Day: July 14, 2021

Myanmar’s junta broke the law in arresting Aung San Suu Kyi on the day it orchestrated a coup d’état, and its leadership should face trial for this, according to one of the country’s most prominent lawyers, who urged authorities to drop charges against the former State Counselor and set her free.

Aung San Suu Kyi, ousted and arrested with other top political leaders during the coup by the Myanmar military on Feb. 1, faces seven charges, including sedition, which her lawyers say are trumped-up offenses to discredit her. Ex-president Win Myint also has been charged with sedition.

Military forces overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government based on accusations that November 2020 landslide elections won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) were marred by voter fraud. The junta, which has not produced evidence of fraudulent elections, has led a violent crackdown on protesters opposed to its rule.

The junta has charged Aung San Suu Kyi with seven criminal offenses for allegedly violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act and for corruption, sedition, violation of the Telecommunications Law, possession of unlicensed walkie-talkie radios, and two violations of protocols set up to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Four counts of alleged “corruption” were added to the list during a court hearing Monday, although prosecutors have yet to release details of the charges.

Speaking to RFA’s Myanmar Service, veteran High Court lawyer Kyee Myint said the coup leaders had acted in violation of the law and that Aung San Suu Kyi should lead their prosecution.

“If you look at the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Citizens’ Freedom Law, you’ll find that Daw Suu cannot be prosecuted,” he said.

“Actually, you could prosecute [the junta]. They entered [her home] without [the requisite] two witnesses and made an unlawful arrest of citizens. The detainees were held for more than 24 hours in violation of the Citizens’ Rights Act. They didn’t have any search warrants or arrest warrants or even a search form.”

Kyee Myint noted that the Citizens’ Rights Act was still in effect when Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint were arrested.

“Under the existing laws at that time, [the junta troops] were the violators, while Daw Suu was unlawfully arrested and prosecuted,” he said, using an honorific reference to the 76-year-old leader. “[She and other detained NLD leaders] must be released according to the law.”

During Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial proceedings on Monday, a court in the capitol Naypyidaw heard testimonies from the prosecution’s witnesses related to three of the charges against her. Her lawyer, Min Min Soe, said the three witnesses from the Naypyidaw Military Command Division testified that the search they conducted on the Nobel Peace Laureate’s home on Feb. 1 related to the Telecommunication Law violation took place without warrants.

‘A judiciary that oppresses its citizens’

Nang Lin, a leader of the Old Takatha Students’ Association, noted that the military has tried to control the country’s judiciary under previous governments by arresting people and convicting them “without bothering to find out whether they were really guilty or not,” but said the legal system is now “crumbling” under junta leadership.

“There have been so many cases filed by the military like this since the Feb. 1 coup,” he said.

“The judiciary in Myanmar is not acting in accordance with the law or the proper reasoning of judges, but instead is under total command of the military and is falling apart. It is a judiciary that oppresses its citizens.”

Khin Maw, a former medical student arrested during the 1975 Shwedagon Students’ Movement that called for the release of political detainees and an end to soaring commodity prices, said he was told by the then-ruling junta at the time that he was being charged with theft and asked if he would agree to the charges. When he refused, a court sentenced him to five years in prison.

“We have no right to defend ourselves [under the military],” he said.

“We don’t believe now that the truth will come out in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, so no matter which lawyers are assigned to defend her, the decision will already have been made by higher-level authorities.”

Aung San Suu Kyi has been kept under house arrest in the capital Naypyidaw since the Feb. 1 coup. Her hearings initially were held via videoconference beginning on Feb. 16.

The military regime converted a building in Naypyidaw into a special closed court for Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s hearings now held in person every Monday and Tuesday since June 14.

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

Senior U.S. government officials and politicians denounced China on Wednesday for alleged genocide against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, taking aim at Beijing’s policies at the inaugural International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington.

The three-day event, which began Tuesday, addressed religious persecution around the world, but has focused heavily on China’s targeting of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in a crackdown on the minority group and its language, religion, and culture that intensified in 2017.

“The Uyghur community faces an existential threat from Beijing, which is a challenge to our own conscience,” said Nancy Pelosi, U.S. speaker of the House of Representatives and a Democratic congresswoman from California, said in prerecorded video remarks.

“We have and we will continue to speak out because as I always say, if we do not speak out about human rights violations in China, indeed anywhere because of commercial interest, then we lose our moral authorities to speak out on human rights violations anywhere,” she said.

Of the 12 million Uyghurs living in the XUAR, China has forcibly held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs in a network of detention camps since 2017, with smaller numbers of Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, fellow Turkic-speaking people, also incarcerated in the system. Beijing says the camps are vocational training or re-education centers aimed at combating religious extremism in its northwestern region.

Those not held in camps are subjected to arbitrary arrests, restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a pervasive digitized surveillance system that monitors their every move using facial recognition cameras, cell phone scans, DNA collection, and an intrusive police presence.

Tursunay Ziyawudan, a Uyghur woman twice detained in internment camps, gave testimony at the summit about her experience of the abuse that inmates suffer at the hands of the Chinese. She recalled that when she was confined the second time in 2018 for nearly a year, she and another young woman were raped by Han Chinese police officers.

“They were always taking girls out of the cells like this,” she said according to a written translation in English of her speech in the Uyghur language. “They did whatever they wanted. Sometimes they brought some of the women back near the point of death. Some of the women disappeared.”

Tursunay said she saw other female inmates bleed to death after being assaulted, while others “lost their minds in the camp.”

‘A profoundly disastrous situation’

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of the outgoing Trump administration in January designated abuses in the XUAR as part of a campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity, including imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution.

“[The] ongoing shocking, indeed horrifying, treatment of the Uyghur population being rounded up in Xinjiang province plays into these truly Orwellian concentration camps where people are surveilled at all times, placed in slave labor, forced to conduct abortions and sterilizations,” Pompeo told the summit.

“It should strike at the heart of every human being and every American who cares or claims to care about freedom in the world,” he added.

The Biden administration endorsed Pompeo’s designation and has imposed sanctions against Chinese officials deemed responsible for the repression. It has since ramped up punishments against China, targeting Chinese firms that manufacture solar-panel material, wigs, electronics, tomatoes, and cotton with suspected forced Uyghur labor.

“The Uyghur case is just such a profoundly disastrous situation and it is a current and ongoing genocide,” Sam Brownback, former U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom under the Trump administration, told RFA’s Uyghur Service in an interview on the sidelines of the summit.

Despite measures by both the Trump and Biden administrations to force the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to stop its repression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the XUAR, the Chinese government has continued it, Brownback said.

“The Communist Party [by] every indication seems to be doubling down and continuing the persecution and creating a virtual police state,” he said. “Even if you get out of the concentration camps, there are cameras, there are limitations on travel, and there’s a social credit system that limits people’s ability to practice their faith. They’ve not let up.”

So far in July, the U.S. Commerce Department has blacklisted 14 new Chinese firms companies accused of direct involvement in human rights abuses in the XUAR. On Tuesday, both the U.S. government issued expanded guidance to American companies about doing business in the XUAR, citing forced labor and genocide against the Uyghur ethnic group.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also held a virtual meeting last week with seven Uyghur camp survivors and advocates to hear first-hand about the abuses being committed in Xinjiang.

Blinken briefly addressed the IRF Summit in a prerecorded video, but did not discuss the situation in the XUAR.

‘More needs to be done’

Brownback acknowledged the latest U.S. measures, but said “more needs to be done” by the international community as a whole.

“I think we need to move the Olympic Games,” he told RFA, referring to the Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing in February 2022. “If they are going to continue to have an ongoing genocide, you can’t conduct the Olympics and do a genocide at the same time. The world community needs to say that.”

Some democratic governments, including the U.S., are considering boycotts of the Beijing Games over the Chinese government’s human rights abuses in the XUAR, Tibet, and Hong Kong.

“Shockingly as he prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, China’s leader Xi Jinping is committing genocide against the Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang,” said Chris Smith, a Republican congressman from New Jersey.

“The Chinese Communist Party today is systematically erasing Islam in western China, bulldozing mosques and shrines, severely throttling all religious practices, and forcing camp detainees to renounce their faith,” he said.

Smith noted that the abuses against the Uyghurs, specifically forced disappearances into the internment camps, forced sterilizations and abortions of Uyghur women, and the taking of Uyghur children from their homes and placing them with non-Uyghur families in other parts of China, all “fits the definition of genocide.”

Smith also said he chaired a congressional hearing on the “Beijing genocide Olympics” on May 18 during which he argued that the Games should be moved to another city or country or be boycotted.

At the end of June, Smith called for the establishment of a U.S. special envoy to address China’s campaign of genocide against the country’s Uyghurs, adding the proposal as an amendment to a bill already under consideration by the House Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. Congress.

The Chinese government had not yet issued any comments on the IRF Summit, though Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian earlier on Thursday dismissed Washington’s updated Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory, saying that charges of genocide were “the same old lies in the Xinjiang-related reports it issued one after another.”

“The repetition of lies just lays bare its hypocrisy and hegemony on human rights,” he said.

China issues white paper

On Wednesday, China’s State Council Information Office issued an 8,000-word white paper defending its policies in the XUAR, and claiming that Beijing upholds rights including political, economic, cultural, and social rights, the rights of women and children, and the freedom of religious beliefs.

“Xinjiang attaches importance to preventing terrorism at its source,” the document said. “It has carried out preventive counter-terrorism measures, including the establishment of vocational education and training centers, to protect basic rights.”

The white paper asserted that there have been no terrorist incidents in the XUAR since the end of 2016 and that “the infiltration of extremism has been effectively curbed, and the right to life of people of all ethnic groups has been fully protected.”

In response to the white paper, the U.S. repeated its calls for China to end its repression of Uyghur and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in the XUAR, and to release those arbitrarily held in internment camps and detention facilities.

“Despite growing international condemnation and extensive evidence of forced labor, internment camps, torture, and sexual violence, the PRC continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang,” the State Department said in an email to RFA. “These atrocities cannot be ignored or denied.”

Reported by Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service and by the Mandarin Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Cemeteries in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon are overflowing with corpses as hundreds of people each day are dying of COVID-19 related causes, aid groups in the city told RFA Wednesday, as many observers blamed the ruling military junta for a callous pandemic response.

Myanmar is dealing with a third wave of outbreaks of the disease, and Yangon’s four cemeteries are ill-equipped to handle daily death tolls of about 500 people amid an oxygen shortage that has gripped the entire country.

Almost all of Yangon’s coronavirus deaths are due to hypoxia, when oxygen fails to reach bodily tissues, a common symptom in serious COVID-19 cases, but Myanmar’s military junta two days ago denied that the oxygen shortage exists.

RFA reported Monday that the military government had begun restricting supplies on claims that people are hoarding oxygen, ordering suppliers not to fill cylinders for individuals.

A nurse in Shan State told RFA’s Myanmar Service that oxygen shortages were not an issue in the country during the country’s second wave of the coronavirus, which occurred prior to the junta’s Feb. 1 overthrow of the democratically elected government under former State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy (NLD) party.

An official from a Yangon-based humanitarian organization told RFA Wednesday on condition of anonymity that the city’s cemeteries are overwhelmed.

“There are four cemeteries in Yangon. The total number of bodies sent to these four cemeteries is over 500 a day. About 95 percent of those who died at home die of hypoxia. Of those 500 deaths, 450 die at home,” the official said, adding that the cemeteries can only handle about 50 bodies per day.

“We all must wear PPE to bring in the bodies. We had to stop taking calls at about 10:30 this morning, because we could not take in any more bodies,” the official said.

More than 200 people each day are buried at the Yayway cemetery alone, and they had to be lined up for cremation. There is additionally a shortage of hearses to transport bodies to the cemeteries, so ambulances are picking up the slack.

Aid groups confirmed to RFA that an oxygen shortage began last weekend when the junta banned the private sale of oxygen.

Making the problem worse, hospitals are no longer accepting oxygen-starved patients, according to a Yangon-based aid worker.

“The main problem for those who badly need oxygen is a lack of doctors and voluntary workers. This is why both the private and government hospitals cannot accept these patients,” the aid worker said.

“The Yangon General Hospital, The Sanpya General Hospital and the North Okkalapa Hospital are still taking in serious patients, but the numbers are limited,” said the aid worker.

Another aid worker told RFA some patients had to be sent back home unable to find hospitals that would agree to treat them. He said there was only enough oxygen for about 15 percent of patients. The junta has not yet lifted a curfew on Yangon and families of those in need of oxygen must wait until 4 am to leave their houses in search of more oxygen.

A member of a charity told RFA that as soon as the curfew ends, people begin lining up at factories to get a single cylinder of oxygen.

“We are still on the road right now. We are going to South Dagon to buy oxygen tanks. You can’t buy them easily. We have to line up and the queues begin at around four in the morning, and we still couldn’t get any on some days,” he said, requesting anonymity for his personal safety.

“The South Dagon Industrial Zone cannot produce enough. They can make about 100 cylinders a day, sometimes 150. They are also trying their best with everything they have. The number of people in line is usually between 200 and 250. If we can’t get it from this factory, we must line up at the next one. If you want the bigger cylinders, you can’t get it in one day. You have to wait until the next day,” the charity member said.

Elsewhere in the country, aid groups in the northwestern Sagaing region’s town of Kalay told RFA that 800 people have died in a little over a month due to coronavirus symptoms, including more than 330 since the beginning of July.

Oxygen orders take almost a week to arrive from the closest large city, Mandalay, Ye Thiha Aung, the chairman of the Kalay Karyan Metta Social Welfare Association, told RFA.

“The death toll is still high in Kalay these days. We see 10 to 20 deaths daily. The problem we are facing is a lack of oxygen. We can only get oxygen from Mandalay, Yangon and Monywa, and we have to wait for up to six days,” Ye Thiha Aung said.

Kalay needs about 500 oxygen tanks each day, but the town can produce only 100.

Junta leader Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing on July 12 denied that there is an oxygen shortage in Myanmar at the second COVID Prevention Coordination Meeting.

A doctor told RFA on condition of anonymity that the general’s statement was the opposite of reality.

“They say there is enough oxygen, but what we see in practice is that the military council is controlling sales to the private sector and is only allowing sales to hospitals. They are also keeping some as reserves for themselves,” the doctor said.

“If you look at the situation in Kalay, you’ll see the reality. People there have been building their own oxygen plants, but the supply cannot meet their needs. The deaths are horrible. The public needs oxygen very badly,” said the doctor.

Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG), made up of lawmakers ousted by the military during the Feb. 1 coup, told RFA that it had evidence that the junta’s policies during the third wave were intended to harm people opposed to the coup, which constitutes crimes against humanity.

The junta’s restrictions limited the people’s access to healthcare, they said.

“Healthcare is a fundamental right for every human being, especially in the time of the pandemic,” Aung Myo Min, an internationally known human rights activist and the NUG’s minister for Human rights told RFA.

“The right to access to essential health care services, medical equipment and PPE materials, without discrimination, is a universally accepted human right. But, in Myanmar, what we have seen is the military and its related institutions have a monopoly on essential health care services and Covid-19 vaccines. This is a very serious violation of rights,” he said. 

“Lately, we have witnessed that authorities have hindered the people’s access to oxygenation equipment for COVID-19 patients. They are supposed to make this equipment widely available to the public. Far from that, we have seen many cases where soldiers confiscate the oxygen tanks and equipment… or threaten volunteers and humanitarian groups distributing them,” Aung Myo Min said.

“These actions are politically motivated. They are deliberate measures to punish the people who resisted their coup. As a result, a large number of people died… They intended to weaken the resistance movements by these deaths. I am pretty sure these actions are crimes against humanity,” he said.

He also accused the junta of prioritizing healthcare access to military members and their families.

“There are funds from international organizations and COVID-19 vaccines acquired under NLD government administration. They are supposed to use these funds to effectively respond to the outbreak. They are using these resources to protect the military members and their beneficiaries only. By ignoring public safety, they intend to stop the street protests. And they intend to punish the people who have opposed them.” 

On Tuesday, the junta’s Ministry of Health and Sports reported 109 COVID-19 deaths, bringing the official tally to 4,036.

Vietnamese fines are ‘abuse of power’

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, authorities in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City reported Tuesday that they had fined thousands of people for ignoring strict social distancing orders in place since July 9.

Authorities in the city collected almost five billion dong [US $218,000] in fines from people who were found in violation of Directive 16, mostly for selling suspended goods and services, gathering in groups of more than two or otherwise being unnecessarily out and about.

Lawyers told RFA that the fines were an abuse of power in violation of current laws, while residents complained that the fines were unfair considering how they have been economically impacted by the pandemic.

Bui Quang Thang, a Hanoi-based lawyer, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service that Directive 16 is an internal communication and therefore cannot be used to punish the public. 

“According to the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents, the Prime Minister’s directives are not legal documents. Based on that, the fact that someone fines people or run news stories about people being fined for violating Directive 16 does not comply with current laws,” said Thang.

“It might be correct for the government to apply 2020 Decree 117’s Article 12, Clause 1a to fine people for not wearing masks, but it would be wrong if they tried to use this article to sanction people for going out without a legitimate reason,” he said.

If people go out while wearing a mask and practicing social distancing, they cannot be considered as not taking protection measures, so any punishment on this basis is unconvincing, Thang said.

Also Tuesday, a document seemingly showing that authorities in the city set quotas for fines surfaced on social media.

The document, believed to have been issued by Go Vap district in the city’s Ward 6, told those working at a checkpoint in front of the Ward 6 People’s Committee to give out fines for “20 cases in each working shift.” It additionally said the target for each patrol team was “five cases for each working shift.”

Immediately after the information was made public, Nguyen Tri Dung, Chairman of the Go Vap district People’s Committee asked the ward to withdraw the orders.

Several residents told RFA that they were angered that that the Ward may have tried to use the pandemic to generate potentially millions of dollars in fines.

“I call it a… barbaric hunt amid all this misery for the people of Vietnam,” local musician Tuan Khanh told RFA.

“Those who are going out and are trying to get through check-points right now must have their reasons. You can’t penalize them,” he said, adding that the quota causes societal discontent, especially among the poor.

Another resident of the city, who declined to be named, told RFA that the people have no choice but to go out when they are running out of food. 

“The government says we only can go out with a reasonable excuse. They ask us to have certificates. For example, if you go to work, you’ll need a work permit. But how can you find certification for buying food or medicine? It’s really unfair to the poor!”

As of Wednesday, Vietnam has confirmed 35,409 COVID-19 cases with 132 deaths.

Cambodia seals border to Vietnamese workers

Cambodia said it will seal its borders to people affiliated with Vietnamese companies starting July 18 for one month.

In a letter issued to the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh, the foreign ministry said Vietnamese workers and technicians would not be allowed to enter Cambodia and those in Cambodia would not be allowed to return home.  The ministry said there would be an exception for Vietnamese patients seeking treatment in Vietnam, diplomats, and civil servants with cross-border duties.

UN representatives, meanwhile, asked Phnom Penh to revoke a sub-decree on compulsory Covid-19 vaccination or take measures to ensure its compliance with international human rights standards. The sub-decree forces civil servants and the military to get vaccinated.

The request came in a statement issued by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Vitit Muntarbhorn, and the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to be enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Tlaleng Mofokeng.

The Cambodian government has yet to respond to the statement, but Kata On, the spokesperson for Cambodia’s official Human Rights Committee told RFA’s Khmer Service Wednesday that the government does not have to respond to the inquiry because its measures are meant to curb the pandemic.

“We need to implement any measures that are useful for our society, so we don’t need to respond,” he said, but declined to explain why the government refuses to remove the vaccination order.

Local rights group ADHOC said forcing people, even public servants to vaccinate is illegal.

“We have seen people at all levels are motivated to get vaccines anyway, so even without this order, people will still want the vaccine,” he said.

The Ministry of Health on Wednesday said it confirmed 915 new COVID-19 cases and 33 deaths. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Cambodia has confirmed 63,615 cases and 986 deaths.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar, Vietnamese and Khmer Services. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane, Ye Kaung Myint Maung, Anna Vu and Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

The United States added its voice Wednesday to international calls pressing ASEAN to appoint a special envoy to Myanmar, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the regional bloc had to act urgently to resolve a post-coup crisis there.

Blinken’s call and a similar one made by the U.N. human rights chief last week came amid a nearly three-month delay in the Southeast Asian bloc’s appointment of an emissary, indicating that ASEAN’s role in resolving the crisis has been rendered ineffective, one analyst told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

During Blinken’s first meeting with his counterparts from the 10 member-states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the secretary “called on ASEAN to take joint action to urge the end of violence, the restoration of Burma’s democratic transition and the release of all those unjustly detained,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

“The secretary said that ASEAN’s five-point consensus is an important step forward and urged ASEAN to take immediate action to hold the Burmese regime accountable to the consensus and to appoint a special envoy.”

Blinken also stated that “the United States stands with Southeast Asian claimants” in the face of China’s “coercion” and “unlawful maritime claims” in the South China Sea.

At a special summit in Jakarta on April 24, ASEAN’s members adopted a five-point consensus on Myanmar, which included calling for the appointment of a special envoy to Myanmar and an immediate end to violence.

Among statements or transcripts of speeches issued Wednesday by the foreign offices of ASEAN members the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, only the one from the Philippines directly stated Manila’s support for appointing a special envoy to Myanmar. However, it did not urge more swift action on the appointment.

For his part, Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told the meeting: “Malaysia remains gravely concerned over the situation that has been unfolding over the recent months.”

“Malaysia reiterates our call for de-escalation of the situation in Myanmar as a matter of priority. We urge all parties to contribute to a conducive environment for national dialogue and reconciliation to take place,” he said.

ASEAN has been widely criticized for not appointing a special envoy amid reports of dissension within the bloc’s ranks, even as nearly 900 people have been killed during anti-junta protests by Burmese security forces since the military toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in a coup on Feb. 1.

Blinken’s comments were a strong message not only to ASEAN but to Myanmar as well, because the junta-appointed foreign minister was present at Wednesday’s video-meeting, said Hunter Marston, a researcher on Southeast Asia at the Australian National University.

“Blinken’s comments regarding Myanmar are significant because the junta-appointed Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin was also present at the meeting,” Marston told BenarNews.

“So the statement was a direct U.S. message to the junta and ASEAN counterparts that the U.S. supports stronger ASEAN action to restore Myanmar democracy.”

ASEAN’s failure to fully implement the consensus shows the members were wavering in their commitment to democracy in Myanmar, said Dinna Prapto Raharja, an international relations analyst at Synergy Policies, a Jakarta think-tank.

“In my opinion, ASEAN has lost the momentum on appointing a special envoy. That ship has passed,” Dinna told BenarNews.

ASEAN’s ‘democratic-authoritarian split’

ASEAN’s failure to appoint an envoy was likely caused by an internal split over which country’s nominee would get the post, Marston said.

“In my view, the holdup reflects divisions between ASEAN’s democratic bloc – Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore – and more authoritarian, military-ruled countries, namely Thailand,” he said.

Marston was referring to how Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, a former army chief who engineered his own coup in 2014, is said to be close to the Myanmar military.

Marston said the two main contenders for the envoy role were Hassan Wirajuda, a former Indonesian foreign minister and Virasakdi Futrakul, a former Thai deputy foreign minister. A former Malaysian human rights commission chief, Razali Ismail, is being considered as an alternative.

“The first two essentially mirror that democratic-authoritarian split, so indecision apparently revolves around whether to adopt kid gloves in dealing with the Myanmar military junta or taking a more ambitious, values-based approach in the form of Indonesia’s candidate for the job,” Marston said.

Syed Hamid Albar, chairman of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar and a former foreign minister, believes Indonesia’s Wirajuda should be ASEAN envoy to Myanmar.

“When Myanmar was transitioning to democracy [previously] it was trying to emulate the earlier Indonesian democratic model, and Hassan was involved in a number of workshops and seminars for democracy in Myanmar,” Hamid told BenarNews.

“He has access and is a very good diplomat and negotiator.”

Dinna of Synergy Policies said Indonesia should, of its own accord, take on a more prominent role on the Myanmar crisis resolution because it is a founding member of ASEAN and the region’s largest country.

“Basically, ASEAN can no longer be relied on in the case of Myanmar. Indonesia should take a bolder role because the other ASEAN countries will definitely not take that position, hence the impasse,” she said.

South China Sea

Meanwhile, the Philippines welcomed Blinken’s rejection of China’s expansive maritime claims in the contested South China Sea.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said he welcomed U.S. support for the 2016 verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that ruled in favor of the Philippines and against China’s vast claims to the waterway.

“It is binding international law and the most authoritative application of UNCLOS on the maritime entitlements of features in the South China Sea,” he said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

“As such, it contributes to the rules-based order in ASEAN and benefits all the countries that use the vital artery that is the South China Sea. The rest is bluster.”

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, while the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam – ASEAN members – and Taiwan have their own territorial claims.

Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to territorial disputes over the South China Sea, but Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the maritime region that overlap Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

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

The Philippines on Wednesday hailed Washington’s commitment to help defend Manila’s South China Sea claims, while it denied assertions by local fishermen that Chinese boats were preventing them from fishing in Philippine waters five years after a landmark court ruling.

A July 2016 verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines and against China over Beijing’s expansive claims in the contested waterway.

“[W]e welcome the United States’ open support for the 2016 Arbitral Award,” Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said after he and his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met virtually together with America’s top diplomat.

“It is binding international law and the most authoritative application of UNCLOS on the maritime entitlements of features in the South China Sea. As such, it contributes to the rules-based order in ASEAN and benefits all the countries that use the vital artery that is the South China Sea,” he said in a statement, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Wednesday’s talks marked the first bilateral meeting with ASEAN at the foreign ministerial level for U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Biden administration.

“The Secretary underscored the United States’ rejection of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea and reiterated that the United States stands with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of PRC coercion,” State Department Spokesman Ned Price said in a readout afterward.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam – which are all ASEAN members – and Taiwan.

On Monday, the fifth anniversary of the arbitral court’s ruling, China’s foreign ministry dismissed it as “nothing more than a piece of waste paper.”

That same day, Blinken came out with a statement to say that Washington, under the 70-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty with Manila, would help defend its longtime Southeast Asian ally if the Philippines came under attack in the South China Sea.

Fishermen unload an overnight catch of fish near a “payao” – a fish aggregating device – in Infanta, northern Philippines, May 27, 2021. [Jojo Riñoza/BenarNews]

Meanwhile, Filipino fishermen are alleging that the Rodrigo Duterte administration has not helped them to assert their rights to fish in and around Scarborough Shoal, a reef located in a prime fishing ground in the waterway.

The shoal was part of a territorial dispute that led a previous Philippine administration to lodge an unprecedented lawsuit before the court in 2013 that challenged China’s vast claims to the sea region. Both Manila and Beijing claim the reef as their own. Scarborough Shoal is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

On Wednesday, Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque rejected allegations by fishermen who say that Chinese coast-guard ships have been harassing or preventing Filipino fishing boats from venturing near Scarborough Shoal. China seized the reef in 2012, which led to the Philippines filing the lawsuit the next year.

On July 12, 2016, the arbitration court ruled in Manila’s favor, declaring its sovereign rights to the EEZ as valid over Beijing’s historical claims.

Roque on Wednesday invited the mayor of Masinloc, a northern Philippine fishing town that faces the South China Sea, to attend his video-call with reporters to back his claim that Filipino fishermen have not been blocked from accessing waters around the shoal.

“This is what the leadership there says, and even the boat operators – they are not prevented from fishing in Scarborough, because that is part of the decision of the tribunal,” Roque told reporters.

“So, I really do not know what they are saying that fishermen are being stopped.”

Neither the Philippine Coast Guard nor Masinloc officials knew of any fishermen who had been harassed by Chinese ships, Roque said.

“Do not worry, when it comes to Scarborough, I don’t think that the Chinese will dare meddle with the likes of Mayor Senyang Lim,” he said, using Masinloc mayor Arsenia Lim’s nickname.

Lim alleged that recent international media reports that Chinese ships were harassing or hindering Filipino fishing boats were old stories. She said fishermen had told her their catch from Scarborough Shoal’s waters had been bountiful.

“We hope that they will stop discrediting us, and the national government is also supporting our fishermen,” Lim told reporters.

“If you go to Masinloc, you will see that they are not being bothered or being stopped.”

‘Our national sovereignty’

BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, was among international media outlets that visited Masinloc and talked to the fishermen in the days leading up to the fifth anniversary of the international arbitral ruling.

In spite of the verdict, Scarborough Shoal has remained inaccessible to Filipino fishermen since 2012, they said.

President Duterte’s government “has completely turned its back on our national sovereignty,” Pamalakaya, a fishermen’s group, told BenarNews in response to Roque’s statement.

On Wednesday, a BBC News producer sent Roque a text message as the government spokesman was holding the press briefing, and told him that they were recently with fishermen from Masinloc who were blocked from entering the shoal. 

BenarNews also sent Roque a message asking him if the Chinese were still in the area.

He replied: “They have ships there, I believe.”

The fishermen were scathing about Roque, who had represented them in his earlier career as a lawyer.

“Our own government’s cowardice and submission to China will not stop us from asserting what is rightfully ours,” Pamalakaya head Fernando Hicap told BenarNews.

“We no longer expect help from the current administration of Duterte. We will fight for our right to fish in our territory.”

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

Six years after the death in a Chinese prison of a popular Tibetan religious teacher, fair treatment under the law is still being denied to Tibetans living under Beijing’s rule, experts say.

Tulku Tenzin Delek, 65, died under mysterious circumstances on July 12, 2015 while serving a life sentence following what rights groups and supporters called a wrongful conviction on a charge of bombing a public square in Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu in April 2002.

Widely respected among Tibetans for his efforts to protect Tibetan culture and the environment, he was initially sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

An assistant, Lobsang Dondrub, was executed almost immediately, prompting an outcry from rights activists who questioned the fairness of the trial.

It is clear that Tulku Tenzin Delek’s death in Chinese custody was due to ill treatment by the authorities, said Dharamsala, India-based researcher Tenzin Dawa of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, speaking to RFA in an interview.

“And to hide the violations, they refused to hand over the Rinpoche’s body to his family,” Tenzin Dawa said, referring to Tulku Tenzin Delek by an honorific reserved for the most highly regarded spiritual teachers.

“We consider that the detainment, sentencing, and death of Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche was completely illegal,” she said.

Tulku Tenzin Delek’s niece Nyima Lhamo, now living in the U.S. after escaping from Tibet in August 2016, said she believes that Tulku Tenzin Delek died in Chinese custody after authorities “poisoned him after treating him badly in prison.”

Family members, friends, and students are still suffering and cannot openly mourn his loss, she said, adding that the stories of other Tibetans still suffering under Chinese rule should be made better known to the world outside Tibet.

One, a Tibetan writer named Lobsang Lhundup who goes by the pen name Dhi Lhaden, was arrested in Chengdu on unspecified charges two years ago and has not yet been brought to trial, with family members still kept in the dark about his fate, sources told RFA in earlier reports.

Two others, a Tibetan woman named Lhamo and a man named Tharpa, were detained in June 2020 after sending money to family members in India, with Lhamo dying two months later of injuries received in custody, sources said.

Writers, singers, and artists promoting Tibetan national identity and the use of the Tibetan language have frequently been detained by Chinese authorities, with many handed long jail terms, following protests that swept Tibet and Tibetan areas of China in 2008.

No signs of improving

Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche should have never been in detention at all, let alone ill-treated and denied adequate medical care, said Sophie Richardson, China Director for the New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch.

“The fact that just a few years later we are writing about additional monks who have been given incredibly harsh sentences, 19 to 20 years for perfectly legal behavior, shows there is no let-up in the Chinese authorities’ denial of the right to a fair trial.”

“I think that anyone who wants to have confidence in the Chinese legal system has to consider cases like Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche’s, as they are not anomalies. The Chinese government has shown no signs of improving,” Richardson said.

Tulku Tenzin Delek’s case has now been raised by Tibetan NGOs and rights groups in many different forums and has helped call further attention to the lack of fair trials and other human rights for Tibetans living in Tibet, said Rinzin Choedon, director of the India chapter of Students For a Free Tibet.

“Many of their stories are still unknown to us,” Rinzin Choedon said.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the region, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity, and subjecting Tibetans to persecution, torture, imprisonment, and extrajudicial killings.

Reported by Lobsang Gelek for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Phakdon. Story contribution by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.