Day: February 23, 2022

The European Union has stepped up its strategic engagement with the Indo-Pacific by convening an inaugural meeting with the region’s top diplomats and then affirming the bloc’s commitment to freedom of navigation and international law – an apparent rebuke of China.

At the Ministerial Forum for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, which took place in Paris on Tuesday, the EU announced the extension of the concept of a coordinated maritime presence in the north-west Indian Ocean, to support regional stability and security. That would ensure a permanent and visible European naval presence and outreach.

“This will allow the EU to further support stability and security in the Indo-Pacific region, to optimize naval deployments, to promote coherence of European action and to facilitate the exchange of information and cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific, including by conducting joint maritime exercises and port calls,” according to a statement issued at the end of the meeting.

Top diplomats from 30 Indo-Pacific counties and 27 foreign ministers from EU member-states took part in the meeting hosted by France, this year’s president of the Council of the European Union. The United States and China were not at the forum in the French capital.

The forum “highlighted the shared ambition among participants to: reaffirm their commitment to a rules-based international order, democratic values and principles, as well as to the strengthening of multilateralism and the rule of law, respect for international law, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” the statement said.

Participants also agreed to work towards peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, which has become a pre-eminent geopolitical theater as Washington responds to an increasingly assertive Beijing in the disputed South China Sea. China has never accepted a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that Beijing’s expansive “historical claims” in the waterway have no legal basis.

The Indo-Pacific meanwhile has become strategically important for the EU, which is the top investor in the region, according to the European Commission (EC).

Together, the Indo-Pacific and Europe command more than 70 percent of the global trade in goods and services, as well as more than 60 percent of foreign-direct investment flows, the EC said on its website.

However, the commission warned, the growing geopolitical rivalry could threaten this increasingly robust trade and investment relationship.

“[C]urrent dynamics in the Indo-Pacific have given rise to intense geopolitical competition adding to increasing tensions on trade and supply chains as well as in technological, political and security areas” the commission said.

“This is the reason why the EU has decided to step up its strategic engagement with the Indo-Pacific region.”

The statement issued after Tuesday’s meeting highlighted this point.

“The EU participants reiterated the importance of the Indo-Pacific region for Europe and underlined their support for an increased and long-term engagement of the EU and its member-states through concrete actions,” the statement said.

“The role of the outermost regions and European overseas countries and territories in the Indo-Pacific was highlighted in this respect,” the statement said, referring to France which has territories in the region.

The Indo-Pacific is home to nearly 2 million French citizens and 9 million square kilometers (3.47 million square miles) of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Stability in the region has been threatened lately through alleged incursions by Chinese research ships, maritime militia and aircraft in the EEZs or of Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, respectively.

Six Asian governments have territorial claims or maritime boundaries in the South China Sea that overlap with the sweeping claims of China.

They are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s minister of foreign affairs who attended the meeting, said she reiterated that international law “must be respected.”

“Peace, stability and respect for international law must be at the center of regional cooperation and all discussions,” she told a virtual news conference from Paris on Wednesday.

“Indonesia emphasized the importance of cooperation and collaboration amidst deepening rivalry that could lead to open conflict,” she said, adding, “Indonesia sees the Indo-Pacific as a vast sea of opportunity too large to be dominated by any one country. Therefore, mutual security, mutual stability, and common prosperity must be a public good.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Workers detained for striking against the NagaWorld Casino in Phnom Penh said they are being held in squalid conditions and must agree to stop gathering in protest as a condition of their release.

A copy of a document Cambodian authorities are pressuring the detained workers to sign was shared with RFA. It says that if the workers continue their “illegal activities,” government officials will take additional administrative and legal measures against them, without exception.

“They tried to force me to sign the document, [but] I didn’t sign it because I didn’t do anything wrong,” said worker Meach Srey Oun. “It is very unjust.”

Meach Srey Oun was one of 51 striking workers detained by City Hall officials on Wednesday. The workers, who are striking against the NagaWorld Casino, were put on a bus by officials from City Hall at about 2 p.m., the workers said.

The workers said they are forced to sleep on the dirty ground and do not have access to clean water but so far have refused to sign the document, despite pressure from authorities.

Thousands of NagaWorld employees walked off their jobs in mid-December, demanding higher wages and the reinstatement of eight jailed union leaders and nearly 370 others they said were unjustly fired from the casino, which is owned by a company based in Hong Kong.

Cambodian authorities said the strike is illegal and allege that it was supported by foreign donors as a plot to topple the government. Phnom Penh City Hall later ordered the workers to stop the strike to protect, it said, against the spread of the coronavirus.

That order was followed by a number of detentions and labor activists see the City Hall directive as a means of breaking up the strike. Authorities detained more than 100 striking workers on Monday and Tuesday for allegedly violating the COVID-19 protocols and said they would have to pay heavy fines to be released.

Siek Kanha is one of the 51 workers detained Wednesday who add to the total detained. She said four employees have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus and were taken to a hospital. She also said that conditions at the holding center are miserable.

“This is an abandoned place, [and] there is no water,” she told RFA. “I haven’t gotten a chance to take a shower.”

Siek Kanha said the 51 workers have been kept apart from another 39 casino workers who remain detained from previous roundups.

The group she is in was not given food until 8 p.m., and authorities didn’t allow their family members to deliver clean clothes to them, she added.

“I don’t have the money to pay the fine,” she said, adding that she and others have twice tested negative for COVID. “We don’t have jobs now.”

RFA could not reach City Hall officials for contact.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hunan have formally arrested prominent rights lawyer Xie Yang for subversion, after he  supported a primary teacher forced into psychiatric “treatment” for her outspoken comments on social media.

Hunan teacher Li Tiantian was held for several days in a psychiatric hospital after she spoke out over the expulsion of a Shanghai journalism lecturer who encouraged her students to verify official accounts of the Nanjing massacre.

Xie was detained more than a month ago, with sources suggesting his online support for Li to have been a factor, but also citing a video he posted containing a satirical reference to ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping.

According to a notice sent by the Changsha municipal police department to Xie’s family, Xie was formally arrested on Feb. 17 on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power,” and is currently being held at the Changsha No. 1 Detention Center.

Xie’s friend Cheng Xiaofeng said Xie had posted a video of pigs being slaughtered to Twitter and Moments, with a caption referring to a “200-pound pig,” an apparent reference to Xi’s claim that he had carried 200 jin (120 kilos) of wheat for 10 miles along a mountain road without switching shoulders.

“Everyone laughed at that, because yes, he could probably lift 200 jin, but walking 10 miles along a mountain path without shifting shoulders would be impossible,” Cheng told RFA.

“In mainland China, if you mention 200 jin, everyone knows you’re talking about this,” he said. “Xie Yang added this phrase to his video, which by itself would have been nothing. The key is the text that went with the video, which did have a meaning.”

Cheng said it is unlikely that any of China’s embattled human rights lawyers will be allowed to represent Xie.

“In cases like this, the lawyer is usually appointed by the government; we did try, but the police weren’t having it,” he said.  

Cheng said Xie’s fellow lawyers had tried to send him money, with a number visiting his family in Changsha to offer support from around China.

“Xie Yang has constantly worked for social justice over the years, kept working, kept speaking up … so we should try to do something for him, now.”

Xie, whose license to practice law was revoked by Chinese officials after he reported being tortured in detention, has also been an outspoken supporter of jailed citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, whose family say she is close to death following months of hunger strike.

Hunan rights activist Ouyang Jinghua said Xie has long been seen as a thorn in the side of the CCP, but that he had done nothing wrong.

“The whole charge of subversion of state power is a false proposition,” Ouyang said. “How did he subvert it? Using what?”

“The CCP probably hate him because he is still a very influential lawyer in Hunan,” he said.

Hunan authorities released Li Tiantian from a psychiatric hospital Dec. 27, 2021, following a public outcry over her detention, but restrictions on her freedom remain.

Li, who was pregnant at the time of her detention, thanked people for their concern after being discharged from the Yongshun Country Psychiatric Hospital, but has said she won’t be giving any media interviews.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Twelve members of a Christian family in southern Laos were attacked and driven from their home this month by villagers angered by the group’s practice of a “foreign religion,” family members and other sources said.

The attack was the latest in a string of similar assaults and legal moves against Christians in the one-party communist state with a mostly Buddhist population despite a national law protecting the free exercise of their faith.

The Feb. 9 attack in Savannakhet province’s Dong Savanh village in which the family home was burned down followed an earlier attack on the funeral of the family’s father, his widow Seng Aloun — now the family head — told RFA on Monday.

“My husband died on Dec. 4 last year, and we took his body to the village cemetery two days later, but the villagers wouldn’t allow us to bury him there. They struck his coffin with wooden sticks and hit my family members too,” she said.

“Later, we buried my husband’s body on Dec. 7 in our own rice field. But the villagers then burned down my home on Feb. 9 and seized our rice field the next day. They just want to get rid of us.”

The family had been evicted from their village once before in 2017, Seng Aloun said. “Village residents and local authorities don’t like us because we believe in Jesus Christ. They don’t want us here. They say they don’t like the religion of a foreign country.”

Police from Savannakhet’s Phalanxay district came on Tuesday to where the family now stays with relatives to ask about the burning of the family’s home and seizure of their field, but also told Seng Aloun to remove social media posts and videos she had posted describing the incident and the earlier attack on her husband’s funeral, she said.

A district official told RFA on Feb. 18 that Phalanxay authorities were aware of the incident and had set up a team to investigate. “But our initial information is that this is a personal conflict, not a religious one,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.

“We are now looking for the person or persons who burned the family’s home, even if they are authorities in the village. Whoever did the burning will be punished according to the law,” he added.

‘They really don’t like us’

Other Christians living in Savannakhet voiced concern over the treatment of Seng Aroun and her family, noting that the Dong Savanh village chief had joined in the Dec. 6 attack on her husband’s funeral, leaving two family members injured.

“Where are the authorities? Where are the police?” the province resident asked. “They should be helping the family. The family is now living with relatives and want their land back so that they can work on it,” he said.

“They really don’t like us,” another local Christian added.

“For example, if we go to village authorities and ask them to sign a document, they turn their back on us and won’t do it. The police always side with village authorities and other villagers too, so we have nowhere else to turn for help,” he said.

Other conflicts unresolved

Similar conflicts in other Lao villages, districts and provinces have gone unresolved, a member of the country’s Evangelical Church added, saying that local authorities won’t tolerate other religions in their largely Buddhist and animist communities.

In October 2020, authorities in Saravan province’s Ta Oy district, in the country’s south, evicted seven Christians and destroyed their homes when they would not renounce their faith.

In March that year, Pastor Sithon Thippavong, a Lao Christian leader in Savannakhet’s Chonnabouly district, was arrested for refusing to sign a document renouncing his Christian faith and was later jailed for a year on charges of “disrupting unity” and “creating disorder.”

Two years earlier, four Lao Christians and three Christian leaders were detained for seven days in Savannakhet’s Phin district for celebrating Christmas without permission.

Lao Christians are allowed by the country’s Law on the Evangelical Church, approved and signed in Laos on Dec. 19, 2019, to conduct services and preach throughout the country and to maintain contacts with believers in other countries.

But in practice, the law appears to apply only in the capital Vientiane and in other large cities, while Christians in the rural areas remain subject to disrespect by the general public and discrimination at the hands of local authorities, sources say.

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Internet censors in China have ordered news outlets and social media accounts to avoid posting anything critical of Russia or favorable to NATO, after Russia began moving troops across the border into Ukraine, prompting a flurry of international sanctions against the country’s leaders.

“With immediate effect, regarding all Weibo posts about Ukraine: Horizon News to post first [on this topic], to be reposted by other major accounts,” a directive from the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s central propaganda department posted to Weibo ordered.

“No pro-Western posts, no posts critical of Russia. All initial copy to be reviewed by us [the CCP propaganda department] prior to posting,” the order, quoted by a video account linked to the Beijing News, said.

“Comments must be selectively moderated, and only appropriate comments must be published,” the order said. “Anyone publishing content will be deemed responsible for it, and genuine care must be taken. Each post much be watched for at least two days, and great care must be taken when handing over [to the incoming shift].”

The order, which was published by the China Digital Times, which curates and publishes similar directives under its “Ministry of Truth” column, said all topics should be confined to stories already published by Xinhua, the People’s Daily and CCTV.

Former Beijing News founding editor Cheng Yizhong confirmed the order was genuine.

“This is a multimedia account managed by the Beijing News … and it doesn’t just apply to them, but to other media as well,” Cheng said. “It’s always the case during a major international conflict that only opinions from Xinhua, CCTV and the People’s Daily may be published.”

“It’s one size fits all,” Cheng said.

Calls to the Beijing News rang unanswered during office hours on Wednesday, with a request for an interview to a senior editor going unanswered at the time of writing. An employee who answered the phone at the central propaganda department said they couldn’t answer questions over the phone.

A senior Chinese journalist who requested anonymity said the directive is necessary because Chinese nationalists hold a number of grievances against Russia, including the claim that the country occupies “huge swathes” of Chinese territory.

Swift deletion of criticism

He said the propaganda directive was likely posted in error.

“Anti-Russian comments won’t get through on social media … even the comments will be cleaned up,” the journalist said. “The attitude of intellectuals hasn’t changed, but any criticism of Russia gets deleted from Weibo.”

He said Chinese investors generally avoid investing in Russia.

“Investors aren’t bullish about Russia at all, and they have all the information; they watch the markets,” he said. “You can make a lot of money by betting against Russia on investment markets; they think life there will get very miserable under sanctions, and this could even bring Putin down.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Wednesday accused the U.S. of “adding fuel to the fire” by sending weapons to Ukraine.

“Lately the US has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” Hua told a regular news briefing in Beijing, referring to the U.S. as the “culprit.”

“If someone keeps pouring oil on the flames while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral,” Hua said.

Hua’s colleague Wang Wenbin said on Feb. 22 that “the legitimate security concerns of any country should be respected,” but called for dialogue and negotiation.

Foreign minister Wang Yi is known to be concerned about any eastward expansion of NATO, according to current affair commentator Guo Chonglun, but China has generally not been openly supportive of Russian incursions into Ukraine, nor its 2014 occupation of Crimea.

“China is facing a dilemma on this right now, because Putin has torn up the Minsk agreement, and forcibly separated [Moscow-backed Donetsk and Luhansk, or Donbas, from Ukraine],” Guo told RFA. “Yet China has yet to recognize Crimea as being part of Russia.”

Taiwan worries

Guo said “China is worried that in future, the U.S. might do the same to Taiwan,” in reference to the democratic island that has never been ruled by the CCP, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China.

“Everyone is watching to see how China chooses its words … no country, not even an ally as close as Russia, should just destroy other people’s territorial integrity; that’s the crux of the matter,” Guo said.

Taiwan defense expert Shen Ming Shih agreed that Russia’s actions have a close bearing on Taiwan.

“If Russia is allowed to unilaterally recognize the independence of those two territories, then the U.S. could also recognize Taiwan as an independent, sovereign nation at some point in the future, should the CCP want to invade,” Shen told RFA.

“This is not a good thing for the CCP … currently, the U.S. neither recognizes Taiwan as an independent country, nor opposes its independence.”

While China and Russia are currently close allies, China will also be unwilling to set itself against the E.U. and NATO, as well as the U.S., Shen said.

Ting-hui Lin, deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan International Law Society, said Putin is unlikely to be deterred, given the massive public approval ratings his 2014 invasion of Crimea garnered.

“Putin sees his task as restoring the former glory of the old, imperialist Russia,” Lin said. “He doesn’t want to invade Eastern Europe or the rest of Europe, or the U.S., or China; he wants to … shore up the stability of his regime at home.”

Lin said CCP leader Xi Jinping could use an invasion of Taiwan in a similar manner, and that the Ukraine crisis for Xi could be a test of U.S. resolve when it came to defending the island against a Chinese invasion.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.