Day: October 9, 2022

JAKARTA— A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck beneath the sea in Banten area, Java Island on Sunday, said Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency (BMKG).

 

However, no tsunami warning was immediately issued.

 

The quake occurred at 5.02 pm West Indonesian time, centered at 26 kilometers (km) southwest of Bayah, Lebak District, Banten Province at a depth of 12 km.

 

The tremors were felt in Jakarta, which is located about 131 km from the centre of the quake.

 

Some residents felt buildings shake for a few seconds when the quake occurred.

 

BMKG in a post on its official twitter warned the public to brace for possible aftershocks.

 

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Vietnam is mounting an assertive campaign to win a seat on the United National Human Rights Council in an Oct. 11 vote, but critics say Hanoi’s poor record at home and diplomatic support for major rights violators abroad disqualify the one-party state.

Fourteen seats on the 47-member Council will be filled by the U.N. General Assembly full-member vote. The highest human rights body has long faced criticism that countries seen as major rights abusers are members who team up to shield each other from scrutiny.

Critics say Hanoi’s record of cracking down on journalists, activists and social media commentators makes it a poor choice for the Council. And they say Vietnam would join the bloc of countries that block Council action on major crises, as it did in its previous  2014-16 term.

“There is little doubt that Vietnam will be a problematic, highly negative influence on the Human Rights Council if it is elected to the 2023-2025 term,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“In fact, at every opportunity, Vietnam does not hesitate to show its contempt for international human rights law, and if they get a seat, it’s highly likely they will seek to undermine meaningful actions by the Council,” he told RFA.

Tuesday’s vote in New York comes days after China and its allies on the 47-member Council defeated a U.S. proposal that the Council hold a debate on a recent report by the body’s rights chief on abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.

Vietnam has conducted an intense propaganda and lobbying drive to support its effort to be elected to the Council.

On Sept. 30, Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Binh Minh approved a huge public relations campaign intended to boost the country’s reputation in the human rights field. Under the project, all Vietnamese state agencies will regularly provide human rights information to the media by 2028, while state officials working in the field will receive communications training.

Over the past month, state media have touted what they say are Vietnam’s human rights achievements and criticized the international community’s accusations of rights violations in the Southeast Asian country.

Vietnamplus, an online newspaper, recently ran two stories titled “Vietnam attaches importance to international cooperation in human rights protection” and “Vietnam ready to contribute further to UN affairs.”

The Voice of Vietnam online newspaper, meanwhile, ran a story titled “Vietnam pledges to make active contributions when becoming member of the UN Human Rights Council.”

‘Unworthy’ candidate

Human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, a former political prisoner who now lives in Germany, said Vietnam was seeking Council membership for the 2023-25 term to boost its standing.

“Authoritarian governments often try their best to join the United Nations agencies, including the Human Rights Council, so that they can use it to tell people inside their country that accusations of their human rights violations are inaccurate,” he told RFA.

“The fact that the Vietnamese Communist government has made every effort to become a member of the Human Rights Council is for political purposes only,” he told RFA. “They will not make any contributions to protect the human rights of their own people as well as of other peoples in the world.”

In April, a coalition of eight organizations from inside and outside Vietnam, including the Vietnam Human Rights Network, Human Rights Defenders, Dai Viet Quoc Dang and the Vietnam Independent Journalists Association, sent an open letter to the U.N. calling on it to reject Vietnam as a Council member for the next term.  They said the country was “unworthy” because of its poor human rights record and support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Oct. 3, three NGOs — UN Watch, Human Rights Foundation and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights — jointly issued a report on rights abuses by the 14 candidate countries, including Vietnam, to circulate to U.N. diplomats.

The report says that the rights situation inside Vietnam has not improved.

It noted that when Vietnam served on Council from 2014-16, it opposed resolutions supporting rights victims in Belarus and Iran and failed to support resolutions on behalf of rights victims in Burundi and Syria.

Another coalition of rights NGOs groups from Europe, the U.S. and Canada has called on U.N. member states to oppose the election of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan and Venezuela, countries deemed “unqualified” because of their grim human rights records and voting records on U.N. resolutions concerning human rights.

London-based Amnesty International said Vietnam’s efforts to be elected to the Council flew in the face of the facts on the ground.

“Vietnamese authorities should show that they are willing to uphold international human rights standards, but nothing could be further from the reality on the ground, where the government continues to pass laws that restrict freedom of expression and association while promoting a climate of fear among people who dare to speak out,” an Amnesty spokesperson told RFA.

Getting worse in Vietnam

Nguyen Dinh Thang said human rights in Vietnam had worsened since the country’s nomination as a Council member in April 2021.

A further stain on the country’s human rights record was its vote against a resolution to dismiss Russia from the Council for invading Ukraine, he said.

Vietnam does not deserve membership after years of rounding up its critics, said attorney Nguyen Van Dai.

“Over the past four years, Vietnam has arrested many political dissidents who only had exercised their freedom of expression and press freedom,” he said.

There are more than 100 political dissidents in jail, most of whom openly criticized the government for wrongdoings, including corruption and rights violations, though none of them opposed the state, Dai said.

“They only raised social issues which were completely true,” he said. “Almost all of them only commented on and analyzed the issues raised by state media. They did not collect the information from somewhere or provide inaccurate information about the Communist government of Vietnam.”

Vietnam is currently detaining 253 prisoners of conscience, according to the rights group Defend the Defenders, though the organization said it believes that the actual number is higher. Prisoners charged with “sabotaging the national solidarity policy” and religious prisoners comprise the largest number of detainees, while about 100 belong to ethnic minority groups, the organization said.

The U.S. State Department’s “2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Vietnam,” issued on April 12, says Vietnam is an authoritarian and one-party ruled country whose National Assembly elections are neither free nor fair, with limited competition among candidates nominated by the CPV.

Vietnam’s chances of getting a Council seat are low, because there are six candidate countries from the Asia-Pacific region vying for a place, and Malaysia will hold its current Council seat until late 2024, said Nguyen Dinh Thang.

Countries from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are usually elected to only one of the Council’s 47 seats, he said.

“I think this year, Vietnam has less chance of winning than during the previous time as it was the only candidate then,” he said.

But Attorney Nguyen Van Dai said simple math made it “very likely to win a seat”  representing Asia-Pacific countries on the Council.

“The Asian region only nominated a sufficient number of nominees, and not more than the allocated slots,” he said.

Council membership would be a helpful propaganda victory for Hanoi, said Nguyen Dinh Thang, director of Boat People SOS, a Vietnamese human rights advocacy organization.

“People would think that you must have been good enough to be selected,” he told RFA “That’s the image they want to show, especially to people in the country.”

 

 

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Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will pledge to bolster the island’s combat power and determination to improve its defenses in a major speech on Monday, at a time when tensions with China have risen dramatically.

Democratic Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has come under increasing military and political pressure from Beijing, especially after Chinese war games in early August following a Taipei visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

According to an outline of her national day speech on Monday, as described to Reuters by a source briefed on its contents, Tsai will talk about “enhancing national defense combat power and uniting the morale of the people.”

“In addition to reaffirming Taiwan’s determination to augment its self-defense and its position on maintaining regional peace and stability, the president will also elaborate on efforts to strengthen national defense combat power and resilience,” the source said.

Tsai is overseeing a military modernization program and boosting defense spending as China presses its sovereignty claims against Taiwan.

In her speech, outside the presidential office in central Taipei, where there will also be a military parade, Tsai will emphasize that “democratic resilience” is the key to protecting Taiwan, the source said.

That includes continuing to deepen international cooperation and “closely connecting” democratic allies, the president will say.

Tsai’s speech will come less than a week before China’s ruling Communist Party’s congress opens in Beijing, where President Xi Jinping is widely expected to win a precedent-breaking third five-year term.

China has pledged to work for peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan under a “one country, two systems” model.

All mainstream Taiwan political parties have rejected that proposal and it has almost no public support, according to opinion polls. China has also never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.

China refuses to speak to Tsai, re-elected by a landslide in 2020 on a promise to stand up to Beijing, believing she is a separatist. Tsai has repeatedly offered talks based on equality and mutual respect.

She has made strengthening Taiwan’s defenses a cornerstone of her administration to enable it to mount a more credible deterrence to China, which is ramping up an ambitious modernization program of its own military.

 

Source: Voice of America

Families offered flowers and dolls, popcorn and juice boxes to children massacred at a day care center in Thailand, part of a Buddhist ceremony held Sunday just paces from where the slaughter began that was meant to guide the young souls back to their bodies.

“Come back home” and “come back with us,” the relatives called into the empty day care center, many with tears in their eyes.

The gun and knife attack on the Young Children’s Development Center in Uthai Sawan was Thailand’s deadliest mass killing, and it robbed the small farming community of much of its youngest generation. The former police officer who stormed the building killed two dozen people at the day care before taking more lives as he fled, including his wife and child, police said. He then killed himself.

Ceremonies were held Sunday at three temples, where the 36 victims — mostly preschoolers — were taken ahead of funeral rites and cremation on Tuesday.

Maneerat Tanonethong — whose 3-year-old Chaiyot Kijareon was killed at the day care center — said the rituals were helping her with her grief.

“I am trying not think about horrible images and focus on how lovely he was. … But I don’t know what I will do with myself once this is all over,” she said. “I am determined that I will try let go of this, that I won’t hold any grudge against the perpetrator and understand that all of these will end in this life.”

At Rat Samakee temple, family members sat in front of the tiny coffins while Buddhist monks chanted prayers. They placed trays of food, toys and milk along the outside of the temple walls as offerings to the spirits of their slain children.

Later, they headed to the day care center and gathered in front of a makeshift memorial there to receive the slain children’s belongings. They made offerings of their kids’ favorite foods and lit incense and candles as they implored the children’s souls to return to their bodies.

Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is expected to attend evening prayers at the three temples where bodies were brought later Sunday.

Police identified the attacker as Panya Kamrap, 34, a police sergeant fired earlier this year after being charged with a drug offense.

An employee at the day care told Thai media that Panya’s son had attended the center but hadn’t been there for about a month. Police have said they believe Panya was under stress from tensions between him and his wife, and money problems.

The attack has left no one in the small community untouched, and brought international media attention to the remote, rural area. Thai police are investigating a report that a CNN crew inappropriately entered the day care center while reporting.

CNN tweeted that the crew had entered the premises at a moment when the police cordon had been removed from the center and were told by three public health officials that they could film inside.

Mass killings in Thailand are rare but not unheard of.

In 2020, a disgruntled soldier opened fire in and around a mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, killing 29 people and holding off security forces for some 16 hours before being killed by them.

Prior to that, a 2015 bombing at a shrine in Bangkok left 20 people dead. It was allegedly carried out by human traffickers in retaliation for a crackdown on their network.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

North Korea has conducted an uncommon late-night missile test on the eve of an anniversary marking the founding of its Workers’ Party.

The test came hours after a U.S. aircraft carrier task force wrapped up a second week of naval exercises with South Korea. The carrier’s return to waters off the Korean peninsula – prompted by North Korea’s launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan – was characterized by Pyongyang as “of considerably huge negative splash to the regional situation.”

Two short-range ballistic missiles were fired between 1:48 and 1:58 a.m. Sunday, South Korea’s military said, from the Munchon area into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan. They flew 350 kilometers and reached a top altitude of 90 kilometers, it added.

Japan’s Senior Vice Defense Minister Toshiro Ino announced similar figures. He said the missiles, after being launched at around 1:47 a.m. and 1:53 a.m., landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone after gliding some 350 kilometers at an apogee of 100 kilometers. The possibility they were submarine-launched ballistic missiles was being studied, he said.

Munchon, located along North Korea’s eastern coast, hosts a naval base that in 2016 was seen undergoing renovation.

Analysts in Seoul, however, noted similarities in Sunday’s launches to a tactical ballistic missile, known to U.S. authorities as the KN-25, or what North Korean media have in the past called the “super-large” multiple rocket launch system. It was thought to be one of two missiles tested last Thursday, hours after the USS Ronald Reagan had been rerouted for a second round of naval exercises with South Korea and Japan.

In an emergency meeting, South Korea’s National Security Council strongly condemned the continuing launch of short- and intermediate-range missiles as destabilizing acts that violate United Nations Security Council resolutions. Sunday’s ballistic missile launching is the seventh in 15 days, extending a record run of weapons testing this year.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, in its assessment, said the latest launch did not pose an immediate threat to the U.S. or its allies, while affirming the U.S.’s “ironclad” commitments to the defense of South Korea and Japan.

Sunday’s test precedes the 77th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s only political party, the Workers’ Party, on Monday. South Korean officials have said North Korea could be preparing a weapons showcase, though a weapons parade like those that occur every five years is viewed as unlikely.

North Korea signals more tests

North Korea has not published a state media report on its missile tests the day after they are conducted since May 2022.

Instead, its official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) over the weekend issued two statements from spokespeople from its Defense Ministry and its National Aviation Administration, both suggesting that launches would continue.

The redeployment of the “nuclear-powered carrier task force… [was an] extremely worrisome development of the present situation,” a spokesperson of North Korea’s Ministry of Defense said via KCNA on Saturday, calling it “military bluffing” to Pyongyang’s “righteous reaction” to military drills between South Korea and the U.S.

In a more substantial KCNA article, also Saturday, North Korea’s National Aviation Administration spokesperson defended Tuesday’s alarming missile flight over Japan, claiming “civil aircraft safety was fully considered in advance” and that the launch was part of a “regular and planned self-defensive step [against] U.S. direct military threats.”

The two comments came in reaction to condemnation by the U.N.-affiliated International Civil Aviation Organization Friday, which North Korea dismissed as “political provocation of the U.S. and its vassal forces.”

Pressure raised as nuclear test anticipated

Pressure continues to mount on parties assisting the nuclear-armed state. The United States Treasury Department on Friday issued additional sanctions against two individuals and three entities based in Singapore and the Marshall Islands with suspected ties to North Korea’s arms program.

Additionally, in a phone call last week, special envoys for North Korea from the U.S., Japan and South Korea committed to bolstering efforts to disrupt North Korea’s cryptocurrency theft, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.

Despite crippling economic sanctions weighing on state coffers, Pyongyang has managed to amass a cash pile worth hundreds of millions of dollars just in the first half of the year, the United Nations Security Council sanctions committee said in a midterm report Friday. The committee noted multimillion-dollar heists of the cryptocurrency ether and North Korea’s exploitation of non-fungible token (NFT) technology.

No meaningful talks anticipated soon

Although Washington has maintained that the line to dialogue without preconditions with Pyongyang remains open, experts do not anticipate North Korea will show up for meaningful negotiations until it has achieved some ambitious military goals.

“North Korea’s leadership has no other strategic card other than playing the same game that it played in 2017 and 2018,” said Bong Youngshik, research fellow at Yonsei University’s Institute for North Korean Studies.

But knowing that U.S. President Joe Biden’s approach is vastly different from that of former President Donald Trump, North Korea now has its focus squarely on building a strategic upper hand – that is, by realizing key goals to upgrade its arsenal as previously announced in a key party congress, Bong said.

“Only after the successful completion of its military modernization program will it play the same game again, when it is armed with strategic assets, which will take another two to three years,” Bong predicted.

Among the five major weapons systems outlined at North Korea’s Eighth Party Congress in January of last year are multiple rocket launchers, tactical nuclear weapons, nuclear-powered submarines, supersonic missiles and maneuverable reentry vehicles. Also known by the acronym MaRV, these ballistic missiles are designed to hit ground targets autonomously.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

Jailed Philippine human rights campaigner Leila de Lima was briefly taken hostage Sunday during an attempted breakout by three inmates who were shot dead by police, authorities said.

The incident happened at the national police headquarters, where de Lima, a former senator, has been held for more than five years with other high-profile detainees.

One police officer was stabbed with an improvised knife before another officer shot dead two of the inmates, police said in a statement.

The third prisoner ran to de Lima’s cell and briefly held the 63-year-old hostage before he was also shot dead.

Police said de Lima was not hurt and that the situation inside the detention facility had “returned to normal.” An investigation was under way.

Police chief General Rodolfo Azurin told local radio station DZBB that de Lima did not appear to have been the target.

“They saw her as an ideal cover. Their intention really was to escape,” he said.

The three inmates were reportedly members of the militant group Abu Sayyaf, which has been accused of kidnapping and beheading several foreigners.

De Lima was unhurt, Boni Tacardon, her lawyer, confirmed to AFP.

“She was brought to the hospital for the standard medical checkup,” Tacardon said.

“But based on the information given to us by our staff who’s with the senator now, she appears OK.”

De Lima, an outspoken critic of former president Rodrigo Duterte and his deadly drug war, is due to reappear in court Monday.

She has been behind bars since 2017 on drug trafficking charges that she and human rights groups have called a mockery of justice and payback for going after Duterte.

Since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr took power in June, there have been renewed calls from diplomats and rights defenders for de Lima to be released.

The latest incident underscored the need for her to be “freed immediately,” said Carlos Conde of Human Rights Watch.

Marcos tweeted that he would speak to de Lima “to check on her condition and to ask if she wishes to be transferred to another detention center.”

Before her arrest on Feb. 24, 2017, de Lima had spent a decade investigating “death squad” killings allegedly orchestrated by Duterte during his time as Davao City mayor and in the early days of his presidency.

She conducted the probes while serving as the nation’s human rights commissioner, then from 2010-15 as justice secretary in the Benigno Aquino administration that preceded Duterte’s rule.

De Lima won a Senate seat in 2016, becoming one of the few opposition voices as the populist Duterte enjoyed a landslide win.

But Duterte then accused her of running a drug trafficking ring with criminals inside the nation’s biggest prison while she was justice secretary.

De Lima lost her bid for re-election to the Senate in May and Duterte stepped down in June.

The lawyer and mother of two has been held in a compound for high-profile detainees, rather than one of the Philippines’ notoriously overcrowded jails.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America