Day: March 25, 2022

Widespread conflict since the military took control of Myanmar has increased the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to nearly 900,000, according to the United Nations, and aid workers say that worsening food shortages are pushing the country ever closer to the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

Earlier this week, the U.N. Humanitarian Office said that 519,900 people had been displaced by clashes between the military and anti-junta forces throughout the country of 54 million since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup, bringing the total of IDPs in Myanmar to 890,300.

The estimate of IDPs, which adds to the 370,400 people who had already fled conflict zones in Myanmar prior to the coup, came as a rights group called on foreign governments to take stronger action against the military’s widespread abuses in the lead up to Armed Forces Day celebrations planned by the junta for the weekend.

The agency said that civilians are suffering the consequences of escalated fighting in northwestern Myanmar’s Magway and Sagaing regions and the southeastern states of Kayah and Kayin, while aid groups have been hampered by tight security. The four areas are centers of fierce resistance to junta rule and have seen some of the worst violence since the coup.

An aid worker who spoke to RFA’s Myanmar service on condition of anonymity said refugees in the isolated Kayah townships of Demawso and Phruso have only poor-quality rice to eat each day because roadblocks erected amid the clashes had led to food shortages.

“The situation in Phruso is particularly bad. There’s been a severe food shortage there for a long time because they don’t have rice fields in the area and no rice can be transported there,” the worker said. “Even if you have money, you can’t buy rice anywhere.”

The worker added that those who have sought shelter in makeshift camps are also suffering from shortages of drinking water and medicine.

In Sagaing region, where the military is engaged in a scorched earth campaign, junta troops have attacked villages, setting some on fire and forcing residents to flee.

A resident of Shar Lwin village in Sagaing’s Khin Oo township, where 63 houses were recently destroyed by arson during a military raid, said inhabitants are too frightened to return to the area and are facing a water shortage while in hiding.

“Many villagers are in trouble. We are hiding in the forest and … as summer approaches, the major problem is water scarcity,” he said.

“There are health problems due to the change in climate. Not just our village, but all the villages in the area are suffering. I’m praying for a quick end to these troubles.”

In Khin Oo’s Kala Lu and Shar Lwin villages alone, troops set fire to at least 327 homes during the month of March, displacing an estimated 2,500 people.

In Southern Chin state’s Kanpetlet township, a week of intense fighting between the military and the anti-junta Kanpetlet Chin Defense Force (CDF) from March 10-17, forced more than 1,000 people from 10 villages to flee to the jungles, residents said — most of them with only the clothes on their backs. 

“Fighting has been going on for some time between the junta and the CDF and the military fired heavy weapons randomly into the area several times,” said one of the township’s residents, who also declined to be named.

“All the elderly, children and disabled are now hiding in the forests and mountains. When fighting broke out, people were not prepared, so they had to flee to safety in a rush with nothing they needed. Everyone is having a hard time without any food.”

Supply routes blocked

An official with the Chin Affairs Federation, who asked to be identified only as Mary, said the junta is actively blocking supplies to the area, exacerbating food shortages.

“People in the country are now living in fear. As soon as the soldiers enter a village, their priority is to destroy rice mills, if there are any. They always burn the rice mills first and then the barns,” she said.

“This is their strategy. When they cut off the food supplies, it becomes very difficult for people to survive. That’s the main problem facing IDPs in the country.”

She added that it was impossible to provide adequate assistance to refugees because of blocked food supply routes.

Ko Banyar, the director of the Karenni Human Rights Group, which helps refugees in Kayah state, called on the junta to reopen supply routes to alleviate hunger in the region.

“Food embargoes should never be imposed on IDPs emerging from conflict zones, regardless of the political situation,” he said. “The blockades must be reopened so that international aid can flow freely. These [IDPs] are the people of Myanmar, not enemies of the state.”

Ko Banyar also urged the U.N. to hold talks with the junta to ensure that refugees receive the help they desperately need.

The U.N. Humanitarian Office said staff have assisted refugees in northern Shan State but warned that the number of IDPs has increased drastically, as fighting intensified between the military and ethnic armed groups.

Last week, the agency said in a statement that despite an influx of humanitarian aid for 6.2 million non-IDPs in need of assistance, Myanmar has yet to receive funding for key sectors.

Marking Armed Forces Day

Also on Friday, New York-based Human Rights Watch called on concerned governments to strengthen economic sanctions against junta members and other senior military officers, as well as military-owned conglomerates, as it highlighted the military’s atrocities ahead of Armed Forces Day, observed in Myanmar on March 27.

The group also called for the United Nations Security Council to adopt a global arms embargo against Myanmar and refer the country situation to The Hague-based International Criminal Court over atrocities targeting civilians since the coup.

“Governments joining Myanmar’s Armed Forces Day celebrations are celebrating the military’s brutal suppression of its own people,” said Manny Maung, Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Governments should instead participate by enacting targeted sanctions against the generals and military businesses.”

On March 27, 2021, Myanmar security forces killed as many as 163 anti-coup protesters in deadly crackdowns in what is thought to be the bloodiest day of violence since military takeover.

Since the coup, security forces have killed people more than 1,700 civilians and arrested more than 9,900, according to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

On Thursday, a joint report by Fortify Rights and the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School identified 61 senior military and police officials who ordered abuses or are otherwise directly implicated in what it designated crimes against humanity in the first six months after the coup.

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration had imposed sanctions on five Myanmar nationals and five entities in response to the junta’s crackdown on civilians.

In a statement that highlighted the deadly violence in Myanmar on Armed Forces Day last year, Blinken said that the sanctions were levelled by the administration “to show our strong support for the people of [Myanmar], and to promote accountability in connection with the coup and the violence perpetrated by the regime.”

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Long lines of trucks have formed at the Chinese borders of Laos and Myanmar, held up by China’s restriction of imports in an effort to prevent more coronavirus outbreaks, sources in both Southeast Asian countries told RFA.

In Myanmar’s eastern border town of Muse, exports to China of seven types of goods — including rice, chilies and eels — have been suspended since March 15, resulting in a backup of more than 70 trucks, border traders there told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

“From the very beginning, it has been very difficult to trade with the Chinese side because of the high cost and the frequent changes in the system,” Than Bo Oo, general secretary of the Muse Rice Commodity Exchange, told RFA. “Lately, most of the goods being moved are those left over from recent months. No new shipments have come from the mainland.”

“We are still adjusting to the system changes. The cost of shipping from the border now seems higher than the cost of shipping on the seas,” he said.

Some of the trucks have opted to unload their cargo into warehouses along the Muse border rather than wait around for China to ease the restrictions, he said.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, border traders were able to export 40,000 to 60,000 bags of rice a day. Prior to last week’s restrictions, only two or three 12-wheelers with 50 tons of rice could get into China each day, the traders told RFA. Now none are crossing.

Fisheries products are now being sent to China through the air because the land route is inaccessible, Tai Kyaw said.

Khun Min Thant blamed China’s policy of delegating responsibility for local COVID-19 policies for the back-up at the border. He said that local Chinese officials in areas near the Myanmar are quick to stop imports to show they are trying to respond to outbreaks. They worry that doing nothing would put their jobs in jeopardy.

“Two mayors already lost their positions in Ruili in connection with COVID surges. So if only one or two people are found infected, they order a complete lockdown,” Khun Min Thant said “Under these circumstances, our losses will continue.

More than 200 trucks have been stopped at the border by Chinese authorities in Kachin State, just north of Muse.

The recurring opening and closing of the border since trade officially resumed in November last year has been a headache for Myanmar traders. RFA reported in January that after an abrupt closing, trucks carrying watermelons decided to dump their cargo near the border rather than wait around for the fruit to spoil.

China is fighting its worst COVID-19 outbreak since the Wuhan mass infections at the start of the pandemic, with authorities struggling to contain the highly contagious omicron variant under the Chinese Communist Party’s controversial “dynamic zero-COVID” policy.

An estimated 50 million people had been placed under lockdown in various cities and districts across the country as of last week.

Figures for lockdowns in Yunnan, the Chinese province bordering Laos and Myanmar, were not immediately available. But local media said Chinese authorities closed a fruit market in the border town of Ruili after a cluster of transmissions was reported on March 8.

Thaung Naing, an assistant secretary at the Ministry of Commerce, told RFA that officials with the ruling military junta are working to get China to lift the various restrictions on Myanmar goods.

RFA attempted to contact the Chinese embassy in Yangon but received no response.

According to figures from the Myanmar Ministry of Commerce, cross-border trade between Myanmar and China totaled $5.47 billion for 2020. But it slumped to only $3.13 billion last year.

Laos’ logjam

The backup of trucks at the Chinese border in Laos remains agonizingly long for drivers trying to get their goods into China, with disputes over access spilling into fistfights between Lao and Chinese truckers. Even as trade between the countries resumed, China imposed a number of precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus, including reducing the number of trucks that can cross over the border gate at Boten.

“It’s been a parking lot from Nampheng Village all the way to the Boten border gate for almost six months now,” a Lao truck driver told RFA’s Lao Service, describing a backup of about 25 miles.

“It takes us more than 14 days to get to our destination in China,” he said.

Another trucker told RFA that the authorities must solve the congestion at the border soon, because most of the trucks are carrying produce.

“Some products have an expiration date, and they won’t be accepted by the Chinese. For example, vegetables, watermelons, bananas and chilies are quickly perishable. The dry produce like corn and cassava is OK though,” he said.

But a Lao customs official at the Boten gate told RFA that traffic at the border has improved, due to the reopening of another gate in a different province.

The recently opened $6 billion Lao-China Railway should help alleviate the border backup by reducing demand for truck freight. But most Lao goods cannot be shipped to China along the high-speed rail connecting the Lao capital Vientiane to China’s rail network, a Lao import-export expert who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told RFA.

“Only the Chinese goods are coming to Laos [via train]. We have to wait until the Lao goods are allowed,” he said.

Lao minerals, cassava and cassava powder are allowed in the cargo bays on the train, he said.

For those whose goods are in the clear, the railway has been great for business, a mineral exports worker told RFA.

“We ship our on the train to China every day,” he said. “We ship the freight in containers it takes no more than 30 hours to reach the destination. We’ve all switched to the railway to ship our products because it’s faster and cheaper.”

An official of the Lao Ministry of Industry and Trade explained that Laos was negotiating with China to open train freight to more types of Lao products.

“Of course, we want to ship more goods, especially agricultural products such as vegetables, bananas, watermelons and rubber by train to China. We don’t know how long the negotiation will last or when it will end,” the official said.

The Vientiane Times reported this week that the Lao government has promised to get more investment from China in an effort to boost exports.

Key to their strategy will be making the train available to Lao goods headed for China. The report said in the railway’s first 100 days, more than 360 cross-border trains transported 280,000 tons of freight to Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Bangladesh.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane and Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong. 

Two Uyghur men arbitrarily detained in Saudi Arabia since November 2020 are believed to be at risk of being forcibly repatriated to China, an international rights group said Wednesday.

Religious scholar Hamidulla Wali (in Chinese, Aimidoula Waili) and his roommate Nurmemet Rozi (Nuermaimaiti Ruze) traveled to the country from Turkey on a Muslim religious pilgrimage to Mecca and were arrested on Nov. 20. Authorities allegedly have never told them why they were arrested and detained, according to rights groups.

Family members of the two men told London-based Amnesty International on March 16 that Wali and Rozi had been transferred from Jeddah to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, in a move they believed was a precursor to extradition.

A source who declined to be identified for safety reasons told RFA on Friday that Saudi authorities revoked Rozi’s Saudi Arabian residency card on Wednesday and sent an official notice about it to his local sponsor.

Amnesty has urged Saudi authorities to stop plans to extradite the two Uyghur men to China, saying they would be at high risk of torture given the government’s crackdown on Muslim minorities in the country’s far-western Xinjiang region.

“If sent to China, it is highly likely that these two men will be subjected to arbitrary detention and torture in Xinjiang’s network of repressive internment camps or prisons, where hundreds of thousands of other Uyghurs have faced grave human rights violations,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement.

She noted that under international law, the Saudi government has an obligation not to extradite Wali and Rozi to China.

“The Saudi authorities should halt all plans to deport the men and immediately release them from detention, unless they are to be charged with a recognizable criminal offence,” Maalouf said.

The Saudi government has publicly supported China’s antiterrorism measures in what rights activists have said is a tacit approval of the crackdown on predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang.

Saudi authorities have returned other Uyghurs back to China after they traveled to the country for work or to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Nuriman Hamidulla, Wali’s daughter, told RFA on Friday that her father is in danger.

“From what we hear now from our source in Saudi is that there is a huge risk of deportation and the source says maybe international organizations and media can help us by publicizing their cases,” she said.

Nuriman also said she met with a lawyer in Turkey about how to prevent them from being deported, but that there is no way to do so in Saudi Arabia using legal channels. Through the lawyer in Turkey, Wali’s family contacted the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Ankara, but no one responded.

“From what we know from the past is that the Uyghurs who were deported back to China from Saudi Arabia were all first transferred to a prison in Riyadh, then they were deported back to China,” she said.

Turkish authorities told Wali’s family that they can do nothing because Wali is not a Turkish citizen even though he holds a long-term residence permit.

In a previous RFA report, Wali said he arrived in Saudi Arabia in February 2020 to perform the umrah hajj, a form of the holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that can be made at any point during the year. He also said he was unable to return to Turkey, where he has been a resident since 2016, after travel routes were shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

At the time, Wali also told RFA that a source in Saudi Arabia had informed him that Chinese authorities made an official request to the Saudi government to arrest and deport him to China, though he did not elaborate on the reason. He said he was also advised to go into hiding shortly before police first began looking for him in July.

Wali, the former owner of Hadiya Clothing, was arrested in Xinjiang in August 2013 after one of his factory employees was accused of inciting protesters to attack police stations. He spent several months in prison, where he was tortured, but eventually was declared innocent of participating in the deadly riot.

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

The Philippine Coast Guard said Friday it had seen more Filipino fishermen operating off a rich fishing ground in Manila’s exclusive economic zone, describing this as a “significant milestone” because China has effectively controlled South China Sea waters in that area for the past decade.

A patrol ship had monitored around 45 Filipino fishing boats in the Scarborough Shoal between Feb. 25 and March 5 – the highest number observed since 2012, when China took control of the area – according to Adm. Artemio Abu, the coast guard commandant.

In a statement, the coast guard confirmed “the increasing presence of Filipino fishermen” in the area and said that it had also kept watch and provided the Filipino fishermen with relief supplies.

“Seeing more Filipino fishing boats in Bajo de Masinloc is a proof of our intensified efforts to safeguard Filipino fishermen who consider fishing as their primary source of livelihood,” Abu said using the Filipino name for Scarborough Shoal, a triangular shaped rocky outcrop.

“Through our regular interaction, we assure them that the PCG [Philippine Coast Guard] will remain active and present in the area. We always assure them that we are here to protect their welfare and promote their safety),” Abu added.

Meanwhile, the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) stressed the need to encourage Filipino fishermen to catch fish in the traditional fishing grounds. The Philippine name for the South China Sea is the West Philippine Sea.

In 2012, the Philippine Coast Guard engaged Chinese ships in a stand-off over the Scarborough Shoal. China reneged on a deal to leave the region, and its ships stayed put.

A year later, Manila filed a case against Beijing over the issue. In a landmark verdict in 2016, the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines and threw out China’s expansive territorial claims in the sea region.

However, Beijing has ignored the ruling and has since maintained a presence in the shoal.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who came to power in 2016 just weeks after the ruling, has pursued appeasement with China instead of working to enforce the court’s decision, agreeing to put the issue on the back burner until only recently. He will be leaving office after the Philippine general election in May.

Still, South China Sea observers say that China has been continuing with its expansionism in the maritime region.

In June 2019, a Chinese vessel rammed a Filipino fishing boat in Reed Bank, another region in the South China Sea that lies within the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The Chinese crew left 22 Philippine fishermen stranded at sea until a passing Vietnamese boat rescued them.

Last month, a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) reconnaissance ship was said to have been chased out of Philippine waters near the Sulu Sea. Beijing insisted it was an “innocent passage” guaranteed under an international convention on the law of the seas.

Opposition lawmakers have sought a congressional inquiry into the recent incursion by the PLAN vessel.

“The repeated and unwanted incursions of Chinese vessels into Philippine territory not only raises serious concerns, but flagrant violations of the country’s national sovereignty and security,” said a joint statement by leftist lawmakers Carlos Isagani Zarate, Eufemia Cullamat, and Ferdinand Gaite.

“These acts brazenly disregard Philippine authority over its territory, thus these should be condemned and investigated,” the lawmakers said.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea as its own, but five other Asian governments – Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam – have territorial claims in the disputed waterway.

While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the sea overlapping Indonesia’s EEZ.

Separately on Friday, Rear Adm. Jeffrey Anderson, commander of aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, referred to the Philippines and other Asian allies when he said that the U.S. Navy’s presence in the South China Sea demonstrates “our commitment to the region as we continue to protect our collective interests, enhance our security and safeguard our shared values.”

Anderson commented days before treaty allies Washington and Manila are set to hold their largest joint military training exercise since 2016, involving nearly 9,000 troops that will focus on training in maritime security, amphibious operations, live-fire, and counterterrorism exercises. 

The 37th Balikatan, which means shoulder-to-shoulder in Tagalog, begins on March 28 and ends on April 8 at training sites in Luzon, the Philippines’ main island. 

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Authorities in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City arrested businesswoman and social media influencer Nguyen Phuong Hang for livestreaming videos critical of celebrities, police announced Thursday.

Hang, the CEO of the Dai Nam Joint Stock Company, was taken in on charges of “abusing the rights to freedom and democracy.” Police said they arrested Hang for “insulting and foul language to offend the honor and dignity of others, including artists,” on her popular YouTube channel.

Her videos criticizing celebrities and politicians have made her an internet sensation, with each post garnering hundreds of thousands of views.

In a video livestreamed two days before her arrest, Hang talked extensively about her business relationship with Phan Van Mai, the current chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, when he was a politician in the southern province of Ben Tre. 

She said that when he was serving as the secretary of the Ben Tre Party Committee in 2020, her company had provided water treatment systems to help the province to cope with increased salinization, a constant problem in the Mekong River delta region due to climate change and upstream development. 

“[Phan Van Mai] has been ungrateful to my husband and me,” said Hang, who added that she went public about their dealings so that Vietnam’s top leaders would see Mai’s true colors, making him ineligible for promotion to even higher positions. 

Hang has been charged with violating Article 331 of the Vietnamese penal code, a law which international human rights organizations have said is a tool for the government to silence dissenting voices and restrict freedom of speech. 

Hang’s arrest was unjustifiable, a Vietnamese lawyer, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service via text messages.

“If the government takes what she has done as an abuse of the rights to freedom and democracy, many other people could be accused in a similar way for their statements,” the lawyer said.

The lawyer said the subjects of Hang’s criticism could file a civil case against her, but she should not be jailed for offering her opinions.

“Whoever was offended or insulted by Hang can sue her. The case should not be criminalized,” he said. 

 Applying Article 331 as it has been in Hang’s case could lead to complaints from people who want someone that they have a grudge against to go to jail.

“For example, you and I have personal animosity against each other, and you report to the police that I have violated Article 331. As a result, I can be arrested and put into prison,” he said.

In January 2022, civil society groups in Vietnam composed a joint petition, calling for the removal of three penal code articles, including 331, because they are often used arbitrarily to crack down on political dissidents.

Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

North Korea conducted its 11th missile test of the year on March 24, firing what is believed to be its first intercontinental ballistic missile since 2017 and possibly its longest-range missile to date. The barrage of banned weapons comes as the nation of 25 million people faces food and fuel shortages so severe that the government warned last year to prepare for hardship to rival the Arduous March, what North Koreans euphemistically call the 1994-1998 famine that killed millions. Experts believe that missile tests cost between $1 million and $1.5 million a pop, putting a strain on an economy reeling from the closure since early 2020 of its border with China to fight COVID-19.