Day: March 22, 2023

No one remains in the villages on the east bank of the Sittaung River in Myanmar’s Shwegyin township.

Over the past two weeks, junta troops have fired heavy artillery and shells at the 10 tracts in Bago region and threatened their residents, following clashes with ethnic Karen rebels, forcing around 1,500 people to flee to the township seat for safety. As many as 200 refugees are now sheltering in each of the town’s monasteries where they rely on donations for their daily needs.

An aid worker who, like others interviewed for this report, declined to provide his name due to security concerns, told RFA Burmese “there is no one left” in the east bank villages.

“We all are sheltering in the town in monasteries, rest houses and pagodas,” he said.

“Some of us are staying at our friends’ homes. Those staying with friends usually don’t get the donations that others do. Others are staying in refugee camps, so donors know their exact number and can provide help for all of them.”

The refugees in Bago join hundreds of thousands of others who have fled conflict throughout Myanmar since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021 coup, leaving the country mired in what international rights groups and aid organizations say is a humanitarian crisis.

According to the latest situation reports published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on March 4 and March 21, the number of war refugees in Myanmar increased by more than 100,000 throughout the country in the two weeks from Feb. 27 to March 13 alone.

The latest additions – most of whom live in Kachin, Kayah, and Shan states, as well as eastern Bago region – bring the number of those displaced by conflict in the country to more than 1.7 million people, UNOCHA said in a statement on Tuesday.

The ethnic Karen Peace Support Network said on Feb. 26 that more than 180,000 people have fled fighting in Bago’s Nyaung Lay Pin and Taungoo townships alone since the takeover.

In Kayin, Kayah and Mon states, in southeast Myanmar, nearly 410,000 people have been displaced by conflict over the same period, according to the UNOCHA, while another 943,000 have fled their homes in western Myanmar’s Sagaing and Magway regions and Chin state.

Banyar, the director of the ethnic Karenni Human Rights Group, told RFA that the number of war refugees in southeastern Myanmar’s Kayah state had ballooned by about 30,000 people over the past two weeks alone.

‘We have nothing left’

A woman who is among those displaced from Sagaing region told RFA that junta troops torched more than a quarter of the structures in her 1,000-home village of Tha Ma Yoe in Wetlet township on March 17, forcing around 4,000 residents to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

She said her two-story home was destroyed in the raid, as well as all of her rice and bean crops.

“We couldn’t take anything when we ran, as the junta soldiers raided our village from both the east and west side at the same time,” she said, adding that she “had to run for about 10 hours” before she and others were able to rest.

“It rained that day and we were soaked … We had to stay under a tree. We have nothing left. We are mad at them for what they have done to us. We want to take up arms and fight back.”

Similarly, more than 8,000 residents of Wetlet’s Han Lin village – a U.N.-recognized World Heritage cultural site – were forced to flee during a military raid on Oct. 22, and most remain displaced five months later.

“We have had to stay in huts made of tarp in the jungle,” said one of the residents. “We’ve received more than 50 tarps [as donations], but there are more than 8,000 people here.”

The resident said that around 40 junta soldiers remain stationed in Han Lin, making it impossible for people to return to their homes.

Those who are unable to flee the military’s raids often face a much worse fate.

Ko Phone, the administrator of Magway region’s Tilin township, told RFA that a joint force of military troops from the 77th Division and pro-junta armed groups killed seven civilians in Shwe Khon Taing and Say Min Taw villages during raids conducted March 15-16.

Among the victims was a blind woman in her 80s named Khin Pu and a man in his 70s named Kar Kyaw, both of whom were burned alive when junta troops set fire to their homes. Additionally, troops shot dead Than Htwe, a 55-year-old villager suffering from mental illness, Ko Phone said.

Thakin Zaw of the Yaw Revolution Army, an anti-junta People’s Defense Force group, said that a 10th grade student from Say Min Taw village who had fled fighting there was found shot in the head with his hands tied behind his back. He said his group is investigating who is responsible for the killing.

International aid stalled

Those lucky enough to have escaped raids are often unable to return to their homes because of a military presence or are too afraid to go back. In the meantime, they are entirely reliant on donations for things like food, medicine, and shelter.

An aid worker in Kayah said that it is imperative that both the junta and the shadow National Unity Government work with international organizations in order to assist the growing number of refugees in Myanmar.

“Officials and responsible persons … should cooperate with international organizations on humanitarian grounds to provide practical and effective assistance such as food and medicine,” the aid worker said.

An agreement was reached by the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on May 6, 2022, to provide immediate aid to war refugees in Myanmar through the junta’s Ministry of International Cooperation in tandem with U.N. aid agencies. 

But refugees and the aid workers who are helping them said that they have yet to receive effective assistance in the more than 10 months that have passed since the agreement – claims that were echoed by the Karenni Human Rights Group’s Banyar and Pado Saw Thamaing Tun, a central committee member of the ethnic Karen National Union.

Attempts by RFA to contact Ko Ko Hlaing, the junta’s minister of international cooperation, by phone went unanswered Wednesday. Emailed requests for comment to the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management and the UNOCHA had yet to receive a response by the time of publishing. 

According to the UNOCHA, at least 1.4 million people have been forced to flee fighting since the coup, joining the more than 300,000 already displaced in Myanmar prior to the takeover.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matt Reed.

Movie distributors in Hong Kong and Macau have canceled screenings of a British-made horror film featuring the popular children’s character Winnie the Pooh, who is banned from China’s tightly controlled internet due to a supposed resemblance to Communist Party supreme leader Xi Jinping.

“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” was scheduled to debut in Hong Kong on Thursday after passing the government film censorship process, but was suddenly pulled from movie theaters without explanation, prompting widespread speculation that it was linked to the banning of Winnie the Pooh from the Chinese internet after a series of memes likening him to Xi went viral.

“It is with great regret that we announce that the scheduled release of ‘Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey in Hong Kong’ and Macau on March 23 has been canceled,” Hong Kong distribution company VII Pillars Entertainment said via its Facebook page.

“We are incredibly sorry for the disappointment and inconvenience,” it said, but gave no reason for the decision.

People commenting under the post seemed to assume political censorship was in play, however. 

“They keep saying that we have freedom of speech!” wrote Wong_FC. “Such freedom of creative and journalistic expression, I don’t think.”

Brian Pun commented “Fragile city,” while Jin Do San said: “I was going to try to understand China’s logic, but now I’m going to give up.”

“We’re already at the point in Hong Kong where we can’t even watch a cult movie,” commented Norman Poon, while Sherman Tse quipped ironically: “We gotta tell good stories about Hong Kong!”

A draconian National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist Party in 2020 has sharply curtailed the freedoms that the city was promised under the “One Country, Two Systems,” arrangement under which Beijing took over the former British colony.

The independent slasher flick is a horror retelling of the children’s books by A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard in which an alienated Pooh and his animal companions turn on their human owner Christopher Robin after he abandoned them to go to college.

Strong online interest

The $100,000 movie had been set for a one-night screening in the United Kingdom, but has begun screening globally after garnering a huge amount of online interest, and had been due to premiere at more than 30 movie theaters across Hong Kong on Thursday.

Kevin Yeung, secretary for culture, sports and tourism, said the decision to pull the film was taken by the distributor, and not by government film censors.

“As far as I know, it passed its inspection and was rated as a Category 3 movie [restricted to people over 18],” Yeung told reporters on Wednesday.

“The movie was released, and the publisher decided not to screen it in Hong Kong for the time being – that was their decision,” he said.

An official who answered the phone at the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration on Wednesday confirmed that it had certified the movie for release, but declined to comment on the cancellation.

An announcement from the Hong Kong movie website Moviematic said the screening had been canceled due to “technical reasons.” 

However, a screenshot of an earlier version of the announcement published by the independent news site InmediaHK showed that the statement had earlier contained the words: “We’re sure everyone understands that in today’s Hong Kong, there are many things that are beyond our control.”

Veteran Hong Kong journalist and current affairs commentator Gary Tsang said the lack of explanation was naturally making people suspicious.

“There is no evidence of law-breaking, nor that they didn’t complete the formalities,” Tsang said. “So now the government can say that all of the formalities were completed without a hitch, and that it wasn’t them who banned the film.”

“It’s similar to when [activists] have applied to hold a protest march and the police allow it, but then once the formalities are complete, someone will start talking about … atmosphere, or influence, or harm, linked to the protest, none of which are mentioned in the regulations,” he said.

‘Good cop, bad cop’

Earlier this month, a women’s labor organization canceled a march to mark International Women’s Day amid threats from police that they would arrest key activists, despite having gotten permission to hold it.

Tsang said the approach has resulted in a “ridiculous” degree of self-censorship in Hong Kong.

“If they did this according to the law, they would be able to tell us clearly exactly which words were in violation of the rules,” Tsang said. “In the case of the seditious sheep, they could at least claim that the books were incitement to sedition.”

“But they can’t even say the words [Winnie the Pooh] in this case; someone has just told them that if they go ahead, there will be consequences, which is even more terrifying, because they are circumventing the rules now,” he said.

Current affairs commentator Sang Pu said the pressure to censor the movie could have come directly from Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and the national security police, bypassing the Hong Kong government entirely. 

“They can’t afford to explicitly admit that Winnie the Pooh means Xi Jinping and Piglet means Putin,” Sang said in a reference to one of the memes depicting Xi in the role of Pooh.

“The Hong Kong government is playing the role of good cop, which waves everything through, then the bad cop comes along and intimidates or coerces people to make them toe the line,” he said.

Last July, a “Hidden Market” pop-up merchandise event was raided by Hong Kong customs officers claiming that T-shirts on sale bearing the image of Winnie the Pooh had violated trade descriptions law.

In 2018, government censors also banned Disney’s movie “Christopher Robin” from being shown in mainland China, with no public explanation given.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

Asia-Pacific is regressing in climate action, and the countries are not on track to achieve greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, a United Nations regional body said Wednesday.

The region will miss all or most of the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unless efforts are accelerated between now and 2030, said Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), releasing their annual “Progress Report” on Asia and the Pacific.

SDGs are 17 social, economic, and environmental goals adopted by the U.N. in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

“Progress towards climate action is slipping away,” the report warned. “The region is both a victim of the impact of climate change and a perpetrator of climate change, with a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Despite assumptions that COVID-19 lockdowns positively impacted the environment, the report said performance on climate action “is unequivocally worse” than any other goal for every region, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

There has also been an increase in deaths and missing persons attributed to disasters, the U.N. commission said.

UN-ESCAP’s report comes just days after another U.N. report on climate inaction warning that the world is approaching irreversible levels of global warming, with catastrophic consequences becoming inevitable.

Asia did well in providing affordable, clean energy  

In 2022, Asia-Pacific recorded the most robust progress in affordable and clean energy, as well as in industry, innovation, and infrastructure. 

Achievements in access to electricity and international support for clean and renewable energy primarily drove progress toward the energy goal, even though the report noted only a slight improvement in the share of renewable energy consumption.

Progress in clean energy and decline in climate action happened simultaneously, said Arman Bidarbakht Nia, the head of ESCAP’s statistical data management unit. 

“You can invest more energy and have wider access to energy. But at the same time, greenhouse gas emissions could go up, which is what is actually happening at the moment.” 

UN-ESCAP said 90% of people in Asia-Pacific countries now have access to electricity. 

Only in North Korea, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu do more than a quarter of the population still lack access to electricity.

Many experts say Asia’s appetite for power is its Achilles heel, giving example of how at the COP26 climate summit in 2021, China and India, two of the world’s largest carbon emitters, weakened their pledge to phase down, instead of phase out, coal. 

Earlier this month, another report by a group of environmental analysts said China rapidly accelerated plans for new coal power plants in the second half of last year, derailing the overall climate progress made globally.

Southeast Asia also performed worse in Life Below Water goals, primarily due to worsening marine pollution and the unsustainable use of marine resources, U.N. said.

Beachside pollution from land sources that wash ashore from the ocean increased from 3.36 million tons in 2019 to 3.92 million tons in 2021 in the Asia-Pacific region, it said.

Myanmar and Cambodia perform well in SDG goals

Myanmar featured in eight of 17 SDGs as one of the top five countries progressing better than the regional average, including tackling poverty, reducing hunger, providing quality education, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, and more. 

Bidarbakht Nia said the countries that were not expected to achieve the goal, like Myanmar and Afghanistan, “are the ones that have been making faster progress compared to the regional average. But it could still be far away from their 2030 target.”

“Also, this is all based on the data available, and those countries… there is very little data after the crisis in the country,” he added.

Cambodia was also among the top five in three of the 17 SDGs, including health, education, and clean water and sanitation. 

The report also lauded Cambodia’s “evidence-based clean air plan” launched last year to address the sources of emissions and reduce PM2.5 and black carbon by 60% by 2030.

Though air quality monitoring began in the Southeast Asian kingdom in 1999, the fine particulate matter PM2.5 monitoring equipment was installed only in 2017 when the annual average in Phnom Penh was 13.47 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3). 

In 2019, it increased to 21.12 μg/m3, more than double the World Health Organization’s guideline (10 μg/m3). Decades-old fuel-intensive vehicles, open burning of solid waste and crop residues, and a construction boom were identified as the main culprits.

Among other plans, Cambodia is raising standards for vehicle emissions and limiting the age of imported cars. Apart from PM2.5, the plan could decrease methane and carbon dioxide, key drivers of climate change, by 24% and 18% respectively by 2030.

Some progress, but overall slow

U.N. Under-Secretary-General Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, executive secretary of UN-ESCAP, said the region was facing a triple crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and geopolitics.

None of the countries in the region are on track to reach the SDGs by 2030, she added. 

The region should have made 50% of the progress by now but has achieved just 14% of the necessary progress so far, the report said. In 2017, it was just 4.4%. 

Based on current trends, Asia-Pacific would take another 42 years to reach the SDG goalpost, according to the U.N.

Climate action in the region needs “a complete trend reversal,” specifically in the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), and small island developing states (SIDS), the U.N. commission said.

“We should leverage innovation to accelerate progress on climate action,” Alisjahbana told Radio Free Asia in Bangkok.

“Secondly, we should tackle this climate action to have the so-called co-benefits, to meet at the same time other objectives. For example, employment creation, doing climate-friendly business… so, you’re gaining revenue and contributing to climate action.”

North Koreans are secretly watching and listening to so many South Korean movies and songs smuggled into the country that they are becoming increasingly worried that they might let a banned word slip – and face prison time or even death for using “capitalist” lingo, sources in the country tell Radio Free Asia.

“Residents who are already accustomed to the South Korean way of speaking now feel like they have to practice the Pyongyang dialect,” said a resident in the northwestern province of North Pyongan, referring to the capital. 

“They are worried that South Korean words will unintentionally or unknowingly come out of their mouths and that they will be punished,” he said.

For example, North Korean women dare not call their husbands or boyfriends  “jagiya” (which correlates to honey) or “oppa” (another term of endearment which literally means older brother). Instead, they must stick with “dongji,” (comrade), the source said.

People are also having to avoid using South Korean loan words from English such as ‘paesyeon’ (fashion), ‘heeoseutail’ (hairstyle) and ‘waipeu’ (wife).

“Even openly saying ‘I love you’ is evidence that they have seen South Korean movies and such language has become normalized,” the source said.  

North Korean authorities are aware of the spreading use of South Korean terms and are intent on “wiping out the rotten language of capitalism,” said a second source based in the same province. 

RFA previously reported instances of people being punished for speaking like South Koreans, and also  shocking cases where people were executed for trying to sell contraband videos and music on thumb drives.

But the recently passed Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act goes even further. 

Under this law, those found to have even taught or influenced others toward adopting this kind of speech could get the death penalty.

But for some people, speaking like an upper class Seoulite just comes naturally after decades of exposure.

So that’s prompted an odd situation where people are having to relearn how to speak like a proper North Korean through practice, sources say.

Divided by a common language

Though North and South Koreans speak a mutually intelligible language, the peninsula can be divided into several major regional dialects. 

Since the end of the Korean war, the respective governments of the North and South enacted differing standardization policies that have led to differences in spelling, the use of loan words from other languages, and most importantly, pronunciation.

In the North, the dialect of the capital Pyongyang is considered standard, whereas in the South, the standard language is modeled after how people talk in Seoul. 

Additionally, the seven decades of separation since the end of the Korean War have resulted in each side of the border adopting different slang, idioms and even terms of endearment.

Under North Korean policy, loan words originating in English or other Western languages have been effectively scrubbed from the standard language – unlike in the South, where such loan words are readily absorbed into everyday use.

But advances in technology over the years made South Korean media more accessible to North Koreans despite government efforts to stop them from watching it.

First it was clumsily distributed in the 1980s in bulky VHS cassettes, but by the late 90’s the medium of choice became video CDs. By the early 2000s, people were sharing the latest hit series on easily concealable USB flash drives, and now they are passed around on tiny microSD cards.

Among young people especially, it has become more than a trend to speak like a South Korean by emulating illegal media. It could be said in many cases that it is how they naturally speak, and they are simply emulating each other. 

Alternate reality

These movies and TV shows have done more than introduce North Koreans to new slang and vocabulary. They have unveiled a world of freedom and prosperity they have come to envy, and as such South Korean-style speech has come to represent those dreams, the first source said.

“The South Korean lifestyles shown in South Korean movies is a fantasy world to North Koreans,” the first source said. “No matter how much the North Korean authorities emphasize our national identity and characteristics, it will not be easy to eradicate the [Seoul] dialect.

Those most in danger of being caught speaking like South Koreans are families of judicial officials, because their power enables them to watch more illegal media without punishment, the first source said.

Ironically, these are the same people whose job it is to crack down on illegal videos, the source said. 

These officials “are supposed to keep and protect the system,” he said. “But they are the ones immersed in South Korean movies and dramas … to the point that they are the ones spreading around South Korean words.” 

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