Day: March 9, 2023

Police in Tibet’s capital Lhasa have ramped up security measures ahead of Friday’s anniversary of a 1959 uprising against the Chinese, people in the region told Radio Free Asia.

Beginning Feb. 25, security officials began randomly checking public spaces, guesthouses and hotels, and areas where Tibetan Buddhists perform religious activities and do businesses. 

Police also have been stopping people to check their cell phones to ensure Tibetans have not been in contact with anyone living outside the region – considered a crime. So far, police have arrested several Tibetans and charged them for alleged political infractions, sources said.

On March 1, Lhasa police posted statements on their website about ensuring stability and preventing separatist thoughts and activities. Images on the site showed officers standing at attention and checking car drivers for IDs and books of what appeared to contain lists of people, including thumbnail photographs. 

Authorities also organized political education campaigns on the policies of the Chinese Communist Party, and appointed local leaders to publicize the nation’s law and order, the sources inside the region said. 

Authorities are taking similar initiatives in other parts of Tibet, including Nagchu, Chamdo, Lhoka and Shigatse.

Friday’s anniversary commemorates a 1959 revolt in which tens of thousands of Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa in protest against China’s invasion and occupation of their homeland a decade earlier.

On March 10 of that year, People’s Liberation Army forces violently crackdown on Tibetan protesters surrounding the Dalai Lama’s summer palace Norbulingka. Subsequently, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, was forced to escape from Tibet seven days later. He fled to Dharamsala, India, followed by some 80,000 Tibetans.

A notice they issued earlier said under the current security initiatives about 50,000 individuals and more than 20,000 businesses and the spaces they rent have been searching QR codes, which are widely used in Lhasa for business transactions.

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

Supporters of Hong Kong democracy are up in arms over the Academy Awards’ invitation to martial arts star Donnie Yen to present an Oscar at this year’s award ceremony. Yen, a celebrity member of an elite body that advises China’s rubber-stamp parliament, has a history of supporting Chinese Communist Party positions—including repressive new Beijing policies in Hong Kong. The decision to invite Yen to take part in the awards ceremony “shows contempt for the people of Hong Kong,” said a petition on Change.org calling for him to be dropped.

Vietnam on Thursday published a white book declaring that Hanoi respects and ensures freedom of religion, but unregistered religious groups told Radio Free Asia that they are not free to worship and that in fact the government oppresses them.

The publication, by the Committee for Religious Affairs, said that “there is no discrimination against beliefs and religions or conflicts among religions” and “followers of different beliefs or religions live in harmony in the community of ethnic groups in Vietnam.” 

All religions are equal before the law and that the government does not discriminate against any religious beliefs, it said.

“No individuals or religious organizations, which operate in compliance with the law, are prohibited,” one clause states.

Compliance with the law includes registering the religion with the government. Currently the government has recognized 36 religious organizations belonging to 16 religions that include Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Caodaism, Hoa Hao Buddhism, Islam and Baha’i.

Those belonging to unrecognized religions are not allowed to operate freely. Hanoi considers the unregistered groups to be illegal and law enforcement has prevented these groups from meeting or carrying out religious rituals or ceremonies.

Registration denied

“The government often says [religious] organizations and groups need to register themselves to be recognized and operate in compliance with the law. However, even if we try to register, they will never approve,” said the Venerable Thich Khong Tanh, a key member of the Sangha of the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam which has been banned and persecuted by Hanoi since 1975.

 “If we register, [the government] will force us to do this and that, to follow their system and make commitments [to them],” he said. “If our registration is rejected and we continue to operate, they will find an excuse to arrest us.”

Tanh said the government routinely persecutes independent religious groups and supports only the groups it has established or was able to tame.

In recent years, RFA’s Vietnamese Service has covered the government’s destruction of several religious establishments belonging to the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam, including several pagodas.

 Local authorities in the southern coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung repeatedly threatened to dismantle the Thien Quang pagoda if followers refused to join the government-endorsed Vietnam Buddhist Church.

In the central province of Gia Lai, local authorities destroyed the Son Linh pagoda last year and have forbidden the abbot to rebuild.

“The monks at the Sangha of the [United Buddhist] Church sought permission to conduct religious rituals, but they [the local authorities] refused,” said Tanh. “They will only permit it if we join the state-owned Buddhist Church.”

Minority rights

The local Tuoi Tre Newspaper cited the white book as saying that “citizens are completely free to follow or not follow a belief or religion. The government ensures the religious activities of ethnic minority people that make up about 14 percent of the population.” 

But RFA’s Vietnamese Service has documented repeated harassment of followers of the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ, an unrecognized religious group that has many ethnic minority members from that  region. 

The church members are forbidden from conducting religious rituals and ceremonies on Sundays and even on Christmas Day.

 Last year, an ethnic Hmong family of 13 were expelled from their village in the northern province of Nghe An for their Protestant beliefs. Village authorities opposed to the religion pasted notices on the family’s homes ordering them not to follow non-Hmong religions.  

Prisoners’ rights

Another claim in the white book is that the government ensures prisoners’ freedom of belief and religion and has provided 54 prison libraries nationwide with nearly 4,500 copies of 17 religious books.

The Venerable Thich Khong Thanh, who has been imprisoned three times with a total of 10 years, told RFA that when he was in prison, he and others were persecuted.  

“When I was reciting and chanting Buddhist scriptures, and some priests were praying, they came to suppress and made us incommunicado,” said Thanh. “They even confiscated all the Bibles and religious books people had sent us.” 

Nguyen Van Dien, a Catholic who completed a 6-year prison term in late February, said that despite his request, he had been unable to see a priest while serving his sentence.

However, he was allowed to receive Bibles sent in by his family if the books were printed by the state-owned Religious Publishing House.

Meanwhile the families of activists Truong Van Dung and Bui Tuan Lam told RFA that they were not allowed to send religious books to the activists. Both are under investigation on the charge of “disseminating anti-state materials.”

In December, the U.S. State Department included Vietnam in its Special Watch List for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom. 

Two weeks later, a Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative said that the U.S. action was “based on biased assessments and inaccurate information about freedom of belief and religion in Vietnam,” and that Vietnam was willing to discuss openly and frankly with the United States in a spirit of mutual respect.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

State security police surrounded the home of rights activist Li Wenzu and her rights lawyer husband Wang Quanzhang on International Women’s Day, as a U.S.-based rights group hit out at the country’s intimidation and harassment of dissidents.

“They sent people to start blocking our door, and not allowing us to go out, from about 5 a.m.,” Wang said from the couple’s home in Beijing’s Shunyi district on Thursday. “They used open umbrellas and shone their flashlights at our security cameras to stop themselves being captured.”

“Our camera shot some blurry footage of them, and found out later that they’d stuck some kind of medicinal plaster over the lens,” he said.

2023年3月8日
上午7点30分
王全璋李文足家 pic.twitter.com/rDCqUGUwc9

— 李文足（王全璋妻子） (@709liwenzu) March 8, 2023

But the harassment didn’t stop there, said Wang, a prominent target of a nationwide police operation that detained hundreds of rights lawyers, law firm staff and activists starting on July 9, 2015, and who later sued the authorities over his treatment in detention.

“At around 7:30 a.m., they started knocking on the door,” he said, adding that when he had opened the door to speak with them, they said they were there due to “special circumstances,” as it was International Women’s Day.

“There were around 20 of them, front and back, with several of their vehicles parked outside the door,” said Wang, who also found that the tires of his car were flat on the same day.

“This happened on Human Rights Day last year too, so I’m even more sure that someone is doing this stuff deliberately,” he said. “Other lawyers [in my chat group] told me they had also found their tires punctured.”

Passport application denied

The harassment of Wang and his family comes as the ruling Chinese Communist Party steps up “stability maintenance” measures during the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing.

But fellow rights activist Wang Qiaoling said she believes the harassment could be linked to the fact that Li, who won the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in 2019, had planned to file an administrative review against her denied application for a passport, to mark International Women’s Day.

“We were planning to go to the Beijing municipal government to submit an application for an administrative review [of that decision], which is actually a pretty common legal procedure,” Wang Qiaoling said. “I don’t understand why they had to go to such lengths [to stop it].”

As the state security police stood guard over Wang and Li, a report from the U.S.-based think tank Freedom House showed that China remains at the bottom of its global survey of freedoms, one of the few countries to have been described as “Not free” for five consecutive decades.

“China ranks near the absolute bottom in terms of overall political rights and civil liberties,” according to the “Freedom in the World 2023” report, which described the country as unmatched in its ability to deploy technology in the service of a surveillance state. “Those who criticized the party received severe penalties.”

It said no country could match the scale and sophistication of the Chinese surveillance state.

“Residents’ activities are invasively monitored by public security cameras, urban grid managers, and automated systems that detect suspicious and banned behavior, including innocuous expressions of ethnic and religious identity,” the report said. 

“Those identified as dissidents can face consequences including forced disappearance and torture,” it said. “Protesters continued to encounter pervasive surveillance, abusive interrogations, and intimidation at the hands of authorities.”

Zhou Fengsuo, executive director of the U.S.-based rights group Human Rights in China, said there is still plenty of resistance to abuses of power by the government, citing the white paper movement of November 2022 that prompted a swift retreat from the rolling lockdowns, mass quarantine and compulsory testing of supreme leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy.

“On the one hand, the Chinese Communist Party stepped up controls and concentrated its power, and its darkness reached a peak,” Zhou said. 

“But on the other hand, there was also unprecedented resistance to trouble the waters, particularly in the second half of the year,” he said. “Eventually, that culminated in the white paper movement of late November.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

A Buddhist monk walking across Cambodia to urge the government to restore social ethics was defrocked following his second arrest in a week by authorities worried about his supposed ties to opposition politicians. 

Police arrested Venerable Soy Sat in Battambang province’s Moung Ruessei district on Thursday and took him to a local temple where he was defrocked for being affiliated with the opposition Candlelight Party, said fellow marcher Sim Mao.

They also arrested marcher Cheat Kamara, but later released him after Soy Sat’s defrocking. 

“The chief monks told Venerable Soy Sat that monks are supposed to eat and practice religion and not be involved with politics,” Cheat Kamara told Radio Free Asia.

Soy Sat said monks are supposed to pay attention to society and advocate for good social ethics and harmony, he added, calling the monk’s arrest a “brutal” action.

Police asked Soy Sat to return to Phnom Penh and get permission from the Ministry of Interior to continue his march through Battambang province, but the monk refused, according to In Kongchit, a provincial coordinator for the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, or Licadho.

“Venerable Soy Sat refused to go back, so he was defrocked,” he told Radio Free Asia. 

Also detained in Pursat

The 72-year-old began his latest march on March 1. He was also stopped for several hours on Tuesday and questioned by police in Pursat province. Earlier that day, Soy Sat had accepted a food donation from Candlelight Party Vice President Rong Chhun, who was in the area for a party meeting.

Soy Sat told officials on Tuesday that he did not participate in Rong Chhun’s party meeting. He also said the march wasn’t tied to any political party. 

During a previous peace march in early February, Soy Sat walked with Rong Chhun and other demonstrators from Phnom Penh to Pursat. They had permission for that march from the Interior Ministry. 

Several days later, he was expelled from his pagoda in Kampong Speu province by the pagoda’s chief, who accused him of incitement and of trying to destroy peace.

Buddhist monks, who occupy their own social class in Cambodia and are given a great deal of respect by the public, frequently participate in demonstrations, but defrocking them is unusual.

The move comes less than five months ahead of an election showdown between the opposition Candlelight Party and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party. In the run-up to the vote, authorities have been arresting opposition figures on what critics say are politically motivated charges.

Support for the CPP has fallen in the past decade amid chronic corruption within the party and the government, which opponents say has led to human rights violations, deteriorating social ethics and a culture of impunity.

RFA could not immediately reach Battambang provincial police chief Sat Kim San for comment on the monk’s latest arrest. 

Translated by Samean Yun for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

The Chinese Communist Party plays “a leading role in promoting authoritarian norms” around the world as some leaders show a willingness to collaborate in spreading new forms of repression, according to a report from Washington-based think tank Freedom House. 

However, even as democratic freedom suffers global setbacks, fundamental rights continue to have “an appeal and capacity for renewal” in places like Myanmar, where people have shown they are willing to risk their lives in pursuit of freedom, the report found.

Among the 56 countries listed as “Not Free” around the world, North Korea, China and Myanmar were listed as among “the worst of the worst.” Additionally, out of 39 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, nine were listed as “not free” and 13 were deemed only “partly free.”

“Political rights and civil liberties declined across the region as authoritarian forces moved to consolidate their power,” the report said. “The trend was most dramatic in Afghanistan and Myanmar, where elected civilian leaders were forced from office.”

The report noted the arrests in early 2022 of prominent pro-democracy politicians in Hong Kong who took part in primary elections to consolidate the democratic opposition. They continued to be detained through December’s Legislative Council balloting – something that Freedom House said “underscored Beijing’s success in dismantling the territory’s semi-democratic institutions.”

Crackdowns in Asia also affected journalists and civil society movements, especially in countries whose institutions were already vulnerable, the report said. 

China, Myanmar

“In China, one of the world’s most restrictive media environments, journalists faced heightened scrutiny and rigorous political indoctrination when attempting to renew their press licenses, and even individuals who engaged in solitary forms of protest were punished with prison sentences,” it said. 

The biggest contraction in freedom took place in Myanmar, which has seen the widespread arrests of civilian political leaders following the 2021 military coup d’etat, Freedom House said. 

“Over a thousand people have been killed as security forces crack down on pro-democracy protests, and thousands of others have been thrown in jail and tortured,” the report said. “The military authorities imposed curfews, repeatedly shut down the internet, raided universities, and searched for human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists to arrest.”

The country’s recent turmoil is “another sign that international deterrents against antidemocratic behavior are losing force,” the report said. However, Freedom House noted that “a widespread civil disobedience movement against the military coup has persisted in the face of violent reprisals.”

Resistance has denied the military regime “legitimacy and crippled its ability to function as a government, reflecting both the people’s commitment to democracy and the power it gives them to shape events.”

In Singapore, authorities forced one of the few independent news outlets to close after its license was suspended. And in Thailand, authorities expanded their ability to prosecute people for publishing news that could incite fear in the public.

China’s leading role

Worldwide, the enemies of liberal democracy “are accelerating their attacks” as regimes “have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same,” the report said, noting that there have been 16 consecutive years of decline in global freedom.

“The leaders of China, Russia, and other dictatorships have succeeded in shifting global incentives, jeopardizing the consensus that democracy is the only viable path to prosperity and security, while encouraging more authoritarian approaches to governance,” it said.

The Chinese Communist Party “offers an alternative to democracies as a source of international support and investment, helping would-be autocrats to entrench themselves in office, adopt aspects of the CCP governance model, and enrich their regimes while ignoring principles like transparency and fair competition,” the report said.

“At the same time, the CCP has used its vast economic clout and even military threats to suppress international criticism of its own violations of democratic principles and human rights, for instance by punishing governments and other foreign entities that criticize its demolition of civil liberties in Hong Kong or question its expansive territorial claims.”

Freedom House pointed to a Marriott hotel’s refusal to host a November 2021 World Uyghur Congress gathering in the Czech Republic, saying it preferred to observe “political neutrality.” New Zealand’s Parliament also refrained from identifying Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang province as a genocide after the trade minister said such language could hurt economic relations with China. 

Turkey was once a haven for Uyghurs fleeing China, but the country “has increasingly shifted its stance to meet Beijing’s demands” by making it more difficult for Uyghurs to obtain permanent residence permits, the report found.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.