Day: September 28, 2022

A military court in Myanmar’s Yangon region has sentenced a former doctor-turned-model to six years in prison for posting provocative content online deemed “harmful to Burmese culture,” prompting condemnation from lawyers and rights groups who called the punishment “unjust.”

The Military Court of Dagon Myothit (North) Township on Tuesday ordered Nang Mwe San to serve a six-year jail term for publishing “sexually explicit” photos and videos online in violation of Article 33 (a) of Myanmar’s Electronic Communications Act and tarnishing the country’s cultural image.

The sentence marks the first time that someone has been prosecuted under the act, which was enacted during the 2011-2016 administration of former President Thein Sein.

Nang Mwe San’s friend confirmed to RFA Burmese that the military court in Dagon Myothit issued the sentence after what she said was a nearly month-long closed trial.

“The sentence was six years imprisonment, handed down by the military court,” said the friend, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They said [the trial] was faster than usual because the northern part of Dagon is a martial law region.”

Attempts by RFA to contact Nang Mwe San’s family members by phone for more details about her case went unanswered Wednesday. The junta has yet to release any information about the court ruling.

Nang Mwe San participated in street protests after the military takeover on Feb. 1, 2021, and, in March that year, posted comments to social media decrying the junta’s deadly crackdown on the unrest. Shortly thereafter, the junta announced that she would be arrested under Section 505 (a) of the Penal Code for defamation against the state and she went into hiding. Sources close to the doctor said that she eventually signed a bond with authorities whereby she was permitted to return to her home in Dagon Myothit (North).

However, on Aug. 5, the military arrested Nang Mwe San, along with film actress Thinzar Wint Kyaw, for “distributing suggestive photos and videos on a foreign website for a fee.”

Nang Mwe San’s friend told RFA that because Thinzar Wint Kyaw is from Yangon’s Mayangone township, which is not a martial law zone, “her case will be decided by a civil court.”

Sources close to the Mayangone Township Court said Thinzar Wint Kyaw stood trial on Sept. 14, although further details about the actress’s case were not immediately available.

‘Protecting’ Burmese culture

A veteran lawyer, who did not want to be named for security reasons, called Tuesday’s ruling “unjust” and said it did nothing to promote Burmese culture.

“This legal action is just an excuse and I’m sure there are other undisclosed reasons behind it,” he said. “And Myanmar’s culture will not benefit because of this action against [the two women]. Can [the junta] really stop this sort of thing? I don’t think it’s possible.”

He added that Section 33 (a) of the Electronic Communications Act is too vague in its definition of what content can be considered “harmful” to the country’s culture.

Zaw Ran, a human rights activist from the Yangon People’s Advocacy Network, told RFA that instead of sentencing people to lengthy jail terms, first-time offenders who violate Section 33 (a) should be given a warning.

“I wonder if these women, Nang Mwe San and Thinzar Wint Kyaw, understand the relevant laws,” he said. “People feel so sorry for them. If they didn’t know about the law, they should have been informed about it before they were punished.”

Zaw Ran condemned the military court ruling for its lack of transparency and said Nang Mwe San was denied access to a proper legal defense.

Saw Han Nway Oo, a writer, told RFA that arresting and jailing women for such actions is a violation of their rights, noting that in nearly every country there are people who earn money the same way.

“I think it’s unfair to hand down such a harsh sentence for exposing your body online for a fee,” she said.

“There are so many people doing this nowadays, even if they say ours is a country where Buddhism and culture flourish and that this is not compatible with our culture. And I think using this Communications Law to jail them is just wrong.”

She added that there are many models showing off their beauty for a living in Myanmar but those who support the military have not been arrested or prosecuted.

Artists from the music, film and theatrical industries took to the streets to protest the military takeover in Myanmar, prompting the military to announce that hundreds of celebrities would be arrested and charged under Section 505 (a).

Among them, actor Pyay Ti Oo, Eindra Kyaw Zin, Lu Min, pop singer Po Po and make-up artist Win Min Than were arrested. Some were later released while others were imprisoned by the military.

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

Leaders of island nations in the Pacific have agreed to the text of a joint declaration of partnership with the United States, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the opening of a two-day summit in Washington on Wednesday.

The announcement came after reports that the Solomon Islands planned not to sign an 11-point declaration during the summit in Washington, the first such meeting with leaders from the region hosted by the White House. In April, the Solomon Islands signed a controversial and secret security pact with China, raising concerns among the U.S. and Pacific allies that Beijing could be moving to establish a military base in the South Pacific. 

Blinken said the United States was committed to working closely with the leaders of 12 Pacific island nations in attendance on issues including climate change, fisheries and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region. 

“I’m especially pleased, as we start our conversations, as we start these two days, with President [Joe] Biden joining us tomorrow, that we’ve also come together around a declaration of partnership between the U.S. and the Pacific,” Blinken said, adding that it “shows that we have a shared vision for the future.”

“I’m very pleased that we have this today, and that we’ve agreed upon it,” America’s top diplomat said during remarks broadcast via YouTube. “It will give us a roadmap for the work we’re doing in the future.”

He also said the United States had committed U.S. $4.8 million to Resilient Blue Economies, a program promoting sustainable fisheries and aquaculture.

Blinken did not say what was in the final version of the declaration, and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for a copy of the text.

The summit comes amid a renewed U.S. focus on the Pacific and concerns in Washington about China’s growing influence in the region that were amplified after Beijing inked its new security pact with the Solomons five months ago. 

Brian Harding, a senior Asia expert for the United States Institute of Peace, said the summit was significant primarily because it is the first time that Pacific islands leaders have been invited for talks at a dedicated forum in the United States.

“Previous meetings have taken place on the sidelines of other meetings in Hawaii or of the United Nations General Assembly,” Harding told Radio Free Asia (RFA), an online news service affiliated with BenarNews.

“It’s unfortunate that so much attention has been focused on this particular declaration, because what Pacific islanders want from this is a wide-ranging and open conversation.”

Harding said the focus on the declaration could be due to Beijing’s failure to secure a similar regional joint declaration during Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s tour of the Pacific in April, which produced the secret deal with the Solomons.

But after decades of a reduced focus on the Pacific region, “there’s concerns that the United States is trying to move a little too fast,” Harding said.

Superpower competition in Pacific

The agreement on a joint declaration marks a potential U.S. win in a vast maritime region where Washington and Beijing are vying for influence and after small island states rejected China’s push for a wide-ranging pact.

During a telephone press briefing on the eve of the summit, a senior Biden administration official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the joint agreement “really is about a larger vision in which the United States and Pacific island nations sign up to some joint endeavors which are important.”

Biden’s Pacific summit is meant to show a deeper U.S. commitment to a vast and economically lagging region that has increasingly turned to China to meet its development needs, officials and analysts said.

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. 

Some analysts say Beijing also wants a military presence in the Pacific as a challenge to U.S. dominance. The pact it signed with the Solomon Islands would allow Beijing to send security forces to protect Chinese interests in those islands. But 10 Pacific countries rebuffed the Chinese government’s attempt to get them to sign up to its vision for the region.

The Solomon Islands government had objected to signing the United States’ proposed declaration, the Australian state broadcaster ABC reported earlier on Wednesday, without citing a source.

U.S. officials are also expected to release a national strategy on the Pacific during the summit, as well as other financial commitments, with Biden scheduled to meet with Pacific islands leaders for dinner to close the summit on Thursday night.

RFA and BenarNews jointly produced this report.

China’s global image took a “precipitously more negative” turn after President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, with Beijing taking the blame for the COVID-19 pandemic while also facing criticism for its human rights record, military posture and economic policies, data from a Washington-based research group showed.    

Ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress in October, the Pew Research Center on Wednesday published a report drawing on 20 years of surveys from more than 60 countries.

“The people are basically good, but leader Xi is too controlling and should not be in power this long,” a U.S. woman was quoted as saying in the essay. “They need to let Hong Kong be an independent state as they promised and stop persecuting the Uyghurs.”

A U.S. man acknowledged that China was on the rise but said trouble would soon follow.

“A rising power that will become problematic when it cannot maintain growth. Xi’s style of authoritarianism is deeply worrying,” he said.

Not all responses focused on specific issues.

“Communist pigs. Not referring to ordinary people, they are the same as you and I,” an Australian woman said. “But their government is nasty including president Xi Jinping.” 

China’s perceived mishandling of the pandemic affected global opinion, but negative feelings toward China were already on the rise prior to 2020. 

Though there was slight variation from country to country, most countries followed the same trend as the U.S., where positive feelings toward China started to turn after Xi’s tenure began and worsened sharply around the time the pandemic started.

U.S friction

When Xi took office during President Obama’s second term roughly four in 10 in the U.S. had a “favorable” view toward China, while between 30-40 percent of respondents held an “unfavorable” view of the country.

But as friction in the bilateral relationship grew due to Chinese land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea and the U.S.’s negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the percentage of Americans who looked at China unfavorably rose to more than half.

Opinion of China showed slight improvement during the first half of the Trump presidency but quickly turned sour as the trade war began in 2018. Among Republicans alone, negative views of China increased by 20 percent between 2018 and 2019.

By March 2020, when it had become clear that COVID had spread beyond China’s borders, more than three-quarters of the U.S. population viewed China unfavorably. China’s reputation in the U.S. continued to decline, with about 82 percent today viewing Beijing negatively, as concerns grow about human rights, its partnership with Russia despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and other issues.

The opinion of China in other countries, though showing similar trends as that in the U.S., varied according to the bilateral relationship.

In South Korea, negative feelings increased greatly following economic pressure from Beijing in 2017 in response to Seoul installing U.S. missile interceptor technology known as THAAD. Opinion worsened during the pandemic to around 80 percent unfavorable in 2022.

People in Japan hold the most negative views of China. As bilateral tensions began to rise over territorial claims in the East China Sea in 2013, 93 percent of Japanese poll respondents said they viewed China unfavorably. In 2022, that number improved slightly to 87 percent, according to Pew.

In Australia, favorable views outnumbered unfavorable well into Xi’s presidency and did not reverse trend until the years between 2017 and 2019 as concerns grew that China was attempting to influence the country’s domestic politics. In 2022, 86 percent of Australians view China unfavorably, an 24 percentage point increase since 2019.

Though the Pew report noted that most of the ill feelings for China were directed at the government or Xi himself, it said that discrimination and harrasment of people of Chinese descent has increased in the U.S. and in other countries since the start of the pandemic.

Additionally, while respondents were for the most part careful to clarify that their negative feelings were limited to the Chinese government or its growing economic power, those who expressed negative views of the country were about 20 percentage points more likely to support restricting Chinese students studying in the U.S. and Australia. 

Growing influence

China was perceived to have growing international influence among 66 percent of people in 19 countries, while 12 percent believed it was getting weaker. At least half of respondents in 24 of the 40 countries surveyed in 2015 said China was on pace to replace the U.S. as the world’s strongest superpower, or had already done so.

In 2018, half or more of respondents in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia and the U.S. said that China was a major threat. Outside of those countries, half or more considered it at least a minor threat.

In 2022, 67 percent of U.S. respondents considered China a major threat, up 19 percentage points from the previous year, and 48 percent said limiting China’s power and influence should be a top foreign policy goal, a 16 percentage point increase over 2021.

Concerns about the Chinese military were also widespread, with 72 percent in 19 countries saying Beijing’s military power was a “serious problem” in 2022. Japan and Australia were the two countries most concerned by the military.

In many of the surveyed countries, the sense that China does not respect human rights was at or near historic highs.

“Although the sense that China did not respect the personal freedoms of its people was already high in most advanced economies in 2018, it nonetheless rose significantly again in 2021, following revelations about detention camps for Uyghurs, the U.S. declaring the situation in Xinjiang a genocide and calls to boycott the 2022 Olympics over human rights abuses, among other issues,” the Pew report said.

Many in the U.S. and Australia expressed concern for mistreatment of the Chinese people at the hands of their government.

“I am very concerned that the people do not have any freedom in the police state in which they live,” an Australian man said. “I have grave concerns about the Uyghurs and the way they are being rounded up and put into the so-called re-education centers. It seems as if there is another holocaust happening to these people.”

A woman in the U.S. was concerned about personal freedoms. 

“China has a huge human rights problem,” she said, “Their citizens are spied on and arrested for speaking out.”

A majority of respondents in both countries in 2022 said promoting human rights in China was important, even if it harmed economic relations. Respondents in Israel, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, however, said strengthening economic relations was more important.

Economy

Economic competition from China is seen as a serious problem in advanced countries in 2022, especially in South Korea, Japan, the U.S. and Australia, but Chinese economic growth was not universally viewed as bad, with about half in the same four countries reacting to it positively. 

The report noted that while the survey was underway, Japanese exports to China fell. South Korea recorded a months-long trade deficit with China after the survey was completed. 

Australia has had a trade surplus with China since before the pandemic, but Beijing enacted a series of sanctions on Canberra in 2020 as relations deteriorated over Australian support for an international inquiry into how China handled the coronavirus.

In the U.S., there was concern about the trade deficit and loss of jobs to China in 2021.

“Massive economic power that cares little about their workers, but have brainwashed them with propaganda into thinking that they matter,” a U.S. woman said.“The workers are like robots. Everything I buy says made in China.”

An Australian woman, however, marveled at the rapid pace of economic progress. 

“China is the only major country in the world that has lifted the majority of its population out of poverty and progressed from a third-world status to a first-world economic status in just under 40 years!” she said.

Opinions about president Xi himself have followed the same trend. 

“Views of the Chinese president turned even more negative between 2019 and 2020. By 2022, majorities in all but two advanced economies surveyed had little to no confidence in his approach to world affairs.” 

Uyghur activist groups are welcoming a call by the U.S. government for the U.N. Human Rights Council to debate rights abuses and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.

The U.S. on Monday filed a proposal known as a “draft decision,” demanding that the Geneva-based council organize the discussion at next week’s session in response to a damning report issued on Aug. 31 by former U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet warning of possible crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

Her report, released on the final day of her four-year term, said “serious human rights violations” had been committed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the context of the Chinese government’s application of counter-extremism strategies.

The draft decision was endorsed by the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland Iceland and Norway, Reuters reported Monday, citing diplomats as the source. 

The 47-member council is divided over allegations of China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, despite reams of credible reports on abuses in the region, including arbitrary detentions, torture and forced sterilization.

It is believed that as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslims have been held in China’s vast network of internment camps purportedly set up to prevent “religious extremism” and “terrorism” in the region.

Beijing has insisted that the camps were vocational training facilities that are now closed. It has vowed to fight any U.N. action on human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang cited in Bachelet’s report.

“Certain Western countries use the Human Rights Council as a tool for political manipulation,” Wang Wenbin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Tuesday at a regular press conference in Beijing, when asked about the proposal.

“They blatantly apply double standards and have gone so far as to name and shame some developing countries and openly pressure them,” he said. “This has poisoned the atmosphere and led to aggravated confrontation at the Human Rights Council, which is detrimental to international human rights cooperation. The international community firmly rejects such practices.”

A group of 66 Uyghur organizations from 20 countries on Monday urged governments to support passage of the draft decision.

“The international community must remember its obligation to end atrocity crimes like genocide and crimes against humanity,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, in a statement. “Justice must be served.”

“Governments must seize this opportunity to finally respond to the abuses,” said Omer Kanat, executive director of the Washington, D.C-based Uyghur Human Rights Project. “The U.N. now has a chance to give hope to a suffering people.”

A vote on the proposal will be held next week in Geneva.  

Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

A former BBC television presenter and freelance journalist in Myanmar was sentenced to three years in prison with hard labor on Wednesday by a military regime court in Yangon for violating the country’s Unlawful Associations Act, bringing her total time in jail to six years, a source in the legal community said.

Htet Htet Khine, the face of BBC Media Action’s national television program “Khan Sar Kyi” (“Feel It”) from 2016 to 2020, which documented the impact of war on Myanmar society, received the new sentence from Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township Court for violating the colonial-era law.   

“She was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 10,000 kyats (U.S. $4.70) under Section 17(1) of the Unlawful Associations Act,” said the source, who has knowledge of the situation but did not want to be identified for safety reasons. “If she fails to pay the monetary fine, that would mean another six months imprisonment.

“She was charged under Section 17(1) the Unlawful Associations Act because it appeared as though she had worked as a volunteer for the opposition group, the NUG,” said the source, referring to the National Unity Government, a Myanmar government-in-exile formed by a group of elected lawmakers and members of Parliament ousted in the February 2021 Myanmar coup.

“They seemed to charge her under this act because she had talked in the media,” added the source.

Htet Htet Khine, a freelance journalist and video producer, has been detained in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison since Aug. 15, 2021, when she was arrested with fellow reporter Sithu Aung Myint.

She was charged with “incitement” and “illegal association” for her reporting work, her family members and legal team told RFA in an earlier report.

Myint Kyaw, former secretary of the Myanmar Press Council during the previous civilian-led government, said the ruling military regime targeted Htet Htet Khine because she is a journalist.

“The federal FM radio has been declared an outlawed association and contact with it is deemed as a violation of Section 17(1),” he said. “She was given three years in prison, which is the maximum punishment under that law.”

“At first she was charged under Section 505(a) and was now given the punishment under 17(1) intentionally as a targeted person,” Myint Kyaw said. Section 505 (a) of Myanmar’s Penal Code pertains to defamation of the state. 

Nathan Maung, a Myanmar-born American journalist who was detained and sentenced to prison by the military junta a week after the military takeover, said the junta is targeting journalists for merely doing their jobs.

“When you are working as a professional journalist, you have to talk to people of all trades,” he told RFA. “Talking to a person on the telephone should not be taken as contacting an illegal organization or an illegal association. 

“They [the junta] will always file any kind of charges in any way they want,” he said. “Their sole intention is to arrest or imprison people from the news media.

“I deeply respect these Myanmar journalists and reporters who are working so hard inland or at the border risking their lives to get their job done,” Nathan Maung said. “It is not safe even for an ordinary person talking on a telephone nowadays, so I’d like to suggest that journalists take extra care in carrying out their work at a time when journalists, including Htet Htet Khine, are being given heavy sentences.”

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

Myanmar’s military killed nearly 800 civilians and burned down almost 26,000 houses in Sagaing and Magway regions in the year since authorities cut off internet access to townships where anti-junta armed resistance is strongest, according to an investigation by RFA Burmese.

In compiling data based on witnesses and local reports, RFA found that at least 643 people were killed in Sagaing and 132 in Magway within the year ending Sept. 15. A total of 20,524 houses were destroyed by fire in Sagaing and 5,427 in Magway over the same period.

Beginning on Sept. 15, 2021, the authorities cut off internet access to the Sagaing townships of Kani, Salingyi. Pale, Budalin, Wuntho, Pinlebu and Kawlin — areas where junta troops have faced some of the fiercest opposition to military rule — and then launched an offensive in the areas.

Local anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitaries said authorities did the same on March 3, in some 20 other townships in the region, including Khin-U, Myaung, Tabayin, Indaw, Taze, Tamu and Homalin.

The leader of the Khin-U Support Organization, a PDF group based in Khin-U, said the internet shutdowns were part of a bid by the military to black out reports of oppression and killings by junta troops.

“The internet was cut off mainly for their military purposes and was politically motivated,” he said. “We had to deal with many situations where we could not communicate as easily as before. They had an advantage in communications but from a military point of view, it did little for them.”

He said many people in the townships had lost their lives or their homes as a result of the military offensives, while the internet shutdown blocked access to education, healthcare and income for countless others.

Beginning on Sept. 23, 2021, authorities also shut down internet access in the Magway townships of Gangaw, Myaing and Tilin.

A resident of Gangaw’s Hnan Khar village said that, since then, the military has been raiding the township on a monthly basis.

“Military columns came to our villages once or twice a month after the internet was cut off,” said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

“As there was no flow of information, the people couldn’t be warned [ahead of the raids] and were caught offguard, arrested, tortured and killed. We saw junta soldiers doing whatever they pleased — killing people and burning down villages.”

The resident said villagers have no way to send out photos and videos of the military’s crimes because of the internet shutdown, and that people have been deleting the evidence from their phones because keeping the images leaves them vulnerable to arrest.

Attempts by RFA to contact junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Htun for more information on the situation in Sagaing and Magway regions went unanswered Wednesday.

Blocking access as a ‘tactic’

Aung Myo Min, minister of human rights for Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG), said the military’s use of internet access as a tactic constitutes a violation of human rights.

“Blocking the internet is a violation of human rights, and doing so to cover up their crimes is a much more serious one,” he said. “They are using it as a strategy, with the aim of blacking out information and committing various crimes and violence against the people.”

Veteran journalist Myint Kyaw told RFA that while the junta may have blocked access to the internet solely to gain a military advantage, doing so severely impacted people’s everyday lives.

“They should have considered the fact that it would hurt tens of thousands of people living in these regions  — their social lives as well as their access to health and education,” he said.

“In a world where access to the internet is seen as a basic right, this point becomes more important and I think we need to investigate this action.”

Political observer Than Soe Naing said that, try as they might, junta leaders cannot cover up military atrocities.

“They are trying to prevent the people and the international community from learning of their crimes and the violence being visited on the regions’ inhabitants,” he said. “The reality of the situation is that they can’t do that in today’s world.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said earlier this month that there are at least 528,300 people displaced by conflict in Sagaing and 98,100 in Magway.

In Chin state, where opposition to the junta is also strong, the military has cut off access to the internet everywhere except the capital Haka, residents say. Authorities have also cut internet lines in Kayah state’s Hpruso and Hpasawng townships.

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