Cao Wenzhuang, a former pharmaceutical registration department director at the State Food and Drug Administration in China, has been sentenced to death by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court.  Mr. Cao is accused of accepting over $300,000 in bribes from two pharmaceutical companies who were seeking approval to sell their products. 

Mr. Cao’s sentence comes less than two months after this same court sentenced the head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, to death.  Mr. Zheng was sentenced to death in May for taking over $800,000 in bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least ten deaths.

Although the sentence may appear harsh, Mr. Cao’s sentence comes with a two-year reprieve, a lighter penalty that may allow him to serve his time as life in prison.  These actions by the Chinese government is also a sign that China is determined to crack down on fraud, corruption, and counterfeiting in the country.  Four other senior food and drug officials were also sentenced to long prison terms.  This comes at a time when China is under increasing international criticism over the quality and safety of its products.

Concerns began when China exported pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical.  Soon after, there were recalls of Chinese toothpaste, blocked imports of some Chinese seafood.

For more information, please see:
–http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/world/asia/06cnd-china.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
–http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=385&sid=1177730

In Islamabad, Pakistan, hundreds of militant student are inside Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), surrounded by 12,000 Pakistani troops, defying a government order to surrender.  The mosque attempted to set up a Taliban-style justice system.

Security forces began their assault on Lal Masjid this week, despite fears that action would inflame people across the country, especially in the pro-Taliban tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

At least 24 people have died, including militants, security officers and bystanders. Tanks fired shells at the mosque, destroying its front wall. Circling helicopters received heavy fire from within the mosque. The mosque’s chief was arrested and more than 1,000 of his followers surrendered.  Security agents caught him trying to leave the mosque wearing a burqa (head-to-toe women’s gown).

About eight explosions were followed by some gunfire, which was followed by an announcement from security force loudspeakers outside the mosque, calling on the students to surrender, a witness said.

The events followed clashes at the mosque between security forces and the militants, who have been in conflict with the government for months. At least nine people have been killed.

An estimated 1,000 students are still in the building, about half of them female students.

For more information, please see:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IG06Df03.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/35ec0ee2-2a49-11dc-9208-000b5df10621,_i_rssPage=5d866f00-6714-11da-a650-0000779e2340.html

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/286205/1/.html

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/286163/1/.html

Indian police have arrested a man posing as a doctor, charging him with illegally aborting female fetuses and then flushing them down the toilet. A.K. Singh ran an illegal clinic in Gurgaon (a Delhi suburb) offering sex-determination tests and abortions.

Abortion is legal in India, but the government outlawed abortion based on the sex of the fetus in 1994. Police found tiny skulls and bones in the clinic’s septic tank, as well as a pile of partly burned fetuses in the clinic building. Singh confessed to the crime, but Indian law does not accept confessions made in police custody unless they are repeated in court.

The Indian government reports that about 10 million girls have been killed over the past 20 years.  Many regions of India, including Gurgaon, report only 800 girls born for every 1,000 boys. Indian parents tend to prefer sons because daughters are expensive to marry off.

For more information, please see:

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070615/137/6h15g.html

http://www.indiadaily.org/entry/aborted-female-foetuses-found-in-gurgaon/

A 16-year-old Chinese boy, Chen, an ex-slave, told his story to the media this week. He reported that he accepted a job at a factory from a man that approached him at a train station.

He said that he was taken to a brick yard, where he was fed minimally, beaten, and forced to work without pay. As a result, his body is pocked with sores from being beaten by the guards.

Recently police have raided thousands of Chinese coal mines, freeing hundreds of workers.

The boy claims that until the raid, police were bribed by the owners of the mines. He went without a bed, shower, health care, or hair cut. Chen said that he was beaten the guards with iron bars, sticks, or bricks if he worked too slowly. 

Chen and his family are now worried about the possibility of retaliation by the brickyard and they agreed to be interviewed by media only after receiving assurances that the exact location of their home would not be identified.

Since the coal-mine scandal broke last month, more than 8,000 kilns and small coal mines in Shanxi and Henan provinces have been raided, with 591 workers freed, including 51 children.

About 160 suspected kiln bosses have been detained, and at least one village-level Communist Party secretary expelled from the party after his son was found to be operating a kiln where 31 slaves were found laboring under harsh conditions.

For more information, please see:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_re_as/china_slavery

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/world/asia/23china.html?ref=asia

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/jan-june07/labor_06-25.html

A group of about one hundred Japanese lawmakers has said the Chinese estimate of the death toll in the ‘Rape of Nanking’ massacre has been grossly inflated.  This disagreement has led to increased friction between the two countries.  The Japanese lawmakers compiled a study indicating the deaths to be 20,000.  China has estimated the number to be over 300,000 deaths.  Historians, however, have generally  agreed that at least 150,000 civilians were slaughters and thousands of Chinese women were raped in the 1937 attack in Nanjing, then called Nanking.

When the Japanese seized the city of Nanjing in 1937, they raped thousands of Chinese women and killed thousands in what came to be known as the ‘Rape of Nanking.’  Many Japanese conservatives are now angry over what they call exaggerated stories of Japanese brutality during World War II.

Amid this new friction between China and Japan, anti-Japanese feelings over the Nanjing attacks among the Chinese have remained strong.  In its 70th anniversary, an American movie about the mass slaughter will open in China next week.  “Nanking” will premiere in Beijing and be released across China.  The movie mixes archival footage with actors’ readings of witness accounts from those who protected Chinese refugees.

For more information, please see:

–Rape of Nanking toll disputed

–China says ‘Rape of Nanking’ was atrocious crime that Japanese lawmakers cannot deny

–‘No massacre in Nanking,’ Japanese lawmakers say

–Film about 1937 Japanese assault on ‘Nanking’ to screen in China