Day: December 1, 2021

China demanded that Indonesia stop oil and gas drilling at sea, alleging in an unprecedented diplomatic note about two months ago that such activities were occurring in waters it claims as part of its historic rights to the South China Sea, an Indonesian lawmaker said Wednesday.

In a separate diplomatic communiqué, China also objected to a joint Indonesia-United States military exercise held in August, according to Muhammad Farhan, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the House of Representatives.

“The letter conveyed China’s stance on offshore drilling activities in the North Natuna Sea bordering the South China Sea,” Farhan told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, using the name Indonesia gives to the disputed waterway.

“Their [China’s] argument was that the drilling location encroached on the nine-dash line. Naturally, the Indonesian government rejected that because we abide by the UNCLOS,” he said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The nine-dash line is a boundary that China puts on its official maps to demarcate its claims to most of the South China Sea. Several neighboring countries dispute those claims.

These also are not recognized under UNCLOS, which requires governments to seek permission in advance for marine scientific research in another state’s exclusive economic zone, a requirement China often ignores.

China says it has ‘historic rights’ to the region, a position unsupported by international law. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as well.

Farhan said he did not see the diplomatic notes himself but was briefed on their content and reports by the National Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla), Indonesia’s coast guard. The Tuna block, where the Indonesian government in 2007 gave a private British firm a contract to explore, has estimated reserves of 100 million barrels of oil, according to a Russian operator that joined appraisal drilling.

China’s objection to this work, which has not been reported previously, was conveyed to Indonesia in September as its research ship was lingering in an area of the South China Sea that Jakarta says is part of its EEZ off the Natuna Islands, according to Farhan.

“The letters did not contain any threat, but in my personal view, we must treat their attitude as a threat, because for the first time China had sent a diplomatic communiqué on territorial claims in the South China Sea or North Natuna,” he said.

Teuku Faizasyah, a spokesman for the Indonesian foreign ministry, declined to comment on Farhan’s revelation and the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to an email query.

‘Torn between its interests’

True to its policy of non-alignment, Indonesia has maintained a studious silence amid China’s increasing militarization in the South China Sea. However, Jakarta has loudly complained in recent weeks about AUKUS, a newly struck security and defense alliance between Australia, the U.S. and U.K. in the Indo-Pacific region.

In August, Indonesian authorities deployed several navy ships to its exclusive economic zone in the North Natuna Sea, but played down the presence of a 3,400-ton Chinese survey ship in the area that overlaps with the nine-dash line.

China’s protests posed a dilemma for Indonesia, said Suzie Sudarman, an international relations lecturer at the University of Indonesia.

“How will the government deal with this while at the same time we need help from them [China]?” Suzie told BenarNews, referring to the Southeast Asian giant’s economic dependence on China.

“Indonesia is torn between its interests, creating the impression that it is unable to make up its mind.”

Teuku Rezasyah, an international relations professor at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, said Indonesia must start to be firm in dealing with China.

“We have the right [to drill], it’s in Indonesia’s EEZ. China has been touting its peaceful rise, but it’s acting up in many places,” he told BenarNews.

Meanwhile last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told a summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that his country was not seeking hegemony.

Beijing was not protesting only about the oil drilling.

In another diplomatic note, it expressed objections to joint exercises involving 4,500 Indonesian and U.S. military personnel in August. This year’s edition of the annual Garuda Shield exercise was the largest involving the two militaries, officials said.

With regard to these exercises, “the Chinese government expressed their concern about security [and] stability in the region,” Indonesian lawmaker Farhan said. 

China’s protest could force Indonesia to conduct more joint military exercises with other major powers including Australia, Russia and the United States around strategic waters, Rezasyah said.

On Wednesday, Indonesia and other members of ASEAN kicked off the regional bloc’s first-ever joint drills with ships from the Russian navy in waters off Sumatra Island.

“Indonesia can also promote international tourism in Natuna by opening direct flights to Natuna, visa-free, or forge sister island cooperation with other countries,” Rezasyah said, referring to means that Jakarta could use to assert the country’s sovereignty.

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

Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha pushed back online on Wednesday against suggestions he had been forced to post a criticism last week of fellow Cambodia National Rescue Party member Sam Rainsy.

“No one has forced me to do anything, especially on my Facebook page,” Kem Sokha wrote, in reference to a Nov. 28 post demanding the now-dissolved CNRP stop using his name and photo for political purposes.

Some activists have called Kem Sokha’s statement — which explicitly mentions Sam Rainsy, a former CNRP leader who now lives in exile — a signal of division within the top ranks of the party’s leaders. But others contend the message shows Kem Sokha was writing under government control as he awaits trial on treason charges in Cambodia.

Writing from exile on Nov. 28, Sam Rainsy claimed that Kem Sokha had posted his statement under pressure from Cambodia’s long-ruling prime minister Hun Sen, “who dreads unity among Cambodian democrats and has been holding Kem Sokha hostage.”

Sok Ey San, a spokesman for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), told RFA on Wednesday that Hun Sen had played no part in the dispute, but acknowledged that a rift within the opposition group would benefit the CPP.

“We will certainly benefit from this, more or less. In any democratic country, each party likes to see its rivals weakened or divided, and they don’t break any laws by wanting this to happen,” he said.

Thailand-based CNRP activist Morn Phalla said that with communal elections scheduled in Cambodia in June 2022, the CPP had likely played a role in framing Kem Sokha’s message in an effort to set the two opposition leaders against each other.

“This is a CPP strategy and doesn’t reflect the spirit of the CNRP,” he said.

Kem Sokha’s message probably shows that he wants nothing more to do with Sam Rainsy, however, said Cambodia-based analyst Seng Sary.

“This rift has nothing to do with the CPP,” he said.

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the Cambodia National Rescue Party in November 2017, two months after arresting Kem Sokha over an alleged plot backed by the United States to overthrow the government of Hun Sen.

His trial on treason charges opened in January 2020, but officials suspended the trial that March until 2021 due, they said, to the coronavirus pandemic.

The trial has since been further delayed, with Phnom Penh Municipality Court Director Taing Sunlay recently telling RFA the trial will likely be convened in late December or early January 2022.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Richard Finney.

British lawmaker Nusrat Ghani, 49, launched an inquiry in the House of Commons in September 2020 to examine the U.K.’s supply chain of products made with Uyghur forced labor in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region. The report from the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee issued in March 2021 urged the government to toughen anti-modern slavery requirements for businesses and to develop new measures to compel companies to ensure that forced labor is not present in their supply chains. The conservative politician also played a key role in introducing a “genocide amendment” to the U.K. Trade Bill that would curb the government’s ability to make trade deals with countries found to have committed genocide. Because of Ghani’s criticism of China over its treatment of the Uyghurs, Beijing sanctioned her and four other U.K. MPs. In April 2021, she submitted a motion to the House of Commons for Parliament to determine that China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs. The motion passed unanimously. Ghani spoke to Alim Seytoff of RFA’s Uyghur Service on Tuesday about her interest in the Uyghur issue, the genocide amendment, and China’s sanctioning of her and other lawmakers. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Where does your passion to help Uyghurs and other oppressed people come from?

Ghani: My passion to help the Uyghurs is because I’m seeing one of the world’s greatest atrocities unfold in front of our eyes in my lifetime. As an elected representative of my constituency, as a member of Parliament, I believe it is my duty to expose what the Chinese Communist Party is doing to the Uyghur people. Over a lifetime ago, many parliamentarians would have worked on dealing with Nazi Germany and dealing with the Holocaust. And now we’re having a situation where genocide is unfolding in real time in front of our eyes, and we have to step up and say something. That’s the reason why I am involved.

As I mentioned earlier on today, freedoms don’t come easy. We need to fight for freedom — the freedoms that you and I have to conduct this interview. We need to make sure that freedom is also accessible to other people around the world and for the Uyghur people because they are being brutalized in such a mass quantity — two million in prison camps, the birthrate being dropped by 80%, hundreds of thousands of Uyghur children removed from the parents. There are no other group of people on the planet that are being brutalized as much as the Uyghur people.

RFA: Before China started committing atrocities against the Uyghurs, could you have ever imagined something like this would have happened in your lifetime in the 21st century?

Ghani: The extraordinary thing is that it’s hard for us to contemplate, but there is a difference between grotesque human rights abuses and a genocide. There are also five markers of genocide, and the last marker is the intent to destroy a group of people. All the evidence exists today to showcase to us that the Chinese Communist Party is carrying out the intent to commit a genocide. The United Nations has a chance to investigate and prevent a genocide, but the United Nations is handcuffed. It is locked in by China and Russia and can’t even undertake the duty that it has to investigate what’s happening to the Uyghur people, let alone to prevent the genocide from continuing.

RFA: China sanctioned you because of your work pushing through the U.K.’s “genocide amendment.” What does the sanctioning mean to you?

Ghani: I think it is a sanction of the U.K. Parliament. I think it was a way to try and silence us, to intimidate us, to control us. But what the sanctions have done is they’ve backfired. That’s made me more vocal, more determined, and more able to coordinate my work with parliamentarians around the world, including here in Washington. The sanctions have just been the absolute reverse of what the Chinese Communist Party wanted to do. Furthermore, by sanctioning British parliamentarians, it has made other parliamentarians ask what is going on. What more do we need to know? What is the Chinese Communist Party hiding? The sanction I wear is a badge of honor. My duty is to continue exposing the abuse of the Uyghur people.

RFA: You and many other MPs have been very active, calling out China’s genocide of the Uyghurs and taking real and meaningful action. But at the same time, the Boris Johnson government is doing very little. Why?

Ghani: Oh my goodness, that’s a difficult one to answer. But look, we have some fundamental values in our country. One of those values is that we ended slavery some time ago. And then to see slavery taking place within those factories in Xinjiang and within the cotton picking fields of the Uyghur [region], and those products ending up on our market, we are now involved in this slave labor. We need to make sure that no firm, no country, is profiting from slave labor. That is a motivation that drives a number of us. A number of parliamentarians are also anxious about China’s ability to harvest data and what they can do to capitalize on that data and then control countries that they have data on. We are incredibly anxious about the threat that China poses to our democracy and to our values and to our freedoms.

Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

Authorities near the Thai capital Bangkok have arrested and defrocked an activist Buddhist monk from Cambodia despite his refugee status, a fellow refugee said Wednesday, expressing fears he will be deported to his authoritarian homeland.

Ven. Bor Bet, a vocal critic of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s authoritarian government, had taken refuge in Thailand in November 2020 to avoid arrest for his participation in protests in Phnom Penh demanding the release of a popular labor union leader arrested in a sweeping crackdown on the opposition and civil society.

“I am concerned that this case is more politically motivated than related to any criminal offense,” said Oeu Narith, an activist from Cambodia’s banned opposition party, also living as a refugee in Thailand.

“Ven. Bor Bet is a social activist who escaped political persecution in Cambodia and received refugee status. While taking refuge in Thailand, prior to his arrest, he had been very active in political activities,” he told RFA’s Khmer Service.

“I am really concerned of his personal safety as he faces deportation like previous CNRP members,” he told RFA, referring to the Cambodia National Rescue Party, which Hun Sen had banned in 2017.

Bor Bet’s apprehension Wednesday in Samut Prakan province. south of Bangkok, follows Thailand’s arrest and quick deportation to Cambodia of four other CNRP-affiliated activists in a crackdown that drew condemnation from rights groups and a statement of concern from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

RFA reported on Tuesday that Mich Heang, a member of the banned CNRP who was arrested in Thailand on Nov. 20 and delivered the next to Cambodian authorities, who sent to the Interior Ministry’s National Police Commissariat General for further interrogation on charges of conspiracy for posting social media messages critical of Hun Sen.

Mich Heang’s arrest and swift deportation from Thailand followed those earlier in November of Cambodian activists Voeun Veasna, Voeung Samnang and Lahn Thavry.

“We will continue to monitor this case along with national and international organizations, and see what actions are needed to respond to this growing trend of cooperation between Cambodian and Thai authorities in deporting Cambodian refugees,” Soeung Senkarona, spokesperson for the Cambodian rights group ADHOC, told RFA.

“We urge the UNHCR to reconsider whether it should take necessary steps against Thailand that has repeatedly violated refugee rights. Such a practice poses a grave risk for Cambodian activists who are taking refuge in Thailand. Otherwise, Thailand will no longer be considered a safe place for refugees,” the spokesperson added.

The Cambodian National Police Commissariat General could not be reached on Wednesday for comment on Cambodian government’s role in this case.

The UNHCR was not immediately available to comment on the monk’s status or arrest, but in a statement last week, the agency voiced concern over Thailand’s treatment of other exiled 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.

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

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. Scores of supporters of the group have since been incarcerated in a wider crackdown by Hun Sen on the political opposition, independent media, and civil society.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Paul Eckert.

A senior party member of Myanmar’s National League for Democracy has died of a heart attack less than two months after being freed from a nine-month detention, according to family members and friends.

Monywa Aung Shin, 77, had been held since Feb. 1, the day that Myanmar’s military overthrew the civilian-led NLD government in a coup. He was released on Oct. 18.

Hospitalized for a heart ailment from Nov. 21 to 24, Monywa Aung Shin died of heart failure on his front porch four days later, his wife Kay Thwe Moe told RFA on Tuesday.

“He got up at about 5:30 a.m. and went out onto the veranda as usual to wait for the daily newspapers when he had a sudden heart attack and collapsed. He didn’t recover,” Kay Thwe Moe said.

As a member of the NLD’s Information Committee, Monywa Aung Shin had also served as a spokesman for the party.

Journalist Nathan Maung, a former editor-in-chief of the Kamayut Media news group who was briefly held in cell next to Monywa Aung Shin, said he was well known and respected for his personal integrity and loyalty to the NLD.

“We were separated by a single wall, and he called out to me and knocked on the door between our two rooms about 10 minutes after I arrived,” Nathan Maung said.

The two men then introduced themselves to each other, and Monywa Aung Shin said that he missed his family and home and hoped he would soon be released, as he was not a cabinet minister or other top figure in the deposed NLD government, Nathan Maung said.

“He was shocked to learn I had been tortured, and I was able to talk with him only briefly a few times, but I found him very friendly and respectful despite the differences in our age,” he said.

Having already served more than 15 years in prison for his political activities since 1988, Monywa Aung Shin was also a poet and was widely respected by all members of the NLD, said Bo Bo Oo, a former member of parliament from Myanmar’s Yangon region.

“He had worked hard for democracy to take root in the country, and he was a literary icon who had focused on moving Myanmar along the correct political path for the country’s development,” Bo Bo Oo said. “He really did so much.”

“This is a big loss for the country, as he had worked so hard and with so much good will,” he said.

Monywa Aung Shin had lived for only 40 days after his release from detention, and spoke openly about the Feb. 1 military coup that ended civilian rule in Myanmar, Kay Thwe Moe said.

“He was really devastated to see how different things were before he was detained and then after his release. This caused him terrible mental stress,” she said. “He really was a peaceful person, and he was so frustrated that he couldn’t do anything to help.”

“He wanted to see people working together and sharing responsibilities for the good of the country,” she said.

Friendship and respect

Ye Htut, a cabinet minister in Myanmar’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)-led government from 2014 to 2016, said that he and Monywa Aung Shin had shared friendship and respect in spite of the differences in their political views.

“We met only once after he was released on Oct. 18, and we talked about the country’s politics for a long time. As far as I can recall, that was the only time that we saw things almost eye-to-eye,” he said.

“Though our friendship was brief, it was long enough for me to see that he was an honest and righteous politician.”

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

The junta has yet to provide evidence for 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’ Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Richard Finney.

In what is being described as another case of “debt trap” diplomacy, China’s Export-Import Bank appears poised to take over Uganda’s Entebbe Airport and other assets because the African nation is struggling to service a U.S. $207 million loan for local infrastructure projects.

China – which agreed to expand the airport in 2015 as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) global infrastructure-building program – has denied reports that it may grab control of Uganda’s international airport because of the country’s failure to pay off the debt.

The site gained infamy in 1976 as the location of the Israeli Defense Force’s daring hostage-rescue operation after Ugandan dictator Idi Amin allowed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to land a hijacked Air France jetliner there.

But it is Uganda’s only international airport, which raises questions about China’s domination of critical infrastructure – with very real implications for Southeast Asia.

If it takes place, the debt-for-equity swap in Uganda follows China’s 99-year takeover of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port and a nearby airfield in 2018, and the 2020 takeover of much of the Lao power grid by a Chinese state-owned firm. 

According to a September 2021 report by the AidData project at the College of William and Mary in the United States, Uganda took on 144 Chinese-financed projects between 2000 and 2017, and its sovereign debt to China accounts for 8 percent of its gross domestic product.

But Uganda’s “hidden debt” to China accounted for zero percent of GDP. This is highly unusual.

‘Hidden debt’

Let me explain this in brief terms. 

Roughly 70 percent of China’s BRI funding comes in the form of loans, not grants.

Sovereign debt is money that a country’s government owes to foreign and domestic lenders. It is almost never collateralized. But commercial lending from the China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China and other BRI lenders almost always is.

That collateral can take many forms: sometimes China forces the borrower to have a certain amount of assets in a Chinese bank that can be frozen; other times, the recipient country puts up assets as collateral, meaning that it will forfeit those assets if it fails to repay its debt.

Very little of China’s BRI lending is favorable to the borrower. The interest rates average around 4 percent, nearly four times more than World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Japanese, European or American lending.

In addition, in the Philippines, BRI projects have dispute resolution mechanisms that are skewed toward China. This is likely the case in other Southeast Asian BRI agreements.

Another kind of lending – called Other Official Flows, or OOF – involves state-owned companies, state-owned banks, joint ventures, and private sector institutions, rather than central banks. As such, it is not always publicly reported.

The AidData project’s 2021 report found that due to this “hidden debt,” the average government “is under-reporting its actual and potential repayment obligations to China by an amount that is equivalent to 5.8 percent of its GDP.”

Uganda was the 19th largest recipient of Chinese grants and carried very little in the way of OOF loans, and yet it still seems unable to service its debts.

Now of course, China could renegotiate the terms of lending, or write off the debt, as a grant. But Beijing has shown little interest in doing so. Indeed, in March 2021, the Ugandan government sent a delegation to Beijing to renegotiate the loan terms, but returned empty-handed.

Beijing is refusing to budge for two reasons. First, the Chinese are legitimately afraid of creating a precedent. If one country gets to renegotiate the terms, all the others will clamor for the same.

Second, BRI lending really slowed in 2018-2019, which suggests that many of the loans were non-performing. If people aren’t paying back the loans, there’s less for the banks to lend out, unless Beijing injects a lot of new capital. It may be doing that now, as lending seems to be picking up.

How this plays out in Southeast Asia

According to the report from the AidData project, China provided $10.7 billion in grants to four Southeast Asian states between 2000 and 2017, and $87.7 billion in OOF loans to six states in the region.

In all countries with the exception of Singapore, which doesn’t borrow from Beijing, sovereign debt loads to China, as a percentage of GDP, range from 1 percent in Cambodia to a whopping 29 percent in Laos. Myanmar is second (5 percent), followed by Vietnam (3 percent). Several states have none. Not including Laos, which is such an outlier, the region’s sovereign debt load to China is a modest 1.4 percent of GDP, on average.

The hidden debt loads tell a different story. The highest amount is Laos at 35 percent of GDP, followed by Brunei (14 percent), Myanmar (7 percent), Vietnam (3 percent), Indonesia (2 percent), and Cambodia (1 percent). Again, excluding the outlier Laos, the average hidden debt to China in the region is 3.4 percent, over twice the amount of sovereign debt.   

While 3.4 percent is not unusually high, remember that those loans are at commercial lending rates and are almost all collateralized. Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have public debt exposure to China over 10 percent of GDP. In July 2021, the World Bank estimated that Laos’ overall debt would increase to 68 percent of GDP, up from 59 percent in 2019.

It’s hard to imagine that Laos will be able to service its debt for a $6 billion railroad, especially because the Thai government has not completed a rail link that would connect the Chinese city of Kunming to Thai ports – the only economically viable reason for the Lao portion.

Laos has benefited from a recent Thai decision to buy more hydroelectricity, which should allow the Laotians to continue to service debts for their cascade of Chinese-funded dams. Vietnam had to begin servicing a $670 million debt for a Chinese-constructed rail line that still had not opened, after years of delays and a 57 percent cost overrun since the project began in 2011.

With economic slowdowns caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which is unlikely to end any time soon, the region’s hard-hit economies will see weaker recoveries than forecast. 

The Asian Development Bank recently downgraded its 2021 growth estimates for every country in the region except for Singapore and the Philippines, and estimated that regional growth would be 3.1 percent in 2021, not 4.4 percent. Revenue will be down for all states, while the continued public health and stimulus costs are rising.

All of this will impact the ability of regional states to service their debt. 

China may be willing to play harder ball with African countries than with neighboring Southeast Asia, where public perceptions about China are starting to sour.  But China keeps pushing its BRI projects on the region, with new projects announced in Malaysia, and a determination to see projects completed in Myanmar despite the civil unrest since the Feb. 1 coup d’etat and an 18 percent contraction of the Burmese GDP. 

The region’s high levels of public indebtedness – and fear of asset seizures by China – should raise a lot of concern, both among Southeast Asian governments and their citizens. And BRI’s heavy reliance on Chinese workers and managers who tend not to return home, shoddy construction, environmental degradation, and corruption should raise even more concern.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or BenarNews.