Day: October 5, 2022

More and more North Korean construction workers deployed to Russia are escaping from their jobs after hearing they are to be sent to Russian-controlled areas in Ukraine, sources in Russia told RFA.

The cash-strapped North Korean government sends legions of workers to Russia to earn desperately needed foreign currency. Workers forward the lion’s share of their salaries to the government, but what they get to keep is greater than what they could earn doing similar work back home.

But now that there is demand for construction in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, increasing numbers of North Korean construction workers are abandoning their jobs and going into hiding, a Russian citizen of Korean descent told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The North Korean workers are nowhere to be seen at the construction sites these days. This is because the command ordered they stop work for an internal investigation as increasing numbers of them are trying to escape after hearing they would be deployed to Ukraine’s Donbas region.” said the source.

“The workers are shaken by the news. … Pyongyang in early September ordered the dispatching companies to gather workers and put them on standby instead of taking on new work where they are currently dispatched,” the source said.

The workers are well aware of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the source. Though the North Korean government is able to control media within its borders, it cannot as easily control what information is available to its citizens overseas.

“After getting the news that the workers would soon be moved to a new construction site in Ukraine, and needed to settle everything by the end of September, many have escaped. It’s not only the construction workers, but also management officials escaping,” said the source.

The construction sites of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East are empty, a source there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“I know that some North Korean companies are on alert as the officials in charge of worker management escaped one after another,” the second source said.

The problem of workers escaping is not new. Even in times of relative peace, many North Koreans deployed to Russia go missing, according to the second source.

“At the end of each year, results must be reported and the managers must pay the workers their share and forward the rest [to Pyongyang],”  the second source said. “However, managers and officials of some companies, who did not receive payment from local companies often escape because they are afraid of punishment they might receive after the review session.”

“North Korean workers live a tired life of despair. They cannot save any money even though they work all day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and then do additional overtime work at night,” said the second source.  

“There are frequent cases where disgruntled workers escape, and others escape because they fear punishment.”

Once news came from the North Korean consulate to prepare to be shipped out to Ukraine, escape numbers rose, the second source said.

Russia’s Ambassador to North Koera Alexander Matsegora mentioned the possibility of sending North Korean workers to Ukraine in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia in July.

There were 21,000 North Korean workers living in Russia as of September 2018, a December 2018 statement from the Russian foreign ministry said. Approximately 19,000 of those were employed at factories, farms and construction sites.

Following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2397 in Dec. 2017, tens of thousands of North Korean workers in Russia were repatriated by the end of 2019.

 Though sanctions prohibit North Korea from sending workers overseas and preclude countries from issuing work visas to North Koreans, Pyongyang has been known to dispatch workers to China and Russia on short-term student or visitor visas to get around sanctions.

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

The Lao military arbitrarily detained five land dispute protesters for three months, then threatened them with further punishment if they were to talk to the media after their release, RFA has learned.

In April, authorities violently detained Nang Boumy, 55, Ngad, 58, Bounthavy, 36,  Khamphout, 49, and Tou Oun, 72, as they destroyed signs and argued with military personnel at a newly built camp in their village of Houay Nam Yen in Naxaithong district, north of the capital Vientiane. 

The five detainees were sent to a military facility in Nong Kheng, in Vientiane’s Sayathany district, where they remained until late July. The military released them, pending the court’s decision on their case, but told them to keep quiet about it. 

“They prohibited us from saying anything or putting anything in the news, otherwise [the five] would be jailed again,” a villager told RFA’s Lao Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“If they were to read the news, they would be able to ask us who the source is. So we kept silent and said nothing,” the villager said.

The court decided their fate while they were not present, and the military relayed the decision, an eight-month sentence with the final five months suspended, when they returned to the prison on Sept. 22., sources told RFA.

Their absence in court was irregular, a legal consultant, who declined to be named, told RFA.

“The military committed a conflict of interest,” the consultant said. “The prosecution is very weird.”

The dispute between the military and the villagers remains unsettled.

Around 40 families have been living in the 25-hectare (61-acre) disputed area in Houay Nam Yen and nearby Sisawat village since 1989, the year they fled homes damaged by floods at the nearby Nam Houm Reservoir. Soldiers claiming ownership of the land began to build there within the past year. 

In April, after the five were detained, Naxaithong district deputy head Phouvone Phong-Latkeo said that local villagers have no right to the disputed land, because the Vientiane Agriculture and Forestry Department had handed it over to the military following the 1989 Nam Houm flood and that it was now property of the state.

Rather than threatening to arrest people living in the disputed area, the military should engage with the community to find a solution, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for New York-based Human Rights Watch, told RFA.

“The Lao military should be negotiating with villagers in cases of land disputes, not abusing their rights by detaining them for months just because the villagers asserted their right to farm there,” said Robertson, who called their arbitrary detention a “blatant violation of human rights.”

He called for an impartial investigation into the detention of the five protesters with accountability for those responsible.

“It is totally unacceptable for the military to cover up their rights violations by threatening the villagers with further harm if they reveal what happened to them,” he said.

“Once again, the Lao government’s complete failure to protect the land rights of the Lao people are on full display.”

RFA attempted to contact the military for more information on the matter, but received no reply.

Translated by Ounkeo Souksavanh. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama called on Tibetans this week not to lose heart amid harsh COVID restrictions imposed by China in the formerly independent Himalayan country.

Speaking on Tuesday in Dharamsala, India — seat of Tibet’s exile government the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) — the Dalai Lama said the Tibetan people are now suffering under measures imposed by China to slow the spread of the disease.

“The public are facing great difficulties amid harsh COVID restrictions in Tibet,” the 87-year-old Dalai Lama said on the second day of a program of religious teachings requested by a visiting group of Buddhists from Taiwan.

“You do not need to feel disheartened when faced with temporary difficulties. What is most important is that you should feel at ease and trust that the truth will eventually prevail.”

“China is changing, and the day will come when we Tibetans in exile and Tibetans in Tibet will be reunited,” the Dalai Lama said.

Chinese state media have reported 18,343 cases of COVID-19 infection as of Oct. 5, with at least 60,507 people now held in quarantine in conditions described as harsh by sources inside the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).

In a Sept. 26 statement, the Central Tibetan Administration said Chinese authorities are holding Tibetans in quarantine camps without adequate food, water or medical care. Camp managers have routinely placed infected persons with others still uninfected, resulting in a further spread of the virus, the CTA said.

At least 5 Tibetans in the regional capital Lhasa have jumped to their death from tall buildings to escape lockdown conditions, sources told RFA in earlier reports.

US promises support

US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Uzra Zeya in a Tweet on Tuesday expressed continuing US support for the Dalai Lama’s role as spiritual leader of the Tibetan people both in exile and in Tibet.

“We will continue to support members of the Tibetan community’s religious freedom, including the ability to choose their own religious leaders,” Zeya wrote following a meeting on the sidelines of the 51^st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

In a statement, Kate Saunders — communications director for the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) — said ICT is urging the UN and member states of the European Union to adopt language joining the United States in supporting the Dalai Lama and protecting Tibetan national identity.

”Tibetans just like the Ukrainians are fighting to protect and defend their religious civilization, their unique identity, and they are facing great danger,” Saunders said. “Tibetans have been showing remarkable resilience, subtlety and sophistication in protecting this great religious civilization.”

Dispute over succession

The question of who will select the Dalai Lama’s successor is a major point of friction between China, which insists on its right to choose the religious leader’s reincarnation, and Tibetans inside their homeland and around the world.

Tibetan tradition holds that senior Buddhist monks are reincarnated in the body of a child after they die. The Dalai Lama has said that if he returns, his successor will be born in a country outside of Chinese control.

In the 1990s the exiled Dalai Lama and the Chinese government each selected their own Panchen Lama, another senior Buddhist teacher, with Beijing’s anointed lama now widely rejected by Tibetans.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force more than 70 years ago, following which the Dalai Lama and thousands of his followers fled into exile in India and other countries around the world.

Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama of fomenting separatism in Tibet.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Written in English by Richard Finney.

The democratic island of Taiwan is making preparations for war, in response to China’s ratcheting up of military tensions with repeated incursions by air and sea, ministers said on Wednesday.

Taiwanese defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) destroyed what he called a “tacit agreement” when it made incursions across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which separates the island from China.

Chiu told lawmakers in Taipei on Wednesday that Taiwanese forces would react if China crossed a “red line,” although he didn’t specify what such a red line might be.

Chinese military aircraft have repeatedly crossed the media line since an Aug. 2 visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi riled Beijing.

Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China, but Beijing insists it has a territorial claim on the island, which was a Japanese dependency for the first half of the 20th century.

“The median line was supposed to be a tacit agreement for everyone,” Chiu told a Legislative Yuan committee. “That tacit agreement has been destroyed.”

The median line, which lies around 40 k.m. (25 miles) from Taiwan’s waters, was delineated by a U.S. general at the height of hostility between Beijing and Taipei in 1954, and the PLA largely respected it until a foreign ministry spokesman said there was no such thing in 2020.

“They want to build a new normal but we do not change … We will stand firm when they come. We do not give in,” Chiu said.

‘Irresponsible actions’

Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen has repeatedly rejected Beijing’s insistence on “unification,” saying the island’s 23 million people have no wish to give up their sovereignty or democratic way of life, a view largely backed up by recent opinion polls.

Tsai condemned Chinese military moves in an online think tank event Tuesday, where she expressed gratitude for support from the U.S., G7 countries and called for solidarity in the face of Beijing’s threats.

“China’s persistent military exercises, gray zone operations, and incursions with military personnel, weaponry, and drones into the areas around Taiwan undermine the status quo across the Taiwan Strait,” she said.

“These irresponsible actions encroach on Taiwan’s sovereignty and threaten peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. They also endanger air and maritime safety as well as international trade in an attempt to erode international law and norms,” Tsai told an event shown by the Global Taiwan Institute, a Washington think tank.

“We know from history and current events that threats against any one country or region translate, directly and indirectly, to increasing threats against its neighbors. This is why global solidarity is key to countering authoritarian expansion, safeguarding democracy, and addressing shared challenges,” she said.

Chiu said Taiwan is already preparing for a Chinese invasion.

“We are building up our arsenal and preparing for war according to our own plan,” he told lawmakers.

Stockpiles of food, critical supplies, energy

Meanwhile, deputy economy minister Chen Chern-chyi told journalists that the government is already taking monthly inventories of critical food and energy supplies.

State-run Taipower and state-owned refiner CPC Corp are already primed to ensure energy supplies, Chen said.

“We want to ensure we have a certain period of stockpiles in Taiwan, including food, including critical supplies, minerals, chemicals and energy of course,” he said.

According to a recent article by former CIA analyst John Culver, China could invade as early as 2024, but some estimates say 2027 is more likely.

But there will be sure signs that war is coming, Culver wrote in an op-ed for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, citing halted demobilization and regular drills, the building of field hospitals and propaganda exercises aimed at preparing the general population for the impact of military conflict.

“If China decides to fight a war of choice over Taiwan, strategic surprise would be a casualty of the sheer scale of the undertaking,” Culver wrote. “Even if Xi were tempted to launch a quick campaign and hope that Taiwan’s will to fight would quickly collapse, Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine probably has induced more caution in Beijing.”

“Any invasion of Taiwan will not be secret for months prior to Beijing’s initiation of hostilities. It would be a national, all-of-regime undertaking for a war potentially lasting years,” he said.

Chao Chun-shan, a China expert at Taiwan’s Tamkang University, said the invasion is almost certainly on the CCP’s agenda.

“They have already put this on the agenda for sure,” Chao told RFA. “[We just don’t know] whether it’ll be in the short, medium or long term.”

PLA capabilities in question

But he agreed that there are question marks over the PLA’s capabilities to stage a massive amphibious invasion.

“Many people say that the CCP, especially the navy, is a match for the United States, but I think the CCP’s military strength is still far behind that of the U.S,” Chao said.

“After 2027, the likelihood they will fight this war is higher.”

Lin Po-chou, Chinese military expert at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said it is still unclear exactly how much military support the U.S. would offer Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

“If it’s going to be an allied operation, there will need to be a lot of coordination and drills beforehand,” Lin told RFA.

“A while ago, there were reports that the U.S. was planning to stockpile weapons in Taiwan. So the form this so-called aid will take is still unclear.”

CIA chief Bill Burns told CBS News on Oct. 3 that developments in Ukraine may have changed CCP leader Xi Jinping’s approach to Taiwan.

“I think President Xi is watching what’s happening in Ukraine like a hawk,” he told the network. “I think he’s been sobered to some extent by the poor performance of the Russian military.”

“That Chinese leadership is also looking at what happens when you stage an invasion, and the people you’re invading resist with a lot of courage and tenacity as well.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Reports that China is trying to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong have sparked security concerns, amid an ongoing crackdown under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by Beijing.

The Financial Times reported recently that China has demanded the floor plans of all properties rented by foreign missions in Hong Kong.

“The order has brought the city in line with how China treats embassies and consulates on the mainland and sparked fears in the diplomatic community that Beijing could use the information to plant listening devices, according to three people familiar with the matter,” the paper said in an Oct. 3 report on its website.

Simon Cheng, a former employee of the British Consulate General in Hong Kong, said Chinese state security police were insistent that he draw a floor plan of the consulate for them during his interrogations during a 15-day detention in August 2019.

Cheng said he wasn’t at all surprised by the FT report, suggesting the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will continue to tighten control on what it views as potentially hostile “foreign forces” that it blames for inciting the 2019 protest movement in Hong Kong.

“I think the freedom of movement of diplomats in Hong Kong will gradually be restricted, which will eventually worsen the relationships between China and foreign countries,” Cheng told RFA.

China confirmed on Aug. 21, 2019 that it was holding Cheng, then investment director for the Scottish International Development Agency under the aegis of the British Consulate General in Hong Kong, 11 days after his family reported him missing.

Cheng was reported missing after he failed to turn up to work since Aug. 9 following a trip across the border to the neighboring city of Shenzhen, in mainland China.

His detention came after weeks of tension between the U.K. and China, with Beijing repeatedly warning London not to “interfere” in its internal affairs by commenting on long-running pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Torture-induced confession

Cheng has since detailed his torture at the hands of Chinese state security police in Shenzhen, confirming speculation that he had been detained while in the controversial dual checkpoint area of the West Kowloon high-speed rail terminus, which was designated part of the People’s Republic of China in a controversial move amid fears of cross-border arrests and detentions within Hong Kong’s borders.

Cheng described interrogation sessions during which he was restrained in a “tiger chair” and asked to detail the role of the U.K. in the Hong Kong protests.

Told that he could be jailed for decades for subversion or rioting, Cheng was forced to confess to charge of “soliciting prostitutes.” He said papers relating to his detention had the date fields left blank, so he never knew if or when he would be released.

Benson Wong, former assistant politics professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said there has been a marked a shift in China’s attitude to foreign diplomats in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

He said the request for floor plans as reported in the FT also included properties used to house diplomats and consular staff.

“[This would mean] that the places where foreign diplomats and even staff live are no longer safe,” he said.

“Embassy personnel could easily be targeted by the so-called national security law,” Wong said of a law that has criminalized public criticism of the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities anywhere in the world, regardless of nationality.

Wong said the new approach would be counterproductive, as Hong Kong tries to reestablish itself as a financial hub and attract more foreign investment.

Ever-widening crackdown

The imposition of the national security law from July 1, 2020 launched an ever-widening crackdown on public dissent and political opposition that has seen dozens of former opposition lawmakers and democracy activists detained for “subversion” for taking part in a democratic primary in 2020.

The mass public protests — which Beijing claims were incited by hostile foreign powers fomenting a “color revolution” in Hong Kong — and the increasingly violent responses by protesters to widespread and excessive police violence, were cited as the main reason for the new regime.

Beijing agreed under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration to allow Hong Kong to maintain its traditional freedoms for 50 years, and to move towards fully democratic elections. But a National People’s Congress (NPC) standing committee ruling in 2014 said a one person, one vote system could only happen if all candidates had been pre-approved by Beijing.

The Chinese government has repeatedly dismissed any criticism of its crackdown in the city as “interference” in its internal affairs.

The U.K. government has said its six-monthly reports and other statements on Hong Kong are part of its “normal diplomatic activities.”

“The U.K.’s response to the situation in Hong Kong is consistent with normal diplomatic practice,” it said in its December 2021 report.

“We stand by the measures we introduced in response to the National Security Law, including suspending our extradition treaty and extending the arms embargo on China to Hong Kong,” the report said.

When U.S. Consul General Michael Hanscom Smith left office in July 2022, pro-CCP media said his departure was “good riddance to a failed diplomat,” citing U.S. consular staff meetings with local protest leaders and pro-democracy politicians as evidence that he was “interfering” in Hong Kong’s affairs.

“The U.S.-backed plan to harm China by sacrificing Hong Kong had been foiled, and his political masters in Washington, D.C., were not best pleased, perhaps even blaming him for not having tried harder,” the China Daily said in an editorial when Hanscom Smith left his post.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.