Month: September 2021

The retired parents of a Uyghur activist living in Australia have been in state custody since mid-2018, RFA has learned from sources inside northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.

Activist Shamsiye Hajibeg is the wife of Nurmemet Abdulmijit Turkistani, president of the East Turkestan Australian Association, a Uyghur advocacy group. It is believed that authorities in Xinjiang have placed dozens of members of Nurmemet’s family into camps, though little detailed information is known about their fate.

Over the past four years, Shamsiye, also a member of the advocacy group, has been unable to get information about 14 of her immediate relatives, including her parents Kamil Abaydulla and Aygul Haji; grandmother Tajinisa Haji; older brothers Zulfikar Kamil and Halmurat Kamil; younger brother Dilmurat Kamil; and her brothers’ wives.

Shamsiye’s contact with her parents began to fall off in early 2017, she told RFA. After she lost contact, she was able to confirm on several occasions through acquaintances that her parents were alive and “on the outside,” meaning that they had not been confined in one of Xinjiang’s internment camps.

Since early 2017, Chinese authorities have detained an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in political reeducation camps under a program Beijing describes as vocational training to combat extremism.

The relatives of Uyghurs living abroad who are active in rights or advocacy groups are among those who have come under pressure from authorities or have been forced against their will into detention.

Like many other members of the Uyghur diaspora, Shamsiye had assumed that her parents and siblings were avoiding contact with her out of caution and did not seek them out lest she cause them trouble. But after her brothers and sisters-in-law stopped sharing posts to WeChat, she came to believe that they had been taken into some form of state detention.

By mid-2018, Shamsiye had lost complete contact with her 67-year-old father, Kamil Abaydulla, a former employee of the water bureau in Atush (in Chinese, Atushi), and her mother, Aygul Haji, a retired employee of the city’s Agricultural Bank of China.

They retired relatively early and ventured into international business in Central Asia for a period, followed by land development in Atush, Shamsiye said.

“I called again and again, and [my mother] picked up once,” Shamsiye said. “She said they were doing well. I asked her if she could, at the very least, call me so that I could hear her voice.”

But her mother told her not to call and to stop looking for her parents, then abruptly hung up, she said.

“And just like that, that was the last time I had a voice call with my mother,” the activist said, adding that whenever she tries to contact her parents by phone now, a message says that their phone number does not exist. When she calls her father’s cell phone, a message says that his mobile unit is powered off.

“I see my family as one that is being oppressed and persecuted, just as hundreds of thousands of Uyghur families in East Turkestan are,” she said, using the Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang.

Sent to a camp

Police officers who work at a neighborhood committee office in Atush where Shamsiye’s parents lived told RFA that Kamil Abaydulla and his wife have been detained since mid-2018 and that the father has not been released since he was taken in by authorities.

When contacted by RFA, staffers at the water bureau and bank said they were unaware of any Kamil Abaydulla and Aygul Haji at their respective places of employment.

Chinese authorities blacklisted Shamsiye’s relatives and placed them under routine surveillance for the past three decades because her grandfather, Abaydulla, served in the East Turkistan National Army from 1944 to 1949, and her uncle, Turghun Haji, a well-known businessperson, had been indicted for “separatism” in 1997, Shamsiye said.

RFA called relevant offices of the municipal police department in Atush, where the couple hold household registrations, to ask about their whereabouts. While most officials declined to answer most questions, one said that the couple had been detained two years ago.

The pair applied for passports on several occasions so they could travel abroad to see their children, but authorities rejected their applications, Shamsiye said.

RFA also contacted the public security bureau of Kizilsu Kyrghyz Autonomous Prefecture, where Atush is located, to ask whether the couple had been indicted and sentenced to prison terms.

One police official told RFA that an ethnic Kyrgyz policeman named Shungqar had handled their case since January 2019. An official in another department at the bureau also said Shungqar was involved in the case.

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

A Uyghur man living in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) was sent to an internment camp four years ago for the crime of speaking to relatives overseas, contradicting Chinese claims that Uyghur residents of the region are free to keep in touch with family members abroad, RFA has learned.

Eli Juma, a resident of the No. 5 Village of Imamlirim township in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture’s Uchturpan (Wushi) county, was detained and sent to a camp in early 2017 for speaking to his uncles Jelil Juma and Helil Juma, both of them living outside China, three years before.

“Yes, he was in contact with his uncles, in contact with his relatives,” a village police officer in Uchturpan confirmed to RFA in a recent interview. “He spoke to them on the phone. I believe it was in 2014,” the officer added, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Details of where Juma’s uncles now live were not immediately available, though RFA’s source said that one or both of the men were believed to have previously owned a corner store in Uchturpan.

Word of Juma’s confinement in a camp was shared with community members at a meeting of the Imamlirim village committee in December 2018, the police officer said, adding that Juma—a farmer and volleyball enthusiast believed to be in his late 30s—was later sentenced to 15 years in prison after spending two years in the camp.

Juma’s jailing for the crime of speaking to relatives overseas contradicts Chinese claims that Uyghurs living in the XUAR and abroad are free to contact each other.

Speaking in January at a press conference, official XUAR spokesperson Zulhayat Ismail said that Uyghurs living in the region maintain normal contact with family members living outside China, and that only a small group of Uyghurs living in Xinjiang have decided to cut off contact with what he called “separatist” relatives overseas.

Challenged by foreign reporters, Ismail said however that some Uyghurs living abroad may have forgotten the phone numbers of their relatives in the XUAR and thus been unable to get in touch with them.

‘Anti-state sentiment’

Speaking to RFA in an earlier report, a village-level security director in Korla in the XUAR’s Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture said that Uyghurs who had previously traveled abroad were being brought into camps to be “reeducated,” as contact with foreigners may have allowed anti-state sentiment to grow in their minds.

Detainees would not be allowed to leave the camps until they had expressed sincere regret for their actions, he said.

Since early 2017, Chinese authorities have put an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the XUAR into political reeducation camps that Beijing says conduct vocational training to combat extremism.

But reporting by RFA and other media outlets indicate that those in the camps are detained against their will, subjected to political indoctrination, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.

Former detainees have also described being subjected to torture, rape, sterilization, and other abuses while in custody.

Parliaments in Canada, The Netherlands, the U.K., and Lithuania, and the U.S. State Department have described China’s actions in the region as “genocide,” while the New York-based group Human Rights Watch says they constitute crimes against humanity.

Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Authorities in Vietnam have rejected petition letters calling for an investigation into legal proceedings against detained blogger Nguyen Tuong Thuy, who is serving an 11-year sentence for writing articles online that criticized Vietnam’s one-party communist government, his family told RFA.

The petition was rejected on the grounds that Thuy, as a prisoner, technically does not have the rights of a citizen of Vietnam.

Thuy, a former vice president of the Vietnam Independent Journalism Association (IJAVN), had blogged on civil rights and freedom of speech issues for RFA’s Vietnamese Service for six years, and visited the United States in 2014 to testify before the House of Representatives on media freedom problems in Vietnam.

Arrested in May 2020, Thuy was indicted along with two other IJAVN members Pham Chi Dung and Le Huu Minh Tuan on Nov. 10 for “making, storing, and disseminating documents and materials for anti-state purposes” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison along with Tuan, while Dung was given 15 years.

Thuy’s wife Nguyen Thi Lan told RFA’s Vietnamese Service Wednesday that her husband had called home from the An Phuoc Detention Center in the southern province of Binh Duong a day earlier.

“He sounded very unhappy. He had asked the detention center to send his petition letters to the procuracy and other agencies… In their responses, the authorities said that in a way, he did not have citizenship rights. This is ridiculous and unreasonable,” she said.

“The authorities did, however, suggest that he request an appeal to reconsider the court decision if he did not agree with it. They said his petition was not valid because he no longer had necessary citizen rights to file it,” said Lan.

RFA’s website features many articles written by Thuy, including a series of reports about death-row prisoner Ho Duy Hai, whose harsh sentence has been criticized by legal experts.

Thuy also wrote reports depicting the plight of people involved in land disputes against developers or the government, and refuted government reports on the anniversary of the 1975 fall of Saigon that mocked Vietnamese people who fled the country then to escape the Communist regime.

Thuy, born in 1950, joined the North Vietnamese army in 1970, retiring after 22 years of service. Over the past 10 years he wrote many articles and managed a popular personal blog that has generated over for million page visits.

Vietnam, with a population of 99 million people, has been consistently rated “not free” in the areas of internet and press freedom by Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group.

Dissent is not tolerated in the communist nation, and authorities routinely use a set of vague provisions in the penal code to detain dozens of writers and bloggers.

Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

China’s investment in Laos has climbed since 1989 to a cumulative $16 billion, but little of this money has benefited ordinary citizens, while the negative impact from Chinese development projects isn’t being counted accurately, Lao sources say.

Sonexay Siphandone—Minister of Investment and Planning—told a meeting with Chinese investors last month that “Chinese investment takes top place on the list in Laos, with over 800 small, medium, and large-scale projects at a total value of $16 billion.”

Foreign investment totals are added to calculations of the country’s GDP, which was $19 billion in 2020, “but mega projects such as hydropower dams and other infrastructure schemes don’t distribute their benefits equally to local people,” a Lao researcher told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity for reasons of security.

“It’s unacceptable that we should talk about the value of investments when these aren’t shared to support the people’s interests.”

For example, a high-speed Lao-China railway under construction in Laos at a projected cost of $6 billion has benefited more Chinese than Lao workers, the researcher said.

“The majority of workers have been imported from China, while unskilled Lao workers have been recruited at much lower salaries,” he said.

In the agricultural sector, the overuse of herbicides and pesticides by Chinese-invested banana plantations in northern Laos have harmed the environment and health of people living in surrounding areas, he added.

“This is not sustainable development, because the impacted communities are not allowed full participation in the [management of the] farms. In theory, these are win-win arrangements, but in practice things are absolutely different,” he said.

Chinese hydropower and mining projects, the Lao-China railway, and an expressway project in the Lao capital Vientiane have also displaced thousands of families, many of whom lost their farms, incomes, and ways of life in the process.

“These were huge impacts, and it will take a long time now for things to be returned to their normal condition,” the researcher said.

“I travel in the north and I see banana plantations that have been abandoned. The Chinese owners went back to China, and the Lao workers have not been paid their salaries,” he said.

‘A huge gap’

Also speaking to RFA, a Lao legal advisor who asked not to be named said, “Lao workers on Chinese projects are paid smaller salaries, while Chinese businessmen buy hotels, guesthouses, and restaurants in places that the Lao-China railway runs through.”

There is a huge gap between the value of Chinese investments in Laos and the negative impacts they create, the legal advisor said, adding, “No one can express concerns about these things in public out of fear for their safety.”

“It makes no sense to just tell people the high value of Chinese investments,” agreed a Lao businessman, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The impact of Chinese investment projects is that the environment is ruined and that local people lose their ways to make a living, and no one reports the estimated costs of this,” he said.

Requests for comment by senior officials of Laos’ Ministry of Investment and Planning received no response.

A lower-level ministry official, however, said that Laos and China, countries with similar one-party political systems, are working to strengthen Laos’ economy by building a “community of common destiny” – a phrase from a 2017 speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Laos is now 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 said in earlier reports.

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.

China is Laos’ largest foreign investor and aid provider, and its second-largest trade partner after Thailand.

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

With food shortages driving hungry North Koreans to steal crops from fields, authorities have deployed military units to guard farmland during harvest season with orders to shoot crop thieves on sight, sources in the country told RFA.

The campaign to stop crop theft has unfolded amid an extensive investigation into the unprecedented theft of emergency wartime supplies of anti-biotics from a government warehouse,

Chronically short of food, North Korea has seen starvation deaths this year 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.

With thievery from farms on the rise nationwide, authorities in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong have ordered the military to patrol the farms there, a military source from the area told RFA’s Korean Service Monday.

“The 9^th Corps have organized groups to patrol the farms day and night because thefts are happening frequently,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

“The General Staff Department ordered them to patrol the farms because… cooperative farm thefts are increasing all over the country,” said the source.

“If the authorities do nothing to prevent this, harvest yields will be greatly reduced,” the military source added.

The source said that the farms were tasked with unrealistic production goals at a ruling Workers Party congress at the beginning of this year, which called for a major agricultural windfall as a solution to projected shortages.

“Preventing residents’ intrusion into the farms for stealing crops is also important for the military to secure its own rations,” the source said.

The army built guard posts and formed patrol teams of about 20 soldiers that have been authorized to use deadly force, according to the source.

“Any illegal trespasser is regarded as ‘an impure element’ against the government system and is to be shot without warning, so the order is causing tension among the residents living near the farms,” the source said.

In nearby Ryanggang province, soldiers are also patrolling farms, said a resident of the provincial capital Hyesan.

“When I go to the outskirts of the city these days, it is common to see soldiers carrying weapons and patrolling the crops, so the people avoid those areas, especially at night,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

“The people are terrified that they could be shot without warning if they merely approach the fields,” said the second source.

The local neighborhood watch units and the probate office are pushing an anti-crop theft campaign of education sessions and propaganda, according to the second source.

“But the residents are not happy about it. The current food problem is considered to be our country’s worst since the Arduous March,” said the second source, referring to the 1994-1998 famine that killed about 10 percent of the country’s population of 23 million.

“The people are saying that they have to eat to survive, even if it means stealing food.”

Penicillin pilfered

A dramatic theft of penicillin from a warehouse inside a guarded government building last month underscored how chronic medicine shortages have also gotten worse since the pandemic and the closure of the border with China.

In South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, police are investigating a large theft from a wartime medicinal storage facility of the antibiotic, which has recently doubled in price.

“The military drug management office’s no. 4 warehouse here in Songchon county was burglarized, so the judicial authorities are on alert,” a resident of the county in South Pyongan told RFA’s Korean Service Sept. 5.

“That warehouse stockpiles and stores various emergency medicines, including antibiotics set aside for civilians in the event of war,” said the third source, who declined to be named.

Governments in every North Korean province, city and county manage reserve warehouses. No. 2 warehouses store food, and No. 4 warehouses store medicine and other necessities. Some municipalities put the warehouses in spent mines or other unused facilities, where they are usually guarded by armed men to prevent theft.

Songchon county’s No. 4 warehouse is located inside the drug management office building, under tight security, according to the South Pyongan source.

“The thief who broke in cut the lock with some kind of tool and stole hundreds of doses of penicillin from the warehouse. This is the first time that wartime medicine has been stolen, so the military’s judicial authorities have been on high alert and are conducting an investigation, but there’s been no progress,” the third source said.

According to the third source, the price of 100 milligrams of penicillin recently jumped from 1,500 won (U.S. $0.25 to about 3,000 ($0.50) won.

Another resident from South Pyongan told RFA that the unprecedented theft triggered an all-out investigation.

“Individual retailers who have been reported to have sold even one dose of penicillin in the local market or in private are the first to be investigated,” said the source on condition of anonymity.

“Due to the coronavirus crisis, the operation of pharmaceutical factories was greatly reduced,” said the South Pyongan resident.

“Even the antibiotic supplies from China are depleted, leading to a big medicine shortage in the market. So, the police are investigating where sellers are getting their penicillin,” added the source.

Police investigated one retailer who said he bought penicillin off a merchant from another area a few months ago, according to the South Pyongan source.

“They searched the house, checked the production dates on the penicillin doses found in their homes, but not a single dose was found to be stolen from the No. 4 warehouse,” the fourth source said.

“Even if they catch the thief, the head of Songchon county’s drug management office will not avoid heavy punishment.”

Though Korean War hostilities ended in an armistice agreement in 1953, North Korea technically remains at war with the more prosperous South.

Reported by Myungchul Lee and Hyemin Son for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun and Jinha Shin. Written in English by Eugene Whong.