Pacific Tribune
Gathering Art and Lifestyle News about Issues for the Pacific Basin
Discrimination in Japan
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
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asahi.com : Cover Story: Foreign input - ENGLISH
“A Japanese doing the same job as I gets twice as much, and that’s wrong.”photoForeign workers march in the streets of Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, demanding equality in employment.(YOSHIHIRO OGINO/ THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)
These are the words of a Chinese national who came to Japan to learn a skill, discovered he was earning a pittance and joined a union in the hope of securing at least the minimum wage.
The annual Shunto spring labor offensive, a movement long associated with workers in red armbands screaming anti-establishment slogans at rallies, is under way.
But what is different now is that many unskilled foreign nationals who came to Japan to learn job skills feel they are being taken advantage of and have joined labor unions to demand minimum wages and other basic rights, such as social insurance coverage.
They include Chinese and people from developing countries who come for industrial trainee programs under which they spend their first year to learn skills, followed by work under a two-year employment contract as an intern with the accepting companies.
China reports 19 dead in Tibet riots
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
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TheStar.com | World | China says 19 dead in Tibet riots
ReutersKANGDING–hina said 19 people died in riots in the Tibetan capital last week and official media warned against the unrest spreading to the northwest region of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims bridle under Chinese control.
Eighteen were burnt or hacked to death in the Lhasa violence, Xinhua news agency said. It has repeatedly quoted officials as saying separatists backed by the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, engineered the protests.
Life is just too hard, widow weeps - Fiji Times Online
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
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Life is just too hard, widow weeps - Fiji Times Online
A WIDOW living in a squatter settlement in Suva is struggling to survive on her $30 a week budget. Anita Kissun, 56, of Jittu Estate, said she and her son survived on a $30 a week but yet another increase in the price of flour and sharps was just too much for her to bear. Mrs Kissun moved to Jittu Estate from Rakiraki 18 years ago. Her husband died in 1998. “The price of food is just increasing, especially flour, and this shows that life is getting harder all the time,” she said. “I thought that the Government will help the poor by having lower prices for staple food, but that is not going to happen anymore,” she said.
Stolen Generations apology a milestone of awesome implications
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
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This is a social justice policy that has awesome implications for many folks in Australia. The financial implications alone are a tangle. Read more about it below: More here: Coalition backs Stolen Generations apology - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
“We believe that its morally and practically important in terms of understanding and addressing the way many Aboriginal people feel about this issue, however we believe very strongly that Mr Rudd now needs to release the wording that he proposes to put into the Parliament for this apology,” Dr Nelson said.”It’s essential that the Australian people have the opportunity to understand what is going to be said by their Parliament on their behalf.”
Australian Gov’t to Apologize to Aborigines
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
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For more info: Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - Australian Gov’t to Apologize to Aborigines
Even though imperialism clearly isn’t a thing of the past as a global phenomenon, the Australian government is preparing to verbally own up to a painful chapter from its own national history by formally apologizing to Aborigines for past attempts at “civilizing” their people via forced assimilation initiatives that spanned more than five decades.
Aust to apologise to Aboriginals
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
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Aust to apologise to Aboriginals - Fiji Times Online
Update: 12.36pm THE newly-elected Australian government is expected to apologise to the country’s indigenous people for forcibly removing up to 100,000 Aboriginal children from 1910 to 1970, reports Radio Australia.
Nelson sees no need to ’say sorry’
Thursday, November 29th, 2007
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How arrogant. Australians are like Americans in lots of ways.
Nelson sees no need to ’say sorry’ - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Newly elected Liberal leader Brendan Nelson says he is not in favour of Labor’s plan to say sorry to Aboriginal Australians.Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd says there will be a formal apology to the stolen generation of Indigenous people.
Dr Nelson says he wants to discuss the issue with his Liberal colleagues, but he says he does not see the need for an apology.
“We in my view we have no responsibility to apologise or take ownership for what was done by earlier generations,” he said.
New Zealand rugby star charged with murder | NEWS.com.au
Monday, October 29th, 2007
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New Zealand rugby star charged with murder | NEWS.com.au
A NEW Zealand national rugby representative is among eight soldiers charged in Fiji over a murder which sparked concerns about human rights abuses following the Pacific nation’s latest military coup. The soldiers were taken off an Iraq-bound flight on Saturday after charges were laid over the February murder of 19-year-old Sakiusa Rabaka and the assault of other people.
Only Now, The Full Horror of Burmese Junta’s Repression of Monks Emerges - CommonDreams.org
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
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Only Now, The Full Horror of Burmese Junta’s Repression of Monks Emerges - CommonDreams.org
by Rosalind Russell
Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon’s residents hear their neighbours being taken away.
Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month’s pro-democracy uprising.
The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime’s soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.
The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies.
“There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing,” said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.
The Jakarta Post - Batam radio stations accused of broadcasting foreign programs
Sunday, September 30th, 2007
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The Jakarta Post - Batam radio stations accused of broadcasting foreign programs
Batam radio stations accused of broadcasting foreign programsBATAM (JP): The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission in Riau Islands province has criticized a number of radio stations in Batam for selling airtime to religious groups from Singapore, allowing them to broadcast religious programs in foreign languages.
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