Day: October 18, 2021

The top diplomats of Indonesia and Malaysia together amplified their nations’ concerns Monday about Australia’s plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, warning this could draw other powers into disputes over the South China Sea and provoke a regional arms race.

Under the so-called AUKUS pact signed last month the United Kingdom and the United States will provide Australia with technology needed to build such submarines.

After holding bilateral talks in Jakarta on Monday, the Malaysian and Indonesian foreign ministers reiterated concerns about the pact that they had articulated in recent weeks.

“Although the country [Australia] stated that these are nuclear-powered submarines and not nuclear-armed ones, both our governments expressed concern and disturbance,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told a joint news conference after meeting with his host and Indonesian counterpart, Retno Marsudi. 

“This could attract the involvement of more powers in the ASEAN region and the South China Sea,” he said.

Retno said Indonesia and Malaysia were committed to maintaining peace and stability in the region.

“Both of us don’t want the current dynamics to lead to tensions caused by an arms race and power projection,” she told reporters. “Such a situation will not benefit anyone.”  

The AUKUS pact has, however, led to a regional schism.

At least two other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are backing AUKUS. The Philippines and Singapore say it will help restore a regional “imbalance” – a clear reference to China’s growing military might – and contribute to stability.

In early October, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told parliament that both Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta believed that strong military cooperation among ASEAN members would ensure greater security in Southeast Asia.

Security analysts say AUKUS aims to help Australia develop nuclear-powered submarines as well as deter China’s aggressive military posturing in the contested South China Sea. Beijing, which has sweeping claims in the strategic waterway, has denounced the pact.

Malaysia, a claimant to waters in the South China Sea, meanwhile, is also a member of the Five Powers Defense Arrangement (FPDA) – along with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

As Saifuddin and Retno were warning about the potential negative consequences of AUKUS, Malaysia, Australia, the U.K. and the other members of FPDA were marking that pact’s 50^th anniversary with a large-scale aerial and naval display in Singapore, according to news reports.

Myanmar

During their news conference on Monday, the Indonesian and Malaysian foreign ministers also talked about a decision made by ASEAN’s top diplomats last week not to invite Myanmar’s junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, to the regional bloc’s summit later this month.

The decision, based on the Burmese military’s failure to take steps to restore democracy after it ousted a civilian government in a coup on Feb. 1, was the right thing to do, Retno said.

“Our efforts as a family have not been met with a good response from the Myanmar military,” Retno said during the press conference, referring to the 10-member regional bloc.

“This decision will not get in the way of ASEAN’s commitment to helping Myanmar, including sending humanitarian aid.”

On Saturday, ASEAN chair Brunei said that the bloc would invite a “non-political representative” from Myanmar to its summit, scheduled for Oct. 26-28.

“[S]ome ASEAN member states recommended that ASEAN give space to Myanmar to restore its internal affairs and return to normalcy in accordance with the will of the people of Myanmar,” Bruneian Foreign Minister Erywan Yusof said in a statement.

In response, the Burmese junta issued a statement the same day alleging that the decision to exclude Min Aung Hlaing from the summit was taken without all members’ agreement – ASEAN decides on issues and actions based on consensus.

“Myanmar is extremely disappointed and strongly objected [to] the outcomes of the emergency foreign ministers’ meeting as the discussions and decision on Myanmar’s representation issue was done without consensus and was against the objectives of ASEAN, the ASEAN charter and its principles,” the junta said.

Philippine police and soldiers killed four Chinese drug suspects in a shootout during a sting operation outside Manila on Monday, the country’s police chief said of the second deadly counter-narcotics raid since September targeting suspected traffickers from China.

Agents from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, backed by soldiers and police intelligence officers, traded fire with the Chinese in a residential area near the city of Angeles, north of Manila, National Police chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar said.

The suspects got wind of the sting and “engaged law enforcement agents in a shootout just as they were about to be arrested,” he said, adding that “The shootout resulted in the death of the suspects.”

“The suspects were known distributors of illegal drugs in the National Capital Region and Region 4-A,” Eleazar said, referring to heavily populated suburban areas south of Metropolitan Manila.

During the raid, the authorities seized 38 kilograms of crystal meth, worth some 262.2 million pesos (5.2 million dollars), he said. They also recovered four handguns from the slain suspects, who ranged from 29 to 43 years old, and came from Fujian and Shanxi provinces, officials said. 

Monday’s drug confiscation was the second biggest since last month when government operatives also killed four Chinese drug suspects and seized 500 kg (1,100 lbs) of crystal meth valued at some 67.7 million dollars – the biggest haul so far in the Philippines in 2021.

Since taking office in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has launched a deadly war on illegal drugs, vowing to eradicate them from the country. 

Under his administration, the police have killed about 8,000 suspected drug addicts and dealers whose markets are primarily located in the sprawling slums of Manila. The number could be as high as 30,000, according to human rights advocates and drug-war survivors.

Duterte now faces the prospect of being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as he ends his six-year term and loses presidential immunity next year.

Chinese survey vessel Da Yang Hao has left Malaysia’s waters, two weeks after the Malaysian Foreign Ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador to protest.

Ship tracking data on Monday showed the 4,600-ton vessel is now on its way northward, more than 200 nautical miles west of the Philippines.

“It’s hard to have any certainty as to China’s decision-making,” said Sharihman Lockman, a senior analyst at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS).

“Da Yang Hao was obviously there as a form of protest against Malaysia’s oil and gas activities so China has probably calculated that they’ve made their point and left,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Since late September, the Da Yang Hao had been operating in an area that runs through the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of three countries: Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines.

At one point it was only 40 nautical miles from Philippines’ Balabac Island and 60 nautical miles from Malaysia’s coast.

On Oct. 4, Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it had summoned Chinese Ambassador Ouyang Yujing to protest against the “presence and activities” of Chinese vessels in Malaysian waters.

Among them was the survey ship Da Yang Hao, which was running back and forth off the coasts of the eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak. The ship first appeared in the area around Sept. 25-26.

Kuala Lumpur called its activity “inconsistent with Malaysia’s Exclusive Economic Zone Act 1984, as well as the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).”

UNCLOS defines an EEZ as extending 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from shore, and grants the coastal state the sole right to explore and exploit the natural resources.

The statement from the foreign ministry added that Malaysia “had also protested against the previous encroachments by other foreign vessels into our waters.”

Malaysia had always been cautious in dealing with China, its biggest trading partner, but the strong wording this time suggested that the Malaysian leadership was under pressure to show a firmer attitude against Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

The analyst Lockman said he doubted that Malaysia’s protest “was decisive in this regard, but it probably helped by further publicizing China’s actions.”

In a similar incident last year, another Chinese survey ship, Haiyang Dizhi 8, only left after a month-long standoff with a Malaysian drill ship contracted by the state-run firm Petronas.

Another Chinese survey vessel, the Haiyang Dizhi 10, has been operating in an oil field in Indonesia’s EEZ since the end of August and was still there on Monday.

Chinese ships often show up uninvited in disputed waters in the South China Sea, especially when there are maritime activities by neighboring countries and their allies.

Naval ships from the U.S., U.K. and other nations have been conducting exercises and port calls in the Indo-Pacific, most recently in a two-week drill called Bersama Gold 2021.

China claims “historic rights” to almost 90 percent of the resource-rich South China Sea which is also claimed in parts by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Southeast Asian countries and China are discussing a so-called Code of Conduct for the South China Sea in order to resolve disputes peacefully and in accordance to the international law. Experts say it is unlikely an agreement would be achieved in the foreseeable future due to the parties’ conflicting interests.

A mural artist who champions the oppressed has painted a portrait of a former Uyghur survivor of an internment camp on a building in France’s second-largest city to raise awareness of the plight of the persecuted Muslim minority group in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.

French street artist Mahn Kloix’s portrait of Tursunay Ziyawudun, who has spoken publicly and testified about her experience in a Chinese internment camp, adorns the side of a building that is the regional headquarters of national telecom operator Orange in Marseille, a major port city in southern France.

“I was aware of what’s happening in China about your Uyghurs, and I was hoping to be able to speak about that,” Kloix, who is also a human rights activist, told RFA this month.

China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in the camps since 2017, while dismissing widely documented evidence of the internment program, including testimony from former detainees and guards describing widespread in interviews with RFA and other media outlets.

China has said that the camps are vocational training facilities where Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic minorities learn skills under a program aimed at to preventing religious extremism in the region, where about 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs live.

RFA and other international outlets have reported extensively abuses endured by Tursunay and other camp detainees, including being beaten and forcibly sterilized.

The U.S., other Western government and legislatures, and human rights groups have declared that the abuses amount to genocide and crimes against humanity.

Kloix told RFA that he chose to replicate a profile of Tursunay with her hand against the side of her face.

“I’ve been looking on the internet, and there are too many pictures,” he said. “I chose this one because there was something soft in the look, something sad about ‘looking away.’”

“And then I read an article by the BBC about Tursunay Ziyawudun, and after that I was convinced that this portrait was something relevant to the situation,” he said.

As a rights activist, most of Kloix’s paintings are of those who have endured injustices.

“I paint portraits of people who are fighting for their freedom and fighting for equality, justice, and a better world,” he said.

“And each time I read stories about people who are locked up or beaten or things like this because of their sexual choices or political point of view or because of their free speech, I feel like this is urging me [on],” he said.

‘Mural has had ‘a great impact’

Dilnur Reyhan, president of the European Uyghur Institute, told RFA that Kloix’s portrait of Tursunay has drawn greater attention in France to the Uyghur crisis.

“It is significant that the portrait of Uyghur camp witness Tursunay Ziyawudun has being drawn by renowned French artist Mahn Kloix,” she said. “It has had a great impact on reaching out and letting the world know what is happening to the Uyghurs.”

Tursunay, who has lived in the United States since September 2020, has been denounced by China for speaking publicly and to the media about systematic rape in the camps.

The 43-year-old Uyghur woman from Kunes (in Chinese, Xinyuan) county in Xinjiang Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture was first detained on March 8, 2018, and spent a total of nine months at one of camps.

Tursunay said that looking at her portrait, which was taken by the BBC earlier this year, makes her feel sad, but seeing it in a mural is exciting because it can help the world know more about what is happening to the Uyghurs.

“This at least gives me some hope that men and women and my sisters in the camps in East Turkistan have a voice through that portrait display,” she said, using the Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang.

Tursunay married an ethnic Kazakh doctor from Kunes in June 2008, and five years later the couple relocated to Kazakhstan, where they had a son and set up a medical clinic. Her husband was granted Kazakh citizenship, but authorities repeatedly refused Tursunay’s applications because she was Uyghur, she told RFA in a report two years ago.

Tursunay returned to Kunes in November 2016 to stay with her family at a time when authorities were implementing tough new policies targeting Uyghurs, including the confiscation of their passports and the criminalization of those who had traveled abroad.

In April 2017, authorities took Tursunay to an internment camp without giving a reason amid the rollout of the mass incarceration campaign in the region, but she was released after one month in part due to poor health.

But Tursunay was unable to get a passport and could not join her husband in Kazakhstan. In March 2018, she was again sent to a camp, where she reported that many of the dozen women she shared quarters with endured torture and poor treatment, including forced sterilization.

Tursunay was taken to a hospital to undergo forced sterilization, but doctors spared her because she suffered from a gynecological condition that could be complicated by the surgery or lead to her death. She was released in December 2018, later given her passport, and allowed to return to Kazakhstan to join her husband and their son.

Reported by Mihray Abdilim for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

A Taiwan-owned bookstore in Hong Kong said it has no more in-store copies a historical book arguing that the eight-nation invasion of China at the turn of the 20th century was justified, amid reports in media backed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that it had removed the book from its shelves.

“The Eight-Nation Alliance Was a Just Cause,” penned by Canada-based author Liu Qikun and published in democratic Taiwan, was reportedly “removed” by Eslite bookstores in Hong Kong, the CCP-backed Global Times newspaper reported.

The pro-CCP South China Morning Post cited an Eslite employee as saying the book was sold out, but may not be fully restocked due to “the current situation.”

The book “glamorizes the invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance,” the Global Times reported, and was unavailable in Hong Kong branches of Eslite on Monday, although copies were still listed on the chain’s website, according to The Standard newspaper.

The controversy comes amid a citywide crackdown on dissent that has seen dozens of former opposition politicians and high-profile journalists detained under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the CCP from July 1, 2020.

Pro-Beijing lawmaker Elizabeth Quat told journalists she had received hundreds of complaints that the book was on sale in Hong Kong, and that publications that “villify and distort” the CCP’s version of history wouldn’t be tolerated.

Chao Cheng-min, who heads the China Times publishing house that published the book, said there was a reason that the book was published in Taiwan in the first place.

“Taiwan has freedom of the press and of publication,” Chao told RFA. “We have always respected different views among our writers, and believe that readers can make up their own minds.”

“But we also respect the different laws and customs in our different regional markets.”

Hong Kong seen as a warning

Author Liu Qikun was designated an “ultra-rightist” during the political purges of the 1950s under late supreme leader Mao Zedong, and later fled to Hong Kong. He emigrated to Canada in 1988 and has written in favor of constitutional democracy in China since retiring from a career in software development.

The disappearance of the books from Hong Kong bookstores came after warnings from high-profile commentators regarding the CCP’s global ambitions in recent days.

U.S.-based historian Miles Yu said that what is happening in Hong Kong should be a warning to the rest of the world.

“It’s not just a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, but the for the whole world … and shows that the CCP isn’t a credible regime,” Yu told a Christian foundation event on Hong Kong, at which he shared a platform with former Trump administration secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

“I think Pompeo had the right attitude towards China, which should be to distrust and verify,” Yu said, citing China’s abandonment of the promises made in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, a U.N.-registered bilateral treaty governing the handover of the city from the U.K. to China in 1997.

“Hong Kong is major example of that,” he said, warning that the CCP will be seeking political domination of its neighbors in Taiwan and southeast Asia next.

Pompeo told the California-based Hong Kong Freedom Beacon Inc. foundation on Oct. 17 that “appeasement was not going to work” in the face of the CCP-backed crackdown in Hong Kong, a conclusion that led the U.S. to pass a raft of legislation and executive measures from November 2019, removing the city’s special trading status and imposing requirements for political reviews and sanctions on officials responsible for the national security crackdown.

“It appears now destined to be just another communist city … when the CCP knocked down and smashed Hong Kong’s freedoms, it also shattered any illusions anyone might have about the regime’s trustworthiness,” he said.

“But the world is still watching,” he said, to enthusiastic applause.

Wider Chinse goals

Veteran journalist Ching Cheong said Pompeo had reversed the mistakes made by previous U.S. administrations in their dealings with China over many years.

“Just look at how many promises the CCP has failed to keep, or broken, since the regime came to power in 1949,” Ching said. “I think there are eight or 10 major instances of this.”

Joanna Chiu, a journalist and author who has reported on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement for many years, recently told the Tom Lantos Congressional hearing on Hong Kong that the city’s seven million people may never hold a large protest again.

“My research examines how Beijing’s bid for control over Hong Kong is part of a wider picture,” Chiu told the Oct. 14 hearing.

“The same set of party and state agencies, such as the United Front Work Department and Ministry of State Security, responsible for putting pressure on civil society groups and political entities in Hong Kong, has a similar mission all around the world,” she warned.

The national security law criminalizes speech and actions deemed to amount to secession, subversion, terrorism, or collusion with foreign powers, and enabled the setting up of a national security office under the direct control of Beijing to oversee the implementation of the law, as well as a Hong Kong headquarters for China’s feared state security police, to handle “special cases” deemed important by Beijing.

It also bans speech or actions anywhere in the world deemed to incite hatred or dissatisfaction with the CCP or the Hong Kong government.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Rights groups and exiled activists say Beijing should be stripped of the right to host the 2022 Winter Games, citing human rights abuses of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians and Hongkongers, among others.

Tibetan, Hong Kong activists detained by Greek police after Acropolis Olympics protest

Greek police detained, then released, a Tibetan and a Hong Kong activist campaigning for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on human rights grounds over the weekend, prompting concerns over collaboration between the Chinese and Greek authorities.

Police in Athens detained 18-year-old Tibetan student Tsela Zoksang and 22-year-old Hong Kong activist in exile, Joey Siu, after they took part in a protest at the Acropolis ahead of an Olympic torch handover ceremony to the Beijing 2022 Committee.

“At 9:30 am, the activists waved the Tibetan flag and Hong Kong’s revolution flag atop the historical monument, chanting “Boycott Beijing 2022” and “Free Tibet” as Greek authorities promptly confiscated their flag,” the U.S.-based rights group Students for a Free Tibet said in a statement on its website.

“Within minutes, at least two dozen police arrived at the scene. The student activists were detained by the Greek police and taken away without a formal arrest at this time,” it said.

It said the pair, both of whom are U.S. citizens, were taking part in the “No Beijing 2022” campaign that includes Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hongkongers, Taiwanese and Mongolian activists, as well as Chinese activists.

They are calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to strip Beijing of the Games, citing “egregious human rights abuses by China including a genocide of the Uyghur people, the brutal and illegal occupation of Tibet, and the severe and worsening crackdown against freedom and democracy in Hong Kong.”

Tsela Zoksang said the awarding of the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing was an endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP)’s “extreme and brutal human rights abuses.”

Joey Siu said that taking part in the same protest in Hong Kong would likely lead to a lengthy jail term.

“By awarding the Chinese government the honor of hosting an Olympic Games yet again, the IOC is sending the world a message that it is OK to turn a blind eye to genocide and crimes against humanity in Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkestan [a short-lived, pre-World War II state used to refer to the Uyghur homeland], and Southern Mongolia [the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia],” she said. “We must stand together to oppose Beijing 2022.”

Brian Leung, known as the anti-extradition protester who unmasked during an occupation of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) on July 1, 2019, said the incident was a “perfect illustration of China’s global authoritarian reach.”

Greece signed a series of investment deals and an extradition treaty with China in 2019, that was praised by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping at the time as a “model” for Sino-EU relations, Leung said via his Twitter account.

“Xi also described China’s investment project in Port Piraeus — where COSCO Shipping, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, obtained majority stake in the port — as the “the head of the dragon” in his grand Belt and Road Initiative,” Leung wrote.

“It is unacceptable that Greek authorities help Beijing whitewash dissent, arrest activists and manufacture false peace,” Leung wrote. “The mere fact that Greece might lose investment under the shadow of China’s threat can compel it to do the dirty work for Beijing.”

Exiled Hong Kong activist Frances Hui said the protest had happened because the IOC has so far turned a deaf ear to concerns over China’s human rights abuses.

“It was IOC’s long-time disregard for our demands and sufferings that has led us to decide to use such kind of protest action to make sure the IOC and the world hear us,” Hui said via Twitter.

The U.K.-based rights group Hong Kong Watch said the activists had been released in a tweet on Monday.

“We are pleased to learn that Joey Siu and Tsela have been released and pass on our appreciation to all of the individuals and organisations that have raised their case in the last 24 hours,” the group said.

Earlier, it said it was “deeply concerned” at the arrest of Siu, who works for the group as a policy adviser.

“We call on the Greek authorities to resist any pressure from the Chinese Government to extradite these activists, to release Joey Siu and the Tibetan activist Tsela Zoksang as a matter of urgency, and to allow them to return to the United States of America,” it said.

Exiled former Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui tweeted that it was unclear whether the pair were arrested at China’s request.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.