Day: January 5, 2022

Days ahead of a visit to Myanmar as the new chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen switched tack and vowed to ensure the junta honors an agreement to end violence in the country nearly a year after it seized power in a coup.

Speaking during a ceremony on Wednesday to honor athlete Ouk Sreymom for her recent gold medal win at the 2021 World Petanque Championships, Hun Sen dismissed the suggestion that he would be soft on Myanmar, despite concerns that the trip – planned for Jan. 7-8 and the first by a foreign leader since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup – would confer legitimacy on the country’s military chief. Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s forces stand accused of committing widespread atrocities since the takeover.

“Please don’t blame the ASEAN chairman yet. Wait and see,” he said, adding that his agenda during the visit “will not be going far beyond the five-point consensus” that was agreed upon by the bloc’s 10 member states during an emergency meeting to discuss Myanmar’s political crisis in Jakarta in April 2021.

“Nonetheless, I haven’t set preconditions for my visit. We will surely discuss the five-point consensus,” he added, referring to a planned meeting with Min Aung Hlaing to discuss bilateral and multilateral cooperation.

Hun Sen went on to say that he has no “hidden agenda” for his visit and that Cambodia only hopes to “ease the tension” in Myanmar, where nearly 8,400 civilians have been arrested and 1,437 killed by junta authorities since February, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, mostly during non-violent protests of the coup.

“The first point of our [ASEAN] consensus agreement is to remain ‘patient and end violence.’ This is what we want,” he said. He added that he would extend his visit to Myanmar if necessary to ensure that progress is made.

Hun Sen’s shift in tone comes a day after he held a phone exchange with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who later took to Twitter to offer his support for Cambodia’s chairmanship and to reiterate his country’s stance that, should Myanmar fail to honor its agreement and reinstate democracy through inclusive dialogue, it must “only be represented on the non-political level at ASEAN meetings.”

Neither Hun Sen nor Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry mentioned Joko Widodo’s comments in a statement that followed the call.

It also followed a joint statement by nearly 200 Cambodia- and Myanmar-based civil society groups condemning Hun Sen for showing support to the junta, and amid demands by Cambodian youth groups that he reconsider the trip and instead work on improving human rights and democracy in his own country.

No mention of opposition

Min Aung Hlaing initially signaled to ASEAN that he would end the violence in his country and allow the bloc to send an envoy to monitor the situation following the April meeting. However, after months of failing to implement any steps to do so, relations between the two sides have spiraled downwards, with ASEAN choosing not to invite junta delegations to several high-profile meetings, including its annual summit.

ASEAN’s previous special envoy to Myanmar, Brunei Foreign Minister Erywan Yusof, attempted to travel to the country in October but was refused permission by the junta to meet with deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other prisoners.

Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed that Hun Sen plans to hold a bilateral meeting with Min Aung Hlaing during his visit but made no mention of whether the prime minister would seek to hold talks with Aung San Suu Kyi or leaders of Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG).

Myanmar’s junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told RFA’s Myanmar Service on Wednesday that he was unaware of whether Hun Sen had requested permission to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, who last month was sentenced by a military court to four years in prison over incitement and breaches of COVID-19 laws. The 76-year-old was arrested on the day of the coup along with President Win Myint and other NLD officials on 11 charges and faces a total of more than 100 years in prison.

“We have already said that he would meet all those concerned [but] it is not customary in any country to allow access to meet with those facing trial or detainees and prisoners,” he said.

Motives questioned

Sasa, the NUG’s minister for international relations, questioned whether Hun Sen plans to represent ASEAN, Cambodia, or his own interests during his visit to Myanmar.

“If he represents ASEAN, he must speak to the people of ASEAN. If he’s making the visit for the people of Myanmar, the Myanmar people must be involved. If he is there as a friend of … Min Aung Hlaing, he’s going to write his own history,” he said.

“People will not accept him if he’s there to just shake Min Aung Hlaing’s blood-soaked hand, It won’t be acceptable. If Cambodia really wants to improve the situation in Myanmar, it cannot do it alone, it must coordinate with other ASEAN members.”

Burmese political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that Hun Sen’s visit will mostly benefit the junta and do little for the people of Myanmar.

“If there’s anything special about Hun Sen’s visit, it will be for those who support the policies of the junta,” he said.

“The rest of the people have nothing to gain from this visit because we have already seen that Hun Sen intends to try to get the junta chief back into ASEAN … our people do not welcome Hun Sen’s visit to Myanmar.”

Cambodian political commentator Em Sovannara told RFA’s Khmer Service that if Cambodia insists on allowing Myanmar to rejoin ASEAN without making any significant progress on its April agreement, “there will surely be boycott decision” from bloc members.

He said that simply by meeting Min Aung Hlaing without any preconditions, Hun Sen had already overstepped his authority.

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

Factory managers in Myanmar are suppressing workers’ rights, with mandatory overtime and late payment of wages now routine following the Feb. 1, 2021, military coup that overthrew civilian rule in the country, sources say.

One worker at a foreign-owned garment factory in Yangon told RFA she now works 11 hours a day but receives no pay for overtime work. Managers have now “taken the upper hand” in their dealings with employees, she said.

“They’ll give you overtime pay, or they may not. This is the sort of situation that we’re in,” Hnin Hnin said. “A typical work day is eight hours, and if we work for 10 hours, those extra two hours should be overtime.

“But they will give that only if the quota for production is reached, and if a piece of cloth falls onto the floor, the price of that cloth is deducted from our wages,” she said.

Around 8,000 workers are employed at her factory, with almost all of them facing the same situation, she said.

Otto — a worker at a sweater factory in Yangon region’s Hlaing Tharyar township — told RFA he has still not received wages owed to him for 10 months of work after his factory closed due to the country’s COVID-19 pandemic.

“We asked for our normal daily wage, and they said they could not pay. Then we asked for half that amount, and they still wouldn’t pay,” he said. “Later, we appealed to the Labor Office for arbitration, and they decided I should be paid 50,000 kyat [U.S. $28] for each of five months that I had worked.”

The factory then reopened for a month, and closed again for another three months, he said.

“The 50,000 kyat per month allowed by the Labor Department is not enough to cover our cost of living, as food and accommodation alone cost around 70,000 kyat per month. But as the Labor Office has already fixed this as the rate, we don’t know what to do,” he said.

Khine Zar Aung, president of the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar, said she has received at least 50 complaints about rights violations that can be passed on for litigation.

“Most of these cases are in the garment sector, and though we can help with cases in the garment and footwear sectors, we can’t help anyone not working for international brands,” she said. “There is no rule of law here, so there are cases where rights are being seriously violated, and we can’t do anything about these at all.”

Around 40,000 garment workers are now without jobs in Myanmar as a result of the Feb. 1 coup, but the military has arrested members of trade unions and other workers’ organizations in the country, making it difficult to organize a legal defense.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Labor has denied reports that workers are not receiving the minimum pay allowed by law, but workers in the garment industry say most are not receiving full pay, overtime pay, or severance pay when separated from their jobs.

Reporting on labor rights in the year before the coup, the U.S. State Department noted “continued reports of employers engaging in forms of antiunion discrimination,” including firing or other forms of reprisal against workers who formed or joined labor unions.

“Trade unions reported cases in which criminal charges were filed against workers for exercising their right to strike, and trade union members were arrested and charged with violating peaceful assembly laws when holding demonstrations regarding labor rights generally,” said the agency’s 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

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

At least six houses, including the home of the local chairman of the opposition political party, were set on fire Wednesday after military troops and associated militiamen raided a village in northwestern Myanmar’s Sagaing region, prompting nearly 700 residents from surrounding communities to flee, locals said.

Government soldiers and their affiliated Pyu Saw Htee militia carried out a morning raid of Inngyun village in Sagaing’s Kalay township, burning down the homes, including that of the village chair of the National League for Democracy, they said.

There were no reported casualties or injuries.

“We don’t know exactly how many houses were burned down, but it was not less than five or six,” said a resident of nearby Yayshin village who declined to be named for safety reasons. “Together with Pyu Saw Htee members from Kyaukpyote and Hanthawaddy, the army surrounded the village at about 8 a.m. and set the houses on fire, though there was no fighting.

“As Yatshin is in the same village tract as ours, our whole village also fled from the area,” the resident said. “The entire village of Ingyun has also fled to the woods.”

Nearly 50 houses in three communities have been set on fire in the past two weeks. The people who left their villages have not yet been able to return due to the military’s presence.

About 40 houses in Kalay’s Natchaung and Hakhalay villages were set ablaze on Dec. 23, after clashes broke out between the military and local People’s Defense Forces (PDF) in Natchaung.

Fighting between the two sides intensified in the following days, prompting more than 20,000 people from eight nearby villages, including Natchaung and Parmone Chaung, to leave, locals said.

The hundreds of people from Inngyun and nearby communities who heard about the fires and fled to safety into the woods and mountains now face food shortages and health risks, locals said. A pregnant woman who escaped had to give birth with the help of a midwife, said a woman from Natchaung village.

“Since we cannot go back home yet, our problems might even get worse,” the villager told RFA. “We’d need food and shelter, and as winter is already here, we need clothes and blankets. In the long run, we will face many problems. There’s enough food only for three more days. We might be able to hold on if we can get some kind of assistance and support.”

Local PDF members said at least 22 people were killed during the clashes in Natchaung village on Dec. 23 when the military opened fire from helicopters.

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun denied that the military burned houses in the villages.

“We don’t deny that there were fires in some areas,” he said. “They really happened on the ground. But what I mean is these are just allegations. Why would we, the security forces, burn villages? There’s no reason for that.

“Even when there is a fire, it is the government that has to take care of the affected areas,” Zaw Min Tun said. “No PDFs would come and help build a house. The government also has to provide assistance to those who are fleeing their homes. We have nothing to do with the fires.”

The situation remained tense on Wednesday as about 80 military troops advanced on Hakhalay village, a spokesman for the Kalay township PDF told RFA.

“We had to launch this resistance to defend ourselves,” he said. “It is a defensive move. We plan to fight back against the dictator to the end if our people, our villages are attacked.”

In the eight villages in Kalay township, internet lines had been cut off and telephone lines were difficult to access, locals said.

Attacks with heavy weapons

Also on Wednesday, at least 15 houses were set on fire in Le-Ngauk village in Sagaing’s Yinmabin township after junta soldiers entered the area, and villagers fled in a panic, said a resident who declined to be named for safety reasons.

“When they arrived, the villagers fled in fear,” the resident said. “With the villagers gone, the houses reported by dalan [informers] were set on fire. After burning them, the troops advanced towards Yinmabin.”

An army convoy of more than 40 military vehicles and about 200 troops made their way to Yinmabin, locals said, though no fighting was reported there.

Zaw Min Tun also denied that military soldiers were responsible for the blazes in Le-Ngauk village.

In Indaw township in upper Sagaing region, about 800 people from villages in the area fled their homes on Tuesday when a junta helicopter launched an attack on local PDF forces, residents said.

Locals told RFA that junta forces also attacked communities about seven miles from Indaw with heavy weapons.

“Yesterday, the military sent a Mi-35 jet fighter to attack Gair-Hae village eight times and fired heavy weapons from nearby Kyaw Ywa and Nang Naung villages,” a local resident said. “The villagers have been fleeing their homes in fear since 11 a.m. and are staying at monasteries. There must be about 800 people.”

Locals said two houses in Gair-hae village were also destroyed in the aerial attack.

The Indaw PDF said a military vehicle carrying about 50 soldiers was ambushed on Monday between Sipin and Hpapant villages in Indaw township while it was on its way from Mandalay to Myitkyina, though it was unclear if there were any casualties.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Writer and taxi-driver Cheung Jing Ho and career politicians Yau Man-chun and Carmen Lau were all members of a District Council elected in a 2019 landslide victory for pro-democracy parties after months of mass protest and resistance to the loss of Hong Kong’s promised freedoms.

The political freedom and peaceful exuberance of that poll, widely seen as a ringing endorsement of the demands of the 2019 protest movement for fully democratic elections and meaningful official accountability, are already a thing of the past in a city where anyone seeking public office must take an oath of allegiance to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Hong Kong authorities, and where election candidates must be pre-approved by a Beijing-backed committee.

Yau told RFA he has had trouble settling into his new life, and wonders if he can do anything to help Hong Kong.

“I miss my family and neighborhood. I always loved going back to the district on the weekends to work. Since I came to the U.K., I have felt at a loose end, and I haven’t yet found my way in life,” Yau told RFA.

“But I have really left for good. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything for Hong Kong again.”

“I have been in conflict with myself over the past two or three months, and it feels as if I can’t get out of this dead end,” Yau said. “I used to love doing constituency work in my district; we were like a family.”

“I loved Hong Kong so much … leaving it was worse than dying.”

Yau, who sees himself as a member of the “last District Council,” to be elected by the people, who returned a majority of pro-democracy candidates, couldn’t stay because the government was disqualifying pro-democracy councilors via a compulsory oath-taking process.

“I keep asking myself what I’m going to do here in England, an elected politician [from Hong Kong].”

“It’s a question I hardly dare to answer, because I feel as if I have let down the people who voted for me by leaving,” he said.

Cheung, Yau and Lau left amid a city-wide crackdown on political opposition and public dissent under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the CCP from July 1, 2020, that has seen dozens of pro-democracy politicians, rights activists and media figures arrested for “subversion,” “sedition,” and “collusion with a foreign power.”

Some are being charged merely for taking part in an unofficial democratic camp primary aimed at selecting the best candidates for Legislative Council (LegCo) elections, originally slated for September 2020.

The authorities responded by postponing the election, changed the rules to require vetting of candidates, and arrested 47 participants for subversion. Now, 90 members have been returned to LegCo under the rules, which ensure that only pro-CCP “patriots” can take part in Hong Kong’s political life.

‘Now there’s no criticism at all’

For Lau, watching from the U.K., Hong Kong’s political life seems irrevocably changed since the mass resignation of opposition politicians in late 2020, in protest at the expulsion of some of their colleagues.

“In the LegCo with no pro-democracy camp, they can pass any bill or budget very rapidly,” she said. “In the past, there would at least have been some debate between pro-democracy and pro-establishment members, but now there’s no criticism at all.”

“Sometimes they don’t even comment; maybe they’re scared to, scared that something bad could happen if they say the wrong thing,” Lau said. “It’s pretty obvious that this is only going to get worse in the new LegCo and those that come after it.”

“Eventually, it’ll be just like the National People’s Congress, where there is no opposition at all,” she said.

“The people who are still living there are going to have to get accustomed to the new Hong Kong, while the Hongkongers who came to England are going to find it equally hard to get used to living there,” Lau said.

Cheung, who has worked a number of different jobs in recent years, as well as writing about his life as a taxi-driver, left Hong Kong in August 2021 after it became clear that the new oath-taking process could result in his being expelled from the District Council like many pro-democracy colleagues.

“For me to stay and swear that oath, there would have to be something worth staying to do,” he said, adding that the arrest of the 47 pro-democracy politicians and activists was among the things that made him decide to leave. “The District Council had no real power, so we decided to resign instead.”

“Resigning and then staying in Hong Kong felt like a dangerous choice, so I came to the U.K., thinking it would be better to live somewhere that has more freedom rather than being under constraints laid down by others,” he said.

He said many of the people who voted for him in his district were doing the same thing, and briefly helped redistribute their second-hand furniture to those who were staying, before saying goodbye to his home himself.

For Cheung, the District Council landslide of 2019 didn’t feel like a victory, so much as staving off the inevitable advance of CCP influence in the running of Hong Kong.

“I never felt it was a victory; at the time we knew it wasn’t really a positive development, just the avoidance of a more negative outcome,” he said.

Cheung doesn’t feel too unhappy about his decision to leave.

“If we say that leaving Hong Kong was a price I was forced to pay, then it is no worse a price than anyone else has had to pay,” he said. “I’m shouldering the burden of the times we live in.”

“Compared with our brothers and sisters who are in prison, it’s not really a price at all,” Cheung said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A Vietnamese soldier reported last year to have died in a fall in his barracks was instead beaten to death by his comrades, according to state media reports on Wednesday.

Nguyen Van Thien, born in 1998 and a resident of the central highlands province of Gia Lai, died at his military camp in November 2021. He is the third soldier reported to have died while performing military service in the country last year.

Senior military officers in Gia Lai first said that Thien had died after falling in his barracks bathroom. But on Wednesday, the Tien Phong Online Newspaper quoted the province’s military command as saying the young soldier had died after being beaten.

Reports last year that Thien had died from a fall were simply the army’s “initial assessment,” said Col. Le Tuan Hien, political commissar for the Gia Lai provincial military command. The Agency of Criminal Investigation for Military Region No. 5 has now filed charges against “related persons” for causing intentional injury, Hien added.

Hien declined to name those being charged or provide further details on the case, saying investigations are ongoing.

Initial reports by the Gia Lai Military Command said that Thien had fallen in his barracks bathroom at around 8:15 p.m. on Nov. 29, 2021. After returning to his room an hour later, he went into convulsions, and was taken by other soldiers in his unit to the Duc Co district medical center, where he died at around 10 p.m.

Severe bruising discovered on his body was attributed to the fall, the army’s media release said.

Reports that another young soldier had died following a beating at his barracks in northern Vietnam’s Hai Duong province circulated widely on social media on Dec. 22, the 77^th anniversary of the founding of the Vietnam People’s Army.

Hoang Ba Manh, 20, was allegedly beaten and died later in his bed on Dec. 20 in what an officer in a meeting with the victim’s family described as a “fight among soldiers.”

And in June 2021, Tran Duc Ho, a soldier from northern Vietnam’s Bac Ninh province, also died at a military camp. Representatives from Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense said that Do had taken his own life, but his family disagreed, saying that many injuries had been found on his body.

Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Richard Finney.

A collapse of fishery stocks in the South China Sea due to overfishing and climate change could fuel serious tensions and even armed conflict, one of the authors of a new report on the topic has warned.

“The simmering conflict that we see in the South China Sea is mostly because of fish even though countries don’t say it out loud,” said Rashid Sumaila, a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada, told RFA on Wednesday.

Sumaila, from the university’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and its School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, has just co-authored a new report entitled “Sink or Swim: The Future Of Fisheries In the East And South China Sea.” In the report, he and other fisheries scientists and economists examine the impacts of climate change and overfishing in the region’s oceans.

The report says that under a scenario in which global temperatures rise by two-degrees Celsius by 2050 from current levels, the South China Sea is “likely to experience significant declines in key commercial fish and invertebrate species, placing many regional fishing economies at risk of devastating failure.”

Regional fisheries in the South China Sea are estimated to generate $100 billion annually, supporting the livelihoods of around 3.7 million people, which the report says will be at risk.

China’s growing need for fish-based feed, not just fish for human consumption, is a key driver of overfishing in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, according to the report.

“Fishery is one of the reasons China’s entangled in disputes with its neighbors in the South China Sea,” Sumaila said.

The report’s researchers urged immediate action to reduce fishing. They called for increased international cooperation to prevent the catastrophic fisheries collapse they are predicting.

Fighting over fish

The link between overfishing and maritime conflicts has been witnessed all over the world. Among some of the more notable incidents was the so-called “cod war” between the United Kingdom and Iceland that continued for nearly 20 years since the end of 1950s.

Navies from both countries were deployed to protect rival fishermen until the U.K. and Iceland reached an agreement in 1976 through diplomacy.

More recently, increased attacks by pirates in the waters off the coast of the east African nation of Somalia were attributed to the depletion of seafood resources through illegal fishing.

However, some researchers like John Quiggin, professor of economics at the University of Queensland, have a different perspective – that it is disputes and lawlessness that put pressure on fish stocks.

“Unresolved conflict increases risk of overfishing and collapse,” Quiggin said.

“As the Iceland-U.K. cod war and the Somali episode both showed, the optimal solution is for states to regulate exclusive economic zones (EEZs) with catch quotas.”

“Best outcome in South China Sea would be for negotiated agreement,” he added.

Sumaila from the University of British Columbia said “the best thing the countries sharing the South China Sea can do is to recognize the immense value of the fisheries of this sea and to cooperate to manage the fisheries sustainably.”

“They could learn from Norway and Russia, who have decided to manage Barents Sea cod fisheries cooperatively even during the Cold War between the then-Soviet Union and the West because they recognize how important this fishery is to their citizens.”

“I believe this can be done for the South China Sea too,” Sumaila said.

Conflict triggers

Separately, the South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Chinese think tank, has alleged that illegal fishing, in particular by Vietnamese fishermen, has “seriously undermined regional mutual trust-building and posed a huge threat and challenge to maritime cooperation, conservation of fishery resources and security of neighboring countries”.

In a new report, the SCSPI said Vietnam operates some 9,000 fishing vessels in the South China Sea and got into fishing conflicts with China, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Vietnamese authorities were not available for comment on this new report but Vietnamese media have reported on the government’s efforts to fight illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, especially after the European Commission issued a “yellow card” warning against Vietnam’s fishing violations in 2017.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has ordered local governments to stamp out IUU fishing by the end of 2021 and leaders of Vietnam’s 28 coastal provinces have committed to stop fishing boats from encroaching on foreign waters.

China, however, is still ahead of other countries in terms of IUU fishing. A Global Illegal Fishing Index created by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime in 2019 ranked China the worst offender.

With up to 800,000 vessels, China’s fishing fleet is by far the largest in the world and Chinese fishermen, having exhausted domestic grounds, are known to have traveled to distant waters like the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa or the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador for their catches.

In the South China Sea, China has been accused of operating a fleet of armed fishing militia to enforce its sweeping sovereignty claims which are disputed by its neighbors, including Vietnam.

RAND Corporation, a U.S. think tank, says China has been carrying out classic “gray zone” operations designed to “win without fighting” by overwhelming the adversary with swarms of fishing vessels usually bolstered from the rear together with coastguard, and possibly naval ships.