TAIPEI: Taiwan saw off China’s military six decades ago when its forces bombarded offshore Taiwanese islands and that resolve to defend the homeland continues to this day, President Tsai Ing-wen told a visiting group of former US officials on Tuesday. Tensions between Taiwan and China have spiked over the past month following the visit to Taipei by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. China staged war games near Taiwan to express its anger at what it saw as stepped up US support for the island Beijing views as sovereign Chinese territory. Meeting a delegation of former US officials now at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Tsai referred to China’s more than a month of attacks on the Taiwan-controlled islands of Kinmen and Matsu, just off the Chinese coast, which started in August 1958. “Sixty-four years ago during the Aug. 23 battle, our soldiers and civilians operated in solidarity and safeguarded Taiwan, so that we have the democratic Taiwan today,” she said, using the common Taiwanese term for that campaign, which ended in stalemate with China failing to take the islands. “That battle to protect our homeland showed the world that no threat of any kind could shake the Taiwanese people’s resolve to defend their nation, not in the past, not now, and not in the future,” Tsai said. “We too will show the world that the people of Taiwan have both the resolve and confidence to safeguard peace, security, freedom and prosperity for ourselves.” In 1958, Taiwan fought back with support from the United States, which sent military equipment including advanced Sidewinder anti-aircraft missiles, giving Taiwan a technological edge. Often called the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, it was the last time Taiwanese forces joined battle with China on a large scale. James O. Ellis, now a visiting fellow at Hoover and a retired US Navy admiral, said his delegation’s presence in Taiwan reaffirmed the American people’s commitment to deepening cooperation. “Consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, part of this cooperation involves strengthening Taiwan’s capabilities for self defense as well as the ability of the United States to deter and resist any resort to force across the Taiwan Strait,” Ellis told Tsai, referring to a US law that requires it to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. Matt Pottinger, who served as former US President Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, is also part of the delegation. The United States, which ditched formal diplomatic relations with Taipei in favor of Beijing in 1979, remains Taiwan’s most important source of arms. “As Taiwan stands on the front line of authoritarian expansionism we continue to bolster our defense autonomy, and we will also continue to work with the United States on this front,” Tsai said. China’s drills near Taiwan have posed a threat to the status quo in the strait and across the region, and democratic partners should work together to “defend against interference by authoritarian states,” she added. Following that meeting, Tsai met two Japanese lawmakers, and other foreign parliamentarians are also expected to visit this year, including from Canada and Britain, defying Chinese pressure not to go. Taiwan’s government says that as the People’s Republic of China has never governed the island it has no right to claim it or decide its future, which can only be set by Taiwan’s 23 million people.
TOKYO: The brazen assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a handmade gun shocked a nation unused to high-profile political violence.
But there has been another surprise in the weeks since the murder as details have emerged about an alleged assassin who was well-off until his mother’s huge donations to the controversial Unification Church left him poor, neglected and filled with rage.
Some Japanese have expressed understanding, even sympathy, for the 41-year-old suspect, especially those of a similar age who may feel pangs of recognition linked to their own suffering during three decades of economic malaise and social turmoil.
There have been suggestions on social media that care packages should be sent to suspect Tetsuya Yamagami’s detention center to cheer him up. And more than 7,000 people have signed a petition requesting prosecutorial leniency for
Yamagami, who told police that he killed Abe, one of Japan’s most powerful and divisive politicians, because of his ties to an unnamed religious group widely believed to be the Unification Church.
Experts say the case has also illuminated the plight of thousands of other children of church adherents who have faced abuse and neglect.
“If he hadn’t allegedly committed the crime, Mr. Yamagami would deserve much sympathy. There are many others who also suffer” because of their parents’ faith, said Kimiaki Nishida, a Rissho University psychology professor and expert in cult studies.
There also have been serious political implications for Japan’s governing party, which has kept cozy ties with the church despite controversies and a string of legal disputes.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s popularity has plunged since the killing, and he has shuffled his Cabinet to purge members with ties to the religious group. On Thursday, the national police agency chief submitted his resignation to take responsibility over Abe’s assassination.
Yamagami, who is being detained for mental evaluation until late November, has previously expressed on social media a hatred for the Unification Church, which was founded in South Korea in 1954 and has, since the 1980s, faced accusations of devious recruitment practices and brainwashing of adherents into making huge donations.
In a letter seen by The Associated Press and tweets believed to be his, Yamagami said his family and life were destroyed by the church because of his mother’s huge donations. Police confirmed that a draft of Yamagami’s letter was found in a computer confiscated from his one-room apartment.
“After my mother joined the church (in the 1990s), my entire teenage years were gone, with some 100 million yen ($735,000) wasted,” he wrote in the typed letter, which he sent to a blogger in western Japan the day before he allegedly assassinated Abe during a campaign speech on July 8 in Nara, western Japan. “It’s not an exaggeration to say my experience during that time has kept distorting my entire life.”
Yamagami was 4 when his father, an executive of a company founded by the suspect’s grandfather, killed himself. After his mother joined the Unification Church, she began making big donations that bankrupted the family and shattered
Yamagami’s hope of going to college. His brother later committed suicide. After a three-year stint in the navy, Yamagami was most recently a factory worker.
Yamagami’s uncle, in media interviews, said Yamagami’s mother donated 60 million yen ($440,000) within months of joining the church. When her father died in the late 1990s, she sold company property worth 40 million yen ($293,000), bankrupting the family in 2002. The uncle said he had to stop giving money for food and school to the Yamagami children because the mother gave it to the church, not her children.
When Yamagami tried to kill himself in 2005, his mother did not return from a trip to South Korea, where the church was founded, his uncle said.
Yamagami’s mother reportedly told prosecutors that she was sorry for troubling the church over her son’s alleged crime. His uncle said she seemed devastated but remained a church follower. The authorities and the local bar association refused to comment. Repeated attempts to contact Yamagami, his mother, his uncle and their lawyers were unsuccessful.
Beginning in October 2019, Yamagami, who is widely reported to have tweeted under the name “Silent Hill 333,” wrote about the church, his painful past and political issues.
In December 2019, he tweeted that his grandfather blamed Yamagami’s mother for the family’s troubles and even tried to kill her. “What’s most hopeless is that my grandfather was right. But I wanted to believe my mother.”
Part of the reason Yamagami’s case has struck a chord is because he’s a member of what the Japanese media have called a “lost generation” that’s been stuck with low-paying contract jobs. He graduated from high school in 1999 during “the employment ice age” that followed the implosion of the country’s 1980s bubble economy.
Despite being the world’s third-largest economy, Japan has faced three decades of economic turmoil and social disparity, and many of those who grew up in these years are unmarried and are stuck with unstable jobs and feelings of isolation and unease.
Some high-profile crimes in recent years, such as mass killings in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district in 2008 and a fatal arson attack on Kyoto Animation in 2016, reportedly involved “lost generation” attackers with troubled family and work histories.
Yamagami’s case also has shed light on the children of Unification Church adherents. Many are neglected, experts say, and there’s been little help because government and school officials tend to resist interference on religious freedom grounds.
“If our society had paid more attention to the problems over the past few decades, (Yamagami’s) attack could have been prevented,” said Mafumi Usui, a Niigata Seiryo University social psychology professor and cult expert.
More than 55,000 people have joined a petition calling for legal protection for “second generation” followers who say they were forced to join the church.
Abe, in a September 2021 video message, praised the church’s work for peace on the Korean Peninsula and its focus on family values. His video appearance possibly motivated Yamagami, said Nishida, the psychology professor.
Yamagami reportedly told police he had planned to kill the church founder’s wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, who has led the church since Moon’s 2012 death, but switched targets because it was unlikely she’d visit Japan during the pandemic.
“Though I feel bitter, Abe is not my true enemy. He is only one of the Unification Church’s most influential sympathizers,” Yamagami wrote in his letter. “I’ve already lost the mental space to think about political meanings or the consequences Abe’s death will bring.”
The case has drawn attention to ties between the church, which came to Japan in 1964, and the governing Liberal Democratic Party that has almost uninterruptedly ruled post-World War II Japan.
A governing lawmaker, Shigeharu Aoyama, last month said a party faction leader told him how church votes could help candidates that lack organizational backing.
Tomihiro Tanaka, head of the church’s Japan branch, denied “political interference” with any particular party, but said the church has developed closer ties with governing party lawmakers than with others because of their shared anti-communist stance.
Members of the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, which for decades has provided legal assistance for people with financial disputes with the church, say they’ve received 34,000 complaints involving lost money exceeding a total of 120 billion yen ($900 million).
Tanaka accused the lawyers and the media of “persecuting” church followers.
A former adherent in her 40s said at a recent news conference that she and two sisters were forced to join the church when she was in high school after their mother became a follower.
After two failed marriages arranged by the church, she said she awoke from “mind-control” and returned to Japan in 2013.
As a second-generation victim “who had my life destroyed by the church, I can understand (Yamagami’s) pain, though what he did was wrong,” she said.
UNITED NATIONS: Russia late Friday blocked agreement on the final document of a four-week review of the UN treaty considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament which criticized its military takeover of Europe’s largest nuclear plant soon after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, an act that has raised fears of a nuclear accident. Igor Vishnevetsky, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, told the delayed final meeting of the conference reviewing the 50-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that “unfortunately there is no consensus on this document.” He insisted that many countries — not just Russia — didn’t agree with “a whole host of issues” in the 36-page last draft. The document needed approval by all 191 countries that are parties to the treaty aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately achieving a world without them. Argentine Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the conference, said the final draft represented his best efforts to address divergent views and the expectations of the parties “for a progressive outcome” at a moment in history where “our world is increasingly wracked by conflicts, and, most alarmingly, the ever growing prospect of the unthinkable nuclear war.” But after Vishnevetsky spoke, Zlauvinen told delegates, “I see that at this point, the conference is not in a position to achieve agreement on its substantive work.” The NPT review conference is supposed to be held every five years but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This marked the second failure of its state parties to produce an outcome document. The last review conference in 2015 ended without an agreement because of serious differences over establishing a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Those differences haven’t gone away but are being discussed, and the draft outcome documents obtained by The Associated Press would have reaffirmed the importance of establishing a nuclear-free Mideast zone. So, this was not viewed as a major stumbling block this year. The issue that changed the dynamics of the conference was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which brought Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning that Russia is a “potent” nuclear power and that any attempt to interfere would lead to “consequences you have never seen.” He also put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. Putin has since rolled back, saying that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” a message reiterated by a senior Russian official on the opening day of the NPT conference on Aug. 2. But the Russian leader’s initial threat and the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine as well as the takeover of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, renewed global fears of another nuclear emergency. Earlier this week, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the Security Council that the Biden administration was seeking a consensus final document that strengthens the nuclear treaty and acknowledges “the manner in which Russia’s war and irresponsible actions in Ukraine seriously undermine the NPT’s main purpose.” Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States and its allies at that council meeting of “politicizing the work on the final document, putting their geopolitical interests in punishing Russia above their collective needs in strengthening global security.” “Against the backdrop of the actual sabotage by the collective West of the global security architecture, Russia continues to do everything possible to keep at least its key, vital elements afloat,” Nebenzia said. The four references in the draft final document to the Zaporizhzhia plant, where Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling, would have had the parties to the NPT express “grave concern for the military activities” at or near the facility and other nuclear plants. It also would have recognized Ukraine’s loss of control and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inability to ensure the plant’s nuclear material is safeguarded. It supported IAEA efforts to visit Zaporizhzhia to ensure there is no diversion of its nuclear materials. The agency’s director is hoping to organize in the coming day. The draft expressed “grave concern” at the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities, in particular Zaporizhzia, and stressed “the paramount importance of ensuring control by Ukraine’s competent authorities.”
WASHINGTON: Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate early this year contained classified documents, many of them top secret, mixed in with miscellaneous newspapers, magazines and personal correspondence, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday. No space at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized for the storage of classified material, according to the court papers, which laid out the FBI’s rationale for searching the property this month, including “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.” The 32-page affidavit — heavily redacted to protect the safety of witnesses and law enforcement officials and “the integrity of the ongoing investigation” — offers the most detailed description to date of the government records being stored at Mar-a-Lago long after Trump left the White House. It also reveals the gravity of the government’s concerns that the documents were there illegally.
The document makes clear how the haphazard retention of top secret government records, and the apparent failure to safeguard them despite months of entreaties from US officials, has exposed Trump to fresh legal peril just as he lays the groundwork for another potential presidential run in 2024. “The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” an FBI agent wrote on the first page of the affidavit.
Documents previously made public show that federal agents are investigating potential violations of multiple federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation or removal of records and the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations. Trump has long insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that he fully cooperated with government officials. And he has rallied Republicans behind him by painting the search as a politically motivated witch hunt intended to damage his reelection prospects. He repeated that refrain on his social media site Friday, saying he and his representatives had had a close working relationship with the FBI and “GAVE THEM MUCH.”
The affidavit does not provide new details about 11 sets of classified records recovered during the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago but instead concerns a separate batch of 15 boxes that the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved from the home in January. The Archives sent the matter to the Justice Department, indicating in its referral that a review showed “a lot” of classified materials, the affidavit says. The affidavit made the case to a judge that a search of Mar-a-Lago was necessary due to the highly sensitive material found in those 15 boxes. Of 184 documents with classification markings, 25 were at the top secret level, the affidavit says.
Some had special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic “signals” authorized by a special intelligence court. And some of those classified records were mixed with other documents, including newspapers, magazines and miscellaneous print-outs, the affidavit says, citing a letter from the Archives. Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer and author of “The Recruiter,” said this showed Trump’s lack of respect for controls. “One of the rules of classified is you don’t mix classified and unclassified so there’s no mistakes or accidents,” he said. The affidavit shows how agents were authorized to search a large swath of Mar-a-Lago, including Trump’s official post-presidential “45 Office,” storage rooms and all other areas in which boxes or documents could be stored. They did not propose searching areas of the property used or rented by Mar-a-Lago members, such as private guest suites. The FBI submitted the affidavit, or sworn statement, to a judge so it could obtain the warrant to search Trump’s property. Affidavits typically contain vital information about an investigation, with agents spelling out the justification for why they want to search a particular location and why they believe they’re likely to find evidence of a potential crime there. The documents routinely remain sealed during pending investigations. But in an acknowledgment of the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday ordered the department by Friday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit. In a separate document unsealed Friday, Justice Department officials said it was necessary to redact some information to “protect the safety and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses, in addition to law enforcement personnel, as well as to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.” The second half of the affidavit is almost entirely redacted, making it impossible to discern the scope of the investigation or where it might be headed. It does not reveal which individuals might be under investigation and it does not resolve core questions, such as why top secret documents were taken to Mar-a-Lago after the president’s term despite even though classified information requires special storage.
Trump’s Republican allies in Congress were largely silent Friday as the affidavit emerged, another sign of the GOP’s reluctance to publicly part ways with the former president, whose grip on the party remains strong during the midterm election season. Both parties have demanded more information about the search, with lawmakers seeking briefings from the Justice Department and FBI once Congress returns from summer recess. Though Trump’s spokesman derided the investigation as “all politics,” the affidavit makes clear the FBI search was hardly the first time federal law enforcement had expressed concerns about the records. The Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, for instance, visited Mar-a-Lago last spring to assess how the documents were being stored. The affidavit includes excerpts from a June 8 letter in which a Justice Department official reminded a Trump lawyer that Mar-a-Lago did not include a secure location authorized to hold classified records. The official requested that the room at the estate where the documents had been stored be secured, and that the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago “be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.” The back-and-forth culminated in the Aug. 8 search in which agents retrieved 11 sets of classified records. The document unsealed Friday also offer insight into arguments the Trump legal team is expected to make. It includes a letter from Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran in which he asserts that a president has “absolute authority” to declassify documents and that “presidential actions involving classified documents are not subject to criminal sanction.” Mark Zaid, a longtime national security lawyer who has criticized Trump for his handling of classified information, said the letter was “blatantly wrong” to assert Trump could declassify “anything and everything.” “There are some legal, technical defenses as to certain provisions of the espionage act whether it would apply to the president,” Zaid said. “But some of those provisions make no distinction that would raise a defense.” In addition, the affidavit includes a footnote from the FBI agent who wrote it observing that one of the laws that may have been violated doesn’t even use the term “classified information” but instead criminalizes the unlawful retention of national defense information.
COLOMBO: Children in Sri Lanka are “going to bed hungry” because of the island nation’s economic crisis, the UN said Friday, warning other South Asian countries could be approaching similar shortages. Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst downturn on record after running out of foreign currency to buy imports, leaving scarce supplies of food, fuel and other essentials. The crisis was being acutely felt by families who were “skipping regular meals” because kitchen staples were becoming unaffordable, said George Laryea-Adjei, the South Asia director for the UN children’s agency (UNICEF). “Children are going to bed hungry, unsure of where their next meal will come from,” he told reporters. Sri Lanka defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt in April and is currently in bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund. Soaring energy prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also battered neighboring economies, and Laryea-Adjei said other countries in the region could face their own nutrition crises. “Acute economic precarity and inflation across South Asia is poised to further threaten the lives of children,” he said. “What I saw in Sri Lanka is a caution for other countries in South Asia.” UNICEF has issued an appeal for $25 million to meet urgent needs for at least half of Sri Lanka’s child population. The government this month issued its own appeal to tackle rapidly spreading malnutrition among children. Official figures in 2021 showed 127,000 out of 570,000 pre-school students nationwide were malnourished. Since then, officials believe the figures have skyrocketed because of the full impact of food shortages and spiralling inflation. Former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned last month after thousands of protesters, infuriated by the country’s predicament, stormed his official residence.
A school district in southwest Missouri decided to bring back spanking as a form of discipline for students — if their parents agree — despite warnings from many public health experts that the practice is detrimental to students. Classes resumed Tuesday in the Cassville School District district for the first time since the school board in June approved bringing corporal punishment back to the 1,900-student district about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southwest of Springfield. The district had dropped the practice in 2001. The policy states that corporal punishment will be used only when other forms of discipline, such as suspensions, have failed and then only with the superintendent's permission. Superintendent Merlyn Johnson told The Springfield News-Leader the decision came after an anonymous survey found that parents, students and school employees were concerned about student behavior and discipline. “We’ve had people actually thank us for it,” he said. “Surprisingly, those on social media would probably be appalled to hear us say these things, but the majority of people that I’ve run into have been supportive.” Parent Khristina Harkey told The Associated Press on Friday that she is on the fence about Cassville's policy. She and her husband did not opt-in because her 6-year-old son, Anakin Modine, is autistic and would hit back if he were spanked. But she said corporal punishment worked for her when she was a “troublemaker” during her school years in California. “There are all different types of kids,” Harkey said. “Some people need a good butt-whipping. I was one of them." Morgan Craven, national director of policy, advocacy and community engagement with the Intercultural Development Research Association, a national educational equity nonprofit, called corporal punishment a "wildly inappropriate, ineffective practice." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that corporal punishment is constitutional and left it up to states to set their own policies. Craven said 19 states, many in the South, have laws allowing it in schools. The most current data from 2017-18 shows about 70,000 children in the U.S. were hit at least once in their schools. Students who are hit at school do not fare as well academically as their peers and suffer physical and psychological trauma, Craven said. In some cases, children are hurt so badly that they need medical attention. “If you have a situation where a kid goes to school and they could be slapped for, you know, some minor offense, it certainly creates a really hostile, unpredictable and violent environment," Craven said. “And that’s not what we want for kids in schools.” But Tess Walters, 54, the guardian of her 8-year-old granddaughter, had no qualms about signing the corporal punishment opt-in papers. She said the possibility of being spanked is a deterrent for her granddaughter, who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. “I’ve read some some people’s responses on Facebook recently, and they’re just going over the top like, ‘Oh, this is abuse, and, oh, you’re just going to threaten them with, you know, violence.’ And I’m like, ‘What? The child is getting spanked once; it’s not beatings.’ People are just going crazy. They’re just being ridiculous,” Walters said. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer with American Psychological Association, said decades of research shows corporal punishment will not reduce inappropriate behavior and is likely to increase aggression, rage, hostility and could lead to depression and self-esteem problems. Prinstein said better methods for eliminating undesirable conduct including problem-solving training; rewarding positive behavior, such as with extra recess; and providing extra attention in the classroom. “Parents are experts on what works for their own children,” Prinstein said. “But it’s important for parents to be educated on very substantial science literature demonstrating again that corporal punishment is not a consistently effective way of changing undesirable behavior.” Sarah Font, an associate professor of sociology and public policy at Pennsylvania State University, coauthored a 2016 study on the subject. Her research found that districts using corporal punishment are generally in poor, Republican-leaning rural areas in Southern states. Font said Black children are disproportionately subjected to it, in part because the policies are more commonplace in districts with higher minority populations. Craven also pointed to racial bias that leads people to view the behavior of Black students differently from other students. “And the thing that I always have to say — that I hate that I have to say — is that Black children are not more likely to misbehave in school. They’re not more likely to break school rules,” she said. Cassville School District spokeswoman Mindi Artherton was out of the office Friday and a woman who answered the phone in her office suggested reading the policy. She said staff had already done interviews. “At this time, we will focus on educating our students,” she added, before hanging up. The policy says a witness from the district must be present and that the discipline will not be used in front of other students. “When it becomes necessary to use corporal punishment, it shall be administered so that there can be no chance of bodily injury or harm,” the policy says. “Striking a student on the head or face is not permitted.” In Missouri, periodic efforts to ban corporal punishment in schools have failed to gain traction in the Legislature. The state does not track which districts allow spanking because those decisions are made at the local level, a spokeswoman for Missouri’s K-12 education department said. U.S. Sen. Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, is pushing for a ban on the use of corporal punishment in schools that receive federal funding. He has called it a “barbaric practice” that allows teachers and administrators to physically abuse students.