Day: June 1, 2023

Jailed rights activist Xu Zhiyong has called on the Chinese people to mark the 1989 Tiananmen massacre that ended weeks of pro-democracy protests with a day of fasting, in an impassioned plea from his prison cell to citizens to keep up the fight for freedom and democracy.

“I have fasted for a day on June 4 every year over the past decade, in prison and outside,” Xu said in a letter from prison posted to the Weiquanwang rights website, and to the Twitter account of U.S.-based fellow activist Teng Biao.

“Others have also fasted over the years, but silently.”

Public mourning for victims and discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned, and references to June 4, 1989, blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.

Xu Guang, a former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University, stood trial in the eastern province of Zhejiang in April for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, after he refused food and drink in detention to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.

According to Xu Zhiyong, fasting on the massacre anniversary should become more widespread, despite the risks.

“Fasting isn’t just a personal thing — it should awaken people, rebuild the national character and create a new national spirit,” Xu wrote.

“We should make it a public affair, and work together to awaken the [Chinese] people.”

Xu also appeared to warn of potential retaliation against himself following his letter.

“I may fall silent for some time after this,” he said. “When I disappear into the darkness, please continue to work hard as citizens, and fight for universal suffrage and freedom of speech.”

Xu said he remains optimistic that such action will work.

“Faced with this darkness, I firmly believe that the dawn will come,” he said, adding that fasting on June 4 “connects people with the past and commemorates the sacrifices of our ancestors.”

Teng said he and Xu Zhiyong were in high school when the 1989 democracy movement was at its height, and had found it inspiring.

“June 4, 1989 was an extremely important and profoundly influential event in Chinese politics,” he said. “It still has a profound impact on China, even though 34 years have passed.”

“It will never be a thing of the past.”

Teng likened Xu’s call to fast on Sunday’s anniversary to the actions of Mahatma Gandhi.

“Fasting is a very powerful action,” he said. “The way Xu Zhiyong sees it, we must always remember this day, or this tragedy from history is likely to repeat itself.”

He described Xu as “my best friend” and said he is concerned for his health in prison.

“The way the Chinese prison guards treat him is inhumane — there are many ways to threaten and abuse prisoners,” he said.

Luo Shengchun, wife of jailed rights attorney Ding Jiaxi, who was sentenced at the same time as Xu, said she believes her husband will refuse food in prison on June 4, as the couple had fasted together for many years while they were still together.

“He will probably keep it going … he even did it while on residential surveillance at a designated location, and the policemen watching him didn’t understand why he ate nothing on June 4,” Luo said.

“This is the only thing we can all do together to commemorate June 4, 1989,” she said.

In April, the Linshu County People’s Court in the eastern province of Shandong handed down a 14-year jail term to Xu and a 12-year sentence to rights lawyer Ding, after finding them guilty of “subversion of state power” – a charge often used to target critics of the government – after they attended a 2019 dissident gathering.

Ding and Xu, the founder of the “New Citizens’ Movement” campaign for government transparency, were detained after they attended a dinner with prominent activists in December 2019 in Xiamen, southeastern China.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.

Noeleen Heyzer, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative on Myanmar, will depart the role June 12, according to the United Nations, after a relatively brief term of about 18 months.

The Singaporean national and former U.N. undersecretary general took on the role in October 2021, some nine months after the military coup in Myanmar. She replaced Christine Schraner Burgener, a Swiss diplomat who served in the role for more than three years.

Heyzer’s coming departure was announced Wednesday by U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who did not provide a reason for the move outside of explaining it was the end of her contract.

Heyzer previously served as the head of the U.N. Development Fund for Women from 1994 to 2007 and of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific from 2007 to 2014.

“The secretary-general is thankful to Ms. Heyzer for her tireless efforts on behalf of peace and the people of Myanmar,” Dujarric said.

Heyzer was tasked with “urging the Myanmar junta to engage in political dialogue with its opponents and end the crackdown,” according to the United Nations, but made little progress.

Envoy role questioned

The U.N. envoy’s time in office was met with mixed reviews.

She met with the military regime’s leaders last year, drawing rebuke from the shadow National Unity Government, who questioned the timing of the trip shortly after a military court sentenced the country’s deposed leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, to six more years in prison. Suu Kyi faces a total of 33 years in jail for 19 cases.

The NUG and hundreds of society groups then called for her to be removed from the position, and slammed the envoy role itself.

“The long history of the U.N.’s attempts at peace-brokering with Myanmar’s military through special envoys has never catalyzed into meaningful results, but has instead lent legitimacy to perpetrators of international atrocity crimes — and has permitted worsening human rights and humanitarian crises,” the groups said at the time.

Still, Heyzer did not mince her words when it came to the junta.

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on March 16, she said that the regime’s plans to hold stage-managed elections in the country this year without engaging in dialogue with the opposition or restoring political rights “risks exacerbating the violence.”

“There is no public trust in the regime, whose interest is seen as consolidating its control by making a transition from emergency rule to a longer-term military-backed government,” Heyzer said.

Residents in the Thai border town of Mae Sot are on high alert after police arrested more than 100 people last week in a search for illegal immigrants.

The raids follow the discovery of a house producing weapons for resistance forces fighting the junta in Myanmar on May 14. Thai authorities were informed that there were at least six people involved in the production of weapons.

But the number of arrested has gone far beyond the handful being pursued, say local groups helping Myanmar nationals in the border town. In total, around 100 people were arrested this week in Mae Sot and the surrounding areas, said Moe Kyaw, chairperson of the Joint Action Committee for Burmese Affairs.

“The rest were arrested on the way to Mae Tao clinic at surprise checkpoints. Some were inspected on the way to the market and in the market. When they could not provide the pass, they were arrested,” he said. “I have heard that at least 50 people were arrested on the 23rd alone.”

Rose, a community leader assisting migrant workers who asked not be further identified, said the task force was focusing on small unregistered factories in the surrounding areas and Mae Tao, a community south of Mae Sot.  

“Regarding the arrests, they [the authorities] have conducted checks of the houses and neighborhoods. They arrested people who had no documents,” she said, adding that some had been able to put up bail, while others will be deported. 

“During these days, [Thai authorities] raided small garment factories which had not registered and arrested [illegal workers]. Those factories are cottage industries and they do not have registration.”     

Witnessing raids

On May 22, Tak Immigration reported they had arrested a group of Myanmar nationals near a small factory in Mae Tao for illegally entering Thailand and working without a permit. 

“I tried to run away to the other side of the sugarcane field. They also hit me, but I got away” said one woman who witnessed the raid. 

Of the 20 people present at the factory, 15 were arrested after police and immigration also raided the nearby workers’ dormitories.

While the arrests in factories were initially carried out in suspected connection to the house producing weapons, this was not the case, said Moe Kyaw. 

“According to reports, at first, they [the authorities] had watched [the factories] on suspicion of weapons being there and later people were arrested,” he said. “[The authorities] raided on suspicion of [weapons being there] but they found undocumented workers instead.”

Democracy activists fleeing from Myanmar and those awaiting resettlement from the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights told Radio Free Asia they were concerned about their security.

Kyaw Kyi, a member of an organization helping migrants in the area, says he’s been unable to help those arrested by the police. He told RFA he tried calling the UN agency to get more information on those arrested, but was unsuccessful. 

“Even if I don’t go out, I’m very scared just staying in the house,” Kyaw Kyi told RFA.  “If I get arrested, I will go. Currently, we are unprotected. We have lost a lot of human rights.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.