Day: January 20, 2022

At least 3,000 people have been displaced in recent days by fighting between local defense groups and government forces in Myanmar’s southern Chin state, with around 400 crossing for safety into neighboring India, local villagers and aid workers say.

Residents from around 30 villages in the state’s Matupi township are now on the run, one local source told RFA on Thursday.

“Some fighting is still going on, so we don’t have exact figures yet,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “People are fleeing mainly because of fear. When junta forces enter the villages, they destroy houses and make arrests, and so the people are frightened.”

Aid workers in the area say food is scarce for those fleeing to the mountains to escape the fighting between People’s Defense Force militias and junta forces that began last April.

Ten days of fighting in and around Matupi since Jan. 9 have left at least 18 junta soldiers and one member of a Chinland Defense Force (CDF) group dead, a CDF-Zotung spokesman said on Wednesday.

RFA could not independently confirm the number of those killed, and Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Min Htun could not be reached for comment.

Fighting between the two sides had continued until Wednesday, the Chin spokesman said.

“There have been battles almost every day, with some yesterday and some before. We saw aircraft in the sky, too. They may have been bringing in more ammunition or taking out their wounded. The troops are still around, so there will be more fighting,” he said.

More than 30,000 residents of Chin state have now fled clashes in the area to shelter in India, according to the India-based Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO).

“If this fighting continues it is likely that even more people will cross over to India,” said CHRO deputy executive director Salai Za Op Lin. “We are very worried about further human rights abuses committed by the military, as many of these are happening eve now.

“As soon as soldiers arrive in the vicinity, people become frightened and leave the villages to run away. And then many problems like finding food, water and medicine will follow,” he said.

In addition to those fleeing to India, there are more than 40,000 internally displaced persons now sheltering in Chin as government forces expand their operations in the area, disrupting local travel and the transport of food and other consumer goods, Salai Za Op Lin said.

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

Authorities in Laos are surveying land to offer to more than 500 families that will be displaced by the Luang Prabang Dam on the Mekong River.

The dam in northern Laos will be one of several cascading dams built on the Mekong, as the government pursues its controversial economic plan to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia” through the sale of excess electricity to neighboring countries.

“We may have enough land for the construction of the two resettlement villages, but we don’t have enough land for farming,” an official of the Natural Resources and Environment Department of Luang Prabang Province told RFA’s Lao Service Wednesday on condition of anonymity.

The two villages are meant to hold 581 families that will need to relocate for construction. Many of these people are farmers and therefore need plots of arable land to continue to work.

“Each family may only get 0.7 hectares [1.7 acres] of farmland, not the full hectare [2.5 acres] they are demanding,” the official said.

“We are unsure as to when we’ll be able to clear the farmland for the villagers because the government has not informed us as to when construction on the dam will begin. They have, however, confirmed to us that it will certainly be built,” he said.

As for the resettlement villages, the official said that the local government has identified two lots not far from the villagers’ current homes.

“They are large enough for two new villages, but these lots also have not yet been cleared,” the official said.

Villagers are reluctant to accept the land that the province is offering, a resident of the province’s Chomphet district told RFA.

“It’s not large enough for us to grow bananas and papayas, nor is it enough to raise chickens, pigs, cows or buffalo. Actually, they told us not to raise cows and buffalo because the land is too small. The authorities came by earlier to show us the two proposed lots for our new villages. They have already taken us there three times,” said the Chomphet resident, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

Another Chomphet resident told RFA that accepting the province’s proposal would leave displaced residents less well-off.

“We’ll be much poorer because most of us are farmers living off the land. With such small farms, we’ll have less food and less income,” the second Chomphet resident said under condition of anonymity.

A villager who will be affected by the construction and also declined to be named said that the authorities should reexamine their compensation package.

“It has to be fair to all the families. Some households are big, and they have big houses and many family members. They should be compensated accordingly,” the villager said.

“What they are offering is too low. For the farmland, we’re only getting 100 million kip [U.S. $8,900] per hectare. We are asking for more.”

Construction Delays

Construction on the dam itself has been suspended as the developer continues work on a bridge that crosses the river, an official of the Energy and Mines Department of Luang Prabang Province told RFA, under condition of anonymity.

The $3 billion, 1,460-megawatt dam will affect about 10,000 people, including the 581 households that will be displaced. Another 692 households will lose their farmland but not their homes, while 671 more will lose part of their farmland. There are also 189 families that live downstream from the dam and will be affected by lower water levels.

Construction was planned to start in 2020 and finish in 2027, but the developer is assessing how the dam will affect nearby UNESCO World Heritage Sites, specifically the scenic town of Luang Prabang.

The project is financed by the Luang Prabang Power Company, a consortium of Thai and Vietnamese power companies and the Lao government. Power purchase agreements for the sale of electricity to Thailand and Vietnam have not yet been signed.

Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries in pursuit of its controversial economic plans.

Though the Lao government sees power generation as a means to boost the country’s economy, the projects have faced criticism because of their environmental impact, displacement of villagers and questionable financial arrangements.

Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Sit Ko Naing Htun was working as a freelance journalist based in Hpakant in Myanmar’s northern Kachin state when the military last February seized control of the country, ousting the democratically elected government.

He dutifully reported on the aftermath for local and international media until one day in he witnessed armed police and soldiers kill unarmed students and other innocent civilians for participating in peaceful protests.

At that point the 27-year-old writer and journalist, who grew up in the nearby Sagaing region’s Yinmabin district, told RFA he decided he couldn’t be impartial in such circumstances, so he traded his pen for a gun and joined the local People’s Defense Force (PDF), a militia made of like-minded people fighting to restore democracy in Myanmar.

“Everyone would be scared to die, right? But I am more afraid of the death of the future of our country, the unity of the ethnic nationalities and the state and the people,” Sit Ko Naing Htun told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

PDF units have sprung up in every part of the country, including areas where armed ethnic militants have been fighting with the military for years. In some cases, the ethnic groups have been working alongside the PDFs as they focus on their common enemy: the military junta trying desperately to retain its power.

The PDF Sit Ko Naing Htun joined operates in an area controlled by an armed ethnic group. There, he said, he is struggling to overcome the hardships of life with his fellow revolutionaries.

“It’d make a difference for the country if you could be a grain of sand or a piece of brick in the armed struggle. We have prepared ourselves to fight to the end so that the state and the people do not die. Because it’s going to be the last battle to root out the evil army that should no longer exist,” Sit Ko Naing Htun said.

Before he became a journalist, Sit Ko Naing Htun wrote short stories and poems. He organized community library associations to provide books to towns and villages in Kani township, part of his home district. He also organized seminars to educate young people on literature and served as the chairman of the Yinmabin township Writers’ Association.

In 2017, under the pen name of Ketharaza, he wrote a collection of short

He had planned to publish a collection of poems and a book about archeology, but the coup put those plans on hold. He hopes to revisit these after the fighting ends.

Sit Ko Naing Htun said he has had no contact with his family who are now refugees in Yinmabin.

“The military has blocked telephone lines and shut down the internet in our townships. Sometimes we can listen to news on the radio,” he said. 

“I worry about my family when I hear sad news about our townships. But in our situation, we can just worry. There is nothing you can do about it except worry. We cannot even have any contact with them to ask how they are doing,” said Sit Ko Naing Htun.

But the writer-turned-soldier believes that a united people can overcome the well-trained military and regain control of Myanmar.

“As long as there is no day of justice in our country, every day is a Revolution Day. This is the last battle. This is the final battle for peace. This is the final battle for the establishment of a federal democratic union. This is the last battle for our true freedom.” he said. 

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

The French Parliament on Thursday officially labeled China’s persecution of its Uyghur minority a genocide, joining other Western governments and legislatures that have issued similar declarations.

Lawmakers voted 169-1 in favor of a nonbinding resolution sharply critical of Chinese policies in the country’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It also urges the French government to take measures to try to help protect the 12 million Uyghurs who live there and to safeguard Uyghurs living in France from Chinese intimidation and harassment.

The resolution was introduced by the opposition Socialist Party in the lower house but supported by President Emmanuel Macron’s Republic on the Move Party. With its passage, France joins the U.S. and parliaments in Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Belgium and the Czech Republic in declaring that China has committed genocide toward Uyghurs.

The declaration is another stain on China’s international reputation just two weeks before the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, for which the U.S. and other Western nations have announced diplomatic boycotts in a show of opposition to the host country’s dismal human rights record.

“French deputies had an appointment today with a moment in history, with an important moment, since they were asked to recognize the Uyghur genocide perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party regime, with mass internment, torture, labor forced, organ trafficking, forced sterilization — basically, everything that constitutes the regime to methodically eliminate a whole part of a people,” said Boris Vallaud, a National Assembly lawmaker and spokesman for the Socialist Party.

“This fight continues and then has to be done basically to seize every opportunity to tell the Beijing regime that freedoms and human rights must be defended everywhere and that the Uyghur people have the right to live free,” he said.

Dilnur Reyhan, president of the Paris-based Uyghur European Institute, which spearheaded the effort to urge the French Parliament to recognize the rights abuses targeting Uyghurs as a genocide, said the motion’s approval was a significant victory for persecuted community.

“This passage of the Uyghur Genocide resolution is not a small victory for us,” she said. “It’s a strong total victory.”

The organization also wants the French government to impose a diplomatic boycott the Winter Olympics, which begin on Feb. 4; to urge the European Union to enact measures preventing goods made by Uyghur slave labor from entering the European market; and to ask the U.N. to pressure China to close the detention camps, Dilnur said.

China has held an estimated 1.8 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in an extensive network of internment camps where they are subject to violence and other human rights abuses, such as torture, forced labor and forced sterilizations of women. The Chinese government has denied reports of violence and said the camps are vocational training centers meant to prevent religions extremism.

“Disregarding facts and common sense, the relevant resolution constitutes a deliberate defamation and stigmatization against China and a brutal interference in China’s internal affairs. We strongly oppose it and strongly condemn it,” the Chinese Embassy in France said about the passage of the resolution.

“Sensationalized claims about Xinjiang such as ‘genocide’ are pure lies based on prejudice and hostility toward China. Their goal is not to defend human rights at all, but to contain China’s development and undermine inter-ethnic solidarity and stability in Xinjiang,” the embassy said in statements on its website.

China also expressed concern that the resolution would seriously damage relations between the two countries.

Uyghur activist groups, however, praised the move by the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, which also passed a resolution calling on the European Union to hold corporations accountable for engaging in illegal labor practices that facilitate the Uyghur genocide.

“In France today the legislature rejected this regime’s actions, and instead has condemned this genocide as unacceptable, and called for regulation of the financial engine that powers it,” said Rushan Abbas, executive director of the U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs, in a statement. “France has taken their place on the correct side of history.”

Dolkun Isa, president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC), called the resolution’s passage “a crucial step towards wider international recognition of the Uyghur genocide.”

“We call upon the French government to follow the position of its parliament, and make concerted efforts with partners internationally to end these unspeakable crimes,” he said.

Also on Thursday, the U.K. Parliament unanimously passed a motion put forward by lawmaker Nusrat Ghani, calling on the U.K. government to make an urgent assessment on whether Uyghurs are at risk of genocide.

In April 2021, the House of Commons unanimously voted to label abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims part of a policy of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Translated by Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Jailed Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang was named this week as a recipient of the 2022 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, the first rights activist from Vietnam to be given the award.

Trang, now serving a nine-year sentence in Vietnam for spreading “propaganda against the state,” was one of three activists selected this year by a jury of leading human rights NGOs and received the recognition in absentia, a personal representative told RFA after the announcement ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland.

“This award is a recognition not only from human rights organizations, but also from authorities in the city of Geneva for Pham Doan Trang’s efforts, and it confirms that everything she did was correct,” said Trinh Huu Long, editor-in-chief of Luat Khoa [Law] magazine.

“We need to protect people like Pham Doan Trang and continue what she started,” Long said. “We also need many more like Pham Doan Trang in order to bring about positive change in the human rights landscape in Vietnam.”

Vietnamese activist Pham Thanh Nghien welcomed the news of Trang’s award, saying many rights advocates in Vietnam deserve similar recognition.

“Pham Doan Trang has been a prominent activist over the past few years, and her award is well-deserved,” Nghiem said. “I along with her family, friends and supporters who have loved and supported her all feel honored and see a part of ourselves in this recognition.”

The international respect shown to Trang and other activists in Vietnam contrasts sharply with the harsh punishments typically handed out to them by government authorities, Nghiem said.

“People often say that each award given for human rights and democracy promotion efforts in Vietnam can be seen as a slap in the face of the Vietnamese authorities,” she said. “I think that awards like this are an embarrassment for them.”

Trang, who has already won multiple foreign awards for her writing, was sentenced Dec. 14, 2021, at the Hanoi People’s Court, with trial judges handing down a sentence longer than the prison term requested by authorities, according to defense attorney Dang Dinh Manh.

‘Propaganda against the state’

Trang was arrested on Oct. 6, 2020, and charged with disseminating anti-state propaganda, according to an indictment made public more than a year after her arrest.

The indictment also accused Trang of speaking with two foreign media outlets — Radio Free Asia and the British Broadcasting Corporation — “to allegedly defame the government of Vietnam and fabricate news,” according to a letter sent in October by 25 human rights groups calling for her release ahead of her trial.

Trang wrote a book on political engagement that had angered authorities in Hanoi and was a cofounder of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, a California-based NGO that says its mission is “to build a democratic society in Vietnam through independent journalism, research and education.”

She also received the 2017 Homo Homini Award presented by the Czech human rights organization People in Need, and the Press Freedom Prize in 2019 from Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply in 2020 with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers and Facebook personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party Congress in January 2021.

Arrests continued through the year.

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

Mihrigul Tursun, 31, has spoken publicly about the violence and torture she and other Uyghurs suffered while interned in China’s vast network of “re-education” camps in the country’s far-western Xinjiang region. She has been denounced by the Chinese government, which produced a short documentary in which Mihrigul’s parents, police officers and doctors all speak against her, and tries to portray her testimonies as false. Mihrigul has co-written a book titled Ort ohne Wiederkehr (Place without Return) with German investigative journalist Andrea Hoffmann about China’s atrocities against the Muslim minority group. The nearly 300-page book released in January describes how Mihrigul was imprisoned several times in detention camps, during which time one of her three young children died. She has lived in exile in Washington, D.C. since 2018.

Co-author Hoffmann, who worked for several years as a foreign correspondent for Germany’s Focus Magazine, was shocked when she learned about what is happening to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and teamed up with Mihrigul to tell her story. The professor of investigative journalism at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, Germany, has reported from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and has written other books about women who fight for their freedom. Hoffmann spoke to reporter Gulchehra Hoja of RFA’s Uyghur Service about why she and Mihrigul wrote the book — the first publication by a Uyghur internment camp survivor — and what she hopes it will accomplish. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Why did you write this book?

Hoffmann: I had a big focus on the Middle East, and I wrote a lot of stories about the Middle East and recently about the Islamic State and what it did to people. And then, I heard about the Uyghurs, but I didn’t know too much about them. I was working as a journalist in the foreign department of a big magazine and saw it. Occasionally, I just heard more and more, and I became curious about what was actually happening, because I heard about those [re-]education camps and imagined them being like schools. And then, some information was gripping, so that’s why I became interested. I made the contact with the Uyghurs in Germany and interviewed them. When I learned more, I thought it would really be interesting to talk to someone who could talk about what was happening in the camps. We had one woman here, but it was the same story. They all have to be careful. And then, they established contact with Mihrigul because she at that time was the only one that was really willing to tell it all. I had just a superficial knowledge about the camps, but when I was talking with her, I was so shocked.

RFA: Mihrigul experienced physical and psychological violence in the camps. What shocked you most after hearing her story?

Hoffmann: I have a sweet spot for people who are suppressed. I hate it when people get into situations where force is applied, when they are treated unfairly, and there seems to be no escape. There are millions who have no escape. It’s a miracle that she could escape. It’s a complete miracle. And all the others, they are in this situation without any fault [of their own], and it makes me so angry. There’s no justification for putting anybody in a situation like that. Then, I heard that all those women were in one room day and night. They didn’t even have a place to sleep, and not enough food; this propaganda all the time, then the fights. People were dying because it was so hard on their bodies and minds. I had this vision of her being in that room all the time. I don’t know how you cannot go crazy in a situation like that. She just had newborn babies that were just six weeks old. I cannot imagine how terrible that must have felt for her body because she was still breastfeeding them, and then also for them. One of them has died. The situation is so terrible. I think you doubt being a human being, and your life is so fragile that you cannot do anything about it against this force from outside. You feel so weak.

RFA: What was the most horrible thing Mihrigul told you about her life outside the camps and the situation that other Uyghurs faced?

Hoffmann: When she told me about those people [Chinese] living in the family homes, it was so terrible. It’s a nightmare. It’s a complete nightmare.

RFA: You are an investigative journalist who has written books about courageous women who fight for their freedom. How is this book different from those?

Hoffmann: The difference is that it is a state committing the crime. Even with the Islamic State, it wasn’t really a state, but a terrorist organization. But this time it’s a state, and that’s the big difference. It’s really shocking. In Xinjiang, it’s any random person who might seem suspect. She [Mihrigul] didn’t do anything. When I talked to her, I thought that maybe she had [participated in] some kind of political activity, but the fact is that everybody there is subject to this harassment and brainwashing. It’s really a dimension that I could not grasp before. It reminded me of German history. Many, many Uyghurs are afraid to speak right now because what they are all afraid of what will happen to their family members there. She [Mihrigul] took this step. I think it’s because of her son, because she feels an obligation.

RFA: What’ your vision for the book?

Hoffmann: I really hope it will make an impact. My aim was really to give her a stronger voice, so I hope she will be heard. We had a very good start now in the German parliament the day before yesterday with one politician who has a strong focus on human rights watch, and there were 60 journalists present, so it’s becoming a topic in Germany. Also, Germany is an important player in this [issue] right now because it is the most important economy in Europe. Germany plays an important role now because we’re still very mild with China on account of having a lot of economic interest there. So now, this discussion in Germany is very important. I think because it is about the position of Europe in this conflict. I really have to think about German history all the time. With what happened to the Jews in Germany, it was the same story. There were some survivors, very few survivors, and they talked, but nobody believed them. Foreign countries were [considering whether] they should act or not act, and they were very slow. The same thing is happening now. In Germany, we have our own issues. We have this doctrine that one should never compare anything to the Holocaust, but I do because I think it’s very comparable because it is also a systematic killing of people.

RFA: What’s the significance of releasing the book just before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics?

Hoffmann: I wasn’t really conscious of that. I just knew we had to get it out very soon, but it’s the perfect timing right now, just three weeks before [they begin].

RFA: Why is German release of this book significant?

Hoffmann: Germany is quite important right now because Europe has to make a decision about whether or not to work with China. It really depends on public opinion where Germany will be going in this regard. Germany has a big influence on Europe because we have the biggest country in Europe, so that’s the important thing about the German release. Of course, I hope it will be available in English because that way it can be distributed everywhere in the world, and everybody will be able to read it.

RFA: How important is this book for Mihrigul Tursun?

Hoffmann: I have a little bit of a background with working with traumatized people because I also studied psychology and did a bit of research. She will never get rid of this. It’s part of her story, and those memories will always be with her. But she might be able to integrate them more, so that it would help her to accept what happened. She might be willing to move on, and that will also give her some more self-esteem. She’s incredibly strong.

RFA: Are you concerned about facing challenges or threats from China for documenting Mihrigul’s story?

Hoffmann: When I imagine what happened to her, I think that I should not be afraid of anything. It’s really important to write everything down — everything that’s happening there right now.

Reported by Gulchehra Hoja for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.