Day: March 30, 2023

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has wasted little time since touching down in New York on Wednesday, delivering one speech shortly after her arrival with a second set for Thursday night.

But it’s been hard to nail down the details. 

The controversial “transit” through America’s biggest city – en route, apparently, to official visits in Taiwanese allies Guatemala and Belize – is in part taking place behind closed doors, with press not invited.

“They are very serious about keeping this a private event,” said Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute, which is hosting Tsai’s speech at the Intercontinental Hotel.

Taiwanese officials, Cronin told Radio Free Asia, did not want to create “unnecessary pressure and dissent” with a public speech, with Tsai also set to be presented with a global leadership award.

“TECRO set the rules,” he said, referring to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s de facto embassy. “It’s not Hudson setting the rules,” he said, but “the Taiwan government.”

Careful diplomacy

Tsai appears to be walking a fine line, advocating Taiwan’s case against Beijing during her trip while avoiding prodding it too much. Chinese officials have already warned of “countermeasures” after the visit, and even of a “serious, serious, serious confrontation.”

Each of Tsai’s previous six “transits” through the United States – one in 2016, two in 2017, another in 2018, and two in 2019 – attracted far less attention, coming at times of relative calm in U.S.-China relations.

Dennis Wilder, research fellow with the U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University and a former CIA deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific, told RFA on Tuesday that the “kind of events” Tsai holds this time would shape Beijing’s reaction.

“For example,” Wilder said, “if she were to give speeches where there would be live coverage of the speech, that would be a new kind of step; were she to give speeches that were incendiary in some way from Beijing’s point of view … we could see a harsh reaction.”

The few snippets of Tsai’s visit that has taken place in the public eye so far have largely been tame, avoiding Taiwanese independence and other themes that could complicate U.S.-China relations.

In an earlier speech to supporters after arriving Wednesday, Tsai thanked the United States for its support and vowed to continue working with Taiwan’s partners in the face of threats from Beijing.

“At this juncture, our partnerships with the United States and other democracies are more critical than ever,” Tsai said in the speech. “We know that we are stronger when we stand together in solidarity with fellow democracies. Taiwan cannot be isolated.”

Thawing relations

Her trip comes at a fraught time for ties between Washington and Beijing, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceling a trip to Beijing at the last minute on Feb. 4 after an alleged Chinese spy balloon was discovered floating across the United States.

However, U.S. officials insist the trip was only “postponed,” and there are already signs Beijing and Washington are seeking a new date.

Rick Waters, deputy assistant secretary of state for China and Taiwan and the head of the State Department’s “China House,” last week paid a visit to China, meeting Chinese counterparts in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, department spokesman Vedant Patel said on Tuesday.

“It was a working-level discussion,” Patel said, “about a wide range of issues that we have as it relates to our bilateral relationship.”

Such a thawing gives U.S. officials reason to avoid an incident.

In a call with reporters about Tsai’s trip on Thursday morning, Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said U.S. officials had offered guidance to their Taiwanese counterparts about Tsai’s “transit” through the United States.

But he declined to say if they had advised against public speeches.

“We are committed to making sure that President Tsai’s seventh transit of the United States is conducted smoothly and successfully, and we have worked closely with many of our Taiwan friends and counterparts to ensure that that is the case,” Kritenbrink said.

“If you have any questions on the specifics of any event that will take place during President Tsai’s transits,” he said, “I would refer you to the Taiwan authorities and to those associated with the event itself.”

Cutting room floor

Even with the private nature of Tsai’s speeches, attacks from Chinese officials about the visit have continued since her arrival.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters at a press briefing in Beijing on Thursday that the trip “gravely undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and sends a seriously wrong message to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists.” 

“This once again shows that the fundamental cause of the new round of tensions in the Taiwan Strait is the Taiwan authorities’ repeated attempt to solicit U.S. support for Taiwan independence and the fact that some in the U.S. intend to use Taiwan to contain China,” Mao said. 

“The Taiwan question is the very core of China’s core interests,” she added, “the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in the relationship.”

Xu Xueyuan, charge d’affaires at the Chinese embassy in Washington, also reportedly said Tsai’s visit could cause a “serious confrontation.” 

“The so-called ‘transit’ is merely a disguise to her true intention of seeking breakthrough and advocating Taiwan independence,” Xu was quoted as saying by Axios. Tsai’s trip, he added, “could lead to serious, serious, serious confrontation in the U.S.-China relationship.”

Return ticket

The worst from Beijing may be yet to come.

Tsai departs New York for Guatemala at 11 a.m. on Friday and returns Tuesday to Los Angeles, where she’s set to deliver another speech and meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in an echo of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-governing island last year.

That meeting will be seen as a “provocation” by the United States, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council said this week, when he threatened “countermeasures.”

Two Myanmar military jets bombed a village in western Myanmar on Thursday where there was no fighting, killing at least 10 people and injuring 20 others, according to ethnic rebels and residents.

The seemingly unprovoked attack on Khuabung village in Thantlang township in Chin state, near the Indian border, is the military’s latest use of air power in its sprawling offensive against anti-junta People’s Defense Force paramilitaries and ethnic armies.

It’s a tactic that has become increasingly common as the country’s armed resistance makes greater gains. Such attacks are typically undertaken by the military to support troops fighting anti-junta forces with devastating effect.

Chin National Front spokesman Salai Htet Ni told RFA Burmese that the strike by the two jets was unprovoked and clearly targeted a civilian population.

However, Thantlang is one of several townships under martial law that the junta has targeted with multiple airstrikes since the start of the year.

“They attacked this morning [at around 10:00 a.m.] without any battles happening,” Salai Htet Ni said. “They dropped bombs into a civilian village.” At least 10 residents were killed and 20 injured, he said.

The airstrike set many of the village’s houses on fire, residents said. Khuabung, around 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the seat of Thantlang township, is home to more than 230 people living in 53 households.

Increasing airstrikes

According to the Chin Human Rights Organization, the military launched at least 53 airstrikes, dropping more than 140 bombs, on the townships of Mindat, Hakha, Matupi and Thantlang in the first two months of 2023 alone. 

The strikes killed five members of the Chin National Front and three members of local anti-junta People’s Defense Force, and also injured six civilians.

In addition to the strike on Khuabung village on Thursday, the military also used Mi-35 aircraft to bomb areas it suspected were occupied by local PDF groups, the Chin National Front said.

The military has yet to issue any statement regarding the bombing of Khuabung and attempts by RFA to reach Thant Zin, the junta’s spokesperson for Chin state, went unanswered on Thursday.

A report issued by the U.N. human rights agency earlier this month said that junta airstrikes in Myanmar had more than doubled from 125 in 2021 to 301 in 2022.

The report followed a joint statement on March 1 by Amnesty International, Global Witness, and Burma Campaign (U.K.) urging governments to sanction companies that sell jet fuel to the junta to limit the country’s air force.

While international sanctions have limited the air force to some extent, former military officials in Myanmar have said they will never be fully effective while powerful countries, such as Russia and China, are backing the junta.

Deaths and displacements in Shan state

News of the airstrikes on Thantlang came as RFA learned that at least 33 civilians were killed and more than 5,000 displaced from southern Shan state’s townships of Pinlaung, Pekon and Mobye during the first three months of the year alone.

Yin Lianghan, a spokesperson for the Shan Human Rights Foundation, said his organization had compiled the statistics after interviewing Buddhist monks displaced by the violence, as well as aid workers in the region.

“These people have been severely displaced because of the junta’s heavy artillery shelling and a massacre in the Nam Neint village,” he said, referring to an incident on March 11, in which junta troops killed 21 civilians, including three monks, in a dawn raid on a monastery in Pinlaung before setting fire to the village.

“The main reason why they have become refugees is because of the junta’s extrajudicial killing of innocent civilians,” he said.

Junta Deputy Information Minister Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun has told pro-junta media that the Karenni National Defense Army committed the massacre in Nem Neint village, but the KNDF claims that it was the handiwork of the military.

According to Shan Human Rights Foundation, at least two children were among those killed by the military shelling in Pinlaung and Mobye townships since the start of the year..

Tensions rising

Khun Bwe Hone, the information officer for the ethnic Pa’O National Defense Force, told RFA that the deaths and displacements occurred amid rising tensions between the military and the ethnic Karrenni Nationalities Defense Force in the three townships, as the junta is preparing a major offensive in the area.

“The junta is reinforcing its troops,” he said, noting that most villagers have already left the area in anticipation of the fighting.

“Our defense forces have warned them to flee to safety. That’s why they left. This battle is likely to be drawn out because we are determined to fight against the military dictatorship … to the end and the enemy is going to do what it has set out to do, too.”

A woman who fled fighting in the area told RFA on condition of anonymity that civilians are pouring into the seat of Pinlaung township from nearby villages to take refuge in camps for the displaced.

The exact number of refugees is unknown, said aid worker Khun Kyaw Shwe. While the refugees are receiving assistance from social support groups and area residents, they are in “desperate need of medicine,” as well as food and access to clean water, he said.

“At the moment, local medical teams are taking care of them with what little medicine they have,” Khun Kyaw Shwe told RFA. “The demand for medicine is quite severe. The refugee camps are dealing with outbreaks of malaria, influenza and respiratory infections.”

Only around 20 days of food stores remain for the camps in Pinlaung, he said, urging international donors to help fill the gaps.

RFA was unable to reach Khun Thein Maung, the junta’s economic minister and spokesman for Shan state, for comment on the killings and displacements.

Translated by Myo Myin Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Vietnam granted early release to two prisoners of conscience, each serving a five-year sentence following separate arrests and convictions in 2019 under a law frequently used by authorities to stifle dissent, other activists with knowledge of the situation said.

The two were convicted of violating Article 117 of the country’s penal code, which criminalizes “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items” against the state. Violators can be sentenced to from five to 20 years in prison. 

Authorities on Tuesday freed Huynh Thi To Nga, 40, about 10 months earlier than scheduled. Police arrested the doctor in Ho Chi Minh City on Jan. 28, 2019, along with her older brother, Huynh Minh Tam, for their online activities.

In November of the same year, they were sentenced to five years and nine years in prison, respectively, for negative comments they posted on Facebook about Vietnam’s leaders, national sovereignty, corruption and economic mismanagement.   

Nga’s brother is still serving his sentence in Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai Province. 

Authorities also freed Nguyen Van Cong Em, 52, about 11 months earlier than scheduled, on March 26. He was arrested on Feb. 28, 2019, for allegedly using Facebook to distort information about the U.S.-North Korea Summit, which took place in Hanoi that month.

Police accused him of using four Facebook accounts to post and share stories and livestream videos with content distorting the summit and calling for protests during the event. 

Both former prisoners of conscience declined to give interviews to Radio Free Asia following their release.

Former prisoner of conscience Le Thi Binh, who was held in the same jail – An Phuoc Prison in Binh Duong province – as Nga from December 2021 to December 2022, told Radio Free Asia that Nga “followed the prison’s rules and tried hard when performing labor to get penalty mitigation and return home early.”

Authorities also accused Nga of taking part in illegal demonstrations, writing and posting nearly 50 articles inciting people to take to the street to protest against the government, call for freedom and democracy, and oppose the Cybersecurity Law. 

The law, which came into force in 2019, in part restricts citizens’ use of the internet and requires companies like Google and Facebook to delete posts considered threatening to national security.

Vietnam responds to U.N.

In a related development, Vietnam’s permanent delegation to the United Nations in Geneva issued a response on March 24 to a November 2022 request by the Special Procedures Branch of the U.N. human rights agency concerning the arbitrary arrests of nine activists.

Authorities convicted them of propagating untruthful information and abusing the right to freedom of expression and democracy to distort and smear the government.

Hanoi said the arrests, detention and conviction of Nguyen Van Nghiem, Le Van Dung, Dinh Thi Thu Thuy, Do Nam Trung, Dinh Van Hai, Chung Hoang Chuong, Le Trong Hung, Le Chi ThanhTran Quoc Khanh, complied with Vietnamese law and Vietnam’s international human rights commitments.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said Thursday that the Vietnamese government was “completely two-faced by refusing to comply with its international obligations but then writing its response as if it is doing so.”

“Hanoi’s stance has been regularly repudiated by the Special Procedures of the U.N. Human Rights Council, yet the government shamelessly keeps making the same argument,” he said in an email to RFA. “Judging by Vietnam’s rights abusing actions and total refusal to accept blame, much less change its practices, it’s hard to see why Vietnam thinks it deserves to be on the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

In October 2022, Vietnam was elected to the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council, despite calls by human rights groups that the country should be excluded because of its dismal rights record. The Southeast Asian nation began its three-year term on Jan. 1, 2023.

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

Hong Kong is recruiting graduates from mainland China in an apparent bid to replace talent lost in the brain drain sparked by the imposition of a harsh security law in 2020.

Many graduates looking for work at a “Greater Bay Area” youth employment fair on Thursday hailed from mainland China rather than Hong Kong, although the heavily subsidized fair was ostensibly held to benefit young people in Hong Kong.

The event comes as Beijing seeks to drive greater integration between the former colonial cities of Hong Kong and Macau and their neighbors in Guangdong province, symbolized by the opening of the world’s longest sea bridge linking cities across the Pearl River Delta in 2018.

Last month, China unveiled a new visa program that could draw a large influx of highly qualified people to live and work in Hong Kong, which has seen a mass exodus of people since the ruling Chinese Communist Party launched a crackdown on dissent in the wake of 2019  protests, while the Hong Kong government has announced it will hand out free air tickets to boost visitor numbers.

Companies that sign up for the employment scheme — HSBC, Bank of China and Tencent all had a presence at the fair — will receive a government allowance of H.K.$10,000 (U.S.$1,275) a month for 18 months, according to the city’s labor department.

A recent finance graduate from mainland China who gave only the surname Chen said she is looking to land a job in a bank, and believes the Greater Bay Area – comprising Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Macau and Zhuhai – is an attractive place to live and work.

“I think there is more cultural crossover in the Greater Bay Area, which is where more foreigners come to do business, creating a lot of job opportunities,” Chen said. “There are so many parts to the Greater Bay Area now, so maybe everyone can spread out to develop [their career] rather than just staying in one place.”

‘I like the work culture’

A recent graduate from mainland China who gave only the surname Lin said she has lived in Hong Kong for the past six years, and is looking for a media job.

“I would choose Hong Kong to work in, because I like the work culture and professionalism,” Lin said. “But mainland China’s actually a bit more comfortable and convenient to live in, and the cost of living is lower.”

A third graduate who gave the surname Huang said she had heard about the fair on the Xiaohongshu social media platform while studying for a master’s degree at a mainland Chinese university.

According to a Labour Department press release, some 2,600 Hong Kong-based jobs will be offered in 35 organizations taking part in the fair, nearly half of which are in the catering, retail and hotel industries.

Most vacancies offer monthly salaries ranging from H.K.$12,000 to H.K.$23,000 (U.S.$1,530 – U.S.$2,930), compared with an average starting salary of around 6,000 yuan (U.S.$875) in mainland China.

Meanwhile, more than 400 mainland China-based jobs will be on offer in management, banking, editorial, engineering and business intelligence, among other categories, it said.

“For graduates, first of all, there are good salaries being offered at a reasonable level,” labor bureau director William Ng said as the job fair opened. “Fresh graduates do not get such a high salary in the mainland, so it’s a good starting salary for Hong Kong students.”

Rail link

Meanwhile, plans are afoot to issue flexible commuter tickets for the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, a backbone of the Greater Bay Area, according to officials.

“The Mass Transit Railway Corp Ltd and the relevant mainland railway authorities have been studying and discussing the feasibility of ‘metroization’ of short haul services of the [high speed rail link],” secretary for transport and logistics Lam Sai-hung told lawmakers on March 29.

“Under the arrangement, ticket holders may flexibly alter the tickets to any other trains traveling to/from the same Mainland destination on the same day,” Lam said.

Elsewhere in Hong Kong, older people have started flocking back to the city in their thousands on single-day, low-cost package tours that see them ushered into special restaurants by tour guides for lunch, to the annoyance of local residents.

Tourist traffic is returning to To Kwa Wan and Hung Hom in Kowloon, with long lines of mainland Chinese tourists waiting for buses or filing into a restaurant for their package-deal lunches.

Not all of them were happy customers, however.

“We’ve been waiting for 10 minutes now … I have a pretty poor impression of Hong Kong — not much space and poorly managed,” a tourist who gave only the surname Chen told Radio Free Asia on Thursday.

“I hope they can open up more restaurants elsewhere and not just have them all concentrated in one place,” a tourist who gave the surname Cheng said.

‘The food’s okay’

But a tourist surnamed Li said it wasn’t so bad. “It’s pretty good,” she said. “People shouldn’t demand perfection, as nothing is ever perfect.”

“The food’s okay,” a tourist surnamed Xiao said. “We had fish, meat and vegetables — at our age, we’ve gone through a lot of hard times, but things are okay now.”

But a Hong Kong resident who gave only the surname Chow said the mainland tourists were a nuisance because they block the sidewalks.

“I told them to move out of the way in Mandarin, but they didn’t seem to hear me,” Chow said, adding that some of the tourists throw toothpicks on the sidewalk after picking their teeth, and spit.

Staff at the two main restaurants in To Kwa Wan catering for mainland tour groups said that an estimated 5,000 mainland Chinese tourists eat in the district every day.

Former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui, who now lives in Australia, said there is considerable public opposition to mainland Chinese tour groups crossing the border in buses.

“There are whole industries dedicated to serving customers from mainland China, which makes people worry that Hong Kong is becoming more like the mainland – it reminds them of the wholesale mainlandization of Hong Kong ever since the [2014] Umbrella Movement and the [2019] protest movement,” Hui said.

“That goes for education, the electoral system, the judiciary and the government, which people in Hong Kong feel is a deterioration, a retrograde step, and that the old advantages of the past have been lost,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen is set to visit the United States and meet House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in an effort to shore up U.S. support amid increasing Chinese military pressure on the island. Meanwhile, Tsai’s predecessor Ma Ying-jeou, whose opposition party espouses closer ties with Beijing, is visiting China. Ma raised eyebrows back home when he echoed Beijing’s official line that people in democratic Taiwan and in mainland China are all “from the same family.” Ma, described by Beijing state media as a “former Taiwan leader,” is receiving a red-carpet welcome but is not scheduled to meet any Chinese leaders.

The United Nations has called on Hong Kong authorities to release veteran rights activist and lawyer Albert Ho, who was returned to custody to await trial for “subversion” under a national security law after his bail was revoked earlier this month.

“We are following ongoing cases under National Security Law (#NSL) with great concern,” the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said via its Twitter account on March 28. “A week ago, Albert Ho was returned to custody under this law, despite his critical health condition.”

“We urge authorities to release Ho, to continue his urgent medical care,” the tweet said.

The 71-year-old Ho had applied for bail on the grounds that he is suffering from cancer, and was released pending trial in August 2022.

He was rearrested on March 22 following media reports citing police sources as saying that he “interfered with witnesses and obstructed justice,” breaching his bail conditions.

Ho, a former chairman of Hong Kong’s second-largest political party, the Democratic Party, was also chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which stands accused of acting as the agent of a foreign power. 

Leaders Chow Hang-tung, Albert Ho, and Lee Cheuk-yan were arrested on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power,” and the group’s assets frozen under the national security law.

Hong Kong-born Ho was educated in the city, graduating in law from the University of Hong Kong, then serving as lawyer to various charitable and non-government groups before setting up his own law firm and eventually winning a seat on the Legislative Council for the Democratic Party, which he went on to lead.

Ho also led legal training across various professional sectors in mainland China, and has represented Chinese victims of World War II, namely sex slaves and victims of forced labor, some of whom traveled to Japan to claim compensation, the London-based rights lawyers’ advocacy group 29 Principles said in a profile on its website.

Ho co-founded the Democratic Party of Hong Kong, which later became the most influential party in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in the 1990s.

In early 2007, he set up the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group and served as chairman and vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance, helping to organize the now-banned annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park to commemorate victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. 

Ho was handed an 18-month jail term by judge Amanda Woodcock in May 2021 for “organizing and inciting others to take part in an illegal assembly” in connection with a protest over the banning of the vigil.

Since 2019, he has been targeted with several different criminal charges for peacefully exercising his right to assembly.

Before his arrest, Ho told journalists he was exhausted by constantly visiting friends and former colleagues in various prisons and detention centers, as the authorities began a citywide crackdown on dissent under the national security law, the 29 Principles profile said. It added that he had also asked his doctors to get his medication for lung cancer ready in case he was arrested.

“I have been in the democratic movement for many years and I am still a free man,” it quoted him saying before his arrest. “I have been lucky. In many other places, people who fight for democracy are all jailed.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.