The Washington Post - 31.07.2019

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A

published Sunday that two senior

government officials had lobbied

him to make it easier for wealthy

Chinese gamblers to enter Aus-

tralia on private jets.

Crown said Tuesday it would

assist with any investigation but

rejected allegations of illegality.

“We believe these allegations

are ill-informed and an attempt

to smear the company,” it said in a

statement.

The Department of Home Af-

fairs, which oversees the Border

Force, said it offers fast-track visa

processing for “a number of large

international organizations.”

The allegations are proving ex-

plosive in Australia, which is

grappling with an influx of

wealth from mainland China that

has driven up property values,

generated lucrative tax revenue

and raised questions about the

source of the financial windfalls.

Packer, who stepped down

from the board of Crown in 2018,

citing mental illness, is one of the

country’s most famous business

executives. He is the ex-fiance of

singer Mariah Carey.

Two months ago, he sold 19.

percent of Crown, leaving him

with about 26 percent of the

company, which reported profits

of 559 million Australian dollars

— about $380 million — in the

year ended that June 30, 2018.

Members of Crown’s high-stakes

“VIP program” wagered 52 billion

Australian dollars — about $

billion — in the same period,

according to corporate filings.

Packer’s lawyer has said that

Packer has not held an executive

position at the company since

2012 and had a passive interest in

the company.

The Law Enforcement Integri-

ty inquiry is expected to focus on

whether federal officials did any-

thing wrong in their relations

with Crown. The casino operator

is primarily regulated by state

authorities, which have said they

are monitoring the situation but

have not taken any specific ac-

tion.

From 2003 to 2016, Crown had

an arrangement with the govern-

ment to expedite the issuance of

short-term visas for gamblers.

Why the arrangement ended is

unclear.

[email protected]

BY A. ODYSSEUS PATRICK

sydney — Australia’s govern-

ment said Tuesday it would inves-

tigate relations between consular

officials and the country’s main

casino operator, Crown Resorts,

after news reports alleged that

organized-crime gangs from Chi-

na were laundering money

through its casinos in Melbourne

and Perth.

In recent days, articles in the

Sydney Morning Herald and the

Age newspapers asserted that

Crown, which is owned in part by

tycoon James Packer, obtained

assistance from Australian con-

sular staff to facilitate the travel

to Australia of people under in-

vestigation or being monitored

by police and intelligence agen-

cies.

The reports also said that a

cousin of Chinese President Xi

Jinping, Ming Chai, holds an Aus-

tralian passport and was aboard a

private jet that was searched by

Australian agents in 2016 on sus-

picion the aircraft was involved in

money laundering.

Ming, a former police official

who has not responded to the

reports, was a valued client of

Crown known as a VVIP, or Very,

Very Important Person, accord-

ing to confidential Crown docu-

ments cited by the newspapers.

The Washington Post has not

been able to independently verify

the reports, and Ming could not

be reached for comment.

On Tuesday, Attorney General

Christian Porter referred the alle-

gations to the Australian Com-

mission for Law Enforcement In-

tegrity, a body that investigates

corruption in federal law enforce-

ment agencies, including the bor-

der-control force.

“It’s my view that there are

sufficient concerns to warrant

further investigations,” Porter

told Parliament.

A former head of the Austral-

ian Border Force, Roman Quaed-

vlieg, told the papers in an article

Australian officials face

probe over visa issuance

BY SIMON DENYER

AND JOHN HUDSON

seoul — North Korea fired two
short-range ballistic missiles early
Wednesday morning, South Ko-
rea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a
statement.
The missile launch was the sec-
ond in a week, after Pyongyang
also fired two short-range ballistic
missiles into the Sea of Japan last
Thursday.
North Korea said last week’s
launch was a direct response to
planned U.S.-South Korean joint
military exercises and the South’s
deployment of what it called “ul-
tramodern offensive weapons,” al-
most certainly a reference to its
import of U.S. F-35A stealth fight-
ers.
Although a ballistic missile test
is a violation of United Nations
Security Council resolutions and
the missiles are designed to
threaten South Korea, President
Trump played down the signifi-
cance of last week’s test, saying
many countries test short-range
missiles.
North Korea has also threat-
ened to pull out of denucleariza-
tion talks with the United States if
the military exercises go ahead,
claiming that they would break a
promise made by Trump to Kim
Jong Un when the two leaders met
at the demilitarized zone between
the two Koreas at the end of June.
The launches have helped
dampen any optimism that might
have arisen out of that meeting,
and they underlined the challeng-

es ahead.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

said Tuesday that he did not know

when the next working-level talks

would begin, but he expressed

hope that they start “before too

long.”

“Chairman Kim said when the

two leaders met at the DMZ that

they would start in a few weeks.

It’s taking a little bit longer than

that,” he told reporters on his

plane before a refueling stop in

Alaska.

“I hope... before too long, we’ll

have Special Representative [Ste-

phen] Biegun sitting with what I

think will be his new counterpart

for North Korea.”

South Korea said the missiles

had been launched from near the

Wonsan-Kalma area, the site of

many previous missile launches,

on North Korea’s east coast, at

5:06 and 5:27 a.m. They flew about

150 miles and reached an altitude

of about 20 miles.

“North Korea’s continued mis-

sile launches do not help relieve

tensions on the Korean Peninsula

and we urge North Korea to stop

such acts,” the country’s Joint

Chiefs of Staff said.

Japan’s Defense Ministry said

Wednesday’s launch had not en-

croached on its waters and did not

immediately affect its security.

While the Trump administra-

tion has responded calmly to the

missile launches, experts said they

represent a significant security

threat. They also pose serious

questions for Trump and South

Korean President Moon Jae-in.

“While not surprising, certainly

not helpful to the diplomatic proc-

ess,” tweeted Jenny Town, manag-

ing editor of the Stimson Center’s

38 North website. “How long can

Moon maintain his cool before he

starts to take this personally? At

what point does this sour the

Trump administration’s political

will to return to negotiations?

Tough choices ahead.”

North Korea said last week’s

missile launch was a “solemn

warning to South Korean military

warmongers.” It said the “tactical

guided missiles” were designed to

fly at low altitude with a “leaping

flight,” to make them harder to

detect and intercept.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at

Ewha University in Seoul, said it

was not appropriate to shrug off

the tests as “short-range.”

“These missiles represent tech-

nological developments that

threaten U.S. allies and forces in

Asia,” he said. “These tests also

reflect North Korean dissatisfac-

tion with the current terms of

diplomatic engagement.”

Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at

the Council on Foreign Relations,

said Trump’s subdued response to

last week’s launches has given

Pyongyang no incentive to stop

testing.

“President Trump has said he is

not bothered by it, so why not?” he

said.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Hudson reported from Washington.

Min Joo Kim in Seoul contributed to

this report.

S. Korea: North fires more missiles

New tests come after

Trump played down

last week’s launch

Chinese gangs are using

casinos to launder cash,

news reports assert

BY ANNA FIFIELD

beijing — The Chinese govern-
ment on Tuesday declared its
campaign of control and repres-
sion in the majority-Muslim re-
gion of Xinjiang to be a resound-
ing success, claiming that almost
all of those detained in intern-
ment camps had been released
and were now “living very happy
lives.”
Signaling the start of a new
phase in Xinjiang, officials quot-
ed reams of figures to support
their claims that life in Xinjiang
had improved remarkably under
70 years of Communist rule and
that the government’s “deradical-
ization” campaign had been effec-
tive.
“All ethnicities have worked
together to make Xinjiang a beau-
tiful place,” Shohrat Zakir, deputy
secretary of the Communist Party
of China in Xinjiang and the
highest-profile Uighur in the gov-
ernment, told reporters at a news
conference organized by the State
Council, or cabinet office, on
Tuesday.
As if to show the harmony of
Xinjiang, the State Council had
organized Uighurs to sing and
dance for reporters, and there
were traditional handicrafts and
dried fruit on display, along with
signs saying, “Build a beautiful
Xinjiang. Realize the Chinese
Dream.”
The government’s portrayal of
the situation in Xinjiang differs
sharply from firsthand accounts
of life there, with former inmates
having described a systematic ef-
fort to rid the minority Uighurs of
their culture and religion and
make them assimilate into the
Mandarin-speaking ethnic Han
majority.
Some people who have
emerged from the camps have
managed to escape from China or
at least get word to relatives,
despite the Chinese government’s
restrictions on international
communication and heavy sur-
veillance.
They describe camps of relent-
less indoctrination, where Mus-
lim Uighurs are being forced to
renounce their religion and in-
stead swear allegiance to the rul-
ing Communist Party.
There are about 11 million Ui-
ghurs living in the Xinjiang re-
gion of western China, and be-
tween 1 million and 3 million of
them have been detained in
camps since 2017, according to
American government and hu-
man rights group estimates.
At the same time, Chinese au-
thorities have razed mosques,
forced men to shave their beards
and women to leave their hair
uncovered, and have instituted
an all-encompassing surveillance
system involving facial recogni-
tion cameras, ubiquitous check-
points and placing ethnic majori-
ty Han Chinese in Uighur house-
holds to keep tabs on ethnic mi-
nority families.
The Chinese government, after
long denying the existence of the

camps, by the end of last year

could no longer argue with the

satellite imagery showing huge

detention centers with barbed

wire and watchtowers. It sudden-

ly announced that the sites were

“vocational training centers” de-

signed to “deradicalize” extrem-

ists in the area.

Asked about the camps, Zakir

and Alken Tuniaz, another senior

Communist official in Xinjiang,

said that they were aimed at the

“deradicalization” of people who

had been influenced by extrem-

ists from surrounding countries.

“We have taken measures to

educate and save these people

and help them see the real pic-

ture,” Zakir said. “For these peo-

ple we have set up vocational

education and training camps.

They are not concentration

camps as some people have said.”

Media reports about brain-

washing at the camps were “fabri-

cated” and “totally groundless,”

he said, noting that the authori-

ties had started to open the camps

to visitors, including selected dip-

lomats and journalists, last year.

Those who have been through

the camps describe witnessing

almost the exact same scenes,

right down to the detainees sing-

ing “If You’re Happy and You

Know It” in English.

Tuniaz said that people were

not allowed to practice their reli-

gion in the camps — the first time

a Chinese official has confirmed

this — but said that their “free-

dom of religious beliefs is protect-

ed” in the centers.

The program had been success-

ful and “most of the graduates

have reintegrated into society,”

Tuniaz said.

“More than 90 percent of the

graduates have found satisfactory

jobs and good incomes and have

become positive members of soci-

ety. They have also driven other

people around them to get rich

and work hard and live a better

life,” he said.

The officials declined to say

how many people had been

through the camps, describing

the number as “dynamic.”

But academics and activists

monitoring the situation in Xinji-

ang say there have been no signs

of mass liberations from the

camps.

“I don’t see any evidence that

large numbers are being released

simultaneously,” said James Lei-

bold, an expert on Xinjiang who

teaches at La Trobe University in

Australia. “If they were out, we

would know.”

The camps have come in for

sharp criticism from mostly West-

ern countries, with more than 20

countries — including Australia,

Britain, Canada, France, Ger-

many and Japan — writing to the

U.N. Human Rights Council to

express concern “about credible

reports of arbitrary detention” of

Uighurs and other minorities in

Xinjiang.

China this week said that 50

countries — including Saudi Ara-

bia, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan —

have written a joint letter com-

mending Beijing for its counter-

terrorism and deradicalization

efforts and on the economic and

social progress in Xinjiang.

The Chinese authorities now

seem to be turning to a new phase

in their operation of the camps

and their repression of ethnic

minorities in Xinjiang, experts

say.

In a report published this

month, German scholar Adrian

Zenz wrote that growing num-

bers of detainees have been re-

leased from camps into forced

labor.

“The state’s long-term stability

maintenance strategy in Xinjiang

is predicated upon a perverse and

extremely intrusive combination

of forced or at least involuntary

training and labor,” he wrote,

describing factory and other

work as part of a supposed pover-

ty-alleviation effort.

[email protected]

China declares success in controlling Uighurs

WANG ZHAO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Dancers perform at a news conference in Beijing for the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Also on

display were handicrafts and signs saying “Build a beautiful Xinjiang.”

“I don’t see any evidence that large numbers

are being released simultaneously.

If they were out, we would know.”

James Leibold of La Trobe University in Australia,

on Chinese claim of Uighurs being released from camps

“At what point does this

sour the Trump

administration’s

political will to return

to negotiations?”

Jenny Town, of the Stimson Center

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