Day: September 30, 2022

At least seven civilians were killed in three separate shootings involving the military or anti-junta forces in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon on Thursday evening, according to witnesses.

The incidents took place in Yangon’s Pabedan and southern Dagon Myothit townships and left six men and a woman dead, sources told RFA Burmese.

In one of the shootings, a rickshaw driver and two young men were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a junta soldier on duty near the Maha Thein Dawgyi Ordination Hall in Pabedan at around 3:30 p.m., according to a resident of the township, who declined to be named for security reasons.

“[The soldier] was shot near a betel nut stall on a side street near Ordination Hall. I didn’t hear anything for a while, and then a [military truck] arrived on the scene. The soldiers were yelling and cursing,” the resident said.

“Then I heard [around 10] gunshots continuously. The rickshaw man and two other young men who were hit died on the spot. I feel sad that these men were shot for no fault of their own.”

The resident said the bodies of the three victims were taken away by a Red Cross ambulance around 30 minutes later.

Other residents of Pabedan told RFA that authorities closed Maha Bandoola and Sule Pagoda roads, which run through the center of the township, following the shooting, but reopened them this morning. Meanwhile, the security force presence inside the Maha Thein Dawgyi Ordination Hall has been doubled, they said.

Posts on a Telegram social media network channel used by junta supporters said the two young men had “carried out an attack” on the soldier at the betel nut stall and were killed when security forces returned fire.

However, a spokesman for an anti-junta armed group known as the Yangon UG Association rejected the claims.

“We will attack and flee with motorcycles or cars. We will even attack on foot and run when we have an escape route. But it doesn’t make sense to attack [a military post] with a rickshaw,” said the spokesman.

“[The military] might be trying to protect themselves. Or they might just be lying to cover up the act. These urban guerrillas are young people in an age of globalization, they aren’t morons. Everyone knows you can’t launch an attack from a rickshaw.”

The spokesman added that urban guerrillas don’t carry weapons in Yangon because junta troops carry out strict security checks in the city.

Southern Dagon Myothit shootings

Also on Thursday, a resident of southern Dagon Myothit’s Ward 53 said junta soldiers shot and killed a man in his 40s and a woman in her 30s inside their home.

“When we found them, they were already dead. The man had gunshot wounds on his chest and stomach,” the resident said.

“They were shot in their own house. When we checked with people nearby, they said the two who had been killed were peaceful people. We don’t know exactly who shot them.”

Later the same night, the anti-junta South Dagon Urban Guerrilla Group said that its members had killed the deputy administrator of Ward 71 and an office worker from Ward 25’s General Administration Department, who it claimed were military informers.

RFA was unable to independently confirm the killings in southern Dagon Myothit township.

The military has yet to release any information about the killings, and further details about the incidents were not immediately available.

Nan Lin, a member of the Yangon-based anti-junta group University Old Students’ Association, told RFA that urban guerrilla units have attacked bunkers, police posts and local administration offices, leaving authorities on edge and ready to fire at anything they deem suspicious.

“More and more people have lost their lives because of the military’s indiscriminate shootings,” he said.

“Urban guerrilla forces are staging all kinds of different attacks. Because of this, the soldiers feel they aren’t safe anywhere,” Nan Lin said. “There are quite a lot of cases now where [troops] open fire at anything suspicious, sometimes even at their own people.”

In Yangon, authorities are regularly arresting people at their homes during checks of guest lists and shooting at anyone they suspect of being members of anti-junta groups, residents told RFA.

According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), authorities have killed at least 2,327 civilians and arrested 15,691 others in the nearly 20 months since Myanmar’s military seized power in a Feb 1, 2021, coup — mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests.

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

Cambodia’s Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court’s decision to deny bail to Cambodian American Theary Seng, who is serving a six-year sentence for conspiracy to plot against the government. 

The lawyer and activist was sentenced on June 14 along with 50 other activists for their association with the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party, once the main opposition in the country before it was dissolved by the Supreme Court in 2017. 

The Supreme Court said Theary Seng was a flight risk and a threat to the country’s social fabric in its decision to uphold the appeals court decision to reject a motion to release her on bail.

Theary Seng’s lawyer Choung Chou Ngy told RFA’s Khmer Service that the decision was unjust. His client never avoided a trial before her arrest and has made it clear that she has no intention to leave Cambodia, he said.

He also disputed the court’s contention that Theary Seng presented some risk to society.  

“It isn’t right to cite social security as a reason to deny her release,” Choung Chou Ngy said.  “This means the court assumes that upon her release, she would cause social disorder. This is a guilty presumption, so I as a lawyer can’t accept it.” 

He said the court has no right to continue to detain Theary Seng because he filed an appeal for her, he said.

“Even though the court convicted her to six years in jail, the verdict is not completed yet because of an appeal,” Choung Chou Ngy said.

He plans to travel to remote Preah Vihear prison, where Theary Seng is being held, to brief her about the verdict and discuss further legal options.

Theary Seng did not commit any crime, she simply exercised her freedom, Ros Sotha, executive director of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee.

“If the government doesn’t open up to accept democratic culture, it will be difficult to lead a country,” he said, adding that Theary Seng’s conviction was for expressing her views against Cambodia’s authorities.

Earlier this month, the New York-based Clooney Foundation for Justice called Theary Seng’s June 14 trial “a travesty of justice” and gave it a grade of F, calling for her immediate release.

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

At least 13 Uyghurs have died as a result of poisoning from disinfectants sprayed in their homes last week used to fight a wave of coronavirus infections in a county in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, local residents and officials said.

The Uyghurs who died were all residents of Guma county (in Chinese, Pishan), Hotan (Hetian) prefecture. They are said to be among thousands of people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) reported to have been poisoned by disinfectants used to fight the COVID-19 virus, according to online comments on social media. 

Many videos shared online show authorities spraying inner walls, furniture, bedding as well as inside refrigerators in homes in the region. Residents said planes with sprayers have flown over the area frequently since the lockdown. 

Acting on an anonymous tip about the deaths in Guma, RFA confirmed that at least a dozen people from a village in the county have died of COVID disinfectant poisoning.

“I am told it is about 12 or 13 [who died],” said a local official in charge of overseeing 10 households in a village in Guma county. 

“It happened on Sept. 20,” he said. 

The official, who declined to be named in order to discuss the incident, told RFA that a resident named Ibrahim from a family in the village died of the disinfectant poisoning. He said one of his own relatives, the wife of one of his cousins, had also died.

“Her name was Atihan. She was a housewife between the ages of 45 and 50,” he said.

Five people from another Uyghur family lost their lives after heavy spraying, said the official.

“A woman named Atahaji died along with her daughter, two grandchildren and one daughter-in-law — five of them,” he said.

“The government sprayed disinfectants on the roofs and in the yards of each house to disinfect, and as a result, all of the residents passed out, and there was no one from the government to take them to the hospital,” a Uyghur from the affected area in Guma told RFA.

The man, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said police detained his 24 year-old son because he refused to let authorities inside their house to spray.

“This is what the community is going through,” the man said. “There is nothing to eat, and the whole community has been knocked out by [authorities’] spraying the so-called disinfectant. We all don’t know what will happen tomorrow when we wake up.”

Spraying from the air

An information service hotline operator in Hotan did not deny the deaths from the disinfectant spray, but advised RFA to contact the Epidemic Command Center for details.

A staffer from the center confirmed that there had been incidents of Uyghurs sickened by disinfectant poisoning at a local hospital.

But when asked her about the death toll from the poisonings, she angrily replied, “Don’t ask such questions.”

RFA later spoke with another staffer at the center who said she had to check with a supervisor before giving out any details, but later confirmed that the poisoning incident occurred in Guma county.  

When asked about the name of the village where the incident occurred, she said she was from Hotan city and was not too familiar with Guma county.  

 A third staffer referred RFA to the center’s Information Services Office for the number of residents who had died from the spraying.

Another Guma resident blamed the deaths on aerial disinfectant sprays by plane over the previous nine days in Hotan. 

A second Hotan resident also said airplanes had been flying over the area since the lockdown began.

Memet Imin, a New York-based Uyghur medical researcher, said there are various types of disinfectants in use right now, though it is unclear what kind of disinfectant authorities used in Guma.  

“There are studies that excessive and long-term use of disinfectants against COVID-19 can be harmful to health,” he said. “A lot of scientific research has been done on this.”

“Therefore, when the concentration of some disinfectants exceeds a certain limit, it may cause some injuries in the skin, eyes, respiratory tract, nerves system and digestive tract, and in some cases, it may cause serious illness,” he said.

Parts of Xinjiang have been under a strict lockdown since early August under China’s “zero COVID” policy, forcing Uyghurs in affected areas to rely on local official for scarce food handouts. Others have not been able to obtain necessary medications. RFA has previously reported deaths from starvation or lack of access to medicine in Ghulja.

The severe lockdown is making life worse for the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang who have been subject to a crackdown by Chinese authorities since 2017 that has included mass detentions in internment camps and prisons and serious human rights violations.

A report issued in late August by the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the repression in the XUAR “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” 

Translated by Mamatjan Juma for RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

North Korea’s recent spate of missile launches has failed to impress its hard-pressed citizens, many of whom are privately grumbling about the misallocation of money they’d rather see spent relieving their poverty, sources in the country told RFA.

North Korea fired a missile on Sunday, two on Wednesday and two more on Thursday, marking five launches in five days and 36 for the year, according to the Korea Herald, a South Korean newspaper. The Wednesday and Thursday launches bookended a visit by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris to South Korea, during which she visited the demilitarized zone that separates North from South.

“Regarding the missile launch on the 25th, most residents are critical of the authorities, saying they don’t understand why they keep launching missiles as they do nothing to help the people’s livelihood, and only make it more difficult for our economy,” a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service Wednesday on condition of anonymity for security reasons. 

“News of the missile launch has not yet been delivered through the media, but they are happening so frequently that people gave up their interest in the topic long ago. Most of us are desperately struggling to make ends meet right now,” he said. 

The North Korean economy is in shambles due to restrictions put in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic and international sanctions meant to deprive Pyongyang of cash and resources that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs. 

The sanctions are intended to dissuade Pyongyang from pursuing its nuclear agenda, but North Korean leaders claim they make the missile launches necessary, the source said. 

“The authorities say that the current economic situation … is difficult because of sanctions and pressure from the United States and the international community, and strengthening national defense capabilities by making nuclear weapons and missiles can put a stop to the sanctions and pressure from the United States,” he said. “And some people believe such propaganda, … although it’s only a small number who are showing a positive attitude towards the missile launches.” 

Each missile launch is costly. According to a June report by the Seoul-based Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, North Korea at that time had spent between U.S. $400 million and $650 million on 33 missile launches, or about 2 percent of its gross domestic product. The average cost per launch is therefore between $12 million and $20 million, or about 3-5 million times the average North Korean monthly salary.

“When I told some people who were complaining about the missile launch about the approximate cost of making one missile, they were surprised,” the source said, without clarifying how much he estimated the cost to be.

“They expressed their anger, saying if they don’t spend so much money to make missiles, but rather use the money to help the lives of the people, we wouldn’t have to go through this difficulty,” the source said.

Most people oppose the missile launches and think the government’s first priority is to help them, although a fear of being punished keeps them from saying so publicly, a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“The Central Committee [of the Korean Workers’ Party] has been making it difficult for the people these days, saying that nationalism, obedience and loyalty to the supreme leader are the true path of patriotism,” the second source said, referring to Kim Jong Un. 

“Now more than ever, residents are reluctant to discuss politically sensitive issues, including missile launches, for fear of being caught wrongly speaking or acting at a time like this,” he said. “It is not like they agree with the Central Committee’s propaganda, that the economy will get better if we make more nuclear weapons and missiles. … It seems to be their survival strategy to avoid causing trouble.”

Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Longtime allies the Philippines and United States reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening bilateral military cooperation on Friday, as their top defense officials met in-person for the first time since a new government took office in Manila.

Acting Philippine Defense Secretary Jose Faustino Jr. and his American counterpart, Lloyd Austin, both articulated their support for stronger cooperation after meeting in Hawaii on Friday (Manila time) to discuss a range of security concerns. 

The administration of President Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr., who was elected in a landslide in May, has moved swiftly to firm up ties with the U.S., marking a departure from the previous administration. Under former President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines drifted away from its alliance with America and closer to China, despite territorial wrangling in the South China Sea. 

The first face-to-face meeting between the defense officials also took place amid mounting tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Security officials and analysts had earlier said that if a conflict broke out there, the Philippines, as a decades-old ally of the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, could offer a staging area for responding U.S. forces.

Austin said that he had a “robust dialogue” with Faustino “on positioning the alliance to address emerging challenges.”

Both countries are bound by a 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty that calls on each side to come to the other’s aid in times of external attacks. The Americans had earlier reminded China of this in the midst of its military expansionism in the South China Sea.

“You’ve heard me say a couple of times that I cannot imagine a day when the United States and the Philippines aren’t allies. It’s who we are,” Austin said during a joint press conference at the headquarters of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, according to transcripts released to the Philippine journalists in Manila.

“Again, I consider us to be more family.”

Austin noted that both countries reaffirmed the Visiting Forces Agreement, which allows for large-scale joint exercises, as well as an agreement granting permission to the American forces to pre-position defense assets on Philippine soil.

Both are “critical to our alliance cooperation and strengthening our combined capabilities,” he said.

Of particular concern are developments in the South China Sea, where China, the Philippines as well as other Southeast Asian nations have competing claims. In 2016, an international court of arbitration ruled in favor of Manila in a landmark case that the Philippines brought against China.

But instead of seeking to enforce the ruling, the previous president, Duterte, pursued warmer relations with China in exchange for the promised largesse of Chinese investments. Although he took a tougher stance before ending his term this year, analysts have said that Duterte did too little, too late to counter Chinese expansionist moves in the maritime region, while he constantly launched verbal attacks against the U.S.

His successor, Marcos, is seeking to reverse that strategy.

While in New York last week, he and U.S. President Joe Biden held a one-to-one meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly to discuss, among other things, boosting the bilateral alliance.

Faustino said the Philippines still believed that “diplomacy and dialogue” were crucial in resolving the South China Sea question.

“This includes continuing … engagement with China in both bilateral and multilateral platforms and multilateral dialogues, without prejudice to the Philippines position in the West Philippine Sea to facilitate mutual trust and understanding,” Faustino said, using the Philippine term for the South China Sea.

However, the “volatile situation” in the disputed sea region remains “the Philippines’ foremost security concern,” the acting Filipino defense chief told reporters in Hawaii.

The Philippines’ defense and security engagement with the U.S. “remains the key pillar of the Philippine-U.S. bilateral relations,” Faustino said, noting that the defense treaty was the bedrock of his country’s “national defense policy.”

“We look forward after this bilateral meeting [to having] a more robust cooperation particularly in issues pertaining to external threats to our country, and coming up with other avenues of operation where we could discuss things with mutual interest to the U.S. and Philippines,” he said.

Taiwan Strait

The top defense officials also discussed tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

Aside from Taiwan’s location near the Philippines’ northernmost tip, tens of thousands of Filipinos work on the island that Beijing considers a renegade province and they could be in danger if the Taiwanese came under attack, Faustino said.

“While the Philippines adheres to the One China Policy, we urge all concerned parties to exercise restraint, and that diplomacy and dialogue must prevail,” he said, adding that Manila’s most pressing concern at this time was the safety of its estimated 150,000 citizens working in Taiwan.

Washington, meanwhile, does not “want to see any type of unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” Austin said. “We are focused on making sure that we are working together to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The meeting in Hawaii took place ahead of a 12-day training exercise involving 2,550 U.S. Marines and some 630 Filipino counterparts.

The exercises, dubbed Kamandag, are to be held in various provinces, including in areas facing the West Philippine Sea. Troops from the Japan Self-Defense Force as well as from the Korea Marine Corps are expected to join as observers, the Philippine military said.

The drills, it said, aim to “enhance bilateral cooperation and interoperability among participating forces in the conduct of combined tactical operations.”

Specifically, the training is meant to enhance the capability of the two sides in the field of special operations, coast defense, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) response and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear operations, the Philippine military said.

Maj. Gen. Charlton Sean Gaerlan, the Philippine Marine chief, said his side hoped to learn from the Americans about advanced techniques in amphibious operations and special operations, particularly in “territorial defense capabilities.”

“Through this exercise, we are able to learn from their techniques, tactics, and procedures to develop our interoperability strategy in the Philippine Marine Corps, especially as we operationalize our Marine Corps Operating Concept for Archipelagic Coastal Defense,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of democratic Taiwan on Friday in a warning over Beijing’s authoritarian ambitions and territorial claims on Taiwan, ahead of China’s Oct. 1 National Day holiday.

Activists from more than 20 Taiwanese rights groups stood outside the Bank of China branch in Taipei with banners that read: “Don’t give up on human rights!” and “Resist China! Resist authoritarianism!”

In a reference to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s call for a “self-confident” China, rights activist Lee Ming-Cheh, who was released from a five-year jail term in China after being found guilty of “subversion of state power,” said the CCP is likely one of the least confident governments in the world.

“In my opinion, the Chinese communist government is the least confident government in the world, and can’t even tolerate true-to-life movies,” Lee told the rally, in a reference to recent movie bans ahead of the CCP’s 20th National Congress on Oct. 16.

Taiwan has never been ruled by the CCP, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China, yet Beijing insists that the island is part of its territory and has threatened to annex it by force, if necessary.

Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen has said the island’s 23 million people have no wish to give up their sovereignty or democratic way of life, a view that has been strongly supported by repeated public opinion polls and her landslide election victory in recent years.

“Taiwan didn’t choose the road of confrontation with China,” Lee told the rally. “We didn’t want to provoke China, but all of the threats to peace in the Taiwan Strait are coming from the Chinese government.”

“All we want is to hold onto our values and our way of life,” he said. “We are a great country that listens to its people, and doesn’t want to be a slave to China.”

The protesters called on Taiwanese to keep on defending human rights, to stand up for the island’s freedoms, and to actively unite against China’s authoritarian ambitions.

‘Unite and resist’

Shih Yi-hsiang, head of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, said respect for human rights is one of the most striking differences between the island and China.

“The need to protect our human rights is our most powerful argument for protecting Taiwan from the threat posed by China,” Shih told protesters.

“I don’t fear that we won’t have enough weapons: what I fear the most is that Taiwan, if we’re not careful, could fall back into more conservative values and authoritarianism,” he said.

“In the face of the Chinese regime, which is an anti-human rights behemoth, Taiwan needs to make more strategic connections and cooperate with human rights defenders from all over the world to unite and resist,” Shih said.

“We must oppose all kinds of authoritarian expansionist moves, whether they are instigated or influenced by China. The defense of human rights is our most powerful weapon in the fight against China,” he said.

Sky Fung, secretary-general of the exile group Hong Kong Outlanders, said Hong Kong and Taiwan are now on the front line of resistance against the CCP’s brand of authoritarian rule.

“This isn’t just a problem for the people of Hong Kong, but something that Taiwanese need to face up to as well,” Fung told the rally.

“Since we can’t avoid this, we had better endure it together,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.