Day: March 8, 2023

Cambodia and Laos declared Wednesday’s International Women’s Day a holiday as leaders sought to highlight improvements in the status of women, but activists across Southeast Asia said much progress was still needed in protecting women, who regularly face discrimination and threats of violence.

Although the Ministry of Women’s Affairs encourages female victims to seek help from local authorities, “those requests are often ignored,” said Chak Sopheap, director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. 

She raised examples of women activists who have faced violence from security personnel while fighting to uphold their rights, including workers striking to demand better wages and working conditions at the NagaWorld Resort and Casino in the capital. Authorities have violently clashed with the mostly female workers on multiple occasions, leaving several injured.

The government must free women it has detained for promoting their rights, including Cambodian-American lawyer Theary Seng, Nagaworld union leader Chhim Sithar and CNRP activists York Neang, Lanh Thavry, Mom Sambo, Kim Tola and Pen Mom, said Mu Sochua, a deputy vice president of the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party.

More female journalists in prison

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued a statement Wednesday calling for the immediate and unconditional release of imprisoned women journalists throughout the world, singling out two reporters from Vietnam and Myanmar.

The group highlighted the case of Pham Doan Trang, who it awarded its Press Freedom Prize for Impact in 2019, noting that the activist and journalist had been moved to a prison 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of Hanoi “in an attempt to suppress any reporting about her state of health, which is critical.”

Trang was arrested on the charge of “propagandizing against the State” in October 2020 and sentenced to nine years in prison in December 2021. She had been accused of speaking with foreign media, including Radio Free Asia and the BBC, allegedly to defame the government with “fake news.”

Reporters Without Borders also highlighted the case of Myanmar freelancer Htet Htet Khine, who has been held in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison since August 2021. 

She was sentenced twice to three years of imprisonment with hard labor on charges of “inciting hatred and violence against the armed forces” for reporting the violence they used after taking power in a February 2021 coup.

Vietnam ranked 174th out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index and is the world’s fourth largest prison for journalists after China, Iran and Belarus.

According to the group, of the 550 journalists and media workers who are currently imprisoned worldwide, 73 – more than 13% – are women, a proportion that has doubled in the past five years.

‘Human trafficking must stop’

In Laos, an official who works on women’s issues told RFA that women’s rights are “a priority” for the government.

“Human trafficking and violence against women must stop, and those who commit these acts must go to jail,” the official said, asking not to be named. “The laws that protect women should be strongly enforced.”

But while the roles and rights of women in Laos have become better respected and protected in recent years, many Lao women – especially those in the country’s remote areas – are poor, uneducated, and easily victimized by human traffickers for the sex trade and forced labor in countries like Thailand and China.

And while the United Nations Development Program has commended Laos for having one of the world’s highest proportions of women in parliament, it noted that very few women hold power in other government institutions.

The UNDP also notes “large inequalities in some regions, with women systematically denied the same work rights as men.”

It cited sexual violence and exploitation, unequal division of unpaid care and domestic work, and discrimination in public office as huge barriers.

Red paint

Also on Wednesday, about 20 youth activists gathered in front of the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh calling on the Thai government to drop charges against Thai Tantawan “Tawan” Tuatulanon, Orawan “Bam” Phupong, and other Cambodian women rights defenders.

The activists held a mediation session and doused their bodies with red paint to draw attention to their cause.

“To honor women’s day, the government needs to encourage the women who are environmental activists, politicians or union leaders,” said Kim Chhilinshe. “They are being detained for crimes that they didn’t commit.”

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government marked International Women’s Day with a bleak statistic: It said 483 women across the country have been killed by the junta in the 25 months since the military seized power from the democratically elected government.

The joint statement by the National Unity Government’s Ministry of Women, Youth and Children’s Affairs and the National Unity Consultative Council’s Coordinating Committee on Gender Policy said the junta had also detained 3,125 women, 11 of whom received the death sentence and 15 life imprisonment.

Helping, not hurting

In Cambodia, a number of women activists and politicians have been arrested due to their activism, said Am Sam Ath of rights group Licadho. He said they should have been encouraged to work to promote human rights and serve society instead of being arrested.

“I want to see women [activists and politicians] who are being detained get their sentences reduced and pardoned so they can return to their families and to help develop the country,” he said.

Lim Mony, a senior staffer with the rights group Adhoc who is working to promote the rights of women, said the government should encourage women to work freely. She also called for an end to political discrimination against women.

“We have to understand that they are helping society rather than working against the government,” she told RFA. “They are working for the sake of the national interest.”

Attempts by RFA to reach government spokesman Phay Siphan about the NGOs’ concerns went unanswered Wednesday.

Translated by Samean Yun and Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Stymied by strict censorship and the fear of political persecution at home, Chinese women are finding allies in the international feminist movement, as well as standing with Uyghur women activists overseas.

Xiao A, a Chinese millennial currently studying in Munich, said she has recently been involved in activism alongside women from Germany, Iran, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Somalia and Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic group targeted by the Chinese Communist Party for mass incarceration, surveillance, forced labor, forced marriage and religious persecution.

“As a Chinese woman living overseas, I feel I need to let the rest of the world see Chinese and East Asian women [clearly], by breaking stereotypes of silence or resignation [around women from those cultures],” Xiao A told Radio Free Asia in an interview for International Women’s Day.

“[We want to] change explicit and implicit discrimination that we face in academia, in the workplace, and in life generally,” she said, adding that she has been particularly inspired by recent waves of protests in Iran by women and girls protesting mandatory veiling and other forms of discrimination against them under an authoritarian regime.

“When our sisters from all over the world are standing strong, and people all around the world are applauding the courage of Iranian women [in protesting the veil], neither I nor the tens of millions of other Chinese women should stay silent, pretend not to see, or wait for someone else to step up,” Xiao A said.

Getting ready for this year’s International Women’s Day events, Xiao A feels that she is truly experiencing the meaning of the day for the first time, compared with the anodyne and sentimental rhetoric that official media and propaganda channels typically put out every March 8.

Situation inside China

Since the detention of five feminists – Wu Rongrong, Li Tingting, Wei Tingting, Wang Man and Zheng Churan – as they planned a public campaign against sexual harassment on public transport ahead of March 8, 2015, activists say the situation for women’s rights activism inside China has continued to deteriorate under ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

While feminism is seemingly discussed everywhere on social media, systemic misogyny persists in China, according to a March 2021 essay by feminist writer Mimi Yana, who blamed “the continued presence of misogyny and social stigma, intensified authoritarian controls over every aspect of our lives, as well as government censorship that silences the most active and outspoken.” 

“These things set hard limits on how creative and critical the feminist movement can be, and divide the women’s rights community,” she wrote on RFA’s affiliated site, WhyNot.

For Xiao A, watching the “white paper” anti-lockdown protests that were sparked last November by an outpouring of support for the victims of a fatal lockdown apartment fire in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi, was a difficult experience.

“I felt very sad and powerless,” she said. “So I hope to do something [for this year’s International Women’s Festival], and if my compatriots overseas see it, maybe that’ll make me feel less lonely. If my sisters in China see it, that would be better still.”

Prisoners of conscience

On the eve of International Women’s Day, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation projected images of Hong Kong’s female political prisoners onto the exterior walls of a skyscraper in New York, listing the days they have lost their freedom. 

One of the prisoners is journalist, Ho Ching-lin, who has been imprisoned for more than 700 days on charges of conspiring to subvert state power. Others are former legislative council member, Claudia Mo; former vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, Chow Hang-tung; and former members of the student organization Scholarism, Yanni Ho and Agnes Chow, who have been imprisoned for more than 500 days on other charges under the Hong Kong national security law. 

Additionally, on Wednesday, 25 human rights groups, including Human Rights in China and PEN America, jointly called on the Chinese government to release Cao Zhixin, Li Siqi, Li Yuanjing and Zhai Dengrui – the latest group of Chinese female conscience prisoners arrested for participating in the white paper movement protest. 

Hong Kong has the highest ratio of female prisoners in the world, including a large number of female political prisoners, the youngest of whom is only 14-years-old, according to Huiying Ng, policy and advocacy director of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. 

“This white paper movement is very different from previous protests. In addition to being a protest mainly of young people, the participation of women is very admirable,” said Zhou Fengsuo, the head of Humanitarian China. “The courage and love they have shown are what people should have in a normal society.”

The writings of Lu Xun

Generation Z student Li Xinyu has been taking part in a forum in New York on Chinese feminism with a few other women, titled “After Nora Walks Out,” a reference to a famous 1923 essay by late Chinese literary giant Lu Xun.

“In his famous feminist speech … influential Chinese writer Lu Xun raises his concerns about the future and the impasses of women who have awakened with a gender consciousness in a society that is not ready for their emancipation,” the forum description reads.

“After almost one hundred years, the theme of his speech seems still relevant to the gender issues and feminism in China today,” it says, citing ongoing “systematic discrimination against women in households and workplaces” across the country.

“I’ve been interacting a lot more with international students here [in New York] since I went to some gatherings linked to the white paper movement last year,” Li said. “I’ve begun to pay more attention to activism focusing on human rights and women’s rights in China.”

“The white paper movement served as a late awakening for me, and I realized the kind of role I could play as a Chinese student overseas,” she said.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party is keen to point to its support for gender equality, on paper at least, including the incorporation of women’s rights into the country’s constitution in 1954. Late supreme leader Mao Zedong’s slogan, “women hold up half the sky,” still makes an obligatory appearance every year on International Women’s Day.

Yet the country ranked 102nd out of 146 countries and territories in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report for 2022, a significant fall from its 63rd place in 2006, while the most recent political leadership lineup under Xi Jinping at the 20th party congress in October 2022 revealed no women at all in the 25-member Politburo, breaking with a two-decades-old tradition that at least one woman would sit on the high-ranking body.

Women under dictatorships

For Germany-based millennial student Deng Lüxing, that’s just not good enough.

“This is why we have to stand up,” said Deng, who will be marching in a demonstration for equal rights on March 8, and who says she too was deeply inspired by the white paper movement and the protesters who have been subsequently detained or silenced, the majority of them young women.

“It’s not just about the women protesters who were suppressed after the white paper revolution,” Deng said. “It’s also about the chained woman in Jiangsu, the Tangshan attacks, the family planning policies and divorce cooling-off period under the Chinese Communist Party.”

“We need to keep a close eye on women living under dictatorships; repression is an important topic,” she said.

Growing social awareness and feminist consciousness among younger Han Chinese women, largely as a result of the white paper movement, is having a spillover effect for Uyghurs, too, according to Ipar Can, a 20-year-old Uyghur student studying in Germany.

“They would come to me and ask how they could help out, and what initiatives I was working on,” she said. “I felt so grateful.”

“I love interacting with them and doing activism with them,” she said. “The more people can stand together, the better.”

For her, though, it’s not all about March 8.

“It’s important to have our voices heard, no matter what day it is, but International Women’s Day is a great opportunity to spread awareness,” she said. “I want people to know about the persecution Uyghur women are suffering locally: forced birth control, sexual violence, and all of that,” Ipar Can said.

For Xiao A, there is plenty of common ground with women from other backgrounds.

“I think what we have in common is that we love life, and are unwilling to resign ourselves to our fates,” she said. 

Translated by Luisetta Mudie and Victor Sun. Edited by Matt Reed.

Names have been changed throughout to protect the identities of interviewees.

The World Uyghur Congress has been nominated by parliamentarians from Canada and Norway for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to human rights and shedding light on Chinese repression of the Uyghur people in the far western region of Xinjiang.

It’s the first time the Germany-based group has been nominated for the prestigious prize. 

China has faced intensifying international criticism for treatment of the 11 million predominantly Muslim Uyghur people, whose culture, language, religion, dress and food is distinct from those of the Han Chinese majority.

The United Nations’ human rights office issued a damning report in August that highlighted widespread arbitrary detentions and other actions by China that it said may constitute crimes against humanity.

China has also taken steps to try to eradicate Uyghur culture and assimilate Uyghurs into China.

The United States, the European Parliament and the legislatures of several other Western countries have declared that the abuses, including the arbitrary detention of an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

‘Crucial contribution’

The World Uyghur Congress has “made a crucial contribution in drawing international attention to the overwhelming campaign of physical, religious, linguistic, and cultural repression currently being waged by the Chinese Communist Party against the Uyghur and other Turkic people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, a campaign that many parliamentarians define as genocide,” wrote Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, a Canadian member of parliament, in the nomination letter.

Brunelle-Duceppe joined fellow Canadian parliamentarian Sameer Zuberi, who is chair of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, and Ane Breivik, leader of the Liberal Party of Norway, in nominating WUC.

WUC President Dolkun Isa said it was a great honor for his organization to be nominated.

“This is despite China’s incessant demonization to conflate our peaceful international advocacy for Uyghur rights with terrorism and separatism,” he told Radio Free Asia. “Through decades-long global efforts to demonize the WUC, China has attempted to put roadblocks to our advocacy work, silence our voice in the world, thus continuing its ongoing crimes against the Uyghur people unabated.”

Isa said the nomination shows that China’s attempts to suppress Uyghur advocacy by defamation, diplomatic attacks and political manipulation has failed. 

“This also shows that the international community led by the Western democracies is convinced by our advocacy work,” he said. “The fact is no matter how strong China might be, justice and truth shall eventually prevail.”

More than a dozen individuals and about 10 other organizations have already been nominated for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize.

The winner of the international peace prize will be announced in October 2023 by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo and awarded on Dec. 10.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.  

In honor of International Women’s Day, North Korean women have been urged to bear more children who will grow up to serve in the nearly 1-million strong Korean People’s Army – praised as an act of the “greatest patriotism,” sources in the country told Radio Free Asia.

The message has come in a series of ideological lectures for housewives, a resident in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong said on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“Last week, a lecture was held on active support for the People’s Army, saying that having many children and sending them to the People’s Army is the greatest patriotism,” the source said.

A second source, based in the northern province of Ryanggang, said the lectures held up legendarily fertile women as the greatest example of patriots.

“They introduced some patriots who sent seven or eight of their kids to the military as an example,” the Ryanggang resident said. “The lecturer emphasized the need to have a patriotic spirit that puts the needs of the country ahead of the family, like these women have.”

But the lectures may really have been aimed at collecting donations from housewives to support the military, the Ryanggang source said.

“In our current difficult living situation, how many citizens can provide material support?”

Manpower – and womanpower

The North Korean military makes up for its lack of advanced technology through sheer numbers.

Compared to the more prosperous and democratic South’s 555,000 military personnel who are equipped with modern weaponry, North Korea has 1.15 million personnel in all its military branches, and many are using equipment that sometimes dates back to the Soviet era.

To maintain such large numbers, every able-bodied North Korean man must serve seven or eight years in the military, and women are strongly encouraged to join for up to five years. The number of enlisted women has been increasing recently due to a shortage of enlisted men in recent years. 

The recent lectures also dedicated a lot of time to  highlighting historical women who worked to support soldiers in wartime, the North Hamgyong source said. 

“The lecture said that all women should learn from the patriotic spirit of the Namgang village women who supported the front lines in the 1950s,” said the second source.

During the 1950-1953 Korean War, women from the small village in the eastern province of Kangwon are said to have shuttled ammunition and food to North Korean soldiers fighting nearby. Their exploits were lionized in film to the point that they are now held up as one of the chief examples of female patriotism.

Rewarded with trip to Pyongyang

These days, North Korea’s most patriotic women – presumably those who have sent many children to the military – are honored with a trip to Pyongyang, according to the North Hamgyong source. The lecture explained that the country’s leader Kim Jong Un publicly promised he would personally invite active supporters to be special representatives to important military celebrations. 

These included the 75th Army Foundation Day events that were held in mid-February, and in July, the anniversary of the 1953 armistice that ended hostilities in the Korean War, which the North calls the “Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War.” 

The lecture recapped how Kim welcomed the patriots in February, the source said.

“Kim Jong Un met with them and took commemorative photos,” the source said. “He also had them visit various places in Pyongyang, and benevolently gave them the opportunity to rest at the Yangdok Hot Spring Resort.”

Additionally, the lectures said that each city, county and province is supposed to register people as “military support enthusiasts.”

In some cases, the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party will choose outstanding contributors as enthusiasts, the source said, adding that the objective is to create a social atmosphere that is conducive to military support.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

The U.N.’s new human right chief said his agency has documented China’s arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and the separation of children from their families in comments during a global update on human rights on Wednesday in Geneva.

Volker Türk, who took over last September, said his office has opened up channels of communication with various actors to follow up on human rights issues in China, including the protection of minorities such as Uyghurs, Tibetans and other groups.

“In the Xinjiang region, my office has documented grave concerns, notably large-scale arbitrary detentions and ongoing family separations and has made important recommendations that require concrete follow-up,” he said.

Türk also said his office has concerns about severe restrictions of civic space, including the arbitrary detention of human rights defenders and lawyers and the impact of the National Security Law in Hong Kong.

The United Nations and Western governments have remained steadfast in their condemnation of China over its harsh policies affecting Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hongkongers, though Beijing has angrily denied accusations of abuses and continued maintaining an iron grip on them.

Türk’s comments come nearly three weeks after U.N. Commission on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or CESCR, grilled 40 Chinese delegates about the human rights situations in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, the far-western autonomous region in China where more than 11 million of the predominantly Muslim Uyghur people live.

When asked for explanations about reports of the destruction of Uyghur cultural and religious sites and the mass incarceration of Uyghurs in “re-education” camps, the Chinese delegates responded with denials and assurances that rights were protected.

The responses were counter to evidence submitted to the committee by numerous human rights groups as well as facts uncovered by an exhaustive report issued last August by former U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet that found that China’s detention of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

Adds support for criticism of China

Hanno Schadler, director for genocide issues at the Society for Threatened Peoples based in Germany, said he hopes that European governments will use the report such to repeat criticism of China.

“When the U.N. experts or the high commissioner says something about the situation of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians or Kazakhs, it gives states some cover to use that criticism … to try to deflect themselves from criticism by the Chinese government that it’s all part of a Western plot or something,” he told Radio Free Asia.

Sarah Brooks, program director of the Geneva-based International Service for Human Rights, said she wasn’t surprised by China’s reaction to the CESCR’s concerns.

“Of course, we expected China to, as it has for the last five years, dismiss concerns about possible crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other minority groups, and instead tout ethnic unity,” she told Radio Free Asia. “But now we also clearly see that lofty language about multilateralism and cooperation with the U.N. is mere rhetoric, and that China is threatened by U.N. experts, on the ESC rights committee or elsewhere, doing the work they were mandated to do.”

The American government and several Western parliaments have declared that the Chinese government’s actions against Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

During an address to the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council on March 2, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, cited the report by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, or OHCHR, during a meeting on human rights crises around the world.

 “We remain gravely concerned about the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity that China is committing against Muslim Uyghurs and other members of minority groups in Xinjiang,” he said. 

The OHCHR report on Xinjiang “affirmed serious abuses perpetrated by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] in Xinjiang, including the large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities, and credible allegations of torture and sexual and gender-based violence,” Blinken said.

Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

International Women’s Day on 8 March celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call for action for accelerating women’s empowerment and gender equality. Why does commemorating the International Women’s Day in Myanmar matter?   

I started writing this op-ed wanting to explain to the unborn generation of children why gender equality and the empowerment of women matters in Myanmar today. It is the ingrained hope of a mother wanting to pass on a better future to her child. It is also my call for action to all involved to further advance on gender equality and the empowerment of women as we are facing an erosion of many hard-earned gains in terms of gender equality.        

Myanmar’s women and girls have been hit disproportionately hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Feb. 1, 2021 coup and the pursuant security, humanitarian, and socio-economic crisis. The economic downturn has led to an increasing pay gap between women and men, and women-led businesses, which are often small and micro-enterprises or in the informal sector, have struggled more to make a recovery. 

Access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services has been severely diminished. While reliable figures are not available, all indicators point to an increase in various forms of sexual and gender-based violence across Myanmar, while access to response services and to justice for survivors is often minimal to non-existent. 

Why does gender equality matter, will you ask? “If society is like a bird with two wings, if one is broken the bird will not be able to fly” will I answer. If women, who make 52 per cent of the population are not equally represented in decision making bodies, lack equal access to basic rights, equal employment and income opportunities, and continue to face the threat of violence in their day-to-day lives, they will not be able to fully claim and exert their rights, then society will never be able to fully thrive and to use its full socio-economic potential towards a sustainable and prosperous future. 

Women in Myanmar have shown tremendous resilience but continue to face unequal access to productive resources, reproductive rights and suffer violence and abuse.

The multiple crises have seen an extraordinary amount of women’s engagement socially and economically, with women playing central and life-saving roles in local and community-level pandemic and humanitarian responses, often in extreme circumstances. Previously marginalized women have begun playing increasingly visible leadership roles, and the unity within the women’s movement is at an all-time high. 

Threats of violence

However, all of this has come at a high cost, with individual women leaders and women’s organisations finding themselves under-resourced, often at a risk of depletion and over-burdening, and facing increasing threats and violence both online and in real life for their outspoken and brave leadership. 

The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan reports that women have been hit disproportionately by conflict, the political and economic crisis, and their subsequent economic impacts due to social norms around work, disempowerment in the workplace and their traditional role in their households and communities. Of the 4.5 million people prioritized for life-saving humanitarian support this year, 52 percent are women. 

Despite the extremely challenging circumstances, the United Nations in Myanmar together with its local partners will reach 2.3 million women and girls in humanitarian assistance covering prevention and response to gender-based violence, HIV/AIDS prevention, cash transfer and food distribution in 2023.

Undoubtedly, the multiple crises have led to an across-the-board erosion of many hard-earned gains of the past decades in terms of gender equality and women’s empowerment as the ratification of the United Nation Convention on Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) or the National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women.  But as dire as the situation is in Myanmar, the continued prominence of women in all aspects of social, political, and economic life give reason for hope as well. 

To halt the regression of gender equality and women’s empowerment, Myanmar women and women’s rights organizations need the urgent support of the international community, including from UN agencies, to listen to their appeals and to continue advocating on their behalf. This includes adaptive and flexible support to women’s organisations providing aid to populations in need in remote areas relying on their knowledge and networks to be able to localise and deliver aid efficiently and effectively. 

A bird with two equally strong and intact wings will fly high and far towards a prosperous and sustainable future. On March 8 and beyond I, on behalf of UN Women, commit to stand for gender equality in Myanmar, today and always.

Karin Fueg is the acting interim UN Women representative in Myanmar.