Day: April 14, 2022

North Korea has declared a five-day military-wide special security period as the people prepare to celebrate the life of the country’s late founder, sources in the country told RFA.

Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un, was born on April 15, a major holiday now known as the “Day of the Sun.” His son and successor, Kim Jong Il (1942-2011), was born on Feb. 16, the “Day of the Shining Star.”

The two holidays solidify the cult of personality surrounding the Kim family, which has now ruled North Korea for three generations.

Friday marks what would have been Kim Il Sung’s 110^th birthday, and authorities have commanded the military to be on high alert.

“The special security period starts at 17:00 on April 14 and ends at 17:00 on the 19th. Units were ordered to create a special security plan for approval by their commanders by 17:00 on April 13,” a military source from the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA’s Korean Service Wednesday on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The General Staff Department has instructed that emergency mobilization units be in a full-combat readiness posture and on standby,” he said.

Additionally, the department told soldiers stationed at the country’s borders, the coast guard, and the air force to be ready at a moment’s notice.

“They need to be able to respond immediately without missing even minor threats that could occur during the special security period,” the source said.

Soldiers in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, meanwhile, also must guard against even the slightest problem during the five-day period, a military source there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“They must also strengthen security in areas that glorify Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, like their statues, public portraits, public displays of their artwork, propaganda boards and related historic sites,” said the source.

Officials and soldiers are resentful at having to do extra work on a holiday, when they are used to getting time off.

“They are saying they wish there were no holidays at all, because they have been mobilized for difficult guard duty and will not be able to properly rest,” he said.

Forced loyalty

Retired and disabled soldiers, meanwhile, were upset about having to take an oath of allegiance to Kim Jong Un ahead of the holiday as a requirement to receive their annual special holiday food allotment celebration of the day, a resident of the Sino-Korean border city of Sinuiju told RFA Tuesday.

“Yesterday in Sinuiju, because of the Day of the Sun, 15 days’ worth of grain and basic foodstuffs, such as 500 grams [1.1lbs] of sugar and a bottle of soybean oil, were provided to war veterans and honorable soldiers,” she said, on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

Honorable soldiers are soldiers disabled from injuries they sustained while on duty. RFA reported last week that the state was unable to properly care for honorable soldiers as promised due to worsening economic conditions. The Sinuiju resident estimated that the city is home to between 100 and 300 disabled and able-bodied vets.

She explained that the gift of 15-days’ food assistance was not provided by the state, but by local authorities. Since central government did not provide funding to the local government for this event, so the veterans realize the “gift from Kim Jong Un” was nothing of the sort, she said.

“Even though they said it has been supplied as a special consideration from Kim Jong Un, it is actually a part of the emergency goods imported by the provincial trade bureau, using local funds” she said.

“They had to attend a special hour-long event at the cultural center, where authorities would present them with their ‘gift from Kim Jong Un’ on the condition that they pledged their allegiance to him. The disabled veterans complained,” she said.

About 200 veterans, including some who had seen action during the 1950-1953 Korean War, attended a similar ceremony in South Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, a resident there who declined to be named told RFA.

“The special holiday supplies … included rice, 500 grams [1.1 lbs] of sugar, and a bottle of soybean oil imported from China via freight train,” she said.

“The county party official emphasized that the food was provided on the occasion of the Day of the Sun as ‘the noble will of the Highest Dignity to cherish and love the veterans and honorary soldiers who were loyal to the party and the leader,’ and forced them to repay them with loyalty,” the South Pyongan resident said, using an honorific term for Kim Jong Un.

The veterans were angry at being made to swear an oath to Kim Jong Un when his so-called gift was imported from China and was not actually from himself or the central government which he leads, she said.

Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Authorities in Vietnam arrested Hanoi resident Dang Nhu Quynh for allegedly posting information on Facebook about the arrest of a business leader, which they said violated state interests, state media reported.

Quynh was arrested Tuesday for posting “unverified information” about several people and companies in the finance and real estate sectors, Lt. Gen. To An Xo of the Ministry of Public Security said Thursday.

Quynh’s posts violated the rights and interests of those individuals and companies and may have negatively affected the country’s stock market, the agency said.

Over the past few weeks, Quynh posted on Facebook assessments of how the ministry was handling the cases of finance mogul Trinh Van Quyet, chairman of FLC Group who had been arrested for stock market manipulation, and Do Anh Dung, the chairman of property developer Tan Hoang Minh Group who was arrested for bond-issuance fraud.

In the posts, Quynh said that the Ministry of Public Security would continue prosecuting people and companies that are guilty of similar crimes in the near future.

Quynh was previously summoned to the ministry for 200 Facebook posts he penned in 2020 about COVID-19 developments in Vietnam.

Authorities commonly arrest people for spreading sensitive information on the pretext of stopping false rumors from spreading, even if what the people targeted have said or written is true, Dang Dinh Manh, a Vietnam-based lawyer, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

“After the arrest of Mr. Quyet, people started talking about other big players who could be the next,” he said.

“On the one hand, false information negatively affects these businessmen and their companies’ shareholders. But on the other hand, some information flagged as false rumors later turned out to be true,” said Manh, adding that a better way to eliminate rumors would be for the government to provide information to the media in an honest and timely manner.

Tran Ngoc Tuan, a journalist based in the Czech Republic, told RFA that Vietnamese spread rumors because they do not trust state media.

“Perhaps every citizen in an authoritarian regime does the job of journalists because they want to learn about the truth, which is often hidden and covered. They often reach out to many sources, including insiders who are leaders,” he said.

“The government believes that this type of information undermines the state, the authorities and executive agencies. However, people often say that you should go to the internet to get information that is true and turn on Vietnam Televison or read the People’s Newspaper to hear untruths.”

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

North Korean authorities are handing out rice and basic food supplies to war veterans and disabled soldiers on the anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birthday. In return, the ex-soldiers take an oath of allegiance to follow Kim’s grandson, Kim Jong Un, to the end.

Cambodian authorities moved this month to block members of political opposition groups from challenging the country’s ruling party in local elections set for June, arresting some on contested charges and disqualifying others from running, Cambodian sources say.

Barred now from participating in the vote are more than 100 candidates from the Candlelight Party, formerly called the Sam Rainsy Party, which merged with other groups in 2012 to form the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP).

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017, allowing the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) led by long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen to win all 125 seats in Parliament in a July 2018 election.

Other opposition activists have meanwhile been arrested, denied release from jail in time to contest the polls, or injured or killed in apparently targeted physical attacks, sources said.

One Candlelight Party activist and his son were arrested in western Cambodia’s Pursat province on Thursday and sent to prison to await trial on charges of illegal fishing, with other party members calling the charges a ploy to restrict their political activities.

Hem Chhil, 35, a commune council candidate for the Kandieng district’s Syva commune, and Pim Dara, 15, were arrested while pumping water from a pond behind their house and catching fish to cook for a holiday celebration, provincial party leader Phan Bunsoth told RFA on Thursday.

“Around five local village guards and police officers arrested them after saying they had used electricity to stun the fish in order to catch them,” Phan Bunsoth said. A tool used for that purpose had been found around 100 meters from the house, he added.

Hem Chhil had earlier been warned by authorities not to set up a party sign outside his home, said Candlelight Party Vice President Thach Setha. “It is as if they arrested him to keep him from installing a party sign for others to see. And then they also arrested a 15-year-old minor. This is such an extreme act for the authorities to take,” he said.

“The authorities are doing everything they can in order to win,” agreed Sam Chankear, provincial coordinator the Cambodian rights group ADHOC. “But this will affect the image of the government and the ruling party as a whole,” he added.

Requests for comment from Pursat provincial prosecution office spokesperson Long Cheap, provincial court spokesperson Heng Donin, and provincial Police Commissioner Sarun Chanthy were unanswered on Thursday.

Physical attacks

On Monday, another Candlelight Party activist — Khorn Tun, a commune candidate in Tabaung Khmom province’s Ponhea Krek district — was attacked by unidentified men who threw rocks at her home, while on April 9, Prak Seyha — a party youth leader for Phnom Penh’s Kambol district — was attacked and beaten by a mob.

Also on April 9, a party candidate for Phnom Penh’s Chhbar Ampov district, Choeun Sarim, was killed in traffic while traveling by motorbike from southern Cambodia’s Takeo province to the capital, Phnom Penh.

Speaking to RFA, Choeun Sarim’s wife Satik Srey Touch said her husband’s skull had been crushed by a blow from behind. He had also been threatened and assaulted in the past, she said.

Meanwhile, a Phnom Penh court on Tuesday denied bail to ailing 63-year-old Yok Neang who is on trial for “conspiracy” in connection with a plan to bring Sam Rainsy, acting chief of the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party, back to Cambodia to challenge CPP rule.

Speaking to RFA, Am Sam Ath of the Cambodian rights group Licadho said that Cambodian courts have no grounds to prosecute Yok Neang and other opposition activists, calling the legal moves against them politically motivated.

“The domestic and international community have seen that these cases are motivated more by politics than by concern for upholding Cambodian law,” he said.

Cambodia is set to hold its fifth commune council election on June 5, with 17 parties competing for a total of 11,622 seats in communes nationwide. Over 9.2 million Cambodians are registered to vote, according to the country’s National Election Committee.

Translated by Samean Yun, Sok Ry Sum, and Sovannarith Keo for RFA’s Khmer Service. Written in English by Richard Finney, Joshua Lipes, and Nawar Nemeh.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is planning a visit to Southeast Asia later this month to counter China’s growing assertiveness in the region, according to news reports and a government official.

Kyodo, a Japanese news agency, said Kishida’s trip would take place during the so-called Golden Week holidays and includes stops in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. The report cited unnamed diplomatic sources.

Golden Week 2022 runs from April 29 to May 5. It starts with Showa Day and ends on Children’s Day, with a five-day consecutive holiday between May 1–5.

It also reported that Kishida may consider a visit to Europe during the holiday period. A previously proposed meeting between ministers of defense and foreign affairs from Japan and India in mid- to late-April may therefore have been postponed as usually foreign ministers accompany the prime minister on his foreign trips. RFA has approached the Japanese Foreign Ministry for confirmation.

In Jakarta, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah on Thursday confirmed to BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news agency, that Kishida would visit Indonesia “at the end of April.” He said the exact date would be announced later.

Kyodo reported that in Southeast Asia, the Japanese prime minister is expected to “underscore cooperation toward realizing the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific amid China’s rise.”

Thailand and Indonesia are this year’s chairs of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) and the Group of 20 respectively.

Vietnam meanwhile shares interest with Japan in safeguarding maritime security in the South China Sea where China holds expansive claims and has been militarizing reclaimed islands.

Free and open Indo-Pacific

“China is the principal geopolitical threat, be it for India, Japan or Southeast Asian countries,” said Pratnashree Basu, associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank.

“Pooling resources and strengthening capacities is therefore an ongoing process for almost all countries in the Indo-Pacific in order to be in positions of stronger pushback in the face of China’s aggression,” she said.

Japan last year joined a growing list of countries that are challenging China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea. Tokyo sent a diplomatic note to the United Nations rejecting China’s baseline claims and denouncing what it described as efforts to limit the freedom of navigation and overflight.

Japan is not a South China Sea claimant, but Tokyo has deepened security ties with several Southeast Asia nations with claims or interests there.

The Japanese Navy and Coastguard have conducted joint exercises with Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor at the Department of Politics and International Studies, International Christian University in Tokyo, said that Japan prioritizes maintaining stability and a rules-based approach to governing the South China Sea as its sea lanes are critical arteries for the Japanese economy.

Tokyo has also been playing an important role in supporting the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy.

Leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, including Japan, the U.S., Australia and India are meeting in person later in May in Tokyo for a summit.

The Quad is widely seen as countering China’s weight in the region.

Kishida visited India and Cambodia in March, his first bilateral trips since taking office in October 2021. Cambodia is the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

As a citywide lockdown continued in Shanghai and around 100 cities imposed more limited COVID-19 curbs, immigration consultancies said they are receiving a record number of inquiries from people hoping to get out of China for good.

Keyword searches relating to emigration spiked more than 100-fold in recent days, according to publicly available data from the Baidu search engine for the week from March 28 to April 3.

Canada, the United States and Australia were the top three countries shown in such searches, with searches for immigration to Canada showing a 28-fold increase compared with the previous week.

“The number of immigration consultations has skyrocketed in the past few days,” an employee who answered the phone at the Beijing-based immigration consultancy Qiaowai told RFA on Wednesday.  “We are very busy every day, and waiting times are relatively long, because we don’t have enough consultants.”

“This is likely the case for every other company [in the sector],” the employee said. “There are more coming from Shanghai because the pandemic is pretty bad in Shanghai right now.”

An employee who answered the phone at the Immigration 11 agency gave a similar response.

“There are quite a lot of people inquiring,” the employee said. “I need to hurry up [with this call].”

“Is it the pandemic? We’ve had a lot of people consulting us from Shanghai in Guangdong, and also a lot from Beijing,” the employee said.

Senior journalist Chen Hongtao said the figures could be an indication that high-ranking officials in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their families are voting with their feet.

“Anyone who has the option to leave may be thinking about how to get out,” Chen said. “Those who work for the regime don’t believe [propaganda], and they have access to a lot more information [than regular people].”

“Most middle and working-class people don’t have the wherewithal to get hold of comprehensive information,” he said. “They’re the ones who believe what the little pinks [pro-CCP commentators] tell them.”

A woman who identified herself by the pseudonym Zhang Li said she and her friends are in the process of trying to leave China.

“I don’t think this is weird at all,” Zhang said. “It’s normal … because the pandemic disease control measures aren’t based on scientific decisions.”

“I know a woman, a medical student, who is currently submitting her application to emigrate to the U.S.,” she said. “She plans to study [English] first, then become a nurse.”

However, it looks likely that the majority of people will have trouble leaving, in the absence of political clout or existing immigration channels.

An employee who answered the phone at the Shanghai police department’s exit and entry administration said the office, which issues passports and exit permits, is currently closed.

“You can’t apply for passports, and entry-exit offices are all closed around here because of the pandemic,” the employee said.

“There are some cases where on-site review of materials is happening for emergency circumstances, for example, to visit the critically ill overseas, or to go and study overseas,” they said.

Meanwhile, residents of Shanghai said they are still struggling to source enough food and other daily necessities, with strict stay-at-home orders still in place across the city.

“I went to the neighborhood committee to order food,” a resident surnamed Xu told RFA. “It’s been 20 days, and I still haven’t gotten the rice I ordered. I am out of oil and soy sauce for cooking at home, and I haven’t been able to buy more.”

“I have to try to get food sent from online… we have been locked down here since March 8,” she said.

A resident of Baoshan district surnamed Zheng said people who test positive are now being “sealed” inside their own apartments or buildings, as isolation and quarantine facilities are full.

“If you test positive, the entire building will be sealed off with barbed wire, and nobody will be allowed in or out,” Zheng told RFA. “The disease control people set up a hut outside to guard it.”

“Last week, they would take you away in a vehicle immediately if you tested positive,” he said. “That’s not the way they’re doing it now.”

A resident of Xuhui district surnamed Liu said the supplies delivered to people’s homes during the lockdown were nowhere near enough to last the entire length of lockdown.

“In the first stage, some people had no food,” she said. “In the second stage, Pudong was closed for four days, and then Puxi was closed for another four days, but I didn’t expect the city to be locked down forever.”

“They government sent a batch of groceries, but … the food they have distributed was far from enough,” Liu said.

A resident surnamed Zhao gave a similar account.

“We have been locked down for more than a month, and we had food for four days,” he said. “There’s not enough for such a long time… all the stores are closed.”

The Shanghai municipal health commission reported a total of 27,719 newly confirmed cases on Thursday, with rapidly constructed and converted field hospitals and quarantine facilities unable to meet demand for beds.

“You can’t get into the Fangcang cabin hospitals, and a lot of people can’t even get an ambulance if they call 120,” Zheng said. “We have no idea how many people have died of COVID-19.”

However, reports have also emerged of people being forcibly dragged from their homes to isolation facilities, even with a negative PCR test.

One audio recording features a young couple who have tested negative arguing with enforcement personnel.

“Our tests were negative,” one person says, while a police officer answers: “The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says you are positive.”

“No way,” the person replies. “I have a negative test result. If I go to the cabin hospital I will wind up positive.”

The ongoing lockdown comes after CCP leader Xi Jinping urged local governments on Wednesday to stick to his zero-COVID policy, with a slew of reports and commentaries in state media defending the approach.

Chen Kuide, executive chairman of the Princeton China Society, said zero-COVID has become a political slogan for Xi that he can’t relinquish.

“He thinks this is a very important representation of the correctness of his political ideology and the superiority of the Chinese system,” Chen told RFA.

“He has made it into a personal, political asset, so he can’t drop it now, because it would mean he’s finished, politically speaking, and a failure.”

China’s economic growth is likely to slow to 5.0 percent in 2022 amid renewed COVID-19 outbreaks and a weakening global recovery,  according to a Reuters poll on Thursday.

“A post by user @Lady_Moye titled “The people of Shanghai’s patience has reached its limit” garnered more than 10 million views on the social media platform WeChat on Thursday.”

“Anyone who deletes this post should die a sorry death,” one comment read. However, the post was removed by WeChat for “violating regulations,” according to a WeChat notice, Reuters reported.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.