Day: October 12, 2021

Bangladesh police have arrested nearly 40 refugees, including many suspected of involvement with illegal weapons and drugs, since they launched a crackdown against criminality at Rohingya camps after community leader Muhib Ullah was slain last month, an official said Tuesday.

Among the dozens of Rohingya refugees taken into custody as part of the crackdown, five are suspected of being linked directly to the Sept. 29 killing of Ullah, a prominent Rohingya activist, at his office in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar district, according to the authorities.

During a statement before a judge on Saturday, one of suspects confessed to being involved in the killing, police told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

“Police so far arrested 38 Rohingya from different refugee camps since the murder of Muhib Ullah,” Rafiqul Islam, an additional police superintendent in Cox’s Bazar, told BenarNews on Tuesday. “Law enforcers are continuing the drives to reduce any offenses or illegal activities in refugee camps.”

Of those taken into custody, five were arrested over their suspected roles in Ullah’s killing, he said, adding that weapons and Yaba (methamphetamine) were recovered from the other 33 people who were taken into custody on suspicion of involvement in different criminal activities.

“Md Elias, 35, one of the five accused in Muhib Ullah’s murder case, has made a confessional statement before a Cox’s Bazar court admitting his involvement in the incident,” Islam said, adding that the suspect appeared in court after being arrested on Oct. 3.

Armed Police Battalion 14 commander Naimul Haque, whose officers arrested Elias at the Kutupalong camp, said a special hotline number was launched in the Rohingya camps on Sunday and that the identities of those who call would be kept confidential.

“Camp dwellers were asked to inform the law enforcers about criminals or criminal activities through the hotline,” he said.

About 1 million Rohingya live in refugee camps in and around Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern district that borders Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

As many as 740,000 Rohingya fled across the border after the Burmese military launched a brutal offensive in August 2017, in response to deadly raids mounted on government outposts in Rakhine by Rohingya rebels.

Efforts between Bangladesh and Myanmar to repatriate the Rohingya to their homes in the Rakhine state have failed since soon after the 2017 mass exodus to Bangladesh began.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the rebel group blamed for the 2017 attacks on police posts in Rakhine, issued a video message on Monday that went viral.

“ARSA is in favor of a safe and dignified full repatriation which Muhib Ullah also wanted. There was no difference between the work of ARSA and Muhib Ullah,” Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi, the group’s commander-in-chief, said in the video message.

“Myanmar agents or any other international NGO, those who are against the repatriation, have killed Muhib Ullah and now are trying to get an advantage by accusing ARSA. The killing made the Myanmar military government very happy,” Ataullah said.

Police in Bangladesh said they were investigating the source of the ARSA video.

“We are collecting all the video and audio messages that spread among the Rohingya in various ways since Muhib Ullah’s murder,” said Islam, the additional police superintendent in Cox’s Bazar.

Habib Ullah, who filed a complaint with Ukhia police accusing unnamed people of killing his brother, had previously told BenarNews that ARSA members were responsible.

Foreign ministry visit

On Saturday, a four-member Bangladeshi foreign ministry delegation led by Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen visited the office at the Kutupalong camp where Muhib Ullah, the chairman of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, was gunned down by a group of armed intruders.

Muhib Ullah’s group maintained a database of information related to alleged atrocities carried out by the Burmese military against Rohingya during the 2017 offensive in Rakhine.

“The delegation at the beginning asked me if ARSA was my brother’s killer? I replied ‘yes.’ And, I asked them to ensure our security,” Habib Ullah told BenarNews.

Momen did not share details about his conversations, but said the ministry remained committed to helping the refugees return to their home villages across the border.

“The killing of Rohingya leader Muhib Ullah will not have any impact on repatriation of Rohingya people to their homeland Myanmar,” Momen told reporters. “Five persons have been arrested over the Muhib Ullah killing and the government is taking into account the incident with due importance.”

Also on Saturday, Bangladesh’s government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) for humanitarian relief efforts on Bhashan Char, a remote Bay of Bengal island where 19,000 Rohingya have been relocated. The government plans to house 100,000 on the island.

The MoU covers “key areas of protection, education, skills-training, livelihoods, and health, which will help support the refugees to lead decent lives on the island and better prepare them for a sustainable return to Myanmar in the future,” UNHCR said in a news release.

Some Rohingya in the refugee camps welcomed the pact.

“We are very happy for the MoU. Many Rohingya already showed interest in going to Bhashan Char,” Mohammad Amin, a Rohingya leader in Cox’s Bazar, told BenarNews.

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

Authorities in Vietnam are ready to try activist and author Pham Doan Trang after more than a year of pretrial detention, but her family and lawyers told RFA that they have not had access to Trang or been shown the indictment against her.

Pham Doan Trang was arrested at an apartment in Ho Chi Minh City in October 2020 and charged under article 117 of the Vietnamese Penal Code, accused of “making, storing, distributing, or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

For three years prior to her arrest, she had constantly moved and changed her residence to avoid being intimidated and arrested by Vietnamese public security officers. 

Rights groups at the time of her arrest condemned her apprehension and warned that the blogger faced the risk of torture in custody.

After the family asked permission to meet with Trang, the Hanoi Procuracy told them the indictment was completed on August 30, and sent to the court in early October, Trang’s representative Trinh Huu Long told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

“This is a serious violation of legal procedures. It’s serious because responsible agencies detained Pham Doan Trang and kept her in complete isolation from outside information as well as denied her the right to legal access,” Long said. 

Long said the prosecution had an unfair advantage in the case, because they have access to the investigation file and the full strength and resources of the legal system, while Trang has not been able to meet even with her family, let alone with lawyers with access to the indictment.

“I think these are serious and major violations in a criminal case,” said Long.

Lawyers are typically allowed to participate in a case only after the investigation is complete, Dang Dinh Manh, one of Trang’s lawyers, told RFA.

“Therefore, we can only do registration procedures to be defense lawyers at the procuracy’s prosecution stage. We submitted our registrations in early September,” said Manh.

“However, we recently received a notice from the procuracy saying they had already sent the file to the court as well as completed their indictment. They also said that they could not grant the permits for us to work as defense lawyers as they no longer kept the file. We had no choice but to register ourselves again with the court, and so far we haven’t heard back,” he said.

Manh said that without a permit defense lawyers would not be able to access the indictment or visit with Trang to provide legal advice.

“When defense lawyers’ preparations are limited, the trial will have a lot of shortcomings. Limited access to the file of the case and the client would prevent us from making necessary recommendations,” he said.

“For example, it may stop us from making requests for additional investigations or for clarification of circumstances and details. In general, all of what we can request as defense lawyers will be limited,” said Manh.

Trang was a cofounder of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, a California-based NGO that says its mission is “to build a democratic society in Vietnam through independent journalism, research, and education.”

The group condemned the Vietnamese government in a statement for “continuously harassing” Trang on the one-year anniversary of her arrest.

“Her arrest and detention was a flagrant violation of the freedom of expression. Speaking more broadly, this is an attack on press freedom and independent journalism,” the statement said. 

The group called on its supporters to demand Trang’s immediate release.

Brad Adams, Asia Director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, described Trang’s lengthy pretrial detention as “horrible.”

“It’s horrible to detain a person for a whole year without a court trial. Pham Doan Trang is innocent. She only wants Vietnamese people’s lives to be better and has used her right to freedom of expression to do that,” Adams told RFA.

“A year has passed, and if the Vietnamese Government fails to present specific, clear evidence of what it has called a violation of the law by Pham Doan Trang, she must be set free immediately,” Adams said.

Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply last year with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party Congress in January. But arrests continue in 2021.

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

The Indonesian president’s decision to allow the government to share the cost of a financially bloated China-backed railway project could deplete state coffers and lead his nation into a debt trap, experts and an opposition lawmaker warned on Tuesday.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo signed a presidential decree last week that authorizes the government to provide cash for the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, China’s flagship One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project in Indonesia, which is about U.S. $2 billion over budget.

A presidential spokesman said Jokowi’s directive would allow the project to be completed, but an economist said this was a bad time for Jokowi to authorize such a move.

“The decision will further burden the state budget, which is already unhealthy due to the pandemic,” Mohammad Faisal, executive director of the Indonesian Center for Reforms of Economics (CORE), told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Jokowi’s new decree overrides a 2015 one signed by him that prohibited the use of state funds for the project – Indonesia’s first venture into constructing a high-speed rail line. The latest decree does not say how much money the government will inject into the project, whose cost has swelled to U.S. $7.9 billion from an estimated $6 billion.

Faisal said state revenues were currently in bad shape.

“The government should get its priorities right,” he said.

Separately on Tuesday, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that this year’s budget deficit may be higher than earlier estimated. She said it could hit 5.82 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from the previous estimate of 5.7 percent, due to COVID-19 measures following a horrific surge in infections between June and August.

Local state-owned companies comprise 60 percent of the PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC) consortium which is building the railway, but the domestic firms operate as commercial entities without government support.

Arya Sinulingga, spokesman for the Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises, said in a statement Sunday that the pandemic had depleted the cash flow of many construction SOEs involved in the high-speed rail project, according to a report in the Jakarta Post.

Ali Mochtar Ngabalin, a presidential spokesmen, said Jokowi was determined to see the project through.

“What’s wrong with using the state budget for a national strategic project so that it can be completed on schedule?” Ngabalin told CNN Indonesia.

However, a politician from the opposition Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), criticized Jokowi for reneging on his earlier decree pledging that his administration would not allow money from state coffers to be spent directly on the high-speed rail project. 

“This is evidence of how badly planned it is,” PKS lawmaker Ecky Awal Mucharam said in a statement.

Big-ticket project

Launched by Jokowi in 2016, the Jakarta-Bandung rail line is expected to shorten the travel time between the Indonesian capital and Bandung to 40 minutes from three hours, officials said.

The project is part of Beijing’s estimated U.S. $1 trillion-plus OBOR infrastructure program to build a network of railways, ports, and bridges across 70 countries.

Since construction began in 2017, the rail project has been dogged by criticism about its impacts on surrounding areas, as well as concerns about rising costs.

Critics said it has worsened air quality, clogged canals and damaged homes of many people who live along the 89-mile stretch of the future line.

Rising costs associated with the rail project, along with the government’s intervention in it, could lead Indonesia into a debt trap, said Bhima Yudhistira, director of the Center for Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS).

“The government would then be forced to continue to collect more tax from the public or increase debt in the future,” Bhima told BenarNews.

That means the government may have to borrow to share the cost of the project, which is now scheduled for completion in 2022, three years after its original 2019 deadline.

According to a study by AidData released late last month, Indonesia owes $17.28 billion in “hidden debt” to China, more than four times its $3.90 billion in reported sovereign debt.

Nearly 70 percent of China’s overseas lending is now directed to state-owned companies and private-sector institutions and the debts, for the most part, do not appear on government balance sheets, said AidData, a U.S.-based international development research lab.

“The ‘hidden debt’ problem is less about governments knowing that they will need to service undisclosed debts (with known monetary values) to China than it is about governments not knowing the monetary value of debts to China that they may or may not have to service in the future,” it said.

But this is not hidden debt, according to a deputy at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs.

“They are investments by Chinese companies,” Iskandar Simorangkir told BenarNews.

Parliament ‘must uncover the real reason’

Bhima, from CELIOS, urged the House of Representatives (DPR) to evaluate the project.

“The DPR must uncover the real reason why the cost [of the project] has swollen. It’s dangerous in the long term for the state finances,” Bhima said.

In addition to cost overruns, the rail line cannot be commercially viable, according to Agus Pambagio, a public policy expert and former trade negotiator for the government. The reason, he said, is that the rail line’s stations are not located at busy city centers.

“I told Jokowi that these things could happen. It was a miscalculation from the beginning,” Agus told CNN Indonesia.

According to the Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises, design changes and rising land prices were factors behind the project’s cost overrun.

“Almost all countries have experienced the same thing and this is our first [high-speed train project],” ministry spokesman Arya said.

Agung Budi Waskito, the chief executive of PT Wijaya Karya, which is part of the consortium of local companies, said in April that the group was negotiating for China to increase its stake in the project, because of the rising cost.

Since then, there has been no word on how those negotiations turned out.

Mirza Soraya, a spokeswoman for the Indonesian Chinese consortium building the rail line, declined to comment on the controversy.

“We are focusing on speeding up the construction,” she said.

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

Residents of a rural village in Laos are asking local government authorities to stop leasing their rice paddies to a Chinese watermelon grower during the off season, the villagers say.

The NAMPheung company had been leasing 180 hectares of land (445 acres) in Ngeun district of the country’s northwestern Xayabury province for the past three years, the villagers told RFA. The company uses the land from December to April to grow watermelons and then returns it to the villagers before rice-planting season.

After three years under this arrangement, the villagers say they can no longer tolerate the  chemical damage NAMPheung causes to their farms and the environment.

“The land is damaged. When they return the land to us for rice planting, yields are down and of lesser quality,” one villager told RFA’s Lao Service, requesting anonymity for security reasons.

“The Chinese investors dig into the land so deep so the farmers have to fill up the land before planting. It’s a waste of money labor and time,” the villager said, adding, “The villagers don’t want to lease the

The villager said that laborers in other provinces who work on Chinese melon farms report that Chinese company workers sometimes steal villagers’ property, including livestock, and that they relieve themselves wherever they happen to be because so many farms are located far from toilets.

Another villager told RFA that NAMPheung uses more land than it is entitled to, leaving the villagers unable to grow cash crops during the dry season.

“The Chinese said they would take all the land and pay the villagers not to grow any vegetables… A high-level official came to the village to ask if anyone would refuse those terms. The villagers can’t say anything. They can only agree,” the second villager said.

The original agreement with NAMPheung was only for one year, according to the second villager, but now the melon growers have been there three years in a row, and the villagers fear retaliation if they complain.

An official of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry in the district told RFA that the local Office of Planning and Investment has now drafted a new contract for the investors to grow watermelon for a six-month period between September 2021 and April 2022.

Under the new contract, the leasing fees are increased, and NAMPheung is required to use less chemicals and to properly clean and improve the land before returning it to the villagers before rice planting season.

“They have agreed to pay five million kip [U.S. $500] per hectare for rice farmland and four million [$400] for vegetable and fruit farms. This is more than reasonable, but still some of the villagers are not happy,” the official said.

The villagers say they are aware of the new contract, but still doubt the company will strictly follow the guidelines regarding the land’s condition and the use of chemicals.

Chinese watermelon growers are currently leasing land in three other Xayabury districts—Hongsa, Hone, and Khob—data data from the Agriculture and Forestry Office of Ngeun district show.

Foreign-invested farming, mining, and development projects in Laos have sparked friction over cases of environmental pollution and land taken without proper compensation, and Lao villagers affected by land grabs often fear to speak out publicly because of concerns over official retaliation.

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

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Cambodia’s Council of Ministers has approved a controversial draft law on a constitutional amendment to ban anyone with dual citizenship from holding top political offices, in an apparent move by strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen to prevent a key opposition leader from gaining office, analysts said.

Approved on Oct. 8, the draft legislation calls for a charter change preventing Cambodians with dual citizenship from becoming prime minister or president of the National Assembly, Senate, or Constitutional Council.

The move appears directed at preventing Sam Rainsy, acting president of the dissolved opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), who holds both Cambodian and French citizenship, from taking any future government leadership roles should he try to possibly participate in the country’s next general election in 2023.

Sam Rainsy, 72, lives in exile in France and was sentenced in absentia in March to 25 years on a charge of attempting to overthrow the government.

A statement issued by the Council of Ministers following the approval of the draft law said that the Senate, National Assembly, and Constitutional Council are top institutions responsible for making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the country to ensure Cambodia’s independence, integrity, and territorial sovereignty and to avoid foreign interference.

“To ensure loyalty for the country, the people at all time, and to avoid foreign interference, the constitutional amendment … will limit the President of the National Assembly, Senate, Constitutional Council and the Prime Minister to have only one citizenship,” the statement said.

The statement also quoted Hun Sen during the meeting, saying that the constitutional amendment “is for the long-term benefit for the country to avoid foreign inference and to show loyalty to the country.”

The draft law must be submitted first to the National Assembly, and then to the Senate and on to King Norodom Sihamoni before it becomes law. The draft law will likely be approved because the ruling Cambodia People’s Party (CPP) controls the National Assembly and the Senate.

Cambodia political analyst Lao Mong Hay said the amendment amounts to a personal vendetta by Hun Sen against Sam Rainsy and will not serve the country’s interests.

“The amendment is useless,” he told RFA. “This is just a reaction to Sam Rainsy to prevent him from becoming the next prime minister.”

Because the opposition leader has been sentenced in absentia to many years in prison, he cannot become prime minister unless he first serves his prison terms, added Lao Mong Hay.

He also noted that former CNRP president Kem Sokha, who does not have dual citizenship and has remained loyal to Cambodia, remains accused of conspiring with a foreign country.

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017, two months after arresting its president, Kem Sokha, over an alleged plot to overthrow the government that CPP officials claimed was backed by the United States.

The move came amid a wider crackdown by Hun Sen on the country’s political opposition, independent media, and NGOs, and allowed the CPP to win every parliamentary seat in 2018 elections, drawing international criticism, U.S. sanctions, and the suspension of trade privileges with the European Union.

Thailand-based political analyst Seng Sary said he supports the amendment, but added that it should take effect after the 2023 elections so that political parties other than the CPP have a chance to be represented in the National Assembly, to avoid criticism that Cambodia has become less democratic with one dominant party.

“It should be a long-term benefit for Cambodia, but it should be done after the 2023 elections when we have more parties and people can fully understand [the amendment],” he said.

Sam Rainsy responded to the move, posting on his Facebook page on Oct. 8 that the amendment was not applicable to him and instead suggested that the government consider making two laws — one requiring the prime minister and other top officials to retire at the age of 70 and another prohibiting the prime minister from holding power for more than two five-year terms.

Hun Sen, 69, has been Cambodia’s longest-serving prime minister and is serving his sixth term in the position under de facto one-party rule.

Nevertheless, Sam Rainsy said he would give up his French citizenship before taking any leadership positions in Cambodia that forbade dual citizenship.

On Thursday, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged Sam Rainsy, his deputies Mu Sochua and Eng Chhai Eang, and other CNRP officials with conspiracy and incitement following a statement that Sam Rainsy posted on Facebook urging Cambodian citizens and the military to push for an end to Hun Sen’s rule.

In early August, former CNRP officials formed new parties to try to restore democracy to Cambodia, after asking Hun Sen to reinstate their political rights by dropping an order banning them from politics for five years that accompanied the court-ordered dissolution of the party.

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

Schoolchildren in Hong Kong from kindergarten upwards will be required to take part in regular ceremonies to raise the Chinese flag, which have included goose-stepping, saluting and reverential “etiquette” when performed in public by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

All primary and secondary schools, special schools and kindergartens in Hong Kong will be required to hold a flag-raising ceremony, with the nationalistic ritual expected once a week in primary and secondary schools from Jan. 1, 2022, the city’s education bureau said in a circular.

The move is aimed at “promot[ing] national education … and an affection for the Chinese people,” a spokesperson said in a statement dated Oct. 11.

All primary and secondary schools must display the national flag on every school day, as well as on Jan. 1, the July 1 handover anniversary and on China’s Oct. 1 National Day, the bureau said.

“Schools are also required to conduct a national flag raising ceremony weekly and on the above days or the preceding/following school day,” the directive said. “The national anthem should be played and sung in a national flag raising ceremony.”

Ceremonies should also take place at sporting events and graduation days, it said.

The spokesperson said kindergartens should follow suit, space and facilities permitting, while international and private schools are also “encouraged” to adopt the practice.

Teaching and learning materials linked in the circular say teachers and students should watch video footage of official flag-raising ceremonies, including the one marking the July 1 anniversary of the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.

At the most recent flag-raising ceremony outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on July 1, 2021, PLA soldiers used a ceremonial “goose-step” for the first time, as well as an elaborate set of maneuvers including timed unfurling of the flags and gloved military handlers in ceremonial dress directed by a sword-wielding officer.

To prepare for the ceremonies, students should watch and describe such ceremonies, then perform a role-play “so as to experience the proper etiquette and respectful attitude, such as standing solemnly, facing the national flag and singing the national anthem in a respectful way, when the national anthem is played and sung,” the directive said.

According to recent laws governing China’s national emblems and anthem, the national flag must be displayed in a position of prominence where it appears alongside the bauhinia flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

“The national flag, when raised and carried in a procession with the regional flag, shall be in front of the regional flag,” the guidelines state, while organizers must take care to retrieve flags used in ceremonies, and return any damaged flags or emblems to the government.

“They must not be displayed upside down, and must not be displayed or used in any way that undermines their dignity,” the guidelines state.

Recent legislation has criminalized any burning, soiling or trampling of the Chinese flag in Hong Kong, as well as the posting or publication of images of such actions.

City-wide crackdown

The directive comes amid a city-wide crackdown on public criticism of the Hong Kong government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that has seen dozens of pro-democracy politicians and activists arrested for “subversion” after taking part in a democratic primary that was deemed a bid to undermine the government by voting against it in the Legislative Council (LegCo).

As the flag-raising directive was published, the city’s oldest opposition party, the Democratic Party, said none of its members had submitted an application to run in December’s LegCo elections, in which candidates must run a gauntlet of vetting processes, including one by the national security police.

Dickson Chau, vice chairman of the pro-democracy League of Social Democrats, said nobody feels safe taking part in opposition politics under the national security law.

“Neither candidates nor voters feel safe any more,” Chau told RFA. “As long as your political views are different from those of the government, you will pay a heavy price regardless of the outcome [of the election].”

“If during the election, something you say displeases the government then they can bring criminal charges even after they have disqualified you,” he said. “In the past … people were vying with each other to run as candidates, but now it’s just dead silence.”

He said the national security crackdown and changes to the electoral system in the wake of the 2019 protest movement had removed most avenues for political opposition and activism.

“The groups that used to represent people’s voices have fallen, one by one … There was once a plethora of organizations bringing broader public opinion into the legislature and making the administration behave in a more reasonable manner,” Chau said.

“Now, that doesn’t exist any more, and the … the government will only hear flattery and loyalty, which can’t lead to a good outcome, only a deepening of public grievances, which will erupt eventually,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.