Day: March 8, 2024

On International Women’s Day, as we celebrate the rights of women around the world and shine a spotlight on inspiring women, the women of Hong Kong who have paid a high price for  fighting for equal rights and for basic rights and freedoms under an increasingly intolerant government. 

Women human rights defenders face gender-based challenges and restrictions that drive them to use alternative strategies in their activism to achieve their goals and overcome obstacles. They have demonstrated immense bravery and perseverance in the Hong Kong that has emerged since the imposition in 2020 of the National Security Law.

During the 2019 Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, young women were prominent in protests, and many faced gender-based and sexual violence. In particular, a number of women reported sexual assault and harassment by the Hong Kong police when they were in detention or in other forms of custody. Few of these cases were prosecuted and the perpetrators have not been held accountable to this date. 

Many women from Hong Kong said that gender-based and sexual violence was a known phenomenon, particularly at the hands of the police. They added that they would not file a complaint, because the investigation would also be conducted by the police, who were unlikely to hold their own officers accountable. 

The women acknowledge the violations that they faced were an unfortunate part of pro-democracy activism, and although they did what they could to avoid assault and protect themselves, it was still worth the risk when fighting for democracy and rights and freedom in Hong Kong. 

In 2023, I wrote a submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on behalf of Hong Kong Watch, about these issues. I provided statistics and case studies, and interviewed women human rights defenders about their own experiences of gender-based and sexual violence, as well as what they observed around them. 

It was chilling to learn that such violations against women were normalized and that there were so few tools for accountability. But it is nevertheless inspiring to see these strong women persevere. 

At the United Nations in Geneva, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women did raise concerns about women’s rights in Hong Kong. The body urged the Hong Kong government to hold perpetrators accountable and strengthen the framework to protect women’s rights. They also warned the Hong Kong government against using national security and public order measures in a way that could violate women’s rights. 

A year on, the Hong Kong government has yet to implement these recommendations or show that they are taking women’s rights seriously. 

Chow Hang-tung

At the top of the list of women deserving support on this day is Chow Hang-tung. The former vice-chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, Chow was charged with “inciting others to participate in an unauthorized assembly” for a Tiananmen Square Massacre vigil in 2021.

Remanded in custody since September 2021, Chow, an activist and lawyer, faces a potential 10 years in jail if convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” in a trial that is expected to begin in late 2024.

Having reviewed her circumstances, the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Chow was arbitrarily detained, should be released immediately, and that her treatment is in contravention of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Hong Kong is a signatory.

Chow faces a number of very serious violations to her rights and freedoms, some of which are related to her gender. 

One thing is clear: she deserves to be free and to exercise her rights, including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. 

Chow remains calm and poised and a source of hope for many of us who stand up to the Hong Kong government, as well as the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. She has not given up and shows no sign of doing so. 

This year, Chow was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Swedish MP Guri Melby. Her brave and principled peaceful activism against the Chinese Communist Party makes her a deserving candidate. Chow has made immense sacrifices for the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong, as well as the people of China. 

Article 23 advances

Many more women in Hong Kong languish behind bars, many of whom are political prisoners, in the jurisdiction that has the highest percentage of women prisoners in the world. 

This includes women who have been arrested and charged under the 2020 National Security Law and the sedition law. Also on the list are women who were former key personnel at Apple Daily, former members of the Legislative Council, former district councilors, and many others. 

International Women’s Day this year coincided with the publication and Legislative Council reading of the Safeguarding National Security Bill, under Article 23 of the Basic Law in Hong Kong. 

This fast-tracked law is set to prohibit new types of offences, and has proposed provisions which are vague and will criminalise the peaceful exercise of human rights while dramatically undermining due process and fair trial rights in Hong Kong. 

The bill will contribute to institutional violations of human rights, including women’s rights, in Hong Kong, and it is something the world must condemn and stand up against. 

Many human rights defenders, including many women human rights activists, are taking action today to raise awareness and coordinate responses to this Bill.

On International Women’s Day, the strong women of Hong Kong who have fought for equality and against the curtailment of Hong Kong’s freedoms over the past decade deserve  appreciation and solidarity with their work.

Anouk Wear is a research and policy advisor at the international NGO Hong Kong Watch. The U.S.-based Wear, who was raised in Hong Kong, focuses on cultural rights, freedom of expression, digital rights, labor rights, and democracy. 

Kang Ju-young, a North Korean escapee in her 20s who now lives in Seoul, said her desire to get married faded as she watched her mother toil long hours in the marketplace – on top of doing all the household chores and childcare.

It was not a lifestyle she wanted for herself.

“Men are supposed to be the breadwinners… but in reality, women end up carrying a heavy burden,” said Kang, who fled in 2017 and used a pseudonym for personal safety reasons.

“They have to go out to work, take care of the children, and make money,” she said. “Seeing others struggle with these responsibilities can make you feel pressured, contributing to our reluctance to get married.”

Many North Korean women feel similarly, and are avoiding marriage and having children, escapees and experts who work with them say.

That’s contributing to the reclusive country’s declining birth rate, much to the chagrin of supreme leader Kim Jong Un. It has fallen to 1.79 last year from 1.88 in 2014, according to estimates from South Korea’s National Statistical Office. This is considered low for a developing country, and is roughly the same rate as developed economies like France, Iceland and Mexico. 

At a conference for mothers in December – the first such gathering in 11 years – Kim exhorted women to bear children and “carry forward our revolution.”

But for many young North Korean women, there is little appeal.

‘Jangmadang generation’

Dramatic economic changes in North Korea have been a major factor.

Kang and other women of her age are called the “jangmadang generation” because they came of age during the emergence of jangmadang, or marketplaces, that popped up across the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early ‘90s and the end of aid from Moscow.

These markets were born out of necessity and are run almost entirely by women. 

North Korean men were – and still are – required to go to their government-assigned jobs, but their state-set wages are hardly worth anything. 

So it has fallen to their wives to support the family. For many, that means selling things in the market, on top of doing the housework and raising the children. Now these informal marketplaces are a mainstay of the modern North Korean economy.

As a result, however, women of the jangmadang generation generally see marriage and children not so much as treasures and joys, but more as hardship and sacrifice, said Oh Eunkyung, a psychologist at the Seoul-based Korean Counseling Psychological Association who counsels escapees.

“They saw marriage and childbirth [in North Korea] as factors that stifle and make their lives difficult,” she said. They instead yearn for easier lives with more freedom where they pursue their own happiness.

Oh says she sees stark differences between generations of North Koreans who grew up before or after the emergence of these markets.

“Children born into the jangmadang generation were still hungry even as their mothers toiled away in the marketplace,” she said. “They continue to hear their mothers complain about hard work.”

Exposure to capitalism, drama

Younger women have also been exposed to new ideas – partly thanks to these markets. Simply running a family business and competing with other stalls has introduced them to capitalism, Oh said.

They also know more about South Korea and the outside world, thanks to the flood of movies and songs that are smuggled into the country and watched in secret. Getting caught watching them can get North Koreans in serious trouble.

“They learned that what they saw in TV shows actually occurs by hearing from their family members or relatives who escaped,” said Oh. “Their perception changes as they see others who live differently in South Korea.”

Interviews with three North Korean women by Osaka-based media outlet Asia Press, which focuses on North Korea coverage, regarding their thoughts on marriage and children reflected many of the same sentiments.

They said that the hardships of living were the biggest obstacle to marriage and childbirth. 

The two women in their 40s said there is a tendency for younger women not to get married and have children. The woman in her 30s said she was herself avoiding tying the knot. 

Government policies to encourage people to have children should focus on making it easier to raise families through improving North Korea’s living situation, they said. 

But instead, people are dragged into ideological education sessions where they are told that getting married and having children are their duty to the nation. 

Punitive policies

In some cases, the government policy to encourage marriage has been punitive, said Jiro Ishimaru, the head of Asia Press.

“The preference for living together instead of marriage has become clear due to the burden of marriage and childbirth in North Korea,” he said. “Crackdowns on [cohabitation] have thus increased in scope.”

Experts predict that policies that punish will however further discourage women from getting married or having kids.

Oh said that no matter how much ideological education the North Korean authorities provide, younger North Korean women have learned to be self-reliant, and they see the state as mostly unhelpful. 

Their priority is on living well, and marriage and childbirth are obstacles to this, she said.

“In order to solve the low birth rate problem in North Korea, the authorities continue to implement coercive and oppressive policies such as sending a couple to labor camps to punish them if they are caught cohabiting,” said Oh. 

That will only cause a backlash and generate more distrust, she said.

The birth rate in North Korea has already declined to the point where it cannot be raised through policy, said Ahn Kyungsoo, the head of DPRK Health, which maintains a website discussing health issues on the Korean peninsula. 

“As North Korean women are more deeply exposed to inflows of external culture, become more independent, engage in more economic activities, the North Korean system seems to have passed the stage of solving the low birth rate through policy,” he said.

“It is too difficult for North Korean authorities to reverse the trend because the psychological atmosphere [of avoiding childbirth] is dominating women [in North Korea] now.”

Kang, the escapee, recalled that prior to her escape, marriage was the furthest thing from her mind.

“I had no intention of getting married back then,” she said. “I had my own life and thought that if I get married, I wouldn’t like the idea of having to carry my child to work, losing the person I am, and living only for the purpose of being ‘Mom…’ I thought ‘I want to be myself, not someone’s mom.’”

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has called on the Biden administration to press China harder over the jailing of Uyghur activists and to focus on securing the release of four high-profile prisoners.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the 43 lawmakers said they were “grateful” to see the United States press China over its treatment of Uyghurs at the recent U.N. human rights review, but wanted more pressure.

China on Jan. 23 appeared before the U.N. Human Rights Council for a five-yearly review of its human rights record. Beijing was criticized by the United States and its Western allies for its treatment of Uyghurs and Tibetans, even if every country only got 45 seconds to speak.

The United States has accused China of carrying out a genocide against Uyghurs – most of whom live in the far-western Xinjiang region – by imprisoning, torturing and sterilizing those who do not fall into line. Beijing has denied the claims and said that alleged high-security concentration camps are in fact vocational training centers.

Led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, the 43 U.S. lawmakers called for the pressure campaign against China to continue until it at least releases many imprisoned Uyghurs.

“As the process moves forward,” they wrote, “we strongly urge [the State] Department, in its role representing the United States at the UNHRC, to continue to vigorously advocate for those arbitrarily detained in China and ensure their swift and safe release.”

The letter also requests that the United States “specifically” focus on four Uyghur prisoners who are relatives of American citizens: retired doctor Gulshan Abbas, university student Kamile Wayit, journalist Qurban Mamut and doctor and translator Ahmetjan Juma. 

Juma was sentenced to 14 years in prison, it says, “in retaliation for his brother’s work as a journalist for Radio Free Asia.” Juma is the brother of Mamatjan Juma, the deputy director of RFA’s Uyghur service.

Bipartisan effort

The letter includes signatures from 43 lawmakers from across the political aisle, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois who serves as his party’s top member on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

Others include Rep. Young Kim, a Republican from California and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific, and Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia whose Fairfax district is home to the country’s largest community of Uyghur-Americans.

Ziba Murat, the daughter of Gulshan Abbas, expressed her “heartfelt gratitude” to the Rep. Michael Waltz, a Republican from Florida, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, for organizing the letter and called on the White House to renew its focus on Uyghurs.

“It is amazing to see such bipartisan support from the Congress, I’m truly overwhelmed,” Murat said, adding she wanted the cases raised in every meeting with China. “In spite of the agony and exhaustion, I will never stop speaking out and fighting for my mother’s return to us.”

RFA’s Mamatjan Juma said his brother – like the relatives of many of his colleagues – was “innocent and unjustly suffering in jail” due to his journalism about Uyghurs and should be immediately released.

“It’s heartening to see the suffering of our loved ones in Chinese prison camps recognized,” he said. “At Radio Free Asia Uyghur service, eight of our staff members, most of whom are U.S. citizens, have confirmed that their loved ones are jailed in China due to their journalism.” 

“We urge the U.S. government to escalate efforts to secure the release of our loved ones from Chinese prisons and to hold China accountable for its crimes against humanity and ongoing genocide,” he added.

Edited by Malcolm Foster

Vietnamese police have temporarily detained three members of an independent Protestant house church in Dak Lak province in the country’s Central Highlands without providing information to their family, a relative of the detainees said.

Pastor Y Khen Bdap told Radio Free Asia on Thursday that the detainees are members of his family – his younger brother Y Qui Bdap, his son Y Nam Bkrong and his nephew Y Kic Bkrong.

All three detainees are from the Ede ethnic minority and permanently reside in Ea Khit village, Ea Bhok commune in the province’s Cu Kuin district. They have been working for KUKA Home Vietnam, an upholstered furniture manufacturer in Dong Xoai city, Binh Phuoc province, for many years and living in a rental unit near the company.

Police from both Dak Lak and Binh Phuoc provinces visited their home on Sunday night to check their IDs and to search the place, the pastor said.

The following day, the police went to their company while they were working and took them away, he said. 

“The police arrested and detained them without any explanation or warrants,” he said.

The Evangelical Church of Christ of the Central Highlands and the independent Protestant house church are two religious groups in Dak Lak province that the Vietnamese government hasn’t recognized, making it difficult for them to carry out their activities. Members are often subjected to harassment and arrest by authorities.

Y Khen Bdap said his family went to the People’s Committee and the police’s headquarters in Ea Bhok commune on Thursday to ask about the detainees’ whereabouts, but staff there said they didn’t know. 

As of midday on Friday, his family hadn’t received any information about the detained relatives, he said.

“We don’t know where they are being detained and interrogated,” Y Khen Bdap said. “Our family is very anxious and worried as the police arrested them without notifying us.”

When family and friends asked the company about the arrests, they were told that police escorted the men away and that they hadn’t yet returned, he said.

Church established in 2017

RFA was unable to reach the KUKA Home managers and workers for comment at the phone numbers provided by Y Khen Bdap.

RFA also contacted Cu Kuin district police and Dak Lak provincial police to verify the arrests and detentions, but staffers told the reporter to go in person to their agencies’ headquarters in person for information.

Y Khen Bdap said he believes the arrests are related to his family’s religious practice, because the three detainees and other adherents of the church often participate in annual human rights events, including the U.N.’s International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief on Aug. 22 and Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.

His brother, Y Qui Bdap, who is also a preacher, met with officers from the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi in 2020 to report on the local authorities’ repeated harassment of his independent house church.

Pastor Y Khen Bdap, who was sentenced to four years in prison in 2004 for “disturbing public order” for his religious activities, said local authorities often had harassed him and other church leaders since the church was established in 2017.

Local authorities have summoned him and the other leaders to ask  about their religious activities and to prevent the church’s adherents from holding events to celebrate Christmas.

In late October 2023, Cu Mgar district police temporarily detained four independent Protestants for five days after they invited President Vo Van Thuong to observe one of their religious services.

After interrogating them, district police demanded they stop practicing religion independently and suggested they join the Evangelical Church of Vietnam or other religious groups recognized by the Vietnamese government.

The police also demanded they not study civil society, saying its aim was to oppose the government, nor participate in activities commemorating the U.N’s human rights days.  

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

Myanmar: Mothers are paying the price of armed conflict and social crisis 

 In Myanmar, where the political and economic landscape is in turmoil, women are facing challenges unlike any in Asia. Among them, married women and mothers are fleeing a civil war under dire circumstances.

With one of the highest infant mortality rates in the region – 32 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the UN – little wonder that women who spoke to RFA said they were hesitant to have children if they could make the choice.

“I don’t have any plans to have a child,” said Thae Oo, a newlywed living in Yangon. Though there is currently no fighting in Yangon, “due to the situation in the country, it is not possible to have a child because the income situation is getting tighter every month. 

“In normal times, there are no difficulties, but this time, I am struggling to survive, so I decided not to bring a child into this world because I think it shouldn’t be a hardship to my child,” she added. 

Indeed, for too many mothers in Myanmar, hardship is only followed by the worst possible outcome. As of 2022, the latest year for which UN figures are available, at least 382 children have been killed in its civil war. 

Cambodia: Poverty and poor care make motherhood highly risky 

According to the World Bank, Cambodia has the highest maternal mortality rate in East and Southeast Asia, with some 218 women dying in childbirth for every 100,000 deliveries.

Though Cambodian women are having enough children to sustain population growth, childbearing can be a risky endeavor and some women would not have children if they could avoid it. Poverty is the main driver, these women told RFA Khmer. 

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An Sokhim’s first pregnancy in Phnom Penh was unplanned and stressful. “I did not have any money to pay for ultrasound,” she said. She could only afford to eat dry noodles throughout her pregnancy as her husband was sick and could not work, and she worried for the health of her child. She had no idea when she would deliver, because she had not been examined by a doctor.

Five women in rural Cambodia who work as garbage pickers or migrant laborers told RFA Khmer they wish to avoid pregnancy because they are too poor and have no regular income. If they have children, they have to drop out of school to help support their families – a “miserable” situation, they said. 

Although the Cambodian government has urged women to have more children, the rural women RFA spoke to said they would abort unintended pregnancies. They would not have the money to deliver the babies, anyway: in Cambodia, when you have no money, you are not welcomed by doctors, several said.

Tibet: Culture, policy and economics collide when thinking about motherhood

For centuries, Tibetan women have embraced motherhood as ‘the expected norm,’ with the act of bearing children regarded as one of ‘conscious intention.’ But now, less so.

Today, women both inside Tibet and in the exile community are increasingly weighing their choice to become mothers or not, how many children to have, and at what stage of their life.

Several women in the exile Tibetan community told RFA that they view motherhood as fundamental to enabling the preservation of their traditions and values to a new generation of Tibetans outside their homeland. 

“For many people, including myself, the desire to carry forward the family legacy is a significant motivator in choosing to have children,” said U.S.-based Tenzin Dasel, 42, and mother of three. 

But inside Tibet, where family planning is formally controlled by Beijing, women are having fewer children, according to publicly available data – despite the Chinese government liberalizing policy. 

A woman in her 60s living in Tibet told RFA that when she was having children and births were restricted, she was pressured into undergoing sterilization after having her third baby. 

But a young mother in her 20s living there now said she had no plans to have another child after her first because the cost of child rearing is so high – even though the government now encourages women to have three children.

China: For many, the cost of motherhood doesn’t add up

In late May 2021, shortly after unveiling the results of the country’s latest census, the Chinese government unveiled a revision to its prevailing population control policy. Couples would now be allowed to have three children – a further relaxation of the decades-old “One Child policy” that had already been amended in 2013 to a “two-child” policy. 

The pressing issue was a significant drop in fertility. In 2020, there were a mere 12 million births recorded in China, a decline for the fourth consecutive year. The fertility rate for the year stood at 1.3 children per woman, well below the 2.1 threshold required for sustaining population growth.

But government encouragement was met with derision. “I can’t give birth [again]! Raising one is already like having a money shredding machine in the house, how can I have another?” asked Mrs Li, who works in the service industry in Changsha, who had a five-year-old daughter.

Qiu Xiaojia had been married to her husband for three years and said she gets excited when she sees a baby, but the reality is that she cannot afford to give birth or raise one. “Now that we have a house, our mortgage is even higher than my monthly salary. How can I afford to have a child? Not to mention three children, I don’t even have the money to have one,” she said.

A poll from the state news agency Xinhua asked: “The three-child policy is coming, are you ready?” The overwhelming answer from respondents was: not even a little bit.

The poll was quickly deleted from Weibo, the social media platform, afterward. 

Reported by Jane Tang for RFA Mandarin (in 2021) and by Dorjee Tso and Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Boer Deng and Paul Eckert.

A U.S. Army intelligence analyst with “top secret” clearance was arrested on Thursday for allegedly sending troves of sensitive military planning documents related to China – including plans to defend Taiwan in case of an invasion – to a person in Hong Kong.

Korbein Schultz, 24, was arrested at Fort Campbell, a U.S. military installation on the border between Tennessee and Kentucky, and charged with bribery offenses and conspiracy to disclose national defense information, according to an unsealed indictment.

The indictment says that Schultz, a native of Willis Point, Texas, joined the Army in November 2018. In June 2022, it says, he began talking over an encrypted messaging app with a person who claimed to be a geopolitical risk analyst living and working in Hong Kong.

From that time on, according to a Justice Department statement, he provided the contact with “documents, writings, plans, maps, notes, and photographs relating to national defense” in exchange for bribes that totalled approximately US$42,000 across at least 14 payments.

The documents and photographs included information “Schultz had reason to believe could be used to injure the United States or used to the advantage of a foreign nation,” the statement alleges.

While the unsealed indictment does not specifically identify China as the “foreign nation” seeking the documents, the Justice Department statement notes that Schultz’s contact sought information including “studies on major countries such as the People’s Republic of China.”

The person also “tasked Schultz with gathering information related to a variety of U.S. military weapons systems, including classified information, and information related to the United States’ potential plans in the event that Taiwan came under military attack,” it says.

Latest arrest

At a press conference in Nashville, Tennessee, following Thursday’s arrest, Henry Leventis, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said that Schultz had put national security at risk.

“The unauthorized sale of such information violates our national security laws, compromises our safety, and cannot be tolerated,” Levantis said. “Today’s indictment should serve as a reminder of the Justice Department’s vigilance in protecting the United States against any threat to national security, foreign or domestic.”

Matthew Olsen, assistant U.S. attorney general for national security affairs, said in a statement that Schultz had “plac[ed] personal profit above the security of the American people” by selling the secrets.

“Today’s arrest shows that such a betrayal does not pay,” Olsen said, adding that his team was committed to “holding accountable those who would break their oath to protect our nation’s secrets.”

Schultz is only the latest active duty or former member of the military to be arrested for allegedly selling classified information to China.

In August, a 22-year-old U.S. Navy sailor stationed on the USS Essex in San Diego, California, was arrested for allegedly providing a Chinese spy with technical manuals regarding the ship for $5,000.

A 29-year-old former soldier also with “top secret” clearance was arrested in San Francisco in October for actively seeking out Chinese intelligence services to attempt to provide them with information. 

In January, a 26-year-old Navy sailor was likewise jailed after pleading guilty to providing a Chinese spy with documents including “plans for a large-scale maritime training exercise in the Pacific theatre” in exchange for payments that totalled approximately $15,000.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.