Day: December 20, 2021

Newly retired military officers in North Korea are complaining to authorities about a serious lack of housing, with many of them forced to stay with relatives in utility rooms and basements after decades of service to the country, sources told RFA.

The military officers, who joined up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were promised that the hardships they would experience in the line of duty would be worth it, because they would be well taken care of after completing their service.

But many have been waiting around for years for the government to provide them with homes. Some are beginning to think that it won’t happen at all.

“As winter begins, dissatisfaction with the authorities is rising among the retired officers. Their housing problems have not been resolved even after they’ve waited several years,” a local government employee from the port city of Hamhung on the East Coast told RFA Dec. 15.

“At the end of last month, several recently discharged military officers visited the Hamhung Municipal People’s Committee and protested the lack of housing support,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Most of the retired officers are living wherever they can, with friends, acquaintances or even in factory dormitories, according to the source.

Home construction has been put on hold due to a suspension of trade with China to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Chinese construction materials have not been available for almost two years in North Korea.

The central government has been funneling resources and electricity to the capital Pyongyang so that it can complete an ambitious national plan to construct 50,000 homes by 2025, including 10,000 by the end of this year.

But this has taken even more attention away from the provinces, the source said.

“Housing construction has been so sluggish here that receiving a state provided house is akin to picking the stars out of the sky,” the source said. “Still, the discharged officers visit the Urban Management Department of the People’s Committee every day to complain.”

Ex-soldiers, especially officers, are supposed to receive benefits like new homes in return for their 30 years of service, but Hamhung officials have been unable to comply, the source said.

“The housing problem for veterans is likely to be similar in other regions of the country, beyond just Hamhung,” the source said.

“It’s a difficult time for everyone to live these days, but the transition from military life is even more difficult. Veterans are accustomed to receiving monthly food rations while in the military. … They have to live their lives to the best of their ability where there are no rations at all,” said the source.

For many, the hard military life was better than their retirement, according to the source.

“They are tired of waiting for their house to be assigned. They are suffering from hardships they never experienced while in uniform,” the source said. “They are not hiding their dissatisfaction, saying, ‘Is this our reward for more than 30 years of hard work in service of the party and the country?’”

A resident of the city of Hyesan, on the border with China in Ryanggang province, told RFA that an uncle has been living with the family for three years while waiting for his own house from the government.

“My uncle visits the People’s Committee every week to find out when he will get his house, but he comes back discouraged because there is no prospect that the problem will be resolved,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

“At least the veterans with parents and relatives can live with them, but most veterans have been assigned to places where there was nobody to support them, so now they live in basements of apartments or in storage rooms,” the second source said.

The economy has transformed radically since the time that the retired officers joined the military. Back then, the Soviet Union was still in existence, providing aid to Pyongyang that kept the economy stable. People could live off their government salaries.

Now government salaries are nowhere near enough to live on, and a nascent market economy has emerged. Most people earn their living doing secondary jobs, usually by running a family business.

“Veterans have no experience doing business in the market, so it is more difficult for them to live,” the second source said. “This is emerging as a real social problem, so urban youth who see these veterans suffering from housing shortages and hardships do not hope to become military officers, and women do not want to marry soldiers.”

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

More than 90 people have been sentenced to death by military courts in Myanmar’s Yangon region since the country’s army overthrew civilian rule in a Feb. 1 coup, according to reports in Myanmar’s junta-controlled media.

Five youths were sentenced on Dec. 16 in Yangon’s South Dagon township for allegedly shooting and killing a local administrator, and another two — identified as Hein Htet Aung and Aukkar Thein —were sentenced in North Dagon township on Dec. 3.

Six others, including Htet Paing Soe, also called Pho Htet, from South Dagon Myothit, and 15 others from Dagon Seikkan township, including Khin Wint Kyaw Maung and Zin Min Kyaw, were also handed death sentences, bringing the total to 28 between November and mid-December.

The number of people on death row in the six Yangon townships under martial law has now risen to 92, of whom 42 were sentenced in absentia, according to official figures.

Speaking to RFA, San San Aye — the mother of four of the youths sentenced in South Dagon — said she feels great sympathy for the parents of other young men condemned to die.

“I have suffered emotionally, and I’m sure they are no different from me,” she said. “No matter who you are, you will feel the same if your children meet this fate. My two sons and two adopted sons are now on death row. I don’t want these people to suffer like me.”

One of her two sons, Thaw Zin Naing, also called Khaing Myair, is now being held in Taungoo prison, while her second son San Naing, also called Shwe Ngar, was sent to prison in central Myanmar’s Mandalay, she said. Her two adopted sons — Soe Phyae Aung, also called Aung Aung, and Aung Myo Lin, also called Kyethpha — are in custody in prisons in Myingyan and in Kyaikmaraw.

Persons tried by military tribunals in the six Yangon townships under martial law have lost the right to legal representation normally provided under Myanmar law and have almost always received sentences of life in prison or death, sources said.

Veteran Myanmar lawyer Pho Phyu said that junta security forces routinely torture detainees to force confessions that can be used against them in court.

“Handing out sentences based on these statements is not in accordance with the law,” he said.

‘Rule of law has disappeared’

The verdicts handed down by Myanmar’s military courts testify to the loss of human rights and collapse of an independent judiciary in the country, said Aung Myo Min, human rights minister for Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government.

“These cases just show the world how much the rule of law has disappeared and how much people have lost their rights, and they show how much democracy is being threatened in Myanmar,” he said.

A former political prisoner who was sentenced to death during an earlier period of military rule said that the people now condemned by military courts should not lose hope.

“It’s terrifying when they give you this orange prison uniform after handing down the death penalty, and even if you’ve been in prison before, you can feel your legs trembling as you walk down to the death cell,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Those now in prison, along with their family members, must not lose hope that they might go free one day. Our lives can always take a new turn when the political situation changes in the country,” he said.

Myanmar’s junta has killed 1,348 civilians and arrested 8,131 since February, mostly during non-violent protests against the coup, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Some 10,000 civilians from Myanmar have been forced to seek refuge along the country’s shared border with Thailand amid fighting between junta troops and joint forces consisting of ethnic Karen groups and prodemocracy militias in Kayin state’s Lay Kay Kaw township, according to sources.

Residents told RFA’s Myanmar Service that on Dec. 15 the military first engaged with a combined group of pro-democracy People’s Defense Force (PDF) militiamen and fighters with the Karen National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU) political group, firing artillery at locations in Lay Kay Kaw’s No. 6 Ward, Rathe Gu village and Lay Kay Kaw Waterfall.

The fighting began after government troops entered the area at least six times on Dec. 14, capturing more than 20 political activists, including a member of Parliament for the deposed National League for Democracy Party. The clashes have continued through the week, forcing nearly all Lay Kay Kaw’s residents to leave the area, KNU town officials said.

The latest clashes began at around 5 p.m. on Sunday in Phlu Gyi village, forcing refugees who were taking shelter there to flee again.

Lay Kay Kaw Mayor Htee Hpatayar told RFA on Monday that efforts to reunite displaced refugees had been hampered by junta forces shelling the area.

“[The military] opened fire on the mountain range southwest of Lay Kay Kaw and on [Phlu Gyi] village. They seemed to know that the [refugees] are sheltering in the village,” he said.

“They are firing heavy weapons around the area to prevent them from staying here. As usual, people run the moment they hear the sound of artillery.”

Htee Hpatayar said a list of about 6,000 refugees has been compiled so far and that KNU officials are still looking for those who remain missing.

A temporary camp was initially set up in Htee Mae War Khee village, about four miles from Lay Kay Kaw, on Dec. 15, but fighting broke out near the camp two days later, forcing refugees to relocate to Phlu Gyi, about three miles away.

Now, the mayor said, refugees are fleeing to Thailand daily. Around 1,000 were waiting to cross the Moei River on the border on Monday afternoon.

Five days of clashes

After fleeing the Phlu Gyi camp on Sunday night, a refugee waiting to cross the river to Thailand told RFA it was no longer possible to stay in Myanmar because “all the villages in this area are under attack.”

“No one can live here anymore. Those who do not want to cross to the other side are now staying near the river in tents,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We heard this morning that there would be new attacks in the coming days.”

The number of refugees who have fled to Thailand to escape the fighting in Lay Kay Kaw number around 5,000, and about 5,000 remain on the Myanmar side of the border, she said.

Ko Sai, a PDF member in Lay Kay Kaw, said that fighting is likely to continue as the military is sending reinforcements to Myawaddy township, slightly more than nine miles to the north.

“If the junta forces come into KNU territory, the KNU will not be sitting idly by. They will respond,” he said.

Ko Sai said there had been 13 clashes between the two sides in the five days of fighting, resulting in around 60 deaths of government troops.

Karen National Liberation Army and PDF coalition forces said they suffered six dead and 12 wounded in the clashes.

Junta spokesman and Deputy Minister for Information Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA that some soldiers were wounded in Sunday’s clashes.

“There was fighting in Mae Htaw Thale, north of Lay Kaw Kaw, at about 10 or 11 a.m. yesterday. It erupted once again at about 5 p.m. Some of our soldiers were wounded,” he said.

Refugees on the border

Meanwhile, Thai authorities said at least 600 of the refugees who fled Myanmar to Thailand on Sunday have since returned voluntarily. However, Benar News – an RFA-affiliated online news service – reported that more than 1,500 refugees from Kayin state crossed into Thailand in the previous 24 hours alone, citing a statement issued by Thailand’s Tak Province Border Center on Monday.

Phil Robertson, deputy director for New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said Sunday that his organization had urged Thai authorities not to forcibly deport the refugees.

Refugees on the banks of Moei River told RFA on Monday that Thai authorities refused to allow them to cross the border on Monday.

Karen National Union spokesman Pado Saw Tawney told RFA that the KNU has appealed to the Thai government to accept the refugees and called on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for assistance.

“The UNHCR plays a major role in protecting displaced people, and so it would be more appropriate if they could take responsibility,” he said.

“Secondly, we want to request [that the Thai government] let our people … who are fleeing to the Thai side of the border have temporary asylum on humanitarian grounds. It is not safe for them to be forced back. It’d be better to send them back when the situation cools down.”

Responding via email to an inquiry from RFA on Monday, the UNHCR’s Myanmar office said it was “concerned that thousands of people have been displaced following armed clashes in Myawaddy township, Kayin state,” but has been unable to reach affected areas “due to insecurity, access limitations and road blockages.”

“We are making all efforts to respond to calls for humanitarian aid and stand ready to support those who need it most,” an office spokesperson said. “UNHCR continues to urge that unimpeded humanitarian access be facilitated so humanitarian assistance could be provided to those in need.”

Residents told RFA that the number of refugees is likely to increase as fighting continued Monday with more artillery fire from the military in and around Lay Kay Kaw.

Lay Kay Kaw was built in February 2015 with the help of the Japan Nippon Foundation as a symbol of peace between the KNU and Myanmar’s nominally civilian government under then-President Thein Sein.

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

A United Nations envoy says he has “credible” information about Rohingya militants being involved in kidnapping, abusing and even killing fellow Rohingya at refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) militants gunned down Md. Muhib Ullah, a prominent Rohingya activist, at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar district in late September, Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told reporters at the end of a six-day visit to Bangladesh.

“I visited his [Muhib’s] office and stood in the very spot where he was murdered. His murder was believed to be at the hands of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA,” Andrews told reporters on Sunday.  

“I have received credible reports that members of ARSA have killed, tortured, abducted, and threatened Rohingya refugees.”

Members of ARSA, an insurgent group active in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, say they want to defend the Rohingya Muslims from the Burmese government, which for decades has violated the stateless minority group’s human rights.

In 2016, a rag-tag bunch of ARSA members attacked police posts in Rakhine, an act that ignited a brutal military offensive, which led to nearly three-quarters of a million Rohingya fleeing across the border into Cox’s Bazar.

In the past two years, reports have persisted that ARSA operates in the sprawling refugee camps, but Bangladesh always has – and continues to – deny this.

“He [Tom Andrews] talked about ARSA, but we did not see any presence of ARSA here,” Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told reporters on Sunday.

“If he identified any ARSA member and shared the information with us, we will send them to their country. We want to see the ARSA people.”

Khin Maung, founder of the Rohingya Youth Association, believes Andrews’ claim.

“The U.N. representative’s statement about ARSA’s presence in Rohingya camps is true. We have been talking about the presence of ARSA in Rohingya camps for a long time,” he told BenarNews.

“The government should continue drives against ARSA activities. ARSA was involved in the killing of Muhib Ullah.”

A retired Bangladeshi air commodore and security expert, meanwhile, said he believed that ARSA members were active in Cox’s Bazar, but added the onus is on the U.N. to solve the Rohingya crisis.

“If the U.N. expresses concern over the presence of ARSA in Rohingya camps, they should take necessary steps to solve the Rohingya issue immediately,” Ishfaq Ilahi Choudhury told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

‘Rohingya have rights as refugees’

Andrews also urged Bangladesh to grant freedom of movement to the refugees, but the foreign minister said that wouldn’t happen.

The U.N. rapporteur said that a barbed-wire fence around the Rohingya camps was not keeping their residents safe.

“I was informed by officials that the fence was constructed to protect Rohingya from criminal activities from outside. But I also heard concerns that that the fence was not only ineffective in achieving its purpose, it also makes residents more vulnerable to dangers such as fires,” he said.

“Many Rohingya spoke to me about the substantial insecurity nighttime brings to the camps. Women in particular are at risk of sexual and gender based violence.”

On Monday, a human rights organization said Bangladesh must end restrictions on Rohingya refugees.

“The Rohingya have rights as refugees, and it’s in the interest of Bangladesh to better protect those rights, including the right to freedom of movement,” Ismail Wolff, regional director at Fortify Rights, said in a statement.

“Rohingya give thanks to Bangladesh but continue to face restrictions and violations of their basic rights and struggle to live with dignity.”

Foreign Minister Momen said the government would not allow such freedoms.

“We won’t agree to allow free mobility of the Rohingya people as they took shelter here [only] for the short term,” Momen said.

Another human rights watchdog as well as U.N. rapporteur Andrews said they worried about education for the 400,000 Rohingya children who live in the camps.

Human Rights Watch said Bangladesh’s government had decided to close thousands of home-based and community-led schools for Rohingya refugee students, while Andrews said the plan was to shut down only private schools in the camps.

Mohammad Shamsud Douza, an additional commissioner for refugee relief and repatriation, confirmed to BenarNews that only private schools were being shut down.

“All educational institutions except for private learning centers in Rohingya camps are open. We shut the private learning centers because they were operating illegally,” Douza said.

According to Momen, the foreign minister, these private centers were promoting radicalism in the camps and following the Myanmar curriculum that the legal centers follow.

“Therefore, the government has asked to stop those unauthorized activities,” he said in a statement on Sunday.

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

A retired Uyghur civil servant abducted by police and taken to an internment camp more than three years ago died at the end of last year, a Uyghur source in exile said.

Niyaz Nasir, 78, had worked at a government food bureau in Toqquzaq county (in Chinese, Shufu Xian) in the Kashgar (Kashi Diqu) prefecture of northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. No explanation was given for his death, and the reasons for his detention are still unclear.

The Uyghur exile said that Niyaz Nasir’s body was returned to his family by authorities with orders that it be immediately buried.

Niyaz’s three children, members of the Chinese Communist Party and also civil servants, had asked that their father be released on bail from the camp in Toqquzaq’s Opal township after seeing him weak and fragile in a virtual meeting on screen in late 2018, a month before his death.

Authorities refused their request, however, saying that Niyaz was in good health “and in better condition than many others,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Reached for comment, an official at the Toqquzaq county judiciary bureau said he had heard no reports of the detainee’s death, adding that officials in his bureau were not routinely informed of deaths in the camps. The official said that he was also unaware that Niyaz’s sons and daughter had asked for his release on bail.

A security director at Toqquzaq’s Bulaqsu village, where Niyaz and his children had lived in Hamlet No. 6, told RFA that the pensioner had been arrested in 2018 and had died in the camp.

“He died at the end of last year,” he said, adding that Niyaz had worked at the county food bureau. “He was a government employee.”

The security director said that Niyaz’s sons and daughter — identified by RFA’s source in exile as Abdulnasir, Abdulahad and Amangul — worked for the county food bureau, the agricultural bank, and the commerce and industry administration.

He did not know what steps they may have taken to secure their father’s release, he said.

Over a million held in camps

China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps since 2017. Beijing has said the camps are vocational training centers and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has mistreated and tortured incarcerated Muslims.

Increased international awareness of the camp system and other abuses, including forced labor and forced sterilization of women, has prompted parliaments in Canada, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Lithuania, as well as the U.S. State Department, to brand China’s actions in the region as genocide.

On Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, the United States imposed a U.S. visa ban on the current and previous chairmen of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Erken Tuniyaz and Shorat Zakir — both ethnic Uyghurs — who had presided over a surveillance program that resulted in mass detentions. 

And on Dec. 8, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government would join a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics along with the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Lithuania, over human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Reported and translated by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hunan are believed to be holding a teacher in a psychiatric hospital after she spoke out over the expulsion of a Shanghai journalism lecturer who encouraged her students to verify official accounts of the Nanjing massacre.

Schoolteacher Li Tiantian, who is currently pregnant, issued a cry for help on the social media platform Weibo Moments on Sunday after officials from her hometown of Shaba in Hunan’s Yongshun county tried to have her committed for psychiatric care.

She said officials wanted her committed to psychiatric hospital for injections for “mental problems.” “If I die, that will be two lives gone,” she said, in a reference to her unborn child.

Hunan-based current affairs commentator Li Ang told RFA that Li is now incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital.

“She was let go because she was telling the truth on the internet,” Li Ang said. “She spoke out in support of Song Gengyi, the lecturer in Shanghai, and the authorities came round and threatened her.”

“I heard she was sent to the psychiatric hospital for ‘treatment’ today, but I was unable to verify that,” he said. “She was threatened by officials from the local education bureau and police.”

Sources said she is likely being held in the Yongshun County Psychiatric Hospital.

Li’s comments were posted on Weibo on Friday after Shanghai Aurora College said it had fired lecturer Song Gengyi for questioning the Chinese government’s official death toll of 300,000 for the 1937 massacre.

Song’s lecture was recorded and posted online by Dong Xun, one of her students.

In the clip, Song calls the 300,000 deaths tally used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a “rough estimate that lacks statistical support” adding that there is a very wide range of estimates of casualties.

Li chimed in on Friday, saying she didn’t see any problem with Song’s lecture, but rather with the student who informed on her and the school that fired her, and the Chinese intellectuals who have kept quiet on the matter.

Repeated calls to Li Tiantian’s cell phone rang unanswered on Monday.

Some online comments hit out at Dong Xun, doxxing him, prompting him to respond with a short video on sharing platform Douyin.

“This wasn’t a trivial matter, but rather a matter of national historical importance,” Dong said. “She’s the one who made it a big deal, so we’ll see how she deals with it now.”

Some comments berated Dong for a lack of conscience, while another remarked acidly: “So the teacher who tells the truth will be replaced with one who will brainwash you.”

A photo circulating on social media showed a banner calling on Dong Xun to “get out of Shanghai Aurora.”

Hubei-based rights activist Wu Lijuan said she was angry at Dong for informing on Song, adding that the video of the lecture had been dishonestly edited.

“This was reported out context, because the lecturer said estimates ranged from 500,000 to 300,000 to 30,000 to 3,000,” Wu told RFA. “They deleted the part where she says 500,000 from the video clip.”

On the same day that Song was dismissed, Tsingtao staff lecturer Gao Weijia had her teaching license revoked and was transferred to a non-teaching role after she said in a Weibo post that young people should “feel free” to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, that includes memorials to convicted Japanese war criminals.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.