Day: June 30, 2021

United Nations human rights and environmental officials called on Wednesday for an end to Cambodian authorities’ use of “punitive measures” against protectors of the country’s environment, following the arrests this month of four young environmental activists.

The four activists, members of the Cambodian environmental protection group Mother Nature, were arrested on June 16 after three of the group—Sun Ratha, Ly Chandaravuth, and Sith Chhivmeng—were arrested while filming the drainage of sewage into the Tonle Sap River in front of Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace.

Separately, authorities in Kandal province arrested Mother Nature activist Yim Leang Hy at his hometown in the province’s Koh Thom district. Sith Chhivmeng was later released after 24 hours of questioning by police in Phnom Penh.

Sun Ratha, 26, and Yim Leang Hy, 32—have now been charged with conspiracy and with lèse-majesté, or insulting the king, and are being held in Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar Prison awaiting trial.

The fourth youth activist arrested and now also held at Prey Sar—Ly Chandaravuth, 22—has been charged with plotting to topple Cambodia’s government.

The group could face between five to 10 years in prison on conviction. Mother Nature founder Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, now living outside Cambodia, also faces charges of conspiracy.

In a June 30 statement, Cynthia Veliko—Southeast Asia Representative for the UN Human Rights Office in Bangkok—called on Cambodian authorities to end the use of the “punitive measures routinely leveled against human rights and environmental rights workers in Cambodia.”

“Human rights and environmental work are not criminal offenses,” Veliko said.

“We urge the authorities to ensure that human rights and civil society organizations in Cambodia can operate without fear or intimidation and that their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association are protected and respected.”

The world is now living in the midst of an environmental crisis, added Dechen Tsering, the UN Environment Programme’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, also writing in the June 30 statement.

“Civil society which peacefully advocates for the environment is a fundamental partner in addressing the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution,” Tsering said.

Cambodia rejects criticisms

Responding to the UN statement, Kata On—spokesperson for Cambodia’s official Human Rights Committee—rejected the statement’s concerns as the thoughts of individuals “whose opinions are not in the best interests of Cambodia.”

“But if these concerns are raised one day at the UN General Assembly or in meetings of the UN Human Rights Council, Cambodia will use the mechanisms [available to it] to defend its record on human rights,” Kata On said.

The concerns expressed in the UN statement are not subjective opinion, however, but the views of skilled UN staff working to fulfill their responsibilities, said Soeung Senkaruna, spokesperson for the Cambodian rights group ADHOC.

“These explanations by the Cambodian government have not won credibility with the international community in the past,” Soeung Senkaruna said.

“If Cambodia is concerned about losing its image on the world stage, or about getting respect on the world stage, it should accept findings like these and work to improve its record,” he said.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Richard Finney.

A Chinese government campaign using Uyghur expatriates to make pro-China videos and comments on social media platforms to mark the July 1 centenary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been met with contempt by activists and netizens from the Uyghur diaspora.

Posts, videos, and photos on WeChat, TikTok, and Instagram featuring ethnic Uyghurs praising the Chinese government’s policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have rankled Uyghurs with family members in the region’s vast internment camp system that has brought international accusations of genocide and crimes against humanity.

In a video recently uploaded to TikTok, an ethnic Uyghur cosmetic surgeon named Mardan who lives in South Korea says he encouraged his seven-year-old daughter to take part in a concert organized by the Chinese Embassy celebrating the CCP’s 100th anniversary, where she sang a Chinese patriotic song.

Other videos show Mardan and his family at embassy events, giving interviews to Chinese journalists, and expressing their loyalty to the Chinese state. The videos describe how Mardan is imbuing his two Korea-born daughters with ideas about the “unity of the Chinese nation” and “Chinese identity.”

Mardan says that he has posted videos of the daughters on social media to propagate the idea that Uyghurs live happily in China.

When contacted to discuss his short videos, Mardan abruptly ended the call, saying that he could not speak to RFA.

In another recent video on Douyin, China’s domestic equivalent to TikTok, a Norway-based Uyghur named Akbar praises Chinese-made cars and other products, and says that he always has considered himself a proud “Chinese citizen” despite living outside the country.

Uyghurs on social media swiftly condemned the video, after which Akbar issued a statement on Facebook asking his fellow Uyghurs for forgiveness and claiming that he considers himself an “East Turkistan Uyghur,” using the name for the XUAR preferred by most Uyghurs. Akbar said he was forced to make pro-China statements on Douyin so he could maintain contact with his relatives in the XUAR.

Some members of the Uyghur diaspora expressed understanding for Akbar’s situation, but many others denounced his actions as unacceptable.

“We are a people subjugated, a people experiencing a genocide, and we have ended up in this situation on account of the Sinophilic Uyghurs among us, on account of those people who support the government,” said Zubayra Shamseden, Chinese outreach coordinator of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

The ‘cowards among us’

A small number of Uyghurs who live in democratic nations publicly express their loyalty to the Chinese state, shun Uyghur-led demonstrations against Chinese policy around the globe, and even report on Uyghurs abroad to Chinese government authorities to help block events and slander activists, Zubayra said.

She cited the examples of Halida, a Uyghur woman working for the Chinese government in Australia, who recently attempted to block Uyghur-led demonstrations, and of a young Uyghur woman in Germany who has spoken out in defense of Chinese policy and slandered the testimonies of camp survivors.

Such actions “make us ashamed that there are people like this among us, that there are such sellouts, traitors, and cowards among us, that there are people who are so selfish as to destroy the future of an entire ethnic group, an entire people, for a smidgen of personal gain,” Zubayra said.

Although such people are useful to the Chinese authorities in their disinformation campaigns, they ultimately live under the threat that they and their families will fall into China’s “black hands,” she added.

Some Uyghurs have spent their entire lives working loyally for the Chinese state, only to find themselves detained and locked up in camps and prisons — what China calls “two-faced Uyghurs,” she noted.

Since January, the U.S. State Department and the parliaments of six other democratic countries have determined that the Chinese government is perpetrating genocide against Uyghurs in the XUAR, citing internment camps that have held some 1.8 million people, some of whom have been tortured or subjected to other abuse. A German parliamentary committee last week declared that serious human rights violations against the Uyghurs are crimes against humanity.

The U.S. and several other countries have imposed sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for various abuses against Uyghurs, as well as on Chinese government agencies and companies suspected of using Uyghur forced labor to make products such as cotton, wigs, tomatoes, and polysilicon for solar panels.

In response, the Chinese government has intensified a multifaceted campaign to counter its critics and dismiss the allegations.

“Whilst Beijing celebrates this month, our communities will be mourning the gradual loss of our fundamental rights over the past century,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, in a statement issued June 28.

“We have nothing to celebrate during an ongoing genocide, so we will continue to speak up against this authoritarian regime,” Isa said. “The CCP is the world’s most fearsome criminal organization supported by the state. It is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people in the last 100 years. [The] CCP’s crimes must be held accountable by the international justice system.”

Following increased pressure from the international community, the Chinese government has stepped up its Uyghur crisis disinformation campaign in Japan, in part by mobilizing Chinese Embassy and Chinese NGOs in the country, Uyghur residents said.

On April 29, two Japan-based organizations, including the Chinese Professors Association, organized an online briefing during which a young Uyghur man named Pahirdin Parhat, gave a pro-China speech, according to Ahmatjan Letip, secretary general of the Japan Uyghur Association.

In addition to claiming that there were no internment camps in the XUAR, Pahirdin also criticized international human rights organizations for making what he called “baseless” claims against China.

The 25-year-old Uyghur recounted having grown up in China and said that Uyghurs faced no discrimination there. He also stressed that Uyghurs and Han Chinese lived prosperous and harmonious lives together in the XUAR, Ahmatjan said.

Pointing out untruths

Among the different kinds of Chinese propaganda being used abroad are embassy-organized online briefings by Chinese and Uyghur officials from the XUAR’s capital Urumqi, so-called “cadets” and “religious figures” whose minds have been changed in the “reeducation centers,” and ordinary people from all walks of life, Ahmatjan said.

“They claim that everything being said about Uyghurs internationally is false, that it is all propaganda fabricated by the West,” he said.

Pahirdin’s remarks provoked strong condemnation from Uyghurs living in Japan, Ahmatjan said, amid a strengthened Chinese government propaganda campaign in that country.

“Pahirdin discussed the camps in his presentation, [and] he said that the Western media is spreading disinformation that one million Uyghurs have been locked up in concentration camps,” Ahmatjan said.

As in some other countries, Chinese government representatives are attempting to justify the crimes they are committing against Uyghurs by forcing Uyghur students to speak out in favor of the government and its policies, he said.

Ahmetjan stressed that Pahirdin’s hour-long presentation had a negative impact on Japanese society, and that in response his organization distributed a video and published op-eds in major Japanese newspapers pointing out the young Uyghur’s untruths.

Abdulkerim Abdurahman, president of the Japan Uyghur Association, told RFA that association members have begun holding anti-disinformation activities in Japan.

“For this person named Pahirdin to stand on China’s side and refute all of this oppression, to say that Uyghurs are living happily at a time when the people in our homeland are suffering so indescribably, deeply angered Uyghurs in Japan,” he said.

RFA could not locate Pahirdin for comment.

To mark the CCP’s 100th anniversary, the Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs issue a statement titled “100 Years of CCP Rule: Genocide is Nothing to Celebrate” and appealed for international attention to China’s treatment of the 12 million Uyghurs in eh XUAR.

“As fireworks burst in China, they will ring as an insult to the millions of people suffering under CCP rule. They will illuminate a nation that has eschewed freedom of religion and democracy in favor of authoritarian rule,” the statement said.

“This is a deeply sad day for the world, since we have yet to stop the CCP’s reign of terror. The genocide of the Uyghurs is ongoing still, and each day the Party is becoming bolder,” said Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Washington-based NGO.

“This is our final wake-up call that the CCP must be stopped if we are to preserve a global system of dignity and order that is respected by all,” she said.

Reported by Mihray Abdilim and Erkin Tarim for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Myanmar’s junta released some 2,300 detainees—mostly political prisoners charged with defamation—as part of a nationwide amnesty on Wednesday, but the move was greeted with skepticism by critics who called it a stunt to gain international recognition following its February power grab.

The 2,296 detainees were freed from prisons in the capital Naypyidaw as well as all 14 of the country’s states and regions, and included journalists, protesters, and relief workers accused of violating Section 505 (a) of the Penal Code for defaming the military.

Aung Ye Ko, a reporter from 7 Days News, told RFA’s Myanmar Service he had been released 124 days after his Feb. 27 arrest while covering an anti-coup protest in the Hledan district of Myanmar’s largest city Yangon.

“I don’t know about their intentions or why I was released but I’m going to carry on with my profession,” he said.

“I endured a bit of physical and mental suffering while in there—there were no beatings but a lot of interrogations. I would say they have no respect for the Media Law.”

Ye Myo Khat, a photojournalist from Myanmar Press Agency (MPA), was arrested while covering the same protest as Aung Ye Ko and slammed the authorities for ignoring the nation’s legal protections for reporters.

“We were unlawfully arrested without any regard for the 2014 Media Law and it is totally unacceptable,” he said.

Anti-coup protesters who were freed told RFA under condition of anonymity that their charges had been withdrawn and vowed to continue fighting against military rule.

On Feb. 1, Myanmar’s military orchestrated a coup d’état, claiming that a landslide victory by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) in the country’s November 2020 elections was the result of widespread voter fraud. Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders have been held in detention since the takeover.

The junta has yet to provide evidence for its claims and has violently suppressed mass demonstrations against the takeover, killing at least 883 people and arresting 5,224, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

On Wednesday, an AAPP official, who declined to be named, told RFA that his organization does not consider the amnesty to be an act of good faith by the military.

“If they want to show goodwill, all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, should be released immediately and unconditionally,” he said, using an honorific for the 76-year-old Nobel laureate, who has been detained since the coup.

“What they did today, as usual, is to play a trick on the international community as their administration is in crisis.”

The official congratulated those released Wednesday on their freedom and urged those still in detention to “stay strong because they are a part of this revolution.”

Chin state clashes

Wednesday’s amnesty came as Myanmar’s military has stepped up offensives in remote parts of the country of 54 million that have led to fierce battles with a profusion of local People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias formed to protect residents from troops loyal to the junta.

Clashes between the military and the Chinland Defense Force (CDF) have been raging in northwest Myanmar’s southern Chin state since April 26 and have forced more than 50,000 people to flee to safety from their homes in the townships of Hakha, Mindat, Matupi and Kanpetle, according to aid groups.

At least 30 junta soldiers and four militia members were killed in fighting in Hakha and Falam townships on Tuesday, according to a CDF spokesman. 

The spokesman said the military launched an attack on CDF positions in Falam using heavy artillery, prompting a firefight that left four militiamen and an estimated 20 junta troops dead.

In Hakha, the Chin state capital, a five-hour exchange of fire that began early on Tuesday killed at least 15 government soldiers and injured one, another CDF member told RFA.

Residents of the area said the military has been looting villages for livestock and restricting the transportation of rice for fear that it will end up in the hands of CDF fighters. Prices for necessities are spiking and medicine is in short supply, they said.

While the two sides agreed a 14-day ceasefire on June 19, only around 30 percent of people displaced b fighting have returned to their homes, saying they continue to fear for their safety.

Win Myat Aye, Minister for Humanitarian and Disaster Management for Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG), told a news conference over the weekend that efforts to support war refugees in the region have been stymied by military restrictions.

More than a quarter of a million civilians in seven regions of Myanmar have been displaced by clashes between the military and militias or fighting between ethnic armies in the months since the junta overthrew the country’s democratically elected government, according to aid groups and the United Nations.

They join more 500,000 refugees from decades of military conflict between the government military and ethnic armies who were already counted as internally displaced persons at the end of 2020, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a Norwegian NGO.

Reported by Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Chinese authorities are closely watching a Tibetan writer after they discovered she had contact with people outside Tibet, a source in Tibet told RFA.

Pema Tso, author of numerous articles and poems published in Tibetan magazines, has been teaching Tibetan language in Rebkong (Tongren in Chinese) for the past 30 years.

Due to constant police surveillance, she has been unable to meet other people or have a normal life, the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

“Since 2020, Chinese authorities started restraining Pema Tso, saying that she had contact with people outside Tibet, specifically Beijing-based Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser,” the source said.

Woeser, who writes a column for RFA’s Tibetan Service, is a controversial figure because of her pro-Tibetan writings and poems.

Woeser “has emerged as the most prominent mainland activist speaking out publicly about human rights conditions” for Tibetans, the U.S. State Department said in a statement after she won its “Woman of Courage” award in 2013.

In addition to surveilling Pema Tso for contacting Woeser and others, authorities warned her several times, according to the source.

“She was… accused of owning sensitive political documents and books. She is currently barred from attending any schools or lectures,” the source said.

Pema Tso was born in the 1960s in Rebkong, the capital of the Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai. She graduated from Qinghai Public University in 1987 as a Tibetan language major. She has won many literary awards for her writings.

Reported by Sangyal Kunchok for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Almost three years after a dam collapse that caused Laos’ worst flooding in decades, most of the 3,600 survivors of the collapse are still living in shelters, with their cash and food allowances cut off or reduced since January, Lao sources say.

On July 23, 2018, water surged over a saddle dam in Attapeu province’s Sanamxay district at the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy (PNPC) hydropower project following heavy rains, inundating 12 villages and killing at least 40 people in Attapeu and neighboring Champassak province.

Only around 111 families of survivors have now been moved into permanent homes—with 45 homes built by the Thai government and 66 built by Japan—and with monthly government support of 250,000 kip ($25) and 20 kilograms of rice per person for all survivors ended or reduced in January 2021, sources in the country say.

“The chief of my village told us that our allowances have been cut off,” a survivor living in Sanamxay district’s Dong Bak Village resettlement camp told RFA in a recent interview.

“[But] late last year, a high-ranking official told us that our cash and rice subsidies would not be stopped until we had all moved into permanent homes and had some land to farm.”

Local authorities should have told camp residents that their allowances would end beginning in January, the man said. “Instead, they kept us waiting and waiting in vain for our allowances for six months.”

“Many of us are upset about this,” he said.

Another Dong Bak camp resident confirmed they had never been informed of the coming cut-off.

“They’re the ones who put us in this situation, and they’re responsible for what happens to us now,” he said.

“The authorities said they wouldn’t cut off our support until we had all moved into permanent homes, but now the cash allowance has been stopped and the rice allowance has been cut back since January,” a third Dong Bak villager said.

“Now we have no money, no land to farm, and no home to live in,” he added.

Desperate for cash

Flood survivors living in Sanamxay’s  Thasengchanh Village resettlement camp are now so desperate for cash that they are selling the temporary shelters the government has given them and are moving into huts in the fields, some said.

“Because of the cut-off of support, I have no choice now but to sell my temporary metal shelter so that I can get some cash to make ends meet,” one villager said, adding that he had sold his shelter to a Vietnamese worker.

“In our Thasengchanh village, some families have no money because the cash allowance has been cut off and the rice allowance has been reduced,” another camp resident said.

So far, about seven families have sold their shelters for about 1.8 million kip ($180) each and have moved to live in huts at their farms or in their rice fields,” the villager said, speaking like the others on condition of anonymity for reasons of personal safety.

“The village and district authorities told them not to sell the shelters, but they wouldn’t listen,” he said.

‘We’re on our own now’

Also speaking to RFA, the Thasengchanh village chief said, “Now we’re in trouble financially because the 250,000 kip cash allowance has been cut off, and the monthly 20 kilograms per-person allotment of rice has been cut off.”

“We’re on our own now,” he said. “To survive, some of us have moved to live on our farms or in the rice fields to grow crops and wait for our permanent homes to be built.”

Ignoring the larger question of financial hardship, one Attapeu provincial official said that the temporary shelters are in any case now the villagers’ own to sell.

“At first, we were planning to take the temporary metal shelters back once the survivors have moved into their permanent homes. But after discussing things with the dam developer, we decided that the survivors are allowed to keep their shelters.”

“They’re theirs, so they can sell them,” he said.

Homes still being built

The construction of 700 permanent homes for the Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy Dam flood survivors is being financed by the company operating the dam, with 505 now being built, the Lao National Committee for Disaster Control said in a statement following a virtual meeting held on June 7.

Construction on the remaining 195 homes has not yet begun, but around 182 homes are expected to be finished by the end of the year, the committee said.

Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong and its tributaries, with plans to build scores more under a plan to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia” to export the electricity they generate to other countries in the region.

Though the Lao government sees power generation as a way to boost the country’s economy, the projects are controversial because of their environmental impact, displacement of villagers without adequate compensation, and questionable financial and power demand arrangements.

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.