Day: January 24, 2022

Two bombs detonated in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon on Saturday, bringing the total number of explosions set by prodemocracy militias in the city since the February 2021 coup to 121, according to an investigation by RFA’s Myanmar Service.

On Jan. 22, a bomb exploded near the No. 20 Ward Administration Office in Yangon’s Hlaingtharyar township, and a remote-controlled explosive went off near a security guard post at a junta office near the city’s Thanlyin Maritime University. Both explosions were later claimed by anti-junta militant groups.

At least 121 anti-junta blasts have gone off in Yangon over the past year, including 28 in Hlaingtharyar township between Dec. 1 and Jan. 22, 18 in Thanlyin, 16 in Mingaladon, 13 in South Okkalapa, 12 in Thaketa, 11 in Okkalapa, nine in Shwepyithar, eight in Dawbon, and six in Tamwe. No official statistics have been made available on bomb attacks prior to Dec. 1, 2021, and several of the incidents included in the total are based on RFA’s reporting.

Most of the blasts occurred near places like schools, administrative buildings, the offices of utility companies, and police stations where security forces were stationed.

A resident of Mayangone township who identified herself as Thuzar told RFA on Monday that people try to avoid sites where security forces are stationed in Yangon, for fear of getting caught in an explosion.

“There are blasts sometimes during the daytime and sometimes late at night. If there are security forces about, people choose another road because they do not want to have anything to do with these soldiers and police,” she said.

“We [also] stay away from the site of any [bombing] incident. If you are found near a site, you might get arrested for questioning. Even if we find injured soldiers near a blast, we wouldn’t do anything to help them as we are fearful of the consequences.”

Moe Myint, another resident of Yangon, told RFA that people who have no choice but to work in the city often are unable to avoid such incidents and sometimes get arrested and interrogated.

“All these young people are working for the overthrow of the [military regime], but they warn people before they [attack],” he said.

“People have been warned to avoid places where junta forces are around, so they can at least decide which route to take if they need to go out.”

Kyaw Lay, a spokesman for the anti-junta Yangon Federal Army, said the bombs the guerrilla group sets only target junta security forces.

“Our people are mainly fighting against the junta forces to regain the democracy we have lost. This is a fight by the people for a just cause,” he said.

“We have sacrificed our lives and will continue to fight against the junta. We believe that even if we are gone, the next generation will carry on the fight. The military will be able to rule our Yangon only if we all die first.”

Kyaw Lay told RFA that urban guerrilla groups conduct clandestine operations to try to keep people out of harm’s way.

Tenuous control in Yangon

Junta Deputy Information Minister Zaw Min Tun told RFA that security forces are working to end the bombings. The number of attacks in Yangon had increased since September, he said, when the shadow National Unity Government declared war on the junta.

“In the days following the announcement, there were about nine incidents in one day in Yangon. Even now there are still one or two bomb blasts a day in the suburbs,” Zaw Min Tun said.

He said that the government “is gaining control” of the situation, without providing details.

Security analyst Kyaw Zaw Han said there will be no end to the bombings until the junta gives up control of the country.

“Now that the opposition is able to produce their own weapons with locally available materials and not rely on imports anymore, there continue to be more, as some people are bent on taking revenge for their losses,” he said.

Arresting and imprisoning people in connection with the bombings, instead of resolving the political crisis, would do little to address the issue, Kyaw Zaw Han said.

According to the Association Assistance for Political Prisoners, the military regime has arrested or detained more than 8,760 civilians arrested or detained since the Feb. 1 coup that deposed the democratically elected National League for Democracy government. The junta has killed 1,490 civilians, the Bangkok-based group says.

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

Authorities in northwestern China’s Qinghai province are banning Tibetan social media groups tied to religion, warning group members they will be investigated and jailed if they continue to use them, sources say.

The order will take effect March 1, according to a Jan. 20 announcement by a provincial official, a Tibetan living in the region told RFA this week.

“All online coordinating of religious activities and related events will be banned,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Anyone found violating this order will be investigated and punished,” the source added.

Many social media groups have been created inside Tibet to coordinate religious activities online and to share information about pilgrimages, holidays or special observances where the lives of captive birds or fish are spared and they are released back into the wild, the source said.

“But religious events and ceremonies performed or discussed on social media groups will now be banned completely, and online activities by the groups will be constantly monitored,” he said.

However, religious activities conducted inside the monasteries will be allowed to continue as before, the source said.

“In China, most religious activities performed online are carried on by Tibetans, so this crackdown is just another example of the Chinese government’s pervasive control of religion,” said Kunga Tashi, a New York-based analyst of Chinese and Tibetan affairs.

The new policy to restrict religious activity online in Qinghai follows recent campaigns forcing the expulsion of young Tibetan monks from their monasteries and the destruction in nomad areas of prayer flags and other traditional symbols of religious faith.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago.

Tibetans living in Tibet and in Tibetan areas of western Chinese provinces say they are subject to political, economic and religious discrimination as well as human rights abuses. Some fear Beijing is now pursuing ever more aggressive policies aimed at eradicating their national and cultural identity.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Laos is eager to begin shipping goods to China via the newly completed Lao-China railway, but coronavirus controls at the border are preventing exporters from cashing in on what was supposed to be a rail freight bonanza.

A centerpiece of China’s Belt and Road Initiative of state-led lending for infrastructure projects to tie countries across Asia to China, the railway is supposed to offer land-locked Laos the promise of closer integration with the world’s second largest economy.

The train connects the capital Vientiane with Boten on the Chinese border over 254 miles north before heading to China’s southwestern city of Kunming.

Rail freight from China has been flowing into Laos, but the reverse route into China has been bottled up as Beijing restricts entry to try to contain several COVID-19 outbreaks ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in February.

Laos’ government has been preparing to start shipping freight to its northern neighbor in the meantime.

“We haven’t sent any freight to China yet, but our government is working on it, and the import-export companies will be shipping soon,” an official of the Lao Ministry of Public Works, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Lao Service Jan. 21.

“Import export companies should register with the relevant department,” the official said.

The railway not only provides Laos with a link to China. It promises to do the same for Thailand, which lies just south of Vientiane, once the COVID-19 restrictions in China are lifted. About 100 containers of Thai goods destined for China had been held up at a logistics center in a suburb of Vientiane after arriving there on Dec. 4, Chanthone Sitthixay, president of the Vientiane Logistics Park Company, told local media on Dec. 31.

But on Jan. 20, Alongkorn Ponlaboot, counselor to the Thai minister of agriculture, posted on Facebook that some Thai freight had gotten through.

“Thailand has shipped 20 containers of rice weighing 1,000 tons via the Laos-China railway to a city in eastern China. This is the first time that Thailand has transported goods to China via railway,” Alongkorn Ponlaboot wrote.

Many companies in Laos, however, are still waiting.

 “Our company has not shipped any freight to China yet. We’re only shipping goods within Laos,” an employee of a Vientiane import-export company, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told RFA. “I don’t know why only China has been able to ship freight through the railway to Laos and Thailand but not vice versa.”

Other companies are shipping goods to China the old-fashioned way.

“We’ve been sending goods to China, but by road, not yet by rail,” said a worker for another company, who declined to be named.

Khampheng Xaysompheng, Laos’ minister of industry and trade, has asked the Laos-China Railway Company to improve the infrastructure to all the stations along the route to support more freight shipments.

Currently, only three of the stations — Natoei Station in Luang Namtha Province, Vang Vieng Station in Vientiane Province, and Vientiane South Station in the capital — are open for goods transport.

Another seven freight stations have been completed, along with 11 passenger stations.                                                  

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

A well-known Vietnamese activist in Hanoi who raised funds for the families of jailed prisoners of conscience and was nearly 10 months ago, underwent a forced psychiatric evaluation while being held in pre-trial detention, her husband said Monday.

Nguyen Thuy Hanh, 58, who founded the 50k Fund to provide support to families of political prisoners in Vietnam who can’t afford to travel to the jails where their relatives are held, was arrested in April 2021 and charged with disseminating materials against the state, according to official media in the one-party communist state.

Local government authorities froze Hanh’s Vietcombank account in 2020 after she raised about 500 million Vietnamese dong (U.S. $21,600) to support the family of Le Dinh Kinh, the elderly leader of the Dong Tam commune, who was killed during an earlier police raid on Dong Tam amid a long-running land dispute that landed many of his family members in jail.

“They took her to a mental health hospital and kept her there for one month, from Dec. 7 to Jan. 7 for medical evaluation,” Huynh Ngoc Chenh, Hanh’s husband, told RFA. “I learned this information from some patients at the hospital. The investigation agency did not inform our family about this issue at all.”

At least four patients at National Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 in Hanoi called him about his wife’s psychiatric examination, and contact at the hospital verified the information, Chenh wrote on a Facebook post.

Before she was arrested, Hanh was suffering from depression and was undergoing treatment, Chenh said.

Hanh’s family has not received any information about her health condition since her arrested, he added.

“She used to have serious depression, and I had to take her to the France-Vietnam International Hospital in Saigon [Ho Chi minh City] and to a specialist [who had a private clinic] for treatment,” Chenh said. “Thanks to this specialist, her health had improved a lot. However, I haven’t had any information about her health since she was arrested in April 2021.”

Authorities have not allowed Hanh’s defense lawyers to see his client, Chenh said.

“My wife had hired two law firms [to be her legal representatives] before she was arrested,” he said. “Their lawyers have registered to be her defense lawyers. However, the investigation agency said in cases related to national security, lawyers are not allowed to meet with their clients until the investigation is complete.”

Vietnamese authorities routinely order psychiatric evaluations of activists who oppose their detention for exercising their rights under Vietnam’s constitution. Other prominent detained Vietnamese, including Land activist Trinh Ba Phuong, dissident writer Pham Thanh, and blogger Le Anh Hung. also have been subjected to psychiatric exams.

Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Two Muslim Uyghur sisters serving lengthy prison sentences for participating in religious gatherings in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region are being held in a women’s prison in the town of Sanji (in Chinese, Changji), detention center officials said.

The siblings, Melikizat and Patigul Memet, are from a family of five women in Korla (in Chinese, Kuerle), all imprisoned for religious activities in 2013, according to a verdict issued in April 2019 and recently seen by RFA. The Korla Municipal Court gave Melikizat and Patigul jail sentences of 20 and seven years, respectively.

The women’s mother, 78-year-old Helchem Pazil, sister Zahire Memet, and sister-in-law Bostan Ibrahim, were convicted of “disturbing public order and inciting ethnic hatred” for “hearing and providing a venue for illegal religious preaching,” RFA reported earlier, citing the document. At the time, it was not clear from the verdict where the women were serving their sentences.

After making additional inquiries about the women, Sanji Women’s Prison staffers told RFA that Melikizat and Patigul were serving their sentences there.

Melikizat, a 37-year-old housewife, was convicted of “incitement to ethnic discrimination,” “collectively bringing social disorder,” and “taking others under her wing,” by providing a venue for religious preaching and taking part in it, according to the verdict.

Patigul, a 52-year-old who worked at a veterinary hospital in Korla’s Tekichi village, was convicted of “collectively bringing social disorder” by attending the religion services. She received a lighter punishment for giving an “early and full confession” and for showing “grave remorse.”

During follow-up calls to local official to try to find out where the women were being held, RFA contacted the police station in Tekichi village, though officers would not provide information about Patigul.

Likewise, the municipal prosecutor’s office in Korla declined RFA’s request to speak with Pezilet Memtimin, the prosecutor in the case.

But during a subsequent call to the office, a staffer said that at least a handful of female Uyghur prisoners from Korla were serving sentences in Sanji Women’s Prison.

When RFA contact the prison, an official asked for the national identification numbers of the five women, then confirmed that Melikizat and Patigul Memet were serving their sentences there.

Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

China sent 39 military aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on Sunday, the same day two U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Groups began a joint operation in the South China Sea.

The Chinese sorties included 34 J-16 and J-10 fighter jets, four Y-8 and Y-9 electronic warfare aircraft and a H-6 bomber, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry.

Taiwan scrambled fighters and issued radio warnings while air defense missile systems were deployed to track the Chinese aircraft activities, the ministry said.

The incursion, the largest since October, highlighted cross-strait tensions and also served as a warning message to Taiwan and the United States, said a prominent Taiwanese analyst.

By this, China wanted to say to the U.S. that it should think twice about the freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) “rather than taking them as a matter of course,” said Ming-Shih Shen, acting deputy chief executive officer at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), a government think-tank.

On the same day, the USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Groups with over 14,000 sailors and Marines began dual carrier operations in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy said. They had earlier joined a military drill in the Philippine Sea.

The U.S. Navy said the carrier strike groups “will engage in joint operations to include enhanced maritime communication operations, anti-submarine warfare operations, air warfare operations, replenishments-at-sea, cross-deck flight operations and maritime interdiction operations to strengthen maritime integrated-at-sea operations and combat readiness.”

“The training will be conducted in accordance with international law in international waters,” it said.

Just one day before that, the two carrier strike groups took part in a joint exercise with the USS Essex Amphibious Ready Group, the USS America Expeditionary Strike Group and Japanese Navy helicopter destroyer JS Hyuga in the Philippine Sea.

The strike groups’ precise location on Monday was not immediately clear.

Observers said China would not turn a blind eye to such a show of force. Last October when the U.S. Navy was conducting joint drills with British and Japanese ships near Okinawa, the Chinese military sent a record 145 fighter planes to Taiwan’s ADIZ prompting the Taiwanese minister of defense to say that cross-strait tensions were “at their worst in 40 years.”

Strategic waterway

Beijing has yet to comment on the latest event. In the past, it had said that such flights were to protect its sovereignty and target “collusion” between Taiwan and the U.S.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province that should be “reunified” with the mainland while most Taiwanese people see their homeland, which is democratic and self-governing, as a sovereign, independent state.

An ADIZ is an area where civilian aircraft are tracked and identified before further entering into a country’s airspace. It does not restrict travel in and out of its limits, nor does it usually apply to military aircraft, although there is no international rule or law saying it cannot.

Taiwan’s ADIZ roughly corresponds to its exclusive economic zone, a 200 nautical mile boundary off its coasts. However, usually only those PLA flights that cross the median line between Taiwan and mainland China are reported as incursions.

A map provided by Taiwan’s Defense Ministry showed the Chinese aircraft flew in an area to the northeast of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas (Dongsha Islands) in the South China Sea.

“This area is at the crossroad between strategic waterways from the Taiwan Strait and the Bashi Strait to the South China Sea,” explained Ming-Shih Shen from the INDSR think tank.

“China’s intensified flights here can, on the one hand, block military assistance from Taiwan to Dongsha Islands, and on the other hand monitor the entry of U.S. naval and air forces into the South China Sea.”

“Intrusions of Chinese military aircrafts in Taiwan’s ADIZ at a large scale are designed to eventually turn the Taiwan Strait into the inner sea of China. China would then have actual control of the Taiwan Strait and even the Bashi Strait,” Shen said.

“Countries [in the region] must pay attention to China’s naval and air force deterrence in the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea,” he warned.

The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, insisted that U.S. ships’ presence and activities in the region are to “support a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Rear Adm. Dan Martin, commander of the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group, was quoted in the Navy web portal as saying on Monday: “We are committed to ensuring the lawful use of the sea and free flow of commerce while deterring those who challenge the shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific now and into the long-term future.”