Daily Archives: June 26, 2020

Hong Kong officials, including Chief Executive Carrie Lam, have denied reports suggesting Macau could be frozen out of an initial travel bubble between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province.

A number of Hong Kong media outlets reported this week that talks were underway between Hong Kong and the mainland to implement mutual recognition of COVID-19 virus tests under their respective health code systems, with Hong Kong currently working on finalizing its own system. Those same reports said Macau would not be part of the scheme.

However, Lam dismissed suggestions a travel bubble could open without Macau, stating she has recently spoken with Macau Chief Executive Ho Iat-seng about the issue. Macau currently has no active cases of COVID-19, having cleared the last of its 45 cases on 19 May.

On Wednesday, Hong Kongs Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Sophia Chan, confirmed to the Legislative Council that discussions were underway between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province to establish a pilot scheme to relax cross-boundary flow of people between the two places within certain limits in order to facilitate people who need to travel between Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Under the scheme, which would likely be subject to a quota, the governments of Guangdong and Hong Kong would mutually recognize COVID-19 test results conducted by designated testing facilities, with the mutual recognition to be done through the health code of the two jurisdictions. Exempted persons would not be allowed to have left Hong Kong or Guangdong in the previous 14 days.

Contrary to reports of Macaus exclusion, Professor Chan added, The Government is [also] discussing with the Macao SAR Government the arrangement for mutual recognition of virus test results and exemption of cross-border travelers from compulsory quarantine. Details will be separately announced after the discussion has completed.

The developments come as Taiwan announced this week that it would allow foreigners to apply for entry from 29 June, with specific mention made of both Hong Kong and Macau.

According to Taiwanese media, citizens of the two SARs will be able to apply for entry for a variety of reasons including special humanitarian considerations and emergency assistance, business activities, internal transfers from multinational companies, economic trade or if they hold residence permits as the spouses or children of Taiwanese citizens.

Those exempted must provide a negative COVID-19 test report obtained within three days of boarding their flight to Taiwan.

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Hong Kong denies reports Macau to be frozen out of travel bubble as Taiwan eases border restrictions - Inside Asian Gaming

Macaus Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng says he is hopeful gaming operators can maintain their patience over the COVID-19 border restrictions that have crippled the industry, suggesting good news is on its way.

Ho was in attendance at the Macao International Dragon Boat Races on Thursday, where he told media he hoped border restrictions between mainland China and Macau would be eased in July.

Gaming operators have supported us for half a year and have made great contributions to Macau, he said. If they can persist, I think good news will come very soon.

Explaining that Macau has been actively pushing to ease border restrictions with both Guangdong Province and Hong Kong, Ho said officials have asked Zhuhai to increase the daily quota for Macau residents to cross into mainland China without undergoing mandatory quarantine.

He also confirmed he has been fighting to join the initial travel bubble currently being discussed by Hong Kong and Guangdong Province. As reported by Inside Asian Gamingthis week, Hong Kong is looking to establish a pilot scheme with Guangdong Province that would include mutual recognition of virus tests and border exemptions for qualified people.

We have had many interactions with Hong Kong, Ho said. Hong Kong has also helped us a lot in coordination work. We hope to join the pilot scheme and weve never stopped communicating with Hong Kong.

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Macau Chief Executive calls on gaming operators to stay patient with good news on border restrictions to come - Inside Asian Gaming

More than 360 Filipino workers have been repatriated and more than 2,000 have received food aid in Macau through the Philippine consulate since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Philippine Consul General in Macau, Lilybeth Deapera, told Lusa.

In total, Deapera stated that the Philippine authorities have repatriated a total of 673 Filipinos from Macau, of whom 368 are workers.

On June 18 alone, a Philippine Airlines chartered plane carried 222 Filipino workers back to the country.

The number of Filipinos who have left the territory may be greater, the consul admitted, since many did not inform the consulate and left the territory before the borders were virtually closed.

With around 30,000 non-resident workers in Macau, Filipinos are, after those from the interior of China, the largest nationality with this type of visa in the territory.

Lilybeth Deapera also revealed that gambling operator Sands chartered a flight to repatriate its employees on Saturday and that on Monday Menzies Macau Airport Services will do the same.

The consul of the Philippines in Macau also said that the Philippine authorities distributed a total of 2,073 packs to affected Filipinos in Macau.

The beneficiaries were mostly workers who were made redundant or who are on unpaid leave, he detailed.

Since the beginning of the pandemic in Macao, thousands of people have been made redundant, the vast majority of whom are non-resident workers and who work in the giant gambling operators complexes in the world capital of casinos, in crisis due to border restrictions in Macao and, therefore, they are practically without tourists and players.

On the sidelines of the annual dragon boat races, Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng, commented on Thursday that the government cannot intervene in the procedure of companies, and that the situation alone is already quite difficult, considering it normal to have some game promoters reducing the number of workers .

On June 19, game operator Melco announced the dismissal of about 75 employees of the biggest show in the territory, House of Dancing Water, and closed the show until next year, according to testimonies of several workers to Lusa.

On June 17, the creation of the special maritime corridor to and from Hong Kong, until July 16, created a new opportunity for workers to leave Macau.

Today, in a press conference, the authorities of the territory indicated that more than 600 tickets have been sold for the transport from Macau to Hong Kong and that since June 17, 248 people have left the territory.

However, the consul of the Philippines in Macau, argued that the number of redundancies for Filipinos may not be directly related to this.

It just gives an alternative route, he said.

Today, the Labor Affairs Bureau released the number of non-resident workers by industry in late May.

According to these data, there were 189,274 non-resident workers in the territory in May, just 225 fewer workers than in May 2019.

Today, in response to the Lusa agency, the Indonesian consulate, one of the countries with the most non-resident workers in Macau, indicated that the number of Indonesian workers who have left Macau since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic has been insignificant, about 50 people.

Today, too, health services announced a new case of contagion from Covid-19, the first in the territory since April 9.

He is a resident of Macau, of Filipino nationality. The 57-year-old man, explained to Lusa a source of health services, arrived in the territory by ferry [] from Manila, via Hong Kong.

Macau was one of the first territories to identify cases of infection with the covid-19, before the end of January.

The city then registered a first wave of ten cases. Another 35 cases started in March, all imported, a situation associated with the return of residents, many students in higher education in foreign countries.

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Philippines repatriated more than 360 workers in Macau and provided assistance to over 2,000 - Macau Business

EU member states are divided over whether to continue to exclude travellers from countries struggling with the coronavirus, such as the United States, when reopening Europes borders on July 1.

On Friday, diplomats were still locked in a days-long series of talks on drawing up criteria for reopening borders, with some countries worried about the reliability of coronavirus data, notably from China.

But with their economies in freefall from the pandemic, Greece, Spain, France and other top tourism destinations are hoping to salvage at least some of the summer holidays and open the door to visitors.

Countries highly dependent on tourism want to reopen ASAP for as many as possible, an EU diplomat told AFP.

The others are reticent to move fast to save eight weeks of tourism season, however important it may be.

Non-essential travel to the bloc has been banned since mid-March and the restrictions are to be gradually lifted starting July 1, as the pandemic recedes at least in Europe.

Greece, however, has already reopened airports to travellers from several countries beyond Europe, including China and South Korea, and capitals will eventually make their own decisions.

A European agreement is essential, said Spanish government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero.

We want an agreement and to avoid health risks. If a country allows entry, there is free movement. We urge that an agreement be reached now, quickly and shortly before 1 July.

Whatever is decided in Brussels will stand only as a recommendation since border control remains a national competence and governments can in the end go their own way.

For travel purposes, Britain still counts as a member of the European Union until the end of its post-Brexit transition period. Four non-EU countries are members of the blocs Schengen passport-free zone.

Some EU members want to limit the reopening to countries with an epidemiological situation comparable or better than that in the bloc that is with 16 or fewer cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants over the past two weeks.

If that criteria is confirmed, and if the members agree that other countries reporting is accurate travellers from the United States, Brazil and Canada would remain banned.

Those arriving from China, Japan, Australia, Morocco, Venezuela, India, Cuba and the Balkans would be welcome.

However, the health-based criteria has collided with geopolitics, with some countries reluctant to ban the US while welcoming visitors from China, where the pandemic began.

One possible scenario would see the list updated every two weeks, allowing for a swift removal of banned countries as the pandemic evolves.

The United States is currently the country most affected by Covid-19 with more than 121,000 deaths while Europe believes it has passed the peak of its own outbreak.

More than 2.3 million cases have been detected in the US and several states in the south and west experiencing powerful outbreaks.

Asked about the reopening of transatlantic travel, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday said Washington was working with our European counterparts to get that right.

Weve denied travel to Europe and vice versa.Thats the posture that we all sit in now and I think were all taking seriously the need to figure out how to get this open, Pompeo told a forum.

by Alex PIGMAN

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EU split on reopening Europe to countries with virus - Macau Business

Taiwan has allowed from Thursday onward that international travellers including those from Hong Kong and Macao can transit through the island.

Entry bans on some students and non-tourist visitors will also be lifted.

From Thursday on, travellers including those from Hong Kong and Macao were allowed to transit through the Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei, as long as they do not enter the island, according to its Central Epidemic Command Centre.

Travellers are allowed to stay at the airport for no more than eight hours and must take connecting flights from the same airlines to their destinations.

Transit passengers would be required to stay within a designated part of the airport and avoid contact with other travellers but they are able to access duty-free shopping and food in the waiting area.

Travellers will undergo temperature checks before and after they arrived, and anyone found to be over 37.5 degrees Celsius will not be allowed to board another flight. Anyone with a fever would be seen by a doctor at the airport to assess whether they need to go into quarantine in Taiwan.

However, travellers from mainland China are still barred from transiting through Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Taiwan announced on Thursday that it will gradually adjust regulations concerning foreign nationals entry into the island.

These adjustments are being made to accelerate Taiwans economic momentum and restore normal living conditions.

From 29 June 2020, foreign nationals who wish to travel to Taiwan for reasons other than tourism and regular social visits may apply for a special entry permit with a Taiwanese overseas mission by submitting relevant documents and forms.

Upon entering Taiwan, all foreign nationals must present an English-language certificate showing they are negative from COVID-19, taken within three days of boarding the flight to Taiwan and must have undergone a 14-day home quarantine period.

Visitors of the following categories can be exempted from negative COVID-19 test:

(SCMP/MOFA/Macau News)PHOTO Taiwan Scene

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Taiwan allow international travellers to transit through the island - Macau News

Italy sent riot police as reinforcements Friday to a council estate in the south where a cluster of coronavirus cases among Bulgarian farm workers has sparked tensions with locals.

About 700 people placed in lockdown this week in the complex of five blocks of flats in Mondragone a town north of Naples would remain isolated for another 15 days, the Campania regions head Vincenzo De Luca said Thursday.

Local health authorities said 43 positive cases had been identified and tests were being carried out on all the residents.

Four of the high-rises house Bulgarian workers and their families while Italian squatters occupy the fifth, De Luca said.

The estate is one of the thousands of ghettos in Italy, where we amass more or less undocumented foreigners to make them live in more or less heinous conditions, said Corriere della Seras editorialist Goffredo Buccini.

The Bulgarians work without contracts under an illegal but well-established system known as caporalato, which sees them do long hours in the fields for wages well below the national minimum, Italian newspapers said.

The men earn around four euros an hour, while women earn less and minors pocket just 75 cents an hour, according to Huffington Post Italia.

It said the families were forced to pay rent under the table to the caporali, the intermediaries who organise the daily recruitment and transport to the fields of workers, who also run the squats.

The army sent 50 soldiers in on Thursday to help secure the zone after clashes between frustrated Bulgarians who wanted to return to work to earn money for food and angry locals who blamed them for spreading the virus.

Hundreds of Bulgarians who came out to demonstrate Thursday were persuaded by police to return inside, but locals who learned they had left the Palazzi Cirio estate then turned up to hurl stones and trash cars, local media reported.

A resident at the estate was photographed throwing a chair off his balcony towards the crowd in retaliation.

The breaking of the lockdown was unacceptable, because respect for the rules is even more imperative when theres a health risk, deputy interior minister Matteo Mauri told Radio 24.

Coronavirus tests were being offered to residents living near the estate and if 100 cases surfaced, the whole seaside town of 28,000 people would be locked down, De Luca said.

He said a few people with the virus had since slipped through the net and disappeared, but insisted surveillance of the estate would be 24 hours non stop from now on.

Italys far-right was set to try to capitalise on the drama.

League leader Matteo Salvini said he would visit next week, while Giorgia Meloni, head of the increasingly popular Brothers of Italy, lashed out at De Luca, who belongs to the centre-left Democratic Party, for failing to control the migrants.

The Bulgarian workers are part of the endless labour force working in the southern countryside without rights, often without contracts, without any security, organised crime expert Roberto Saviano wrote in the Repubblica daily.

Its easy in this case to say that those spreading the disease are the foreigners, the invaders, the immigrants, the families of Bulgarian workers accused of going out to continue working, he said.

But it would have happened the same if it had been Italian workers living in those working conditions, with those wages.

The estate was built decades ago as part of a project to transform Mondragone into the world Mozzarella capital, he said.

Furious locals seem to forget that those workers are essential to the regions agricultural production, he added.

Clusters of new cases have also emerged in Bologna and other parts of Italy, which lifted its lockdown at the start of June after three months of a pandemic which has officially killed over 34,600 people.

by Ella IDE

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Tensions flare over virus-hit 'ghetto' in southern Italy - Macau Business

Ludmila Yudina, a retired speech therapist and supporter of President Vladimir Putin, has been butting heads recently with her grandchildren.

The 81-year-old is backing constitutional reforms the longtime Russian leader proposed earlier this year, which Russians are voting on in a nationwide ballot that will end on Wednesday.

The reforms, the first major changes to Russias basic law since 1993, will reset presidential term limits, potentially allowing Putin to serve two more terms.

They will also enshrine conservative values in the constitution, including an effective ban on gay marriage and a mention of the countrys faith in God moves that sociologists say are exposing a growing gap between the values of older and younger Russians.

For Yudina, these changes are needed to protect traditional Russian values, under threat from Western influences.

For some reason, young people are more oriented towards the West, she says after a family lunch on the patio of the familys summer home outside Moscow.

Russia is a completely different country, we have a different mentality, we have spiritual values in relation to family and marriage, between a man and a woman I would like to keep these traditions.

Sitting in the shade of a gazebo and sharing tea, her two grandsons 19-year-old Ilya Bagdasrov and 20-year-old Ivan Loznitsa disagree.

Ivan, an aviation student, says the reforms will help make Russia a conservative, totalitarian state, pointing out that it is younger Russians who will be living with the new constitution for the next five or 50 years.

Ilya, a science student, says the appeal to conservative values is a cover to convince older Russians to back the reforms.

All of this is a contrivance, he says. Its obvious that the crucial amendment is the reset of (presidential) terms.

Polls show that younger voters many of whom cannot remember life before Putin came to power in 2000 overwhelmingly oppose the reforms.

A recent survey by independent pollster Levada showed only 33 percent supporting the reforms and 45 percent against. Voters aged over 65 were 71 percent in favour.

The new generation prefers individual freedoms over traditional values, and does not appreciate this unchanging power, says sociologist Alexei Levinson.

Several prominent young Russians have slammed the reforms, including internet star Yury Dud a 33-year-old whose online documentary videos rack up millions of views who called the vote a shameful attempt to extend Putins rule.

Svetlana Khokhlova, 50, a former conservative lawmaker in the Istra district near Moscow, believes the countrys youth have become victims of anti-Russian propaganda.

She has taken to social media to try to convince young people who often do not follow state-run journalism of the importance of supporting the reforms.

People who are against Putins constitution today did not know the USSR as a superpower, and they did not know the disaster of the first post-Soviet years, she says.

I have three grandchildren and I dont want my great-grandchildren to become people without gender, nationality or a country.

It is unlikely the youth vote will be enough to block the reforms from passing with a large majority.

Voters are expected to overwhelmingly back the proposed constitution, which has already been on sale in Moscow bookshops since mid-June.

by Marina LAPENKOVA

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Putin reform referendum reveals Russian generation gap - Macau Business

Unrest in central Mali, plagued by jihadist attacks and inter-community violence, has killed 580 civilians so far this year, the United Nations said Friday.

Michelle Bachelet, the UNs high commissioner for human rights, said security was deteriorating and widespread impunity in the west African nation was undermining attempts to protect civilians.

The former Chilean president urged the authorities to launch thorough, impartial and independent investigations into all alleged rights abuses.

The vicious cycle of retaliatory attacks between Dogon and Peulh militias, coupled with the violations and abuses committed by Malian defence and security forces and armed groups, has created a situation of chronic insecurity for the civilian population, who are not able to count on the protection of the Malian forces, said Bachelet.

This needs to stop. People need justice, redress and reparations, she said.

Clashes between the Peulh, also called Fulani, and Dogon communities have increased in recent months, with community-based militias initially formed for defence launching attacks, said Bachelets OHCHR office.

From January 1 to June 21, the Human Rights and Protection Division of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali documented 83 incidents of violence across communal lines in central Mali.

Community-based militias from the Peulh group, who are primarily herders, were responsible for at least 71 of these incidents, leading to the deaths of 210 people, said OCHCR.

Those from the Dogon community mainly farmers and hunters carried out 12 attacks, leaving at least 82 people dead.

People have also been abducted, displaced or forced to join militias.

Bachelets office said the unrest had been fuelled and instrumentalised by groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (IS-GS).

These armed groups are increasing their presence and were behind 67 killings in central Mali.

Meanwhile some 230 extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions have been attributed to the Malian security forces deployed to the region.

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580 civilians killed this year in central Mail: UN - Macau Business

A six-year-old boy caught in crossfire was among five people killed in Indian Kashmir on Friday, officials said, as security forces step up a clampdown in the disputed Himalayan region.

New Delhi has bolstered counter-insurgency efforts in the restive territory, with at least 33 separatist militants killed this month.

The child was in a car that drove into a gun battle between suspected rebels and paramilitaries near the town of Bijbehara, a police officer told AFP.

The boy and a soldier were injured during the exchange of fire and both later died in hospital, said the officer, who asked not to be named.

Three rebels were killed in a separate firefight at Chewa, near the regions main city Srinagar, in a battle that lasted 20 hours, army spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said.

Armed clashes are frequent in Indian Kashmir but have increased in recent weeks.

Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan and has been divided between the two nuclear-armed rivals since 1947.

Rebel groups have fought for decades for Kashmirs independence or its merger with Pakistan.

An insurgency launched three decades ago has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

India has 500,000 soldiers stationed in its section of Kashmir and accuses Pakistan of arming militant groups there.

Tensions have mounted again in Kashmir since August last year when India revoked the regions semi-autonomous status, detained local political leaders and imposed a months-long internet and mobile phone blackout.

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6-year-old boy dies in Indian Kashmir crossfire - Macau Business