Day: June 28, 2023

Philippine security forces have rescued nearly 3,000 people from a slew of Asian and African nations during a massive raid on illegal gambling operations, with officials saying Wednesday that these migrants were duped into working in the fraudulent offshore operations.

The workers – most of them Filipinos, with many others from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries – were found when police commandos, armed with warrants, simultaneously raided seven buildings in Las Piñas, Metro Manila, on Tuesday.

The targets of the raid, the owners of a gaming hub, were identified as Quiha Lu, Liangfei Chen, Jimmy Lin, and Abbey Ng. Police said these suspects – all believed to be Chinese – were found to have violated the country’s anti-trafficking in persons law.

Capt. Michelle Sabino, a spokeswoman for the Philippine National Police’s Anti-Cybercrime Group, said the workers were promised work at an online casino.

“The job posting lured them into this work. They’re the ones assisting in online gaming,” Sabino told reporters on Wednesday.

Of the workers rescued, 1,528 were Filipinos trafficked from other parts of the country; there were also 600 Chinese, 183 Vietnamese, 137 Indonesians, 134 Malaysians, 81 Thais, and 21 Taiwanese; the rest were from Nigeria, Singapore, Myanmar, Yemen, Pakistan, South Africa, India, Somalia, Sudan, Cameroon, and Iran, a police report said.

Col. Jean Fajardo, national police spokesperson, said that only two of the seven buildings they raided had the relevant license to operate as offshore gaming establishments.
“We received information on the presence of foreigners in one of the buildings,” Fajardo told reporters.

Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, or POGOs as they are more popularly called, entered the country in 2016 at the start of the term of then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration and have flourished due to loose gaming laws here.

Such operations cater largely to customers in mainland China, where gambling for money is banned. At their peak, POGOs hired more than 300,000 Chinese workers and brought them to the Philippines.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

Chinese Communist Party investigators have expelled a high-ranking official in the Beijing city government for possession of banned political books and journals, as the authorities continue to purge unapproved content and replace it with official propaganda that sticks to the party line.

The Beijing branch of the party’s disciplinary arm, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, announced on June 25 it had expelled former state assets supervisory official Zhang Guilin for “serious violations of discipline and law,” paving the way for a criminal prosecution.

“The investigation found that Zhang Guilin’s political awareness was weak, and he kept and read books and periodicals with serious political issues,” the commission said in a statement reported by state news agency Xinhua, which didn’t elaborate on the nature of Zhang’s chosen reading material.

Government censors already routinely remove dissenting opinions and criticism of the government from social media and other online platforms, but the party now appears to be targeting a quieter, slower way to transmit information – books and journals that can slip into the country under the official radar, or be ordered from overseas publishers.

According to Xinhua, Zhang had also accepted favors and failed to disclose “sexual transactions,” with disciplinary officials calling for “stern punishment.” Zhang’s case has been handed over to the state prosecutor’s office for prosecution, it added.

Zhang is the latest in a long line of high-ranking Chinese officials to be accused of secretly keeping and reading books “with serious political issues.”

Authorities in Shanghai announced earlier this month that former Dongfang.com editor-in-chief Xu Shiping had been expelled from the Communist Party after accusations of “hiding and reading prohibited books,” as well as misuse of public funds and abuse of official power.

In recent years, former Changsha deputy mayor Chen Zehui, former Huainan deputy mayor Li Zhong, former Chongqing state security police officer Li Bin have all been expelled from the party and removed from their posts for bringing banned books into the country.

‘Serious political issues’

Chinese Communist Party rules define “books and periodicals with serious political issues” as reading matter that opposes government policy, undermines party unity and “smears the image of the party and the country” or “insults party and government leaders.”

Earlier this month, Shanghai dissident Ji Xiaolong stood trial for criticizing premier Li Qiang’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic while he was party secretary, something the court viewed as “insulting the country’s leaders.”

Books and articles that “distort the history of the party and the military” are also forbidden, according to Articles 45 and 46 of the “Regulations on Disciplinary Action in the Chinese Communist Party.”

China already has laws protecting the reputation of its revolutionary heroes and martyrs, and has jailed people for questioning the official view of history.

Former party school professor Deng Yuwen, who now lives in the United States, said party officials have always kept and passed around banned books and journals, however.

“Even during the extreme era of the Cultural Revolution, they didn’t manage to ban them completely, and it’s even less likely they can do that now,” Deng told Radio Free Asia. “I believe that all of the senior cadres in the party likely have such books.”

“It’s fine until [a political power play] happens, then it’s considered a violation of party rules,” Deng said.

According to Deng, the key factor affecting party officials’ careers is the degree to which they can demonstrate their absolute political loyalty to supreme leader Xi Jinping.

Key tool for purges

Wang Ruiqin, a former member of the Qinghai branch of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, agreed.

“The private possession and reading of books and periodicals with serious political issues is very common,” Wang said. “Especially among the younger officials … who have enjoyed the benefits of the economic reform era [that began in 1979].”

“This political accusation is likely to be an important tool for the purging of dissenting opinions in internal power struggles,” she said. “It will also have a ‘chilling effect’ on other party members and officials.”

As the ruling party moves to ensure that only the official narrative is read, heard or seen by its citizens, the works of Xi Jinping and the party charter have moved to the top five sales slots during the past two months, calling to mind the era of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.

Out of the top 20 highest-selling publications in May and June, 7 are writings or speeches by Xi Jinping.

In top place is Volume 2 of “Selected Readings from Xi Jinping’s Works, while Volume 1 ranks second.

In third place is the party charter, or constitution, while Xi’s report to the 20th party congress in October is in fourth spot.

Fifth and sixth places are taken up by Xi’s writings on governance and a study outline of Xi’s thinking “in the new era.”

‘Politics by decree’

Zhejiang-based scholar Jiang Yi said the last time a leader’s writings took up all of the top spots in book sales rankings was under late supreme leader Mao Zedong, whose Little Red Book of selected works became a huge nationwide bestseller.

“A supreme Chinese leader is once more dominating book sales rankings, and the era of politics by decree has returned,” Jiang said.

He said the rankings were likely the result of a massive system-wide orchestration that involves mass orders by government departments and state-owned enterprises and compulsory orders using party or government funds.

“Political books like that are actually pretty boring, so it’s quite a tough call to have Xi Jinping’s writings dominate half of the sales rankings, given the huge variety of books available,” Jiang said.

Former 1989 student leader and current affairs commentator Ji Feng said China is currently living through the Cultural Revolution 2.0.

“These books have all been funded by the taxpayer, and have nothing to do with the market economy,” Ji said. “It’s all about propaganda and political correctness, just as it was with Mao Zedong’s anthologies.”

Feng Chongyi, a professor at the Sydney University of Technology in Australia, said the move is a mistake, however.

“How can they regress to such a point all of a sudden?” Feng said. “This is an insult to the intelligence of regular citizens, not to mention the publishing industry, professors, and scholars.”

“It’s the restoration of totalitarianism, and it’s a tragedy for the whole nation,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.

Myanmar’s junta claims that it has completed a census that accounts for nearly 90% of the population ahead of planned elections, but critics and political analysts say that’s impossible given the turmoil and fighting wracking the country.

The military regime, which overthrew the democratically-elected government in February 2021, has said it will hold elections this year, but no date has been set. Western governments and international rights groups say that any election held under the junta is unlikely to be free or fair.

Last week, pro-junta media outlets reported that a census comprising 87% of Myanmar’s population of about 54 million people had been collected as part of a pilot program ahead of that vote.

But observers said there was no way that the regime had accurately collected census data for nine out of 10 citizens in the current state of crisis, with an estimated 1.5 million people who have been displaced from their homes.

“[Junta officials] held an emergency meeting last Friday about the elections at the Yangon region government office … [but] they themselves don’t even know what to do in these circumstances,” said an election observer, who declined to be named for security reasons.

“They’ve included names of people who no longer live at their address or have died in their collection of the population census,” he said. “Some of them are in foreign countries … Frankly speaking, they are struggling to even get 25%.”

According to the Union Election Commission, or UEC, there are currently 63 political parties in Myanmar: 50 that have applied for registration to participate in the elections and 13 that have applied to establish new parties. 

Junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said during a Jan. 23 meeting with the UEC that an election must be held under any circumstances.

Census data ‘completely unreliable’

However, political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA on Tuesday that since the UEC has been unable to form sub-election commissions in states and regions across the country, it cannot effectively collect the population census or hold an election.

The United Nations estimates that there are around 1.5 million internally displaced persons in Myanmar, many of whom are living in the country’s jungles after fleeing conflict between the military and anti-junta groups in their villages and townships.

“The only place the UEC can collect the population census numbers is from government offices in cities and towns, so their population data is completely unreliable,” he said.

Than Soe Naing also suggested the junta is preparing to hold an election “just for a show,” and pointed out that it has been unable to even announce an exact date.

Tun Aung Kyaw, the spokesman for the ethnic Arakan National Party, went further to suggest that it wouldn’t even be possible to hold an election in Myanmar next year, due to the security and military situation in the country.

He added that parties that applied for recognition under a recently passed political party registration law ahead of a March 28 deadline are required to hand over information about their present status, members and financial accounts within 90 days in order to obtain final legal status.

“That’s why these political parties are not in position to stand firmly,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, or USDP, whose officials are mostly former military generals, is systematically preparing for the junta’s elections, holding frequent party meetings and organizing events around the country. 

Attempts by RFA to contact USDP leaders and spokespersons for comment on their preparation for the election went unanswered Tuesday.

Reflecting the people’s will

Regardless of the junta’s success in its efforts to carry out a census and ready the country for a ballot, it must be the people who will determine the political fate of the country, said Bo Bo Oo, a former NLD lawmaker for Yangon region’s Dala township.

“A one-sided election under the control of the military junta will not win any support from the people,” he said. “Any attempt to win the people’s support should be done in ways that reflect the people’s will.”

The NLD won Myanmar’s 2020 general election with more than 80% of the vote, but the military seized power on allegations of vote fraud, which it has yet to present evidence to support. The UEC under the junta also dissolved the NLD in March after its leadership chose not to re-register under the new registration law.

While the junta has yet to announce a date for the election, it has said that national census data will be complete by Oct. 1, 2024.

Political analysts say that the junta intends to use an election to legitimize its rule and secure power in Myanmar for the long term.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.