Day: April 11, 2023

A Chinese official who approved the destruction of a huge Buddha statue in a Tibetan-majority area has been assigned to another position in the same prefecture, Tibetans inside and outside the region said. 

Wang Dongsheng, former chief of Drago county, now holds an apolitical appointment as director of the Science and Technology Bureau in the Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China’s Sichuan province, they said. Drago county, called Luhuo in Chinese, lies in Kardze in the historical Tibetan province of Kham.

A source in India told Radio Free Asia that Wang was promoted to the position in August 2022. 

Wang had earlier overseen a campaign of destruction at the sprawling Larung Gar Buddhist Academy in Drago in a move that saw thousands of monks and nuns expelled and homes destroyed.

After he took office as Drago county chief in October 2021, Wang directed the demolition of the 30-meter (99-foot) Buddha statue there following official complaints that it had been built too high. Dozens of traditional prayer wheels used by Tibetan pilgrims and other Buddhist worshipers were also destroyed.

Officials forced monks from Thoesam Gatsel monastery and Tibetans living in Chuwar and other nearby towns to witness the destruction that began in December 2021. 

Wang had earlier overseen a campaign of destruction at Sichuan’s sprawling Larung Gar Buddhist Academy in a move that saw thousands of monks and nuns expelled and homes destroyed.

“[J]ust within a month of taking the office, he initiated the demolition of Tibetan religious sites in Drago,” said a Tibetan source inside the region who requested anonymity for safety reasons. “Under his leadership the Drago Buddhist school was destroyed.”

Hotbed of resistance

Since 2008, Drago has been a hotbed of resistance against the Chinese government, prompting interventions by authorities, including significant crackdowns in 2009 and 2012. Beijing views any sign of Tibetan disobedience as an act of separatism, threatening China’s national security.

In this satellite image slider, the 99-foot Buddha statue in Drago in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is shown at left sheltered by a white canopy on Nov. 19, 2019. At right is the site on Jan. 1, 2022. Credit: Planet Labs with analysis by RFA

Earlier this year, Chinese authorities tightened restrictions on Tibetan residents there, imposing measures to prevent contact with people outside the area, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Wang’s term as chief of Drago county ushered in a period of heightened assault on Tibetan Buddhism at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, with the brutal dismantling of important cultural and religious sites. 

Party leaders who suppress Tibetans and successfully carry out harsh campaigns against the Buddhist minority group are often promoted, said Dawa Tsering, director of the India-based Tibet Policy Institute.

“This is the norm, and we can see that happen with Wang Donsheng,” he told RFA. 

Lui Pang, an executive member of Drago Communist Party, has been appointed as the new county chief, the sources said. 

Among Drago county’s dozen administrative officials are eight of Chinese origin who hold higher positions, while the remaining four are Tibetans who work as office employees, they said.  

So far, there’s been a slight easing of the harsh campaigns against Tibetans in the region under the new county chief, said another Tibetan inside the region, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.

“Unlike under former chief Wang, if one does not get involved in any political and sensitive issues and incidents, they [authorities] will not make random arrests as such,” the source said.

Previously, Wang was appointed deputy secretary of Tibetan-majority Serta county in Kardze, called Ganzi in Chinese, in December 2016, and later served as its county chief.

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

For Nefise Oghuz, giving testimony about the illegal imprisonment of her uncle and what she says is the genocide of Uyghurs in western China was her “duty.”

The 20-year-old Uyghur student provided statements in four languages — Uyghur, English, Mandarin and Turkish — on social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, about how police in Urumqi, capital of western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, arrested her uncle, Alim Abdukerim, 33, at his home on Aug. 28, 2017.

“I dared to share this video testimony as I could not bear the sufferings of my people facing genocide,” she told Radio Free Asia. “I could not accept the fate of my uncle and that of millions of Uyghurs in the concentration camps, and I felt terrible for my nephew, who had not seen his father even once after he was born.”

Abdukerim’s family did not know his whereabouts for two years, though Oghuz later obtained information that he was in prison in Korla, known as Ku’erle in Chinese and the second-largest city in Xinjiang, two years after he was taken away.

“My innocent uncle has been in jail for the past six years,” Oghuz says in the multilingual videos. “I demand the Chinese government release my uncle, Alim Abdukerim, immediately.”

‘I could not bear this injustice’

“My uncle Alim Abdulkerim has been detained in Xinjiang for six years because he is Uyghur. He hasn’t been able to see his son, Abdulkerim, who is now six years old. We believe he is innocent and appeal to the Chinese
government to release him and reunite him with his family. pic.twitter.com/EdWEMkhVri

— Nefise Oğuz (@NefiseOguzz28) April 2, 2023

The videos have received widespread attention from Uyghurs in the diaspora as well as an outpouring of reactions on social media.

“Since we could not get any information about him, I could not bear this injustice,” Oghuz told Radio Free Asia by phone from Istanbul, where she and her family have lived since 2015. 

“So, I gave this testimony. For the past years, we kept mum, fearing that our testimony would cause harm to other relatives in our homeland,” said the sophomore majoring in English journalism at Turkey’s Istanbul University, who studied in bilingual classes in Xinjiang until middle school.

“Although I have not openly advocated for my uncle previously so as not to cause trouble for my relatives back home, I have advocated for my uncle through various channels in a more discreet way,” she said. “Realizing my uncle had suffered too long, we lost our confidence in the Chinese government’s justice and began openly demanding his release.”

Chinese police detained Abdukerim shortly after he married amid a larger crackdown on Uyghurs beginning in 2017 during which authorities arbitrarily detained ordinary and prominent Uyghurs, such as businesspeople, writers, artists, athletes and Muslim clergy members into “re-education” camps. 

China has claimed that the camps were vocation training centers set up to prevent religious extremism and terrorism in the restive mostly-Muslim region. But those who survived the camps say Uyghurs there were subjected to torture, sexual assault and forced labor.

The U.S. government, the European parliament and the legislatures of several Western countries have declared that the Chinese government’s abuses against the Uyghurs amount to genocide and crimes against humanity. A report issued by the U.N.’s human rights body has said that the camp detentions may constitute crimes against humanity. . 

Reason for arrest unclear

Abdukerim, who has a young son he’s never seen, was a computer engineer responsible for managing computer and internet-related business at a family-run company called Halis Foreign Trade Ltd. He and Oghuz grew up together. 

Oghuz said she tried to obtain information about him from relatives in Xinjiang and from Chinese social media sources. 

“We don’t know why the Chinese government arrested him,” she said. “He had never been abroad. I think the Chinese authorities detained him for being Uyghur and Muslim.”

Following Abdukerim’s arrest, the family’s company closed its doors. His crime and the length of his sentence remain unknown, though Oghuz learned that he is being held at a prison in  Korla that operates under the auspices of the Xinjiang Construction and Production Company, a state-owned economic and paramilitary organization also known as Bingtuan. 

His prisoner number is 3153.

“I hope the Chinese government releases my uncle and allows him to meet his son,” she said. “It’s OK if I don’t see him, but his son needs to see his father. I will not stop being my uncle’s voice until the Chinese authorities release him.” 

Different languages

Oghuz said she presented testimony in Turkish, hoping that the Turks would pay attention to the sufferings of the Uyghurs, thousands of whom live in the diaspora in the southern European country.

She gave it in English, hoping that the international community would also pay attention, at a time when Uyghur rights groups are calling for concrete measures to hold China to account for its actions in Xinjiang.

And she gave testimony in Chinese to try to force the Chinese government to respond to her demand.

“For those who think they cannot give testimony in foreign languages, they may provide it in the Uyghur language,” Oghuz said. 

“Your testimony will eventually cause anxiety among the perpetrators,” she said. “The Chinese will see your testimony and worry that if more people like you speak up, they will expose their crime to the broader global community.”

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

Officials in China’s northern region of Inner Mongolia are ordering all schools to switch to Mandarin-medium teaching and slash Mongolian language classes by September, in what one exile group said is ongoing cultural “genocide.”

The regional education bureau ordered schools at every level to implement “teaching in our national Mandarin language” and to ensure high-schoolers are proficient in the language, even if they speak Mongolian at home, in a continuation of a policy that sparked mass protests across the region in August 2020.

Schools must “build Chinese national consciousness and community, and deepen education in national unity,” regional officials said at a meeting in late March.

Rights activists have warned that “national unity” programs have led to forced intermarriage between majority Han Chinese and Uyghurs and Tibetans, as well as other attempts to erase ethnic identity and autonomy.

Covert recording

Meanwhile, the New York-based Southern Mongolia Human Rights and Information Center published an audio recording of school officials telling parents at the Hohhot No. 30 High School that they must “firmly inculcate a common, Chinese national identity” into the region’s six million ethnic Mongolians.

“New details leaked from a covert recording confirm … a comprehensive ban of Mongolian language instruction across the [region will] be fully effective starting September 1, 2023,” the group said in a report on its website, citing a 52-minute audio recording of a recent parent-teacher meeting.

“Under a directive from the central government, all Mongolian schools across the region will use Mandarin as the language of instruction starting Sept. 1 this year,” the official is heard saying, adding that the policy will be rolled out at the No. 30 High School from May 1.

All ethnic Mongolian students will soon be required to take the college entrance exams in Chinese, rather than Mongolian, starting in 2025.

“The Chinese policy of total erasure of the Mongolian language in [Inner] Mongolia has been well planned and systematic,” the Southern Mongolia Human Rights and Information Center said, adding that the National People’s Congress had ruled minority language-medium education was “unconstitutional” in the wake of the 2020 protests.

The ruling replaced a clause in Article 4 of the constitution, which once stated: “All ethnicities have the freedoms and rights to use and develop their own spoken and written languages and to preserve or reform their own folkways and customs.” It paved the way for further purges of any historical or cultural material from classrooms linked to traditional Mongolian culture.

Parents and teachers have also been explicitly banned from organizing Mongolian-medium teaching on the side, the group said.

Engaging in cultural genocide

The group’s director Enghebatu Togochog recently testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that teachers could be punished just for informing students of any learning opportunities outside of school.

“From what is happening to the Uyghurs and what is happening to the Mongolians and Tibetans, it is apparent that the Chinese authorities are engaging in different forms of genocide campaigns on multiple fronts,” he said.

“[The] goal is the same: to wipe out the language, culture and identity of these three peoples and [to convert them to a] ‘Chinese’ nationality,” he said.

Japan-based ethnic Mongolian scholar Khubis said that the No. 30 Middle School in Hohhot was originally set up to deliver Mongolian-medium education to ethnically Mongolian students.

“Now the whole school is going to start teaching in standard Mandarin,” he said. “The school also stated [in the audio clip] that Mandarin will be used as the medium of instruction across the entire region from Sept. 1.”

“This will have a particularly big impact on Mongolians,” he said.

Policy borne of ‘Han chauvinism’

Germany-based activist Xi Haiming said the policy is a highly aggressive one.

“Xi Jinping is using Mandarin, that is, Chinese, to sinicize Mongolians, as well as Tibetans and Uyghurs,” he told Radio Free Asia. 

“This is a barbaric policy springing from Han chauvinism, which is to say Chinese nationalism,” Xi said, using a term used to reference racist and colonialist policies from Beijing.

The government announced in 2021 that it would extend compulsory Mandarin teaching to preschoolers across the country, ousting minority languages like Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur — as well as regional Chinese languages like Sichuanese or Cantonese — as the medium of instruction for children of all ages across the country.

The move was aimed at “enabling pre-school children in ethnic minority and rural areas and rural areas to gradually acquire the ability to communicate at a basic level in Mandarin, and to lay the foundations for the compulsory education phase,” the directive said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

The parents of a prominent political activist and blogger who is expected to go on trial on Wednesday have asked the Hanoi People’s Court for a fair and transparent trial that will result in their son’s release.

Nguyen Lan Thang “has never done anything wrong to his family, country and his own conscience,” his parents told Radio Free Asia. They added that he “always lives a life of a patriotic and responsible citizen” by speaking up against wrongdoings and shortcomings across the country.

Thang, a long-time contributor of blog posts on politics and society to RFA’s Vietnamese service, was arrested in July 2022 and charged with spreading anti-state propaganda. 

His trial is the latest in a continuing crack down on dissenting voices in the one-party communist country. 

He is accused of “making, storing, spreading or propagating anti-state information, documents, items and publications opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” The charge against him comes under Article 117 of Vietnam’s criminal code, which is often used by authorities to suppress free speech on social media.

His parents, Prof. Nguyen Lan Trang and Dr. Tran Thao Nguyen, are unlikely to be allowed to attend the closed trial. Only his wife has received an invitation to attend in person.

Thang’s parents told RFA that speaking up about wrongdoings and standing up for society’s disadvantaged shouldn’t be seen as “anti-state crime.” Additionally, keeping books given to him by friends as gifts also shouldn’t be viewed as a crime.

The charges could send Thang in prison for between five and 12 years.

The 48-year-old has written several articles on freedom, democracy and human rights on the RFA Vietnamese blog since late 2013. He has also taken part in protests defending Vietnam’s sovereignty in disputed areas of the South China Sea and worked to help people affected by floods and storms in the country’s Central Highlands.

In April 2022, he wrote for RFA about news reports that Russian ships had been turning off their locator systems to evade being tracked for illegal oil sales. He recalled that during the Iraq War, tycoons from a certain “socialist-oriented market economy” had repainted oil ships to buy sanctioned Iraqi oil at a discount and “became very very rich.” 

Closed trial could set precedent

Last month, Thang submitted a petition requesting that the court hold an open trial, arguing that the charges didn’t merit a closed trial. An activist from Hanoi who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons said Thang’s closed trial could set a precedent for future trials of dissidents.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists have issued statements calling on the Vietnamese government to drop the charges and immediately release Thang.

“For more than a decade, Nguyen Lan Thang has carried out crucial work documenting protests and human rights abuses in Vietnam despite a worsening climate of retribution aimed at those who criticize the state,” said Ming Yu Hah, the deputy regional director for campaigns at Amnesty International.

“His peaceful activism and reporting should be welcomed as part of legitimate public debate, but instead, he is facing years in prison.”

Thang’s wife, Le Bich Vuong, expressed her gratitude to the organizations for their statements. 

“Facing the accusations, Mr. Nguyen Lan Thang has said that he only exercised a citizen’s freedom of expression, press freedom, and responsibilities for protecting national sovereignty, environment, and human rights and fighting against injustice in society,” she told RFA on Tuesday.

“My family doesn’t have any wishes greater than having him released tomorrow,” she said.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

As North Korea’s economy worsens, factory workers are stealing more parts, tools and other items to sell elsewhere and bring in a bit more income. Others are bribing their bosses to skip work so they can make more money doing other side jobs.

Authorities have taken notice, and are installing security cameras to monitor their activities, sources in the country say.

In the past, such closed-circuit television cameras, or CCTVs, were used only in high-priority areas, such as in busy intersections and government buildings, and almost exclusively in the capital Pyongyang. But starting in March, they began to appear in factories and other workplaces.

“Earlier this month, CCTVs were installed at every factory under the Tokchon Motor Complex. The cameras are running for 24 hours,” a source from South Pyongan Province, North of Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

The complex is North Korea’s foremost auto and auto-parts production facility and employs about 25,000 people.

“The Central Committee supplied CCTVs imported from China,” the source said. “The cameras are used to monitor who is stealing factory materials and who is spending their working hours away from their job.”

Side jobs

Although most men in North Korea are assigned a government job that they must report to, the salary is way below the cost of living, to the point that most people have to earn money in other ways to make ends meet. 

In most cases, this means that they have to go into business for themselves, often by selling goods or services in local marketplaces.

Most companies will accept bribes from their employees who want to seek their fortunes elsewhere, the sources say. But now the cameras will reveal who actually shows up for work.

“The CCTVs are installed at the main gate of each factory, and at the workplaces of each factory,” he said. “The workers are uncomfortable that the cameras reveal who goes to work at what time and who chats during the work day at the daily work review session every evening,”

Rampant theft

It’s the same situation at the Chongju Bearing Factory in the northwestern province of North Pyongan. Cameras have been installed to stop theft, which is rampant at the factory, a source there told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Due to the lack of food received from rations, factory workers secretly steal bearings and material parts produced in the factory in their pockets,” he said. “They will later sell them at the market to make a living.”

Since the cameras were installed, several employees have been caught. 

“Now if they put even a small piece of iron in their pocket, they are disgraced publicly as a thief who steals state materials,” he said. “The workers are very unhappy about this.”

The source said that the CCTV cameras also changed the way that daily production reviews are conducted. 

Previously, the head of the work team reported production totals. But since the cameras were installed, the team leader must also report who worked a full eight hours and whether they stole anything.

Stealing a few items from factories is widespread in North Korea, and perpetrators are not usually punished beyond public criticism. But if the scale of the theft is large, those responsible can be punished as criminals under the law.

Installing cameras in factories is highly unusual, said a source using the pseudonym Kim Yong-il, who once was an administrative official in the North prior to escaping and resettling in South Korea.

“It seems like the cameras are not for the small factories. They should first go into the larger ones,” said Kim. “CCTVs enable discipline management. The other intention is to crack down on the leakage of materials and equipment from inside the factory.”

He said that if North Korea did nothing to increase wages and rations at the factories, using the cameras to force employees to show up to work and prevent them from stealing would result in not only increased productivity, it will also increase their dissatisfaction.

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

Dozens of members of a persecuted Protestant church in China have arrived in the United States after escaping the country via Thailand, where they were also detained by the immigration authorities amid fears of repatriation.

The Mayflower Church members touched down in Dallas on Good Friday after a coordinated effort from advocacy groups and politicians to bring them to the country.

All 63 members of the Mayflower Church touched down in Dallas on Good Friday after a coordinated effort from advocacy groups and politicians to bring them to the country, according Texas-based Christian rights group ChinaAid, , which helped with their relocation. The group previously told Radio Free Asia that a family of four was not traveling with the others.

“In 2019, Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church [also known as the Mayflower Church] left China to seek religious freedom,” ChinaAid said in a statement on their arrival. “They faced constant persecution from the Chinese Communist Party.”

“They embarked on a nearly four-year journey for religious freedom [that] some believed … would come to an abrupt end when Thailand immigration apprehended the 63 members,” it said, adding that the church members had been “released into American custody” and put on planes for Dallas following negotiations with the Thai authorities.

“It is the most joyful homecoming to welcome the Mayflower Church to Texas,” ChinaAid founder and president Bob Fu said. “None of this would have been possible without the help of partners, members of Congress, and U.S. government staff who worked countless hours in order to bring the Mayflower Church to safety.”

“Now they can live out their faith fully without fear of persecution,” Fu said.

Families in the church were separated and held in two different detention facilities, one of which was the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok, described by ChinaAid as “notorious.”

“The quick intervention by the United States government surely saved the lives of all the men, women, and children,” ChinaAid said.

The church members will be resettled in Tyler, Texas, which is represented by Republican Rep. Nathaniel Moran.

“The immediate action taken by U.S. officials signals that as a nation, we are still committed to standing for the persecuted,” Moran said in a statement. “Every individual should be free to practice their faith safely and without fear of persecution.”

A track record of abduction

Meanwhile, Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, hit out at the treatment of the group by Thai officials.

“Thai government officials must be more vigilant when it comes to malign Chinese Communist Party activities within their country, and work to hold accountable any police officers or officials who colluded with Chinese Communist agents in an attempt to deprive church members of your rights under international refugee law,” he said.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) commented: “The Mayflower Church congregation is now free to exercise their faith after years of religious persecution.”

The group of 28 adults and 35 minors were accused of illegally overstaying on their visas and taken into custody pending a deportation hearing.

Abraham Cooper, vice chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, said on Twitter that the Chinese government had a record of abducting Chinese dissidents from Thailand, so he urged the U.S. government to use all feasible tools at its disposal to ensure the safety of the Mayflower Church members.

While the U.N. refugee agency can designate somebody a refugee if they apply for the status in Thailand, they don’t always follow up by offering them resettlement, leaving an unknown number of Chinese nationals vulnerable to detention and forcible repatriation should the Thai authorities choose to do Beijing a favor and detain them.

Rights groups say that Beijing’s law enforcement agencies routinely track, harass, threaten and repatriate people who flee the country, many of them Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, under its SkyNet surveillance program that reaches far beyond China’s borders. Chinese officials use a variety of means to have them forcibly repatriated.

Chinese police are now calling up people who have booked flights to leave the country and interrogating them about where they are going and when they plan to be back, sources in the country told Radio Free Asia in February.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.