Day: September 2, 2022

Wartime readiness drills designed to test the capabilities of county and city-level hospitals in North Korea showed an exhausted medical staff and widespread equipment shortages, sources told RFA.

Hospital employees nationwide were tested over a five-day period for the first time since 2019. They were made to set up field hospital tents, transport equipment and practice carrying patients on stretchers to be ready in the event of war. 

But the tents were falling apart, the employees were inadequately fed, and medical equipment was in short supply, according to the sources, who questioned if the already overwhelmed North Korean medical system would actually be able to handle wartime casualties.

“The drills started with an emergency call by city and county hospitals under the lead of the Civil Defense Department in each province,” a medical source from Chongjin, in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Provincial, municipal and local hospitals were all involved in the five-day drill. On the first day, on the early morning of Aug. 25, each hospital was loaded with emergency medical equipment and medicines, tents and stretchers that they need in wartime,” he said. “They all gathered at an open space near the Susong River and inspected everyone’s readiness for wartime mobilization.”

On day two, each hospital had to set up a field location supplied with medical equipment.

“The tents had to be set up in no less than three minutes. We had to set up, dismantle and then set the tent up again more than 10 times,” the source said.

“On the third and fourth days, we had training events. These included evacuating patients while wearing a gas mask, identifying generally wounded patients and differentiating them from those who were wounded by nuclear or chemical weapons, treating different kinds of wounds, treating chemical weapons attacks,” the source said.

On the final day, the Civil Defense Ministry had to come up with scenarios to test how each team would react in various situations, he said.

“Most of the medical workers are women. Setting up and dismantling a field hospital and training to transport male patients on stretchers, all while wearing gas masks, was especially difficult for the women,” said the source.

“The training was so hard that in the evening, the female nurses were exhausted and often lay down in bed without enough strength to eat dinner,” he said.

In Puryong county, in the same province, the drill lasted three days and was held at the county hospital, a resident of the county told RFA. Medical personnel were tested in the same manner — evaluating emergency equipment, setting up field hospitals and practicing patient transport and wound treatment.

“Officials of the Civil Defense Ministry came out and watched the whole training. The entire hospital staff from the director of the hospital to lower-level employees were involved in this drill,” the second source said.

“The wartime readiness status of each hospital was very poor. These are the hospitals that must operate field hospitals during wartime, but there is a shortage of tents, not to mention the shortage of medical equipment and medicines,” he said. “The tents were old. Many were torn here and there. These tents have been used for many years.”

Although the drills showed shortcomings in North Korea’s ability to handle casualties during war, the second source said that “it is more urgent to provide equipment and medicine to treat the residents [in peacetime].”

Though North Korea claims it has universal health care, its medical system is notoriously under-equipped and only serves patients who can afford to pay for treatment, according to a 2020 report published by South Korea-based NK-News. Many hospitals have no electricity or heating and surgeries are performed using battery-operated flashlights, the report said. 

“How much money a patient has determines whether they live or die,” a source in the report said.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Unions and NGOs criticized Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government for promoting a former district governor convicted of shooting three female garment workers a decade ago to a senior position in the Interior Ministry.

A decree dated March 18 promoting Chhouk Bandith, the former governor of Bavet city in Svay Rieng province, to the senior ranks of government was released publicly on Thursday. The decree did not state his new position.

Chhouk Bandith was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay 38 million riel (U.S. $9,500) in compensation to the victims, who had been protesting poor factory conditions in February 2012 when they were wounded in the shooting. 

Rong Chhun, president of the independent Cambodian Confederation of Unions, said Chhouk Bandith’s promotion might encourage others to use violence to quell criticism. 

“This is a bad example for our society because Chhouk Bandith committed many bad acts,” he told RFA. “We don’t want to see this promotion happen in Cambodia.”

Ny Sokha, president of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, an NGO, also urged the ministry to reconsider.

“Senior officials must set a good example for younger generations,” he said. “Will this promotion of a former convict be a good example?” 

Chhouk Bandith remained at large for a time after his conviction, prompting rights groups to speculate that he was under the protection of top officials. In November 2013, an appeals court upheld his 18-month jail sentence and the restitution to the garment workers, according to an earlier RFA report. 

He later turned himself in after Hun Sen ordered his capture, served time in jail, and was released in 2015.

RFA could not reach government spokesman Phay Siphan on Friday for comment on the ex-governor’s new role in the ministry. 

Translated by Samean Yun for RFA Khmer. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on China to follow recommendations made in a report on Xinjiang published by the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michele Bachelet this week, which concluded that China’s repression of the Uyghurs and other Muslim groups in the region “may constitute crimes against humanity.”

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General, told reporters on Thursday that Guterres hopes China would “take on board the recommendations” made in the report released by the High Commissioner a day earlier, according to Al Jazeera. Dujarric said the report “confirms what the Secretary-General has been saying on Xinjiang for quite some time, that human rights must be respected and the Uyghur community need to be respected.”

Thursday’s statement marks the first time the Secretary-General has openly called on China to follow through on the recommendations in the Xinjiang report released in the last minutes of Bachelet’s last day in office as the UN Human Rights High Commissioner. Prior to the release of the report, High Commissioner Bachelet’s office had faced tremendous pressure from China not to publish it.

The 46-page report found that human rights violations documented in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) assessment, flow from “a domestic ‘anti-terrorism law system’ that is deeply problematic from the perspective of international human rights norms and standards.”

The report covers the period beginning in early 2017 during which Chinese authorities arbitrarily detained up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in internment camps in Xinjiang, according to numerous investigative reports by rights groups, researchers, foreign media and think tanks.

The predominantly Muslim groups have also been subjected to torture, forced sterilizations 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.

OHCHR’s report makes 13 recommendations to the Chinese government, including promptly releasing those detained arbitrarily in vocational education and training centers, prisons or other detention facilities and releasing details about the location of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who have been out of touch with relatives abroad, establish safe means of communication for them, and allow travel so families can be reunited.

The report also recommends that China investigate allegations of human rights abuses in the vocational education and training centers, including allegations of torture, sexual violence, forced labor and deaths in custody.

Chinese condemnation

China immediately condemned the release of Bachelet’s report. China’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. Office at Geneva was the first one to dismiss it.

“This so-called ‘assessment’ runs counter to the mandate of the OHCHR, and ignores the human rights achievements made together by people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang and the devastating damage caused by terrorism and extremism to the human rights of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang,” the mission said in a statement.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin blamed the U.S. and its Western allies as the mastermind behind the release of the U.N. Xinjiang report.

Wang said during a regular press briefing on Thursday, “This so-called assessment is orchestrated and produced by the US and some Western forces and is completely illegal, null and void. It is a patchwork of disinformation that serves as a political tool for the US and some Western forces to strategically use Xinjiang to contain China.”

While Wang attacked the legitimacy and credibility of the report, he went on to use it to justify China’s narrative denying that atrocities taking place in Xinjiang.

“The fact that this assessment, despite its illegality and zero credibility, did not go so far as to play up false allegations such as “genocide”, “forced labor”, “religious oppression” and “forced sterilization” shows that the lies of the century concocted by the US and some Western forces have already collapsed,” he said.

Global reaction

On Thursday, the U.S. and other governments welcomed Bachelet’s report.

White House press secretary Katrine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that the Biden Administration welcomed the report and stated, “The report deepens our grave concern regarding the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity that China is perpetrating. Our position on the atrocities in Xinjiang has been clearly demonstrated with our words and in our actions.”

“We call on China to immediately cease committing these atrocities,” she said.

The White House statement followed one by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said Washington would work closely with its partners, civil society and the international community to seek justice and accountability for Uyghur victims and continue to hold China to account.

Joseph Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy also welcomed the report and said, “As the report states, the human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region requires urgent attention by the Chinese government, the United Nations, in particular, its human rights bodies, as well as the international community more broadly.”

“The EU joins the call by UN experts reporting to the Human Rights Council to closely monitor, report, and assess the human rights situation in China.”

Other statements applauding the report’s findings came from the foreign ministries of the U.K., Germany, and Japan.

Junta troops in Myanmar’s Sagaing region have killed at least 12 civilians and burned down more than 500 houses in 11 days since entering the region’s northern townships of Kawlin, Kanbalu and Kyunhla, villagers and local defense groups said Friday.

Sources in the area told RFA Burmese that the military had set nearly 50 villages alight since Aug. 22, forcing more than 20,000 residents from 80 villages in the area to flee their homes for safety.

Nay Zin Lat, the former National League for Democracy (NLD) representative for Kanbalu township, said a dozen people had been killed over the past 11 days and that three villages in Kyunhla township were set on fire on Thursday alone.

“Kyunhla township’s Hmaw Tone village is still burning today,” he said.

“Eight unidentified bodies were found on Aug. 23 near [Kyunhla’s] Tei Pin Seik village. They might have been burned to death or killed by heavy weapons. We cannot confirm anything yet.”

Nay Zin Lat said three fighter jets fired at Kawlin township’s Thit Seint Kone village at around 11:20 p.m. the same day, adding that “five villagers were hit and only one survived.”

The Kawlin Revolution Group, an anti-junta paramilitary organization, told RFA that four people were killed in the attack, including six-year-old Pyisone, Moe Aung, Zin Myo Tun, and his nine-months pregnant wife, Phyu Zar Win.

RFA tried to contact family members of the victims but was unable to reach them because the phone lines were cut.

Local anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) groups announced that more than 40 enemy troops were killed in a skirmish between the PDF and the military near the border of Kanbalu and Kawlin townships on Aug. 22-23, and that three officers and a cache of ammunition were captured.

A resident of Aung Chan Thar village told RFA that junta troops started burning his and other villages in Kawlin township as they passed through the next day.

“The troops that were airdropped into the area set fire to our village. The fighting took place on Aug. 22 and they started burning the village on the 23rd,” the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“There used to be 75 houses in our village. They set fire to almost every village they entered. All those from our village are on the run and are depending on food donated by people nearby. But when it rains, life is miserable and we don’t have any food or medicine.”

500 homes burned

Sources told RFA that more than 500 houses have been burned since Aug. 22, including 75 from Kawlin township’s Aung Chan Thar village, as well as 59 from Kone See village, two from Tei Pin Seik village, 95 from Ein Chay village, 17 from Inn Yar village, and 53 from Ywar Koe Gyi village — all in Kyunhla township. They said at least 220 houses were torched in three other villages as well, without providing details.

“Even my pucca (brick) building has turned to ashes. All 95 of the houses have been destroyed,” said a villager from Ein Chay, who also declined to be named, fearing reprisal.

“Right now, we don’t dare to stay [in the village] and we don’t have a place to live. All the villagers have fled. When it rains, everyone has a difficult time.”

Other sources said the military had cut off internet access in Kawlin and Kanbalu townships and that details of the arson attacks remain unknown.

A member of a local armed-resistance unit said junta troops are still stationed in Kyunhla’s Ywar Koe Gyi and Kaing Wun villages and that a nearby area came under attack by air raid on Thursday night.

“The army columns are not leaving. They aren’t going anywhere,” the fighter said.

“Last night, a jet fighter came and fired at some places between their forces and our camp. It was between Ywar Koe Gyi and Kaing Wun villages and there were no casualties.”

RFA contacted the junta’s minister for social affairs in Sagaing, Aye Hlaing, but was unable to reach him on Friday.

The latest offensive in Sagaing came days after an Aug. 17 meeting between junta chief Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and U.N. Special Representative Noeleen Heyzer, during which the former claimed that his forces were not responsible for using arson attacks against villages.

However, Data For Myanmar, a group that monitors the fires nationwide, said on Aug. 29 that a total of 28,434 homes have been burned across the country since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Shanghai police have detained a prominent rights activist who called on a local official to resign over the citywide COVID-19 lockdown in April.

Ji Xiaolong has been incommunicado, believed detained by the Shanghai state security police, for 24 hours, sources told RFA on Friday.

Ji, 46, lives in an expatriate district of Pudong district, and has around 33,000 followers on Twitter, which is banned in China.

His detention came after he began writing petitions to Shanghai ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary Li Qiang, calling on him to resign for “blindly following orders from the central government [in Beijing]” when implementing weeks of grueling lockdown in the city earlier this year.

In the petition, Ji wrote that he was fine with being jailed for opposing government policies in an era of widespread internet censorship and surveillance of ordinary people.

He was already under residential surveillance at his home, and police had prevented him from going back to his hometown in Jiangsu’s Shazhou county to visit his elderly parents, he wrote.

An activist surnamed Liu from the central province of Hubei said the fact that critics of the government get arrested in China was unsurprising.

“This has become in the norm, in this abnormal country,” said Liu, who served a five-year jail term for “incitement to subvert state power” for supporting vulnerable groups.

Liu said he is himself currently under residential surveillance in the run-up to the CCP’s 20th National Congress on Oct. 16.

A commentator from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, who gave only the surname Guo, said he admired Ji, although feared he wouldn’t have the courage to act similarly.

“Too many Chinese people have been brainwashed, and the democratic needs more people to wake up,” Guo said. “Then some people have to take the lead if we are eventually to achieve freedom and democracy.”

In 2019, he was handed a three-and-a-half year jail term after he scrawled “Down with the Communist Party” in a public toilet in Shanghai, and wrote his own satirical graffiti about indefinite rule by CCP leader Xi Jinping.

He had earlier called on rights activists and democracy campaigners to respond to Xi’s call for a “toilet revolution” by penning political slogans on the walls of toilets in universities and hospitals that could be seen by thousands.

Ji freely admitted at his trial to having scrawled the message, and other “sensitive phrases,” on the wall of a public toilet in the city.

Some of his graffiti also referred to constitutional changes nodded through in March 2018 by China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, enabling Xi to seek a third term in office at the forthcoming 20th party congress on Oct. 16.

Stimulus measures

Ji’s renewed detention came as premier Li Keqiang announced a slew of economic stimulus measures to kickstart China’s economy following several months of rolling lockdowns, restrictions on freedom of movement and mass, compulsory testing under Xi’s zero-COVID policy.

Li’s announcement came amid citywide lockdowns in Chengdu and Shenzhen, and ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks in the central province of Henan.

A Chengdu resident who gave only the surname Ren said the measures have had a big impact.

“To put it bluntly, not that many people have died from COVID-19; it’s the epidemic prevention and control measures that are killing people,” Ren said.

“I have to go out, so I have to do a PCR test every day … but the shops are basically all closed, so I can’t spend any money. There aren’t many people out on the street, and the buses seem to have stopped and there’s no plane travel.”

“Each family can only send one person out for a reason, like buying groceries or getting a test, and you need some kind of exit permit,” said Ren, who lives in Chengdu’s Qingyang district.

Current affairs commentator Si Ling said the authorities seem worried about achieving their economic targets for the year. But he said he doesn’t expect the measures to do much good.

“They are about to hold the 20th party congress, but winter is coming, and the number of cases in China keeps increasing, so the current policies being launched by the Chinese government are more than offset by its ongoing epidemic prevention and control measures under the zero-COVID policy,” Si told RFA.

“There is a systemic, downside risk in various places, with problems continuing at financial institutions, and declining foreign and domestic investment,” he said. “This slew of problems isn’t conducive to economic recovery.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Hong Kong barrister and rights activist Chow Hang-tung has said “pleading guilty” to national security charges against her would be “impossible,” in a court hearing ahead of her trial for “incitement to subvert power.”

The charges were brought against Chow and several fellow organizers of now-banned candlelight vigils commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in Victoria Park.

“There is no way I will be pleading guilty,” Chow told the court. “The pursuit of democracy isn’t a crime, so I won’t be pleading guilty.”

Chow’s hearing came amid an ongoing, city-wide crackdown on public criticism of the Hong Kong authorities and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the wake of a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020.

Chow and her defense attorney played out a number of video clips submitted by the prosecution as evidence for its claim that she and the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China were using the vigils to incite the overthrow of the Chinese government.

They included someone reading out a list of all of those who died when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) suppressed weeks of peaceful, student-led protests on Tiananmen Square with machine guns and tanks on the night of June 3, 1989. and in the days that followed.

National security prosecutor Ivan Cheung tried to have the list of victims’ names stopped, arguing that the clip was “inappropriate,” only to be asked how it could be inappropriate if it formed part of the evidence being submitted by the prosecution, according to an account of the hearing posted by Chow’s supporters on Facebook.

In total, the prosecution submitted 58 statements from 39 witnesses, 136 pieces of documentary exhibits and a number of video clips. It was unclear whether the clips deemed “inappropriate” would continue to be used as evidence.

Defense attorney Eric Shum said the prosecution had been given due warning that the defense would play the clips in court.

“We don’t need lessons from you about this,” Shum said.

“History of June 4 crackdown in 1989 and over 3 decades of commemorations in Hong Kong comes back in vivid images in open court as Chow Hang-tung replays video footage submitted by the prosecution as evidence against the Alliance’s alleged ‘incitement to subversion’ offense,” Agence France-Presse correspondent Xinqi Su tweeted from West Kowloon Magistrate’s Court.

Chow said the Alliance was in favor of limiting the absolute power of the CCP, but denied it wanted to bring down the government, arguing that the two aren’t the same thing, and that the charge of subversion doesn’t hold water.

“To end one-party dictatorship is to limit the absolute power of a political party so it cannot do as it pleases and it must bear consequences for the crimes it committed,” Su quoted Chow as saying.

Chow and her defense team are arguing that there is no case to be brought to trial.

Chow’s stand in court came as former talk show host Wan Yiu-sing, known by his nickname Giggs, pleaded guilty to one charge of “seditious intent,” over comments he made during online radio shows he hosted from August to October 2020, and three charges of “money-laundering.”

Seditious intent under the colonial-era Crimes Ordinance is defined as “intent to arouse hatred or contempt of the Hong Kong [government] or to incite rebellion, and cause dissatisfaction with it.”

The sedition charges under the 68-year-old Crimes Ordinance carry a maximum prison term of two years. They were revived by the administration of chief executive Carrie Lam during the 2019 protest movement and have been used to arrest Cheng Lai-king, the chairwoman of Central and Western District Council, and democracy activist Tam Tak-chi.

Wan waved to fans and family calling out messages of support in court on Thursday.

The sedition charges against Wan were based on his hosting, producing and uploading of online programs between February and November 2020 in which he is alleged to have provoked rebellion or incited hatred and contempt of the authorities.

The money-laundering charges were linked to his crowd-funding related transactions.

The charges were brought under Article 21 of the National Security Law for Hong Kong, and are believed to be linked to a series of shows he did on an educational aid program run by the democratic island of Taiwan, which has never been ruled by the CCP, and which has rejected Beijing’s claims on its territory.

The charges carry a maximum jail term of five years in minor cases and up to 10 years in cases deemed “serious” by a government-appointed judge.

According to Hong Kong’s English-language South China Morning Post, Wan had called on people to donate via Patreon to fund both his shows and the Taiwan aid program, leading to the accusation that he was “collaborating with a Taiwanese pro-independence group.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.