Day: May 30, 2023

In Taiwan, he was in the coffee industry and military reserves.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Yao Kuan-chun volunteered to go fight.

He has been on the ground in Ukraine the past three months, one of a handful of Taiwanese soldiers who have joined other international fighters in the war that started in February 2022.

Yao, 30, knows the threat of invasion from a bigger authoritarian neighbor – China – and is fighting for the larger causes of democracy and freedom. 

But he’s also getting first-hand combat experience in case China decides to invade his island.

“Tensions have escalated (across the Taiwan Strait), so we need to pick up the pace if we’re to be ready. Whether or not they dare to invade depends on our preparedness,” Yao said. “Who’s going to come to your rescue if you don’t defend your own country?”

“There’s a saying that goes, ‘Today, Hong Kong, tomorrow, Taiwan’,” he said, referring to fears that the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms could be repeated in Taiwan should it come under Chinese rule.

“Or you could say, ‘Today, Ukraine, tomorrow, Taiwan,’” he said.

Yao was given just two weeks of training before being sent to the front lines. He described his experience of fighting as “very scary.”

“Even if you know what you’re doing, it’s still scary,” he said. “There’s not enough training.”

The recruitment team appeared to be on the lookout for Chinese infiltrators.

“I got more political questions than about my military background,” he said. “This surprised me.”

“They cut to the chase and asked me if I supported the Chinese Communist Party, and whether I knew about China’s [close] relationship with Putin.”

‘Freedom and democracy aren’t free’

Lu Tzu-hao, 35, said he made his decision to volunteer “without thinking about it too much.”

“It’s really amazing that [the Ukrainians] have been able to hold down the fort for a year now,” said Lu.

“We helped out with defense or supply logistics,” he said. “I’ve been bombed even in my sleep.”

“If a bomb fell in front of us and didn’t go off, me and the guys would feel like we’d been given another chance at life,” said Lu, who grew up helping his parents with their meat stall at a local wet market. 

Why did he do it?

“Freedom and democracy aren’t free,” said Lu, adding that other volunteers would sometimes ask him about tensions between Taiwan and China.

“I told them yeah, Taiwan has been suppressed for a long time,” he said. “Less than a month after I got back to Taiwan, [Beijing] launched missiles at us.”

“That same day, seven or eight soldiers from different countries asked me if we needed them to come over,” Lu said. “They’d be happy to come to Taiwan’s aid [because] they support our freedom and democracy.”

Witnessing war

Lee Cheng-ling, 36, had served in the Marines in Taiwan, firing howitzers. After he volunteered, he was stationed in the Kharkiv area of eastern Ukraine for nine months.

“I just wanted to help,” Lee said, adding that the firsthand experience fighting was “very valuable.”

Ukrainians are aware of China’s threats against Taiwan, he said.

“Last August, when China launched missiles, it was quite big news in Ukraine,” he said. “Yep, Ukrainians know that Taiwan is in a similar situation.”

The cruelties of war have made an impression on all the Taiwanese volunteers who spoke to Radio Free Asia.

“We went through Bucha to survey the town after it was liberated,” Yao said. “There were at least 14 [civilians] dead, the youngest in their teens, and the oldest nearly 70.”

“They were locked up in a basement – can you imagine what they must have suffered?”

Lee recalled Russian troops opening fire on a fleeing middle-aged civilian and killing him.

“He was scared and tried to run,” he said. “The Russian forces saw him, opened fire and killed him, spraying his car with bullet holes.”

“There was a pool of blood on the ground.”

The United Nations has estimated that 8,490 civilians have been killed by Russian forces in Ukraine, but the true number is likely far higher.

‘That could be you’

At least one Taiwanese soldier paid the ultimate price.

Tseng Sheng-kuang, 26, was in Ukraine for five months before dying of injuries sustained in battle in November 2022.

In an interview recorded before his death and used with his family’s permission, he too drew a close parallel with his volunteering in Ukraine and Taiwan’s own situation.

“China wants to invade Taiwan [and] I want to defend my country, but I need to help this country first,” Zeng said. 

His mother Su Yu-jou said she had been less than convinced.

“He showed me some stuff on his phone saying ‘look Mom, these are innocent civilians … if the Chinese Communist Party attacks Taiwan … that could be you,” Su said.

“I asked him, ‘Couldn’t they just manage without you?’.”

“When he would call, there would always be noises like air-raid sirens in the background, or shelling,” Su said. “We would also hear the sound of machine-gun fire.”

“I would be so worried, and ask him what the sounds were – he told me it was shells going off,” she said.

Her son’s death was a “life-ending blow.” She keeps his old uniform close, and has an image of him tattooed on her arm, for fear that his memory will fade over time.

“When Sheng-kuang died, I realized that war is a terrible, terrible thing, and so very cruel,” she said. “I never want to see another war.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster

Police in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan have detained more than 30 people following clashes over the weekend between hundreds of armed police and Hui Muslims trying to prevent the demolition of a dome on a major mosque.

Authorities in the mostly Muslim town of Nagu starting arresting people for public order violations after clashes on Saturday, when a government demolition team toppled the minarets and dome roof of the historic Najiaying Mosque.

It is part of the “sinicization” of religion under President Xi Jinping that ushered in a nationwide crackdown on Muslim, Christian and Tibetan Buddhist religious activities and venues in 2017.

The mosque, run by Hui Muslims, had recently expanded its minarets and dome, a move that was ruled illegal by a local court, al-Jazeera reported, amid concerns that further clashes look likely when authorities move to demolish a dome in nearby Shadian on Friday.

Social media footage posted by Twitter user Ismail Ma showed hundreds of police in full riot gear forming a blockade outside the mosque gate on Saturday. They prevented members of the public from entering, with some members of the crowd trying to push through the phalanx of officers and throwing what appeared to be paving slabs at police amid angry shouting.

In another clip, a crowd faces off with ranks of riot police in a city street, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” according to Ma.

“According to the live video obtained so far, there are a lot of plainclothes policemen mingling among the people,” Ma tweeted. “There are non-local people around who aren’t Muslims, and whose accents aren’t local, so watch out for … plotting and framing.”

An officer who answered the phone at the Nagu county police department declined to comment when contacted by Radio Free Asia on Monday.

“I don’t know about this – you need to wait for an official announcement,” the officer said. 

‘Disrupting social order’

On Sunday, the Tonghai county prosecutor and police issued a joint statement calling on anyone involved in the clashes to turn themselves in, saying they had “seriously disrupted social order.”

Anyone who does so by June 6 and gives a truthful confession will be dealt with more leniently, the statement said, calling on others to inform on their fellow protesters to get a lighter sentence.

A Hui Muslim resident of Yunnan who gave only the surname Yang said the authorities have been demolishing mosque domes across the region in recent years, pointing to the “sinicization” program under Xi.

“Islam in China is to be de-Arabized,” Yang said. “This is totally evil – there’s no freedom of religion at all.”

Wlodek Cieciura, assistant professor in the department of Sinology, Islam and Muslims in China and the Sinophone World at the University of Warsaw, said via Twitter that the Nanjiaying mosque was “once of the most famous centers of Islamic learning and culture in China.” 

He added that “the situation in Shadian town, some 90 km to the south is said to be even more charged.”

Cieciura cited a Hui friend as saying that Shadian and Najiaying were “the last bastions of dignity for Chinese Muslims,” and “This might be our final stand.”

Shadian saw a major resistance among Hui Muslims to the Cultural Revolution smashing of religious venues and artifacts under late supreme leader Mao Zedong, suffering a major massacre in 1975, Cieciura said, adding that there are plans to similarly “renovate” the Shadian Mosque on June 2.

Targeting churches as well

A Christian believer from the eastern province of Anhui who gave only the surname Wang said the “sinicization” program had earlier targeted church crosses around the country in recent years, particularly in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

“They’ve removed pretty much all of the cross from churches now, and now they’re moving on to other religions,” Wang said. “The removal of domes from mosques is similar to the removal of crosses.”

“They are moving on to rectify religions other than Christianity,” he said.

In a May 27 tweet, Ciecura cited comments from Muslims on social media as “declaring their readiness to defend the mosques to the end.”

The Shadian resistance movement erupted in 1964 in response to nationwide political witch hunts targeting religious believers, and continued until at least 1975, culminating in the massacre of around 1,600 Muslims in an orgy of violence that the government blamed on disgraced former premier Lin Biao, and later on the Gang of Four.

The atheist Chinese Communist Party regards religious beliefs as a dangerous foreign import that could destabilize the regime, and deploys an army of “religious affairs” officials to micromanage and suppress faith organizations around the country.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

A church outlawed in Vietnam has reappeared in the country’s northern Thanh Hoa province after many years with no presence or activities in the area, Vietnamese police said Tuesday.

The World Mission Society of Church of God, also known as Church of God the Mother, has made a comeback with 16 service locations, mostly in Thanh Hoa city, and around 500 followers, according information on the provincial police’s website.

The group’s embers range in age from 18 to 50 years old, and most are students and housewives, authorities said. They often promote their religion by approaching people at coffee shops, parks and business workshops, especially events about multilevel marketing models.

Freedom of religion is technically enshrined in Vietnam’s constitution, but the charter also allows authorities to override rights, including religious freedom, for purposes of national security, social order, social morality and community well-being.

The Church of God was established in 1964 by Ahn Sahng-hong, a South Korean minister, whose followers believe to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. It has more than 3.3 million registered members in 175 countries, according to its website.

The group’s teachings depart significantly from mainstream Christian theology, and it has been publicly criticized by former members and researchers for behaving like a cult by exercising control over its members.

RFA reported in March that police in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam ordered church members to stop following the religion.

Vietnam’s Law on Belief and Religion requires religious groups to register their organizations and places of worship. Only organizations that have operated for at least five years can apply for registration. Once registered, the organizations are granted status as legal entities. Many groups refuse to register out of fear of persecution or concern for their independence, however.

The United States in December 2022 placed Vietnam on a watch list of countries to be monitored for severe violations of freedom of religion as the government continued to crack down on Christian churches and demolish Buddhist pagodas.

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

Malaysia said Tuesday it had detained a Chinese-registered ship carrying what is believed to be World War II-era cannon shells and was investigating the vessel’s alleged involvement in the plunder of wreckage from two British warships in the South China Sea.

The bulk carrier, registered in the southeastern Chinese city of Fuzhou, was seized on Sunday after it anchored illegally off the coast of Johor, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) said.

While inspecting the vessel, maritime authorities discovered rusty cannon shells, scrap metal, bullets and other relics believed to be from World War II. 

Discovery of the ammunition comes amid recent reports of scavengers looting two British shipwrecks, the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, which were sunk by Japanese torpedoes in 1941.

The 32-member crew – including 21 Chinese, 10 Bangladeshis and a Malaysian – are being questioned at the Tanjung Sedili Maritime Zone, said Nurul Hizam Zakaria, the MMEA director for Johor state.

“We are still investigating and our priority is to obtain statements from the crew members,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service.

The maritime agency said it was looking into a possible link with a separate seizure of relics and ammunition from a private scrap yard at Tanjung Belungkor in Johor. 

Malaysian newspaper the New Straits Times reported the Johor seizure was believed to be from the British World War II wrecks, which are located about 100 km east of Malaysia in the South China Sea.

“We at the MMEA cannot simply mention the British World War II wrecks because it is not confirmed yet and is still under investigation,” said Zakaria.

Following reports last week, a spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Defence told the BBC it condemned the “desecration” of maritime military graves and would take “appropriate action.”

The MMEA, the Royal Malaysian Police and the Department of Malaysian Heritage are investigating the recent seizures.

“Our officers are currently on-site to determine whether these relics are related to British World War II shipwrecks,” deputy head of the heritage department Mohd Muda told BenarNews.

BenarNews has contacted the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur for comment.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.