Day: September 29, 2021

Md. Muhib Ullah, a prominent Rohingya activist who represented his community in international settings including at the United Nations and the White House, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen Wednesday night at a refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh, police confirmed.

At least five men gunned down the Rohingya leader at close range after bursting into his office at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, said Naimul Haq, commanding officer of the Armed Police Battalion Unit-14.

“Primarily, we suspect that members of a rival group killed the Rohingya leader who was very active over the issue of repatriation. The other Rohingya group is against repatriation,” Haq told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, without naming the rival group.

“The miscreants shot at least five rounds targeting Muhib Ullah,” Naimul said.

The victim, who served as chairman of Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 8:30 p.m. (local time), the police spokesman said.

Syed Ullah, secretary for the organization, said his colleague was killed because of his work for the Muslim minority group.

“The miscreants are trying to stop the voices of the people who are talking about the rights of Rohingya,” he told BenarNews.

In response to the shooting, officers were deployed to search for the killers in the camps in and around Cox’s Bazar that house 1 million Rohingya refugees near the Myanmar border, said Rafiqul Islam, an additional police superintendent in Cox’s Bazar.

Muhib Ullah, 50, was among about 740,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims who crossed into the southeastern Bangladeshi district four years ago as they fled a brutal offensive launched by Myanmar’s military in their home state of Rakhine in August 2017.

Over time, he became a popular leader among the Rohingya people because of his initiatives to ensure their rights.

In August 2019, he organized a massive rally at Kutupalong to mark the second anniversary of the exodus.

One month earlier, he told then-U.S. President Donald Trump about his concerns for Rohingya in Bangladesh. He met Trump at the Oval Office during a meeting about international religious freedom hosted by the State Department at the White House.

In December 2019, BenarNews reported that Muhib Ullah had been receiving death threats in recent months. In addition, a police spokesman said he had been missing since the August rally and his group’s office had been closed.

After he was gunned down, other Rohingya leaders said he had escaped previous assassination attempts.

One refugee leader, Muhammad Rafiq, said Muhib Ullah spoke out for others.

“The popular Rohingya leader represented our community at the United Nations in Geneva and at the White House in Washington,” Rafiq told BenarNews. He called Muhib Ullah’s killing a great loss for the community.

In the hours after he was killed, tributes to Muhib Ullah poured in from abroad, particularly from human rights advocacy groups.

“This is terrible. Muhib Ullah provided crucial leadership to the #RohingyaRefugees in Bangladesh, repeatedly saying that they want to go home, but with dignity and safety. He always thanked the Bangladeshi people for providing refuge, but also asked for rights protections,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, tweeted.

Matthew Smith, co-founder and CEO of Fortify Rights, said Muhib Ullah was not properly protected by Bangladesh authorities.

“Militants in the refugee camps in #Bangladesh had threatened Muhib Ullah’s life before, forcing him into hiding at times. He never received the protection he needed and deserved,” Smith tweeted.

Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s South Asia campaigner, called on Bangladesh’s government to expedite the investigation and to have fair trials for those suspected of the killing.

“Muhib Ullah was a leading representative of the Rohingya community, who spoke out against violence in the camps and in support of the human rights and protection of refugees. His killing sends a chilling effect across the entire community,” Hammadi said in a news release.  

“Violence in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar has been a growing problem. Armed groups operating drug cartels have killed people and held hostages. The authorities must take immediate action to prevent further bloodshed.”   

The United Nations relief agency, UNHCR, noted its sadness over Muhib Ullah’s death.

“We are in continuous contact with law enforcement authorities in charge of maintaining peace and security in the camps,” a UNHCR spokeswoman told news media.

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

Indonesia this week repatriated 200 Vietnamese fishermen who languished at immigration detention centers for months amid the coronavirus pandemic after local authorities confiscated their boats on suspicion of poaching in Indonesian waters, officials said Wednesday.

Another 216 fishermen from Vietnam will be sent home in October, according to a senior official at Indonesia’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries.

The first batch of 200 was flown home when Hanoi sent a chartered plane to pick them up from Batam Island, where they were staying, said Adin Nurawaludin, director general of marine and fisheries resources monitoring at the ministry.

“As many as 200 people have been repatriated via Hang Nadim Airport, Batam on Monday on a Bamboo Airways … flight to Quang Ninh, Vietnam,” Adin told reporters in Jakarta.

“The plane was specially prepared by the Vietnamese government to take them home.”

Since the start of the pandemic, at least 500 Vietnamese fishermen have been stranded in Indonesia, some having languished for more than a year in shelters and detention centers run by the fisheries ministry and immigration authorities across the archipelago.

Indonesian officials had said earlier that pandemic-induced lockdowns had prevented the fishermen from being sent home more quickly, and that the Vietnamese government had made no attempt to arrange a repatriation flight.

“The reason they were only sent home yesterday is that during the pandemic, flights are scarce and countries are on lockdown,” Didik Agus, a spokesman for the fisheries ministry, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

“We took the initiative to raise this issue diplomatically and Vietnam responded by carrying out this repatriation.”

Officials at the Vietnamese embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to a BenarNews request for comment on Wednesday.

Ticket cost

Meanwhile, around 30 fishermen are still stranded at a detention center in Tanjung Pinang in Riau Islands province, due to lack of available seats on this week’s flight, or not having enough money to buy a ticket home, which costs around VND30 million (U.S. $1,320), RFA’s Vietnamese Service learned.

Danh Chien, 45, who has been detained in Tanjung Pinang since March 2020, said he could not buy a ticket on the recent flights home because his father in Vietnam could not manage to earn or borrow enough money to repatriate him. 

“I am very sad and upset, and I am asking for help to find a way to return to Vietnam. Life is so miserable here, as I don’t have money to buy food and lack everything,” he told RFA.

“Fellow inmates who have money do give me food …. I am very grateful for that. I don’t receive any money from home.”

Vietnamese fishermen stranded in Indonesia had earlier complained about poor living conditions in detention centers, including not getting enough food or being given bad food.

Indonesia’s government dismissed the complaints.

“We feed them and there are quite a lot of them. No one is hungry. They can eat three to four times a day,” Pung Nugroho Saksono, a director at the fisheries ministry, told BenarNews in May.

In December 2020, detainees at Tanjung Pinang sent videos of themselves to RFA to highlight their poor living conditions.

An inmate, who asked to be identified as Mr. Bien, told RFA in May that the Vietnamese officials had visited the detention center before the lunar New Year in early February 2021, to collect information after the videos had been published.

In May, Vietnamese fishermen were also being held at facilities in Pangkal Pinang, off the east coast of Sumatra; in Pontianak, West Kalimantan; and in the Natuna Islands, according to Nugroho Aji, director of enforcement at the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries.

This year, Indonesia has seized 48 foreign boats suspected of engaging in illegal fishing – 25 from Vietnam, 17 from Malaysia, and six from the Philippines, according to the fisheries ministry.

Teuku Faizasyah, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the Indonesian government continued to communicate with the Vietnamese authorities so that more Vietnamese could be repatriated.

“There are still plans for more repatriation in the future,” he told BenarNews.

Mohammad Abdi Suhufan, the coordinator of Destructive Fishing Watch (DFW) Indonesia, an NGO, welcomed the repatriation of the Vietnamese fishermen.

“They should have been sent home a long time ago, but it seems like Vietnam neglected them, and this has created a burden for Indonesia,” he told BenarNews.

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

Lao villagers displaced by construction of the Xayaburi Dam, a hydropower project on the Mekong River in northwestern Laos, are struggling to survive in resettlement towns three years after being moved, saying  they lack sufficient farmland and water to support themselves, Lao sources say.

Construction began on the first of Laos’ 11 planned Mekong River dams in 2012, with the dam going into operation in October 2019 amid widespread criticism from environmental and human rights activists who warned that altering the natural flow of the Mekong River would cause serious damage to the environment and communities living downstream.

Compensation has now been paid to those displaced by the $4.47 billion Thai-owned Xayaburi project, with resettlement villages finally built and land distributed to those who lost their land when the dam went into operation, sources said.

Land and water in resettlement areas are still in short supply, though, one villager told RFA’s Lao Service on Monday.

“We can grow crops on the land provided by the dam developer and the authorities, but there’s not enough of the land to farm,” the resident of the Nator Yai resettlement village in Xayaburi province said. “Our village also doesn’t have running water yet,” he added.

A villager who was not displaced by the dam’s construction and is living in the province’s Pieng district said that the operations of the Xayaburi dam and other dams on the Mekong have caused water flows on the river to rise and fall in unnatural and unpredictable ways.

“These dams often release water that floods our village and gardens,” he said.

“Our vegetable gardens on the Mekong riverbank are often flooded,” agreed a farmer living in the province’s Ngeun district, adding that water levels on the river constantly fluctuate.

“Sometimes the water is so low that we can see the riverbed, but at other times the water comes and floods our gardens so quickly that we don’t have time to save our crops.”

“We keep growing vegetables on the riverbank because we can’t do this anywhere else,” he said.

Xayaburi dam developers had promised villagers displaced by the dam’s construction new homes, allotments of land, and allowances of food and financial support for three years beginning with the launch of dam operations in October 2019, an official with the province’s Labor and Social Welfare Department told RFA.

Shortages of water and farmland are leaving residents of Xayaburi resettlement villages uncertain of their future, though, one resettled villager said.

“Since we don’t have enough water and land to farm, we’re worried about our livelihoods after October next year when our financial and food support comes to an end,” he said.

Speaking at a virtual Mekong River-ASEAN Environment meeting on Sept. 4, Angkana Neelaaphaijit—a former member of the Thai National Human Rights Commission—said that “a great number of people in ASEAN countries have lost their land to large development projects such as the Xayaburi dam and the Hongsa Lignite Power Plant in Laos.”

Large projects should also benefit villagers living in the areas in which they’re built, with investors responsible for the impacts on the environment and the health and livelihoods of local people, she said.

“The people’s rights should be respected. And if they petition for their rights, they shouldn’t be threatened or abducted,” she said.

Another project moves forward

Another project on the Mekong, the China-backed Sanakham Dam, is once again moving forward after a two-year delay caused by concerns over the spread of COVID-19 in Laos, with the regional Mekong River Commission now resuming a prior consultation process that is scheduled for completion in January.

Speaking to RFA on Sept. 22, an official with the Lao Ministry of Energy of Mines called the Sanakham Dam, a project of China’s Datang International Power Generation Co. Ltd., one of the Lao government’s top development priorities.

“The Lao government is determined to build this dam,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And despite the delay, the dam developer is also determined to complete construction on the Sanakham Dam in 2028, as planned.”

“The dam developer has all the plans needed to build this dam, and of course we intend to sell the electricity to Thailand,” the official said, adding that developers and the government are preparing to “spend a lot of money and use the most advanced technology” to reduce the dam’s possible impacts.

According to the primary report of an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) already conducted, the 684 megawatt Sanakham Dam will affect more than 3,000 people in 621 families living in 13 villages in three districts of Xayaburi and Vientiane provinces, with 267 families in three villages forced to move from their homes.

“We’ll be displaced. Our village and temple will be relocated, and we’ll lose our farmland too,” said a resident of Kae village in Xayaburi’s Kentao district, speaking to RFA on Sept. 22. “We have more questions than answers so far.”

“We can’t relocate our rice fields, farms, and gardens to new locations. So how and where can we farm or make a living in a new place?”

“How will [the developers and the government] compensate our losses? And will our living conditions be the same or worse?” he asked.

“Everything will change because of the dams,” he said.

Another villager in Kentao district likely to be displaced said that many villagers won’t object to being moved if they are offered fair compensation for the land and property they lose.

“Many villagers have no problem with relocation as long as the compensation is fair. However, relocations should be done on a voluntary basis,” he said.

“Most of us are very reluctant to move,” a villager living in Vientiane province’s Sanakham district said. “But what can we do? We will have no choice.”

“But if we are offered fair compensation, we might not be so reluctant to move,” he said.

Environment, community, culture

Speaking to RFA on Monday, a representative of the Love Chiang Khan Group, a Thai environmental NGO based in northeast Thailand, which suffers transboundary impacts from Lao dams, said that the Sanakham Dam, like the Xayaburi, “will have serious impacts on our environment, community, and culture.”

“Villagers likely to be affected should participate and have a voice in the prior consultation process,” he said.

Thailand has not yet agreed to sign agreements to buy electricity from four Mekong River dams in Laos, including the Sanakham Dam, the Thai Energy Minister told the Thai People’s Network of Eight Mekong River Provinces, an environmental group, on Aug. 25.

Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong and its tributaries and is building about 50 more under a plan to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia” and export the electricity they generate to other countries in the region, mainly Thailand.

The Lao government sees power generation as a way to boost the country’s economy, but the dam projects are controversial because of their displacement of villagers without adequate compensation, environmental impact, and questionable financial and power demand arrangements.

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.

With Koranic recitations and the raising of the blue and white crescent moon and star East Turkestan flag, Uyghurs in Canada opened a mosque and community center on the outskirts of Toronto in a renovated 150-year-old Roman Catholic Church to serve a community of 2,000 members of the Turkic ethnic group.

The East Turkestan Association of Canada — which uses Uyghurs’ preferred name for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwestern China —conceived the idea of a Canadian Uyghur center in 2008 and 13 years later bought the church building it for CAD $610,000 (U.S. $482,000) with donations from as far away as Germany and Australia, said Tuyghun Abduweli, president of the group.

“For Canadian Uyghurs, this shows what kinds of results unity and solidarity can and cannot achieve,” he told RFA’s Uyghur Service.

“The unity here in Canada [that] ultimately led us to purchase such a large church, which we then turned into a mosque to use for our own cultural, historical, and religious matters, is very exciting and inspiring to Uyghur Canadians.”

The opening ceremony drew members of the Uyghur community in Canada, a Canadian lawmaker, diplomats and officials, and leaders of two major Uyghur exile groups — Dolkun Isa, president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, and Rushan Abbas, executive director of the U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs.

The East Turkestan Association of Canada also invited the Catholic pastor and former congregation of the church to raise awareness of the plight of the Uyghurs in the XUAR, said association member Itbiar Artish.

The Catholic congregation had been getting older, and church administrators could not afford to keep up the building, said Robin Wilkie, the last pastor of the church, after the opening ceremony on Sept. 25.

“And with COVID, they decided that it was time to sell. So that’s when the Uyghur community purchased the building from us, and so we hand the baton on to them to carry on their faith,” he said of the Italian Romanesque-style building built in 1873-1874.

Documented abuse

Xinjiang came under Chinese imperial rule during the Qing Dynasty in the 18th century. An East Turkestan state was declared in 1949, but was forcibly absorbed by the new People’s Republic of China later the same year.

China has come under criticism for heavy-handed policies targeting the 12 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, destroying mosques, making Mandarin Chinese the main language in schools, monitoring Uyghurs’ moves with a pervasive and intrusive surveillance system, and using forced Uyghur labor at factories and farms.

Researchers have documented the incarceration by Chinese authorities of as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps that Beijing claims are vocational training centers.

China rejects widespread and documented allegations that it has mistreated Muslims living in Xinjiang and keeps the region closed to independent researchers and journalists.

The United States and the legislatures in several European countries have deemed the treatment of Uyghurs and others in the XUAR as constituting genocide and crimes against humanity.

In February, the Canadian parliament passed a unanimous nonbinding motion declaring China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in the XUAR a genocide, becoming the second country after the U.S. to make that determination.

Lawmakers also included an amendment to the motion, calling on the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing if the Chinese government continued its maltreatment of the minority group.

At the time, China strongly condemned and opposed the moves from Ottawa, saying Beijing had lodged representations with Canada.

About 2,000 Uyghurs — or 600 to 700 families — live in Canada, a country of 38 million people, Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project in Canada, told the Canadian women’s magazine Chatelaine in March.

Reported by Jelil Kashgary for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The Chinese survey vessel Haiyang Dizhi 10 has left Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) after almost a month, marine traffic data show.

The 3,400-ton survey ship, tailed by a Chinese coastguard vessel, is moving northeast out of the North Natuna Sea, where it has been since the end of August.

It is unclear where the vessel is heading, but it may stop at Fiery Cross Reef, where China operates a large outpost, for rest and resupply. Experts say it could yet head back toward Tuna Block, the oil field where U.K.-based Harbour Energy and its partner, Russia’s Zarubezhneft, are drilling two appraisal wells. The Chinese ship spent the last month surveying around the area.

The submersible rig Noble Clyde Boudreaux, commissioned by Harbour Energy, had just completed the first appraisal well “despite Chinese meddling,” the industry web portal Energy Voice reported Monday. It added that the drilling of the second well was planned to finish in early November.

Meanwhile, marine traffic data show that another Chinese survey ship, the Da Yang Hao, is now operating in an area that runs through the EEZs of three countries: Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. None of the countries has made any public comment about the Da Yang Hao yet.

Malaysia, however, keeps “tracking and shadowing Chinese vessels” which are spotted in the Malaysian waters, said Thomas Daniel, senior fellow at the Malaysian Institute of Strategic and International Studies.

“Malaysia has always preferred quiet diplomacy in dealing with China in the South China Sea. There have been exceptions to this, but they are few and far between,” Daniel said.

“My understanding is that Malaysia is often very forthright about its concerns and positions with China on these matters. But it is unlikely that policymakers or officials will speak of this openly as drawing public attention might be seen as potentially counterproductive in the long run,” he added.

The same approach may be adopted by the Indonesian authorities who have not said much about the Haiyang Dizhi 10, despite public pressure. Countries in the region seem reluctant to challenge China openly, mainly due to their economic reliance on the Chinese market but also to their limited maritime capabilities.

Earlier this week, the Indonesian government announced a budget proposal for 2022 in which 12.2 trillion rupiah, or $853 million, would be allocated to develop the security infrastructure in the Natuna Sea.

Indonesian media report that the budget will be used to build up defense infrastructure on strategic islands and procure maritime security equipment including unmanned aerial vehicles or drones.

The budget would be divided equally between the Indonesian Navy and the Maritime Security Force, which is known as Bakamla.

The government said 41 percent of the budget was used to meet the weapon system needs of the navy in Natuna and 44 percent was used to fulfill Bakamla’s marine security equipment needs.

China has been accused of harassing its neighbors’ fishing and oil and gas activities in the South China Sea, where its sweeping claims overlap with the claims and EEZs of other nations. Beijing asserts that these are lawful operations in waters under its jurisdiction.

Myanmar’s Arakan Army (AA) ethnic armed organization (EAO) has been beefing up its administrative and judiciary mechanisms in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state during the past 10 months of a cease-fire negotiated with the army before its military coup. On Aug. 1, the AA announced that the people of Rakhine state can now report all crimes and land disputes, as well as other legal issues, to its political branch, the United League of Arakan (ULA). According to Pe Than, a top Rakhine politician and a former lower house MP from Arakan National Party’s Myebon township, the AA now controls 80 percent of the administrative and judiciary sectors in Rakhine state, while military junta’s administrative mechanism is almost completely collapsed.

Myanmar’s military seized power from the democratically elected government on Feb. 1 and embarked on a campaign of brutal repression against anti-junta protests, killing at least 1,146 civilians and arresting 6,914, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). The junta is now reinforcing troop levels in Rakhine state in response to the AA’s growing influence, but Pe Than told RFA’s Myanmar Service that the Rakhine people will never settle for anything less than complete independence from Myanmar.

RFA: Can you first tell us about the current situation in Rakhine state?

Pe Than: The issue in Rakhine state is a bit different from the problems in the mainland. Tensions still exist between the military and the ULA/AA and renewed fighting could occur any day. We do not have any stability here yet. The military has not accepted any part of the demands for self-determination made by the AA.

RFA: How much control does the AA have in Rakhine state now?

Pe Than: The AA has now gained control of large swathes of the region and is exercising administrative and judicial powers. Apart from the cities and major towns and areas where there is a large military presence, I should say the AA is in control of about 80 percent of the region. Frankly, the military junta’s administrative machinery has totally collapsed. The judiciary sector does not work at all. The police have no powers, and the courts are not working. No one files complaints or cases at police stations. Even in the major towns, the police are constantly on their toes and cannot perform their duties properly. As the courts have failed in their work, the responsibility of the rule of law has now fallen on the shoulders of the AA in most areas. Only the AA can now mete out justice.

RFA:  Do you think Rakhine state will become an autonomous region soon?

Pe Than: Autonomy and self-determination are goals for staying in the union. Otherwise, the goal becomes a totally independent state. Previous governments in the country have given the ethnic people only a small portion of the rights they deserved. People have been demanding a federal system all along, but these demands have been ignored and lately, people are talking about independence. The AA is now a formidable force and has the full support of the local people. And so, we might be seeing major battles that would bring about a decisive result.

Self-determination and independence

RFA: Are the people of Rakhine state hoping for an independent state?

Pe Than: Most people want self-determination. Rakhine was once an independent country that became colonized for 137 years. People lost all their basic rights, natural resources in the region were exploited and Rakhine state became one of the poorest states in the country. They are now yearning for self-determination and, if possible, total independence.

RFA: Do you mean a totally independent country?

Pe Than: That is the dream of the people. And they believe that the AA leaders will find a way that would bring the least harm to the people in pursuing that dream.

RFA: What do you think of the current situation in Myanmar?

Pe Than: The conflict between the junta and the [shadow] National Unity Government (NUG) is getting bigger and bigger, and the sufferings and grievances of the people are also growing day by day. The military will use its full might to protect its interests, but the other side is not going to back down. Since political dialogue is off the table, a civil war will break out soon and I think the country will be ruined.

RFA: What do you think of the Muslim population in Rakhine state?

Pe Than: The Muslims are the second largest population in our state. If we want to establish a new state, we cannot ignore the existence of them. We won’t be able to solve the problem if Rakhines and Muslims cannot live together in harmony. I think the ULA/AA will be able to handle the situation and find a solution. The ULA/AA has already invited Muslim leaders to take part in the administration and judiciary sectors and I think an understanding between the two peoples will overcome the existing problem. The previous governments had played one against the other to create problems and now I think the ULA/AA is working hard to find a solution for the development of Rakhine state.

Reported by Khin Maung Soe for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane.