Day: June 26, 2023

Chinese authorities in Tibet are randomly searching monasteries and forcing monks to sign documents renouncing all ties to the “separatist” Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s foremost spiritual leader, Tibetan sources living in exile told Radio Free Asia.

The Dalai Lama is widely regarded by Chinese leaders as a separatist intent on splitting Tibet, a formerly independent nation that was invaded and incorporated into China by force in 1950, from Beijing’s control.

The Dalai Lama, who now lives in exile in India, says only that he seeks a greater autonomy for Tibet as a part of China, with guaranteed protections for Tibet’s language, culture and religion.

RFA reported last year that China began requiring Tibetans working in official government positions to renounce all ties to the Dalai Lama as a condition of employment. Authorities appear to be including monasteries under this rule.

Beginning this month, Chinese authorities conducted searches of monasteries in Shentsa (in Chinese, Shenzha) and Sok (Suo) counties on the premise of maintaining security, a Tibetan living in exile, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Tibetan Service. 

“The authorities search all the residences of the monks and the main shrines in the monasteries,” the exile said. “The monks of Shartsa Monastery are also forced into renouncing ties with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and be a part of anti-Dalai Lama groups.’ 

In a photo received by RFA from Tibet, the Shartsa monks are seen signing their names on a board on the wall. 

The text on the board states that “We will rigorously take part in opposing the Dalai Lama clique and will remain loyal and devoted to the country [China].”

As part of their searches, the authorities have been scrutinizing the monks’ prayer manuscripts and books, and removing prayer flags from shrines, said another exiled Tibetan, who declined to be named.

“They did not give any sort of warning before conducting these random searches,” said the second exile. The monks in these monasteries were summoned for a meeting where they were forced to sign documents renouncing the Dalai Lama and separatism.” 

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

A former student leader of the 1989 pro-democracy movement in China has been forced to leave his home in the capital and travel the country amid official pressure to relocate to the town of his birth in the southwestern province of Guizhou.

Ji Feng was initially ordered to leave Beijing ahead of the 34th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre, along with dozens of other critics of the ruling Communist Party and former participants in the pro-democracy movement.

But unlike most of his peers, Ji hasn’t been allowed to return to the city he calls home.

Instead, the authorities are forcing him to live in Guizhou, where he has his hukou, or household registration documentation, he told Radio Free Asia in a recent interview.

“They want to force me to go and live in a rural area, where my hometown is, in Tongzi county under the administration of Zunyi city,” he said. “State security police in Zunyi have been very polite and nice to me, but I’m not allowed to go to [Guiyang], the provincial capital.”

“They say there are [politically] sensitive people living here, but they won’t even let me visit my uncle,” said Ji, who chaired the Guizhou University Students’ Autonomous Federation during the 1989 democracy movement in China.

Ji said the Guiyang authorities seemed to regard him as a “top priority.” He said he stayed at a friend’s place in the city for a short time, but the state security police wouldn’t leave him or his friend alone.

“They took my friend down to the police station, then had my friend bring them to his home,” Ji said. “Then they called me down to the police station.”

“There are about seven or eight state security police in Guiyang led by a single guy Chen Zhang, who was pretty scary,” he said. “I told them to detain me, because they’d terrified my friend already.”

“I didn’t want my friend to face long-term harassment, threats and warnings just for meeting up with [me],” he said.

But police told Ji that while he was technically free to move around, anyone meeting with him would answer for the consequences.

Independent journalist Gao Yu said police had forced Ji out of his rented home in Songzhuang in Beijing’s Tongzhou district.

“The police asked the landlord to cancel his lease, and he was told to move out quickly,” Gao said. “The Beijing police told him he could go to Yanjiao [in neighboring Hebei province] and they would find an apartment for him.”

“He didn’t agree to that, but was forced to leave Beijing, and has been of no fixed abode since May,” she said.

Gao said Ji’s treatment is similar to that meted out to prominent rights lawyers Wang Quanzhang and Li Heping and their families.

She said police seem to want to isolate influential activists in remote locations, to minimize their ability to organize or meet up with like-minded people.

“The more remote a place they send you too, the less influence you will have,” Gao said. 

Ji has so far refused to cave in and settle down in his hometown in Tongzi county.

Currently in the central province of Hunan, he plans to head for the southern city of Shenzhen next, and eventually to wind up back in Hebei province, not too far from Beijing.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

A day after the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan began a port call in Da Nang, Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, met Monday with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

In juggling two competing superpowers, Hanoi is demonstrating its flexible “bamboo foreign policy” of bending with the wind but never breaking, said Truong Nhan Tuan, a France-based observer of Vietnamese political affairs.

Vietnam has been involved in military conflicts with both China and the United States. And while Hanoi remains close to Beijing, it has also opened up to dealing with Washington since reestablishing relations in 1995.

One power is ascending and the other is in decline, he said.

“China is a power on its way to restoring the old Chinese empire’s power and station, while the U.S. is a great superpower whose position was established after World War II and is declining,” said Tuan. 

Meeting with his counterpart Li Qiang, Prime Minister Chinh was on his first official visit to China since taking office in 2021. He was attending the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions of the World Economic Forum, a four-day event that started Sunday, according to Vietnam’s foreign ministry.

The USS Ronald Reagan was accompanied by two escort ships, the missile cruisers USS Antietam and USS Robert Smalls.

Tuan said the timing of the two events was not a random coincidence and was more akin to “seeing off one person at the front door while welcoming another at the rear.” 

“Vietnam has no choice but to do this to let Chinese leaders see to whom it attaches more importance,” said Tuan. “If Vietnam were an independent and sovereign state, the visit by the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier would be Vietnam’s internal affairs, and its prime minister wouldn’t have to report to China.”

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

As Jinky Cabardo worked at her eatery in Batanes, a chain of islands that form the Philippines’ northernmost territory, a helper relayed some alarming news: The small archipelago province had run out of rice.

This happened back in April amid talk that the people of Batanes could be caught in the middle should war break out between China and Taiwan, an island just a few hundred kilometers away, Cabardo recalled.

Neighbors began to fret that month when American servicemen landed here in tilt-rotor aircraft and vessels during joint exercises with their Philippine counterparts, Cabardo, a mother of two who is in her 40s, told a reporter with BenarNews, an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

“There was panic buying. People were hoarding food,” said Cabardo, who owns Centro, a small restaurant in downtown Basco, the quiet capital of the island chain, whose total population is less than 20,000.

People who live in this tiny province surrounded by sea in the Luzon Strait are on edge, worrying that Batanes could easily be exposed to fighting between rival superpowers should they go to war over Taiwan. 

The presence of the foreign troops participating in the recent drills with Philippine troops got the locals buzzing that this was to prepare for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. But both the Philippines and United States officially denied that the war games were connected to such a threat.

Batanes folk usually believe the news coming out of the mainland – more specifically, Manila, the country’s capital and seat of government, Cabrado said.

“So when the reports about the training came out and the Americans were seen in our province, they thought they would be [ensnared in the] conflict, so they panicked,” she recalled during the interview with BenarNews in May.

Batanes serves as a natural demarcation between the Philippines and Taiwan. These lush green islands are celebrated for their stone-crafted houses, coral walls, and charming cogon grass roofs.

Batanes is the smallest province in the Philippines. Surrounded by 4,500 square kilometers (1,737 square miles) of sea, the province’s total land mass is 203.2 square kilometers (78.4 square miles) – one third the size of Metro Manila. 

Because of the tension between Taiwan and China, Batanes has gained attention lately as a potential flashpoint in the geopolitical struggle between China and the U.S., its geopolitical rival and close ally of both Taiwan and the Philippines. 

Analysts say Batanes is key terrain that both sides may vie to occupy were war to break out in the Taiwan Strait.

To ensure control of the Luzon Strait, China may take control of the Batanes Islands to use them as a base for enclosing the Bashi Channel with anti-ship and anti-air missile coverage, said Jay Batongbacal, director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines.

“A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would require blockading and isolating [Batanes] from access by the U.S. and other allied forces. China will bombard Taiwanese defenses first before launching amphibious and air invasions,” he told BenarNews as he painted some scenarios.

‘China will make us a target’

As an ordinary citizen, former Batanes Gov. Telesforo Castillejos said he was aware of the predicament facing locals, given their province’s proximity to Taiwan, which China sees as a renegade province.

“If I allow the Americans to use our island as a stepping stone to whatever activity… then China will make us a target,” said Castillejos, who grew up in Basco in a family of farmers.

“I am not an expert. But from a layman’s point of view, if the West Philippine Sea is a major concern of our country – having that international tribunal decision won by the Philippines – how much more for a small island [chain] like Batanes?” he said, referring to territories claimed by the Philippines in the contested South China Sea. 

“I will not be surprised if one day, they [China] will present some old maps claiming part of their territorial waters is Batanes.”

In mid-2016, the Philippines won a landmark case before an international arbitration tribunal in its territorial dispute with China over the waterway. But Beijing so far has refused to abide by the ruling and has carried on with its military expansionism and program to build artificial islands in the maritime region. 

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to territorial disputes in the waterway, Beijing claims historic rights to parts that overlap with Indonesia’s EEZ.

According to Castillejos, 76, Batanes has largely been forgotten by the central government, which lately has been sending coast guard and navy patrol ships to the islands, though few and far in between.

“We cannot even secure our territorial waters. And our marine resources are being depleted by China. The same problem until now. Our government is not in a position to secure our territorial waters,” he told BenarNews.

In February this year, the Philippines, under an expanded defense pact, gave the United States access to four new military bases – a deal that one analyst described as “central” to Washington’s aim to deter any Chinese plan to attack Taiwan.

In 2014, the Philippines and U.S. signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which supplemented the Visiting Forces Agreement of 1999. The VFA provides legal cover for large-scale joint war games between the two longtime allies and stipulates that U.S. forces can only rotate in and out of the Philippines, a former American colony.

Castillejos considered President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s policies like how having the EDCA could help protect the people if conflict broke out between China and Taiwan.

“But I always pray and believe that war will not happen because no one will be a winner,” he said.

According to Batanes Vice Gov. Ignacio Villa, local authorities have contingency plans in place should something bad occur in the Taiwan Strait.

Under the plan, they would build a “tent city” that could accommodate thousands of refugees, considering that an estimated 150,000 Filipinos work in Taiwan.

“The Americans will be helping in this measure,” he said.

‘We are living peacefully here’

German Amboy Caccam, the mayor of Basco, echoed that sentiment. When the people of these islands voiced their concerns, the United States provided reassurances and pledged assistance, he said.

“First, there is the repatriation of Filipinos in Taiwan returning home. It is anticipated that Batanes will serve as a transit point,” he explained.

“Therefore, if Batanes becomes a transit point, we may face an influx of refugees. Our primary concern lies in providing sufficient food and water. While we have enough resources to sustain the existing population, we are currently unprepared to cater to the needs of refugees,” he added.

If he had to decide, said Caccam, a former public school teacher, he would not allow the Americans to stay in the country to make their province the venue for future military drills.

“I don’t like it. We are living peacefully here. We are a potential target because of their presence. But if that’s the policy of the government, we can’t do anything,” he said.

Known for its traditional low-slung houses built to withstand any typhoon, the main sources of livelihood for the people of Batanes – which is more commonly known among locals as Ivatan – are fishing and tourism.

Bishop Danilo Ulep, the head of the Catholic Church in Batanes who has lived in these islands since 2017, said the locals were hardy people who could adapt to whatever was thrown their way. 

This, he said, now potentially included being a pawn in a larger geopolitical war.

The people here “possess the remarkable ability to overcome any form of adversity,” Ulep told BenarNews.

The man of the cloth described the Batanes islanders as modest and humble people “who can thrive without the luxuries commonly found on the mainland” and who show “remarkable solidarity by supporting and assisting one another.” 

“They have the strength to triumph over any misfortune that comes their way. This is a quality I have personally witnessed in them,” Ulep said.

BenarNews is an online news organization affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

A Chinese court has handed down a four-and-a-half year jail term to Xie Wenfei, prominent rights activist who has long been a critic of the government and a vocal supporter of the Hong Kong democracy movement.

The Chenzhou Municipal People’s Court in central Hunan province gave the sentence to Xie after finding him guilty of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Communist Party, according to his brother.

News of his fate comes amid concerns that Xie has been subjected to ill-treatment during his years in incommunicado detention, and after he was forced to fire lawyers hired by his family to defend him on three separate occasions.

The sentence was handed down following a secret trial on an unknown date, and the family wasn’t allowed to attend either the trial or the sentencing hearing.

Xie, also known as Xie Fengxia, has been incommunicado since being taken away from his home in Hunan’s Chenzhou city of April 29, 2020, and has been denied visits from family members or lawyers.

“Xie Wenfei … called me on WeChat from the Zixing Detention Center to tell me that he will be released on Oct. 30, 2024, after four-and-a-half years in prison,” his brother Xie Fengchun told Radio Free Asia.

Poem about pandemic

Associates said at the time that his detention came after he posted a poem he wrote about the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan.

Xie’s friend Yuan Xiaohua said that following his release from an earlier jail term for speaking out in support of the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, he had continued to speak out on political matters, including posting a message marking the death anniversary of Mao-era dissident Lin Zhao.

“They probably fear him and hate him because he’s always expressing his opinions on current affairs and traveling all around the country, and then there’s his comments on the pandemic and his commemoration of Lin Zhao,” Yuan said.

Xie will be sent to serve out his remaining sentence at Hunan’s Chisan Prison, which has held a number of high-profile political prisoners including Taiwanese rights activist Lee Ming-cheh, Changsha Funeng NGO founder Cheng Yuan and rights activist Ou Biaofeng, Yuan said.

“Based on what has leaked out about Cheng Yuan and Ou Biaofeng from Chishan Prison, there has been physical punishment, torture and forced labor, which is really very worrying,” he said.

Changsha Funeng sought to prevent discrimination by using the courts to strengthen protections for individuals living with disabilities and with HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases.

A person close to Xie’s case who requested anonymity due to safety concerns said his relatively heavy sentence was likely due to his having an earlier conviction, but could also be a form of political retaliation by the authorities.

“After he got out of prison, local officials would offer him humanitarian assistance and visit him and his parents from time to time, bearing gifts,” the person said.

“But Xie Wenfei has a very no-nonsense personality, and was very rude to them, and refused to let them in the door and threw away the stuff they brought,” the person said.

Xie had earlier been detained in October 2014 after wearing a black T-shirt and holding a banner in support of the 79-day Hong Kong pro-democracy movement on the streets of Guangzhou.

He entered the courtroom for his 2016 sentencing hearing shouting, “Build a democratic China!” and “Down with the Communist Party!” and could still be heard yelling slogans as he was being led out of the courtroom after sentencing

He was jailed by the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court on Nov. 19, 2016, for “incitement to subvert state power.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

A woman who uploaded a short video of herself doing a hand dance to the social media platform WeChat in which she mimes a reference to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre is being harassed by Chinese authorities, according to her social media posts and a friend who has spoken with her.

Huang Zhihong, who goes by the username Poinsettia, is suffering from deteriorating mental health amid constant surveillance by police in the southern province of Guangdong, said her friend Wang Zhihua, who now lives in New York and who recently spoke with her via video call. 

In the video, Huang is dressed in black and performs a graceful “hand dance” to a mournful background track.

A couple of times during the dance, her hands form the hand signals – often used by street vendors and in regular conversation – to denote the numbers 6 and 4, a reference to the date of the June 4, 1989, massacre of unarmed civilians by the People’s Liberation Army with machine guns and tanks.

Public commemoration of the massacre is banned in mainland China, while an annual candlelight vigil that used to mark the anniversary in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park has fallen silent after more than three decades, its leaders in prison under a draconian national security law used to crack down on public dissent.

Huang first made the video to mark the anniversary of the massacre in 2021, and uploaded it to WeChat Moments, where it was soon deleted by government censors.

Later, it started appearing on overseas sites not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and was posted again to YouTube on June 5, 2022, where it was also picked up by the U.S.-based China Digital Times website.

Unwanted attention

Police started stepping up their surveillance and harassment of Huang after her video dance was reposted to Twitter by the U.S.-based former 1989 student leader Zhou Fengsuo on Sept. 15, 2022, her friends said.

“I seem to have brought disaster down on her,” Zhou told Radio Free Asia, adding that he had also messaged Huang to thank her for the video last year.

“They detained her because it was a very sensitive matter,” Wang said. “The police seemed to think she had been colluding with foreign forces. But they didn’t get any evidence of that even after 24 hours of interrogation,” he said.

But because Huang told police that she had never even heard of Zhou, and that he had initiated contact, not her, she was released by police on that occasion, he said.

“Since then, they have harassed her, called her in to ‘drink tea‘, but the most terrifying thing has been the stalking,” Wang said. “They park their police car in front of her shop and stand watching her, causing her mental health problems.”

Depressed

He said Huang and her 12-year-old daughter are now both suffering from depression due to fears for their safety and that of their family.

Huang has repeatedly declined to respond to media requests out of concern for her personal safety amid ongoing police harassment, and didn’t respond to Radio Free Asia’s attempts to reach out for comment on this article.

She wrote in a post to WeChat moments in April that she had been approached by local police and questioned soon after receiving her daughter’s newly applied-for passport, according to a screenshot of the post shared by another U.S.-based friend of Huang’s, Xiyan.

Police told her at that time that they regarded her as “unpatriotic,” and said it was in their power to decide whether to let her leave China, as Xiyan already had, the post said.

According to Wang, Huang once described herself as “not a brave person – I just naturally like to dance.”

But he said the effect on her mental health has been clear to see.

“She cries the whole time,” he said. “Whenever we video call, she cries.”

“She complains to me, as her good friend,” Wang said, adding that long-term surveillance by the local police had left Huang physically and mentally exhausted. 

According to Huang’s friends, she made the video to “express her condolences” after reading about the massacre anniversary online, and without rehearsal.

“It was on the spur of the moment, triggered by the candlelight vigils and commemoration on June 4, and it just felt natural for her to dance it that way,” Wang said, citing Huang’s account of the video.

“It looks very natural, with just a piece of cloth hung as a background, and I think that really touched a lot of people,” he said.

Renewed popularity

Despite the trouble it has brought her, Huang’s dance enjoyed another spike in popularity on Twitter earlier this month, around the 34th anniversary of the massacre.

A tweet linking to the video posted by Twitter user @Huaxianzi999 on June 4, 2023 garnered 200,000 views, 434 retweets and 1,426 likes.

Another U.S.-based friend of Huang’s who gave only the nickname Xiyan for fear of reprisals against loved ones back home said she had been “shocked” at the video when she first saw it.

“Later, we talked on the phone, and she said the video had been deleted,” Xiyan said. “She didn’t have any particular intent in mind – she just wanted to express herself in that way.”

U.S.-based activist Chen Xiangwei – who also knows Huang – said he had warned her the video could have safety implications for her.

“A lot of people feel this way, not quite right in themselves because they’re not allowed to speak out,” Chen said. “A lot of my online friends like to speak up for justice on behalf of ordinary people – their existence gives us a lot of hope for this country.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.