Day: July 12, 2021

Cambodian opposition party activists injured in physical assaults during the last year are living in fear, with their attackers still unidentified by police and authorities sometimes blaming the victims themselves for the attacks, sources in Cambodia say.

Human rights and civil society groups point to a lack of political will on the part of authorities to hold perpetrators to account, however.

More than 30 Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) activists and their relatives and supporters have reported being beaten by anonymous attackers, mostly by motorbike-riding assailants targeting their heads. The attackers have used batons and bricks, and also their own vehicles, against the victims.

One of those attacked, a CNRP activist named Sin Khonn who was assaulted and badly injured on May 12 this year, said that authorities have so far failed to show any results of an investigation following up on his report of the incident immediately after it happened.

The assault was carried out by four men on two motorbikes who beat Sin Khonn at the Doeurm Sral market near Wat Chas in the capital Phnom Penh, leaving him with a laceration over his right eyebrow and several fractured fingers on his left hand.

Evidence of the attack was recorded in security camera footage that clearly showed the men who assaulted him and the motorbikes they used to chase him down, but nothing has been done yet to pursue justice in his case, he said.

“I still live in fear because my attackers have not been apprehended or brought to justice. I feel very insecure,” Sin Khonn said.

“On June 7 and 15, several strangers were watching me, and sometimes they even followed me to where I live,” he said, adding “I now refrain from going out anywhere, especially at night.”

“I really believe that these acts of violence launched against us are intended to discourage young people and opposition activists from openly expressing themselves,” he said.

Tes Saroeun, another CNRP activist and victim of an assault in Phnom Penh, said he doesn’t look for justice from the Cambodian police and courts, as the attacks are clearly part of a campaign of systematic political persecution.

Attacked twice by unknown individuals, once in December 2020 and a second time at the end of January, while attending court hearings for other CNRP activists, Tes Saroeun said he is now “terrified and traumatized.”

“Whenever I go anywhere now, I look to the left and right and am very careful. I believe that the attacks against me were politically motivated, because I am a politician and a political party activist,” he said.

A pattern to attacks

Police investigations into the violence are often hindered by victims’ refusal to fully cooperate with authorities, though, said Sok Seiha—a spokesperson for the Phnom Penh Municipal Police—adding that victims sometimes don’t even file a formal complaint.

“Our main challenge is that victims will appear to withhold some part of the truth,” he said. “They don’t tell us everything.”

“For example, they might have had some personal fights or arguments with other people or even with family members that lead to the violence. And then they describe the attacks as politically motivated acts,” he said.

“This is always a challenge to our investigations,” he said.

There are patterns to these attacks, though, and they happen again and again, said Am Sam Ath, deputy director for human rights for the Cambodian NGO Licadho. No perpetrators have ever been arrested, and no cases have been brought to court, he said.

“Although the authorities claim that they are carrying out investigations, their activities appear to be less dynamic than they are in the less politically connected cases, where the investigations and the identification of the perpetrators appear to happen much more quickly,” he said.

“The authorities need to change the way they handle these investigations if they want to regain the public’s trust,” he said.

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017, two months after the arrest of its leader Kem Sokha for his role in an alleged scheme to topple the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. Police detained Prak Seiha and his wife for around 12 hours at the time.

The ban, along with a wider crackdown on NGO’s and the independent media, paved the way for Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) to win all 125 seats in the country’s 2018 general election.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Richard Finney.

North Korea is forcibly mobilizing married women living near the border with China to toil away making cement blocks for the construction of a wall, sources in the country told RFA.

The wall will keep citizens of the northeastern province of Ryanggang from easily accessing the border, especially near the province’s largest city Hyesan, where the government uncovered a rash of smuggling incidents over the past year, following the January 2020 agreement by Beijing and Pyongyang to shut down the frontier and suspend all trade to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Though exploiting the public for free labor is common practice in cash-strapped North Korea, sources told RFA that the people are angry that the government started mobilizing women for the project when it fell behind schedule.

“Not only are they mobilizing the members of the neighborhood watch units in the border area, but also members of the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea. They are making cement blocks for wall construction,” a resident of the province, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Korean Service July 5.

Mobilizing married women for long-term projects could be potentially ruinous for many families. In North Korea’s nascent market economy, men work a job that provides a government salary nowhere near enough to live on. In many families, the wives who have no official jobs must run businesses to support their families.

But Pyongyang has been serious about preventing border-crossing during the pandemic. The border closure has, however, devastated the North Korean economy and caused food prices to skyrocket, thereby increasing the incentive for smugglers to bring in food and products from China to make a living.

To stop illegal border crossings, North Korea has held public executions, deployed special forces to the border area, laid landmines to keep its own people from escaping, and ordered soldiers and police to shoot on sight anyone found within a kilometer (0.6 miles) of the border.

The new wall is yet another obstacle to be overcome, according to the Ryanggang source.

“The people are critical of the authorities, saying, ‘Even in this severe coronavirus emergency, people still cross the river, risking their lives to smuggle. Even if they build the wall, could that possibly stop people from finding a way to cross the river?’” the source said.

“Compared to other areas on the border, it is easier for smugglers to cross into China from Hyesan because of its unique geographical features. This is why they are building the wall in Ryanggang,” said the source.

According to the source, authorities had initially planned to build the wall using labor from the military and youth, but after they took too much time to clear the land, finishing the project before its Oct. 10 Party Foundation Day deadline seemed impossible without finding more labor.

To stay on schedule, each woman in the Socialist Women’s Union must complete ten cement blocks per day, according to the source.

“The mobilized women range from newlywed women in their 20s to those in their 60s. People complain that the authorities are making frail old women in their 60s to do hard labor,” the source said.

“They have to start each day by transporting sand from the mountains and mix it with enough cement to make all the blocks assigned to each group. The women complain about the work, saying ‘Could building a wall on the border stop the landslide of public sentiment?’”

Another Ryanggang resident confirmed to RFA July 7 that authorities added female labor to the wall project to try to finish it before the Oct. 10 deadline.

“Though the construction of the two-meter-high cement wall with high-voltage wiring on top along the Hyesan border came out of orders…to prevent the virus from coming in from China, the goal is to permanently prevent smuggling and escape from the country,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

“A month has passed since they gave the order, but construction has not progressed as they expected because of a lack of materials and manpower. The provincial party committee had already burdened the residents to provide the necessary materials and funding before mobilizing the women, which they said was an emergency measure,” said the second source.

Women who are responsible for making a living for their families are complaining about being forced to work on the wall, which they say is useless, according to the second source.

“No matter how high the wall is, they will not be able to completely subdue the will of the people to cross the river in search of food and freedom.”

RFA reported in late June that North Korea, forced more than 13,000 married women from all over the country to “volunteer” for farm work in South Hwanghae province, considered to be the country’s breadbasket, after acknowledging grain production shortfalls over the past year due.

Forced labor for government projects is considered by human rights organizations as a form of human trafficking or slavery.

The U.S. State Department in its 2020 Trafficking in persons report classified North Korea in Tier 3, the lowest tier, made up of countries not making an effort to meet the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.

“During the reporting period, there was a government policy or pattern of forced labor in mass mobilizations of adults and children, in prison camps as part of an established system of political repression, in labor training centers, and through its imposition of forced labor conditions on DPRK overseas contract workers,” the report said.

Reported by Jieun Kim for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

The Philippines marked the fifth anniversary Monday of a landmark arbitral ruling that went against China’s expansive South China Sea claims, by warning that Manila rejected any attempt to “erase” the verdict, while Beijing dismissed it as a “piece of waste paper.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked the anniversary by saying the two Asian nations were bound under international maritime law to comply with the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

Washington would invoke its mutual defense commitments should Philippine forces be attacked in the contested waterway, he warned. America’s top diplomat issued the statement on the same day that a U.S. warship conducted a freedom of navigation mission in the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands.

In Manila, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said President Rodrigo Duterte had previously stated that the ruling was part of international law. 

“The award is final. We firmly reject attempts to undermine; nay, even erase it from international law, history and our collective memories,” Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said in a statement.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the Philippines was seeking a peaceful solution to maritime disputes.

“On this anniversary, we once again urge all interested parties to heed the call for a rules-based international order and refrain from acts that may exacerbate this tense situation in the area,” he said in a statement. “Consistent with Philippine national policy, we shall continue to seek

In 2013, the government of then-President The late Benigno Aquino III sued Beijing before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague over Chinese claims in the South China Sea that encroached upon most of Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The case marked the first time any nation had challenged China over its maritime sovereignty.

On July 12, 2016, the court ruled in Manila’s favor, declaring its sovereign rights to an EEZ as valid over Beijing’s historical claim as demarcated by the so-called Nine-Dash Line on official Chinese maritime maps.

In Beijing on Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry maintained its stance on the South China Sea.

“The award of the arbitration is illegal, null and void. It is nothing more than a piece of waste paper,” ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a daily press conference, as he challenged U.S. military efforts in the maritime region.

The United States has conducted drills that “illegally intruded into China’s territorial waters,” he said. “Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. side conducted close-in reconnaissance for nearly 2,000 times and over 20 large-scale military drills on the sea. The U.S. allegation of ‘freedom of navigation’ in the South China Sea threatened is simply untenable.”

China’s People’s Liberation Army reported on social media that it sent ships and planes to “warn them and send them away” on Monday after the USS Benfold, a guided-missile destroyer, after it entered Chinese-claimed waters near the Paracels, according to media reports.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea as its own, but five other Asian governments – Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – have territorial claims. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

One of those countries, Vietnam, said on Monday that it wanted all sides involved to respect and fully implement the legal obligations in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), cooperate and actively contribute in preserving peace, stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

“The PRC’s statement about this mission is false,” the U.S. Navy said in a statement on its website, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as USS Benfold did here. Nothing PRC says otherwise will deter us.”

In his statement, Blinken said freedom of the sea was an enduring interest of all nations.

“Nowhere is the rules-based maritime order under greater threat than in the South China Sea. The People’s Republic of China continues to coerce and intimidate Southeast Asian coastal states, threatening freedom of navigation in this critical global throughway,” he said.

“We also reaffirm that an armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments under Article IV of the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.”

Meanwhile in Metro Manila, dozens of members of the fishermen’s group Pamalakaya joined activists in protesting outside the Chinese’ consulate to demand that Chinese ships leave the Philippines’ EEZ and other disputed waters. 

“Five years after our momentous arbitral victory, China continues to trample on our fishing rights in our traditional fishing grounds,” Fernando Hicap, the group’s leader, told reporters.

“These are Filipino fishers standing up against China and upholding our rights in the West Philippine Sea,” Hicap said.

The West Philippine Sea is how Manila refers to its EEZ and territories it claims in the South China Sea.

“Likewise, this is a defiance against President Duterte who has completely turned his back on our national sovereignty and the Filipino people. Our own government’s cowardice and submission to China will not stop us from asserting what is rightfully ours.”

He said fishermen have been losing millions of pesos every year to the destruction of coral reef by Chinese reclamation and illegal poaching within the country’s territory.

In a report released Monday on water quality in the Spratly Islands, U.S.-based Simularity said satellite imagery had verified that hundreds of ships anchored there were dumping raw sewage on the on the reefs they are occupying, “leading to a cascade of reef damage that can take decades to recover.”

Such damage directly affects fish stocks in the South China Sea, said Similarity, which describes itself as having software that “automatically analyzes geospatial imagery and data to automatically find and classify unusual changes.”

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions and we are close to the point of no return,” the report said.

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

Cash-strapped local governments across China are ordering teachers and officials to pay back bonuses as plummeting tax revenues start to bite in the wake of economic damage wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic, RFA has learned.

Civil servants and teachers at public institutions in Henan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong provinces were recently charged 20,000 yuan each in repayments for the first quarter of 2021, while being informed that all bonuses had been suspended indefinitely.

The move comes amid growing calls from the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to tighten the public purse-strings.

On June 7, the Nanchang water resources bureau in the eastern province of Jiangxi ordered state employees to repay their bonuses within 10 days, while authorities in Dexing city have ordered teachers to repay bonuses to their schools.

Teachers’ bonuses in Jiangxi’s Dexing typically amount to 20,000 yuan per quarter, not including an annual bonus, bringing the overall amount to more than the basic salary of most teachers.

Li Qiao, a scholar based in Jiangxi’s Jingdezhen city, said the repayment demands indicate that the government is undergoing something of a fiscal crisis.

“Regardless of the authorities’ claims of ‘bumper harvests’ of economic growth, closed-down shops and businesses are everywhere, and there is unemployment, while the pandemic is still under way,” Li told RFA.

“That is bound to take a toll on tax revenues, and financial difficulties are inevitable,” he said. “Reductions in bonuses and other benefits are already happening.”

Civil service bonuses have been suspended in Shanghai, Jiangxi, Henan, Shandong, Chongqing, Hubei and Guangdong, according to Weibo posts from people living in those places.

Government employers in Guangdong’s Chaozhou city were ordered at the beginning of this month to stop paying out housing subsidies and performance-related bonuses, according to one post.

Three days later, the government in Shanwei city followed suit.

Salaries for low-ranking civil servants, primary and secondary school teachers on paper typically range from 2,000 to 4,000 yuan a month, with the government handing out a wide range of child support payments, mortgage rebates and other benefits to top them up.

The Jiujiang Bank, based in Jiangxi, recently starting offering refund loans to state employees who can’t afford to pay back their benefits.

Chengdu-based writer and independent researcher Tan Zuoren said similar announcements are being made in many places across China.

Bonuses canceled or taken back

“Performance bonuses for civil servants are being canceled or, in some cases, they are being chased for repayment, and bonus payments already issued will have to be repaid,” Tan told RFA.

“There are many reasons for this fiscal tightness,” he said. “Tax revenues will definitely have fallen since the start of the pandemic … while spending has increased, leaving a big gap between revenue and expenditure.”

According to official figures, that deficit rose by 30 percent in the first half of 2020, with local government debt skyrocketing by 3.4 trillion yuan.

Only Shanghai reported a fiscal surplus during that period, while all of the other cities, regions and provinces returned a deficit.

Henan, Sichuan and Yunnan all reported fiscal deficits of more than 250 billion yuan apiece.

“The government would never take the decision to cut civil service bonuses lightly,” Li said. “In the first half of last year, only Shanghai managed to break even, while everywhere else was in deficit.”

“When the government says we all need to tighten our belts, there’s a reason for that,” he said.

Premier Li Keqiang first warned of such belt-tightening in his 2020 annual government work report to the National People’s Congress (NPC).

Citing “unprecedented” economic challenges sparked by the pandemic, Li called on governments at all levels to tighten their belts and commit to negative growth in spending, while reducing “non-urgent and non-essential” expenditure by half.

Finance minister Liu Kun told the NPC that the central government in Beijing would boost funds transferred to local governments by 12.8 percent to counter the economic fallout.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Authorities in more than 10 Chinese cities and provinces have brought in new measures to cool residential property prices since last year.

School admissions in China are made on the basis of the residential address of the family applying for the school place, sending prices of apartments near high-performing schools skyrocketing in some areas, official media reported.

Since last year, authorities in Zhejiang, Sichuan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing have all announced measures to curb rising residential prices in school districts.

Some areas have sought to dilute the impact on home prices by awarding school enrollment rights to families who rent apartments in school districts, not just to those who buy.

Some districts in China have sought to slash applications by raising the bar for parents, requiring families to have owned property in the district for several years prior to the application.

Prices near Beijing’s fifth-ranking Zhongguancun No. 3 Primary School jumped by around 31 percent in the space of a single year, while apartments in Yuetan district near another top school come with a markup of nearly 60 percent compared with comparable properties elsewhere, Bloomberg cited online property data as showing.

Prices for housing in the most popular school districts in Shanghai rose by an average of 20 percent in the space of one year, it cited Urgan Surveyors as saying.

CCP general secretary Xi Jinping’s comments in March to the effect that property prices in school districts are fueling educational inequality appear to have spurred momentum to address the issue at local level.

China’s Politburo announced on April 30 it would move to dampen speculation in properties in school districts, the first time the issue has been discussed at such a high level of government.

Authorities in Beijing’s Xicheng district, home to a number of popular schools, have announced they will be delinking property locations from specific schools, with families only entitled to register at one school in any given district, without specifying which one.

Some parents in the district have been informed that they won’t be able to register at their preferred school, and will instead be allocated a different school in the same area, the Chinese Business Network reported.

Prices of 60-square-meter homes have fallen from 10 million yuan to 9.2 million in the past few days following the news, it said.

Wang Yeqiang, director of the Institute for Urban and Environmental Stuties at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences in Beijing, said the measures are likely to be highly effective.

“Every wave of residential price increases starts with increases in school district housing,” Wang told RFA. “It acts as a bellwether of market-wide price increases.”

“[These policies] will have to stabilize school district housing speculation and rein in investor demand,” Wang said.

Political scapegoat

Independent scholar Si Ling said the real estate market is something of a political scapegoat in China.

“There is a lack of clear and transparent policy explanations regarding the various allocation policies linked to housing in school districts,” Si told RFA.

“Many commercial organizations are currently speculating about the government’s intentions regarding school district boundaries, and what the next government’s policy direction will be,” he said.

He said the policy was sending a strong signal to the real estate sector to rein in hot money.

“[It’s saying that they] must be more cautious in this area of their business, as there may be restrictions on venture capital inflows, and even maybe foreign capital inflows,” Si said.

But he said the policies don’t address the root cause of the issue.

“The root cause of this phenomenon around school district housing is that there is a huge divide between urban and rural China, with the most advanced medical technology and educational resources concentrated in the cities,” Si Ling said.

“It is only in recent years that the Chinese government has realized that this problem is having an impact on social stability,” he said.

The Politburo recently also considered a slew of measures aimed at encouraging people to have up to three children, including housing incentives.

Among the support measures planned by the government to tackling a low fertility rate and an aging population include improvements to prenatal and postnatal care, a universal childcare service, and reduced education costs for families.

China’s fertility rate stood at around 1.3 children per woman in 2020, compared with the 2.1 children per woman needed for the population to replace itself.

But raising children in China is a costly business, with parents stretched to find money for even one child’s education.

While state-run schools don’t charge tuition until the 10th year of compulsory education, they increasingly demand nominal payments of various kinds, as well as payments for food and extracurricular activities.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.