Day: October 10, 2022

A woman and both of her children have died after a creek overflowed due to heavy rains in Pakokku, the biggest city in Myanmar’s central Magway region. The woman’s husband is still missing after the flood waters destroyed their family home.

The bodies of the two children were found immediately on Saturday morning. Their mother’s body was found later that evening, according to locals. Firefighters and locals are still searching for the man. The names and the ages of the deceased are not yet known. 

A Pakokku resident told RFA it rained heavily on Friday night and Saturday morning, filling the creek and causing it to overflow.

“It’s a dry creek that flows strongly from the rain,” the local said. “The two parents and the children were swept away by the flood when the rain was heavy.”

Myanmar’s rainy season normally lasts from May through October but central regions are usually drier than the lower parts of the country. This year, Pakokku residents say the city has seen heavy rains, toppling trees and power poles and causing roadblocks.

Residents told RFA people who do not own homes in the city center are forced to build houses next to creeks, which often overflow during rainstorms. 

There are many creeks in the city and locals said nearly 100 people have been killed by floods there since 2010.

Human rights groups in Malaysia say some 700 nationals may now be trapped in online scam centers across Laos under threat of beatings and electric shock if they fail to meet work targets or try to leave their guarded compounds.

The case highlights what the United Nations and others describe as a rising tide of young men and women being lured into — and trapped in — brutal online scam operations across the Mekong region of Southeast Asia.

The Malaysian International Humanitarian Organization says the number of nationals stuck in Laos is based on reports from some of the trapped victims it and two other Malaysian rights groups have been in contact with by phone and text over the past few months, plus a few who have managed to escape or negotiate their release.

“They’ve been tortured mentally and physically,” the group’s secretary-general, Hishamuddin Hashim, told VOA.

Hishamuddin said the victims are typically lured to Laos with social media ads for well-paid IT or casino jobs, only to be lockup up on arrival and forced to run a range of online love and investment scams on targets across the region and around the world, depending on their language skills. He said the victims report being watched around the clock by guards posted throughout the fenced-off compounds, including some with guns on the ground floors.

“If they don’t want to work, they will be beaten…. Some of them [have] been electrocuted … by electric shock,” he added, all “to force and to punish those who cannot achieve the target and those who want to return back to [their] home country.”

Besides forcing the victims to cheat unwitting targets out of their money, Hishamuddin added, some of the criminal syndicates are demanding ransoms ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 from the trapped workers’ families for their release. He said the Malaysian government refuses to pay the ransoms as a matter of policy, though he knows a few families that have paid partial deposits on demanded sums only to then lose contact with their children and their captors.

Hishamuddin said the rights groups have passed what they know onto Malaysian authorities, which have been in contact with their counterparts in Laos.

Malaysian authorities did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment, and a spokesman for the Lao government refused to be interviewed.

Hishamuddin said the Malaysians are trapped in compounds across Laos. While the victims don’t always know exactly where in Laos they are, he estimates that about half of them are likely being held inside the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in the country’s northwest, on the border with eastern Myanmar and northern Thailand.

The Golden Triangle SEZ has been an alleged hotbed of transnational organized crime for years. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the man who runs it, Chinese national Zhao Wei, in 2018, placing him at the heart of a crime network laundering money for Myanmar drug lords and trafficking in everything from drugs to wildlife and people.

Zone officials did not reply to VOA’s requests for an interview, but Zhao has previously denied the allegations.

The Golden Triangle SEZ also gets repeated mention in the U.S. State Department’s latest Trafficking in Persons report, released in July. It says Lao authorities helped repatriate dozens of foreign nationals being forced to work inside the zone in 2021 and launched a special investigation into labor trafficking there early this year.

Winrock International, however, a U.S.-based aid group that runs development projects around the globe, says the Anti-Trafficking Department of the Lao government’s Ministry of Public Security is still debating whether to even post police officers at the zone.

“Things go slow here,” the head of Winrock’s anti-trafficking projects in Laos, Xoukiet Panyanounvong, told VOA.

Hishamuddin, whose group works specifically on migrant labor and trafficking issues, said he had heard reports of Malaysians trapped in Laos before, but never as many as 700 at once.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a non-government research group based in Switzerland, says the figure is plausible.

Lindsey Kennedy, a consultant for the Global Initiative, told VOA that the group’s researchers visited the Golden Triangle zone in May and believe thousands of people were being held against their will inside a single compound they found there.

“Volunteer rescue organizations have also told us that there are many similar options [operations] throughout the country, including in Vientiane,” she added, citing the Lao capital. “It is unclear how many of the people trapped are Malaysians, but a significant number of Malaysian people have been previously discovered at identical scam centers in Cambodia and Myanmar.”

These scam centers have been around for years, but Kennedy said they mushroomed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her group estimates they’ve now ensnared tens of thousands of young men and women across the Mekong region. Cambodia recently started cracking down, but Kennedy said it remains to be seen whether that will drive the criminal groups that run them out of business or merely out of the country to elsewhere, including Laos. Her group’s research has found some of the same people behind multiple special economic zones and casino towns hosting these centers in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines.

Researchers and rights groups are convinced the trafficking could not be happening without government corruption.

Despite the U.S. sanctions, Zhao is pouring millions of dollars into expanding the Golden Triangle zone with the Lao government’s blessing. On October 1, the government even awarded him the state’s “Medal of Bravery, Second Class” for “his efforts and contribution to national defense and national public security,” local media reported.

“His continued operations do tend to suggest that he operates with political protection,” Kennedy said.

“There must be some people on higher level benefit from this,” Hishamuddin agreed. “These criminal people, they cannot do this without support by high-level authorities.”

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

North Korea says it simulated strikes on strategic South Korean assets as part of weeks of unprecedented missile testing, as well as the launching of what the North called a new type of ground-to-ground intermediate-range ballistic missile that overflew Japan.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and the party’s main broadsheet Rodong Sinmun on Monday issued parallel reports, announcing that leader Kim Jong Un, who had been absent from the public eye for a month, guided military drills of the Korean People’s Army (KPA).

Taking place from September 25 to October 9, the seven rounds of ballistic missile drills checked and assessed the “operation of tactical nukes,” North Korean state media reported, together with the military’s “nuclear counterattack capability,” which would serve as a “severe warning to the enemies.”

Corresponding images showed short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) exploding in the air, on land targets and via a “super large” multiple rocket launch system, known to U.S. and South Korean officials as the KN-25.

Tactical nuclear operation units confirmed the state’s nuclear combat readiness, military effectiveness and actual war capabilities, state media said, as shown in their ability to “hit and wipe out” targets at the intended time and place.

The North Korean leader was cited as dismissing calls from Washington and Seoul to return to talks without preconditions, saying there was neither necessity nor content for discussion with the “enemies.”

Instead, he called for a “clearer signal to the enemies escalating the regional situation” that North Korea was powerful and resolute in its will to maintain its “strongest nuclear response posture” to defend its right to exist.

Targeting South Korea

The latest flurry of ballistic testing began at an unconventional location: a silo within a reservoir in the northwestern part of North Korea in the early hours of September 25, according to state media. The new type of launchpad highlighted Pyongyang’s embedded message that it was able to send up an SRBM from more locations than ever before.

Its drills three days later were aimed at “neutralizing” airports in South Korea, state media said. Two of its latest missile launches this month – on October 6 and October 9 – were simulations targeting South Korea’s “main military command facilities” and main ports.

Instead, he called for a “clearer signal to the enemies escalating the regional situation” that North Korea was powerful and resolute in its will to maintain its “strongest nuclear response posture” to defend its right to exist.

Targeting South Korea

The latest flurry of ballistic testing began at an unconventional location: a silo within a reservoir in the northwestern part of North Korea in the early hours of September 25, according to state media. The new type of launchpad highlighted Pyongyang’s embedded message that it was able to send up an SRBM from more locations than ever before.

Its drills three days later were aimed at “neutralizing” airports in South Korea, state media said. Two of its latest missile launches this month – on October 6 and October 9 – were simulations targeting South Korea’s “main military command facilities” and main ports.

There was no official comment from South Korea’s presidential office or military to the claims made on Monday. Senior presidential press secretary Kim Eun-hye, one day prior, had said that the people would be defended by a strong South Korea-U.S. alliance and the trilateral security cooperation with Japan, adding that Seoul would take an overly ready security posture.

‘Very clear political message’

Analysts say the latest display of apparent strides made in North Korea’s various nuclear delivery systems is cause for solemn concern, pushing the likelihood of a complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula further out of reach.

“They launched a total of 12 missiles of more than five different types and none of them failed,” notes Park Won-gon, North Korean studies professor at Ewha Womans University in South Korea.

“There is a very clear political message there; they are showing all of the capabilities of the tactical nuclear weapons [to underscore that it is] very unreasonable to call for the full denuclearization of North Korea. … It means that finally, North Korea has a very high chance to be acknowledged by the United States as a de facto nuclear weapon state.”

The next desirable scenario in Pyongyang’s point of view would be to enter arms control talks, experts say, which would affirm North Korea as an official nuclear weapons-bearing state.

North Korea’s seven ballistic missile tests within a span of 15 days also showed that its tactical missiles have South Korea, Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam within range.

This leads to new territory and the next dilemma to grapple with, Park said, “to deter the actual use of North Korea’s nuclear weapons because North Korea is trying to lower the barrier to use the nuclear weapons as Russia is doing right now.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine in an invasion that now is in its eighth month.

The detailed reporting of the short- and intermediate-range missile launches was issued on North Korea’s 77th anniversary of the founding of the state’s only political party, the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).

Park said the fact that the weapons drills were unveiled to a domestic audience in nearly half a year via its main newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, suggests that Kim Jong Un could be warming up his people for more action, a seventh nuclear test.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

Two journalists with CNN left Thailand Monday after authorities accused them of using tourist visas to enter the country while covering the aftermath of a deadly mass shooting that left nearly 40 adults and children dead.

Anna Coren, 47, and Daniel Hodge, 34, faced widespread criticism for recording a video segment inside a day care center in the northeastern province of Nong Bua Lam Phu, where dozens of children were killed by an ex-police officer in a gun and knife attack.

Authorities said the journalists had inappropriately entered an active crime scene without permission and were initially reported to be investigated over the allegations.

Thailand’s deputy national police chief, Surachate Hakparn, has since said both reporters have been cleared of any misconduct but were fined $133 (5,000 baht) and agreed to leave the country, The Associated Press reported.

The journalists were scheduled to fly to Hong Kong, and sources say they were not blacklisted by Thailand’s immigration authorities, Thai PBS reported.

Background shooting

On Thursday, ex-police officer Panya Kamrab killed at least 38 people, including 24 children, in an attack that began at the childcare center in the town of Uthai Sawan. Victims of the killing spree included children under five years of age and a woman who was eight months’ pregnant.

Local authorities said the gunman had been fired from the police force earlier this year and was at the time facing trial over drug charges. Following the attacks, the 34-year-old killed his wife and stepson before committing suicide.

Although mass shootings are rare in Thailand, last week’s incident was the worst of its kind in the country’s history. The massacre has caused grief throughout Thailand, and although funeral proceedings have begun, the victims’ families are still trying to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones.

The deadly event has been a major story worldwide and been covered by local and international media since the news broke.

 

Meanwhile, a photo has circulated on social media, showing the CNN reporters leaving the day care center, with one of the crew climbing over a cordoned off fence. The image caused local outrage from Thai netizens and alerted authorities to the alleged breach of the crime scene by the journalists.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) released a statement at the time saying it was “dismayed” that the journalists didn’t obtain permission while entering the scene. The FCCT said the journalists did so in an “unprofessional” manner and committed “a serious breach of journalistic ethics in crime reporting.”

In response, a CNN statement said both reporters had been given permission by either a volunteer or health officer to enter the care center, unaware that the person wasn’t permitted to do so.

The journalists were later escorted to a local police station and questioned before being fined and stripped of their visitor visas.

Anna Coren

Anna Coren, an Australian journalist who joined CNN in 2008, apologized in a video posted to Twitter.

“I would like to offer my deepest apologies to the people of Thailand, especially the families of the victims of this tragedy,” Coren said. “We are so sorry if we’ve caused you more pain and suffering; that was never our intention. We would also like to apologize to the Thai police and to the deputy police chief for the inconvenience that we have caused.”

Mike McCarthy, executive vice president of CNN International, released a statement it was never any intention to contravene any rules and the network “deeply regret any distress” the report may have caused.

The video segment both journalists produced in the day care center has since been pulled from broadcasting and removed from CNN’s website.

‘Parachute journalism’

Part of CNN’s now-removed video showed the day care center still marred with blood-stained floors, which drew criticism for its insensitivity to the situation.

Pravit Rojanaphruk, a veteran journalist with Khaosod English, an online media outlet, said “gruesome” photos being published by local Thai media were once considered the norm, but today practices have changed.

“Things have changed since then, and the tendency now is to avoid running disturbing photos of crime and accident victims,” Pravit told VOA. “CNN parachuting in and caught in picture crossing the cordoned area of the crime, thus became a big issue and a reminder of the unresolved debate among the Thai press as to what’s fit for print.”

Phansasiri Kularb, a journalism lecturer at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said “parachute journalism,” a practice of sending reporters to places where they have limited knowledge, has its benefits. The purpose of such reporting is “to produce well-round[ed], multi-perspectival coverage,” Phansasiri said,

Phansasiri, however, noted the drawbacks.

“If journalists do not have much knowledge about the region, situation or political contexts, and only focus on getting stories out by disregarding social sentiments and the complexity of the conflict — their presence tends to cause further harms, tension and misunderstandings rather than presenting useful facts for the public,” the lecturer told VOA.

This is not the first time CNN has come under criticism in Southeast Asia.

In April 2021, a CNN crew interviewed Myanmar citizens during the height of mass protests after last year’s military coup there. Later, local authorities arrested 11 people as a result of the interviews given to the news organization.

 

 

Source: Voice of America