Day: March 14, 2024

More than three years after the arrest of a popular Tibetan writer and poet in northwestern China, police have not provided any details about his whereabouts, his sentence or his well-being, despite repeated appeals by his family for information, two sources told Radio Free Asia.

Gendun Lhundrub, a former monk at Rongwo Monastery in Rebgong county of Malho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China’s Qinghai province, was detained on Dec. 2, 2020. 

Authorities did not cite any reasons for his arrest, which followed a long period when police monitored his activities for signs of dissent and opposition to Chinese policies, RFA learned at the time.

Chinese authorities frequently detain Tibetan writers, artists and singers who promote Tibetan national identity and culture or who have criticized China’s rule of the western region. 

They scrutinize their writings for content considered as “endangering national security” or constituting an “act of separatism,” thereby deeming them threats to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. 

Lhundrub’s relatives have made repeated requests to authorities in Rebgong county to find out where he is and whether he has been sentenced, said one source from inside Tibet. 

“However, they have not received any response to their queries,” said the source, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.

Whenever the family wants to send items to Lundrub, officials at the Chinese government’s Rebgong county office tell them to leave the items with them, and they will forward them to Lundrub, he said. 

“His well-being is also unclear as no one has been allowed to meet him,” the source added.

Additionally, officials have shared no details or documentation as proof of Lhundrub’s sentence, both sources said.

Long list

Lhundrub is among those on a long list of well-known Tibetan writers and poets arrested by authorities. In 2016, Tibetan language advocate Tashi Wangchuk was arrested and tortured. He was released in 2021 after being held for two years in pre-trial detention and serving part of a five-year prison sentence. 

Gendun Lhundru was born in 1974 in Rebgong in the traditional Amdo region of Tibet in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. 

He became a monk at a young age and enrolled in the Rebgong Dargye Monastery. He later studied at the Rebgong Rongpo Monastery, Labrang Tashi Kyil and Serta Labrang. 

Starting in 1994, he wrote poetry. In October 2022, he released an anthology of poems called “Khorwa,” and wrote on the website Waseng-drak that writers and artists require freedom to express their thoughts and emotions without restriction, RFA learned from sources that year. 

Lhundrub’s collection of poems, which include “Black Rosary,” “Melody of Life” and “White Book,” and his literary skills are highly regarded by Tibetans around the world.

Written by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

The Hong Kong government, poised to pass its stricter “Article 23” national security law next week, blasted criticism of the bill from rights experts who say it will undermine freedom of religion in the city.

The Safeguarding National Security bill, currently before the Legislative Council, includes sentences of up to life imprisonment for treason, insurrection, sabotage and mutiny, and 20 years for espionage. It can punish people 10 years for crimes linked to “state secrets” and “sedition,” and allow the passports of anyone who flees overseas to be revoked.

Critics say the ruling Communist Party has a broad and vaguely defined interpretation of many of the crimes in the bill, and that “national security crimes” are already being used to prosecute people for peaceful dissent and political opposition.

Hong Kong Justice Secretary Paul Lam warned last week that anyone who hears that another person has committed “treason” but not reported it could be jailed for up to 14 years, once the law takes effect.

This “has grave implications for the confidentiality of Confession in the Catholic Church and other Christian traditions,” according to a letter signed by 16 experts and published by Hong Kong Watch on March 13.

“The new law could force a priest to reveal what has been said in Confession, against his will and conscience and in total violation of the privacy of the individual confession,” the group said.

A Hong Kong government spokesman said Hong Kong Watch is an “anti-China organization,” and its members were “frontline destabilizing forces.”

He said ordinary citizens were in no danger of committing treason, which he defined as “levying war against China, or instigating a foreign country to invade China with force,” and called their letter a “blatant, shameless and barbaric intervention.”

Advocating for democracy is a crime

Under the “Article 23” legislation, any attempt to push for legislative changes or criticism of the authorities could be regarded as sedition, and any contact with overseas individuals or organizations could be prosecuted as courting foreign interference, the letter said.

Under another clause, “advocating for democracy and the restoration of civil liberties in Hong Kong, anywhere in the world, could now constitute a crime and result in the cancellation of one’s Hong Kong passport,” it said.

The new law has been rebooted three decades after being shelved following mass protests against it in 2003 and fast-tracked through the legislature in mere days after Chinese officials said it should be completed “as soon as possible” at the National People’s Congress in Beijing last week.

It looks likely to be made law next week.

The experts said that the “vague provisions within the law … open the potential for politically-motivated prosecutions under illegitimate ‘national security’ grounds,” pointing to clauses allowing the extension of detention without charge and the prevention of contact between arrestees and their lawyers.

‘More like mainland China’

Taiwanese national security expert Shih Chien-yu said the legislation will have an indelible impact on Hong Kong, which was once promised the continuation of its traditional rights and freedoms for 50 years after the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.

“The Article 23 legislation basically will make Hong Kong even more like mainland China,” Shih told RFA Cantonese. “The penalties are very heavy, mostly more than three years.”

Shih predicted that many businesspeople will leave Hong Kong because of it.

Lawmakers completed their detailed review of the bill on Thursday, adding in a strengthened supervisory role for the Committee for Safeguarding National Security, which is itself under the direct supervision of the central government in Beijing.

London-based rights group Amnesty International called on the government to “step back from the brink” and halt the legislation. Hong Kong “is now taking repression to the next level,” the group’s China Director Sarah Brooks said in a March 8 statement.

“The apparent overarching purpose of Article 23 is to stifle any and all criticism of the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities and their policies, within the city and globally,” she said.

Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet has appointed a former governor convicted of shooting a group of protesters to a senior position within the Ministry of Interior, RFA Khmer has learned, prompting condemnation from rights groups over rampant nepotism and impunity within the government.

It’s the latest controversial appointment by the prime minister, who in February named his younger brother, Hun Many, one of Cambodia’s 11 deputy prime ministers. The same month, his father, former Prime Minister Hun Sen, appointed as his adviser a former top military police official who was found guilty 15 years ago in an acid attack that disfigured a victim’s face.

In a sub-decree dated Jan. 30, but only released to the public on Thursday, Hun Manet appointed Chhouk Bandith, the former governor of Bavet city in Svay Rieng province, to the position of deputy director general of the General Department of Administration under the Ministry of Interior.

Chhouk Bandith was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay 38 million riel (US$9,500) in compensation after he was convicted of shooting and wounding three female garment workers. They had been protesting poor conditions at the Kaoway Shoe Factory in Svay Rieng province in February 2012. He was released from prison in February 2015 after serving his full sentence.

Despite his conviction, on March 18, 2022, Acting Head of State and President of the Senate Say Chhum promoted Chhouk Bandith to the new post.

Chhouk Bandith is also a nephew of influential Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam A.

Attempts by RFA to reach him and government spokesman Pen Bona for comment on the appointment went unanswered Thursday.

‘There is no reform’

Ly Chanravuth, an activist with the environmental watchdog Mother Nature Cambodia, called the move a sign that Hun Manet is reneging on his promise to reform the government.

“This is an example that proves there is no reform,” he said. “Instead, we’re seeing appointments based on lineage and factions. In addition, the appointment of officials who have committed serious misconduct has put us back to where we were years ago.”

Ly Chanravuth said that appointing convicted criminals to office will lead to social insecurity. The public will be unable to seek help from the government to find justice because the officials that they rely on are already violating the rights of the people, he said.

Chhouk Bandith remained at large for a time after his conviction, prompting rights groups to speculate that he was under the protection of top officials. In November 2013, an appeals court upheld his 18-month jail sentence and the restitution to the garment workers, according to an earlier RFA report.

He later turned himself in after then-Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered his capture.

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

For two decades, accountant Khin Thit Yee lived and worked as a business consultant in Yangon, Myanmar, and as an online trainer for the accounting programs she set up while investing in an agricultural business on the side.

Before the Burmese military coup in February 2021, she was working for one of the Big Four accounting firms in that city.

“When the coup was announced, I was sleeping. My mother broke the news to me, and I was very surprised,” she told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. 

But it took Khin Thit, now 41, no time to wrap her head around the situation. Two months after the coup, she and her family headed to Bangkok in search of new lives in neighboring Thailand.

“After March 2021, things [were] getting worse and worse,” she said. “I checked with my office, and they said they could support my move to Singapore. But if I moved to Singapore I would not be able to take care of my family because the living expenses are very high. So, I decided to go to Thailand and gave notice to my office.”

Today, Khin Thit holds a consulting management position with an international firm in Bangkok and does not plan to return to Myanmar.

She is among a growing number of Myanmar’s working professionals who have moved to Thailand in the aftermath of the 2021 coup d’état and since the Myanmar military launched a violent crackdown on opponents and resistance forces. 

Fighting across the Southeast Asian country has displaced millions and killed at least 50,000, including 8,000 civilians, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.  

 The number of Myanmar migrants and those fleeing the fighting to Thailand can fluctuate at times as “some have been in Thailand before the coup, and some moved here after the coup,” Khin Thit said. “Some are still living in Myanmar and flying back and forth.”

The estimated monthly number of long-term migrants entering Thailand since the beginning of 2023 is 13,000, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Khin Thit said she was no longer optimistic about her home country.

“Before the coup, I believed in my country and the people, and I wanted to contribute to the community and make the country better. But after the coup, I was lost.”

Relocation

Apart from her full-time work, Khin Thit runs two restaurants in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and has invested in properties in Bangkok. She is hopeful about her life in Thailand with her mother, uncle, brother and the brother’s family.

“In Thailand, the culture is not very different, and living expenses are OK,” she said. “It is also easy to start a business here.”

Natty Tangmeesang is a Thai blogger who lived in Myanmar between 2014 and 2020 and worked as a marketing and communications executive in Yangon.

She said the ascent of the National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi after the 2015 general election allowed the country to open doors to international investment, which brought opportunities for citizens.

“Now we have seen a wave of middle-class and wealthy Myanmar people looking for ways to live and open businesses in Thailand,” Natty told BenarNews. “Many of them have opened restaurants, bars and businesses here. Others have come for higher education as well.” 

In February, real estate consultant Colliers Thailand reported that buyers from Myanmar were looking for residential projects in cities such as Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket, noting that they were “upper-middle class, mostly young families aged 35 and older,” The Bangkok Post reported.

Those who flee

Natty said the exodus of young, middle-class Myanmar citizens could spike soon because of the junta’s military conscription beginning in April for men between the ages of 18 and 35 and women between the ages of 18 and 27. 

The conflict after the February 2021 coup is the one between “the new generation” and the Myanmar military, Natty said about those who joined rebel groups against the government. “So, they are hunted down by the army.”

Taien Layraman, assistant to the president of International Affairs at Payap University, said that since the junta made the announcement in February, there had been a surge in applications from Myanmar students to the university in Chiang Mai province.

“Our semester usually begins in August, and we often see applications later on in the year,” she told BenarNews. “But this year we have seen a lot of early applications.”

University administrators also noticed that before the 2021 coup, Myanmar students enrolled at the school before returning to work in Myanmar, though now they are usually finding work in Thailand or another country after graduation, she said.

New hope

Susu, 20, a Myanmar student from Bago city, has lived in Tak, a Thai province along the border with Myanmar, since moving to Thailand in December 2022, when she joined her sister who had moved here earlier. 

She is working on obtaining a general equivalency diploma and wants to enroll at a university in Thailand.

Susu, who goes by one name, said traveling to Thailand was a daunting experience but that she was willing to risk it.

“I and another sister left Bago and traveled to Myawaddy; then a traveling agent took us across the Moei River to Tak,” she said.

After the coup, Susu’s sisters, who worked as a teacher and a nurse in Bago, joined the civil disobedience movement, a national strike involving health care workers and civil servants who opposed the military’s takeover of Myanmar’s government.

Because their safety was at risk, the three sisters decided to move to Thailand, leaving their mother and everyone they knew behind. 

“My friends in Myanmar used to have a goal for their future, but after the coup there was no opportunity, no safety, no justice,” Susu said. “I want to go back to Myanmar one day. But from the way things look, nothing will ever get better.”

Meanwhile, as the civil war in Myanmar enters its fourth year, Thailand has sought to create initiatives, including a humanitarian corridor that would be set up in Tak province, to coordinate the shipment of food and medicine to Myanmar.

The Thai Parliament recently hosted a seminar to “seek peaceful and sustainable political solutions for Myanmar,” according to Thai opposition lawmaker Rangsiman Rome.

It was lambasted by the Myanmar junta as affecting bilateral relations.

Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara was scheduled to deliver a speech, but he canceled shortly before the event.

“I think humanitarian aid is not just sending supplies, but also offering other assistance,” blogger Natty said. 

“There are many working professionals from Myanmar, those who are nurses, teachers or journalists, who have to flee Myanmar without papers for safety,” she said. “We should offer them support as well.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

More than 800 Chinese nationals were deported from near Myanmar’s border with Thailand in relation to online fraud, according to China’s Ministry of Public Security.

The group was deported Wednesday from Myawaddy’s infamous gambling and scam center, Shwe Kokko, in Myanmar’s Kayin state through neighboring Thailand, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Scam centers have plagued the border areas of Thailand, Myanmar and China as nationals from all three countries are tricked into – and subsequently enslaved in – online fraud. Tens of thousands of Chinese nationals were deported from Myanmar in 2023 by both junta and rebel army officials for their roles in both perpetuating and being trapped in criminal schemes. Many are linked to forced labor, human trafficking and money laundering, which proliferated after COVID-19 shut down casinos across Southeast Asia.

A resident in Myawaddy told Radio Free Asia that the gambling businesses in Myawaddy should be eradicated.

“The [Chinese nationals] have been repatriated through Thailand as they were illegally staying in Shwe Kokko. They kept saying that [authorities] are continuously sending them back,” he said, declining to be named given the issue’s sensitivity. 

“There are still gambling businesses in Myawaddy. The [big] gambling business split off and many small ones appeared in the city center. They are still there.”

Since March 2023, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security has been cooperating with Myanmar and Thai authorities on the border to crack down on transnational communication network fraud and online gambling activities. The 800 Chinese nationals were linked to an online money laundering gang, according to the statement.

The details of the repatriation could not be confirmed by RFA. The arrests were a result of the long-term trilateral cooperation between China, Myanmar and Thailand, it continued.

According to Myanmar junta-backed media, 52,820 foreigners, including 50,772 Chinese nationals, were repatriated from Oct. 5, 2023 to March 6, 2024.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

 

China has asked 12 banks to provide financing to the beleaguered state-owned real estate firm, Vanke Group, just days after the housing and urban-rural development ministry vowed to let insolvent property developers go bankrupt.

The Chinese government’s support bucks its recent trend of letting indebted developers take their own downward course, which has compounded a spiraling crisis in the sector, once a major economic growth driver. 

Privately-held Evergrande Group and Country Garden Holdings were left to their own devices as their debts soared, leaving their creditors and homebuyers high and dry in trying to recover investments. The Hong Kong High Court issued a liquidation order for Evergrande in January. A similar fate looms for Country Garden which received a liquidation petition from one of its creditors in Hong Kong. Both companies are listed in Hong Kong.

In contrast, rescue efforts for Vanke, part-owned by the Shenzhen government, are being coordinated by the State Council, China’s cabinet amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s policy of advancing state enterprises and a retreat of the private sector. 

The State Council has requested financial institutions to make swift progress and called on creditors to consider private debt maturity extension, according to a Reuters report on Monday, citing unnamed sources. 

Separately, the state-owned Cailian Press reported that the 12 institutions are expected to raise as much as 80 billion yuan (US$11.1 billion) for Vanke. But the report cited sources saying that the attitude maintained by each bank was conservative.

Shaky ground

Nonetheless, Vanke is likely to stay on shaky ground among investors after rating agency Moody’s lowered its credit rating to “junk.” 

“The rating actions reflect Moody’s expectation that China Vanke’s credit metrics, financial flexibility and liquidity buffer will weaken over the next 12-18 months because of its declining contracted sales and the rising uncertainties over its access to funding amid the prolonged property market downturn in China,” said Kaven Tsang, a Moody’s senior vice president in a statement this week.

The rating agency said it has placed all the ratings on review for downgrade, as it saw the company’s ability to recover sales, improve funding access, and maintain an adequate liquidity buffer to be worrying.

The government’s bid to save Vanke has aroused discussion online. Some netizens questioned the discrepancy between saving Vanke and abandoning Evergrande, while others worried that saving Vanke would reduce national resources at a time when the economy is growing at its slowest pace since 1990. There are also many posts rationalizing the government’s efforts to support Vanke.

The blogger “Wuxinxinshuofang” believes that propping up Vanke is to ensure that the “hunt” for foreign capital won’t be disrupted by a Vanke-triggered real estate crisis. 

“The collapse of Vanke will bring about the debt crisis and liquidity crisis of all real estate companies. Efforts so far to prop up the market have only begun to show effects. Vanke can fail next year, but not this,” the blogger wrote.

Zombie developers to zombie banks?

Frank Xie, a professor at the University of South Carolina Aiken Business School, attributed Beijing’s support to Vanke’s state-owned background.

“The Chinese Communist Party cannot let Vanke fail, because the CCP [Communist Party of China] treats its own people and outsiders differently,” Xie pointed out. 

The failure of any state-owned assets would be “tantamount to the bankruptcy of national capital, questioning the Communist Party’s ability to run enterprises.”

Xie said that Chinese banks have accumulated a large backlog of mortgage loans involving real estate, and even assisting Vanke will only delay the explosion.

“As for other private companies facing the same problems as Evergrande, the CCP cannot save them, nor does it want to save them,” he added.

Beijing has also established a “white list” of approved property projects by distressed developers that banks and financial institutions should support in a stop-gap measure. Those deemed beyond rescue should go bankrupt.

Chen Songxing, director of the New Economic Policy Research Center at National Donghua University in Taiwan, said that the Chinese official statement of “bankruptcy should be bankrupt” is merely to show the outside world Beijing is unable to save real estate developers. 

Chen said the amount of rescue for Vanke this time was insufficient to solve the problem, given how intertwined the real estate and banking industries are. He warned this was only a delay tactic which could lead to a bigger crisis.

“China’s current financial situation actually does not have the ability to save the real estate industry, as this is just transferring the debts of real estate developers and local governments to banks. 

“If you continue to save these zombie real estate developers this year, it is very likely that banks will also become zombies in the future. It is very detrimental to China’s economic development,” Chen said.

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.