Day: July 21, 2021

Two malnourished North Korean prisoners died in recent weeks, one dropping dead at work and the other beaten to death because she was too weak to do labor, said sources in the country who said coronavirus bans on family visits stopped inmates from supplementing meagre diets.

Prisoners are made to work all day and fed starvation rations, resulting in severe weight loss due to malnourishment, and eventual death by starvation.

“A male prisoner in his 50s collapsed and died while pulling weeds from a rice paddy last week,” a resident of South Pyongan province, near the North Korean capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service July 16.

“Most prisoners are severely malnourished because the food they get these days is so little that it leaves them starving,” a said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

According to the South Pyogan source the man in his 50s was incarcerated at one of the country’s most notorious prisons, Prison No. 11 in Chungsan, where he toiled daily and was fed only 100 grams of boiled corn – a meal that provides 96 calories.

“Most prisoners have collapsed from malnutrition after the prison banned outside visitation due to the coronavirus. Before the pandemic, prisoners’ family members were allowed to visit them once a month and feed them more nutritious food. They were barely surviving then,” said the South Pyongan source.

“But now that family visits are banned, the prisoners are working hard to remove the weeds with their extremely emaciated bodies,” the South Pyongan source said.

If the prisoners skip work due to illness or fatigue, they miss out on their 100 grams of corn, so most never stop working regardless of how sick or tired they are, the South Pyongan source said.

“When it rains and they can’t work, the prisoners lie in their cells all day as if they were dead. With only bones and skin left, they are just breathing, and they look as miserable as dead bodies,” said the source.

“Prison No. 11 is one of the most notorious in the country. The prisoners are dying from hunger and overwork, but they and their families have no way to complain about it anywhere.”

Another source, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, told RFA that a security officer beat a 31-year-old detainee to death in pre-trial detention in the provincial capital Chongjin.

“The woman who died was sent to a pre-trial detention center for watching a South Korean movie,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

“She became so malnourished and weak that she did not move as quickly as directed and she was beaten to death by the security agent,” the second source said.

She had been caught two months earlier in a sweeping ideological crackdown under the recently passed Reactionary Idea and Culture Law, according to the North Hamgyong source.

“The security agent who killed her was a 24-year-old recruit who just graduated from the Political University and was newly assigned to the detention center,” the North Hamgyong source said.

“The woman’s body was buried in a nearby hill, and the security agent who killed her continues to work without having been punished. Nearby residents and detainees at the detention center are furious.”

The Seoul-based Korea Joongang Daily noted that the Reactionary Idea and Culture Law did not precisely define which acts and ideas could be called “reactionary” when it was passed in Dec. 2020.

RFA reported last week that the government made a list of reactionary activities, including what one source described as minor acts that authorities formerly tolerated.

According to the U.S. State Department’s 2019 human rights report, estimates of the North Korean prison population range between 80,000 and 120,000. This figure includes estimates for political prison camps, the existence of which North Korea denies.

A 2012 report by the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) said North Koreans who are sent to the various levels of the penal system–sometimes for very arbitrary reasons–endure brutal interrogations that include torture.

In addition to forced labor and starvation, they could be subject to torture, murder, extermination, rape… and “other inhumane acts committed knowingly in a systematic and widespread manner by state police agents operating on behalf of the state authority,” the report said.U.N Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights Tomás Ojea Quintana warned in a report in March that the closure of the Sino-Korean border and restrictions on the movement of people could bring on a “serious food crisis.”

“Deaths by starvation have been reported, as has an increase in the number of children and elderly people who have resorted to begging as families are unable to support them,” said the report.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in a recent report that North Korea would be short about 860,000 tons of food this year, about two months of normal demand.

Reported by Jieun Kim. Translated by Jinha Shin. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

A court in Cambodia has added new anti-government conspiracy charges against three environmental activists who already are serving jail terms of up to 20 months for incitement convictions, in a move that could keep them in prison for 10 years, their lawyer said Wednesday.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court added the charges against Mother Nature Cambodia activists Long Kunthea, Phuon Keoraksmey, and Thun Ratha on Monday after investigation judge Im Vannak covertly brought each of them into the court for questioning without the presence of an attorney, said their lawyer Sam Chamroeun.

The trio now faces an additional sentence of at least 10 years each if convicted on the conspiracy charge.

On May 5, the three activists were sentenced on incitement charges related to protests against forest and water projects, along with Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, a Spanish national and founder of Mother Nature Cambodia, who was convicted in absentia after being expelled from the country and denied re-entry. Human rights groups have condemned the verdicts.

In June, Gonzalez-Davidson was charged by the same court with plotting against and insulting the country’s king when authorities arrested three of his Mother Nature colleagues — Sun Ratha, Yim Leanghy, and Ly Chandaravuth — who were placed in pretrial detention.

RFA could not reach Im Vannak for comment Wednesday.

Thun Ratha’s wife, Bat Raksmey, told RFA that it was unjust for the court to charge her husband and the two others with a crime because they were working to protect the environment for the sake of society. She said the court is a rubber-stamp institution.

“To be honest, the law is being used based on one person’s mouth,” she said. “This is not the rule of law because insofar as they have worked to protect the environment, the court has incorrectly charged them with ‘conspiracy’ instead. There is no justice for my husband.”

Long Kunthea’s sister, Long Soklin, told RFA on Wednesday that her sibling was not plotting against the government.

“The conspiracy charge is very unjust,” she said. “They are [the court] hiding information about the new charge. They led them to the court in secret. What evidence did they have?”

“They were protecting the environment and not illegal loggers,” she said, noting that the government doesn’t hesitate to arrest environmentalists while it fails to arrest illegal loggers in Prey Long, a 3,600-square-kilometer (1,390-square-mile) nature reserve forest in northern Cambodia.

Long Soklin said she is concerned about her sister’s well-being in prison, where she’s been for more than a year, and that she has sent her food and money.

Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), an organizations that promotes and protects political and civil rights in the Southeast Asian nation, said the new charges against the activists are groundless and will seriously affect their ability to have a fair trial.

“These individuals are being detained on charges already, and now the court has added another charge. It will affect their ability to get fair trials,” she said, noting that they are having difficulty accessing their attorney on the conspiracy charge.

Chak Sopheap said that the new charge is intended to send a message to other environmentalists that protecting environment will be punished — contrary to the government’s commitment to preserve its natural resources.

“The authorities should stop persecuting and labeling activists who don’t work for their benefit but for the sake of Cambodia’s natural resources,” she said.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

China has employed a heavy-handed campaign this week to co-opt a Muslim holiday celebrated by Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, with staged displays of happy, dancing ethnic minorities and interviews to counter accusations of widespread rights abuses in the region, Uyghur exiles said.

Many of the 12 million Muslims in the XUAR this week are celebrating Eid al-Adha, also known as Qurban Eid (in Chinese, Gurban), that honors the willingness of the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son. Muslims mark the period with prayers and dancing and by slaughtering goats, sheep, cows, or camels.

On Tuesday, Chinese officials organized a Qurban Eid news conference in the XUAR’s capital Urumqi featuring five Uyghurs from Urumchi (Wulumuqi) and the cities of Turpan (Tulufan), Aksu (Akesu), and Kashgar (Kashi), to talk about the Eid holidays and their purportedly happy lives.

“For us, every day of our happy life is a holiday!” said participant Ablikim Erkin from Toqsun (Tuokesun) county in Turpan prefecture, according to a report by Xinjiang Daily, an official publication of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Xinjiang Committee.

“As Xinjiang people, we should cherish the unity of all ethnic groups just like we take care of our eyes,” said another participant, Yasinjan Elik from Aksu. “All ethnic groups should stick together like the seeds of a pomegranate.”

The pomegranate simile has been an official CCP slogan since XUAR Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo was appointed to run the region in August 2016.

Among a string of harsh policies attacking Uyghur rights, freedoms, culture, and religious practices, Chen set up a network of internment camps that have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities since early 2017.

China says the camps are vocational training centers meant to combat religious extremism and terrorism in the region, but reporting by RFA and other outlets has shown that inmates are subject to political indoctrination and serious human rights abuses and often drafted for forced labor when their incarceration is over.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on several top Chinese officials deemed responsible for violations in the XUAR, including Chen, marking the first time Washington sanctioned a member of China’s powerful Politburo.

The U.S. and other democracies have said that China’s harsh crackdown on the Uyghurs amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.

Tuesday’s official holiday news conference also featured video links to live footage of Uyghurs in Aksu and Hotan (Hetian) celebrating the Eid holiday.

A separate video on a government-controlled website shows Uyghur Muslims dancing to celebrate the Qurban Eid holiday in Kashgar.

‘They’re all lies’

Qelbinur Sidik, who taught Chinese at internment camps for nearly two years, dismissed the press conference as “Chinese propaganda” aimed at trying to show that Uyghurs enjoy religious freedom.

“They’re all lies,” she said about the participants’ comments, adding that Uyghurs in the XUAR have not been able to celebrate Ramadan or Eid al-Adha since the arrival of Chen Quanguo five years ago.

“They closed down all mosques and destroyed many of them,” she told RFA. “They never allowed anybody to enter them for prayer. Whenever someone from the outside came to visit, local police changed clothes and went to the mosques as worshippers.”

Qelbinur, an ethnic Uzbek teacher from Urumqi, provided witness testimony on unsanitary conditions in the camps and evidence of rape, forced sterilization, and the forced medication of Uyghurs at the Uyghur Tribunal in London. The independent people’s tribunal is investigating whether China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in amounts to genocide.

People are seen dancing during Eid al-Adha only when outside inspectors visit the International Grand Bazaar in Urumchi, Qelbinur said.

“The male dancers are police officers, and the female ones are cadres from local residential areas,” she said. “Some even told us that they get paid 100 yuan [U.S. $15] for dancing one day at the International Grand Bazaar.”

“Now they’re saying that Uyghurs went to the mosque, held Eid prayers, and slaughtered lambs,” Qelbinur said. “These are all staged performances.”

Ilshat Hassan, China committee chairman of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said that officials held the press conference in response to pressure on China from the international community over the Uyghur issue.

“China’s putting on a show for Qurban Eid under international pressure,” he said. “We’re in fact watching a forced theater of tragedy, but the days of China fooling the world are over.”

‘No hesitation in liquidating Uyghur culture’

On Wednesday, BuzzFeed News published a report detailing the massive volume of detention space built by China in the XUAR.

After calculating the floor areas of 347 compounds appearing to be prisons and internment camps, the report compared them to China’s own prison and detention construction standards to determine the amount of space needed for each inmate.

The report found that the compounds are spacious enough to hold more than 1 million people, or one in every 25 residents of the XUAR simultaneously — a figure that is seven times higher than the imprisonment capacity of the U.S., the country with the highest official incarceration rate in the world.

Author and columnist Gordon Chang told RFA that the report substantiates that the scale of atrocities in the XUAR is much larger than what most people thought.

“This report suggests that the number of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others who have been detained in these facilities is far greater than previously estimated, and clearly Beijing has shown no hesitation in liquidating Uyghur culture through committing crimes against humanity in these camps,” he said.

Reported by Nuriman Abdurashid and Mihray Abral for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Authorities in Vietnam have yet to set a trial date for two land rights activists detained more than a year ago for their criticism of the government in a high-profile land dispute, members of their family told RFA.

Trinh Ba Phuong and Nguyen Thi Tam, of the capital Hanoi’s Duong Noi district, were arrested June 24, 2020 on charges of propagandizing against the state for posting online articles and livestreaming videos critical of the government’s brutal response to a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of the city.

Phuong’s mother Can Thi Theu and brother Trinh Ba Tu were also arrested that day on the same charges and sentenced on May 5 to eight years in prison and three years on probation each on the charge of “creating, storing, disseminating anti-State materials.”

Phuong and Tam remain in pre-trial detention.

“My husband’s lawyer Luan Le met him on July 20, and told me Phuong was healthy,” Do Thi Thu, wife of Trinh Ba Phuong, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service Wednesday.

“The lawyer also said that my husband had maintained his right to silence from the time he was arrested until speaking with him,” she said.

The family has not received any information about the schedule of Phuong’s trial, though Hanoi Police concluded investigation into his case on June 15.

Phuong and Tam were both arrested by Hanoi Police for “disseminating anti-State materials.” Tam’s family told RFA that she had also met with her lawyer, but they have no information on her trial date either.

Trinh Thu Thao, the daughter of Can Thi Theu, told RFA that Theu and her son Trinh Ba Tu are still in solitary confinement at a detention center in nearby Hoa Binh province. RFA previously reported that Thao had learned they were placed in solitary confinement about two weeks ago.

The report also said that the mother and son have also been refused family visits since their trial, but authorities did not explain why.

Lawyers for the mother and son visited the detention center on July 8, where staff told them that their solitary confinement was in accordance with orders from the Sentence Enforcement Department.

Can Thi Theu has been imprisoned twice previously, in 2014 and in 2016, for opposing the government’s transfer of land in Duong Noi to private companies.

Dong Tam incident

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.

In an earlier flare up of the Dong Tam dispute that goes back to 1980, farmers detained 38 police officers and local officials during a weeklong standoff in April 2017. Three months later, the Hanoi Inspectorate rejected the farmer’s claims that 47 hectares (116 acres) of their farmland was seized for the military-run Viettel Group—Vietnam’s largest mobile phone operator—without adequate compensation.

While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation.

International organizations have voiced concern about the Dong Tam case, calling on the Vietnamese government to hold an independent and transparent investigation.

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 Eugene Whong.

Asia cannot afford to go to war over territorial rivalries in the South China Sea, the Philippines Defense Secretary said Wednesday ahead of a visit by his new U.S. counterpart to Southeast Asia next week.

Delfin Lorenzana is expected to discuss South China Sea-related issues when he and American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin meet in Manila on July 29 and 30 after Austin visits Singapore and Vietnam, the first trip to the region by a top official in the Biden administration.

“[E]ven if there are intensifying exercises between the U.S. and its allies in the region, I do not believe that this is in preparation for war over the South China Sea,” Lorenzana said, referring to recent naval maneuvers in the disputed waterway.

“For one simple reason: that there are major trade [routes] coming from China, and according to the World Bank, more than U.S. $6 trillion worth of goods pass [through] that place, [in the] South China Sea every year,” Lorenzana said.

He was speaking during a forum previewing next week’s State of the Nation address by President Rodrigo Duterte. It will be the Philippine commander-in-chief’s last annual speech to Congress before his term expires in 2022.

Manila and Washington are bound by a 70-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), which calls on both parties to come to each other’s military aid if one of the two longtime allies comes under attack.

“There is a provision in the MDT that an attack to one is considered an attack to the other,” Lorenzana said.

The Philippines, Lorenzana said, would abide by the treaty even though invocating it in any degree would have to pass through the legislature “before we participate in any conflict in the South China Sea.” 

On July 12 – the fifth anniversary of a landmark international arbitral court ruling that went in Manila’s favor and rejected China’s territorial claims in the waterway – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that Washington would invoke the mutual treaty if Philippine military or civilian ships or aircraft were attacked in the South China Sea.

That same day, China’s foreign ministry dismissed the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration as “a piece of waste paper.”

On Monday, Austin tweeted about his upcoming Asian trip.

“Strong alliances & partnerships are key to supporting a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. That’s why I’m visiting Singapore, Vietnam, & the Philippines,” he said via Twitter.

Both the U.S. and rival superpower China are competing for influence among countries in Southeast Asia.

“Throughout his trip, Secretary Austin will meet with key leaders to reaffirm defense relationships and conduct bilateral meetings with senior officials. Secretary Austin’s visit will demonstrate the importance the Biden-Harris Administration places on Southeast Asia,” Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said in a statement Monday.

In the Philippines, Hermogenes Esperon, Duterte’s national security adviser, emphasized that the government would not stop in protecting its “territorial integrity.” 

“We continue to optimize the deployment of all our assets to protect our maritime domain, and allow our fishermen unhampered fishing access to our fishing grounds,” Esperon said during the same forum on Wednesday. 

The military, coast guard and maritime police have been providing support to fishermen as well as marine scientists studying the sea region, according to Philippine defense and security officials.

The Philippines occupies nine islands and areas in the South China Sea, the largest of which is Pag-asa (Thitu) Island, where the military has been constructing an improved airstrip and port. The Philippines, meanwhile, has complained about the presence of scores of Chinese ships – including ones that Manila described as Chinese militia boats – in waters inside its exclusive economic zone.

Visiting Forces Agreement

Lorenza said he expected to discuss the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) along with the MDA and other South China Sea concerns with Austin.

Duterte ordered the VFA repealed in February 2020 because he was angered by a Washington decision to bar his former national police chief – the top enforcer of his administration’s war on drugs that has led to thousands of deaths – from traveling to the United States. 

In the face of China’s continued aggression in the region, Lorenzana and other foreign policy officials prevailed on Duterte to reconsider and allow an extension of the pact that would expire this year. 

The VFA, signed in 1998, provides legal cover for large-scale joint military exercises between Washington and Manila.

On Wednesday, Lorenzana said the VFA would not be scrapped, although certain provisions would have to be amended.

“I am confident that this will be signed under President Duterte,” he said. 

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

Police were out in force at Yuen Long MTR station on the second anniversary of a mob attack on train passengers there at the height of the 2019 protest movement, as one victim of the attacks told RFA they are still waiting for justice.

As shoppers and train passengers bustled through the station on Wednesday, there was scant suggestion beyond the police presence that anything violent had happened there.

But for one woman who gave only her surname, Cheng, the memories of her husband’s beating at the hands of the attackers have yet to fade.

“I saw a group of vicious men wearing white use their weapons on ordinary people,” she recalled. “But there wasn’t so much as a single police officer or MTR staff member present at the time.”

“We will only be able to forgive, and to let go of our grievances, and move on, when justice has been done,” she told RFA.

Pro-democracy members of the District Council, who were returned in a landslide victory for the opposition camp after months of protests against the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s growing interference in the day-to-day running of Hong Kong, were keen to get to the bottom of the attacks, which many suspect were carried out at the instigation of pro-China groups, while the Hong Kong police looked the other way.

But two years after they set up a committee to probe the incident, 21 pro-democracy politicians have resigned from Yuen Long’s District Council amid concerns they will be disqualified for “insincere” oaths of allegiance and required to pay back salary received while in post.

The district councilors who formed the investigative committee ran into obstructions at every turn, according to committee member Hermine Chan.

Security law scares witnesses

She said the CCP’s imposition of a draconian national security law banning public criticism of the government had affected people’s willingness to come forward with information, for fear of reprisals at a later date.

“We appealed to some local residents who were attacked to come forward with evidence, and some of them did share some of their photos and videos [of the attacks],” Chan told RFA.

“But when it came to establishing the exact details of what was shown in them, they were unwilling to say more, and didn’t always give us that information,” she said.

“It was impossible for us to reconstruct what happened from photos and videos alone, with no context or narrative attached to them,” Chan said.

Later, Ng Kin-wai, who chaired the investigation, was arrested for “subversion” under the national security law for taking part in a democratic primary in the summer of 2020, and the group fell apart, she said.

“We have lost our sense of where to go next, and it’s unclear how we can find out what actually happened now,” Chan said.

She said the arrest and fining of TV producer Bao Choy for carrying out license plate searches as part of her independent investigation into the Yuen Long attacks had given the councillors pause.

“Now that a journalist has been prosecuted for carrying out a thorough investigation into the incident, we are reviewing what to do next, and looking at the legal implications,” Chan said. “I never thought it would be this hard.”

Another committee member who gave only the nickname T said it effectively no longer exists, and the official narrative has tried to twist the incident into a melee between rival groups.

‘Who Owns the Truth?’

The anniversary came as the independent platform Stand News reported that there were a number of pro-China figures on the streets of Yuen Long as dozens of white-shirted mobsters burst into the MTR station and mall area, attacking passers-by in the main concourse and beating up train passengers.

While 63 people were arrested at the time, only seven people have been convicted of “rioting” or other offenses linked to the attacks so far, the report said.

Bao Choy’s documentary for government broadcaster RTHK showed how police were present as baton-wielding men in white T-shirts began to gather in Yuen Long ahead of the bloody attack on passengers and passers-by, was arrested at her home.

She was arrested on suspicion of road traffic violations relating to vehicle registration searches used in the program, and later fined by a court.

The Hong Kong Connection TV documentary titled “7.21 Who Owns the Truth?” showed clips from surveillance cameras at shops in Yuen Long and interviewed people who were identified in the footage.

Its airing forced police to admit that they already had a presence in the town, but did nothing to prevent the attack, following initial denials.

Thirty-nine minutes elapsed between the first emergency calls to the final arrival of police at the Yuen Long MTR station, where dozens of people were already injured, and many were in need of hospital treatment.

Pro-government lawmaker Junius Ho was filmed shaking hands with white-clad men in Yuen Long on the night of the attack.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.