Day: April 19, 2022

The president of an unrecognized Cambodian political party who is on the run, facing an arrest warrant for forgery of documents for June local elections, is in a safe location, his lawyer told RFA Tuesday.  Critics said his charges were trumped up amid a government crackdown on the opposition.

Seam Pluk, president of the National Heart Party, is in hiding in an undisclosed place, his lawyer Sam Sok Kong told RFA’s Khmer Service.

His flight was revealed Monday, the same day a prominent activist fled to safety after receiving a death threat for joining street protests.

Sam Sok Kong said his client is willing to appear before the court but fled because he didn’t have time to prepare for a hearing by April 25. He is waiting for the warrant to expire and the court to issue a new one.

“He is planning to consult with lawyers about his legal issues and he is seeking to testify before the court. When he has a date, he will make it public so we can clarify before the court against the charge,” Sam Sok Kong said.

Phnom Penh Municipal Court Investigative Judge Li Sokha on April 4 ordered police to bring Seam Pluk in for questioning over allegations of the use of fraudulent documents to register his party for local elections. If he is convicted, he could face up to three years in jail.

RFA was not able to reach Seam Pluk for comment but previously he said the court’s warrant is political intimidation against non-ruling party politicians and has nothing to do with enforcing the law.

Soeung Sengkaruna of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (Adhoc) said Seam Pluk was targeted for political reasons, the latest in a series of such cases.

“The court is being criticized for lacking independence over politically motivated cases. It is rare that politicians and conscience activists are spared. They are charged and convicted,” he told RFA.

Thach Setha, the spokesperson of a small party called the Candlelight Party, told said Seam Pluk was targeted because of his previous support for Candlelight, which has recently been gaining steam. Its leaders believe it could challenge Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party in the upcoming elections. After  the Ministry of Interior banned Seam Pluk’s party, Thach Setha urged all its members to join the Candlelight Party. 

“Since he supported [the Candlelight Party] he was charged. This case is politically motivated more than being about the law,” Thach Setha told RFA. RFA reported Monday that Seam Pluk joined the Candlelight party after the Ministry of the Interior refused to recognize the Cambodian National Heart party but Thanch Setha said Seam Pluk never joined.

The Candlelight Party, formerly known as the Sam Rainsy Party and the Khmer Nation party, was founded in 1995. It merged with other opposition forces to form the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in 2012.

All opponents of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have been targeted in a five-year-old crackdown that has sent CNRP leaders and landed scores of supporters in prison.

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017 in a move that allowed the CPP to win all 125 seats in Parliament in a July 2018 election. Sam Rainsy, 72, has lived in exile in France since 2015 and was sentenced in absentia last year to 25 years for what supporters say was a politically motivated charge of attempting to overthrow the government.

CPP spokesman Sok Ey San told RFA recently that Seam Pluk received thousands of dollars from Sam Rainsy, but Seam Pluk has denied the allegation.

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

Authorities in China’s Qinghai province have released three of the nine Tibetans who received prison terms in 2018 for running an “illegal organization” promoting land rights. Three more from the group are due to be released in June, according to Tibetan sources in exile.

Sonam Gyal and two others, who were not immediately identified, completed their terms and were freed earlier this year, a source living in India told RFA’s Tibetan Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“In January this year, Sonam Gyal and two others were released after serving their prison term,” said the source.

“Tashi Tsering and two others are scheduled to be released in June, also after completing their prison terms,” the source added. The names of the other two who are expected to be freed are also unconfirmed.

While the source said that the terms of the second trio are set to expire in June, “it is also uncertain if [they] will be released accordingly.”

According to the source, the remaining three had their cases “sent back for retrial and were sentenced to seven years again.”

“The prison time they had already served until now was invalidated,” they said.

In April 2019, RFA reported that the nine Tibetans, all residents of Horgyal village in Qinghai’s Rebgong (in Chinese, Tongren) county, were handed terms of from three to seven years by the County People’s Court for running an “illegal organization,” citing information from the Dharamsala, India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).

Authorities had additionally accused the men — Gendun Soepa, Drukbum Tsering, Bende Dorje, Tashi Tsering, Sonam Gyal, Dargye, Shawo Tsering, Khajam Gyal and Choesang — of usurping the duties of already established village committees, “extortion,” and “gathering people to disturb social order,” the group said at the time.

Detained in July 2018, the nine men were formally arrested in August, and were serving their sentences at a large prison facility in Rebgong, a second Tibetan source in exile told RFA.

“Though the prison is very close to Horgyal village, their families and relatives were never allowed to meet them over the last several years,” said the source, who also declined to be named.

“Sonam Gyal’s health was not in a good state for a long time while in prison, but we don’t know much about his current health status, even though he is released. … People in the region were all too scared to talk about it and tried to avoid the conversation.”

The second source said that the health conditions of the six still in prison are also uncertain.

Petition to reclaim land

In a petition signed on Feb, 21, 2017, the nine, part of a larger group of 24, had mobilized village support to demand the return of Horgyal village land handed over for use by three brick factories in exchange for lease payments to the village that ended when the works were closed down by government order in 2011.

For the next seven years, authorities compensated the factories annually for their loss of business, though payments to the Horgyal village government then stopped, TCHRD said in its statement at the time of their sentencing, adding that villagers had called since then for the land’s return.

Two years before, a Tibetan monastery in Rebgong had appealed for the return of property formerly leased to a teacher’s college but seized by local officials as the college moved to a new location, Tibetan sources told RFA in an earlier report.

The property, comprising one third of the total estate of Rongwo monastery, was confiscated in 2016, and monks had petitioned ever since for its return, sources said.

Chinese development projects in Tibetan areas have led to frequent standoffs with Tibetans, who accuse Chinese firms and local officials of improperly seizing land and disrupting the lives of local people.

Many projects result in violent suppression, the detention of protest organizers, and intense pressure on the local population to comply with the government’s wishes.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

North Korea ordered all public transportation to stop for three days in observance of the April 15 birth anniversary of the country’s late founder, angering some citizens who rely on buses and other services to get around and conduct business, sources in North Korea told RFA.

“From the day before the Day of the Sun through yesterday, authorities in Unsan county completely restricted the operation of state-owned transportation, including buses, taxis and motorcycles,” a resident of South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“With every major national anniversary, the authorities will do things like strengthening security and holding political events and lectures, but this is the first time they are trying to control the people by shutting off public transit,” she said.

Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un, was born on April 15, and his birthday is celebrated every year as a major holiday called the “Day of the Sun.” Kim Il Sung’s 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.

April 15 this year would have been Kim Il Sung’s 110^th birthday, and authorities stopped all buses and taxis nationwide for three days to try to encourage citizens to attend political events to celebrate the day, sources said.

Authorities wanted to push residents to attend a people’s rally to show support for the party ideology and to rededicate their loyalty to the leadership, but North Koreans have responded coolly to the measure, the source said.

“Public transportation services completely stopped for political events to commemorate the Day of the Sun, but the merchants who rely on public transit to transport goods from one market to another had no avenue to complain about their difficulties,” she said.

The stoppage of public transit in the northwestern province of North Pyongan was designed to reduce the risks anyone would attempt to disrupt political events there, a resident of the province told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“Residents who are unable to travel for three days had no choice but to go to the political events, starting with the special assembly on the day before the Day of the Sun,” she said.

On the Day of the Sun, the people laid flowers in offering to Kim Il Sung at the Tower of Eternal Life, a landmark in the border city of Sinuiju, after which they celebrated with a public dance ceremony, the second source said. The following day, they attended a political event where they rededicated their allegiance to Kim Jong Un.

“The people were exhausted from going to these events, and it took them away from their jobs, which they need to put food on the table,” she said.

In addition to turning off public transit, authorities cut civilian phone communications between North Pyongan and the capital Pyongyang during the three-day period, the second source said. She tried to call the cell phone of her acquaintance in Pyongyang, but could not get through until April 17.

Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

The Hong Kong government on Monday said only one valid candidate has been approved to run in a forthcoming “election” for the city’s top job, naming former police officer and security chief John Lee.

“The name of the one validly nominated candidate for the sixth-term Chief Executive Election was gazetted today (April 18),” the government said in a statement on Sunday.

The move comes after dozens of pro-democracy politicians and activists were arrested amid a citywide crackdown on public dissent and political opposition under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had also pushed through changes to Hong Kong’s electoral system that effectively ensure that only “patriots” backed by a slew of CCP-backed committees and the national security police could make the slate.

Now, even the appearance of choice appears to have been dispensed with.

The government’s Candidate Eligibility Review Committee, chaired by financial secretary Paul Chan said the 786 nominations garnered by Lee from the 1,500-strong Election Committee were valid.

The announcement came as a well-known figure from the 2019 protest movement calling for fully democratic elections was convicted of “organizing an illegal assembly” in a court in Eastern District.

Brother Lunch

David Li, known by his protest nickname Brother Lunch, appeared in Eastern Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, was found guilty and released on bail pending a social services report.

The court found that Li had repeatedly shouted slogans and made hand gestures at the International Financial Center, signaling the “five demands, not one less” of the protest movement which included universal suffrage and no limits on candidacy, as well as greater police accountability and an amnesty for political prisoners.

The fact that others joined in, and that Li appeared to be looking to see the effects of his demonstration on others, meant he had organized an assembly, despite the fact that he had stuck to a requirement for 1.5 social distancing in place at the time.

The defense said Li is autistic and has a diagnosis of ADHD, and called for his young age and rehabilitation to be taken into account.

Li was a regular participant in the “lunch with you” gatherings during the 2019 campaign to prevent legal amendments allowing the extradition of alleged criminal suspects to face trial in mainland China, which later broadened to include calls for full democracy and official accountability.

His conviction came as the creator of a banned sculpture commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre said he was unable to move his work out of Hong Kong, because at least 12 logistics companies had refused to take on the job.

NSL scares shippers

Danish artist Jens Galschiøt said he has been working with the Danish foreign ministry in a bid to get the sculpture out of Hong Kong, but that no removal company would move it from its current location to a cargo terminal at Hong Kong’s airport.

Galschiøt said he has been turned down by at least 12 companies, who said they feared that moving the sculpture would put them in breach of the national security law.

He said there appears to be a greatly diminished trust in the city’s judicial system since the law took effect.

Galschiøt revealed plans for smaller replicas of the sculpture to be placed in universities around the world, to serve as a focus for commemorating the dead of Tiananmen Square.

He said the statue had been cut into two parts by University of Hong Kong management at the time of its removal on Dec. 23, 2021.

The statue was placed on the university campus by the now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Democratic Patriotic Movements of China, which had it on loan from Galschiøt.

The 32-year-old Alliance now stands accused of acting as the agent of a foreign power, with leaders Chow Hang-tung, Albert Ho, and Lee Cheuk-yan arrested on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power,” and the group’s assets frozen.

The group was one of a number of civil society groups that disbanded following investigation by national security police.

The annual Tiananmen massacre vigils the Alliance hosted on June 4 often attracted more than 100,000 people, but the gatherings have been banned since 2020, with the authorities citing coronavirus restrictions.

China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office had previously accused the organization of inciting hostility and hatred against the CCP and the central government.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Authorities in Shanghai are warning the families of elderly people who have died of COVID-19 not to talk to the media, as the omicron outbreak rips through at least one hospital in the city, causing an unknown number of deaths.

At least 27 elderly people in Donghai Hospital in Shanghai’s Pudong New District have died of COVID-19, with many more deaths suspected as a result of an outbreak among staff and patients.

Some families have refused to have their loved ones’ remains cremated, and have been warned not to talk to foreign media by police, a person who has spoken to the families told RFA.

“A person identifying as a police officer told me that they are conveying a message to families from the internet police in Pudong; it’s not the hospitals that are contacting them,” Yue Ge, a Chinese YouTuber who has been following the outbreak among the elderly closely, told RFA.

“[This person] said they would let it go as understandable if they spoke to Chinese media, but that they mustn’t talk to foreign media, on pain of legal consequences,” Yue said.

The warning comes after several families of elderly people who died in the Donghai Hospital after being admitted for COVID-19 claimed that the hospital had under-reported the number of patients who have died of the disease.

“The families counted and found [references to] 27 bodies, which basically means that there were 27 dead bodies that tested positive for COVID-19,” Yue said.

“Some of the Donghai families are saying that the Donghai Hospital has totally failed to contain an outbreak [of nosocomial infections] that started in mid-April,” he said.

“According to their account, deaths are still happening there,” he said.

‘No means of controlling it’

Yue said the hospital is understaffed, with at least 80 percent of its staff dispatched elsewhere for disease control and prevention work, and elderly people admitted there aren’t being properly cared for or treated.

He said the figure of 27 deaths didn’t include people who had died there due to other causes than COVID-19.

Yue said large numbers of elderly patients with the virus are also being sent to temporary field hospitals or designated hospitals, with fears that some may even have died due to neglect or starvation.

“In the two weeks or more since the start of April, there have been four staff changes among the nurses on the ward where [some of the elderly patients] are,” Yue said. “Three of them were due to the fact that the nurses tested positive.”

“The fourth just got there … but the family fear that transmission is still occurring,” he said. “It seems they have no effective means of controlling it.”

“The nursing staff are already in full PPE, but transmission is still taking place; they can’t stop it, and the new nurses aren’t paying full attention to taking care of the elderly because they’re afraid of getting infected too,” Yue said.

Yue said there are also concerns that the hospital will start editing death certificates to suggest that COVID-19 wasn’t the primary cause of death, and that the patients had died “with” it rather than “of” it.

“They got the feeling that there is a certain amount of embellishment or editing of medical records going on after the event,” Yue said. “The official response is that the charts have to be written up after attempts to resuscitate someone.”

‘Who are people supposed to talk to?’

Wuhan-based activist Zhang Hai, who has campaigned for redress after his father died in the early days of the pandemic, said the government is suppressing a huge amount of information about the current outbreak.

“We don’t have a free press in China, so there are no reasonable channels available for us to tell the rest of the world what’s happening to ordinary people,” Zhang said. “This is because our domestic media organizations are all controlled by the government.”

“Who are people supposed to talk to, if not foreign media? Their loved ones have been treated unfairly and lost their lives,” he said.

“Anyone with a bit of courage would find it impossible not to speak out,” Zhang said.

Meanwhile, some residents of Shanghai have been posting notices in their doors and windows refusing to take any more PCR tests after many rounds of citywide mass testing.

“No PCR tests: negative antigen self tests,” read one notice, a photo of which was sent to RFA.

“Negative all along,” read another card.

The notices are an indicator of growing public anger at the citywide lockdown, which comes after the city’s leaders were repeatedly told to pursue the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s zero-COVID strategy, regardless of how hard it was to keep 26 million people stuck at home amid lack of resources and food shortages.

Dozens of residents of one residential community responded with “we don’t want to,” after their neighborhood committee told them to line up downstairs for yet another round of PCR testing.

Many are unclear why they need to be repeatedly tested if they haven’t been outside their homes for weeks, according to Zheng Jianming, a resident of Jiading district.

“We have done more than 20 PCR tests, so what else is there left to do?” Zheng said. “We are all negative, we can’t go out, so we can’t get infected.”

“And getting a PCR test could put you at risk; we think it’s now the biggest source of potential infection,” he said. “We’ve all stopped going for PCR tests in the past few days; fewer and fewer people are doing them.”

Compulsory PCR testing

Current affairs commentator Zhang Jianping said the repeated rounds of PCR testing was “bizarre.”

“Some people have long suspected that this has to do with collusion [between government and vested interests],” Zhang said. “The director of the Beijing health commission lost his job over that, confirming the rumors.”

“We can see from the Shanghai outbreak that this is a road, this mass, compulsory PCR testing, that has led to the spread of the virus,” he said.

The CCP’s disciplinary arm announced on April 16 that Yu Luming, head of the Beijing municipal health commission, is currently under investigation for “serious disciplinary violations.”

Unconfirmed media reports have said the probe is linked to Yu’s involvement in PCR testing.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a recent social media post that the public “misunderstands” the government’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy, saying many confuse it with having zero infections as a goal.

“Even if community infections occur to some degree, as long as the cases account for a small proportion of the nationwide total, ‘dynamic zero-COVID’ can still be achieved,” he wrote.

He said the government doesn’t expect the country to reach a state of zero infections.

Jeering and negative comments on his post, with one saying it was “utopian,” and “blah-blah,” and another saying that most people loathe the current policy, were deleted by government censors.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will visit India’s northwestern territory of Ladakh later this year in his first trip away from his residence since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago, sources said this week.

The visit, which will take place between July and August, was made at the invitation of a high-level delegation from Ladakh, a strategically sensitive area where thousands of Indian and Chinese troops clashed in June 2020, with deaths reported by both sides in the fighting.

News of the trip was announced on Monday by delegation members Thiksey Rinpoche, a former member of the Indian parliament’s upper house, and Thupten Tsewang, also a former Indian MP and now president of the Ladakh Buddhist Association.

“We made the request during our special audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and he agreed to visit and bless devotees in Ladakh this summer,” Thiksey Rinpoche said following an April 18  meeting at the spiritual leader’s residence in Dharamsala, India, the seat of Tibet’s exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration.

The Dalai Lama, who last visited Ladakh in 2018 and spent 19 days there, had been unable to visit again in recent years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Thupten Tsewang, also a member of the delegation. “Now, the people of Ladakh will be very happy to hear this news, and we are all very delighted,” Tsewang added.

Banned by Chinese authorities in Tibet, celebrations of the Dalai Lama’s July 6 birthday have been held by large gatherings in Ladakh in recent years, sources say.

Concerns have been raised over the advancing age of the now 86-year-old spiritual leader, with Beijing claiming the right to name a successor after he dies, and the Dalai Lama himself — the 14^th in his line — saying he will be reborn outside of areas controlled by China.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force more than 70 years ago, and the Dalai Lama and thousands of his followers later fled into exile in India and other countries around the world following a failed 1959 national uprising against China’s rule.

Tibetans living in Tibet frequently complain of discrimination and human rights abuses by Chinese authorities and policies they say are aimed at eradicating their national and cultural identity.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.