The extradition of the US-based dissident Peng Ming is the latest demonstration of China's willingness to chase down opponents of the government wherever they are. With China's President Hu Jintao due to arrive in Britain on a five-day state visit in early November, Peng's life sentence is a timely reminder of the Chinese sensitivity to public opposition.There are well-grounded fears that opponents of the Chinese government will be prevented from demonstrating in public when Mr Hu arrives. Their homes have been destroyed and no tents have arrived from the government At night it is bitterly cold here in the mountains. So the villagers have made their own makeshift tents out of hay, forging a crude frame with bits of plank scavenged from the ruins of their homes, and piling bales on top But it does not keep the rain out.. "It will help us build a new government for the Shia," he said..
In the hills above Pakistan's most famous tourist attraction, earthquake survivors have become so desperate for shelter that they are sleeping in hollowed-out bales of hay. "The new constitution cuts my country up into pieces," said Atiqa Jawad Wadi, a middle-aged secondary school teacher. "My family and I will vote 'no'." Alwan Jassim al-Aswad, an elderly man sitting in a coffee shop near by, was going to vote in favour of the constitution because the Shia religious hierarchy backed it. With a federal Iraq will come control of the southern oilfields, and with that a shift of political and economic power from Baghdad to Basra..
The streets of Baghdad were eerily empty as police and soldiers tightened their grip in the final hours before people vote on the new constitution Iraqis are deeply divided. "They used to say this was the Venice of the East, the Amsterdam of Asia," said Hameed al-Rahimi, 64, standing on the corniche at Basra "Look at it now, look how sad it looks. But these are new times, and we shall see a new Basra, inshallah." Today's vote on the new constitution is seen here as heralding the start of the Shia ascendancy. The action is inhumane and causes innocent people to suffer, said Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. The United States-led coalition's alleged practice of cutting off food and water to force Iraqi civilians to flee before attacks on insurgent strongholds is a "flagrant violation" of international law, a United Nations rights advocate said yesterday.