Month: November 2021

A court in Cambodia sent an opposition activist recently deported back to the country from Thailand to pre-trial detention over his online criticism of the government and its leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen, his lawyer told RFA.

Mich Heang, a member of the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was arrested in Thailand with two other Cambodian workers on Nov. 20 and delivered to Cambodian authorities at the border the next day.

The other two migrants were released by Cambodian authorities, but Mich Heang was sent to the Interior Ministry’s National Police Commissariat General for further interrogation. 

His lawyer, Sam Sok Kong, told RFA’s Khmer Service Sunday that the Phnom Penh municipal court charged Mich Heang with conspiracy.

The veteran activist had criticized Hun Sen’s government on social media while living in Thailand.

“He was placed under pre-trial detention by the court. His family contacted me for legal assistance,” the lawyer said.

Since Mich Heang’s forced repatriation, neither his family nor his lawyer have been able to visit him, but Sam Sok Kong said Sunday he planned to meet him at the prison on Monday.

While living in Thailand as a migrant worker, Mich Heang was an active supporter of the CNRP. He was particularly vocal about the need to end impunity in Cambodia which allows perpetrators of crimes against activists and journalists to go unpunished.

He was regularly critical of the government on social media, including on topics relating to social injustice, the rights of migrant workers, and governmental restrictions on civil and political activities.

Placing Mich Heang in detention for his political views is wrong, and the Thai government should not have deported him, Ny Sokha, president of the local Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association told RFA.

“Thailand has shown its failure to thoroughly respect the U.N. refugee convention. She fails to show to the world her commitment to humanitarianism in terms of helping protect refugees fleeing Cambodia to escape from political persecution,” he said.

“If Thai authorities continue to deport people like this, I think we can say Thailand can no longer be considered as a safe country for political refugees anymore,” Ny Sokha said.

In a statement last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees voiced concern over Thailand’s treatment of other native Cambodians in recent weeks.

“We are extremely alarmed by this trend of forcibly returning refugees to Cambodia, where they face a serious risk of persecution,” said Gillian Triggs, UNHCR’s assistant high commissioner for protection.

Thailand this month arrested Cambodian activists Voeun Veasna, Voeung Samnang and Lahn Thavry and quickly sent them back to Cambodia.

A Thai government spokesman last week defended the deportations, calling them consistent with Thailand’s foreign policy.

RFA attempted to contact Chhay Kim Khoeun, spokesperson for the National Police Commissariat General, and Plang Sophal, spokesperson for Phnom Penh Municipal Court, but neither could be reached.

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Local governments in North Korea are scrambling to make candies in preparation for a nationwide celebration of leader Kim Jong Un’s birthday in January, but the government is forcing hungry citizens to pay for it, sources in the country told RFA.

At a time when the country is struggling with food shortages said to be almost as bad as the 1990s famine, the nationwide baking project has made a huge dent in flour and sugar supplies, doubling prices, and funneling money away from the people who need it to buy food for themselves.

“Since yesterday, the price of one kilogram of flour has jumped from 12,000 won (U.S. $2.40) to 30,000 won ($6). The price of sugar has also jumped from 13,000 won to 25,000 won,” a resident of Unsan, South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service.

“It’s all because the central government has ordered that each province must produce and supply confections as gifts for children from Kim Jong Un for his birthday on January 8,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

The gift of sweets to children on or around the birthday of the country’s leader or his predecessors has been a longtime tradition in the north, dating back to the era of Kim’s grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung.

Early on in Kim Jong Un’s rule, candies were supplied to expectant mothers and students in daycare and elementary schools on Jan. 8, but since 2019, the government expanded candy gifts to every child across the country, to be received on Jan. 1.

“The amount of imported flour and sugar circulating in local markets is very limited because border trade has been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. Prices for flour and sugar will continue to rise until food factories finish producing the confections,” said the source from Unsan.

The current economic devastation and widespread food shortages are due to North Korea’s closed border with China and suspension of all trade with Beijing at the start of the pandemic, almost two years ago.

The lack of food imports to bridge the gap between domestic production and demand made shortages more pronounced. The closed border also makes it harder for the country to scrape together enough sugar for candy, as most of it prior to the pandemic had been coming from China, according to the source.

With prices on the rise, some local governments are forcing the people to pay for the ingredients.

“Starting today, food factories in Uiju county have started producing confections for Kim Jong Un’s birthday present,” a resident of the county in North Pyongan province, in the country’s northwest, told RFA.

“To purchase the raw materials for confections, the county party directly imposed a tax of 5,000 won on each household,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

The local government has a deadline to finish the candy by Dec. 20, so it has started directly controlling distribution of all flour and sugar in the county to secure enough of each ingredient to the food factories, according to the second source.

The result has been that even less flour and sugar reach the markets.

“They even demanded each house provide one egg for confection production. As people must purchase the eggs for donation at the local marketplace, the market is running out of eggs,” the second source said.

“Residents are angry that the authorities are wiping out the pockets of the people at a time like this to make candy for children, supposedly from Kim Jong Un for his birthday.”

RFA reported in March 2020 that celebrations, including production of candy gifts, for the birth anniversary of Kim Jong Un’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il, were scaled down that February due to the start of the pandemic.

By March 2020, however, the whole country was ordered to scramble to make enough candy to celebrate Kim Il Sung’s birth anniversary in April that year.

Translated by Claire Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

A United Nations whistleblower fired last week for accusing the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR ) of providing the names of Chinese government opponents and activists who sought accreditation to participate in U.N. activities has called for an external investigation of the body. Emma Reilly, an employee at the OHCHR and a human rights lawyer, said that the sharing of the names of dissidents with the Chinese government has endangered their lives and their families. The OHCHR said it stopped the practice in 2015, although a 2017 press release stated that Chinese authorities in Geneva regularly asked the office to confirm whether certain people were attending Human Rights Council meetings. “The office never confirms this information until the accreditation process is formally under way, and until it is sure that there is no obvious security risk,” it said. Reilly spoke to reporter Nuriman Abdurashid of RFA’s Uyghur Service about her allegations and call for an independent investigation. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Why were you fired?

Reilly: I was fired for doing my job. … It was telling the truth to member states and in public that didn’t work. It was telling people about the U.N. policy of handing names over to the Chinese government. The irony is that in court, the U.N.’s argument is that the policy is public. So, I’ve been fired for making public something that, when they’re in front of a judge, the U.N. says is public.

RFA: Are these names given at China’s request or does the U.N. take it upon itself to hand them over? How does it work?

Reilly: What happens is that the Chinese delegation sends an email about a couple of months before sessions of the Human Rights Council or other U.N. meetings. The Chinese delegation always talks about it as being a favor. They know they have absolutely no right to have this information, but they ask for this favor, and then the U.N. replies and does the favor. They ask about specific people. The number of people on the list varies sometimes. There are about 20 or 25 people. And then the U.N. will tell them that these people will be coming. Of course, they send Chinese police to their homes. They arrest them. They put their families in concentration camps. They disappear people. They torture people. And they have them phone their family members. Why on earth is the U.N. human rights office doing this?

RFA: How many names in total have been handed over to the Chinese?

Reilly: In total, I can’t be 100% sure because the U.N. stopped copying me on the emails, handing them to China pretty quickly. But what I can see is that after they get them, China writes a letter to U.N. security saying, ‘We don’t want these people to come.’ I know whose names have been handed over when I can access those letters, [which] are on a central database within the U.N. where you can see the communications between member states and the U.N. Not all of them are there. From the ones I have, it’s somewhere between 50 and 70. But it’s more than that. I don’t know how many more.

RFA: Which names of Uyghurs were given to the Chinese? Was it only those who are about to present information to the Human Rights Council or those who have asked for assistance in finding information on their families in Xinjiang?

Reilly: I know that it’s people who applied to attend the Human Rights Council [and] some of the treaty bodies. I have evidence that a few, [such as] the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, gave names to China the last time. I don’t think it affects the working group on arbitrary detention, … which are the cases where people are most likely to be asking about specific family members. But I can’t rule it out. That’s why they need to investigate it, and people need to know for sure. People need to be able to confidently contact those bodies.

I’ve given people private email addresses of the members of those bodies when I’ve had them to stop them from going via the U.N. and to get to the members directly. … Frankly, nobody knows, apart from the people who are handing over names, and that’s the problem. I knew that names for the Human Rights Council were handed over at least in 2020. I don’t know if the fact that I’ve gone so public in 2021 means that it has stopped.

RFA: You’ve made it your life’s work now to make the U.N. answer for this situation, so what kind of outcome do you expect?

Reilly: Nobody really pays attention to things they think they can hold tight, because that’s what has tended to happen in whistleblower cases. But the difference is that other whistleblowers have been reporting individual acts of misconduct. This is the U.N. policy that everyone’s going along with — that we make an exception for China because China wants this information and people want an easy life or money. I don’t know why they’re doing this. I don’t think it will go away as easily as they think it might.

I certainly plan to take it to national jurisdiction. There’s no point in taking court cases against the U.N. and the U.N. court. In my case, they fired a judge. He was about to rule in my favor and they literally told the judge not to come to work the next day. That’s the kind of thing that really happens in a totalitarian society. That shouldn’t be happening in the U.N.

It’s up to the member states to finally do something, to finally exercise oversight with the U.N., to finally hold responsible the people who are handing over [names], and to finally do an investigation as to the extent of it. Imagine for a second if their current story was true, [that they stopped doing this] in 2015. Even if that were true, we basically have the U.N. on the record saying, ‘Yes, we handed over people’s names for over a decade, but we’re not going to hold anyone responsible for that. We’re not going to do any kind of investigation as to why.’

The first time I saw it happen in 2013 it was really weird because everybody pretended it was the first time. It was only years later that I realized it wasn’t the first time, and we even had a meeting with a deputy representative of the Chinese delegation in Geneva, so quite a high-level person. It was me and two other U.N. staff members meeting with him about this request, and he pretended it was the first time. It was only a few years later that I discovered emails where he was the addressee of the email giving them names. The U.N. persuaded this Chinese diplomat to pretend that this was the first request in order to try to make me think that my concerns were taken seriously.

Q: Should Uyghurs continue to send their information or petition for the whereabouts of their family through the U.N.? Is it safe for them to do so?

Reilly: Don’t let this stop you from getting the message out in U.N fora. That’s what China wants. China wants to make sure that the Uyghur genocide is never discussed anywhere in the U.N. Just be super careful about how you do it.

There are a number of different things you can do. You can give speeches for other people to read on your behalf. That means that because you’re never applying to attend the meeting, your name is never given to China. Another option for the Human Rights Council is to submit something by video message. When you do that, you just have to speak in the name of the NGO, but you don’t have to again apply to attend the meeting, so your name won’t appear on the accreditation list that would be given China.

Other options are things like trying to get in as an invited guest of a U.N. staff member if you really want to give a speech yourself. There are ways of doing that for some of the meetings. Contact the members of the committee and the members of the working group and the special rapporteurs directly. There’s no reason to believe that any of them are involved in this. The ones I met were always quite shocked when I told them about this. You can generally write to them directly. It’s quite easy to find their direct emails if you just Google them. They’re usually affiliated with a university or have a job, and you can write to them directly and explain that you don’t want to go through the secretariat because the secretariat hands over names for at least the Human Rights Council and a couple of treaty bodies. Don’t stop trying to force the U.N. to do its job, and I’m not going to stop trying to force member states to investigate them.

Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

The U.S. is going all out to woo ASEAN states in its effort to counter China in the region, through this week’s Jakarta visit by a senior Washington official – the second in as many months to Southeast Asia’s largest country.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said he was in Southeast Asia in his new role as part of a diplomatic push by the Biden administration to demonstrate its commitment to the region. His maiden visit in his new position comes close on the heels of a trip to the Indonesian capital by State Department Counselor Derek Chollett.

Kritenbrink, the former American ambassador to Vietnam, said he made Jakarta his initial stop in a four-nation regional tour “in recognition of the leadership role that Indonesia plays.”

“I came here with a really simple objective,” Kritenbrink told reporters at a media briefing Tuesday. Indonesia serves as the official liaison between the United States and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is headquartered in Jakarta.

“I want to further demonstrate the strength of America’s commitment to our strategic partnership with Indonesia, as well as America’s commitment to ASEAN centrality and its outlook on the Indo-Pacific, and our commitment to peace and stability across the Indo-Pacific region, writ large.”

ASEAN’s outlook on the Indo-Pacific says member-states must promote freedom, peace, stability and prosperity in the region, through a peaceful settlement of disputes, and through promoting the rule of law and rejecting the use of threats and force.

Kritenbrink expressed “fundamental concerns” about some of China’s actions, which he said could undermine the “rules-based international order.” He said Washington’s concerns include Beijing’s aggressiveness in the South and East China seas.

The U.S. diplomat also warned that competition between the U.S. and China would become increasingly fraught.

“We therefore believe we also need to have intense diplomacy, to make sure there’s not some kind of miscalculation that could lead to inadvertent conflict,” Kritenbrink said.

Southeast Asia has become a global geopolitical hotspot amid China’s increasing militarization and expansionism in the disputed South China Sea.

‘Supporting our partners’

Meanwhile, despite spats between many Southeast Asian nations and China over the strategic waterway, Washington will not force countries to pick sides in its rivalry with Beijing, Kritenbrink told reporters.

In recent months, Beijing’s verbal quarrels with Manila have escalated over Chinese ships in Philippine waters. Chinese vessels have also intruded into Malaysia’s maritime air space, the Malaysian Air Force said. And analysts say China has “illegally” parked research ships in Indonesia’s waters.

Still, “we’re not about forcing people to make a choice,” the U.S. diplomat said.

“We’re about supporting our partners and friends so that you have choices, [so] that you have the say over your sovereignty and over your sovereign decisions and that you’re free to make those choices,” Kritenbrink added, alluding to China’s intrusions in other nations’ waters.

China claims historical rights to almost 90 percent of the South China Sea, an area roughly demarcated by a nine-dash line. Other claimants have rejected those claims and a 2016 international arbitration tribunal ruled that it had no legal basis.

Claimants include ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The other members of the bloc are Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand.

While in Jakarta, Kritenbrink met with several Indonesian officials including Deputy Foreign Minister Mahendra Siregar, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin and Trade Minister Muhammad Luthfi.

After Indonesia, he was scheduled to make stops in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

‘US politics can once again change’

Despite recent trips to Southeast Asia by high-profile officials from the Biden administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chollett, one regional analyst said Washington’s engagement may be short lived.

Both Harris and Austin, members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet, skipped Indonesia, the region’s biggest and most populous country.

“Of course, the U.S.’ renewed interest in Southeast Asia cannot be separated from the U.S.-China rivalry,” Rizal Sukma, senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

“There is no guarantee that this U.S. engagement will be sustainable, because we have learned that U.S. politics can once again change, and its policy will change again.”

Rizal did not name anyone but he likely was referring to a four-year absence from the ASEAN leaders’ summits under the Trump administration. Biden attended the virtual summit last month.

Assistant Secretary of State Kritenbrink emphasized repeatedly that Washington was committed to Indonesia, ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific. He said Southeast Asia should expect even more such visits.

“[Y]ou will continue to see, let’s put it this way, you will continue to see a number of senior American visitors from a range of our departments and agencies visit Indonesia,” he said.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Arif, an international relations lecturer at the University of Indonesia, said Southeast Asia needed to be given more importance by Washington.

 “[A]visit by the Assistant Secretary of State cannot compensate for the lack of higher-level engagement,” he told BenarNews.

“Many still regret that Jakarta was skipped on previous tours of Southeast Asia by the vice president and members of the U.S. government.”

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

Authorities in northwestern China’s Qinghai province have ramped up efforts to vilify the Dalai Lama, now questioning Tibetan children to discover what their parents have told them about the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, sources in the region say.

The new push expands efforts beginning in 2017 to ban displays of the Dalai Lama’s photos in private homes in Qinghai, historically a part of northeastern Tibet’s Amdo region, a local source told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

“Under the pretense of assessing the livelihood of Tibetans, Chinese officials carry out random home inspections to check for photos of the Dalai Lama,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And the officials also make sure that parents are not saying anything about the Dalai Lama to the children living in their homes.”

Visiting officials will sometimes begin conversations with the children living in Tibetan homes, asking them what they know about the exiled leader, who is regarded by Chinese leaders as a separatist seeking to split Tibet from rule by Beijing.

“They are making sure that parents are not teaching their children anything about the Dalai Lama,” he said.

Officials also destroy family altars and shrines and warn them to take down Tibetan prayer flags hung outside their doors, the source said.

A second source in Tibet told RFA that a campaign launched three years ago in Qinghai’s Golog (Chinese, Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture now restricts Tibetans from performing many traditional religious activities.

“For example, they are not allowed to hang Tibetan prayer flags outside their homes or to build heaps of stones carved with mantras, and they are not allowed to keep shrine rooms in houses provided with government support.”

“If anyone is found violating these guidelines, they will be deprived of any benefits provided by the state,” he said.

A Tibetan living in exile confirmed the details of China’s campaign, citing scenes he’d witnessed when visiting Tibet in 2017.

“The Chinese government was conducting random inspections, calling these part of a program assessing the living standards of Tibetan residents to see if more support was needed from the state.”

“But in reality, they were checking to see if anyone was keeping photos of the Dalai Lama and to make sure no one was imparting information about him to younger Tibetans,” he said.

China’s interference in the instruction Tibetan parents give to their children can only have damaging effects, said Yangdon, a staff member at the mental health desk of the Department of Health in Tibet’s Dharamsala, India-based exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration.

“This constant harassment by the Chinese government in controlling what parents want to share with their children will have a very negative psychological impact on them,” Yangdon said.

“The Chinese government’s campaign imposes further severe constraints on Tibet’s religion and language and on displays of devotion to the Dalai Lama, just as they did during the [1966-1976] Cultural Revolution,” added Karma Tenzin, a researcher at the Dharamsala-based Tibet Policy Institute.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in India in the midst of a failed 1959 national uprising against rule by China, which marched into the formerly independent Himalayan country and annexed it by force in 1950.

Displays by Tibetans of the Dalai Lama’s photo or public celebrations of his birthday are harshly punished in Tibet and Tibetan regions of western Chinese provinces.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Delivery of a verdict in the trial by a military court of deposed Myanmar national leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been postponed to Dec. 6, sources close to court proceedings told RFA Tuesday.

No reason was given for the delay in announcing a verdict, which was expected Tuesday, the sources said.

All five of the former State Counselor’s lawyers have been barred since October by Myanmar’s military rulers from releasing information or speaking publicly about the two cases being tried. The trials are closed to media.

Charged under Section 505 (b) of the Penal Code, Aung San Suu Kyi, former Myanmar president Min Myint, and Naypyidaw mayor Myo Aung are accused in the first case of defaming the country’s military and undermining state order.

In the second case, filed under Section 25 of the Disaster Management Law, Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint are charged with violating COVID-19 containment rules by greeting supporters last year at a political rally.

Section 505 (b) of the Penal Code provides a maximum sentence on conviction of two years’ imprisonment, while Section 25 of the Disaster Management Law provides a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

Aung San Suu Kyi. 76, faces up to 11 different charges, including corruption and incitement, and if found guilty in all cases could face a maximum sentence of more than 100 years in prison.

Myanmar’s junta has also detained nearly four dozen high-ranking officials from the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) on charges of corruption since seizing power ten months ago in what legal analysts have called a bid to tarnish the party’s image at a time of heightened political rivalry.

Zaw Min Tun, a spokesman for the ruling State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself, told RFA that any announcement of a verdict in the months-long trial would be a matter for the court to decide.

“It is true that no decision has been made today,” the junta’s deputy information minister said. “But we [the military council] have no right to interfere in this, as this is the role of the judiciary. That is all I want to say.”

Khin Maung Myint, a senior lawyer living in Myanmar’s former capital Yangon, said the judge hearing the case may have postponed today’s court session because he needs more time to review details of the trial before writing a verdict.

“Even when the reading of a verdict is scheduled, judges have sometimes not been able to write a complete verdict in a case. Such postponements are not unusual,” Khin Maung Myint said.

Extra care in writing a verdict may also be required because Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial is being closely watched both in Myanmar and around the world, he added.

However, the verdict’s delay may also be aimed at allowing a longer sentence to be imposed, said Yangon-based political analyst Than Soe Naing.

“The junta may expect that a long term in prison will end with the prisoner’s death, and that’s why this verdict was postponed,” he said, adding, “If her case had ended with a sentence of only three years, this would not meet the junta’s expectations.”

Myanmar’s military rulers may have also wanted to watch public reaction to the news of a delay, said Aung Kyi Nyunt, a central executive committee member of the NLD.

“In other words, the military council might be thinking, ‘What will people say if this is postponed?’ We don’t know what they may be watching for, though,” he said.

Myanmar’s military overthrew the country’s democratically elected government on Feb. 1, claiming voter fraud had led to a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party in the country’s November 2020 election.

The junta has yet to provide evidence of its claims and has violently suppressed nationwide protests calling for a return to civilian rule, killing 1,299 people and arresting 7,640 over the last nine months, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP-Burma).

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Zaw Zaw Aung. Written in English by Richard Finney.