Day: April 10, 2023

One of three Burmese armed resistance fighters who sought medical assistance in Thailand was killed as Thai authorities handed them over to junta authorities en route to Myanmar, Radio Free Asia has learned.

The incident prompted Thailand’s opposition Commoners Party on Monday to condemn the Thai government for cooperating with Myanmar’s military regime in what it said was a violation of domestic and international law.

The three members of the anti-junta People’s Defense Force entered the Thai border town of Mae Sot, across from Myawaddy in Myanmar’s Kayin state, on April 1 seeking medical treatment, but were arrested by Thai authorities at the Thai-Myanmar border immigration gate. On the morning of April 4, they were sent back across the border to Myanmar’s Karen Border Guard Force, who arrested them and transferred them into the custody of junta troops.

Following their deportation, reports emerged that the three PDF members – Thiha, the Lion Battalion’s deputy platoon commander, and fighters Htet Nay Win and Saw Phyo Lay – were killed in junta captivity.

On Monday, the Lion Battalion spokesperson Anyar Thar told RFA that Saw Phyo Lay was shot as he attempted to escape during the handover and later died from his injuries. The status of the other two men remained unclear.

“When [the PDF fighters] learned that they were being handed over to the BGF [Border Guard Forces], they jumped out of the boat that was carrying them,” he said.

“Troops from both sides shot at them. [Saw Phyo Lay] who was about to die [from his injuries] was even handcuffed, put back into the boat and sent over to the BGF. This shows how good the relations are between the BGF and Thai authorities.”

Anyar Thar said that Thiha and Htet Nay Win have been sent to the junta’s Southeast Regional Military Headquarters based in the Mon state city of Mawlamyine.

Neither the junta nor the Karen Border Guard have released any news regarding the incident and attempts by RFA to reach Col. Saw Chit Thu, the head of Myanmar’s Border Guard Force, went unanswered on Monday.

Opposition condemnation

On Monday, Thailand’s opposition Commoners Party issued a statement criticizing the Thai government for collaborating with Myanmar’s junta and accusing it of perpetrating an “inhumane act” by assisting the junta in committing “war crimes.”

The statement also called on Thailand’s Immigration Department to publicly clarify why it violated international and domestic laws by repatriating the PDF fighters after they entered Thailand in need of medical attention.

“I do not accept the Thai government’s policy towards Myanmar anti-junta activists and refugee applicants,” Commoners Party spokesperson Kornkanok Khamta told RFA Burmese. “The government is sending them back to unsafe locations. We all have to show that we are one with the people of Myanmar.”

When asked about the Thai government’s response to the Commoners Party statement, Kornkanok Khamta said none was provided.

“They silently neglect the statements of other organizations as well,” she said.

Attempts by RFA to contact Thai Foreign Ministry spokesperson Kanchana Patarachoke went unanswered on Monday.

Human rights groups have also called on the Thai government to examine its immigration department’s handling of the three resistance fighters.

Speaking to RFA, Patrick Phongsathorn, a legal expert for the NGO Fortify Rights, urged the Thai government to investigate the situation as soon as possible and to prosecute the officer responsible for deporting the PDF members under Thailand’s anti-torture law.

Refugees fearful

Previously, Thai authorities have arrested Myanmar nationals seeking shelter in Thailand after fleeing fighting between the military and anti-junta forces and warned them to abide by Thai law, but mostly allowed them to stay on humanitarian grounds.

One Myanmar refugee in Thailand named Nikki told RFA that members of the Burmese community there are now worried for their safety after the three PDF fighters were arrested and returned across the border.

“This incident has seriously scared the Burmese people who are taking refuge in Thailand,” she said.

“We are too scared to even go out to buy food. Thai police are regularly arresting Burmese refugees in Mae Sot, targeting the undocumented and political refugees.”

Reports of the deportation came amid an April 5-8 attack by a combined force of the ethnic Karen National Liberation Army and the Lion Battalion on military and Karen Border Guard Force bases located north of Myawaddy.

Although details of the attacks were not immediately clear, injuries have been reported and nearly 10,000 residents of the area are believed to have fled the fighting to safety.

Some of the anti-junta fighters injured in the battle were taken to the Thai side of the border on April 9 and later arrested by Thai police.

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

Myanmar’s New Years, called Thingyan, is normally a water festival in which people can drench each other during the hottest time of the year. And junta troops have been busy building pavilions around the country to create a sense of normalcy in the war-wracked country.

But in an apparent attempt to dispel any notions of stability under military rule, rebel groups set off several bombs this past weekend at these pavilions in the cities of Yangon, Mandalay and Mawlamyine.

No one was injured in the blasts, but they have clearly contributed to the turmoil in the country that has slid into civil war since the military’s February 2021 coup d’etat. 

An anti-junta urban guerrilla group known as the Dark Shadow claimed responsibility for the explosions in Yangon’s Sanchaung, Dagon, and Thar Kay Ta townships, and at People’s Square downtown, in a statement issued on April 8. 

The perpetrators of the bombings in Mandalay’s Zay Cho Market and in the Mon state city of Mawlamyine remained unknown on Monday.

A resident of Yangon named Ye Myo told RFA Burmese that while no one was hurt in the explosions, the junta has responded with increased security at the sites ahead of the April 13-16 Thingyan celebrations.

“The bombs that went off in the pavilion in front of the Sanchaung Police Station and the pavilion in front of People’s Square were very loud,” he said.

“The junta has increased security after the blasts. We used to see only one or two military security personnel [near the sites], but after the blasts, we can see around 10 security personnel have been assigned to keep watch at night.”

Ye Myo said that authorities dismantled at least three pavilions on Sunday in Yangon’s Mingalardon township amid reports that anti-junta forces planned to fire “remote-controlled missiles” at the sites.

On Monday, the pro-junta Myawaddy newspaper reported that two members of the anti-junta Special Task Agency were arrested in Yangon’s Alone township for allegedly planning to carry out bombings during the water festival. The report said they were planning to frighten away would-be participants at the festival and that “effective action” will be taken against them.

Attempts by RFA to reach the Special Task Agency for comment on the report went unanswered by the time of publishing.

Trying to create a celebration

Sources said that despite the bombings, the junta is continuing preparations for Thingyan with beefed up security in Myanmar’s various regions and states.

They said that in addition to a festival pavilion planned for city hall in Naypyidaw, the junta is preparing some 20 smaller pavilions on Pyinmana-Taung Nyo Road in the capital’s Zabu Thiri township and a water festival parade. 

But most people have no intention of taking part in Thingyan celebrations this year, a resident of Pyinmana, who declined to be named for security reasons, told RFA.

 

“I haven’t heard anything about preparations for the celebration by residents so far,” he said. “But I think the junta is trying very hard to create a very big celebration.”

The Pyinmana resident said junta troops are on patrol at the pavilion sites “around the clock.”

Other sources told RFA that the junta has been ordering civil servants from several government departments to take part in the Thingyan festivities and to organize traditional dance performances.

A resident of Mandalay named Ko Moe said that the junta is preparing to hold Thingyan festivities as usual, despite the bombing there, adding that there are “more pavilions this year” than last.

“One significant addition compared with last year is the pavilion at Nay Cho market,” he said. “The junta is trying to bring large crowds to that area, too. I think they are building the pavilions at a vast cost with the help of those who support them and people in their inner circle.”

He said that last year’s Thingyan Festival parade organized by the junta was a failure as residents boycotted the event.

Tin Oo, a resident of Yangon, said that in addition to a pavilion being built at city hall, the junta has instructed each township administrator to build large pavilions for their townships and to organize traditional dance presentations for entertainment.

“The junta’s intent is to make this year’s water festival crowded with people, whatever it takes,” he said.

Tin Oo said the junta is offering 10,000 kyats (U.S.$5) per day to security guards and anyone who is willing to join celebrations at the pavilions, and 50,000 kyats (U.S.$24) per day and festival wear to dance troupes that are willing to take part.

“[These offers are meant] to draw large crowds during the festival, which I think will be impossible,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see if this year’s Water Festival will be crowded or not.”

Calls for boycott

Anti-junta political groups, meanwhile, are urging people across the country to go on strike instead of participating in the regime’s Thingyan celebrations. 

Nan Lin of the Ta-Ka-Tha University Students’ Union Alumni Force told RFA that the junta is trying to draw large crowds during the Thingyan festival because it wants to “divide the people” and “make an impression that the situation in the country is under control.” 

“The junta is forcefully controlling Myanmar’s heartland regions by burning down civilian villages, killing everyone in its way, and committing excessive, forceful and cruel atrocities, but in urban areas, it aims to make an impression that things are back to normal,” he said. “This is part of the junta’s plan to divide the people.”

The armed opposition has called on people not to associate with the junta during the Water Festival and not to use military-related products.

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

Chinese police are using spies to make sure that Uyghur Muslims are not fasting during the holy month of Ramadan – including members of their own ethnic group.

The spies – which Chinese officials refer to as “ears” – are drawn from ordinary citizens, police and members of neighborhood committees, said a police officer from an area near Turpan, or Tulufan in Chinese, in eastern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

“We have many secret agents,” she told Radio Free Asia.

China began banning Muslims in Xinjiang from fasting during Ramadan in 2017, when authorities began arbitrarily detaining Uyghurs in “re-education” camps amid larger efforts to diminish Uyghur culture, language and religion.

The restriction was partially relaxed in 2021 and 2022, allowing people over 65 to fast, and police reduced the number of home searches and street patrol activities. 

But this year, the government has prohibited everyone from fasting regardless of age, gender or profession, said a political official at Turpan City Police Station. “No one is allowed to fast in this Ramadan,” which runs from March 22 to April 20 this year. 

Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars, or key practices, of Islam, during which Muslims are urged to abstain from eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset.

Punishment unclear

During the first week of Ramadan, authorities summoned 56 Uyghur residents and former detainees to interrogate them about their activities and determined that 54 of them violated the law by fasting, a policeman from Turpan City Bazaar Police Station. 

Neither he nor another police officer at the station would discuss what happened to those they determined to have broken the law.

Police stations in Turpan have enlisted two or three spies from each village to surveil residents previously interrogated and detained for fasting during Ramadan, and those released from prison, officers told RFA. 

“Our ‘ears’ came from three fields — the ordinary residents, the police and the neighborhood committees,” said the police officer from an area near Turpan.

“Because of the language barrier, we recruited Uyghurs to surveil other Uyghurs,” she said. “In my workplace, there are 70-80 Uyghur policemen who either directly work as ‘ears’ or lead other civilian ‘ears.’”

Authorities said they even planted spies among the police force to observe whether Uyghur officers were observing Ramadan by fasting.

The Turpan City Bazaar Police Station recruited two or three “ears,” meaning spies, from among ordinary citizens from each village and neighborhood committee to watch the activities of residents during Ramadan. Some villages even have four to five spies, a policeman there said.

The police officer from an area near Turpan said her station has 286 police officers, most of whom are Uyghurs. But her “comrades,” or Chinese police, find it difficult to spy on Uyghur residents there because of the language barrier. 

Instead, they deployed Uyghur police officers to directly keep an eye on Uyghur residents, or else they were made the leaders of spy rings, she said. 

Police will investigate those who previously violated the law or broke the law by fasting during Ramadans past, as well as people who organize fasting activities, said the police officer.

The elderly and teenagers are being surveilled because “older people have rigid ideas and will not transform easily,” while teenagers “are easy to confuse” and susceptible to the words of adults, she said. 

The spies within

A staffer at the Turpan Prefecture Police Bureau said authorities there had spies working within the police forces to see if Uyghur officers were fasting from dawn to dusk, and then reported the results of their activities at weekly political meetings. 

“We have our upper-level officers and internal agents watching the behavior of Uyghur policemen,” she told RFA, adding that officers tested their Uyghur colleagues by handing out fruit to eat.

As of yet, they have detected no fasting officers, she added.

This year’s policy also includes home searches, street patrols and mosque searches, said a police officer from a station in Turpan city. 

Authorities on patrol are questioning Uyghur Muslim families to see if they are waking up before dawn to eat and gathering for a meal after sunset — considered a violation of the law by Chinese authorities — he said.

“When we search the houses, we check if they have carried out illegal religious activities and if there are security threats,” said the political official at Turpan City Police Station. Violators would be punished with legal education for light offenses and jail sentences for severe ones, he said.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said Monday he holds out hope for peace in Taiwan, even as China carries out war games near the island after the recent trip by its leader to the United States.

Manalo is in Washington this week to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken as part of the “2+2 Ministerial Dialogue,” which will also include Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, amid Manila’s preparations to open four more U.S. military outposts on its territory. 

But the trip comes as Beijing carries out naval military drills around the self-governing island – about two hours’ flight from Manila – following Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s recent trips to the United States, which included a meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.  

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies ahead of his meetings, Manalo said that the Philippines was closely monitoring the situation given the self-governing island is “right next door.” 

But he said that he believed Beijing’s response this time around had not been quite as aggressive as in the aftermath of the trip to Taiwan by McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, in August last year. 

“Well, that really escalated tensions,” Manalo said of Pelosi’s trip to the island that Beijing considers a renegade province. “But so far, we see now that this visit is – hopefully – it’s not as it was in August.”

“This could hopefully pave the way, let’s say, for calming the situation a bit on the straits [and] between China and the United States,” he said.

South China Sea

Manalo also said that the maintenance of peace in the South China Sea, which he often referred to as the “West Philippine Sea,” was a priority for Manila as competing claims for the maritime territory are negotiated with Beijing and other claimants in Southeast Asia.

But in an apparent reference to Beijing’s unilateral moves to build-up coral reefs into naval bases in the disputed waters, he defended the “international rule-based order” as the fairest way to arbitrate control of the waters but said Manila would always “uphold its sovereignty.”

The Philippines was “at the heart of this seascape,” he said, and “the South China Sea, for us, is also about people,” with Philippine citizens relying on the waters for fishing. He said Manila would therefore not accept any “harassment” or “denial of access” to the waters.

“The Philippines has been clear and consistent about our interest in maintaining the South China Sea as a sea of peace and stability – and [about] our aim to boost our defense capabilities,” he said. 

Manalo meets with Blinken and Austin on Tuesday.

One of China’s “Feminist Five” activists who sparked an international outcry when they were detained ahead of International Women’s Day in 2015, has left the country to take up a position as a visiting scholar in the United States.

Zheng Churan was detained alongside fellow activists Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Wei Tingting and Wang Man on March 6, 2015, two days ahead of International Women’s Day, as they planned a campaign against sexual harassment on public transportation, on suspicion of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”

While they were eventually released “on bail” in April 2016, they remained criminal suspects under tight police surveillance and under the threat of prosecution, while at least one of them was prevented from leaving the country.

Much of China’s feminist activism moved online after their detention, only to be targeted in a nationwide “public opinion” cleanup campaign that saw key feminist social media accounts shut down beginning in 2017, although it saw a resurgence with the #MeToo movement, whose activists have also been detained and prevented from traveling outside mainland China.

“It was a pretty big victory for me that I was able to get out of there in reasonably good health,” Zheng told an April 8 Georgetown University lecture titled “Unleashing the Power of Feminist Activism in China,” in her first public appearance since arriving in the United States a month ago.

“What activism taught me was how to see new possibilities, how to find hope in small victories and how to keep fighting,” she said.

‘Success is a process’

Wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words “This is what a feminist looks like” in Chinese, Zheng retains the same intensity she had when campaigning online for the release of her detained labor activist husband Wei Zhili by taking up running and logging her daily workouts as a way to draw attention to his situation.

“I don’t think the [women’s rights] movement has to reach some kind of end point, or milestone, to be regarded as a success,” Zheng said in an interview after the lecture. “In my opinion, success is a process.”

“Activism changes the way people think, and how they look at the world, and shows them how to use their worldview as guidance in living their lives,” she said. “That’s the most important thing.”

Zheng’s lecture also included a call on audience members to pen postcards in support of Chinese women currently detained for their activism, particularly the young women detained in the wake of the “white paper” protests in November 2022.

Participants sent postcards to “white paper” movement supporters Cao Zhixin, Li Siqi, Li Yuanjing, Zhai Dengrui and Kamile Wayit, and to Wu Yi and other women for visiting “Xiaohuamei,” a woman found chained by the neck in an outbuilding in Jiangsu province’s Feng county last year.

“Actions like these are happening all over the world,” Zheng said. “It will be very heartening [for these women] back in China to know that they haven’t been forgotten.”

She said she continues to draw her greatest inspiration from such actions.

“The biggest inspiration I get from feminism is its actions,” she said. “There are various things we can do to change inequality, and action is a very important use of our power.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.

The Dalai Lama apologized on Monday for briefly kissing a young boy on the lips and asking him to “suck my tongue” at a student event in northern India last month.

The Feb. 28 incident sparked online criticism, but in Tibetan culture sticking out one’s tongue is sometimes used as a traditional greeting, and can be seen as a sign of respect or agreement. 

The leader of Tibetan Buddhism posted a statement on his Twitter account, saying he “wishes to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused.”

The statement said the Dalai Lama “often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras.”

“He regrets the incident,” it said.

A story in Tibetan folklore tells of a 9th-century Tibetan king who was known for his cruelty and his black tongue. The practice of sticking out their tongue is used by Tibetans to show they aren’t the reincarnation of the wicked king.

A video clip shows the boy at first asking the 87-year-old for a hug. 

The Dalai Lama then points to his cheek and says “first here.” The boy kisses the cheek and gives him a hug. Then the Dalai Lama motions to his lips and says “here also,” and kisses the boy briefly on the lips.

He then sticks out his tongue and says “and suck my tongue.” With laughter in the background, the video shows the boy sticking his tongue out before withdrawing it, and the Dalai Lama did the same.

Namgyal Choedup, a representative in the Office of Tibet in Washington, said the video clip was “blown out of context and some news networks have sensationalized the incident. 

“However, His Holiness has apologized if his words have offended anybody.”

According to a reliable source, the parents of the boy seen in the video told officials in the Dalai Lama’s office that their faith and respect for him remains intact.

Youth event

The Twitter account for the M3M foundation, the philanthropic arm of an Indian real estate company, said on Twitter that the Dalai Lama blessed more than 120 students who had just completed a skills training course.

The event took place at the Main Tibetan Temple near the Dalai Lama’s residence in Dharamsala – the city at the edge of the Himalayas that serves as the seat of the Tibetan government in exile. The Dalai Lama fled his homeland into exile in 1959 after a failed national revolt against Chinese rule.

The foundation included a photo of the Dalai Lama with his arm around the smiling boy. 

Still, the Delhi-based child rights group, Haq: Center for Child Rights, told CNN in a statement that it condemns “all form of child abuse.”

“Some news refers to Tibetan culture about showing tongue.” the statement said. “But this video is certainly not about any cultural expression and even if it is, such cultural expressions are not acceptable.”

Kalden Lodoe of RFA’s Tibetan service contributed to this report. Edited by Malcolm Foster.