Day: July 23, 2021

Several political prisoners staged a rare protest at Myanmar’s notorious Insein Prison on Friday demanding that authorities grant their freedom, days after the ruling military junta announced an emergency COVID-19 amnesty for inmates charged with all minor crimes except defamation.

The prisoners of conscience began their demonstration early in the morning and could be heard singing pro-democracy songs in unison, as well as calling for the release of detained National League for Democracy (NLD) leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint. Their singing could be heard well outside the walls of the prison in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon.

A lawyer representing the inmates cited prison staff as saying that the protesters had made three demands.

“The first demand is to free political prisoners charged under [Penal Code] 505 (a) [for ‘state defamation’], as inmates with minor criminal cases and drug offenders have had their charges dropped in recent days,” the lawyer told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

“The second demand is to provide adequate and proper medical treatment to those who have been ill. ‘Sickness is rampant, but treatment is inadequate,’ they said. The last one is to relax [new] restrictions … for inmates on items sent from families which have made life extremely hard.”

Witnesses told RFA that six military trucks arrived at Insein Prison after the protest erupted and that security at the facility was tightened.

The protest came three days after the junta’s July 20 order to release all prisoners held under a group of 11 charges that include gambling, possession of illicit liquor, drugs, and prostitution. The release, which the military said had been granted to protect against the spread of COVID-19, drew criticism for omitting detainees who had spoken out against the junta’s Feb. 1 coup d’état.

Myanmar is struggling with a devastating third wave of COVID-19 infections, the number of which rose Friday to a total of 258,870 since the country’s first recorded case in March last year. The official monthly infection rate has jumped from around two percent of those tested in April 2020 during the first wave to 23 percent earlier this month, and at least 6,459 have died in the country, including more than 2,200 in the first three weeks of July alone.

Meanwhile, the country’s hospitals are operating at maximum capacity and turning away all but the most seriously ill. Others must settle for treatment at home, but shortages have left families scrambling to secure basic medical supplies, including the oxygen they need to keep their loved ones alive.

Efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 in Myanmar were dealt a serious blow when the country’s military seized power on Feb. 1, claiming that a landslide victory by the NLD in the country’s November 2020 ballot was the result of voter fraud.

The junta has provided no evidence to back up its claims and has violently responded to widespread protests, killing 931 people and arresting 5,358, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

Tens of thousands of people, including many healthcare professionals, have left their jobs to join a nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) in opposition to junta rule.

Brutal punishments

Soe Yar Zar Tun, a freelance journalist who was released from Insein Prison at the end of June, said he fears for the safety of the political prisoners in Insein, as the junta could use force against them.

“Even in normal times, we have to obey [prison authorities] to the letter. If they say sit, we sit. If they say get up, we get up. If not, they would come in and curse and hit you,” he said.

“And now, they have brought in soldiers and I’m sure they would use force to subdue [the protesters]. I don’t know how many will be injured. I’m worried some might get killed.”

Zeyar Lwin, who is helping prisoners’ families send letters to their loved ones, told RFA that the protesters face punishments including beatings and being sent to “dog kennels,” or extremely cramped enclosures, for days at a time.

“They are only provided with a very small amount of food and water and won’t even be let out for a bath,” he said.

“Those who led the protest would be beaten brutally. The junta does a lot of bad things outside of the prisons, but you can’t even imagine what they might do inside.”

Other punishments could include a lockdown in the prison that would make it more difficult to receive letters or foodstuffs from family members, or tighter restrictions when prisoners are taken for court appearances.

As of Friday, protesters were negotiating with prison officials, but had yet to come to an agreement.

A retired prison official who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity said the protests could spread to other prison blocks or prisons if the demands of the political prisoners are not addressed.

Calls for release

The AAPP, in an emergency statement on Friday, said anti-military slogans and political songs were heard from the women’s dormitory at Insein Prison at around 8:00 a.m., suggesting the protest had spread to other cells throughout the facility.

In September 1990, six political prisoners were killed and 40 were taken to the hospital in Insein Prison after a brutal crackdown on protesters led by prison officials.

The AAPP has called on international governments to put pressure on the junta to prevent a massacre in prisons by the authorities.

An AAPP spokesman told RFA that the political prisoners should be released because of the worsening COVID-19 situation.

“Covid infections are very high inside the prison. These people shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place and now there’s even more of a reason for them to be released,” said the spokesperson, who declined to provide their name.

“They were sent to prison and it’s wrong that they weren’t provided adequate care. These are political prisoners, and it is as if they are using other inmates as weapons to systematically kill them.”

The embassies of Australia, Canada, and 13 EU member states have called for a peaceful solution and urged the authorities to ensure good health care for all detainees in prisons out of respect for fundamental human rights.

Phyu Phyu Thin, Secretary of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Representative Committee, CRPH, also wrote a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross Friday urging the International Red Cross (ICRC) to address the plight of political prisoners in accordance with international ethics.

Repeated attempts to contact the director of Insein Prison by RFA went unanswered Friday.

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

Tom Andrews, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, recently warned that a steep increase in the number of COVID-19 cases during a third wave of the coronavirus coupled with the public mistrust of the junta following its Feb. 1 coup d’état had created “a perfect storm of factors that could cause a significant loss of life in Myanmar.” 

In an interview with RFA’s Myanmar Service on Thursday, he said the crisis will not end until the junta ends its attacks on healthcare professionals, and he called on the international community to exert more pressure on the military. He said there has been an “exponential increase” in cases of COVID-19 in the Southeast Asian nation since the latest outbreak began in May.

RFA: What is your opinion of the situation in Myanmar right now?

Andrews: There’s very, very deep concern within the United Nations about conditions in Myanmar. Needless to say, there’s been an explosion of COVID cases. We’re still unclear exactly what the count is of people that have been infected or people who have succumbed to the disease, but we know that there has been a significant increase, almost an exponential increase in the number of cases. And so, it is a very dangerous situation and we’re very deeply concerned about what’s going on in Myanmar right now. 

RFA: Are you positive that the junta will allow the U.N. and international NGOs to come in and provide assistance in Myanmar?

Andrews: Well, that’s the key question right now. I mean obviously, the junta will play the most decisive role in terms of stopping, of preventing, the care, the support and the help that the people of Myanmar desperately need. I mean let’s face it, the best thing that could possibly happen would be for [junta chief] Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and the military junta to stand down for a civilian government, a legitimate government to be immediately reinstated so that this emergency response to this crisis could go on.

Since the coup, all of that [prevention and vaccine roll out by the civilian government] has collapsed. We know that the healthcare system as a whole has collapsed since the coup. So that’s been just simply a disaster. That’s the only way to put it.  

Short of stepping down, the next step would be for the junta to at least agree to stop attacking doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. These attacks continue as I speak. And the fact is, you can’t attack COVID-19 and attack doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. All hands have to be on deck, and as long as the junta continues this extraordinarily destructive path, then there’s really not going to be the kind of help and support for the people of Myanmar that the people of Myanmar desperately need and deserve.

So, I think what has to happen, frankly, is for those interlocutors or potential interlocutors who have the ear of the junta, those who have a direct interest in stopping COVID to speak with the junta and appeal to them to at least take the minimal steps that would be required to stop this disaster from getting any worse. And the first step of that, of course, is to stop attacking those who are providing health care or could be providing health care to the people of Myanmar in their hour of desperate need.

Pressure needed

RFA: You are calling for an emergency coalition for Myanmar from the United Nations with U.N. member states, so how far does that go? What kind of action can we expect from that coalition in the near future?

Andrews: Well, an emergency coalition is, I think, important. I continue to call for it and encourage countries to consider it. There are two major areas that I think it could have a significant impact on. One, of course, is in confronting this healthcare crisis—nations coming together in a very coordinated and focused way to provide for the extraordinary needs that exist right now within Myanmar and working together to try to create the conditions necessary for that aid to get through.

Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and his generals are not going to end this horrible reign of terror because they wake up one day and realize they’ve made a terrible mistake. They’re only going to do this when there is the requisite pressure, when they feel that there is no alternative but to stand down. And that is exactly what we have to focus on.

The suffering that the people of Myanmar are suffering through, it’s hard to imagine. The hopelessness that’s being felt. I’ve spoken to people in the country. I know that there are people who are losing their families. I understand just the horrific conditions that are being confronted by the people of Myanmar and I’m so deeply, deeply sorry for what is happening to you. And I’m just so amazed at the courage and the tenacity of the people of Myanmar, dealing with this crisis and standing up as best as they can against this military junta. 

The international response to this crisis is painfully slow. And I want you to know that that there are those of us who are working very, very hard and focusing as much energy and attention as possible to move the international community forward as directly and as powerfully as possible. So please know that we are with you, that we will continue to work with you and that this crisis that you are facing, you are not facing it alone. And I fully understand the suffering and the frustration that is being felt by the people of Myanmar. And I’m sorry that it is taking as long as it’s taking, but we will persevere.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service.

A court in central Cambodia’s Kampong Speu province has detained a former opposition party council member who recently returned from Thailand, sending her to prison following her arrest without a warrant on Friday, Cambodian sources said.

Kem Tola, a former commune council member for the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was held overnight at the provincial police station before being turned over to the Kampong Speu Provincial Court and put into detention, her sister Kem Sitha told RFA.

“I want her to have her freedom back,” Kem Sitha said, adding that Kem Tola does not yet have a lawyer and that police have not provided any details of charges made against her.

“She returned to Cambodia after having already said she has retired from politics. She returned to Thailand to start a business,” she said.

Kem Tola had been tried in absentia in April and sentenced to a year in prison on a charge of “incitement” after she and other activists had gathered for a meal and posted comments on Facebook supporting the return to Cambodia of CNRP acting president Sam Rainsy, who now lives in self-imposed exile in Paris.

She had fled to Thailand in 2019 after being summoned for questioning over her online posts, but decided to return after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen appealed to CNRP activists living abroad to come back, promising them amnesty if they returned.

No warning was given of her arrest when she came back, Kem Sitha said, adding that local authorities had instead approached Kem Tola to urge her to defect to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). Kem Tola refused, though, saying that she wanted only to live a normal life and support her aging parents, she said.

Afraid of losing power

Klaing Bun Lai, a senior CNRP activist now living in Thailand, said that Kem Tola had been arrested because Hun Sen is afraid once again of losing power following the recent announcement by Sam Rainsy of a plan to form a new shadow government, citing the example of Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) formed in opposition to that country’s Feb. 1 military coup.

“Hun Sen is a coward in the political arena. He just uses the law to unjustly persecute activists from the opposition party,” he said.

Kem Tola’s arrest will now cause fresh criticism of the persecution by Hun Sen’s government of political opposition figures, said Am Sam Ath, deputy director of the Cambodian human rights group Licadho, noting that Kem Tola was arrested only “after she returned in response to a government appeal.”

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

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. 

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

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Richard Finney.

A bipartisan Congressional committee on China has asked the president of the International Olympic Committee to postpone and relocate the 2022 Beijing Winter Games if China does not end its severe human rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative James McGovern, the chair and co-chair respectively of the bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), made the request in a letter issued Friday to IOC president Thomas Bach.

“No Olympics should be held in a country whose government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity,” they wrote.

The letter was also signed by CECC commissioners Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Christopher Smith, both former commission chairs.

“This action would also be in the best interests of the athletes,” said the CECC commissioners. “We find it unfair for the IOC to force athletes to sacrifice their conscience in order to pursue their competitive goals, or vice versa.”

The letter comes amid intensifying international condemnation of China, as Western democracies consider full or partial boycotts of the Beijing Winter Games in response to the Chinese government’s harsh policies against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.

A UK parliamentary report on human rights abuses in the XUAR issued in early July recommended a partial boycott of the Beijing Games.

The commission pointed out in its letter that when it had urged the IOC in 2018 to use its leverage with the Chinese government to help end mass internment and abuses targeting Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the XUAR, the IOC never officially responded to the request.

“Since the 2018 letter, the situation facing Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic communities in the XUAR has deteriorated further, as documented by the Commission and numerous other governmental and non-governmental entities around the world,” it said.

The CECC also noted that in January the U.S. State Department determined that the Chinese government’s actions constituted genocide and crimes against humanity.

“We have seen no evidence that the IOC has taken any steps to press the Chinese government to change its behavior,” the commission said.

China has 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 extremism in the XUAR.

The commission also pointed out that on March 24, 2020, that Bach announced jointly with the Japanese government a postponement of the Tokyo Games because of the COVID-19 pandemic — four months before the Olympics were scheduled to begin. The Tokyo Games were postponed for a year and opened on Friday.

“If the Olympic Games can be postponed for a year for a pandemic, they can be postponed a year for a genocide,” the letter said.

“Therefore, we ask that you announce a postponement of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games to allow a period of time for the host government to take concrete steps to end its gross violations of human rights, including genocide and crimes against humanity in the XUAR, with a commitment to move the Olympic Games to another country unless fundamental improvements in the human rights situation in the XUAR are verified by the IOC and an impartial and independent United Nations mechanism,” it said.

There was no immediate response from the IOC or the Chinese government.

The CECC will hold a hearing on U.S. corporate sponsorship of the 2022 Winter Olympics on July 27. It held a hearing on China, genocide, and the Olympics in May.

Other actions by the U.S. to penalize Beijing for its mistreatment of the Uyghurs include the imposition of import controls on Chinese firms that manufacture products with suspected forced Uyghur labor and sanctions against individuals and entities that the U.S. says are involved in human rights abuses.

In mid-July, the Senate passed a bill that would ban the import of products from the XUAR, which now must be passed by the House of Representatives. And last week, the U.S. government expanded a warning to American firms about doing business in the XUAR.

A municipality in the eastern Netherlands has cut ties with China’s Wuhan over the government’s mistreatment of the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in an unusual move by a foreign city to break a twinning arrangement with a Chinese sister city.

A majority of city council members in Arnhem on Wednesday approved a proposal to end the partnership which has been in place since 1999, citing China’s human rights violations targeting the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, Dutch broadcaster NOS reported.

The twinning, or sister-city, arrangements pair towns or cities in different countries to encourage people-to-people contact and cultural links as well as economic benefits. Chinese cities have more than 1,400 sister cities around the world as a means of increasing China’s soft power and global influence.

The arrangements boost cooperation and exchanges among Chinese and foreign cities under the framework of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s massive loan, infrastructure, and trade program that stretches from the East to Europe and other continents. The Netherlands has not formally signed on to the BRI.

The move comes as many Western democracies are punishing China for its repression of the Uyghurs through legislation, calls to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and sanctions on officials and entities deemed responsible for rights abuses against Turkic minorities in the XUAR, or that use Uyghur forced labor.

The city council’s decision to end the twinning arrangement came after an appeal from Ahmedjan Kasima, a Uyghur refugee living in the Netherlands who, along with other Uyghurs, talked to some of the town councilors during a demonstration prior to the council meeting.

Arnhem’s mayor and some of the councilors who favored keeping the relationship with Wuhan and maintaining dialogue with China about human rights, wanted to speak to their counterparts in Wuhan before holding the vote, but the council did not agree, NOS said.

A majority of councilors from the pro-immigrant DENK party, GroenLinks green party, social-liberal Democrats 66, Socialist Party, Christian Union, Nationalist Party for Freedom, and Party for the Animals, an animal rights party, voted for the immediate severing of ties, according to a report on the NL#Times website.

“We believe that human rights violations are taking place on a massive scale in China and the situation of the Uyghurs and other minorities in China is deteriorating by the day and that under these circumstances it is immoral to maintain city ties with China,” political parties said during the discussion, NL#Times reported.

Tülay Gemici, a councilor for GroenLinks, one of the parties that voted to cancel the twinning arrangement, told Omroep Gelderland, a regional public broadcaster for the Dutch province of Gelderland, that the demonstration “had played a role” in the party’s vote.

“When I see such a group of people, and a man tells me that he has not seen 19 of his relatives in four years because they are missing, it adds to the overall picture and reinforces the feeling that we should not [involve] Arnhem,” the broadcast organization quoted her as saying.

An evaluation commissioned by the municipality estimated that the economic impact of cutting ties with Wuhan would amount to several millions of euros and dozens of jobs for companies in the region, though the twinning arrangement did not yield any investment from China, Dutch media reported.

After the vote, Ahmedjan Kasima told NOS that he did not expect the city council to vote to end the partnership. He had called for the twinning arrangement to be dissolved a few weeks ago, but at that time it appeared as though a majority of members would vote in favor of keeping it, the report said.

‘A political strategy’

China has used the sister-cities arrangement since its opening up in 1978 as a political strategy to “infiltrate” the Western world, said Asiya Uyghur, a Uyghur intellectual and observer based in Netherlands.

“If the breaking of sister-city ties with the Chinese cities develops into a domino effect in Western society, it might severely damage China’s strategic plan of dominating the world,” she said.

“In this perspective, Netherlands’s Arnhem’s breaking ties with Wuhan over the Uyghur issue has a profound meaning and it is a significant setback for China,” she said.

Arnhem, capital of the province of Gelderland, has a population of about 159,300. Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province with a population of about 11 million, is the location where the contagious COVID-19 virus was first detected in December 2019. Wuhan has sister-city agreements with 13 other countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

The Dutch parliament in February said that the systematic persecution and mass detention of Uyghurs amounted to genocide.

The UK parliament and other democratic legislatures in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Canada, and Lithuania also have determined that China’s policies in the XUAR constitute genocide, citing internment camps that have held some 1.8 million people, some of whom have been tortured or subjected to other abuse.

In January, the U.S. government determined that serious rights abuses against Uyghurs in the region were part of a campaign of genocide, and in June, a German parliamentary committee declared that the abuses constitute crimes against humanity.

China has angrily rejected international scrutiny and criticism over Xinjiang, arguing that its policies are aimed at combating extremism and maintain stability in the region.

Reported by Uyghuray for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

A relative of a detained Vietnamese journalist will stand trial for helping him evade capture by the police, state media reported.

Police in the capital Hanoi on Thursday indicted Nguyen Van Son, 65, for harboring his relative Le Van Dung, 51, founder and anchor of the Facebook-based online CHTV news channel, after they issued a special warrant for Dung.

Police arrested Dung at Son’s house in Hanoi on June 30 after a month-long search.

Dung was charged with “creating, storing, and disseminating  information, documents, items, and publications opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 117 of the Criminal Code for his online writings about land disputes, corruption and environmental pollution cases, and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Son now faces charges of hiding a criminal under Article 389 of the Criminal Code.  RFA was unable to determine their exact relationship.

Slap on the wrist

Police in the north central province of Ha Tinh fined a reporter from the state-run Vietnam Businessmen Magazine for an anti-police comment he made on social media, a much lighter penalty than other social media users have received under the same charge, state media reported Friday.

Identified in state media as Nguyen Duc T., authorities ordered the reporter to pay 2.5 million dong (U.S. $109) for “abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to entice and incite others to violate the legitimate interests of organizations,” in violation of Article 331 of Vietnam’s criminal code.

On June 10, T. attached a comment to a news posting created by another user, saying “Brothers, let’s fight and trap the Ha Tinh Police,” according to the report.

The reporter met with the Ha Tinh Police July 12 and confessed to writing the comment, agreeing it had affected and violated the legitimate rights and interests of the Ha Tinh Police, the report said. 

Since January 2021, authorities have jailed several other social media users for violating Article 331.

On July 21, authorities sentenced Facebook user Tran Hoang Minh to five years in prison for posting stories in September 2020 that decried what he said were unfair verdicts against activists who opposed the government in a high-profile land dispute in September 2020.

Minh’s comments called for the murder of the judge in the case and advocated “killing as many public security officers as possible”. 

On April 15, 2021, Authorities sentenced Quach Duy, a former public servant at Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, to a four-and-a-half-year jail term for writing stories which allegedly offended the honor and dignity of Vietnamese leaders such as the late President Tran Dai Quang, former Party Secretary of Ho Chi Minh City Le Thanh Hai, and former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. 

Harsh forms of persecution

With Vietnam’s media all following Communist Party orders, “the only sources of independently-reported information are bloggers and independent journalists, who are being subjected to ever-harsher forms of persecution,” the press freedoms watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says in its 2021 Press Freedoms Index.

Measures taken against them now include assaults by plainclothes police, RSF said in its report, 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.