Day: September 16, 2022

An “alarmingly high” number of Cambodians have had to sell their homes to repay credit card and small loan debt, a study of Cambodia’s microfinance sector has revealed.

The study, commissioned by the German government’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), surveyed households, held group discussions with villagers, and interviewed local authorities in 24 Cambodian villages. 

It found that many of the indebted households had taken out small loans with an 18 percent interest rate, and about half had trouble repaying.

Of the households that reported difficulties, 13 percent reported selling their homes over the past five years. When extrapolated for the entire country’s population of borrowers, “[this] would mean 33,480 debt-driven land sales per year, or roughly one sale every 16 minutes,” the study said.

Some borrowers tried to lower their debt burden by eating less, and others took their children out of school so they could work to help repay the family debt, the report found. Borrowers in some rare instances suffered from food insecurity or were forced to work in inhumane conditions, or put their children to work to such an extent that it constituted  human rights abuses, it said.

The study shows the challenges faced by Cambodians who borrow money, Eang Vuthy, executive director at the Phnom Penh-based Equitable Cambodia NGO, told RFA’s Khmer Service.

“When [the microfinance institution] holds land and house titles, they charge an interest rate that doesn’t reflect the ability of each family to make income each month,” he said. “They consider the interest rate based on the value of the land.” 

He urged the government and microfinance firms to forgive the debts of poor people who have no hope of ever making enough money to pay it off.

 “This is a financial crisis. We have to have a national policy to allow time for people to pay off their debts rather than forcing them to pay or confiscate their land,” he said.

RFA was unable to reach National Bank of Cambodia Director Chea Serey for comment.

In Channy, president of the local Acleda bank, told RFA that 18 percent interest rates are relatively low compared to the rates credit companies in other countries charge.

Acleda provides loans based on its evaluation of a prospective borrower’s eligibility, but sometimes, people lie in their loan application forms while others misuse the loans, he said.

“There shouldn’t be any customers losing their land because they are taking loans, unless they misuse the loans,” In Channy said.

Kaing Tongngy of the Cambodia Microfinance Association, said Cambodians sell their homes to raise capital for their businesses or because they want to relocate, not because they cannot pay their loans.

However, Kaing Tongngy said that some loan officers are unscrupulous and that his institution will provide more training to loan officers. Debtors should discuss their circumstances with their lenders if they cannot pay their loans, he said.

“Microfinance companies consider people as clients. People have the right to ask and bargain,” said Kaing Tongngy. “We urge people to talk about finding solutions to reduce tension” 

Forced to sell

Sources in the country told RFA that they had no way to repay their debts other than to sell their homes.

Vann Voeun of Kampong Speu province said that he and his brother sold their homes to repay debt they owed in 2019. He said that their creditors would not allow them to make late payments, and threatened to confiscate their properties, so he sold their land and cows to pay the interest on time.

“The most delay they could give us was only one week, otherwise they threatened to foreclose on the properties. We were afraid so we borrowed more money from neighbors even though they charged more interest,” he said.

He said that he didn’t misuse the loan but his business failed. He said that the loan led to his brother’s divorce.

“A micro financer threatened me. I  hurried to sell my land. The land should have sold for U.S. $20,000 but I sold for only $10,000,” Vann Voeun said.

In Banteay Meanchey province, Prin Chhoy sold two lots of her land to pay off her debt. She no longer has her house, but instead lives in a small shelter on her farm. She said her child dropped out of school because the debt became too much.

During RFA Khmer Service’s call-in show on Friday, Sok Meng from Takeo province said that he took out a loan for $20,000 to start a business, but he is unable to generate enough money to repay the bank. 

“I bought supplies for my business but I’m not making any profit,” he said. “My business doesn’t work. I can’t make any income due to inflation. It is hard to live, I am making $20 dollars [each day], it is hard to pay the loan. I spend more than I can make in income. I will sell my business and sell my land. Things are so hard.” 

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong. 

Myanmar’s junta has banned domestic and international NGOs operating humanitarian programs, including United Nations relief agencies, from traveling to six townships of Rakhine state, aid workers said Friday.

A staffer with an international NGO, who declined to be named for security reasons, told RFA Burmese that the organization had received a letter from the Rakhine Ministry of Security and Border Affairs on Thursday explaining that it had been immediately barred from traveling to the townships of Buthidaung, Maungdaw, Rathedaung, Mrauk-U, Minbya and Myebon.

“The letter said permission to travel to the six townships in Rakhine is restricted, but it didn’t say for how long,” the staffer said.

“Usually they would give some explanation, such as ‘for security reasons,’ but this letter didn’t say why … we are not allowed to distribute basic food items anymore. This includes U.N. agencies, NGOs and all INGOs (international NGOs).”

U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations operating in the region were not immediately reachable by RFA for comment and no public statements had been issued in reaction to the order by the time of publishing. Some international NGOs confirmed the travel ban to RFA, but asked that their organizations not be named, citing fear of repercussions from junta authorities.

Hundreds of refugees who have fled recent fighting between the military and the ethnic insurgent Arakan Army are living in camps in the six townships and depend largely on the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross, World Food Program, and other international organizations.

Soe Naing, who oversees the Tein Nyo Refugee Camp in Mrauk-U, told RFA that the ban would cause significant difficulties for people sheltering there, as they have few other sources of aid and the military regime has not provided them with any assistance.

“We rely mainly on ICRC support in our camp,” he said. “The Department of Resettlement and Rehabilitation hasn’t given us any support for more than six months, saying that it has not received permission from higher-level authorities. These refugees are already in a dire situation and blocking aid will make the situation far worse.”

More than 900 families comprising more than 4,000 people are currently living in Tein Nyo refugee camp, he said.

Meanwhile, the junta has yet to approve the distribution of more than 55,000 bags of rice for Rakhine war victims donated in November 2021 by Yohei Sasakawa, the chairman of Japan’s Nippon Foundation and the Japanese government’s special representative for national reconciliation in Myanmar, sources said.

Attempts by RFA to contact the junta spokesman for Rakhine state for comment went unanswered Friday.

More than 40,000 refugees displaced by fighting between the military and the Arakan Army from 2019 to 2020 are still living in 143 refugee camps in Rakhine, while another 10,000 have been displaced from Rathedaung, Mrauk-U, Maungdaw and neighboring areas since the resumption of fighting in July.

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

The North Korean people are eager to be inoculated against COVID-19 after their leader Kim Jong Un discussed vaccines in a policy speech, but authorities have not said when vaccines will become available, sources in the country told RFA.

While speaking to the Supreme People’s Assembly on Sept. 8, Kim briefly mentioned that in preparation for winter, public health institutions would be “administering vaccination in a responsible way” but recommended that the public wear masks starting in November.

The speech made international headlines for Kim’s remarks on the nuclear issue — he refused to give up nuclear weapons and lauded a newly passed law that allows preemptive nuclear strikes — but North Koreans are more interested in the single reference to vaccines, hoping it means they can get their jab soon.

“When people gather around these days, they always talk about coronavirus vaccines,” a resident of Kyongwon county in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“In areas close to the Chinese border, like here in Kyongwon county, things were more difficult during the COVID-19 quarantine period,” said the source.

Beijing and Pyongyang closed their 880-mile border and suspended all trade when COVID first emerged. 

Additionally North Korean authorities said anyone caught within a one kilometer “kill zone” at the border would be shot on sight. Authorities also held public executions of smugglers and locked down entire counties and cities when they detected “suspected cases.”

“Until the beginning of this year, border areas were much more brutally controlled by the authorities and the rules were enforced more closely than in other areas due to the fears of the malicious virus entering from China,” the source said.

The country maintained that it was completely “virus free” up until May this year when Pyongyang declared a national “maximum emergency” after tracing a major outbreak of the virus to a military parade the previous month. 

The emergency protocol included locking down cities, restricting movement between provinces, and isolating suspected infected persons in quarantine centers. Though only a handful of COVID-19 cases were officially confirmed, government figures identified 4.7 million suspected “fever” cases and 74 deaths over the course of the emergency.

The emergency posture ended Aug. 10, when North Korea claimed victory over the virus.

“I know it is the same throughout the country. But many people in Kyongwon county were ill with COVID-19 during the emergency quarantine period. They died without receiving any treatment because no medicine was available,” the source said. 

“There are 30 households in my neighborhood watch unit. Of those, five have lost members of their family to COVID-19. One household even lost three family members,” the source said. “Everyone is saying we would not have suffered so many deaths if the entire population had been vaccinated against the coronavirus like in other countries.

“I don’t know why the authorities are only now talking about vaccination, when China and other countries started on that so much earlier.” 

North Korea rejected 3 million doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine in September 2021, still claiming to be virus free. Pyongyang also twice rejected vaccine assistance from Russia, and did not respond to offers from the Biden administration during the maximum emergency.

“Whenever the neighborhood sees the leader of the neighborhood watch unit, they ask if there is an order to start the vaccination,” the source said.

“Although the authorities are currently promoting the main points addressed in Kim Jong Un’s administrative policy speech, the only thing we are interested in is vaccination.”

A resident of Hyesan, a city in Ryanggang province that borders China, said the biggest concern for locals is when a vaccine will become available. 

“Kim Jong Un mentioned COVID-19 vaccination in his administrative policy speech at the Supreme People’s Assembly on Sept. 8th,” the second source told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “There should be specific instructions or actions related to vaccination by now. But it’s frustrating because the authorities are still quiet.

“We know that vaccines produced in the United States or Europe, where science and technology are more advanced, have excellent safety and effectiveness. Some people are concerned about getting poorer quality Chinese or Russian vaccines,” the second source said.

The disease and government orders to contain it have taken their toll on the Hyesan resident.

“I hope that the nationwide vaccination campaign is completed quickly. I want to live comfortably without having to fear malignant infectious disease.”

RFA reported in late May that the government had begun vaccinating soldiers mobilized as labor for a high-profile construction project in the capital Pyongyang. The campaign was promoted in propaganda films, with soldiers appearing to be moved to tears as they received what the films referred to as the “Immortal Potion of Love” from their benevolent leader Kim Jong Un. 

A spokesperson for the Global Vaccine and Immunity Alliance, which operates the COVAX initiative, told RFA that enough doses could be made available to inoculate every North Korean should the government mount a vaccination drive.

“COVAX will be happy to share the vaccine if North Korea asks for it to be introduced,” the spokesperson said. 

A spokesperson for UNICEF told RFA that it has not received any information regarding a proposed COVID-19 vaccination effort in North Korea.

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

An official from Myanmar’s deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) and one of the party’s supporters have died in two separate incidents in recent weeks while in the custody of junta authorities, friends and family members told RFA Burmese on Friday.

Zaw Myo Win, NLD party secretary for Uttara Thiri township in the capital Naypyidaw, and Khin Myo Nwe, an NLD party supporter from Yangon region’s Twantay township, both died shortly after their arrest, sources said.

Zaw Myo Win, also known as Ko Gyi, died on Sept. 13 in Mandalay region’s Pyin Oo Lwin township, a party member close to his family told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

“He had been in hiding for some time. The army said they shot him when he tried to flee on a motorcycle,” the party member said.

“What we know is he was arrested when [police and soldiers] were checking guest lists [at peoples’ homes]. … We heard the tragic news that he died after being arrested there. We haven’t been able to get his body back either.”

The party member told RFA that only Zaw Myo Win’s phone, registration card, and some personal items were returned to the family.

Fellow party members described the party secretary as “a core member of the NLD … [who] carried out the party’s work with devotion” and said he was known as “a friend of the people.”

Zaw Myo Win had been hiding in Pyin Oo Lwin township since shortly after the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup, they said.

Interrogation death

Similarly, Khin Myo Nwe, a 44-year-old NLD supporter from Yangon’s Zee Phyu Kone village, was arrested in the region’s Twantay township on Aug. 27 and died during interrogation two days later, a resident of the town told RFA.

“She fell unconscious during a brutal interrogation and died soon after arriving at the hospital,” said the resident, who declined to be named, citing fear of reprisal.

“She was one of about 30 people who were arrested on suspicion by police following the killing of six people from the [Zee Phyu Kone village] administrator’s office.”

The six were killed when unknown gunmen fired at their car as it returned from the Twantay Township Administration Office on Aug. 22. Khin Myo Nwe was among the residents of Zee Phyu Kone who were later taken into custody by the military for questioning, the resident said.

Khin Myo Nwe “was not an NLD member” but supported the party’s mandate following its landslide victory in Myanmar’s November 2020 election, they added.

As of Friday, the junta had yet to issue any statements regarding the two deaths in custody.

According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, security forces in Myanmar have killed 2,276 civilians and arrested more than 15,500 since last year’s coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests.

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

China is carrying out illegal, transnational policing operations across five continents, targeting overseas critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for harassment, threats against their families back home and “persuasion” techniques to get them to go back, according to a recent report.

Chinese police are currently running at least 54 “overseas police service centers” in foreign countries, some of which work with law enforcement back home to run operations on foreign soil, the Sept. 13 report from Safeguard Defenders said.

Initially started as a pilot scheme by police in Qingtian county, Zhejiang province in 2019, the overseas stations were ostensibly set up to help Chinese nationals overseas with administrative tasks, the report said.

“But they also serve a far more sinister and wholly illegal purpose,” the report said. “Some official anecdotes of official operations explicitly cite the active involvement of Hometown Associations on the ground in tracking and pursuing targets indicated by [police or public prosecutors in China].”

Hometown associations are community based groups of people from the same town in China, and are connected to the hierarchy of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, which runs outreach and influence operations both in China and overseas.

One of the key operations the service centers are involved in is the “persuasion to return” process, in which pressure is brought to bear on activists overseas using threats and retaliation against their loved ones back in China.

“In the mere fifteen months between April 2021 and July 2022 alone … a staggering number of 230,000 Chinese nationals were returned to face potential criminal charges in China through these methods, which often include threats and harassment to family members back home or directly to the target abroad either through online or physical means,” Safeguard Defenders said.

The “persuasion to return” campaign was rolled out as a pilot project across 10 provinces in 2018, and official guidelines include denying targets’ children the right to an education in China, or targeting their family members for harassment.

“The combination of an absolute absence of minimal judicial safeguards for the target and the association by guilt methods employed on their families, as well as the illegal methods adopted to circumvent official international cooperation mechanisms and the use of United Front Work-related organizations abroad to aid in such efforts, pose a most grave risk to the international rule of law and territorial sovereignty,” the report found.

Nine ‘forbidden’ countries

People living in any of the nine “forbidden” countries for Chinese nationals, which include Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia, Turkey and Indonesia.

“People who have no urgent need to travel to or stay in those countries are required to return to China as soon as possible,” the report said.

While there is no official breakdown of where the 230,000 individuals were returned from, the majority appear to hail from the banned countries, with some 54,000 people “persuaded” to return from Myanmar between January and September 2021 alone.

It is likely that the pilot scheme will now be rolled out globally, Safeguard Defenders said, adding that Chinese state media have already reported that overseas police service stations actively assisted Chinese police in “persuasion to return” activities in Spain and Serbia.

The report found 54 physical overseas service stations in 30 countries across five continents set up by Fuzhou and Qingtian counties, although other police departments may also be operating more stations not found by the investigation.

Safeguard Defenders researcher Chen Yanting told RFA that the “persuasion to return” process basically uses family members as hostages, making it hard for them to find jobs or for their children to attend school.

“This is like a presumption of guilt … [and] with private coercion used on anyone who doesn’t want to return,” Chen said.

Chen cited the case of a Chinese national who ran a burger restaurant in Cambodia.

“[He] was inexplicably asked by the police in his hometown to return to China, but he refused. So the police went to the outside of his mother’s house to spray it with the label ‘house of a fraud suspect’ and even cut off the water and electricity,” Chen said.

“These measures are being carried out in a number of coastal provinces.”

Overseas operations

An employee who answered the phone at one of the overseas service centers set up by the Fuzhou police said they accept tip-offs from members of the public.

“We carry out online intelligence gathering [and] we take police reports … from overseas Chinese,” the employee said.

“We have definitely detained some people, although I can’t guarantee that we always manage to catch them.”

Shih Yi-hsiang, head of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, said the report should act as an urgent warning to governments around the world that the Chinese state is carrying out operations overseas.

“[We want to know] if it’s possible for them to use those powers to target overseas dissidents or anyone wanted by the Chinese government,” Shih said.

“Is there a risk that Taiwanese and Hong Kongers in the nine [banned] countries could be affected?”

Hong Kong has seen a mass wave of migration following a citywide crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement, while Taiwan is a democratic country that has never been ruled by the CCP, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China, which nonetheless claims its territory and nationals as its own.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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The praying mantis, according to a popular Chinese expression from the ancient Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi, is “an insect who knows how to advance, but will never know how to retreat; without measuring its strength, it easily offers resistance.”