Day: October 7, 2022

U.S. and Filipino Marine forces stormed a beachfront facing the South China Sea on Friday in a mock assault aimed at sharpening their skills on coastal defense.  

The war games, called Kamandag 6, involve 2,550 United States Marines and 630 Filipino counterparts. 

Unlike the previous five drills, troops from South Korea and Japan – two countries that are also seeking to blunt China’s military influence in the region amid territorial disputes – sent troops as observers, officials had announced. On Friday, South Korean troops participated in the drills.

“What you see here is the strength of democratic allies,” said U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts who served in the U.S. Marines. “There are countries that believe in freedom of democracy and practice it regularly.” 

The drills show that Washington was prepared to work with its Asian allies locked in security concerns triggered by tensions in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, he said.

 “We can work together. It is not easy. There’s a lot of coordination. And that is the strength the U.S. brings to this. It’s a historic partnership with countries like the Philippines, Korea and Japan,” Moulton told reporters. 

Col. Romulo Quemado, commander of the Filipino Marines coastal defense regiment, said Friday’s drills were meant to sharpen coordination in the area of amphibious landing as well as in responding to chemical or biological attacks. 

“We have continued to build on the combined competencies on amphibious operation that is solid, and more importantly, the continuing relations with our allies and friends in the region,” he said. 

The drills come during the same week as the third resupply of its BRP Sierra Madre outpost along the disputed Second Thomas Shoal (Ayungin Shoal) in the South China Sea since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office. The three resupplies by civilian ships occurred without Chinese intervention, whose ships frequently harassed such efforts in the past.

The Kamandag, which means “Cooperation of the Warriors of the Sea” and runs through Oct. 14, will include a combined live-fire exercise in central Luzon featuring aircraft and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, as well as amphibious operations along the island’s eastern and northern coasts, military officials have said.

The exercises are taking place amid Chinese military expansionism in the South China Sea where Beijing is locked in territorial disputes with the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan. Beijing claims historical rights to much of the region, including waters reaching rivals’ shores.

While Indonesia does not regard itself as party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Prominent Myanmar journalist Sithu Aung Myint, known for his reporting for both local and international media outlets, was sentenced to three years in prison Friday by a junta court on alleged charges of ‘inciting government employees to commit crimes,’ family members and sources close to the court told RFA.

A special court in Myanmar’s notorious Insein Prison located in the largest city of Yangon handed down the sentence under Section 505 (a) of the Penal Code, which has been used by the junta to target opponents since it seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 military coup. 

“This prison sentence is arbitrary,” a person close to the family told RFA.

“He didn’t do anything but write articles,” added the source.

Sithu Aung Myint, who had worked for Voice of America among other outlets, was arrested Aug. 15 last year at an apartment in Bahan Township in Yangon, 

“I heard he is in good health in prison although he lost weight,” the family friend said.

Sithu Aung Myint was detained along with Htet Htet Khine, a freelance producer for BBC’s Media Action and the presenter and anchorwoman for the Khansarkyi program, funded by the British broadcaster.

On Sept. 15, a Bahan Township court sentenced Htet Htet Khine to three years, and on Sept. 27, the a secret court in Insein Prison.gave her an additional three years prison under the Illegal Association Act by 

Since the coup, the military junta has led a wide-ranging crackdown on journalists and opponents of its rule, leading to condemnation by civil society and international human rights groups.

Myanmar journalist Myint Kyaw told RFA that the harsh sentences imposed on reporters this year show the junta’s tough policy targeting news outlets to silence its critics. 

“Just the other day, we saw them giving the maximum sentence to a Japanese documentary filmmaker. This is a clear sign that the military council has a very hostile policy toward the news media. We have seen this trend since the middle of 2022.” 

He said outlets have already shown increased restraint in reporting on anything that could go against the junta’s line, knowing they could receive the maximum penalties if prosecuted. 

Sithu Aung Myint’s lawyer told RFA that he is planning to appeal the decision. 

Sithu Aung Myint will face two additional cases for “defamation of the state”  under Section 124 (a) of the Penal Code, which can carry a sentence of life in prison, according to family members and close friends.

According to research compiled by RFA that is based on statements from the family members of arrested journalists, 135 journalists have been arrested in Myanmar during the 19 months since the military coup. Seventy have been released so far, while 65 are still detained in various prisons. Among them, 29 journalists have been sentenced to a minimum of one and a half years in prison and a maximum of 11 years in prison.

Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Nawar Nemeh.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has stepped up its censorship of social media ahead of its five-yearly congress, with users complaining that it was no longer possible to “speak normally” using Douyin, Weibo and WeChat.

“I’m unable to have a normal conversation in any of my group chats with friends, relatives or classmates,” the Twitter account @observerincn tweeted on Oct. 4.

“I started to climb the Great Firewall [use circumvention software to use sites outside China], to find a place where we could talk normally, but none of my friends or relatives were there,” the account said.

“Inside the Great Firewall, the thing that prevents people from communicating normally, causing division and confrontation, isn’t just the fact that the internet has been hijacked by the devil,” it said. “It’s also the endless intimidation and abuse.”

A resident of the eastern province of Jiangsu surnamed Feng said several of her chat groups on WeChat have been blocked in recent days.

“A lot of groups are getting blocked,” Feng told RFA. “People are setting up up new groups.”

“My WeChat group was blocked and my friends stopped sending me messages,” she said. “It’s gotten much worse now; they are stopping people chatting in groups and among followers.”

“You can chat privately one-to-one,” Feng said.

One Twitter account replied to @observerincn, saying most blogs, podcasts and livestreams had now disappeared.

“There have been a lot of public security announcements that are now blatantly intimidating to ordinary people, telling them not to spread rumors or believe rumors,” the account said. “If you’re investigated, you will be clearly told that your children and even future generations will be seriously affected.”

“This is by no means an isolated case, but based on my own experience and that of several friends of mine.”

VPN crackdown

Feng said it is also getting harder for her to use a virtual private network (VPN) to scale the Great Firewall and read content that is blocked by government censors in China.

“I can’t [get over the wall]; it’s blocked and I can’t open FreeVPN,” she said. “This time, [the controls] are very strict.”

“The 20th National Congress is on Oct. 16, but police were contacting me and coming to my home as early as Aug. 15 to tell me they were starting stability maintenance measures.”

Internet technician Li Ming said China’s internet censorship had likely had a technological upgrade.

“VPNs and virtual private servers don’t seem to be blocked, but the use of … other types [of blocking] are more powerful now,” Li said. “They are blocking at the level of protocols, not servers, which probably mean they are capturing data packets.”

“Now, if you … enter an address, they block the data packets, which is different from before, so it’s probably an upgrade,” he said.

According to information security site Thousand Eyes, China has always used deep packet inspection as part of its intrusion detection system (IDS).

“If the IDS technology detects undesirable content and determines that a connection from a client to a web server is to be blocked, the router injects forged [reset code] into the data streams so that the endpoints abandon the connection,” it said.

“After blocking the connection, the system [blocks] further communication between the same pair of machines, even for harmless requests that would not previously have been blocked,” according to an analysis on the site.

“These timeouts can last for up to hours at a time and escalate if more attempts are made to access the censored content.”

If Li Ming’s observation were correct, the system would now be blocking data packets rather than just forcing connections to drop when they are detected.

Blocking outside users

Users outside China said they are also having difficulty using WeChat.

Former 1989 Tiananmen protest leader Wang Dan, said via Twitter that WeChat appeared to be preventing blocked users from outside China from chatting privately with users back home, a move which he termed “a new firewall.”

Wang said the move showed that the CCP continues to fear any free flow of information.

“Whatever they say about self-confidence this, self-confidence that is fake,” he said. “They are living in a turbulent world where they have to fear every shadow, all day, every day.”

A resident of Sichuan surnamed Zhao said he had noticed his posts on WeChat disappearing more often than before.

“Sometimes I post something with a slightly more sensitive title, but I can’t get it to send,” Zhao said. “Sometimes I will post something, but then, a short while later it’s gone, or only visible to me, not to others.”

WeChat, which is heavily relied upon by millions in China for anything from social contact and news updates to online shopping and fan sites, with 1.26 billion active users by the end of the third quarter of 2022.

WeChat’s parent company Tencent hadn’t responded to a request for comment by the time of writing.

Social media users are beginning to give up trying to use the platforms at all.

One user in the eastern province of Jiangxi said he had deleted his Weibo account, quit his WeChat groups, and doesn’t bother using any China-based chat apps at all any more.

Another user told RFA that he had quit all of his WeChat groups, but was re-added to a family group chat so he could stay in touch.

The powerful Cyberspace Administration of China said on Sept. 29 that is continuing to run operations labeling unconfirmed posts and comments as rumors, to “rectify the chaos of the rumor mill.”

It said internet workers at 12 platforms including Weibo, Douyin, Baidu, Tencent, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Zhihu and Douban had so far labeled 80,000 items as “rumors.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Tibet now faces a “critical moment” for the survival of its distinct religious, cultural and linguistic heritage as China’s policies in the region threaten Tibet’s national identity, a top U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday.

“PRC authorities continue to wage a campaign of repression against the Tibetan community,” U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Uzra Zeya said at a gathering held on the sidelines of UN Human Rights Council meetings this week in Geneva, Switzerland.

Central to Beijing’s campaign to fully absorb Tibet into China is its plan to install a Dalai Lama of its own choosing as a puppet leader when the current 87-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader, now living in exile in India, someday dies, Zeya said.

“The PRC views this co-optation as critical to eroding international support for Tibet and completing its forcible ‘Sinicization’ of the six million Tibetans living in the PRC,” the U.S. diplomat added.

“PRC authorities have shown they are willing to act with cruelty when any succession process falls outside the boundaries of their control,” Zeya said, noting that Beijing in 1995 abducted another senior Tibetan religious leader — the 11^th Panchen Lama, then a young child — and selected a candidate under China’s control to replace him.

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.

Global implications

“PRC interference in Tibetan Buddhism extends well beyond PRC borders and has global implications,” Zeya added.

“In fact, PRC policies on the succession issue are part of broader efforts to reshape and undermine human rights globally, including through transnational repression and acts targeting the right to freedom of religion or belief.

“The United States will continue to call out PRC authorities for their repression against the Tibetan community,” Zeya said, calling on “likeminded governments, civil society, and other stakeholders” in the international community to join U.S. efforts to press for a change in Beijing’s policies in Tibet.

The U.S. Tibet Policy and Support Act of 2020 makes it official U.S. policy that the Dalai Lama’s succession is a strictly religious matter that can be decided only by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community.

If Chinese leaders attempt to identify a new Dalai Lama, they will face sanctions under the Act that could include having their assets frozen and their entry to the United States denied.

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.

Written in English by Richard Finney.

A Chinese coast guard fleet conducted a patrol near the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea on Friday, the latest of more than two dozen forays into disputed waters this year at a time of high regional tensions over missile launches from North Korea.

The patrols came as Pyongyang has been firing ballistic missiles into the waters off the Korean Peninsula in the last two weeks. On Tuesday a missile launched over Japan prompted the U.S. to call an emergency meeting at the U.N. Security Council and to hold a trilateral ballistic missile defense exercise with allies Japan and South Korea.

“China Coast Guard 2301 fleet conducts a patrol in territorial waters off the Diaoyu Islands on Oct. 7, 2022,” the Chinese Coast Guard announced on its Weibo account, referring to the island group by its Chinese name.

The announcement came just over a week after three Chinese coast guard vessels spent more than eight hours in the waters off the disputed islands. The Japanese-controlled islands are also claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu Islands.

Chinese ships have been spotted entering the area that both countries call their own territorial waters 28 times this year.

Japan has yet to respond to the latest Chinese incursion, but in the previous incident on Sept. 28, Tokyo dispatched patrol vessels to chase off the Chinese ships and “lodged a stern protest with Beijing over the intrusion, which violated international law.”

Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki told reporters at that time that Beijing’s action was “extremely regrettable and totally unacceptable.”

Changing status quo

Despite repeated protests from Tokyo, Chinese ships have been conducting regular patrols near the islands.

The same fleet led by coast guard vessel 2301 carried out a similar patrol early June this year. 

The Japanese government bought most of the Senkakus from a private owner ten years ago. Since then, “China has been using this as an excuse to send the Coast Guard and other agencies’ ships into Japan’s contiguous zone almost every day except for stormy weather days, and these ships intrude into Japanese territorial waters several times a month,” said the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“China Coast Guard ships persistently continue unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in the waters around the Senkaku Islands,” said the ministry.

“This includes approaching Japanese fishing vessels inside Japanese territorial waters and intrusions by ships mounted with artillery,” it added.

Before the government’s purchase of Senkakus in 2012, Chinese ships almost never entered Japan’s territorial waters near the islands, according to the Japan Coast Guard.

The Senkaku Islands are a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea northeast of Taiwan that Japan has administered since 1895.

On Thursday, Japan, the U.S. and South Korea held a trilateral ballistic missile defense exercise in the waters between Korea and Japan, following North Korea’s ballistic missile launch over Japan on Oct. 4, according to a statement from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The three allies also staged a trilateral anti-submarine exercise for the first time in five years on Sept. 30.

Pyongyang has carried out six missile launches in less than two weeks as “countermeasures” to U.S.-led military drills in the region. 

The U.S. and South Korea responded with missile launches and drills around the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday and Wednesday, without Japan.