Day: September 26, 2022

A Cambodian government delegation urged  migrant workers at a festival in Thailand to back Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party, an opposition activist told RFA.

At a celebration for the Cambodian Pchum Ben ancestor remembrance festival on Sunday, CPP officials promised the migrants that the government would help them navigate the process for working legally in Thailand, Pong Socheat, a representative for the banned Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), told RFA’s Khmer Service.

“I met the workers, who told me that the Cambodian People’s Party elements came to persuade them to join the CPP.  They always promise to help process documents they need to work,” Pong Socheat said.

“But the workers are not swayed by that because they do not like the way Hun Sen’s regime rules the country,” Pong Socheat said. 

The CPP has been targeting the Cambodian diaspora for support in countries like the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea and in neighboring Thailand, where, according to labor NGOs, approximately 2 million Cambodian migrant workers live, both legally and illegally.

Cambodia’s Minister of Labor Ith Sam Heng led the delegation of officials and embassy staff as they met with around 4,000 Cambodian migrants at the festival event in Thailand’s Samute Prakan province near the capital Bangkok.

Ith Sam Heng told the workers that the Cambodian government is looking after migrant workers, who remit more than U.S. $2 billion to their families in Cambodia each year.

“For our brothers and sisters who work in Thailand I wish to re-emphasize that the government … will continue to pay close attention to you by taking an effort to keep your job and business opportunities for you through the strong cooperation with Thailand,” Ith Sam Heng said at the event. 

He praised Hun Sen, who has effectively ruled Cambodia since 1985, for overseeing an era of peace, development and cooperation with the country’s neighbors “so that we can give opportunities for our brothers and sisters to work here. And he will continue to look after our brothers and sisters”     

But Pong Socheat said that Ith Sam Heng made a mistake by bringing along State Secretary Heng Sour, who he said was infamous for threatening to kill overseas Cambodian workers who criticize the ruling party.

“Even in Thailand, Hun Sen’s regime comes after us and threatens us. Even if we just meet among ourselves and discuss our desire for change, we are worried about our safety, because they threaten us, saying the Thai authorities will cooperate with them,” Pong Socheat said.

Many Cambodian migrants have been critical of their government for failing to protect their rights and interests. 

The Khmer community in Thailand does not believe that government officials back home are trying to help make their lives easier, Chhorn Sokheoun, a representative of the migrant workers, told RFA. For this reason, the CPP will not be able to persuade many migrants to join the party, he said.

“The workers attended the Pchum Ben festival in Samute Prakan province because it is our Khmer tradition. But only a very small number would be brainwashed by the CPP’s political ideology,” Chhorn Sokheoun said. 

“The majority of workers did not attend the gathering because they clearly understand that working in Thailand is difficult. As for the passports and other necessary document issues, the government has not been helpful. It has always ignored the workers’ problems,” he said.

Thuch Thy, who is from Cambodia’s western Battambang province but now works illegally in Thailand, said the cost of living in her new home is immense. A permit to work legally costs more than 17,000 baht (about $450), she said. But Thuch Thy said she has no choice but to work in Thailand because her family has debts in Cambodia and the wages offered there are too low.

She said Cambodian migrants in Thailand face many problems, including labor rights abuses from their employers, but rarely receive support from Cambodian officials.  

“I have been working in Thailand for 15 years. I have never seen any [Cambodian] authorities come to provide any emotional or financial support. I have suffered from poverty and survived floods and heavy rains, but I have never seen any aid donations from my government. If Cambodia had job opportunities like in Thailand, I wouldn’t have left my village,” said Thuch Thy.  

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Military shelling in Myanmar’s Rakhine state over the past four days has claimed the lives of at least two children and injured several others, residents said Monday, as clashes ramp up between junta troops and ethnic insurgents following a two-year lull.

Late on Sunday evening, junta troops from the 9th Military Operations Command (MOC-9) in Kyauktaw township fired shells into Na Ga Yar village, killing 7-year-old Maung Gyi and injuring a man named Kyaw Sein, a resident told RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity.

“A shell fired by the military fell right on the house at about 11 p.m. and went through the roof,” the resident said. “That was the only one that fell on our village, but around 30 shells fell along the banks of the [nearby] Kyauktaw river.”

The boy, who is also known as Moung Ko Naing, was buried on Monday and Kyaw Sein is currently receiving medical treatment, the resident said. Some inhabitants of Na Ga Yar have fled to nearby villages, he added.

Separately, residents told RFA that a seven-year-old from Buthidaung township’s Ah Twin Hnget Thay village was killed and two residents of North Tha Bauk Chaung village were wounded on Sept. 23 when the 8th regiment of the junta’s Buthidaung Township Border Guard Force fired shells toward Tha Bauk Chaung village. Additional details of the incident were not immediately available.

The incident in Na Ga Yar came just four days after a shell fired by MOC-9 injured four members of a family in the same village, sources said.

Residents reported additional civilian casualties resulting from junta attacks since the weekend.

A man staying at the Thein San Guest House in Kyauktaw’s Ywama ward was injured by a stray bullet on Saturday, while a 21-year-old woman and her two children were injured on Monday when a shell fired by a junta naval boat exploded in Minbya township’s Khaung Laung village, sources said.

Of the shelling on Monday, residents said that the clash erupted after members of the ethnic Arakan Army (AA) intercepted two naval vessels traveling upriver from the capital Sittwe to Minbya between Khaung Laung and Laung Shay villages.

“Two Z-craft [boats] came up from Sittwe at about 9 a.m. When they approached our village, [a helicopter] arrived, hovering above. Soon afterwards, we heard the sound of fighting as the vessels approached Khaung Laung village,” said a resident of nearby Thut Pon Chaung village.

“I think the AA fired at the navy. Both vessels were hit. We heard the gunfire. The aircraft also returned fire.”

The Thut Pon Chaung resident said junta troops were firing from the river between Khaung Laung village to Minbya, and a military unit stationed at Kyein Taung Pagoda in Minbya also fired shells into the area.

Pe Than, a former lawmaker and veteran politician in Rakhine state, condemned junta troops for attacking civilians.

“What we have seen is that as the fighting throughout Rakhine state has intensified, the junta is targeting residents, regardless of whether there are any clashes nearby,” he said.

“The military is doing whatever it wants in the villages. More people are becoming displaced by fighting. It’s like the Myanmar proverb ‘burning down the barn because the mouse cannot be found.’”

He urged residents of the state to “keep their eyes and ears open at all times” as the fighting between the two sides is “likely to become even more severe.”

Growing conflict

Fighting between Myanmar’s military and the 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 last week.

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.

More than 10,000 residents have fled their homes in townships including Maungdaw, Rathedaung and Mrauk-U in the more than two months since the resumption of fighting.

Neither the AA nor the junta has released any news regarding the situation in Rakhine. Attempts by RFA to reach the junta’s spokesman in the state went unanswered on Monday.

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.

On Sept. 20, Junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told a press conference in the capital Naypyidaw that the military is trying to recapture the two locations.

Junta shelling has killed three children and three adults and wounded 18 people since fighting resumed in Buthidaung, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw and Minbya townships.

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

Press freedom in Hong Kong has declined for yet another year, with most local outlets now hesitant to criticize the Chinese government, according to a recent survey by the city’s journalists.

“HK’s press freedom has declined for yet another year, according to HKJA’s latest Press Freedom Index,” the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association (HKJA) said in a news release posted to its Twitter account.

“Ratings by journalists dropped almost six points, showing that the city’s press freedom hit a new low in 2021,” it said.

In a recent poll carried out for the HKJA by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (HKPORI), 97 percent of journalists who responded said press freedom is in decline, while more than half of public respondents agreed with this view.

“Some journalists … did not participate in the survey for fear of reprisals,” the HKPORI said in a press release.

“Some Hong Kong journalists bluntly said that they were worried about their own safety and did not dare to report on topics that might violate the National Security Law,” it said, in a reference to a draconian security law banning public criticism of the government that has been used to jail most of the city’s pro-democracy activists and former members of the political opposition.

“Some media management said that the government and media executives had put pressure on them to make Hong Kong journalists self-censor and be forced to become official mouthpieces,” it said.

“Commentators pointed out that the China effect has deteriorated the Hong Kong media.”

One country, two systems

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Deng Xiaoping had promised Hong Kong could run its own affairs under a “one country, two systems” arrangement, with the city’s freedoms preserved for at least 50 years, and with progress promised towards fully democratic elections.

The reality has been very different. Just 25 years after the  handover, Hong Kong is no longer the world’s freest economy and has plummeted in global press freedom rankings following a citywide crackdown on dissent under the national security law.

Hong Kong journalist Cheung San said the June 2021 raids on the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper and the jailing of several top editors and founder Jimmy Lai, as well as subsequent targeting of Stand News in December 2021, had changed the environment for working journalists in the city.

“There are some stories I will filter of my own accord, as I may be suspected of violating the national security law,” Cheung told RFA. “I am afraid that it may already be dangerous to touch on certain issues.”

“In the past, when I ran into a story that I wanted to report … I would definitely try to get my superiors [to agree to it],” he said. “Now I don’t do that any more, because I know that everyone is worried, and I can’t ask others to risk their lives so I can write the stories I want to write.”

An editorial manager who gave only the surname Yim said media bosses often use the threat of the national security law to suppress media reporting that the Hong Kong government doesn’t want to see.

“The media fear the red lines of the national security law more than anything now,” Yim said. “Media bosses use [it] as a way to put pressure on editors and reporters.”

Exiles off limits

Yim said one topic that quickly became off-limits in Hong Kong was the doings of exiled pro-democracy politicians in other countries.

“We can’t write about emigres overseas,” he said. “On COVID-19 policy, there are some experts who don’t agree with the government’s zero-COVID policy, but they’re not allowed to speak. But if the government criticizes them, then we can report that.”

“Some of our audience are telling us that a lot of media in Hong Kong have turned into government media,” Yim said.

Yim believes that sometimes the political pressure on the media comes all the way from Beijing.

“If the pressure is coming from higher up, then it could have come all the way from Beijing,” he said. “You will find that most of Hong Kong’s media are dealing with this … they are suppressed regardless of who they are, and you can tell that there is someone higher up handing down instructions from behind the scenes.”

Huang Chao-nien, an assistant professor at the National Development Institute of Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, said the rapid disappearance of press freedom in Hong Kong also shows the power of CCP influence far beyond the borders of mainland China.

“Hong Kong is a very prominent example, because it had a very high degree of press freedom before, and it has declined in just a few short years,” Huang told RFA. “The fundamental factor at play here is China; it’s the spillover effect of Chinese authoritarianism.”

“Hong Kong is just the first stop, when it comes to the damage done by the China factor,” he said, calling on the rest of the world to take warning from events in Hong Kong. “[The CCP] is [also] trying to influence and manipulate foreign media through various channels.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Regional bloc ASEAN will “refuse to be a pawn in a new Cold War,” Indonesia’s top diplomat said at the U.N. on Monday, as she vowed that Jakarta would not let geopolitics block global economic recovery under its G20 presidency.

During her speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi spoke twice about how “the fundamental principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity are non-negotiable” but did not mention Russia’s war in Ukraine or territorial tensions in the South China Sea.

As she stood in for Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who was conspicuously absent from the most visible podium on the international diplomatic stage, Retno also criticized many post-war “mini-lateral groupings,” saying they had “become part of a proxy war between major powers.”

“This is not what regional architecture should be. It must serve as the building block for peace and stability rather than undermining them,” she said.

One such regional grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), was formed to advance peace in the region, she said.

“ASEAN was built exactly for this purpose. We refuse to be a pawn in a new Cold War,” Retno said.

“Instead, we actively promote the paradigm of collaboration with all countries. This paradigm will also guide Indonesia’s Chairmanship in ASEAN next year.”

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest and most populous country, is a founding member of the regional bloc and Jakarta serves as the headquarters of the ASEAN Secretariat. It will take over as ASEAN chair from Cambodia next year, during a tumultuous time for the grouping, when it is dealing with a post-coup crisis in member-state Myanmar.

ASEAN has been roundly criticized for its inaction in Myanmar and for the failure of a five-point consensus that the Burmese military agreed to at an emergency meeting last year. Washington, too, has been pushing ASEAN to take stronger steps against the Burmese junta led by Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

The 10-member regional bloc famously operates by consensus. And critics have said that some of the member-states’ close ties with China have prevented stronger action by ASEAN against the Myanmar military.

However, Retno said, Indonesia was very concerned about the Myanmar military’s inaction on the five-point roadmap to return the country to democracy, a roadmap that fellow member-state Malaysia has said should be scrapped in favor of a new approach.

Similarly, ASEAN has not condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, analysts say, because several countries, including Indonesia, rely on Moscow for their weapons needs.

Indonesia, too, did not directly condemn Russia for the invasion, although it did vote for a U.N. General Assembly resolution in March that “deplored” Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.   

‘World is pinning their hope on G20’

Still, Jakarta is caught betwixt and between, because as G20 president this year it has to balance the ire of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, on the one hand, and Russia’s defense of its actions and Beijing’s support of Moscow, on the other.

In March, U.S. President Joe Biden, who is expected to attend the G20 summit in Bali in November, urged President Jokowi to invite Ukraine as a guest if Russia was not expelled from the group. Jokowi did invite Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but it is not yet certain if Russian President Putin will attend the summit.

In her speech on Monday, Retno said there was no option but for the G20 summit to produce some solutions for the struggling post-pandemic world.

“The whole world is pinning their hope on G20 to be a catalyst of global economic recovery, especially for developing countries,” Retno said.

“G20 must not fail. We cannot let global recovery fall at the mercy of geopolitics,” she told the General Assembly.

Ukraine and Russia provide 30 percent of the world’s wheat and barley, a fifth of its maize and more than half of its sunflower oil. The two countries are also major producers and suppliers of fertilizers. In addition, Russia is the world’s largest natural gas exporter and second largest oil exporter.

For almost six months after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, it blocked all of the latter’s Black Sea ports and cut off access to almost all of that country’s exports, especially of grain, several news services have reported. Those moves sparked fears of a global food crisis.

Russia has since lifted the blockade under a U.N.-backed deal in July, the Black Sea Grain Initiative, but the spillover effect of the months-long halt of grain exports has led to food inflation in many parts of the world. The rise in food prices comes on top of sky-high fuel prices, amid Western sanctions on Russian oil.

“We must act urgently to address food and energy crises and prevent a fertilizer crisis from happening. Otherwise, billions more people would be at risk, particularly in developing countries,” Retno said.

In such a situation, Retno said, “peaceful solution is the only option to settle any conflicts.”

“My president conveyed these messages of peace in his visits to Kyiv and Moscow last June,” the Indonesian foreign minister said, referring to Jokowi’s so-called peace mission to Ukraine and Russia.

“A habit of dialogue and cooperation would nurture strategic trust,” Retno said.

“These are the rules of the game that we must maintain if we truly want peace.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Top jobs in the state sector of Laos are going mainly to applicants with the right ‘connections,’ leaving better-qualified candidates out of work and prompting calls for transparency in government hiring, RFA has learned.

Documents leaked on Sept. 21 by sources in the Finance Ministry and spread on social media show that six positions in the ministry were recently filled by applicants who had powerful backers in senior government posts but had not passed exams to get their jobs.

Tests for state employment should be given fairly, with hiring standards made more clear and transparent, Lao sources told RFA in recent interviews.

“It’s not right to recruit only the sons and daughters or cousins of powerful people,” a resident of Champassak province in southern Laos told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The government should investigate whether or not these people passed their exams, and what their level of education was when they took their exams,” he said. “They should hire only applicants who have the best qualifications and who want to serve their country.”

If the sons and daughters of high-ranking officials want to apply for government jobs, they should take and pass their exams like everybody else, and the public will then accept them without argument, the source added.

The government hiring of persons with powerful connections has been a common practice in Laos for a long time, said a source in the Lao capital Vientiane. “The prime minister has said it’s not allowed, but in reality people know this practice still continues and can’t be stopped,” he said.

“It’s hard to get a state job in Laos if you don’t have the right connections,” agreed another resident of Vientiane, saying his own brother and sister had used this system to find work after finishing school.

“You might have to wait two or three years to get a job, and then only after seeing the son or daughter of some high-ranking official get hired first. And sometimes you have to pay money to get a job,” he added.

Long waits, low salaries for jobs

Fewer Lao graduates are now interested in finding state work — not only because of favoritism in hiring but because salaries are often higher in the private sector, a source living in southern Laos’ Savannakhet province said, also declining to be named.

“This new generation doesn’t like to work for the government because the salaries are too low. They can’t feed their families. They might have to wait 2 or 3 years even to find a job, and then have to wait that long again before they’re self-sufficient,” he said.

Addressing an opening session of the 9^th National Assembly of Laos on June 13, Lao Prime Minister Phanh Kham Viphavanh urged an end to the hiring of unqualified state employees based solely on family connections, calling the practice an obstacle to the country’s development.

Today’s Lao elites are the offspring of leaders of the Lao People’s Liberation Army, or Pathet Lao, a communist movement organized, equipped and guided by Vietnam’s Communist Party that overthrew the Lao monarchy in 1975. 

The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party is the only party the landlocked country of 7 million people has ever known.

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya for RFA Lao. Written in English by Richard Finney.

President Joe Biden’s summit with Pacific island leaders this week is meant to show a deeper U.S. commitment to a region that is increasingly turning to China to meet its development needs, officials and analysts say.

The Sept. 28-29 meetings will be the first-ever Washington summit for leaders of Pacific island nations. But it will need solid outcomes to overcome skepticism that U.S. attention to Pacific island nations is reactive rather than enduring, observers say.

“We’ve seen quite a few attempts from the U.S. recently to speak the language of the Pacific, to demonstrate their commitment to the Pacific. But so far that has been lacking in any significant substance,” Mihai Sora, a Pacific analyst at Australia’s Lowy Institute and a former diplomat in the region, told BenarNews.

Over two decades, China has become an important source of infrastructure, loans and aid for Pacific island nations as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and gain regional allies in international organizations such as the United Nations. Remote, prone to natural disasters and lagging in economic development, the Pacific island countries have welcomed China’s assistance as easier to obtain and meeting the needs of their people.

Some analysts say Beijing also hopes to establish a military presence in the Pacific in a challenge to U.S. dominance. Earlier this year it signed a pact with the Solomon Islands that would allow it to send security forces to protect Chinese interests in those islands.

American involvement in the region diminished after the breakup of the Soviet Union, with a reduction in embassies and U.S. development assistance through its Peace Corps agency.

Pacific leaders say their top concern is the climate and they don’t want to be forced to take sides in the U.S.-China rivalry.

Rising sea levels and more extreme weather linked to higher average global temperatures threatens many low-lying Pacific nations. Tuvalu, made up of nine coral islands and home to some 12,000 people, fears it will be submerged this century.

“For us the most important security issue is climate change. It is not China, it is not the U.S., it is about climate change,” said Siaosi Sovaleni, the prime minister of Tonga.

“We are facing, on an annual basis, extreme weather events. It used to be once every five years,” he told a conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the lead up to the summit.

David Panuelo, president of the Federated States of Micronesia, said he hoped the summit would result in greater Peace Corps involvement in the region – as already promised by the U.S. – a larger contribution to protection of vast Pacific fisheries and more climate finance. 

“In order to be considered a success, the U.S.-Pacific Summit must see the return of the U.S. Peace Corps to the FSM and other Pacific Islands,” he said in an email to BenarNews. “The summit must result in additional commitments from the U.S. on helping the Pacific prevent, mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.” 

U.S. officials are aware they are on the back foot.

Kurt Campbell, the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, acknowledged that rivalry with China is behind renewed U.S. attention to the Pacific island countries. However, U.S. leaders also recognize the region had been neglected, he said during the same conference at Carnegie.

“In the past we have perhaps paid lesser attention to these critical places than we should have. I think being honest about that is important,” he said.

“This is a region that has been disappointed before. Sometimes expectations get raised, they’re unfulfilled. We understand the bar is high and I think what we’re going to try to do is fulfill those expectations,” Campbell said. 

According to Sora, of the Lowy Institute, there are numerous ways for the United States to show a long-term commitment to the Pacific including with new initiatives and scaling up some of its existing but small-scale involvement.

“There’s definitely room for the U.S. to demonstrate in some meaningful way that it’s committed to the region and that it’s committed to the region for the long term,” Sora said by phone.

“A huge vulnerability for the U.S. right now is the regional perception that U.S. interest in the Pacific is only as a reaction to China’s increasing influence and presence.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.