Day: June 20, 2023

On June 11, a group of Montagnards in Vietnam’s Central Highlands attacked the offices of two communes with small arms and molotov cocktails, killing four policemen, two commune officials, and three civilians. The attackers wounded two other policemen and burnt the commune offices. This prompted an immediate and massive government response. 

As of the time of writing, 74 people have been arrested, including, allegedly, one of the group’s masterminds. Two people turned themselves in, and the government has promised leniency for others who surrender. 

So far, almost all of the information about the events has come from the government side, so there is clearly a bias in the reporting. The government has selectively leaked a lot of information and ensured that the story has gotten coverage in the state-controlled media. 

The Communist Party of Vietnam immediately dispatched deputy prime minister Tran Luu Quang and the deputy minister of public security Luong Tam Quang to signal government control, a sign of the government’s insecurity.

Legitimate grievances

Dak Lak and the Central Highlands are not new to unrest, though gun violence is very rare in Vietnam. But the region has not been beset by violence for a while, which begs some questions: Why now? What prompted this latest spate of unrest?

There are a number of underlying issues for any unrest involving the Montagnards, a broad grouping for some 30 different tribes, in the Central Highlands. 

Beginning in the 1990s, the Vietnamese government began to encourage migration of ethnic Kinh Vietnamese to the region to establish coffee plantations and other agribusinesses. 

Today, Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world, exporting over 1 million metric tons in 2022, and almost all of it comes from the Central Highlands. 

But that put the Kinh population at odds with the Montagnards, who practiced swidden agriculture: burning forests, farming for a few years, and then moving on to new land. All of a sudden, with land titles going to the Vietnamese settlers, the Montagnards were unable to practice their traditional agriculture, its environmental degradation and inefficiency. 

Beyond the economic interests in encouraging Kinh settlement, the government had a political interest in settling the region.

The Montagnards had close ties to both the French colonial government as well as the Americans. Persecuted minorities often seek protection from the majority population. During the Vietnam War, the United States relied on the Montagnards and the Hmong in neighboring Laos to interdict North Vietnamese troops and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Hanoi has never forgiven them for this.

But while the Montagnards often portray their struggle as being anti-communist, it’s important to note that the government of the pre-1975 Republic of Vietnam treated them terribly, too, believing that they were abetting North Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. South Vietnamese government officials shared the same mistrust and condescension as their rivals in Hanoi.

Beyond politics, there is simply a lot of condescension by Kinh towards the poor tribes that constitute the Montagnards. For the Montagnards, this is simply a form of internal colonialism; indeed, some Montagnards do not even respect Vietnamese sovereignty.

That animus and mistrust is further compounded in Hanoi by the fact that many of the Montagnards are Evangelical Christians. The Vietnam Fatherland Front, an arm of the Communist Party responsible for mass organizations and religions, only recognizes six religions, controlling their clergy and organization. 

Evangelical Christianity continues to go unrecognized, and, as such, the house churches are technically illegal. That many of the Montagnard congregations are supported by faith groups in the United States and elsewhere compounds Hanoi’s paranoia.  

Land and religious freedom remain at the heart of Montagnard grievances, but there are others. 

The Central Highlands remains a poor region of the country, lagging in human development indicators, educational opportunity, and public health. While Vietnam enjoyed over 8 percent economic growth in 2022 and was the darling of foreign investors, receiving over $22.4 billion in investment, that prosperity is nowhere to be seen in the Central Highlands.

And while we should not be conspiratorial about this, we do need to consider that the unrest comes at a time when U.S.-Vietnamese relations are set to be upgraded to a “strategic partnership.” CPV General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has agreed in principle to visit Washington this summer, and President Biden is expected to travel to Vietnam in the fall.

Not everyone in Vietnam’s conservative and xenophobic national security establishment and party echelons are happy with the deepened ties. A full-on crackdown is likely to prompt the U.S. Congress to scrutinize Vietnam’s already dismal human rights record, assault on independent journalists and environmental activists, and control over social media. 

The quick and effective government response has not been bad for the Vietnam Ministry of Public Security or its minister, To Lam, who immediately promoted the four officers posthumously and moved quickly to compensate their kin and the wounded officers. 

What do we know about the attacks?

So far we know very little about the motivation for the attacks or the group’s organization or foreign ties, if any. Montagnard organizations in the United States have denied any involvement. 

A spokesman for the ministry of public security said the group had acted in “an organized manner, reckless, ruthless and without humanity.” Suspects, allegedly, had been “ordered to kill officers and local police on sight, taking their assets and weapons.” 

According to state media, three of the arrested men claim to have been promised “large sums of money” to kill officials. 

The government has offered little proof other than statements by arrested individuals, but given Vietnam’s history of coerced confessions, this is not reliable evidence.

The government will have a heavy-handed and disproportionate response. As the communist party’s mouthpiece noted:

Local authorities have quickly taken drastic measures to suppress the attack, stabilize the situation, support the bereaved families and the injured, and call on local residents to stay calm and follow authorities’ instructions to ensure safety.

Ministry of public security troops were shown on state-TV, deployed with sniper rifles. They are clearly not taking this lightly. 

In addition to the large-scale response, the Vietnamese People’s Army has been mobilized in Cu Kuin District to provide security, a function that the military has largely eschewed, though less so in the Central Highlands than in ethnic Kinh-dominated regions.

The government immediately received Cambodian government cooperation in sealing the border.

The government has also quickly moved to control the information space, levying large fines against five people so far for disseminating “false information” on Facebook about the attacks. The government, which has stepped up the use of civil fines rather than criminal enforcement to control social media, hopes that the VND35.5 million ($1,510) fine is enough to deter on-line discussion.

More information about the attacks and their motivations will emerge, but anything in the Vietnamese state media, is there for a reason. While the government has every right to promote law and order, it’s long ignored the legitimate grievances of the country’s ethnic minorities and will shift the blame away from itself to foreign forces.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.

In Brief

An audio recording of an “internal speech” attributed to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang predicting that war between China and the United States is inevitable has gained attention on the Chinese Internet.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) discovered striking similarities in the phrasing of the supposed Qin speech and a nationalistic article posted by blogger Tanji Kede in 2022. And the recording of the supposed Qin speech sounds remarkably like several audio versions of Tanji Kede’s article circulating online, in terms of wording, voice and recording characteristics. 

AFCL’s comparison of Qin’s alleged speech with these various online postings suggests that the “internal speech” is likely a fake, and instead was likely a recording created by one or more Chinese netizens.

In Depth

Users on Twitter and YouTube have recently circulated the supposed “internal speech of Qin” with many referencing a video posted on the Chinese social media platform Q Town Media as their source. The original poster — who identifies himself as James Quan — does not provide any information about the time or location of the speech.

The 10-minute clip is entitled, “Video 06012023: Recording of Qin Gang’s Internal Speech: War is Inevitable, China’s Relations with the U.S. are at a Boiling Point.” It features a male voice speaking about U.S.-China relations. The faceless speaker notes that the United States has “long regarded China as its imaginary archnemesis” and “the only way for the U.S. to stop the rise of China is through war.” 

Throughout the speech, the video shows a blurry still image of what appears to be a meeting between senior Chinese and American officials. The participants’ faces aren’t clear, but the Chinese and American flags are identifiable. 

Relations between the United States and China have grown competitive and strained in recent years, as many in Washington view China as seeking to challenge U.S. supremacy and Beijing alleges that the U.S. is trying to contain the country’s rise.

Recent events, including the February shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over U.S. waters, have exacerbated these tensions. But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip this past weekend to Beijing, during which he met both Qin and President Xi Jinping, did appear to help stabilize ties between the two superpowers.

Some netizens suggested that the sentiments expressed in the purported Qin speech reflect current Chinese foreign policy. But others expressed doubt over the authenticity of the video and voiced suspicion that the speech might have been generated by AI.

Did Qin ever deliver such a speech? 

This is unlikely. After conducting an online search of select phrases from the supposed Qin speech, AFCL found a match with an article entitled “Farewell to America!” posted on the Chinese news site 163.com by Tanji Kede on April 30, 2022. Further comparison showed that virtually the entire content of the supposed Qin speech matches sections two through four of the lengthy article, except for a few differences in wording and a reordering of the paragraphs.

Is the voice in the recording that of Qin’s?

AFCL found several videos of users reading aloud all or parts of Tanji Kede’s article on popular Chinese video-sharing platform Douyin. One such recording entitled “Farewell to America (1)”  was posted by a user identified as Fengyu Tonglu in September 2022. 

A comparison of this latter recording and the supposed Qin speech suggests that the audio for both probably comes from the same source. Both videos contain most of the same sections from the original article, read in slightly different order, and the voices sound virtually identical. 

Furthermore, the same beeping noise is audible at the same place in the text in both recordings, occurring just as the speaker finishes saying, “Otherwise the First World War’s tragedy will be repeated.” The sound occurs at approximately the 4:40-minute mark in the supposed Qin speech and at 8:42 minutes in the Fengyu Tonglu video.

Another Douyin video posted in April 2022 shows a middle-aged man reading the same content as the beginning section of the purported Qin speech, with a similar accent and intonation. AFCL identified the man in the video as Douyin user Liuge Liao Shenghuo by linking him to other videos he posted online. However, the April 2022 video was not found among Liuge’s content on Douyin.

AFCL compared the Liuge audio with the supposed Qin audio using the open AI voiceprint recognition software Unisound. The program found a 93.81 percent probability that the voices from the two tracks belong to the same person. In contrast, a comparison of the supposed Qin internal speech with audio of the foreign minister responding to journalists’ questions at a news conference on March 7, 2023, resulted in only a 65.78 percent probability that the voices belong to the same person. 

AFCL also asked a Taiwanese information engineer with voice recognition expertise to analyze and compare the audio from the Liuge video and from Qin’s alleged speech.  The engineer noted that the sound waves of both clips were consistent with each other and tentatively concluded that they were likely the same track. AFCL did not directly compare the voices in the two Douyin videos. 

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment as of the time of publication. 

Conclusion

Until Chinese officials confirm or deny whether the audio clip is indeed from Qin, AFCL cannot definitively make a clear judgment. However, based on voice recognition software analysis and similarities in text, voice, and recording features in the supposed Qin and Douyin clips, AFCL preliminarily concludes that the alleged Qin leaked audio is most likely fake. It appears that someone manipulated existing online audio or video material and then attributed it to Qin, potentially in a bid to spread misinformation. 

Translated by Shen Ke

Chinese Communist Party officials appear to be distancing themselves from detained gambling tycoon She Zhijiang, whose casinos have been linked with massive human trafficking and online scam operations in the region, and who faces imminent repatriation to China after being arrested by Thai police in August 2022.

She, who owns property and gaming ventures in Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines, stands accused of “running illegal online gambling operations,” and will likely face repatriation very soon coinciding with the expiration of his 30-day appeal period, according to an official statement and a person familiar with the case.

A deputy spokesman for Thailand’s Supreme Prosecutor’s Office announced that the court had issued a deportation order for She on May 25. However, the order allowed 30 days for She to appeal the decision.

Shortly afterwards, Thailand’s Provincial Electricity Authority said it would cut off the power supply to Shwe Kokko, the site of She’s $15 billion real estate and casino mega-project that has become notorious as a bastion of illegal activity, including drug trafficking, amid violence and unrest in post-coup Myanmar. 

Meanwhile, officials linked to Beijing’s international outreach and influence operations are now claiming he has no connection with a key organization carrying out its “United Front” work among overseas Chinese.

While official reports show She attending top-level meetings in Beijing in 2019 hosted by the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, a known United Front organization, officials at the body said they had “no knowledge” of She’s case when contacted by Radio Free Asia, and that it fell under the remit of the China Federation of Overseas Entrepreneurs instead.

However, an official at the entrepreneurs’ organization said She, as a former high-ranking officer in the organization, would still be the business of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese.

As Chinese officials appeared pass the buck on She, a Thailand-based dissident who shared a detention center cell with him in Bangkok told Radio Free Asia that the former gambling tycoon is desperate to avoid repatriation to China amid an ongoing crackdown on human trafficking and online scams that have netted thousands of victims across the region in recent years.

According to court documents shared with the dissident by She, he had once been a valued collaborator for the Chinese authorities, and was put in touch with state security police in the southern island province of Hainan and given a handler to provide intelligence for Beijing.

United Front darling

She, a former Cambodian national who was granted Chinese citizenship during his 2019 Beijing trip, now fears that his most basic human rights won’t be protected and is calling on the international community to help prevent his repatriation to China, the dissident, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, said.

She wouldn’t be the first former darling of the United Front system to face repercussions back home amid an ongoing anti-corruption and anti-espionage campaign that typically nets people who have fallen out of political favor under general secretary Xi Jinping, or who are considered insufficiently loyal to China’s supreme leader.

In May, a court in the eastern city of Suzhou handed down a life sentence to 78-year-old American citizen John Leung, who headed a Beijing-backed overseas Chinese community group, after finding him guilty of “espionage.” Leung had also previously been photographed alongside high-ranking Communist Party officials.

“She Zhijiang made his name and fortune in Myawaddy, an extremely sensitive area in the hands of the Chinese,” the dissident said, referring to an area in southeastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, where She’s Yatai Corp is a major investor in the Shwe Kokko Special Economic Zone.

While the Shwe Kokko mega-project along the Thaungyin River was initially promoted as a way to spur economic growth and deliver material benefits to the local community, it has gained notoriety more as a bastion of illegal activity, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies, C4ADS, an independent research outfit that studies transnational organized crime networks.

According to the dissident, She believes that his army of some 5,000 mercenaries and his deep connections in the local area should protect him from the worst form of political retaliation on his return to China. Yet he still fears he could receive the death penalty.

“I told him he has been abandoned by the Communist Party, who can easily deal with other people under his command,” the dissident said, adding that She had handed over copies of hundreds of pages of court trial records and other documents and asked him to make them public.

Much of the material details close cooperation between She and Chinese Communist Party officials, including his recruitment as an agent by the state security police.

They also allege that he paid up to two million yuan in bribes to An Chen, secretary-general of the China Federation of Overseas Entrepreneurs.

Personal fiefdom

According to the dissident, She ran afoul of Beijing after he grew extremely powerful in Myawaddy, and wanted to run the Asia-Pacific City complex in the Shwe Kokko Special Economic Zone as his personal fiefdom, something that the Chinese Communist Party couldn’t countenance owing to the strategic importance of the area, which is close to the border with Thailand.

Chinese state media reports from the time of She’s arrest described She as the “Asia-Pacific City online scam king,” whose operation in Myawaddy had attracted more than 100 casino and scam companies to Asia-Pacific City.

“Amid a vast network of vested interests and transactions, crimes like smuggling, kidnapping, human trafficking, fraud, assault, extortion are densely intertwined and span Southeast Asia and China,” the August 2022 Phoenix News report on She’s arrest said.

“She Zhijiang, who has changed his nationality and who has multiple pseudonyms, rules the roost like an emperor.” 

According to the dissident, none of these activities could have taken place in Myanmar without the knowledge and collusion of the Chinese Communist Party.

“You can’t do this stuff with no backing – behind them are governments and warlords,” he said. “The Chinese Communist Party controls 100% of this place.”

Another person familiar with organized crime in the region agreed that the Chinese government is heavily involved with organizations carrying out criminal activities in the region, including in Myawaddy, Sihanoukville and the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, a gambling and tourism hub catering to the Chinese and situated along the Mekong River where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand converge. 

“There’s a man called Zhao Wei in the Golden Triangle SEZ who has leased a piece of land for 99 years, and the place is full of gray-to-black operations,” the person said. “The entire area is under his control … and he is engaged in scams, human trafficking and wild animal trafficking around there.”

“Basically 80% of the scamming industry in Southeast Asia is run by people from Fujian [province],” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.

Authorities in Beijing have stepped up their harassment of rights attorney Wang Quanzhang and his family, cutting off power to their new apartment and forcing his wife and child to leave.

Forced to leave their old apartment in the middle of the academic year and find somewhere else to live, the family thought they had finally found a new home in a Beijing suburb, but instead the harassment escalated.

The family has been watched and harassed by a group of unidentified men since they relocated to the northern Beijing suburb of Changping after being forced to leave their previous apartment, according to video clips posted to Wang’s Twitter account.

“Are you telling me what to do?” says one, when Wang opens the front door to find them outside. “Yes of course, because this is our front door,” Wang replies.

“So is this your private property? You are violating my right to privacy,” the man retorts.

Overseas activists have called on the authorities to stop, saying it is a continuation of an operation targeting rights lawyers and public interest law firms that began in 2015.

Wang’s wife Li Wenzu said via her Twitter account that the power to the apartment was cut off on Sunday, and that the power company had refused to reconnect it.

“I called the power supply bureau at 1800 on June 19, 2023, to file a request for repairs,” Li wrote on Monday. “At 1830, a member of staff from the Changping supply station called me back and promised to deal with it immediately.”

“But when I called them back at 1900, they told me the property management company had said this was an internal matter … I told them this should be their responsibility.” she wrote.

24-hour siege

Li told Radio Free Asia that she has now left the apartment and has sent the couple’s child to stay with friends for the time being.

“They’ve cut off our power again, and the door of the meter box has been sealed with a big lock,” she said. “There are many unidentified men in front of the building every day.”

“We are under 24-hour siege, and couriers can’t get through to deliver anything — they are constantly escalating their harassment of us, using different methods to stop us from living a normal life,” she said.

Li said the constant stress and fear has taken a toll on their son, Wang Guangwei.

“We kept moving around during the month when we were forced to relocate, and there have been frequent incidents of violence and intimidation such as the police coming to our door in the middle of the night, which left the kid severely frightened, and he became ill during that time,” she said.

“I felt desperate and powerless with all of that happening every day, I could even live the most basic normal existence, and our son couldn’t attend school,” she said. “And now he has to be separated from us.”

Li said she expects the water and gas to be cut off next.

An overseas-based rights group called on the authorities to end the official harassment of Wang Quanzhang and fellow rights attorney Li Heping and their families.

“The authorities are requested to implement and guarantee the implementation of the Civil Code and … immediately stop all inappropriate and illegal acts that smear and trample on the law,” the China Human Rights Lawyers Group said in a statement dated June 19.

Petition to end harassment

It called for an investigation into officials and police officers who had entered the lawyers’ homes illegally.

Luo Shengchun, wife of jailed rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, said she had signed a petition calling for an end to the harassment of rights lawyers and their families.

“They have forced Li Wenzu and [Li Heping’s wife] Wang Qiaoling to leave their homes, and my anger is indescribable,” Luo said. “Government agencies in China have degenerated to the point where they just hire a group of thugs to do this stuff — it’s crazy. They don’t treat ordinary people as human beings, and it’s getting worse.”

U.S.-based rights activist and legal scholar Teng Biao said the persecution dates back to a 2015 police operation that targeted hundreds of rights lawyers, fellow activists and their families, during which many were jailed for subversion, with Wang Quanzhang “disappearing” for around three years.

“A lot of lawyers got their licenses revoked during the July 2015 crackdown, and many were sentenced,” Teng said. “Now they want to totally silence any defenders of human rights, and so they are using these thuggish methods.”

“China has now upgraded to a high-tech totalitarian system with total disregard for the rule of law and the most basic standards of human rights,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.