Day: February 15, 2022

Chinese truck drivers at the Lao-Chinese border are bribing traffic police in Laos to skip extremely long lines of trucks that are waiting to get into China, Lao truck drivers told RFA.

COVID-19 protocols in China are causing major delays at the border. Only 150-200 trucks from either side are able to pass over in a day. RFA reported last month that the trucks must be sprayed three times within 20 minutes of crossing as part of an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, and the gate is only open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m..

At one point there were more than a thousand trucks on the Lao side at the Boten border gate, and fights were breaking out between drivers over their spots in line.

Lao authorities are now giving priority to drivers who give them a little extra cash, a Lao trucker, who had been waiting in line for more than a week, told RFA’s Lao Service.

“Some Chinese truckers are paying money to the authorities, who will then clear traffic for them. Then they drive past the others and go,” said the trucker, who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

“We can do nothing except wait. Since I’ve been here almost 100 Chinese trucks have totally skipped the line,” he said.

The trucker said that all drivers get a queue number ticket from authorities and are told to wait their turn. But the Chinese truckers are able to just drive through.

“Up until now, we’ve never seen any Chinese being fined for that. We’d like to urge the authorities to look into this problem and solve it. Everyone should comply with the rules,” he said.

Another waiting Lao trucker said that the Chinese truckers don’t seem to care about Lao rules and laws.

“They can just pay the authorities. I’ve been waiting in line for six or seven days now. I’m still far away from the border gate. The line is still long, and the wait is endless.”

One trucker recently took to Facebook to express his anger.

“Everyone else wants to go too. All our trucks have been stuck for days. Some people say the owners of the trucks carrying watermelons can pay kickbacks to the traffic police and they are allowed to go through. I am therefore calling on the upper-level authorities to come up here and see what’s happening,” he wrote.

A Lao official at the Boten border gate told RFA that trucks move according to their placement in line. Line skippers are detained and fined, the official said.

“We don’t have a policy that favors Chinese drivers over Lao drivers. We have rules to follow,” the official said. “Before, there might have been some cases of line skipping, but now we’ve improved the situation and the trucks are moving through faster, but according to their queue numbers.”

Laos President Thongloun Sisoulith visited Luang Namtha province last week and told provincial authorities that he would discuss the congestion with Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh.

The president said he wanted to see the problem solved because it was hindering exports to China.

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

More than 2,000 workers at a Korean electronics company factory in Vietnam’s Red River Delta went on strike on Monday, following a successful worker action at another foreign-owned plant in the country, local media reported.

Employees at Cresyn Hanoi Co., Ltd. in the Bac Ninh province are demanding wage increases, meal allowances and bonuses for working on Vietnam’s Reunification Day on April 30 and Labor Day on May 1, according to Vietnamese daily newspaper Tien Phong.

The factory employs a total of 3,500 workers, according to VietnamCredit, a business information provider in Vietnam. The company’s website said the plant makes seven million Bluetooth headsets and data link cables a month.

Workers are also want the company to pay employees based on the number of years they have worked. Furloughed employees would earn 70 percent of their base salary, under the workers’ demands.

They also asked management to create a COVID-19 testing calendar, provide more worker uniforms, and expand the company parking lot.

Representatives from the province’s Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, Public Security Department asked the company to make sure it is adhering to Vietnamese labor laws on annual raises, overtime pay and worker seniority.

Cresyn Hanoi immediately addressed some issues as it reviews costlier wage increases. The company agreed to test workers weekly for the COVID-19 virus, increase employees’ meal allowances, replace worker uniforms each year, and expand the parking area.

Cresyn Hanoi said it would respond to worker demands for higher base pay, allowances, and bonuses by Feb. 25.

The strike comes on the heels of a successful strike by workers at Viet Glory Co., Ltd., a Taiwanese-owned footwear manufacturer in central Vietnam’s Nghe An province. The company ceded to demands by its 5,000-strong workforce to increase salaries and provide extra pay for long-term workers, along with other benefits, according to state media.

A Viet Glory worker told RFA on Monday that he was resuming work after the strike and that he and his colleagues were pleased that their demands had been met.

“We will probably get a new salary from next month on with a 6 percent increase in base salary,” said the employee, who declined to give his name in order to speak freely. “In general, we are excited about the pay raise, and everyone is happy because we have not gotten a pay raise in several years.”

RFA reported on Feb. 8 that Viet Glory’s more than 5,000 workers had gone on strike at noon the previous day to demand higher salaries and protest against a harsh work environment.

In response, the company said it would increase workers’ fuel allowance to 260,000 dong (U.S. $11) from 200,000 dong a month, and their meal allowance to 20,000 dong from 18,000 dong a month. The company also said it would pay male workers with children under 5 years old a child allowance of 50,000 dong a month.

Viet Glory initially refused to increase base salaries and seniority allowance, however.

But on Feb. 12, Viet Glory relented and agreed to a 6 percent salary increase as of Feb. 1. It also granted a seniority allowance to employees who have worked for the company for at least a year.

The monthly seniority allowance is 30,000 dong per year worked. Those who reach their seventh year with the company will receive a monthly seniority allowance of 210,000 dong.

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

Many Chinese have turned their attention from the Beijing Winter Olympics to the bizarre, fast-moving story of a woman found chained in a shed in a rural part of Jiangsu province after being married to a local resident and bearing him eight children. Despite the best efforts of China’s formidable internet censors, netizens are sleuthing online and poking holes in official explanations about the case of the woman identified as Yang Qingxia, who is believed to be a human trafficking victim.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is celebrating plans to build another 10,000 new homes for residents of Pyongyang, even as work on the first 10,000 pledged under a capital building scheme has fallen behind schedule, sources in the country told RFA.

Pyongyang, the country’s capital and with a population of 3 million its largest city, suffers from a severe housing shortage. Kim pledged at the Korean Workers’ Party Congress in January 2021 his government would build 50,000 houses by the end of 2025, one-fifth of which were to have been finished by the end of last year.

But workers have only completed the exteriors of most of the buildings, a setback largely attributed to a two-year suspension of trade with China due to the coronavirus pandemic. Almost everything that goes into the interiors of North Korean homes, from sinks to toilets to kitchen fixtures, is imported from China.

Despite the delays, Kim held a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the next phase of the construction project. Freight trade with China resumed last month, and Pyongyang has been fervently importing construction materials, even when food is its most pressing concern, to try to get the home construction program back on schedule.

Residents in the capital are upset that the government continues to kick people out of their homes to start on the next 10,000 homes before the first 10,000 have been finished, a resident of South Pyongan province, north of the capital, told RFA’s Korean Service.

The source, who requested anonymity for security reasons, read reports in state media that detailed Kim Jong Un’s speech at the groundbreaking.

“[He] called it the establishment of ‘a new area for the people, symbolizing another era of transformation,’” said the source. “He claimed that the 10,000 new homes in Pyongyang were a move ‘toward a great new era of socialist development.’”

But the residents considered the ceremony to be “outrageous propaganda,” according to the source.

“The first 10,000 homes … were supposed to be completed by the end of last year,” the source said. “The displaced residents who received home use permits for the new homes have been living in great difficulty because they were not able to move into new homes.”

Since all real estate is owned by the state, people technically do not own their homes in North Korea. Instead they receive home-use permits, which can be traded on the open market, effectively circumventing government controls on real estate trading and speculation.

For residents who were forced to give up their old homes because they were in the construction area, a home-use permit for the newly constructed homes was their only compensation. They are on their own for lodging in the interim, forced to stay with family or friends while they wait for construction to be completed.

“They have barely completed the building frames of the last 10,000 homes due to the lack of construction materials. All the interior work remains unfinished, and they are already looking forward to the next goal of finishing 10,000 homes with a grandiose ceremony,” the source said.

“The big plan for 50,000 homes in Pyongyang in five years is going to be a huge talking point for the government,” he said.

Residents in the northwestern province of North Pyongan were unmoved by the latest groundbreaking, a resident there told RFA.

“They wonder, ‘Will the new apartments go up on their own if we don’t even have construction materials yet? Even if we blindly set a goal and add manpower to speed things up?’” the second source said.

The second source noted that funds were collected from residents all over the country and tens of thousands of soldiers were mobilized to meet the construction goals for the capital in the middle of the pandemic. And still, the government failed to complete its goal.

“It may not even be completed until the Day of the Sun,” said the second source, referring to April 15, a major national holiday to commemorate the birth anniversary of North Korea’s late founder and Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

The 10,000-home construction project is a major priority for the North Korean government. RFA reported in June that authorities routed electricity away from other regions of the country to keep Pyongyang fully powered so construction workers could work through the night.

Working on the project has been grueling and dangerous for the mobilized workers. Pyongyang residents complained in May that the underfed workers were mugging civilians to get money for food. Additionally, a fire in a workers’ dormitory killed 20 workers in April, RFA reported.

Translated by Claire Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Doubts are growing around the official identification of a woman found chained in an outbuilding after being married to a resident of Jiangsu’s Feng county and bearing him eight children, Chinese commentators said on Tuesday.

An official investigation into the background of Yang Qingxia, who received a diagnosis of schizophrenia in the days after the video of her chained to a wall went viral on Chinese social media platforms, has identified her as “Xiao Meihua,” the nickname of a young woman who went missing in the southwestern province of Yunnan in the 1990s.

But social media users have been engaging in a little research of their own, and have taken issue with the claim, saying Yang’s photos more closely resemble a missing woman from Sichuan province, Li Ying.

An investigation team set up by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee and municipal government in nearby Xuzhou city claims that Yang originally hails from Yunnan’s Fugong county.

But freelance researchers say officials have yet to travel to the village they say Yang is from.

Xiao Meihua’s younger sister as said Yang is likely too old to be her older sister, who would be 43 this year, while Yang’s marriage certificate shows her to be 52.

Current affairs commentator Cai Shenkun said he didn’t believe that Yang’s marriage certificate photo resembled Xiao Meihua at all, while other online researchers said it more closely matched a photo of Li Ying.

“I saw the marriage certificate photo, and these are two different people,” Cai said. “Their ages don’t match, either … This is a very serious issue.”

Online comments said they believe Xiao Meihua, whose parents are now dead, was chosen as a convenient identity to give to Yang.

“Everyone suspects that Xiao Meihua is no longer alive,” Jiangsu commentator Zhang Jianping told RFA. “The photo of the marriage certificate … shows that Yang Qingxia is very likely Li Ying, the missing woman from Sichuan.”

More questions arise

But there is a problem with that story, too.

According to official statements, Yang, 52, allegedly gave birth to eight children in the space of 23 years following her marriage in 1998, with the eldest now 23 and the youngest 20 months old.

One of her children, the eldest son, was named Dong Xianggang to mark the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, but online researchers have also cast doubt on this claim, saying his mother could have been someone else entirely.

If Yang is indeed Li Ying, she would have been born in Sichuan’s Nanchong in 1984, before going missing in 1996 at the age of 12, making it unlikely that she gave birth to Dong Xianggang. Also, Yang’s age is given as 52, while Li Ying would only be 38.

Beijing-based criminal defense lawyer Mo Shaoping said the government could use DNA testing and other forms of technology to get to the bottom of Yang’s identity — if it wanted to.

“There is enough technology around now to use facial recognition to compare [Yang and Li’s] faces, and also to tell whether the photo on the marriage certificate is actually the woman who was chained up,” Mo said.

“There should be no barrier to doing this whatsoever … I hope a qualified agency will run a comparison to see if they really are the same person.”

The authorities have begun clamping down on public reporting and comments on Yang’s case.

Police detained two women who traveled to the village where Yang was found in Feng county, in a bid to help her, and are holding them on suspicion of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the CCP.

Viral video launches story

Meanwhile, two social media users known as @I can carry 120 pounds and @Sister Xiaomeng Xiaoquanquan said they had tried to make inquiries at the local police station.

“I went to report the case at the local police station, but they did nothing, even after I had sat there for six hours,” @I can carry 120 pounds wrote, wile @Sister Xiameng Xiaoquanquan wrote that she had “gotten myself caught up in so many inexplicable things” after going there to try to offer support to Yang.

And residents of Yueyang in the central province of Henan posted photos of themselves holding placards calling for a full investigation into the entire case.

In the original viral video, a woman identified as Yang Qingxia is shown sitting in a dilapidated outhouse at a rural property near Jiangsu’s Xuzhou city with a chain around her neck, as a citizen journalist asks her if she is getting enough to eat.

Local officials said Yang was diagnosed with schizophrenia following psychiatric consultations on Jan. 30, and is currently being treated with antipsychotic medication. But questions have also been raised about why local official supported the family for many years with financial and building subsidies.

Some pointed out that a number of local officials and Yang’s psychiatrist all shared the same family name — Qu — which appears first in official name listings in China.

RFA confirmed via official websites on Tuesday that Qu Ligui is currently deputy director of the Feng county finance bureau, a Qu Lixin serves as deputy director of the county civil affairs bureau, while Qu Shenpeng and Qu Liguo are CCP party secretary and deputy mayor of Huankou township, Feng county, respectively.

The chief psychiatrist responsible for Yang’s diagnosis is Qu Liquan.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Since 2017, the Chinese government has detained about 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in hundreds of “re-education camps” in Xinjiang in an effort to prevent possible religious extremism and terrorism among the mostly Muslim groups.

As anthropologist Darren Byler sees it, the mass detentions are part of China’s settler colonialism and resource extraction in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where about 12 million Uyghurs. His latest book Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City examines how China’s settler colonization of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi) has led to “terror capitalism” — a system that justifies oppression by branding Uyghurs a security threat to generate state investment in policing and surveillance technologies to monitor and control them.

Byler’s ethnographic fieldwork in Urumqi shows how the Chinese government’s imposition of ethnic majority Han Chinese values along with efforts to increase the number of Han settlers in the area have perpetuated Uyghur dispossession and expulsion from the city. He focuses on young Uyghur men, the main target of state brutality, and their development of tight social bonds as a protective measure.

Byler’s other book on Xinjiang, In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony, also published in 2021, examines China’s pervasive surveillance network in Xinjiang and is based on thousands of government documents and interviews with camp detainees and workers. The assistant professor of international studies at Canada’s Simon Fraser University discussed his books with reporter Nuriman Abdurashid from RFA’s Uyghur Service. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: You’ve written two books about the Uyghurs. Briefly summarize them.

Byler: One is called In the Camps. It’s about what has happened since 2017, when over a million people were put into camps, and what that has done to Uyghur and Kazakh society. This is a book that’s written for a general audience to help them understand what has happened. I’ve also written a longer book called Terror Capitalism, which is about the economic and political systems that led to the camp system, so it’s mostly about the beginning of the People’s War on Terror which started in 2014 and how that led to the camps.

RFA: Why were you interested in writing about the Uyghurs?

Byler: The second book [Terror Capitalism] is focused on the rise of an economic formation of a kind of security-industrial complex where the state has hired over 1,000 contractors — private companies — to build forms of surveillance that will begin to sort through Uyghur and Kazakh behavior and diagnose who is potentially a criminal. They are using Chinese counterterrorism laws, which are very broad and define things as terrorism that are not terrorism, that in any other context in the world would not be thought of as that. It is things like having WhatsApp on your phone, using a VPN, and having relatives who live abroad and sending them money — things that you know anyone would do in any other context and they wouldn’t be considered a crime for Muslims like those things now are. The technology systems are being used to determine if people have done those things. That’s what I’m looking at. I’m interested in how the companies benefit from those things. They benefit [not only] by receiving money, but also by receiving data which they can use to develop other products. There’s also the forced labor element that is built into the system as well, where the camps are used to control who is sent to work in factories.

RFA: What do you expect Terror Capitalism to accomplish?

Byler: The first three chapters focus on processes of enclosure devaluation and dispossession, which are all of the ways in which Uyghurs have been systematically targeted by this system. Two of the last three chapters focus on ways that Uyghurs survive [and] how they find where to live even as these things are being done to them. One of the things I found was that Uyghurs can really care for each other by sharing friendship [and] by telling their stories and remaining the author of their own history. By saying out loud what’s happened to you, you reclaim that knowledge as yours. That’s really powerful. I learned so much from the Uyghurs I met when I was living in Urumqi. They taught me what is really important about being a human because many of them were [living] in very precarious conditions. Some of them were being called on a daily [or] weekly basis to come back to their villages because the police were visiting their families and saying they must come back. Then if they did go back, they would disappear. But they felt like in the end that God would protect them. They also understood that they and their families and their friends cared for them, so that it wasn’t their burden alone. By sharing their pain, sharing their suffering with each other, they made each other stronger. I found that to be really beautiful. It was also very sad because I can write these stories, but in the end I can’t protect my friends. All we can do is to appeal to the world to say that this should never happen. … We can help people to tell their own stories and translate them for the world to understand that this is what’s happening to these people. A crime against humanity, which is what this is, is a crime against all of our humanity, so this should really hurt all of us, and we should grieve together and support each other as we respond to it.

RFA: What do you expect your readers to gain from your latest book?

Byler: What I want my readers to take away from the book is that what’s happening to the Uyghurs is similar to and related to older forms of settler colonialism that occurred in other places like in North America where Native Americans were colonized or in contemporary forms of colonialism like in Kashmir [and] Palestine. Even the technologies and tactics are being shared. It’s in many places. In the two places I mentioned, the Global War on Terror is being utilized as a tool to put those colonial systems in place. The same thing is happening in northwest China. That’s what I want readers to take away from this.… The decimation of Uyghur society is the most egregious form of settler colonialism that’s in the world right now. It also can be seen as a warning of the kind of things that could happen with the colonial systems in other places like Kashmir or Palestine. … I also want [readers] to understand that mass incarceration systems produce forms of dehumanization, that they have a logic and an economic logic that drives them. We see that happening in North America. We see it happening in China now. There are many places in the world where prisons are used to warehouse people that are unwanted. This is another example, an extreme example, of how those things happen and what effects they have.

Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.