Day: February 4, 2022

Two U.S. lawmakers nominated two Uyghur rights organizations for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in a rebuke to China just as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics got underway.

Reps. Tom Suozzi of New York and Chris Smith of New Jersey, co-chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Uyghur Caucus, wrote a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee saying that the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) and Campaign for Uyghurs, both based in Washington, D.C., have brought attention to the Chinese government’s abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang.

Both organizations have strongly condemned China for its violence against the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities and have lobbied the U.S. and other countries to take action to stop the genocide of the mostly Muslim peoples.

“The UHRP and the Campaign for Uyghurs have made significant contributions to building fraternity between nations and promoting peace by defending the human rights of the Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominately Muslim ethnic minorities that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has targeted with genocide and other crimes against humanity,” they wrote, according to a report in the New York Post on Thursday.

Suozzi and Smith formed the Congressional Uyghur Caucus in July 2021 to support legislation to address the human rights abuses in Xinjiang. They are also members of the bipartisan U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which previously urged Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, to postpone the 2022 Beijing Games and to relocate them if China did not end its persecution of minority groups.

“Put simply, the Chinese Communist Party has committed genocide against the Uyghur people,” Suozzi said, according to a statement issued by the Campaign for Uyghurs on Friday. “For years, these atrocities went unnoticed by the public eye. But through the heroic work of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and the Campaign for Uyghurs, and countless others, they brought this genocide front and center for the world to see.”

Omer Kanat, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said the nomination sent a message to China that the Games “will not be able to cover up the genocide against Uyghurs,” he told RFA.

“It’s truly a tremendous encouragement to the UHRP staff and board, and gives much-needed hope and inspiration to Uyghurs, to know that the work of Uyghur groups have been elevated for Oslo’s attention,” UHRP board chairman Nury Turkel, who is also vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said.

Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, was equally enthusiastic about the nomination of her organization.

“Regardless of the outcome of the nomination, the fact that the Uyghur issue will be discussed along with the Nobel Peace Prize nomination is a great victory for the Uyghur movement,” she told RFA.

China is believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in detention camps in Xinjiang. The government has said the facilities are vocation training centers and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has mistreated and tortured incarcerated Muslims.

The U.S. government and parliaments in several nations have declared the abuses against the Uyghurs, which include mass surveillance, detentions, forced labor, sexual violence and forced sterilizations of Uyghur detainees, a genocide and crimes against humanity.

The U.S. and several other Western nations refused to send diplomats to the Games in protest.

Hundreds of Uyghur protesters demonstrated in Turkey’s capital Istanbul on Friday in a last-ditch call for a boycott of the Olympics, urging participants in Beijing to speak out against the Chinese government’s maltreatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

About 50,000 Uyghurs are believed to live in Turkey — the largest Uyghur diaspora outside Central Asia.

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

Authorities in North Korea arrested a dance instructor and several of her students after she used foreign media to teach them “capitalist” dance moves, sources in the country told RFA.

In late 2020, North Korea passed the draconian Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, which punishes citizens for a wide variety of offenses, mostly related to watching, keeping or distributing media from capitalist countries, particularly from South Korea and the U.S. The law carries a maximum penalty of death for serious offenders.

The law has also been used to punish drivers for tinting their car windows, students for using South Korean-style speech and slang, and now, dance instructors, for teaching youth to emulate the moves of foreign pop stars.

“The Anti-Socialism Inspection Group caught a dance instructor in her 30s who was teaching foreign-style disco dances to teenage students in Yangji-dong, Pyongsong City,” a resident of the northwestern city of Pyongsong, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Korean Service Jan. 31.

“The Anti-Socialism Inspection Group, a joint operation of the State Security Department and the police, has been intensively cracking down on people for watching South Korean movies and distributing foreign media,” the resident said.

The source said that North Korea authorities tend to be a bit more lenient in enforcing the rules around Seollal, the Lunar New Year holiday that was celebrated Tuesday, the source said. Consequently, residents feel a bit freer to enjoy South Korean movies or listen to foreign songs during this time.

This year, however, the Anti-Socialism Inspection group has been more vigilant in enforcing the thought and culture law, she said.

“At the scene of the crackdown on the dance instructor that day, a USB flash drive containing foreign songs and dance videos had been plugged in, next to the flat screen TV,” the source said.

“Teenage students were learning how to dance by imitating the choreography on screen. The Anti-Socialism Inspection Group seized the flash drive and took the instructor and all of the students to their headquarters,” she said.

News of the arrests quickly traveled beyond the city and the province. A resident of Sinuiju, about 130 miles to the northwest, near the border with China, told RFA that someone told him the story two days before Seollal.

“From what I heard over the phone, this woman had majored in choreography at the Pyongsong University of the Arts. A few years back, she was assigned to teach at Okchon high school in Pyongsong,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

“But it was difficult to live on just the monthly teacher’s salary of only 3,000 won [U.S. $0.60], so she made her actual living by running a private dance academy out of her home,” he said.

Students in middle and high school would attend private lessons twice per week, for one or two-hour sessions at a cost of about $10 per hour, according to the second source.

“They preferred to learn to dance like they do in South Korea, China and America, rather than in the North Korean style. So, she taught them how,” he said.

Another resident of Pyongsong told RFA that the Anti-Socialism Inspection Group began to be more active in December.

“The granddaughter of a provincial party official was caught with an SD card installed on her smartphone, and it contained South Korean movies. In the investigation, she revealed how and where she bought the SD card,” the third source said on condition of anonymity.

“The rich class usually buy USB flash drives smuggled in by sea from China. In the end, those who have been illegally selling or lending these flash drives and SD cards to teenagers get caught, one after another, including a relative of an official at the prosecutors’ office,” she said.

The relative later confessed who he had sold the movies and dance videos to, which led the authorities to the dance instructor, the source said.

“Members of the Anti-Socialism Inspection Group hid in plain clothes around the dance instructor’s house for two days. … They saw many students go in and then they raided the house,” the third source said.

Most of the students are children from wealthy families that typically are not subjected to severe punishment for infractions because of their money and power, according to the third source.

“However, since the Central Committee has ordered that those who violate the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture Act be severely punished regardless of their rank or class, the foreign dance instructor and students caught this time will not be spared from hard labor. Their parents are also likely to be punished by being forced to leave the party,” the source said.

Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Authorities in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh have ordered workers from the NagaWorld Casino to immediately stop a long-running strike protesting labor conditions there, claiming the demonstrators could be spreading the coronavirus.

Labor leaders say the government’s response is really about preventing meaningful worker’s rights reforms in the country.

The order from Phnom Penh City Hall came after the Ministry of Health said that a striking worker tested positive for COVID-19.

“The COVID-19 Combatting Committee advises workers to immediately stop gathering to hold demonstrations until such time that there is assurance that COVID-19 will not spread among the group,” the committee said in a statement Feb. 4.

“In the case of stubbornness that leads to community infections, the concerned individuals will be fined and prosecuted,” it said.

Thousands of workers began their strike in mid-December, demanding higher wages and the reinstatement of eight jailed union leaders and 365 workers they say were unjustly fired from the hotel and casino.

Cambodian authorities have deemed the strike “illegal” and say it is supported by foreign donors as a plot to topple the government.

A NagaWorld union member, Ouk Sopheak Molica, refused to comment on the order from City Hall, saying the workers have not decided how to respond. 

The worker identified by the health ministry as COVID-19-positive, Chhuon Sam An, told RFA’s Khmer Service that she did not get COVID-19 from the workers on strike.

After she tested positive, the ministry ordered all the striking workers to get tested for the virus within three days. The ministry has also warned of serious legal consequences if they fail to follow through.

The workers have asked the Ministry of Health to conduct the tests where they are holding the strike demonstrations, instead of requiring them to travel to test centers.

Khun Tharo, program coordinator for the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, a workers rights group based in Phnom Penh, told RFA that he is skeptical that City Hall’s demand the strike be ended was motivated by COVID concerns.

“It seems there is something hidden behind their orders. We must seek the truth about the intentions behind the ministry’s order,” he said. 

The workers have been on strike for the past 50 days. Authorities in Phnom Penh arrested 29 strikers, union activists, and union leaders from Dec. 31 to Jan. 4, including several pregnant women who the labor group says were unjustly fired by NagaWorld.

Of those arrested, 20 were later released after they pledged not to rejoin the strike. Another worker was placed under judicial supervision.

NagaWorld casino is a subsidiary of NagaCorp, a Hong Kong exchange-listed company and one of the world’s most profitable gaming outfits. It claims to be the largest gaming entertainment company in the Mekong Region.

According to the company’s website, NagaWorld owns, manages, and operates Phnom Penh’s only integrated hotel-casino entertainment complex and enjoys a monopoly within a 200-kilometer (124-mile) radius of the capital until 2045.

A 2017 leaked text message by Chen Lip Keong, NagaCorp’s chief executive officer, revealed his close business ties with the wife and children of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the sons of Sok An, the late deputy prime minister. None of the parties confirmed or denied the leaked information.

Despite lockdown conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic, the company reported that it generated U.S. $173 million in profit during the first half of 2020 and U.S. $74.7 million dollars during the same period in 2021.

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

The bodies of 11 people have been discovered in Myanmar’s Sagaing region, days after the military carried out an airstrike on a graduation ceremony for anti-junta militia recruits, killing several civilians, sources said Friday.

A resident of Myinmu township’s Padoke Tine village told RFA’s Myanmar Service that the bodies were found on Thursday at the edge of a field where the local People’s Defense Force (PDF) militia held a ceremony for graduates of its training program three days earlier. Eight of them were charred beyond recognition, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. 

“On Jan. 31, while we were watching a training graduation ceremony, helicopters swarmed the area and fired onto the grounds to prevent people from running away,” he said.

“I think they were mostly firing to warn people — if they had fired more heavily, they might have killed everyone in the village. Those who tried to run back to [Padoke Tine] were killed. We can’t identify the bodies because [junta troops] burned them.”

The villager said that five helicopters were involved in the attack and estimated that “at least 20 people were killed.”

More than 70 villagers were detained by ground troops during the attack and were not released until the military left Padoke Tine two days later, he said. It was only when residents were able to return to the village on Thursday that they discovered the bodies.

Kin Do, a member of Myinmu Township PDF, told RFA that everyone who was killed in the attack was a civilian.

“Their helicopters came in and started firing. They fired on both men and women — all of the people at the field who tried to run back to the village,” he said.

“There were no deaths from among the PDF fighters. I think at least 20 civilians got killed. [Junta troops] piled up the bodies on the street, burned them, and discarded the remains everywhere. It was so barbaric.”

Kin Do said the military helicopters showed up at the exact time of the graduation ceremony, noting that several leaders from different anti-junta groups were in attendance. PDF fighters did not respond to the attack for fear of injuring civilians, he added.

Other sources estimated that at least 80 junta ground troops were involved in the assault on the graduation ceremony and were members of the Northwestern Military Command Division based in Monywa, Sagaing region’s largest city.

Repeated attempts by RFA to contact junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment on the incident in Padoke Tine village went answered on Friday.

Thousands displaced by fighting

Meanwhile, residents of Myinmu township told RFA that around 8,000 people from Padoke Tine, Malae Thar, Thama Taw, Gulu and Nyaung Pin villages remain displaced after fleeing during the helicopter attack.

One villager, who declined to be named, said they are too frightened to return home.

“We are hiding as of today. We are all too afraid to return home because of the airstrike. We don’t know when they will return to attack again,” they said.

“Thousands of people have fled their homes. There are many women, children, and elderly people. Many of them are sheltering at a nearby monastery. These people are from five villages near where the incident occurred.”

Other residents said that after the helicopter attack, junta soldiers raided their homes and stole their property.

Local PDF sources said tensions have been running high in Myinmu township following a recent clash in which junta troops shot four PDF members in nearby Madu Ya village.

Earlier this week, troops in Sagaing region razed more than 400 homes in two villages they accuse of providing a haven for anti-junta forces, forcing an estimated 10,000 civilians to flee, according to residents.

The attack occurred on the evening of Jan. 31, when around 100 soldiers entered Mwe Tone and Pan villages in Pale township and began setting structures ablaze, sources said.

Prior to the fires, PDF fighters had attacked an outpost in Inn Ma Htee village, where troops were reportedly conducting a training exercise for the pro-military Pyusawhtee militia group.

Villagers told RFA that the burning of the two villages was a form of payback for casualties the military suffered in the Inn Ma Htee village attack.

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

Eleven Tibetans beaten and arrested by Chinese authorities in January for spreading news of the destruction of a 99-foot-tall Buddha statue and dozens of prayer wheels in southwestern China’s Sichuan province have been sent to labor camps in the region, Tibetans with knowledge of the situation said Friday.

Monks Tashi Dorjee, Tsering Samdup, Nyima Lhamo, and Abbot Pelga, along with Pelga’s assistant Nyima, and six other unidentified Tibetans were arrested following the destruction of the statue and 45 traditional prayer wheels in Drago (Luhuo) county of Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in December 2021, said a Tibetan in exile who declined to be named for safety reasons.

“[They] are still being held in Chinese custody and now have been sent to labor camps,” he told RFA.

The 11 were arrested on suspicion of sending news and photos of the statue’s destruction — reported exclusively by RFA in early January — to contacts outside the region.

“A few of them also sustained injuries from beatings and torture, though much about their current conditions remain unknown,” the Tibetan in exile said.

Authorities have restrictions still in place at both the monastery and in the county, he said.

“A police station has been set up near the Mani prayer wheel that was demolished earlier by the Chinese authorities in Drago,” he said. “A few monks from the monastery and a few other individuals are stationed in this police station to keep an eye on the daily activities of local Tibetans and the monks of Drago Monastery.

“It is very difficult to explain how intense the situation in Drago is at the moment,” the source said.

Authorities in China’s Sichuan province forced Tibetan monks and residents to watch the demolition of the Buddha statue following official complaints that it was too high, Tibetan sources told RFA in an earlier report.

The prayer wheels authorities destroyed at the same time had been set up for use by Tibetan pilgrims and other worshipers, they said.

Pema Gyal, a researcher at Tibet Watch, a nonprofit that promotes the human rights, said that Tibetans who live in Drago county have told his group that are constantly interrogated by Chinese authorities and face a number of restrictions on their activity.

“So, it is clear that the Chinese government continues to suppress the Tibetans,” he told RFA.

A Tibetan monk from Drago who now lives in exile said Chinese authorities are wielding a heavy hand because of previous protests staged in the county.

Chinese government officials are “extra cautious of the region and try to eliminate everything that empowers the Tibetan language and Buddhist institutions,” the monk said.

A previous protest against Chinese rule took place in 2012 in Drago, leading to the arrests of many Tibetans, eight of whom are still serving prison terms, RFA recently learned from Tibetan sources with knowledge of the matter.

They include Sonam Lhundup, who was sentenced to life in prison; Chakbe, sentenced to 12 years; Kunthok, sentenced to 13 years; Kundup, sentenced to 11 years; and Tashi Dhargay and Namgyal Dhoundup, who each were sentenced to 14 years. Two other unidentified Tibetans are serving sentences of unknown durations.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Authorities in Hong Kong arrested a veteran rights activist known for carrying coffins at protests for “subversion,” after he announced he would protest outside the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Central Liaison Office in the city on the first day of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday.

Koo Sze Yiu, 75, was arrested under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the CCP, on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power,” a charge that carried a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

He was arrested by national security police at 6.00 a.m., and is being held at Cheung Sha Wan police station for questioning, local media reported.

Police also brought in four fellow activists for questioning in connection with Koo’s case, including veteran activist Lui Yuk-lin.

Koo was a colorful and regular feature of the regular and peaceful mass protests that once took place regularly in Hong Kong, before a city-wide crackdown on “illegal” public assembly in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

Koo, who has stage four colorectal cancer, has been arrested and jailed several times already since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, including for “desecrating the national flag” in July 2020.

Meanwhile, more than 10 police vehicles and dozens of uniformed and plainclothes officers were deployed outside Beijing’s liaison office, with roadblocks on the approaches to the building on Des Voeux Road West and Connaught Road West.

Many bore armbands delineating them as “Special Police,” including fire department and immigration officers.

Koo’s arrest came after he issued a news release on Thursday announcing his plan to protest outside the Central Liaison Office on Friday, “raising and sending off a coffin to celebrate the Winter Olympics … and the national security law.”

League of Social Democrats (LSD) spokesman Dickson Chau said he had no idea the arrest would take place.

“[This shows that] they don’t just expect Hong Kong to take the same strict COVID-19 prevention measures as the rest of China; they also want zero leniency when it comes to dissidents,” Chau told RFA.

“This is a higher-level of stability maintenance and a higher-level alert,” he said.

He said the next six months would likely see no let-up.

“We have Xi Jinping seeking a third term and the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China,” he said. “Dissenting voices will definitely be eliminated.”

Opinion pollster Chung Kim-wah said a political boycott of the Olympics over the CCP’s rights record in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, as well as its growing military threats against the democratic island of Taiwan, had made the Olympics a “much more sensitive international issue.”

“Beijing is in an embarrassing situation with this Winter Olympics, because so many countries are staging political boycotts,” Chung told RFA. “I think the Hong Kong government is working right along with those concerns in Beijing, and so they won’t tolerate any negative voices on the subject.”

“[That’s why] they are taking decisive action against Koo, as a deterrent, to act as a clear warning to people not to try anything in the next couple of weeks,” he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Hong Kong protesters and rights campaigners took to the streets of central London on Thursday night to call for sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for rights abuses in Hong Kong, including the city’s leader, Carrie Lam.

Shouting “Shame on China! Free Tibet! Free East Turkestan! Free Hong Kong!” the protesters staged an “alternative” Olympics opening ceremony at Picadilly Circus, some of them dressed as Winnie the Pooh, in a satirical dig at Xi Jinping, while others brought effigies of tanks and the Olympic five rings, and others played out a sketch in which International Olympics Committee president Thomas Bach presented a gold medal to Xi for “human rights violations.”

Ruling Conservative Party member Nusrat Ghani, who has been sanctioned by Beijing for speaking out against the mass incarceration of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, warned that the CCP will use the Winter Olympics to “whitewash evil deeds”, and called on the international community to take notice of the repression suffered by Hong Kong, the persecution of Tibetans, and the genocide of Uyghurs.

“No one can deny what is happening against the Uyghur people. The crime of all crimes: genocide,” she said. “No to the genocide Olympic Games!”

MP Lord Alton told the rally, to cheers: “We have to sanction those who have committed these crimes, whether in Xinjiang or Hong Kong. I have Carrie Lam on my list. Sanction Carrie Lam!”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.