Day: July 2, 2021

A court in Cambodia’s Tbong Khmum province on Friday sentenced 14 political opposition figures and land-rights activists charged with conspiracy and incitement to one-year prison terms amid a continuing nationwide crackdown by authorities on political dissent in the Southeast Asian country.

Eight of those convicted are now being held in the Tbong Khmum provincial prison and include six members of the banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), while another six defendants were convicted in absentia after having fled the country to avoid arrest, sources say.

Speaking to RFA after the sentencing, Sam Sokung, a defense lawyer for the convicted CNRP members, slammed the court’s decision as unfair and said he would appeal Friday’s verdict after conferring with his clients.

“Our defense team believes that the sentence of a year’s imprisonment and fine of from 2 million [U.S. $492] to 4 million riels is unacceptable, because our clients didn’t do anything wrong,” Sam Sokung said, adding, “No evidence was presented in court to support the charges of incitement against them.”

The six CNRP activists sentenced on July 2—including Su Yean, Mak Sam An, and Khon Ton—were arrested between November and December last year ahead of the planned return, later canceled, of senior CNRP official Mu Sochua and other party members to Cambodia from exile.

The two others sentenced July 2 were land-rights activists Phon Sophal and Sem Chamnan.

A key source of social tension in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries is the widespread practice of land grabs in which authorities seize land from people for development projects or foreign invested enterprises without paying them fair compensation for lost crops, property, and livelihoods.

Srey Seath, the wife of jailed CNRP member Su Yan, called on the court following the sentencing to drop all charges against her husband and release him, saying that he suffers from a chronic illness in prison and needs medical attention and family support.

“I would like to ask the international community and international organizations to help my husband, who has committed no crime,” Srey Seath said. “It is unjust of the court to sentence my husband to a year in prison and to fine him 4 million riels,” she added.

Politically motivated arrests

Soeung Senkaruna, spokesperson for the Cambodian rights group ADHOC, expressed his regret that the Tbong Khum court had sent the eight dissidents and activists to prison for simply exercising their right to freedom of expression as citizens of a democratic country protected by law.

“These arrests by authorities of political activists, social activists, and environmental activists are not cases of law enforcement, but are politically motivated,” Soeung Senkaruna said, adding, “[Cambodia’s] constitution gives citizens the right to engage in political activity and social activism.”

From the beginning of 2020 to June 2021, authorities of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have arrested around 80 political activists, environmental activists, monks, social activists, and members of youth groups, charging them with conspiracy, incitement, and insulting the authorities.

Court officials and other authorities say they make the arrests in accordance with the law, “But international human rights organizations, the United Nations, and UN special rapporteurs believe the arrests are being made in violation of the fundamental rights of our citizens,” Soeung Senkaruna said.

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017 and barred its members from taking part in political activities, two months after party leader Kem Sokha’s arrest for his role in an alleged plot to topple Hun Sen’s government.

The ban, along with a wider crackdown on NGOs and the independent media, paved the way for the ruling CPP to win all 125 parliamentary seats in the country’s 2018 general election.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Zakaria Tin. Written in English by Richard Finney.

A Uyghur college instructor charged in 2018 with four different “crimes” amid a crackdown by authorities on Uyghur educators and intellectuals is serving a 25-year sentence in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), sources in the region said.

The detention of Shawkat Abdulla first came to light two years ago when his younger brother, Parhat Abdulla, who lives in Norway, reported Shawkat’s sentencing to the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database — a Norway-based project that records disappeared and extrajudicially detained Uyghurs in the XUAR. Few other details about his case were available, however.

RFA’s Uyghur Service, which has been investigating the case over the past two years, recently learned further details about Shawkat’s arrest and sentencing through sources in the XUAR.

According to the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database, Shawkat graduated with a degree in biology from Xinjiang Normal University in 1993, after which he began working as an instructor at Ili Normal College, a teacher’s college in Ghulja city (in Chinese, Yining) in the Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture. During the course of his 25-year career, he served in both academic and administrative capacities.

But authorities deemed Shawkat, who had received praise from the college’s leaders in the past, a “suspect” in the summer of 2018 as they rounded up Uyghur educators and other intellectuals and took him away to “study” — a euphemism for detention in a “re-education camp.” Authorities apprehended Shawkat in the middle of the night, placing a black hood over his head as they led him away.

Shawkat’s family members did not know where he was being held and were unable to obtain information about him from relevant authorities in the prefecture. They went to the XUAR’s capital Urumqi (Wulumuqi, in Chinese) to try to get information about his whereabouts, but did not find out anything.

Parhat Abdulla said he eventually learned from friends and acquaintances in Chinese provinces outside the XUAR that authorities had accused his brother of a series of “crimes” and sentenced him to prison.

Shawkat was widely known for his social activity and role as an organizer as well as for his accomplishments in the field of education, said a source familiar with the situation in Ghulja and the fate of Uyghur detainees there.

Government authorities also recognized these qualities in Shawkat, and for a time employed him as an administrative officer in the municipal branch of the Bureau of Education, said the source, who declined to be named.

But Shawkat’s concern about “ethnic issues” concerning the Uyghurs while on the job displeased his Han Chinese superiors and colleagues at the bureau, and he was sent back to his former teaching position, the source said.

A ‘sensitive’ case

Authorities detained Shawkat during the early days of the mass internment campaign because he had expressed critical opinions and advocated for the protection of Uyghur schools when it came to the allocation of finances and facilities, this person said.

The “re-education camps” that China set up beginning in 2017 are believed to have housed 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslims, according to sources from the region. China says the camps are vocational training facilities set up to combat religious extremism and terrorism in the predominantly Muslim XUAR.

Authorities also have targeted Uygur educators at schools and other educational institutions in the region in an effort to wipe out Uyghur language and culture.

An Ili Normal College official refused to comment on Shawkat’s case on the grounds that it was “sensitive,” but he indirectly acknowledged that the instructor was being held in some form of state custody.

“We can’t talk about this situation on the phone,” he said. “It’s sensitive for us. There’s no way I can talk about it.”

An official at the Bureau of Education in Ili prefecture said he was unable to give RFA any details about Shawkat when a reporter called to verify the information.

When RFA contacted the municipal branch of the education bureau in Ghulja for information about Shawkat, a female employee said her office was staffed entirely by ethnic Han Chinese.

A male employee at the Ghulja branch of the education bureau said all the employees were newly recruited young people and that they had no knowledge of what older individuals like Shawkat had done on the job.

The employee, who did not give his name, avoided answering questions when RFA pointed out that Shawkat was middle-aged and asked whether there was anyone by his name among former bureau workers who had been detained.

Four alleged ‘crimes’

After authorities apprehended Shawkat for his views on Uyghur educational policy and took him to a camp, they accused him of alleged “crimes” they said he had committed 20 years earlier, said the source who is familiar with the detainee situation in Ghulja.

Authorities cited Shawkat’s participation in a meshrep — a traditional male Uyghur gathering that typically includes poetry, music, dance, and conversation — that was implicated in the 1997 Ghulja Massacre as evidence of the “crime of ethnic separatism,” the source said.

Uyghur demonstrators in Ghulja participated in a nonviolent protest in early February 1997, calling for an end to religious repression and ethnic discrimination in the city. Chinese authorities violently suppressed the protest and detained and sentenced hundreds of Uyghurs to lengthy prison terms.

Rights groups and Uyghur exile groups commonly refer to the event as the Ghulja Massacre, citing reports that some 200 Uyghurs were executed during a subsequent crackdown.

During their interrogations of Shawkat, authorities tried to accuse him of as many “mistakes” as possible and of having committed as many “crimes” as possible as justification for meting out a lengthy prison sentence, said the source familiar with the situation in Ghulja.

They also pointed to his phone conversations with his brother when they discussed books used as evidence of “separatism” against him, Parhat said.

“I always had him send me books — good books that had been published by presses back in the homeland,” he said.

Authorities also cited Shawkat’s transfer of money to his brother in Norway for a house purchase as evidence of “aiding terrorists,” Parhat said.

“My brother put something like 50,000 yuan [U.S. $7,730] in my account,” he said.

“It wasn’t very much in Norwegian currency,” he said. “They [my parents] wouldn’t have been able to go to the bank and transfer the money because they’re older, so of course my brother went and took care of it, and because of that, someone apparently said he’d transferred money abroad.”

A police officer working in national security in Ghulja confirmed that this was the case, stating that Shawkat had had a “problem” that arose concerning the use of his phone.

Authorities also accused Shawkat of a fourth “crime” of having violated official birth-control policy limiting to two the number of children that ethnic minority couples could have, though he already had paid a fine at the time of his third child’s birth, according to the source familiar with the situation in Ghulja.

Shawkat was sentenced to a total of 25 years in prison for all four offenses, according to another relevant official in Ghulja who confirmed that he was an employee of Ili Normal College.

She responded with a “correct” when asked by RFA about the length of Shawkat’s prison term, confirming all the information recorded about his case in the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database.

Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The U.S. government on Friday announced new sanctions targeting Myanmar nationals and entities with ties to the country’s military regime, which has violently suppressed protests in the wake of its February coup, and vowed to take additional actions unless the junta agrees to step down from power.

The Department of Treasury blocked the assets of 22 individuals connected to the regime, including three members of the junta, known as the State Administration Council (SAC), and four military-appointed cabinet members, as well as 15 adult children or spouses of previously designated military officials whose financial networks the State Department said in a statement had “contributed to military officials’ ill-gotten gains.”

Additionally, the Department of Commerce added Wanbao Mining, Ltd., two of its subsidiaries, and King Royal Technologies to its list of entities it says provide revenue and other support to Myanmar’s military. Wanbao and its subsidiaries have also been implicated in labor and human rights violations, including at the Letpadaung copper mine.

“Today’s measures further demonstrate that we will continue to take additional action against, and impose costs on, the military and its leaders until they reverse course and provide for a return to democracy,” the State Department said.

“The United States is committed to promoting accountability for the Burmese military, the SAC, and all those who have provided support for the military coup.”

The State Department urged the junta to implement a five-point consensus agreed to by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) during an emergency summit in April to end its campaign of violence in Myanmar and immediately restore the country’s path to democracy.

Friday’s sanctions follow similar ones in May, in which the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of 13 military regime figures, specifically citing the “violence and repression” against civilians in the western town of Mindat, where the army used heavy artillery and helicopter gunships against ethnic Chin militia fighters.

Myanmar’s military overthrew the country’s democratically elected civilian government on Feb. 1 and has violently cracked down on widespread protests. Military leaders say a landslide victory by the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) in the country’s November 2020 elections was the result of widespread voter fraud but have yet to produce any evidence of their claims.

Security forces have killed at least 888 people and arrested, charged or sentenced 5,173 in the five months since the takeover, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (AAPP).

The junta has also moved to assert control of the country’s remote ethnic regions, taking on a host of local People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias with its own troops and the help of paramilitary groups that support its rule. Some 230,000 people have been displaced by the clashes, according to the United Nations and aid groups.

They join the more than 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.

Civilian deaths in custody

At least 28 civilians have been tortured to death by the authorities during interrogations in detention since the coup d’état, according to investigations by RFA’s Myanmar Service—the latest of whom were two men in their 30s from the country’s Bago and Sagaing regions.

On Thursday, authorities informed the family of 34-year-old Soe Min from Bago’s Pyay township of his death three days after his arrest for allegedly “destroying a school,” according to the man’s friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal.

“When the body was brought home, several injuries were apparent—like those caused by being beaten with an iron rod—and it looked like he had died days earlier,” the friend said, adding that there was also a long incision that had been stitched up along the abdomen.

On Friday, police returned the dead body of 39-year-old Aung Zaw Myo from Sagaing’s Monywa township to his family following his detention in connection with a bomb blast at an industrial zone in the area a day earlier. Authorities told family members that Aung Zaw Myo, who had been healthy when he was arrested, had died about five hours after being taken into custody.

An anti-junta activist told RFA that the military had likely tortured the detainees to death.

“We feel sorry for our comrades. Many have died at their interrogation camps,” said the activist, who also declined to be named.

“These deaths should not have happened … They can’t do this sort of thing within any legal framework. It’s completely fascist.”

Others who have died in police and military custody include former NLD officials and members, a poet, and several other civilians from around the country.

High Court lawyer Kyee Myint told RFA that the military has enjoyed total impunity since repealing basic protections for the country’s citizens in mid-February.

“There is no longer any rule of law in the country … They can arrest you, hold you in a cell for more than 24 hours, kill you—anything,” he said.

“Under the Citizens’ Protection Act, you could litigate against such unlawful arrests. You could sue a police commander if he refused to open a case. These kinds of laws have all been repealed. The military is ruling the country by amending laws however it wants. That is why the country is suffering.”

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

Vietnamese land-rights activist Can Thi Theu is being held in solitary confinement under harsh jail conditions following her sentencing to eight years in prison for criticizing the government over its handling of a deadly land-rights clash, her daughter said Friday.

Trinh Thi Thao, Theu’s daughter, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service that her mother is currently in a prison in the seat of northern Vietnam’s Hoa Binh province, where she has been placed in a cell on her own in the heat of the country’s tropical summer after being jailed for political reasons.

“I just got a message that my mother is in solitary confinement, meaning that she is alone in a cell,” Thao said, adding that she had received the information about her mother from a source whose family member is in the same prison as Theu.

“It is very hot right now in the north, horribly hot. There were prisoners in the same prison who were sent to the hospital for heat stroke.

Thao said she is worried about Theu’s health but hasn’t been able to speak with her, and prison authorities have not allowed her to visit since her trial in early May. She said she has been given no explanation about why her mother was placed in solitary or why she cannot meet with her family members.

“My mom told her fellow inmates in other cells that if they hear her banging on the door, they should immediately yell for help so they could send her to the hospital,” Thao said. “I am worried for my mom’s health in this situation.”

Theu and her sons Trinh Ba Tu and Trinh Ba Phuong were arrested on June 24, 2020 on charges of propagandizing against the state for posting online articles and livestreaming videos critical of the government’s response to a land dispute that turned violent last year.

On Jan. 9, 2020, around 3,000 security officers conducted a raid on Dong Tam commune’s Hoanh hamlet to intervene in a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.

Dong Tam village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, was shot and killed by police during the operation, and Kinh’s sons Le Dinh Chuc and Le Dinh Cong were sentenced to death on Sept. 14, 2020 in connection with the deaths of three police officers who were also killed in the clash.

Theu and Tu were sentenced to eight years in prison each by a court in Hoa Binh on May 5. Trinh Ba Phuong remains in pre-trial detention.

Tu has also been refused visits with his family since his trial and authorities have yet to explain why.

Harsh forms of persecution

According to Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), state media in Vietnam is highly restricted, leaving bloggers and independent journalists as “the only sources of independently reported information” in the country, despite being subjected to “ever-harsher forms of persecution.”

Measures taken against them now include assaults by plainclothes police, RSF said in its 2021 Press Freedoms Index, which placed Vietnam at 175 out of 180 countries surveyed worldwide, a ranking unchanged from last year.

“To justify jailing them, the Party resorts to the criminal codes, especially three articles under which ‘activities aimed at overthrowing the government,’ ‘anti-state propaganda’ and ‘abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to threaten the interests of the state’ are punishable by long prison terms,” the rights group said.

Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply last year with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party Congress in January. But arrests continue in 2021.

Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

A journalist who criticized the performance of a hand-picked youth representative at the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s centenary celebrations on Tiananmen Square has had her social media account deleted, RFA has learned.

The Weibo account of Song Shiting, a reporter for Sanlian Life Weekly, disappeared on Friday after she made fun of delegates representing the CCP’s  Youth League at the ceremony, who seemed to have been picked for their model-like looks.

Viewing a contribution by university student Feng Lin, whose appearance took Chinese social media by storm, Song wrote that the young women seemed to be “competing with each other to pay tribute” to the party.

“It was like a horror film, watching them lined up there competing with each other to pay tribute like that: it really made my flesh creep,” Song wrote on her personal Weibo account after the ceremony was broadcast live to the nation.

Her comments sparked a deluge of pro-government abuse before her account was deleted.

Xian-based current affairs commentator Zhuang Zhi said Song’s comments wouldn’t have resulted in censorship in “a normal, free society.”

“This is a further strengthening of ideological control, and controls are getting tighter and tighter,” Zhuang said.

“This is very harmful to society.”

State media named the youth representatives as Beijing primary school students Yao Muchen and Peng Youxin, representing the Chinese Young Pioneers, and university students Feng Lin and Zhao Jianming, for the Chinese Communist Youth League.

“The four students jointly delivered an affectionate ode to the party,” the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.

“Today, we make a vow to the party: listen to the party’s call, are grateful to the party and follow its lead,” it quoted them as saying in unison, before repeating “Rest assured, CCP, we are ready to build a powerful China!” four times.

‘Ticket to a brighter future’

Feng Chongyi, a professor of Chinese Studies at the Sydney University of Technology in Australia, said many young people in China see party membership as the main ticket to a brighter future.

“Now thousands of troops are trying to cross a single-plank bridge,” he said of the current employment market. “They are all trying to squeeze into the civil service to find employment.”

Feng said the CCP has little to do with ideology, and is more of a vehicle for economic advancement.

“The party itself has no soul … and the privileges it gives access to come at the cost of enslavement and political risk,” he said.

The closure of Song’s account came as large numbers of WeChat accounts were shut down around the July 1 centenary, a Christian pastor in the eastern province of Shandong told RFA on Friday.

“A lot of public accounts belonging to our church members have been deleted, including my official account,” he said. “Sometimes we can’t post messages on WeChat, either.”

“It has been pretty bad for some time now,” he said.

A Beijing resident who gave only her surname, Wang, said posts are constantly being deleted from the WeChat groups she belongs to.

“Sometimes, posts I saw in the morning on a WeChat group will be gone by the afternoon,” Wang said. “Sometimes, even by noon.”

A resident of the southern province of Guangdong surnamed Chen said the deletion of WeChat posts is widespread now, and appears to be part of the government’s “stability maintenance” tactics around the centenary.

“The authorities have achieved the ultimate in stability maintenance measures during this centenary,” Chen said.

“After allowing the Chinese people to live relatively unfettered lives over the past 40 years or so, the authorities now seem in a hurry to take that away from them.”

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

Khin Chumreoun was an elected official representing the people of Chbar Ampov district in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. As a member of the now-banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), he was arrested and detained in what authorities said was participation in a riot at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park in 2014. After a three-year stint in prison he was released, but agents of Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) threatened him and his family to force him to defect to the CPP.

After an attempt on his life, he moved his family to neighboring Thailand, where he continued his advocacy for Cambodian democracy. But Hun Sen’s agents attacked him in front of his Bangkok apartment in Dec. 2020. The UN then granted his family refugee status and he relocated to Finland. In an interview with Sek Bandith of RFA’s Khmer Service, Khin Chumreoun talks about his persecution from his time as a political prisoner and an exiled activist, and how he will continue his advocacy for Cambodian democracy. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Please talk about the struggle of being a political prisoner for more than three years, and how do you compare the hardship you faced both in and out of prison in Cambodia with the time you were engaged in advocacy work outside the country in Thailand?

Khin Chumreoun:  My life in prison and as a political refugee were very different.  In the prison, at first I was badly treated by the prison guards. But after two or three months the situation got better, because the relationship between myself and the prison guards had improved. We understood each other better. So I knew that they were just doing their jobs, and they knew that we’re not criminals and they apologized to us. 

A big problem in the prison cell was smoking. Each day the prisoners smoked no less than 10 packs in my cell. The prisoners are under constant stress, so they smoke. But the most difficult time for me and my fellow prisoners came as a result of radioactive exposure in the prison.

The Hun Sen regime accused us of clandestinely using cellular phones inside the prison to call the outside would. To try to find them, they often starved us and isolated us from others. They searched our cells, but they found no phones. This is why they installed radioactive equipment inside the prison, to prevent prisoners from using cellphones.

Exposure to the radiation really messed with my head. Before I was imprisoned, I could speak English and had good computer skills, but after I got out, I became forgetful because the equipment used to jam the phones was installed in the prison and affected my memory and brain. I had a headache, nasal inflammation, and a runny nose and flu, and I had to take medicine every day. LICADHO and other human rights organizations visited us in prison and gave us medicines.

Inside the prison, the visits from our families and the CNRP leadership kept our spirits strong. Also, the Cambodian People’s Party sent its agents to try to persuade us to defect from the CNRP to join the CPP. We were told that we would be set free immediately if we agreed to join them. But I did not betray my people, who voted for me to be the council member representing Chbar Ampov district. I would not disappoint the people who voted me into office.

This dictatorial regime has relentlessly persecuted people, and my case underscores that. I was imprisoned twice. After I was released, I thought that I would be safe. But I was not. A car full of Hun Sen’s agents attempted to kill me by running me over, so I had to jump from my motorbike. 

A few days later, a man came to tell me that I should flee for my own safety. He said, “I feel pity for you, so you have to flee, because there was an order from high up to make you either a cripple for life or make you ‘go to sleep inside a coffin.’”           

RFA: You say that relentless threats and persecution were made not only against you, but also against your wife, so that made you decide to flee to Thailand. Tell me more about how they were threatening and persecuting her.

Khin Chumreoun: From the time I was in the prison in 2015, my wife and children were constantly pressured, and they threatened to hurt my family to get them to try to make me defect to the CCP. My wife and children were followed wherever they went. This made me very worried while I was in prison.

I can tell you that even though I was in prison for more than three years and lost all my property, and even though my family was subjected to constant persecution, despite all that, the regime still did not want me to live, or wanted me to live in misery or under its control. So that is why I decided to flee to Thailand. 

Even in Thailand, the Hun Sen regime sent its agents to hunt me down. On Dec. 15, 2020, at around 05:30 PM, six unidentified men came to arrest me while I was walking down from my apartment.  Security camera footage showed to me by my landlord showed there were six men hitting me from the back and the front. They crushed me against the columns of the apartment building while attempting to arrest me. I was struggling hard and managed to get away from them and ran up to my apartment. Because of this, the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] helped me leave Thailand to resettle in Finland. 

RFA: Now that you are safe in a third country, how are you going to organize your political life, and what messages do you have for your friends and comrades who still live in politically unsafe places?    

Khin Chumreoun: The government of Finland has been providing living assistance to my family for four years, to start with. Secondly, even though I am living here, it will not make me forget my people, my hardships, and the hardships of my people in Cambodia. I will continue to struggle to sacrifice my time and whatever I can to fight toward restoring democracy in Cambodia for the Khmer people. Lastly, I wish to send messages of encouragement to our activists in Thailand.  You have to continue to struggle, and I am still with you. For the people in Cambodia, I want you know that I will not abandon you nor will I abandon my country. Thank you.  

Reported by Sek Bandith for RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Eugene Whong.