Day: October 25, 2022

Laos will allow foreign nationals to acquire honorary citizenship if they donate and invest roughly U.S. $1.5 million, but critics worry that the program could result in a massive land grab by wealthy Chinese investors.

According to Decree No. 14 issued in September, honorary citizens are exempt from visa requirements for entering and exiting the country and may live in Laos permanently. Additionally, they will be able to buy land on state-owned property for a set duration and they can lease public and private land, the Laotian Times reported.

To become an honorary citizen, investor applicants must donate $500,000 towards the country’s socio-economic development, and also invest $1 million before they apply, the report said.

The stated purpose of the program is to bring in foreigners with knowledge and expertise to help Laos develop. But this will likely mean that Chinese investors will buy up land and leave Lao people with fewer places to live and less access to natural resources, said a resident of the capital, Vientiane, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons.

“It’s not right, what they are doing,” the source said. “If someone has money they can buy anything, including land and other things. But the Lao people are poor, and after a while the people will not have any land to grow crops.”

The decree would allow investors to purchase unlimited amounts of land, a source from the northern province of Luang Prabang told Radio Free Asia.

“We already have a lot of Chinese investors here in our country as it is,” the second source said. “When they come to get their land concession, it affects rural villagers. They won’t  have land to grow rice to feed their families any longer.” 

China is Laos’ largest foreign investor and aid provider, and its second-largest trade partner after Thailand.

Growing resentment

Reports have increased in recent years of growing resentment in Laos over Chinese business presence in the country, over Chinese casinos and special economic zones linked to human trafficking and crime, and over the often high-handed treatment of Lao workers by their Chinese bosses.

But a government official pointed out that the program is not only available to Chinese citizens.

“It is open to all foreigners who have the money to invest,” the official, from the Lao Ministry of Justice, told RFA.

“We do not choose what nationality to give the honorary citizenship to. They can be Thai, Chinese or Vietnamese,” the official said. “All have the same right to get honorary citizenship from the government.”

An honorary citizen has some, but not all, of the rights of a full-fledged Lao citizen, a second official said, particularly that honorary citizens can gain concession to use land but cannot own it.

But since all land in Laos is owned by the state, residents can be forced off their land with little or no compensation as they are pushed out to make room for development projects.

RFA was not able to determine exactly how honorary citizenship differs from full-fledged citizenship.

The honorary citizenship program has both positives and negatives, a law professor from Lao National University told RFA.

“The good point is that it will allow foreign investors to more easily invest in our country,” he said. “But the bad point is that in the future there will be many foreign investors coming to Laos, and this could force Lao people to move out from their rural villages.”

Several other countries in the region offer either permanent residency or citizenship to those who invest in large amounts.

Singapore grants permanent residency to foreign nationals who invest at least $2.5 million, while South Korea will grant it to those who invest $5 million, or who live in the country for three years after investing more than $500,000. In both countries, permanent residents can become citizens after living in the country for a specific period of time.

The “Cambodia My Second Home” program, meanwhile, allows foreign investors to acquire a visa with a five-year path to citizenship with an investment of $100,000 or more. Cambodian law also allows for investors to bypass minimum residency requirements with an investment of about $312,000.

Similar programs exist in Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia.

In Cambodia, some have been able to bribe their way to obtain immediate citizenship. Independent news outlet VOD reported last month that interior ministry official Oknha Duong Ngeap admitted in court to taking $120,000 each from Chinese and Taiwanese clients in exchange for granting them Cambodian citizenship.

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Eugene Whong. 

Xi Jinping’s third term in office as Chinese Communist Party supreme leader will likely mean more suffering for ethnic minority groups in China, exiled activists warned in recent forums and interviews with RFA.

Xi’s regime, which is already engaged in a program of mass incarceration of Uyghurs and mass surveillance and police controls in Xinjiang and Tibet, will continue to pose a grave threat to minority groups, exiled Uyghur rights activist and businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer told a recent forum in Taiwan.

If the international community doesn’t try to resolve the issue of Uyghurs, Tibetan and other ethnic minority groups, “Chinese atrocities” could have a global impact, Kadeer told the forum analyzing the global threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party under Xi, who removed presidential term limits in 2018, and could now rule indefinitely.

She said in a recorded message to the forum that “the most dangerous time” was right now, and called on “ethnic minorities oppressed by the Communist Party” to unite to resist it.

Unlike previous versions, Xi’s political report to the opening session of the 20th National Congress on Oct. 16 made no mention of “regional autonomy for ethnic minorities,” a phrase that had appeared in his reports to the 18th and 19th party congresses.

Before Xi took power, the Chinese government was criticized for widespread rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the Tibetan Autonomous Region, but still paid lip service to the notion of autonomy, and allowed the use of the Tibetan and Uyghur languages to teach children in schools, along with a limited degree of religious activity.

Kelsang Gyaltsen, who represents the Tibetan government-in-exile on the democratic island of Taiwan, said Xi was at least still talking about “accelerating the development of ethnic minority regions” back in 2012, as well as “equality, solidarity, mutual assistance and harmony.”

By 2017, he had added the phrase “forging a national consciousness” and “the sinicization of religion,” two policies that were to give rise to a nationwide crackdown on Muslims, Christians and Tibetan Buddhists, as well as a ban on minority languages as a teaching medium in schools.

The ban on Mongolian prompted street protests and class boycotts by students and parents across the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which borders the independent country of Mongolia, prompting a region-wide crackdown by riot squads and state security police in the fall of 2020.

Tibetan, Uyghur and Korean-language teaching is also being phased out of schools in ethnic minority areas, local parents and teachers have told RFA.

‘National unity’ and ‘Forging a sense of community’

Chinese writer and historian Wang Lixiong described one aspect of the “sinicization of religion” in Xinjiang in detail following a research trip to the region.

In a commentary for RFA’s Mandarin Service published on Tuesday, he cited a sign at a rural school listing “23 manifestations of illegal religious activities.”

Traditional Uyghur marriage ceremonies, Quranic study groups, “printing and distributing religious propaganda,” and proselytizing Islamic religious beliefs were among the actions listed, along with “accepting foreign religious donations” and organizing pilgrimages to Mecca outside of government-backed package tours.

“You can imagine how religious believers would feel, caught in such an endless web,” Wang wrote.

“The janitor told me that teachers were required to gather in school four days a week, even during vacation, to study politics, mainly anti-separatism,” he said. “Political study now takes up more of their time than studying for professional purposes.”

Kelsang Gyaltsen said “national unity” programs have led to forced intermarriage between majority Han Chinese and Tibetans. A similar policy has targeted Uyghurs in Xinjiang, RFA has reported.

“Forging a sense of community” means abolishing ethnic identity and autonomy, he told RFA in a recent interview, adding that “strengthening exchanges” refers to the erasure of distinct ethnic identities.

“The Constitution and the Ethnic Region Autonomy Law clearly stipulate the protection of the rights and interests of ethnic minorities, but Xi Jinping’s report to the 20th party congress didn’t mention it,” he said.

Signs suggest policies to continue

Tseng Chien-yuen, an associate professor at Taiwan’s Central University, said Xi likely avoided mentioning it due to widespread international criticism — including at the United Nations — of China’s policies in ethnic minority areas.

“Of course he daren’t mention it; it is his flaw and a stain [on his regime],” Tseng told RFA.

“There is a major conflict between the party-state system and regional ethnic autonomy, which has worsened during Xi’s tenure, with concentration camps and ethnic minority groups stigmatized for their beliefs and cultural differences, or accused of terrorism,” he said.

“I can’t see any indication that he is reviewing [those policies].”

Other observers agreed that while Xi said little explicitly about ethnic policies, nothing about this year’s party congress indicates that there will be a loosening of restrictions currently in place in regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang.

Kunga Tashi, a U.S.-based Tibet and China analyst, told RFA that Xi’s speech “included nothing that signals positive changes for Tibet in the near future,” while Ilshat Hasan, the executive vice chairman of the World Uyghur Congress exile group, noted that Xi’s elevation of loyalists to China’s inner circle of policymakers “is not a good sign for the world or for Uyghur people.”

Kelsang Gyaltsen said the treatment of Tibetans, Uyghurs and ethnic Mongolians should also serve as a warning to democratic Taiwan.

“Now that Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia are all being tightly controlled, none of those promises [of autonomy] are worth the paper they’re written on,” he said.

“If Taiwan falls under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, like Tibet and Xinjiang … it won’t be one country, two systems [the promise of autonomy made to Hong Kong]. It’ll be one country, one system,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A Vietnamese court sentenced citizen journalist Le Manh Ha to eight years in prison and five years of probation on the charge of “disseminating anti-state materials” for his advocacy on behalf of citizens who lost land to a major hydropower project, his attorney and wife said.

Le Manh Ha, 52, has been active as a land petitioner since the early 2000s, campaigning against the relocation of farmers in Tuyen Quang province who were displaced by a hydroelectric project. 

In May 2018, he founded a YouTube Channel called “The Voice of the People – Le Ha Television” to let land petitioners and farmers speak out against the injustices they faced. Ha also interviewed many land rights petitioners across the province.  

“In Vietnam, corruption defeats the people because corruption has been equipped with modern weapons,” Ha wrote on Facebook the week before authorities arrested him in mid-January. “The people have no weapon except for their cell phones to fight against corruption.”

After his arrest, the province’s newspaper and the local police newspaper said Ha had prepared, posted and shared on YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms, many articles and video clips with content that propagandized, distorted and defamed the state and spread fabricated information to sow confusion among the people.

The Tuyen Quang Provincial People’s Court held Ha’s one-and-a-half-day trial after two postponements in September, charging Ha under Article 117 of Vietnam’s 2015 Penal Code.

The article broadly prohibits distributing propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and is frequently used by authorities to stifle peaceful critics of the country’s one-party communist government. Those convicted of crimes charged under Article 117 can be sentenced to five to 20 years in jail.

Displaced by power plant

Ha and his family were forcibly displaced. They used to reside in the province’s Na Hang district, but they had to relocate to Tuyen Quang city in 2004 because of the construction of a hydropower plant. 

His family and hundreds of other households said they were unfairly compensated for land lost to the project. They sent petitions to various provincial and central government officials, but their complaints have not been resolved.

Though all land in Vietnam is owned by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint with residents, who have accused the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of major infrastructure projects and lucrative real estate developments and of paying insufficient compensation for their losses.

Since January, Vietnamese authorities have convicted six activists and Facebookers on the charge of “disseminating anti-state materials,” handing down prison sentences ranging from five to eight years. To date, the country has 49 prisoners of conscience jailed on this charge, while a dozen others have been detained for investigation. 

Four lawyers defended Ha, who pleaded not guilty at the trial.

Court authorities allowed Ha’s wife, Ma Thi Tho, to attend the trial as a person with related interests and permitted Ha’s supporters and other relatives to watch the proceedings from a nearby room. 

Exercising freedom of speech

Ha’s defense team believed that the verdict was wrong, one of the lawyers told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“The lawyers presented a lot of evidence to prove that Mr. Le Manh Ha had not violated Article 117,” the attorney said. “The trial developments, from the questioning to debating sessions, did not reflect the nature of the incident.” 

The prosecutor did not respond to many arguments thoroughly, and the verdict summarized the defense lawyers’ viewpoints too briefly, he said.

Ha’s wife, Ma Thi Mo, told RFA that when the judge allowed Ha to say some final words at the trial, he stressed that what he had done was exercise freedom of speech. 

Though Vietnam’s constitution guarantees that citizens “shall enjoy the right to freedom of opinion and speech,” those critical of the government or those who discuss certain topics deemed unacceptable by the Communist Party of Vietnam are often subject to intimidation and imprisonment.

 “He said that all of his actions showed his patriotism and reflected his own opinions and that he did not intend to oppose the state or to defame the people’s government,” Mo said about her husband.

 She also said Ha requested that the government remove Article 117 from the Penal Code and Article 16 from the Law on Cybersecurity.

Ha requested an appeal right after the judge announced the verdict.

UN Human Rights Council

Earlier this month, Vietnam was elected to a three-year term to the U.N. Human Rights Council beginning in 2023, despite calls by human rights groups that the country should be excluded because of its dismal human rights record.

Before the court issued the sentence, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, called on the Vietnamese government to allow people like Ha to express their opinions peacefully in order to become a responsible member of the council.

“If Vietnam is serious about being a productive, contributing member of the UN Human Rights Council to which it was recently elected, the government should release all people locked up for simply expressing opinions the government doesn’t like,” Robertson said.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The man who threw a shoe at Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in last year says he got the shoe back from police – and plans to auction it off to raise money for charity work in the country.

Cambodia-American Ouk Touch says he hopes to raise U.S.$1 million.

Ouk Touch, 75, threw the shoe – from a black pair of $85 Clarks – at Hun Sen during his visit in May to Washington DC for a summit between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. The shoe didn’t hit Hun Sun.

At the time, a video of the incident went viral on social media, and Cambodian officials rushed to condemn Ouk Touch and demand he be punished by U.S. authorities. Exposing someone to one’s shoe sole is considered an insult or repulsive gesture in many Asian and Mideastern cultures. 

But no charges have stemmed from the incident since, Ouk Touch said. “I wasn’t summoned to court. It has been quiet,” he said about any subsequent investigation. 

“I am happy that I got [the shoe] back,” he Radio Free Asia. “I want to sell it so I can help the poor, victims and those who don’t have food to eat in Cambodia. I want to sell it for $1 million.” 

Anyone who wants to buy the shoe can reach him directly, he said.

“My action, it was just throwing a shoe at Hun Sen. But Hun Sen threw grenades at the Cambodian people, peaceful protesters. Hun Sen is a dictator, and he has killed many people, including my relatives,” said Touch, 72, a former soldier in the Cambodian army in the early 1970s. 

Ouk Touch was reportedly referring to when armed men attacked Hun Sen’s elected coalition partners in 1997, killing 16 people and wounding 150. No perpetrators of the attack have been brought to face trial. 

“I have intended to do this for a long time because I want him to be humiliated, nothing more than that,” he said, adding that after the incident he slept better.

Aside from a handful of visits since 1999 to the United Nations for annual meetings, Hun Sen has made very few trips to the United States. 

He attended the West Point graduation ceremony of his son and now designated heir,  Hun Manet, in May 1999. He also took part in the first U.S.-ASEAN summit hosted by former President Barack Obama in California in February 2016.

The U.S.-ASEAN summit hosted in May by U.S. President Joe Biden was part of his intent to center American foreign policy on the Indo-Pacific in response to the growing competition with China in the region. 

After the shoe-throwing incident, Hun Sen notably used it as justification for further targeting his political opponents. 

“If the U.S. considers shoe-throwing as freedom of expression, it is encouraging [the practice] in other countries,” he said a few days afterward. “Now I am concerned for the safety of the opposition party leaders…We can also throw shoes at opposition party leaders’ heads in Cambodia.”

In response to Ouk Touch’s announcement of wanting to auction the shoe, Cambodian government spokesperson Phay Siphan told RFA that there were differences between the United States and Cambodia in terms of culture, belief and respect. 

“Cambodia can’t accept it, Cambodia regards this action as an insult,” he said, but he added that he respects the decision made by U.S. authorities not to press charges.

English story written by Nawar Nemeh

Chinese police have yet to release dissidents and rights activists from house arrest and other restrictions in the wake of the 20th party congress, with one activist detained for breaking restrictions, people targeted by the measures told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.

Independent political journalist Gao Yu said she was taken on an enforced “vacation” for more than two weeks, ahead of the party congress, which ended Sunday. “It’s been 16 days today,” Gao said, adding that she had only brought enough medication to last 14 days. “I thought I would be allowed home after the party congress ended, so I brought 14 days’ worth.”

“I have asked to go home,” she said. “I have to get to the hospital for a follow-up appointment.”

Gao said she had been banned from posting to Twitter during the party congress. “I saw a lot of people tweeting, but I wasn’t allowed to tweet,” she said. “They even told me to delete some tweets I had already sent.”

Ahead of the congress, at which Xi was elected to an unprecedented third five-year term, Chinese police launched a large-scale “stability maintenance” operation removing anyone pursuing complaints against official wrong-doing, migrant workers and political dissidents from view.

Some critics of the regime, like Gao, were taken out of town on “vacations” by the state security police, while others were placed under guard in their homes and warned against posting to social media or giving interviews to foreign media.

“Stability maintenance” measures can range from enforcing house arrest to stave off potential activism, to hiring “interceptors” to bring petitioners back from Beijing, to escorting dissidents under house arrest to hospital appointments or grocery shopping at politically sensitive times of the year, including the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

Under Xi Jinping, such operations have grown to include a plethora of law enforcement agencies and committees, including state security police who target peaceful activists, political dissidents, religious believers and ethnic minority groups as potential “threats” to social stability.

While the cost of the stability maintenance regime that shores up the ruling party’s grip on power isn’t clearly labeled in annual budgets, political analysts say it has likely more than tripled under Xi, to an estimated 1 trillion yuan.

Getting Stricter

A rights activist who declined to be named said the measures taken this year have been tougher than in previous years. “The security measures for the 20th party congress are unprecedented,” the activist said. “It’s as if they are dealing with a major enemy. The police are on duty round the clock, and all leave has been canceled.”

Anyone being monitored has to check in at the police station or take a selfie at home every day to prove they aren’t going anywhere, the activist said.

“I’m still in Changsha, and I’ll be going back to Beijing in a couple of days,” Beijing-based dissident Ji Feng told RFA, saying his return has been delayed by the COVID-19 Health Code tracker app.

“I have to wait for my … health code to turn green [after quarantine],” he said. “I was in Kunming earlier, and now I have to quarantine for seven days in Changsha … because Kunming’s health code [isn’t] green.”

Rights activists in the central province of Hunan said they will likely remain under round-the-clock surveillance or on enforced “vacation” under Wednesday.

An activist from Zhuzhou city, who gave only the surname Li, said one of their number had been detained for breaking house arrest.

“Ren Ming refused to listen when they told him not to go out during the 20th party congress, so they could keep track of his whereabouts,” Li said. “He went out anyway, and they detained him.”

Ren is being held under 11 days’ administrative detention, a sentence that can be imposed by police on perceived “troublemakers” for up to 15 days without the need for a trial, Li said.

Most other Zhuzhou activists remain under house arrest until Wednesday.

“There are still people whose freedom of movement is restricted, and a Vietnam War veteran will be restricted until Oct. 26,” Li said. “He was taken to Yanling county, which is administered by Zhuzhou, where he was placed under house arrest.”

“It’s not clear whether everyone will have regained their freedom by Oct. 26,” he said.

Translated and written by Luisetta Mudie.