Day: October 1, 2021

Claims by China that 70 years of Beijing’s rule have improved Tibetans’ lives and that Tibet has always belonged to China distort present-day realities and ignore historical facts, Tibet’s India-based exile government said this week in a new report.

In a report released on Thursday, a day before China’s Oct. 1 National Day, the Dharamsala, India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) refuted claims made by China in a White Paper, “Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity,” released in May.

“It is not 70 years of liberation, but in fact 70 years of suppression and oppression,” Tibet’s exile leader Sikyong Pema Tsering said at an event held to launch the CTA report. “In the last 70 years, the Chinese government has constantly subjugated the Tibetans inside Tibet in the name of infrastructure development and evolution.”

China has maintained its rule in Tibet only by establishing “an oppressive regime that uses force and the instillment of fear among the people,” the CTA said in its report, titled “Tibet: 70 Years of Occupation and Oppression.”

“Today, the subjugation of Tibetans is pursued by means of increased securitization, intensified surveillance and a narrative on development, all of which are used as a political tool to integrate Tibet with China,” the exile government said.

Chinese rule in Tibet “bears all the fundamental characteristics of colonialism,” the CTA said.

“It relies, as other colonial regimes have, on the narratives of superiority and virtue of Chinese culture and ideology and the ‘backwardness’ of the Tibetan ‘Other.’”

Claims by Beijing that Tibet has always been a part of China come only from relationships between the Dalai Lamas—Tibet’s national and spiritual leaders—and the rulers of Mongol and Manchu empires that had themselves conquered China centuries before, according to the report.

“Contrary to China’s claim, Tibet was not historically a part of China, but was seized by force as the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet from 1949 to 1951. The claim that Tibet was ‘liberated’ is part of a narrative aimed at legitimizing what was and continues to be an illegal occupation of Tibet,” the CTA said.

Masters of the Country

In its White Paper released in May, Beijing claims that “People in Tibet enjoy the right to be masters of the country and the region in accordance with the law,” and that under Chinese rule Tibet has enjoyed “rapid and sustained growth thanks to social harmony and stability.”

But China has long denied the Tibetan people the right and freedom to develop their country according to their vision and needs,” the CTA said in its report, adding, “Since occupation, China has been on a looting spree in Tibet: logging Tibetan timbers, mining Tibetan mineral resources, [and] damming and diverting Tibetan rivers.”

Tibetans are constantly required to show gratitude to the Chinese government as a minority population happy for Beijing’s help, the exile government said.

“[And] any perceived failure by the Tibetans to show subordination is seen not only as a sign of ingratitude but also as a political crime which needs to be corrected with coercion and re-education.”

Finally, claims by Beijing that it protects and promotes use of the Tibetan language are contradicted by education policies mandating classroom instruction in Chinese, with school graduates who lack Chinese language skills increasingly marginalized in professional occupations.

“The education policy implemented by the Chinese government not only downgrades the use of the Tibetan language, but also aims at eradicating the Tibetan identity,” Sikyong Penpa Tsering said in remarks at Thursday’s launch of the report.

“Tibetan graduates are facing increasing difficulty finding jobs,” Tsering said.

China’s repeated assertions that over the last 70 years that it has “peacefully liberated” the country from feudal and backward rule are contradicted by the violence of its conquest and occupation, according to the CTA report.

“In short, the euphemism ‘peaceful liberation’ is similar to the image propagandized and popularized by China today, where the phrase ‘Peaceful Rise’ of China is sold in the market.”

“In reality, the rise of China is not peaceful at all. Rather it has been violent, with increasing repression in Tibet, East Turkestan, Southern Mongolia and now Hong Kong,” the CTA said.

Reported by Lobsang Gelek for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Crowds of Vietnamese people rushed checkpoints and clashed with police Friday as the country began lifting months-long coronavirus lockdowns and travel restrictions in Ho Chi Minh City and other large cities, videos obtained by RFA showed.

At checkpoints around Vietnam’s largest city, Ho Chi Minh City, laborers from rural areas broke barricades and fought with police, while others knelt in the street and pleaded with the police to let them through, saying they had run out of money to stay in the city, the videos showed.

Several thousand immigrant laborers in Ho Chi Minh City attempted to leave the city, state media reported, causing heavy congestion in many of the checkpoints.

In one incident in southern Vietnam’s Binh Duong province, at least one person was injured when members of the militia used batons on the crowd of people gathered Thursday night and Friday morning and demanding that authorities remove barricades to allow them to leave.

Video of clashes like the one in Binh Duong went viral on social media in the country of 98 million people.

Vietnam had been among the most effective countries in tackling COVID-19, reporting no deaths through late July 2020—a record that was attributed to effective contact tracing, strict quarantines, and early testing.

After weathering three waves of the virus with confirmed cases numbering in the low thousands, a fourth wave arrived in April 2021, causing the current outbreak, with a caseload rapidly approaching 800,000.

During the fourth wave, the country locked down its largest cities and forbade residents from leaving their houses except to procure food, a move that has led to widespread unemployment and loss of income.

Other people became stranded far away from their homes due to the lockdowns, some of which lasted longer three months.

Local state-run outlet Voice of Vietnam reported that, starting Friday, Ho Chi Minh city planned to transport by bus anyone who wishes to return to their home province.

At midday Friday, many people were still waiting for their turn to go through the checkpoint on Highway #1 in the city’s Binh Chanh district.

The Zing online newspaper reported Friday that provinces west of the city had sent traffic police to the area to escort busloads of people to their hometowns. They formed a convoy of buses with more than 1,000 passengers bound for 13 provinces. Several hundred people on motorbikes joined the convoy. 

People returning from Ho Chi Minh City are required to quarantine in local facilities. Provincial leaders asked returning citizens not to simply return home on a whim, but to register ahead of time to ensure safety, local media reported.

For Ho Chi Minh City’s residents, a trip outside the city remains forbidden. While they are now allowed to travel within the city, they may not move between Ho Chi Minh and other jurisdictions.

As of Friday, Vietnam had confirmed 790,755 cases of COVID-19 and 19,301 deaths according to data from Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.

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

Bangladesh police said Friday they had arrested a Rohingya man in connection with the killing of a prominent refugee leader this week, even as a Rohingya rebel group rejected allegations that it was behind the murder.

A suspect identified as Mohammad Selim, 27, (alias Lomba Selim), was arrested from a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar district on Friday morning, police said.

Rohingya leader Md. Muhib Ullah was shot dead in his office at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar by at least five unidentified gunmen Wednesday night. He was buried at the camp on Thursday evening amid tight security as thousands of Rohingya attended his funeral.

“Based on preliminary investigation, we think Selim might have involvement with the murder,” Ukhia police chief Sanjur Morshed told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, without providing details.

“Police will produce the accused in court on Saturday and seek permission for his interrogation in police custody.”

Also on Friday, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) rebel group said that Muhib Ullah was “reportedly assassinated by unidentified transnational border-based criminals.”

It is time for to hold the criminals accountable “instead of finger pointing with baseless and hearsay accusations,” ARSA said in a statement via Twitter.

ARSA issued its statement a day after Muhib Ullah’s brother, Habib Ullah, accused the rebels of killing the Rohingya refugee leader.

“All the killers of my brother and great Rohingya leader are members of ARSA,” Habib Ullah told BenarNews.

“I recognized only a few of them [the killers] as the others were wearing masks. They had been working in the camp against repatriation while my brother was in favor of it,” he said.

Habib Ullah said he would not name the suspects because he was concerned for his own security.

However, Naimul Haque, commanding officer of the Armed Police Battalion Unit-14, said the rebel group was not present in Bangladesh.

“ARSA does not exist in Bangladesh. Rival refugee groups sometimes use the name of ARSA to spread panic,” Haque told BenarNews.

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.

Myanmar conducted the crackdown after deadly raids on police and military outposts in Rakhine state that authorities blamed on ARSA rebels. Myanmar declared ARSA a terrorist group on Aug. 25, 2017.

Also on Thursday, Habib Ullah filed a murder case with the Ukhia police accusing unnamed people of the killing. In his complaint, he said his brother had disputes with extremist Rohingya groups and that he never compromised.

“That’s why my brother became a target of the extremist group,” he said in a statement that was part of his police complaint.

Police question a motorcyclist at the Kutupalong refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh as part of increased security after the fatal shooting there of Rohingya leader Muhib Ullah, Oct. 1, 2021. [Sunil Barua/BenarNews]

 

‘Brave and fierce advocate’

Meanwhile, an independent media organization in Myanmar posted a video dated Friday purportedly showing Muhib Ullah’s widow complaining about insufficient security for her husband.

“He needed security. The police should have been guarding him,” a woman who Mizzima TV identified as Muhib Ullah’s wife, Nasima Khatun, said in the video posted on YouTube.

“They didn’t even come after he was shot,” she alleged.

Habib Ullah said his brother was killed because of his popularity among Rohingya and his global standing.

Muhib Ullah represented the Rohingya community before the United Nations and at the White House in Washington, where he expressed concerns about his fellow refugees to then-President Donald Trump in 2019.

Among those who paid tribute to Muhib Ullah were United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and an international group of 27 Rohingya organizations.

“Muhib Ullah was a brave and fierce advocate for the human rights of Rohingya Muslims around the world,” Blinken said in a statement issued Thursday.

“We urge a full and transparent investigation into his death with the goal of holding the perpetrators of this heinous crime accountable. We will honor his work by continuing to advocate for Rohingya and lift up the voices of members of the community in decisions about their future.”

Bachelet and the Rohingya organizations echoed the call for a thorough investigation into the killing.

“It is heartbreaking that a person who spent his life fighting to ensure that the violations committed against the Rohingya people were known world-wide has been murdered in this way,” Bachelet said in a statement issued Friday.

In their statement, the Rohingya organizations also expressed concern for the around 1 million refugees who and live in camps in and around Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh.

“The camp situation remains particularly precarious,” said the organizations with members in the U.S., United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Norway, and Sweden.

Refugees live in cramped quarters “with limited freedom of movement, access to education or health service,” they said.

While tributes to Muhib Ullah have poured in from abroad in the two days since he was gunned down, Bangladesh’s government has yet to issue a statement offering condolences to his family or condemning the murder of the high-profile refugee on its territory. 

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

Authorities in Cambodia’s coastal city Sihanoukville have threatened to take legal action against casinos and other businesses that force staff to work during the pandemic, after employees accused a Chinese-owned casino of forcing people infected with the coronavirus to keep working.

After one of the sick laborers at The Century Casino died, her family asked authorities to order the Chinese owner to pay them compensation for forcing the woman to continue working while ill, said Ros Leng, cousin of worker Hean Sreynich.

A doctor told the family that the women who died Thursday at the casino had contracted the COVID-19 virus five days earlier and had died of food poisoning and dehydration, he told RFA.

The casino did not inform the family about Hean Sreynich’s death or offer to pay them her salary, he said.

The family learned about her death from her coworkers, Ros Leng said.

“We should like the casino to resolve the issue and to give us compensation,” he said.

RFA could not reach the casino’s human resources manager to comment on the matter.

News that some of the casino’s 437 workers had contracted the virus spread after a group of employees livestreamed videos on Facebook on Thursday.

They said they were forced to perform their jobs, including managing online gambling platforms, while they were ill and that they had been forced to remain inside the building since March without any treatment.

On Sept. 25, the workers called on the provincial labor department to order the casino operator to stop forcing them to work.

Authorities banned the casino from asking employees to work while they were in quarantine, with provincial governor Kouch Chamroeun on Monday warning hotels and casinos not to use forced labor.

“To avoid labor disputes and to avoid forced labor that leads to human trafficking and prostitution and to exploited labor, Sihanoukville provincial authorities have issued strict measures banning forced labor, employing workers in exchange for paying off their debs, fake marriages, producing pornography, and illegal detention,” the governor said in a statement.

“Provincial authorities will take action against any casinos or hotels that detain or force workers to work or [engage in] illegal trafficking,” he said.

Authorities would shut down any business that violates the directive, prosecute the owners, and revoke their operating licenses, Kouch Chamroeun added.

A casino employee who declined to be named out of fear of retribution said the authorities sent two nurses to the casino to distribute medicine after the Facebook video the workers made went viral.

“The treatment we received is acceptable, but we don’t know if this will change in the future. Right now authorities are paying attention to us. There is some improvement needed, but it is acceptable,” she said.

Yow Khemara, director of the Department of Labor and Vocational Training in Preah Sihanouk province, told RFA that medical professionals have provided treatment and medicine to the more than 200 workers who have the COVID-19 virus. He also confirmed that one employee had died.

“Right now, we have doctors stationed there during the day because casino employees have complained,” he said. “We also are giving them four meals daily.”

Chinese investment has flowed into Sihanoukville in recent years, bringing dozens of Chinese-owned casinos and other businesses.

While the businesses create jobs for Cambodians, many complain about what they see as unscrupulous business practices, criminal activities, and unbecoming behavior by Chinese businessmen, residents, and tourists alike.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

A new study found under-reported debts of at least $385 billion owed by different countries to China in the past two decades, and that one-third of projects under the Belt and Road Initiative have run into major implementation problems.

The hidden debts, which slipped through the scrutiny of international lenders such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and credit rating agencies, mean borrowing countries may have to repay more than they think.

The findings are from a four-year study by AidData, an international development research lab based at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute in the United States.

“Chinese debt burdens are substantially larger than research institutions, credit rating agencies, or intergovernmental organizations with surveillance responsibilities previously understood,” the study said.

The reason is an increasing number of deals struck not directly between governments through central banks but through often opaque arrangements with a range of financing institutions, hence “the debt burdens were kept off the public balance sheets.”

The study said that nearly 70 percent of China’s overseas lending “is now directed to state-owned companies, state-owned banks, special purpose vehicles, joint ventures, and private sector institutions in recipient countries” rather than sovereign borrowers which are central government institutions.

According to Brad Parks, AidData’s Executive Director and a co-author of the report, “the hidden debt problem is getting worse over time.”

Most of the hidden debts occurred in projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s ambitious international development program and President Xi Jinping’s brainchild. It was launched in 2013 under the original name One Belt One Road.

The study also found that 35 percent of the BRI infrastructure project portfolio has encountered major implementation problems—such as corruption scandals, labor violations, environmental hazards, and public protests.

‘Loanshark practices’

AidData studied 13,427 China-funded projects across 165 countries worth $843 billion over an 18-year period and found that the average government “is under-reporting its actual and potential repayment obligations to China by an amount that is equivalent to 5.8 percent of its GDP.”

Collectively, these under-reported debts are worth approximately $385 billion.

Forty-two developing countries, including Laos, Papua New Guinea, the Maldives, Brunei, Cambodia and Myanmar, now have levels of public debt exposure to China in excess of 10 percent of GDP, the study said.

The authors of the study said that Beijing has used debt rather than aid “to establish a dominant position in the international development finance market. Since the BRI was introduced in 2013, China has maintained a 31-to-1 ratio of loans to grants.”

Beijing’s lending to low- and middle-income countries is provided on less generous terms than loans from other lenders and multinational creditors.

“A typical loan from China has a 4.2 percent interest rate and a repayment period of less than 10 years,” compared to a typical loan with a 1.1 percent interest rate and a repayment period of 28 years from countries like Germany, France or Japan.

“This is quite comparable to loanshark practices at the global level,” said Soumya Bhowmick, associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in Kolkata, India, who was not involved in the study.

“This is particularly worrisome because countries which are grappling with the double whammy of high public external debt, as well as high volumes of debt owed to China, highlight the precarious situation of their own public finances,” he said.

However, as developing countries are desperate to find money to finance their infrastructure projects, they seem to have no choice but reach out to Chinese lenders whose favorite risk mitigation tool is collaterization, or the use of the borrowing country’s valuable assets or natural resources.

Laos, for example, had to sell part of its national electricity grid to China in 2020 in exchange to debt relief from Chinese creditors.

Laos’ overall level of debt exposure to China is equivalent to 64.8 percent of its GDP, including 35.4 percent of GDP worth of hidden debt that comes with the China-Laos railway mega project, according to the study. The $6 billion dollar railway is due to open in December.

‘Implementation problems’

The Philippines, too, had to place national assets as collateral in a 2018 loan agreement with China to finance a large irrigation project dubbed the Chico River project.

“Beijing is more willing to bankroll projects in risky countries than other official creditors, but it is also more aggressive than its peers at positioning itself at the front of the repayment line (via collateralization),” AidData said.

Forty of the 50 largest loans by China were collateralized and China has rapidly scaled up the provision of loans to resource-rich countries that suffer from high levels of corruption.

Corruption scandals, labor violations, environmental hazards, and public protests have blighted BRI projects, the study found.

A part of a project to build the East Coast Rail Link connecting Kuala Lumpur and Kota Bharu in Malaysia, funded by China Eximbank, was cancelled in 2018 after allegations of artificial cost inflation and corruption.

BRI infrastructure projects are also taking substantially longer to implement. A project to build Vietnam’s first elevated railway line in Hanoi suffered from years of delay and a budget ballooning by 60 percent.

“Host country policymakers are mothballing high-profile BRI projects because of corruption and overpricing concerns, as well as major changes in public sentiment that make it difficult to maintain close relations with China,” explained Brooke Russell, an associate director at AidData and one of the other co-authors of the report.

China’s foreign ministry said in a statement cited by Reuters that since its launch, the BRI had “consistently upheld principles of shared consultation, shared contributions and shared benefits.”

Currently, China is outspending the U.S. and other major powers by more than 2-to-1 on overseas development. In an average year during the BRI era, China spent $85 billion on their overseas development program as compared to the U.S.’s $37 billion.

Authors of the study, however, warned that China would soon face higher levels of competition in the global infrastructure finance market.

At a meeting of the G7 industrialized nations in June, the U.S. and its allies announced a spending plan to rival China’s influence called Build Back Better World (B3W) which promises to fund global infrastructure projects that are financially and environmentally sustainable.

The E.U. recently also announced its Global Gateway Initiative which analysts say is likely to collide head-on with the BRI.

“It remains to be seen if ‘buyer’s remorse’ among BRI participant countries will undermine the long-run sustainability of China’s global infrastructure initiative, but clearly Beijing needs to address the concerns of host countries in order to sustain support for the BRI,” AidData’s Russell said.

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

North Korea has increased fines for violators of its extensive COVID-19 emergency rules to levels many times citizens’ salaries in an effort to enforce its draconian national quarantine effort, officials of state-run enterprises told RFA.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, North Korea has imposed strict rules on its 25 million people, including shoot-to-kill orders near its border with China and lockdowns of entire cities and counties.

No measure has had a greater effect on society than the closure of the Sino-Korean border and suspension of all trade with China since January 2020, a move that devastated the North Korean economy, making it difficult for many citizens to make a living.

Up until now, minor violations of quarantine rules had been punishable by nominal fines based on government salaries. The average North Korean monthly salary in 2018 was about 4,000 won (U.S. $0.66), according to the Korea Joongang Daily, a South Korean newspaper.

But as the months passed, frustrated and desperate citizens began ignoring the rules, and the government decided to base fines on market prices instead of government salaries, sources told RFA.

“Recently we had to attend a learning session titled ‘Strict Compliance with the Requirements of the Emergency Quarantine Act,’ where the punishments and fines for violations were so high that the people were shocked,” an official of a state-owned company in the central northern province of Ryanggang told RFA’s Korean Service this week.

Every adult in North Korea must attend two-hour lecture sessions twice a month in party ideology and changes in policy.

“Normally, the learning sessions are held separately for government officials and the general public, with different titles, but this time the title and content were exactly the same for both groups,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

The revised Emergency Quarantine Act listed fines the source called “shockingly high,” and punishments including unpaid labor, reeducation, dismissal from a job, and detention.

“The session strongly stressed that the emergency quarantine project is the most critical challenge facing the country, in that it is directly related to the safety of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, so the people must be of the mind where there can be no mistake,” the source said.

The source said that authorities told attendees that the higher fines were because citizens had become lax in complying with quarantine laws.

Another official, from a state-run factory in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, the same lectures drew the same reaction.

“At the session the punishments and fines for violations of the law were explained and everyone was surprised at the amounts,” the second source said, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

The second source told RFA about fines for specific violations. On the low end of the spectrum were a 5,000 won ($0.82) to 10,000 won fine for failing to report suspected cases, suspicious packages, or animals that died with unknown causes.

The fine for doing business in an unauthorized place is between 50,000 and 100,000 won; while driving an overloaded bus carries a penalty of 100,000 to 500,000 won. Acts such as improperly disposing of wastewater from quarantined areas or raising pheasants in a cage-free environment are punishable by a fine of 500,000 to one million won.

“Residents are increasingly dissatisfied with their living difficulties under this prolonged emergency quarantine… The shift to market price-based fines pushes the fines into the territory that normal residents cannot afford, so they have no choice but to obey the government’s harsh measures.”

While imposing extensive quarantine measures and heavy punishment, North Korea maintains outwardly that it has been virus-free throughout the global pandemic, and has reported to zero confirmed COVID-19 cases and zero deaths.

Observers doubt the claim, citing costly quarantine measures and reports that hospitals isolate “suspected cases,” while those who die of suspected symptoms are quickly cremated before COVID-19 can be confirmed as the cause of death.

Reported by Chang Gyu Ahn for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin and Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.