Day: June 13, 2023

Three weeks of fierce fighting between junta troops and ethnic Karenni forces in eastern Myanmar has killed at least 35 civilians, including three children, a domestic human rights group and local residents said. 

Karenni militias have been battling the military for decades in their campaign for greater autonomy in Kayah and Shan states, but the conflict has worsened in recent months as the Burmese army targets People’s Defense Force fighters who have taken up arms against the military since the 2021 coup.

The two sides have been engaged in armed conflict in Moebye – also known as Mongpai – township in southern Shan state since May 25.

Among those who died were more than 20 men and 10 ten women, as well as three minors aged eight, 13 and 18, according to Karenni Human Rights Group.

Banyar, executive director of the Karenni Human Rights Group, said that the victims were killed by heavy artillery or because they caught fire as they were trapped in the middle of the fighting. 

“They were either killed in the town of Moebye, hit by heavy artillery or shot to death, Banyar, the group’s executive director, told Radio Free Asia on Monday. “Some of them were arrested before being killed. Some were shot at. Some were killed as heavy artillery shelling hit them.”

The organization collected 12 dead bodies and buried them during the first week of June, though some corpses still cannot be collected on account of security issues, Banyar said.

The latest round of civilian deaths comes as the military steps up attacks on its adversaries in the southern Shan and Kayah state townships of Moebye, Pinlaung and Pekon. 

Junta forces have conducted airstrikes and heavy artillery assaults on areas where fighters from the Progressive Karenni People’s Force, or PKPF – a local offshoot of the anti-regime People’s Defense Forces – are believed to be, killing civilians in the process.  

Relief workers have had difficulties helping the injured and collecting dead bodies because junta troops are everywhere in Moebye, arresting and killing locals, said aid worker Nwe Oo said.

“I’ve heard that there are injured people in Si Kar and Done Tu Htan wards in town, but because we haven’t had a chance to go in, we haven’t been able to bring them out,” she said. “We have to be very vigilant as the fighting has been intense and complicated.” 

Artillery fire

To make matters worse, junta forces have blocked some roads in Moebye and have kept open a main road for pedestrian use, she said. 

A Moebye resident, who declined to be named for safety reasons, said military troops fired heavy artillery into residential areas.

“We heard gunshot exchanges and artillery fire non-stop last night,” he said, estimating that about 450 junta soldiers have been stationed in high-rise buildings, schools and residential homes.

The resident said three members of a friend’s family were killed on the spot with heavy artillery as they hid in a bomb shelter. 

“Because telephone communication has not been reliable, there is no way we will be able to leave the town,” he said.

The junta has not yet issued any statements about the situation in Moebye. RFA could not reach Khun Thein Maung, Shan state’s economic minister and junta spokesman, for comment. 

A PKPF official told RFA there have been casualties on both sides in the fighting, and some civilians are still caught up in it.

There have been many casualties among members of the People’s Defense Forces and the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, an armed insurgent group formed after the 2021 military coup, and among junta troops who have been firing heavy artillery non-stop, the official said.  

“Some civilians have been trapped in town,” he said. “Some people have taken refuge in the monastery because they thought they would be safe there. We heard that some of them managed to sneak out of town, but we don’t know how exactly they escaped.”

More than 50 civilians, including 13 children under the age of 18, died in Moebye between February 2021, when the military seized power from the elected government, and this June 12, according to PKPF figures. 

Moebye has a population of about 30,000 people. Some residents remain in about three of the township’s 10 wards, while the rest have fled the fighting.

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

Russia has resumed supplying oil to North Korea after a 27-month hiatus due to international sanctions, data from the United Nations showed. 

Experts told Radio Free Asia that the resumption likely coincided with Pyongyang supplying Moscow with weapons for use in its war against Ukraine.

The UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea on June 9 published data on Russian oil shipments to North Korea, which indicated that in December 2022, Moscow supplied 3,225 barrels of refined oil to Pyongyang. 

In January, the total number of barrels sharply increased to 44,655, then sharply decreased over the next few months, with only 3,612 barrels sent in April.

It was the first time that Russia sent oil to North Korea since August 2020, when Pyongyang suspended international trade to counter the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

In September 2022, Georgiy Zinoviev, head of the Russian foreign ministry’s First Asia Department, said that Russia would be willing to resume trading oil products with North Korea if Pyongyang would lift the ban. 

North Korea’s opening gives Russia a much needed market for oil at a time when its main markets in the European Union enacted a partial embargo on Russian oil due to the war in Ukraine. 

Through April, Russia has sent nearly 99,473 barrels of oil to North Korea, which is around 19% of the amount permitted by U.N. sanctions meant to deprive Pyongyang of resources that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs.

Oil for weapons

Two U.S.-based experts said that it was likely that the refined oil exports to North Korea resumed in return for supplying weapons to Russia, which is at war with Ukraine. 

In June, a State Department spokesperson told Reuters news service that the U.S. was able to confirm that North Korea had sent arms, including infantry rockets and missiles to a Russian-backed mercenary group in November 2022, despite denials from Pyongyang.

“I would guess that [the oil shipments] may be Russia fulfilling its end of the deal in exchange for North Korea providing weapons and lethal aid to the Russian troops in the ongoing war with Ukraine,” Soo Kim, policy practice area lead at Virginia-based LMI Consulting and a former CIA analyst, told RFA’s Korean Service.

“At this stage, Russia is in need of military support to offset its deficiencies in its battle against Ukraine,” said Kim. “North Korea is willing to provide lethal aid probably because [North Korean leader] Kim [Jong Un] can receive energy and food assistance in exchange.”

She also said that Pyongyang and Moscow working closely together could undermine U.S. interests.

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution also told RFA that refined oil may be a payment for weapons aided by North Korea. 

In addition to oil, Russia is exporting more than 1,000 tons of wheat flour to North Korea, according to a recent press release from Moscow’s Federal Veterinary Customs Agency.

North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported Monday that Kim Jong Un sent a congratulatory message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, affirming his willingness to increase close strategic cooperation between the two countries.

Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong.

Religious and civil organizations representing Vietnam’s Montagnard people said they weren’t involved in armed attacks on two police stations that left nine people dead over the weekend.

Sunday’s attack took place in Dak Lak province in the remote Central Highlands – a region that’s home to some 30 tribes of indigenous peoples known collectively as Montagnards. 

Two state newspapers, VnExpress and Cong Thuong, published detailed information about the incident, saying that at dawn on Sunday, around 40 people wearing camouflage vests split into two groups to attack the two police stations in the Ea Tieu and Ea Ktur communes. 

Police on Tuesday updated the number of people arrested in the attacks to 45. Two people surrendered to police and 10 others were arrested on Monday night, according to a Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security update.

The ministry used the phrase “the group causing insecurity and disorder at the People’s Committees of Ea Tieu and Ea Ktur communes” to refer to the attackers.

A joint letter issued Monday night by a group of Dak Lak government agencies and organizations strongly condemned the attacks and called on the public “not to post or share related information that has not been verified.” 

It also urged people “to stay vigilant and not ‘listen to, believe in, or follow” reactionary elements and hostile forces who take advantage of the situation to create distortion and entice people to oppose local authorities, causing political security in the area.”

‘Montagnard people are commoners’

The Bangkok-based Montagnard Stands for Justice group said on Facebook that the organization had no connection with the incident and wasn’t affiliated with any groups or individuals assisting in the use of violence.

The organization, whose founders are political refugees in Thailand and the United States, also said they were concerned that any armed uprising would hinder their efforts to advocate for religious freedom in Vietnam.

Frustration in the region has grown after decades of government surveillance, land disputes, economic hardship and crackdowns on unofficial churches. 

Pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh, the U.S.-based co-founder of the Vietnam Evangelical Church of Christ, told Radio Free Asia that he didn’t think any Montagnards were involved in the attacks. 

“Montagnard people are commoners who live with their religious faith,” he said. “When their religious faith or land is violated, they, of course, will have to voice up. However, I don’t think Montagnard people in Dak Lak province were capable enough to organize such an armed force of 30 to 40 people.”

He said he was able to contact church members in the area where the attacks occurred on Sunday. They expressed confusion and said they didn’t know what was happening, he said.

The executive director of North Carolina-based Dega Central Highlands Organization, Y-Duen Buondap, told RFA that his organization also wasn’t involved in the attacks.

“We don’t have any members involved in these incidents,” he said. “However, we have the information that the Montagnard people have rioted to demand their rights and interests, as they could not bear further suffering. They are suppressed, beaten, arrested and cornered daily.”

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Matt Reed.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has instructed his government to speed up a draft election law amendment that would ban any politicians from running for office if they don’t vote in next month’s parliamentary election.

Amendments to two articles in the election law would prohibit those who don’t vote on July 23 from ever running for any commune, district, provincial, Senate or National Assembly office, he said at a public gathering with workers in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. 

“If you dare not vote, you won’t be able to run for councilors or Senate,” he said. “You will be done.”

The move appears to be aimed at boosting voter turnout, and in reaction to talk of an election boycott by opposition activists, according to Sam Kuntheamy, executive director of the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia.

The boycott would be a way of expressing public anger over the banning of the main opposition Candlelight Party from running in the election.

The proposed amendment would also impact voters who don’t vote in this election, he said. “The amendment will change the vote from ‘right to vote’ to ‘compulsory to vote,’” he said.

Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director, said Hun Sun is trying to pressure people to vote because he thinks a high voter percentage will bring legitimacy to the election, said 

“There is nothing he can do to make the election legitimate because he has already engineered – through a bogus requirement – the disqualification of the main opposition party,” he told Radio Free Asia. 

“So this is Hun Sen running against a bunch of firefly parties, parties that really don’t have any chance of winning. And he’s trying to inflate the numbers,” he said.

‘If you dare’

Hun Sen also accused activists from the opposition Candlelight Party of launching an Internet campaign urging people not to vote. 

Last month, the National Election Committee ruled that the Candlelight Party couldn’t appear on the ballot, citing inadequate paperwork. The party had hoped to organize a demonstration this month to protest the ruling but postponed that after Hun Sen threatened to arrest the party’s vice president and other members.

Hun Sen has implemented many bad laws to protect his power since 2017, when the Supreme Court ordered the Cambodia National Rescue Party – the main opposition party at the time – to be disbanded, according to Eng Chhai Eang, a top CNRP official who now lives in the United States.

One way around the new requirement would be for voters to go to polling stations, take a ballot into a voting booth and then destroy it, he said. 

“All parties can join in this,” he said.

Only a dictator would change the election law just six weeks before an election, Robertson said.

“Hun Sen likes to borrow rights’ abusing ideas from other countries. He borrows from Singapore. He borrows from military coup governments in Thailand. He borrows whatever sort of thing he can use to try to justify whatever he needs to do,” he said.

“The reality is that this election is rigged. It’s fixed from the beginning.”

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

Concerns are growing over the fate of Laos-based Chinese free-speech activist Qiao Xinxin, whose associates say he has been incommunicado for several days amid reports of his arrest by Chinese police in the Laotian capital.

Qiao, whose birth name is Yang Zewei, is missing, believed detained on or around May 31 in Vientiane, after launching an online campaign to end internet censorship in China, known as the BanGFW Movement, a reference to the Great Firewall, according to fellow activists.

The case reflects China’s growing “long-arm” repression of its critics outside the country. Some have been detained on foreign soil, while others have told Radio Free Asia they face regular harassment from people believed to be acting on Beijing’s behalf targeting loved ones back home and via their social media accounts.

According to an online petition posted by a group called the China Citizens’ Action Party, activist Wang Qingpeng tweeted on June 2 that Qiao had been incommunicado for 48 hours.

A State Department spokesperson on Monday condemned threats, harassment and cross-border abductions of dissidents by the Chinese authorities, saying there were concerns for Qiao’s safety following media reports of his disappearance.

In comments made in an email to VOA Chinese on June 12, the spokesperson called on the government of Laos to respect and fulfill its obligations under international law, including not allowing the deportation of anyone who could face torture or other serious harm in their country of origin.

In an April 20 statement released via Twitter, Qiao had called on fellow activists to stage protests outside China’s embassies around the world, should he fail to post to his social media accounts for 48 hours.

In the statement that he termed a “Declaration of Not Suicide,” Qiao said police in China were investigating his postings to social media and putting pressure on his loved ones back home.

“I am now in Laos, but police in my hometown are investigating my speech online and trying to harass my family members in China,” said the handwritten statement, which he held up in a selfie posted to his Twitter account.

“I still love this world and [am] confident about the democracy of China,” it said. “If there’s no more online updates for 48 hours, please help to protest in front of [Chinese] embassies. Thanks!”

Tearing down the wall

According to the Citizens’ Action Party, Qiao launched the #BanGFW movement online in March, after which police started putting pressure on his relatives to contact him and tell him to stop.

“Qiao Xinxin didn’t back down, but fought harder and harder,” petition author “Prince Ye” wrote. “He invited more netizens to raise placards calling for the Great Firewall to be torn down, to contact different governments and to get in touch with the media.”

Qiao, who briefly worked as a contributor for Radio Free Asia, was visited on June 1 by two Laotian policemen and six Chinese police officers, who arrested him, according to Wang and fellow activist Lin Shengliang, who cited Qiao’s neighbor in Vientiane.

Lin, who lives in the Netherlands, said Qiao had likely come back from his daily swim in the Mekong River to find the police officers waiting for him.

“It’s very likely that the people were hiding [in his apartment] and grabbed him as soon as he walked in the door,” Lin said. “They likely pressed him to the floor in an instant.”

“He would definitely have resisted … but there would have been no time for him to send out any signal for help.”

According to Qiao’s neighbors, he was taken away by eight uniformed police officers in handcuffs, six of whom were believed to be Chinese.

Lin said he had called the local police station to ask who had taken Qiao.

“The guy said, ‘It’s not our case,’ and was eager to wash his hands of it,” Lin said. “But it was passive confirmation that he was arrested.”

Transnational repression

Fellow #BanGFW activist Wang Nan said cross-border law enforcement by Chinese police is common in Laos and Thailand.

“China [is believed to have] arrested people in Thailand more than once,” Wang Nan said. “As far as I know, most of Thailand’s economy and export trade depend on China, while the same is true in Laos.”

Former Guangzhou police officer Deng Haiyan says he was forced to cut off all contact with his China-based family after coming to live in the United States.

“They harassed all of them – my father, even my wife’s sister and brother-in-law,” Deng told Radio Free Asia in a June 12 interview. “I have basically cut off contact with them now, for fear they will be treated as guilty by association.”

“They also do certain things online to target me, like posting my personal details like my ID card number and that of my wife on social media, and libeling me, saying I am part of a pornography ring,” he said. “All of this is ongoing.”

Harassed at home

A U.S.-based dissident who asked to remain anonymous said her family is being targeted for harassment back in China.

“My brother is harassed by them every month, and it gets worse in June, when they freeze his bank account,” she said, in a reference to the politically sensitive anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

Meanwhile, New York-based journalist Ma Ju said he cut off contact with his family in China seven years ago.

“I have also had all kinds of online harassment on a daily basis,” Ma said. “I think the Chinese Communist Party are behind it.”

“I have been hacked so many times while making online content — my power just cut out on two occasions,” he said. “I contacted the FBI about it some time ago, and it turned out there had been a hacker attack that disconnected my internet.”

“If I’m doing a live stream I’ll use mobile data instead, so they can’t cut me off.”

In November 2022, police in Bangkok Police detained an exiled Chinese dissident after he staged a lone street protest against Chinese leader Xi Jinping inspired by the Oct. 13 “Bridge Man” protest in Beijing.

Veteran rights activist Li Nanfei, who has been stranded in Thailand for several years despite being a U.N.-registered refugee, was arrested after holding up a placard on a Bangkok street that read: “His Majesty President Xi, put an end to dictatorship in China! Give the people back their freedom!”

Earlier in the same month, Adiyaa, an ethnic Mongolian Chinese national who fled the country after his involvement in 2020 protests over a ban on Mongolian-medium teaching in schools, reported being held by Chinese state security police in Bangkok.

In 2019, Thai police detained two Chinese refugees – Jia Huajiang and Liu Xuehong – who had earlier helped jailed rights website founder Huang Qi before fleeing the country. 

Thailand has sent refugees from China back home in the past.

In July 2018, authorities in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing jailed rights activist Dong Guangping and political cartoonist Jiang Yefei after they were sent home from Thailand as they were awaiting resettlement as political refugees, prompting an international outcry.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi have escalated their response to a viral video of a suspected rat’s head found in a student’s food at a Nanchang university canteen, vowing a provincial level inquiry amid widespread public disgust and online ridicule over the incident.

The provincial government said Saturday it has put together a taskforce to probe the grisly find by a student at the Jiangxi Industry Polytechnic College in the provincial capital, including education officials, market supervisors and police, state media reported.

The move comes after local market supervision officials announced that the sodden lump – which appears in the video to have eyes and rodent-like teeth – was in fact part of a “duck’s neck” – a common ingredient in soups. 

Food quality has long been a bone of contention for students at Chinese vocational colleges, with campus protests breaking out in the southwestern province of Sichuan in 2019 over an incident of mass food poisoning.

Nanchang market supervision bureau official Jiang Xiexue told state-run Jiangxi Radio and TV that “local law enforcement officials had arrived at the scene and confirmed the strange item as a duck neck after repeated comparison,” the Global Times reported.

But public suspicions weren’t so easily allayed.

“Many netizens insisted on their speculation that it was a mouse head rather than a duck neck with some questioning that how come the duck neck has teeth and what the long ‘hairs’ were,” it said, adding that Global Times commentator Hu Xijin had called for “more convincing evidence” to prove the lump came from a duck.

‘Duckrat’ memes

Jiang’s claim was backed up by a written statement from the student who posted the viral video, which has spawned a number of “duckrat” memes, in which the head of a rat is edited onto a photo of a duck and spoof videos based on the phrase “calling a rat a duck.”

“Hi everyone – in today’s show we’re going to learn how to write the phrase ‘call a rat a duck,'” says one video, in the style of a calligraphy lesson or writing tutorial, as a hand inscribes the phrase onto a dirty car door.

“Finally, the truth emerged – turns out it came from a creature engineered by researchers at the Jiangxi Industrial Polytechnic College, known as a duckrat,” says a mock documentary on the topic posted to the video-sharing site Bilibili and shared on Weibo.

Later reports also emerged that a student had found a green caterpillar in their food at the same canteen, the China Daily reported on June 12.

“Although the canteen continued to operate normally after the incident, fewer people are using it,” the paper reported, citing the Henan-based Top News service. “Instead, many students have been seen receiving takeout deliveries at the entrance of their dormitories.”

Seeking scapegoats

Beijing-based current affairs commentator Ji Feng said he wasn’t optimistic that the upscaled investigation would improve matters.

“The point of the investigation … will be to find scapegoats … among the management or in the contractors operating the canteen,” Ji said, adding that the university canteen business is highly lucrative for contractors.

Former Jiangxi high school teacher Sun Yanru agreed, saying that the inquiry will likely seek to take the heat off local officials.

“Firstly, this investigation won’t yield any substantive results, although naturally they may come up with a few scapegoats to try to calm down [public outrage],” Sun said.

“That’s what they did with the woman found chained up in Xuzhou, Jiangsu,” Sun said. “This kind of investigation task force lost any credibility with the general public a long time ago.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.