Day: July 27, 2022

Chinese officials in a Tibetan-populated region of Sichuan this month arrested a Tibetan man accused of setting up a group honoring Tibetan religious leaders on the popular social media platform WeChat, Tibetan sources said.

Lotse, 57 and a resident of Sichuan’s Sershul (in Chinese, Shiqu) county in the Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, was taken into custody in July for creating the chat group, which was set up to celebrate the birthdays of revered Tibetan lamas, a Tibetan living in exile told RFA this week.

“The group has around 100 members who come from all parts of Tibet,” RFA’s source said, citing local contacts and speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Chinese authorities called Lotse’s creation of the group “unlawful,” the source added.

Lotse, a single father of two sons, is now believed to be detained by authorities somewhere in Sershul, and local Tibetans were questioned about him and pressured by police in the period leading up to his arrest, the source said.

“Chinese police also visited Lotse at his home before his arrest and threatened him for creating such a group without the government’s permission,” he added.

Banned birthday celebration

Sichuan authorities arrested two Tibetans in 2021 for celebrating the 86^th birthday on July 6 of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, sources told RFA in earlier reports.

The pair, a man named Kunchok Tashi and a woman named Dzapo, both in their 40s, were taken into custody in Kardze’s Kyaglung town on suspicion of being part of a social media group that shared images and documents and encouraged the reciting of Tibetan prayers on the Dalai Lama’s birthday.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in India in the midst of a failed 1959 Tibetan national uprising against rule by China, which marched into the formerly independent Himalayan country in 1950.

Displays by Tibetans of the Dalai Lama’s photo, public celebrations of his birthday and the sharing of his teachings on mobile phones or other social media are often harshly punished.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on Tibetan-populated regions of western China, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity, and subjecting Tibetans to imprisonment, torture and extrajudicial killings.

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

A court in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong have handed down a six-year jail term to an outspoken poet who called on ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping to step down, two years after his trial.

Zhang Guiqi, 49, who is widely known by his penname Lu Yang, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment by the Liaocheng Intermediate People’s Court, which found him guilty two years ago of “incitement to subvert state power.”

“They informed his family by phone that he has been sentenced,” Independent Chinese PEN’s freelance coordinator Zhang Yu told RFA. “He was convicted of incitement to subvert of state power, sentenced to six years in prison and deprived of political rights for three years.”

Lu pleaded not guilty, and plans to appeal, Zhang said.

“[His family] wanted to see the judgment, but they wouldn’t show it to them because they said it was a crime involving national security, and was a state secret,” Zhang said.

Lu’s arrest came after he posted a video of himself calling on Xi to step down, and calling for “an end to the CCP dictatorship.”

“At least three years of that sentence is linked to his mention of Xi Jinping, because if he’d called on anyone else to step down, it wouldn’t have been aggravated, which would have meant a three-year sentence,” Zhang said.

“That’s one year each for each character [in Xi Jinping’s name].”

Zhang said the video had been seen by a fairly small number of people to start with.

“I’m guessing that he may have used his superior knowledge of the law to argue back, making them … retaliate hard against him,” Zhang said.

Lu Yang was among a group of rights activists who went to the Shandong Jianzhu University in January 2017 to support a former professor there, Deng Xiangchao, who was targeted by Maoist protesters after he retweeted a post satirizing late supreme leader Mao Zedong.

The Shandong authorities terminated Deng’s teaching contract after the incident, while Maoist flash mobs attacked Deng’s supporters at the scene, including Yang.

Independent Chinese PEN issued a statement condemning the sentencing of Lu on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Lu’s wife, who gave only a surname, Zhang, said she has been barred from giving interviews to foreign media, and has been threatened with the loss of her job by her current employer.

“I was in a very dark place, in hell, after I got the news [on July 26],” Zhang said. “I have been threatened by my employer … and they told me not to speak to foreign media.”

“I can’t lose this job because I have to support older relatives and my kids, who are studying abroad.”

Zhang is currently struggling to do that on a monthly salary of just 1,200 yuan, and the couple’s art and teaching business had been shut down by the authorities after Lu was detained, on the grounds that he had a share in it, Zhang Yu told RFA.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

UPDATED 4.46 P.M. EDT on 2022-7-27

Military troops have killed at least six people in a raid on a village in Myanmar’s Sagaing region, residents said Wednesday, amid reports that an anti-junta paramilitary group killed seven people in an attack intended as revenge for the executions of four democracy activists.

Sources from Salingyi township’s Yae Mein (South) village said the bodies of six men were discovered when residents returned to the area on Wednesday following the raid a day earlier.

Four of the men were identified as Chit Shwe, 70; Aung Moe, 35; Aung Khaing, 40; and Moe Oo, a 30-year-old member of the anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF). The two others had yet to be identified, sources said, adding that they “might have been brought along by the troops.”

A resident who spoke to RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, said that the body of PDF fighter Moe Oo was found buried in a shallow grave, while the rest of the bodies were discovered in nearby Yae Mein village (North).

“We found the body of the PDF guy and buried it. We found the bodies of the other three men from Yae Mein (South) village in Yae Mein (North) Village. Altogether, there were six bodies,” the resident said.

“After spending the night in Yay Mein, the soldiers killed them before leaving the village. They raided every village in their path and wreaked havoc. They arrested and tortured people in all of the villages,” he added, without providing details of which other villages had been targeted by the troops.

Residents said the six victims all displayed signs of “serious head injuries” and “gunshot wounds.”

A family member of Aung Moe, who also declined to be named, said the troops had killed him as he returned home for a break from farming.

“When the military entered the village, we all fled because we were afraid. But he came back from the fields for lunch and was nabbed,” the family member said.

“He was beaten up during interrogation the whole day and finally killed.”

According to the relative, Aung Moe’s body was found shirtless with a scarf bearing the logo of the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) around his neck and “covered with htameins,” or women’s sarongs.

“His hands were tied at the back and his body was dumped in a [rice] paddy bin,” they said.

Family members of Chit Shwe and Aung Khaing said the two men were also killed when they returned to the village following the initial raid on Tuesday. They said Aung Khaing’s eyeballs had been “gouged out.”

It was not immediately clear which military battalion was responsible for the raid and the killings.

The military had yet to release any information regarding the incident and calls by RFA to junta Deputy Minister of Information Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun went unanswered Wednesday.

Act akin to ‘war crime’

A Salingyi-based member of parliament for Sagaing region, who also requested anonymity for security reasons, said the killings in Yae Mein (South) village amounted to a “war crime.”

“The military no longer sees members of the public as citizens, but as enemies,” they said.

“Not all people are PDFs or even armed. They are living their lives peacefully. But when troops enter villages … they act in ways that are not in line with a soldier’s ethics. They shoot people in the heads or cut their throats. These are war crimes committed against innocent people.”

A resident of Lin Sa Kyet village, situated nearby Yae Mein (South), told RFA the killings were “so horrible that people of nearby villages are now terrified of the junta troops.”

“The military is brutal. When they enter villages, they kill anyone they find suspicious. They simply shoot people in the heads,” he said.

“The local people are suffering tremendously. They have no place to live. [Those who have fled] are still taking shelter in the jungle. They are finding life very difficult.”

A member of the Salingyi Revolution Army (SRA), a local PDF group, said his group will confront the military to prevent troops from harming any more residents of the township.

“[The troops] no longer have the ability to fight on the ground, so they are bullying and attacking innocent people,” he said.

“We will retaliate. Our focus will be on the military. Our plan is to attack their [supporters]. We’ve been fighting them guerrilla-style in the past, but now we’re going to start fighting them head-on.”

Residents of Salingyi told RFA that two columns of around 150 junta troops are currently operating in the township. They said some 3,000 people from 10 villages have fled their homes because of the military’s presence, and are taking shelter in the jungle.

PDF revenge attack

The discovery of the six bodies in Salingyi township came amid reports by state media and the PDF that seven people were killed in fighting in a village in Magway region, where homes were set on fire in a revenge attack.

Eight local PDF groups raided the pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia-occupied village in Pauk township on Monday in retaliation for the weekend executions of four democracy activists, a statement from the PDF groups said.

Former student leader Ko Jimmy, former NLD MP Phyo Zeya Thaw, and two other democracy activists, were hanged Saturday in Yangon’s Insein prison – the first judicial executions in decades. That has further fueled opposition to the military council that seized power from an elected government in February 2021.

A PDF officer said the village had strong leanings towards pro-junta militias and locals were heavily armed.

“Fighting started at 5.30 a.m. and continued beyond 7 a.m.,” said the officer-in-charge of the Southern Pauk Guerrilla Force, who did not give his name for security reasons.

A PDF news release on Tuesday named the attack “Operation Zeya Thaw.”

It said eight joint PDFs, including the Southern Pauk Guerrilla Force, banded together to launch the attack. It said the seven people killed were Pyu Saw Htee militiamen.

Junta-aligned newspapers reported Tuesday that the seven fatalities were civilians, including two members of the village defense force and two children, and that 41 houses were burned down. Kyemon Daily newspaper printed blurred photos of blackened corpses.

The PDFs said they had warned the public about the attacks in advance and civilians had not been deliberately targeted.

This year has seen an upsurge in arson attacks and killings in Myanmar’s Magway and Sagaing regions as violence has spiraled between junta forces and PDFs. 

Last month, independent research group Data For Myanmar, which studies the effects of conflict on communities, said that at least 18,886 houses had been destroyed by military arson across the country since the coup. 

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane.

Updated to include reports of six dead in Sagaing region’s Salingyi township.