After starting work in a hotel kitchen, Zhai Meiqin began selling furniture and built a billion-dollar conglomerate, but she took great pride in being recognized this week for driving a new phenomenon in China: philanthropy.

Zhai, one of China’s richest women and president of the privately owned HeungKong Group Ltd., said she never forgot her humble upbringing in Guangzhou in southern China, where her father was an architect and her mother worked in a store.

This made her determined to help others, and she started donating to charity shortly after setting up the business with her husband in 1990.

As their business grew, taking in real estate, financial investment and health care, Zhai broke new ground in 2005 by establishing China’s first nonprofit charitable foundation.

Since then, the HeungKong Charitable Foundation has helped an estimated 2 million people, by funding 1,500 libraries, providing loans for women to start businesses, and funding orphans, single mothers, handicapped children and the elderly.

“I realized there were a lot of poor people in China and this drove me to earn more money so I could help them,” said Zhai, 53, who was one of nine philanthropists named Thursday as winners of the 2017 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

Zhai and her husband, Liu Zhiqiang, whose HeungKong Group with 20,000 staffers has made them worth about $1.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine, are known for being leaders of the culture of philanthropy in China.

Their foundation was listed as number 001 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Zhai said at the end of 2015 there were 3,300 registered nonprofit charitable foundations in China.

Next generation

“By setting up the foundation, I wanted to encourage other people, other entrepreneurs, to also donate to charity,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from Guangzhou translated by her daughter.

“Now I want to make sure that the next generation continues this culture of philanthropy in China,” she added, with two of her four children taking an active role in her foundation.

The other philanthropists to win the Carnegie Medal — which was established in 2001 and is awarded every two years — came from around  the globe.

The list included India’s education-focused Azim Premji, Canadian-born social enterprise pioneer Jeff Skoll and American-Australian lawyer and former World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn.

The winners were chosen by a committee made up of seven people representing some of the 22 Carnegie institutions in the United States and Europe.
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Cambodian activists fighting plans to transform Phnom Penh’s largest lake into a luxury development made a tactical decision when they took to the streets: put women on the frontline to show a “gentle” face and prevent violence.

But it was wishful thinking.

The women of Boeung Kak Lake, once home to a thriving community, have been kicked, manhandled, threatened and jailed, one of many land battles globally where women are bearing the brunt of the crackdown on protesters.

“We are mostly women because we are more gentle so we face less violence. This is our strategy,” said Im Srey Touch, a 42-year-old activist from Boeung Kak Lake.

“If we let men participate in our protests, we let them stand behind us or outside, and we stand in the front to reduce the likelihood of violence.”

​Evictions began in 2007

In fact, as the number of people killed in land conflicts around the world soars, more than half of the dead have been women, rights watchdogs say.

In Phnom Penh the conflict began in 2007 when nearly 4,000 families were stripped of their housing rights after the Cambodian government leased the Boeung Kak Lake area in the nation’s capital to make way for an upmarket mini city.

Since then, the lake has been filled with sand and most of the 4,000 families evicted, with little to no compensation, amid complaints about the social and environmental impact.

Over the years, more than a dozen activists protesting the evictions have been arrested, most of them women through whom land is passed down in many parts of Cambodia.

Whose courts?

In February, a court sentenced Tep Vanny, the most high-profile lake activist, to two and a half years in jail for inciting violence and assaulting security guards.

Rights observers say the government is using the courts and jails to muzzle activists, including those defending their land rights against government officials and their business cronies.

“It is a signal to civil society that ‘We can come after you whenever we want. The courts are ours. We can make anything we say about you stick,’“ said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Asia for New York-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch.

The government of Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) rejects such criticism and says it respects due process.

“The court makes decisions based on the constitution and, like every open society, the court provides justice to everyone no matter who they are,” said government spokesman Phay Siphan.

​Long history of land disputes

Amnesty International has criticized the Cambodian government for “bending the law to their will” to crack down on dissent. It said 42 criminal cases have been brought against the Boeung Kak Lake activists since 2011.

“Nobody believes Tep Vanny was assaulting these security guards,” said Robertson, who accused the judges of being “stooges” of the CPP.

Home to 15 million people, impoverished Cambodia has a long history of disputes over land rights, many dating back to the 1970s when the communist Khmer Rouge regime destroyed property records, and all housing and land became state property.

Cambodia began to privatize land after 1989, when Hun Sen’s CPP-led government shed its communist past and courted foreign investment, paving the way for economic land concessions.

“After privatization, land prices started going up, and people were at risk of land grabbing by companies, the state and well-connected individuals,” said Naly Pilorge, director of the nonprofit Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO).

LICADHO says the lack of a publicly available land register detailing boundaries means authorities could confiscate land, claiming that affected families were living on state property.

Between 2000 and 2014, about 770,000 Cambodians were affected by land conflicts, according to charges presented by lawyers at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

“Because Cambodia is lawless … with close ties between companies, government, the military and police, it’s a recipe for violence,” Pilorge said by phone from Phnom Penh.

A broken family

Despite the court cases and jail time, the Boeung Kak Lake women persist. They protest loudly and lie on the ground when ringed and roughed up by authorities. They are arrested in groups, sometimes just two, and, once, 13 of them.

Pilorge says authorities now appear to be trying a new tack, turning their energies onto Vanny on whom it is taking its toll.

During a brief recess before her guilty verdict Feb. 23, the 37-year-old divorcee who was arrested last August described the impact of her detention on her son, 11, and daughter, 13.

“I lost my role as a mother. I have a broken family. My child is sick,” she said, adding that she could not be there for her daughter’s surgery to remove her appendix.

“During the last hearing, my daughter cried until she fainted … I am a mother but I’m in prison. I can’t take care of her,” she said.

Activists suspect authorities are using her in a bid to silence other activists ahead of local elections this month and next year’s national vote.

A lake activist who was arrested with Vanny last year, Sophea Bov, was convicted for insulting authorities and fined $20. So far Bov has refused to pay the fine, Pilorge said, but no one has come for yet although the judge could imprison her.

“She was hoping that if she refused to pay the fine, she could go to prison to be with Vanny. Imagine where they are now, to think like that,” Pilorge said. “As human beings, we grow and we become stronger with challenges … these women have been tested, and they’ve overcome a lot of obstacles.”

 
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Demeaning images in advertising of women doing domestic chores or scantily clad act as stubborn obstacles to gender equality, the head of U.N. Women said Thursday, urging the global ad industry to become a weapon for good.

Advertising has the power to create positive portrayals of women and eliminate stereotypes, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of the United Nations’ agency on women, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Mlambo-Ngcuka spoke from France, where she is calling on advertising leaders who are attending the industry’s annual Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity to eliminate stereotypes and commit to gender equality.

“People are more likely to see adverts in their lives than read books,” she said. “It’s a waste if we are not using this opportunity for good.”

​Stereotypes everywhere

Stereotypes of women permeate the globe, she said, be it in nations such as Iceland with high gender equality or those with very little in the way of equal rights, like Yemen.

“Of the many things that we’ve tried to do to obtain gender equality, we are not getting the kind of traction and success that we are looking for, because of the underlying stereotypes and social norms in existence in society,” she said.

“Adverts create a role model that people look up to, even mimic and try to be like,” said the veteran South African politician.

“If they see men in powerful positions most of the time and do not see women and people who look like them … then they think this is not for them.”

Research illustrates issue

Research by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media illustrates the issue, said Philip Thomas, chief executive of the annual advertising event in Cannes, who also participated in the interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

One in 10 female characters in advertising is shown in sexually revealing clothing, six times the number of male characters, he said.

Of characters portrayed as intelligent, such as doctors or scientists, men are 62 percent more likely than women to play those roles, he said. Women are 48 percent more likely to be shown in the kitchen, he said.

Creative teams at advertising agencies are predominantly male, and just 11 percent of creative directors around the world are female, he said.

The industry can make an effort to mentor women, employ and promote more female creative teams and reward work that promotes positive images, he said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said she welcomed efforts such as one in Berlin, where the city’s ruling coalition has agreed on a ban on degrading or sexist advertising.

An expert committee will examine and prevent discriminatory advertising on both privately and publicly owned advertising billboards and hoardings.

Opposition parties in Berlin say such a ban infringes on free speech.

“When it’s so much that is against us, I think we are allowed sometimes to make some extreme measures even if there’s a controversy,” she said. “Let’s have the discussion.”
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Minnesota’s government and businesses will continue to engage with Cuba in the areas they can, like agricultural trade, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s partial rollback of the detente, Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith said on Thursday.

The first U.S. state representative to make an official visit to Communist-run Cuba since Trump’s announcement on Friday, Smith said authorities there were worried about the setback to bilateral relations.

Leading a bipartisan trade delegation from Minnesota, she said she was therefore glad to carry the message that there was still plenty of support for continuing to normalize relations.

“There is no denying the actions Trump took last Friday are a real setback,” Smith, a Democrat, said in an interview in the gardens of Havana’s iconic Hotel Nacional. “But the important thing to me is that there is bipartisan support at the federal level for normalizing and modernizing our relationship.”

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, in May led a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, to introduce legislation to lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

Minnesota is one of the largest U.S. farming states, and Smith’s delegation included its agriculture commissioner and the head of its corn growers association. The delegation hopes to improve ties with and promote exports to Cuba.

U.S. farm groups have been particularly critical of the decision by Trump, a Republican, to retreat from Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s opening toward Cuba, saying it could derail huge growth in agricultural exports that totaled $221 million last year.

U.S. law exempts food from a decades-old embargo on U.S. trade with Cuba, although cumbersome rules on executing transactions have made deals difficult and costly.

While Trump’s new Cuba policy does not directly target agriculture, it damages improved relations, the farm groups say.

Trump ordered tighter restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and a clampdown on U.S. business dealings with the island’s military, which manages much of the economy.

The Minnesota delegation met this week with officials of the Cuban ministries of foreign affairs and agriculture, while also visiting a cooperative and local food markets.

But the tour did not include the usual trip to the Mariel port and special development zone, which Cuba hopes will attract foreign investment and become a major shipping hub in the Caribbean. It is controlled by a military-affiliated company.

“In Minnesota we don’t have a lot of cocoa or coffee or pineapples, but we do have a lot of corn and beans,” Smith said. “We need each others’ products.”

Cuba invited the Minnesota delegation to a trade show later in the year, Smith said, while Minnesota invited Cuban officials to visit.

“I am very hopeful all of those things will lead us to a place where we can move forward.”
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JetSmart, a low-cost airline set to launch this year in Chile, said on Thursday it will offer one-way tickets for less than $2, as the nation’s passenger air market becomes increasingly competitive.

“We will have 30,000 tickets for 1,000 pesos ($1.50) per one-way trip plus taxes, to fly within Chile … in 2017,” JetSmart, owned by Indigo Partners, an airline-focused U.S. investment fund Indigo Partners, said on its website.

Indigo Partners has already carved out a niche in ultra-low-cost airlines and owns Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris and part of Denver-based Frontier Airlines.

Indigo is known for unbundled, or a la carte, fares that carry cheap base prices but charge additional fees for extras, such as carry-on bags too big to fit under the seat and advance seat assignments.

In February, Indigo announced that JetSmart would operate three Airbus A320s in Chile in 2017, and another six in 2018.

While the company will focus on domestic routes, it will eye opportunities for regional expansion once established in Chile, Indigo managing partner Bill Franke said at the time.

Chile’s airline market is dominated by LATAM Airlines, Latin America’s largest carrier, with a smaller share taken by established low-cost carrier Sky.

LATAM, which has been facing increasing pressure from low-cost airlines throughout the region, is rolling out a partial low-cost model this year.

Low-cost carrier Viva Air launched in Peru in May, low-cost airline Flybondi is set to launch later this year in Argentina, and Norwegian Air is set to launch long-haul, low-cost routes from Europe to Buenos Aires early next year.
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