Day: April 5, 2022

Two more Uyghurs — a mother and her daughter — are in danger of being deported from Saudi Arabia back to China, where they could face severe punishment at the hands of authorities there, an international human rights group said.

Police detained Buhalchem (in Chinese, Buheliqiemu) Abula and her 13-year-old daughter near the holy city of Mecca on March 31 and told them that they faced deportation to China along with two Uyghur men already held, according to a message received by Abula’s friends, London-based Amnesty International said in a statement on Monday.

One of the men held, Nurmemet Rozi (Nuermaimaiti Ruze), is Abula’s former husband and father of the 13-year who are now also being held. Rozi and Hamidulla Wali (Aimidoula Waili), a religious scholar, have been detained without charge in Saudi Arabia since November 2020.

The two men traveled to Saudi Arabia from Turkey on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca and were arrested, though authorities allegedly never told them why they were being held, RFA reported in March. Family members of the two men told Amnesty that the pair had been transferred from Jeddah to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, in a move they believed was a precursor to extradition.

“Buhalchem and her daughter were detained in the evening of March 31,” Wali’s daughter, Nuriman Hamdulla, told RFA. “I spoke to her as she and her daughter were taken away. They were given no reason for the detention. We’re not sure where they’re detained now.”

“They’re innocent,” she said. “They must be detained at the request of the Chinese government because they didn’t break any law.”

Hamdulla also said that she had not received a response from the Saudi authorities about whether her father and Rozi had been sent back to China.

“Deporting these four people — including a child — to China, where Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are facing a horrific campaign of mass internment, persecution and torture, would be an outrageous violation of international law,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“With time seemingly running out to save the four Uyghurs from this catastrophic extradition, it is crucial that other governments with diplomatic ties to Saudi Arabia step in now to urge the Riyadh authorities to uphold their obligations and stop the deportations,” she said.

Rights groups, the United Nations and some Western countries have denounced China’s persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang. China is believed to have detained about 1.8 million people in a network of internment camps across the region, with survivors reporting forced labor, torture and rape.

Call for international action

Under the international law principle of nonrefoulement and as a state party to the U.N. Convention against Torture, Saudi Arabia is prohibited from returning people to countries where they would face torture, cruel punishment, persecution or other serious harm.

Alkan Akad, Amnesty’s China researcher, told RFA that the Uyghurs would likely face arbitrary detention and torture if they were deported to China.

“They would be taken to internment camps, and the daughter also would be forcibly separated from her family,” he said. “And so, we call on the Saudi government to release them immediately unless there is international recognizable crime they are charged with.”

An official at the office of the Permanent Mission of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations in New York told RFA that the country’s “policy on the Uyghur issue is very clear in all our statements,” but said that she was not responsible for the issue.

Amnesty also called on the international community, especially the United States and the United Kingdom as strategic allies of Saudi Arabia, to take action to prevent the illegal extradition of the Uyghurs to China.

The call came after two U.N. experts, Fernand de Varennes and Ahmed Shaheed, urged Saudi Arabia on April 1 to abide by the nation’s nonrefoulement obligations and to refrain from extraditing Rozi and Wali.

“We are alarmed by the arrest of two Uyghur men in Saudi Arabia, since November 2020, and their continuous detention without proper legal justification or implementation of fundamental safeguards, reportedly on the basis of an extradition request made by China,” the experts said in a statement.

“Detention should remain an exceptional measure subject to an individual assessment and regular judicial review, otherwise Saudi Arabia would be depriving the two men of their fundamental rights provided for under national and international law,” they said.

De Varennes and Shaheed also requested that Saudi authorities immediately allow the two men to contact their families.

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.

“We call on the Saudi authorities to immediately release the detained Uyghurs and refrain from deporting them to China, a country that’s committing active genocide against Uyghur Muslims,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress in Germany. “We urge the Saudi government to allow the Uyghurs to leave for a third safe country.”

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

Indonesians’ views on China have worsened since 2011 but they’re not too fond of the West either, according to the results of a new poll released by an independent Australian think-tank Tuesday.

About 60 percent Indonesians either strongly agreed, or agreed, that Indonesia should join other countries to limit China’s influence – an increase of 10 points since a survey in 2011 – showed the poll conducted by the Lowy Institute.

But should conflict break out between the United States and China, about 84 percent of those polled said Indonesia must remain neutral. Only four percent said Jakarta should support Washington and 1 percent said it should support Beijing.

“The polling results reveal that the citizens of the world’s third most populous democracy are optimistic about the future but wary of the great powers that are seeking to court them,” said the report on the poll’s results.

Indonesia, the largest and most populous nation in Southeast Asia, was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement at the height of the Cold War and still retains a non-aligned foreign policy.

While neither of the superpowers in the early 21^st century came out as favorites, China’s position fared worse than that of the U.S., noted Evan Laksmana, one of the report’s authors.

“On U.S.-China, across 16 questions (representing a range of hard to soft power indicators), we can see that the latter’s standing has declined worse compared to the former. Even in areas traditionally seen as China’s forte like foreign investment,” he wrote on Twitter.

For instance, the percentage of those who said China’s growth was good for Indonesia fell to 43 percent of those polled from 54 percent in the 2011, the latest survey showed.  

About 47 percent said the emergence of China as a world power posed a critical threat, a seven-point increase from 2011. And nearly half (49 percent) saw China as a threat to their country in the next decade, compared with 43 percent for the U.S. and 34 percent for Australia.

The Lowy Institute said it interviewed 3,000 respondents in 33 Indonesian provinces during the poll that it conducted between November and December last year.

Less support for Western investment

The survey also revealed that questions on Chinese investment elicited the most negative reaction and Saudi Arabia the most positive. Additionally, confidence in neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore was high.

As many as 57 percent of respondents favored Saudi Arabia buying a controlling stake in a large Indonesian company, while 53 percent of respondents said they support investment from Japan and Singapore.

Support for Western investments was less than for other countries, with four in 10 people favoring investment from the United States (42 percent), Australia (41 percent) and the Netherlands (37 percent).

Three in 10 Indonesians (31 percent) said that the government allowed too much investment and more than half (58 percent) of those felt the government had allowed too much investment from China.

Another 13 percent think the government is allowing too much investment from the U.S.

Only 30 percent of Indonesians said they supported a Chinese company, bank or investment fund to buy a controlling stake in a large Indonesian company, the report said.

Bhima Yudhistira, director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), said reservations about Chinese investment stemmed from concerns about job opportunities among locals residents and perceptions of preferential treatment for Chinese businesses.

“An example is the various revisions to labor regulations to make it easier for foreign [Chinese] workers to come,” Bhima told BenarNews.

“During the pandemic, even when Indonesia was tightening restrictions, Chinese workers were allowed to come. There is a feeling of injustice resulting from the influx of foreign workers in the name of investment,” he said.

Various facilities have been given to Chinese investors in nickel smelters, ranging from tax breaks to import duties on capital goods, he said.

Eko Listiyanto, deputy director at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef), said that concerns about China’s investments were understandable given their heavy involvement in infrastructure projects.

“China is also trying to expand its investments, especially to developing countries through the Belt and Road Initiative,” he told BenarNews. The $1 trillion-plus BRI is an infrastructure program to build a network of railways, ports and bridges across 70 countries.

“On the other hand, European and U.S. investors are still struggling to recover, and generally their interests are not in infrastructure,” he said.

Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong have expelled a student from Yantai’s Ludong University after he protested the government’s COVID-19 policies, which have led to strict lockdowns in major cities across China in recent weeks.

Postgraduate student Sun Jian, 38, was expelled after he held up a placard on campus on March 27 that read “resolutely oppose the campus lockdown,” among other slogans, he told RFA on Tuesday.

“The placard I held up was made of grey cardboard on a wooden stick, and it said I resolutely oppose the campus lockdown; resolutely oppose such high-frequency PCR testing of all staff; resolutely oppose such strict restrictions on students; resolutely oppose the school making epidemic prevention its top priority,” Sun said.

He said he was approached and obstructed several times by university personnel during the 20 minutes he displayed the sign.

“I was stopped by a teacher about three minutes after I left the postgraduate apartment building,” he said. “A while later, two security guards from the university came and followed me in an electric vehicle.”

“One of them asked me for my personal details, and also advised me not to raise the placard,” Sun said. “Another teacher recorded me on their phone.”

Sun’s walk took him from the postgraduate dorm to Ruzi Lake in the northern sector of the Ludong University campus.

“Another teacher came along and tried to dissuade me, and also asked for my personal details,” he said. “Later, I heard someone say they were going to snatch the placard away from me and I started running at the that point, and they chased me.”

“Soon after that, a teacher came up and tackled me from behind and I fell to the ground … they snatched my phone,” he said. “Two security guards and a teacher escorted me to the concierge at the No. 1 administrative building.”

Four days after his solo protest, Ludong University published a document accusing Sun of publishing “untrue and inappropriate remarks” about China, Shandong province, Yantai city and the school’s disease prevention strategy to his WeChat public account.

Sun also continued to post video and commentary about his protest to social media, even after he was detained by the university authorities.

Sun was expelled from the university on the grounds that he had “openly opposed and resisted campus regulations, and seriously disrupted public order on campus.”

‘Detention center’ conditions

Sun had earlier complained in a letter to the school authorities that he felt he had been sent to a detention center rather than a university, owing to the COVID-19 restrictions imposed there.

“The students at Ludong have become highly dependent on daily express deliveries for their day-to-day existence,” he told RFA. “Online shopping is now an indispensable part of their lives, but the school banned it across the board.”

“This has been very troublesome and hugely damaging,” Sun said. “I have been at the school since 2020, for more than 18 months now, and there were also lockdowns back then, even where there were no COVID-19 cases.”

“They had to go to restaurants to buy food and eat it back in the dorms, because they weren’t allowed to eat in restaurants, and the prices on campus were so high,” he said.

“The libraries were all shut down, so we couldn’t study there, so all of that was very troublesome for the students.”

He said that foreign students and the family members of teachers were allowed to come and go freely, but Chinese students were banned from leaving campus.

“Excessive disease control measures have sowed panic among students; I think the PCR testing of all staff was unnecessary and also caused huge disruption to students studies, and their daily lives,” Sun said.

“I feel that my behavior fell purely within the scope of freedom of speech,” he said. “I did abide by the disease control regulations that I didn’t agree with.”

“I expected that Ludong University would punish me or expel me. I expected these consequences, but I couldn’t predict the specific outcome,” he said.

“I feel that people should carry on speaking out, always speak up,” Sun told RFA, adding that he plans to file an official complaint against the university.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

The Philippines and Japan will hold an inaugural four-way meeting of their foreign and defense ministers later this week to deepen bilateral security cooperation, Manila confirmed on Tuesday. 

The two-plus-two talks, which will consist of two ministers from each side sitting together in the same room, could include discussions on maritime security and the countries’ respective territorial disputes with Beijing in the East China Sea and South China Sea. The meeting, agreed to by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in November, is scheduled for Saturday in Tokyo, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said in a statement.

“The 2+2 is the next logical progression in the deepening policy and security cooperation between the two countries and is envisioned to be a key component in further strengthening the decade-old PH-Japan Strategic Partnership,” it said.

“The close ties between the two countries for six decades now continue to expand to various areas of cooperation and have resulted in the improvement of the Philippines’ maritime law enforcement capabilities, increased maritime domain awareness and enhanced counterterrorism and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities, among other areas,” the department said.

While it did not mention any specific topics for discussion, the department said the meeting was to lay the groundwork for a “security partnership in the next decade.”

Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana plan to discuss with their Japanese counterparts ways of working together “amidst the growing complexity in the regional and international security environment,” the department said.

Last week, Kyodo News Agency said Japanese and Philippine ministers were expected to discuss arms exports to the Philippines. It also said Tokyo planned to hold similar discussions with New Delhi later this month.

Tokyo’s plans for the two-plus-two talks “could send a nuanced message to Beijing about Japan’s determination to foster security ties with like-minded partners,” an analyst said last week.

“If Japan could bring the Philippines and India on board for maritime deterrence, it will be a big deal,” Huynh Tam Sang, an analyst at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam, told RFA.

South China Sea claims

Beijing has overlapping claims with Manila in the South China Sea while four other Asian governments – Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam – also claim territories in the waterway.

Still, China holds the most expansive claim, saying it has “sovereign rights and jurisdiction” over nearly all of the South China Sea.

While Japan is not a claimant, it is a strategic rival of China. The two powers have competing claims in the East China Sea, including the Tokyo-administered Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims and calls Diaoyu.

China and the Philippines

The Philippines-Japan two-plus-two meeting will also occur the day after a scheduled virtual meeting between Duterte and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The Philippine foreign ministry has not yet released details of what is to be discussed then.

“Xi Jinping wants to talk to me. We are friends,” Duterte said, according to a transcript released last week announcing the meeting.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted Locsin for talks in Tunxi, a district in China’s Anhui province.

Chinese and Philippine officials said “maritime issues should be put in a proper place in bilateral relations,” according to a statement issued by the Chinese foreign ministry after Sunday’s talks.

Wang said Manila and Beijing “should eliminate interference and calmly and properly manage differences, so as to prevent the overall China-Philippines relations from being affected.”

In the meantime, Filipino and U.S. forces have been conducting their largest joint military exercises in years on Philippine territory. The Balikatan (“Shoulder-to-Shoulder”) exercises began on March 28 and go till April 8. 

On Tuesday, Lorenzana told reporters that a Chinese ship that had entered Manila-claimed waters in January was “shadowing” another military exercise involving Philippine and American forces.

“The area where the Chinese ship passed is not international waters. … It is the waters between Palawan and Mindanao,” Lorenzana said, referring to the country’s islands in the west and south.

On March 14, the foreign affairs department said it had summoned Beijing’s envoy, Huang Xilian, over the alleged incursion of a Chinese Navy electronic reconnaissance ship from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1.

“What the ship did was shadow the ongoing exercises with the U.S. forces, U.S. Navy, that we were having,” Lorenzana said, referring to a joint exercise near Palawan from Jan. 28 to 31.

“The exact military term is shadowing. In Intel, that is following and watching,” he said. “[I]t stayed in the area for several days, shadowing the exercise which contradicts the Chinese claim of innocent passage.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

YouTube has suspended the account of Odessa-based Chinese national Wang Jixian after he reported on atrocities committed as Russian troops withdrew from Bucha, RFA has learned.

Odessa-based programmer Wang has been uploading videos since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began last month, but hasn’t published any new videos since one on March 30 in which he hits out at pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) critics as “human trash,” and translates news reports of gang rape being committed by Russian troops in Bucha, including of a young girl.

Wang had been uploading to the site daily, with the same introduction every time: “It’s Jixian. I’m in Odessa.”

YouTube told Wang that his account had been suspended for posting “violent content” in his March 28 video, ignoring an appeal submitted by Wang.

“I find this inexplicable,” Wang told RFA. “YouTube claims that my account was reported for violent content, which violates the rules, but where is the violence? I didn’t include photos [of violence] in my video.”

“This was a front-line war report … In my appeal, I asked them to say which video or photos weren’t allowed, but within five minutes of my submitting the appeal, YouTube sent its final decision, which was that my account has been suspended for a week,” he said.

Wang said he didn’t blame YouTube, but the “ulterior motives” of whoever reported him.

Wang’s March 28 video included footage of Odessa with air-raid sirens going off, and the sounds of missiles exploding, but also footage of him cooking in h is kitchen, and compiling Ukrainian government and media dispatches about the war, including news that the Ukrainian army had intercepted a Russian missile over the city.

In the second half of the video, Wang turns his attention to the CCP-backed media in China, which is still strongly supportive of Russia, particularly the claim that Russia has the upper hand in the war, despite arms sales from Western countries.

He shows photographic evidence suggesting that large numbers of Russian tanks have been captured by the Ukrainian army, as well as Russian soldiers fighting from electric tricycles and motorbikes.

The video also included footage of Ukrainian soldiers taking Russian soldiers captive, with one handed one a coat with the words, “Welcome to Ukraine, you bastard!”

Wang also takes issue with praise by pro-CCP commentator Sima Nan’s claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is “kind-hearted,” and had refrained from sabotaging the power and water supply to Ukrainian homes.

‘Countering lies and panic’

Wang said his suspension came after he was targeted by multiple messages warning him “don’t provoke the Chinese government,” and “don’t be too aggressive with your comments.”

He told RFA he is trying to stem the flow of “lies and panic” by spreading accurate information.

“I’m countering lies and panic by reporting from the front line,” Wang told RFA. “Panic can be very contagious and spreads like a virus, like a plague.”

“If an authoritarian power tries to intimidate you, you have to give back as good as you get … I humiliated them mercilessly,” Wang said. “The more you fear them, the happier they will be and the more they will do to you.”

Wang has since shifted to Twitter, where his account quickly garnered tens of thousands of followers within a day of opening.

Wang has been subject to repeated vitriol on social media sites in China, however, where he is accused of spying for the U.S., and insulting China and the CCP.

But he thinks his videos will remind the world that not all Chinese nationals follow the official line on the war without question.

“I kept going with the YouTube channel so at the very least there would be a Chinese voice in the international community,” Wang said. “I’ve been asked by … journalists why all Chinese people support Russia, and I ask them in return why they only give a platform to one voice in such a huge country.”

“[The party line] does not represent all voices in China; it’s just that any dissenting voices are being filtered out,” he said.

‘Weaponizing propaganda’

Japan-based Chinese national Ding Dong said Wang’s YouTube suspension wasn’t the result of “normal reporting,” suggesting a malicious reporting campaign by pro-CCP actors.

“Wang Jixian hit CCP propaganda and lies about the Russian war in Ukraine especially hard,” Ding told RFA. “The suspension of his YouTube channel was likely the result of a large number of organized, [pro-CCP] supporters.”

“I am really indignant that a big company like [that] will carry major channels for foreign propaganda [like Chinese state media outlets] for economic gain,” he said.

Chinese blogger Wangguo Wahaha agreed.

“Wang Jixian made his opposition to Russia’s violent invasion very clear in his videos, but because his stance didn’t conform to the CCP official line, he was maliciously reported, which triggered the suspension mechanism,” he said. “The CCP weaponizes propaganda every day … and there is now a tendency for the CCP … to extend its tentacles beyond the Great Firewall, to overseas social media platforms.”

“We have seen a whole string of such instances … we really need to put pressure on platforms like YouTube to re-examine their terms of service, which are so easily abused by the CCP,” he said.

Earlier this month, Twitter briefly suspended an anonymous account translating online internet comment about the Russian invasion of Ukraine from inside the Great Firewall for readers outside China, in a bid to highlight online opinion about the war, which has been heavily influenced by ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda and a ban on criticism of Russia.

The crowd-sourced Great Translation Movement account @TGTM_Official on Twitter features online comments made on Chinese social media platforms rendered into English by volunteer translators.

The account started out in mid-February, amid growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine, with volunteers selecting and tweeting various examples of Chinese online comment using the hashtag #TheGreatTranslationMovement in various languages.

The suspension, which was reversed on April 3, came after the account was criticized by the CCP-backed Global Times newspaper in March, which accused it of “smearing China with malicious words and deeds.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.