Day: March 2, 2023

More than 100 people, including teams from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, participated in the first-ever ice wall climbing competition in northern India, to demonstrate athletic skills in brutal climatic conditions in the Himalayan Mountain region and to boost high-altitude sports and tourism in the area.

The three-day event, organized by the North West Frontier Indo-Tibetan Border Police, or ITBP, in collaboration with the Ladakh Mountain Guide Association, began on Feb. 27 in Gangles in the Union Territory of Ladakh. It honors Norbu Wangdu, a high-ranking member of the border police who died during an avalanche at the frontier in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand in 2019.

The event’s objective is to encourage participation from across the region, improve skills in extreme weather conditions, nurture talent and promote sports and tourism in Ladakh, which lies in the vicinity of the Karakoram and westernmost Himalayan mountain ranges, people who attended the event told Radio Free Asia.

Ladakh in the western Himalayas is a strategically important area divided by a Line of Actual Control, a notional demarcation line that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-administered Aksai Chin, amid a long-running border area dispute between the two countries.

About two dozen soldiers were killed during a clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh in 2020. The two sides clashed again in a December 2022 skirmish in the eastern Himalayas, though no one died.

Among the 13 teams that participated in the competition, were five from the ITBT, two from the Ladakh Mountain Guide Association, two groups of schoolchildren from the city of Leh, and the Ladakh Police, according to an article by The Times of India.

Members of India’s ITBP are deployed along the Asian country’s borders with China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The unit was one of the seven Central Armed Police Forces set up in October 1962 amid the Sino-Indian War during which the two nations fought a bloody war over contested territory. The ITBP has been safeguarding the border area ever since. 

“[With] Ladakh being a strategically important region, such competition is not only beneficial in developing individual skills, but also helps to secure the border area,” said Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, an Indian politician and member of parliament from Ladakh, who attended the event.

“Such activity is beneficial to the youths of Ladakh in gaining some skills that could help in rescue operations at the border,” he added.  

The event also aims to attract more tourism during winter when the number of visitors to the region plunges due to cold weather, said S.K. Gunjal, inspector general of the ITBP in the North West Frontier–Ralong region. 

Gunjal also said he hoped the competition would yield candidates who could represent India in the Winter Olympics, which will be held next in 2026 in Milan, Italy.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Two years after national security police rounded up dozens of former opposition lawmakers and democracy activists in mass arrests for “subversion,” politicians are calling on the British government for the immediate release of one of the arrestees on humanitarian grounds, amid reports that her husband is critically ill.

The cross-party group of 54 U.K. parliamentarians and public figures called on Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to ask the Hong Kong government for the immediate release of former pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo, on compassionate grounds.

The letter notes reports that Claudia Mo’s husband, British journalist Philip Bowring, is currently in a hospital ICU with pneumonia, according to a copy posted online.

“Given that her husband and her children are U.K. citizens and Claudia previously held U.K. citizenship, we believe the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office has a special responsibility for her welfare and to champion her release,” the letter said.

A panel of three handpicked national security judges and no jury is currently in the process of trying 47 former pro-democracy lawmakers and political activists including Mo for “incitement to subvert state power” at Hong Kong’s High Court.

The prosecution has said their bid to win a majority of seats by running a primary election for pro-democracy candidates was “a conspiracy” to undermine the city’s government and take control of the Legislative Council. 

The defendants could face life imprisonment under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party from July 1, 2020.

“Given our legal and historic ties to the people of Hong Kong … more must be done by the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office to support the 47 democrats and to secure their release,” said the letter, which was signed by former colonial governor Lord Patten of Barnes, former foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind and the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Alicia Kearns, among others.

Benedict Rogers, who heads the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch, said the British government should listen.

“On the two-year anniversary of the arrests of the 47 democrats and their ongoing trial, we hope that the Foreign Secretary will listen to this eminent, cross-party, and bicameral group of parliamentarians and push for the release of Claudia Mo on compassionate grounds so she can visit her husband who is in the ICU,” Rogers said in a statement on the group’s website.

“Furthermore, the FCDO must do more to take responsibility for those political prisoners in Hong Kong with direct links to the U.K., whether that is through family members, previously held citizenship, or British National Overseas status,” he said.

The Department of Justice and Correctional Services Department declined to comment on individual cases, but added that prison rules allow people in custody to apply for a leave of absence to see dying family members, the English-language South China Morning Post reported.

“The commissioner would consider factors such as the term of sentence, nature of the person’s offenses, criminal background and risk of escape when granting approval,” the paper said.

Chakra Yip, who heads the London-based rights lawyers’ advocacy group “29 Principles,” said she worries that the Hong Kong authorities won’t honor such requests in the case of political prisoners, however.

“If the family members of human rights lawyers jailed in China die or become critically ill, Chinese officials still have no effective way to grant them leave of absence for a temporary visit,” Yip said. “There has been no improvement in this situation in 10 years.”

“It’s concerning that Hong Kong may be handling requests for leave of absence from [political] detainees in the same way as [mainland] China,” she said.

She cited the cases of Chinese rights lawyers Yu Wensheng and activist Guo Feixiong, both of whom have recently been prevented from leaving China to take care of dying next-of-kin.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

After a five-year wait, Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha is expected to learn his legal fate on Friday when the Phnom Penh Municipal Court announces its verdict in his treason case.

The unsubstantiated charges against Kem Sokha followed his arrest in September 2017 when more than 100 armed police officers stormed his home in Phnom Penh. Several months earlier, his Cambodia National Rescue Party – the main opposition party at the time – had made significant gains in local commune elections.

The treason charges against him have always been denied by Kem Sokha and have been derided by the international community.

“It’s ridiculous that Kem Sokha has lost five years of his freedom and that Cambodian voters have not been able to consider him for elections,” said Brad Adams, former Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch. “All because of a faked case. They found an old video of him calling for democracy in Cambodia and decided to make that a crime.”

Kem Sokha, 69, was put on trial beginning in January 2020 but the hearings were suspended two months later on the pretext of the coronavirus pandemic. The trial resumed last year. He faces up to 30 years in prison.

Meng Sopheary, Kem Sokha’s lawyer, said her client will attend Friday’s court hearing. 

“We cannot say whether the court judgment will turn out to be positive or negative,” she said. “But we have raised a lot of legal arguments that have shown the prosecution does not have enough evidence to convict my client.”  

Prison, then house arrest

The evidence presented included a video recorded in 2013 in which he discusses a strategy to win power with the help of U.S. experts. The United States Embassy has rejected any suggestion that Washington is interfering in Cambodian politics.

After his 2017 arrest, Kem Sokha was sent to Trapeang Phlong Prison in Tbong Khmum province, near the border with Vietnam. He was transferred to his house arrest in Phnom Penh in October 2018. More than a year later, the court eased some of the restrictions against him by allowing to travel inside the country but still banned from participating in politics. 

Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved and outlawed the CNRP following Kem Sokha’s arrest. That paved the way for Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party to take every seat in the National Assembly in the 2018 general election. 

The ban on the CNRP also kicked off a five-year crackdown on political opposition, with many of those affiliated with the party arrested and detained on charges like conspiracy, incitement and treason.

‘A complex knot’

The case is obviously politically influenced and shows just how much Hun Sen has interfered with Cambodia’s judiciary, political activist Lao Mong Hay said. 

“The due process was breached. The court kept delaying his trial week by week. The procedure of arrest, imprisonment and bail and house arrest were all wrong,” he said. “The prime minister said that Sokha’s case will be tried by 2023 or 2024. This clearly shows that politicians interfered in the affairs of the court. ” 

Another irregularity was the fact that the court never summoned any foreigners to testify, even though Kem Sokha is accused of conspiring with a foreign government, Lao Mong Hay said.

Hun Sen does indeed control the courts, and the prime minister would be making a mistake by allowing Kem Sokha to be found guilty of treason, exiled political analyst Kim Sok said. This is a time for resolving problems, not making them worse, he said. 

“The fact that he accused Kem Sokha of colluding with the U.S. and other foreigners is already a complex knot. If he doesn’t take this opportunity to untie the knot, the problem will be greater,” he said. “The ongoing issue will spill over to Hun Manet’s burden in the future.”  

Hun Sen has said he expects to remain in power until 2028, when he plans for his son, Hun Manet, to take over.

It is more likely that Kem Sokha will be found guilty, political analyst Em Sovannara said. That would ensure that the CPP dominates the July general elections. 

“The appeal process would take time, at least until the 2023 election is over. That means Kem Sokha would not be able to join the election,” he said. “Then the new National Assembly will be without CNRP or Kem Sokha.”

Written and translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

It isn’t exactly a plot from a spy novel, but the absurdities of circumstance read more like fiction than real life.

Mark Gibbel, a retired NASA engineer, said he was visiting his fiance in Cambodia when a government-aligned news outlet, citing unnamed police sources, claimed that he was secretly a Central Intelligence Agency spy sent to carry out ‘political subversion’.

The allegation made in Fresh News would be “funny if it wasn’t so serious,” Gibbel, 68, told RFA.

The Cambodian outlet reported on Wednesday that Gibbel was allegedly working with Meach Sovannara, former spokesman for the Cambodian National Rescue Party, the country’s largest opposition party until it was dissolved in a widely criticized court decision in 2017.

It later cited an unnamed senior police officer saying an investigation had been opened into Gibbel’s alleged political activities in Cambodia with Meach.

“After information was leaked, Mark Gibbel, a CIA agent, left Cambodia last night,” the police official is quoted as saying.

Police were investigating why the “CIA agents” were in Phnom Penh in order to prevent any societal unrest ahead of a closely watched verdict expected this Friday on the treason trial of former CNRP leader Kem Sokha, Fresh News said.

Gibbel said he had gone to Cambodia not to stir up trouble, but to visit a woman he hopes to make his wife.

“I was trying to figure out how my future life should go, should I live with my girl in Cambodia or live with her in the U.S.?” Gibbel said, adding: “I think this silly accusation [has] maybe forced our hand, [I have] no choice but to try to get her safely to America.”

He has a professional association with Meach in the U.S., where the two run a nonprofit organization, the Policy Research Institute in California, that provides educational materials for youths in South East Asia. Gibbel insisted that the charity is apolitical.

Kicked out

Gibbel said he first suspected something strange was happening when police turned up at his guesthouse in Phnom Penh on Wednesday morning, insisting he thumbprint a three-page handwritten incident report in Khmer.

The document does not accuse him of spying. It instead says that he purchased flower seeds to grow in the U.S and met with Meach. Assured by his fiancé’s brother that the document contained nothing untoward, Gibbel complied with the officers’ directive.

But his landlady – unimpressed at having her business overrun with policemen – threw Gibbel out, which he took as his cue to leave Cambodia. It was not until he arrived in Thailand on Wednesday evening that he learned he had been accused of being a spy. Since he left Cambodia, his fiancé and her family have been under police surveillance, he said.

The accusation has come as a shock, not least because he is not opposed to the Cambodian government, Gibbel said.

“In the USA I have many friends that are members of the CPP,” he said.

He had even been thinking of trying to meet Hun Manet, eldest son to Prime Minister Hun Sen and his anointed successor.

“I have many friends that speak highly of him,” Gibbel said.

Gibbel’s alleged co-conspirator, Meach, has also denied the Fresh News accusations of espionage, calling the report “unacceptable.”

Meach had previously served a prison sentence of 20 years on insurrection charges, though he was released and pardoned in 2018 following the Cambodian elections. He told RFA he had not been contacted by police regarding the latest allegations.

The privately-owned Fresh News is known for fierce editorial loyalty to Prime Minister Hun Sen and has used its pages to warn against perceived criticism of his government.

On Thursday, it claimed that RFA and another non-state news outlet, Cambodia Daily, were inciting youths against the government with their independent reporting.

North Korean orphanages are growing as starving parents drop off their children in the middle of the night in hopes that the kids, at least, will be able to eat, sources in the country told Radio Free Asia.

The acts of desperation are founded in part by the belief that orphanages receive supplies of food and medicine donated by the international community, despite Pyongyang’s restrictive COVID policies.

“On the morning of [Feb. 27], an employee of the orphanage in Pukchang county found a 2-year-old girl lying at the front door of the orphanage,” a resident of the county in South Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service.

“Women who are starving to death are secretly leaving their children … at night or in the early morning, and then they disappear with no trace,” said the source. “[They know] that the international community has been sending things like food, oil, and clothing to the orphanages over the years, so the kids will at least not starve.”

North Korea has suffered from chronic food shortages since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The food situation was made worse by the coronavirus pandemic, when North Korea and China closed their border and suspended all trade. 

Although rail freight has resumed, the food shortages are still worse than they were pre-pandemic.

Dwindling foreign aid

Foreign aid has declined. North Korea received about U.S.$40 million per year in aid between 2016 and 2020 according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Financial Tracking Service. 

But COVID-19 policies that rejected outside help meant that aid decreased sharply to $14 million in 2021 and further decreased to a mere $2.3 million in 2022.

While it is not known how much of the aid was going to orphanages each year, it is reasonable to assume that they are receiving less than they were pre-pandemic.

Pukchang county, which has a population of about 140,000 people has thus seen the small orphanage’s numbers swell to about 110 children, according to the source. 

Two orphanages in the same province, in the city of Sunchon, have seen babies appear on their doorsteps almost every week, a source there told RFA.

“In the Ryonpo neighborhood where I live, they turned a company’s recreation center into an orphanage back in 2012,” the second source said. “A few days ago, there was a 3-year-old boy found crying on their doorstep.”

The source said that a ban on local travel due to COVID-19 restrictions still in place has limited many people’s ability to earn money. 

Most families in North Korea must run side businesses because salaries for government-assigned jobs are not enough to live on. A large portion of side businesses involve buying imported goods in one location, then selling them at a higher price in another.

‘Taking photos of babies’ faces’

The resulting lack of income has meant that many have had to decrease their food intake, including families with children. 

“As more and more residents abandon their young children at the orphanage, the city authorities are taking pictures of the babies’ faces and handing them over to the local safety departments to find the parents and send the babies back to their families,” the second source said.

Residents are however critical of the authorities, saying that they are not doing enough to solve the problem of people’s livelihoods to the point that people are willing to abandon their children.

Data on the number of orphaned children in North Korea is unclear, but the South Korea-based North Korean Refugees Human Rights Association estimated in 2020 that as many as 40,000 North Korean orphans had escaped the country and were living in China.

For those still in North Korea, life as an orphan is often spent performing forced labor for the state. RFA reported in November that many orphans were among a workforce of young people who state media said had “volunteered” to work in coal mines and rural farms.

The U.S. State Department accused North Korea of “the worst forms of child labor” in its report on human rights practices in the country for 2020.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Foreign journalists working in China continue to face government interference when trying to do their jobs, amid “battered morale” linked to repeated journalist expulsions and visa woes, according to a new report.

An annual survey of journalists’ working conditions from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China found it had been “yet another tough and draining year” for members in 2022, with scant hope of any improvement despite the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in December.

“China continues to be one of the most important stories of our time, yet since the start of the global pandemic in 2020, press freedoms across the country have declined at an accelerated pace, and it remains to be seen if they will recover,” it said.

“Foreign correspondents on the ground traveled less and were able to cover far less in depth in 2022, largely because of [COVID] restrictions,” it said.

The survey included journalists working for news organizations from 30 different countries and regions, although one in 10 were based outside of China at the time of the survey due to problems with accreditation, the club said.

It said Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID restrictions, which lasted through most of 2022, had “strangled” coverage plans, at a time when foreign journalists in China were “already battered in morale and greatly diminished in numbers” due to expulsions of colleagues and problems getting their professional accreditation, which relies on the journalists’ J-visa, renewed.

During the year, 46% of respondents to the club’s annual survey reported having been told to leave a place or denied access for “health and safety reasons” when they presented no health risk by China’s own standards. A similar proportion, or 47%, reported that they had faced barriers to their reporting due to the COVID-19 surveillance and tracker app mandated by the ruling Communist Party until December.

Sources harassed, police obstructing

Journalists working in China also face concerns over the impact their reporting will have on their sources, with 38% of respondents saying that at least one of their sources had been harassed, detained, called in for questioning by the authorities or otherwise suffered negative consequences for interacting with foreign journalists, up from only a quarter last year.

Chinese nationals working for foreign media organizations were also frequently targeted by the authorities, with 45% of respondents saying their Chinese colleagues had been harassed or intimated, compared with 40% in the previous year.

Chinese police continued to play a key role in preventing overseas journalists from doing their jobs, with 56% of respondents saying they had been “obstructed at least once” by police or other officials during 2022, while 31% said they had canceled trips to other parts of China due to pressure from officials.

More than half of foreign news organizations are still waiting for their visas to be renewed, while officials told applicants that the delays had been caused by “geopolitical tensions.”

“In at least one instance, an American reporter with a valid visa and press card had their residence permit revoked and was barred from re-entering China after they left the country for a routine trip,” the club said in a statement on its website. “They were eventually forced to relocate elsewhere after months of failed negotiations.”

Getting into trouble

A journalist for a foreign outlet based in Beijing said they often dropped interview plans due to concerns about getting interviewees into trouble with the authorities.

It’s a story that is corroborated by people who have gotten into trouble for talking to the foreign media.

“I have just gotten a request for an interview from a foreign media organization,” a rights lawyer who declined to be named for fear of reprisals told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday, adding that he had turned the request down due to fears for his personal safety.

An activist living in a major city in the center-west of China said she had been repeatedly warned off talking to foreign media by police after taking part in recent protests against cuts to medical insurance payouts.

“The police station has told me they don’t want me giving foreign media interviews,” the activist said, declining to be named for fear of further reprisals.

“I got a call from one foreign media outlet today, and I told them it was inconvenient,” she said, in a reference to a euphemism often used by activists to indicate they are under surveillance or political pressure.

“I am under total surveillance, including the monitoring of all phone calls and internet activity,” she said.

‘Followed us the whole time’

The Beijing-based based foreign journalist said she is followed wherever she goes in China, and has been shadowed by unidentified personnel taking video footage and photos in a number of locations.

“I don’t know who they were, but they followed us the whole time, taking photos and video of us, in Wuhan, Xiamen, and other places,” she said, adding that she doesn’t cover particularly sensitive news.

In early December, she traveled to Wuhan to interview people coming out of three years of rolling lockdowns, mass quarantine and compulsory daily testing under the zero-COVID policy.

“We only went to the seafood market, Wuhan University and various other places to shoot video, but they followed us the entire time,” she said.

While she has yet to suffer violence at the hands of police or security personnel, she said she knows of other journalists who have.

Journalist handcuffed, beaten and kicked

In November 2022, the International Federation of Journalists said Ed Lawrence of the BBC and Michael Peuker of Radio Télévision Suisse were detained while covering anti-lockdown protests in Shanghai, with Lawrence allegedly assaulted in the process.

“BBC correspondent Ed Lawrence was reporting on anti-lockdown protests in Shanghai when he was arrested, handcuffed and assaulted by Chinese police,” the group said in a Nov. 28 statement.

One online video clip shows Lawrence being handcuffed by at least five police officers and forcefully escorted down a street by an unmasked policeman as he calls for his associate to contact the British Consulate, the group said.

Lawrence was released after several hours. But the BBC has raised concerns over the attack and arrest of an accredited journalist. It said Lawrence was beaten and kicked by police.

China ranked 175th out of 180 countries and regions in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index published by the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.