Day: June 15, 2021

A Bangladesh government-cleared environmental impact report on a Chinese-funded coal power plant contains false information and plays down how the project will affect air quality when it becomes fully operational, said a report released Tuesday by three green groups.

The parts of the report about the impact on air quality of the first unit of the Banshkhali S. Alam coal power project contain inconsistent data and omissions, raising serious legal questions, said a study by a trio of environmentalist NGOs.

“The air quality modeling is flawed, resulting in predicted pollution levels multiple times lower than would be obtained with appropriate modeling,” said a study of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on the Chittagong project done by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Bangladesh Environment Lawyers Association (BELA), and the Bangladesh Working Group on External Debt (BWGED).

“There is absolutely no mention of the health impacts of air pollutant emissions under the impact assessment. The impacts of the plant’s mercury emissions are completely omitted.”

The fact that the government cleared this EIA is “an alarming indication of lack of oversight,” the groups said in their joint report. It also shows the disregard for guidelines and standards by those involved in the project, they said.

“It’s evident from the EIA analysis that the Chinese financiers and companies have knowingly allowed such a project which they wouldn’t allow in their own country,” BELA Chief Executive Syeda Rizwana Hasan said in a press statement.

“Bangladesh authorities are equally responsible for allowing such a project, which raises concern on their oversight and enforcement capacity.”

The plant’s EIA is not publicly available, which also shows the lack of transparency around the project the three groups said. The groups, however, did not say how they managed to obtain a copy of the EIA.

Will ‘take necessary measures’

In response to the three groups’ study, the Bangladesh government said it would look into their findings.

The Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources will share the findings with the Department of Environment, if necessary, said Mohammad Hossain, director general of power at the ministry.

“We will ask the authorities concerned to take necessary measures based on the findings, if needed,” Hossain told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news agency.

An official at the Banshkhali S. Alam coal power project – also called SS Power I – declined to comment.

“I am not in a position to talk to the media,” Ebadat Hossen, chief financial officer of SS Power Plant, told BenarNews.

The Banshkhali S. Alam coal power project is scheduled to begin producing 1,320 MW of power in 2023. Seventy percent of the U.S. $2.49 billion cost of the facility was financed by China, according to information on S. Alam Group’s website.

The plant is being built by Shandong Electric Power Construction Corporation (SEPCOIII), a subsidiary of PowerChina, a Chinese central government enterprise, according to the three groups.

Coal power plants need to be strictly assessed and cleared due to their potential environmental impact, according to Bangladesh’s Environmental Conservation Rules, the groups said.

‘Emissions five times higher than China allows’

EIAs generally use models that project an estimate of the maximum air quality impact when a plant is running as designed, but the Banshkhali EIA shows average estimates, the three environmentalist groups said.

There are similar inconsistencies in the numbers on particle emissions from the project, the groups said.

This “flawed” assessment has been used to justify emissions limits for the plant that are five times higher than China allows for Sulphur dioxide and three times what it allows for oxides of Nitrogen.

In addition, coal-fired power plants are the main source of mercury emissions into the air globally, the three groups noted, but Banshkhali’s EIA has no data whatsoever on these emissions.

The Banshkhali coal power plant has been controversial since March 2016, when 30,000 local residents protested the planned project. Since then, 12 people have been killed in clashes with police, either for protesting the plant’s construction, or while agitating for allegedly unpaid wages.

The approval of the Banshkhali plant reveals systemic problems in the process involved in allowing energy projects, said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at CREA and the author of the study released by the three groups.

“Bangladesh lacks meaningful environmental regulation, as do many other countries hosting China-backed energy projects.”

“Yet the Chinese government and state-owned financiers have failed to put in place environmental and social safeguards that would prevent project developers from exploiting weak or non-existent regulatory oversight.”

Meanwhile, China, the world’s biggest coal user, said in April that the fossil fuel would play a less dominant role in its energy production, the Associated Press reported. Even though the country plans to build new coal-fired power plants, it won’t use them on a wide scale, China said.

Bangladesh, too, said something similar.

Nasrul Hamid, Bangladesh’s power minister, said last August that the country would review plans for 26 out of 29 coal-fired power plants.

“Banshkhali was not on the initial list of exempted plants, but has continued construction nonetheless,” the three groups said in a press statement.

In addition, Bangladesh is set to construct another coal-fired power plant. China will bear 75 percent of the $2.06 billion cost of this plant, BenarNews reported last September.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

News that an industrial-scale gold mine will launch operations this month in eastern Cambodia’s Mondulkiri province has raised local fears in a region already hit by widespread pollution from toxic waste, sources say.

In a June 10 statement, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that Australian-owned Renaissance Minerals will begin manufacturing gold in Mondulkiri starting June 21, producing an average of three tonnes of pure gold per year in its first eight years of operation.

Cambodia is expected to generate gross revenue of $185 million per year from the project, with an estimated $40 million in excise and other taxes going each year into the national treasury to be used for “the development of the nation’s economy and society,” Hun Sen said.

Indigenous people living in Mondukiri are urging government authorities to be cautious in granting concessions for mining in the province, though, citing a May 2018 incident in which hundreds of villagers were sickened and more than a dozen killed when toxic substances including cyanide used to flush gold mines were improperly handled and seeped into a local river. Hundreds of cattle also died.

Rong Cheng, a Chinese-owned company located in Mondulkiri’s Keo Seima district and still in operation, was among the companies blamed for the pollution, sources told RFA in earlier reports.

Speaking to RFA on June 14, Roeung Phlom—a member of Mondulkiri’s Phnong ethnic minority community network—said that Cambodia’s government should carry out thorough studies before allowing companies to mine in the province.

“I request the government to conduct proper studies and research so that mining will not affect local residents with regard to their water consumption or the natural resources in the forest that people rely on,” Roeung Phlom said.

“In the past, mining operations have resulted in landslides, and people were poisoned by drinking water that was poisoned by waste from the gold mines,” she said.

“The government should guarantee there will be no polluting of the soil or air.”

Roads blocked, sanctuaries threatened

Some of the mining companies invested in Mondulkiri have now blocked key roads in the Keo Seima district, creating obstacles to traffic, Kroeung Tola—an advisor to the Phnong ethnic community network—said, also speaking to RFA.

Areas now being explored for minerals also lie between the Keo Seima wildlife sanctuary and the Phnom Penh wildlife sanctuary, posing possible hazards to wild elephants and other animals in their own habitat and natural surroundings, Kroeung Tola said.

Mining companies and Cambodian authorities should release social and environmental impact assessments for projects to the public, and should allow local residents to take part in decision-making processes, he said.

“The government should take stringent measures rather than intermittent ones and should form specific plans, because these things affect local livelihoods,” Kroeung Tola said, adding, “I remain concerned over the safety and health of our local people.”

Attempts to reach Sorn Sarom, spokesperson for Mondulkiri province, and Svay Sam Eang, provincial governor, were unsuccessful on June 14.

Svay Sam Eang has said in the past that gold mining investments will create more revenue for the country’s economy and for Mondulkiri, and that two companies in particular—the Chinese-owned Rong Cheng and Australian–owned Renaissance Minerals—have helped build wells, hospitals, roads, and bridges in the province.

Call for transparency

Cambodia’s government should be transparent in its handling of revenue from the mining industry, though, said Heng Kimhong, program manager for research and advocacy for the Cambodia Youth Network.

“The government should release information to the public so that people know how much revenue, either from taxes or excise or from its own investment sharing, is being generated by the mining industry, Heng Kimhong said.

Environmental activists have voiced doubt over Hun Sen’s description of the Renaissance Minerals deal as a “victory” for Cambodia’s gold mining industry, though, saying his June 10 announcement closely followed the news that KrisEnergy—a Singapore-based oil company with projects in Cambodia—had gone bankrupt, embarrassing the government.

Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, founder of the local environmental group Mother Nature, called Hun Sen’s announcement on the Renaissance Minerals deal an attempt to divert attention from the collapse of KrisEnergy, with which the government had partnered to produce oil from Cambodia’s offshore reserves.

“This could be a tactic by the Hun Sen regime after experiencing such a major embarrassment over its offshore oil production. Hun Sen’s government is trying to divert public attention now by focusing on its gold mining industry,” Gonzalez-Davidson said.

Reported and translated for RFA’s Khmer Service by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Richard Finney.

The Belgian parliament on Tuesday recognized China’s treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) as crimes against humanity and warned of a “serious risk of genocide,” joining other governments and legislatures that have made similar designations.

The vote in Brussels followed the Czech Senate’s 38-0 vote Monday for a motion declaring China’s policies toward Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities as amounting to genocide and crimes against humanity in the Xinjiang region.

The moves by the two legislatures follow those of other democratic parliaments — Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania — which determined that China’s policies in the XUAR constitute genocide. The U.S. government in January designated abuses in the region as part of a campaign of genocide, and the German parliament is conducting an inquiry into the allegations.

The Belgian motion, which cleared the parliament’s foreign relations committee and will be confirmed by a plenary session on July 1, also calls for a reexamination of policies ranging from extradition to investment.

“Today the Belgian Parliament has raised a warning sign to the world,” said lawmaker Samuel Cogolati, co-author of the resolution and co-chair of the cross-party Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.

“There can be no further excuses for inaction,” said Cogolati, who has been sanctioned by China. “There can be no ‘business as usual’ with China while the Uyghur prison camps stay open.”

“Belgium may be a small country, but we can send a clear message to the world that human rights standards should be upheld universally — for all people, everywhere,” he said.

Cogolati originally sought a stronger statement blaming China for committing the “crime of genocide.”

“We cannot stay silent while the Chinese Government carries out the most brutal persecution of Uyghurs, Tibetans and other groups,” Czech Senator Pavel Fischer, who co-chairs the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said in a statement.

The Czech parliament’s motion also called for the government to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, making it the 11th country to bring forward a parliamentary initiative concerning the Olympic Games.

The other countries that have introduced legislative initiatives are Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, Germany, the EU, the UK, and the U.S.

“I hope that all democratic states will use the Beijing Winter Olympics to signal the strength of our horror at what is taking place in the Uyghur and Tibetan Regions,” Fischer said.

“This isn’t about petty politics,” he said. “This is about preventing an industrial scale atrocity. Any political leaders that accept invitations to the games risk tacitly condoning these abuses.”

There were no immediate reactions to the measures on the websites of the Chinese embassies in Belgium and the Czech Republic, or by China’s Foreign Ministry in Beijing.

‘We are gaining momentum’

Uyghur rights groups welcomed the moves by the two parliaments.

“The decision of the Belgian Parliament to recognize the serious risk of a genocide of the Uyghurs is another important step towards widespread recognition of the Uyghur genocide,” Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement.

“It is imperative that other countries in the European Union, as well as the EU institutions themselves, follow suit and take a firm stance against China’s atrocities and recognize them for what they are: a genocide,” he said.

Omer Kanat, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, thanked the Czechs and Belgians for standing up.

“We are gaining momentum,” he said. “Seven countries have now recognized the Chinese government’s destruction of the Uyghur people as atrocity crimes.”

“The Chinese government cannot succeed in escaping international condemnation, despite its constant propaganda and intensive diplomatic pressure on world governments,” Kanat said.

The Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) also applauded the Czech Senate’s unanimous passage of the motion declaring the Chinese regime’s actions as a genocide.

“This is a clear sign of shifting tides against the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party’s] authoritarianism and a recognition that the regime has been allowed to operate with impunity for too long,” CFU founder and executive director Rushan Abbas said in a statement.

Abbas also urged the international community to boycott the Beijing 2022 Olympics and for more Western governments to recognize the atrocities taking place against the Uyghurs.

Concern over organ harvesting

Also on Monday, U.N. human rights experts expressed alarm over reports of alleged human organ harvesting targeting minorities in China, including Uyghurs, other Muslims, and members of other persecuted minority groups, while they are in detention.

The experts said they had received credible information that the detainees may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations without their informed consent, while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations. They also said that the results are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation.

“Forced organ harvesting in China appears to be targeting specific ethnic, linguistic, or religious minorities held in detention, often without being explained the reasons for arrest or given arrest warrants, at different locations,” the experts said in a statement. “We are deeply concerned by reports of discriminatory treatment of the prisoners or detainees based on their ethnicity and religion or belief.”

Following the G7 summit in the UK on Sunday, leaders issued a joint statement calling on China “to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang.”

Chinese authorities have conducted a campaign of mass incarceration in the XUAR since 2017 during which an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been locked up in a vast network of internment camps.

Beijing says the facilities are residential training centers or re-education camps that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.

Reports by RFA, other media outlets, rights groups, and independent researchers indicate that those held in the camps have been detained against their will and are subjected to political indoctrination and maltreatment, while enduring poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.

Some former detainees have described being subjected to torture, rape, and forced sterilization while in the camps.

A state-run news outlet in Vietnam was hacked a day after it published two reports critical of a YouTuber famous for exposing fraud among the country’s celebrities, local media reported.

Nguyen Phuong Hang has become well known in Vietnam, for her videos and livestreams that targeted several of the country’s entertainment personalities and a doctor of traditional medicine.

Voice of Vietnam (VOV) on June 12 published the reports about Hang, with headlines “Ms. Phuong Hang and Aberrant Livestreamed Videos: It’s Time to Take Strict Action,” and “Don’t Give Yourself the Right to Offend Anyone Online.” 

Ngo Trieu Phong, the editor-in-chief of VOV’s online newspaper told local media that the newspaper’s website had been continuously hacked since Sunday, the day after the articles were published.

RFA was unable to determine if the attacks were related to VOV’s reports on Hang.

The Department of Cyber Security and High-tech Crime Prevention under the Ministry of Public Security confirmed to local media that the Ministry of Public Security had received the Voice of Vietnam’s request for an investigation into a cyber-attack and that an investigation was underway. 

Reports in the media said the newspaper suffered several attacks from multiple fake accounts that culminated in a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The attackers reportedly also hacked VOV’s Facebook page, sending offensive and threatening emails to interviewees and reporters.

According to Editor Phong, VOV’s articles were unbiased and featured expert opinions without the views of the newspaper or its reporters. He said the main point of the articles were to highlight that people should not abuse social media and livestreaming capabilities to harm the dignity and honor of others.

Hang’s livestreamed videos have broken records in Vietnam, generating views in the millions. Many of her recent videos discussed the shortcomings of celebrities and public figures, including a recent one that exposed comedian Hoai Linh for postponing disbursement of his publicly pledged donation of 14 billion dong (U.S. $610,000) to the victims of catastrophic flooding that inundated the country’s central region last year.

Shortly after Hang gained notoriety through her videos, the Ministry of Information and Communications issued directives to provincial and municipal authorities to tighten their control over “unlawful information” on the internet and to hand out “appropriate punishments” to violators.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung delivered a speech Monday calling a cleaner, friendlier cyberspace.

“There are many gaps existing in the cyber-domain, and they have been taken advantage of,” he said.

“Many individuals and organizations have been hurt and the Ministry of Information and Communication should be the first agency responsible for easing their pain,” said the minister.

Vietnam passed a controversial cybersecurity law that took effect in Jan. 2019 and grants authorities “sweeping powers to censor online content,” with technology companies required to identify users and remove politically sensitive postings.

Dissent is not tolerated in the communist nation, and authorities routinely use a set of vague provisions in the penal code to detain dozens of activists, writers, and bloggers.

According to the rights group Defend the Defenders, Hanoi is currently detaining at least 262 prisoners of conscience.

Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anny Vu. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the United Nations “improperly” gathered and shared data about Rohingya refugees with the government of Bangladesh, which in turn gave it to Myanmar, from where members of the persecuted stateless minority group had fled.

In some cases, U.N. refugee agency UNHCR did not obtain informed consent from Rohingya for host-country Bangladesh to share this data with Naypyidaw, Human Rights Watch said.

“The United Nations refugee agency improperly collected and shared personal information from ethnic Rohingya refugees with Bangladesh, which shared it with Myanmar to verify people for possible repatriation,” New York-based HRW said in a statement.

“The agency did not conduct a full data impact assessment, as its policies require, and in some cases failed to obtain refugees’ informed consent to share their data with Myanmar.”

HRW said it based its allegations on interviews with 24 Rohingya and 20 aid workers, analysts, local activists, journalists, and lawyers who observed or participated in the process by UNHCR and Bangladesh’s government to register the refugees.

In a statement rebutting the criticism, UNHCR said it had clear policies in place to ensure data was kept safe when the agency registered refugees, and that it had expressly asked the Rohingya for consent to have the Bangladesh government share their data with Myanmar’s administration.

“When UNHCR and the Government of Bangladesh signed their Memorandum of Understanding on data sharing in January 2018, and organized their joint registration exercise of Rohingya refugees, specific measures were taken to mitigate potential risks,” the U.N. agency said Tuesday.

“[E]ach refugee family was informed of the purpose of the joint registration, which was primarily aimed at providing protection, documentation, and assistance to Rohingya refugees. All were asked to consent to their data being shared with partners on the ground for the purpose of receiving assistance.”

According to ReliefWeb, 852,701 refugees who crossed into Bangladesh since the Myanmar military’s brutal crackdown in 2017 are registered under the Bangladesh government-UNHCR registration process. It began in January 2018 in the camps in southeastern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, where most of the refugees live.

Rohingya data for repatriation

HRW said that in 2018, the Bangladesh government aimed to provide an identity card for refugees – called a “Smart Card” – that would allow them to obtain aid and services.

“The government also sought to gather personal data collected by UNHCR to submit to Myanmar for repatriation eligibility assessments. UNHCR said this would help protect the refugees’ right of return.”

UNHCR acknowledged that the process was used to establish Rohingya refugees’ former residence in Myanmar and right to return, but that its officials had sought consent.

“For this purpose, refugees were separately and expressly asked whether they gave their consent to have their data shared with the Government of Myanmar by the Government of Bangladesh,” the U.N. agency said.

Rohingya refugee families who did not consent to share their data with the Myanmar administration were still registered and able to access the same services and entitlements, UNHCR said.

According to Human Rights Watch, it interviewed two dozen Rohingya refugees between September 2020 and March 2021 about their registration experience, and 23 of them said UNHCR did not mention sharing data with Myanmar, or linking it to assessments for repatriation eligibility.

Three said they were told after giving their data that it might be used for repatriation purposes.

UNHCR vigorously denied these allegations.

“UNHCR wishes to stress that any return to Myanmar must be based on the individual and voluntary choice of refugees, if and when they feel conditions are right for them to do so,” the agency said.

BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, reported in January 2018 that Rohingya refugees interested in returning to Myanmar would be asked to sign a document stating that their return was voluntary and pledging to abide by the “existing laws” of that country.

However, attempts to begin repatriation to Myanmar – in November 2018 and August 2019 – failed. In January this year, Bangladesh and Myanmar resumed China-brokered talks on Rohingya repatriation for the first time in a year.

In February, a military coup in Myanmar stalled any further progress on repatriation talks.

UNHCR in Malaysia

In a separate development, the UNHCR’s office in Malaysia said Tuesday that it was sharing refugee population data with that country’s government so that all refugees and asylum seekers could be vaccinated against COVID-19.

UNHCR’s Malaysia officer further said it had not set any preconditions with the government for sharing that data, but advocated that refugees and asylum-seekers not be detained.

The refugee agency issued the statement in response to a news report that it had set conditions on sharing refugee data with the government.

Rights groups in Malaysia had earlier this year said there was a danger that unregistered refugees and asylum seekers would be detained when and if they went to a COVID-19 vaccination center.

But in February, a Malaysian minister had assured them that no arrests would happen if any refugees showed up to be vaccinated.

The government then reneged on its promise in late May, announcing it would arrest those who lacked valid papers in order to vaccinate them as part of measures to contain surging coronavirus cases in the country.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.