Day: October 15, 2021

Troops loyal to Myanmar’s junta have torched an entire village—including a Baptist church and a dozen other buildings—in the country’s embattled Chin state, residents said Thursday, prompting condemnation from a local human rights group which called the act a “war crime” under international law.

The burnings took place on Wednesday afternoon, after a military convoy of around 40 vehicles and two tanks headed from Falam township to the Chin state capital Hakha was attacked about three miles outside of Falam by the anti-junta Chin Defense Force militia, an armed group formed to combat Myanmar’s military in the western state, sources told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

Following the clash, the military set up camp in Rialti village—some five miles further along the road to Hakha from the site where the convoy was attacked—and began setting buildings alight, residents said.

A religious leader from the Rialti Village Baptist Church, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, said that the military initially burned eight homes around 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, before continuing to set buildings on fire Thursday morning.

“This morning, it was the church and our warehouse—those two were set on fire earlier this morning and at about 9:00 a.m., the remaining three houses,” he said.

“All were gone in a short while. The whole village, including the church, was set on fire. Eight houses were torched yesterday. In all, 13 buildings, including the church, were destroyed.”

Residents said that the troops only left the village on Thursday after making sure that the buildings were ablaze. They told RFA that they had fled to nearby forested hills when the military arrived on Wednesday and watched from afar as the structures went up in flames.

Junta spokesman Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun on Thursday dismissed reports that government troops were responsibile for the burning of the church and homes in Rialti village, saying the military “does not open fire on any religious building or in any village.”

“It’s not right to blame the military every time something happens during a battle—it’s always an exchange of fire between the two sides,” he said.

“What we do know is that there was no fighting in that locality. Additionally, we are rebuilding religious buildings that were destroyed by fire or other reasons.”

But Salai Za Op Lin, deputy executive director of the India-based Chin Human Rights Organization, confirmed to RFA that the military had burned down the Baptist church and other buildings in Rialti village and called the act a “war crime.”

“We see this as a war crime because wherever they go, they focus on wherever there are large numbers of people—it’s a deliberate violation of religious freedom,” he said, noting that other Christian communities in Chin state have been targeted since the military seized power in a February coup.

“Now that the military has started a real operation in Chin state, we can expect a lot of such abuses and acts, and we urge the international community to keep a close eye on this.”

Last month, Pastor Cung Biak Hum, 31, was shot and killed when he and several others ran to put out fires set by government soldiers during an attack on Chin state’s Thantlang town, the scene of recent fighting with civilian militias that oppose the junta takeover.

Attacks on churches

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

The junta has yet to provide evidence of its claims and has violently repressed anti-coup protests, killing at least 1,171 people and arresting 7,308 others, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Amid nationwide turmoil, the military has stepped up offensives in remote parts of the country, triggering fierce battles with local People’s Defense Force militias and some of the dozens of ethnic armies that control large swathes of territory along Myanmar’s periphery.

According to Salai Za Op Lin, the military’s actions on Wednesday marked the eighth time junta forces have destroyed a Christian church in Chin state in the more than eight months since taking over the government. He said that while the military has attacked churches with heavy weapons and destroyed religious objects in the past, the incident in Rialti was the first time a church was set on fire.

Dr. Hkalam Samson of the Kachin Baptist Association called any kind of an attack on churches “unacceptable.”

“We have always objected to the intentional destruction of religious buildings in the midst of conflict,” he said.

“We could understand and accept this kind of thing if it was an accident. But there has been a lot of intentional destruction and we cannot accept such actions.”

Christians make up around six percent of Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s population.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Jailed Vietnamese land activist Trinh Ba Tu was brutally tortured in detention as part of a bid by authorities to force him to plead guilty to charges of “anti-state activities,” a relative said Thursday, prompting calls by rights groups for an immediate investigation into his case.

Trinh Thi Thao, Tu’s elder sister, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service that she met with her brother’s lawyers on Monday and learned that he had been so badly beaten during an interrogation following his June 24, 2020 arrest that he required hospitalization for kidney inflammation.

After receiving treatment, he was returned to detention and told to sign a false statement confessing to the crime of “creating, storing, disseminating anti-State materials” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code related to posting online content critical of the government’s brutal response to a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of the capital Hanoi.

“My brother Tu said that the prosecutor insulted him during the interrogation—the prosecutor’s name is Minh and he’s a prosecutor from Hoa Binh province,” Thao said.

“During the investigation process, investigators promised Tu that if he pleaded guilty, he would be jailed for only six years, otherwise he would have to serve eight.”

Tu and his mother Can Thi Theu, who was arrested the same day and similarly charged, were sentenced on May 5 to eight years in prison and three years on probation each.

His brother Trinh Ba Phuong and another land activist named Nguyen Thi Tam were separately arrested on June 24 on charges of propagandizing against the state for posting online articles and livestreaming videos condemning the government for its handling of the military airport dispute. Phuong and Tam remain in detention pending a trial expected to begin on Nov. 4, Thao told RFA.

Speaking to RFA on Thursday, Ming Yu Hah, deputy director of London-based rights group Amnesty International, said that if the reports of Tu’s torture are true, the Vietnamese government must be held accountable.

“Beating by the authorities under such circumstances would likely constitute torture or other ill treatment, which is absolutely prohibited by international law,” she said, adding that Tu should never have been convicted and sentenced in the first place.

“These serious allegations of torture and ill treatment must be investigated by the Vietnamese authorities immediately and the perpetrators must be brought to justice without delay.”

Ming Yu Hah noted that Tu, Theu, and Phuong are all recognized as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International and called for them to be freed.

“They have committed no recognizable crimes and have instead been punished for raising awareness of human rights violations committed by the Vietnamese Government,” she said. “They must be released immediately and unconditionally.”

Trinh Ba Tu and his mother Can Thi Theu, who Thao told RFA in July were being held in solitary confinement at a detention center in nearby Hoa Binh province, are currently awaiting a trial to appeal their convictions. The two have also been refused family visits since their trial, although authorities have yet to explain why.

Dong Tam incident

On Jan. 9, 2020, around 3,000 security officers conducted a raid on Dong Tam commune’s Hoanh hamlet to intervene in a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.

Dong Tam village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, was shot and killed by police during the operation, and Kinh’s sons Le Dinh Chuc and Le Dinh Cong were sentenced to death on Sept. 14, 2020 in connection with the deaths of three police officers who were also killed in the clash.

In an earlier flare-up of the Dong Tam dispute that goes back to 1980, farmers detained 38 police officers and local officials during a weeklong standoff in April 2017. Three months later, the Hanoi Inspectorate rejected the farmer’s claims that 47 hectares (116 acres) of their farmland were seized for the military-run Viettel Group—Vietnam’s largest mobile phone operator—without adequate compensation.

While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation.

International organizations have voiced concern about the Dong Tam case, calling on the Vietnamese government to hold an independent and transparent investigation.

According to Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), state media in Vietnam are highly restricted, leaving bloggers and independent journalists as “the only sources of independently reported information” in the country, despite being subjected to “ever-harsher forms of persecution.”

Measures taken against them now include assaults by plainclothes police, RSF said in its 2021 Press Freedoms Index, which placed Vietnam at 175 out of 180 countries surveyed worldwide, a ranking unchanged from last year.

“To justify jailing them, the Party resorts to the criminal codes, especially three articles under which ‘activities aimed at overthrowing the government,’ ‘anti-state propaganda’ and ‘abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to threaten the interests of the state’ are punishable by long prison terms,” the rights group 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 Joshua Lipes.

North Korea is “encouraging” newly graduated military officers to take up harsh assignments on the front lines in yet another example of forcing less privileged people to “volunteer” for unpleasant duties, sources in the country told RFA.

As it is still technically at war with prosperous South Korea, North Korea makes every male serve at least seven backbreaking years in the armed forces after finishing high school, but those who are well connected or show promise can enter military academies and become officers with easier duties.

The 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, and 5^th Corps of the Korean People’s Army are front-line units stationed in areas of North Korea closest to the Demilitarized Zone which separates North from South. Even for officers, service on the front is more difficult, more dangerous, and requires much more labor than other assignments.

“My son and most of his classmates in this year’s graduating class at O Jin U Artillery Academy have been assigned to the 1^st and 5^th Corps, front units in Kangwon province,” a farmer from Ryanggang province in the country’s north told RFA’s Korean Service Thursday.

“The academy’s political department forced them to volunteer, saying it was a request of the party,” said the farmer, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

The farmer said his son had previously been assigned to the 7^th Corps in South Hamgyong province in the country’s east, a relatively easy assignment in the rear.

“When he went to the military academy, he expected to return to his original unit, but when graduation approached… they gathered all the students from rear units and said, ‘You’ve had a comfortable time in the military in the rear. It is your duty as soldiers and members of the party to go to the front lines and follow the will of the Supreme Commander,” said the farmer, referring to the country’s leader Kim Jong Un.

“In a meeting ahead of graduation, the head of the academy told our son, ‘The General Secretary’s request is for you to go to the 1^st Corps, the main outpost of the country,’ basically forcing him to volunteer,” the farmer said.

The head of the academy told his son that it would be helpful for his future if he volunteered for duty in the 1^st Corps and would be a good display of his loyalty, according to the farmer.

“If he were to disobey the request to join the unit on the front line, it would leave a mark on his personal record and follow him for the rest of his days. Moreover, all his hard work over the past three years becoming a military officer as the son of a lowly farmer will have been in vain,” said the farmer.

All the graduates from the rear naturally volunteered for service on the front, according to the farmer. 

“Who could possibly dare to disobey the demands of the party?”

A former soldier who served in the 1^st Corps told RFA that frontline service is so bad that nobody wants to serve in those units.

“Kangwon province is very mountainous, so there are not many people, and the transportation situation is very inconvenient. Working and living conditions are awful,” said the former soldier, who now lives in North Hamgyong in the country’s northeast.

“Once assigned to a front unit, it’s almost impossible to be reassigned to the rear. The greatest wish for 1^st Corps soldiers and their families is to go to a rear unit north of Chollyong,” said the former soldier, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Chollyong is an area of Kangwon province notorious for its 99 steep peaks and valleys. The rough terrain makes any assignment there extremely difficult, and anything north of Chollyong is a cushy rear assignment in comparison.

“The 1^st and 5^th Corps are all-round corps, larger than the others and are the core units that the party is most focused on,” the former soldier said.

Kim Jong Un’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il visited the 1^st and 5^th Corps during the 1994-1998 North Korean famine to encourage them to prevent any unexpected chaos at a time when the country was on the brink of collapse, the former soldier said.

“I don’t know how I endured more than 20 years at the base in that mountain range in Kangwon province. I still get goosebumps thinking about that time,” the former soldier said. 

The former soldier said that all the officers at the front are always trying to transfer to the rear, and nobody wants to serve there when they graduate from the academy, so therefore authorities are forcing them to volunteer.

“In the end, the reality of this country’s military is that the children of the poor and powerless have no choice but to serve at the front.”

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