Day: April 15, 2022

The Chinese military conducted a large multi-force exercise on Friday morning around Taiwan, just hours after U.S. lawmakers arrived for a visit to show support for the self-ruling island and meet President Tsai Ing-wen.

Chinese military aircraft, warships and troops were taking part in the combat readiness drills in the East China Sea as well as in the sea and airspace around Taiwan, according to a statement from Col. Shi Yi, spokesman for the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The number of troops and weaponry was not disclosed but the Taiwanese military said six PLA aircraft including four J-16 fighter jets and two J-11 fighter jets entered Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Friday.

The PLA statement said the drills were being conducted “in response to the recent wrong signals the U.S. sent related to the Taiwan issue.”

“The U.S. wicked tricks are completely futile and very dangerous,” it said, adding “those who play with fire will set themselves on fire.”

The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense responded that its naval ships and aircraft have been dispatched to closely monitor the cross-strait situation and safeguard the security in “our airspace and territorial waters.”

U.S. delegation in Taiwan

Six members of the U.S. Congress arrived in Taipei Thursday evening. The bipartisan delegation was led by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and included Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The delegation met Friday with President Tsai. The U.S. lawmakers voiced support for the self-governing island and its democracy. Menendez described Taiwan – which China regards as a renegade province– as a “country of global significance” and said its security has implications for the world.

The previously unannounced visit came after reports last week that U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was planning a landmark visit to Taiwan but had to postpone it after she tested positive for COVID-19.

Such visits are sensitive because Washington and Taipei do not have formal diplomatic relations, although they do have substantial ties and the U.S. is committed by law to help provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing on Friday that China “firmly opposes any form of official interaction between the U.S. and the Taiwan region” and confirmed that the military drills were a response to the lawmakers’ visit to the island.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry issued its own robust statement late Friday in response to the Chinese drills, saying “the threat of force … will only strengthen the will of the Taiwanese people to defend freedom and democracy.”

“Democratic Taiwan will continue to deepen cooperation with the United States and other like-minded countries, safeguard the security of the Taiwan Strait and the free and open Indo-Pacific region, and prevent the continuous expansion of the totalitarian government of the Chinese Communist Party,” the statement said.

On Thursday, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said at a meeting at The Economic Club of Washington D.C. that it is U.S. policy to ensure that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan does not occur.

China is watching the war in Ukraine closely and some observers fear that Beijing may consider opportunistic moves against Taiwan, which it seeks to unite with the mainland, by force if necessary.

During the drills on Friday morning, PLA Air Force Su-35 fighter jets flew over the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan in formation with H-6K strategic bombers.

Qi Leyi, a Taipei-based military analyst and commentator for RFA Mandarin Service, said: “Whenever the U.S.-Taiwan relations advance, the PLA has a corresponding military response. Beijing’s worried that Taiwan and the U.S. are entering a quasi-alliance.”

Taiwanese rights activist and NGO worker Lee Ming-cheh has arrived home on the democratic island following his release at the end of a five-year jail term for “subversion” in China.

“After being improperly detained by China for more than 1,852 days, Lee Ming-cheh arrived at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport at around 10 a.m. today, April 15, 2022,” a coalition of rights groups that has campaigned for Lee’s release said in a statement.

“Due to disease prevention regulations, neither the [coalition] nor family members were able to meet him at the airport,” it said, adding that a news conference would likely be held when Lee has completed his quarantine period.

Lee was shown in local live TV footage arriving off a Xiamen Air flight to Taipei and being escorted to a car by two people in full personal protective gear.

“When I finally returned to Taiwan, I saw Ching-yu, who was looking tired and wan but very excited, through the window,” Lee said in a joint statement issued with his wife, Lee Ching-yu.

“I am still very tired and the world seems quite unfamiliar, although my current isolation is completely different from the isolation I experienced in China,” he said. “Now I am embraced by love, not besieged by terror.”

The statement continued: “Our family’s suffering is over, but there are still countless people whose human rights are being violated in China. May they one day have their day of liberation, too.”

“We know that freedom comes from oneself, just as the people of Taiwan traded blood and tears under martial law for freedom, democracy and human rights,” the letter said. “May the Chinese people know and learn from this.”

Taiwan’s government said Lee’s incarceration was “unacceptable.”

“Lee Ming-cheh … was tried by a Chinese court for ‘subversion of state power’ and imprisoned for five years, which is unacceptable to the people of Taiwan,” Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng told reporters on Friday.

He called on the Chinese government to protect the rights of Taiwanese nationals in China.

‘Vilifying China’

Lee is a course director at Taiwan’s Wenshan Community College, and had volunteered with various NGOs for many years, the Free Lee Ming-cheh Coalition said in a statement posted on the Covenants Watch rights group’s Facebook page.

“The Free Lee Ming-cheh Coalition has always believed that Lee Ming-cheh is innocent,” it said. “He has only ever concerned himself with commenting on human rights in China, civil society and other similar issues online.”

“The treatment he received after being imprisoned was hardly in line with international human rights standards,” the group said.

“Apart from being forced to eat bad food, to live in unheated quarters, and wear discarded clothes … Lee’s right to communicate was also restricted,” it said.

“We will continue to monitor Ming-cheh’s physical and mental health following his return to Taiwan,” it said.

His release comes after he was held for most of his sentence at Chishan Prison in the central Chinese province of Hunan, where authorities repeatedly refused to allow his wife to visit him.

Lee was also barred from speaking to his wife on the phone, or from writing letters home, Amnesty International’s Taiwan branch has said.

Lee applied to visit her husband at the prison 16 times during the past two years, but was refused every time, although the family members of other prisoners had visiting rights at the time, it said.

A lifelong activist with Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is vilified by Beijing for refusing to accept its claim on the island, Lee was sentenced by Hunan’s Yueyang Intermediate People’s Court to five years in jail for “attempting to subvert state power” in November 2017.

He was accused of setting up social media chat groups to “vilify China.”

Cross-strait tensions

According to statistics from Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), Lee Ming-cheh is among 149 Taiwan nationals to have gone missing in China since Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016.

While the Chinese authorities had assisted in providing some information on 82 missing Taiwanese, some information on the remaining 67 had been withheld or was insufficient to draw any conclusion.

Eeling Chiu, secretary general of Amnesty International’s Taiwan branch, warned that what happened to Lee could happen to citizens of any country, citing the case of Swedish national and Hong Kong-based publisher Gui Minhai, who remains behind bars in China after being arrested in Thailand for alleged “crimes” committed in Hong Kong.

Taiwan was ruled as a Japanese colony in the 50 years prior to the end of World War II, but was handed back to the 1911 Republic of China under the Kuomintang (KMT) government as part of Tokyo’s post-war reparation deal.

The KMT made its capital there after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists that led to the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

While the Chinese Communist Party claims Taiwan as an “inalienable” part of its territory, Taiwan has never been ruled by the current regime in Beijing, nor has it ever formed part of the People’s Republic of China.

The Republic of China has remained a sovereign and independent state since 1911, now ruling just four islands: Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.

The island began a transition to democracy following the death of KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek’s son, President Chiang Ching-kuo, in January 1988, starting with direct elections to the legislature in the early 1990s and culminating in the first direct election of a president, Lee Teng-hui, in 1996.

Taiwan’s national security agency has repeatedly warned of growing attempts to flood Taiwan with propaganda and disinformation, and to infiltrate its polity using Beijing-backed media and political groups.

Lawmakers say the country is doing all it can to guard against growing attempts at political infiltration and influence by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department in Taiwan.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Three activists affiliated with Cambodia’s banned opposition party are spending the New Year’s holiday in jail, with the wife of one reporting concern over her husband’s declining health.

Eap Suor, the wife of Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) activist Kong Sam An, visited her husband, 70, at the Prey Sar Prison Friday, the second day of the Cambodian New Year holiday.

She told RFA’s Khmer Service that he was very ill due to his detention in a crowded prison cell, where he is underfed to the point of malnutrition. He and other prisoners looked pale during the highly restricted visit, which allowed only two family members to see him.

“This is the second New Year that I visited my husband in prison. He told me that he was happy to see us and nothing could compare with meeting his children and wife,” she said.

“Please release him, he is an innocent person. I was shocked to see my husband. He is a good person, they shouldn’t imprison him,” Eap Suor said, adding that they brought food and money for him during the visit.

“There is no clean water or a place to sleep, and he now has skin disease,” she said.

The Supreme Court is set to hear her husband’s appeal on April 27, she said.

Kong Sam An, a former district councilor for the CNRP, was arrested in September 2020 and sentenced to seven years in jail for “treason” for an alleged plan to bring CNRP’s exiled leader, Sam Rainsy, back to Cambodia.

The Supreme Court banned the CNRP in November 2017 for its supposed role in an alleged plot to overthrow the government. Key party figures were arrested as others fled into exile as part of a crackdown by Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen on the political opposition, NGOs and independent media outlets

Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party went on to win all 125 seats in the country’s July 2018 general election.

Since then, the government has continued to target activists associated with the CNRP, arresting them on arbitrary charges and placing them in pretrial detention in overcrowded jails with harsh conditions.

The Khmer New Year runs from April 14-16.

The family of another CNRP activist, Khan Bunpheng, was unable to visit him over the holiday, because the prison did not inform them that New Year’s visitation was permitted, his wife Men Kuntheary told RFA.

Khan Bunpheng had been a commune chief in Battambang province in the country’s northwest. He was arrested in January 2021 on treason charges.

Men Kuntheary said she plans to bring her husband food and money after the holiday.

Prum Chantha, wife of Kak Komphear, who is also charged with treason, told RFA that she was unable to meet her husband. She instead had a Buddhist ceremony at her home without him.

“I am sad that for the past two years, I haven’t had a chance to see him. I wish in the new year that my husband will be in good health and that he will be freed soon,” she said. 

RFA was unable to reach Prison Department spokesman Nuth Savna for comment on Friday.

Am Sam Ath, of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Licadho), said political prisoners should not be kept away from their families on the holiday.

“We cannot forget that people are meeting happily during the New Year both inside and outside the country, but the families of detained activists can’t meet them. This is sad,” he said. “As an NGO we urge politicians to negotiate to reach a compromise to release the political activists.”

About 60 CNRP activists are in custody, some serving sentences as long as five years.

Cambodia has no bail, so detained political activists can remain in pretrial detention for years before their case is heard in court. Licadho has said that the lack of a bail system has unnecessarily kept the prison population larger than it needs to be.

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

An anti-regime People’s Defense Force leader in Yangon was allegedly tortured to death by members of the Myanmar military and pro-junta groups, one of the man’s colleagues told RFA on Friday.

Chan Min Naung, a former aid worker who became an anti-junta militia leader in Yangon’s Kyauktan township following the February 2021 coup, was captured after a group he was leading assassinated a local junta administrator on April 2.

Before he was killed, Chan Min Naung was repeatedly cut with a knife, pinned down while his legs and hands were broken, and then beheaded, members of the Kyauktan People’s Defense Force (PDF) said.

The PDF is the armed wing of the National Unity Government (NUG), a body of democratically-elected legislators and officials that is widely accepted by Myanmar’s civilian population to be the legitimate government of the Southeast Asian nation.

RFA could not independently confirm the report about Chan Min Naung’s death or reach his family.

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun was not available for comment.

Chan Min Naung’s alleged killing followed the murder of Soe Moe, who was the administrator of the township’s San-gyein-hmi ward. He was shot dead on April 2 by an anti-junta group that calls itself Che Guevara and works under the Kyauktan PDF.

Soe Moe had been accused of being an informer to the regime and selling public land for personal gain.

The Kyauktan PDF said it assigned a group of hitmen to kill Soe Moe after he did not heed a warning to stop his activities. In an attack led by Chan Min Naung, Soe Moe was shot and died as he arrived at a hospital. A deputy administrator was also killed.

But colleagues of Soe Moe were able to detain Chan Min Naung, Kyauktan PDF leader Dee Par said.

“The main guy who got him was a city development worker in our town known as James Bond,” he said. “The ward administrator’s thugs also stabbed Chan Min Naung and later dragged him by a rope from the rear of a car. That must have been about 1,500 yards from San-gyein-hmi’s Sixth Street to Shwe Hmaw Wun Hall.”

Chan Min Naung was later tortured to death by military intelligence personnel and other local councilors at Shwe Hmaw Wun Hall, he said.

“They stabbed him in the back of his left palm,” Dee Par said. “They sliced his hands and ears and pulled his hair out. They also broke his legs and arms and left him in the rain tied to a post. They kicked him in the groin and carried on with their questioning.

“We later learned that Chan Min Aung was decapitated and cut into pieces and buried,” he said.

Chan Min Naung’s body was not turned over to his family, though authorities told them that the man had been buried, he said.

A photo obtained by RFA shows a stab wound in Chan Min Naung’s left palm and facial injuries. Dee Par said the photo was taken by one of the questioners while Chan Min Naung was being interrogated at Shwe Hmaw Wun Hall. The photo was later leaked to the local PDF.

Chan Min Naung’s relatives have been threatened by the military, Dee Par said.

The PDF leader, who was divorced and had a five-year-old daughter, was active in his community and in charity events before the coup.

Lin Thant, the NUG’s representative to the Czech Republic, said the shadow government would take steps to address Chan Min Naung’s murder.

“We have seen many evidence of such brutal torture committed by the junta’s forces,” he said.
“When their officers and troops are captured on the front lines by our units, the NUG has a policy to treat them well as prisoners of war and to give medical attention if needed.”

“Comparatively, the inhuman acts of the military against the detainees were so brutal they could be seen as war crimes,” he said. “We are collecting evidence and preparing work on many things so that we can submit the cases to the international courts.”

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Karen rebels used heavy artillery to beat back a push by Myanmar junta forces to take Kayin state’s “peace town” of Lay Kay Kaw late Thursday and early Friday, with reports of heavy casualties among regime soldiers.

Lay Kay Kaw was established as symbol of peace in 2017 through a partnership between Japan’s Nippon Foundation, the Myanmar government and the rebel group Karen National Union (KNU) to house ethnic Karen refugees who were returning home after decades of fighting between the military and armed ethnic groups.

But in recent months, Lay Kay Kaw has been the site of fierce fighting among the junta troops and their opponents. More than 10,000 villagers have been displaced since clashes first broke out in the area on Dec. 15, 2021, as the sides pushed for advantage.

Myo Thura Ko Ko, a spokesman for the Cobra Column, which is affiliated with the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), an ethnic armed group, said Myanmar soldiers shelled the area before the assault.

“They used a variety of heavy weapons, and the shells fell like rain in the area,” he told RFA.

Fighting between the two sides began at about 3:30 a.m., with Myanmar soldiers retreating with heavy casualties after failing to capture a targeted hill, Myo Thura Ko Ko said. The number of soldiers wounded or killed is not known, however.

“We were close to the fighting zone, only about 100 yards away, so we saw the enemy being injured or killed,” he said. “But it was hard to estimate the exact number of casualties because of the darkness.”

KNLA and Cobra Column troops successfully defended the hills where they were stationed, and there were no casualties on their side, Myo Thura Ko Ko said.

While clearing the area Friday morning, rebel soldiers found an intact rocket-propelled grenade, two mobile phones and some military equipment left by Myanmar forces, he said.

Padoh Saw Tawney, the KNU’s foreign affairs officer, said junta forces attacked the rebels in the hills where the KNLA joint forces are based because they are in a strategic area near Lay Kay Kaw.

“Their main goal is to get control of the area,” he said. “They are desperate for territorial control, and they have tried a couple of times. They also tried it last night and didn’t succeed, but they will do it again.”

Myanmar soldiers launched air strikes on KNLA and anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) fighters in Lay Kay Kaw on April 10, suffering a loss of about 20 soldiers and a captured captain, according to the KNU. The air strikes damaged about 30 houses and a school in the town, residents told RFA in an earlier report.

Some officers and soldiers were injured during an ambush while clearing the town’s sixth ward, said a statement issued by the junta on Apr. 13. It said necessary security measures would be taken to ensure stability and peace in Lay Kay Kaw because the Karen rebels had violated nationwide cease-fire agreements.

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun could not be reached for comment on the fighting.

Civilians displaced by clashes are now sheltering along the banks of Thaungyin River near Myanmar’s border with Thailand. They said they were forced to flee to the Thai side as the fighting intensified but returned after it subsided because they were pushed back by Thai authorities.

Myet Hman, who is now living in the P’lotapho refugee camp near the river because of the fighting near Lay Kay Kaw, told RFA that he wanted the armed conflict to end as soon as possible so he and other locals could return to their homes.

“It would be better for us if the two sides killed each other and quickly found a resolution,” he said. “That would be good. But now, armed men from this side or that side come into the village, stop for a while, and then engage in clashes. Meanwhile we villagers have had to flee our homes because of their fighting.”

Almost everything left in deserted houses in Lay Kay Kaw has been looted, he added.

Reported by RFA Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Residents of Shanghai are banding together to save each other’s pets from being killed as the COVID-19 lockdown in the city drags on, RFA has learned.

More than 1,000 listings have been made to an online document listing people who have tested positive for coronavirus in the past few weeks, and are looking for people to take care of their pets while they are in compulsory isolation facilities.

“I basically have tested positive … but they haven’t notified me when I will be sent to isolation,” a woman surnamed Wang from Shanghai’s Putuo district wrote on the page on April 12.

“I have a five-month-old kitty at home.”

Wang was told by her neighborhood committee that her cat would need to be “disposed of,” she told RFA.

“I wanted to see if … I could get it sent to a friend’s house, but I don’t know if the neighborhood committee will accept this or not, or whether they will agree to have the cat stay in my home,” she said.

“They told me that, strictly speaking, the cat should be disposed of, and that I shouldn’t tell anyone about this,” Wang said.

“[They told me] if I can move the cat away, or give it to a friend, before I get sent to isolation, it would be safer [for the cat],” she said.

Wang said she was at her wits’ end to know what to do. The mutual assistance page for pet owners suggests she is far from alone.

“I’m worried that [will also test] positive, and my pet’s life will be in danger,” another Shanghai resident wrote. “The neighborhood committee won’t allow the cat to leave, should I want to hand it over to a friend.”

“If I go into isolation, I fear the consequences of leaving my pet at home will be unimaginable. Please help!” they said.

Another wrote: “My family members are all … contacts [of an infected person], and they could all test positive. I’m afraid our dog will be disposed of by the neighborhood committee.”

“Please take my dog to a foster home, with dog food, litter tray and toys.”

Seeking foster homes

The majority of posts were labeled as being from Pudong New District, with hundreds of distraught pet owners requesting help.

A volunteer from Shanghai surnamed Lin said she helped to arrange foster homes for three cats.

“They are very anxious to send their cats and dogs [to a foster home], but some neighborhood committees won’t help them with that, so they have to figure out what to do by themselves,” Lin said.

“Sometimes, volunteers from their community can come to their door [and take the pet] and send it to me,” she said. “It’s very hard for them to send their pets away, because they’re not allowed out themselves.”

She said there had been a surge in requests for pet foster homes after a video surfaced on social media showing a corgi being beaten to death by neighborhood committee members with a shovel, amid loud screams from the animal and shocked comments from the person shooting the video.

Once pets have been successfully removed from the residential community, then logistics personnel must be hired to deliver them to the foster home, Lin said, which is very expensive.

Some pet owners have sent their pets to pet hospitals, but places are hard to secure.

An employee who answered the phone at the Sanlin branch of the Shanghai Hanghou Pet Clinic chain said most of the pet hospitals are now full.

“We are all full, right now; the hospital is overcrowded,” the employee said. “There have been a couple of cases in Shanghai of pets being killed, this is true.”

Shenzhen shelters

Meanwhile, authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen have set up two pet shelters, where pets of people sent into isolation are housed for free.

There are places available for up to 300 pets, and the facility is the first of its kind in China.

Peter Li, head of China affairs at the Humane Society International, said the humane disposal of pets isn’t official policy in Shanghai.

“The few cases we have seen in Shanghai are the result of grassroots government workers not following Shanghai government policy,” Li told RFA.