Day: September 9, 2021

Security forces in Myanmar are targeting anti-junta youth activists throughout the country, forcing many to drop out of school and take up arms with militia groups seeking to unseat the military regime despite international laws prohibiting children from becoming soldiers, family members said Thursday.

Youth activists, many of whom say they felt hopeless about their future under military rule, began to join the widespread resistance movement against the junta after it seized power from Myanmar’s democratically elected government in a Feb. 1 coup.

Many have been arrested or even killed in clashes with the military, prompting concern from observers who lament what they say is an increasingly lost generation of children forced to sacrifice their dreams in the hopes of reclaiming their country from an oppressive regime.

In the seven months since the coup, security forces have killed 1,058 civilians and arrested at least 6,343—mostly during crackdowns on anti-junta protesters—according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

The junta says it had to unseat Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD government, claiming the party engineered a landslide victory in Myanmar’s November 2020 election through widespread voter fraud. It has yet to present evidence of its claims, though, and public unrest is at an all-time high.

Among the youth activists who have joined the fight against the military is 16-year-old Zaw Myo Mai Laban from the Kachin state capital Myitkyina, who went underground in June after around 50 soldiers and police officers tried to arrest him at his home for taking part in anti-junta protests.

“We know young students like us are not physically fit for fighting yet—we’ve only just passed childhood,” the member of the Basic Education Students’ Union Network (BESUN) of hundreds of students from more than 50 townships told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

“However, we are doing this with the sole intention of fighting injustice and oppression. We give encouragement to one another when we find ourselves weak and try harder to be competent for the revolution.”

Zaw Myo Mai Laban said that ethnic armed groups in the liberated areas of the country’s remote border regions had initially refused to allow those under the age of 18 to attend military training, in accordance with international laws prohibiting the use of child soldiers, but eventually relented due to “the strong enthusiasm of the young students.”

“It is true that I am underage according to international law and laws against child soldiers, but [the military is] killing people whether they are underage or not,” he said.

“International law doesn’t mean anything to the military.”

‘I would rather fight’

Despite the military’s heavy-handed response to anti-junta protests, many high school students continue to take part in the gatherings, particularly in Myanmar’s largest cities Yangon and Mandalay.

A student with BESUN in Mandalay, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, said he participates in protests daily “for the future of the country’s youth.”

“We are more afraid of losing our future than we are of the military,” he said.

“Education in Myanmar at present is completely in shambles. Conditions were just about to see some improvement when they staged this coup. All our hopes were dashed … We had a spirit of revolution long before the coup, and their atrocities made us want to fight back even more.” 

”When your friends are killed, there is little you can do but grieve for them. I would rather fight for them instead,” he said.

Most of the high school students now involved in the anti-junta movement are minors under parental guardianship. Many parents told RFA they are worried about their sons and daughters being arrested, maimed, or killed, although some have allowed their children to join the protests.

The mother of two high school students aged 15 and 17 in Yangon’s South Okkalapa township said she accompanies her children to protests but has asked them not to join the armed uprising.

“I went along with them so they would not get into trouble or be harmed, because you can’t stop them from joining the protests,” she said.

“However, I asked them not to do anything like take up arms because they are not old enough. If they get arrested and sent to prison for taking part in the protests, at least I could go and see them. I may be selfish, but I cannot allow my young kids to join a revolution.”

A student with the Launglon township branch of BESUN in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi division, who also declined to be named, said he regularly speaks with parents as part of an effort to bring more youths into the anti-junta movement.

“If students don’t get involved in politics, politics will work against them,” he said.

“We enlightened [parents] by explaining that students have been detained and tortured too. This helped them understand why we have taken to the streets, and they allowed their sons and daughters to join us.”

Investigating youth activists

Meanwhile, authorities have spared no effort in investigating high school students involved in anti-junta activities.

In Myanmar’s Bago region, five high school students were arrested in the first week of September, including one who died in detention while being interrogated. According to AAPP, at least 23 school age children were among those killed in the past seven months since the coup, while at least 20 high school students have been arrested.

An AAPP spokesman told RFA that school age children are still very much at risk from the military.

“If things continue like this, the children in our country will no longer have a future, including those who would one day be the nation’s leaders,” he said.

“Children must have the right to freedom of movement and to follow their dreams. They shouldn’t be living in fear. However, at present, they must be careful even of what they wear because of current restrictions. The loss of their future is a loss for the country.”

Calls by RFA to military spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun seeking comment went unanswered Thursday.

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

With food prices on the rise in North Korea, a Pyongyang restaurant serving the city’s signature dish has had to abandon price controls, causing a more than twentyfold increase and making a casual meal outside the house an expensive luxury that ordinary residents of the capital can no longer afford, sources told RFA.

Naengmyeon is a savory buckwheat noodle dish served cold that is enjoyed by many during the hot summer months. Though the dish is believed to have originated in North Korea, it exploded in popularity in the South after the Korean War and is available in Korean restaurants worldwide.

The two most popular styles of naengmyeon are the spicy, brothless variety that originated in the eastern coastal city of Hamhung, and Pyongyang naengmyeon, served in chilled beef broth, with a healthy accompaniment of vegetables and sliced beef, if available.

In Pyongyang, naengmyeon in a state-run restaurant could be had for about 300 won (U.S. $0.05), a price that was locked in by government policy to keep the cost of living stable for the capital’s residents, who have the privilege of not living in the impoverished provinces, sources told RFA.

But food shortages brought on by the closure of the Sino-Korean border and suspension of all trade with China since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic have made prices in even the state-run Pyongyang restaurants skyrocket to the point that a quick lunch of cold noodles is too expensive for the average person.

“Okryu-gwan, a state-run restaurant that is an official showcase restaurant of Pyongyang and specializes in naengmyeon has raised the price above the state-controlled rate to actual market price, causing resentment among the people,” a resident of the capital city recently told RFA’s Korean Service.

“The symbolism of Okryu-gwan as an institution that serves the people has completely disappeared, because the price of food, which had always been low because of price controls, has suddenly increased more than twenty times,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Okryu-gwan has a storied history. Originally founded in the 1960s under the direction of national founder and then leader Kim Il Sung, grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un, the restaurant was in some ways a center of culinary culture in the city, according to the source. Okryu-gwan was the site of a luncheon during the 2018 Inter-Korean Summit, where Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-In symbolically dined at the same table, with Pyongyang naengmyeon as the main course.

Food supplies had always been guaranteed by the government, and this allowed the restaurant to keep prices well below market cost, making it one of the most popular dining destinations in the city.

“The restaurant provided meal vouchers to the factories and neighborhood watch units. Then they provided food, such as naengmyeon, to people who could have the meal vouchers at a low, nationally guaranteed price,” the source said.

“However, since June, the meal voucher disappeared, and they raised the price from 300 won ($0.05) for a bowl of naengmyeon to the market price of 7,000 won ($1.15),” the source said.

“The average monthly salary of ordinary workers in Pyongyang is 2,000 to 3,000 won ($0.32-0.49), but a bowl of naengmyeon is more than two months’ wages, so how can ordinary citizens afford that?”  

Divided by class

Even though Okryu-gwan had in the past been affordable, there had always been a two-tiered system in place, the source explained.

“These state-run restaurants would provide food at market prices to foreigners, high-ranking officials, and the rich,” said the source.

“The privileged people who could pay market price dined in a separate space inside Okryu-gwan and were able to enjoy various other dishes besides naengmyeon. But ordinary people who had to show a meal voucher would only be able to eat naengmyeon,” the source said.

Another resident of Pyongyang confirmed to RFA Sept. 5 that Okryu-gwan had raised its prices to market rates.

“The price increase, coupled with shortened restaurant hours due to the food shortage, has caused a drop-off in the number of customers visiting the restaurant to eat naengmyeon,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

The second source said that the sharp increase in the restaurant’s prices signified that Okryu-gwan no longer has the mission of serving the citizens of the capital.

“Criticism from the citizens is pouring in. Before the pandemic, Okryu-gwan was open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. with plenty of food supplied by the state. These days it’s only open twice a day, from noon to 2 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. because of the food shortage,” the second source said.

“It’s not only Okryu-gwan, but also other famous restaurants made to serve the people like Cheongryu-gwan, the Koryo Hotel restaurant, and the restaurant at the Daesung Department Store have raised their food prices all at once.”

The price increases are causing the people to grumble that the country’s leadership does not care about them, according to the second source.

“The citizens complain that General Secretary Kim Jong Un has repeatedly emphasized his ‘people-first principle’ in various important government meetings this year, but their living standards continue to get worse and worse.”

A quarter century after famine killed as many as a tenth of North Korea’s 23 million people, the food situation in North Korea is again dire, with starvation deaths reported in the wake of the closure of the Sino-Korean border and suspension of trade with China in Jan. 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

In addition to heavy rains in summer that caused severe flooding and destroyed crops in some areas, output at many farms is reduced by a lack of equipment and materials, a result of the long closure of the border with China.

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 Jeong Yon Park for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

A court in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh sentenced seven opposition activists to 18 months in prison Thursday for “incitement” after they used social media to criticize the government for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court delivered the sentences to the members of the banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), who included one Buddhist monk, in absentia because all seven of them are living abroad. Judge Ouk Reth Kunthea ordered authorities to arrest the activists upon their return to Cambodia.

Ron Chanthy, one of the convicted activists who currently lives in Thailand, refused to accept what he called an “unjust verdict,” saying the court and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) had “worked together” to prevent him from running in Cambodia’s commune elections to be held next year and general elections in 2023.

He said that in admonishing the government for its response to the pandemic, he was simply exercising his freedom of speech and not inciting anyone to act against the state.

“I will continue to speak out against the government,” he told RFA’s Khmer Service, adding that he believes it is “useless to appeal” the verdict.

“There is no justice for me because the court is being influenced by Hun Sen.”

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017 over an alleged plot to overthrow the government. The move came amid a wider crackdown by Hun Sen on the country’s political opposition, independent media, and NGOs that paved the way for his CPP to win all 125 seats in parliament in the country’s July 2018 elections.

The activists had established a Facebook page called “CNRP Fighters” through which they slammed policies they say led to Cambodia’s nearly 2,000 deaths and 97,000 infections from COVID-19 since the coronavirus was first detected in the country in early 2020, including 400 deaths and 14,500 cases in the last month alone.

Thursday’s verdicts followed an Aug. 26 trial in absentia for the activists and monk, who is currently living in Canada, in which the only person present was a representative of the plaintiff, who is a police officer.

Another of the convicted activists, Mao Vibol, said he believes Cambodia’s courts are protecting Hun Sen’s power by unfairly prosecuting his political opponents.

“What we have been doing is right—that is why the public follows us [on Facebook],” he said. “Our work has rightfully caused Hun Sen concern.”

Jailed activists questioned

Also on Thursday, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court Investigative Judge Sin Sovanroth questioned Kong Mas and Khat Bunpheng—two CNRP activists who have been jailed for eight months after being convicted of “conspiracy.”

The two were arrested in December 2020 for working to facilitate CNRP Deputy President Mu Sochua’s return to Cambodia from self-imposed exile to avoid what she says are a string of politically motivated charges and convictions. In January, Mu Sochua and fellow party leaders and activists were prevented from boarding a Singapore Airlines flight to Phnom Penh from Los Angeles because they had been refused visas to enter Cambodia.

Mu Sochua and eight other CNRP leaders—including acting CNRP President Sam Rainsy—were sentenced in absentia in March to between 20 and 25 years in jail. The nine, who were prohibited from returning to Cambodia to defend themselves in the trial, were also banned from voting or running as candidates in future elections.

Speaking to RFA, Am Sam Ath of Cambodian rights group Licadho said that Thursday’s questioning of Kong Mas and Khat Bunpheng did not comply with court procedures, adding that the pair’s convictions were “politically motivated” and should be resolved through dialogue.

“Without political negotiation, the activists will continue to stay in prison,” he said.

“The arrests, charges and detentions are politically motivated and have no basis in law.”

Attempts by RFA to reach court spokesman and prosecutor Plang Sophal for comment went unanswered Thursday.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

China has denounced the second round of a Uyghur Tribunal scheduled to begin Friday in London to investigate whether the government’s treatment of ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in its far-western Xinjiang region constitutes genocide.

More than 30 witnesses and experts testified about torture, rape, and other human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) during the first set of hearings in early June. Uyghur exiles described forced abortions, arbitrary arrests, and forced labor, while international legal experts weighed in on the applicability of laws on genocide and other statutes.

Such evidence and other credible documentations of abuse have formed the basis of genocide accusations against Beijing laid by several Western governments and legislatures, including the United States.

The allegations, if proved, could implicate China in a campaign to deliberately destroy the Uyghurs, and constitute the commission of genocide as defined in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention of 1948.

The independent people’s tribunal was set up because it is not possible to bring China before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Though China has signed and ratified the Genocide Convention, it has entered a reservation against ICJ jurisdiction.

Though the London panel has no state backing and any judgments will be nonbinding on any government, it aims to galvanize international action to hold China accountable for the abuse.

Another group of witnesses and experts have been lined up to provide testimony during the second round of hearings on Sept. 10-13.

Chinese officials have denied widespread and documented allegations that it has subjected Muslims living in the XUAR to severe rights abuses. As it did during the first session, Beijing has condemned the tribunal and smeared its participants ahead of the start of the second round.

Responding to a question about the Uyghur Tribunal at a news conference in Beijing on Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian blasted the panel as a “kangaroo court” that “has nothing to do with law, justice or truth, and is just another farce staged to smear and attack Xinjiang.”

Zhao noted that the tribunal is funded mostly by the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), which he said is an “organization dedicated to separating Xinjiang from China.” The WUC is an international organization based in Germany that represents the collective interests of Uyghurs in the XUAR and abroad.

Zhao discredited WUC president Dolkun Isa as a “terrorist listed by the Chinese government” and prominent British lawyer Geoffrey Nice, who chairs the nine-member tribunal, as a “veteran British agent notorious around the world for filing frivolous lawsuits on human rights.”

‘Political farce,’ ‘pseudo-court’

The Foreign Ministry spokesman also took aim at Adrian Zenz, an independent researcher with the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, branding him an “anti-China swindler.”

Zenz testified at the first round of hearings about China’s policy to reduce Uyghur population growth in the XUAR. He has also produced reports documenting China’s use of birth control and population transfer policies to reduce the Uyghur population, the forced sterilization of Uyghur women, and the detainment of Uyghurs in internment camps in the XUAR.

The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim group estimated at more than 12 million people in the XUAR. China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps since 2017, though Beijing says the facilities are vocational training centers meant to deter religious extremism and terrorism.

In a report published in August, Zenz concluded that China’s plans to reduce the ethnic minority population may constitute genocide under the U.N. Genocide Convention by presenting empirical evidence that the Uyghurs are being destroyed as a people.

“These so-called ‘Chair,’ ‘experts,’ and ‘witnesses’ have deplorable track records and are habitual liars, who have become a laughing stock in the international community a long time ago,” Wang said. He accused Zenz of hurling “absurd accusations” and fabricating “lies and rumors.”

An article in China’s state-owned newspaper Global Times on Thursday also took aim at the Uyghur Tribunal with a grim nod to the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.

“The political farce and the pseudo-court of the so-called Uyghur Tribunal will have its second ‘hearing’ starting Friday, just one day before September 11, a time which should be used to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks in the U.S.,” the article said.

Kristian Petersen, an assistant professor of religious studies at Old Dominion University, who has written about Islam in China, wrote in an op-ed for Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the U.S. embrace of Chinese claims about Uyghur terrorism has facilitated the repression of the minority group.

Following the terrorist attacks, “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defined Uyghur resistance as part of the worldwide ‘terrorism’ emergency and not as a local issue of ‘separatism’ as it used to in the past,” he wrote.

After the series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in the U.S. in 2001 by militants linked to the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda, Chinese authorities increasingly portrayed its repression of Muslim minorities in the XUAR as part of the Global War on Terror to destroy terrorist groups.

Petersen cited the U.S. government’s addition of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) on its list of terrorist organizations in 2002 in exchange for Beijing’s support for efforts to overthrow the Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks by the Afghanistan-based militants.

“With official international support of ‘war on terror’ proponents, the legal and political apparatus had already been set in motion to frame and justify the CCP’s crackdown on any Uyghur dissent as an anti-terrorism effort,” Petersen wrote.

“The ETIM’s designation as a terrorist organization thus became the linchpin of U.S. complicity in the CCP’s oppression of Uyghurs.”

In October 2020, however, the U.S. State Department removed the ETIM from its designated terrorist list, with a U.S. official saying that there had been no credible evidence in a decade that the group still existed.

‘This brutal regime’

Dolkun Isa of WUC told RFA that the scheduling of the second round of Uyghur Tribunal hearings on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks was profoundly significant because China used the tragedy as a pretext to launch a war on the Uyghurs “culminating with today’s genocide.”

“On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the international community must understand that China hasn’t fought and isn’t fighting so-called terrorism in East Turkestan,” he said using the Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang.

“It’s eradicating an ancient people whose country was occupied and colonized by this brutal regime. The international community must show its political will and action to stop this ongoing Uyghur genocide,” he said.

The tribunal is expected to issue a final verdict on whether China is committing genocide or crimes in December.

Authorities in Vietnam on Wednesday indicted five journalists from the Báo Sạch (Clean Newspaper) Facebook-based news outlet on charges of “abusing democracy and freedom to infringe on state interests,” state media reported.

According to the indictment, issued by the Procuracy of Thoi Lai district, in the southern city of Can Tho, the Clean Newspaper staff posted anti-state and reactionary information and delved into information that was “inappropriate, distorting, against the country’s interests, and slanderous of the people’s administration” in violation of Article 331 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code. 

The five indicted journalists are: Truong Chau Huu Danh, Nguyen Thanh Nha, Doan Kien Giang, Nguyen Phuong Trung Bao, and Le The Thang.

Thang remains at large while the others have been arrested and detained. 

Danh, meanwhile, was also charged with posting stories that “generated bad interactions between internet users in the cyber environment” and “propagandized, distorted, defamed and seriously slandered Party organizations and local Party committees.”

State media reports also said the Clean Newspaper group was paid by businesses to write and publish favorable stories.

According to the indictment, the group’s Facebook fan page, Facebook group, and YouTube channel were created in August 2019. Between the three platforms, the group had published 47 reports or videos dealing with hot-button social issues.

Article 331 and Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code have been criticized by human rights lawyers and organizations as having been used as “a tool to stifle dissenting voices.”

Dang Dinh Manh, a Vietnam-based lawyer, told RFA on Wednesday that the two articles are essentially the same, despite differing text.

“If you want to impose a lighter penalty, go with Article 331 and if you want a more serious one, go with Article 117,” said Manh. 

Article 117 imposes penalties for “creating, storing, and disseminating information, documents, items, and publications opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” while Article 331 prohibits “abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to violate the interests of the state, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals.”

Manh said an investigator told him during a meeting that prosecutors will choose which article they want to apply to a case depending on how severe they want the punishment to be.

“In general, both articles are aimed at restricting people’s freedom of expression. These articles should not exist because they contradict Vietnam’s very constitution, which allows Vietnamese people to criticize the policies they deem as detrimental to the interests of the country and the people. What the Clean Newspaper group said should not be seen as anti-State,” Manh said.

In its Freedom in the World 2021 report, Washington D.C.-based Freedom House gave Vietnam an overall score of 19 out of a possible 100, a one-point drop from last year’s rating. Vietnam scored three out of 40 in political rights, and 16 out of 60 in civil liberties.

”Freedom of expression, religious freedom, and civil society activism are tightly restricted [and the] authorities have increasingly cracked down on citizens’ use of social media and the internet,” Freedom House 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.

Mainland Chinese democracy activists and relatives of victims of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre have paid tribute to the organizers of a now-banned candlelight vigil marking the June 4, 1989 crackdown, as Hong Kong national security police charged three of them with “subversion.”

The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’s former leaders Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho and current vice chair Chow Hang-tung have been charged with “incitement to subvert state power.”

Chow and four other Alliance members have also been charged with “failing to comply with a notice to provide information” under Article 43 of the national security law.

The June 4 Memorial Hall, a museum dedicated to preserving a historic record of the Tiananmen massacre, was also raided by national security police, who took away a van-load of exhibits and boxes of materials on Thursday.

Zhang Xianling, a member of the Tiananmen Mothers’ victims group who donated some items to the museum, said police were possibly trying to wipe out collective memories of the Tiananmen massacre and 1989 democracy movement.

“What happened on June 4, 1989 took place in broad daylight,” Zhang said. “The government brought in regular troops to kill innocent civilians, which was a crime.”

“Are they now trying to cover up what happened by confiscating these things? That’s not actually possible,” she said. “”Nobody who lived through that will forget the June 4, 1989 massacre.”

Tiananmen Mothers spokeswoman You Weijie said she couldn’t see how the museum could have violated Hong Kong’s national security law.

“Those relics from the young people [who died] were donated by their relatives to the June 4 Memorial Hall in Hong Kong,” You said.

“We did this so the younger generation and the whole world would remember the Tiananmen massacre forever.”

Keeping memories alive

Former 1989 student leader Li Hengqing said the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had become extremely worried it would “lose” Hong Kong following the mass protests, civil disobedience, and barricade battles with riot police during the 2019 protest movement.

Li said the Alliance had allowed memories of the 1989 pro-democracy movement to live on in Hong Kong for decades.

“The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was founded in 1989, during the 1989 pro-democracy movement,” Li told RFA.

“In the 30 years that followed, the Alliance … ran a memorial event for the June 4 massacre victims every year in Victoria Park.”

“This sort of event isn’t tolerated by the CCP regime,” he said.

“Now, under the Hong Kong version of the national security law, they have arrested and imprisoned many of the [leading members] of the Alliance,” he said.

“We strongly protest against the charges of incitement to subvert state power brought against Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, and Chow Hang-tung,” Li said.

“As someone who took part in the 1989 movement, I would like to pay tribute to all of our friends and compatriots in Hong Kong who have supported the Chinese democracy movement.”

“We stand with the people of Hong Kong.”

A thorn in Xi’s side

U.S.-based exiled dissident Wang Juntao said it is clear that the CCP intends to take away any remaining freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong’s seven million people.

“[CCP general secretary] Xi Jinping doesn’t want to allow people of Hong Kong to have freedom any more,” Wang told RFA. “The CCP has already enacted this draconian law, making behavior that was once legal, illegal.”

“Hong Kong has been a thorn in his side since he started bringing back many of the practices of the Mao Zedong era in mainland China, because people in Hong Kong can question that approach,” he said.

Wang said Hong Kong was a relatively safe place in the Mao era, from where people could criticize what was happening in China.

“Today, we can see that Xi Jinping won’t let people do this again, so at this point, he is even worse than Mao,” Wang said. “These Hong Kong comrades have paid this price for the principles they believe in, and to spread the ideals they believe in.”

“They are worthy of great respect, but I also feel a kind of anger and sadness at the dark times and backwards steps that we are seeing in Hong Kong,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.