Day: June 30, 2021

The Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental organization that promotes cooperation in the vital Asian waterway, called on China and its downstream Southeast Asian neighbors Wednesday to share information more transparently for better management of the river’s resources.

In its situation report, the MRC urged China, as well as members Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, to share data with each other to assess recent changes in the river’s flow patterns and potential impact on riparian communities.

“For the sake of better management of the basin and of good faith cooperation, both Member Countries and China should notify any planned major changes in the operation of hydropower projects and share that information with the MRC Secretariat,” An Pich Hatda, the MRC Secretariat chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The MRC that found that during the dry season starting in November 2020 and ending in May 2021, water levels the river’s main stream in Laos and Thailand fluctuated, and water levels in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake were lower than usual, the report said, attributing the changes to upstream dams in China and Laos.

Tonle Sap’s waters ebb and flow with the annual cycle of the river connecting it to the Mekong, and it has been drying at a rapid rate in recent years, threatening the fish stocks providing millions of Cambodians with their main source of protein.

The Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) would have above-average rainfall in June and August, but a July that is dryer than usual, the report predicted.

“The low levels in the Tonle Sap Lake in May will continue into June and July as the tributary dams fill up as the rain starts. The reverse flow to the Tonle Sap Lake, which usually starts in mid-May, is consequently expected to follow the previous year’s pattern but is still subject to actual rainfall over LMB from June to October 2021,” the report said.

China has built 11 dams in the Upper Mekong, which it calls the Lancang, and Laos had built around 80 dams on the Mekong and its tributaries, with plans to build many more in its controversial bid to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia,” by selling the generated power to neighboring countries.

Changes in the river caused by hydropower projects “may have impacted navigation, river ecosystems, and riverbank stability, although more study is needed to pinpoint the type and extent of impact,” the MRC’s statement said.

The report said that water releases from storage dams caused above-average flow increases for most of the dry season, and this had both positive and negative implications on the region.

More water could be good for farming, navigation and reversing seawater encroachment in the Mekong Delta, the report said.

However, even though Thailand and the northern part of Cambodia had record rainfall in April and May, river levels did not increase significantly in those months, according to the report.

The MRC recommended more detailed research on water level patterns, particularly at several new monitoring stations in Laos. Additionally, it said studies on better active management of basin-wide water storage could reduce negative impact on riparian communities.

The report marks the first time that the MRC made clear the impact of dam projects on the Mekong River, the Thai People’s Network in Eight Mekong Provinces, a citizens’ group that has filed a lawsuit in Thailand related to construction of Laos’ Xayaburi dam, told the RFA-affiliated online news service BenarNews.

“The MRC should have performed their job and made the issue clear a long time ago. Especially in the past two years, China’s dams and the Xayaburi dam have caused hardship on the people in Isan [Thailand’s northeastern region],” said Ormbun Thipsuna, director of the network.

“It’s time for four MRC member-countries to discuss and find who is to be responsible for the mismanagement of water to have affected other countries, and materialize its consensus,” she said.

BenarNews attempted to contact Somkiat Prajamwong, secretary-general to the Office of the National Water Resources of Thailand, but he could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

In 2020, China agreed to share data on water levels and rainfall with the MRC, promising to alert the commission and its members of abnormalities.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a briefing Wednesday that Beijing was “completely open and transparent” in providing data to the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, another platform that facilitates international cooperation between China and the Lower Mekong countries.

“Since November 2020, China has been providing hydrological information of the Lancang River to Mekong countries on a daily basis… and has been offering notification on major changes in discharge volume downstream,” Wang said.

The long arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is affecting freedom of speech at overseas universities, according to a report published on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

CCP-backed activities on the campuses of Australian universities had interfered with academic freedom, affecting both students and academics critical of Beijing, the report found.

It said Beijing’s supporters and the Chinese government had also harassed and intimidated those who express support for democracy movements.

“Australian universities rely on the fees international students bring, while turning a blind eye to concerns about harassment and surveillance by the Chinese government and its proxies,” HRW’s Australia researcher Sophie McNeill said.

“Australian university administrators are failing in their duty of care to uphold the rights of students from China,” she said.

McNeill’s report cited the cases of three students studying in Australia whose families had been contacted by the police back home in China regarding their activities in Australia.

The report also found that more than half of the China-related faculty interviewed were selective about what they said in public, while university administrators had also censored staff, asking them not to discuss China publicly.

Some students engaged in intimidation and physical attacks on those protesting on issues considered “sensitive” by the CCP, including the status of democratic Taiwan, the Hong Kong protest movement, and the mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

Chinese students studying at Australian universities were particularly vulnerable, the report found, with one student reporting that their passport had been confiscated by police after they went back home, indicating that state security police have sources of information on Australian campuses.

Watching their words

A Hong Kong student who gave only the nickname Bonnie said she had attended an Australian university with close ties to the CCP, and which had a China-funded Confucius Institute on its campus.

She said some of her professors had clearly been watching their words when they talked about China-related issues.

“One professor I had would correct himself when talking about the origin of the COVID-19 virus,” she said. “He stopped and said instead that it had come from Asia, instead of China.”

“I knew that wasn’t right, but none of the students had the courage to correct  him,” she said. “I think that counts as a blow to academic freedom.”

She said she frequently used precautionary measures to avoid detection when attending on-campus protests linked to Hong Kong.

Chinese students make up around 40 percent of foreign students in Australia, with around 160,000 studying in the country last year, and they are an important source of income for Australian higher education.

Under surveillance

A Hong Kong resident who has also studied in Australia, who gave only the nickname Jacob, said he knew that mainland Chinese students were under surveillance by Chinese police during their time there.

“We also thought we were under surveillance during events and gatherings,” he said of the Hong Kong students.

“There would be people at our events whom we didn’t know, Chinese people, who took photos of the scene, and of us, with their cameras or phones,” Jacob said.

“They even assaulted participants at our event.”

He said the university he attended had provided little in the way of protection for the Hong Kong students, so precautionary measures were needed, with many Hong Kong students donning masks to evade facial recognition software.

Reported by Emily Chan for RFA’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Twenty-four years after the city was handed back to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hongkongers are once more lining up in droves to leave, the sounds of farewells echoing through the departures hall at the international airport, in stark contrast with the hushed and empty arrivals floor.

The imposition of a draconian national security law on the city from 11.00 p.m. on June 30, 2020 ushered in an ever-widening crackdown on all forms of dissent and political opposition that has seen dozens of former lawmakers arrested for “subversion” for taking part in a democratic primary, and the closure of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper last week.

Media organizations have seen a number of arrests of prominent columnists, popular political and cultural programs are being axed, and online content is being deleted to protect the safety of the staff who produced it.

A Hong Kong resident surnamed Chan said he had recently left Hong Kong with his wife and young children, to settle in the U.K.

“As the generation that lived through Hong Kong under British rule and also in the Special Administrative Region [under Chinese rule], we didn’t have high expectations,” Chan told RFA. “We just didn’t want to see the so-called boundaries [of acceptable behavior] constantly shifting.”

“We would actually think about going back if everyone enjoyed fundamental human rights and freedoms,” Chan said.

But Chan isn’t holding his breath.

“Look at [the Tiananmen massacre of] June 4, 1989. Three decades later, they are still trying to erase that piece of history, and won’t admit to [wrongdoing],” he said.

“Is it possible for Hong Kong to go back to the way it was 10 years ago?” he said. “I’m not very optimistic.”

Many of those leaving for good on Tuesday were young families with school-age children, encouraged by changes to immigration rules in the U.K., Canada, and Australia, and spurred by a mandatory program of “national security education” in Hong Kong’s schools, as well as the axing of Liberal Studies from school curriculums.

Elderly relatives wept as entire nuclear families waved their last goodbye, before disappearing through the immigration gate, en route for a new life somewhere else.

Targeting the young

Mandatory education has also been used to target juvenile offenders who ended up in the prison system for taking part in the 2019 protest movement against the erosion of Hong Kong’s promised freedoms.

“Young people who took part in the protest movement were given prison sentences in order to provide them with education,” Chung Kim-wah, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (HKPORI), told RFA.

“Now they are using this to teach them so-called patriotic education.”

“This all happens in the confinement of the prison environment without their parents’ knowledge, and the parties involved have no choice in the matter, he said. “It’s pretty similar to the re-education and brainwashing camps; they are having ideological indoctrination forced on them.”

Chung said the new emphasis on patriotic education in schools and juvenile correctional facilities alike would have a negative effect on the ability of future generations of Hongkongers to think critically.

‘Human rights emergency’

London-based rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday that the national security law had sparked a “human rights emergency” in Hong Kong.

“In one year, the National Security Law has put Hong Kong on a rapid path to becoming a police state and created a human rights emergency for the people living there,” the group’s Asia-Pacific regional director Yamini Mishra said in a statement.

“From politics to culture, education to media, the law has infected every part of Hong Kong society and fomented a climate of fear that forces residents to think twice about what they say, what they tweet and how they live their lives,” Mishra said.

The group said the Hong Kong authorities have repeatedly used “national security” as a pretext to justify censorship, harassment, arrests, and prosecutions, while overriding previous human rights protections.

It said people charged under the law are effectively presumed guilty rather than innocent, meaning they are usually denied bail.

After his mandatory 10 days’ self-isolation on arriving in the U.K., Chan’s first act was to take part in a protest rally commemorating a June 12, 2019 rally against plans to allow extradition to mainland China, at which Hong Kong’s police force launched an onslaught of tear-gas, batons, and pepper spray on unarmed protesters.

His next protest was to mourn the loss of the Apple Daily.

“There hasn’t been the freedom to hold a demonstration or rally in Hong Kong for the past six months, the past year even,” Chan said. “Why can I only speak out on behalf of my birthplace in a foreign country?”

Chan, who once worked in healthcare, said he had already started limiting what he posted online after the national security law took effect.

“The boundaries were getting closer and closer with the introduction of the national security law, to the extent that public organizations were restricting their online speech … naturally there were concerns,” he said.

Looking back from far away, Chan said the city where he has lived his whole life has changed beyond recognition.

“The rule of law that everyone relied on, the presumption of innocence; these most basic principles have been erased under the national security law,” he said. “It feels as if our entire system of values has collapsed.”

Reported by Lu Xi and Emily Chan for RFA’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Authorities in Beijing have banned sales of natural gas canisters and knives, as the city began to fill up with military personnel on the eve of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s centenary celebration on July 1.

Internet connections in the capital have also been intermittent in recent days, local residents told RFA.

Businesses in Beijing are required to mail knives to customers after the event, while sales of natural gas have been temporarily suspended until July 4, according to a directive sent to community groups.

Dissidents across the city remain under close surveillance, with many taken out of town on forced “vacations” by state security police, political commentator Zha Jianguo said.

“There have been police officers on guard [outside my home] since yesterday,” Zha said. “Two security guards and three others sent by police outside the door.”

“This is because of the centenary, and they have been there since June 15,” he said. “They were only there for six days around the anniversary of June 4 [1989].”

“Our freedom of movement is gone, as well as our basic human rights,” he said.

Ji Feng, a former participant in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, has been taken to the Baiyangdian Resort in Hebei province, neighboring Beijing, in custody of state security police.

Meanwhile, a petitioner from northeastern China who gave only a surname, Wang, said there are police on guard outside her apartment in Beijing’s Daxing district, where large numbers of people pursuing complaints against the government are living temporarily.

“Two police officers in uniform arrived outside our home yesterday,” Wang said. “They are also going door-to-door checking IDs.”

“If they catch you, they will take you back [to your hometown],” she said.

‘Knocking on doors’

A petitioner surnamed Zhang said officials had also been around the “petitioner village” confiscating natural gas bottles used for cooking.

“They’ve been knocking on doors and checking to see if the bottled gas was taken away yet,” Zhang said. “[They are also taking] car batteries away.”

“The mobile signal has been terrible in Beijing during the past few days … [and] basically the internet connection comes and goes,” Zhang said.

Government censors have also moved in recent days to shut down large numbers of groups on the social media platform WeChat, a user told RFA.

“They are shutting down groups in Beijing,” the user said. “It seems that they shut down one of our groups every day.”

A Beijing resident surnamed Zhao said all communications signals will be jammed around Tiananmen Square around the time of the centenary parade, from around 8.00 a.m. to noon, between Dongdan and Xidan, as well as some parts of the Second Ring Road.

Speaking at a courtyard home-turned-memorial hall where Mao Zedong and 12 others founded the party in 1921, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping on Monday called on party members to “sacrifice everything” for the party.

No past mistakes

Xi has presided over the public erasure of dissenting opinions, as well as over a growing insistence that the party’s past mistakes not be alluded to in public debate.

The party is now campaigning against “historical nihilism,” which is defined as any attempt to use the past to question the party’s current version of events, or its role in modern Chinese history.

According to Xi, his “socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era” will produce more revolutionary heroes willing to sacrifice their lives for the people.

The number of CCP members recently topped 95 million, according to the party’s organization department.

But Yang Haiying, a professor at Shizuoka University in Japan, said many members join to further their life chances, rather than to spend a life working to improve the lot of ordinary Chinese.

“There is a lot of competition to join the party right now,” Yang told RFA. “When college students join the party during their time at university, they are all doing it so they can become civil servants.”

“It’s sheer pragmatism,” he said.

Zha Jianguo agreed.

“It’s a good idea to join the party right now; everyone knows that,” he said. “That’s if you want a government career, or to win promotion.”

“It’s a basic prerequisite.”

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA’s Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.