Day: March 21, 2024

Indonesian rescuers on Thursday brought ashore 69 additional Rohingya who were found clinging to their wooden boat for nearly a day and suffering from hunger and dehydration after it capsized in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Aceh province, authorities said. 

Those rescued were brought to shore for medical treatment, said Supriadi, captain of the rescue ship, even as some locals protested their arrival. Six others from the same boat were rescued Wednesday by local fishermen.

“When they were found, they were weak due to dehydration and perhaps had not eaten for several days,” said Supriadi, who goes by one name. 

Authorities reported that search efforts were complete.

 

A video taken by a fisherman on Wednesday showed more than 50 Rohingya standing on the overturned hull of the barely visible boat as they frantically waved for help. The boat had flipped over in waters off Kuala Bubon port (16 nautical miles from Meulaboh), possibly after being struck by large waves, according to officials.

Zaned Salim, one of the original six to be rescued, said 150 Rohingya departed from a Malaysian refugee camp 24 days ago, hoping to sail to Australia, adding that about 50 people had died during the journey. Authorities said they did not recover any bodies during rescue efforts, adding that those efforts were finished. 

Meanwhile, hundreds of residents blocked roads in protest against the latest Rohingya arrival. 

“The residents demand that the Rohingya refugees not be placed in their village,” said Iswahyudi, West Aceh’s deputy police chief, who goes by one name.

Local journalists reported that villagers were carrying banners and shouting their opposition to the refugees’ presence. 

“We do not accept refugees here. … Why bring them to our village?” said one resident.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, but has a long history of hosting refugees from various conflicts. It allows refugees to stay temporarily, while they wait for a third country to resettle them, a process that can take years.

Aceh has a history of welcoming Rohingya, specifically, but there has been growing resistance fueled by negative sentiment on social media. Some residents claimed there are not enough resources for both themselves and the Rohingya.

Faisal Rahman, an associate with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) praised the collaborative rescue operations by the local leadership and law enforcement.

“The UNHCR deeply appreciates the swift and compassionate action of the West Aceh district officials and their teams in aiding the Rohingya,” Faisal said, adding several of those rescued were in poor health and rushed to a local hospital.

Rahman said Zaned Salim’s claim that as many as 150 people were aboard the boat needed to be verified. 

“If the refugee’s claims were true, it implies a tragic loss of lives at sea, as only 75 individuals have been accounted for,” he said. 

Persecuted minority

The Rohingya are members of a persecuted stateless Muslim minority from Myanmar who have been fleeing violence and oppression in their homeland for years. 

Following a 2017 military offensive in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that the U.N. described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” about 740,000 Rohingya fled from their homes across the border to Bangladesh. About 1 million Rohingya live in crowded camps in and around Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh.

Desperate, many leave overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, seeking better lives in other Muslim countries including Malaysia and Indonesia. 

The latest wave of Rohingya began arriving in Aceh in October 2023. 

Since then, over 1,800 refugees have landed in Indonesia and have been accommodated in locations across Aceh, according to the UNHCR.

In January, the UNHCR reported that 569 Rohingya refugees had died or went missing at sea in 2023 while attempting to flee from Myanmar or Bangladesh.

BenarNews is an online news affiliate of Radio Free Asia.

Chinese censors have deleted a video in which a People’s Liberation Army soldier brags about a medal given to her father for participating in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, highlighting the government’s efforts to hide that part of its history, according to media reports and social media posts.

In the video posted March 18 to the official account of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force on the video-sharing platform Bilibili, a woman clad in a camouflage uniform holds up a medal she said was presented to her father after he was among the troops that entered Beijing in early June 1989 to put down weeks of peaceful, student-led protests in Tiananmen Square.

The woman said she used to enjoy wearing the medal herself when she was a little girl.

“My father is a retired soldier,” she says, according to subtitles on screenshots published by several media outlets including Taiwan’s Liberty Times newspaper, Radio Taiwan International, and the citizen journalist X account “Mr Li is not your teacher.”

3月18日，中国火箭军B站账号发布了一则视频
一名女战士展示其父亲的“首都卫士”勋章。
根据资料显示，“首都卫士”勋章是六四发生后，中国人民解放军向首都戒严部队官兵颁发的。
这则视频在粉红群体中被率先发现并引起讨论，但目前视频已被删除。 pic.twitter.com/JOJzUTGVdq

— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) March 18, 2024

“Here is the medal he was given for defending the capital,” the woman says.

The “Defender of the Capital” honor was handed out to soldiers and other enforcers of martial law in Beijing, which was ordered by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping on May 20 and defied by protesters and hunger strikers, who remained on Tiananmen Square.

‘You’re bragging?’

The video soon started to garner comments referencing the killing of civilians by the People’s Liberation Army on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

“You’re bragging about how the People’s Liberation Army killed our compatriots?” said one comment, while another said the medal was fit for a “butcher,” according to screenshots of the now-deleted video.

“A ‘medal of honor’ won for massacring unarmed students on behalf of a dictator,” wrote another.

“You must be pretty ignorant to be proud of this,” said another comment. “Proud of having innocent people’s blood on your hands,” said another.

Some comments were from “little pink” supporters of the government, one of whom commented that not enough people were killed in the massacre.

Chinese censors work hard to keep any mention of “June 4,” “6/4” or the Tiananmen massacre from the public. Last October, censors deleted a photo showing two hugging Chinese athletes who inadvertently displayed the numbers “6” and “4” on their uniforms.

The video in question was deleted on March 18, the reports said. A capture of the Rocket Force’s Bilibili account made on that date by the Internet Archive was unavailable on Thursday.

Part of the machinery

Fang Zheng, whose legs were crushed by a tank during the assault on Beijing, said the soldier has become part of the ruling Communist Party’s machinery of oppression.

“This little pink soldier is a second-generation June 4 massacre soldier who has sadly become an integral part of the CCP’s brutal machine,” Fang told RFA Cantonese.

“As a child, she may not have known the meaning of the ‘Defender of the Capital’ medal and thought it was an honor for her father,” he said. “But the Defender of the Capital medal basically means he suppressed and massacred people.”

He said many soldiers in the 27th Army had been at pains to hide the fact that they had taken part, although others have spoken out.

Lt. Gen. Xu Qinxian served a five-year jail term for refusing to lead his 38th army troops into Beijing on the eve of the crackdown. The 27th Army carried out the order after attempts by the 38th Army to enter the city ended in chaos.

Former student leaders have said that they were expecting the army to use water cannons and rubber bullets, but diplomatic archives later declassified by the U.K. government said the army was ordered to “spare no one” as they used dum-dum bullets, automatic weapons and armored vehicles to carry out mass killings in Beijing.

‘History written in blood’

Fang said the government still tries to avoid mentioning the massacre in public to this day.

“The June 4 massacre is something the Chinese Communist Party can’t get past, so it covers up this part of its history,” he said.

Former 1989 student leader Zhou Fengsuo said it’s possible that the young woman didn’t even know what took place in the early summer of 1989. He said the June 4th Memorial Hall museum in New York also has specimens of the medal shown in the Bilibili video.

“It’s a typical vacuum paradox created by years of brainwashing by the Chinese Communist Party,” Zhou said. “But this history written in blood can suddenly get shouted out for the world to hear in unexpected places.”

“Back then, the government gave out a lot of commendations, medals and watches,” he said. “But later, they were seen as incriminating evidence. By keeping these things in the museum, we can confirm the history of the Tiananmen massacre from a different angle.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

A majority of Indonesians perceive China’s activities in the South China Sea as a threat to their country’s sovereignty, with nearly half favoring a defense alliance with Southeast Asian nations to strengthen its position, a new survey has revealed. 

Most respondents believe that Beijing’s actions in the waterway also threaten member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), according to the survey released this week that was conducted by Indonesia Strategic and Defence Studies (ISDS) and Kompas Research and Development.

“The Indonesian public does not like the aggressiveness of Chinese ships which are pushing into Indonesian territory,” ISDS co-founder Erik Purnama Putra told BenarNews.

Some 73% of respondents viewed China’s presence in the South China Sea as a menace to Indonesian sovereignty, while even more – 79% – perceived Beijing as a threat to ASEAN nations. This sentiment is strongest among people aged 27-42, the study found.

The poll indicated that Indonesians prefer ASEAN as the best partner for defending their territory, and a defensive alliance with these nations as the best bet for security. The United States was the most preferred non-ASEAN partner, the survey suggested.

The poll results show that generally people think that the conflict in the South China Sea is a matter of territorial sovereignty, Dimas Okto Danamasi of Kompas Research told an online press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday, when the survey was released.

“The survey was held to measure the extent of public awareness regarding state sovereignty in four forms, namely political, economic, cultural and territorial sovereignty,” Dima, a researcher at Kompas Research, said.

The ISDS-Kompas Research survey polled 312 respondents between the ages of 17 and 60 in five cities – Medan, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, and Makassar.

The South China Sea remains a major source of friction among several territorial claimants. Beijing’s assertive actions have also alarmed the United States.

China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Taiwan and ASEAN member-states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. 

While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the dispute, its EEZ overlaps with China’s expansive nine-dash line. Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s EEZ in and around the Natunas.

Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia have accused China of disrupting their oil and gas exploration activities. And the Philippines has expressed concern over recent encounters near Second Thomas Shoal (Ayungin Shoal) and Scarborough Shoal, which both lie within its EEZ.

An agreement to prevent such skirmishes from developing into a full-blown conflict – in the making since 2002 – will hopefully be completed by 2025, said Hadi Tjahjanto, coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs.

Negotiations between ASEAN and China for this agreement, a code of conduct (COC) for the South China Sea, resumed last year when Indonesia held the rotating chair of ASEAN.

China “is a strategic comprehensive partner for Indonesia and ASEAN which has a central role in regional peace and stability,” Hadi said.

“We all hope that the COC can become an effective document, substantive, and actionable to avoid escalation and at the same time increase mutual trust and mutual confidence between countries with interests in the South China Sea,” he added.

There also needs to be increased collaboration among ASEAN coast guards, Vice Admiral Irvansyah, leader of Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla), said at the online press conference. 

“The situation in the South China Sea requires civil order management, rather than a military emergency response,” he said.

‘Diplomacy is the key’

Erik, the ISDS co-founder, advocated for a united ASEAN front and stressed the need for closer coordination among maritime security stakeholders, including the military and Bakamla, to make patrols more efficient and effective.

“As a non-aligned country, Indonesia cannot form military alliances, but instead [it] seeks as many friends as possible to solve common problems,” he said. 

Agus Widjojo, Indonesian ambassador to the Philippines, said he was confident that diplomatic strategies and leveraging national power would be central to resolving the sea dispute. And here, he highlighted Indonesia’s potential influence as a major Southeast Asian power.

“Diplomacy is the key to resolving the South China Sea conflict, as no nation stands to gain from its escalation,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Around 100,000 North Koreans worked overseas in 2023, earning about US$500 million for North Korea, indicating that Pyongyang has the means to get around sanctions, a report by the U.N. Security Council’s Panel of experts said.

According to the report, which covers July 2023 to January 2024 and was dated Mar. 7, the workers were sent to around 40 countries to work in construction, hospitality, medicine and information technology.

 “These workers are initially dispatched on student or tourist visas; some use false nationalities and identity cards,” the report said. “The vast majority are reportedly working in two countries.”

Though the report did not name those countries, sources have told Radio Free Asia that there are tens of thousands of North Korean workers in Russia and China, with one source saying as recently as December that there were more than 100,000 in China alone. 

But the workers can only keep a fraction of their earnings, the report said.

“The remainder is taken by their dispatching agency and in many cases used to purchase items for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the report said, using North Korea’s official name.

More planned

The report said that North Korea also has contracts to send around 400,000 more workers abroad once the border with China opens further after being closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2397, meant to deprive Pyongyang of cash and resources that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs, all North Korean workers were supposed to have returned home by the end of 2019, and no new work visas were to be issued to North Korean citizens since then.

According to RFA reports, some of the workers who were abroad prior to the deadline ended up stranded in China or Russia once North Korea closed its borders in January 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Though Pyongyang brought some of them home last year, others who have not seen their homes in more than four years remain abroad.

IT workers

Among the various sectors that dispatched North Korean workers are employed in, about 3,000 IT workers abroad and 1,000 at home generate what the panel estimated amounted to between $250-600 million per year.

A report from South Korean outlet NK News quoted human rights activist Sokeel Park as saying that the sanctions should be revised to protect North Korean workers.

“If there is any interim deal that includes sanctions relief with snapback provisions in return for progress on arms controls, sanctions against North Koreans living and working overseas should be relieved first,” Park, the South Korea director of Liberty in North Korea, told NK News.

“If these sanctions are adjusted, they could work in a broader range of countries, their visa situations could be regularized and there could be a push for better compliance with International Labour Organization standards and improvement in conditions and share of pay,” he said.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

About 100 villagers in northern Cambodia who were evicted from their homes are hiding in the forest, sleeping in plastic tents and catching fish to survive, because they are afraid they will be arrested, said the head of an association who visited them on Thursday.

“They are guarding themselves afraid that authorities will arrest them,” said Koet Saray, president of Khmer Student Intelligent League Association. His organization works with students to increase their participation in social development, good governance and the sustainable use of natural resources.

In a decade-long land dispute, some 300 families in several villages have been driven off their land in Preah Vihear province’s Kuleaen district to make way for a rubber plantation on a land concession given by the government to Phnom Penh-based Seila Damex Co., Ltd.

On March 6, hundreds of police and other security forces clashed with about 130 residents during a protest against the forced evictions. They tear-gassed protesters, burned down homes and arrested about 40 villagers.

The seizure of land for development, often without due process or fair compensation for displaced residents, has been a major cause of protest in Cambodia and other countries in East and Southeast Asia.

The villagers in hiding in the forest are using old hammocks and plastic tents for shelter and have a few mats to sit on, but lack mosquito nets, Koet Saray said. They are catching fish to eat and boiling water to drink.

The adults took their children with them when they fled, so they are not going to school, he added. 

Some of the villagers arrested during the protest have since been released, but on March 12 the provincial court ordered more than two dozen others to be held in pre-trial detention on charges of illegal encroachment on forest land.  

One of the villagers, who refused to be named for safety reasons, said she wants to return home soon because she can’t live in the forest forever.

She wants Cambodian President Hun Manet and former President Hun Sen to release her detained family members and resolve the land dispute so the villagers will have a place to live, she said.

Provincial Governor Kim Rithy told hundreds of villagers on March 13 said he would allocate 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of land to 100 families — some of the land previously granted Seila Damex in 2011 — according to an earlier RFA report.

Am Sam Ath of Cambodian rights group Licadho said authorities must investigate the land dispute and the government must provide villagers with a social land concession if they have no land to cultivate. 

Social land concessions in Cambodia provide land on which people can establish residences and make money through agriculture.

“We should eradicate forced evictions,” he said. “The government must have a specific process to resolve the case rather than using violence.” 

Translated by Yun Samean for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

About 100 villagers in northern Cambodia who were evicted from their homes are hiding in the forest, sleeping in plastic tents and catching fish to survive, because they are afraid they will be arrested, said the head of an association who visited them on Thursday.

“They are guarding themselves afraid that authorities will arrest them,” said Koet Saray, president of Khmer Student Intelligent League Association. His organization works with students to increase their participation in social development, good governance and the sustainable use of natural resources.

In a decade-long land dispute, some 300 families in several villages have been driven off their land in Preah Vihear province’s Kuleaen district to make way for a rubber plantation on a land concession given by the government to Phnom Penh-based Seila Damex Co., Ltd.

On March 6, hundreds of police and other security forces clashed with about 130 residents during a protest against the forced evictions. They tear-gassed protesters, burned down homes and arrested about 40 villagers.

The seizure of land for development, often without due process or fair compensation for displaced residents, has been a major cause of protest in Cambodia and other countries in East and Southeast Asia.

The villagers in hiding in the forest are using old hammocks and plastic tents for shelter and have a few mats to sit on, but lack mosquito nets, Koet Saray said. They are catching fish to eat and boiling water to drink.

The adults took their children with them when they fled, so they are not going to school, he added. 

Some of the villagers arrested during the protest have since been released, but on March 12 the provincial court ordered more than two dozen others to be held in pre-trial detention on charges of illegal encroachment on forest land.  

One of the villagers, who refused to be named for safety reasons, said she wants to return home soon because she can’t live in the forest forever.

She wants Cambodian President Hun Manet and former President Hun Sen to release her detained family members and resolve the land dispute so the villagers will have a place to live, she said.

Provincial Governor Kim Rithy told hundreds of villagers on March 13 said he would allocate 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of land to 100 families — some of the land previously granted Seila Damex in 2011 — according to an earlier RFA report.

Am Sam Ath of Cambodian rights group Licadho said authorities must investigate the land dispute and the government must provide villagers with a social land concession if they have no land to cultivate. 

Social land concessions in Cambodia provide land on which people can establish residences and make money through agriculture.

“We should eradicate forced evictions,” he said. “The government must have a specific process to resolve the case rather than using violence.” 

Translated by Yun Samean for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.