Day: March 13, 2023

Australia will buy up to five U.S. nuclear-powered submarines with delivery by the “early 2030s,” and then switch to British submarines by the end of that decade, according to a deal unveiled by the leaders of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States on Monday.

Meeting in San Diego, California, under the auspices of the AUKUS security pact announced between their nations in 2021, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden said the deal was the best way they could find to provide Australia the submarines as fast as possible.

The deal will involve Australia purchasing three Virginia-class submarines from U.S. shipyards with the option to buy two more, Albanese said at the event. At the same time, Australia will begin building its own submarines with help from the United Kingdom.

“This will be an Australian sovereign capability, built by Australians, commanded by the Royal Australian Navy and sustained by Australian workers in Australian shipyards, with construction to begin this decade,” Albanese said, adding that it would create 20,000 jobs.

“Our future security will be built and maintained not just by the courage and professionalism of our defense forces,” he added, but by all involved, including engineers and welders. “For Australia, this whole-of-nation effort also presents a whole-of-nation opportunity.”

Nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed

For the first time, the deal will deliver Australia access to nuclear-powered submarines, with the energy source allowing the vessels to stay at sea for months at a time without the need to refuel. But the vessels will be equipped only with conventional weapons, with Australia over the decades deciding against building nuclear weapons.

“I want to be clear to everyone,” Biden said, “these subs are [nuclear-] powered, not nuclear-armed subs.” As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Australia is “a proud non-nuclear-weapon state,” he explained, “and is committed to stay that way.”

Australian personnel will embed in U.S. navy-building yards as part of the sale, Biden said, and existing American submarines will carry out more frequent rotations to Australian ports “to make sure Australian sailors are fully trained to prepare to safely operate this fleet.”

“Already today,” Albanese said, “there are Australian submariners undergoing nuclear power training in the United States, and I’m proud to confirm, Mr. President, that they are all in the top 30% of their class.”

Sunak said the deal would create “thousands of good, well-paid jobs in places like Barrow and Darby” in the United Kingdom while sharing “knowledge and experience with Australian engineers so they can build their own fleet,” and create a tight bond across AUKUS.

“We represent three allies who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder together for more than a century, three peoples who have shed blood together in defense of our shared values, and three democracies that are coming together again to fulfill that higher purpose,” he said.

A French exit

The announcement comes after months of to-and-fro, with key U.S. congress members suggesting Australia would not be able to purchase U.S.-made submarines given huge backlogs at American shipyards.

Last year, Rep. Rob Whitman, a Republican from Virginia who was then his party’s highest-ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said Canberra would not be able to jump the queue to buy America’s most cutting-edge submarines while the U.S. Navy waits.

“There’s been a lot of talk about well, the Australians would just buy a U.S. submarine,” Whitman said Dec. 5. “That’s not going to happen.”

The Virginia-class submarines being sold to Australia, though, are not “clunkers” and are of the “highest quality,” Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut and the chairman of the bipartisan “AUKUS caucus”, told ABC Australia over the weekend.

“The shelf life of a Virginia Class submarine is 33 years,” he said. “No one is going to be foisting off clunkers on good friends and allies.”

The deal is the culmination of a multi-year process that began with Albanese’s predecessor, Scott Morrison, scrapping a deal made with a French naval builder to sell Australia conventionally-fueled submarines. 

Morrison said at the time he feared the vessels would be outdated by the time they were delivered, but it turned into a diplomatic crisis after French President Emmanual accused Morrison of lying to him. 

Albanese’s government last year agreed to pay the French company about $583 million in a settlement for the scrapped contract.

A fact sheet distributed by the White House in the lead-up to the event highlighted what it said was “unmatched safety records” of the U.K. and U.S. nuclear-powered submarines Australia was buying.

“For over 60 years, the United Kingdom and United States have operated more than 500 naval nuclear reactors that have collectively traveled more than 150 million miles – the equivalent of over 300 trips to the moon and back – without incident or adverse effect on human health or the quality of the environment,” the document said. 

“Australia is committed to upholding these same standards to safely steward naval nuclear propulsion technology,” it said.

Eyes on China

Biden, Albanese and Sunak did not directly mention China’s posturing in the Indo-Pacific region during Monday’s event, and instead focused on what they said were the ties that bound their three countries.

The U.S. president called Australia and the United Kingdom “two of America’s most stalwart and capable allies” and said that “our common values” and “shared vision” were the driving force behind AUKUS.

But the 18-month-old security pact is widely understood to be aimed at deterring Chinese aggression amid Beijing’s threats to invade Taiwan and take control of the South China Sea, which it claims as territory. 

Charles Edel, a senior adviser and the Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and Independent Studies in Washington, said in a call with reporters on Friday that the deal aimed at “convincing Beijing that it’s no longer operating in a permissive security environment.”

“The larger significance of the announcement, though, is not just submarines, but the strategic convergence we’re seeing between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., particularly in the context of increasing tensions between China and Russia,” Edel said.

“In a narrow sense then AUKUS is a trilateral partnership that’s meant to enhance the defense capabilities of the three nations involved,” he added. “But in its broader significance is the intentionality to drive technological integration, grow the industrial capacity, and deepen strategic coordination between all three countries.”

The deal was welcomed by Republicans in Congress, with Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, who serves as the party’s ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying it was a positive first step for the Biden administration in projecting power to Beijing.

“The Indo-Pacific faces a direct threat from China, and there is nothing more important than deterring Chinese aggression and making it hard for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping to achieve his goals,” Risch said.

But for Australia, it’s also about the nuclear-powered submarines.

“This is a very big day for Australia, and it’s a good day,” Albanese had said on Sunday morning, according to The Age. “A new dawn in San Diego, and a new dawn for Australia’s defense policy.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

A Tibetan writer arrested by Chinese police nearly three years ago has been confirmed serving four years in prison for “splittism and spreading rumors in internet chat groups,” according to Tibetans with knowledge of the situation.

Zangkar Jamyang, now 45, disappeared on the night of June 4, 2020, when authorities in Kyungchu county of Ngaba, a Tibetan region in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, hauled him away without a trace.

For a very long time, his family had no clue about his whereabouts, or even that he had been arrested, said a Tibetan from inside the region. 

Eventually, they discovered he was arrested and charged with “inciting ‘separatist’ acts and participating in online discussions on various subjects,” the source told Radio Free Asia.  

He is being held in Menyang Prison, and his family members and relatives are not allowed to see him, he added, referring to the detention center near the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province. 

Chinese authorities frequently detain Tibetan writers and artists who promote Tibetan national identity and culture, with many sentenced to lengthy prison terms. 

At times, Tibetans have resisted Chinese efforts to suppress their language and culture by staging large-scale protests, which are usually put down by force.

Jamyang, who is fluent in both Tibetan and Chinese, wrote a book and contributed to Tibetan literary magazines, including Dang Char.  

Around March 2020, Jamyang began growing vocal about the importance of teaching the Tibetan language in schools. He criticized the Chinese government when officials began implementing policies to drop the teaching of the region’s native language in schools. 

Jamyang, who is married and has two children, encouraged Tibetans to denounce the Chinese government’s efforts to prevent Tibetans from using and teaching their own language  

Authorities interrogated the writer many times and searched his laptop computers and mobile phones, said another Tibetan with knowledge of the situation. They also detained him a few times. 

“Jamyang was actively sharing information about the greatness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the preservation of the Tibetan language in online chat groups,” said the source, referring to the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. 

In 1998, Jamyang left Tibet and learned English while living in Dharamsala. India, the residence of the Dalai Lama and the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

But in 2002, he returned to Tibet and provided translation services to United Nations organizations and NGOs from the United States. He also worked as a tour guide and translator for visitors to the region. 

In 2019, his application for a visa to go to the United States was approved, but he could not travel amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

On June 4, 2020, he suddenly disappeared – and only after a very long time was his family informed of his arrest by the Chinese police, the second source said.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Volkswagen is facing fresh questions about its operations in Xinjiang, after an executive visited the northwestern Chinese region to try to allay concerns that Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are subject to forced labor and other abuses under harsh government assimilation policies. The German carmaker’s China chief said he saw no human rights violations at the 10-year-old Urumqi plant, while the company has said that forced labor of Uyghurs is not part of its supply chain.

Vietnamese police have summoned two attorneys defending members of a Buddhist house church in Long An province, accusing them of violating a law that is widely used to imprison dissidents.

Attorneys Dang Dinh Manh and Dao Kim Lan, two of five defense lawyers working on a case involving the Peng Lei Buddhist Church are accused of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state” under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code.

Vietnamese authorities routinely use the statute to attack those speaking out in defense of human rights.

Freedom of religion is technically enshrined in Vietnam’s constitution, but it also allows authorities to override rights, including religious freedom, for purposes of national security, social order, social morality and community well-being. Authorities have been aggressive in crushing various religious groups.

The one-party Vietnamese government also is notorious for violations of human rights, including the prosecuting of rights attorneys and other defenders, and ignoring international obligations to promote and protect them. 

According to the notices, police summoned the lawyers after the Department of Cybersecurity and High-Tech Crime Prevention under Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security issued an advisory that some of the defense attorneys involved in the case showed signs of violating Article 331. 

The summons for Dang Dinh Manh, dated March 6, instructed him to meet with police investigators on March 21, 2023, while the summons for Dao Kim Lan, dated March 8, told him to meet with them on March 15. 

Many state-media outlets, including Tien Phong, or The Pioneers, and Phap Luat TPHCM, or the Ho Chi Minh City Law Newspaper, reported that police were investigating the two lawyers.

In February, three lawyers — Dang Dinh Manh, Dao Kim Lan and Ngo Thi Hoang Anh — were notified by Long An police that they had “carried out activities of disseminating videos, images, statements and stories with signs of abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to violate the state’s interests and legitimate rights and interests of individuals and organizations,” according to state media reports.

RFA could not reach Ngo Thi Hoang Anh to confirm that she had received a summons. Dang Dinh Manh and Dao Kim Lan refused to comment. 

‘Abusing democratic freedoms’

The three lawyers and two others — Nguyen Van Mieng and Trinh Vinh Phuc — have been providing legal support for six members of the house church, who in July 2022 were sentenced to a combined 23 years and six months in prison on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331.

Duc Hoa district police and Venerable Thich Nhat Tu, a Buddhist monk, were the plaintiffs in the case. 

Before the first-instance trial, lawyers sent an 11-page petition to Vietnam’s president and the heads of the National Assembly, Ministry of Public Security, and People’s Supreme Procuracy, highlighting indications of the violation of criminal procedures and judicial activities. 

The lawyers also raised concern about the objectivity of the investigation because Duc Hoa district police, a plaintiff, was part of the probe. 

The petition also indicated that police forced a Peng Lei nun to submit to a gynecological examination, offending her honor and dignity because the action was unrelated to the case. 

Even though the lawyers’ complaints had not been addressed, the Duc Hoa People’s Court moved ahead, putting the six church members on trial and sentencing them each to three to five years in prison. 

Police investigator Huynh Hung, who is in charge of the case against the lawyers, declined to answer Radio Free Asia’s questions about the case. 

Attorney Nguyen Van Dai, who now lives in Germany, told RFA on Monday that the responsible agencies should have quickly responded to the petition filed by the church’s lawyers instead of launching an investigation against them. 

“This was a serious violation of freedom of speech and press freedom of lawyers in general and citizens in general,” he said. “They [the authorities] used available tools, including the police and the procuracy, to dismiss the lawyers from their profession. This was an act of vindictiveness by the authorities towards human rights lawyers.”  

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

A top Cambodian government minister’s public appeal for a peaceful, inclusive national election was being met with skepticism by election watchdog and opposition party officials.

Minister of Interior Sar Kheng on Sunday said authorities and police forces at all levels should make it easy for all political parties to operate freely as activists begin meeting and organizing in provincial capitals ahead of the July national elections.

“The government has a duty to ensure security, guarantee that all registered parties for election have the opportunity to assemble and have the opportunity to conduct their campaigns in line with their wishes, particularly in line with their political programs to seek popular support,” he said at a fundraising ceremony for the construction of a university in Kandal province.

Opposition party officials, however, say their local offices have been unable to function fully due to continued surveillance by authorities. 

“The order of the Minister of Interior doesn’t seem to have any effectiveness,” Candlelight Party spokesman Kim Sour Phirith told Radio Free Asia on Monday. “I’m not sure if the lower authorities listen to him or they listen to other individuals who have ordered them.”

Threatening gestures and words have been taking place less frequently, but local authorities still take pictures of citizens who go to opposition party meetings, he said. Some people are now afraid to participate in non-ruling party activities, he said.

Violence during 2022 local elections

In the run-up to the June 2022 local commune elections, human rights NGOs reported many cases of violence toward Candlelight Party activists and supporters. Some were beaten up or had stones thrown at their houses. Unidentified men riding motorcycles used iron batons to strike supporters on their heads. No one was prosecuted.

The Interior Ministry oversees public administration and policing down to the provincial and local level. Sar Kheng also serves as deputy prime minister and is a top official in the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. 

King Norodom Sihamoni, a constitutional monarch who normally stays out of public debate, issued a message on Feb. 8 calling on all eligible voters to go to the polls for the sake of national development and prosperity. 

The King said no person or political party should have to worry about harassment or intimidation, and people should be allowed to exercise the right to vote in accordance with one’s conscience. 

For Sar Kheng’s appeal to be effective, officials who violate his order and seek to intimidate opposition party activists must be punished, according to Sam Kuntheamy, executive director of the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, 

“So far, he hasn’t taken legal action against anyone who has done the opposite of his order and instruction,” he said. “Therefore, they [his lower authorities] seem to not care because [they know that] there have been no consequences for the violators of his instruction.”        

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Matt Reed.

Martial arts star Donnie Yen introduced a performance at the Oscars award ceremony on Sunday night, amid protests outside the venue over his ties to the Chinese Communist Party and lack of support for the 2019 protest movement in Hong Kong, which he has termed “a riot.”

The Star Wars actor introduced a performance of best song nominee “This is a Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once” which swept the Academy Awards including a best actress win for Michelle Yeoh, despite growing calls on the event organizers to uninvite him, with critics citing his support for Beijing’s official propaganda about the city’s pro-democracy movement.

Prominent pro-democracy activists and Chinese dissidents gathered outside the Dolby Theater on Sunday night, holding up banners satirizing Yen’s support for the Chinese Communist Party, including a photo of him with supreme leader Xi Jinping.

“Say no to CCP puppet. Say no to Donnie Yen,” read one banner, while another said: “Donnie Yen is not a hero: he values zero,” emblazoned on a photo of Yen shaking hands with Xi in a celebrity line-up. Another protester displayed the slogan of the 2019 protest movement, which is now banned in Hong Kong under a draconian national security law banning criticism of the government: “Free Hong Kong, revolution now.”

Hollywood and the CCP

The protest, which was attended by former 1989 student leader Wang Dan, came as a petition on Change.org calling for Yen to be dropped from the ceremony garnered more than 100,000 signatures.

Wang told the protest that Yen, who described the 2019 protest movement as “a riot” in an interview with GQ Hype magazine, had “rubbed salt into the wounds of the people of Hong Kong, and insulted Hong Kongers.”

“Donnie Yen isn’t worthy of the name Hong Konger,” he said.

Security around the awards ceremony was tight, with a police cordon around the venue and several streets in the surrounding area sealed off by police, Wang said via his Twitter account, adding that around 200 people had turned up for the rally.

“Shame on [the] Oscar[s],” Wang tweeted, with an award icon.

Wang said he had earlier written to the newly established United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, describing Yen’s role in the ceremony as “a Chinese cultural invasion of the United States.”

“I have called on them to pay close attention to Hollywood and the Academy … and to ensure that the relationship with China and the Chinese Communist Party isn’t one of collusion and vested interests,” he said.

Yen is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference of non-government advisers that includes party elders, intelligence officers and scholars, as well as movie stars, CEOs of major companies and other celebrities.

Yen told GQ Hype magazine in a recent interview after being asked about the boycott of his movies and his view of the 2019 protest movement: “It wasn’t a protest, OK, it was a riot.”

“A lot of people might not be happy for what I’m saying, but I’m speaking from my own experience,” said Yen, using very similar language to official descriptions of the protests.

‘He has gotten this wrong’

Taiwan-based petition co-author Tong Wai Hong, said he was disappointed that the petition hadn’t worked, although he had personally presented it to the organizers.

“It wasn’t surprising that the public outcry was ignored, but I am really disappointed,” Tong said. “I’m just a regular person, not an organization, and I’m not a political figure.”

Tong, who was acquitted of “rioting” charges linked to his role in the 2019 protest movement, told Radio Free Asia in an earlier interview that what unfolded in that year couldn’t be described as “rioting.”

“For me and for a lot of other people, it was a fight against tyranny,” Tong told RFA on March 7. “He has gotten this wrong. The Chinese Communist Party has carried on restricting our freedoms and suppressing our human rights ever since the 2019 protests.”

He cited the banning of documentaries and other cinematic works linked to the protests, under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing from July 1, 2020, which ushered in an ongoing crackdown on peaceful dissent and political opposition that has seen dozens of former pro-democracy lawmakers stand trial for “subversion” for taking part in a primary election to maximize their seats in the Legislative Council.

Boycott began in 2019

Many Hong Kongers started boycotting Yen’s movies over his pro-Beijing stance during the 2019 protests against the erosion of Hong Kong’s promised freedoms and judicial independence that saw pitched battles between protesters armed with bricks, Molotov cocktails, catapults and other makeshift weapons against fully equipped riot police who fired huge quantities of tear gas, rubber bullets, chemically treated high-pressure water cannon and occasionally live rounds of ammunition at protesters and journalists.

Rights groups criticized the unsafe and indiscriminate use of tear gas and other forms of police violence during the months-long protest movement that left nearly two million adults suffering from post-traumatic stress symptoms and depression, according to The Lancet medical journal.

Police violence against young and unarmed protesters early in the movement brought millions onto the city’s streets and prompted the occupation of its international airport, while unarmed train passengers were attacked by armed riot police at Prince Edward MTR and by white-clad mobsters at Yuen Long MTR, who laid into passengers and protesters with rods and poles while police took 39 minutes to answer hundreds of distress calls from the scene.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.