Day: April 25, 2023

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday threatened to fire the relatives of a popular Cambodian online activist based in France who has been highly critical of the longtime leader and the government.

Thousands of viewers watch Sorn Dara’s talk shows on Facebook during which he routinely attacks Hun Sen and calls for his removal from office. His father is a military officer and a longtime supporter of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and and his sister-in-law works at the Ministry of Interior. 

“You want to try me if your parents don’t teach you lessons. I will fire your parents – including your relatives – from their jobs,” Hun Sen said at a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh. “You are so rude. I will invite your father and your sister-in-law to learn some lessons and don’t complain that I am taking your relatives as hostages,” an apparent reference to firing them.

Sorn Dara lives in exile in France and is seeking asylum there. He most recently criticized Hun Sen for promising free admission to people and participants during the upcoming Southeast Asia Games, which are being held in Cambodia next month.

The move has been criticized as a way to curry favor with voters ahead of July’s parliamentary election.

Following his threats on Tuesday, Hun Sen posted videos of Sorn Dara’s mother and brother on Telegram saying they were disappointed that Sorn Dara hasn’t joined the CPP. 

‘You insult your parents’

Hun Sen also spoke publicly about Sorn Dara in February, saying that he wasn’t a good son because he didn’t listen to his parents.

“You insult your parents to whom you owe gratitude saying they have less education than you,” he said. “Your parents gave birth to you. You still look down on them. How about the regular people? If you don’t recognize your parents, then you are not human.”

Sorn Dara is a former official of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was dissolved by the Supreme Court in November 2017. He said his father disowned him that same year because he had refused to join the CPP.  

Sorn Dara’s father, Col. Sok Sunnareth, deputy chief of staff of the Kampong Speu Provincial Operations Area and a ruling party working group official, publicly implored his son on Feb. 22 to stop criticizing Hun Sen and his government, according to a Khmer Times report. 

On Tuesday, Sorn Dara responded to Hun Sen’s latest angry threat with a Facebook post that said the prime minister should act in a more mature manner and lead the country with dignity.

Speaking to Radio Free Asia, Sorn Dara noted that Hun Sen has recently been using threats and tricks against political opponents as the election looms. 

“I don’t want to be associated with my family. They are different from me,” he said. “No one can stop me from doing something.”

‘I will try to advise my brother’

Sorn Dara’s parents appeared in a short video in February posted by the pro-government Fresh News, saying they had severed ties with their son.

His brother, Sorn Saratt, told RFA on Tuesday that he has also cut ties with him. But he said he will try to convince his brother to defect from the opposition party and join the CPP.

“I will try to advise my brother to stop attacking the King, the government and Samdech [Hun Sen], to stay away from traitors and return to the family and the country,” he said.

Ros Sotha, executive director of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, told RFA that Hun Sen’s threat isn’t legitimate. He urged the prime minister to be patient and to avoid violating human rights and the law.

“As a leader, he shouldn’t be afraid of being criticized,” he said. “There is no law that [Sorn Dara’s relatives] will be fired because they are related to members of the opposition party.”

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol is in the United States this week for a state visit to mark Seoul’s 70-year alliance with Washington and for talks with President Joe Biden will likely focus on trade and deterrence against North Korean nuclear capabilities, experts told Radio Free Asia.

Yoon, who arrived in Washington on Monday, attended an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday where he said that the U.S.-South Korea alliance should ““evolve into a supply chain and future-oriented, innovative-technology alliance,” Reuters reported. 

But security will be the major topic of Wednesday’s summit with Biden.

To that end, Biden is expected to underscore Washington’s commitment to defending South Korea, and announce new strategies on nuclear deterrence efforts at a time when Pyongyang is ramping up tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Experts have speculated that the North could soon stage its seventh nuclear test.

“I believe that President Biden will assure President Yoon of America’s unwavering commitment to South Korea’s defense, including a strong statement on extended nuclear deterrence,” said Harry Harris, a former ambassador to South Korea. “This could involve combined consultation and coordination.”

The two leaders could explore deterrence through “NATO-like lines of effort,” said Patrick Cronin, security chair at the Hudson Institute in Washington.  

“These lines of effort include demonstrating alliance solidarity, foremost by elevating South Korea’s influence in collective defense planning, forward deployment of advanced conventional and strategic platforms, and preparedness for scenarios involving nuclear weapons,” he said. 

“Seoul should come away with a sense its voice will be heard in potential contingency responses and in the command, control, and consultation over possible nuclear use,” Cronin said

Robert Rapson, the former Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at U.S. Embassy Seoul, said he anticipates that discussions on deterrence would likely only reinforce existing policies.

“Despite all the rhetoric and buildup in advance of the summit, I don’t think we’ll see any dramatic changes in U.S. extended deterrence policy and its application with Korea,” said Rapson. 

“I don’t see any moves towards adopting a NATO-like nuclear sharing arrangement nor re-stationing of US strategic assets in Korea.  This may fall short of Yoon administration hopes and expectations.”

Tech competitiveness

Trade friction with China is another topic that Biden and Yoon will also likely discuss, as policies intended to strengthen the competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector relative to China’s will inadvertently make South Korean tech less competitive in the American market.

“The two sides will discuss ways to advance the Biden administration’s efforts to block China’s access to critical high technology and semiconductors while not negatively impacting South Korea’s semiconductor industry, which relies significantly on China and investments there,” said Frank Aum of the United States Institute of Peace. 

“There will also be broader discussions about how to strengthen supply chain resilience in general, including greater South Korean investments into the United States,” he said.

Following Wednesday’s summit, Biden will host Yoon for a state dinner at the White House. 

On Thursday, Yoon is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress, and on Friday he will head to Cambridge to tour the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and deliver a speech at Harvard University. Yoon will fly back to Seoul on Saturday. 

A hospital in Myanmar’s southern Shan state that’s been providing care to war refugees and civilians was bombed by the military junta on Tuesday, according to a local People’s Defense Force official.

Three people, including a nurse, were wounded in the attack, which could have been much worse – a 500-lb. bomb dropped from a Mi35 combat helicopter didn’t explode when it hit the hospital, according to Nay Kaung, a member of the Mobye PDF.

“This hospital has been providing treatment to civilians and refugees. There were no members of PDF,” Nay Kaung said. “The junta is targeting the civilians.”

At least 300 war refugees have been sheltering in a neighborhood near the hospital in Hsaung Phway village, Pekon township. A nearby refugee camp was also attacked on Tuesday, Nay Kaung said.

The hospital and clinic were damaged in the attack, and one of the people injured – a female patient – was in serious condition, he said.

People Media, a pro-junta media outlet, reported that an air attack was launched on Hsaung Phway village where members of the local PDF and the Karenni National Progressive Party, or KNPP – the political wing of the Karenni Army – have been staying.

People Media said that healthcare workers at the state-operated hospital were recently moved from the area for security reasons. It also said that members of the KNPP and the local PDF have since set up camp inside the hospital. 

Myanmar’s junta has yet to issue any statement about the attack.

Karenni troops normally move from one place to another but they do not station at places like hospitals, said Khoo Nyay Reh, spokesman of the Karenni Military Information Center.

Heavy clashes have been taking place in Shan state’s Pekon and Mobye townships since early this year.Intense fighting broke out near Hsa Long (North) village on the border of Mobye and Pinlaung townships on Monday, the KnIC said on Tuesday. Junta troops suffered casualties in the clashes and Karenni troops seized several weapons and ammunition, according to the KnIC.

Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Matt Reed.

The maximum nine-day temporary custody period for a missing Vietnamese blogger ended Sunday without any information from police about his status – whether he would be detained pending trial or whether he would be released – as required by law.

Duong Van Thai, 41, fled Vietnam in either 2018 or early 2019 fearing political persecution for his many blog posts and videos on Facebook and YouTube that criticized the government and leaders of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

The U.N. refugee agency in Bangkok granted him refugee status in Thailand, a country that for many decades has served as an informal safe haven for political refugees in the region.

But Thai disappeared on April 13 in what his friends now believe was an abduction near his rental home in central Thailand’s Pathum Thani province. Closed circuit video footage from that day shows him casually getting on a motorbike outside his house and driving along nearby streets.

The following day, Vietnamese police announced that they had apprehended Thai and placed him in custody for “illegally entering” the country from neighboring Laos, though they did not provide any images of the arrest. 

Under Vietnam’s criminal law, police must publicly disclose the status of a detainee after the temporary custody period expires. Additionally, a procuracy office at the same level must approve the status change regarding a case.

“Forty-eight hours have passed [since the deadline], but Vietnam’s media and judicial agencies haven’t provided any information,” human rights attorney Nguyen Van Dai, who lives in Germany, told RFA on Tuesday. “They have violated the people’s right of access to information.”

Police in Ha Tinh province’s Huong Son district, where Thai is being held, did not provide an update about his status, according to state media despite heavy news coverage of his arrest.

Radio Free Asia’s calls to Huong Son district police and the Ministry of Public Security went unanswered. An employee at the Ha Tinh provincial police requested that the reporter come in person to the head office to obtain information.

Vietnamese law also requires authorities to inform the family members of a person they arrest and hold temporarily within 24 hours.

But the blogger’s mother has not received any news about him from police. She became aware of his arrest only from news reports and neighbors, according to a close friend of Thai’s family, who did not want to be named for safety reasons.

“There is every reason to believe that Duong Van Thai has been kidnapped, and his transfer from Thailand says a lot about the total shamelessness of the Vietnamese authorities in their ever-increasing hunt against independent voices,” said Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific director at Paris-based Reporters Without Borders in a written statement.

The issue also raises questions about the possible complicit passivity of Thai authorities because this is not the first time that foreign journalists or bloggers who have taken refuge in Thailand have been deported back to their respective countries, he said.

“This new case is clearly alarming, and we ask the U.N. representatives, starting with the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees], to hold the Thai and Vietnamese authorities accountable for this scandal,” Bastard said.

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

Myanmar junta troops on Friday torched more than 370 in Inn Sa, a village 20 miles northwest of Sagaing city. About 100 soldiers took part in the raid, which forced more than 1,500 residents to flee.

Opposition forces in northern Sagaing region have put up some of the fiercest resistance to junta rule since Myanmar’s February 2021 coup d’etat and the military has responded with a heavy handed offensive. 

According to the independent research group Data For Myanmar, since the military coup, nearly 48,000 houses in Sagaing region had been burned down as of mid-March. At least 500,000 people have fled conflict in Sagaing since the takeover.

Chinese authorities have announced the formal arrest of a leading Taiwanese nationalist politician for ‘secession’ after holding him incommunicado for months, paving the way for a criminal trial over his activities on the democratic island.

Taiwan National Party Vice Chairman Yang Chih-yuan was detained in August 2022 under China’s national security law as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi left Taiwan following a trip that angered China, which launched several days of wargames around the island in response.

Yang was arrested by state security police in the southeastern coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou and accused of having founded the pro-independence Taiwan National Party, with the aim of “promoting Taiwan to join the United Nations as a sovereign and independent country.”

Yang was placed in “residential surveillance at a designated location” from Aug. 4, 2022, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, meaning that he was held with no access to a lawyer or to family visits for six months.

State media reports accused Yang of “actively scheming” to work towards formal statehood for Taiwan, which split from mainland China in 1949 amid civil war and has never been ruled by the Communist Party.

‘Colluding with separatist forces’

They cited his campaigning for a referendum on independence for Taiwan, a sovereign state still using the name of the 1911 Republic of China founded by Sun Yat-sen, and his founding of the Taiwan National Party in 2011 as examples.

Reports at the time also accused Yang of “colluding with separatist forces to support Hong Kong secessionists” during the 2019 protest movement in the city, but that charge appears to have been dropped.

“Yang Chih-yuan, a criminal suspect from Taiwan, is suspected of the crime of secession,” China’s state prosecutor, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, said on its official website on Tuesday.

“A few days ago, the Wenzhou Municipal People’s Procuratorate approved Yang Chih-yuan’s arrest on suspicion of secession,” it said. “The case will be passed to the municipal procuratorate for prosecution.”

Lee Ming-cheh, a Taiwanese community college manager who served a five-year jail term in China for “subversion” linked to his activism in the island’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said that while some of his activism had connections to China, Yang’s activities had all been carried out in Taiwan.

He said Yang’s arrest and prosecution should sound a warning to any politically active Taiwanese, and not just regarding travel to China, Hong Kong or Macau.

“The risk of something like this happening to Taiwanese people isn’t confined to China, Hong Kong or Macau,” Lee warned. 

“Anyone who is regarded by them as a Taiwan independence activist could wind up getting extradited from any country that has extradition agreements with China or Hong Kong,” he said.

Clear escalation

Lee, who was the first Taiwan national to be jailed for a crime under China’s national security law, said Yang’s case marks a clear escalation in Beijing’s intentions towards pro-independence Taiwanese.

“This is a clear attempt at suppression, and is intended to warn Taiwanese that advocating independence won’t be consequence-free, and that they could face threats and criminal prosecution in China,” Lee said.

“Last year, they were even talking about carrying out trials in absentia, in cases where they couldn’t lay hands on the person,” he said.

China amended its Criminal Procedure Law in 2018 to allow trials in absentia in cases of “crimes seriously endangering national security” and “terrorist activities,” vaguely worded offenses that are typically used to target peaceful critics of the regime.

In 2021, a court in Hong Kong jailed motorcyclist Tong Ying-kit for “terrorism” and “inciting secession” after he flew the banned protest slogan “Free Hong Kong, Revolution Now!” from the back of his motorbike.

Wang Chih-sheng, secretary general of the China Asia-Pacific Elite Exchange Association, said the sort of activities Yang engaged in are totally normal behavior in a democratic environment like Taiwan.

‘Chilling effect’

He said Yang is clearly being used to discourage freedom of speech and political activism in Taiwan, despite the fact that Beijing has no jurisdiction there.

“It’s clear that this could bring with it a new wave of chilling effects,” Wang said. “Taiwanese people could end up self-censoring their political speech and limiting their degree of involvement in activism or even political donations in future, if they want to do business with China.”

He said it’s likely that more cases will follow Yang’s, and cited the recent detention in Shanghai of Taiwan-based publisher Li Yanhe, or Fucha.

“[Yang’s arrest] could make everyone in Taiwan feel unsafe, especially when you add in the impact of the [detention of ] Eight Banners Press editor Fucha, and secret Chinese police stations overseas,” Wang said.

Authorities in New York recently arrested two men for allegedly setting up an overseas branch of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan that was eventually shut down by the authorities last year.

Beijing has shut down a number of the offices in the wake of a September 2022 report from the Spain-based Safeguard Defenders group listing dozens of such operations, sparking investigations and orders to shut down from governments around the world.

Taiwanese Premier Chen Chien-jen called on China to release Yang and let him come home to Taiwan “as soon as possible.”

He also warned Taiwanese to exercise particular caution when traveling to China.

The Taiwanese government agency that deals with China said it has repeatedly called on Beijing to release Yang through various channels, but had received “no positive response.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.