BANGLADESH
Ousted PM seeks passport
Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday requested a new passport to facilitate her return from exile two years after she was ousted in a mass uprising. The government has been seeking her extradition from India and earlier dismissed suggestions she needed new identification documents to return home. Hasina said she wants to return next month at any cost, despite being sentenced to death over her government’s deadly crackdown on protesters. “If death is my destiny, I would rather die on the soil of my own country, among my own people,” she said last week. In a letter seen by The Associated Press that was e-mailed to the government’s diplomatic mission in New Delhi, Hasina’s counsel urged the top diplomat to take necessary action to provide her a passport and national identity card.
Photo: Reuters
GREECE
Twenty migrants die at sea
Twenty people have died over the weekend trying to reach Crete, which has become a main destination for migrants headed for the EU, authorities said yesterday. Eight bodies were found on one boat and 12 on another, while 40 people were rescued off both, the Hellenic Coast Guard said yesterday. Maritime police launched an emergency rescue late on Saturday after a boat issued an alarm signal, with strong winds making sea conditions difficult, the coast guard said. About 28 survivors and one body, all Sudanese nationals, were picked up by another boat sailing nearby, then transferred to a police vessel and taken to Crete, authorities had said on Sunday.
JAPAN
Okinawa seeks US review
Okinawa Governor Genta Koja yesterday said he would request a review of a pact seen as giving the US military preferential treatment in Japan, following a murder allegedly committed by a US Marine. Prosecutors last month indicted the Marine on suspicion of murdering a 39-year-old woman at an Okinawa hotel, in a case that triggered outrage and reignited controversy over the US military presence on the southern island. “I’ll call for a fundamental review of the SOFA,” Koja said, referring to the 1960 Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement, which critics say has rendered US military bases virtually extraterritorial and immune to domestic laws.
CHINA
Pastor arrested in Beijing
A pastor of a house church in Beijing has been arrested, his wife said this week amid an intensifying crackdown on unregistered churches. Pastor Cui “Edward” Xianfeng (崔獻峰), who founded Beijing Jiaquan Church in 2006, was arrested on Oct. 23 on charges of fraud, said his wife, Gu Jin-young, who lives outside of China. Cui was first detained on Sept. 4 as part of a raid on his church that involved about 100 police officers, Gu said. The fraud allegations are related to church members’ offerings, she said. Such charges are likely related to the church being unregistered. Police in Beijing’s Shijingshan District did not respond to a request for comment. By 2019, authorities sealed off the group’s worship facility in Beijing, forcing the congregation to meet in smaller groups and at different locations, Gu said. In 2023, authorities interrupted a Sunday church class to warn Gu and Cui that their church had become too large, she said. Gu, a South Korean national, said she has been denied a visa since 2023 to return to China as a family member.
