Hong Kong Votes for Democracy

Hong Kongers have suffered one delay after another on their path to full democracy since the territory's return to China in 1997. But that hasn't snuffed out their democratic spirit. Witness the results of Sunday's legislative elections.

Pro-democracy parties won 23 seats in the 60-member Legislative Council elections. That's down from 25 after the last election in 2004. But that's not the number that matters. Half of the legislature is appointed by special interest groups loyal to Beijing. The other half is directly elected by the people. In those seats, the democrats won 19 of 30, gaining a seat from the 2004 results. The democrats' losses came only from the ranks of special-interest legislators.

The result maintains the crucial veto pro-democracy parties have wielded over constitutional reforms by denying the pro-Beijing parties a 40-seat supermajority. This won't force Government House to push ahead with democracy faster, but it will keep Beijing from pushing any antidemocratic electoral "reforms."

Within the democratic movement, this election also marks a changing of the guard of sorts. Its best-known figureheads have left -- Democratic Party founder Martin Lee and former bureaucrat Anson Chan, both of whom announced their retirements before the election. Sunday's results thus give a mandate to a new generation of democratic voices in the legislature, like Kam Nai-wai, a 47-year-old social worker and member of the Democratic Party just elected to represent Hong Kong Island.

The result is also a slap in the face to the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), the largest pro-Beijing group that campaigned for seats. The DAB is better funded and better organized than the pro-democracy crowd. In the run-up to Sunday's vote, the DAB blanketed the territory with advertisements. Chief Executive Donald Tsang did his part, too, rolling out a package of largesse including expanded electricity discounts, and hosting a star tour by China's Olympic athletes. Yet those efforts yielded only eight directly elected seats.

Voters clearly were frustrated with the government's economic record. Ahead of Sunday's polls, a Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme poll found 87% of voters said their decision would be driven by "livelihood" issues like housing and education, while 77% said they were "focusing" on economic policies. Little wonder: inflation is running 6.3% and GDP growth slowed to 4.2% in the second quarter, from 7.3% in the first.

On their face, the pro-Beijing and democratic policy platforms weren't that far apart. Unfortunately, both favor imposing a minimum wage and enacting a competition law. The key difference was that democrats also campaigned on holding Mr. Tsang's administration accountable for its perceived policy blunders. This suggests that Hong Kongers understand better than some of their leaders the relationship between democracy and prosperity.

Skeptics will note that turnout, at about 45%, was 10 percentage points lower than in the last general election, in 2004. But Hong Kong's turnout was still high by the standards of some other democracies. In 2006 in the U.S., when a very unpopular executive faced a legislative election, only 41% of voters turned out. So it's hard to argue that Hong Kongers are not interested in democracy now.

Sunday's election is another reminder that the territory deserves a democratic system worthy of its voters.

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China rushes troops to quake zone as toll rises

China deployed more than 8,000 soldiers and military reservists to help search and rescue efforts in the southwest Monday after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake that left 40 people dead, state press said.

The weekend quake, in a mountainous region spanning the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, destroyed or damaged more than 392,000 homes and injured nearly 675 people, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Xinhua was quoting figures announced by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

The China News Services said earlier Monday the military were rushed to the scene to beef up search and rescue efforts as more people were being located and pulled out from the rubble.

Some 2,000 troops, police and firefighters already in the area have rescued more than 130 injured victims from collapsed buildings since the quake struck on Saturday afternoon, it added.

An inter-ministerial command post was set up on Monday in the quake zone to coordinate communications and the rescue and relief work, the China Earthquake Administration said.

Food, water, medical supplies and tents were being rushed to the scene, it said on its website.

Besides searching for survivors, rescue workers were also rushing supplies to those in need, evacuating people from dangerous buildings, and setting up refugee camps, it added.

The administration said two of the fatalities were attributed to a 5.6-magnitude aftershock that shook the region around Panzhihua city on Sunday afternoon.

Panzhihua is near the epicentre of the main quake and about 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of where an 8.0 earthquake devastated a swathe of Sichuan on May 12, leaving nearly 88,000 people dead or missing.

According to the government in Sichuan, aftershocks continued to rattle the region Monday, shaking the city of Dujiangyan which was also badly damaged in May.

Most of Saturday's damage was in the county of Huili.

source : afp.google.com

Indian homes torched in Christian-Hindu violence

Protesters set fire to several houses in eastern India on Monday in an area where recent clashes between Hindus and Christians have left at least 11 people dead, police said.

No one was injured in the latest attack in Orissa state, but police feared the arson will increase tension in a region with a history of violence along religious lines.

Senior police official Gopal Chandra Nanda would not say whether the burned homes belonged to Hindus or Christians, but said an investigation was under way. The attacks took place in Tikabali, a town in Kandhamal district that has been the center of the unrest. Police have imposed a strict curfew across the district for the past week.

The violence began late last month with the killing of a Hindu leader, which police blamed on Maoist rebels but Hindu activists blamed on Christian militants.

In apparent retaliation, Hindu hard-liners set fire to a Christian orphanage, killing a Christian woman and seriously injuring a priest. The violence has spread to include mob attacks on churches, shops and homes.

Orissa has a history of Hindu-Christian clashes generally fueled by Hindu suspicions about Christian missionary work among the rural poor.

On Sunday, four small churches were burned in a village in southern Orissa, an area that had not seen recent Christian-Hindu violence. No one was injured in those attacks, Nanda said.

Thousands of poor and lower-caste Hindus have converted to other religions, including Christianity, often in an attempt to escape the rigid confines of Hinduism's complex caste system.

That has long embittered Hindu groups who say Christian missionaries try to lure the poor and those on the lowest rungs away with promises of money and jobs. Churches deny that the converts were pressured or bribed.

Last year, four people were killed and nearly 20 churches destroyed in similar clashes in Orissa. An Australian missionary and his two sons, aged 8 and 10, were burned to death in their car in Orissa following a Bible study class in 1999.

source : www.iht.com