Authorities in China’s far-western Xinjiang region used the Chinese government’s 100-day crackdown on criminals and fugitives to target Uyghurs deemed “religious extremists” and “two-faced,” a police officer in a major city said.
The campaign was rolled out by Wang Xiaohong, a close ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping who was appointed public security minister on June 25, to eradicate criminal forces and to shore up political security and social control across the country.
Wang directed police to “diffuse all kinds of safety risks and resolutely safeguard social stability” in the run-up to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party later this year, when the party’s national policy goals for the next five years will be set and its top leadership elected.
At a July 15 promotional meeting for the “Hundred Days Action” across China, Chinese public security leaders said that 42,000 cases had been cracked and 72,000 criminal suspects had been arrested during the campaign, according to Chinese media reports.
RFA called Chinese police departments at various levels in the region to find out how the operation affected the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, who have borne the brunt of China’s oppressive policies for decades.
Tight-lipped authorities generally declined to discuss cases, but the public security sweep in Xinjiang targeted mainly Uyghurs deemed “religious extremists,” “separatists,” “terrorists” and “two-faced persons,” state media in Xinjiang said.
The Chinese Communist Party uses the term “two-faced” to describe people — usually officials or party members — who are either corrupt or ideologically disloyal to the party, though it is often applied to Uyghurs in official positions who are interested in carrying on their cultural and religious traditions.
A police officer in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian), a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, confirmed the city’s police headquarters held meetings on “eliminating and fighting against evil forces” in recent months.
The anti-crime campaign elsewhere in China focused on crimes like theft, while in Xinjiang officers sought to catch allegedly disloyal Uyghurs, officials said.
Authorities focused on “operations against evil forces” in Hotan, the police officer said.
“’Evil forces’ refer to people who take criminals under their wings,” he told RFA. “Here our main targets in eliminating evil forces are those people who took people who preached religion illegally under their wings, protecting them from being prosecuted. The people they took under their wings also include separatists, extremists and two-faced people.”
“Pickpockets and thieves are in the periphery of our target in this operation,” he said. “The main targets are the ones I mentioned earlier.”
The officer went on to say that authorities arrested a man named Waris and more than 10 people during a social gathering that was attended by more than 500 people.
“We took them away with black hoods on their heads,” he said. “The ones who were arrested are all male. There were no females among them.”
The policeman said he did not know the identities of the 10 others, and that the case was classified as a “state secret.”
Xinjiang’s Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang have been subjected to severe human rights abuses, torture and forced labor, as well as the eradication of their linguistic, cultural and religious traditions in what the United States and several Western parliaments have called genocide and crimes against humanity.
Chinese authorities have detained up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in internment camps since 2017, according to numerous investigative reports by researchers, think tanks and foreign media. China has said that the camps were vocational training centers meant to deter religious extremism and terrorism, and that they are now closed.
Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Rail freight shipments between the northern Chinese city Dandong and North Korea’s Sinuiju will resume next week, providing a vital lifeline of goods to the pariah state, North Korean sources said.
“Starting around Aug. 8 or 9, the international freight train between Sinuiju and Dandong will resume its operation,” an official from a trading organization in North Pyongan province told RFA on Thursday.
“There has been an order from the Central Committee for all trading companies to prepare import and export materials to load,” he said, referring to the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of North Korea.
North Korean authorities proposed the resumption of service to the Chinese government because the country faces economic difficulties due to a serious shortage of supplies, he said.
North Korea is dependent on trade and aid from China, its main ally and trading partner. Restrictions on the flow of goods from the country during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns devastated North Korea’s already chronically unstable economy.
Freight train service between Sinuiju and Dandong, the hub of North Korea-China trade, was halted in August 2020 because of the pandemic. It resumed on Jan. 16, but was closed by the Chinese again on April 25 after outbreaks in both countries.
Maritime trade with North Korea was also halted at that time but was partially resumed in mid-July after repeated requests from authorities in North Korea.
Trading company representatives, including ones from firms in the North Korean capital Pyongyang, are stationed in Sinuiju, which sits across the international border of the Yalu River from Dandong, the source in North Pyongan said.
“They have been ordering goods from their Chinese counterparts to import construction materials and basic food. They are trying to secure foreign currency to pay for the imports,” he said.
A North Korean source in Dandong, with knowledge of the situation, also told RFA on Thursday that the Dandong-Sinuiju freight train service was about to resume.
“Since yesterday, a Dandong-based logistics company has been recruiting truck drivers to transport goods to the Dandong freight station and manpower to load goods on the freight train in preparation for the resumption of Dandong-Sinuiju freight train operations,” he said.
The logistics company must collect basic food such as sugar and flour, iron products, and construction materials ordered from North Korea from all over China and transport them to Dandong freight station, said the source, who declined to be named so as to speak freely.
Additionally, Dandong quarantine authorities will directly manage the freight station and the trains that return to China after transporting goods to North Korea, he said.
Chinese workers who load and unload goods on freight trains in Dandong must have received COVID-19 vaccinations, the source added. Workers will be tested daily for the virus and can continue on the job if their results are negative.
The freight train will operate 15 to 17 cars at a time and will go directly to the Uiju quarantine facility, formerly the Uiju Airfield, near North Korea’s northern border with China, the source said.
Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee for RFA Korean. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has removed legal hurdles to elevating his son as his successor with constitutional amendments that circumvent parliamentary powers over high-level appointments. Hun Sen, 69, has ruled the country since 1985, and has been grooming his West Point-educated son Hun Manet, 44, as his replacement.
At least 214 civilians have been killed and 89 injured in southern Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region in the 18 months since the country’s military seized power in a coup, according to local research group Southern Monitor.
The group said in a statement on Thursday that since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, at least 17,415 people in Tanintharyi – the home region of junta chief Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s parents – were forced to flee their homes, while 93 homes were destroyed in arson attacks over the same period.
The dead included those killed by junta troops as well as victims of retribution attacks by the armed opposition for their alleged role as informants for the military regime, it said.
Southern Monitor’s information officer told RFA Burmese that the number of civilian deaths in Tanintharyi has risen sharply since the beginning of 2022, with the months of April and June being the deadliest.
“Violent incidents in Tanintharyi region have increased significantly in 2022. People died in an increasing number of battles as well as in bombings and landmine incidents,” said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Another worrying trend is the killing of civilians. It can be said that killings by both sides have increased quite a bit.”
He said most of the assassinations and civilian deaths occurred in Tanintharyi’s townships of Launglon and Yebyu.
At least 93 houses were razed in Tanintharyi since the coup, according to Southern Monitor – 33 in Palaw township, 30 in Thayetchaung township, 18 in Tanintharyi township, six in Dawei township, three in Yebyu township, two in Launglon township, and one in Myeik township.
A spokesman for the anti-junta Democracy Action Strike Committee (Dawei) told RFA that most of the fires were started by the junta troops and pro-military Pyu Saw Htee militia fighters raiding villages.
“A military column would come and a battle with PDFs would occur. When [the military] couldn’t proceed any further, they’d set fire to a nearby house,” said the spokesman, who also declined to be named, citing security concerns.
In Launglon, they just set fire to the houses, even though there were no clashes. One of the houses burnt down was owned by a former Dawei District Protest Committee member. At the time of the incident, he was a member of the committee. There were also cases when the Pyu Saw Htee and the military came together and just burned down a house for no reason.”
According to the Dawei Political Prisoners Network, as of April 29, there were 221 political prisoners in detention in Tanintharyi, two of whom have been sentenced to death by the junta.
Military crackdown
Residents of the region told RFA that the armed resistance in Tanintharyi started in earnest in August 2021 in response to the military’s violent crackdowns on civilians.
A spokesman for the Palaw Township People’s Defense Force said most of the fighting in Tanintharyi region, up until recently, had been caused by military clearance operations. He claimed that the armed resistance was not responsible for starting any clashes.
“The fighting we have here began when they entered the area,” said the spokesman, who also asked to remain anonymous.
“We’re not in a position to attack them yet because we are still in a state of preparation. The PDF has not launched any offensives, except one.”
According to the list compiled by Southern Monitor, from June 2021 to July 2022, there were 133 battles and at least 141 attacks using landmines. Most of the attacks took place in the townships of Dawei, Launglon, Thayetchaung, Palaw and Tanintharyi.
Attempts by RFA to reach junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment on the violence in Tanintharyi went unanswered Thursday.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced Wednesday that the number of people displaced by violence in Myanmar had ballooned to 866,000 from 346,000 prior to the coup.
It said most of the refugees are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, but the junta has yet to announce any plans to address the problem.
However much Prime Minister Hun Sen might rail against Cambodian politicians holding dual nationality, a second passport is fast emerging as the must-have status symbol among even his closest allies.
Most popular has been sunny Cyprus, an island nation and European Union member state located in the Mediterranean Sea. Previous reports have found that Hun Sen’s niece, chief of police, finance minister, two personal advisors and a senator from his Cambodian People’s Party were all granted Cypriot passports in early 2017.
But not all Phnom Penh’s power players have been so successful at diversifying their passport portfolio. Former CPP lawmaker and Transport Ministry secretary of state Ing Bun Hoaw also sought a European passport in 2017. Unlike his former colleagues, though, Ing was hoping to become a citizen of Malta, another EU member state whose border is lapped on all sides by the waves of the Mediterranean. Unlike his former colleagues, his bid was unsuccessful.
The passport brokers
Assets tied to senior Cambodian political figures totalling more than $230 million have been uncovered by RFA as part of a wide-ranging and ongoing investigation into the CPP elite’s ties to Singapore, a financial hub two hours flight from Phnom Penh. Among those assets were more than $30 million linked to Ing’s wife Heng Sokha. It was in the prosperous city state that Heng launched her family’s quest for a second passport – demonstrating how Singapore functions not just as a piggy bank to Cambodia’s rich and powerful, but also as a gateway to the jetset world of second passports and offshore banking.
In early 2017, Heng contacted the Singapore office of Henley & Partners, a Swiss consultancy that prides itself on being “the global leader in residence and citizenship by investment.” Heng has substantial business interests in Singapore, and the consultancy acts as a broker between countries looking to sell citizenship and wealthy individuals seeking to buy it.
Later that year, Henley & Partners suffered a leak of some 617,000 internal files. Those files were made available to journalists and researchers through the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s Aleph Database in June of this year. Amid those hundreds of thousands of files are 32 that document Heng and her family’s interactions with Henley & Partners up until the leak. A review of those files by RFA forms the basis for this story.
A man prays on a rock at Fort Tigne in front of Valleta, in Sliema, the northeast coast of Malta, June 18, 2022. (REUTERS/Nacho Doce)
Heng was interested in getting Maltese passports for herself, her husband and their five children under the island’s Individual Investor Programme, which offered a path to citizenship in exchange for a 650,000-euro (roughly $650,000 at present exchange rates) contribution to the country’s “National Development and Social Fund.” Additional contributions of between 25,000 and 50,000 euros were also required for each dependent included on the application.
A quote prepared for Heng by Henley & Partners on March 2, 2017, estimated the total cost to the family at just over 1 million euros. But it did not take long for Henley & Partners to notice there was something interesting about their application.
“Our DD [due diligence] found that her spouse is/was a Secretary of State,” an associate at the firm’s Singapore office wrote to her colleagues in Malta in an email dated March 10, 2017. “Please update me on your findings.”
Four days later a senior compliance official at the firm responded. They had conducted their own checks and “identified Mr. Ing as a PEP.”
An excerpt from the “background verification report” on Heng Sokha and Ing Bunhoaw prepared by Control Risk at the request of Henley & Partners.
The three-letter acronym stands for “politically exposed person” and refers to anyone who through their holding of high office – or their proximity to those who do – is at greater risk of being involved in bribery or corruption. Businesses such as banks and law firms that process large transactions on behalf of clients use the term to flag customers for enhanced scrutiny.
At a cost of 5,000 euros to Heng, the company ordered a “background verification report” on the couple from Risk Advisory, a due diligence consultancy. The 12-page report came back in July 2017 giving the couple the all-clear.
That clean bill of health was clearly important to Ing and Heng. Internal Henley & Partners emails show that the couple’s representatives pushed the immigration brokers to write a letter attesting to their having survived scrutiny. The company, seemingly confused at first by the request, eventually relented.
“To whom it may concern,” they wrote. “Henley & Partners is pleased to confirm that Mr. Ing and Mrs. Heng have been through the Enhanced Due Diligence process by way of a Background Verification Report with a positive result.”
“In view of the above, we therefore recommend that Mr. ING and Mrs. Heng are fine to proceed onto the next step in applying for the Malta Individual Investor Programme.”
Heng Sokha and Ing Bun Hoaw’s representatives pushed Henley & Partners to provide this letter affirming that they cleared the firm’s enhanced due diligence. However, the Maltese government reached a different conclusion, and rejected the couple’s citizenship application.
Such a letter can be very useful for someone wanting to avoid scrutiny while moving large amounts of money, according to money laundering and financial crime researcher Richard Smith.
“Perhaps to open a bank account. Or just as a thing to be able to wave at an estate agent or anywhere you wanted to transact some money, it wouldn’t do any harm to have that in your back pocket,” Smith told RFA.
But in at least one endeavor it was useless. While Henley & Partners and Risk Advisory both gave the family a green light to proceed with the citizenship-by-investment process, the Maltese government disagreed.
“The application was refused by the Maltese government minister responsible for citizenship,” Sarah Nicklin, Henley & Partners’ head of PR, told RFA by email.
Nathalie Attard, a civil servant with Malta’s Home Affairs Ministry, told RFA by email that the ministry would neither confirm or deny that Heng and Ing ever submitted a citizenship application. She added that, in accordance with the Maltese Citizenship Act, “the Minister does not assign any reason for the grant or refusal of an application for Maltese citizenship.”
Nicklin stressed that responsibility for due diligence “lies with the relevant sovereign state” and any checks carried out by the company were “only preliminary ahead of processing by government.” Nonetheless, she said Henley & Partners had invested “significant time and capital in creating a corporate structure that is wedded to best practice governance and the highest levels of due diligence, even before passing a client over to the consideration of a sovereign state.”
The Maltese government’s own checks employ such an “exceptionally high level of scrutiny” that its citizenship-by-investment program had a 25-50 percent rejection rate, according to Nicklin.
“It would thus be wrong to insinuate or infer that there is weak due diligence in the programmes run in Malta or elsewhere, or that it is an easy way for wealthy criminals to subvert the law,” she added. “The contrary is the case.”
Neither Ing nor Heng responded to phone calls, text messages or emails seeking comment for this story.
Going global
But while the couple’s dreams of Maltese citizenship were dashed upon the government’s rigorous scrutiny, the rejection was a brief hiccup in the internationalization of the family’s footprint.
Heng in particular has embraced the jetset lifestyle. Her Instagram profile is awash with images of her on private jets. In several photos she is pictured carrying a Hermès Birkin bag that sells for $95,000. The couple’s children have also been educated at British private schools and universities in England and Belgium.
A selection of photos from Heng Sokha’s Instagram feed dated July 1, 2021, where she’s sporting a luxury Hermès Birkin bag.
The September after she was rejected by Malta, Heng incorporated Daun Penh Pte Ltd in Singapore. The company does not publish annual accounts, but publicly available information suggests it controls investments greater than its $31 million of paid-up share capital, an RFA analysis found earlier this year.
In 2020, she acquired Connectum Ltd, a British payments services provider that acts as a middleman between retail businesses, their customers and credit card companies. Her acquisition of the company was first reported by RFA in May 2021, when it was revealed the company’s former owners had ties to fraud and financial institutions implicated in large-scale money laundering. Seven months later, RFA published details of police and banking records, as well as correspondence by Connectum’s management, suggesting the company had allowed millions of dollars in criminal funds to pass through its accounts.
Whatever it was about Heng that made the Maltese government squeamish, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority does not seem to share their concerns. All changes of ownership at British financial services firms must be approved by the FCA. According to Connectum’s most recently published accounts, Heng’s takeover received that approval.
A spokesperson for the FCA declined to comment, saying the agency is “unable to comment on individual firms.” Connectum did not respond to a request for comment on the Maltese government’s rejection of their owner’s citizenship application.
Dual nationality, a useful scapegoat
Hun Sen’s dislike of dual nationality among politicians is nothing new, even if its animus has evolved through the years. He railed against the practice during a May 1996 press conference.
“When one wife is angry with him, he runs to the embrace of the other wife. He steals things from one place and keeps them in the other place,” he said. “Politicians should have only one nationality in order to be fully responsible to the nation and to maintain equity between two nationalities.”
In this April 19, 1997 file photo, then Cambodian Second Prime Minister Hun Sen smokes a cigarette during a news conference held in his compound at Takhamao, south of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
At the time he was the junior partner in a fractious coalition with the royalist FUNCINPEC party, many of whose leading lights had not long before returned from decades overseas. The CPP was attempting to force through a clause in the Nationality Law that would exclude dual citizens from political leadership. The party talked up national security concerns over divided loyalties and a sense that the recent returnees had lived the good life as refugees and not shared in ordinary Cambodians’ suffering during the Khmer Rouge and subsequent Vietnamese occupation.
But it was clear that whatever ideological motivations the CPP might have espoused, the push had more calculated aims. Cambodia was two years away from its second national election in decades. The CPP had lost the popular vote at the first in 1993 and was only now in government having blackmailed FUNCINPEC with the threat of civil war. Had the clause gone through, it would have forced some of Hun Sen’s most popular opponents to choose between their second passport and political office.
A quarter of a century later, there is no meaningful parliamentary opposition to the CPP. Today, Hun Sen perceives the greatest threat to his rule as coming from within the upper reaches of his own party. In October of last year, he forced through a constitutional amendment restricting some of the highest offices in the kingdom to individuals holding only Cambodian citizenship. From then on, the dual nationals that make up so much of Cambodia’s ruling class would be prohibited from becoming prime minister, president of the National Assembly, the Senate, or the Constitutional Council. Whether the law will stem the flow of senior party officials seeking to convert the riches they’ve amassed at home into second passports for themselves and their children overseas remains to be seen.
Villagers displaced by fighting in Myanmar’s war-torn Kayah state are running short of badly needed food and medicine, with children and the elderly hardest hit in the camps set up to shelter them, sources in the region say.
Children are now suffering from dengue fever and diarrhea in the eastern part of Kayah’s Loikaw township, where around 4,000 refugees now live in IDP camps, a relief worker at one camp, told RFA on Friday.
“The main problem we are facing here now is the shortage of medicine,” the worker named Aung Naing said. “In another nearby camp, there is the flu. That is very common. And then there are the gastroenteritis cases,” he added.
“We are now seeing slight changes in the symptoms, with kids showing traces of blood in their vomit. There’s a lot of that happening,” Aung Naing said.
Elderly refugees also lack medicine for high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems, and painkillers, saline water and medicines for fevers are now urgently needed in the camps, he said.
Shipments of medicine are now restricted in Kayah state, where People’s Defense Forces are clashing with forces of the military junta that overthrew civilian rule in Myanmar in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup, a spokesman for the Karenni Human Rights Group said.
The prices of medicine have also risen in local markets because of shortages, the spokesman named Banya said.
“We have absolutely no ability to produce medicine here, and we have to buy mainly from outside. The prices here have more than doubled, and there is only a trickle of international aid,” he said.
The UN refugee agency and World Food Program provide assistance to the camps mainly for food, with no help given for medical needs, he said.
“Many people in the camps have been living here for months or even years, and they are becoming weak,” Banya said. “There is no proper health care for pregnant women and young mothers, and refugees are facing even more health challenges because they have no access to vaccines.”
Refugees in ‘a very bad situation’
A spokesman for the Progressive Karenni People’s Force, which also helps war refugees, said that at least six people have died in the camps where the group works due to shortages of medicine and food.
“Medicines are badly needed, and there has recently been a shortage of rice and dried rations. Some of the refugees are in a very bad situation,” the spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“We have seen people die in some IDP camps because they didn’t have enough medicine. And because transportation has been restricted on the roads, it is also hard now to move from place to place or provide comprehensive health care,” he said.
Many in the camps now survive only by eating edible leaves and roots found in surrounding forests, the spokesman added.
In an Aug. 3 statement, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it is facing difficulties in providing food and medicine to war victims in Myanmar because of restrictions imposed by the country’s military.
Calls seeking comment from Myanmar military spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun and the junta spokesman for Kayah state rang unanswered on Friday.
Translated by Khin Maung Nyane for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Military crackdown
