Day: April 28, 2022

Authorities in Cambodia on Thursday arrested the president of a small Cambodian political party who had been on the run since last week after being charged with forging documents to compete in local elections in June.

RFA reported April 18 that Seam Pluk, president of the National Heart Party, had gone into hiding after authorities issued a warrant for his arrest and ordered him to appear in court on April 25. His lawyer, Sam Sok Kong, said that he intended to appear but that the court date did not give sufficient time to prepare to fight the charges.

Choung Chou Ngy, another lawyer representing Seam Pluk, told RFA’s Khmer Service that the arrest was not legal because the warrant expired two days ago.

“It is wrong for the police to implement an expired warrant. The court should take action against the police,” he said.

Choung Chou Ngy also sought to cast doubt over the allegation that Seam Pluk forged registration documents so that his party could participate in elections.

“The Ministry of Interior did a unilateral investigation without the National Heart Party’s participation. Was it an accurate audit? It is a secret,” he said.

Among the 4,000 thumbprints collected for party registration, the Ministry of Interior only identified 200 that may have been forged, he said. Even if there are forgeries, the party has enough support to register, assuming the remaining prints are legitimate, Choung Chou Ngy said.

The political party registration process should not lead to arrests, Kang Savang, a monitor with the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (Comfrel), said.  

“I haven’t seen the ministry file a complaint over thumbprint issues. This is new to me. I am concerned they are using the court to deal with the case. It will affect people’s right to participate in the electoral process,” Kang Savang said.

“I think authorities shouldn’t use the court to resolve this issue. The ministry should have just refused to register the party,” he said.

The Ministry of Interior moved to prosecute Seam Pluk after they accused him of receiving funds from exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy to participate in the election, an accusation Seam Pluk has denied.

Sam Rainsy is one of two prominent leaders of the now-banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in November 2017 in a move that allowed Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party to win all 125 seats in Parliament in a July 2018 election.

Sam Rainsy, 72, has lived in exile in France since 2015. He was sentenced in absentia last year to 25 years for what supporters say was a politically motivated charge of attempting to overthrow the government.

Choung Chou Ngy said he will meet Seam Pluk April 29 in prison to discuss an appeal against his detention.

RFA reported last week that another small opposition party, the Candlelight Party, believed that Sam Pluk has been targeted because of his previous support for Candlelight.

The Candlelight party has been gaining steam over the past year and its leaders believe it can challenge the CPP in the upcoming elections.

After the National Heart Party’s registration was denied, Candlelight party leadership encouraged Heart party supporters to join Candlelight.

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.

Freedoms monitor

Seam Pluk’s arrest comes as three NGOs released a report that listed hundreds of instances of rights abuses in the country, which Hun Sen has led for decades.

“Despite the government’s duty to respect, protect and promote the freedoms of association, expression and assembly, the report records more than 300 restrictions and violations of fundamental freedoms in every province,” the report by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (Adhoc), and the Solidarity Center said.

The report’s findings show that “fundamental freedom is being restricted while opposition parties are being abused by the state, authorities and third-party actors,” Hun Seanghak, who coordinated the report, told RFA.

But a spokesperson for a government-aligned rights group dismissed the report’s conclusions.

“When individuals break the law, authorities must implement the law. Is that human rights abuse? In Cambodia people enjoy their freedom,” Kata Orn, spokesperson for the pro-government Cambodia Human Rights Committee, told RFA.

He said the report was designed to please donors and doesn’t reflect the truth about democracy and freedom in Cambodia.

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

A Canadian parliamentary committee advanced a motion to offer special immigration procedures now granted to Ukrainian refugees to Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities fleeing persecution in Xinjiang, while lawmakers in the United Kingdom moved to ban medical imports from the region in western China.

Members of the Standing Committee on Immigration and Citizenship in Canada’s House of Commons unanimously approved a motion on Thursday that includes the issuance of temporary resident permits and single journey travel documents to people without a passport.

This measure would allow displaced Uyghurs who face risk of detention and deportation back to China to seek refuge in Canada.

Last month Canada said it would introduce new immigration policies, including a Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel, for Ukrainians who want to come to Canada.

The government is obligated to respond to the committee’s motion within 30 days, in a process that is expected to later involve a debate in the House of Commons and a vote on the motion, said conservative lawmaker Garnett Genuis, a committee member.

Genuis said the motion reaffirms a recognition of the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in China and calls for recognition of the vulnerability of refugees from Xinjiang.

“We’re seeing a situation in which the Chinese Communist Party is trying to extend its influence beyond its borders and threaten the security of Uyghurs who have already sought asylum in other places,” he told RFA. “So, it [the motion] calls on the government of Canada to work to support Uyghur refugees and create pathways that recognizes particular challenges.”

Canada’s Parliament, along with some other Western legislatures, including the one in the U.K., have declared that China’s policies targeting Uyghurs constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. The U.S. government also has declared likewise.

In March 2021, the Canada, the U.S., U.K. and European Union announced sanctions against Chinese officials and companies over human rights violations in Xinjiang, bringing swift condemnation of their actions by Beijing along with threats of retaliation.

Memet Tohti, executive director of Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project in Canada, said his group lobbied with committee and parliament members to press the demand that Ottawa “treat the Uyghur refugees fleeing the Chinese genocide just like the Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.”

Thursday’s passage of the motion with the support four parties means “they now have unanimous consensus in the Parliament on resetting Uyghur refugees in Canada,” he said.

No more blind eyes

This week, lawmakers in the U.K. passed an amendment banning the government from purchasing health goods made in the Xinjiang region where China has been accused of forced-labor abuses.

The Modern Slavery Amendment was incorporated into a larger health bill to prevent the country’s National Health Service from buying products tainted by modern slavery, including anything made with Uyghur forced labor.

A year ago, U.K. lawmakers approved a nonbinding parliamentary motion declaring that crimes against humanity and genocide were being committed against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, who spearheaded the amendment’s passage, said he welcomed the move by government health officials to outlaw the purchase of goods and services that come from companies and countries where there is slave labor.

With the advance of the amendment, “the government has signaled that they will no longer turn a blind eye to forced labor in U.K. supply chains,” he said.

Rahima Mahmut, U.K. director of the World Uyghur Congress, said the Uyghur activist group has campaigned for years for the government to take meaningful action against Beijing’s genocide in Xinjiang.

“This amendment is the most significant piece of U.K. legislation addressing the Uyghur crisis so far,” she told RFA. “Once the bill comes into law, the Chinese government will no longer be rewarded with million-pound contracts for Uyghur slave-made healthcare products, as they have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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

China has reacted strongly against Taiwan’s alleged plans to extend a runway on the contested Taiping Island in the South China Sea, saying it was “playing with fire.”

Taiwanese media reported last week that the island’s military is planning to lengthen the existing 1,150-meter-long airstrip by 350 meters so that it will be able to accommodate F-16 jet fighters and P-3C anti-submarine aircraft.

Taiwanese officials have yet to confirm the plans, reported by United Daily News, a conservative Taiwanese newspaper. But recent satellite imagery suggests some kind of changes on the ground at the western tip of Taiping, which is located in the north-western part of the Spratly islands.

Taiping, also known as Itu Aba, is the biggest natural feature in the Spratly islands. It is currently occupied by Taiwan but is also claimed by China, the Philippines and Vietnam.

On Wednesday, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, warned Taipei of “playing with fire” with the Taiping extension plan.

“Any attempt to collude with external forces and betray the interests of the Chinese nation is playing with fire and will surely be punished by both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait,” Ma was quoted by the state-run China News Service (CNS) as saying.

“It will be rejected by the people and punished by history,” he said.

The island, officially considered a “rock” under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is named after the warship “Taiping” that China sent to take over the island after Japan surrendered at the end of World War II.

It has been under Taiwan’s control since 1956.

‘Inherent territory’

Ma Xiaoguang was quoted as saying that “the Nansha Islands (Spratly Islands), including Taiping Island, are China’s inherent territory, and China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday rejected China’s statement, saying that the islands in the South China Sea belong to the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan), and “the Taiwanese government’s determination to defend the sovereignty of the islands in the South China Sea has never wavered,” the island’s news agency CNA reported.

The ministry however did not confirm nor deny the alleged runway extension. Taiwan’s air force earlier declined to comment.

Taiwan, Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, are all claimants of the South China Sea, but China holds the most extensive claim of nearly 90 percent of the sea, demarcated by the so-called nine-dash line.

The U-shaped demarcation line was actually first introduced in 1947 by the ROC and it is now being used by both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) to back their claims in the South China Sea.

An international tribunal in the case brought against China by the Philippines in 2016 rejected the Chinese “historical claims” in the South China Sea and invalidated the U-shaped line.

Both Taiwan and the PRC refused to accept the ruling. Taiwan was not party to the case but its claims in the South China Sea are similar to those of China.

Satellite photos

Taiping is located in the north-western part of the Spratly islands, 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) from Taiwan and 850 kilometers (530 miles) from the Philippines. It is under the administration of Kaohsiung Municipality.

The current runway was only built in 2008. Proposed plans to develop the infrastructure on Taiping Island were criticized by the other two claimants – the Philippines and Vietnam – as stoking tensions in the disputed South China Sea.

Last week, a Beijing-based Chinese think-tank said it had obtained new evidence of the runway extension plan.

The South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI) said satellite imagery obtained via the satellite data provider Sentinel Hub shows that reclamation work has begun on the western tip of Taiping Island, supporting the news about the island’s intention of extending the existing airstrip to 1,500 meters.

Satellite photos from Sentinel taken on March 24 and April 23 and seen by RFA show noticeable differences in the topography of the western areas of the island.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense declined to comment when asked by RFA.

In March, the Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-Cheng said that Taiwan had no intention of militarizing Taiping despite reports that China had completed building military facilities on three artificial islands nearby.

Tainted milk parent-turned-campaigner Guo Li has been denied compensation for wrongful imprisonment by the Supreme People’s Court RFA has learned.

In 2017, a court in the southern province of Guangdong retrospectively acquitted Guo after he served a five-year jail term for demanding compensation after his infant daughter was sickened by the 2008 melamine-tainted milk scandal.

The simultaneous interpreter was handed the five-year sentence by a court in Guangdong’s Chaozhou in 2010 for “extortion” linked to his campaign for compensation from Guangzhou-based infant formula maker Scient after his child became ill with kidney stones.

Following his release, Guo then lodged an appeal with the Guangdong Provincial High Court, which found that the facts of the case were unclear, that there was insufficient evidence, that the court of first instance had breached due process on two occasions, and that the case was inconclusive.

Guo later took his appeal to the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing, learning on April 10 that his attempt to win redress had been unsuccessful, he told RFA in a recent interview.

He said his claim for state compensation was ruled “inadmissible” because a time limit had expired.

“The court found that no compensation should be paid, and my appeal application was rejected,” Guo said. “I was advised to deal with the matter through other means.”

Guo said the ruling was itself in breach of regulations governing state compensation claims.

“I think this is a shameful and ridiculous ruling,” he said. “I will continue to pursue those responsible for compensation in the Guangdong Provincial People’s High Court, via the prison service, and through the detention center system.”

Beijing-based lawyer Mo Shaoping said the two-year limitation does exist, but that the court should have ignored it.

“If the judicial system has wronged a person and that person is eventually acquitted, they it should take the initiative to compensate them,” Mo told RFA.

Tainted milk scandal

Guo’s daughter was one of 300,000 made ill by infant formula milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, which saw a total of 21 people convicted for their roles in the scandal, two of whom were executed.

The government said after the 2008 scandal that it had destroyed all tainted milk powder, but reports of melamine-laced products have occasionally re-emerged.

Guo has previously described three years of harsh treatment, including beatings and solitary confinement, during his prison sentence, as the authorities put pressure on him to “admit to his crimes.”

Held in a cell measuring little more than one meter (3.3 feet) wide and deprived of adequate food and water, Guo was given moldy food and dirty ditch-water instead.

Campaigners say promises from then-premier Wen Jiabao that the government would foot the medical bills for all of the children affected by melamine-tainted milk haven’t been kept.

Instead, the scandal has led major health insurance companies in China to start excluding kidney-related diseases from policies, owing to the huge medical bills racked up following the scandal.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Authorities in China’s Qinghai province have freed a Tibetan schoolteacher after holding her in jail since last year, when her school for Tibetan students was closed for teaching classes in their own language, RFA has learned.

Rinchen Kyi, 42, was released on Aug. 24 at about 8:00 p.m. local time and taken to her family home in Qinghai’s Darlag (in Chinese, Dali) county without advance word given to family members, a Tibetan living in exile told RFA this week, citing local sources.

“Two cars carrying security personnel arrived that evening at the door of Rinchen Kyi’s family home,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “A few neighbors came out to see what was happening and saw Rinchen Kyi get out of one the cars and immediately enter her house.”

“Police prevented people from getting too close to her, so no one was able to learn where she had been held all this time,” the source added.

Kyi was a teacher of 2^nd and 3^rd grade students at the Golog Sengdruk Taktse School in Darlag when it was closed on July 8, 2021 amid a regionwide clampdown on schools offering instruction in the Tibetan language, sources told RFA in an earlier report.

Authorities took her to a hospital on Aug. 1 citing an alleged mental illness, and she was later charged with inciting separatism and arrested at her home, with no word given to her family concerning her whereabouts or condition of health.

Separatism is a charge frequently used by Chinese authorities against Tibetans promoting the preservation of Tibet’s language and culture in the face of domination by China’s majority Han population.

Pema Gyal, a researcher at London-based Tibet Watch, confirmed Kyi’s release from jail. “We need to know now where she was detained and what kind of reeducation program she may have been subjected to,” Gyal added.

Darlag-area students at Sengdruk were divided into different sections when the school closed and were sent to study at separate schools, while students who had come to Sengdruk from areas in neighboring Sichuan province had trouble at first finding schools to take them in, sources told RFA in earlier reports.

Authorities in Sichuan have meanwhile also closed down private Tibetan schools offering classes taught in the Tibetan language, forcing students to go instead to government-run schools where they are taught entirely in Chinese.

The move is being pushed in the name of providing uniformity in the use of textbooks and instructional materials, but parents of the affected children and other local Tibetans have expressed concern over the imposed restrictions, saying that keeping young Tibetans away from their culture and language will have severe negative consequences for the future.

Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses in the monasteries and towns deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say.

Translated by Rigdhen Dolma for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.