Day: October 6, 2021

Forty Lao prisoners held in a detention center in the capital Vientiane have been found infected with COVID-19 and are being denied contact with relatives or other outside visitors, Lao sources said.

Arrested without health checks, many of those sent to the Xaysettha district jail were confined in a single room with other criminals, some of them already infected, and the infection then spread rapidly to the others, an official source said.

“The police had arrested some drug traffickers, and some of them were already infected with COVID-19,” the official told RFA on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“They were never examined or separated, but were just put into the jail,” he said, adding that the infected prisoners are not allowed now to receive visits from family members or others from the outside.

It was not immediately clear if the infected group, which was identified during an inspection of the jail on Tuesday by municipal authorities, has now been kept apart from other prisoners in the facility, however.

Also on Tuesday, 12 soldiers were found infected at an army camp in Savannakhet province in southern Laos, with authorities there saying some of the men may have caught the virus outside the camp and then spread it on their return.

“Only a small number of the soldiers are infected, and they may have caught the virus from infected members of their families,” one camp official said, also declining to give his name.

“Authorities are now taking them for treatment at clinic shelters outside the camp, and are limiting their contact with others,” he said.

On Aug. 29, a group of about 20 prisoners escaped from a provincial prison in Savannakhet out of fear they would become infected with COVID-19 behind bars, but were quickly recaptured by authorities, sources told RFA in an earlier report.

The prisoners broke out of the Provincial Detention Center at 1:00 a.m., but pursuing guards fired warning shots, and all escapees were back in custody around 40 minutes later.

Many villagers in southern Lao provinces now say they are short of food and other essentials due to prolonged and strict government-ordered coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, preventing people from working and closing most markets and stores.

The impoverished, landlocked country of 7.4 million people saw a spike in outbreaks beginning in April after managing to evade infections for nearly a year.

Laos has recorded 25,987 cases of COVID-19 infection as of Wednesday, with 22 deaths also reported.

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Family members of a Rohingya refugee leader, who was gunned down in his Cox’s Bazar office last week, said Wednesday they have been receiving threatening phone calls asking them to withdraw a case they filed on the killing.

The relatives of slain leader Muhib Ullah have been receiving these phone calls and messages since his brother filed a case with police two days after the Sept. 29 killing, said a relative, Md. Syed Alam.

“Since filing the murder case, Muhib’s wife Nasima Khatun and younger brother Habib Ullah have been receiving threats through text and voice messages from unknown phone numbers,” Alam, the uncle of the slain leader, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

“Muhib’s family members and relatives are not moving freely because of fear.”

Alam said the callers had also told the family members to stop talking to the media about the killing. Khatun and Ullah declined to talk BenarNews on Tuesday.

“We are passing our days amid serious fear because we are receiving threats repeatedly,” said Md. Rashid Ullah, Muhib Ullah’s nephew.

Police have deployed officers to provide security to Muhib Ullah’s family members, and said they were investigating the threats.

“We have already collected some text and voice messages that were sent to Muhib’s family by unknown senders,” Naimul Haque, commanding officer of the Armed Police Battalion Unit-14 at Cox’s Bazar, told BenarNews.

“The investigators are working to find the senders of the messages.”

Unidentified assailants killed Muhib Ullah, who headed the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar on the night of Sept. 29.

The 50-year-old refugee had been a leading champion for Rohingya rights, and represented his community internationally, including in visits to the United Nations and the White House. He had been advocating for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar.

Around 740,000 Rohingya Muslims crossed into the southeastern Bangladesh Cox’s Bazar district after fleeing a brutal anti-Rohingya offensive launched by the military in August 2017 in their home state of Rakhine.

Meanwhile, Md. Hasanuzzaman, superintendent of Cox’s Bazar district police, claimed Wednesday that the authorities had uncovered the motive behind the murder and know who orchestrated it, but they did not disclose details.

“We are hopeful of arresting the main culprits shortly,” the police officer told reporters.

Since the killing, police have arrested five men as suspects but not released details about them. The suspects are in police custody and being interrogated.

‘Mistrust has also increased’

Separately, international watchdog Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that Rohingya community leaders and volunteer workers had said they were being targeted by “armed Islamist groups.”

“At least a dozen activists have come forward to seek protection from the [United Nations] refugee agency, UNHCR, and Bangladesh officials since Muhib Ullah’s killing because of renewed threats from armed groups and other risks of violence,” the New York-based rights group said.

HRW urged the Bangladesh government and U.N. officials to take urgent measures to protect Rohingya facing threats and violence in the camps.

From August 2017 until July 2021, at least 228 Rohingya refugees have been killed in the camps, according to the Bangladesh Peace Observatory, a research organization at the University of Dhaka’s Center for Genocide Studies.

Of those slain, 108 were killed in internal feuds, Md. Humaun Kabir, a research manager at the observatory, told BenarNews.

Imtiaz Ahmed, a professor and the center’s director, said violence in the camps had increased in recent years as factionalism has grown.

“Mistrust has also increased for various reasons among the forcibly displaced people, which has become a major reason for internal feuds,” he told BenarNews.

ARSPH’s secretary, Md. Zubayer, said the camps were even more tense since Muhib Ullah’s killing.

“We are not sure if we can carry out the activities of our organization,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen said the government would identify the Rohingya leader’s killers and bring them to justice.

“We do not want any unrest in the camps” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“The government is very sincere in ensuring the necessary security of the Rohingya people.”

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

Ethnic rebels and militiamen engaged in 265 armed clashes with Myanmar junta forces in September, killing nearly 300 national soldiers in Kayin and Kayah states, officials from the groups said Wednesday, amid an intensified effort by ethnic soldiers to resist the military regime that overthrew the elected government eight months ago.

The powerful Myanmar military ousted the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government on Feb. 1, claiming the party had stolen the country’s November 2020 ballot through voter fraud.

Fighting against military forces escalated across the nation after the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) on Sept. 7 declared a nationwide state of emergency and called for open rebellion against junta rule.

The move by the group of ousted NLD politicians, activists, and representatives from ethnic minority groups, sparked an escalation of attacks on military targets by various allied pro-democracy militias and ethnic armed groups. The number of civilians displaced by the violence numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and aid workers face a humanitarian crisis.

The central committee of the Karen National Union, a political group with an armed wing, which represents the ethnic Karen people in mountainous eastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, said that the clashes fought by armed groups under its umbrella resulted in 234 deaths of junta soldiers and five ethnic troops. Ten KNU soldiers were injured as well.

Lt. Col. Saw Kalae Do of the Karen National Liberation Army’s (KNLA) 5th Brigade told RFA that 215 of the clashes occurred in the territory controlled by the brigade, with fighting occurring on an almost daily basis in September because Myanmar soldiers had become more aggressive in expending their territory and securing troop reinforcements.

“For us, we have to maintain the control of our territory, so there were shootouts between the two forces,” he said. “There were armed engagements almost every day.”

“If they hadn’t provoked us, we would not have responded,” he added.

The KNLA saw far fewer casualties from the clashes because its soldiers are familiar with the terrain and have better guerilla combat skills than national forces, Saw Kalae Do said.

National soldiers fired more than 160 rounds of heavy artillery in the brigade’s territory, injuring three civilians, he added.

In August, there were 130 armed engagements in which 118 military soldiers died and 68 others were injured, though there were no casualties among the KNLA troops, Saw Kalae Do said.

RFA could not independently confirm the number of casualties.

In neighboring Kayah state, Karenni National Defense Force (KNDF) militia engaged in at least 14 clashes with Myanmar troops in the past few months, with 40 national troops and three Karenni soldiers killed, said a KNDF official who declined to be named.

Now the fighting could intensify after national forces brought about 500 more troops into the area, the KNDF official said.

“Future fighting will depend on the actions of the military council troops,” he said. “There could be some of the biggest fighting in a month or it could cool down to the level of regular fighting, but I think there are more prospects for the former.”

Junta forces set fire to at least 55 civilian homes, killed two civilians, and critically injured two others during the September clashes, KNDF officials said, though RFA could not independently confirm the number of causalities.

RFA could not reach junta spokesman Maj. Gen Zaw Min Tun for comment.

Political analyst Than Soe Naing said fighting across Myanmar would intensify with civilians forming defense forces to fight alongside the ethnic armed groups while the volunteer People’s Defense Force, the armed wing of the National Unity Government that has declared itself to be the legitimate government of Myanmar, battle junta soldiers in central Myanmar.

“This fighting will only be the beginning,” he said. “We are heading towards a nationwide civil war. That’s why these clashes are not decisive wars. The real decisive wars are forthcoming.”

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Vietnamese authorities on Monday arrested a Facebook user, charging him with “abusing freedom and democracy” for writing a series of online posts they said had defamed the country’s leaders, state media reported on Monday.

Vo Hoang Tho, 36 years old and a resident of the Ninh Kieu district of southern Vietnam’s Can Tho City, had published 47 posts on his Minh Long Facebook page criticizing government efforts to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19 in the one-party communist state, media sources said.

Containment efforts, including community lockdowns and other harsh restrictions, are widely unpopular in Vietnam, and Tho’s arrest was just the latest in a continuing crackdown on Facebook users who use the popular social media platform to voice dissenting views.

Can Tho City’s Investigation Agency said Tho had formerly worked as a journalist but did not identify the media organization for which he worked.

RFA has reported nearly 30 cases in which Vietnamese citizens have been arrested for political offenses over social media posts since the beginning of this year. Among those now serving sentences for Facebook posts are journalists, bloggers, and another citizen who had posted complaints about coronavirus policies.

On Sept. 10, Vietnamese authorities arrested and charged a woman with “carrying out activities to overthrow the government,” making her the third person apprehended this year for joining an  exile Vietnamese organization called a terrorist group by Hanoi, according to state media reports.

Le Thi Kim Phi, 62, had used a Facebook profile under the name Phi Kim to connect with members of the Provisional Government of Vietnam, a U.S.-based opposition group, said the investigation division of southern An Gian province’s police department.

And on Sept. 8, authorities in Can Tho indicted five journalists from the Bao Sach (Clean Newspaper) Facebook-based news outlet for publishing reports and videos dealing with politically sensitive social issues.

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 Richard Finney.

Malaysia said Wednesday it would open talks with Myanmar’s shadow government if the junta fails to cooperate with ASEAN’s conflict resolution efforts – the first such declaration by a member of the regional bloc.

ASEAN members meanwhile were discussing excluding Myanmar from an upcoming summit because he had “backtracked” on a pact to restore peace and democracy, the bloc’s special envoy said, days after Malaysia advocated the move in public comments that a junta spokesman dismissed as “personal remarks.”

Wong Chen, a Malaysian lawmaker, asked Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah in parliament whether Kuala Lumpur would begin a dialogue with the civilian National Unity Government (NUG) in Myanmar, if the junta barred the ASEAN envoy from talking to all parties.

“[T]he process to implement the five-point consensus is still being worked on with whatever that is humanly possible, by the special envoy,” Saifuddin said.

“If that does not happen … I believe what was raised by the MP … can be done if what was agreed in the consensus cannot be achieved.”

When it ousted the elected government in a coup on Feb. 1, the Burmese military claimed that voter fraud had led to a landslide victory for civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. The junta threw her and members of the NLD government in jail.

The junta also got security forces to turn the guns onto their own people when thousands of pro-democracy protesters took to the streets around the country after the coup. Close to 1,060 Burmese, mostly anti-coup protesters – have been killed by the forces in the eight months since.

Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief in ASEAN member-state Myanmar, had agreed to the five-point consensus during an in-person meeting with Southeast Asian leaders in Jakarta on April 24. The points include stopping violence, a commitment to dialogue with all parties, and an ASEAN emissary to conduct this dialogue.

In Kuala Lumpur, Saifuddin told parliament that ASEAN’s special envoy to Myanmar, while briefing foreign ministers of the bloc on Monday, had said Naypyidaw was not cooperating on the consensus.

If that continues, some stern steps need to be taken, the Malaysian foreign minister said.

‘Saifuddin is doing the right thing’

On Monday, Saifuddin had recommended the first of these steps, when he forcefully and clearly said that if no progress was made on the ASEAN consensus, Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing should be excluded from the bloc’s upcoming summit, scheduled for Oct. 26-28.

The Malaysian minister got ASEAN listening.

Erywan Yusof, the ASEAN envoy to Myanmar, told reporters on Wednesday that ASEAN was seriously considering disinviting Min Aung Hlaing to its summit.

“I can say that we are now deeply in discussion on this matter,” Erywan said during a press conference in Bandar Seri Begawan.

He did say other ASEAN members had raised the same idea, but analysts noted earlier this week that a strong public statement, such as Malaysia’s, would put pressure on ASEAN as a bloc.

Even the Myanmar junta spokesman saw the idea as Malaysia’s, when Radio Free Asia (RFA), a sister entity of BenarNews, asked him about it on Tuesday.

“This is just his personal remark,” junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told RFA, referring to Foreign Minister Saifuddin.

“It’s not ASEAN’s stance, because it would need a consensus. … So the remarks you mentioned have to be taken as just personal remarks.” 

One regional political analyst, Oh Ei Sun, commended Malaysia’s top diplomat for speaking out on the issue of excluding the Myanmar junta chief from the summit as wel, saying that he would talk to the Burmese shadow government.

“Saifuddin is doing the right thing: ramping up the pressure on the recalcitrant junta,” Oh, from the Institute of International Affairs in Singapore, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

“Now the junta is likely to be not so friendly to Malaysian investments and businesses there. But that is the price to pay for diplomatic leadership. Malaysia must also persuade like-minded ASEAN countries to take similar strong stand. Indonesia for example …”

To recognize Myanmar’s parallel civilian government would pay ASEAN dividends, according to another Southeast Asia analyst, Azmi Hassan.

“ASEAN countries threatening to recognize NUG will put pressure on the military junta to uphold the promise they made in April to ASEAN,” he told BenarNews.

“While it will make the junta angry, ASEAN will gain a strong dialog partner by engaging with the NUG.”

‘Myanmar had to step aside’

ASEAN envoy Erywan, in his remarks Wednesday, said that Myanmar had yet to respond to his request for “meeting all parties concerned,” including the imprisoned civilian government leaders, as agreed to in the five-point consensus.

“…the concern is that there seems to be, up until Monday and even until today actually, no progress on the implementation of the five-point consensus,” Erywan said, referring to the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting earlier this week.

This had raised a concern, he said, because the junta chief had committed with other ASEAN leaders to the consensus back in April.

“It is tantamount to basically backtracking,” Erywan said.

But junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told RFA “it would be very difficult for us to hold talks with those from groups we have declared illegal” or who are under trial.

“I have never heard of any governments allowing foreign delegates to meet with a person under trial or a person or representatives of illegal organizations, except in very special circumstances,” he said.

He was referring to jailed NLD members, including Aung San Suu Kyi.

RFA asked the junta spokesman how it would affect Myanmar’s military government if its chief were to be barred from the summit.

“Apart from some criticisms in the international community, there won’t be any [consequences],” he said.

“There might be, more or less, some repercussions on certain ASEAN projects or meetings or work being carried out in conjunction with other countries.”

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

Anti-junta forces in central Myanmar attacked a 50-vehicle military convoy Tuesday, killing more than 40 soldiers and injuring 30 others, members of the militia told RFA.

The Yaw Defense Force (YDF), one of many People’s Defense Force (PDF) militia groups that sprung up to resist the military after it ousted the country’s democratically elected government in a coup d’état on Feb. 1, told RFA that in the attack they used a series of 14 remote control landmines near Gangaw township in the Magway region, along the Gangaw-Kalay Highway, which connects Magway with the western Chin state and northern Sagaing region.

“The Gangaw-Kalay Highway is a strategic route, and it would be difficult for the military if this road would be cut off… They would have to send food and supplies by air,” a member of the YDF told RFA’s Myanmar Service Wednesday.

“When the rains are gone, they won’t be able to use the waterways because the rivers will be dried up. So they need this road to go up into the mountains of Chin state,” the YDF member said.

RFA was not able to independently verify the exact number of casualties in the attack.

Junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun confirmed to RFA that a convoy was attacked with landmines near in Gangaw township but said that only two vehicles were damaged, and a few soldiers were injured.

Nearby residents told RFA that fighting between the military and the YDF and its allies had intensified in recent days.

Sources close to the military last week told RFA that the junta had been sending armored vehicles, artillery, and attack helicopters to its forces in Gagnaw in hopes of gaining a tactical advantage.

Though the Gangaw-Kalay Highway is normally very busy, a resident of Gangaw told RFA on condition of anonymity that fighting caused traffic to come to a complete standstill.

“We heard they are conducting a military operation along Kalay-Gangaw road… The pressure is on the PDFs because of the large presence of troops in the area, there are frequent clashes. Travelling in the area is difficult now as cars are not allowed to leave the city,” said the Gagnaw resident.

She said the flow of goods has been disrupted and commodity prices have skyrocketed. Living conditions have deteriorated and businesses have been shuttered.

Fighting has also intensified in neighboring Kalay in the Sagaing region.

The Kalay PDF said nine government soldiers died on October 4 when the militias attacked a convoy of 10 military vehicles which had stopped near a crossing at the Pan Mon Chaung Bridge to search for mines.

A Kalay resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity said junta troops have now set up checkpoints and sentry posts all along Gangaw-Kalay Road, and more are coming in large numbers from the Magway region, forcing residents to flee the heavy fighting.

“A lot of military vehicles are coming towards Gangaw. The whole population is holding its breath and waiting, as the junta appears to be set to take total control of Kalay-Gangaw region,” the Kalay resident said.

“People are all scared and worried about the increasing military presence in our area. The situation is very bad. If they stay here, it will be very difficult for us,” the resident said.

Residents in the Sagaing and Magway regions and Chin State are panicking as the military has shut down internet access in the area and is sending in massive reinforcements. They fear a major operation is looming over the horizon, and local PDF groups are also preparing for the impending battles, sources said.

Military spokesman Maj.Gen. Zaw Min Tun confirmed that the military was taking control of the area due to the rising number of casualties.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.