Thousands of protesters in Hong Kong turned out Saturday to demonstrate against traders from mainland China.

The demonstration was mounted in Sheung Shui, a town near the Chinese city of Shenzhen, along the border with Hong Kong.

The protesters want traders from China to stop buying goods in Hong Kong that the traders then sell on the mainland.

Many of the stores in the area of the demonstration in Sheung Shui were shuttered.

The protests started peacefully, but ended with clashes between the demonstrators and the police, who used pepper spray on the crowd.

Hong Kong has been the site of weekend demonstrations for weeks.

The protests began because of a controversial extradition bill that would have allowed the extradition of Hong Kong criminal suspects to  mainland China.

After several weeks of controversy and large, angry street protests, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam recently said the extradition bill is “dead.”

Lam called the attempts at passing the bill “a total failure,” but did not say whether the bill is being withdrawn, as protesters have demanded.

The bill sparked massive demonstrations from the moment it was introduced in April, with opponents alarmed about extraditing criminal suspects to China, which has a substantially different legal system than Hong Kong. The sentiment was shared along a wide cross section of Hong Kong society, from international business groups to legal societies and pro-democracy parties.

The former British colony was granted special autonomy for 50 years after it returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. But many in Hong Kong are concerned that China is slowly encroaching on those rights and tightening its grip on the territory.
 
The extradition debate has seen the government unwittingly reignite Hong Kong’s protest movement, and calls for the direct election of its leader, five years after 2014’s so-called Umbrella Movement democracy protests came to an end.

As Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters vow to keep up their fight, churches remain on the front lines. Christian groups hold regular public gatherings and sing hymns at demonstrations, both as a way to protest and to de-escalate clashes between police and more aggressive protesters. As VOA’s Bill Gallo reports, many churches in Hong Kong fear a crackdown on religion as China expands its influence.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.

The United States is backing a renewed Argentine effort to prosecute Iranian and Hezbollah agents accused of plotting a deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

At a Washington forum Friday about the 25th anniversary of the attack, U.S. Counterterrorism Coordinator Nathan Sales joined Argentine Ambassador to the U.S. Fernando Oris de Roa to call for Iran to cooperate with Argentine authorities seeking justice for the victims.

In Latin America’s deadliest terrorist attack, a suicide car bomber struck the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) center in the Argentine capital, July 18, 1994, killing 85 people.

Argentine prosecutors have long said they believe Lebanese militant group Hezbollah carried out the attack on the order of its Iranian government patrons, but none of the suspected perpetrators have been apprehended to stand trial. Tehran has denied involvement.

“Impunity must end,” Sales told an audience at the Wilson Center event about the implications of the AMIA bombing for present-day counterterrorism policies. He said the Trump administration is working with Argentina and other Latin American nations to hold Iran and its proxy Hezbollah accountable.

“In this hemisphere, we’re actively working with our partners to counter Iranian and Hezbollah terrorism. We’re partnering with key multilateral players like the Organization of American States and the 15 member Caribbean Community, CARICOM,” Sales said. “We also have robust bilateral counterterrorism cooperation throughout the region, including with countries such as Argentina, Panama, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Colombia,” he added.

Sales said he aims to expand that cooperation next week, when he visits Buenos Aires as part of a U.S. delegation to a Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial meeting. He said the participating nations will discuss how to bolster their counterterrorism capabilities and eliminate security gaps, such as those that enable terrorists to travel and acquire funds.

In his remarks to the Wilson Center forum, Oris de Roa said the Argentine government is determined to interrogate and eventually convict all people involved in the AMIA bombing.

“Argentina continues to request that Iran cooperates with Argentine judicial authorities,” Oris de Roa said. “We ask countries that are friends of Argentina to join us in this (demand) and avoid receiving or sheltering under diplomatic immunity any of the accused for whom international arrest warrants have been issued or (for whom) red notices (akin to arrest warrants) have been circulated by Interpol.”

Five suspects targeted by the red notices have remained at large, living freely in Iran and traveling to 20 countries that are Interpol members, according to a research note by the Wilson Center and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which co-organized Friday’s event. Argentine authorities have been unable to extradite the suspects despite making requests to countries such as China and Russia, the note said.

In an interview with U.S. network CNN’s Spanish-language channel conducted this week, Argentine President Mauricio Macri said he is preparing to get tougher with Hezbollah. In an online preview of the interview ahead of its Sunday broadcast, Macri said he is taking steps to declare Hezbollah’s armed forces to be a terrorist organization.

Washington has designated all of Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

Argentine lawyer Miguel Bronfman, who leads AMIA’s legal team, welcomed reports that his government is beginning to act against Hezbollah.

“It’s a crucial measure that was long awaited,” Bronfman told VOA Persian at the Wilson Center forum. “It will help not only the investigations of the AMIA case, but also the prevention of future attacks and movements by Hezbollah,” he said. “And we hope other countries, especially Paraguay and Brazil, will follow Argentina’s initiative.”

But Bronfman said sanctioning only Hezbollah’s armed forces, as Macri suggested, would not be enough. He called for Argentina’s government to issue a terrorist declaration for all parts of the militant group, including those that engage in political and social welfare activities.

This week’s indictment of American multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges shows how public and political pressure fueled by the #MeToo movement is prompting prosecutors to take a closer look at sexual assault cases that most likely would have fallen by the wayside just a few years ago.

In 2007, Epstein, then a jet-setting money manager for the wealthy who counted Donald Trump and Bill Clinton among his friends, avoided charges for alleged sexual crimes involving minors that, upon conviction, could have put him behind bars for decades. 

At the time, Epstein stood accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls at his Florida and New York homes. Then the U.S. attorney’s office in Florida offered Epstein a secret deal allowing him to walk free after a little over a year in prison. The office was headed by Alexander Acosta, who currently serves as President Donald Trump’s labor secretary. Acosta announced his resignation Friday over his handling of Epstein’s case. 

The Epstein deal was a decade before the movement known as #MeToo surfaced in 2017. Thousands of women in the United States and around the world came forward with harrowing personal accounts of mistreatment, from sexual harassment to rape. The movement also focused attention on how powerful men had gotten away with harassment by intimidating victims and using their influence to get more lenient punishments when caught.  

On Monday, federal prosecutors in New York unsealed a new indictment against Epstein, charging him with sex trafficking crimes that could keep him locked up for the rest of his life. 

The failure of federal prosecutors in Florida to charge Epstein with the same crimes set off a political firestorm, leading to Acosta’s resignation. For many, the uproar is emblematic of how society views sexual violence in the #MeToo era. 

Without the #MeToo movement, “we would not have seen the reopening of the case against Jeffrey Epstein and certainly would not have seen the level of outrage that’s existing,” said Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights4Girls, an advocacy organization that campaigns against sexual violence.

The #MeToo movement started as a Twitter hashtag in October 2017, after numerous women went public with allegations of sexual assault against powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

In the months that followed, as more victims came forward with their own accounts of sexual abuse, dozens of influential men in business and the news media resigned in disgrace, accused of using their positions of authority to harass or assault women. 

“I think that for a long time you saw a reluctance to prosecute very high-profile offenders, and I think that’s one of the things that the #MeToo movement has been able to change in a very positive way,” said Camille Cooper, vice president of public policy at RAINN, the largest anti-sexual abuse organization in the United States. “Some of those people that would have been left at large, like well-known comedian Bill Cosby, are now being held accountable for their crimes.”

In April 2018, Cosby was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in Pennsylvania nearly 14 years earlier, one of dozens of women who had made similar allegations going back decades. 

In May 2018, Weinstein was charged in New York with rape and other sex crimes against two women, and is awaiting trial.

And Thursday, R&B singer and songwriter R. Kelly was arrested in Chicago on a federal indictment that accuses him and members of his entourage of recruiting women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity with him. 

History of leniency 

Some legal scholars say that in years past, prosecutors often ignored evidence or refused to believe victims. In Weinstein’s case, for example, the Manhattan district attorney’s office disregarded an audiotape in which Weinstein admitted to harassing one of his victims. In the Epstein case, prosecutors had “significant evidence,” yet they allowed him to plead to two lesser state charges, according to Vafa. 

Penny Venetis, a law professor at Rutgers University, said the leniency shown to Epstein was common in a criminal justice system that often seems to favor the wealthy and well-connected. 

“Whereas someone who is not as connected as he was would have gotten life in jail for sex crimes committed against minors, he was able to use the jail as a hotel with his wife and then spend the evening after a certain time in a private jail cell,” Venetis said. 

Speaking at a press conference Monday in New York, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman declined to say what led prosecutors to reopen a case that had been dropped more than a decade ago. But Berman credited a recent investigative story by the Miami Herald that found about 80 women who had allegedly been sexually abused as minors by Epstein. 

The November 2018 expose triggered calls on the Justice Department to examine the Epstein deal, making it all but impossible for prosecutors to ignore revisiting the case, according to legal experts.

Increased prosecutions?

For all of #MeToo’s impact, some see little evidence the movement has led to increased prosecution of sexual assault cases or stiffer penalties for the perpetrators. 

“If you go into any courthouse across this entire country, you’ll see a significant number of sex crimes being pled down to very little time at all,” Cooper said. 

In a recent survey by the University of California at San Diego, 23 percent of women and 9 percent men reported being sexually assaulted, a figure that has stayed steady over the past year. Most sexual assault cases remain unreported, and when they are reported, they’re rarely prosecuted.

Yet with greater public awareness about sexual violence, authorities are less likely to avoid prosecuting someone based on a belief that a jury won’t deliver a guilty verdict, said Jennifer Long, chief executive of AEquitas, a group of former prosecutors who work against sexual violence.

“With the greater awareness in the community and greater resolve to hold these perpetrators accountable, it bolsters the efforts of prosecutors who want to take these cases forward and who want to obtain justice on behalf of victims and on behalf of the community,” said Long, who is also an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University. 

“#MeToo follows along decades of important advocacy, and it has certainly left many of us who’ve been working on these issues for a long time very hopeful,” she added. “We have moved from a society that labels underage individuals as somehow complicit in any type of violence that they’re suffering.” 

The Trump administration Friday asked the Supreme Court to lift a freeze on Pentagon money it wants to use to build sections of a border wall with Mexico.

Two lower courts have ruled against the administration in a lawsuit over the funding. Last week, a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco kept in place a lower court ruling preventing the government from tapping Defense Department counterdrug money to build high-priority sections of wall in Arizona, California and New Mexico.

At stake in the case is billions of dollars that would allow Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term. Trump ended a 35-day government shutdown in February after Congress gave him approximately $1.4 billion in border wall funding, far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking. Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of wall.

The money includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counterdrug activities and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund. The Treasury Department funds have so far survived legal challenges, but the transfer of the military construction funds has not yet been approved.

At issue here: $2.5 billion

At issue in the case before the Supreme Court is just the $2.5 billion in Defense Department funds, which the administration says will be used to construct more than 100 miles of fencing. The lawsuit challenging the use of those funds was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. Late Friday, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan gave the groups until the afternoon of July 19 to respond in writing to the Trump administration’s filing.

The administration wants the Supreme Court to lift the freeze on the Department of Defense money while it continues its case at the appeals court and, if necessary, appeals to the Supreme Court. The administration says the trial judge who initially heard the case and put a freeze on the funds was wrong and that the groups bringing the lawsuit don’t have a right to sue.
 

At least 12 civilians were wounded Thursday in a car bomb explosion that occurred near a church in Qamishli in northeast Syria. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attack. VOA’s Zana Omar was at the scene.

The U.S. State Department is making the advancement of religious freedom a foreign policy priority, with survivors of religious persecution representing North Koreans, Rohingyas, Uighurs and Yazidis invited to highlight the urgency of the problem at a conference next week in Washington.

“This is a major foreign policy initiative of the United States,” said Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom. During a telephone briefing, he said it was an issue that has not received enough attention around the world as religious persecution has grown in recent years.

More than 1,000 representatives from religious groups and civil society, as well as foreign ministers, are expected to gather at the State Department July 16-18 to discuss the status of religious freedom around the world.

Victims of recent attacks at a synagogue in San Diego, mosques in New Zealand and an Easter bombing in Sri Lanka are also expected to attend.

Speakers at the ministerial will include Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi woman who has been advocating for the group in northern Iraq, and American evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson, who was freed after two years of detention in Turkey.

“Our effort is to stir action. We want to see, really, a global grass-roots movement around religious freedom,” said Brownback.

The U.S. special envoy said governments of nations that have been designated by the U.S. as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for severe violations of religious freedom, including China and Myanmar, are not invited to the conference as it is centered on like-minded countries and governments that aspire to move toward religious freedom.

The mixed economic outcomes of increased jobs but lower wages has divided working class support for President Donald Trump.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is telling congressional leaders that Congress should raise the debt ceiling before leaving for its August recess. He says he could run out of maneuvering room to avoid an unprecedented default on the national debt before lawmakers return.
 
In a letter Friday to House and Senate leaders, Mnuchin says that based on updated projections, “there is a scenario in which we run out of cash in early September, before Congress reconvenes.”
 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that she would like to complete a deal with President Donald Trump this month to raise the borrowing limit and set spending levels for the coming budget year.

 

U.S. President Donald Trump has abandoned efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census and decided to get the information on people residing in the United States through other federal agencies. Speaking outside the White House Thursday, Trump blamed Democrats and “unfriendly” courts for creating obstacles to what he called a legitimate question. Opponents say the question would deter many non-citizens, legal or illegal, from participating in the census and that the skewed results would give Republicans more seats in the House of Representatives and other advantages. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.

The thriving U.S. economy is creating new manufacturing jobs in northeast Ohio, part of the country’s once vibrant industrial heartland, but these new jobs pay about half what workers who belonged to unions made in the past. As VOA’s Brian Padden reports from Youngstown, Ohio, the mixed economic result of more jobs but at lower wages has divided working class support for President Donald Trump, who won this key battleground state in the 2016 presidential election with a promise to revive American manufacturing.

Anthropologists know that humans migrated to Europe out of Africa thousands of years ago. But it’s been hard to get a firm date on when and how or even why. Now, thanks to new technology, some old bones may help scientists narrow down the “when” of human migration. Faith Lapidus narrates this report from VOA’s Kevin Enochs.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday he had invited his son Eduardo to become ambassador to the United States, underscoring his family’s influential role in the country’s diplomacy and domestic politics.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, currently a federal congressman, told reporters separately he would accept the role if nominated. His father said earlier that the appointment would hinge on his son’s acceptance.

“If it is a mission given by the president, I would accept,” Eduardo Bolsonaro told reporters, adding he was prepared to resign from Congress if the president appoints him. He added the ultimate nomination still depended on conversations with his father and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo.

The appointment would need to be approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before passing to the full upper house for confirmation.

Brazil’s previous ambassador to Washington retired in April. The far-right Brazilian president, who said his campaign last year was inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump, has made friendly overtures to the American leader and made similar use of family members as official advisers.

Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flavio, is advancing his conservative social agenda as a senator.

Carlos Bolsonaro, another son of the president and a Rio de Janeiro city councilman, has taken a role in his father’s social media communications and stirred controversy by attacking members of the Brazilian Cabinet.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, the third of the president’s four sons and a daughter from three marriages, has counseled his father on foreign affairs.

After his father’s election in October, Eduardo Bolsonaro was one of his first envoys to Washington, where he met with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, and was spotted wearing a “Trump 2020” cap.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon named the younger Bolsonaro the Latin American leader of his right-wing nationalist organization, “The Movement.”

During the Brazilian leader’s White House visit in March, Trump heaped praise on Eduardo Bolsonaro, who sat by his father during an Oval Office chat while Brazil’s foreign minister and ambassador in Washington were nowhere to be seen.

Two senior human rights officials say they want the 5,600 refugees and migrants in Libyan detention centers freed and their protection guaranteed.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and International Organization for Migration Director Antonio Vitorino issued a joint statement Thursday. They said if Libya cannot guarantee safety for the migrants, they need to be evacuated to other countries “where accelerated settlement is needed.”

The two officials described Libya as a place where “suffering and risk of human rights abuses continue” for refugees. “A safe, managed process of release with proper information on available assistance is essential for all.”

Grandi and Vitorino also said migrants picked up in the Mediterranean Sea must no longer be sent back to Libya, as it cannot be considered a safe port.

They pointed to last week’s airstrike on a detention center near Tripoli, which killed more than 50, as one of the perils faced by refugees returned to Libya.

They called on European Union nations to resume search-and-rescue operations in the dangerous waters and said all member states should share this responsibility, along with halting penalties for charity-run rescue ships.

The two said more help was needed for the 800,000 migrants in Libya so that “living conditions are improved, human rights are better protected, and fewer people end up being driven into the hands of smugglers and human traffickers.”

Refugees from North Africa and elsewhere trying to escape poverty, war and terrorism usually depart from Libyan shores to try to reach European ports.

A judge will rule on whether a 9-year-old Guatemalan boy who was separated from his father at the border can stay in this country, and whether his father will be allowed to return to the United States.

After spending nearly a year in federal facilities, Byron Xol (Shol) has been living with a Texas family in recent months. His father, David, was deported to Guatemala.

He says he and his son left that country because they had been threatened by gangsters. He is an evangelical Christian, and says he refused to join the gang because his faith forbids violence.

David is one of 21 parents included in an American Civil Liberties Union motion that they be allowed to re-enter the country and seek asylum.

China on Thursday attacked a statement by 22 Western countries at the United Nations urging it to stop holding members of its Muslim population in detention centers, calling the measure necessary for national security and accusing the countries of trampling on its sovereignty.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily briefing that the letter “disregarded the facts, slandered and attacked China with unwarranted accusations, flagrantly politicized human rights issues and grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs.”

“The Chinese side expressed strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition,” Geng said, adding that China had registered “solemn complaints” with the countries involved.

“We urge these countries to respect the facts, discard prejudice, abide by the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter, and stop politicizing human rights issues and intervening in China’s internal affairs with the Xinjiang issue,” he said.

In addition to travel restrictions and a massive surveillance network, China is estimated to have arbitrarily detained up to 1 million Muslims in prison-like detention centers in Xinjiang, with reports of harsh treatment and poor living conditions inside.

China denies committing abuses in the centers and calls them training schools aimed at providing employable skills and combating extremism.

Geng said Xinjiang has not suffered any new violent incidents for more than two years, proving the effectiveness of the government’s approach.

“The happiness … and sense of security of the people of all ethnic groups have substantially improved, and they sincerely support the government’s policies,” he said.

While China restricts access and reporting in Xinjiang, Geng said it would welcome a visit by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“We welcome those who truly uphold the objective and fair principle to go to Xinjiang and look around, but we resolutely oppose any external forces using the Xinjiang issue to interfere in China’s internal affairs and undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Geng said.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday accused China of backsliding on promises to increase purchases of American farm exports.

The president’s latest salvo on Twitter comes the same week that US and Chinese trade officials had their first contact in months in an effort to revive negotiations that nearly collapsed in May.

Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met last month on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan, agreeing to cease further hostilities while the talks resumed.

Mexico is doing great at the Border, but China is letting us down in that they have not been buying the agricultural products from our great Farmers that they said they would. Hopefully they will start soon!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 11, 2019

Following the Osaka summit, Trump announced that, in return for suspending a planned tariff increase on $300 billion in Chinese imports, Beijing had offered to buy “a tremendous amount of food and agriculture product.”

Reducing America’s soaring trade deficit with China has long been a principal aim in Trump’s trade battle with Beijing, which he also accuses of stealing American technology and unfairly intervening in markets.

Since last year, the two countries have traded tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way trade.

South Korea’s foreign minister told U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Japan’s export curbs against South Korea are “undesirable” for trilateral cooperation, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

Japan tightened curbs last week on exports of three materials crucial for smartphone displays and chips, saying trust with South Korea had been broken over a dispute with Seoul over South Koreans forced to work for Japanese firms during World War II

The restrictions will affect companies such as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd and SK Hynix Inc., which supply chips to companies such as Apple Inc., and South Korea is stepping up diplomatic overtures to their mutual ally the United States to step in.

Widespread damage

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told Pompeo in a phone call late Wednesday that Japan’s trade restrictions may not only cause damage to South Korean companies but could also disrupt the global supply chain and hurt U.S. companies.

Kang “expressed concern that this is undesirable in terms of friendly relations between South Korea and Japan and trilateral cooperation among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan,” the ministry said. Seoul hoped Tokyo would withdraw the curbs and that the situation would not deteriorate further, it said.

Pompeo “expressed understanding” and both agreed to continue to cooperate and to strengthen communication between the three sides, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Kim Hyun-chong, deputy chief of South Korea’s National Security Office, arrived in Washington Wednesday in an unannounced visit and told reporters he was there to meet officials from the White House and Congress to discuss issues that included Japan’s export curbs.
 

The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria is reporting “solid progress” following talks with officials in the Syrian capital and says they are “very close to an agreement” on establishing a constitutional committee.

Geir Pedersen spoke to reporters Wednesday following two meetings with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem in Damascus. He did not elaborate or offer details about the committee’s formation and whether a breakthrough had been reached.

Formation of the committee, which would rewrite Syria’s constitution, is key to any political process to end Syria’s long-running civil war.

The more than yearlong effort to form the 150-member committee has been dogged by objections from Syria’s government over the 50-member list representing experts, independents, tribal leaders and women. There is already agreement on 50-member lists from the government and the opposition.

New York state has expanded a state law prohibiting gender pay discrimination, making it illegal to pay someone less based on factors such as race, religion or gender identity. 
 
The new law also changes a legal standard for pay equity to make it easier for employees to prove discrimination in court. 
 
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the changes into law Wednesday in Manhattan, just before joining the U.S. women’s soccer team for a parade honoring its World Cup victory. Cuomo says he supports female players in their quest for pay equal to that of male players. 
 
Democratic state Senate leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins says the women’s team’s lesser pay highlights a fundamental economic problem facing women throughout society. 
 
Cuomo also signed legislation Wednesday barring employers from demanding prospective workers’ salary histories.