Day: May 12, 2023

China and Canada have carried out tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, with Beijing responding in kind after Ottawa showed the door to a Chinese diplomat who was found trying to intimidate a Canadian politician and his family. The ethnic Chinese lawmaker had drawn Beijing’s wrath over his sponsorship of a Canadian parliamentary motion condemning China’s rough treatment of its Uyghur minority group. Sharp-elbowed, sharp-tongued “Wolf Warrior” diplomats have stoked concerns about Chinese influence operations in a number of host countries with their efforts to stifle exiled critics and opponents.

Myanmar troops burned alive 19 civilians, including eight minors, on Wednesday, relatives of the dead, witnesses and a spokesman for the shadow government said, in the latest atrocity committed by junta soldiers in the country’s civil war.

The attack came in the south-central Bago region, where junta troops were fighting ethnic Karen rebels and members of the People’s Defense Force, a loose group of ordinary people who have taken up arms since the February 2021 military coup.

The slaughter came hours after remote mine attacks by rebels. Junta forces arrested people living in Nyaung Pin Thar village in Htantabin township and burned them to death around 5 p.m. on May 10, residents said. 

Five members of the same family, including a 6-year-old, were killed, said a relative. 

“The military junta forces just killed them like that,” another villager said.

The initial count was 18 dead, but on Friday, the Karen National Union, the political wing of the Karen National Liberation Army, announced that another resident had been burned to death in Nyaung Pin Thar village of Htantabin township.

Junta forces are still near the village and the death toll could be higher because the area is now like a battlefield, the KNU’s statement said.

The junta’s military’s 44th Battalion and units of 73rd, 599, 590 and 48 Light Infantry Divisions are operating the region and fighting with the KNU and its affiliate armed groups, according to the statement.

Another atrocity

The shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, and witnesses told Radio Free Asia that the victims ranged in age from 5 to 70 years old.

“They killed a total of 18 innocent villagers, 10 women and eight men,” NUG spokesman Nay Phone Latt said, adding that most of the adults killed were over 50.

“This is yet another massacre committed by the military council,” he said, referring to the junta which has ruled Myanmar with an iron fist since seizing power in a February 2021 coup.

The troops killed the villagers after a battle broke out between them and joint forces from the Karen National Liberation Army and the anti-junta People’s Defense Force near Nyaung Pin Thar village, said a local militia member.

“We detonated landmines about 15 times and about 30 junta soldiers were killed,” he said. “After that, the junta troops advanced to Nyaung Pin Thar village. More battles broke out there too.”

“We only found out last night, after the battles ended, that they had killed the villagers,” said a member of the local People’s Defense Force, a loose grouping of ordinary people who have taken up arms to fight the military. “We found the bodies only this morning.”

The 73rd and 36th infantry battalions based in Htantabin township raided other nearby villages including Nyaung Pin Thar and killed local villagers, he said.

He also said that during the battle, anti-regime forces killed about 20 junta soldiers and captured three officers.

RFA could not reach Bago region military junta spokesman Tin Oo or junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment.

Junta troops have conducted 64 mass killings across Myanmar between the Feb. 1, 2021 coup and mid-march 2023, resulting in the deaths of 766 people, according to the NUG’s Ministry of Human Rights. 

Translated by Myo Min Aung for RFA Burmese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Potentially devastating Cyclone Mocha is expected to slam into the shared border region between Myanmar and Bangladesh on Sunday, putting hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced at risk.

Posting wind speeds of nearly 210 kilometers per hour (130 mph), the storm is similar in strength to Cyclone Nargis, which left nearly 140,000 people dead and missing in 2008, said Hla Tun, director of Myanmar’s Department of Meteorology and Hydrology.

“It’s very dangerous,” he told Radio Free Asia.

Cyclone Mocha, which formed Thursday in the southern Bay of Bengal, caused heavy rains and coastal surge in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state on Friday.

It is expected to affect areas stretching from Rakhine’s Kyauk Phyu township in the east to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh in the west – where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees live in makeshift camps.

As Mocha barreled towards that coast, Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department on Friday night raised its danger level to eight on a scale of 10.

“We cannot stop the cyclone. But we are trying to reduce the extent of damage of the cyclone,” said A.B. Tajul Islam, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee at the Disaster Management Ministry, told the RFA-affiliated BenarNews on Friday evening. 

“The government has been trying to relocate people to the cyclone shelters, but it is not possible to shift all of the people,” said Islam.

In Myanmar, the Irrawaddy Delta region and Rakhine coast can expect frequent strong winds and torrential downpours, while waves in the Bay of Bengal may reach heights of 4-5 meters (13-16 feet), weather officials said.

Evacuations have begun

Residents in the path of the storm have begun to evacuate.

About 800 people from four villages have been sheltering in a local monastery since May 8, said Than Htay, a resident of Rakhine’s Pauk Taw township.

“When the storm hits, it will have been too late to run,” he said. 

On Friday, the International Rescue Committee warned in a statement that “over 850,000 refugees risk losing their homes and livelihoods” if the cyclone hits Cox’s Bazar.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it is “engaging with all relevant stakeholders to ensure timely and unimpeded access to those in need,” noting that even before the cyclone hits, there are already about six million people in need of humanitarian assistance and 1.2 million people displaced across Rakhine state and Myanmar’s northwest.

“Of particular worry is the situation facing 232,100 people who are displaced across Rakhine,” it said in a flash update issued on Friday.

Inhabitants of Sittwe, the capital of the Rakhine state, and nearby villages are also evacuating, and state authorities and civil organizations have prepared emergency shelters, said Soe Min Aung, a resident of the city.

The Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine rebel group, is also evacuating residents from the coast and low-lying areas. The group’s spokesman, Khaing Thu Kha, told reporters that more than 10,000 people had been relocated from 21 villages over the last two days, and are being provided with food and medical assistance.

Rohingya at risk

Thousands of Rohingya displaced by a Myanmar military crackdown in 2017 and living in camps in Myanmar have not been evacuated, officials said. 

More than 140,000 are sheltering in refugee camps in Rakhine’s Sittwe township.

These most vulnerable can only pray that the storm veers off course, said Kyaw Hla, a committee member of the Thae Chaung refugee camp in Rakhine state.

“If the storm actually hits here, we won’t be able to withstand it,” he said. “If that is the case, we will have to suffer. We will just have to try to survive all on our own.”

Meanwhile, Bangladeshi government officials have instructed Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar – where 740,000 live in camps – to shelter in religious schools and schools operated by the NGO community, residents of the camps told RFA.

But they acknowledged that there is little they can do to prepare for the brunt of the cyclone.

“We are very worried – if the storm hits here, there will be many negative effects,” said Ko Aung Myaing of the Kutupalong refugee camp. 

Heavy rains will likely lead to landslides, destroying flimsy homes on the hillsides, he said. “The tents we have are not strong enough.”

Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner, told BenarNews that there were risks of landslides at some of the refugee camps.

“We have identified 500 families living at the camps in Teknaf who face the risk of landslides,” he said. 

Officials had not yet started to evacuate people from Cox’s Bazar on Friday night, but were planning to start evacuations early on Saturday morning. At least 2,000 people had been evacuated from Saint Martin’s island and had arrived in Teknaf, a sub-district of Cox’s Bazar district, officials said.

Muhammad Shaheen Imran, the Cox’s Bazar deputy commissioner told BenarNews that the government readied 576 cyclone shelters in the area that could accommodate up to 500,000 people.

Disaster risk management specialist Abdul Latif Khan told BenarNews that Mocha was likely to cause up to two meters (seven feet) of tidal surge in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar.

‘Passing the days with anxiety’

Mohammad Alam, chairman of the Teknaf Leda Development Committee, told BenarNews that the authorities had been making public announcements to make people aware of the dangers of Mocha.

“The people living on hills at risky places have been asked to go to safer places. Pregnant women and children have been advised to take shelter at nearby schools and distribution centers inside the camps,” Alam said.

“We are passing the days with anxiety,” he said.

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

There’s a growing possibility that Cambodia’s main opposition Candlelight Party may not be allowed to compete in July’s general elections after the Ministry of Interior is refusing to reissue a registration certificate.

If the Candlelight Party is barred from the July 23 vote, it almost certainly means that Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodia’s People’s Party will waltz to victory, continuing his iron grip on power since he became prime minister in 1985.

The snag appears to be over paperwork.

The Candlelight Party submitted its application, along with other parties, to run in the election on May 6, two days before the deadline, and the Interior Ministry has submitted a statement to the National Election Committee confirming the party’s registration. 

But the commission says it needs the more formal certificate dating back from 1998, when it first registered itself, Candlelight Party spokesman Kim Sou Phirith told Radio Free Asia on Friday.

That certificate, however, was lost when the offices of the Cambodia National Rescue Party – the previous main opposition party – were raided by government agents in 2017. The Candlelight Party, founded by Sam Rainsy in 1995, was a part of the opposition camp at that time.

And the Interior Ministry has refused to re-issue a registration certificate.

“There is no good news,” said Kim Sou Phrith. “The Ministry of Interior has maintained that the statement the ministry issued is enough.”

Harassing and threatening opponents

The crisis is the latest difficulty for the party as it attempts to recruit candidates and campaign for votes. 

For months, party activists in the provinces have been monitored, harassed and threatened while top officials in Phnom Penh continue to face legal issues they say are politically motivated. 

Going back to 2017, the CNRP was ordered disbanded by the Supreme Court later that year – another way that Hun Sen has tried to eliminate his political opponents.

After the party was dissolved, former CNRP members and others revived the Candlelight Party in 2021. 

Interior Ministry officials have left it to the NEC and the party to work out whether the ministry’s statement can be adequate verification, Kim Sou Phirith said.

“The NEC might think it is an independent organization, but the ministry has registered all the parties and the ministry has recognized us, so why is the NEC still denying us?” he said.

Party officials will again resubmit the statement to the NEC on Saturday, Kim Sou Phirith said. 

If that doesn’t work, he said they’ll file an appeal to the Constitutional Council, a judicial body that examines election disputes, among other matters.

Right now, it’s hard to predict whether the NEC will allow the party to register for the election, he said.

Pardons and defections

Meanwhile, King Norodom Sihamoni has pardoned nine opposition party activists after they apologized to Hun Sen and joined with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. 

One of the activists is Kong Mas, a former CNRP activist who was convicted of treason and incitement after he supported Sam Rainsy’s proposed repatriation in 2019. Sam Rainsy has lived in exile in France since 2015.

There have been a number of high-profile defections to the CPP in recent months as Hun Sen and others have sought to co-opt and silence opposition figures. Most defectors have been appointed to government posts.

Also this week, the king agreed to appoint a former U.S.-based political commentator to a government position. So Naro fled to the United States several years ago to seek political asylum after he had a dispute with several senior CPP officials. 

“Samdech understood my injustice and he investigated the case,” he told RFA, using an honorific for Hun Sen. “I was a victim and it was unfortunate. Samdech didn’t know about it before, now he is responsible and took action to restore my position. I am happy to return to my old position.” 

So Naro said he will give advice to the prime minister but won’t be working in any of the ministries.

“I am a U.S. citizen and a free citizen, no one can control me,” he said. “I have met Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha. I know that Hun Sen has better qualities as a leader.” 

Finland-based political analyst Kim Sok said Hun Sen has been using all means to convince activists to defect to the CPP by intimidating and bribing them before the election. But he’ll get rid of them when the CPP doesn’t need them, he said.

“We should be vigilant against those who have jumped ship for their own benefit,” he said.  

The ruling party has been generous in giving government positions to defectors, party spokesman Sok Ey San said. 

“The CPP doesn’t care about any criticism about the appointment because this is the CPP’s kindness,” he said. 

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

A court in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on Friday sentenced war veteran and democracy activist Tran Van Bang to eight years in prison and three years probation for Facebook posts that were deemed to be anti-state propaganda in a trial that lasted less than three hours.

Tran Van Bang, better known as Tran Bang, is a 62-year-old war veteran who fought during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. He had regularly participated in demonstrations against China for its controversial claims over territories in the South China Sea. 

He was arrested in March 2022 for what was initially determined to be 31 Facebook posts between March 2016 and August 2021. 

After a subsequent investigation, authorities found that he wrote 39 problematic posts between three Facebook accounts that that were seen as “distorting, defaming and speaking badly of the people’s government; providing false information, causing confusion among the people; and expressing hate and discontent towards the authorities, Party, State, and country’s leaders,” the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, citing the indictment.

The posts were in violation of article 117 of the penal code, a vague law that the government has often used to silence dissent.

It was the latest conviction in Hanoi’s ongoing campaign against bloggers and activists. Vietnam has convicted at least 60 such people under the same article and sentenced them between four and 15 years in prison, and 13 others to between four and 12 years under the older article 88, because it was the law when the alleged crime occurred, New York-based Human Rights Watch reported.

During Friday’s trial, Bang claimed that his Facebook accounts had been hacked and he hadn’t used them in a very long time. 

But the Procuracy rejected the explanation, and used the posts on the accounts to convict him.

Tran Dinh Dung, Bang’s defense lawyer, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service following the trial that freedom of speech is guaranteed in Article 25 of Vietnam’s constitution, and Article 117 does not explain anti-state propaganda.

“The current law fails to clarify what freedom of speech is and what anti-state propaganda is,” said Dung. “In addition, there are some electronic documents and evidence missing, so I requested that the file of the case should be returned to the procuracy and a verdict should only be made when everything was clarified.”

Closed trial

Two diplomats, from the U.S. and France, were barred from attending the proceedings. They were made to wait in the courtyard until the trial’s conclusion. 

Family members, meanwhile, were allowed only to watch the proceedings on a television screen from another room in the courthouse.

Bang’s brother, who declined to be named, told RFA that the audio of the broadcast was cut several times when the defense lawyer was speaking and was turned very low when Bang spoke in his own defense. 

“The lawyer requested an additional investigation as some assessments of the investigator about the Facebook stories, which were the ground for accusations, were wrong,” Bang’s brother said. 

“The lawyer also said that the accusation grounds were just the investigator’s viewpoint, and with another viewpoint, other people may find my brother innocent.”

According to Dung, his client will appeal the verdict. He told the judging panel that Bang was suffering from a serious health issue as he had a tumor in the groin area, which had not been determined benign or malignant. The verdict noted this information but also said that it needed to wait for the opinion of Bang’s detention center clinics, Dung said.

“On May 10, I had a working session with the detention center, and they told me that their clinic had recommended removing the tumor,” said Dung, adding that red tape is preventing the operation. “If the tumor is malignant, i.e. cancer, it would be a very serious health issue.”

Human Rights Watch on Thursday issued a media release calling on the Vietnamese government to drop all charges against Bang and immediately release him.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

China’s ruling Communist Party newspaper marked the 15th anniversary of a devastating earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan with a commemorative video on Friday, sparking criticism from bereaved parents who say the causes of the school collapses have never been investigated as promised.

The propaganda video focused on improvements in the lives of survivors over the past decade-and-a-half, while the Global Times reported on improvements in “disaster prevention” on Friday in a bid to put a positive spin on the 15th anniversary of the devastating Sichuan earthquake that killed more than 80,000 people, more than 5,000 of them children.

“It’s because so many people refused to give up, that we had so much motivation and energy [to rebuild our lives],” the voice-over says, accompanied by inspiring tales of amputees who have made a success of their lives despite losing limbs in the rubble.

“So many people are still seeing a fresh start in life, like rays of sunlight shining through the cracks, or seeds sprouting afresh,” it says.

But parents whose children died due to substandard construction in school buildings said they are still silenced, detained and harassed if they continue to call for an investigation that was promised into the deaths of 5,000 children, which their families largely blame on rampant official corruption.

Forgotten the dead

Sang Jun, whose son died in the Fuxin No. 2 Elementary School in Sichuan’s Mianzhu city, said the government has treated the living well, but appears to have forgotten the dead.

“They have forgotten about the victims, and they still haven’t investigated [why it happened],” he said. “There is nowhere we’re allowed to mourn them now — we’re not allowed to go to the scene [of the collapsed buildings].”

Many still call for a government response through official complaints channels, yet are harassed and detained when they do so, according to Zhou Xingrong, a bereaved parent from Sichan’s Dujiangyan city who has lodged more than 100 complaints with central government in Beijing over the loss of her son.

“When we got to Beijing … a bunch of four or five burly men with Beijing and Hebei accents grabbed us and forced us into a vehicle, took our backpacks … our mobile phones and ID cards,” Zhou said of a recent petitioning trip in February. “They wouldn’t let me speak and threatened to tape up my mouth.”

“Then a few people from the Juyuan township of Dujiangyan came and they took us on the bus straight to Shijiazhuang and then bought tickets for the high-speed railway back to Dujiangyan,” she said. “When I got back, there was no explanation, and my personal freedom was restricted, and I wasn’t allowed to leave the house.”

“Tofu buildings”

The authorities’ treatment of victims had been unjust, she said.

“They promised to pursue those responsible back then, but nothing has been done for 15 years,” Zhou said. “No-one is being held accountable for the tofu buildings,” a reference to buildings believed to have been built shoddily and with leftover materials, similar to the dregs left over from the tofu-making process.

“They acted illegally and won’t answer up to the injury done to me and my family,” she said. “The past 15 years have been so difficult.”

Sang Jun agreed.

“Back then, [then premier] Wen Jiabao said he would investigate illegal construction methods, and told us to go home and wait for news,” Sang said. 

“Fifteen years and three premiers later … none of them has even mentioned the Sichuan earthquake, not one of them this whole time.”

“I have also been to Beijing [to complain] but they tell us to deal with it back in our local area, so now we have to give up, because trying to stand up for your rights is too hard,” Sang said.

Afraid of backlash

He said he has given up in part to avoid any backlash against his second son, born after the disaster.

“My other kid is very good at reading, and it will affect their ability to find a job in future if I go against [the government],” he said. “They always settle accounts, up to three generations later.”

“I would like to stand up for my rights, but I’m afraid of the backlash.”

Lu Biyu said it is particularly hard for bereaved families to get closure because the government places restrictions on public mourning for their lost children.

“The police and government set guards at the scene [of the disaster] every year, and they don’t want to let us go there [to make offerings to the dead],” Lu said.

“I would feel better if I could sit with my baby for an hour or two in that place, especially after so many years of unsuccessful petitioning,” she said.

“The day of the earthquake was the most painful of my life. It’s still all there, in my mind,” Lu said. “It’s as if it happened yesterday, that feeling of rigidity when I hugged his body.”

“I kept thinking, why couldn’t it have been me? He died before he had experienced anything, so I can’t let him go,” she said, adding that only the classroom block collapsed in her home district of Juyuan, leaving all of the private houses around standing.

“If it hadn’t been a tofu building, then all of those children wouldn’t have wrongfully died,” Lu said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.