Day: September 21, 2022

Fighting between Myanmar’s military and the ethnic Arakan Army (AA), which resumed in July after a two-year lull, has intensified and is spreading southward through Rakhine state, sources in the region told RFA Burmese on Wednesday.

What began as intermittent clashes two months ago in northern Rakhine’s Maungdaw township and across the border to the northeast in neighboring Chin state’s Paletwa township has since spread to the central Rakhine townships of Buthidaung, Mrauk-U and Kyauktaw, and is now expanding to Toungup township in the state’s south-central region, according to residents.

Civilian casualties are also on the rise, largely due to shelling by the military, sources said. On Tuesday night, a family of four in Kyauktaw’s Na Ga Yar village were injured by heavy weapons fire originating from the junta’s 9 Military Operations Command headquarters in the seat of the township, according to one of the victims, Mya Yin Oo.

“[Three] shells hit our house while I was in the kitchen,” she said. “My grandson, who was reading upstairs, as well as my other grandson downstairs, were both injured. My daughter was also injured and I was wounded on my back.”

Mya Yin Oo’s daughter, Oo Yin Than, was injured on her hand, while her grandsons — 10th grade students Myo Naing Win and Min Aye Soe — were injured on the head and back. All four are being treated at the Kyuaktaw Hospital and are expected to fully recover, Mya Yin Oo said.

Other residents of the area told RFA that on Monday, AA fighters in Kyauktaw intercepted and attacked two junta boats carrying food and soldiers making their way to Paletwa along the Kalatan River.

The vessels retreated and 9 Military Operations Command headquarters began firing heavy weapons, they said.

A resident of Toungup, who declined to be named, told RFA that there was a clash between junta troops and the AA on Aug. 26 near the township’s Kyein Taw Kyin village and another on Sept. 16, about three miles southwest of the township. He said he expects more fighting to come to southern Rakhine state in the weeks ahead.

“There was one clash near Toungup and another in the vicinity of the Toungup jetty,” the resident said.

“Everyone is assuming that there will be more fighting soon, all the way down through southern Rakhine state, and people are living in a state of fear because the military is checking all traffic on the roads.”

Northern tensions

Meanwhile, in the north, the AA recently announced that it had captured the junta’s 352 Light Infantry Battalion camp on Sept. 10 and its Border Guard Station near milepost No. 40 along Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh on Aug. 31. The AA claimed that “many junta soldiers were killed” and many others were captured, along with weapons and ammunition.

Junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said at the press conference on Tuesday that the military is trying to recapture the two locations.

“Regarding the AA, the [military] has taken necessary action since the attack on the No. 40 border guard post,” he said.

“The AA attacked weak border police outposts because they didn’t want to walk along the road to peace. There are many plans behind these attacks. We already know those plans. Therefore, we will take the necessary response.”

AA spokesman Khaing Thukha said in an online video press conference on Sept. 19 that the clashes were in response to military roadblocks and maneuvers, and vowed to retaliate to any attack by junta troops.

“The AA had to respond in some way in areas where the military had imposed restrictions and roadblocks,” he said. “If they attack us, we will counter them. That’s why fighting was fierce in those areas. If they attack in other places, they will have to face counter-attacks.”

He said the junta had increased its strength in Maungdaw township to around 10,000 troops, and the AA had responded in kind.

Pe Than, a veteran Rakhine politician and former lawmaker, told RFA that the AA is trying to establish its own liberated area in the state.

“AA troops are currently stationed throughout the region. Administration and judicial mechanisms have been firmly established [in its territory],” he said.

“We are seeing that the AA has changed its strategy from defensive actions to offensive ones and has even captured junta camps. So what [the AA] is doing now is shutting down the border guard stations in Maungdaw. From there, I think they are trying to establish a liberated area between Maungdaw and Paletwa townships.”

In the more than two months since the military and the AA resumed fighting, more than 10,000 residents have fled their homes in townships including Maungdaw, Rathedaung and Mrauk-U.

Three people, including one child, have been killed and 11 injured by junta shelling in Mrauk-U township since the fighting resumed, residents said.

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

Authorities in Cambodia have set the country’s 2023 minimum wage to U.S. $200 per month, but labor leaders told RFA the $6 increase is not enough to keep pace with inflation.

The Minimum Wage Council decided on next year’s salary in a meeting held Wednesday. Cambodia’s unions asked for a minimum wage ranging from $206 to $213, but employers and government officials agreed to increase it to $198, according to a statement from the Ministry of Labor. 

The country’s leader, Hun Sen, decided then to round the figure up to $200, the statement said. When state benefits are included, the minimum income for Cambodians now comes to between $217 and $228, the statement said.

Cambodia’s Minister of Labor Ith Sam Heng told reporters the new wage will help workers, but union leaders and workers told RFA’s Khmer Service they were disappointed with the raise.

“I am sad because the government must play a vital role in defining the new minimum wage, and they know about inflation,” Yang Sophorn, the president of Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions (CATU), told RFA. 

“Inflation is 5 percent. The government only added $6 to the current minimum wage of $194,” she said.

The Cambodian Labor Federation was unhappy with the decision, its president, Ath Thun, told RFA.

“We don’t like the results, but it has been done. The union will continue to work with workers and listen to their reactions,” Ath Thun said. “We will ask the government to reduce utility bills and fight against inflation, especially in gasoline and food prices.”

Yorn Yoert, a worker, told RFA that she has begun cutting back on food to save money.

“I eat food not for enjoying its taste, but just to survive, because I have reduced spending,” she said. “Before I had three meals daily but now I skip breakfast.” She also criticized the wage increase as insufficient.

Exploitation abroad

Many Cambodian workers reject the kow pay and seek opportunities in neighboring countries like Thailand. But migrants told RFA that they face exploitation by their employers and risk imprisonment if caught by authorities without proper documentation. 

Thai employers sometimes force Cambodian migrants to work overtime without pay, Ling Sophon, project coordinator for the Phnom Penh-based Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights NGO, told RFA. 

Workers report that the documents that they need to legally work in Thailand are more expensive, and there are not many job opportunities right now, he said. 

Migrants are also unfamiliar with immigration laws and Cambodian officials often don’t help them if they get arrested, Ling Sophon said. Over the last three months, migrants have complained about their difficulties renewing their passports, work permits and other documents, she said. 

The husband of Cambodian migrant Chey Mom was recently arrested by Thai police and sentenced to 18 months in jail, she told RFA. The couple had been living in Thailand for the past seven years.

She said that since the arrest it has become harder to support her two children, who are of school age. She also asked Cambodia’s government for help.

Another migrant, Cheng Nai, told RFA she is continuing to work in Thailand even though she risks arrest after she lost her legal documents when COVID-19 pandemic hit the country. 

The pandemic has also decreased job opportunities as tourism dried up. But she won’t go back to Cambodia, she says, because the pay is much lower and there are even fewer jobs.

“Here it is easier to find a job, I am 41 years old now, I am afraid in Cambodia they will stop taking [older workers],” Cheng Nai said. “In Thailand they accept me for jobs even though I don’t have a passport. I want to work in Thailand.”

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

Chinese authorities in Tibet have allegedly arrested and tortured five Tibetans, killing one of them, for publicly lighting incense and praying, two Tibetan sources living in exile told RFA.

The five Tibetans, identified as Chugdhar, Ghelo, Tsedo, Bhamo and Kori, lit incense and prayed for the long life of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in Sertar county (in Chinese Seda), in China’s northwestern Sichuan province on Aug. 24.

Police arrested them shortly after, although the sources said the religious activities did not violate any law. RFA was unable to identify any charges.

“The arrested Tibetans were appointed by the local Tibetans in their area to lead religious activities,” a Tibetan living in exile, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Tibetan Service.  

“But amidst growing religious clampdown by the Chinese government in Serta and Golog, Tibetans are not even allowed to hang prayer flags in front of their own house. They also deny Tibetans from performing Sang-sol (an incense burning ritual), because they say it is harmful to the environment,” the source said.

Chugdhar died in a prison in the Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture where the other four remain in detention, another Tibetan living in exile, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told RFA.

“Chugdhar was 52 years old and he is survived by his parents. Chinese police kept denying that they tortured him to death,” the second source said.

“The police even have offered his family 100,000 yuan [more than U.S. $14,000] and agreed to pay an additional 10,000 yearly if they would just take Chugdhar’s body with them. But it was just a trick played by the Chinese police to make them take the body because his family never received any of the money they were promised,” the second source said.

Chugdhar’s official cause of death is suspicious, the first source said.

“Chugdhar was a healthy person, but he was brutally tortured in prison until he died. His family was summoned by Chinese authorities on Aug. 26, and they informed him that his death was sudden. They told the family to collect his body from the prison,” the first source said.

 “When Chugdhar’s father and other family members went to get his body, the Chinese police forced them to sign a document which states the Chinese police have nothing to do with his death,” the first source said. 

The other four Tibetans were first detained in a prison in Sertar county for a week and then moved to a prison in Kardze on Aug. 31, according to the first source.

“They are still undergoing trial but their families fear that they will be convicted soon. Their family members are also not allowed to meet them at all,” the first source said. “These Tibetans are innocent because they were only performing religious activities.” 

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

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

At least 22 people died of starvation or lack of medical attention on a single day last week under China’s COVID lockdown policies in the northern Xinjiang city of Ghulja, RFA has confirmed with police and bereaved family members.

Appeals for help from Uyghurs trapped in quarantine under Beijing’s zero-COVID measures are popping up on Chinese social media platforms.

Their suffering has been highlighted by the Uyghur diaspora as they agitate for international action against China’s heavy-handed assimilation campaign in the minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Uyghurs are demanding that the United Nations, convening in New York this week, take action on a damning report by the UN human rights chief that said China’s arbitrary detention and repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

U.S. President Joe Biden listed the crackdown in Xinjiang among global rights violations in his address to the UN General Assembly Wednesday.

Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining), a city of roughly a half-million mainly Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, has been under lockdown since early August, prompted by outbreaks of COVID-19. RFA has previously reported deaths from starvation or lack of access to medicine in Ghulja.

Last week, more than 600 mostly young Uyghurs from a village in Ghulja were detained by authorities in Xinjiang after they ignored a strict COVID-19 lockdown and staged a peaceful street protest against a lack of food that had led to starvation and deaths.

Videos posted by desperate Uyghurs on Chinese social media platforms—and quickly deleted by government censors—show local people under strict “zero-COVID” lockdowns struggling to access food and medical care, with some saying family members had starved to death.

‘Nobody responded’

Although unable to independently verify all claims made in the videos, RFA Uyghur followed up information of deaths spreading on social media with city officials and police in Ghulja and confirmed that at least 22 people had died there on Sept. 15.

Asked how many people had starved to death in the city on Thursday last week, a Ghulja municipal told RFA “20,” but declined to disclose more information about where in the city the deaths occurred.

“There are 20 people who have died of starvation. Don’t call again.”

Another official, from the Ghulja City Municipal Emergency Response Station gave RFA the figure of 22 deaths, but declined to release more information.

A third official, from the Ghulja City Police Command Center, rejected accounts from social media that as many as 100 had died on that one day, and put the toll at “about 21 and 22.”

Uyghurs in the city have also complained that their residential management offices are charging exorbitant fees to deliver food donated from outside the area, while Uyghurs from outside Ghulja say housing managers have refused to accept donated food.

According to a video shared on the Chinese platform Duoyin, one of the deaths on Sept. 15 was Halmutar Ömerjan, the chairman of Kepekyuzi village in Ghulja.

“They killed my husband Halmutar Ömerjan, the chairman of Kepekyuzi. Nobody responded to my phone calls,” the man’s widow, Huriyet Bekri, said a statement on social media.

Posting ban

She said he was quarantined for seven days, then transferred to an uninhabitable and left alone before he was returned to his family malnourished and uncared for.

“They took my husband Halmurat Omerjan into a quarantine station which has no plumbing or electricity for seven days, and killed him by starvation,” the widow wails on the video.

“In case you don’t know which Halmurat he is, he is the son of the school headmaster Omerjan.

That video was posted despite a warning in the Uyghur language posted on Douyin warning residents not to share “any news, any graphic with news written on it, or images of desperate expressions or videos on social media, especially in separate chat rooms.”

On Sept. 18, Ablikim Ablimit, a Uyghur refugee living in Turkey, received news that his father, Tokhahun Abdul, had died of starvation in Ghulja on the 15th, and was buried right after his death.

“He lived on the Bahar Street of Ghulja City. He was not able to get to the hospital due to strict lockdown and starved,” Ablimit told RFA by telephone.

“His was 73 years of age when he died. He was in good health,” the son said.

Ablimit offered a reminder of the harsh conditions Uyghurs have been living under for years, adding that his father “was taken to an internment camp and detained for two years from 2017 to 2019.”

Action on UN report demanded

China’s uncompromising zero-COVID lockdown and mandatory testing policies, which have also caused suffering in Tibet and in many eastern Chinese cities, add another layer of oppression for the 12 million Uyghurs.

The Uyghurs have long endured extensive high-tech monitoring, repressive re-education policies and arbitrary incarceration under what China says is a campaign to combat extremist violence, but which some Western governments describe as genocide.

The report issued on Aug. 30 by U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights Michelle Bachelet covers the period 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.

China rejected the UN report as “based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces.”

In the three weeks since Bachelet issued the report, U.N. rights experts and Uyghur groups have stepped up calls for concrete action from the international community, including setting up a U.N. Human Rights Council panel and a special envoy on Xinjiang abuses and steps by member states and businesses to hold China accountable.

Remarks on Xinjiang by Biden, and by German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz, were welcome, “but certainly not enough stop the ongoing genocide,” said World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa.

“We ask the U.N. member states to activate the U.N. mechanism to investigate the genocide and the U.S.-led free world to call for the passage of a U.N. resolution to condemn China’s ongoing genocide.”

In Washington this week, the Uyghur American Association (UAA) are staging a hunger strike in front of the White House by leaders of the advocacy group and by three internment camp survivors: Uyghurs Zumret Tursun, Tursunay Ziyawudin and by Gulzire Aulkhan, an ethnic Kazakh.

“First, we’re deeply disturbed by the photos and videos coming out of our homeland, especially from Ghulja. China’s communist government is using COVID as a pretext to lock down our people in their homes and continues its genocide. We want to bring attention to it,” said UAA President Elfidar Iltebir.

“Second, there hasn’t been any meaningful actions taken after the publication of the U.N. report on Uyghurs,” said the activist, who camped overnight near the White House.

 Translated by Mamatjan Juma for RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Paul Eckert.

A Rohingya volunteer watchman was killed at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar allegedly by Rohingya insurgents, making him the fifth victim of such an attack by armed rebels, Bangladeshi police said Wednesday.

While police wouldn’t say whether the suspected assailants belonged to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgent group, residents of the sprawling camps near the Myanmar border insist that it was behind these attacks on the volunteer Rohingya security guards.

A group of 20-25 armed men attacked volunteer security watchmen early Wednesday morning at the Balukhali camp in the Ukhia sub-district, said Md. Faruk Ahmed, assistant superintendent of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn-8), who identified the dead victim as 35-year-old Mohammad Jafor.

“The armed group attacked Jafor around 3:30 a.m. and stabbed him with a sharp weapon,” the police officer said, adding that Jafor was later hacked with machetes.

“The rebel Rohingya groups are facing obstacles to committing any offence inside the camps due to the volunteer guards. That’s why they are now trying to challenge the security of the camp through such attacks,” he said.

According to the police, including Jafor, at least five Rohingya volunteer watchmen and three camp leaders have been killed since July. According to APBN officials, almost 8,000 Rohingya volunteer for guard duty.

Night-time guards were introduced at the camps in October following the September 2021 killing of Rohingya leader Muhib Ullah, who had drawn international attention to the refugees’ plight and visited the White House in Washington.

In a report issued in June, Bangladesh police alleged that ARSA leader Ataullah Abu Ahmmar Jununi had ordered Muhib Ullah assassinated because he was popular.

Jubair blamed ARSA for killing Rohingya leaders who call for refugees to repatriate to Rakhine, their home state in nearby Myanmar. He said that while ARSA claimed that its members were working to “defend and protect” Rohingya against state repression in Myanmar, they wouldn’t flinch in attacking refugees.

ARSA, formerly known as Al-Yaaqin, is the Rohingya insurgent group that launched coordinated deadly attacks on Burmese government military and police outposts in Rakhine that provoked a crackdown that began on Aug. 25, 2017 and forced close to three-quarters of a million people to seek shelter in Bangladesh.

For years since the 2017 exodus into Cox’s Bazar, Bangladeshi government officials denied that ARSA had a foothold or presence in the sprawling camps, which house about 1 million refugees. But that changed with Muhib Ullah’s killing by a group of gunmen and other attacks that followed. 

Md. Harun, a security volunteer and community leader, told BenarNews about Wednesday’s attack: “We suspect that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is behind this latest attack.”

Hasina on Rohingya repatriation

Earlier, on Tuesday, Bangladeshi border guards and police arrested 22 people, including seven Rohingya refugees, when they were trying to go to Malaysia by boat via the Bay of Bengal.

Teknaf Model Police Station chief Hafizur Rahman said that of the 15, seven were Rohingya and the rest were Bangladeshi nationals. And of the 15 Bangladeshis, five were working as agents to send the remaining 10 of their compatriots to Malaysia, the officer said.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday again urged the international community and the United Nations to hasten the repatriation of the forcibly displaced Rohingya to Myanmar, state news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) reported.

Hasina made this call while U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi paid her a courtesy call in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly proceedings.

Hasina also emphasized enhancing the U.N. refugee agency’s activities in Myanmar on Rohingya issues.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Hundreds of students at a business school in the central Chinese city of Wuhan have protested in recent days amid power shortages and a COVID-19 campus-wide lockdown.

The students thronged the campus of the School of Foreign Economics and Trade at the Wuhan Textile University in protest at a prolonged power outage in the student dormitory on Monday night.

The protest was triggered by a report that one of the university’s senior managers had been fined more than two million yuan for “embezzlement” and “stealing electricity.”

The local power supply office said in a statement that the university authorities had used the transformers originally allocated to the dormitories and canteen to divert the power supply without authorization, prompting widespread anger among students.

Amid scenes of emotional confrontation with police, student negotiators demanded the school apologize for cutting off the power supply.

The campus gates were later opened, with normal power restored to the dormitories, RFA has learned.

Students told RFA via Weibo that some students were trapped in a lift when the power outage happened, with others suffering through still-sweltering heat with no power for air-conditioning units in the dormitory buildings or seeking cooler places to sleep out of doors at night.

Wuhan resident Zhang Hai said rising power prices and weighted pricing structures meant that theft of electricity was now rife in China.

“It’s a very common phenomenon in our country, the idea that you grab what you can,” Zhang told RFA. “In Western countries, the more power you use, the lower the price, but in China, the price is higher the more power you use.”

“So, I think at least 80 percent of individuals or organizations would steal electricity, given the opportunity,” he said.

Businesses dragged down

Hubei-based commentator Gao Fei said power shortages are already taking businesses down.

“When they built the Three Gorges Dam, they said electricity would only cost a few cents per hour,” Gao told RFA. “But the prices have yet to come down, years later.”

“A lot of small- and medium-sized enterprises are being dragged down by electricity bills that are too high,” they said.

Gao said power outages are common in Wuhan, which he described as “inhumane” due to the summer heat.

“I don’t know if it’s a power failure or a lack of power supply, but the power goes out every couple of days,” Gao said. “When the power is out, I can’t sleep in the bedroom at night.”

“But if … I go outside to the roof or balcony to sleep, I basically don’t get any sleep all night, because it’s uncomfortable and dangerous.”

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in a crowded classroom or dorm,” Gao said.

Zhang agreed, but said the students were bearing the consequences of actions by university management.

“The students’ demonstrations, marches and rights activism is all to show the school that they won’t get stuck with the consequences of [management’s] actions,” he said.

Forcible quarantine

The protests came after a campus-wide lockdown at the Communication University amid a COVID-19 outbreak, during which 600 to 700 teachers and students were forcibly quarantined.

Yao Xiaoou, a senior professor at the school, recorded a protest video and posted it to social media.

In the video, Yao took issue with being ordered into compulsory quarantine despite no evidence that he had been in contact with any known cases of COVID-19.

He insisted on staying home, saying it was safer than any quarantine facility.

U.S.-based Lu Nan, who made the video public, said Yao’s protest was relatively mild, and comes against growing public anger with ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy.

“This likely has something to do with the CCP 20th National Congress [starting Oct. 16], Lu told RFA. “Xi Jinping … wants to show the world the right direction to take.”

“Lower-ranking officials are all trying to flatter him, and show their loyalty,” he said.

France-based movie director Hu Xueyang likened Xi’s zero-COVID policy to the campaign-style actions orchestrated during the Cultural Revolution [1966-1976] by late supreme leader Mao Zedong.

“Xi Jinping is even worse than Mao Zedong, because we’ll be doing PCR tests for the rest of our lives,” he said. “

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.