Santa not coming to towns across China

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At least ten schools nationwide have curtailed Christmas on campus. (AP)
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Three cities have banned Christmas decorations this year. (AP)
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Churches in another city have been warned to keep minors away from Christmas. (AP)
Updated 24 December 2018
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Santa not coming to towns across China

  • Christmas remains a shopping festival across most of China
  • At least four Chinese cities and one county have ordered Christmas decorations banned this year

SHANGHAI: It took less than 24 hours for all the Christmas trees, lights and bells to disappear from a 27-story shopping and office complex in the Chinese city of Nanyang.
Even the giant teddy bear at the mall entrance wasn’t spared, said Ma Jun, who works at a tutoring company in the building.
“Everything is gone and cleaned,” she said.
Christmas continues to be a shopping festival across most of China, with huge trees adorning shopping malls in Shanghai and Beijing, but a growing emphasis on traditional culture by the ruling Communist Party and the systematic suppression of religion under President Xi Jinping are imperiling Santa Claus’s position.
At least four Chinese cities and one county have ordered Christmas decorations banned this year, according to official notices and interviews. Students, teachers and parents from 10 schools around China told The Associated Press that Christmas celebrations have been curtailed.
“The ongoing local reaction against Christmas is part of the wider sentiment since Xi took power,” said Zi Yang, a China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Xi is trying to broaden the appeal of the Communist Party by casting it as a crusader for Chinese tradition in a fast-changing world, he said. “Therefore, foreign cultural elements such as Christmas are placed on the chopping block.”
The seasonal humbug follows similar outbreaks of anti-Christmas rhetoric in 2014 and 2017. It appears not to be centrally organized, but rather a spreading resistance to foreign festivals by local authorities seeking to align themselves with the growing tide of cultural nationalism.
The squeeze on Christmas is an example of how efforts to “normalize” thinking bleed into the everyday lives of many Chinese. That push exploded into view this year through re-education camps for Uighur Muslims and a crackdown on Christian churches that has continued with force in recent weeks.
In Nanyang, about 950 kilometers (600 miles) west of Shanghai, government officials stopped by the office and shopping complex on Dec. 16 to say that Christmas decorations would have to come down, said Ma, the tutoring company employee.
An official from the city’s urban management bureau hung up when asked for comment.
Nine hours by car south, Hengyang, a city in Hunan province, said in a Dec. 19 notice posted on an official government social media account that anyone caught holding Christmas sales or celebrations that blocked the streets would be punished. Communist Party members, the notice said, should avoid foreign festivals and instead be “models of adherence to Chinese traditional culture.” Hengyang police posted a video on their official social media account of locals discussing the importance of Chinese culture and plans to avoid ostentatious Christmas celebrations.
Langfang city, just south of Beijing, banned Christmas stage performances and merchandising promotions, according to a notice circulated on social media.
Shop windows were to be stripped of Christmas stickers and streets kept free of Christmas banners and lights. Law enforcement patrols were to be stepped up Dec. 23-25 to prevent illegal signs of celebration.
The Langfang urban management bureau declined comment. The state-run Global Times newspaper argued that Western media are exaggerating China’s crackdown on Christmas and reported that the restrictions in Langfang were aimed not at Christmas but at cleaning up roadside stalls and migrant vendors in hopes of winning a “National Civilized City” award from the Communist Party.
Some 270 kilometers (167 miles) west, Fuping county, also in Hebei province, issued a similar clean-up notice. Though the Dec. 21 announcement mentions Christmas eleven times, an official from the Fuping urban management bureau said the rules were aimed at street vendors generally, not Christmas.
Police in the Panlong district of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southern China, circulated a notice that hotels, karaoke parlors, Internet cafes, bars and other crowded places must prohibit Christmas-related decorations and activities.
“It is forbidden to hang Christmas stockings, wear Christmas hats, place Christmas trees, and so on,” the notice read.
It wasn’t clear if the notice applied to all of Kunming city, though a police officer told the AP that the order to circulate it came from city officials.
Reverend Jonathan Liu, founder of the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness, a California nonprofit, said the pushback against Christmas reflects Xi’s efforts to “Sinicize” religion.
Preachers are coached on how to convey Communist Party core values in their sermons and national flags and songs have been injected into some church services, he said.
Liu provided the AP with a notice sent to churches in Zhoukou, a city to the east of Nanyang in Henan province.
It tells churches to vet Christmas plans with the government, forbids minors from participating in Christmas events and caps expenses at 2000 yuan ($290). “I wish you all a happy Christmas! God bless you,” read the notice, which Liu received from a pastor in China.
An official at the United Front Work Department in Zhoukou referred queries to the religious affairs bureau, which could not be reached for comment.
Before becoming president, Xi went to Finland in 2010 and was photographed with Santa Claus. That kind of chumminess appears to be a thing of Christmas past, experts say.
The central government issued guidelines last year for a cultural revival project that calls for a marked boost in the international influence of Chinese traditional culture by 2025.
“You have a culturally conservative ethos in the country that has definitely been encouraged by the central party-state,” said Guo Yingjie, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney. “It’s not hard for university presidents or officials to say, ‘OK celebrating Christmas can easily be seen as de-Sinification or promoting Western culture.’“
Students have taken to social media to complain about restrictions on Christmas celebrations at their schools.
At a top Shanghai university, a student union had its Christmas plans canceled for the first time, an organizer told the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing rebuke.
The students came up with a solution: By replacing “Christmas” with “New Year’s” in their activity proposal and changing the date from Dec. 25, it sailed past school administrators.
Students in the city of Qingdao were reprimanded for hosting an event about gratitude on Thanksgiving Day and warned not to celebrate Christmas publicly, according to a student, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution.
Liu Kaiming, president of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a civil society group in the city of Shenzhen, said that despite the drumbeat of official discontent, Christmas cheer continues to spread in China.
“The sound of resistance is more powerful on the surface, but it has no practical effect,” he said. “Young people’s enthusiasm for the festival is ever-increasing.”


Sweden grants lowest ever number of residence permits to asylum seekers in 2024

Updated 10 January 2025
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Sweden grants lowest ever number of residence permits to asylum seekers in 2024

  • “I think it will need to continue to decrease,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a news conference
  • The number of people in Sweden, who were born abroad has doubled in the past two decades to about a fifth of its 10.5-milion population

STOCKHOLM: Sweden granted the lowest number of residence permits to asylum seekers and their relatives on record in 2024, a boost for the right-wing government which pledged on Friday to keep bringing the number down further.
Sweden’s minority government and its backers, the far-right and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, won the 2022 election on a promise to keep reducing immigration and gang crime, which they say are linked.
Since then it has introduced and proposed several measures to make Sweden less attractive to immigrants, such as making it harder to become a citizen and gain residence permits, less generous rules for bringing family members to Sweden and slashed the number of UNHCR quota immigrants accepted.
According to Swedish Migration Agency data 6,250 asylum seekers and their relatives were given residency permits in 2024, down 42 percent compared to when the government came into power and the lowest number since comparable records began in 1985.
“I think it will need to continue to decrease,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a news conference. “We now have a historically low asylum rate, but that should be put in relation to a number of years when it has been at very high levels.”
The number of people in Sweden, who were born abroad has doubled in the past two decades to about a fifth of its 10.5-milion population.
The country recorded a peak of just over 86,000 granted asylum related residency permits in 2016, the year after the migration crisis when 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden, the highest number per capita in the EU.
Since then Sweden has reversed generous immigration policies, fueled by the rise of the Sweden Democrats, which first made it in to parliament in 2010 but in the last election won 20.5 percent of the vote to become the second-biggest party.
The policies have drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups, which say that the government is falsely making immigrants responsible for Sweden’s problems and risking eroding civil rights and protections.
The government is actively encouraging immigrants to return to their home countries and has earmarked 3 billion Swedish crowns ($269.18 million) for repatriation grants. Starting next year immigrants to Sweden can get 350,000 Swedish crowns to return, up from the current 10,000 crowns.


Special UK unit to track down soldiers over deaths of Afghan civilians

Updated 10 January 2025
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Special UK unit to track down soldiers over deaths of Afghan civilians

  • Ministry of Defence team tasked with finding ex-personnel wanted in connection with alleged killings between 2010, 2013
  • Afghan Inquiry established in 2022 following Times, BBC investigations

LONDON: The UK Ministry of Defence has instructed a special unit to find former elite soldiers wanted in connection with alleged killings of Afghan civilians, The Times reported on Friday.
The Afghan Inquiry Response Unit will locate people named by sources in relation to the alleged war crimes covered by the Afghan Inquiry.
It will use information including the addresses of people drawing military pensions to track down those wanted for questioning.
The AIRU, which was set up in 2023, includes military personnel, civil servants, former police detectives and a specialist Metropolitan Police counterterrorist officer.
The Afghan Inquiry is looking into claims that UK special forces members killed unarmed Afghans during night raids across a three-year period of operations, and attempted to hide evidence of wrongdoing.
The Afghan Inquiry was established in 2022 after investigations by The Times and the BBC uncovered claims that UK Special Air Force units killed numerous Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013, including an incident where three boys aged 12, 14 and 16 were killed while drinking tea in their home.
The inquiry has the power to compel witness testimony under threat of imprisonment, but has had to contend with issues including former serving personnel not keeping contact with their regiments and some witnesses refusing to give evidence.
Former Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer was threatened with jail last year after he refused to give up the names of soldiers who had told him about alleged war crimes.


Saudi-based doctor receives highest award for overseas Indians

Updated 10 January 2025
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Saudi-based doctor receives highest award for overseas Indians

  • Dr. Syed Anwar Khursheed among 27 awardees of this year’s Pravasi Bharatiya Samman
  • He has served at King Faisal Hospital in Taif and as Royal Protocol physician in Riyadh

NEW DELHI: Dr. Syed Anwar Khursheed, one of the longest-serving Indian physicians in Saudi Arabia, received on Friday the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, the highest honor conferred by India’s president on nationals based overseas.

Dr. Khursheed was born in Gulbarga city in the southwestern state of Karnataka and has spent most of his professional life — more than 40 years — in the Kingdom.

He has served for three decades at King Faisal Hospital in Taif and nearly a decade as a Royal Protocol physician in Riyadh, was involved in the COVID-19 response, and has overseen critical care operations and medical assistance to Hajj pilgrims.

He has also contributed to education, founding the International Indian School in Taif, and provided guidance on the establishment of other schools for the Indian community in Saudi Arabia.

Dr. Khursheed usually travels to India twice a year to see his relatives and hometown, but this time the visit is different, coming with a recognition that he did not expect.

“My heart rate is higher this time,” he told Arab News, as he arrived in India to take part in the ceremony in Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

“I really felt excited, thrilled when the award was announced. I was not in the race for the award. I am aware of the honor associated with the award, the prestige it has ... I will be joining an elite club of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman awardees and meet top-level personalities from around the globe. It’s a lifetime achievement.”

Established in 2003, the annual award celebrates the exceptional contributions of overseas Indians in various fields, including medicine, community service, education, business and public affairs.

Dr. Khursheed is among 27 recipients of this year’s Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, and the only one based in Saudi Arabia. He received the award from President Droupadi Murmu.

“Dr. Syed Anwar Khursheed is a distinguished physician with 45 years of experience in public health care and is one of the longest-serving physicians in the government sector. Having spent three decades at the King Faisal Hospital, he was a part of the Medical Protocol Department of the Royal Saudi Family for eight years. He also oversaw critical care operations in the Hajj program at Minah and Arafat,” Suhel Ajaz Khan, India’s ambassador to the Kingdom, told Arab News.

“The Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award to Dr. Syed Anwar Khursheed is a matter of great pride for the Indian diaspora in Saudi Arabia, since it is the highest honor conferred on overseas Indians by the Hon’ble President of India. The award has recognized Dr. Khursheed’s outstanding achievements in the field of medical science and health care, and his long-standing contribution to the welfare of the Indian community in Saudi Arabia.”

More than 2.65 million Indians live and work in Saudi Arabia. They constitute the second-largest Indian community in the Middle East after the UAE.

Among the previous recipients of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award from Saudi Arabia are Dr. Majid Kazi, personal physician to King Fahd bin Abdulaziz, who was honored with Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2006, and Rafiuddin Fazulbhoy, social worker and the founder of Indian International School in Jeddah, who received it in 2008.

In 2011, the award was conferred to renowned pediatrician Dr. M.S. Karimuddin, and in 2014 to Shihab Kottukad, a social worker engaged in assisting the poorest Indian laborers in the Kingdom.

Educationist Zeenat Jafri, who started the first Indian school in Riyadh, was awarded Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2017. In 2021, the recognition was granted to Dr. Siddeek Ahmed, investor and philanthropist based in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.


Kremlin says Putin ready for talks with Trump

Updated 10 January 2025
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Kremlin says Putin ready for talks with Trump

  • Incoming US president has said he can bring a swift end to the nearly three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine
  • Washington has delivered tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its military offensive

MSOCOW: The Kremlin said Friday that President Vladimir Putin was open to talks with Donald Trump, after the incoming US president said a meeting between the pair was being set up.
Trump, who will be inaugurated on January 20, has said he can bring a swift end to the nearly three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine, without presenting a concrete plan.
“The president has repeatedly stated his openness to contact with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Trump on Thursday said a meeting with Putin was being arranged.
“He wants to meet, and we’re setting it up,” Trump said at a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
“President Putin wants to meet, he’s said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with, that’s a bloody mess,” he said.
The Kremlin welcomed Trump’s “readiness to solve problems through dialogue,” Peskov said Friday, adding Moscow had no prerequisites for staging the meeting.
“No conditions are required. What is required is mutual desire and political will to solve problems through dialogue,” he told reporters in a daily briefing.
Trump’s hopes for a swift end to the conflict have stoked concern in Kyiv that Ukraine could be forced to accept a peace deal on terms favorable to Moscow.
Washington has delivered tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale military offensive in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that without such support his country would have lost the conflict.
He is pushing Trump to back his “peace-through-strength” proposal, seeking NATO protections and concrete Western security guarantees as part of any settlement to end the fighting.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry dismissed Trump’s comments on any forthcoming meeting with Putin.
“Trump has talked about plans for such a meeting before, so we see nothing new in this,” said spokesman Georgiy Tykhy.
“Our position is very simple: we all in Ukraine want to end the war fairly for Ukraine, and we see that President Trump is also determined to end the war,” he said, according to the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
Tykhy said Ukraine was preparing for high-level discussions between Kyiv and Washington “immediately” after the inauguration, including between Trump and Zelensky.


The Supreme Court is considering a possible TikTok ban. Here’s what to know about the case

Updated 10 January 2025
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The Supreme Court is considering a possible TikTok ban. Here’s what to know about the case

  • Three appeals court judges have sided with the government and upheld the law, which bans TikTok unless it’s sold
  • The justices largely hold the app’s fate in their hands as they hear the case Friday

WASHINGTON: The law that could ban TikTok is coming before the Supreme Court on Friday, with the justices largely holding the app’s fate in their hands.
The popular social media platform says the law violates the First Amendment and should be struck down.
TikTok’s parent company is based in China, and the US government says that means it is a potential national security threat. Chinese authorities could force it to hand over sensitive data on the huge number of Americans who use it or could influence the spread of information on the platform, they say.
An appeals court has upheld the law, which bans TikTok unless it’s sold.
The law is set to take effect Jan. 19, the day before a new term begins for President-elect Donald Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on the platform. The Republican says he wants to “save TikTok.”
Here are some key things to know about the case:
Is TikTok banned?
Not now, but the short-form video-sharing app could be shut down in less than two weeks if the Supreme Court upholds the law.
Congress passed the measure with bipartisan support, and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed it into law in April.
TikTok’s lawyers challenged the law in court, joined by users and content creators who say a ban would upend their livelihoods. TikTok says the national security concerns are based on inaccurate and hypothetical information.
But a unanimous appeals court panel made up of judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents has upheld the law.
When will the Supreme Court decide?
The justices will issue a decision after arguments Friday, a lightning-fast movement by court standards.
The conservative-majority court could drop clues about how it’s leaning during oral arguments.
TikTok lawyers have urged the justices to step in before the law takes effect, saying even a monthlong shutdown would cause the app to lose about one-third of its daily American users and significant advertising revenue.
The court could quickly block the law from going into effect before issuing a final ruling, if at least five of the nine justices think it is unconstitutional.
What has Trump said about it?
The law is to take effect Jan. 19, the day before Trump takes over as president.
He took the unusual step of filing court documents asking the Supreme Court to put the law on hold so that he could negotiate a deal for the sale of TikTok after he takes office. His position marked the latest example of him inserting himself into national issues before he takes office. It also was a change from his last presidential term, when he wanted to ban it.
Parent company ByteDance has previously said it has no plans to sell. Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, last month.
Who else is weighing in?
Free-speech advocacy groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have urged the court to block the law, saying the government hasn’t shown credible evidence of harm and a ban would cause “extraordinary disruption” in Americans’ lives.
On the other side, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican former Senate leader, and a group of 22 states have filed briefs in support, arguing that the law protects free speech by safeguarding Americans’ data and preventing the possible manipulation of information on the platform by Chinese authorities.