Day: February 1, 2022

The military junta that overthrew Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected government on Feb. 1, 2021 stands accused of crimes against humanity for abuses including mass killings, torture, and sexual violence. Rights groups say military attacks on civilians and torching of villages in border regions that have opposed the military amount to war crimes. The coup has also brought joblessness and hunger to many of the country’s 54 million people.

Myanmar’s junta on Monday extended a state of emergency order by six months as opponents of the regime prepared to hold a nationwide “Silent Strike” on the eve of the anniversary of the coup and vowed to rebuild the country at any cost.

Early on Monday, the National Defense and Security Council held a special meeting at which junta chief Snr. Gen. Main Aung Hlaing said that “developments in politics, economics and social situations” in the country required that the junta extend the state of emergency, according to a statement released by the council.

Among the developments he listed were “local and foreign destructive forces” working toward “total annihilation” of the country, “terrorist attacks,” unfinished political appointments, and a need for “a genuine and disciplined multi-party democracy.”

Acting President Myint Swe, Lower House Speaker Ti Khun Myat, and other generals unanimously agreed to extend the state of emergency, which went into effect immediately and grants the military sweeping powers to crack down on opponents to its rule.

The order came just a day ahead of the anniversary marking a year since the military seized power from the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup, propelling the country into a political crisis. In the time since, security forces have arrested more than 8,830 civilians and killed 1,500 more, mostly during nonviolent protests of junta rule, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Activists have planned to lead a nationwide Silent Strike on Tuesday that they hope will shut down the country and draw global attention to the junta’s rights violations. But authorities have responded with threats to punish anyone who supports the strike by applauding, honking car horns or playing drums with up to life imprisonment.

Despite the warnings, many people told RFA’s Myanmar that they will proceed with the strike on Tuesday because they refuse to give up on the democratic progress the country made under NLD chief Aung San Suu Kyi. The former state counselor was detained along with former President Win Myint following last year’s coup and now faces 16 charges her supporters say are politically motivated.

“Instead of calling it the one-year anniversary of the coup d’etat, we should call it the anniversary of the destruction of Myanmar,” said Wai Moe, a third-year college student in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon said.

“The disruption in education for students of all grades — from kindergarten to seniors in college — is unrecoverable. Both the youth and the older generations have lost all hope.”

Zeyar Lwin, the leader of one of the many branches of an anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) militia that have sprung up, told RFA that the nation’s youth are “fighting the regime for their future.”

“Every single person has their own hopes and plans for the future. This military coup has shattered these hopes, dreams and goals,” he said. “Before the coup, these young men had good careers as doctors, teachers, attorneys, Buddhist monks or trainers, but this coup forced them all to join the resistance and they all carry resentment in their hearts.”

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun dismissed claims that the nation’s youth had “lost their future” because of the coup, saying the military has reopened schools and never forced them to join PDF groups.   

“If they chose not to return to school and went to the jungle camps, we can’t do anything for them. This was their choice,” he said. “We always welcome them back. We have announced that they will not be punished if they have not committed any crimes. What more should we do to give them a guarantee?”

Decades of military rule

The people of Myanmar are no strangers to martial law, having lived under military regimes for nearly 50 of the country’s 74-year history.

But people who experienced military rule in Myanmar following the country’s 1962 and 1988 coups told RFA that life under the current junta has been the worst of all three periods.

On March 1, 1962, Gen. Nay Win of the Socialist Party orchestrated a coup in Myanmar under the premise that the government had failed to prevent ethnic Shans from splitting from the Union. His regime detained, tortured and killed thousands of Shans, while leading the economy to ruin after nationalizing all major firms in the country.

By 1988, the year of Myanmar’s second coup, the country had become one of the least developed in the world and relied on the United Nations for assistance. When students led a mass uprising that year, the military reacted by taking control of the government and violently shutting down protests, killing as many as 3,000, according to some estimates. But experts noted that even then, the junta received support from friendly nations including China, and the country was able to rebuild.

Political analyst Than Soe Naing said that rule under the previous juntas paled in comparison to that of the current regime.

“Following this coup, the junta has cracked down on the civil disobedience movement and peaceful demonstrators, killing young students. This led to an armed resistance,” he said. “Now, the regime uses the worst techniques to suppress people by killing civilians, burning villages and looting their properties.”

Hla Kyaw Zawl, a Myanmar-based political analyst, called the aftermath of the 2021 coup “the worst of all,” but she expressed confidence that the regime “will not last long.”

“The new regime doesn’t have international support and the people don’t support them either,” she said, adding that even the junta’s allies only support it “nominally.”

Vow to rebuild

Activists and other opponents of the regime said that the people of Myanmar are fed up with military rule and would ensure that last year’s coup would be the country’s last.

“We have returned to the conditions we experienced in the past,” said former college student Paing Ye Thu, describing a life of fear in which citizens cannot express their opinions or disobey orders. “After this military coup, these kinds of feelings come back. In addition, more and more people are struggling to make ends meet. We can no longer sit aside and allow ourselves to be ruled this way.”

Others looked beyond the destruction the coup had wrought on their country over the past year to how they will rebuild when the military is forced to step down from power.

“I believe we will be able to build a new nation after we declare victory so that we can fulfill our personal dreams and ambitions,” said Tayzar San, a doctor who ran a free clinic in Mandalay before the coup and joined the resistance movement shortly after.

“I am sure that after this revolution, we will have a peaceful and livable nation and a political system that ensures human rights and dignity. I hope we will have a peaceful and pleasant life for all generations.”

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

As China gears up for the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics, foreign journalists working in the country warned on Monday that press freedom is declining ‘at breakneck speed.”

While foreign journalists have long faced challenging conditions under the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), now they are also dealing with growing hostility and intimidation, including online stalking, smear campaigns, hacking and visa denials, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said in its annual report.

As the number of journalists forced out by the Chinese state grows, covering China is increasingly becoming an exercise in remote reporting, the report said.

“With China pulling out all the stops for the Olympic Games, the FCCC is troubled by the breakneck speed by which media freedom is declining in China,” it said, citing 99 percent of foreign journalists as saying in a recent survey that reporting conditions fall below international standards.

Restrictions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic have enabled officials to delay approvals for new journalist visas, cancel reporting trips outside of Beijing, and turn down requests for interviews, the report said.

Nearly half of respondents said their bureaus are understaffed due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, with more than half saying they had been denied access to news-makers or places due to pandemic restrictions.

“Coverage of China is suffering,” the FCCC said. “Nothing replaces on-the-ground reporting, free of state obstruction and surveillance.”

More than 60 percent of respondents had been obstructed by police or officials last year, while almost all journalists who went to Xinjiang were visible followed throughout their trips, while more than a quarter said their sources had been detained, harassed or questioned more than once following interviews.

Legal action and trolling

There is also a growing legal threat for journalists working in China, it said.

“Chinese authorities also appear to be encouraging a spate of lawsuits or the threat of legal action against foreign journalists, typically filed by sources long after they have explicitly agreed to be interviewed,” the FCCC said.

It said “state-backed attacks” including online trolling of foreign journalists is also on the increase.

“Such campaigns have fostered a growing feeling among the Chinese public that foreign media are the enemy and directly encourage offline violence and harassment of journalists in the field,” the group said, adding that many have left the country to protect themselves and their families.

Authorities in Beijing, Tianjin and Hangzhou have stepped up anti-COVID-19 measures after 20 locally transmitted cases of the virus were confirmed in Beijing, 11 in Tianjin and 24 in Hangzhou.

Beijing resident Guo Li said the authorities there are sticking to the CCP’s “zero-COVID” policy ahead of the Games.

“The situation in Beijing is that it’s pretty bad in Fengtai district, with suspected cases being placed under compulsory quarantine and observation until there is a negative PCR test,” Guo told RFA. “I heard it will be more or less impossible for anyone who has left Beijing to get back into the city while the Winter Olympics are going on.”

‘Stability maintenance’

A resident of neighboring Hebei province surnamed Wang said the province is being used as a buffer zone to protect the capital.

“Hebei is being used as a wall around Beijing, protecting it,” Wang said. “It has gotten harder and harder to get into Beijing from Hebei.”

“If you want to get out of Beijing, you need a certificate, and you have to wait for a notification before you can get back in again,” he said.

Meanwhile, district and township officials around Beijing are ordering people to reduce the size of their Lunar New Year gatherings, or even banning them outright.

Any petitioners pursuing long-running complaints against the government in Beijing are being placed under house arrest by local officials from their hometowns.

“They are detaining people now for stability maintenance,” a petitioner who declined to be named told RFA. “Most petitioners are under house arrest, with three, four or five people watching them 24 hours a day.”

While some are being placed under surveillance in Beijing, the majority have been prevented from leaving their hometowns, they said.

“All of them were taken into custody,” the petitioner said. “Some were sent to the Communist Party School, some were put in quarantine, where they are being watched at home.”

“Petitioners from Jilin were detained in local hotels from Jan. 23, while petitioners from Dalian have been held under house arrest for more than 40 days by the local police,” they said.

The Beijing Bureau of Commerce issued guideline on Jan. 30 calling on families to limit private dinners to less than 10 people, and for traditional New Year’s Eve dinners to last no longer than two hours.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A new langur monkey named after an extinct volcano, the world’s first drought-resilient succulent bamboo and an iridescent snake with odd, non-overlapping scales are among an extraordinary 224 species discovered in the Greater Mekong region recently, researchers say.

Hundreds of scientists from across the globe discovered 155 plants, 16 fish, 17 amphibians, 35 reptiles and one mammal in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, according to a report published last week by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

The discoveries have thrilled other researchers.

“It is always a good thing to discover new living creatures. … Every animal promotes ecosystem diversity and a wealth of knowledge to the academic world, especially to scientists and biologists,” Punya Kaesawat, a researcher at the faculty of sciences at Burapha University in Thailand, told BenarNews on Monday. 

“It is believed that new findings of these species will follow.” 

The habitats of more than 200 species in the Greater Mekong are at risk of being damaged by humans or climate change, he said. 

“They may directly impact these sensitive new species,” he said, adding that illegal exotic markets could be interested in the new species. 

According to a 2011 study, there are about 8.7 million species on Earth while only 1.6 million have been identified, meaning that more than 80 percent of species have yet to be discovered.

“The Greater Mekong region is one of planet Earth’s most important biodiversity hotspots, highlighted by the endless number of new species discovered there every year,” professor Thomas Ziegler, curator at the Cologne Zoological Garden in Germany, said in the report’s foreword. 

More than 3,000 new species have been found in the Greater Mekong since 1997, according to the report.

The new “discoveries, painstakingly identified and recorded by keen naturalists and taxonomists … demonstrate that the region is still a frontline for scientific exploration and a hotspot of species diversity,” WWF said in the report.

“Many species go extinct before they are even discovered, driven by habitat destruction, diseases spread by human activities, predation, competition brought by invasive species and the devastating impacts of illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade.”

Ziegler noted the extreme threats faced by these species, saying that “to record this treasure trove of biodiversity before it is completely lost, we must accelerate our work and strengthen international cooperation.”

Here are some of the discovered species: 

CAMBODIA

Leptobrachella neangi (amphibian) 

It took 10 years to identify the leaf-litter frog as a new species because of its similarity to a previously identified species. In 2010, Cambodian herpetologist Thy Neang collected two adult female species in the Cardamom Mountains at Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary – DNA testing in 2020 determined the frogs were new species. 

Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis (reptile) 

The yellow-spotted bent-toed gecko has a unique elongated body and snout compared to other species in its group, according to WWF. Researchers discovered it in the isolated rocky mountain region of Phnom Chi in the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, one of the most extensive lowland evergreen forests in mainland Southeast Asia and home to more than 55 threatened wildlife species. 

LAOS

Laobambos calcareus (plant) 

Discovered in Khammouane province in Laos, this is the first documented case of succulence in bamboos, which means its stem can inflate and deflate depending on the quantity of water stored during the dry or wet seasons. Researchers saw it in the dry season when it looked deflated and wrinkly, but during the rainy season, the plant looked inflated and “bamboo-ey.”  

Pareas geminatus (reptile)  

WWF said researchers found this new medium-sized slug snake during field studies in the Golden Triangle where the borders of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. It has a yellow-brown color and unique patterning with the stripes behind the eyes merging to form a black collar. 

“This very cute and unique snake was initially difficult to classify, given its morphological similarity to another species and past confusion about taxonomy,” said Tan Van Nguyen of Save Vietnam’s Wildlife, who led the research team.  

MYANMAR

Begonia chenii (plant) 

The perennial reddish flowers and berry-like fruit discovered in Putao district, Kachin State, is named after professor Chen Jin, director of the Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was found in a tropical forest in Kachin, an area known to be one of the most diverse floristic regions in continental Asia.

Trachypithecus popa (mammal) 

This Popa langur monkey was identified in a 100-year-old museum specimen from the United Kingdom’s Natural History Museum and was later matched with more recently collected bones from central Myanmar. It is named after the extinct volcano Mount Popa, home to the largest population of this species of about 100 individuals. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has proposed that it be listed as Critically Endangered.  

THAILAND

Cnemaspis selenolagus (reptile) 

Thailand’s San Phueng rock gecko – Cnemaspis selenolagus – resembles a half-finished paint job. It has a yellow-orange upper body and is grey from the middle to its tail. The color helps it to camouflage against the lichen and dry moss on rocks and trees where it spends its days.

Tylototriton phukhaensis (amphibian) 

An orange-brown knobby newt with devil horns and a racing stripe was observed by chance in a 20-year-old travel magazine, which sparked researchers’ interest to see if it still existed. It was discovered thriving in Doi Phu Kha National Park with more than 50 swimming in a swamp covered with vegetation and big rocks. Thailand’s Department of National Parks reported that this species likely is threatened by habitat degradation, deforestation and other human activities. 

Amomum foetidum, plant 

This ginger family plant, which emits a pungent odor, was discovered in a plant shop in eastern Thailand. Previously undescribed, it is often used as a substitute for stink bugs, which are normally found in spring, as an ingredient in a popular chili paste served with sticky rice.

VIETNAM

Artocarpus montanus (plant) 

This mulberry tree species found in the evergreen mountain forest of southern and central Vietnam was discovered in 70-year-old specimens at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. DNA analysis confirmed it as a new species in 2020. It is related to jackfruit and breadfruit and is assessed as Near Threatened by IUCN. 

Leptobrachium lunatum (amphibian) 

The big-headed spadefoot frog was discovered on the Kon Tum Plateau in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and northeastern Cambodia. It has deep orange irises shaped like crescent moons (hence the name lunatum or crescent moon). 

Achalinus zugorum (reptile) 

The odd-scaled snake was discovered curled up on a small gravel road in Lung Cang Village, Ha Giang Province, in 2019. Only one specimen of this species has been collected. 

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