Day: May 20, 2022

North Korean authorities are mobilizing medical students in the capital of Pyongyang to help in hospitals suddenly overwhelmed with cases of COVID-19, sources in the country told RFA. Even so, deaths continue to rise due to lack of proper care and from counterfeit medicines as treatment options remain limited in the impoverished and isolated country.

After more than two years of denying any North Korean had contracted the coronavirus, the country finally announced its first cases and deaths last week, saying the Omicron variant had begun to spread among participants of a large-scale military parade in late April.

The long-term denial means doctors in the capital’s many hospitals are not up to speed on how to treat coronavirus, a Pyongyang resident told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“As a result, some elderly people infected with Omicron and people with chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes died because they did not receive proper treatment,” said the source.

“In addition, there are a number of people who have died due to side effects from medicines they purchased on their own without proper prescriptions,” the source said.

Pyongyang, with 2.9 million residents living relatively closely to one another, has been hit the hardest by the pandemic.

“They declared an emergency and mobilized doctors from each hospital in the city, then they even began mobilizing med students,” a Pyongyang resident told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“All residents in the city are subject to intensive medical screenings. They must check their temperature and report any abnormal symptoms twice a day,” the source said.

The demand for fever reducers and antibiotics has greatly increased. Many people travel from pharmacy to pharmacy in search of acetaminophen, ibuprofen and amoxicillin, said the source. Antibiotics have no effect on viral diseases like COVID-19.

“Authorities began to release wartime emergency medicines and have placed uniformed military doctors at pharmacies to prevent stealing. So now it is possible to buy necessary medicines,” said the source.

As home to most of the country’s privileged elites, Pyongyang has superior health care facilities than exist in the provinces.

In the city of Hamhung, in the eastern province of South Hamgyong, people had been crowding hospitals weeks before the declared emergency, complaining of coronavirus symptoms, a medical source there told RFA.

“There are provincial hospitals and city hospitals, as well as health institutions and facilities in provincial cities like Hamhung. However, in the case of county-level hospitals, there are only a few beds with poor medical equipment and facilities, and inexperienced doctors,” the second source said.

“I am worried about whether they can cope with it. It will be of great help if the authorities receive aid from the U.N. or medicines made in South Korea, which are effective and safe,” the source said.

About 2.2 million people have been hit by outbreaks of fever, 65 of whom have died, according to data based on reports from North Korean state media published by 38 North, a site that provides analysis on the country and is run by the U.S.-based think tank the Stimson Center. Around 1.5 million are reported to have made recoveries, while 754,800 are undergoing treatment.

The country has only a handful of confirmed COVID-19 cases, which 38 North attributed to insufficient testing capabilities. Data published on the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center showed North Korea with only one confirmed COVID-19 case and six deaths as of Friday evening.

Accurate reporting

The numbers provided by state media are likely accurate, Ahn Kyungsoo, head of dprkhealth.org, a South Korea-based website that tracks North Korea’s healthcare situation.

But Ahn said that not all “fever” cases are necessarily coronavirus.

“In the middle of April is when seasons change in Korea. The North Korean authorities have released statistics since the end of April. There are inevitably a lot of people who develop fevers that time of the year due to the change of seasons…. And the main symptoms… are almost the same as those of cold patients who get ill in-between seasons,” he said.

“The cumulative number of people with fever that the North Korean authorities are talking about is not an individual person with a confirmed case of COVID-19. Their definition of ‘cured’ does not mean the full recovery from COVID-19, but only that fever symptoms have disappeared. These are the people who have been released from quarantine,” he said, adding that test kits in North Korea are scarce, and tallies can only be kept by observing symptoms like fever, body aches, coughing and sore throats.

Ahn said that even with a lot of help from the international community in the form of donated vaccines, North Koreans would still have trouble inoculating everyone because of a lack of cold storage and an inability to quickly transport vaccines to most parts of the country.

“Also, it takes time for the vaccine to take effect after one is vaccinated. From the perspective of North Korea, it will take quite a while even if they get the vaccine tomorrow. So, I think getting as many oral treatments as possible would be more advantageous than the vaccine.”

Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin J. Chung

Myanmar’s junta condemned seven youths to death this week in the Yangon region, with a secret military tribunal finding them guilty of murder, a state-run Myanmar’s junta condemned seven youths to death this week in the Yangon newspaper said.

The seven, all from all from Hlaingtharyar township in the country’s largest city Yangon Region, were ruled guilty of taking part in the March 6 murder of a ward official suspected of being a police informer and sentenced to death on Wednesday under Section 54 of the Anti-Terrorism Law.

As of March 11, military tribunals in the Yangon region had sentenced more than 150 people to death or life imprisonment, RFA reporting has revealed. No executions have yet been reported by the military regime that overthrew Myanmar’s elcted government on Feb. 1, 2022.

The seven were identified as Ye Min Naing, Soe Moe, Thant Zin, Daewa, San Shay, Athay Lay and Aye Aye Min.

Another youth, Htet Myat Naing, Yangon’s North Dagon township, was also sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison under Section 50(j) of the Anti-Terrorism Law for having links to and collecting money for terrorist organizations.

An underground youth activist in Yangon said the military is imposing harsh punishments on young people to discourage them from participating in resistance movements against the junta, the junta newspaper said.

“The deliberate arrests of young people and such harsh sentences are attempts to intimidate the youth not to be involved in the revolution. No matter what they do, young people are already determined to march on with this,” he told RFA.

Lawyers have argued that the sentences imposed by military tribunals handing down highest sentences on the youth are unjust and punishable.

Military spokesman Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun said the government was not targeting young people but was prosecuting violators of the law.

According to Thai-based rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma, a total of 10,707 people were arrested and 1072 of them were imprisoned between Feb 1, 2021 to May 19, 2022, among them 72 have been sentenced to death including 2 children. And another 41 are sentenced to death in absentia.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written by Paul Eckert.

An ethnic Ede Montagnard minority activist was sentenced to four years in prison on Friday for submitting three reports about human rights violations in Vietnam to “reactionary forces” overseas, another activist who followed his trial said.

A court in Cu Kuin district, Dak Lak province, sentenced Y Wo Nie on the charge of “abusing the rights to freedom and democracy” under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, said activist Vo Ngoc Luc, who followed the trial developments as they were broadcast over a local loudspeaker.

The article prohibits citizens from abusing “the rights to freedom and democracy to violate the State’s interests and the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals.” Rights groups have criticized the statute as providing authorities widespread latitude to crack down on any criticism of the government.

Nie participated in several online training courses held by “reactionary forces.” The classes included lessons on religious faith, Vietnam Civil Law, international human rights law, the Montagnard experience in Vietnam, and how to document human rights abuses, according to the online news outlet Congly, the mouthpiece of the Supreme People’s Court of Vietnam.

“Learning about human rights is very good — that’s what I told security officers whom I met this morning,” Luc said. “You cannot convict [people] for taking online courses on human rights.”

Prosecutors failed to provide evidence to support a second accusation against Nie for “providing false information,” Luc said.

“They were all general and ambiguous accusations,” he said.

“Saying the sentence was too heavy is wrong,” Luc added. “I would say it was groundless. If we lived in a civilized world, then the court would declare his innocence, set him free right at the trial, and the investigation agency would apologize him.”

In its indictment, the Cu Kuin People’s Procuracy said that in 2020 Nie collected distorting and false information and composed three reports on human rights violations and sent them to “reactionary forces overseas” via the WhatsApp instant messaging service.

The indictment also said Nie met with the delegates from the U.S. Embassy and Consulate General in Vietnam when they visited the Gia Lai province in June 2020.

The judges concluded that Nie’s acts had affected social safety and order, political security and government administrative agencies’ activities, undermining confidence in the regime and at home and abroad.

When Nie was arrested in September 2020, Cu Kuin police officers said that they seized “many materials with false content and images slandering, insulting and defaming the prestige and dignity of the party, state, local authorities, the public security forces in Cu Kuin district and in Dak Lak province.”

Prior to the September 2020 arrest, Nie received a nine-year jail term for “sabotaging the national unity policy.”

In recent decades, many ethnic minority groups in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, including the Montagnards, have been persecuted for their religious beliefs and seen their land confiscated without adequate compensation. The crackdowns tend to ramp up on the groups when they try to fight back and report these human rights abuses, activists said.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The U.N.’s human rights chief on Monday will begin a six-day official visit to China, including to the far-western Xinjiang region where widespread abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities at the hands of Chinese authorities are said to have occurred.

The trip is the culmination of years of effort by exiled Uyghurs to draw international attention to what they and independent researchers have said is a network of detention camps in Xinjiang.

While groups representing the community welcomed the announcement of the trip, they also expressed concern the team led by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet will be kept from seeing the true picture of what is taking place in the region, including allegations of Uyghurs being used as forced labor at Chinese factories.

Bachelet’s May 23-28 visit will mark the first to China by a U.N. high commissioner for human rights since 2005. She plans to meet with high-level government levels, academics, and representatives from civil society groups and businesses during stops in Guangzhou — the capital of southern China’s Guangdong province where she plans to deliver a lecture to students at Guangzhou University — and in the Xinjiang cities of Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi) and Kashgar (Kashi), the press release said.

Bachelet, a former Chilean president, first announced that her office was seeking unfettered access to Xinjiang in September 2018, shortly after she took over her current role. But the trip was delayed over questions about her freedom of movement through the region.

Bachelet plans to issue a statement and hold a press conference at the end of the visit on May 28.

An advance team from her office arrived in China on April 25. They were quarantined in Guangzhou according to China’s COVID-19 protocols but met virtually with officials during that time. They later held in-person meetings and visits in Guangzhou and traveled to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S.’s top diplomat to the U.N., has joined with Uyghur advocacy groups and other human rights organizations in calling for China to give Bachelet unfettered access to Xinjiang to gather evidence of what’s taking place there.

China is accused of having incarcerated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang in mass detention camps, subjecting some to torture and other abuses. The United States and the legislatures of several Western countries have found that China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

Beijing has rejected all such claims as politically motivated attacks on its security and development policies in the vast western region. Beijing has called for a “friendly” visit by the U.N. rights official.

“We have repeatedly stated and expected that Commissioner Bachelet’s visit should be completely impartial with unfettered access to the concentration camps in the region,” Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Germany, told RFA.

“Our current position is still the same; however, we’re deeply concerned because her trip seems to be not based on the expectations of the international community and wishes of Uyghur people but rather on China’s arrangements from our observations and the press statements of both U.N. and Chinese government,” he said. “If the trip is made under such circumstances, then China will take full advantage of Bachelet’s visit to whitewash the Uyghur genocide.”

‘A light to be shone’

Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) on Friday repeated the demands outlined by some 200 rights organizations that sent an open letter to Bachelet in March, calling for transparency in the visit, unfettered access to the region, and the publication of an overdue human rights report on Xinjiang.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, WUC, CFU and Uyghur Human Rights Project were among the groups that signed the letter. They all have repeatedly raised alarm to Bachelet’s office about extreme measures taken by Chinese authorities since 2017 to eradicate the religion, culture and languages of Xinjiang’s ethnic groups.

A visit without unfettered access would support China’s long-standing narrative that there are no human rights violations occurring in the XUAR, CFU said.

“Commissioner Bachelet has delayed the release of her office’s report and her visit, extending the suffering of the Uyghur people and our wait for a light to be shone on China’s genocidal crimes in the largest global forum on Earth,” CFU’s executive director Rushan Abbas said in a statement.

News of the dates for Bachelet’s visit came two days after Geneva-based watchdog organization UN Watch demanded that Alena Douhan, a U.N. Human Rights Council official, return a U.S. $200,000 contribution she received from the Chinese government in 2021.

Douhan, a Belarussian former professor of international law and U.N. special rapporteur focused on the negative effect of unilateral sanctions, received the money, according to disclosures in a U.N. filing, as she lent U.N. legitimacy to Chinese disinformation, including a regime-sponsored propaganda virtual event with the banner, “Xinjiang is a Wonderful Land,” UN Watch said in a statement on May 18.

Douhan appeared on the program in which Chen Xu, China’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said that people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang live “a life of happiness.” The event also featured XUAR chairman Erkin Tuniyaz, who accused the U.S and other Western countries of concocting a “smear that the Xinjiang government deprives local ethnic workers’ fundamental rights.”

“It is clear that China is now willing to pay unprecedented sums of money to influence Alena Douhan’s U.N. human rights office, in wake of last year’s decision by the U.S., EU, U.K. and Canada to announce sanctions on China for its persecution of the Uyghurs,” Hillel Neuer, UN Watch’s executive director, said in the statement.

“A U.N. human rights investigator accepting money from China’s abuser regime would be like the Chicago Police Department receiving subsidies from Al Capone,” he said.

“Her taking $200,000 from the Chinese regime — as she works to promote their most dangerous propaganda — simply does not pass the smell test. She’s in breach of the UN’s most fundamental ethical principles,” Neuer added.

UN Watch called on Douhan to return the money immediately and to remove suspicions that a U.N. human rights expert is helping the Chinese to whitewash crimes against the Uyghurs. The group also urged U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, Bachelet and Thomas-Greenfield to ensure that Douhan is held to account.

Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service.

The Philippines has installed buoys and opened some command posts to mark out and assert its sovereignty in waters and islets it claims in the contested South China Sea, the country’s coast guard chief said Friday.  

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) set up five navigational buoys, each one 30-feet long and bearing the national flag, near Lawak (Nanshan), Likas (West York), Parola (Northeast Cay), and Pag-asa (Thitu) islands from May 12 to 14, Adm. Artemio Abu, the service’s commandant, told a local radio station.

Abu hailed “the resounding success of installing our sovereign markers.”

On May 17, he said, the coast guard also established new command observation posts on Lawak, Likas, and Parola to boost Manila’s “maritime domain awareness” in the South China Sea, which Filipinos refer to as the West Philippine Sea, and is crisscrossed heavily by international vessels. An estimated $5 trillion in international trade transits through the waterway yearly.

Several Vietnamese and Chinese fishing boats, as well as China Coast Guard vessels, he noted, had been spotted in the vicinity of Pag-asa Island, the largest Philippine-held territory that houses a Filipino civilian community.

“The ships from Vietnam and China showed respect for the mission we undertook,” Abu said, adding that the Philippine Coast Guard boats were prepared to challenge the foreign vessels in case they interfered with the mission to install the navigational buoys and command posts.

In the past, China Coast Guard ships had blocked Philippine vessels on resupply missions to outposts manned by the Philippine Marines in the disputed waters. In November 2021, CCG ships fired water cannon toward Philippine supply boats, which were en route to Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal.

Sourced from Spain, the buoys are equipped with “modern marine aids to navigation” including lanterns, specialized mooring systems, and a satellite-based remote monitoring system able to transmit data coast guard headquarters in Manila, Abu said.

The lack of this capability was highlighted in recent years, when vessels from other claimant states in the maritime region, particularly from China and Vietnam, became more and more present in Philippine-claimed waters.

The new coast guard outposts will “improve our capabilities in promoting maritime safety, maritime search and rescue, and marine environmental protection,” Abu said.

“These [outposts] will optimize the strategic deployment of PCG assets by monitoring the movement of merchant ships in its surrounding waters and communicating maritime incidents to the PCG National Headquarters [in Manila].”

Separately, the head of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights lauded the coast guard for its actions in “asserting the sovereignty of the Philippines over the disputed territories where China has constructed artificial islands and interfered with Filipino fishing activities.”

“No State should deprive our Filipino fisher folk from carrying out their livelihood in our national territories. The installation of navigational buoys is a notice to the rest of the international community that the Philippines is asserting sovereignty over the Kalayaan Island Group,” Jacqueline Ann de Guia, the commission’s chairwoman, said in a statement Friday. 

Chinese coast guard vessels and fishing trawlers have, in recent years, also blockaded or limited Filipino fishermen’s access to their traditional fishing grounds in the South China Sea, such as Scarborough Shoal and the waters around Pag-asa.

On Friday, the embassies of China and other states with territorial claims in the sea did not immediately respond to requests from BenarNews for comment.

The Philippines, China, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam each have territorial claims in the South China Sea. Indonesia does not count itself as a party to territorial disputes but has claims to South China Sea waters off the Natuna Islands.

A 2016 ruling by a tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration affirmed Manila’s sovereign rights to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone and an extended continental shelf, and declared Beijing’s sweeping claim to virtually the entire sea invalid under international law.

Beijing rejected the ruling and proceeded to occupy the waters with its vast flotilla of government and fishing vessels. The international community has urged China to comply with the ruling, as other claimant states have made efforts to assert their rights and deploy more of their own vessels to the disputed waters.

Marcos: On the way forward with China

The coast guard’s installation of the buoys and command observation posts occurred only days after the Philippine general election, in which Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won the presidential election in a landslide, according to an unofficial tally of votes.

On July 1, he will succeed President Rodrigo Duterte, who will be leaving office at the end of a constitutionally limited six-year term, during which he cultivated warmer bilateral ties with China and was seen as relatively soft on the issue of territorial disputes.

The installations also took place in the same week that Marcos had a “lengthy” telephone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who congratulated him for his victory in the May 9 polls.

“We talked about the way forward for the China-Philippine relationship,” Marcos said in a statement on May 18. “So, it was very good, very substantial.”

Marcos, 64, is widely seen here as someone who would carry on with Duterte’s friendly policies towards Beijing over the maritime issue.

“I told him that in my view, the way forward is to expand our relationship, not only diplomatic, not only trade, but also in culture, even in education, even in knowledge, even in health to address whatever minor disagreements that we have right now,” Marcos said.

“And I told him that we must not allow what conflicts or difficulties we have now between our two countries to become historically important,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Authorities in Beijing are ramping up COVID-19 restrictions, while some residents of Shanghai said they were able to leave their apartments on brief trips outside on Friday.

Much of Chaoyang district in the eastern part of the Chinese capital was under lockdown on Friday, while 100 subway stations and 24 administrative districts in Fangshan district were locked down after 10 positive PCR tests among college students there.

The Beijing municipal health commission reported 64 newly discovered local cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, of which 10 were students at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s Fangshan campus.

While the authorities haven’t declared a lockdown, parts of the city are indeed in a locked-down state, a Fangshan resident surnamed Zhang told RFA.

“We’re locked down. There was a close contact in our building, so the entire building was locked in for 18, 19 days,” she said.

“They put seals on our doors and electronic dogs outside,” she said, in a reference to automated devices that call the police if people move outside of their apartments.

She said residents are now struggling to buy food.

“It’s not just that the street hawkers have gone out of business: we can’t get a hold of vegetables at all,” she said.

“Five chilli peppers now cost 12.9 yuan, when they used to be 2.5, or 3.5 yuan at most,” Zhang said. “Three small cabbages now cost nearly 13 yuan, while the price of cucumbers and potatoes has also gone up.”

Zhang Mingming, a spokesman for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Fangshan district committee, said hundreds of students and faculty at the Beijing Institute of Technology campus and at the School of International Education are being transported out to compulsory isolation facilities.

Even open spaces

As of Tuesday, Beijing had 15 high-risk areas and 32 medium-risk areas, with more than 100 subway stations closed to passengers.

Since May 1, anyone entering public places has to show a recent, negative PCR test taken in the past 48 hours.

“You need a negative PCR to get into the park; this is an open space,” a local film-maker told RFA. “I don’t know why.”

PCR testing companies have been the target of widespread public anger on Chinese social media for profiteering on the back of mass, compulsory testing.

The film-maker said: “A lot of people think it’s the government, but most of the money is going to the [medical] insurance industry.”

Photos posted to social media showed Beijing residents trying to eke a living by setting up makeshift roadside stalls, while some roast duck restaurants started hawking roast duck by the side of the street.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai, residents are slowly being allowed out to resume some daily activities.

“They say today that lockdown will be lifted tomorrow, but when it’s tomorrow, they say businesses will stay open every day starting from the day after tomorrow,” a resident of Pudong district surnamed Fang told RFA. “I have no idea which is the true statement.”

“A lot of people are waiting to get passes to leave our residential compound, but they haven’t been issued yet,” she said. “The neighborhood committee put out a list, but our compound wasn’t on it.”

“There have been no positive tests in our compound for more than two weeks, but they still won’t let us out,” Fang said. “They’ve done 30 or 40 PCR tests on every person here, but it’s still not over.”

Mass layoffs and bankruptcies

Some workers in Shanghai are being allowed to travel between work and home only, in a “point-to-point” arrangement.

But the move could be too late for many companies, which have been bankrupted by the CCP’s zero-COVID policy, with widespread mass layoffs of pre-lockdown staff.

Mass layoffs have been predicted at major factories as well as at small and medium-sized businesses, amid a spike in departures via Shanghai’s Hongqiao Railway Station, as newly unemployed migrants finally leave the city.

Shanghai worker Zhang Wandi, said many companies have been hit with rental payments and salaries through lockdown, but with no income to fund them.

“Currently, commercial rent deposits in Shanghai are generally three months’ rent … but nobody has paid their rent lately because they’re all waiting for government subsidies,” Zhang said. “I think a lot of companies are just going to go out of business when lockdown ends.”

Media worker Li Wei said the government must fear mass layoffs as a side-effect zero-COVID.

“The thing they fear most is layoffs at big companies,” Li said. “The economy is not a car, to be driven with one foot on the brake and the other on the gas; it’s more like a plane, where the plane loses height when you slow it down, and you have to take off again.”

“To do that, you have to  have a runway, taxiing and acceleration, and the disease control and prevention measures have hit China’s economy hard,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.