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US Embassy in Bangkok Helps Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Flee to America

U.S. Embassy officials reached the jail and whisked Chen and her daughters away

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BANGKOK – Stuck in a Bangkok jail with a deportation order against her, Chen Guiqiu waited with dread over what seemed certain to come next. A Thai immigration official showed her surveillance video of the jail entrance, where more than a dozen Chinese security agents were waiting.

Within minutes, Chen feared, she and her two daughters would be escorted back to China, where her husband, the prominent rights lawyer Xie Yang, was held on a charge of inciting subversion – and where punishment for attempting to flee surely awaited her.

After weeks on the run, Chen was exhausted, and so was her luck. A Christian, she prayed: “Don’t desert us now, not like this.”

Help arrived, from America.

U.S. Embassy officials managed to enter the facility just in time to whisk Chen and her daughters out a back door. The Chinese agents outside soon realized what had happened and pursued them, finally meeting in a standoff at the Bangkok airport where Chinese, Thai and U.S. officials heatedly argued over custody of the family.

Chen and her supporters disclosed details of her family’s March escape for the first time to The Associated Press. Their journey reveals the lengths that China’s government has been increasingly willing to go to reach far beyond its jurisdiction in the pursuit of dissidents and their families.

The saga also demonstrates that in at least some cases, American officials are willing to push back, even at a moment weeks before President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were to meet in Florida. The Trump administration has been criticized for downplaying human rights in foreign policy, but may have viewed Chen’s case as special – if not for herself then for her youngest daughter, a 4-year-old American citizen.

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The family’s ordeal began July 9, 2015, when the Chinese government launched a nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers. Chen’s husband, Xie, a lawyer who represented evicted farmers and pro-democracy activists, was among dozens detained in the “7-09 crackdown” and, months later, charged with crimes against the state.

In January, Chen helped release her husband’s account of being beaten, deprived of sleep and otherwise tortured while in detention – drawing further condemnation of Beijing by Western governments. Police summoned Chen for hours-long meetings where, she said, they threatened to evict her, deny her children schooling and have her fired from her job as a professor of environmental engineering at Hunan University.

By early February, the pressure was becoming unbearable. Seemingly unable to extract a confession out of Xie, the authorities turned up threats against Chen and, increasingly, those close to her.

When police detained Chen’s 14-year-old daughter as she tried to board a train for Hong Kong, Chen knew a travel ban had been placed on their names.

That was when she decided to contact Bob Fu, a Christian rights activist based in Texas who has helped several high-profile dissidents flee China, including Chen Guangcheng, a blind rights lawyer whose 2012 flight to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing sparked diplomatic tensions.

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“We’re going on a trip,” Chen told her daughters the morning of Feb. 19.

They headed south from their home in central China, then crossed into at least two countries without paperwork. There were nights, she said, when they had nowhere to sleep and days when they had nothing but a bag of chocolates to eat.

Traveling by foot and car for five days, they finally arrived at a safe house in Bangkok whose owners knew Fu.

Even though Chen took precautions, never turning on her phone or accessing the internet, Chinese authorities had gotten wind that she might be in Thailand. While she was in hiding, Chinese security agents forced her 70-year-old father, her sister, her university employer and other relatives and friends to fly with them to Bangkok in an unusual attempt to locate her.

Less than a week later, on March 2, Thai police, directed by a Chinese translator who Chen believed was from the Chinese Embassy, barged into the safe house, seized her belongings and sent the family to detention. It is unclear how they were located.

Chen appeared in immigration court the next morning. She was accompanied by the translator, who took away Chen’s phone and snapped pictures of Chen’s court documents with her own phone camera. A judge ruled that Chen had entered the country illegally and ordered her deported. The translator paid for her legal proceedings and fine.

An increasing number of Chinese in recent years have sought refuge in Thailand only to be sent back. In 2015, Thailand deported two Chinese dissidents who the United Nations recognized as refugees, a journalist who feared Beijing’s persecution and 109 minority Uighurs who said they had fled repression. Later that year, a Hong Kong publisher of books on Chinese political gossip vanished from his Thai home and into Chinese custody, alarming the international community.

As Chen was taken back to the jail to pick up her children and things, with Chinese officials waiting for her outside, she appeared likely to meet a similar fate.

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In Texas, Fu was dumbfounded by news of Chen’s arrest. He sprang into action to alert the State Department, and his associates in Thailand, who quickly located her in the jail.

According to Fu, U.S. officials made it into the facility on March 3 while Chen was in court, found Chen’s daughters and stayed with them while they searched for the mother. Finally, through their Thai contacts in the jail, the Americans located her and convinced Thai officials to let them whisk her out the back, said Fu and another person with knowledge of the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.

The family piled into a car and sped through Bangkok’s congested streets headed for the airport while Fu, 12 time zones away, frantically tried to book flights and prepare the family’s requisite U.S. paperwork.

But the Chinese agents were not far behind.

Despite her deportation order, Chen was stopped at the airport by Thai immigration officials who explained that they were under immense Chinese pressure to prevent her departure. In an hours-long standoff at the airport, the person with knowledge of the operation said, the confrontation between the Chinese, American and Thai officials nearly boiled over into a physical clash.

Chen and Fu declined to explain what happened next, citing diplomatic sensitivities, other than that the family eventually made it to the U.S. on March 17.

It is unclear whether Chen was housed in the U.S. Embassy in the intervening weeks or whether and how a deal was negotiated to allow Chen’s departure from Thailand.

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said Monday he was not aware of the matter. The Ministry of Public Security did not respond to faxed requests for comment. Thai and U.S. authorities declined to comment on Chen’s experience.

Justin Higgins, a State Department spokesman for East Asia, said that in general the U.S. “urges China to release all of the lawyers and activists detained in the July 9, 2015, crackdown and remove restrictions on their freedom of movement and professional activities.”

It’s unusual for U.S. officials to take such bold action to help Chinese citizens – in Chen’s family’s case, human rights workers say. But the citizenship of Chen’s younger daughter, who was born 4 years ago in the U.S. while Xie was studying in the country on a sabbatical, was likely a key factor.

Compared to previous years, when China’s diplomacy with its neighbors touched mostly on economic and national security issues, Beijing increasingly demands foreign governments’ cooperation when it hunts for fugitives, even those whom other countries may view as political dissidents.

“China is exporting its human rights abuses beyond its borders,” said Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, and former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia.

“The Thai government has always tried to maintain good relations with the U.S. and with China,” Shirk said, “but these kinds of cases make that balancing act very difficult.”

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The U.S. may be changing its stance on China, given Trump’s effusive praise for Xi and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent remarks that Washington will not force human rights issues on other nations. Yet Chen’s case suggests that America is still willing to confront China on thorny rights issues, at least when U.S. citizens are involved.

“This administration appears to be more muscular, more assertive, and we’re seeing ‘Putting Americans First’ play out,” said John Kamm, the founder of the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco who has advised U.S. administrations on Chinese human rights issues. “But what I’m hoping is that ‘Putting Americans First’ doesn’t mean putting other people last.”

Kamm noted that two U.S. citizens – Texas businesswoman Sandy Phan-Gillis and aid worker Aya Hijazi – were released by China and Egypt, respectively, in recent weeks in response to high-level pressure from U.S. officials. Yet the U.S. notably did not sign onto a letter from 11 Western countries who, spurred by Xie’s allegations, protested the torture of Chinese human rights lawyers, he added.

Now safe in Texas, Chen said she wanted to thank the State Department and the Trump administration. But her sense of relief has been tempered by a painful reckoning of the ruin and chaos she left behind.

Xie’s trial began Monday and was expected to be completed by day’s end. A government-appointed defense lawyer is representing him.

Chen Jiangang, Xie’s former lawyer who helped release his account of torture, was detained last week in a Chinese province near Myanmar, human rights observers say.

The relatives of Chen who were pressed by the government to travel to Thailand have had their passports confiscated upon their return to China. They have been repeatedly interrogated, and their jobs have been threatened, she said.

The electricity at Chen’s apartment has since been cut, forcing her elderly father to move back to his village. Authorities have emptied her Chinese bank accounts, she said.

For now, Chen and her daughters are living off the charity of her supporters. The former professor plans to seek a job, a home, and school for the girls. Chen said she was happy to start over in America. She has little money, but still has her voice.

“All the things we tried to expose, all the articles we used to write about the truth of 7-09 – the harassment, the torture, the denial of our children’s schooling, the forced evictions – we were always smeared so quickly,” she said.

“If I’ve escaped the country, they can’t control the situation anymore. Now, what can they do?”

By GERRY SHIH

The Associated Press

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AP writers Gillian Wong in Beijing, Matthew Pennington in Washington and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

News

The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

News

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP