In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Asia-Pacific

03 Mar

While Russia was stealing all the attention over the weekend, a small group of assailants wielding knives killed at least 33 people and injured over a hundred in the main railway station of Kunming, China.  China's government has called these "terrorist attacks," and has hinted it is linked with Uighur separatists in China's northwestern Xinjiang province.  But the failure of the U.S....

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27 Feb

In a legal wrinkle to the ever-worsening Sino-Japanese relationship, the Chinese government has now publicly backed a lawsuit filed in Beijing courts against Japanese companies that used Chinese citizens as forced laborers during World War II. The lawsuit names Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and Mitsui Mining and Smelting as defendants and asks for compensation of 1 million yuan ($163,000) for each defendant...

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26 Feb

As China continues to offend or at least alarm its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia with its expansive territorial and maritime claims, it is worth noting there is one important Asian player who wholeheartedly supports each and everyone one of China's sovereignty claims:  Taiwan. (Taiwan's government even supports China's sovereignty claim over Taiwan, just disputing which government is "China".) In...

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26 Feb

According to VOA News, the Ukrainian Parliament would like the ICC to investigate recently-deposed President Yanukovych: Ukraine’s parliament voted on Tuesday to send fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych to be tried for ‘serious crimes’ by the International Criminal Court once he has been captured. A resolution, overwhelmingly supported by the assembly, linked Yanukovych, who was ousted on Saturday and is now on the...

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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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