Japan ruling party calls for joining genocide convention
ANI
16 May 2021, 18:18 GMT+10
Tokyo [Japan], May 16 (ANI): Ahead of the Group of Seven (G7) summit next month, lawmakers from Japan s ruling party has drafted proposals for the government, to advance the issue of human rights diplomacy amid growing scrutiny of abuses in China s Xinjiang province.
The proposals, which the party plans to submit this month include ratifying a United Nations convention on genocide and introducing legislation to enable sanctions, Nikkei Asia reported.
Moreover, the recommendations from the Liberal Democratic Party also ask the Yoshihide Suga government to back the idea for corporate due diligence on human rights matters.
May 16, 2021 01:12:42 am
An Australian think tank released a report on the declining birth rates among the Uyghur population in China’s western Xinjiang province, concluding that China’s birth-control policies imposed on the Uyghurs may constitute genocide.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyzed the publicly-available data on birthrates in China from 2011 to 2019, and found that birth rates among the Uyghur ethnic minority dropped precipitously starting in 2017. The birth rate fell by almost half in the predominately Uyghur and minority population regions in Xinjiang, where China’s “one child policy” is being strictly enforced. The policy started during the administration of Deng Xiaoping in 1979 as a way to combat over-population, but has since been loosened for Han families, who are native to the eastern half of the country and represent the ethnic majority in China.
Defence undershoots by $10b on new weapons
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The Defence Department is on track to underspend by more than $10 billion on new equipment by 2023, despite high-level warnings about the risk of war, according to Labor’s analysis of budget papers.
While the Morrison government regularly touts its $270 billion, 10-year arms build-up, in 2020-21 the capital acquisition budget for new equipment is $2.1 billion, or 18.1 per cent lower than what was forecast in 2017, now totalling $9.5 billion.
The Joint Strike Fighter is among Australia’s most expensive defence projects.
Joe Armao
Since the 2016 Defence white paper, which heralded the modernisation of the military amid rising regional uncertainty, the amount underspent has cumulatively totalled almost $6.2 billion, with the gap between what was first budgeted and what was actually being spent growing wider each year.
Oleg Vornik is a local CEO with a broad global view.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, he was spending six months of the year travelling the world to sell his company DroneShield s counter-drone technology to Australian allies.
Although international border closures have kept the 39-year-old in Australia since, Sydney-based DroneShield has continued to export amid rising global demand for counter-drone technology.
“We are dealing with a new class of a threat, which is very dangerous,” he told SBS News.
Oleg Vornik with one of the counter-drone devices.
SBS/Sandra Fulloon
Commercial drones are readily available, and authorities across the world fear terror groups could modify the devices as weapons against military or civilian targets.