Day: May 4, 2023

A U.N. Human Rights Council working group has issued an opinion on the case of a Vietnamese activist arrested in 2021 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for “anti-state propaganda,” saying that his detention was arbitrary.

Do Nam Trung, 41, was sentenced in December 2021 to 10 years in prison for “spreading materials against the state” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, frequently used by authorities to restrict freedom of expression and opinions deemed critical of Vietnam’s one-party communist state or government leaders. The activist is known for his work promoting freedom of expression, human rights and democracy in the Southeast Asian county.

Trung had participated in several social movements and had spoken out against official corruption in posts on his Facebook page. He also had posted criticisms of the build-operate-transfer highways that Vietnam has adopted in recent years, sparking rare protests over toll collections that many motorists deemed unfair.

Authorities arrested Trung in July 2021 in Hanoi while driving to work. At the time, about two dozen police officers searched his home, disabled internet and phone connections and confiscated memory sticks, business cards and driving licenses.  

In the 11-page report dated March 9 and just released publicly, the Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention deemed Trung’s detention arbitrary because his “conduct falls within the right to freedom of opinion and expression protected under articles 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” 

The group also stressed that no trial should have taken place.

The working group requested that the government immediately remedy Trung’s situation and bring it into conformity with relevant international norms, including those set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 

It also urged Hanoi to ensure a full and independent investigation of the circumstances surrounding the arbitrary deprivation of Trung’s liberty and to take appropriate measures against those responsible for violating his rights.

In June 2022, the working group asked Hanoi to provide detailed information about Trung’s situation and to clarify the legal provisions justifying his continued detention as well as its compatibility with the country’s obligations under international human rights law.  

The Vietnamese government requested an extension last August, but failed to submit a response by the Sept. 15 deadline. It sent a late response on Oct. 4, which the Working Group said it could not accept because it did not arrive on time.

The working group has given the Vietnamese government six months to respond to the current opinion.

Bottom of the list

The development comes as Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued its 2023 World Press Freedom Index, which ranks Vietnam 178 of 180 countries, falling four places from last year. The group said Vietnam, whose traditional media is controlled by the state, is the third-largest jailer of journalists.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, told Radio Free Asia that the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had done “an excellent job of rejecting all the Vietnamese government’s weak reasons for Do Nam Trung’s detention and of giving clear-cut cause for Trung’s immediate release.”

“Once again, the disparity between international conventions on human rights and Vietnam’s law is fully exposed,” Robertson said in an email. “Vietnam is carrying out a widespread crackdown on political activists and completely disregarding all human rights principles.

A journalist in Vietnam, who spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons, told RFA that authorities have subjected independent journalists and writers to fierce repression, convicting them under vaguely-worded articles under the 2015 Penal Code and under the Cybersecurity Law, which took effect in 2019.

“It seems that the Vietnamese government disregards all international criticism of her human rights violations,” the journalist said. 

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

Authorities convicted them of propagating untruthful information and abusing the right to freedom of expression and democracy to distort and smear the government. Hanoi said the arrests, detentions and convictions complied with Vietnamese law and the country’s international human rights commitments.

In January, Vietnam began a three-year term on the 47-member Human Rights Council, despite objections by human rights groups that the country should have been excluded because of its dismal rights record. 

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

Intense fighting has caused the number of internally displaced persons in Myanmar to grow by more than 680,000 between January and April 20, according to independent research group ISP-Myanmar.

That number is more than a quarter of the total number of people uprooted after the February 2021 military coup d’etat, the group said.

More than 2.6 million have fled their homes since the coup, mostly due to armed conflict between military junta troops and the joint forces of the People’s Defense Forces and ethnic armed organizations, according to an April 27 report from the group. 

That’s in addition to the 1 million Rohingya who have fled across borders in recent years to take shelter in Bangladesh, India and Thailand.

More than 1.3 million refugees have left Myanmar’s northern Sagaing region. Magway region and Kayah state have the second and third largest number of refugees.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or UNOCHA, told Radio Free Asia that it plans to provide humanitarian assistance to 4.5 million people in Myanmar in 2023, including 1.6 million people who have fled their homes.

The U.N. continues to face obstacles in distributing humanitarian aid, cutting through red tape, defending against attacks on aid workers and raising funds, UNOCHA said in an email to RFA.

‘Clear grounds with nothing in it’

Junta troops have been carrying out fierce area-clearing operations in Sagaing recently, an Inn Pat village resident said.

“There are more than 600 or 700 houses in our village. The junta has burned it down four times,” the resident said. “Nearly 200 houses were burned and the residents whose houses were damaged in the fire can longer live in their own homes. 

“The places where their houses used to stand are clear grounds with nothing in it,” he said.

The junta has burned down nearly 5,000 civilian houses in 70 villages in Khin-U township since the coup, and refugees are having trouble with drinking water shortages, he said.

In the same way, junta troops are clearing areas in Magway, which is adjacent to Sagaing. 

On March 28, more than 100 houses were burned down in Kin Mun Chon village in Salin township. A resident said villagers have been surviving in the jungle in very poor conditions since then.

‘Direct threat to children’s survival’

In Kayah state, where around two-thirds of the total population have fled their homes, residents said junta troops have been conducting military operations and restricting the transportation of food and medicine.

The Progressive Karenni People Force, or PKPF, announced on May 1 that 134 refugees from Kayah had died as a result of insufficient food and medicine and from the fighting.

Banyar, director of the Karenni Human Rights Organization, criticized the junta for deliberately creating difficulties for refugees and local residents.

“It is becoming more and more difficult for pregnant mothers to get the necessary vaccinations due to shortages of medicines and the junta’s blockage of medicine transport,” he said. “In addition to this, there are shortages of vaccination for newborn babies, too. This is a direct threat to children’s survival.”

The junta’s chairman of the humanitarian aid management department and the minister for international cooperation, Ko Ko Hliang, did not immediately respond to a phone message left by RFA. 

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Bangladesh is moving full steam ahead with a China-backed project to begin repatriating Rohingya to Myanmar, a plan that Human Rights Watch warned would put the lives of the persecuted refugees at “grave risk.” 

On Friday, a delegation of 27 people, including 20 Rohingya from refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh, is scheduled to visit Maungdaw in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, to assess preparations for the planned move this month of about 1,000 refugees.

Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner said the trip would be a follow-on action to a visit in March by Burmese officials to verify the identities of the Rohingya who were part of a mass exodus who fled a brutal 2017 military crackdown against the stateless minority group.

“We are going to help the forcibly displaced people of Myanmar to assess whether the situation in Rakhine is favorable for return,” Mohammed Mizanur Rahman told BenarNews on Thursday.

“Our plan is to start the repatriation by this month,” he said, insisting that Dhaka would not force any refugees to go back.

Despite its questionable role in this repatriation program, the United Nations refugee agency said in March that conditions in Rakhine state were not favorable for the safe return of 1,000 Rohingya.

Abul Kashem, a Rohingya leader from the Cox’s Bazar camp who is part of the delegation visiting Friday, told BenarNews that refugees were not interested in going back to camps in Myanmar.

“Once we go there, we can see whether the situation is conducive to return. We, the Rohingya people, want to return to our homesteads, but not to camps there,” he said.

Bangladesh diplomatic observers said the plan really is a “ploy” by Myanmar’s military rulers to stave off international pressure ahead of a hearing next month at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in an application to the court by The Gambia that says Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya.

The United States in March 2021 declared as a genocide the Myanmar military’s 2017 deadly crackdown against Rohingya Muslims that killed thousands and forced nearly 740,000 people to flee across the border to neighboring Bangladesh.

Myanmar is “interested in starting repatriation, though on a limited scale,” said Faruk Khan, the chairman of the Bangladesh foreign ministry’s parliamentary watchdog committee.

“Myanmar has come to understand that they must take their people back. Otherwise, they would face more international sanctions and pressures,” he told BenarNews.

“China has also come to understand that the Rohingya crisis must be settled. So they have been using their influence over Myanmar. I would not say that all people would return in a year, but once the repatriation starts, gradually the pace would be faster,” he added, about the Beijing-backed plan.

A former foreign secretary, Md. Shahidul Haque, expressed skepticism about the repatriation move.

“The Rohingya refugees want to return to their original homesteads, while Myanmar says they must live at guarded camps for 120 days before going to their villages; a big question remains what freedom the Rohingya would get in Rakhine,” Haque told BenarNews.

“Myanmar is set to submit their counter-[argument] at the ICJ. Keeping this issue in mind, Myanmar has been showing interests in repatriation. They become active in repatriation before every ICJ hearings, and cut off communications afterwards.”

In March, Human Rights Watch urged Bangladesh to halt the repatriation plan. The prospect of durable returns has grown ever more distant since the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar, carried out by the same generals who orchestrated the 2017 mass atrocities, HRW said.

“Voluntary, safe, and dignified returns of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar are not possible while the military junta is carrying out massacres around the country and apartheid in Rakhine State,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for the watchdog group.

“Bangladesh authorities should stop deceiving these refugees to get them to engage with junta officials when it’s clear that Rohingya will only be able to return safely when rights-respecting rule is established.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.

A Chinese government-funded study has recommended a second capital in the country’s far-western Xinjiang region to rebalance China’s economy, address ethnic tensions and strengthen ties with Eurasian nations.  

Published in the Chinese-language journal “Social Sciences in Xinjiang” on April 21, the report proposes that the purpose-built capital be close to Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or to Kashgar, one of the westernmost cities of China near the border with Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

The report, based on four years of research by Zhou Wen of Fudan University in Shanghai and Mi Jun of Sichuan University, evaluates risks and opportunities of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure development project that seeks to connect China to many other parts of the globe.

But the study does not provide details about how the central government would distribute its functions between Beijing and the potential second capital, according to a report on it in the “South China Morning Post.”

With expansive desert and mountainous areas, Xinjiang is home to more than 11 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities who have been repressed by the Chinese government in recent years through detention in “re-educations” camps, torture and forced labor.

The study has raised questions among experts and researchers abroad who focus on the Xinjiang region about possible motives for considering a second capital in the region as well as its impact on Uyghurs and other minorities who live there.

Pressure to Sinicize

Erkin Ekrem, vice president of the World Uyghur Congress and an associate professor of history at Hacettepe University in Turkey, believes that the proposal to establish a second capital in Xinjiang is related to China’s be a global power by 2049, the year that will make the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

“The Uyghur region is critical for China to achieve its dream,” he told RFA. “It is a gateway to Central Asia, Western Asia, Turkey and Europe. Therefore, establishing a secondary capital in the Uyghur region has strategic importance for China.”

At the same time, the plan would create unfavorable conditions for the Uyghur people, Erkin said

“For China to establish a secondary capital in East Turkistan, it must first Sinicize the region,” he said, using Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang. 

The vast territory’s lack of arable land would require China to bring water into the region, which would necessitate the resettling of more Han Chinese, said Erkin.

“None of these issues are favorable for Uyghurs, resulting in them disappearing by melting away,” he said.

Sean Roberts, an international affairs professor at George Washington University, who has written extensively about China’s Uyghurs and Central Asia said the potential move would have a dual purpose. 

“On the one hand, it’s likely about integrating the northwest of the country more into China’s governance, which has been something that China’s been trying to do since the 1990s,” he said. “I would say it’s something that is one of the motivating factors for the repression of Uyghurs and related peoples in the region now.”

On the other hand, a potential second capital also would be a defensive move, Roberts said.

“For a long time, China has been concerned about integrating the northwest more into the country and under the state’s purview because it worried that it could be a source of instability, perhaps aggravated by external forces.”

“This doesn’t mean that [the Chinese] are concerned about Central Asia or Russia invading, but they might be concerned about there more instability in Eurasia and wanting to have a second capital close by to ensure that China’s borders are secure in that it doesn’t spill over into China,” he said. 

In the end, the plan would not bode well for the Uyghurs, Roberts said.

“If implemented, this would end the historical concept that this region is the Uyghur people’s motherland,” he said. “I believe this also would accelerate the speed of Sinification in the area. This plan would change the entire landscape of the Uyghur Region and its relationship with the central government in Beijing.”

Other factors at play

Abdulhakim Idris, director of the Center for Uyghur Studies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, has a different take on possible motives for a second Chinese capital in Xinjiang.

If China and the United States clash militarily over Taiwan, Beijing will be vulnerable to a U.S. naval attack because of its location.

“If it moves its capital to our motherland, then it will be safer because it would be farther away from the U.S. Pacific Fleet,’ he said.

China also is hoping to pry Central Asia from Russia’s grip and play a more dominant role in the region to promote Belt and Road projects and to guarantee its energy and trade security., Idris said.

Translated by the Uyghur Service. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Hong Kong journalists still working in the city are being reduced to the status of government stenographers, as a climate of fear leads to widespread self-censorship, former reporters from the now-shuttered Apple Daily and Stand News warned in recent interviews with Radio Free Asia.

International press freedom groups say the ruling Communist Party under supreme leader Xi Jinping has “gutted” press freedom in the formerly freewheeling city amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

Hong Kong journalists who fled the city after Beijing imposed a national security law from July 1, 2020, continue to campaign for press freedom for the city from overseas, while some eke out a freelance living following the closure of pro-democracy news outlets.

Lam Yin-bong, former assignment editor at Stand News, which shut down under investigation by national security police a few months after the Apple Daily was forced to close, said there are plenty of stories that are largely ignored by mainstream media outlets in Hong Kong these days.

“Quite a lot of voices have disappeared in the mainstream media in Hong Kong,” Lam said. “For example, protesters who are about to go to prison or are about to be released from prison seem to have disappeared from public view.”

He cited the recent release of “fishball rebellion” protester Lo Kin-man, jailed for “rioting” in the wake of 2016 unrest in the Mong Kok section of the city.

“He was given the longest sentence out of all the defendants, and the Mong Kok riot was a major event in Hong Kong history, and he was the last one to be released from prison, so personally, I think this is a news story,” Lam said. 

“Yet when he was released from the fairly remote Tong Fuk Prison, I was the only one waiting for him.” 

Trying to fill a gap

Lam, who set up his own ReNews online news service a year ago, said he is trying to fill a gap left by self-censorship in Hong Kong’s mainstream media, but lacks resources to make much of a difference.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is inundated by a seemingly endless supply of trivial reporting on politically important topics, such as the recent visit by Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office chief Xia Baolong.

“The Hong Kong government’s manipulation of the media is more obvious and its methods more mature than before, and the mainstream media is only too willing, or has gotten into the habit, of following the official lead,” Lam said.

“When Director Xia Baolong visited Hong Kong, a bunch of journalists filmed him going to Kowloon Bay for dim sum, and even quoted sources as saying what kind of dim sum he had,” Lam said. “What is the significance of that information?”

“The mainstream media is flooded with this sort of [trivial] information,” he said. “It’s not that nobody writes about the other stuff. The problem is that there is a huge amount of boring information in the media … which drowns out the other stuff.”

Risker interviews

Former Apple Daily reporter Shirley Leung, who has moved to the democratic island of Taiwan to set up the Hong Kong-focused Photon News, has carried out in-depth interviews with former 2019 protesters, as well as academics, politicians, civil society leaders and rights activists, in a bid to make sure their voices are recorded.

Those kinds of interviews are now much riskier under the national security law for journalists still in Hong Kong, she said.

“Since the Apple Daily and Stand News went, I would say that 80% of the people who once took part in protests and campaigns have disappeared from mainstream media reporting,” Leung said.

“There is an atmosphere of fear that made me feel that I had to be able to write freely or report fully what my interviewees are saying,” she said of her move to democratic Taiwan.

“Back when I was in Hong Kong, it was very difficult — frankly there was a lot of self-censorship and I felt like what I wrote was lifeless.”

With Photon News, Leung is hoping to exercise the old freedoms once enjoyed by Hong Kong’s journalists, and “bring different perspectives back to Hong Kong,” she said.

But she said it is getting harder and harder to find people in Hong Kong who are still willing to give media interviews, in the current political atmosphere.

“Those awaiting sentencing are already behind bars, and the ones getting out don’t want to talk about it,” Leung said. “This is all totally understandable, and very human.”

In April, British lawmakers called on their government to issue emergency visas to journalists at risk of arrest or prosecution in Hong Kong, and to apply targeted sanctions to individuals responsible for the arbitrary arrest and pending trial of former Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai.  

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

The vice president of the opposition Candlelight Party said he’s not concerned about being arrested sometime before the July 23 election – a comment that follows a pro-government newspaper’s report that warned of a possible arrest if he’s found in violation of his court probation.

Rong Chhun, a prominent activist who has held several top labor roles in Cambodia, joined the Candlelight Party in January, saying that he supports the party’s platform of “freedom, human rights, justice and democracy.” 

His decision came amid a wide-ranging crackdown by authorities against the Candlelight Party, with Prime Minister Hun Sen repeatedly attacking his opponents in public forums. 

Those actions have continued in recent months, with some party activists facing harassment and threats at the provincial level while more senior members of the party have been targeted with arrests and lawsuits. Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party have also persuaded a number of activists to switch their allegiance to the CPP.

Rong Chhun is expected to submit his application with the National Election Committee on Saturday to be listed on the ballot as Candlelight’s top parliamentary candidate in central Kandal province. That would put him in direct competition with Hun Sen, who is running as the CPP’s top candidate in Kandal.

“Hun Sen must be open to my candidacy and to having a fair and just competition,” he told Radio Free Asia on Thursday.

“It is not worth it if you win without competition,” he said. “If we are competing and you’ve done bad things against competitors, the world will think that it is worthless to win.”

‘It will backfire on them’

In 2021, authorities sentenced Rong Chhun to two years in prison for criticizing the government’s failure to address disputes over the country’s shared border with Vietnam in 2020. He was later ordered to serve for 15 months, with the remainder of the sentence suspended with a three-year probation.

The court said he is required to tell authorities of any changes in address or employment or any plans to travel abroad. He must also appear for meetings with court officials when summoned.

On Thursday, the spokesman for Phnom Penh Municipal Court told the Fresh News newspaper that Rong Chhun would be arrested if he’s found to have disregarded any of the probation requirements.

Rong Chhun told RFA that he hasn’t been banned from voting and has the right to run for any office in the July 23 general election. Also, the Ministry of Interior has already recognized him as the Candlelight Party’s vice president, he said.

“I have nothing to be worried about because I’ve done nothing wrong. There is no ban that says I can’t involve myself in politics. If I am arrested and people think it is not correct, it will backfire on them,” he said, referring to the CPP. 

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