Thai sports authorities have threatened to keep their country’s kickboxers away from the May 2023 Southeast Asian Games in Cambodia after the hosts said they would use the Cambodian term Kun Khmer for the ancient martial art instead of Muay Thai, the Thai name for their national sport that is also used internationally. Cambodian authorities added insult to injury in the long-running dispute over the origin of Southeast Asian kickboxing when they declared their nation the “cultural owners” of the sport. Muay Thai won recognition by the Olympics in 2021 and is being considered as a future Olympic event.
Hong Kong officials have begun traveling the region in a bid to attract fresh talent, particularly younger people, to settle in the city as a crackdown on dissent continues to drive middle-class families to flee the former British colony.
Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun made a trip to Singapore and the Philippines earlier this month to peddle the “advantages” offered by Hong Kong’s proximity to mainland China and its growing integration with other cities in the Pearl River Delta under the “Greater Bay Area” plan.
Chief Executive John Lee announced a slew of measures last October including a scheme aimed at enticing graduates from the world’s top 100 universities, including two in Singapore, to come and work in the city.
The moves come amid an exodus of middle-class families, who vote with their feet, with families citing the curbs on freedom of speech and growing political interference in schools as driving factors in their decision to leave.
A middle-class professional who gave only the surname Wong said he will be emigrating with his family to the United Kingdom next week, giving up a highly paid job with career prospects to escape the long arm of Beijing. The unpredictability of life under Communist Party rule was a key deciding factor.
“Here in China and Hong Kong we went from total lockdowns to totally ignoring this virus in the space of a week, saying it’s just like a cold, but it’s actually the same virus,” Wong said. “It’s clear that policy-making is totally irrational.”
But Wong said he didn’t decide to leave due to the government’s COVID-19 policy.
“What matters more … are political considerations, [concerns about] whether there is any guarantee of a good life here in the long run,” he said. “That’s what made me determined to leave.”
U.S. Extension
The moves also come as the United States on Thursday extended by two years a rule that has allowed Hong Kong residents already in the United States to remain instead of being deported back to the Chinese territory.
The Deferred Enforced Departure exemptions for Hong Kong residents were introduced in August 2021 and were set to expire on Feb. 5, according to a memorandum from the White House, which said the decision was in line with “our democratic values.”
“Offering safe haven for Hong Kong residents who have been deprived of their guaranteed freedoms in Hong Kong furthers United States interests in the region,” it said. “The United States will continue to stand firm in our support of the people in Hong Kong.”
China began cracking down on Hong Kong’s sovereignty in the wake of the 2019-2020 protests against a proposed extradition law that would have allowed Beijing to arrest dissidents in the self-governing territory and move them to the mainland’s judicial system.
Population decline
Net departures of permanent residents totaled 113,000 for the whole of 2022, while the city’s population fell by 1.2 percent in the 12 months to August 2021, prompting calls from media backed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party for the government to act to stem the brain drain.
Police officers in protective gear stand guard at a locked down area in Hong Kong, Jan. 22, 2022. One Hongkonger calls the COVID-19 policy making “totally irrational.” Credit: Associated Press
A woman who gave only the surname Auyeung said she is planning to leave with her family this year, because “Hong Kong is no longer free under the national security law.”
She said she and her husband are now both censoring themselves in the workplace to avoid overstepping invisible “red lines.” The repercussions of coercive policy-making are already being felt at their child’s kindergarten.
“The kindergarten teacher called me and said our kid couldn’t attend full time any more because they didn’t get two shots of [China’s homegrown COVID-19 vaccine],” Auyeung said. “I am absolutely disgusted that the government is using children’s access to schooling to drive up the vaccination rate.”
“We both work, and there is no childcare at home if the kid is home for half the day,” she said. “I want to get out of here fast.”
Sociologist Chung Kim-wah said those who can afford to leave are generally doing so.
“There used to always be a difference between Hong Kong and mainland China, and we used to believe that Hong Kong’s way of life would be respected … but this government will only act on China’s say-so,” Chung said.
“They have just imported China’s way of doing things wholesale, giving families who previously had little incentive to leave plenty of reason to reconsider,” he said.
Civil servants, doctors leaving
Many of those who are leaving actually work for the government, either as civil servants, or as healthcare professionals and educators.
The city’s civil service currently numbers just over 170,000, 17,000 short of its full complement, with more than 9,000 vacancies for senior civil servants currently open.
Doctors and nurses wait to receive China’s Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 at a community vaccination center in Hong Kong, Feb. 23, 2021. Staff turnover rates in government hospitals are just over 8% for doctors and nearly 11% for nurses by October 2022, according to the Hospital Authority. Credit: Pool via Reuters
Former civil servant-turned-YouTuber Woo Wong-jan once held a senior scientific post at the Hong Kong Observatory, which tracks the territory’s weather.
While not a highly political area of work, Woo said civil servants in all departments are being forced to take pledges of loyalty to Beijing, as well as accept curbs on public speech under the national security law.
“The requirement for civil servants to take an oath derives from the national security law, which also restricts their freedom of speech,” he said.
“I used to work at the Observatory, and I wasn’t involved in politics, but some things would have been unavoidable for me as a civil servant, including being educated about the national security law and doing certain things I wouldn’t necessarily be willing to do,” Woo said.
“I could see that Hong Kong would change a lot in the next few years, and I asked myself whether I would want to live somewhere like that?” he said. “I didn’t, so I decided to resign.”
Public documents have revealed that more than 10,000 of Woo’s colleagues left the civil service between 2021 and 2022, some 4,000 of them due to resignation rather than retirement or being fired.
Medical professionals are another group that is voting with their feet, with staff turnover rates in government hospitals at just over 8% for doctors and nearly 11% for nurses by October 2022, according to the Hospital Authority.
A former public hospital doctor who gave only the surname Cheung said she is unsure whether government schemes to replace Hong Kong’s lost middle-classes — which included allowing mainland-China trained healthcare professionals to practice in Hong Kong — will be effective.
“Can the fresh talent recruited by the government replace what has been lost?” Cheung said. “China’s medical system, knowledge and skills are not the same as Hong Kong’s.”
“Medical treatment isn’t just about handing out medicine or performing surgery, but involves connections between people, technology, management styles as well as degree of adherence to morality and values,” she said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Officials from Japan and the Netherlands, two of the world’s biggest microchip exporters, are in Washington for talks on a trilateral deal to limit sales of key technology to China, a top official said Friday.
The meeting comes amid a report from Bloomberg that a deal was nearing completion. Cooperation from the two countries – which together with the United States produce the bulk of the world’s high-end chipmaking fabrication technology – is being sought by the Biden administration to give teeth to its unilateral export bans.
U.S. officials have expressed confidence the two countries would eventually come on board with export controls, which if implemented would effectively end Beijing’s ability to produce the most cutting-edge chips needed for military and artificial-intelligence purposes.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed in a press briefing on Friday that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was hosting officials from both countries for talks in Washington, but said he could not confirm that a binding agreement was near.
“Officials from the Netherlands and from Japan are here in D.C. for a couple of days worth of discussions being led by the national security adviser,” Kirby said. “They are talking about a range of issues that are important to all three of us, and certainly the safety and security of emerging technologies is going to be on that agenda.”
“I certainly would leave it to the Japanese and to the Dutch to decide for themselves how they want to characterize these discussions,” he added. “We’re grateful that they were able to come to D.C.”
The U.S. export ban is considered by many experts to be toothless without Dutch and Japanese help, with American industry leaders saying Chinese firms could simply switch to buying from producers in either, undercutting the policy while harming American firms.
Beijing, meanwhile, has slammed the Biden administration’s broader efforts to decouple its chipmaking industry from China’s, which includes subsidies to reshore chipmaking in the United States, calling it protectionist and part of a “Cold War mentality.”
But U.S. officials say controlling access to high-end chipmaking technology is a national security priority, and note lower-end chips used in consumer products and computers are not impacted.
A massive fire has destroyed much of Nepal’s ancient Hinang Pungtsey Buddhist monastery on the border with Tibet, according to sources.
The fire, which broke out on Wednesday, razed the central prayer hall in the 200-year-old monastery, sources told RFA, adding that most of the prayer books in the building were also torched.
Authorities are still investigating the cause of the blaze, and have yet to report any deaths or injuries. Most of the idols inside the monastery were also destroyed, sources said, because of how long it took to contain the fire.
The historic monastery in Nepal’s Chumnubri Rural Municipality-2 Gurkha district also serves as an elder care center.
Outside of India, Nepal holds one of the larger regional diasporas of Tibetans, with about 20,000 living inside the small landlocked Himalayan nation.
Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Nawar Nemeh and Josh Lipes.
Authorities in Xinjiang have given a 20-year jail sentence to a Uyghur woman who at one time staunchly supported China’s anti-extremism campaign targeting the mostly Muslim ethnic group in the restive northwestern region, while two of her sons were each jailed for 17 years, local security officials said.
Hurshide Kerim was a member of the Communist Party’s “propaganda vanguard,” a group of Uyghurs who traveled around Xinjiang and publicly denounced “religious extremism” under China’s nearly 10-year-old “strike hard” campaign aimed at what Beijing deems to be terrorism and extremism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Authorities accused her of being a “two-faced” Uyghur—a derogatory term for local people who work for the government but also observe elements of Uyghur or Muslim culture—after police found an “illegal” book in her home in Ghulja county, known as Yining in Chinese, the sources said.
Kerim’s case illustrates how some Uyghurs were amenable to serve as propaganda tools for Chinese authorities in exchange for higher salaries, free travel, and promotions by denouncing the traditional practices and beliefs of their ancient Turkic culture. But like ordinary Uyghurs, they were not immune from arrest or detention if authorities discovered that they had willingly or unwillingly committed infractions.
They also face the scorn of ordinary Uyghurs for serving a Chinese government that multiple Western countries and human rights groups accuse of committing genocide or crimes against humanity for their treatment of the Turkic minorities of Xinjiang.
Kerim, who has six children and more than 10 grandchildren, was 55 years old when she was arrested in 2017 and is serving her sentence in Baykol Women’s Prison in Ghulja, said a security official in Qarayaghach town, where the woman resides.
When Chinese authorities began the strike hard campaign against in 2014, they imposed severe penalties on Uyghurs, arrested them arbitrarily, and began a propaganda campaign against the group’s ethnic customs and religious faith under the guise of promoting modernity. As part of the campaign, authorities confiscated and burned a vast number of religious and cultural books.
Authorities target sons
Authorities also charged Kerim’s two sons, Merdan and Mewlan for violating China’s “planned birth policy” in the past under which ethnic minorities were allowed to have up to three children, though some Uyghurs had larger families. But in 2017, the Chinese government began enforcing family planning policies in Xinjiang as a population-control measure.
Kerim, a villager from Qarayaghach town, from which several Uyghur propagandists were hired, was taken away when authorities began mass arbitrary arrests and detentions began in Xinjiang in 2017, town security officials said. Local police also arrested those she previously criticized.
The woman was active in propaganda work in the neighborhood, said one security official who worked with her, but who declined to be identified so he could speak freely.
“She was [part of the] propaganda vanguard that gave speeches against extremism during meetings,” he told RFA. “The police arrested her after suddenly searching her house, because they found an illegal book.”
The security official said he had no further information on Kerim and did not know what type of book police found in her home, whether it belonged to her, or if she had confiscated it while working.
An employee at the local judicial department confirmed that authorities sentenced Kerim to 20 years in jail, but also did not know the title of the confiscated book or its contents.
“Hurshide was a good and well-dressed lady, a Communist Party member, and worked 30 years for the government,” she told RFA. “The government sentenced her to prison for her mistake.”
Kerim has three daughters and three sons, two of whom were sent for political “re-education” and later sentenced to 17 years in prison, she said.
Other collaborators arrested
Uyghur vanguard propagandists in other parts of Xinjiang also have suffered the same fate as Kerim, with demotions and punishments.
Patigul Dawut, who enjoyed a degree of fame for a while when she worked as a member of the propaganda vanguard in Korla, the second-largest city in Xinjiang and known as Kuerle in Chinese, was arrested in autumn 2017.
Authorities took her in for “allowing others to preach religion” because workers were said to have delivered Islamic sermons at her carpet factory, her husband told RFA at the time.
Dawut was ordered to serve six months in a local detention center, despite suffering from a number of health complications, said her spouse, Naman Bawdun, a Uyghur former head and Communist Party secretary of a village in Korla.
Bawudun, whom authorities had recognized as a “vanguard of ethnic unity” was arrested with Dawut, while their daughter, a police officer, was fired from her job.
Other Uyghurs who previously worked for Chinese authorities also have come under attack in recent years.
Nur Bekri, the highest-ranking ethnic Uyghur in the Chinese government, who served as the head of China’s National Energy Administration and vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, was arrested on corruption charges in 2018. He was highly unpopular among Uyghurs because he supported China’s repression of Muslim “extremists” and advocated Chinese-language education for Uyghur students.
Kadir Memet, former deputy chief of the Urumqi police department, was detained by authorities for unknown reasons in 2019. The highest-ranking Uyghur police officer in the regional capital was reviled for ruthlessly implementing Beijing’s repressive policies against members of his ethnic community, sources told RFA at that time.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Edited by Paul Eckert.
Severe winter weather in North Korea dampened spirits over the Lunar New Year holiday, as the government forced citizens to shovel snow from major roads leading to the capital Pyongyang on one of their few days off, sources in the country told RFA.
Ordering people to provide free labor is common practice for the cash-strapped government, but making them toil away on arguably the most important holiday of the year, which fell on Jan. 22, made them especially angry, sources said.
“It snowed on the Lunar New Year in various parts of the country, including here in Kimchaek,” a woman from the city in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“The children were playing in the snow, but everyone else was mobilized early in the morning to clear the snow on the roads, even on the holiday,” she said.
The source said that the head of each neighborhood watch unit went door to door to tell people they had to clear snow, so no one, including the source herself, could avoid participating.
“After clearing the roads all day, we had to shift to clearing the snow that had hardened into ice from car wheels.”
Each family is responsible for a particular section of road and had to work for about an hour, according to the source.
The country’s priority is to keep all the roads that lead to Pyongyang open to prevent disruptions of supplies to the city, but residents were very unhappy to have their holiday disturbed, sources said.
Bitter days ahead
The weather in North Korea is expected to take a turn for the worse, according to forecasts broadcast on the Lunar New Year.
“The forecast said that cold temperatures as low as 30 degrees below zero [-22 degrees Fahrenheit],” a resident of North Hamgyong’s Puryong county told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
“The people are already having a harsh winter, without enough firewood or food,” he said.
People in Puryong are not well off, according to the county resident, so they cannot buy coal and firewood. Instead, the forest management office permits them to climb the nearby mountain once per week to forage for dead trees and shrubs they can burn to keep their homes warm.
Nonetheless, their televisions rang in the new year with images of smiling people in Pyongyang enjoying the holiday, a far cry from their reality.
“Here in the provinces, there were so many houses that couldn’t even have a special meal on New Year’s Day, let alone go watch art performances or play traditional games,” he said. “I couldn’t find anyone going out of their homes or smell the good food [they were cooking] like I did in times past.”
At the coldest time of the year, the government has also been cracking down on firewood and coal being sold on the black market, according to the second source.
“Most of the people have given up on heating their homes, using what little wood or charcoal they have to cook rice in the mornings and evenings,” he said.
The people are currently being made to collect scrap metal and make compost as part of government projects, and must return to frigid homes after a hard day’s work, according to the second source.
“The whole family sits around their stove where they cook dinner, warming their hands and feet,” he said. “The fire in the furnace is too small, so the room is cold. They cannot take off their socks and clothes and they must sleep so that their bodies are next to each other [to stay warm].”
Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
