Day: September 6, 2022

More than 1,000 people from two Cambodian provinces staged a protest on Tuesday outside the Ministry of Justice in Phnom Penh, calling on the government to resolve a long-running dispute over land taken by politically connected businesspeople, sources in the country said.

The residents of several hundred villages in Koh Kong and Kampong Speu provinces west of Phnom Penh contend that they did not receive adequate compensation for farmland seized to build an airport and have been forced into poverty as a result.

Land disputes are common in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries. Government officials routinely seize land for lucrative real estate ventures, leaving displaced locals with little or no recourse.

The villagers said they took their decade-long grievances to the capital city after provincial authorities turned down their request for help.

They raised banners imploring Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife, Bun Rany, to intervene and deliver justice, saying the ongoing dispute has caused them financial hardship. They also petitioned the Ministry of Justice and Hun Sen’s Cabinet, requesting that charges against more than 30 representatives of the villagers be dropped.

Authorities arrested the representatives in September 2021 during a violent roundup of protesters in Kandal province, which surrounds the capital region. They were demonstrating against land the government took from them and gave to a businessman with ties to the autocratic leader to build an airport.

Det Huor, a representative of the Koh Kong villagers, told RFA that the 1,000 people who protested on Tuesday also intended to march to the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, but were stopped by security officers.

She said villagers involved in the land dispute can no longer afford to send their children to school. She and other villagers have been imprisoned for defending their rights, she said.

“Villagers’ representatives are the most vulnerable,” she said. “When we demanded [a solution], companies filed complaints to the court. I myself was sentenced to two years in jail and ordered to pay a fine.”

The protesters’ banners displayed portraits of Hun Sen and requested he identify villagers as citizens with incomes below the poverty line, so they can receive free medical services and other benefits. They also asked that officials stop pursuing legal action against them and against village representatives in court.

Pheap Teng, another representative from Koh Kong, said authorities and wealthy Cambodians used the courts to prosecute the villagers in the land dispute between her community and the provincial airport company owned by Ly Yong Phat, a casino tycoon and senator from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

Pheap Teng said she worries she will become even more impoverished if the dispute drags on.

“Please speed up a solution for my community,” she said. “Only Samdech [an honorific for Hun Sen] can give us a solution with Okhna [honorific] Ly Yong Phat.”

RFA couldn’t reach government spokesman Phay Siphan for comment on Tuesday.

Soeung Sengkaruna, spokesman for Cambodian rights group Adhoc, said after local authorities neglected the villagers’ entreaties, the residents had to spend a lot of money seeking intervention from the central government to no avail. Because of this, he urged Hun Sen to provide a solution.

“People think that only the prime minister can resolve the conflict,” he told RFA. “This is why they urged him to deliver a solution.”

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

The United Nations special envoy to Myanmar said she will not return to the country unless she is allowed to meet with jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as she defended an initial visit to the Southeast Asian nation where she held talks with the country’s military rulers.

Noeleen Heyzer, the special envoy of the U.N. secretary-general, discussed the situation in Myanmar, which has been rocked by violence since the military’s February 2021 coup, at a meeting on Monday at the Yusof Ishak Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. 

Heyzer met in August with senior military regime leaders, including junta chief Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, in the capital Naypyidaw during her first visit to Myanmar nine months after her appointment. At the time, critics warned her visit risked giving legitimacy to the regime.

But the junta, which ousted a democratically elected government, declined her request to see Suu Kyi, who has been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison on various charges.

“If I ever visit Myanmar again, it will only be if I can meet with Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi,” Heyzer said in key highlights from the remarks at the seminar.

While in Myanmar, Heyzer called on the junta to stop its violence against civilians.

“I have repeatedly called for the immediate cessation of aerial bombings and a humanitarian pause in targeted areas to allow for effective and safe access, and the urgent delivery of assistance through all existing channels to address the multiple humanitarian needs and vulnerabilities,” she said in her seminar remarks.

Heyzer also said she held extensive and regular discussions with the opposition National League for Democracy, the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) and ethnic armed groups. She said she is trying to determine the true situation on the ground by continuing to interact with members of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), formed by lawmakers who were unable to take their seats because of the coup, civil society organizations, women’s groups, human rights groups and ethnic war refugees.

Heyzer said she went to Naypyidaw and met with the junta leaders because it was important to engage all stakeholders in Myanmar and to act as a bridge between Myanmar and regional stakeholders and the international community. 

During Heyzer’s visit in August, Min Aung Hlaing indicated that he might allow her to meet Suu Kyi, who has now been sentenced to hard labor and imprisonment on what rights groups say are trumped-up charges by the military regime.

“In response to my request to meet State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the senior general indicated the possibility of a meeting eventually,” Heyzer said in her remarks. “I am now very concerned about her health and well-being, and condemn her sentencing to hard labor.”

During her address to more than 200 virtual and in-person attendees, Heyzer said there was deep distrust among stakeholder groups in Myanmar and that it was not easy to hold a dialogue with them.

Heyzer also said she visited Bangladesh after her trip to Myanmar to meet with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and inspect Rohingya refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar area. She is urging Association of Southeast Asian member states to create a regional framework to protect the refugees from Myanmar, who were driven out of the country by a brutal military crackdown in 2017.

There is no clear path regarding the crisis in Myanmar and no easy way to resolve it, Heyzer said. The U.N. and the international community have limitations in what they can do, and there are differences of opinion among U.N. member states regarding the crisis in Myanmar.

She said it is impossible to force solutions from outside the country to solve the crisis, but that regional organizations and international governments must listen to the voices of the Burmese people.

“A multidimensional catastrophe will emerge” unless the regional and international communities find new ways to support a democratic future for Myanmar, she said.

‘World needs to wake up’

Also on Monday, the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), a group of former U.N. rights experts, said the NUG, representing the people’s resistance against the military junta, should be recognized internationally as the official government of Myanmar. It said the NUG controls most of the country’s territory. 

The SAC-M was formed to monitor and record human rights violations in Myanmar after the 2021 military coup. Its members are Yanghee Lee, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar from 2014 to 2020; Marzuki Darusman, former chair of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar; and Chris Sidoti, former member of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar.

“The world needs to wake up to the reality that a new Myanmar is already taking shape,” said Lee in a printed statement about a briefing paper issued by the SAC-M.

“The National Unity Government is not a shadow government or a government in exile,” she said. “It is the representative of the people’s revolution and resistance to the military junta, the combined forces of which control the majority of the country.”

The briefing paper titled “Effective Control in Myanmar” finds that the NUG and resistance organizations have effective control over 52% of Myanmar’s territory. The junta can claim to have stable control over 17% of the territory and is being actively contested in a further 23%, the report said.

 “The NUG is the legitimate government of Myanmar and should have been recognized formally as such long ago,” Sidoti said in the printed statement. “But instead, there is a complete mess in the international system when it comes to Myanmar’s representation. That is depriving the Myanmar people of their voice at a time when they need it the most.

“The revolution in Myanmar will succeed. But history will not look back kindly on how we in the international system failed to stand with the people,” he said.

Kyaw Zaw, spokesman for the NUG’s presidential office, said the statement by the SAC-M described the true situation in Myanmar.

“[The NUG] is the government that represents the people. We have full legality,” he said. 

“They (the military) are trying to seize power with guns,” he said. “The people accepted our government as their representative. Therefore, what Ms. Yanghee Lee had said was a true reflection of our government’s position.”

The SAC-M’s report said the military council has control of only 93 townships out of 330 in the country, and 21 of those townships are controlled by subordinate militia groups.

The report goes on to point out that 16 townships in Sagaing and Magway regions — hotbeds of armed resistance to the junta — have been completely freed from the control of the military council, and that the armed resistance has begun to take over administration matters.

RFA could not reach junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment.

Thein Tun Oo, executive director of the Thaningha Strategic Studies Institute, a group of former military officers, criticized the report as being largely inconsistent with the actual situation.

“We don’t know what information they have based their statement on,” he said. 

“What we can say is that this statement was issued with the intention of bringing some instability to Myanmar,” he said, adding that the report was released for political purposes because a decision on the appointment of Myanmar’s permanent representative to the U.N. will be made soon.

The U.N. Credentials Committee, which includes nine member countries, will decide who will be allowed to represent Myanmar during the first session of the 77th U.N. General Assembly to be held in New York on Sept 13-27.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Authorities in Vietnam have fined an online gaming streamer for defaming unnamed government officials as “bald” and addicted to pornography, according to state media.

Nguyen Thi Thanh Loan, also known as Milona, was ordered to pay an administrative fine of 10 million Vietnamese dong (U.S. $425), reports said Tuesday, citing a statement from the Internal Security Office of the Thai Binh Provincial Police.

Milonia, a 26-year-old from An Vinh village in Thai Binh’s Quynh Phu district, made the comments as she livestreamed herself playing League of Legends on Facebook’s gaming platform at the end of August.

“People who often watch 18+ [adult] movies tend to be a little bald,” Milona said during the livestream, a video clip of which later went viral on social media. 

“Perhaps as they don’t do a damned thing but watch 18+ movies at home all day, state presidents all go bald,” she said. “Their f***king heads only have a few hairs left, right? Because they don’t do any f***king things but stay at home to watch 18+ movies.” 

Milona, who has more than 200,000 followers on Facebook and is a well-known streamer, did not mention specific heads of state or specific countries, but many Vietnamese Facebook users and state media suggested that she should be punished if she had referred to one of the country’s four top leaders.

But rights lawyers told RFA Vietnamese at the time that authorities were overreacting to her comments, which appeared to have been made in jest.

Expression restricted

Dominated for decades by the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam, the Southeast Asian nation has little tolerance for dissent or statements that insult the country’s leaders.

Authorities in Binh Thuan province’s Phan Thiet City recently fined another Facebook user, known as N.T.N., 7.5 million Vietnamese dong (U.S. $320) for posting an altered image of Communist Party Politburo member and Permanent Member of the Secretariat Vo Van Thuong, saying the post had “humiliated [Thuong’s] honor and prestige.”

Freedom House, a U.S.-based non-governmental organization, ranked Vietnam as “not free” in its 2022 “Freedom in the World” report.

“Freedom of expression, religious freedom and civil society activism are tightly restricted,” the organization said in the report. “The authorities have increasingly cracked down on citizens’ use of social media and the internet to voice dissent and share uncensored information.”

A spokesman at Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs disagreed with the assessment, saying that Freedom House had given “biased assessment and prejudice, which are drawn on false information about Vietnam.”

Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

North Korea has ordered all medical schools in the country to begin making and selling basic medicines to cover a shortage brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, sources in the country told RFA.

Drug stocks in the country have dwindled during the pandemic as factories struggle to procure raw materials from China. North Korea and China closed the Sino-Korean border in January 2020 and suspended all trade. 

Though limited trade between the countries has resumed, a lack of supplies for medicine means that the universities have been pressed into service to help meet demand. 

“A pharmacy will be operating at the Pyongsong University of Medicine starting from today,” a source in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service Sept. 1 on condition of anonymity for security reasons. 

“The pharmacy will sell basic medicines which the university is manufacturing,” she said. “They will sell Korean traditional medicines and new medicines … at a 20 percent discount from the market price.”

The pharmacy sells a traditional medicine called  paedoksan, which is an herbal treatment for high fever or acute bronchitis. It also kills a kind of parasitic worm. The so-called “new medicines” are what North Koreans call synthetic fever reducers like aspirin, and hand sanitizer. 

All the income generated from the school pharmacy will be used to purchase raw materials to make more medicine and for the school’s operating costs, according to the source.

Under the old health care system in North Korea, medicines were made by factories under the Ministry of Public Health and given free of charge to patients through drug management centers across the country. 

But the medical system began to collapse under the strain of the economic hardships in the 1990s, including the 1994-1998 famine. Now treatment and medicines are available only to those who can afford it. 

The medical university in Sinuiju, the city across the Yalu River border from China’s Dandong, will operate a 24-hour pharmacy selling fever reducers and laxatives, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“The medicines sold at the medical university pharmacy are manufactured by students,” she said. “Paedoksan is produced by trainees who are about to graduate from the pharmacology program at Sinuiju Medical University. The trainees in the department of new medicines make aspirin, glucose and IVs.

“Using the medical university pharmacies seems to be one way for them to cope with a serious shortage of medicines,” she said. “The number of deaths has increased due to the increasing number of suspected COVID-19 patients and the spread of waterborne diseases during the rainy season.”

The source said she did not believe that people are concerned about the side effects from the medicines made by students but are happy to have any medicine at all.

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

Pro-independence groups in the democratic island of Taiwan have called on candidates in November’s elections to sign pledges never to surrender in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI) hit out at the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) for sending its vice chairman Andrew Hsia on a tour of several Chinese cities and provinces during military saber-rattling from Beijing sparked by the Aug. 2-3 visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Hsia’s trip came amid several days of PLA military activity around Taiwan in the wake of the visit to the island, which Beijing claims must be ‘unified’ with China, by military force if necessary.

In a Sept. 5 statement, WUFI called on Taiwanese voters not to support “politicians who are hesitant about defending Taiwan or even support surrender” in the mostly local elections later in the year.

Citing Ukraine’s defense of its territory against the Russian invasion, the statement said the concerted Ukrainian resistance had meant that Russia was still very far from its aim of occupying the country and setting up a “puppet regime.”

“Taiwan should get itself out of the quagmire as soon as possible by completing the establishment of a Taiwanese state that matches its actual situation, and defend our freedom and human rights that have been earned through generations of hard work,” the WUFI statement said.

“We should require political parties and politicians to make clear that they will stand up for these values and not be coerced by outside forces,” it said.

“We call on everyone to make good use of the democratic tools in their hands in each election, examine them carefully, support candidates who have the will to resist and defend Taiwan’s democracy and freedom to the death, and eliminate candidates who parrot totalitarian threats, and who may surrender to the aggressors,” the group said.

Funding a defense force

The statement came after the founder of a major Taiwanese chipmaker reapplied for Taiwanese nationality after naturalizing as a citizen of Singapore, saying he wants to help in the fight against the military threat from Beijing.

Billionaire Robert Tsao, who founded the United Microelectronics Corp (UMC), has regained the passport of the 1911 Republic of China, which has controlled Taiwan since it stopped being a Japanese dependency after World War II, saying he hopes everyone will defend the island against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Tsao, 75, has also pledged U.S. $100 million to help train some three million civilians — including 300,000 snipers and sharp-shooters — to be deployed in the event of a Chinese invasion.

He cited growing concerns that China will, if it is allowed to take Taiwan, set up mass “re-education” camps to brainwash the population into accepting CCP rule.

Tsao dismissed as “nonsense” Beijing’s claim on Taiwan, saying indigenous peoples have lived there for 4,000 years and Hokkien settlers for more than 350 years, while the People’s Republic of China is only 73 years old.

“Therefore, if the CCP uses force against Taiwan, it will be an act of blatant aggression, a deliberate massacre, a vicious war crime and a crime against humanity,” Tsao told a news conference on Sept. 1.

Tsao’s funding will go to set up the Black Bear Academy of military training, whose graduates he said would be ready to defend Taiwan within the next three years.

He said with U.S. arms sales and technical support, together with Taiwan’s own scientific and technological capabilities, would mean the island is “definitely capable of defeating communist invaders.”

“So in the future, the CCP can only hope to sow civil unrest and self-destruction in Taiwan,” Tsao said. “They will support local gangsters to cause trouble everywhere, or secretly help some low-quality politicians and politicians in Taiwan to spread defeatism and capitulation, rumors and provocation.”

“Training three million Black Bear warriors and 300,000 marksmen will offer psychological and technical assistance for young people in Taiwan to become staunch warriors against the CCP,” he said.

China ‘more evil’ than Russia

When the nationalist KMT regime of Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s Soviet-backed communists, it took over what had been a dependency of Japan since 1895, when Taiwan’s inhabitants proclaimed a short-lived Republic of Formosa after being ceded to Japan by the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The island had just been handed back to the Republic of China as part of Japanese reparations in the wake of World War II, and KMT rule wasn’t welcome in many quarters, particularly after the Feb. 28 massacre following a popular uprising in 1947.

Nonetheless, Beijing forces countries to choose between diplomatic recognition of Beijing or Taipei, and has repeatedly threatened to annex the island, should it seek formal statehood as Taiwan.

WUFI chairman Chen Nan-tien said China is potentially far more of a threat to Taiwan than Russia is to Ukraine.

“Taiwan is facing a regime that is more evil, possibly stronger and more ambitious than Russia,” Chen told reporters at a recent press conference. “Any candidate for public office should swear a solemn oath to defend Taiwan to the death.”

Shen Po-yang, co-founder of Black Bear Academy, said Taiwan’s civil defense organization currently leaves local politicians in command, leaving the system vulnerable to political and covert infiltration.

“If these people have already negotiated terms with the CCP, then any civil defense we might mount will collapse under their command,” Shen told RFA. “Then the collapse of logistics networks will definitely lead to the collapse of the military services in combat, because the medical system may be affected.”

“Voters may not know how [a particular candidate] will act if there is a war,” Shen said. “People need to know if the candidates they are voting for are willing to take on civil defense roles in the event of war.”

“If not, you shouldn’t be supporting them.”

To sign or not to sign

Chen Li-fu, vice-chairman of the Taiwan Association of Professors, said signing the pledge of “no surrender” could have repercussions for candidates, who could be barred from traveling to China or face potential detention as “pro-independence” activists if they do.

“This letter of commitment will help the people of Taiwan identify the opportunistic politicians, and enhance the effectiveness of democratic defense mechanisms,” Chen told RFA.

Chen Chi-hsiung, secretary-general of the Taiwan Federation of Students, agreed.

“The letter of commitment is important … to get an overview of candidates’ views before the election, and to watch to see whether these commitments are truly being implemented after the election,” Chen said.

Peifen Hsieh, spokesperson for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said the government has recently boosted defense spending for 2023 by nearly 14 percent, putting it at around 2.4 percent of GDP.

“All the DPP candidates support President Tsai [Ing-wen]’s … policy of defending a democratic Taiwan,” Hsieh told RFA. But he said it would be up to individual candidates to decide whether or not to sign the “no surrender” pledge.

“The DPP is a democratic political party, and we respect the right of individual candidates to choose whether or not to sign,” Hsieh said. But he added: “The DPP is at the heart of the resistance.”

Independent Taipei municipal councilor Miao Boya said he would sign the pledge, citing the mayor of Kyiv and other Ukrainian municipal councils as role models.

“Since Taiwan is on the frontline of the threat from China, of course people should be given a clear understanding of our position on defending our country and our sovereignty,” Miao said.

The KMT responded by saying it pledged to defend Taiwan military, that it supports strengthening the military, but that it refuses to “give up on dialogue” and will continue “taking pragmatic action” to ensure Taiwan’s security and prosperity.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Prisoners held on political charges in communist Vietnam are being denied amnesty and work-release privileges now granted to other inmates, RFA has learned.

Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Aug. 31 declared an amnesty for nearly 2,500 inmates on the occasion of Vietnam’s National Day on Sept. 2. Political prisoners were not among those scheduled for release, however.

A resolution by Vietnam’s National Assembly approved in June and coming into effect Sept. 1 similarly excludes prisoners of conscience from new programs allowing inmates to work outside their places of detention.

Vietnam’s 2018 Law on Special Amnesty making prisoners convicted of “national security” offenses ineligible for amnesty release violates Vietnam’s own promises of freedom for its citizens, the wife of one political prisoner wrote in a Sept. 2 Facebook posting.

“Don’t the rights to freedom that President Ho Chi Minh promised [in his Sept. 2, 1945 declaration of Vietnam’s independence from colonial power France] include the freedom of speech and the freedom to nominate oneself to the National Assembly?” Le Thi Na wrote.

“If so, why do parents now have to be separated from their sons, wives from their husbands, and children from their fathers, just because their family members had exercised their rights mentioned in this proclamation, as well as in Vietnam’s own constitution?”

Na, the wife of citizen journalist Le Trong Hung — now serving five years at Prison No. 6 in Nghe An province’s Thanh Chuong district for “disseminating anti-State materials” — told RFA in an interview that many of those charged with national security offenses had only spoken up to expose authorities’ wrongdoings.

“But as they are political dissidents, they are not eligible for amnesty, which is unfair and inhumane,” she said.

“And not allowing political prisoners to work outside their detention center is the quickest and most brutal way to destroy both their physical and mental health,” Na added. “Prisoners of conscience are held inside the four walls of their cell, and have no access to nature.”

Allowing political prisoners outside work would provide them a change of environment and improve their state of mind, said Hanoi-based journalist Nguyen Vu Binh, who served a seven-year prison term for publishing articles promoting human rights and democracy.

“Prisoners of conscience are disadvantaged by not being given the same rights that other prisoners enjoy,” said Binh, also speaking to RFA.

Binh added that though political prisoners are not forced to work, many want to be given something to do so that their bodies can get some exercise. No one wants to be subjected to back-breaking labor, though, he said.

Paid in ‘credits’

Former prisoner Tran Thanh Phuong, who completed a jail term in March, said that political prisoners at the An Phuoc Detention Center in southern Vietnam’s Binh Duong province are permitted to work only inside the jail’s walls.

“However, inmates charged with social offenses are sent to outside workshops sometimes up to one or two kilometers away,” he said.

Phuong said that An Phuoc prison staff often pay prisoners only a tenth of market value for their work, and this is given not in cash but in credits that political prisoners can use to buy food or other commodities at the prison canteen. Credits earned by other inmates can be accrued toward possible reductions of their sentence, he said.

Current regulations on prisoner amnesty and work outside detention centers are in line with Vietnamese law, said legal expert Bui Quang Thang, speaking to RFA from Vietnam’s capital Hanoi.

“Of course, whether or not it is correct to charge someone with offenses against national security is a different matter entirely,” Thang said.

According to international and domestic human rights organizations, Vietnam currently holds hundreds of prisoners of conscience sentenced for carrying out peaceful activities such as writing articles or criticizing the government on social media.

Many groups have called on Vietnam to eliminate vaguely worded provisions in its Penal Code to bring it more in line with human rights treaties that Vietnam has signed.

The government of Vietnam says the country holds no political prisoners.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Written in English by Richard Finney.