Day: April 7, 2023

Chinese authorities have handed down jail terms of up to 13 years to six people in connection with the discovery last year of a woman chained by the neck in an outbuilding in Feng county.

The Xuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern province of Jiangsu handed down a prison sentence of nine years for abuse and wrongful imprisonment to Dong Zhimin, the man with whom the woman had lived since 1998, state news agency Xinhua reported.

However, the accusations of rape made by the woman weren’t mentioned by the court, in a case has shone a spotlight on the prevalence of trafficking and rape of women and girls in China.

The court also sentenced five other people to jail terms of up to 13 for “trafficking in women,” the report said.

Five of the six defendants pleaded guilty during a trial that lasted two days, it said, in a case that has become the poster child for women’s rights – or the lack of them – in China,

“The woman later identified as Xiaohuamei was abducted from her hometown in Yunnan province and taken to Jiangsu province in 1998,” Xinhua reported, citing the court. “She was later trafficked three times before being purchased by Dong’s family in Feng county.”

Shackled and starved

Xiaohuamei bore Dong eight children during her incarceration, during which she was frequently shackled and starved, particularly after her mental health deteriorated, the report said.

“From July 2017 to the point at which Xiaohua was discovered, Dong Zhimin imprisoned and tortured Xiaohuamei, tying her with cloth ropes and chains around her neck,” the court found. “During this period, Xiaohuamei’s food supply and daily needs weren’t always met, and she often suffered from hunger and cold.”

“The place she was living in was very hard on her, with no water supply, electricity, or sunlight,” it said, adding that the woman identified as Xiaohuamei had since been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

“The court said Dong’s abusive acts rendered Xiaohuamei’s schizophrenia irreversible and caused serious injuries,” the report said. 

‘Nothing has been solved’

Chinese director Hu Xueyang, who made a documentary to raise awareness of the case, and of trafficking and rape in China, said the case still counts as an official cover-up.

“They targeted Dong Zhimin, who is at the bottom of the entire chain, just to appease public anger,” Hu said. “Actually, nothing has been solved.”

“This verdict is just being used … as a way to cover up the horrible crimes of selling and raping Chinese women, that have been going on for decades,” he said.

While the authorities quickly identified the woman as Yang Qingxia, known by her nickname Xiaohuamei, a young woman who went missing in the southwestern province of Yunnan in the 1990s, social media users still take issue with the claim, saying the woman more closely resembles a missing woman from Sichuan province, Li Ying.

Public anger over widespread trafficking in women and girls, mostly for “marriage” to men who can’t find willing partners, remains high in China since the woman’s discovery.

Twitter account “Save the chained woman” commented on the sentences: “Kidnapping, human trafficking, illegal detention, rape, intentional injury and killings of trafficked women in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province.”

“How can such terrible deeds be stopped? When will the trafficked women living in hell on earth regain their freedom?”

‘Green light for traffickers’

Twitter user Martin Lyu commented: “The victim is still only being referred to as Xiaohuamei, not even by a formal name,” while “Moreless” commented that the sentences were a “green light” to traffickers.

Former Sina Weibo censor Liu Lipeng said Dong Zhimin was easy for the authorities to target, as he is neither a member of the ruling party nor a local official.

“The point of not prosecuting anyone for rape is to avoid the death penalty or a life sentence,” Liu said via his Twitter account. “As a result, a large number of victims of large-scale human trafficking … have come forward to demand the case be overturned.”

Rights lawyer Lu Tingge agreed, saying that the sentences are carefully judged to “maintain stability” in a case that has shocked many middle-class Chinese to the core.

“They are avoiding the most serious allegation, because of the high profile that this case has,” Lu said. “They are seeking to minimize the impact to maintain stability, [and] so they don’t have to investigate local [officials] for criminal responsibility.”

‘Ignored public doubts’

Lu said the authorities’ handling of the case had totally ignored public doubts.

“They just go right ahead regardless of the questions,” he said. “The police are blatantly covering up crimes now – they’re the criminals here.”

According to U.S.-based economist He Qinglian, the counties around Xuzhou have a long history of human trafficking.

“The case of the chained woman has forced Chinese people at home and overseas to relive the vile abduction and sale of some 50,000 women in the 1980s; it has also revealed that there has been a criminal community of human traffickers in and around Dongji township, where that abducted woman was kept chained up for so many years,” she wrote in a commentary for RFA Mandarin at the time of the women’s discovery.

He’s comments have been backed up by the relatives of trafficking victims, prompting some to speak out more openly about the abuse suffered by their close relatives.

But analysts and activists interviewed for an award-winning investigative report by RFA Mandarin said the political will is lacking at the local level to eradicate its systemic causes.

Part of the problem is the systematic disempowerment of victims, many of whom are abducted, trafficked and subjected to regular abuse from a young age, and kept locked up by their persecutors, leaving them with severe trauma and other mental illness.

Some women develop Stockholm Syndrome, a state of intense dependence on and emotional attachment to abusers by victims of kidnap and prolonged incarceration and abuse, they said.

Meanwhile, the authorities have also retaliated against people who spoke out over the Jiangsu chained woman case, jailing Guangxi dissident Lu Huihuang for four-and-a-half years last November after he called on the ruling Communist Party to fully investigate the case.

Lu refused to accept the judgment and has expressed his intention to appeal.

Authorities also arrested Chen Zhiming, chief editor of the Hong Kong-based political magazine Exclusive Characters, in a move that Germany-based poet Yang Lian said was likely linked to his magazine’s recent focus on the chained woman case. 

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang have slapped a travel ban on veteran democracy activist Zhu Yufu, as he prepared to travel to Japan to visit his terminally ill sister.

In his first interview with the media in five years, Zhu, 71, told Radio Free Asia that he had applied for, and gotten, a visa for Japan to visit his sister Zhu Yanmin in Sasebo, who is dying of cancer.

“My sister’s lung cancer is at an advanced stage, and she has already had surgery on both lungs,” he said. “All four of her cancer treatment plans have failed, and now her white blood cells are nearly zero, which is very dangerous.”

“That’s why I want to go and visit her now – the trip is for humanitarian reasons,” Zhu said.

Zhu, who was among a group of activists who applied for official permission to set up the now-banned China Democracy Party in 1998, has previously served time in jail for “incitement to subvert state power.”

He served a second jail term from 2012 for “subversion of state power” after he posted a political poem online titled “It’s Time,” calling on people to stand up for their freedom.

He has been under house arrest and close surveillance since his release from prison, and has spent the last two years navigating the bureaucracy necessary to get himself to Japan to visit his sister despite the restrictions of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s zero-COVID policy, which ended last December.

In mid-March, however, he got a visit from state security police in his home in the eastern city of Hangzhou, who confiscated his passport and shattered his dream of meeting with his ailing sister one last time.

“They said if I left the country, I would become a focal point for other people,” Zhu said. “Nobody is being allowed to leave the country now.”

Zhu said he had retorted that the state security police didn’t want to lose the funding that came attached to his case under China’s draconian “stability maintenance” system, which seeks to nip potential political and social unrest in the bud by targeting activists seen as likely instigators.

“I haven’t opposed the Communist Party for more than 10 years,” Zhu said. “I haven’t given any interviews or written any articles.”

“All I have done is keep on trying to visit my sister.”

‘Top surveillance target’

Zhu said he has long been regarded as the No. 1 threat to social stability by authorities in his home province of Zhejiang.

“I’m the top surveillance target in Zhejiang,” he said. “I’m not allowed to leave Hangzhou, nor say or write anything.”

“There are several surveillance cameras downstairs in this building that were installed just to watch me,” he said. “They call me if I cross the Qiantang River [to leave town], and they come to my door every week to take photos.”

Zhu said he plans to ignore such restrictions now that he has been prevented from seeing his sister.

“I’m not going to comply from now on,” he said. “I’m going to do what I want to do.”

Fellow Hangzhou dissident Zou Wei called on the authorities to let Zhu leave for compassionate reasons.

“This is a form of political persecution,” Zou told Radio Free Asia.

“I hope the authorities will approve Zhu Yufu’s overseas trip to visit a terminally ill relative as soon as possible, on humanitarian grounds,” he said.

In 2013, Zhu was subjected to abusive treatment in jail after his relatives traveled to the United States to garner more support for his release.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.

A junta court has sentenced 13 youth activists to three years of hard labor in prison each for “incitement” after they organized a flash protest against military rule that authorities broke up by plowing into them with vehicles.

They were among nearly 30 activists accused of organizing the Sept. 13, 2022, flash protest – organized over social media to keep authorities in the dark – in Yangon’s Kyimyindaing township.

To quell the protest, junta security personnel drove two taxis and three other civilian cars into the crowd, injuring several people.

The court in Yangon’s Insein Prison issued the sentences in a closed hearing on March 29 for “spreading rumors or reports with the intent to cause fear or alarm among the public to commit offenses against the state” under Section 505(a) of Myanmar’s Penal Code, the defendants’ lawyers and sources close to their families told RFA Burmese.

“These young activists were those arrested during the anti-junta protest on Pan Pin Gyi Street [in Yangon] in September 2022,” one of the lawyers said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal.

The lawyer said that the 13 youths who were sentenced last week are “just old enough” to be prosecuted under Section 505(a). They ranged in age from 18 to 25.

“Some of [the arrested activists] are minors and they were tried [separately] in juvenile courts,” the lawyer said.

The activists belong to various groups that have protested the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat including the Octopus youth organization, Basic Education Students & Youths Association, Myanmar Labour Alliance, Bama Youth Network, Pyin Nyar Nan Daw Private School Student’s Union, Owl Community, and Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar.

It was not immediately clear whether those sentenced intend to appeal.

Those arrested in poor health

A member of the Myanmar Labour Alliance – whose members Nay Min Tun, Than Zaw, Zu Zu Yar Khaing, Ya Min Kay Thwal Khaing and Aye Chan Aung were among those sentenced – told RFA that all 13 are “in poor health” after being violently arrested and interrogated.

“We know that they had asked for medication as they could not sleep at night due to the pain from those injuries,” the alliance member said.

Among those sentenced were journalists Myat Ko Oo, Pyae Phyo Thu and San Lin Phyo, said lawyers.

Yay Ba Wal, the president of Octopus, said five members of his organization were in the group of 13, including two women, two men, and one non-binary member of the LGBTQ community.

“The five Octopus members who have been arrested and imprisoned have only been able to see their families when they were taken out [of Insein Prison] for a court hearing,” he said.

“Arbitrary and unjust punishments for young people who protest peacefully have already become a routine practice of the terrorist junta.”

Sending a message

Jewel, a member of the anti-junta Pazundaung Botahtaung Youth Strike Committee, told RFA that the forceful arrest and maximum punishment of the youth protesters was meant to send a message to the international community that Myanmar is “stable” under military rule.

“When there was a protest, news spread through the internet and social media networks, reaching the international community,” she said. “That’s why every time there is a protest, the junta fails in its attempt to convince the international community that it is ruling the country in a stable state.”

“That’s why I think they have suppressed the youth protesters so aggressively like this,” she added.

Jewel noted that protests of military rule have not stopped, despite the junta using every means at its disposal to arrest participants.

September’s crackdown was not the first time junta security personnel had driven vehicles into a crowd of protesters on Pan Pin Gyi Street.

On Dec. 5, 2021, authorities driving a military vehicle rammed into a group of youths protesting the coup on Pan Pin Gyi Street, seriously injuring two journalists, before arresting participants.

According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), authorities in Myanmar have killed at least 3,225 civilians and arrested more than 21,275 others since the coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests.

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

Dozens of Chinese Christian asylum seekers who fled alleged religious persecution in their homeland left Thailand for the United States after being released from Thai custody for an immigration violation, police and United Nations officials said Friday.

A group of 63 members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church (also known as the Mayflower Church) had feared Thailand might deport them to China, but American officials and a lawmaker reportedly intervened and persuaded Thai authorities to send them to the U.S.

“They flew out last night on multiple flights,” a police official who works closely with Gen. Surachate Hakparn, the deputy national police chief, told reporters in Bangkok on Friday. 

Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin Service confirmed with China Aid staff on Friday that only 59 of the 63 church members are on their way to the U.S. They will arrive at Dallas International Airport at 7:00 p.m. local time. One family of four stayed behind in Thailand.

Earlier in the week, Surachate said that Thai authorities had met with American Embassy officials and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR to arrange for the Chinese Christians to be sent to the U.S. for resettlement, and their departure from Thailand was expected to happen on Friday.

“We understand this group left to the U.S. However, we are unable to provide details on the procedures involving these cases due reasons of confidentiality and protection,” Morgane Roussel-Hemery, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, in an email Friday.

The American embassy in Bangkok declined to confirm the information and referred questions to the U.S. State Department.

While talking to reporters on Wednesday, Surachate said that authorities arrested the members of the church group last week after the National Police Bureau launched a crackdown on undocumented Chinese visitors who may commit crimes while staying in major Thai cities such as Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket.

The 63 were detained in Pattaya and tried at a court there for overstaying their visas by at least six months, officials said. They were fined and then bused to Bangkok, where they were placed in immigration detention before their release. The mothers and children in the group were held at a center for mothers and children in Don Mueang district, while the rest were held at the Suan Plu immigration detention center, according to Surachate.

During a visit to Washington in late February, Surachate said he met with U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, who asked the senior Thai police official to help take care of the Chinese Christians. Smith, a New Jersey Republican who chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, did not immediately respond to an email query from BenarNews.

Surachate met with officials from the American embassy and UNHCR on Wednesday and an agreement was reached to send the Christian exiles to the U.S., he said.

“We came to the conclusion to send them to the U.S. as soon as possible,” Surachate told reporters later that day but asked that the information not be made public until after the group had departed for the U.S.

The Chinese exiles fled China in 2019 amid what they said was escalating persecution. The group first traveled to South Korea’s Jeju Island, and then to Thailand in 2022, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news organization affiliated with BenarNews.

“Based on the investigation, these people for two years were seeking asylum and a certificate from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Korea, but to no avail,” Surachate said.

“Therefore, they traveled to Thailand because they heard it is easier to obtain UNHCR papers here…They received the certificate just after four months of arrival. We did not know they already had papers when they were arrested,” he added.

Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, but the non-refoulement principle under international human rights law states that people cannot be sent back to a country where they are likely to be persecuted, tortured, mistreated or have their human rights violated.

According to U.S.-based Freedom House, Christianity has expanded rapidly in China since 1980, but is strictly controlled by the state.

“The Chinese authorities seek to monitor and control Christians by encouraging them – sometimes forcefully – to join state-sanctioned churches that are affiliated with ‘patriotic’ associations and led by politically vetted clergy,” said a 2017 Freedom House report.

“Religious leaders and congregants who refuse to register for theological or practical reasons risk having their place of worship shuttered and face detention, beatings, dismissal from employment, or imprisonment.

Freedom Seekers International, an American faith-based group that assists people fleeing from religious persecution aboard, was working this week to arrange for the members of the Mayflower Church to be allowed to travel to Texas.

“FSI – Freedom Seekers International has been working with them for two years. And … we are taking the lead on their resettlement in the United States,” Deana Brown, the founder and CEO of the group based in Tyler, Texas, told BenarNews in an email on Wednesday.

Several organizations were working with the State Department to facilitate the release of the Mayflower Church people from Thai custody, she said.

“Since Monday we have been able to take supplies daily to the detention center for the 63 Mayflowers: baby formula, water, Pedialyte, diarrhea medicine, bug bite, medicine, underwear for everyone, a change of clothes for the children, shirts for the adults, snacks, bread, toilet paper, etc.,” Brown said. 

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

North Korea banned the use of foreign currency this month and has begun confiscating yuan and dollars from citizens by stopping them on the street for random searches, sources in the country told Radio Free Asia.

Citizens are ordered to exchange their foreign currency for the domestic won, but they prefer Chinese and U.S. currency because it is thought to be more stable.

Inflation in the 1990s and 2000s had become so bad that Pyongyang revalued the won 100:1 in 2009, The government announced the change and then allowed people to convert only a certain amount of old won, making the rest worthless and wiping out the life savings of many citizens. 

Fearing that another revaluation could come at any time, most have lost faith in the won.

But the new won-only policy could be an indication that authorities are collecting foreign currency to prepare for a total resumption of trade with China, which was suspended at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and restarted only on a limited basis in 2022.

“Some are wondering if the opening of customs trade between North Korea and China is imminent with the recent ban on the use of foreign currency,” a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. 

“This is because in the past, ahead of periods of increased trade between North Korea and China, the authorities had to maneuver foreign currency out by issuing a ban.”

North Korea previously banned foreign currency in Jan. 2010, shortly after the revaluation, likely in an attempt to force the public into accepting the revalued won. It however had to lift the ban in February of that year because of runaway inflation that disrupted economic activity.

In May of that year, the South Korean government put a stop to all economic exchanges with the North, forcing Pyongyang to increase trade with Beijing by about 30%. 

The government is confiscating foreign currency from the citizens in order to secure enough of it for when trade with China completely resumes, likely later this year, a North Korean escapee who once worked as the head of a military unit that dealt with foreign currency, told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The former unit leader, who settled in South Korea in 2016, said that the North Korean government would be unable to confiscate all the foreign currency from the people because they would never cooperate.

Forced exchange 

The policy was announced during the weekly neighborhood watch unit meetings, a source from the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity.

“Residents with foreign currency must exchange it for domestic currency at the market or in stores,” she said, adding that those who refuse to convert their stashes risk being randomly stopped and searched by police. 

“If they find foreign currency, not only is it confiscated, but the details of how they acquired it and how it is being used are investigated,” she said.

The North Pyongan resident described these searches as “tigers hunting for prey,” but even so, the government-backed money changing booth in the local marketplace is not raking it in.

“Most residents have a very negative attitude towards the order to ban foreign currency,” he said.

Worn out paper money

Another reason people dislike the won is because the most commonly used notes are now falling apart. The bills currently in circulation include 1,000, 2,000, and 5,000 won notes printed in 2008, and a newer 5,000 won note printed in 2014.   

“Domestic bills are so worn out that it’s almost not worth it to glue them together or add paper [to stabilize them],” he said. “Large-scale merchants have to hire people to glue the money back together every evening.”

North Korean notes are of such a low value that they are not convenient, according to the North Hamgyong source.

“With 100 yuan being around 120,000 won, when [one 100-yuan note] is exchanged, it becomes 120 1,000-won notes, and it is bulky to walk around with,” she said.  

“Some residents are only exchanging a small amount to avoid the authorities’ crackdown,” the source said. “However, most residents are protesting the government’s ban… They say that if the authorities cannot afford to change worn-out bills then they are not in a position to ask them to not use foreign currency,” 

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

Chinese authorities have been harassing the cofounder and teachers who worked at a private school with a Tibetan-language curriculum in China’s Qinghai province that had been shut down in July 2021, Tibetan sources said.

Authorities shuttered Sengdruk Taktse School, in Tibetan-populated Dharlag, or Dali in Chinese, in Golog county, or Guoluo, in Qinghai’s Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, amid a wider clampdown on schools promoting Tibetan culture and offering instruction in the Tibetan language. 

At the time, the students there were told to enroll in Chinese government-affiliated schools in the region that offer a Chinese curriculum, Radio Free Asia reported. 

Meanwhile, authorities have been surveilling and hounding the school’s cofounder, Khenpo Jigmey Kunga Gyaltsen, and teachers who taught there, said the two sources who declined to be identified for safety reasons.  

“Ever since the Chinese government shut down the Sengdruk Taktse School in 2021, the site has been kept unused,” said a Tibetan from inside Tibet. “All the teachers and affiliated staff from the school are constantly being summoned to the police station for interrogation and kept under tight scrutiny. They are also being monitored for who they meet with.” 

A Tibetan living in exile who has knowledge of the situation said most of the school’s former students are enrolled in Chinese government-run schools.

“Initially, when the government forcefully closed down the Sengdruk Taktse School, they said they were still going to use the school premises for education purposes under the supervision of the Chinese government, but it’s been almost two years, and the school remains idle,” the source said. 

The Chinese government closed down many private schools in Tibet between 2020 and 2021 and forbade the students from paying for outside instruction in the Tibetan language and Buddhist studies. 

About three weeks after authorities closed the school, they detained Rinchen Kyi, who had taught second- and third-graders, and took her to a hospital, citing an alleged mental illness. She was later charged with inciting separatism and arrested at her home, but eventually released in August 2022, RFA reported earlier.

Chinese authorities frequently use the charge of separatism against Tibetans who promote the preservation of Tibet’s language and culture in the face of domination by China’s majority Han population.

The forced shutdown of private Tibetan schools adds to decades-long concerns of shrinking space for Tibetans to exercise their freedom to learn their own language and practice their religion. 

Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses in the monasteries and towns deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say.

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