Banyan

The public is unnerved, while the Nazarbayev magic wears thin

THE guiding principle of Kazakhstan’s autocratic ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has always been “the economy first, then politics.” It seemed to serve for years. Free-market reforms and rising oil exports have brought Kazakhstan impressive growth over the past decade, averaging 8% a year. Mr Nazarbayev and allies prefer the country to be compared to the better Eastern European economies rather than being lumped together with poorer Central Asian neighbours.

Yet 20 years after independence, Mr Nazarbayev’s motto rings hollow. Political stagnation has gone hand-in-hand with corruption and a lack of respect for rule of law. For many Kazakhstanis, that was tolerable while times were good. But over the past few weeks people have been shaken out of their complacency by events that raise questions about Kazakhstan’s political stability. Has Mr Nazarbayev lost his touch?

Things have not been quite the same since clashes on December 16th-17th between laid-off oil workers and security forces in the oil town of Zhanoezen in western Kazakhstan left at least 16 people dead when police fired on unarmed rioters with live rounds. A state of emergency imposed on Zhanaozen after the violence was lifted only on January 31st. An official investigation into the violence was largely unrepentant about government actions. It declared that most police officers had “acted in accordance with the law under a real threat to lives and safety of peaceful citizens and the policemen themselves,” said the prosecutor-general, Askhat Daulbayev, on January 25th. Only “in some cases” were the use of weapons and special police equipment “disproportionate.” Four senior local police officers will be charged for using excessive force.

The authorities claim black hands behind the outbreak of riots, which followed a seven-month standoff between sacked oil workers and their former state employer, Samruk-Kazyna. Mr Daulbayev said a number of notable individuals agitated among the strikers, urging violence. Among them, authorities have named Vladimir Kozlov, leader of the unregistered Alga (“Forward”) party, which is believed to be funded by an exiled banker, Mukhtar Ablyazov. Yet some observers wonder whether the workers had support from inside the regime. An internal struggle for succession has raged since Mr Nazarbayev was rumoured to be ill last year.

In any case, the public has been unnerved not only by the shooting deaths, but by the crackdown on dissenters and the media that has followed. A curious consequence is that a usually lifeless opposition is being invigorated. Not, admittedly, at the polls. Parliamentary elections held on January 15th ended almost five years of one-party rule by Mr Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan (“Fatherland”) party; but that was by design, and the two other parties that took up seats were Nazarbayev allies. (The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said, as usual, that the elections were neither free nor fair.) The only real opposition party allowed to run, the All-National Social Democratic Party (OSDP), got just 1.6% percent and denounced the results.

The OSDP has since organised two protests in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s commercial capital. For the first, only 100 people turned up. The second demonstration on January 28th was attended by close to 500, just days after three prominent opposition figures, including Mr Kozlov, had been arrested for allegedly seeking to incite social strife. What had begun as an outcry against the way the election had been handled turned into broader grievances against the authorities, with demands for the release of activists and a transparent investigation into the Zhanaozen riots.

The official reaction was perhaps predictable. A few hours after the unsanctioned event, three OSDP leaders were arrested and given jail sentences by a city court. But this has only increased tensions—and may start to tarnish the president’s image in the West, carefully burnished by pretending to play by democratic norms.

MANUFACTURED Korean pop music, or K-Pop, is riding high on a wave of international hype. The greatest figure in the history of this country’s popular music, however, does not wear high heels, nor miniskirt. Indeed, he does not even dance.

Shin Joong-hyun first learned to play guitar in the 1950s, and soon found a following among the American soldiers stationed here. Jackie Shin, as they knew him, was a master of jazz, rock ’n roll, rhythm-and-blues, and country. He already knew the Americans’ favourite songs, having spent every waking hour listening to Armed Forces Korea Network (AFKN), for many years the sole conduit by which Western music flowed into Korea.

“They would shout, ‘We want Jackie! We want Jackie!’”, he recalls. But soon, Mr Shin’s own countrymen would follow suit. First he wrote and recorded a hit song called “Nima” for The Pearl Sisters; soon offers from record labels came flooding in. Other singers began to seek him out, hoping he could do the same for them. A university student named Kim Chu-ja hung around his office every day until he agreed to give her an audition; luckily for both, she had a voice to match her persistence. With his help she became one of the top stars of the late 1960s and early 70s.

The good times were not to last. In 1972, Mr Shin received a call from the president’s office, asking him to write a song to glorify Park Chung-hee, the former army general who had been ruling South Korea even since staging a coup 11 years earlier. “I don’t know how to do that. Ask someone else”, he replied. Following that, police began to forcibly cut rock-’n-rollers’ hair, and confiscate their guitars. Another song of Mr Shin’s, the Jimi Hendrix-like “Mi-in” (“Beautiful Girl”), was deemed “degenerate” and “noisy” by the authorities, and duly banned.

In 1975, a few stoner-fans gave him marijuana, which he says did nothing more than make his head hurt, and prevent him from concentrating on his music. The police busted him all the same. He was sullied in the press as a drug addict, and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of torture while imprisoned. He was later sent to a mental institution and, upon his release, banned from performing music for life.

Life comes to an end however. When Park Chung-hee was assassinated in 1979, Mr Shin was freed to resume his career. But musical tastes had changed by then, in part, he thinks, as function of the censorship that was characteristic of Park’s rule. The dictatorship “didn’t like people who think”, Mr Shin says, and encouraged a culture of simple, mindless songs that suited the “make money, spend money” ethos of the time.  

Naturally Mr Shin laments having been cut off in his prime. But as it happens his best music is now seeing renewed interest, four decades after its heyday. A musical featuring his songs is in the works. A night at Gopchang Jeongol—an increasingly cool underground den of vinyl records and rice wine, in the student area of Hongdae—is not complete without the DJ spinning a few old Shin Joong-hyun records. And two years ago Fender, a renowned guitar-maker, gave him his own Custom Shop Tribute Guitar, putting him in an exclusive club of six (other members include Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton).

To see why, take a look at this relatively recent performance, in which a 68-year-old Shin Joong-hyun tears up his most famous hit 

(A shame the video is slightly out of sync).

Or for a change of mood, here’s one he wrote for Kim Jung-mi, one of his early-1970s muses

SPENDING four days on a crowded, grubby train as it trundles over 4,200 kilometres, past 615 stations, and through eight states in India, is a lesson in endurance. Splash out 2,500 rupees (around $50) and you may board the newly inaugurated Vivek Express, the world’s eighth-longest train ride. A weekly service, for the first time it connects directly, by rail, the far north-east of the subcontinent—the seven poor and neglected states stuck on the wrong side of Bangladesh—through “mainland” India and down to its southernmost tip, at Kanyakumari.

The air is cold and foggy in Dibrugarh, a scruffy town in a remote corner of Assam known for tea-gardens and natural beauty. Earlier, when the sun was out, snow-capped mountains, foothills to the Himalayas, were visible to the north. There, in Arunachal Pradesh, lies the disputed border with China. Only a short distance to the south lies the frontier with Myanmar. Now, just before midnight, as your correspondent climbs aboard, a winter chill hangs over the station.  

No whistle marks our (on-time) departure, but a polite female voice from the tannoy system advises against riding on the roof, as it is “very dangerous”. So we begin to plod through the night, mostly parallel to the massive Brahmaputra river. We cut briefly into Nagaland, a state forgotten by the brash claims of those who celebrate a “rising India”. It is still known for its insurgents, who are in turn spurred on by persistent poverty: the average Nagalander’s annual income last year was just 22,400 rupees ($450), a paltry sum compared with 62,500 rupees per person earned in Tamil Nadu, at the pointy end of India.

The mornings, indeed all the waking hours, are punctuated by regular cries of “chai, chai”, as a man lugging a silver urn offers tiny cups of sweet, brown and milky tea at 5 rupees each. He is followed by water-sellers (“pani, pani”), the junk-food wallah (“chips, chips”) and—depending on the nearest station—sellers of samosas, biryanis, newspapers, paperback novels, SIM cards, memory sticks and a great deal more. In turn come beggars (an elderly man with stumps instead of hands, a boy with one leg) and occasional hijras (transgenders) in search of a few rupees.

Activities for the passenger are scarce. Staring at the passing countryside can become repetitive: in summary, the north is cold, brown, dusty and full of people, whereas the south is warm, green, wet and full of people. The north is litter-strewn, the south better swept. At one point, in a coal-mining corner of West Bengal, we are rewarded with a sight of mountainous slag heaps, with palm trees before them. Across much of India, it seems, satellite dishes are now sprouting on the roofs of even humble, thatched homes. And all over there are fast-growing cities, such as Guwahati in Assam, with around 1m residents (and occasional, horrific, terrorist attacks), of which few foreigners have ever heard.

More revealing is the scene inside. Youngsters, even if not wealthy (the more prosperous, after all, are now riding on India’s many airlines instead) crowd around laptops watching films. The middle-aged, the men, pass their hours furtively swigging on bottles of rum and whisky and then subsiding into sozzled sleep. This is strictly against train rules so they cower behind curtains when pouring their shots. “The tipsy train”, observes a laconic young Indian novelist, along for the ride.

A telling detail is the beep of mobile phones. Not only does everyone appear to have one, the coverage along the entire journey is unbroken. For a Briton used to wretched phone reception on a densely populated small island, the triumph of Indian telecoms is self-evident.

Fellow passengers, of course, offer the most. A companion in your correspondent’s cabin, who boarded in Dibrugarh, rides all the way south to Kerala. He calls himself Mr Kamil, tells stories of being a trader in coconuts and “small things”, and of roaming the country for work over the past 27 years. After so long on the rails, he says he has learned much about his homeland. Such as? “India”, he leans over to reveal, “is very, very big”.

Those who take India’s long-distance trains are a particular type. Mostly they are educated and rich enough to need to travel long distances—some to study, others to trade or find work—they yet cannot afford the cost of flying. Many are connected to government. Geeta Mohan (pictured, seated left), a teacher from Kerala, is delighted to ride a direct train home from her school, which is thousands of kilometres away in Bhutan. She has taught for there for 31 years.

Two friends, Bhutanese civil servants (pictured, beside Ms Mohan), are trundling south to Chennai to complete a year of studying computer use. Sitting with them, as we creep into Andhra Pradesh, on India’s east coast, is T.K. Shaju, a soldier in the Assamese Rifles for the past 15 years and a veteran of insurgencies in the remote north-east. His home, too, is in Kerala, and he calculates he has spent a year of his life on the train, losing several days at a time when he crosses India to get home to his family.

Stroll up and down the train and a wider variety of characters appear. In the second-class carriages there are many labourers: Indian’s railways help shift workers from the relatively young and poor north to the fast-aging and richer south. A tea-picker in Assam might earn a measly 40 rupees a day (less than $1), plus some food and lodging. If he rides south to Kerala, he may toil for five times as much. Others are moving to study: the south has colleges of hotel management, for instance, which is helpful for a booming tourism sector.

Most damning may be the fact that many choose to cross India to find a decent hospital. As we reach Vellore in Tamil Nadu, for example, various patients and their relatives disembark. One woman from Guwahati helps her mother, with a brain tumour, who has come to seek decent care unavailable in the north.

And as we enter the last leg of the journey, moving to Kerala and the western coast of India, I spend my time talking to the men who run the train. Pentan Kshetru, the manager of the moving kitchen (pictured at right), is proud of his work. Young and from Manipur, one of the neglected “seven sister” states in the north-east, he dares to hope that the Vivek Express now binds his state more closely to the rest of the country. “Yes, 100%, it is connecting India and everybody is proud” he claims, somewhat unconvincingly. Another man, the novelist, who is planning an Indian sequel to a Dickens’ work (“Greater Expectations. Do you see?”), talks of the train as a “metaphor for uniting India”. And he admits, frankly, problems to be overcome: “you know we didn’t always think of the north-east being in India.”

Not all is unity and better understanding. A Tamil ticket inspector is scathing in regard to his various compatriots, especially northerners. He rails against the filthy habits of some passengers, who scatter rubbish, lift their children to urinate in sinks or relieve themselves from open doors while the train is stopped in stations. He dismisses a suggestion that all they need is better education. He prefers to write off the entire culture of the northern “Hindu cow belt” as ignorant or backward.

At last, to the delight of the hard core of passengers who have been aboard for four days, the train clatters by the backwaters of Kerala, within sight of the Indian ocean, then into Kanyakumari itself. A tourist spot, crammed with visitors eager to see the subcontinent’s southern tip, it is also a chance to inhale ozone-rich sea air and walk on the beach. For the black-clad pilgrims marching through the station, and others, the final draw is an extra half-kilometre away. A rock in the sea, dedicated to a Bengali aristocrat who helped to spread Indian philosophies, and yoga, to the West and raised awareness of Hinduism on the international stage. Known as Swami Vivekananda, the train service is named for him.

CLEARLY the Japanese government does not think it has too much on its plate trying to secure support at home and abroad for its plan to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the America-led free-trade zone. According to Motohisa Furukawa, minister for national policy, Japan’s decision to prepare the ground for TPP entry has stoked China’s interest in a trilateral free-trade agreement with Japan and South Korea. In the past, he observed to The Economist on January 24th, discussions on the issue with China had never progressed very far. “Now they’ve [the Chinese] become very positive.” Japan, too, seems eager. Asked whether the TPP or rather a trilateral East Asian FTA would be the priority for Japan, he simply said: “whichever is the quickest.”

He didn’t mention South Korea, whose government remains preoccupied by historical grievances with Japan and appears keener on pursuing a bilateral FTA with China—perhaps worried that a trilateral deal might boost its already high trade deficit with Japan. But Mr Furukawa said the milestone to watch out for was an investment treaty between Japan, China and South Korea, which is expected to be signed shortly. “That will be the trigger for a fully-fledged discussion.”

Other government officials, too, put high store by the investment treaty, which would be one of the first formal frameworks to connect the three countries. One enthusiastically equated it to the European Coal and Steel Community, out of which the European Union grew. Hyperbole aside, it is clear that a trilateral FTA would not set out to be as rigorously all-encompassing as the TPP talks—which may make it easier to achieve. From Japan’s perspective, the threat of a flood of cheap goods from China is partially mitigated by rising labour costs in its neighbour’s booming economy. The possibility of creating a trilateral FTA might also attract the European Union toward free-trade talks with Japan.

For all the complications for Japan that would come from negotiating two huge trade treaties at once, there is one very positive aspect. It is becoming increasingly clear that efforts to forge a TPP are not isolating China; instead they are coaxing it towards more open trade, even if this remains of the “noodle bowl” variety of Asian FTAs, rather than an over-arching Asian-Pacific agreement. Mr Furukawa noted that one of the main benefits to Japan in joining efforts to expand regional free trade is that it will be able to help set the rules of global trade and investment. If China, too, takes part, such rules would become far more meaningful.

There is still a big question about whether Japan can live up to such ideals, however. It is not clear that the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, can persuade ordinary voters that free trade is in their interest. Richard Katz wrote a report in The Oriental Economist (no relation) this week saying that both the Noda and Obama administrations are trying hard to get a “yes” on Japan’s TPP participation. But he said there remain serious doubts in America. “The big fear in both government and business circles is that the strong opposition from Japan’s politically powerful farming sector would make it impossible for Japan to sign off on the sort of agreement that the US and some of the other participants would like to see.” Japanese farmers might reckon they have just as much reason to oppose a free-trade deal with China and South Korea, too.

(Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons)

UPDATED: The first four paragraphs were changed on 7am BST, January 26th, to take account of the unexpected drama in Canberra.

WHILE many Australians headed to the beach on January 26th, some aboriginal leaders and their supporters used the holiday marking the country’s national day to occupy lawns outside Parliament House in Canberra. It turned unexpectedly dramatic. Australia Day marks the anniversary when the British first settled Australia, on the shores of what is now Sydney, 224 years ago. Many indigenous Australians see the anniversary somewhat differently: as invasion day. This Australia Day sees the start of a process that will try to resolve the two viewpoints. At long last, Australians will soon have a chance to vote in a referendum on recognising aborigines in the country’s constitution.

The Canberra demonstration this Australia Day concentrated minds on yet another anniversary in aborigines’ long struggle for recognition. Forty years ago, on January 26th, 1972, a handful of young aboriginal protesters pitched a tent on lawns in front of Parliament House. They were fed up with the then conservative federal government’s refusal to grant traditional land rights to their people. The centre of the protest became known as the “Aboriginal Tent Embassy”; it has stayed on in various forms ever since.

The demonstration this Australia Day to mark the embassy’s founding showed the issues it represents remain just as volatile today. Julia Gillard, the Labor Party prime minister, and Tony Abbott, the conservative Liberal Party opposition leader, were at a nearby restaurant for an unrelated event. Earlier, Mr Abbott told journalists who had asked if the tent embassy was still relevant, that it was “probably time to move on” from it.

Taking his remarks as a call for the embassy to be closed, demonstrators converged on the restaurant. They banged on its glass walls, chanting “racist” and “shame”. The two political leaders stayed inside until police and security officials arrived, surrounded them and bundled them out in dramatic scenes past the demonstrators. Michael Anderson, one of the tent embassy’s founders, called Mr Abbott’s comments disrespectful. “He said the aboriginal embassy had to go. We thought 'no way', so we circled around the building.” No one was injured or arrested.

Four years after the tent’s pitching, in 1972 another conservative government enacted legislation, drafted by its Labor predecessor, to grant aboriginal land rights for the first time.

The fact that this took so long reflected a principal concept for the men who drafted the constitution, under which Australia’s six states formed a federation in 1901: that Australia was terra nullius, or unoccupied, when Europeans first settled. Today Australia’s 500,000 aborigines (about five times their number in 1901) comprise about 2.5% of Australia’s 23m people. They still lag behind the rest of Australia in health, education and life expectancy.

In 1967 Australians voted overwhelmingly to drop a clause from the constitution that had excluded aborigines from being counted in the census. But that proved to be unfinished business. On January 19th, a panel of 22 experts, more than half of them aboriginal people, delivered a new report to the Labor government of Julia Gillard. It recommends questions for yet another referendum aimed at bringing aborigines into the country’s founding document. Ms Gillard has promised the referendum by the time of the next federal election, due in 2013.

The panel said Australia has an “historic opportunity” to remove the “last vestiges of racial discrimination from the constitution”. These vestiges are two remaining sections that sit oddly with Australians’ evident pride at having built a successfully multicultural country. One gives states the power to disqualify people of “any race” from voting in state elections. The other allows the federal parliament to make “special laws” for “any race”.  Drawn up in the era of the discredited and long since abandoned "White Australia" policy, these sections were also aimed at preventing people from Asia and the Pacific islands from taking Australian jobs.

The panel called these sections a “blemish on our nationhood” and said they should be repealed, not before time. In their place, it recommends a new section recognising “that the continent and its islands now known as Australia were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”; the same new section would give parliament power to make laws for the “advancement” of those peoples. In one respect, the panel went further than some expected: it called for another new section, which would take up a blanket ban on racial discrimination, on grounds of race, colour, ethnic or national origin.

The Gillard government has yet to respond on whether it will accept the panel’s recommendations as the basis for the next referendum’s questions. Choosing the questions will be crucial. Thanks largely to the founding fathers’ strict approval rules, Australia has a dismal record on constitutional change: for a referendum to succeed, there must be an overall majority yes vote in the country, as well as a yes vote in at least four of the six states. Consequently, less than a fifth of 44 referendums that have been attempted since 1901 have passed. Governments seeking to modernise the constitution have often seen their campaigns fail when opposition parties refused to support change. (The last failed referendum, 13 years ago, on whether Australia should become a republic, bucked the pattern. This was the sole case of a prime minister, then John Howard, both initiating a referendum and then campaigning against it, thus ensuring its defeat.)

This time, the omens are more promising. Despite their rancour on almost every other issue, both the Labor government and the conservative Liberal-National opposition support constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians in some form. Some constitutional experts worry nonetheless about the sort of campaigns that might be launched by fringe groups and conservative radio “shock jocks”, and urge that the referendum's questions be kept simple and incapable of distortion. Australia is a bigger and more complex country than in 1967; deleting an exclusionist clause about aborigines then was probably an easier process than inserting fresh ones, as now proposed. The 90% yes vote of 45 years ago remains a record.

Still, Patrick Dodson, a co-chairman of the expert panel, says that as Australia “repositions” itself in a global world, and casts a critical eye over other countries' human-rights records, “we have to get our own house rectified”. Known as Australia’s “father of reconciliation”, Mr Dodson says that of all his battles for his fellow aboriginal people, a yes vote would be a “source of greatest pride”. Mark Leiber, his panel co-chairman, says the stakes in this referendum are greater than in earlier ones: “A no vote would send a terrible message.”

AN EXTRAORDINARY story is making the rounds among the hacks and other expats in Japan. A Canadian freelance journalist who has lived in Japan for years fell into the ugly whirlpool of Japan’s immigration-and-detention system. For years human-rights monitors have cited Japan’s responsible agencies for awful abuses; in their reports the system looks like something dark, chaotic and utterly incongruous with the country’s image of friendly lawfulness.

Still the case of Christopher Johnson beggars belief. Returning to Tokyo after a short trip on December 23rd he was ushered into an examination room, where his nightmare began. Over the next 24 hours he was imprisoned and harassed. Most of his requests to call a lawyer, the embassy or friends were denied, he says.

Officials falsified statements that he gave them and then insisted that he sign the erroneous testimony, he says. Guards tried to extort money from him and at one point even threatened to shoot him, he says—unless he purchased a wildly expensive ticket for his own deportation, including an overt kick-back for his tormentors. Once he was separated from his belongings, money was stolen from his wallet and other items removed from his baggage (as he has reported to the Tokyo police).

The problems to do with Japan’s immigration bureau have been known for years. Detainees regularly protest the poor conditions. They have staged hunger strikes and a few have committed suicide. A Ghanaian who overstayed his visa died in the custody of guards during a rough deportation in 2010. (In that case, the prosecutor has delayed deciding whether to press charges against the guards or to drop the case. A spokesperson refuses even to discuss the matter with media outlets that are not part of the prosecutor’s own “press club”.)

Mr Johnson’s ordeal closely matches the abuses exposed in a 22-page report by Amnesty International in 2002, “Welcome to Japan?”, suggesting that even the known problems have not been fixed. One reason why the practices may be tolerated is that the Japanese government apparently outsources its airport-detention operations to a private security firm.

It is a mystery to Mr Johnson why he was called aside for examination, but he suspects it is because of his critical coverage of Japan. (Mr Johnson’s visa status is unclear: in an interview, he said his lawyer advised him not to discuss it.)

Reached by The Economist, Japan’s immigration bureau said it cannot discuss individual cases, but that its detentions and deportations follow the law, records of hearings are archived and the cost of deportation is determined by the airline. The justice ministry declined to discuss the matter and referred all questions to the immigration bureau. Canada’s department of foreign affairs confirmed to The Economist that a citizen was detained and that it provided “consular assistance” and “liaised with local authorities”.

Mr Johnson’s own rambling account of his saga appeared on his blog, “Globalite Magazine”. It must be considered as unverified, despite The Economist’s attempts to check relevant facts with the Japanese and Canadian governments. As a result, we cannot endorse its accuracy. We present edited excerpts, below, because they are deeply troubling if true.

On my way home to Tokyo after a three-day trip to Seoul, I was planning to spend Christmas with my partner, our two dogs, and her Japanese family. I had flight and hotel reservations for ski trips to Hokkaido and Tohoku, and I was planning—with the help of regional government tourism agencies—to do feature stories to promote foreign tourism to Japan. 

While taking my fingerprints, an immigration officer saw my name on a computer watch list. Without even looking through my passport, where he might find proper stamps for my travels, he marked a paper and gave it to another immigration officer. ”Come with me,” he said, and I did. 

He led me to an open room. Tired after three hours’ sleep overnight in Seoul, I nodded off. Officers woke me up and insisted we do an “interview” in a private room, “for your privacy.” Sensing something amiss, I asked for a witness and a translator, to make sure they couldn’t confuse me with legal jargon in Japanese. An employee of Asiana Airlines came to witness the “interview.”

The immigration officers provided a translator—hired by immigration. She turned out to be the interpreter from hell. ”Hi, what’s your name?” I asked, introducing myself to her. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she snapped at me. She was backed up by four uniformed immigration officials.

Q: “What are the names of the hotels where you stayed in April in the disaster zone? What are the names of people you met in Fukushima?”

A: “Well, I stayed at many places, I met hundreds of people.”

Q: “What are their names?”

A: “Well, there are so many.”

Q: “You are refusing to answer the question! You must say exactly, in detail.”

(Before I could answer, next question.)

Q: “What were you doing in May 2010? Who did you meet then?”

A: “That was a long time ago. Let me think for a moment.”

The interpreter butted in: “See, you are refusing to answer. You are lying.” 

The “interpreter”, biased toward her colleagues in the immigration department, intentionally mistranslated my answers, and repeatedly accused me of making unclear statements. I understood enough of their conversation in Japanese to realise she totally got my story wrong. 

Without hesitation, he wrote on a document: “No proof. Entry denied.” 

“But I do have proof,” I said.

But he refused to acknowledge it. “You must sign here. You cannot refuse.” 

Continue reading "Gulag for gaijin"»

IT WAS billed as an historic occasion: the first independent panel of Japan's Diet (parliament), and a rare moment of bipartisanship. On January 16th, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) held its first public hearing. Some 50 members of the public, and around 100 journalists, attended. 

The group received the reports of other official panels. First, from a committee named by the prime minister which delivered a blistering interim report in December (as described in The Economist). Also, by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the Fukushima nuclear plant—and whose report downplayed the incident. Even the ministry of education produced a report.

Yet the actual news of the day occurred following the meeting, at the start of the official press conference. After the commission's chairman, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, gave opening remarks, a spokesperson announced the start of the question-and-answer period, and felt compelled to add: "There will be no informal press briefing after this formal press conference. So please ask your questions here."

To outsiders, the comment may have sounded strange. What does that mean, an "informal press briefing" after the official press conference? But to those with experience watching the Japanese media interact with officialdom, the significance was unmistakable. 

Japan's media operate under a "press club" system that can lead to a form of self-censorship. News is doled out in unofficial interactions with the press. This serves many interests. For government and to a lesser extent business, it keeps the media on a tight leash and controls content. For individual journalists, it gives the veneer of exclusive information and inside access. For newspapers, it lessens the chance of being scooped by rivals, so everyone can work under less pressure. 

Because no outlet can afford to get dropped from the press club, no one dares rocks the boat. And though politicians complain about the practice, it suits their interests. They pretend that the clubs are not officially sanctioned, but rather run by the journalists themselves. However that's not strictly true. After all, ministries including the prime minister's office, provide the press clubs with large workrooms inside their own buildings. 

One of the problems of the press-club system is that it makes it harder for the media to serve as a watchdog against the most powerful institutions. The energy companies with nuclear plants were not seriously scrutinised before the Fukushima crisis (nor afterwards, the critics bellow). The lack of such scrutiny may have contributed to the environment in which safety precautions were ignored. 

During the commission's meeting itself, the most difficult questions concerned the possibility that there was earthquake damage to the reactor before the tsunami hit. It raises troubling questions whether nuclear power is safe anywhere in this seismically-active archipelago. TEPCO, as on previous occasions, provided incomplete answers, perhaps reflecting valid uncertainties—but also suggesting it is not telling the whole story.  

Questions at the press conference focused more on process than on substance, since it was the commission's first day. That the NAIIC playing host to only a single, formal press conference and not engaging in any sort of back-channel with the press does not mean that its work will be any better nor the reporting more accurate, nor does it imply any other virtue for that matter. The spokesperson's remark was made offhandedly, as a simple point of fact, rather than as a salvo across the bow of Japan's media practices. 

Yet it represented a breath of fresh air: a small example of how an old custom is increasingly looking out of date in a new, post-Fukushima Japan.

CHINA and America can breathe a sigh of relief. A closely fought presidential election in Taiwan has delivered a second four-year term to the China-friendly incumbent, Ma Ying-jeou. China had feared that his opponent, Tsai Ing-wen, would try to steer the island closer to formal independence. America professed neutrality, but clearly did not want to see tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait. To officials in Washington as well as Beijing, Mr Ma looked the less likely of the two to stir up trouble.

Mr Ma’s party, the Kuomintang (KMT), has also retained its control of the legislature. In parliamentary polls, held at the same time as the presidential ones, the KMT won 64 of the legislature’s 113 seats. Ms Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won 40. Mr Ma’s fortunes were boosted by the unexpectedly poor performance of a third candidate, James Soong of the People First Party. Mr Soong’s decision in November to join the race prompted fears in the KMT that it would lose some of its supporters to him. (His party split from the KMT in 2000.) “Jiu jiu jiu”, urged large characters on one election van in Taipei this week, meaning “Save, save Jeou”. In the end, Mr Soong took less than 3% of the vote. Mr Ma got nearly 52%, against less than 46% for Ms Tsai. 

But the elections were not entirely good news for Mr Ma. In 2008 he won with 58% of the vote and his party secured 81 seats in the legislature. His popularity has been dented by the battering of the island’s export-dependent economy by the global slowdown. Many Taiwanese complain of a growing gap between rich and poor and increasingly unaffordable housing prices. Ms Tsai made considerable progress in restoring the unity and confidence of her party. The DPP had been shaken badly by corruption scandals surrounding its former leader, Chen Shui-bian, who was president from 2000 to 2008. (Mr Chen is now serving a 20-year sentence for corruption.) After her defeat today, Ms Tsai announced her resignation as the DPP’s chairwoman. But her party has shown that it is back as a powerful contender.

There will now be much bickering in the DPP over whether Ms Tsai could have done better. Some in her party will ask whether she should have signalled acceptance of what the KMT and China call the “1992 consensus”: an agreement they say was reached between the two sides to accept the idea of “one China”—and to disagree about what it means. In the build-up to the polls, many business leaders publicly expressed support for this consensus, implying support for the KMT’s way of handling ties with China. To the DPP, anything even hinting at the notion of one China of which Taiwan is part is anathema. China on the other hand insists that the 1992 consensus must be the basis for any cross-strait agreements. It attacked Ms Tsai’s calls for an ill-defined “Taiwan consensus” to replace it.

China will be especially relieved not to have to grapple with new cross-strait semantics at a time when it is preoccupied with its own (democracy-free) leadership changes later this year. Even if Ms Tsai had won, many analysts believe, China would have been restrained in its response, fearing that an escalation with Taiwan might exacerbate political divisions and social tensions at home. China’s president, Hu Jintao, will be stepping down as part of the leadership shuffle. He must be glad to know that the DPP’s next chance at the presidency of Taiwan will not come till long after his departure.

(Picture credit: AFP)

OUR acting Asia editor and our South Asia bureau chief discuss India's efforts to use biometrics in distributing public resources

TAIWAN’S presidential election on January 14th seems set to decide the future of this unusual island’s relations with China. But in final days of campaigning, Ruifang, an obscure former mining town on Taiwan’s woody north-eastern coast, was entranced by the more personal aspects of a visit from the incumbent candidate, Ma Ying-jeou—and with the carnival atmosphere that accompanied him.

Cymbals clashed for a gaudy lion-dance performance through the streets, before Mr Ma told over 1,000 of his supporters, packed under a brightly striped tent, that his ruling Kuomintang (KMT) has improved relations with China and is bringing them towards a lasting peace.

“I have made my stance clear—no unification, no independence, no use of force—right?” he said. “Right,” roared the crowd.

Attendees were handed red plastic amulets to be worn around the neck. Known as a Taiwan ping’an fu, signifying peace and safety, they share a homonym with the traditional Taoist amulets distributed at Taiwan’s temples for protection.

The president came up with this campaign gimmick in early November, after the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) accused the KMT of being a “big bad wolf” that favoured big business at the expense of ordinary people. In a nod to the Three Little Pigs, they launched a fundraising campaign that sent round 100,000 piggy banks to collect small political donations for the party. The piggy banks had nothing to do with the party’s pro-independence stance, but they were a hit. By January 6th, the DPP said, they had helped rake in $6.7 million.

Mr Ma’s amulets tie in with his themes of cross-strait warming (and he has raised buckets of them over incense burners at temples, to be blessed on the campaign trail), but they have not been so popular.

In addition to passing out plastic election kitsch, Mr Ma has been talking a big game about boosting stagnant wages and tamping down rocketing housing prices and unemployment. However there is no escaping the fact that at the heart of the election there is going to be a vote on this vibrant, democratic island’s future relations with the giant authoritarian state on the mainland.

Ever since Mr Ma was elected four years ago, he has strived to bring an end to the era of cold-war-style hostilities with China, now six decades old. New business accords, such as the institution of direct flights across the strait of Taiwan, agreements on tourism and a partial free-trade pact inked last year have all been part of the larger project. Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province to be brought back to the fold, has been happy to offer Mr Ma economic sweeteners in the hope that under his direction the Taiwanese public will develop fonder feelings towards China. In the long run, China's leaders hope for the island to become so enmeshed in the mainland’s enormous economy as to make unification an inevitability.

Sweeteners and blessed amulets notwithstanding, the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen, a former academic, is now running neck-and-neck with Mr Ma. Although Ms Tsai is a moderate and does not favour rolling back Mr Ma’s commercial initiatives, she is deeply mistrusted in Beijing. China’s leaders remembers the 2000-2008 rule of Chen Shui-bian, a firebrand for independence when he was president, now stuck in prison for corruption. A win by Ms Tsai bring back the bad old days of military tension. The overarching—and perhaps insurmountable—sticking point between Ms Tsai and China’s government has to do with her refusal to accept an informal cross-strait consensus reached over a decade ago. The consensus holds that Taiwan is “a part of China”, though the two sides may disagree on the meaning of that. Accepting the consensus is Beijing’s bottom line. Analysts say that China has been floored by Ms Tsai’s surge of support in recent months and that it is psychologically unprepared for a DPP government, a situation that could give ammunition to hardliners in Beijing who were already opposed to taking a softer stance on Taiwan. This dynamic could be complicated further by China’s leadership transition, due in autumn this year, when Chinese president Hu Jintao is expected to hand over the leadership of the Chinese Communist Part to Xi Jinping, a fellow moderate.

Bruce Jacobs, a professor of politics at Australia’s Monash University, says Mr Ma is definitely Beijing’s preferred candidate. Mr Ma is also believed to be favoured in Washington; America has pledged to help Taiwan defend itself from Chinese attack—and does not want another crisis on its hands.

Concerns about security, however, were the last thing on the mind for many of Ruifang’s residents. Zhou Su-fen, a retired nurse who was standing next to a roadside stall selling all kinds of pro-Ma paraphernalia (including dolls of Mr Ma dressed in skimpy running gear), echoed others in the crowd when she said that for her the rally was simply an opportunity to see all the political figures she knew from television—in person, for the first time. Like many attendees at KMT rallies, she said she preferred Mr Ma’s government for being less corrupt than the DPP (though everyone regards Ms Tsai herself as being perfectly clean).

A deciding factor in the election will be the performance of another pro-China presidential candidate, James Soong, a former high-ranking member of the KMT, who is running as an independent. Although Mr Soong normally commands only 10% of the vote or less, any surge of support for him in this tight race would siphon more precious votes away from Mr Ma than from Ms Tsai.

Taiwan will be holding elections for its 113-seat legislature at the same time. The DPP, which holds fewer than a third of the seats, is expected to improve its standing. A hung parliament is not out of the question, which could slow the speed of the cross-strait thaw, even if Mr Ma wins.

AFTER more than two years of sordid revelations in the media, legal wrangling and political point-scoring, on January 9th the High Court in Malaysia’s capital finally handed down a verdict in Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy case: not guilty. Homosexuality is illegal in Muslim-majority Malaysia, and if found guilty the former deputy prime minister and current leader of the opposition could have been jailed for up to 20 years and whipped. The case began in 2008 when a male aide reported to the police that Mr Anwar had sodomised him. But Mr Anwar and his supporters have always argued that the charge was a lie and that the whole trial was a put-up job by a nervous government, desperate to discredit him after he came close to winning a general election earlier in that year. 

Indeed, to many Malaysians the whole case seemed an unlikely re-run of earlier charges brought against Mr Anwar when he was ousted from his post as deputy prime minister in 1998—hence the moniker of Sodomy 2.0 for this case. The first time round he went to prison for six years on corruption and sodomy charges, only to be cleared of the latter by the supreme court in 2004. This time the judge ruled that the prosecution case against Mr Anwar was too flimsy for a conviction; the DNA evidence, in particular, was unreliable. 

Indeed, Mr Anwar claims that all the accusations and legal suits over the past 14 years amount to nothing more than a sustained political vendetta against him by the country’s ruling party, which started after he fell out with the autocratic and long-serving prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. Once the golden boy of the United Malays National Organisation, which has ruled the country continuously since independence from the British, Mr Anwar has been demonised by his former colleagues ever since. 

Malaysian politics is an unusually dirty business. But the trials of Anwar, together with the explicit sexual revelations in the press that have necessarily accompanied them in the guise of court reporting, have taxed the patience and fortitude of most Malaysians. Whatever they think of Mr Anwar personally, most Malaysians will be glad that the whole thing is finally over and hope that the trial is not followed by Sodomy III. 

If the two sodomy charges really were invented by elements within the government bent on wrecking Mr Anwar’s political career, then these attempts have backfired. The first case rallied huge public sympathy for him. In Sodomy 2.0 he has been publicly vindicated, despite a widespread belief that he was going to be convicted.  The government swiftly tried to spin the verdict to its advantage, claiming it shows that Malaysia has an “independent” judiciary after all, and that “the government does not hold sway over judges’ decision”. But, such is degree of public cynicism in Malaysia, few will take these statements at face value.

How will the verdict affect Malaysia’s politics? It was delivered against the background of an impending general election, and in the short term Mr Anwar’s victory will doubtless give his party and the opposition in general a much-needed boost. It might even persuade the prime minister, Najib Razak, to postpone going to the polls for a bit longer, to allow time for the political spotlight to swivel back onto his own agenda.

In the longer term, however, the verdict might not serve the opposition so well. Although Mr Anwar remains a charismatic figure and a forceful speaker, he is at 64, he is too familiar and his ideas and rhetoric have not really shifted since the mid-1990s. He has failed to groom a successor or to nurture a new generation of opposition leaders. Rather than becoming a vibrant, modernising force in politics his party has become something of a family-run affair, riven by discord and infighting. In prison, so the hard-nosed political operators say, he would have served as a useful martyr to rally the opposition. Now they are stuck with him indefinitely; a man still strong and popular enough to worry the government, but too weakened to win an election or recruit the cohorts of younger voters that they need. As a result, the more savvy, younger politicians will now be eyeing up the following election for their opportunity, not this coming one. And that’s not good for democracy in Malaysia, which is rarely in rude good health at the best of times.

APPLICATIONS are invited for a new Marjorie Deane internship for 2012. This award, financed by the Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Foundation, is designed to provide work experience for a promising journalist or would-be journalist resident in Japan who will spend three months or more at The Economist bureau in Tokyo, assisting with coverage of business and finance. Applicants should send a letter introducing themselves, along with an original article of no more than 500 words that they think would be suitable for publication in the business or finance sections of The Economist.

Absolute fluency both in English and Japanese is required, as measured by TOEFL iBT 109 or higher, IELTS 7.0 or 日本語検定 (1級). Prior work experience is preferred in the fields of business or finance. The internship will be conducted on a part-time basis.

Applications should be sent by e-mail to japaninternship@economist.com or posted to:

The Economist Newspaper Ltd. Internship Applications
10F Yomiuri Shimbun Building, 6-17-1
Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0061

They must reach us by January 27th.