China tries to block Uighur film

Rebiya Kadeer has campaigned for the rights of China’s Uighur community

Organisers of Melbourne’s International Film Festival have defied calls from China not to show a documentary about an exiled Uighur leader.

Festival director Richard Moore said a Chinese consular official had insisted that the film be withdrawn, but he had refused to do so.

The film, Ten Conditions of Love, centres on Rebiya Kadeer, the US-based head of the World Uighur Congress.

China accuses the group of inciting recent ethnic unrest in Xinjiang.

Beijing and Canberra are already locked in a row over an Australian mining executive who has been arrested for spying in China.

‘Strident’

Mr Moore said that after the event’s programme was published, he was contacted by Melbourne-based Chinese cultural attache Chunmei Chen who urged him to withdraw the film.

“I said I had no reason to withdraw the film from the festival and she then proceeded to tell me that I had to justify my decision to include the film in the festival.

“No-one reacts well to strident approaches, or to the appearance of being bullied. I don’t think it’s a positive way of behaving,” he added.

He said he told Ms Chen he did not have to justify the film’s inclusion, “then politely hung up”.

Chinese troops have restored order in Xinjiang after bloody riots

The Chinese consulate in Melbourne has not commented on the incident.

China has accused Ms Kadeer of orchestrating recent bloodshed in Xinjiang, home to the ethnic Muslim Uighurs and a growing number of China’s Han majority.

Violence between the two groups this month has left more than 180 people dead and more than 1,600 injured, Chinese authorities say.

Ms Kadeer, one of China’s richest women, was jailed in China for endangering national security but released in 2005 on medical grounds. She now lives in the US.

Ten Conditions of Love, by Melbourne film-maker Jeff Daniels, tells of Ms Kadeer’s relationship with her activist husband Sidik Rouzi and the impact her campaigning had on her 11 children.

Three of her children have been jailed.

‘Spying’ arrest

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned China on Wednesday that governments and corporations around the world were watching how it handled the case of an Australian mining executive.

Stern Hu, the Australian head of Rio Tinto’s iron ore business in China, was detained on suspicion of industrial espionage relating to negotiations with Chinese steel mills over iron ore prices.

Australia counts heatwave deaths

Australia counts heatwave deaths

The Australian authorities fear about 20 people have died as a result of one of the worst heatwaves in 100 years to hit the south-east of the country.

Most of them were elderly people who had been struggling in the heat.

The heatwave has also caused power outages in Melbourne, Australia’s second biggest city.

Extreme temperatures of more than 40C (104F) have hit the south-eastern states of Victoria and South Australia in the past three days.

If the high temperatures continue into Sunday, it will equal the worst heatwave that south-eastern Australia has witnessed in 100 years.

Already, it has caused disruption, destruction and death.

In Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, health officials reported more than 20 sudden deaths, most of them elderly people overcome by the baking temperatures of over 40C who had suffered strokes and heart attacks.

Raging wildfires have ripped through the Gippsland region of neighbouring Victoria, and at least 10 homes have been destroyed near the rural town of Boolarra.

In Melbourne, the state capital, the heatwave has meant disruption to transportation services and power outages.

Trains have been cancelled because the rail lines have buckled in the heat.

An explosion at an electrical substation left over 300,000 homes without power.

Some traffic lights in the city have stopped working, so too the signals in parts of the rail network.

 

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Melbourne jury convicts militants

A Muslim cleric and five of his followers have been convicted of belonging to a terrorist group which allegedly planned attacks in Australia.

A jury in Melbourne found Abdul Nacer Benbrika guilty of leading the group.

The cell was accused of planning to stage “violent jihad”, targeting the prime minister and major sports events.

Four other men were acquitted. Charges are pending against two others, in what is being described as Australia’s biggest-ever terrorism trial.

Australian police bust drugs ring

Australian police bust drugs ring

The ecstasy was hidden in some 3,000 tins disguised as canned tomatoes

Australian police say they have busted an international drugs ring and seized what they describe as the largest single haul of the drug ecstasy.

Sixteen people were arrested across Australia, with further raids expected in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy.

It follows a year-long investigation after 15 million ecstasy pills were found hidden in a shipping container that arrived in Melbourne from Italy.

The tablets had an estimated street value of about A$450m (US$400m; £200m).

The ecstasy – a banned amphetamine with mild hallucinogenic properties – was found by Australian customs officers hidden in tins of tomatoes in a shipping container in June 2007.

The pills were replaced with a harmless substitute and the delivery was tracked, police say.

‘No soft target’

The breakthrough came when another shipment of 150kg of cocaine arrived in Australia last month, which led to the raids across several countries.

In Canberra, Attorney-General Robert McClelland said Australia had shown it was not a soft target for drug smugglers – that view, he insisted, has been “well and truly” smashed.

The syndicate was believed to be responsible for 60% of illegal drug imports in to southern Australia.

Local newspaper reports have suggested that among those targeted by the police were Australians allegedly linked to the Calabrian mafia in the New South Wales fruit-growing town of Griffith, as well as others associated with an outlawed motorcycle gang.