PERTH, Australia: A self-confessed Chinese spy has given Australia’s counterespionage agency inside intelligence on how Beijing conducts its interference operations abroad and revealed the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong, media reported.
Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told reporters Saturday that the detailed accusations of China infiltrating and disrupting democratic systems in Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan are “very disturbing.”
The Nine network newspapers reported Chinese defector Wang “William” Liqiang told ASIO — the country’s counterespionage agency — that he was involved in the kidnapping in 2015 of one of five Hong Kong booksellers suspected of selling dissident materials. The incident has been a reference point for protesters during the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong.
He would be the first Chinese intelligence operative to blow his cover.
“I have personally been involved and participated in a series of espionage activities,” Wang reportedly said in a sworn statement to ASIO in October.
He revealed he was part of a Hong Kong-based investment firm, which was a front for the Chinese government to conduct political and economic espionage in Hong Kong, including infiltrating universities and directing harassment and cyberattacks against dissidents.
Using a South Korean passport, Wang said he meddled in Taiwan’s 2018 municipal elections and claimed there were plans to disrupt the presidential vote on the democratic self-ruled island next year. China claims Taiwan as its territory to be reunited by force if necessary.
Wang said he faced detention and possible execution if he returned to China.
He said he currently was living in Sydney with his wife and infant son on a tourist visa and had requested political asylum.
Australia’s Home Affairs Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
In Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond Saturday to a faxed request for comment on Wang.
In Hong Kong, calls to the China Innovation Investment Limited office went unanswered Saturday. The company was identified by Wang as a front for Chinese intelligence operations in the city.
According to its website, CIIL is an investment holding company incorporated in Cayman Islands in February 2002 and listed on Hong Kong’s stock exchange in August the same year. It has investments in several companies in Hong Kong and China involved in energy storage products, lightning products, energy saving and media terminals.
Resource-rich Australia relies on China for one-third of its export earnings, but relations have been frosty for some time.
The Australian government has been trying to neutralize China’s influence by banning foreign political donations and all covert foreign interference in domestic politics.
“These are very disturbing reports,” Frydenberg said. “The matter is now in the hands of the appropriate law enforcement agencies.”
“The government makes no apologies for the strong measures that we’ve taken to ensure that we have foreign interference laws in place,” he added. “We will always stand up for our national interest whether it’s on matters of foreign policy, foreign investments or other related issues.”
Former ASIO boss Duncan Lewis warned on Friday that the Chinese government was seeking a “takeover” of Australia’s political system.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison dismissed such concern, saying that national intelligence agencies were on top of any threats.
Last week, Liberal Party members Sen. James Paterson and Rep. Andrew Hastie said they had been barred entry to China for a study trip because of their criticisms of the Chinese government.
Self-confessed Chinese spy spills secrets in Australia
Self-confessed Chinese spy spills secrets in Australia
- Wang ‘William’ Liqiang would be the first Chinese intelligence operative to blow his cover
- ‘I have personally been involved and participated in a series of espionage activities’
‘Thrown out like trash’ from Iran, Afghans return to land they hardly know
- More than 1.2 million Afghans deported from neighboring Iran since March 2024, IMO says
- Tehran had pledged mass deportations to counter growing local discontent over refugees
ISLAMABAD: Ghulam Ali begins his days in pain, his muscles aching from hauling grain on a rickety cart through the streets of Kabul, homesick for the country he called home for nearly four decades.
Ali is among more than 1.2 million Afghans deported from neighboring Iran since March 2024, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), after Tehran pledged mass deportations to counter mounting local discontent over refugees.
Thousands have also fled this month after Israeli and US airstrikes hit Iranian military targets.
For Ali, 51, whose family left Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s when he was just 10, Iran was home.
“I grew up there, worked there, buried my parents there,” he said during a midday break from work in Kabul, sipping green tea with a simple lunch of naan bread.
“But in the end, they threw us out like trash. I lost everything — my home, my little savings in cash, my dignity,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by video link.
Like many others, he has returned to a homeland he barely knew and one that has changed drastically.
Outsiders in their own country, many men struggle to support their family while women face severe restrictions on their daily life under the ruling Taliban.
Since late 2023, an estimated 3 million Afghans have been forced out of Iran and Pakistan, where they had sought safety from decades of war and, since the Taliban’s return to Kabul in 2021, from extremist rule.
Unwelcome abroad, they have returned to a homeland facing economic collapse and international indifference.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his latest report on Afghanistan, called on countries hosting Afghan refugees to protect those in need and abide by international obligations to ensure any returns to Afghanistan are voluntary.
“Returnees face immense challenges... in particular securing housing, employment and access to basic services,” he said.
Up to 10,000 Afghan women, men and children are taking the Islam Qala border crossing from Iran on a daily basis, according to the Taliban authorities. Inside Afghanistan, humanitarian aid agencies say conditions are dire, with inadequate shelter, food shortages and no road map for reintegration.
“They return to a homeland that is dramatically unprepared to receive them,” warned Arafat Jamal, the UNHCR representative in Afghanistan in a statement last month.
The Taliban’s deputy minister for border and refugees affairs, Abdul Zahir Rahmani, also told local media this week that Afghanistan had seen a sharp increase in refugee returns since this month’s 12-day air war in Iran.
Many said they had no say in the matter.
Ali said he was arrested at a construction site in Mashhad, Iran’s second-biggest city, lacking documentation during a crackdown on refugees by the Iranian police.
He and his wife, six children, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren were deported in March.
“We were treated like criminals,” he said. “They didn’t care how law-abiding or in need we were. They just wanted all Afghans out.”
The extended family — 15 people aged 5 to 51 — is now packed into a two-room, mud-brick house on Kabul’s western fringes.
Ali said his Persian-accented Dari draws sneers from fellow laborers – another reminder he doesn’t fit in. But he brushes off their mockery, saying his focus is on feeding his family.
“We can barely afford to eat properly,” his wife Shahla said by video as she sat cross-legged on a worn rug.
“Rent is 4,000 afghanis ($56) a month — but even that is a burden. One of my sons is visually impaired; the other returns home every day empty-handed.”
For women and girls, their return can feel like a double displacement. They are subject to many of the Taliban’s most repressive laws, including restrictions on their movement without a “mahram,” or male companion, and curbs on education and employment.
On Kabul’s western edge, 38-year-old Safiya and her three daughters spend their days in a rented house packing candies for shops, earning just 50 afghanis for a day’s work, below Afghanistan’s poverty level of $1 a day.
Safiya said they were deported from Iran in February.
“In Tehran, I stitched clothes. My girls worked at a sweet shop,” said Safiya, who declined to give her last name.
“Life was tough, but we had our freedom, as well as hope … Here, there’s no work, no school, no dignity. It’s like we’ve come home only to be exiled again.”
During their deportation, Safiya was separated from her youngest daughter for a week while the family was detained, a spat over documents that still gives the 16-year-old nightmares.
In Iran, said Safiya, “my daughters had inspiring dreams. Now they sit at home all day, waiting.”
Afghans are also being forcibly deported from next-door Pakistan – more than 800,000 people have been expelled since October 2023, according to Amnesty International.
Born in Pakistan to Afghan refugee parents, Nemat Ullah Rahimi had never lived in Afghanistan until last winter, when police barely gave him time to close his Peshawar grocery store before sending him over the Torkham border crossing.
“I wasn’t allowed to sell anything. My wife and kids — all born in Pakistan — had no legal documents there so we had to leave,” said the 34-year-old.
Rahimi now works long hours at a tire repair shop at a dusty intersection on the edge of Kabul as he tries to rebuild a life.
“I can’t say it’s easy. But I have no choice. We’re restarting from zero,” he said.
Several arrested in Serbia as tensions mount ahead of anti-corruption rally in Belgrade on weekend
- Protesting university students have called Saturday’s rally to press their demand for an early election
- Authorities made similar arrests back in March, ahead of what was the biggest ever anti-government protest
BELGRADE: Police in Serbia have arrested several people accused of allegedly plotting to overthrow the government as tensions soared ahead of a major anti-government rally planned this weekend in the capital Belgrade.
Police said six were detained on Wednesday evening, suspected of “preparing criminal acts against the constitutional order and security of Serbia” and “calling for violent change of the constitutional order.”
At least one other university student was arrested earlier this week accused of preparing “an act of terrorism” based on his private conversations over a mobile phone. Hundreds on Thursday demonstrated against the arrest in Belgrade.
Protesting university students have called Saturday’s rally to press their demand for an early election after nearly eight months of almost daily anti-corruption demonstrations that have shaken the populist government of President Aleksandar Vucic.
Persistent protests started in November after a renovated rail station canopy collapsed that killed 16 people and which many blamed on rampant government corruption and negligence in state infrastructure projects. University students have been a key force behind the nationwide movement.
Vucic and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party have refused the students’ demand for a snap vote, instead accusing the protesters of planning to spur violence at Saturday’s gathering.
Police alleged the detained group met last week in a hotel in the central town of Kraljevo to plan a violent change of government and attacks on police and pro-government media outlets. One of the suspects had a gun and ammunition, they said.
No other details were immediately available. Serbian media reported that those arrested include an opposition politician, veteran of the wars of the 1990s, and others.
Authorities made similar arrests back in March, ahead of what was the biggest ever anti-government protest in the Balkan country, which drew hundreds of thousands of people.
Vucic’s loyalists also set up a camp in a park outside his office which still stands. The otherwise peaceful gathering on March 15 came to an abrupt end when part of the crowd suddenly scattered in panic, triggering allegations that authorities used a sonic weapon against peaceful protesters, which they have denied.
Vucic, a former extreme nationalist, has become increasingly authoritarian since coming to power over a decade ago. Though he formally says he wants Serbia to join the European Union, critics say Vucic has stifled democratic freedoms as he strengthened ties with Russia and China.
Europe rights court condemns France over racial profiling
- Police stopped Karim Touil three times in 10 days in the eastern city of Besancon in 2011
- The court ordered the French state to pay him 3,000 euros ($3,500)
STRASBOURG: A top European court on Thursday condemned France for failing to protect the rights of a Frenchman who had accused his country’s police of racial profiling.
The European Court of Human Rights was unable to determine discrimination in the case of five other French plaintiffs.
But it found that the government had provided no “objective and reasonable justification” for police stopping Karim Touil three times in 10 days in the eastern city of Besancon in 2011.
The court said it was “very aware of the difficulties for police officers to decide, very quickly and without necessarily having clear internal instructions, whether they are facing a threat to public order or security.”
But in the case of Touil, it presumed “discriminatory treatment” that the French government was not able to refute.
It ordered the French state to pay him 3,000 euros ($3,500).
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International last year said racial profiling was “widespread throughout the country and deeply rooted in police practices.”
HRW said young men and boys perceived as black or Arab, some as young as 10, were often subjected to “abusive and illegal identity checks.”
The rights groups said they had lodged a complaint with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
France’s rights ombudsman in 2017 found that a young person “perceived as black or Arab” was 20 times more likely to face an identity check than the rest of the population.
Philippine police face mandatory fitness training to stay in service
- New program is called Pulisteniks, from ‘pulis’ – police in Tagalog – and ‘calisthenics’
- Program mandates police units across the country to dedicate Tuesdays and Thursdays to fitness
MANILA: The Philippine National Police has kicked off a new fitness initiative for officers, vowing to get overweight personnel back in shape or out of the service.
Launched this week, the campaign is called Pulisteniks, from “pulis,” which means police in Tagalog, and “calisthenics.”
The program mandates PNP units nationwide to dedicate Tuesdays and Thursdays to fitness, including various physical activities such as running, walking, jogging, biking, Zumba, and combat sports like arnis – the national martial art and sport of the Philippines – aikido, boxing, karate-do, judo, muay thai, swimming, table tennis, and taekwondo.
“The directive of our chief PNP is clear. We need our police officers to be physically fit. This program has been in place for a long time, but now we’re putting more focus on it because we’re also aiming to meet our target response time,” Maj. Philipp Ines, Manila Police District spokesperson, told Arab News.
“What is happening now is just a reiteration of our ongoing programs. The good thing is we’re now being given time to focus on physical conditioning every Tuesday and Thursday from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. This is a good program to help our officers reduce weight and be able to keep up with the demands of public service.”
Under the Department of the Interior and Local Government Act of 1990 all PNP officers are required to keep their body weight within 5 kg – either above or below – a standard weight based on their height and sex.
“We undergo quarterly check-ups, where they check if our BMI – body mass index – is within the acceptable range. If it’s not, the health or medical officer tells our personnel to lose weight. That’s why now there’s a program in place to help with that because before it was hard for many officers due to the lack of time,” Ines said.
“The Manila Police District Health Service is monitoring our progress so we can track whether we’re able to comply. And every year, there’s a required physical fitness test that we all have to pass. If you fail those tests twice in a row, it could be grounds for separation from service.”
Philippine Police Chief Gen. Nicolas Torre III said that officers are given a target of six months to a year to lose weight.
“After a year, if they don’t meet the standards, they can be removed from the service,” he said in a radio interview.
The fitness program has already gained support from Filipino netizens whose comments on Facebook ranged from “I hope they lose weight to look better” to “It’s embarrassing to see all fat police officers these days,” and “your uniform doesn’t fit you.”
Remedios Borejon, retired National Police Commission public affairs officer, told Arab News the program should help improve how the police are seen.
“I’m in favor of the program. This is also to help make our police officers look prim and proper, like gentlemen. Because it really doesn’t look good if a police officer looks sloppy or overweight,” she said.
“In the past, you rarely saw overweight police officers. I support this. It helps improve their image and boosts professionalism.”
‘Thrown out like trash’; Afghans return to land they hardly know
- Forced back to a changed land that offers little
- Refugees say they struggle to make ends meet
ISLAMABAD: Ghulam Ali begins his days in pain, his muscles aching from hauling grain on a rickety cart through the streets of Kabul, homesick for the country he called home for nearly four decades.
Ali is among more than 1.2 million Afghans deported from neighboring Iran since March 2024, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), after Tehran pledged mass deportations to counter mounting local discontent over refugees.
Thousands have also fled this month after Israeli and US airstrikes hit Iranian military targets.
For Ali, 51, whose family left Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s when he was just 10, Iran was home.
“I grew up there, worked there, buried my parents there,” he said during a midday break from work in Kabul, sipping green tea with a simple lunch of naan bread.
“But in the end, they threw us out like trash. I lost everything — my home, my little savings in cash, my dignity,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by video link.
Like many others, he has returned to a homeland he barely knew and one that has changed drastically.
Outsiders in their own country, many men struggle to support their family while women face severe restrictions on their daily life under the ruling Taliban.
Since late 2023, an estimated 3 million Afghans have been forced out of Iran and Pakistan, where they had sought safety from decades of war and, since the Taliban’s return to Kabul in 2021, from extremist rule.
Unwelcome abroad, they have returned to a homeland facing economic collapse and international indifference.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his latest report on Afghanistan, called on countries hosting Afghan refugees to protect those in need and abide by international obligations to ensure any returns to Afghanistan are voluntary.
“Returnees face immense challenges... in particular securing housing, employment and access to basic services,” he said.
Up to 10,000 Afghan women, men and children are taking the Islam Qala border crossing from Iran on a daily basis, according to the Taliban authorities. Inside Afghanistan, humanitarian aid agencies say conditions are dire, with inadequate shelter, food shortages and no road map for reintegration.
“They return to a homeland that is dramatically unprepared to receive them,” warned Arafat Jamal, the UNHCR representative in Afghanistan in a statement last month.
The Taliban’s deputy minister for border and refugees affairs, Abdul Zahir Rahmani, also told local media this week that Afghanistan had seen a sharp increase in refugee returns since this month’s 12-day air war in Iran.
Many said they had no say in the matter.
Ali said he was arrested at a construction site in Mashhad, Iran’s second-biggest city, lacking documentation during a crackdown on refugees by the Iranian police.
He and his wife, six children, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren were deported in March.
“We were treated like criminals,” he said. “They didn’t care how law-abiding or in need we were. They just wanted all Afghans out.”
The extended family — 15 people aged 5 to 51 — is now packed into a two-room, mud-brick house on Kabul’s western fringes.
Ali said his Persian-accented Dari draws sneers from fellow laborers – another reminder he doesn’t fit in. But he brushes off their mockery, saying his focus is on feeding his family.
“We can barely afford to eat properly,” his wife Shahla said by video as she sat cross-legged on a worn rug.
“Rent is 4,000 afghanis ($56) a month — but even that is a burden. One of my sons is visually impaired; the other returns home every day empty-handed.”
For women and girls, their return can feel like a double displacement. They are subject to many of the Taliban’s most repressive laws, including restrictions on their movement without a “mahram,” or male companion, and curbs on education and employment.
On Kabul’s western edge, 38-year-old Safiya and her three daughters spend their days in a rented house packing candies for shops, earning just 50 afghanis for a day’s work, below Afghanistan’s poverty level of $1 a day.
Safiya said they were deported from Iran in February.
“In Tehran, I stitched clothes. My girls worked at a sweet shop,” said Safiya, who declined to give her last name.
“Life was tough, but we had our freedom, as well as hope … Here, there’s no work, no school, no dignity. It’s like we’ve come home only to be exiled again.”
During their deportation, Safiya was separated from her youngest daughter for a week while the family was detained, a spat over documents that still gives the 16-year-old nightmares.
In Iran, said Safiya, “my daughters had inspiring dreams. Now they sit at home all day, waiting.”
Afghans are also being forcibly deported from next-door Pakistan – more than 800,000 people have been expelled since October 2023, according to Amnesty International.
Born in Pakistan to Afghan refugee parents, Nemat Ullah Rahimi had never lived in Afghanistan until last winter, when police barely gave him time to close his Peshawar grocery store before sending him over the Torkham border crossing.
“I wasn’t allowed to sell anything. My wife and kids — all born in Pakistan — had no legal documents there so we had to leave,” said the 34-year-old.
Rahimi now works long hours at a tire repair shop at a dusty intersection on the edge of Kabul as he tries to rebuild a life.
“I can’t say it’s easy. But I have no choice. We’re restarting from zero,” he said.
