Day: October 21, 2022

On the eve of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ trip to Vietnam, 14 international and local rights organizations called on him to urge Hanoi to release four environmental activists imprisoned in what they called a “new wave of repression” that threatens progress in addressing climate change and protecting human rights.

Guterres’ visit on Friday and Saturday commemorates the 45th anniversary of Hanoi’s membership in the United Nations. Earlier this month, Vietnam was elected to a three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Council despite critics pointing to its track record of rights abuses.

In a joint open letter penned Thursday, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the other organizations demanded the release of Nguy Thi Khanh, director of the Green Innovation and Development Centre; Dang Dinh Bach, director of the Research Center for Law and Policy for Sustainable Development, Mai Phan Loi, chairman of the Committee for Science Affairs at the Center for Media in Educating Community; and Bach Hung Duong, MEC’s director. 

The four were sentenced to two to five years in prison in separate trials earlier this year. 

 “These political prisoners are emblematic victims of a new wave of repression in Vietnam which, through a combination of threats and judicial harassment, is threatening progress in combating climate change, protecting human rights and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” the letter said.

“We call on you to remind Vietnam that, as a newly elected member of the U.N. Human Rights Council, it has an obligation to uphold the highest human rights standards,” it said.

U.N. agencies in Vietnam must be more transparent and proactive in urging the country to improve its human rights record, said Jessica Nguyen, advocacy officer from the Illinois-based 88 Project, which maintains a database of imprisoned political activists in Vietnam, and was one of the 14 signatories of the joint letter. 

“To do so, the U.N. agencies themselves have to improve their accountability in human rights issues in Vietnam, particularly [making themselves more accountable] to civil society organizations,” she said.

Environmental protection is on the agenda for Guterres’ trip, presenting a seeming contradiction in a country where the four environmental activists are in prison on “bogus ‘tax evasion’ charges,” Phil Robertson, deputy head of Human Rights Watch’s Asia-Pacific Division, told RFA.

“The U.N. leader wants to talk in Hanoi about climate change policies, but how can Vietnam really move forward when it is busy jailing key civil society partners who are critical to national efforts to stop global warming?” Robertson said. This contradiction cannot stand, and the U.N. needs to tell the Vietnamese government that it must end its repression of civil society organizations and NGO leaders.”

 “Every day Vietnam is defying its obligations to uphold human rights, and we’re demanding that the U.N. call them out on it, and press Hanoi to do much better,” he said, adding that the international community seemingly has not noticed that Vietnam’s jails are filled with people who dared to criticize the government. 

Guterres needs to state clearly that “Vietnam’s continued repression of activists and civil society groups will jeopardize the country’s ability to meet the SDGs that are so near and dear to the U.N.’s heart,” he said.

Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Australia will increase its aid to the Pacific by more than half a billion U.S. dollars over four years, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Friday, as the country steps up efforts to keep influence in a region that has increasingly turned to China for development assistance.

The aid will help Pacific island nations respond to climate change, reduce pressure on government budgets and support aviation links in the region, Wong said in a speech at the Pacific Way conference, held in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia.

“Australia is committed to working with all in the Pacific to achieve our shared aspirations and address our shared challenges,” Wong said.

The boost to Pacific development assistance forms the largest part of an increase to Australia’s foreign aid spending that will be further detailed in the Australian government’s annual budget due on Tuesday.

It follows a period last decade when Australia’s foreign aid dwindled due to budget cuts under the conservative Liberal party, which was in government from 2013 to 2022. During this time, Canberra’s relationship with Pacific island countries soured.

“Without these investments, others will continue to fill the vacuum, and Australia will continue to lose ground,” as it did under previous governments, Wong said, according to Australian broadcaster ABC.

She said Australian foreign aid would be increased by 1.4 billion Australian dollars (U.S. $877 million) over four years, with 900 million Australian dollars of that allocated to the Pacific.

Australia’s last annual budget, for its fiscal year ended June, had allocated 3.73 billion (U.S. $2.3 billion) to foreign aid.

Wong said Australia would also increase its infrastructure finance fund for the Pacific from 3.5 billion to 4.0 billion (U.S. $2.5 billion) and lend on favorable terms to Pacific island countries.

“We recognize that as a major lender in the region, we have a responsibility to ensure that Australia is a partner that won’t impose unsustainable debt burdens,” Wong said.

Over the past two decades, Beijing has amassed substantial goodwill with economically lagging Pacific island countries by building infrastructure and providing other assistance on easier terms than countries such as Australia.

China’s security pact with the Solomon Islands, signed in April, amplified concerns in the United States and Australia that Beijing aims for a military presence in the region. China’s government also has been providing training to Solomon Islands police.

ABC reported Friday that Australia’s increased aid would include funds for Australian police stationed in the Solomon Islands following riots there last November.

Last month, the United States promised more than U.S. $800 million in assistance over a decade as it tries to rebuild relationships with Pacific island countries after a period of neglect.

Australia is also trying to repair its relationship with the Pacific. Wong became Australia’s foreign minister in May after the center-left Australian Labor Party won national elections.

Since then, she has visited 12 Pacific island nations and territories, which was “an expression of the priority that the new Australian government attaches to this region,” she said Friday.

She also reiterated her support for regional organizations such as the Pacific Islands Forum, which has been challenged by tensions with Micronesian member countries over the forum’s leadership and Kiribati’s departure as a member.

Working through the forum ensures each member country’s sovereignty is respected and that “the responsibility for Pacific security remains in the hands of the Pacific,” Wong said.

Canberra’s increase in aid comes a day after Australia and Fiji signed a Status of Forces agreement, which allows the presence of one country’s forces in another.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

Peng Chau, a small island just a short ferry ride from Hong Kong’s central business district, has become a haven for residents seeking to leave behind stress accumulated from events such as pro-democracy protests in 2019, a national security crackdown that followed, and more recently, strict curbs against COVID-19.

Something clicked instantly for Zero Chan when she first set foot on the island of Peng Chau, a short ferry ride from Hong Kong’s central business district, at a time when she was feeling burnt out and recovering from illness.

“People need space, but there’s so much noise in the city,” says Zero Chan, a 36-year-old yoga teacher and devotee of Buddhism and Zen. “I’m very happy now.”

Some experts say a growing trend of alternative communities can be linked to protest episodes in 2014 and 2019 that railed against China’s tightening grip on the former British colony.

“These social events are important catalysts,” said Ng Mee-kam, a professor of urban studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “In the face of all these changes, all these tensions and all these conflicts, I think it’s inevitable that people of all generations have to reflect on what’s going on, and what life means.”

Newcomers drawn by an idyllic lifestyle and low rents in one of the world’s priciest property markets are rejuvenating Peng Chau, reversing an exodus in the 1970s as fortunes waned in the area, once home to Hong Kong’s biggest matchstick factory.

Many dilapidated village homes have been renovated, and deserted concrete husks such as the Fook Yuen leather factory have been converted into a “secret garden” art space featuring graffiti and installation works.

Cafes, boutiques and an independent bookshop have sprouted beside traditional Chinese temples, family-run shops and diners.

Yet, despite a growing trend of seeking out quieter lifestyles on islands as well as villages in the rural New Territories, such spaces are threatened by big new development projects, said Ng, the academic.

“The frontiers for the younger generation to have the space to explore these alternative lifestyles is diminishing, so I think we, as a society, need to be very careful,” she added.

– Reuters

Police in Beijing have contacted the family of a Chinese student studying in the United States after he expressed support online for the “Bridge Man” protester, who unfurled banners on a Beijing bridge calling on ruling Chinese leader Xi Jinping to step down on the eve of the 20th Communist party’s congress.

Police in Beijing’s Zhongguancun district contacted the parents and brother of Han Yutao, a student at Bellevue College in Washington state, after he posted a video clip on social media expressing solidarity with the “Bridge Man” protester, who has been identified as Peng Lifa. 

Han, 23, also walked around the Bellevue campus with a placard, telling everyone he met about Peng, who has been hailed as a hero similar to the 1989 “tank man” for his brave and rare public protest.

Within a day of his video appearing, Chinese police had contacted Han’s family, putting pressure on them to persuade him not to be a “traitor,” and to distance themselves from him, Han told RFA.

“On Oct. 19, police from Zhongguancun West district found my family and knocked on their door,” Han told RFA. “They asked for my mother’s phone number, then called her and asked her where I go to school, when I left China, what I’m studying, then asked for my phone number in the U.S.”

“Everyone in my family was telling me [not to do any more protests],” he said.

“My brother was trying to talk me out of [my views], telling me not to be a traitor, and not to be used as a ‘hitman’ by others,” Han added. “He said he wanted nothing to do with traitors to China, or those who took their money, which wasn’t nice to hear.”

“But I understand … he was trying to protect himself,” he said.

An officer who answered the phone at the Zhongguancun West district police station declined to comment when contacted by RFA on Thursday.

Han said police also confiscated a number of his books that were published on the democratic island of Taiwan, which isn’t subject to China’s censorship. 

“If they contact me, I don’t plan to give in to their arrogance,” Han said. “I will start by telling them how evil the Communist Party is first … to try to prod their conscience.”

Han said he had his eyes opened to the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, after hearing family members talk about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre by the People’s Liberation Army, which used machine guns and tanks to suppress weeks-long mass, student-led protests in and around Tiananmen Square.

He said Peng — who goes by the social media handle Peng Zaizhou in a reference to popular anger with governments — struck a chord because of his sheer bravery.

“Why do I support Peng Zaizhou? Because I don’t want to be afraid of the CCP any more,” Han said. “I felt very ashamed even back in China that I was being suppressed by the CCP.”

“Why did I show my face? Because justice should be upright,” he said.

Former 1989 student leader Zhou Fengsuo, who founded the U.S.-based rights group Humanitarian China, said the tactics used by the Chinese government are redolent of the criminal underworld.

“Han Yutao showed his face and used his real name, which is very risky,” Zhou said. “That the CCP is threatening the family members of international students shows [the government’s] anger.” 

Zhou said the timing of Peng’s banners, which also called for an end to COVID-19 lockdowns and for democratic elections ahead of a party congress that will likely approve Xi Jinping’s precedent-breaking third term in office, made the authorities even more nervous.

“They are panicking even more right now, showing that this regime has no legitimacy. They’re a gangster regime that resorts to kidnapping,” he said.

Rights groups say China increasingly engages in unofficial renditions of overseas critics from compliant nations, while Beijing was widely criticized for engaging in “hostage diplomacy” with the arrests and sentencing of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig in the wake of the 2018 arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver.

“Peng Lifa had a kind of Tank Man energy, and his upstanding actions inspired a lot of people,” Zhou said. “Courage really is contagious.”

Meanwhile, Han said he had received support and solidarity from non-Chinese students at Bellevue, but not from fellow Chinese nationals, who remain under threat of being reported to the authorities if they step out of line politically while overseas.

“I showed my placard to a lot of Chinese students here, but they mostly acted indifferent, as they are really afraid of getting into trouble,” Han said. “So they would look at my placard with scorn, as if I were some kind of weirdo.”

Chinese students studying overseas risk having similar repercussions as Han experienced against loved ones back home, as well as the prospect of being invited for “tea” with the state security police when they go home. State security police have also been known to call them and threaten them outright during their studies.

Han said he was well aware of those risks before he acted, but felt he couldn’t stay silent.

“I thought, why should I fear the tyranny [of the CCP] here in the U.S.?” he said. “Does that mean I have to keep quiet for the rest of my life?”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A new biopic about Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen focuses on the now 70-year-old’s impoverished childhood, eschewing any mention of his time as a Khmer Rouge battalion commander to instead depict him as a bookish student who overcame bullying to achieve his destiny.

The 30-minute film, which opens with a scene of the future premier being struck by a burst of moonlight as his mother gives birth, is centered around Hun Sen’s upbringing in Phnom Penh’s Neakavoan pagoda, where he lived in the 1960s before joining the communist maquis in 1970. 

Titled “Life of a Pagoda Boy,” it shows Hun Sen struggling to afford to eat after being sent to the city as a young child to study with monks, who teach him about Cambodian history and prophesize that he will grow powerful. His parents, meanwhile, are depicted as poor rabbit trappers who battle to survive and often fantasize about a life where they didn’t send him away.

“Because you’ll be far from your parents, you’ll have to struggle,” the father says as he sends Hun Sen away from the idyllic countryside, in a sequence that takes up the film’s first half. “Study hard,” his mother offers.

A series of rapid-fire scenes then culminate in Hun Sen’s rise to officialdom.

As he studies in the dying days of Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s rule in Phnom Penh, the young Hun Sen is bullied by the children of aristocrats, with his main tormentor bearing a clear resemblance to present-day opposition leader Sam Rainsy, whose father was a top minister in Sihanouk’s government.

When the bully pours a drink over Hun Sen’s head at a cocktail party and mocks him for being poor – as renowned Cambodian “Golden Era” pop singer Pan Ron plays live in the background – the film cuts to a monk making the prophecy that Hun Sen had been blessed and will grow powerful. 

A final bullying scene then sees “Life of a Pagoda Boy” suddenly cut to its closing scene: an older and steely-eyed Hun Sen, now as the 27-year-old foreign minister in the Vietnamese-backed successor regime to the Khmer Rouge in the early 1980s, meets with Indian diplomats, as the credits roll.

Building a legacy ‘beyond political contestation’

The biopic was written by Hun Sen and cost $120,000 to produce, and premiered at the Ministry of Land Management in Phnom Penh on Sept. 28, according to pro-government local newspaper The Khmer Times.

Its release comes as the premier enters the twilight of his rule.

“The film is part of a process of memorialization that has been taking place for some time now,” Sebastian Strangio, author of “Hun Sen’s Cambodia,” told Radio Free Asia, pointing also to the recent construction of the prime minister’s “Win-Win Monument” on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

“After so many years in power, it is clear that Hun Sen is starting to consider his legacy, and work out ways of ensuring that it survives his own eventual exit from the political scene,” he said. “In that sense, it is more than navel-gazing; it is an attempt to wreath Hun Sen’s legacy in the veil of legend, and to place it effectively beyond political contestation.”

Hun Sen has said he plans to run for reelection next year, before handing power to his son, Hun Manet, after the 2028 election, at which point he will have served as prime minister for 43 years. His Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), an outgrowth of the Hanoi-backed regime that replaced the Khmer Rouge in 1979, has faced little threat to its power since the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was forced to disband in 2017.

CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said he could not deny that the film had a political purpose. “There’s no one who doesn’t want the benefits of telling stories,” Eysan told RFA. “It is to draw support and votes.”

But a critic of the CPP said that Hun Sen was looking beyond 2023.

But Buntenh, an activist monk who was exiled from Cambodia and is now based in Lowell, Massachusetts, told RFA he believed that the film was part of a propaganda push to make the case for continued Hun family rule.

“This is to divert the youth’s attention from the power transfer to his son. The youth who have an education do not believe in this transfer of power from father to son,” Buntenh said. “He has no other way to help his son.”

Buntenh said the film’s focus on Hun Sen’s childhood in a pagoda and on predictions of his rise made by monks was intended to convince people that his rule over the country was preordained and legitimate. That was important, he said, because his leadership of the country since 1985 had been marred by state corruption, stark inequality and human rights abuses.

“Hun Sen believes the Cambodian people believe in superstition and the abstract – things that do not have scientific proof. He understands they believe in fate, which is not in line with Buddhist faith,” he said. “This is the only way for Hun Sen to do promotion for his family dynasty.”

Widespread land-grabbing, deforestation, political violence and graft have marked Hun Sen’s decades of rule over Cambodia, with his government repeatedly pledging to stamp out each over the years to little avail. High-profile critics of the government have routinely been killed in broad daylight, including union leader Chea Vichea in 2004, environmentalist Chut Wutty in 2012 and political commentator Kem Ley in 2016.

‘Glossing over the unpleasantness’

Hun Sen’s efforts to guarantee succession to his eldest son come after the destruction of what was already a flimsy democracy in Cambodia.

The CNRP, which was created out of two rival opposition parties in 2012, came close to defeating Hun Sen’s CPP in the 2013 national election. But the party was then banned in the lead-up to the 2018 election, with opposition leader Kem Sokha jailed and a number of independent media outlets shuttered, including Radio Free Asia’s local offices. 

Hun Sen’s party later won all 125 National Assembly seats on offer, with the premier appearing to grow more outwardly concerned with public perceptions of his legacy as he readies his country – and his party – for a succession.

Notably, in suddenly skipping from his childhood to his time as foreign minister, the film ignores Hun Sen’s time as a battalion commander in – and then defector from – the Khmer Rouge, which is estimated to have killed at least 1.7 million Cambodians, or almost a quarter of the country’s population at the time, during its three years in power. 

The prime minister lost his left eye in fighting the day before Pol Pot’s forces took over Phnom Penh in April 1975, before defecting in 1977.

Such an omission was easy to understand from the prime minister’s perspective, said Sophal Ear, an associate professor in global development and Cambodia expert at Arizona State University in Phoenix.

“The inconvenient truth is the 1970s would have to explain his whereabouts,” Ear told RFA, adding Hun Sen was clearly not proud of all of his origin story. “What, indeed, was he up to? It’s too complicated, so we dig a hole and bury the past. We gloss over the unpleasantness and skip a decade.”

“This is all part of a project to control the narrative; pagoda boy becomes savior of the nation. This is his legacy-building and legend-making.”