Day: October 11, 2022

The suggestion by the world’s richest person, billionaire Elon Musk, that China should “figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan,” was met with angry responses from Taiwan but a nod of approval from Beijing. 

During an interview with Britain’s Financial Times on Friday the Tesla and SpaceX founder, who was described as “an admirer of as well as an investor in China” said that he believed a “conflict over Taiwan is inevitable.”

“My recommendation… would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable,” Musk was quoted as saying.

He also suggested that “they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

The billionaire’s recommendation immediately sparked an outcry in Taiwan, with all the major political parties voicing condemnation.

A legislator from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Chao Tien-lin, called for a boycott of Tesla’s products “indefinitely” unless the businessman changed his tone about Taiwan. 

Chen Chi-mai, mayor of Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan’s economic hub, suggested that Musk could “try it himself, let his company become part of the Chinese economy and see if it works.”

“Then he will understand why his recommendation won’t work with Taiwan,” Chen said.

The island’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said “neither Taiwan nor any other country would accept Musk’s proposal, which is based solely on corporate investment interests.”

“Taiwan occupies a key position in regional democratic politics and the global technology economy,” it said.

“It is not the product of any commercial transaction or acquisition, and it has long rejected any institutional arrangements of the Communist Party of China,” the Council said.

The MAC also pointed out that Taiwan has an important role in the supply chain of high-tech industries such as semiconductors and has been working with Tesla for a long time.

‘High degree of autonomy’

When asked about Elon Musk’s Taiwan recommendation, China’s Foreign Ministry reiterated that “the Taiwan question is China’s internal affair.”

“We remain committed to the basic principle of peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems,” spokeswoman Mao Ning told a press briefing on Saturday.

On Sunday, Mao elaborated that if “sovereignty, security and development interests are ensured, Taiwan can adopt a high degree of autonomy as a special administrative region.”

“Taiwan’s social system and its way of life will be fully respected and the lawful rights and interests of our Taiwan compatriots will be fully protected,” the spokeswoman said.

“China’s reunification will not undermine any country’s legitimate interests,” Mao Ning said.

In his interview with the FT, Musk said Tesla would be caught up in a conflict over Taiwan, but his company wouldn’t be alone.

“Apple would be in very deep trouble,” he said, adding that the global economy would “take a 30 percent hit.”

Tesla’s Chinese factory in Shanghai reportedly produces 30% to 50% of the company’s total electric car production.

Huang Chun-mei in Taipei contributed to this story.

Locals have discovered the bodies of two ethnic Chin women from Magway region’s Ngape township who went missing on Sunday. They were identified as 14-year-old Mai Hnoun Par Hla and 21-year-old Mai Shwesin Ye, both members of the Asho tribe from Bone Baw village, a resident – who did not want to be named for safety reasons – told RFA.

“Two girls disappeared around 8 p.m. that night,” the local said. “They were returning from Goke Gyi village to Bone Baw village. They were found near Myay Lat village at around 5 p.m. on October 9.”

Locals say both women were raped and murdered but RFA has not been able to confirm this independently. Their bodies have now been returned to their families.

There are 11 Asho Chin villages on the mountain where Ngape township is based, on the Rakhine mountain range. The villages lie close to each other on the highway which runs from Mandalay to Sittwe city in Rakhine State.

There is a police station in Goke Gyi village, and the military junta’s 88th division is often stationed in Myay Lat village. The 14th division of Ngape township and junta forces from Pa Dan village are also active in the area, along with three artillery units from nearby villages.

The ousted National Unity Government’s Ministry of Women, Youths and Children Affairs told RFA in March that around 150 women and 130 children had been killed across the country since the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup.

Women’s League of Burma officials told RFA the same month that more than 100 women had been killed, more than 1,500 arrested and there had been at least 10 cases of sexual violence against women across Myanmar since the coup.

New reports by China’s state-sanctioned media have revealed the extent of the population in Chinese reclaimed and controlled islands in the South China Sea.

CGTN, the global arm of state television network CCTV, reported on Monday that a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) hospital ship, Youhao, has just completed an 18-day voyage covering 4,000 nautical miles (7,408 kilometers) and has now returned to port.

The hospital ship, commissioned in November 2020, visited 13 islands of the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos in the South China Sea, which China calls Xisha and Nansha islands, and “provided medical services to more than 5,000 people,” according to CGTN.

They are “officers and soldiers stationed on Xisha and Nansha islands and reefs,” the TV channel said.

This is the first time a Chinese official channel has disclosed the number of soldiers on the rocks and reefs that China has reclaimed and developed in the disputed South China Sea. 

A report published earlier this year by Recorded Future, a U.S.-based private cybersecurity company, estimated the number of Chinese troops stationed in the South China Sea was more than 10,000.

A Pentagon report in 2016 said China had reclaimed more than 3,200 acres (13 square kilometers) of land in the South China Sea but the current area of artificial islands is believed to be much larger as reclamation works have continued in recent years.

Three of the reclaimed islands – Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross – all in the Spratlys in the southern part of South China Sea, have been fully militarized with warehouses, hangars, seaports, runways and radars, U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. John Aquilino said earlier this year.

China’s efforts to transform artificial islands into military bases are “destabilizing to the region,” Aquilino said.

Sansha‘s growing population

China and five other parties including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, hold conflicting claims over parts of the South China Sea but Beijing’s claims are by far the most expansive, almost 90 per cent of the sea. 

In the northern part of the South China Sea, PLA troops seized some of the reefs occupied by the South Vietnam army in 1974 and China is now the sole occupier of the Paracel archipelago with about 130 small coral islands and reefs.

Despite protests from neighboring countries, in 2012 China established Sansha City to administer the Paracel and Spratly islands, Macclesfield Bank, Scarborough Shoal, and their surrounding waters.

Woody Island in the Paracels serves as the headquarters for Sansha City, which covers nearly two million square kilometers, but includes only around 20 square kilometers of land.

Sansha had only 1,800 permanent residents including civilians and military personnel in 2020, making it the prefecture-level city with the largest area but the smallest population in China, according to another CGTN report.

Youhao, or Friendship in English, is a 4,000-ton hospital ship built in China. The ship has more than 100 beds, three operating theaters, and is equipped with a wide range of medical equipment. 

The ship’s medical staff came from the First Naval Hospital of the Southern Theater Command in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province.

UPDATED AT 00:06 A.M. ON 10-11-2022

Blogger and human rights activist Huynh Thuc Vy has been beaten and strangled by prison guards, according to family members, who found out after Vy whispered a call for help to her young daughter.

Vy is serving a 33-month prison term for “offending the national flag” under Article 276 of Vietnam’s criminal code. She is being held in Gia Trung Prison in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, about 200 km away from her home, making family visits difficult. However, on a visit this month Vy told her six-year-old daughter about her treatment at the hands of prison staff.

“About five minutes before the end of the meeting, Vy was allowed to hold her two little kids,” Vy’s younger brother Huynh Trong Hieu told RFA on Monday.

“She said softly into the daughter’s ear ‘Mom was beaten and her neck was held tightly by the guards. Please tell the family to tell lawyer Dang Dinh Manh to save Mom’.”

Hieu said the girl told her grandfather what Vy said as the family returned home.

RFA called the number of Gia Trung Prison to follow-up on the claims but no one answered the phone.

Hieu also told RFA that on Aug. 10 guards refused to allow Vy to hold her children. Vy reacted by throwing the meeting room phone on the floor and breaking it. One month later, the family came to see her again and she told them she had not been penalized for that.

Hieu said he believes Vy was beaten for helping her cellmates by sharing her food or giving their relatives’ phone numbers to her father so he could tell their relatives how they were being treated. Vy had told her family the prison guards did not want her to help other cellmates in that way.

Vy’s former husband, Le Khanh Duy, said in May that political prisoners at Gia Trung were being locked in their cells all day for refusing to work and that Vy had been harassed by other inmates who had been told to make political prisoners’ lives difficult.

Other political prisoners held at Gia Trung include Nguyen Trung Ton, a member of the Brotherhood for Democracy, who is serving a 12-year jail sentence, and Luu Van Vinh, a member of the Vietnam National Self-Determination Coalition, serving a 15-year term.

Vy, 37, was sentenced to 33 months in prison in 2018 after spraying paint on Vietnam’s national flag. At the time, she was allowed to postpone the sentence because her children were young, but she was sent to prison on November 30, 2021.

This story has been updated in the final paragraph to add details of Vy’s sentence.

Fighting over the weekend in northwestern Myanmar’s restive Sagaing region between the military junta’s soldiers and People’s Defense Force (PDF)  militias left 16 rebels dead, with some corpses showing signs of severe torture, local sources told RFA.

“They had tortured them inhumanely. They cut the skins everywhere severely to keep them from being distinguished from each other,” Tauk Te, a member of the PDF Myanmar Defense Force, said of the seven bodies they found. “Some had their insides spilling out through open holes in their stomachs and some had their brains coming out of their heads.”

Sagaing, an agricultural region where resistance against the junta is strong, has seen some of the most intense fighting in Myanmar since the military took control in the February 2021 coup. More than half a million people in Sagaing have been displaced by the fighting, according to a U.N. report released last month. 

The fighting took place in two separate battles, in Wetlet township, just north of Mandalay, and in Taze township, farther north.

In Taze, two rebel units attacked junta soldiers with artillery near Tat Thit village around noon on Friday, local sources told RFA, reportedly killing six junta soldiers. The next day, fighting continued, forcing about 4,000 civilians to flee their homes in eight villages, including Ka La Zin, Dei Yauk and Chaung Yoer, the PDF press department in Taze said. 

Farther south, in Wetlet township, junta soldiers attacked a small rebel camp near Pha Yar Lay Kone and Nay Pu Kone villages,  local PDF sources said. The attack included an hour-long air raid by 2 fighter jets and a Mi-35 military helicopter that were followed by two Mi-17 supply choppers that dropped off around 100 junta soldiers, they said.

Both the Mi-35 and Mi-17 helicopters are made by Russia, which has resisted international pressure not to arm Myanmar’s junta amid its crackdown on civilians that began after the military took control in a February 2021 coup.

Six rebel fighters were killed in the airstrikes, a PDF source said, and three were captured and tortured to death. “They cut their skin and faces, and hit their heads with gun butts until they were killed, the source said. 

The rebel unit lost hand-made guns, 40MM grenades and over 450 million kyat worth of military hardware. The soldiers also reportedly burned down their camp buildings in the area. 

Locals told RFA that four people in their 20’s and five people in their 30’s were among the deceased, and their names have not been released yet.

So far, RFA has received no response from junta spokesperson and minister for social affairs Aye Hlaing about the hostilities in Sagaing. 

Area residents also said that junta troops stationed at a monastery on Du Thin hill near Nay Pu Kone village captured 15 local civilians in the process. 

One civilian fleeing Nay Pu Kone said there have been more frequent air attacks by the junta in their region lately. “We had to be really cautious at the sound of airplanes. No fighter jets flew over us before. Now that they are here on us, you can imagine the danger we are in. We had nowhere to run when they came.”

Local residents said that more than 1,000 villagers from Nay Pu Kone and are too afraid to go back to their homes with junta soldiers still stationed there. Myint Oo, the ousted parliamentary representative of Wetlet, said that the junta has used more air strikes because they have been faced with landmines in ground assaults.

“They dare not come by trucks. Lately, they have to leave their trucks somewhere safe and walk as our PDF forces have set up landmines in several locations. But even then, they still face landmine attacks. So they now rely mainly on air strikes,” Myint Oo said. 

“Their acts of human rights abuse go beyond any words. They don’t care about any local or international law. They just do whatever they want,” Myint Oo said. “They have given full authority to even juniors who, as a result, kill indiscriminately without moral conscience for civilians, including children.”

Reported by RFA Burmese. Written in English by Nawar Nemeh.