Day: June 22, 2023

An internationally recognized gymnast and bodybuilder from Yangon is being kept under surveillance by military junta police and plainclothes intelligence officers, according to sources close to the family. 

Radio Free Asia’s Burmese service profiled 21-year-old Thae Su on June 13. The report included footage of her performing acrobatic gymnastics and also detailed her family’s strained financial situation. 

The video on RFA Burmese’s Facebook page drew more than 6 million views in the first 24 hours and attracted a lot of attention from local media, businessmen and from Burmese people around the world. 

Local businessmen and well wishers donated money to Thae Su’s family in the days after the broadcast, according to the sources. Some Burmese people living abroad contacted RFA asking how to help her and her family. 

But on June 15, administrative officials from Yangon’s Dala township, military intelligence and armed plainclothes officers entered her home as a local media crew was filming, the sources said. 

The officers threatened the film crew and told them they couldn’t shoot footage without permission from junta officials, according to the witnesses and neighbors.

The armed men also told Thae Su not to talk to any more reporters. RFA has been unable to contact her family since last week and sources said plainclothes intelligence officers have been seen watching the family house. 

It was unclear why junta authorities have cracked down on the family.

‘The flag of Myanmar was wrapped around me’

Thae Su told RFA that she first became interested in sports in 2014 after going to a summer aerobics class – thinking it was a dance class – on the day of her fifth grade final exam. 

Since then, she’s competed in physique gymnastics, acrobatic gymnastics, wushu and bodybuilding, winning at least 20 prizes at township, district and regional level competitions. 

In 2019, she won first prize in the women’s fitness physique open category at the Southeast Asian Bodybuilding and Sports Competition in Myanmar. She also took third place at the World Bodybuilding and Fitness Competition in South Korea that same year. She was only 18 years old at that time. 

“No year was more joyful than 2019,” she told RFA for the June 13 broadcast. “I was on the stage when I was receiving those medals. I was feeling so proud and happy when the flag of Myanmar was wrapped around me on the stage. I had never felt like that before.”

Thae Su’s grandmother and father raised her in a tiny slum house in Dala, a poor neighborhood on the opposite bank of the Yangon River. They did whatever work they could get – rain or shine – to pay for her training, transportation and food. Her grandmother sold dried fish and various grocery products while her father drove a motorcycle taxi.

The grandmother, Ohn Shwe, told RFA that it was all worth it. 

“She won third prize in an international competition. Among the many contestants from many countries, she won third place,” she told RFA. “That made me so happy.”

But recently, Ohn Shwe has been unable to sell at markets as she recovers from COVID-19. And Thae Su’s father, Zaw Min Oo, hasn’t been able to find work after junta authorities banned the use of motorcycles in Dala township earlier this year. 

“I want her to be very successful. I want her to become a sports captain as she wishes,” he said. “But since I am old, not many people call me for work. As I can’t drive motorcycles anymore due to the ban, I can’t hope too much.”

The family moved to a new location five months ago when the legal land owner showed up in their previous location. Thae Su said hasn’t been able to train at her gym because she can no longer afford the 2000 kyats, or just under one U.S. dollar, for public transportation. 

“Her sports career seems to have stopped now,” Ohn Shwe said. “We have been through a lot of trouble.”

Sources said this week that the family has refused to accept any more donations following the warnings from officials. RFA tried unsuccessfully to contact Thae Su and her family on Wednesday. 

RFA also tried to reach junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun by telephone for comment but he didn’t immediately respond. 

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Internet users in Hong Kong have been unable to access an online newspaper article describing how U.S. President Joe Biden called Chinese president Xi Jinping a “dictator,” sparking a fresh war of words between the two superpowers in the wake of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that was supposed to have eased tensions.

An article published by the pro-China Singapore newspaper Lianhe Zaobao about the diplomatic row was unavailable to Hong Kong readers on Wednesday, sparking concerns that the authorities are starting to impose China’s Great Firewall of internet censorship in the city, amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent.

Clicking on a link to the June 21 article on the paper’s website displayed in Google search results from Hong Kong yielded an error message that read: “Sorry, but that page doesn’t exist.”

However, other stories on the same website were accessible around the same time.

Further investigations from Hong Kong revealed that articles mentioning the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the recent arrests of Hong Kongers commemorating it in public were also unavailable on the paper’s website.

The same articles were easily accessible from outside Hong Kong, however.

Network engineer and citizen journalist Zhou Shuguang, who currently lives in democratic Taiwan and uses the online handle “Zuola,” said the block had likely occurred within Hong Kong-based servers hosting the paper’s content, rather than being imposed by the paper in Singapore.

“There are host servers in many different places around the world … including in Hong Kong, Osaka, Japan, and the United States,” Zhou said after investigating the page and its domain name, server and other technical information available on the paper’s website. 

“The purpose is to allow readers faster access to content.”

But the servers in Hong Kong will come under the control of the authorities there, who would likely apply provisions from a draconian national security law banning public criticism of the authorities.

“Servers in Hong Kong are governed by the Hong Kong National Security Law, or the Hong Kong government,” Zhou said.

But he said it wasn’t out of the question that the Lianhe Zaobao had also engaged in some form of self-censorship to gain access to readers in China.

Expansive national security law

Hong Kong data scientist and pro-democracy activist Wong Ho-wa agreed, saying that the paper appears to have made a decision to deny Hong Kong users access to certain content.

He said if the authorities had imposed an external block, then the entire website would be unavailable, as was the case in 2021 when they blocked access to the Hong Kong Chronicles website.

“If you can get onto the website, but some content is visible and other content isn’t, most of that is controlled by the media organization or the official website,” Wong told Radio Free Asia. “Naturally there are certain factors they consider.”

“It’s not about the server – it’s a programming or regional issue,” he said, citing regional variations in availability of content on streaming site Netflix as an example.

An employee of the Lianhe Zaobao who responded to a query about the issue from RFA on Wednesday said: “We are looking into it.” However, no further response had been received by the time of writing.

An official who responded from the Hong Kong government’s Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau said the issue didn’t fall within its remit.

Hong Kong’s national security legislation applies – in theory, at least – anywhere in the world.

The British government in February hit out at authorities in China and Hong Kong after they put pressure on the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch to take down its entire website, citing the law.

“You and Hong Kong Watch are obliged to remove the website … without delay, and immediately cease engaging in any acts and activities in contravention of the national security law or any other laws of Hong Kong,” the city’s national security police wrote to the group’s CEO Benedict Rogers.

“Should you fail to do so, further action will be instituted against you and Hong Kong Watch without further notice.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.

A Malaysian court is expected to charge four Thai nationals Friday in connection with the 2015 discovery of graves of more than a 100 human-smuggling victims found at jungle camps near the border with Thailand, Malaysia’s home minister said. 

The Thai suspects were handed over to Malaysia on Thursday as part of a 2017 extradition request by Kuala Lumpur and an investigation into the discovery of mass remains of Rohingya and Bangladeshi human smuggling victims in shallow graves in Wang Kelian, a village in Perlis state.

“They were handed to us on June 22 and will be brought to the Sessions Court in Perlis to be charged on Friday,” Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said in a statement but without disclosing details.

A senior Malaysian police official, who asked that his identity be kept anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said the Perlis police chief was scheduled to hold a press conference related to the Thai nationals on Friday.

“The four will be charged with human smuggling,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

In January 2015, Malaysian authorities found 139 mass graves and 28 abandoned camps scattered near the rocky hills along the Thai-Malaysia border at Bukit Wang Burma in Wang Kelian, but waited four months to exhume the bodies.

More than 100 skeletal remains, believed to be those of members of Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, were found in the graves while other remains apparently belonged to undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

After a cluster of similar mass graves were discovered at jungle camps abandoned by human smugglers on the Thai side of the frontier, Thailand in early May 2015 launched a crackdown on illicit immigration that triggered a humanitarian crisis in Southeast Asia.

Close to 3,000 ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh nationals, abandoned by their handlers on smugglers’ boats, suddenly came ashore in Malaysia and Indonesia. It was only after the news of the Thai graves made headlines that Malaysian authorities publicized the discovery of the graves in Wang Kelian and moved to recover the remains of the victims.

A Malaysian government-commissioned panel inquiry report made public last October found that officials could have prevented the torture and deaths of the smuggling victims if they had taken “a more proactive step in border control.”

“It did not require any extraordinary effort to detect what had happened in Bukit Wang Burma,” according to an excerpt from the Royal Commission of Inquiry report.

“The Commission regards the incident at Wang Kelian as a humanitarian tragedy that should never have happened in this day and age.”

No Malaysian has been charged in connection with the 2015 discovery. Only four foreign nationals have been convicted and imprisoned.

But in Thailand, prosecutors tried 102 people linked to 32 graves found on its side of the border. Of the 62 people convicted, one was a three-star general, who died in prison while serving an 82-year sentence.

‘No form of trial on our side’

Malaysia’s home minister said this latest development was the result of close cooperation between his country and Thailand. Malaysia had in 2017 sought the extradition of 10 Thai nationals.

“As a result of close collaboration between the two countries, four of the 10 individuals were tracked down and presented at a Thai court to face extradition,” Saifuddin said.

“The extradition proceeding took place at many courts in Thailand, and the Thai Court of Appeal on March 30 this year ordered the four individuals to be handed to Malaysia.”

However, Mohd. Mizan Mohammad Aslam, a professor at the National Defense University of Malaysia, would like to see a more active investigation on the Malaysian side.

“In Thailand, many people have been arrested for being involved in the crime and ended up in prison,” he told BenarNews.

“However, on our side, we have yet to take any action seriously; there has been no form of trial on our side.”

He urged the Malaysian authorities to find local suspects involved in the case and put them behind bars.

“I believe that if no serious action is taken, such crimes can flourish again and create another Wang Kelian,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news outlet.