Day: March 1, 2023

Myanmar’s military junta sentenced almost 2,400 people to prison terms in February, more than doubling the number of prisoners it sentenced since taking power in the 2021 coup to nearly 4,700.

Statistics from the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, showed that between the coup and Jan. 31, 2023, the junta had sentenced 2,299 people, but in February 2023 alone, it sentenced 2,384.

According to the reports of the AAPP, in a single day on February 13, a record number of 1,293 people were arrested and 1,274 people were imprisoned nationwide.

Government opponents said the surge in imprisonments is an attempt by the junta to instill fear among the public, many of whom remain resistant to accepting junta rule more than two years after the military ousted the country’s democratically elected government.

Among those sentenced in February were 13 civilians who were deemed to be in violation of the country’s anti-terrorism law, according to reports that surfaced on the Telegram social media app, which has become a haven for pro-military writers who support the junta.

The 13 civilians include Myo Tun, 20, from the capital Naypyidaw, who got four years for what the court said was a violation of the anti-terrorism law. Soldiers beat and arrested Myo Tun in November 2021 and he has not seen his family since.

“We are not satisfied by this sentence by any means,” a friend of Myo Tun’s family, who like all other unnamed sources in this report requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Burmese Service.

“Giving such a prison term to a young man of only 20 years is stupid, it’s an act of bullying to those who blindly rely on weapons,” the family friend said. “I want to ask if they even found any trace of terrorism-related materials among his property.”

Imprisoning youth

Another 20-year-old, Myo Ko, of the Sagaing region, also got four years in violation of the same law for what the junta claimed was encouragement of violence. He had merely dropped out of school in protest of pro-military education, a person close to the family said.

“Myo Ko is still a kid at a little over 20 years old, and has not experienced life yet. He is very honest, peaceful, well-mannered and polite,” the source said. “Since the military is imprisoning kids under unfair laws, … I will continue to work toward uprooting the military dictatorship to the best of my ability as a citizen.”

An official of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners told RFA that the junta has repeatedly imposed the death penalty, often without showing any evidence.

The military junta announced on state media under its control that it has given amnesty and released prisoners from various prisons across the country four times over the past two years. 

But  most of those released have been mostly criminal prisoners and only a very small number of political prisoners who were jailed for opposing the military council were among them. 

A lawyer in Yangon, said that since the military junta amended the anti-terrorism law in August 2021, he has seen repeated use of that law being used in court cases.

Up until June 30, 2022, the junta had been using Section 505 of the Penal code, which concerns spreading rumors or reports with the intent to cause fear or alarm among the public to the point that a person could be induced to commit offenses against the state, the lawyer said

Additionally, the junta has abused the court system, by charging people it arrests in multiple courts in multiple municipalities in order to extract maximum punishment, he said.

According to the AAPP, the junta used the anti-terrorism law to arrest 1,293 people and sentence 1,274 on a single day on Feb. 13. Both figures amount to more than half of the total for the entire month of February.

Nay Phone Latt, the spokesman for Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government told RFA that the military junta courts are only nominal. 

“A terrorist group has no right to make or amend any law. A person must have the right to defend himself or herself under the law,” he said. “The trial must be held in public courts that people can witness.”

He said these rights are enshrined in the International Declaration of Human Rights. “But the junta just labels places as ‘courts’ and conducts trials and gives sentences without these basic requirements.”

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

Civil groups urged the European Parliament to step up pressure on Vietnam to improve its dismal human and labor rights records during a review of the implementation of the European Union-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement.

The call came during a conference in Brussels on Feb. 28, led by Marianne Vind, vice chair of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with countries in Southeast Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. 

The free trade agreement, which came into force on Aug. 1, 2020, includes a chapter on trade and sustainable development that entails commitments by the EU and Vietnam to promote labor rights, environmental protection and sustainable development, as defined by international conventions and multilateral environmental agreements. 

Representatives from Vietnam Workers’ Defenders, Reporters Without Borders, the Swiss-Vietnam Committee, and the U.S.-based Vietnam Reform Revolution Party, or Viet Tan, expressed grave concerns about the worsening human rights situation in Vietnam since the EU and Vietnam ratified the free trade agreement, or EVFTA, which abolishes most custom duties within 10 years.

They pointed to the Vietnamese government’s various violations with regard to freedom of speech, press freedom and workers’ rights that run counter to the provisions included in the agreement.

Since the agreement’s signing, human rights abuses have become worse in the one-party communist state, said Helena Huong Nguyen, a conference organizer and member of Viet Tan based in Denmark.

“In the past, only political dissidents were imprisoned, but over recent years, civil society and environmental activists, and even those interested in trade agreements, have also been jailed,” she told Radio Free Asia during a post-conference interview. “The Vietnamese government has even raided online voices of dissent.”

Use of Penal Code, Cybersecurity Law

A Vietnamese guest speaker who attended the conference virtually and requested anonymity for safety reasons, said that he and many human rights activists in Vietnam had hoped the free trade agreement would bring about not only economic benefits, but also improvements in the human rights situation because of the EU’s influence when it comes to such rights.

But instead, they experienced increased suppression of freedom of speech and press freedom along with further deteriorating human rights over the past two years, he said. 

Vietnam’s 2018 Cybersecurity Law allowed has authorities to impose administrative fines on people who write stories and commentaries deemed malicious or that distorted Vietnamese Communist Party guidelines and government policy and law, he said, by way of example. 

At the same time, the government has used the country’s 2015 Penal Code to its advantage, especially Articles 117 and 331, to stifle political dissent, he added. 

Article 117 forbids the distribution of propaganda against the state, while Article 331 criminalizes “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state.” Vietnamese authorities routinely use the statutes to attack those who speak out in defense of human rights.

The Vietnamese government arrested 40 political dissidents and human rights activists in 2019, 60 in 2020, and 25 in 2021 and 2022, said the guest speaker, attributing the lower arrest rates in the last two years to the increased caution that other activists exercised to avoid being hauled away. 

‘Too afraid of the consequences’

Julie Majerczak, representative to European institutions for Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, said press freedom in Vietnam has been on the decline since the free trade agreement was ratified.

Vietnam ranked 174th out of 180 countries on the group’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index and became the world’s fourth largest prison for journalists after North Korea, Myanmar and China, Majerczak said. 

The number of arrested and convicted journalists had decreased lately because authorities had imprisoned nearly all independent journalists, she said.

Blogs are no longer widely used as they were a decade ago among journalists to criticize government policies because they are too afraid of the consequences, Majerczak said. 

Additionally, the government has been increasing its censorship of traditional, mainstream media, she said. 

Majerczak cited the cases of professional journalist Pham Doan Trang and citizen journalist Do Cong Duong. Trang, RSF’s award winner in 2019, was sentenced to nine years in prison for “propagandizing against the state,” and Duong died because of harsh jail conditions during his prison term.

“The EU should not cooperate economically with Vietnam until Hanoi improves its human rights record,” she said. “The EU should use the EVFTA to pressure Hanoi to release journalists and improve detention conditions for human rights defenders.”

Preventing trade unions

Huy Nguyen of Vietnam Workers’ Defenders, a U.S.-based organization that seeks to protect workers’ rights in Vietnam, said the government has taken many measures to prevent laborers from establishing independent trade unions.

The country’s current Labor Code violates International Labor Organization conventions because it includes provisions for establishing trade unions, he added. 

Nguyen accused the Vietnamese government of violating a free trade agreement provision that requires the establishment of a Domestic Advisory Group. The civil society component is meant to ensure that employer and workers organizations, business groups and environmental groups cano submit views or recommendations on the FTA’s trade and sustainable development chapter.

In July 2021, Vietnam police arrested journalist Mai Phan Loi of the Center for Media in Educating Community and attorney Dang Dinh Bach of Center for Legal Studies & Policy for Sustainable Development because their groups registered to become members of Vietnam’s Domestic Advisory Group, Nguyen said. 

Shortly after that, Hanoi formed Vietnam’s Domestic Advisory Group with three members, two of whom were under the government’s control, he said. 

In January 2022, Vietnam added three more members, although one did not have the independence required by the free trade agreement, Nguyen said. The same month, Hanoi sentenced Loi to four years in prison and Bach to five years, both on charges of “tax evasion.” 

The EU should request that Vietnam review the members of its Domestic Advisory Group and allow representatives from truly independent civil society organizations to join the group, said Nguyen. He also urged Hanoi to release Loi and Bach. 

As a newly elected member of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, Vietnam should take concrete action to improve its human rights record, said Sébastien Desfayes, a Swiss parliamentarian and chairman of the Swiss-Vietnam Committee.

That would include the release of activists, free elections, respect for universal human rights and the right to an independent judiciary, he said.

He also called on Vietnam to eliminate articles 117, 118 and 331 of the Penal Code, which authorities use to suppress freedom of speech. 

RFA could not reach Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs by phone or email for comment. 

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

The junta troops entered the central Myanmar village of Kone Ywar on Tuesday evening and set it alight. When the flames had finally died down by Wednesday morning, they methodically set fire to whatever was left standing.

The destruction in Kone Ywar – a settlement populated by more than 1,400 people in Sagaing region’s embattled Yinmarbin township – is becoming all too commonplace in Myanmar, where more than two years after a coup, the military has embarked on a scorched earth campaign to root out the country’s armed resistance.

But while civilians are regularly caught up in the conflict, despite claims by the junta that it does not target noncombatants, it is rare for the military to wipe out nearly an entire village.

By the time the smoke had cleared on Wednesday and the junta unit had moved on, all but 30 of Kone Ywar’s more than 700 homes had been razed, three civilians had been killed, and thousands of Yinmarbin’s residents had fled the township in fear for their lives.

“[The soldiers] burned down almost the entire village … They were burning the whole night yesterday and they even torched the houses left standing this morning,” a resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity fearing reprisal, told RFA Burmese.

“Only about 30 houses were left, although we don’t know exactly how many were destroyed.”

The raid followed a clash near the entrance to Kone Ywar between the military and members of the local anti-junta People’s Defense Force paramilitary group that led to military casualties, he said, suggesting that the arson had been an act of revenge.

Other residents told RFA that the soldiers had killed three men in their 30s, two of whom lived in Kone Ywar. The identity of the third man was not immediately clear.

Soon after departing Kone Ywar, the troops again clashed with PDF forces in nearby Yae Aungt village, with military helicopters joining the battle, they said.

Around 10,000 residents from the two villages, as well as from others in the vicinity – including Sar Taw Pyin, Zee Taw, Let Hloke, Ohn Taw, Lar Boet and Yin Paung Taing – had fled their homes for safety and remained displaced, residents added.

Yinmarbin is one of the townships in Sagaing region declared under martial law by the junta last month.

Wetlet township raid

The destruction in Kone Ywar came on the same day that junta troops raided two villages in Sagaing’s Wetlet township, setting fire to homes and killing at least two elderly residents, sources said.

A resident of Wetlet, who declined to be named citing security concerns, told RFA that a column of around 80 soldiers torched 59 houses in Moke Soe Chon Bu Tar and another two homes in nearby Bo Te on Tuesday.

Tin Hla, a woman in her 70s, perished in the fires in Bo Te, the resident said.

“They left her there when they were burning the houses and since she was too old to run, she died in the fire,” he said.

Junta troops leaving Moke Soe Chon Bu Tar at around 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday shot and killed Myint Than, 60, as he rode his motorbike outside the village, the resident said.

More than 1,000 residents of the two villages – each with more than 100 homes – were forced to flee to safety during the raid, sources told RFA.

Attempts by RFA to contact Aye Hlaing, the junta’s social affairs minister for Sagaing region, by phone went unanswered Wednesday. However, junta Deputy Information Minister Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun has previously said that arson is a tactic used by the PDF and that the military “never causes harm to civilians.”

Last month, a military column burned down more than 100 houses in Wetlet township’s Ta Kaung Min village in a Feb. 3 raid, during which a civilian was killed by a rocket propelled grenade fired by junta soldiers, residents said.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as of Feb. 2, some 650,000 residents of Sagaing region had fled their homes due to armed conflict in the aftermath of the Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

Data for Myanmar, an independent research organization, says that at least 43,292 houses have been destroyed by arson in Sagaing in the two years since the takeover.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Laotians are worried that a recent string of “wife wanted” ads on social media – offering payments of thousands of dollars per month – will lure young women into human trafficking operations where they will be abused and forced to work like slaves.

“Lao wife wanted; good salary: 100 million kip [nearly U.S. $6,000] per month,” a recent ad on Facebook said — an unheard sum of money in the poor Southeast Asian country.

Another one on a news website NBC Lao News said: “Singles can apply; Lao wife wanted; salary: 100 million kip; share immediately!”

The ads apparently are placed by Chinese men who want Lao wives, but residents say that women who respond to them never get paid those princely sums.

City-dwellers are largely aware of the scam, but those in the countryside, many of them ethnic minorities from marginalized backgrounds, have taken the bait.

Some women who respond are sent to China. Others wind up in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, a gambling and tourism hub catering to the Chinese and situated along the Mekong River where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand converge.

“Many Chinese men will go there, establish some kind of relationship like girlfriend-boyfriend with Lao girls and women, then pay a dowry to the parents and marry them,” said a young Lao woman from Luang Namtha province.

Parents in remote areas who are hungry for money let their daughters marry the Chinese, she told Radio Free Asia on Thursday.

“But once their daughters are taken to China, the parents are unable to contact them,” she said. “Some of the traffickers or middlemen are somebody they know, [and] they lure them by saying the [women] will work in a neighboring country where they can make a lot of money. Because they’re poor, they take the offer.”

Desperate for money

Laos is a hotbed for trafficked women who are taken across the border to marry Chinese men, given a shortage of eligible Chinese women due to the country’s gender imbalance.

It is part of a larger regional problem as the poor girls and women from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, North Korea, Pakistan and Nepal have been trafficked.

Economic hardship in Lao villages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a new surge in the trafficking to China of Lao women and girls desperate to find jobs, despite travel restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of infections, RFA reported in 2021.

A multi-year economic crisis with surging inflation, currency depreciation, increasing amounts of foreign-owned public debts, and ongoing rampant corruption have forced many people to get second jobs to make ends meet or to come up with money another way.

A Lao woman from Xaysomboun province, also in the north, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons, said she too saw the ads on social media and that there have been many cases of Chinese men entering the country to obtain a bride.

“Many Lao girls and women who fall victim to this kind of trick are mostly members of ethnic groups because they are poor,” she said.

Lao authorities campaign against the dangers of human trafficking once a month in the province, trying to educate the public about the country’s anti-human trafficking law and the dangers of different kinds of human trafficking, but their message falls on deaf ears, she said.

“The girls and women won’t pay attention to the campaign because they need money,” the woman said. “They want to improve their living conditions, so they agree to marry Chinese men.”

‘They just disappear’

A Laotian man in Luang Prabang province who has also seen the social media ads, said parents are starting to become more careful, keeping their sons and daughters under close watch and telling them not to believe the ads.

Many more Chinese are coming to Laos now that China has reopened its borders following the dropping of COVID-related lockdowns and travel restrictions, said an official in Luang Namtha province.

“As a result, more Laotians are becoming at risk of being trafficked,” he said. “They are tempted, [and] they need money and want to go to a foreign country.”

Women who want to find jobs can seek assistance from the government-funded Lao Women’s Union, a nationwide women’s rights organization, he said.

“It’s more dangerous now, because many of them once they enter the SEZ can’t be contacted, so they just disappear,” he said about the Chinese-controlled zone. “In most cases, the men will take the women to China.”

In 2022, on the International Anti-Human Trafficking Day, July 30, about 540 Laotians including 448 women have been victimized by human trafficking since 2014.

The Lao government identified 110 trafficking victims in 2021, including 30 adult women, 62 girls, five adult men, and 13 boys, though it did not identify what types of trafficking they were subjected to, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2022 “Trafficking in Persons Report.”

“[G]iven the government’s tendency to include forced and fraudulent marriage cases with victim identification data in past years, this figure likely included forced and/or fraudulent marriage cases that featured corollary sex or labor trafficking indicators,” the report said, adding that traffickers exploited the majority of these victims abroad, mostly in China and Thailand.

In 2020, the Lao government reported 142 trafficking victims, which included 21 victims of sex trafficking, 39 victims of labor trafficking, 66 victims of fraudulent marriage, and 16 victims of other forms of exploitation, according to the report.

Translated by Max Avary for RFA Lao. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday mocked opposition parties and nongovernmental organizations for criticizing recent efforts to coax young activists to join the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh, the prime minister alleged that some recent converts to the CPP have told him that foreign donors and activists have been working to get younger Cambodians to conduct a “color revolution” – a term sometimes used to describe an anti-regime protest movement. 

He added that the young activists were being paid to go against the Cambodian government.

“I am telling those who claim to be a democracy don’t respect democracy,” he said, a likely reference to the West and its support for democratic activists. “You regard your supporters as good people, but you see those who support the government as selling out.”

Lessons from the 1970s

Hun Sen also appeared to warn the United States about the possible unintended consequences of committing a “third mistake” against Cambodia.

The prime minister didn’t mention the United States by name, but he said the first mistake came out of the 1970 military coup d’etat – sponsored by the U.S. – that removed Prince Norodom Sihanouk from power. The coup intensified civil war and paved the way for the Khmer Rouge to come to power five years later.

The second mistake was supporting the Khmer Rouge’s claim to Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations in the 1980s, he said. The Cold War-era move followed an invasion by Vietnam that drove Khmer Rouge insurgents to the Thai border, and it came at the start of a decade that saw more turmoil and slow economic development.

Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who took part in the Vietnam-led invasion, was a part of the government installed in 1979. He became prime minister in 1985.

He said Wednesday that, as a leader, he’s had to rebuild the country from scratch. 

“I advise you not to commit a third mistake,” he said. “This is what I said to those countries who claim to be the father of democracy when they met me.”

Leaders ‘must be open’ to all opinions

The prime minister’s remarks come amid a recent campaign to co-opt activists, opposition figures and journalists ahead of the July general election.

In the latest example, at least 25 former staffers of the recently shuttered media outlet Voice of Democracy have applied for government jobs, a CPP spokesman said on Tuesday.

In a democracy, someone like Hun Sen can’t avoid being criticized, said Soeung Sengkaruna, a spokesman for the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC), a local rights group. He can’t just regard any criticism as an abuse of human rights and democracy, he said.

“A leader must be open to accept all opinions. If they give constructive feedback, [the government] should accept it for reform,” he said.

In mentioning the Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen should have pointed out that China was their main supporter during the 1975-1979 Pol Pot regime and also provided support during the 1980s, said Um Sam An, a senior official in the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party who lives in the United States.

Vietnam’s recent closer relationship with the U.S. – even as bitter memories of war from the 1960s and 1970s remain – is a good example for Hun Sen of flexible thinking in international relations, Um Sam An said. 

“A leader needs to think about the national interest rather than the past,” he said.

Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Matt Reed.

Authorities in China are stepping up nationwide “stability maintenance” measures — including hauling in a prominent financier for questioning and placing restrictions on a prominent Protestant church leader — ahead of the annual session of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, Radio Free Asia has learned.

Hong Kong-listed China Renaissance Holdings said its chairman Bao Fan, who has been dubbed China’s “Mergers and Acquisitions King,” is currently facing questioning by the authorities, after he was reported incommunicado.

The private venture capital firm said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange dated Feb. 26 that Bao is “currently cooperating with an investigation by the relevant Chinese authorities,” and that company operations would proceed as normal.

Soon after Bao went incommunicado, the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s disciplinary arm issued a criticism of the concepts of a “financial elite,” and the idea that “only money matters.”

The party needed to “correct unwritten rules and unhealthy tendencies in the industry, and deepen systematic reform of financial institutions,” the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said.

Xie Tian, ​​a professor at the Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina, said Bao’s disappearance was reminiscent of that of Canadian national Xiao Jianhua, who was kidnapped from a Hong Kong hotel in 2017 before being jailed for 13 years in August 2022 by a Shanghai court, which found him guilty of billions of dollars’ worth of financial offenses.

“We know that since the Jiang Zemin era, [all the Chinese leaders have] factions, and different families control energy, telecommunications, transportation, and electricity, although this isn’t made public,” Xie said.

“I think Bao Fan is one of them. The National People’s Congress opens soon, and the case of Bao Fan has something to do with Xi Jinping’s … taking the opportunity to purge these factions … as part of a political clean-up,” he said.

Sydney University of Technology professor Feng Chongyi agreed.

“It looks as if he is now broadening the scope [of the anti-corruption campaign] and systematically cleaning up the entire financial system,” Feng said.

“Some in key positions that he does not trust and people who are not from his faction will be sidelined … with anti-corruption work the most convenient reason [this],” he said. 

Meanwhile, the rights website Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch reported on Feb. 28 that police in the southwestern province of Sichuan confined the deputy deacon of the Chengdu-based Early Rain Covenant Church in his home, along with his family.

“When we were about to go out in the morning [of Feb. 26], we opened the door to find two police officers, a man and a woman there, along with two auxiliary police officers, and staff from the residential committee and property management,” the website quoted deputy deacon Xiao Luobiao as saying.

“They told us that the Sunday meetings of the Early Rain Covenant Church are illegal, and refused to let us leave,” Xiao said, adding that the officials had snatched away his wife’s phone, prompting an angry outburst, after which police returned the phone to Xiao.

“I said I was going to get breakfast, but they wouldn’t allow this … and bought it for me instead,” he said in written comments to Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch. “We had no choice but to have our Sunday worship at home.”

U.S.-based Ren Ruiting, a former member of the Early Rain church, said the church is on the authorities’ “most sensitive” stability maintenance list.

“Now that the parliamentary sessions are coming up, they are getting flagged up on lists of people who need to be kept at home,” Ren said.

“Everyone gets harassed around the time of the [National People’s Congress],” Ren said.

In Beijing, veteran rights activist Hu Jia said he was unable to communicate with the outside world, following reports on social media that he is being held at home and prevented from being with his terminally ill father ahead of the congress, which opens in Beijing on March 5.

“I don’t know why you’re calling but I think you’re probably a friend,” Hu said when contacted by phone on Wednesday. “If you are a friend, thank you very much for calling.”

“I can’t hear anything [you are saying], and maybe you won’t even be able to get through if you call again,” he said. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t make it this way, but I have no way to be in two-way communication right now.”

Hu’s Twitter account has been moribund for the past year, while accounts on overseas-based chat apps have been deleted.

Repeated calls to the Tongzhou district police department in Beijing and to Hu’s local Zhongcang Street police station rang unanswered during office hours on Wednesday.

Hu, a veteran health rights activist and prominent critic of mass demolitions and evictions to make way for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, has been repeatedly targeted for house arrest and enforced, out-of-town “vacations” in the company of state security police in recent years, ahead of politically sensitive dates and major events.

Official party newspaper The People’s Daily reported on Feb. 27 that a special taskforce has been set up in the central province of Henan to “manage emotions and resolve conflicts” after a man killed his wife in Hua county.

“Some netizens spread false information on the Internet and deliberately exaggerated the facts,” the paper’s online edition reported. “We would like to remind netizens that the internet is not a place outside the law … and that they shouldn’t believe or spread rumors.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.