Day: March 12, 2024

Shares of Chinese soft drink maker Nongfu Spring have dropped after some consumers said they were boycotting their products due to a perceived lack of patriotism, and posted videos of themselves on social media dumping out their contents.

Hong Kong-listed shares in Hangzhou-based Nongfu Spring slid 7.7% from HK$44.60 on Feb. 29 to HK$41.20 on March 5, as online nationalists launched a boycott at the start of the annual National People’s Congress, which ended Monday.

Users shared photos of labels on some of the company’s spring water bottles, complaining that it depicted a Japanese temple. Others likened a Greek letter on the company’s bottled jasmine tea to the shape of Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where the Japanese war dead are remembered.

Others targeted the company’s founder and China’s richest man Zhong Shanshan, calling him a profiteer, and pointing out that his son Zhong Shuzi is an American citizen, citing the company’s 2020 prospectus.

Still others said the red bottle cap used on Nongfu Spring water bottles recalled the red sun emblem in the Japanese national flag.

Nongfu Spring responded on March 8, saying that the labels on its Oriental Leaf Green Tea bottles are based on a Chinese temple, and pointing to text on the label which mentions that the Japanese art of tea-drinking originated in China.

“The content is not only authentic but also meticulously sourced, with the intention of highlighting the profound impact of Chinese tea and tea culture on a global scale, thereby showcasing a strong sense of national pride and confidence,” the company said in comments reported in the nationalistic Global Times newspaper.

Targets of wrath

The statement appears to have done little to mollify the “little pinks,” a nickname for zealously patriotic supporters of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

On Sunday, two branches of 7-Eleven in the eastern province of Jiangsu said they had pulled all Nongfu Spring products from the shelves, saying that they won’t sell products that “adulate Japan,” the paper reported.

Nongfu Spring hasn’t been the only target of nationalists’ ire in recent days, either.

They have also gone after Nobel literature laureate Mo Yan for hurting their feelings by “insulting the People’s Liberation Army, late Chairman Mao Zedong, and the Chinese people.”

Mo’s work “Red Sorghum,” which was made into a 1987 film starring Gong Li, “vilified the Eighth Route Army” and “insulted revolutionary martyrs,” according to some comments, while others demanded compensation for hurt feelings and “reputational damage.”

Netizens also took aim at Beijing’s Tsinghua University for being the only top university that hasn’t been targeted for U.S. sanctions.

China has laws banning insults to revolutionary heroes and martyrs, as well as to the national anthem, its soldiers and police force.

You’re hurting my feelings

Its lawmakers are also considering a law criminalizing “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people,” a stock phrase frequently used by Chinese officials and state media to criticize speech or actions by outsiders that Beijing disapproves of. 

Under a proposed amendment to the Public Security Administration Law, wearing the wrong T-shirt or complaining about China online could lead to a fine of up to 5,000 yuan (US$680) or 15 days in jail. 

The law doesn’t specify what kind of acts might do such a thing, but does warn that “denying the deeds” of revolutionary heroes and martyrs or defacing their public memorials would count. 

“Sometimes it’s directly organized by the government, and sometimes it’s not — it’s just people jumping on the bandwagon,” political commentator Ji Feng said.

He said the hate campaign against Mo Yan recalled the public denunciations of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and the Anti-Rightist Movement of the 1950s.

If such denunciations continue, Ji warned that they will eventually target people who say nothing at all, and eventually move on to include those who don’t sing the praises of the Communist Party or its leaders loudly enough, “layer by layer.”

Hard-wired

U.S.-based political commentator Hu Ping said both Mo Yan and Nongfu Spring were once considered to be firmly inside the Chinese political establishment, and they are now next in line because public figures who supported democracy have long since been dealt with.

“[Their targets] are getting more and more left-wing, because there’s nobody left on the other side of the political spectrum,” Hu said. “So they just find the most liberal-minded person and attack them, which we all think is pretty ridiculous.”

Independent political scholar Chen Daoyin said patriotism has become hard-wired into China’s legislation, administrative regulations and throughout law enforcement under the leadership of Xi Jinping.

“Anyone deploying this kind of patriotic [attack] is protected by these structures, so internet censors wouldn’t dare to stop them, or they might get burned themselves,” Chen said. 

He said nationalistic witch hunts drive huge amounts of traffic on Chinese social media platforms, suggesting that the latest wave of “little pink” activity wasn’t driven by any government order. “It was a spontaneous thing, and purely driven by economic motives.”

Mo, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, has yet to respond publicly to the criticisms of his work.

British-Chinese writer Ma Jian said totalitarian regimes lend themselves to such dramas in the absence of freely available information.

“When a totalitarian country has eliminated true patriots, and anyone with a sense of morality or justice … then when the mob starts to bite there is nowhere they won’t go once they take the opportunity,” Ma said.

“We will continue to see stories like this, and the most extreme kind of absurdities — it won’t just be Mo Yan and Tsinghua University,” he said. “And nobody will even think it’s strange any more.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Activists and villagers criticized a provincial court’s decision on Tuesday to send 28 land dispute protesters to prison one week after they were detained during a violent clash with hundreds of police officers.

The Preah Vihear Provincial Court ordered the protesters held at a prison in the northern province on charges of illegal encroachment on forest land.

More than 40 villagers have been arrested over the last week following a clash on March 6 with police in several villages in Kuleaen district where Phnom Penh-based Seila Damex has government-approved plans to develop a rubber plantation.

Authorities used tear gas and fired their guns in the air to disperse about 130 protesters who tried to stop the destruction of homes last week. The dispute with Seila Damex affects some 300 families. 

Some of the protesters who were arrested have been released in recent days, villagers told Radio Free Asia. The remaining 28 were held in an undisclosed location until Tuesday’s court decision to send them to pre-trial detention. 

Seila Damex was granted an economic land concession in 2011 in two communes in Kuleaen district, according to human rights group Licadho.

Local residents relied on the land to grow crops and fruit trees, but those have now been destroyed, according to one villager who told RFA she has been hiding in a forest since last week’s protest.

“Please give justice to the villagers and release them,” she said on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Samdech [Hun Sen] promised that no one should be detained over a land dispute. But now villagers are being detained.”

‘Victims in their own land’

Hun Sen, Cambodia’s former prime minister, led the country from 1985 until last August, when he stepped down in favor of his eldest son. But the 71-year-old still retains power behind the scenes.

Cambodia’s land issues date from the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, which forced large-scale evacuations and relocations, followed by a period of mass confusion over land rights and the formation of squatter communities when the refugees returned in the 1990s after a decade of civil war.

The villager said children of the 28 detained protesters are staying in a makeshift shelter and begging for rice from nearby villagers. Other villagers have fled to nearby forestland to avoid arrest, she said.

Instead of arrest and prosecution, provincial authorities and court officials should seek a solution with the land protesters, said Poek Sophorn, the executive director of Ponlok Khmer, a non-governmental organization that focuses on forest conservation in Cambodia’s northeast.

The dispute with Seila Damex has gone on for years, with no serious efforts from Cambodian government officials to find new land for the villagers, he said.

“They should be given land to feed themselves and build houses,” he said. “They are human and they are becoming victims in their own land. It is against national and international principles.”

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed.

While global leaders from U.S. President Joe Biden to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued well wishes to the more than 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide at the start of Ramadan this week, China’s president remained silent.

Xi Jinping failed to acknowledge Ramadan, one of the most sacred times for Muslims, despite the 11 million-strong mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples who live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as well as the roughly 7 million other Muslims in China.

Chinese authorities have cracked down on Uyghurs in Xinjiang for decades, claiming they are prone to religious extremism and separatism. The Chinese government says it wants to make Islam “compatible” with Chinese culture by ensuring it aligns with traditional Chinese values defined by Beijing.

Ramandan began less than a week after Ma Xingrui, China’s Communist Party secretary in Xinjiang, discussed the “inevitability” of the Sinicization of Islam, with Uyghur rights organizations expressing concern about possible crackdowns on Muslims during Ramadan, which runs from the evening of March 10 to April 9.

“Everyone knows the need for Sinicization of Islam in Xinjiang,” he said at the National People’s Congress in Beijing on March 7, according to a VOA report. “This is an inevitable trend.”

Since 2017, China has restricted or banned religious rituals among the Uyghurs in an effort to eliminate “religious extremism” amid a larger crackdown on Muslims that resulted in the mass detention of nearly 2 million of them. Authorities have also demolished mosques and committed severe rights violations in Xinjiang, amounting to genocide and crimes against humanity, according to the U.S. government and others.  

In 2023, authorities banned Uyghurs in many parts of the region from praying in mosques and their homes during Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Only senior citizens were allowed to pray in mosques under heavy police surveillance.

The previous Ramadan, authorities in Kashgar paid Muslim Uyghur men to dance outside Xinjiang’s most famous mosque to celebrate the end of the holy month. The performance was filmed and released by state media ahead of an anticipated visit by the U.N. human rights chief.

“To the Uyghurs enduring the ongoing genocide, Ramadan is synonymous with extreme suffering, pervasive surveillance and unyielding oppression,” Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, told Radio Free Asia.

“This year, the situation is further inflamed by Ma Xingrui’s audacious remarks about the inevitability of the Sinicization of Islam in East Turkistan,” she said, using the Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang. 

Religions must adapt

The concept of the Sinicization of Islam was first introduced by Xi Jinping during the National Religious Work Conference in April 2016, when he emphasized the need for religions to adapt to a socialist society and advocated for the integration of religious beliefs with Chinese culture, Xinhua News agency reported.

In 2017, the Chinese government began detaining Uyghurs and other Muslim en masse in large “re-education” camps and prisons, in part to eradicate “religious extremism.”

During the National Religious Work Conference in 2021, Xi made “adhering to the Sinicization of religions” a main objective. He emphasized the need for training more personnel with Marxist views on religion and collecting believers around the Chinese Communist Party, according to Xinhua News Agency.

American political analyst Anders Corr said Ma Xingrui’s comments indicate little change in Beijing’s goal of bringing Islam and other religions under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP.

During an August 2023 visit to Xinjiang, Xi Jinping urged government officials to enhance the Sinicization of Islam in Xinjiang and to suppress illegal religious activities. He also emphasized the importance of maintaining stability through efforts directed against terrorism and separatism, according to media reports.

Turghunjan Alawidin, a member of the East Turkistan Scholars Union, said the Sinicization of Islam will completely transform the religion in China.

“The statement that the Sinicization of Islam is an unavoidable trend essentially implies the eradication of Islam,” he told RFA. 

“China has a history of hostility towards Islam and has targeted the religious beliefs of Uyghurs,” he said. “Chinese authorities seem to acknowledge that erasing Uyghur religious beliefs is necessary to gain compliance; thus, they are actively suppressing Islam.”

Hu Ping, a U.S.-based China analyst and former chief editor of the pro-democracy journal “Beijing Spring,” said that the Sinicization of Islam implies the CCP’s systematic alteration and control of the religion. 

Historical precedent

Ma Ju, an ethnic Hui scholar based in the U.S. said China’s efforts to Sinicize Islam has historical precedent, noting a failed attempt during the transition from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). 

Now, Xi Jinping is treating the issue as one of Chinese nationalism, he said.

“The primary objective of Sinicizing Islam is the complete eradication of the Muslims in China,” he said. “Ma Xingrui’s recent visit to Beijing and his public declaration that the Sinicization of Islam is inevitable sends signals to the world that China intends to persist in ethnic and cultural genocide in the Uyghur region.”

Ma Xingrui’s concern about the “three forces” — a political phrase referring to ethnic separatism, religious extremism and violent terrorism in Xinjiang — is “self-defeating and undermines the effectiveness of past anti-terrorism efforts,” Ma Ju said.

But Anders Corr said that the Chinese government uses the phrase as justification for its oppression of the Uyghurs.

“Beijing is still using the excuse of terrorism to bring Islam under its control and commit genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,” he said. “There is little to no recent evidence of extremism in Xinjiang.”

Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Joshua Lipes.

The Arakan Army has captured a key township near a major Chinese special economic zone in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the ethnic rebel group said Tuesday, in the latest setback for the country’s military junta in the country’s three-year civil war.

The seizure of Ramree on Monday comes after three months of fighting, the Arakan Army, or AA, said. It marks the first town to fall to the group in Rakhine’s majority ethnic Bamar south. 

The Arakan Army is part of an alliance of three ethnic armies that have pushed the junta back in the western and northern parts of the country, suggesting a turning point in the war that began soon after the junta took control of the government in a February 2021 coup d’etat.

Ramree shares an island with Kyaukphyu township, home to the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone, or SEZ, and deep sea port complex – a Chinese-led venture for which Beijing had requested heightened security. The project was approved in 2023 by the junta and attempts to recruit locals for work have been met with controversy and distrust.

In January, following AA rocket attacks on the Danyawaddy naval base, which lies adjacent to the port project, residents told RFA Burmese that the rebel army had gained control of some of the SEZ.

On Tuesday, the AA said in a statement that the capture of Ramree came despite junta troop reinforcements, as well as daily airstrikes and shelling by the army, navy and air force. It warned residents who fled their homes during the fighting to refrain from returning immediately, as landmines remain in the area.

An elderly man was injured in a junta artillery attack on Monday, after the AA had occupied Ramree, a resident told RFA on condition of anonymity due to security reasons. The resident said that more than 10,000 people had fled their homes since the AA launched its offensive on Ramree on Dec. 8.

Military airstrikes have destroyed more than 200 houses and buildings, including a township hospital, he said.

Pushing on to Kyaukphyu

Residents said that they remain concerned about possible military attacks by the navy and air force, despite the AA’s control of the township.

Pe Than, a veteran Rakhine politician and former lawmaker, said now that the AA has seized Ramree, he expects it will push on to Kyaukphyu township.

“Danyawaddy navy base is located in Kyaukphyu and if the navy fires shells from there, it could kill a lot of civilians in the area,” he said.

The AA is now in control of most of the areas within the Kyaukphyu SEZ, meaning it will likely have a say on how Chinese development proceeds, said a resident who has closely watched the progress of Chinese projects in the region.

“AA territory is now within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of Kyaukphyu, so if China wants to continue with its projects, it will have to hold discussions with the AA,” he said. “Otherwise, the projects may encounter some problems.”

The military, meanwhile, has enforced its defense lines near the Shwe natural gas pipeline project on Kyaukphyu’s Maday Island, residents said.

The junta has yet to issue a statement on the capture of Ramree. Attempts by RFA to contact Hla Thein, the junta’s spokesperson for Rakhine state, went unanswered Tuesday, as did efforts to contact the Chinese Embassy in Yangon.

AA spokesman Khaing Thukha said on March 4 that the AA intends to “fight for the liberation of all of Rakhine state to be able to build the future of the Rakhine people,” who are ethnically distinct from the Bamar people.

In November, the AA ended a ceasefire agreement with the military that had been in place since the coup. Since then, the ethnic army has captured the Rakhine townships of Minbya, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, Ponnagyun, Myebon and Ramree, as well as Pauktaw township in neighboring Chin state.

Border checkpoints reopened

The AA, along with the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA – the Three Brotherhood Alliance – launched an offensive known as “Operation 1027” against the military in northern Shan state, which borders China, and 16 cities before agreeing to a ceasefire in China-brokered talks with junta representatives on Jan. 11. 

An ex-military official later said it was not sustainable and less than a week after the agreement, both sides were accused of violating it in a skirmish.

At the end of last month, the two sides met again in the Chinese city of Kunming for talks that focused on reopening parts of the border with China that had been shut down during the fighting and preserving the ceasefire.

On Monday, the MNDAA group of ethnic Kokang rebels reopened the Chinshwehaw and Wanding border checkpoints in the townships of Chinshwehaw and Kyu Koke, which had been closed since the beginning of Operation 1027. The two gates serve as crucial trade channels with China.

While people are allowed to use the checkpoints, moving goods across the border at the two locations remains “uncertain,” said MNDAA Information Officer Li Kyarwen.

“People with proper documentation can now cross the border,” he said. “However, the import and export of goods is still undetermined. Further clarification is needed.”

Nyo Tun Aung, the deputy chief of the AA, disclosed in a press conference that the junta and the Three Brotherhood Alliance discussed reopening the checkpoints on Feb. 29 and March 1.

However, Li Kyarwen would not confirm whether the decision to reopen Chinshwehaw and Wanding was a direct result of the talks.

Translated by Aung Naing and Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Myanmar’s junta has refused to accept dozens of nationals facing deportation by the Indian government for illegally entering the country, their relatives said Tuesday.

Indian media reported that authorities in eastern India’s Manipur state have been making arrangements to send 77 women who served sentences for illegal immigration in the state’s Imphal Jail back across the border from Moreh township to Tamu township in Myanmar’s Sagaing region since March 8.

On that day, Indian authorities took an initial batch of 38 women by helicopter from Imphal Jail to an Indian military camp in Moreh, but junta officials refused to accept them, a family member of one of the women, who contacted her by phone from Imphal, told RFA Burmese.

“Indian prison staff told them that they will be sent back to Imphal Jail because the Myanmar military regime refused to accept them,” said the family member who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

Attempts by RFA to contact Nyunt Win Aung, the junta’s social affairs minister and spokesperson for Sagaing region, and junta spokesperson Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun, for an explanation of why the women were not accepted, went unanswered Tuesday.

The exact number of women being deported remains unclear. Some of them have children with them and their husbands remain in Imphal, family members said.

Most of the women are from Sagaing and Magway regions, as well as Chin state. Some of them migrated to Manipur before the Myanmar military’s Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat, while others fled there after the takeover.

Most were arrested while working as weavers in the towns and villages of Manipur.

Jailed despite sentences served

A family member from Sagaing’s Monywa township told RFA that most of the women who entered India before the coup had served their five-year sentences and paid fines of 1,000 rupees (US$12), but had been “kept in prison for two and a half years” more.

“They should be allowed to stay in Manipur without being sent back to Myanmar, or they should be recognized as refugees by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,” she said.

A person who is helping Myanmar refugees in Manipur told RFA that they would face persecution back home if Indian authorities repatriate them.

“Those who fled Myanmar after the coup could be arrested on various charges,” he said. “They will not be safe in Myanmar.”

Civil society organizations, including India for Myanmar, have called on Manipur authorities to only repatriate the women through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to ensure their safety.

RFA emailed the Myanmar Embassy in New Delhi and the Indian Embassy in Yangon for more information on the situation, but had not received a response by the time of publishing.

According to data collected by India for Myanmar and other civil society organizations, more than 150 Myanmar nationals are being detained on immigration charges at detention centers in Manipur state, and more than 80 of them have already served their sentences.

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Laos’ highest court is working to set up a special court in the notorious Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone to directly clamp down on an area that has attracted scam-related businesses and human trafficking, a government official told Radio Free Asia.

Lao state media reported last week on the planned special court. A government official who works in the zone said the idea was first proposed several months ago.

“There is now an agreement to open the People Court’s office in the zone,” he said on condition of anonymity for security reasons. 

An office site and a place where court officials would live has already been selected, he said. Relevant officials in nearby Bokeo province have agreed to coordinate in forming the new court. 

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, or SEZ, was established in 2007 in the northern province of Bokeo on a 3,000-hectare (7,400-acre) concession along the Mekong River where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. 

It’s become a gambling and tourism hub catering to Chinese citizens where investors – exempt from most national-level economic regulations – have built hotels, restaurants, casinos, a hospital, markets and factories.

But it has also earned a reputation as a haven for criminal activities, including prostitution and drug trafficking.

In August, a report from the International Crisis Group called for a “coordinated regional approach” – including through law enforcement – to combat the outsized impact illicit businesses have in the Golden Triangle SEZ and across the river at another special economic zone in Myanmar’s Shan state.

Lao authorities currently do not have the right to enter special economic zones to conduct investigations.

In June, however, the Golden Triangle SEZ management board handed oversight of a detention and rehabilitation center located inside the zone to Bokeo provincial police. And in January, officials from the Office of People’s Supreme Prosecutor visited the zone to discuss logistics for establishing a prosecutor’s office.

‘Money is god there’

Laos’ judicial system includes a People’s Supreme Court that is located in Vientiane as well as local People’s Courts and Military Courts throughout the country. The special court would be directly overseen by the People’s Supreme Court.

A former Lao government official told RFA that the special court could speed up criminal cases, which would help authorities tackle the zone’s large volume of crime.

“This zone has almost become its own country already,” he said. “There are too many people who break the law.”

But a resident of Bokeo province said a better approach would be to strengthen the current system of transferring criminal cases to the local People’s Court in Bokeo province.

A lawyer in Vientiane said that court officials located inside the zone would be even more unlikely to resist bribes from wealthy Chinese business people who dominate the zone.

“Everything will be difficult,” he told RFA. “In Laos, officials are afraid of rich people. If the rich people committed crimes in the zone, who would sue them in this court? It seems impossible to do so.”

Another Lao resident of Bokeo province agreed with this sentiment. 

“I have seen that when something bad happens in the zone, law enforcement’s response is weak,” he said. “These days, money is god there.”

RFA contacted the People’s Supreme Court in Vientiane for comment on the planned special court, but a relevant official said he wasn’t able to comment.

Translated by Phouvong. Edited by Matt Reed.