In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Asia-Pacific

11 Feb

One of the most frustrating things about China's response to the Philippines arbitration has been the brevity of its legal discussion and analysis.  In particular, I've long thought that China had a pretty good argument that the Annex VII UNCLOS arbitral tribunal does not have jurisdiction over the dispute since, in many ways, territorial disputes are at the heart of the...

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26 Jan

The New York Times reports that  Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economics professor, has been arrested by Chinese authorities for separatism and inciting ethnic hatred.  A number of his students are also seemingly being detained. Tohti is just one person and, perhaps unfortunately for him, his case is emblematic of larger regional tensions in China and Central Asia. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, about...

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16 Jan

A subcommittee of the  U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee held a much-needed hearing to educate themselves on China's recent activity in the East and South China Seas.  Professor Peter Dutton of the Naval War College, along with two other experts on Asian affairs, gave interesting and useful testimony on the nature of China's maritime disputes with Japan, the...

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10 Jan

It looks like the U.S. and India have worked out a sort-of deal to end the battle over visa-fraud charges brought against India's deputy consul-general in New York Devyani Khobragade.  Yesterday, a U.S. grand jury indicted Khobragade on the visa-fraud charges, and shortly thereafter, Khobragade was allowed to leave the U.S. for India.  India is now retaliating by demanding the U.S. withdraw...

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07 Dec

The WTO's new Director-General Roberto Azevedo is celebrating a rare event:  The WTO's entire 159-country membership has finally reached  a new multilateral agreement.  This is the first time that the WTO's membership as a whole (as opposed to smaller groups of its member states) has reached an agreement since it was formed in 1994 and the first set of agreements under...

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24 Nov

I don't have any insights to offer on the big news this weekend, that legally-non binding-UNSC-resolution-violating agreement in Geneva.  But I did want to note one other big sort-of-law news item from the other side of the world: China's announcement that it is drawing an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, including over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku...

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20 Nov

[This Post has been updated]. One of the main benefits of attending a conference (rather than just reading descriptions of its proceedings), is the chance to have face-to-face exchanges with individuals you normally never get a chance to meet.  One of the unusual aspects of the Asian Society of International Law is that it draws lawyers from many different Asian...

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