In March of this year, as Coronavirus thrust itself onto the forefront of the global stage, the Director General of the United Nations, Tatiana Valovaya, expressed hope that COVID-19 could serve as a “common enemy” to bring the world together and catalyze peace. While the status of this can be debated, this hope has not … Read more
Organ harvests, forced sterilization of women, psychological torture, and forced family separations—the hallmarks of the Xinjiang region in China. Uyghur Muslims live in fear in Xinjiang as the Chinese government continues to wage war on their culture, with its elimination as the goal. Many are subjected to “re-education” camps, a euphemism for an exploitative labor … Read more
When it comes to flood myths, China’s is not as well known as Noah’s Ark, but just as influential. Legend says that four millennia ago, the Yellow and Yangtze rivers frequently flooded, with devastating consequences for the ancient Chinese. However, salvation arrived when a distant relative of the emperor, Yu, united the region’s disparate tribes, … Read more
This article was co-written by Corbin Duncan and Michel Nehme. It was winter in Beijing, and Gough Whitlam cut an unusual figure in a terracotta-clad temple of the Chinese capital. Towering over his Chinese counterparts at 6’3”, Whitlam’s presence was marked by obvious bemusement and subtle suspicion in equal measure. It was his second visit … Read more
Sometimes it is the tiniest spark that lights the largest fires. Small pocketbook items have become the catalysts for large-scale protest movements around the globe in the past months. A four-cent raise in metro fares in Chile, fluctuations in the price of onions in India, and a twenty-cent tax on the use of the messaging … Read more
Australian Parliament building in aftermath of wildfire. This past summer, Australia experienced one of the most devastating fire seasons on record. Over a period of 80 days, forty-six million acres of bushland were razed (an area larger than Portugal), an estimated one billion animals were lost, including endangered species, and 2,500 homes were destroyed. Tragically, … Read more
Kishore Mahbubani, former Singaporean Ambassador to the United Nations, once declared, “When ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] was born on the 8th of August 1967, it was destined to fail.” After all, Southeast Asia was, and continues to be, one of the most diverse regions in the world, hosting four major religions, 800 … Read more
Over many years, the rule of law has been regarded, even sanctified, as one of Hong Kong’s core values. This high regard has always seemed justified: In the 2019 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index (released in February of 2019, before the current protests), Hong Kong ranked 16 globally — third in Asia and five … Read more
Protest against the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghurs. In November, two documents were leaked detailing chilling evidence of the mass detention and onslaught of violence by the Chinese government against Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of China. This series of documents is the most recent evidence revealing this brutal crackdown on Muslim ethnic … Read more
The Yasukuni Shrine houses spirits of fallen Japanese soldiers from the Meiji Restoration to World War II. Yet, it also enshrines 14 World War II war criminals convicted by the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, including the wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. Yasukuni is a reminder of Asia’s unhealable wounds from World War II, housing ghosts … Read more