by the bbc's daniel lak, december 2001 [...] Nepal's worst disaster of its horrible year was the massacre of eight members of the royal family on 1 June.... A government inquiry later found that he had turned a gun on himself soon after shooting his father King Birendra, his mother Queen Aishwarya, his sister and brother, uncles and aunts.... No one who was in Nepal at the time will ever forget the sense of doom and grief that seethed through a shocked population on the morning of 2 June. [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1729511.stm

october 22, 2005 [...] Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, who knows a thing or two about replacing dictatorship with freedom and democracy, urged the West to be on alert as China grows in economic strength and not to tolerate its aggression and human rights abuses.
...As long as the capital from free countries continues to pour into China, China’s already oppressive practices will become more entrenched and the ensuing and everexpanding militarism will make the likelihood of transition to a peaceful country ever more unlikely.
...If China insists on maintaining its one-party dictatorship, if it continues to exploit and suppress its people at home and expand its military threats against its democratic neighbours, then China will retain its current status and we will continue to witness the rise of a militarist hegemony.
...Free nations must develop and strengthen their global and regional cooperation in both supporting the people of China in their struggle for freedom and democracy as well as taking measures to stop Chinese acts of oppression and aggression. [...]

http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/003042.php

kathmandu, october 21 (reuters) [...] Nepal banned imports of poultry from the 25 nations of the European Union on Friday over fears that the deadly avian flu could reach the tourism- and aid-dependent Himalayan kingdom, an official said.
Nepal imports about half a million live birds for breeding a year, about 10 percent of them from European nations, he said. [...]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/B282339.htm

october 21, 2005 [...] Reporters Without Borders today called on the Chinese authorities to stop blocking accessing to the website of the independent online encyclopedia Wikipedia, whose popularity has been growing steadily in China.

...This latest online censorship paradoxically comes at a moment when China is openly raising the issue of democracy by publishing its first white paper entitled “The construction of political democracy in China” on 19 October.

The authorities are censoring Wikipedia in the same way that they censor thousands of websites with information that strays from the official Chinese propaganda on certain issues as Tibet and human rights in China.

Internet users trying to visit the Wikipedia site since 18 October get an error message referring to temporary connection problems for unknown reasons. [...]

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15374

october 20, 2005 […] North Korea, Eritrea and Turkmenistan are the world’s ‹black holes› for news… North Korea once again comes bottom of the Reporters Without Borders fourth annual World Press Freedom Index, released today. It is closely followed in the 167-country list by Eritrea (166th) and Turkmenistan (165th), which are other ‹black holes› for news where the privately-owned media is not allowed and freedom of expression does not exist.
Journalists there simply relay government propaganda. Anyone out of step is harshly dealt with. A word too many, a commentary that deviates from the official line or a wrongly-spelled name and the author may be thrown in prison or draw the wrath of those in power. Harassment, psychological pressure, intimidation and round-the-clock surveillance are routine. […]

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20

october 20, 2005: Yahoo Hong Kong ratted out a Chinese dissident journalist to the Chinese government, sending the journalist to prison for ten years. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang shrugged off the public outcry over this by saying that helping to send Yahoo customers to jail was just the price of doing business in China. Now Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo has responded with an open letter to Yang, and it's a scorcher:
International companies are ignoring basic human rights in return for business opportunity, while the Communist party is offering profits in return for continued control of the internet and the ability to intimidate dissidents, Mr Liu writes.
«The collusion of these two kinds of ugliness means that there is no way for western investment to promote freedom of speech in China, and that in fact it greatly increases the ability of the Communist party to blockade and control the internet.»
«You are helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech,» he writes.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/20/chinese_activist_to_.html

von can merey, october 19, 2005 [...] Es ist noch nicht lange her, dass sich Kaschmirer in der zwischen Indien und Pakistan geteilten Region am Gebirgsfluss Neelum trafen.... Jetzt hat der pakistanische Präsident Pervez Musharraf für die vom Erdbeben verwüstete Region das bislang Undenkbare angeboten: Die De-facto-Grenze für Kaschmirer zu öffnen.

...Noch in der Nacht begrüsste Neu Delhi das Angebot - man warte nun auf konkrete Vorschläge aus Islamabad zur Realisierung, sagte Aussenamtssprecher Navtej Sarna.
.... «Das beispiellose Angebot, wenn es auch wie waghalsige Politik wirkt, könnte sich als wegweisende vertrauensbildende Massnahme erweisen, sollte es verwirklich werden.» [...]

http://www.merkur-online.de/nachrichten/vermischtes/weltspiegel/art85

lilu, October 3, 2005 [...] 37 Bauern wurden am 18. September in Lombok, Indonesien, einer Insel Nähe Bali während eines Treffens der Via Campesinavon der Polizei erschossen und verletzt. 15 internationale Delegierte wurden unerwartet daran gehindert an dem Treffen teilzunehmen. Die Delegierten waren Teil der Mission die Verletzung der Bauernrechte aufzudecken die sich ereigneten, als sie ihre Existenz verteidigten, nachdem die Zentralregierung Jakartas ihnen die Bauernlizenz entzogen hatte. [...]

http://www.indymedia.org/or/2005/10/825357.shtml

by chris buell, september 29, 2005 [...] More than 1,100 political prisoners continue to be held by the military government in Myanmar, despite pledges by the government to release dissidents as part of democratic reforms, the UN Special Rapporteur to Myanmar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro reported Wednesday to the UN General Assembly. Pinheiro, who has been barred from the country since 2003 but said his report was based on independent sources, said the immediate release of the remaining prisoners would show the world that the government was serious about reforms. The government previously released several hundred prisoners, but many others, including Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, remain in detention. US and British diplomats have said they will attempt to bring abuses in Myanmar to the UN Security Council agenda after previously being blocked by Russia. [...]

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/09/myanmar-still-detaining-1100-political.php

september 16, 2005 [...] Twice a year, the government of
Taiwan holds air-raid drills around the country, to pre-
pare the population psychologically for the possibility of
an military attack by China.
I don’t know if China holds similar air-raid drills (I
suspect not), but here in Taiwan, twice a year, trafffic in
all major cities is stopped, no cars or trucks or taxis or
buses are allowed to move for 30 minutes in mid-after-
noon, usually from 2:30 pm to 3 pm, and big department
stores must lock their doors and keep customers inside in
basement levels.
In schools, as the photo shows, students sit on the floor
of a classroom and place bookbags over their heads. [...]

http://japundit.com/archives/2005/09/16/1200/