By Hiroshi Tajima and Takayuki Nakagawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff WritersVLADIVOSTOK, Russia — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to make final arrangements for Abe’s visit to China in October, in their talks in Vladivostok, Russia, on Wednesday morning.

The two leaders also confirmed their stance of closely coordinating with each other for North Korea’s denuclearization.

In the about 40-minute meeting, Xi stressed that the two nations share an important awareness of promoting continuous development of China-Japan relations. The Chinese president said that the two countries have the opportunity to enter a normal track, and develop and improve bilateral ties, based on common efforts from both sides.

Xi also said he “welcomes” Abe’s visit to China in October.

Meanwhile, Abe asked Xi to visit Japan after his visit to China. Xi replied that he takes note of the invitation.

Following the meeting, Abe told reporters, “Japan and China reconfirmed a common awareness of deepening friendship and cooperation.”

“I want to establish a basis for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia by lifting the bilateral ties to a new stage through reciprocal visits by the two leaders [of Japan and China],” he added.

Priority has been given to realizing Abe’s visit to China on Oct. 23, exactly 40 years after the Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty came into force, on the assumption that the prime minister will win his third consecutive term as president of the Liberal Democratic Party in the LDP presidential election on Sept. 20.

The meeting was the seventh between the two leaders and follows the previous one in Da Nang, Vietnam, in November 2017.

In Wednesday’s meeting, Abe and Xi reconfirmed setting denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as a common goal, in light of coordination that is under way to realize a second U.S.-North Korea summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Abe explained Tokyo’s position to resolve as early as possible the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea and received support from Xi.

The two leaders also agreed to promote infrastructure development in third-party countries by Japanese and Chinese private firms, with an eye on China’s Belt and Road Initiative to create a massive economic zone.

Abe and Xi exchanged views on international trade as the United States is strengthening its protectionist policies.

Free trade, not protectionism, is important, Xi said. For his part, Abe said, “Amid ever-changing situations surrounding trade and investment, it is important to maintain close communications between Japan and China.”Speech

This trend deters others from engaging with the UN and results in “self-censorship.”

UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour, the senior UN official designated to address the issue, will present the report to the Human Rights Council on September 19.

A total of 29 countries in which new cases are listed in the report are Bahrain, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, India, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, the Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar, the Philippines, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

The annual report on reprisals of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the ninth of its kind, details country by country cases in two annexes, including allegations of killing, torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and detention, surveillance, criminalisation, and public stigmatisation campaigns targeting victims and human rights defenders.

It includes allegations of reprisals and intimidation documented in a total of 38 countries. Some of the States are current members of the Human Rights Council, according to a message UNB received from Geneva.

Some have featured in the annual report on reprisals nearly every year since it was instituted in 2010.

“The cases of reprisals and intimidation detailed in this report and its two annexes represent the tip of the iceberg, while many more are reported to us. We’re also increasingly seeing legal, political and administrative hurdles used to intimidate – and silence – civil society,” said Andrew Gilmour.

The report noted that selectively applied laws and new legislation are used to restrict and obstruct organizations that are likely to cooperate with the UN. This includes limiting their ability to secure and maintain funding, especially from foreign donors.

The impact of fear of reprisals is not only visible in the field, where United Nations personnel often encounter people too afraid to speak with them, but also at headquarters in New York, Geneva, and elsewhere, the report says.

The report highlights a “disturbing trend in the use of national security arguments and counter-terrorism strategies by States as justification for blocking access by communities and civil society organizations to the United Nations.”

It noted that a number of NGOs, human rights defenders, activists and experts have been labelled as “terrorists” by their governments. Reported cases include individuals or organisations being officially charged with terrorism, blamed for cooperation with foreign entities, or accused of damaging the reputation or security of the State.

“States have frequently invoked counter-terrorism as the reason an organisation or individual should be denied access to participation at the United Nations. The real global threat of terrorism notwithstanding, this issue must be tackled without compromising respect for human rights,” the report says.

The wide scope of reprisals inhibits the UN’s work in many ways, including in conflict settings, when delivering humanitarian assistance or in protecting civilians, and in the development context, where community members who engage on land and resource-related projects frequently encounter a hostile environment.

The report recognised that the United Nations must strengthen the collection of information on acts of intimidation and reprisal, including do more to ensure that incidents experienced by women human rights defenders and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons are documented, disaggregated and properly analysed.

It also encouraged all stakeholders to report allegations of intimidation and reprisals for cooperating with the UN on human rights as they occur, to ensure follow-up and action.

“As the Secretary-General has said, we should all be deeply shocked and angered by the extent to which civil society actors suffer reprisals because of their work, including when they cooperate with the UN. But shock and anger must translate into real action. Governments can do much more to stop reprisals, ensure that they do not recur, and hold those responsible to account for their actions,” said Gilmour.

The report called on States to follow up on the cases included in the present and previous reports and provide substantive responses.

The Mekong River Committee (MRC) plans to hold an open forum this month on the development of hydropower dams along the river. However, 20 NGOs in the Kingdom have said they will boycott the event.

Waters were particularly catastrophic this year after the collapse of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy hydropower dam located near the Kingdom’s border with Laos.

The dam, which cost an estimated $1.02 billion, was a project undertaken by a South Korean company.

After the collapse, tens of thousands of hectares of crops and residential land were inundated, displacing 50,000 families.

Soth Morn, 45, of Stung Treng’s Siem Pang village, told The Post on Tuesday that river flooding normally doesn’t cause serious problems for villagers.

Morn claimed that 50 per cent of his cashew nut plantation was completely damaged.

“My family and I, along with some villagers, left home for safer ground on the hills because the waters were rising very quickly. We brought only important items and two pigs. We left 20 ducks there. They drowned that night.”

“We have really never experienced such a flood before and I do not want to see this terrible event happen again,” Morn said.

Boycott called

He appealed to the authorities not to allow any more dams to be built along the Mekong. He said biodiversity and the livelihoods of those living along the river would be impacted.

Nonetheless, his appeal could fall on deaf ears, as the MRC had recently announced it will lead a discussion in the Lao capital about proposals for two new hydropower dams in the region.

An announcement issued by the committee last month said the forum will take place over two days near the end of this month.

A group of 20 environmental NGOs responded to the announcement by saying they will boycott the forum unless the projects are delayed.

Mok Bunthoeun an official at the NGO Forum, said after the collapse of Xe Pian Xe Namnoy, the Laos government called for further dam projects to be delayed until the collapse is investigated fully.

“The Laos National Mekong Committee explained that the Pak Lay hydropower dam is not a new project, but we think that the regional discussion forum should be delayed.”

“The Mekong Committee should reply formally to our request for an explanation over the impact of the previous hydropower dam or else we will not attend the forum,” Bunthoeun said.

Meanwhile, National Committee for Disaster Management spokesman Keo Vy agreed that the forum should be delayed to next month while the collapse of Xe Pian Xe Namnoy is investigated.

“It will not be late even if we delay the regional discussion forum to next month. However, experts of the MRC and relevant parties should make the decision,” he said.

But the committee hasn’t given any indication that the forum will be delayed.

MRC executive director Pham Tuan Phan said: “This forum encourages involved parties to raise their concerns and suggestions on the Pak Lay project and other remaining projects.

“This forum is a special opportunity to discuss and share concerns with other country members of the MRC, especially the country mentioning about this project and find a solution for those concerns.”

“The future does not depend on the past in this new era. Developing countries have fewer facilities from the previous revolutions, but they have fewer burdens and can move faster,” he told the World Economic Forum on Asean in Hanoi.

He said success was not so much about technology as policy.

“Since developing countries don’t have a solid legal framework, they are more flexible to develop new policies to adapt and accept changes,” Hùng said.

The acting minister said he came to the event to share his initiatives about the future for Vietnam and the region.

“I want to share the idea of developing one Asean, meaning a flat Asean – no roaming charges or roaming charges as low as domestic charges so that everybody can travel but feel like they’re at home,” Hùng said.

He also suggested establishing an Asean university of information and communication technology (ICT), saying ICT is the key sector in the fourth industrial revolution.

Hùng put forward an initiative to set up a regional cybersecurity information centre and expressed his hope that the initiatives will be discussed during the forum.

“Our life nowadays depends on the internet, but the internet is not safe enough – so we have to make it safer in the future,” he said.

Anne Birgitte Albrectsen, chief executive of Plan International, a development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls, said she hoped discussions at the forum would help close the gender technology gap.

“We’re seeing that women actually have less access to the internet, less access to mobile phones. Young girls and women have fewer skills to enter the technology sector. Generally, in technology, we’re seeing only 10 per cent of the employees are young women. And they’re certainly not climbing the ladder in companies,” she said.

Social norms still lag behind, she added.

“Women are still expected to take care of the home. Young girls and women cannot be what they cannot see,” she said.

Sharing this opinion, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesian minister of finance, said that governments would have to prove their roles.

“It’s very exciting for young people to come into this fourth industrial revolution. But in order for this revolution to become an equal opportunity for everyone, there needs to be policies today that will prepare them to be able not only to use it and enjoy it but also to adapt and innovate,” she said.

Roasted, boiled or steamed, dog meat can be found in markets and food shops across the capital city famed for its tasty street food, and the meat is traditionally eaten with rice wine or beer.

But Hanoi People’s Committee on Tuesday warned residents to lay off canine meat to prevent the spread of rabies and other animal-borne diseases.

It also urged them to stop eating cat meat, often dubbed “little tiger” on Vietnamese menus, which is less popular than dog but still readily available in rural areas.

The practice of killing the animals is often cruel and the city government hopes it can be gradually phased out, it said in a statement.

It said it was a matter of preserving Hanoi’s reputation as a “civilised and modern capital” among foreigners, many of whom consider eating the meat of animals commonly kept as pets taboo.

“The trading, killing and use of dog and cat meat has brought on a negative reaction from tourists and expatriates living in Hanoi,” the statement said.

There are about 493,000 dogs and cats in the city, the vast majority of which are kept as domesticated pets, and about 1,000 shops open for selling the animal meat.

Three people have died from rabies in Hanoi since the beginning of this year, and two others were confirmed infected with the disease, according to official figures.

Vietnam’s capital city is renowned globally for its street food, and its culinary staples such as pho noodle soup and pate banh mi sandwiches have reached menus around the world from Paris to Pittsburgh.

Hanoi city is also a playground for more adventurous diners who can sample fried frog meat, fertilised duck embryo or hotpot turtle meat.

That was what Facebook user Athirah Arshad stumbled upon while browsing through online blogging site Tumblr  images of pregnant women with lewd captions.

“I was looking for information about pregnancy online, and I decided to log onto Tumblr. I was really shocked to read the captions that accompanied those photos,” she told The Star.

The photo captions, which were attributed to the images of tudungclad pregnant women, contained sexual innuendos written in Malay.

The 21yearold food stall operator from Seri Manjung had first censored the faces of those mothers before posting the screencaps on her Facebook as a friendly reminder to motherstobe to think twice before uploading their baby bump pictures onto social media.

“I’m aware that there are people who are ‘terlampau gila seks’ (extremely horny) out there, that even pregnant mothers can become models.

“This is so dumb! What kind of human are they?” she wrote in a post.

Athirah also expressed hope that the authorities, including the police and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) would take action against the individuals for posting such materials online.

Her post had been shared over 5,600 times, with many Facebook users feeling disgusted and angry over the matter.

Facebook user Nurul Amirah Aimie wrote that she was aware of such horrible people online.

“That is why I never post pictures of my pregnancy, whether it’s holding my baby bump, wearing tight blouse or dress,” she wrote.

Another user Alimi Yazid pointed out that the mothers in the pictures were not wearing any revealing clothes.

“The problem is with the perverted men, not these pregnant ladies. Victim blaming is stupid,” he added.

The Mumm champagne house teamed up with designer Octave de Gaulle, who has specialised in conceiving of everyday objects for the final frontier, to develop the space-age bottles.

Journalists from several countries will try the champagne on Wednesday during a flight taking off from the French city of Reims, in the heart of champagne country.

The specially equipped Airbus Zero-G plane will make a series of parabolic manoeuvres, climbing steeply before plunging down to create 20-second spurts of weightlessness.

The target audience is not astronauts, who are not allowed to drink alcohol on the International Space Station.

But the coming wave of sub-orbital and orbital space tourism promoted by private operators such as Virgin Galactic and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin could prove an ebullient audience for cosmic connoisseurs.

“They won’t have to be performing any professional tasks onboard, so they’ll probably be able to drink a bit of alcohol,” said astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, who heads the company which operates the Airbus Zero-G.

In zero gravity, the challenge is quite simply to get the wine out of the bottle.

“You could imagine drinking it with a straw,” said physicist Gerard Liger-Belair, who consulted on the project — though it’s unlikely you’d ever find a champagne fan stooping to such an indignity.

In search of a more elegant solution, around three years ago the Mumm team turned to De Gaulle — a great-grand-nephew of the French wartime leader Charles de Gaulle — who came up with a bottle divided into two chambers.

The champagne is in the upper portion, while below is a finger-controlled valve which uses the champagne’s own carbon dioxide to eject small amounts of wine which emerges as foam.

– Catching your champagne foam –

The next trick was to stop the wine from streaming across the cabin, for which De Gaulle created an aluminium strip that forms a ring over the top of the bottle to capture a bubbly sphere.

“Then you rotate the bottle and the foam sphere is released,” he told AFP in his Paris workshop.

Drinkers can then scoop the wine out of the air using a tiny yet long-stemmed glass which resembles an egg cup.

Clervoy said the moment the foam turns to liquid in the mouth is a sensation that can’t be matched on Earth.

“It’s really magical because the champagne lands not just on your tongue but on the palate, the cheeks — the gastronomic sensations are magnified,” he said.

Mumm is now looking for a partner, either a public space agency or one of the private upstarts.

In the meantime, De Gaulle plans to refine his prototype, and who knows, one day astronauts might be able to ring in a new year while on a mission.

“There has always been a bit of alcohol in space, even if it’s officially prohibited,” he said.

August is probably not the best time for tourists to travel to Angkor Archaeological Park in northern Cambodia, as the rainy season brings particularly muggy conditions.

But for Yuan Mengxi, an assistant researcher at the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage, her trip last month was perhaps one of her most exciting, although she had been there more than 10 times.

Restoration of Ta Keo, a temple at the site built in the 10th and 11th centuries, has been completed.

“The work has been long and tough,” Yuan said. “But it is meaningful when you see locals, including the elderly and children, continuing to worship deities at the shrines.”

The park houses the major tourist attraction of Angkor Wat, and welcomes visitors from around the world.

But when the Angkor complex was entered onto the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1992, it was also labeled as being “in danger” due to unstable foundational architecture and severe damage caused over time by warfare.

Many parts of the temples there have collapsed, and refurbishing foundations posed potential hazards to workers.

As a result, the International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor, also known as ICC-Angkor, was organized in 1993 under the UNESCO framework. China is one of the members of this committee.

Yuan visited Ta Keo to inspect the restoration work, which the academy started in 2010.

“Maybe it’s our best way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of ICC-Angkor and the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Cambodia,” she said.

Construction of Ta Keo as a “state temple” began during the reign of Jayavarman V, a ruler during the Khmer Empire (802-1431). Covering 46,000 square meters, the site is generally considered one of the most magnificent temple-mountains in Angkor.

The term temple-mountain refers to the style for the construction of state temples during the Khmer Empire, which was influenced by Indian temple architecture.

“It’s important evidence showing the transition of architectural styles from the early-stage Angkor sites with typical Hindu characters from India to the later ones featuring local Buddhism,” Yuan said.

Ta Keo is also believed to be the first temple built entirely from sandstone in the Khmer Empire.

However, when the academy started restoration work, experts had to sift through tens of thousands of fallen stones and largely collapsed halls, corridors and turrets.

“We had to find the right stones in the rubble and put them back,” Yuan said. “Everything has to be concise. But restoration is far more than putting the fallen stones back. The bulk of the work is done through detailed research before the engineers start.”

A fresh report from the UN rights office decried “the instrumentalisation of the law and of the courts by the government and military in what constitutes a political campaign against independent journalism”.

It slammed the “failure of the judiciary to uphold the fair trial rights of those targeted”.

The rights office pointed to the “particularly outrageous” and high-profile example of the conviction of Reuters journalists Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone, also known as Thet Oo Maung.

Last week, a judge jailed the two — both Myanmar nationals — for seven years under a draconian state secrets act over their reporting of the Rohingya crisis.

Around 700,000 of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority were driven into Bangladesh by a Myanmar army-led crackdown in August last year.

The UN report said there were many other examples of detentions and prosecutions of journalists and their sources, indicating “wider trends of suppression of freedom of expression”.

According to the report, laws on telecommunications, official secrets, unlawful association, electronic transactions, import-export and aircraft have been used against journalists in a number of cases.

It pointed to one case, where three journalists were arrested in June 2017 after covering a “drug burning” ceremony in connection with the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

The event took place in an area under the control of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in northern Shan state.

Even though the journalists were covering events unrelated to the armed conflict, they were charged under the so-called unlawful association act.

The report pointed out that the act is “routinely used to allege that any contact with an ethnic armed group is tantamount to a criminal offence”.

In another case highlighted in the report, a documentary crew working for Turkish state television was last year charged under Myanmar’s Import-Export Law over their use of a drone to film the parliament building in Nay Pyi Taw.

While the charges were dropped in the end, the report said the case illustrated the authorities were willing to use any legal provisions to block independent reporting on critical issues in Myanmar in “flagrant violation of the right to freedom of expression”.

‘Just doing our jobs’

In Myanmar, it has become “impossible for journalists to do their job without fear or favour,” it said.

UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned in a statement Tuesday that the situation was “hardly conducive to a democratic transition” in Myanmar.

She called on authorities in the country to “cease the legal and judicial harassment of journalists and to initiate a review of ill-defined laws that facilitate attacks on the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression”.

The sentencing of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo sent shockwaves through the small community of journalists in Myanmar, a nation that had only recently started to taste democratic freedoms after nearly half a century of military rule.

In his reasoning, the judge pointed to information and contact details of armed ethnic groups found on the pair’s phones.

Outraged journalists are staging protests and have started a Facebook campaign, changing profile pictures to photos of the jailed duo and sharing a logo depicting a reporter with arms outstretched, daring the authorities to come for him as well.

“We journalists, including Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, are just doing our jobs,” said Nyan Hlaing Linn, one of the instigators of the campaign. “If collecting information is a crime then they should come and #arrestmetoo.”

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry reported that storms flooded low-lying areas in six northern provinces, three central provinces including Vientiane, and two southern provinces, damaging or destroying more than 1 million hectares of crops and fisheries.

Khammuan province’s farmland was the most badly affected, followed by Savannakhet.

Officials said the extent of the floods would have a long-term impact on food security projects as well as hinder efforts to boost agricultural production.

In particular, the storms will have a bearing on the ministry’s targets for 2016-2020 which were set to ensure food security, greater commercial production, and sustainable forestry management.

Under these targets, the ministry is pursuing annual production of 2.5 million tonnes of paddy rice through government-introduced food security projects. Of this, between 200,000 and 400,000 tonnes was to be stockpiled as a national reserve.

In the wake of the floods, the ministry’s Department of Irrigation is cooperating with provincial authorities to provide financial support in combination with funding to repair damaged irrigation systems.

The ministry will also support farmers with planting vegetables, clean agricultural production, and planting rice in the dry season from November to April.

The ministry had set a target to increase agricultural production in 2018-2019 from 177,000 hectares to 185,000 hectares. The ministry will store 986 tonnes of series 3 rice seeds as well as harvest 500 tonnes of series 1 and series 2 seeds, which are expected to be ready at the end of this year. The rice seeds will be distributed to farmers for planting in the dry season.

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Dr Lien Thikeo said recently that so far this rainy season farmers had planted crops on 234,000 hectares, equal to 31 percent of the target.

Dr Lien said he was anticipating losses incurred in the rainy season to reach around 527 billion kip. Environmental experts predict that climate change is expected to bring increasingly severe drought and flood conditions to Laos, with crop yields possibly falling 10 percent by 2020 and 30 percent by the year 2050.

This could further affect food security improvement measures which the government is continuing to work on with its agencies and non-governmental organisations.