Day: August 16, 2021

Laos is drowning in debt with at least $400 million due in loans this year that can’t be repaid, with cash flows crippled in the country because of a shutdown of the economy due to COVID-19 and another $1 billion coming due each year from 2022-2025, experts say.

State officials and Lao researchers say they now see no way the one-party communist state can meet the debts it owes foreign lenders, mostly in China but also in Thailand and Vietnam, amid the global pandemic.

“It will be hard to Laos to repay all the debts that have been outstanding for so many years now,” an official in the Lao state inspection agency said, speaking to RFA on condition of anonymity. “Laos can’t pay off its debts even if it makes payments over the next ten years. It’s just a huge sum of money,” he added.

Laos’ external debt repayment profile “remains challenging,” according to a Fitch Ratings report dated Aug. 9, “with around U.S. $422 million due over the remainder of 2021 and an average of U.S. $1.16 billion due per annum between 2022 and 2025.”

Lao debts are tied mainly to the development of infrastructure projects including hydropower dams and transportation systems, one Lao researcher said, also asking that his name not be used. “But the more development we do, the more money we borrow,” he said.

“And in the meantime, the national tax revenue being collected is much smaller than it used to be. The revenue that used to come in from gold mining is almost gone, for example,” he said.

Laos’ debt challenge was avoidable “and is closely related to overly ambitious, and poor coordination and implementation with dam building and other megaprojects,” said Keith Barney, a senior lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University.

“It is an environmental tragedy of the highest order that key rivers in Laos, such as the majestic Nam Ou, have been sacrificed to build these dams for an outcome that has seen not state revenues and sustainable development for the people of Laos, but elevated debt burdens and financial stress,” Barney said.

‘In a tight corner now’

Tax and tariff collections in Laos have also fallen off as businesses close and people lose work amid shutdowns, especially in the tourism and service sectors, caused by the spread of coronavirus in the country, sources say.

“Everyone is in a tight corner now, and living under tough conditions. We lack cash flow now because of the outbreak of COVID-19,” said a Lao businessman, who requested his name be withheld.

Laos must additionally find funds to accommodate and quarantine the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers—many of whom when employed sent money back to their families in Laos—now returning home from Thailand and other neighboring countries.

Around 100 shelters are now being built housing 1,000 workers each, with food costing each shelter around 40 million kip (U.S. $4,000) each day, sources say.

New program launched

The administration of Lao Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh has recently launched a new program ordering high-ranking state officials to return their luxury vehicles, modernizing the country’s tax collection system, and producing goods for export to earn money for national savings.

“We have to build a base of producing goods for export and economizing expenses so that we can have more foreign currencies in reserve to stabilize savings,” Viphavanh said in a recent government meeting, adding that the Ministry of Finance now has no money in the state treasury.

“So the Ministry is asking the Bank of the Lao PDR to repay its debts in advance so that we don’t get into this kind of trouble again,” Viphavanh said, referring to Laos by its formal name, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.

The government is also now emphasizing reform of the country’s state-owned enterprises to increase transparency in their management, said Finance Minister Bounchom Ubonpaseuth, addressing the 1^st Extraordinary Conference of the National Assembly on Aug. 6.

“Many different state agencies would like to take control of the state enterprises, but when these collapse no one wants to take responsibility for their losses,” he said.

Laos has a history of widespread government corruption. The Berlin-based Transparency International reported in January 2021 that Laos’ corruption ranking had worsened, dropping from 130 in 2019 to 134 in 2020 out of 180 countries.

Reported and translated for RFA’s Lao Service by Ounkeo Souksavanh. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Myanmar’s junta is targeting members of the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD), including its leader Aung San Suu Kyi and dozens of lawmakers, in a bid to disband the party and secure its tenuous hold on power six months after overthrowing the government, ousted lawmakers and analysts said Monday.

A member of the NLD’s Central Committee told RFA’s Myanmar Service that the military regime has arrested a total of 324 NLD members—98 of whom are members of parliament (MPs)—since its Feb. 1 coup d’état. Among the detained are 15 members of the NLD’s Central Committee, as well as five regional and state chief ministers, the committee member said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

Other senior NLD members have died in detention since the coup, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal attorney Nyan Win on July 20 and Bago region MP Nyunt Shwe, who died of COVID-19 in prison on Monday. Three party members—Khin Maung Latt and Zaw Myat Lin of Myanmar’s largest city Yangon and Kyaw Kyaw from the capital Naypyidaw—were allegedly tortured to death at interrogation centers, according to the committee member.

Meanwhile, 10 people, including Magway Region Chief Minister Dr. Aung Moe Nyo, have been sentenced by the military to between two and three years in prison and face additional charges. NLD chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi, former president Win Myint, and several other party leaders remain in detention on a variety of anti-state charges after being rounded up in the aftermath of the coup.

The Central Committee member told RFA that the junta is targeting the NLD with the goal of removing the party from politics altogether.

“The junta is afraid of losing the state authority it unlawfully seized,” they said.

The committee member said they believe the military’s leadership was unhappy with the socio-economic development, transparency, and other reforms that the NLD delivered after winning the country’s 2015 elections, and afraid of being held to account for the corruption and other crimes it had committed during its 1962-2011 rule. 

“That must be why they are trying to completely remove the NLD from Myanmar politics, hoping that afterwards they’d be free to do what they want,” the committee member said. 

“[NLD] party leaders and party members are being unlawfully persecuted, and people are being brutally suppressed so that they cannot interact with the party.” 

Holding on to power 

The junta says a landslide victory by the NLD in the country’s November 2020 general election was the result of voter fraud, but has yet to provide evidence of its claims and has violently repressed widespread prot4ests, killing 998 people and arresting 5,711 since the coup, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

The regime’s Union Election Commission (UEC) announced on July 26 that the 2020 election results had been officially annulled, although the NLD has dismissed the decision as illegal, saying it invalidates the will of the people. The military has called for a change in the format of the election to include proportional representation ahead of a new ballot.

Political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that the military’s actions are aimed at holding on to power.

“It doesn’t matter when elections are held—as long as the people wholeheartedly support the NLD, it will be difficult for the military to maintain power,” he said.

“This is why the junta is working towards the abolition of the NLD and the long-term imprisonment of its leaders.”

In the aftermath of the coup, the military raided NLD offices across the country, confiscating documents and office equipment and destroying party signboards. Party officials say grassroot-level NLD offices have since removed all signs, citing security concerns.

Aung Kyi Nyunt, a member of the NLD Central Committee, said that despite the military’s efforts, the party will endure because it continues to represent the will of the people.

“I don’t believe that the people will accept the annulment of the election results or participate in new elections, as they already made their decision,” he said. 

“As long as the people are there, the party will be there.” 

Little hope for justice

Meanwhile, family members of imprisoned NLD lawmakers told RFA on Monday that they have little hope for justice while the junta remains in charge of the country.

Lin Naing, the husband of jailed Taungup township MP Ni Ni May Myint, said that the military had arrested his wife and many other NLD members with complete impunity.

“We didn’t know where people were interrogated after being taken away—most were taken to court from interrogation centers and imprisoned straight away,” he said.

“There is no transparency. Those arrested were not allowed to speak with their lawyers and were jailed on random charges. Almost all the cases are like that. Anyone who is charged under Section 505 (a) of the Penal Code [for ‘defamation of the military’] has no legal protection.”

Ni Ni May Myint was arrested in Yangon on May 12 along with NLD youth leader Chit Chit Chaw and sentenced to three years in prison for defaming the military. The pair have been denied visits with family members, Lin Naing said.

Thant Zin Tun, a Pyithu Hluttaw member from Dekkhina Thiri township, has been in detention in Naypyidaw Prison since March 2, when he was arrested in the capital along with Naypyidaw Council Development Committee member Min Thu, NLD MP Kyaw Min Hlaing, and Amyotha Hluttaw member Maung Maung Swe.

A member of Thant Zin Tun’s family, who declined to be named, said the junta has been devoting a significant amount of effort to building a case against the MP.

“We were allowed to see him 12 days after his arrest, but we haven’t seen him since,” the relative said.

“They are meticulously constructing a case so that they can sentence him to prison. They have called in ‘witnesses’ that they want to testify in the case. There is nothing we can do for him.”

Attempts by RFA to reach junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment went unanswered Monday.

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

U.S. Charge d’Affaires Atul Keshap, the senior diplomat in the U.S. Embassy in India, met last week with a representative of Tibet’s exile government, disregarding Chinese protests that the meeting represents interference in China’s internal affairs.

The Aug. 10 meeting with Ngodup Dongchung—a representative of the Dharamsala, India-based Tibetan exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA)—followed an earlier meeting in July between Dongchung and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The CTA representative and Atul Keshap, now named as the new U.S. ambassador to India, had met briefly during the July 28 meeting with Blinken, Dongchung told RFA.

“This time we went to welcome Ambassador Keshap in his new post in New Delhi,” Dongchung said.

“We had a great conversation with the ambassador where he assured us that the U.S. supports Tibet’s religious freedom and the preservation of Tibet’s cultural and linguistic identities and respects the Dalai Lama’s vision for the equal rights of all people,” he said.

“He also asked about His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s health,” he said.

Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet into India with thousands of his followers amid a failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, and has lived in exile in India ever since.

The Chinese Embassy in India on Aug. 11 slammed Dongchung’s meeting with Keshap, calling it “a provocative act” and saying “Tibetan affairs are purely China’s internal affairs that allow no foreign interference.”

“Cordial meetings that take place in a free and democratic country do not need anybody’s approval,” Dongchung said, adding, “These accusations of ‘interfering in China’s internal affairs,’ and calling these meetings a ‘separatist act’ are baseless, and no one should pay any attention to them.”

Delivering on promises

The recent series of U.S. contacts with the CTA shows that President Joe Biden is delivering on his campaign promises regarding Tibet, said Tenzin Lhadon, a research fellow at the Dharamshala, India-based Tibet Policy Institute, speaking to RFA in an earlier report.

“President Joe Biden said that if elected, his administration will meet with the Dalai Lama and work on resolving the Tibetan issue, as mandated by last year’s Tibet Policy and Support Act 2020,” Lhadon said.

“I think this visit reassures us of the Biden administration’s commitment to the Tibetan issue,” he said.

The Tibetan Policy Support Act of 2020 affirms as U.S. policy the right of Tibetans to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose advancing age has underscored uncertainties in recent years over his possible successor.

Beijing claims the right to name the Dalai Lama’s successor, while the 86-year-old spiritual leader himself says that any future Dalai Lama will be born outside of territory controlled by China.

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 RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.

More than 80 percent of the Uyghur children at a village preschool in China’s far-western Xinjiang have at least one parent in state custody, while pupils with both parents in detention attend a separate “welfare school” where they are continuously monitored, RFA has learned.

China has been separating Uyghur children from parents under the program of mass internment camps launched by Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) Communist Party chief Chen Quanguo. The campaign has seen up to 1.8 million Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities rounded up and sent to political re-education camps under the pretext of vocational training.

About six months after the internment campaign began in early 2017, reports began to surface about the children of “double-detained” parents — those whose mother and father both were incarcerated — being placed in state care, according to independent German researcher Adrian Zenz, who has documented the XUAR’s internment camp system.

Twenty-five of the 30 children enrolled in the preschool at one township in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture have one parent being detained by authorities, while those with both parents detained are being taught at a separate “welfare preschool”— a boarding school that functions like an orphanage for children four to six years old — a security officer at the school told RFA.

“At our preschool, some of the children still have their mother [on the outside], and some of the children still have their father,” she told RFA’s Uyghur Service. “There are something like 25 of these children” among the total 30.

About 150,000 people live in 15 villages of Chaharbagh township in Yarkand (Shache) county.

During the winter, the children with one detained parent live in dormitories at the preschool, and during the warmer months, they are allowed to live at home and be brought to school each day by their other parent, said the security officer who declined to be named in order to speak freely.

The children of detainees are sometimes allowed to have video chats with their parents, though they are unable to speak freely during the brief meetings, she said.

“Whenever there is a notification that it’s OK for the children to meet with their parents, they let them do so,” the security officer said.

Some of the children are aware that their parents are in re-education facilities when they speak to them via video chats, she added.

Constant monitoring

RFA has confirmed similar arrangements for children in other parts of the XUAR.

A welfare preschool in Aksu (Akesu) prefecture has 40-some students, according to a security officer who has worked there for nearly four years and took part in political studies.

“We live in a [school] housing area, [and] we take turns in the security office at the school’s entrance,” said the security guard from Kuchar (Kuche) county’s Ishkhala township who declined to give her name.

“There are arranging meetings — on-screen, face-to-face meetings — for the children at the preschool, in particular for those under our jurisdiction,” she said.

Children with both parents detained, who are being educated in separate schools, are monitored by police and security guards 24 hours a day, said an official in central Xinjiang’s Korla (Ku’erle), the second-largest city in the XUAR.

He said that guards make sure the children do not leave the school and enforce political indoctrination.

Omer Hemdulla, a Uyghur from the XUAR who now lives in Turkey, has participated in “Where is my family?” protests outside the Chinese Embassy in Istanbul, demanding information about the disappearance of his two children, and the imprisonment since October 2017 of his two millionaire older brothers.

The children were one and two years old when he left them in Xinjiang and moved to Turkey in hopes of relocating his family members to the country, which is home to 50,000-100,000 Uyghur exiles. But his children were taken away after his brothers and in-laws were detained.

“After they took my in-laws in, our communication was essentially cut off,” he said. “I have been unable to obtain any information about where my daughters are.”

RFA contacted the Justice Department of Bayingolin (Bayinguoleng) prefecture to try to find out about Omer’s children, but an official was unable to provide details.

The official confirmed that children there with both parents detained were attending a welfare school run by the Bureau of Civil Affairs, but declined to provide information about the school, including the number of children enrolled.

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

Hong Kong’s population fell by 1.2 percent in the past 12 months, amid an ongoing exodus of people in the wake of a draconian national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from July 1, 2020.

Government statistics showed the city’s population fell by just over 87,000, to 7,394,700, as hundreds, sometimes thousands, of net departures continued to be recorded every day during the past few months.

Total net departures were recorded at 89,200 for the same period.

The previous year’s figures also showed a decline of 1.2 percent.

Net departures have regularly reached 2,000 ahead of key visa deadlines for the United Kingdom, with net arrivals rarely reported since the national security law criminalized public criticism of the government, political opposition and other forms of activism.

The exodus looks set to hit the city’s healthcare sector, with the Hospital Authority (HA) reporting the loss of 4.6 percent of doctors and 6.5 percent of nurses in public hospitals.

HA chairman Henry Fan said public hospitals are in “a worrying situation,” linking the loss of doctors and nurses to the current migration wave, as those leaving had applied for detailed service records and paid up their taxes in advance, a prerequisite for leaving the city.

He said private hospitals were also seeing their doctors emigrating, and were making the situation worse by recruiting doctors from public hospitals, Fan said in a comments that were widely reported in local media.

The father of a four-year-old boy with congenital heart disease, who gave only the nickname Jayco, said his son’s cardiothoracic consultant had recently left Hong Kong, with no obvious replacement in sight.

“Why would a doctor in a public hospital leave?” he said. “He had already served in public hospitals for many years, so it wasn’t likely ambition.”

“I think ultimately, it’s because of the way everything has changed in Hong Kong, forcing dedicated healthcare workers’ hands,” he said. “I think he felt he had to do this to be able to live his life and take care of his children.”

Hong Kong at a turning point

Professor Paul Yip from the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Social Work and Social Administration told government broadcaster RTHK that Hong Kong is now at a “turning point.”

“There is a watershed, a turning point, which Hong Kong will experience a rapid ageing population and if the present situation continues, I think that would have some significant impact on the population development of Hong Kong,” Yip said.

“It means there will be less economic producers in Hong Kong and we would need to work harder to attract foreign talents to come to Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam has sought to downplay tearful scenes at Hong Kong International Airport, as hundreds of young families lined up to leave the city in search of a better life elsewhere.

Lam said on July 20 that her government had no official position on the exodus of residents.

“Every now and then in the history of Hong Kong, there are such emigration trends,” she told reporters.

Families and emigration consultants have told RFA that the government’s introduction of compulsory CCP-backed “civic and social development” curriculum, alongside “national security education,” in Hong Kong’s schools was the key factor in their decision to leave.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

North Korea has begun sending citizens to labor camps for skipping out on their low-salary government-assigned jobs to try to make a living elsewhere in an economy that has gone from bad to worse under the coronavirus pandemic, sources in the country told RFA

The double squeeze of international nuclear sanctions and the closure of the border and suspension of trade with China at the beginning of the pandemic in Jan. 2020 has devastated the North Korean economy.

Commerce has dried up, factories lay idle for a lack of raw materials and food prices have jumped sharply over the past year and a half as shortages mount.

Though all North Korean men must, in principle, report to government-assigned jobs every day, the salaries they earn are not enough to live on or support a family.

Sources confirmed to RFA that it is becoming increasingly common for workers to leave their homes and jobs to move about the country like migrants, looking for any job they can find.

“It is because going to work or leading a working life is not important at all for those who don’t have rice to eat right now or can’t make an everyday living,” a resident of the eastern coastal province of South Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service Aug. 12.

“These days, more and more residents are selling their houses and moving to a remote place or wandering around the country because it is difficult for them to make a living in the face of rising food prices,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

The crackdown on absentee workers began at the beginning of August, according to the source.

“They’ve been cracking down on absentees by ruthlessly sending them to the disciplinary labor center, probably on internal orders from above that outline such punishment,” the source said.

“The leaders of factory and company workers, and their organizations are looking for those who stopped coming to work for no reason, or those who stop coming to organizational meetings, to ask them to return,” said the source.

Investigators are visiting the missing workers’ homes, talking to family members and casual acquaintances to find out where they are, according to the source.

“Each company used to have to report employee attendance to the local police office every day, but now they must report it twice a day, in the morning and the afternoon,” said the source.

The crackdown is causing people to return to work in factories they have not set foot in for several months.

“Once the investigation for the crackdown is over for a day or two, they stop coming again,” the source said.

“They are openly complaining about the party, saying that they are only strengthening the crackdown rather than providing relief measures even when people are starving to death.”

A neighborhood watch unit leader in nearby North Hamgyong province confirmed to RFA that authorities there are cracking down on the unemployed, those not living in their official residences, social security beneficiaries who skip neighborhood watch unit meetings, and students who are not regularly attending classes.

“When I look back on my experience as a neighborhood watch unit leader, it’s been a long time since I received an order to identify and report social security beneficiaries and even students who miss school for a long time,” the second source said.

“Even though the police department or the local police office already knows who is unemployed, who isn’t living in their residence and who is receiving social security, they ordered the local probate office to double check,” said the second source.

The source said that it was more difficult for the authorities to control the lives of male workers.

“Unlike women, who are strictly controlled by the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea, all the social security beneficiaries are men, and… control over them is very loose,” the second source said. Authorities are also having trouble keeping tabs on students, he added.

“The coronavirus outbreak has made earning a livelihood extremely difficult, and many residents are recalling the Arduous March they experienced in the mid 1990s,” said the second source, referring to the 1994-1998 North Korean famine that killed millions, or as much as 10 percent of the population by some estimates.

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.

RFA reported in April that North Korean authorities were warning residents to prepare for economic difficulties as bad as the Arduous March.

RFA also reported in May that a machinery factory in the country’s northwestern border city of Sinuiju had been sending out agents to track down workers skipped out on their factory jobs to work in the more lucrative fisheries industry.

Reported by Changgyu Ahn for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin. Edited by Joongsok Oh. Written in English by Eugene Whong.