Day: March 21, 2024

Junta authorities closed a public hospital and several private clinics in a wartorn area of Myanmar’s western Rakhine state and ordered doctors and other medical personnel to relocate to the state capital, leaving residents without access to healthcare.

It’s the latest example of how Myanmar’s three-year civil war has taken a huge toll on hospitals and schools, which have also been forced to close. 

A woman said she’s worried her pregnant sister and other women won’t be able to safely deliver their babies.

“The nurses wrapped all the medical devices and equipment at the hospital,” she said, requesting anonymity for security reasons. “The next day, all the doctors and nurses left the hospital.”

The March 1 notice in Maungdaw township comes amid intense fighting between junta troops and the rebel Arakan Army, or AA, which has attacked positions in junta-controlled Maungdaw and neighboring Buthidaung township in recent months.

All patients at Maungdaw’s public hospital were discharged after the order, a hospital official said. One infant has since died during a delivery that took place outside the hospital, he said.

Rakhine state has been the center of intense clashes since the AA ended a ceasefire in November in place since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup d’etat. 

Junta troops have suffered heavy losses on the battlefield while the AA has captured a half dozen townships since November – some of them near the fortified administrative and military hub of Sittwe, where residents have been preparing for possible fighting inside the city. 

‘No safety guarantee’

There wasn’t an official written notice; medical personnel were given a verbal order by junta authorities, sources close to the health care workers told RFA. No specific reason for the move to Sittwe was given, they said.

Three days after the closure, junta authorities announced that the hospital could reopen. But doctors and other medical staff haven’t returned due to security concerns and the facility has remained closed, the sources close to the health care workers said.

“No one has gone inside the closed hospital because there’s no safety guarantee,” the hospital official said. “No medical treatment is provided and medicines aren’t available. Even the private clinics outside have all closed due to a lack of doctors.”

RFA attempted to contact Kyi Lwin, the director of Rakhine state’s Public Health Department, and Hla Thein, the junta’s spokesperson for Rakhine state, to ask why all medical staff were told to relocate to Sittwe, but they couldn’t be reached on Wednesday.

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Six Myanmar poets have been killed by the junta that seized power in a 2021 military coup. In China and Vietnam, bards are locked away for political crimes. A prominent translator of Tibetan poetry says he worries about the many authors who’ve disappeared without a trace.

This year’s World Poetry Day appears to offer little to celebrate across a region where popular reverence for poets sits uneasily with the censorship and repression of ruling communist and military governments that are hostile to free expression and political activism. 

But the bleak environment is not stopping poets from trying to play their historic roles in movements for freedom and social justice, poets told Radio Free Asia ahead of World Poetry Day, established in 1999 by UNESCO.

“Poets are those who love truth and want justice,” said Yee Mon, a former political prisoner who serves as the defense minister of the shadow National Unity Government that is fighting the Myanmar military junta.

“Today, we take special pride in the poets participating in the Myanmar people’s Spring Revolution,” said Yee Mon, who has been writing poetry under the pen name Maung Tin Thit for more than 30 years.

The Spring Revolution, a protest movement that was launched after the February 2021 military coup, was met with fierce retaliation by the junta. 

“Following the military coup, local poets have suffered immense physical and psychological losses, including loss of employment, financial strain, deteriorating health, and tragically, loss of life,” said Nyein Thit, a poet and former member of parliament who is among more than 70 Burmese poets in hiding inside or near Myanmar to evade arrest and torture by the junta. 

Six Myanmar poets were killed, with torture suspected in the death of Khet Thi, who before his arrest in May 2021 wrote: “They shoot us in the head, but they don’t know that the revolution is in the heart.”

Sixteen Burmese poets have been arrested and imprisoned. Among them, poet Kyaw Gyi received a 30-year sentence and Lu Phan Khar was sentenced to 28.5 years.

For Tibetans in China, “freedom of speech is an unattainable dream” and “any effort to reveal the truth will be undermined, oppressed and even punished,” says  Beijing-based Tibetan writer and poet Woeser.

“I feel more and more the pressure of being grabbed by the throat,” she told RFA Tibetan. She said Chinese customs confiscated copies of her new poetry collection “Under the Scorching Sun of Lhasa” when they were shipped from their publisher in Taiwan. 

Tibetan and Uyghur poets in jail

Chinese authorities frequently detain Tibetan poets, writers, artists, and singers who promote Tibetan identity and culture or who have criticized China’s seven-decade rule over Tibet. Content seen as “endangering national security” or constituting an “act of separatism” is banned.

“Tibetan writers and poets who persist in sharing the contents of their heart, despite heavy-handed government censorship and retaliation, show tremendous courage and resilience. They also play a critical role in society by preserving and elevating Tibetan culture,” said James Tager, director of research at PEN America.

Dechen Pemba – whose website, High Peaks Pure Earth, publishes English translations of Tibetan poems, writings and songs from inside Tibet – says, “Tibetan artists persist in writing and expressing themselves,” using social media and evolving digital platforms despite the threats they face from authorities. 

“The biggest concern I have right now is the arbitrary detention of many Tibetan artists by the CCP, with many cases remaining unknown to us,” she told RFA Tibetan, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

In a recent example, poet Tenzin Khenrap, pen name Dhongrang Chak, was taken into custody in July 2023 and has since been arbitrarily detained with no information of his case or whereabouts. 

RFA Uyghur has documented the imprisonment of scores of Uyghur intellectuals and artists, including an educator and poet who died in prison last August, and renowned Uyghur writer and poet Abdulla Sawut, who was released after five years in detention in poor health and died in December 2022 because he could not obtain food or medicine amid a strict coronavirus lockdown.

In 2020, Vietnam sentenced dissident poet and blogger Tran Duc Thach, to 12 years in prison for “activities aimed at overthrowing the People’s Government,” although his lawyer said he was only promoting political pluralism.

PEN America in 2022 documented 18 imprisoned writers in Vietnam, placing the country fourth globally in imprisoning writers.

“Authorities further intimidate and silence writers and artists through travel bans, equipment confiscation, and detentions based on artistic work,” the group said.

The number of writers and poets behind bars in China has grown since ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping took power in 2012, according to Zhang Yu of the writers’ group Independent Chinese PEN.

“We have on our list, which dates from 2001 to the present, more than 300 people,” Zhang said. “There are more than 70 who remain behind bars.”

‘Jasmine Revolution’

Chinese dissident poet Zhu Yufu was jailed for seven years in 2011 on charges of “inciting subversion of state power” for a poem he wrote in oblique support of China emulating the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia that sparked the “Arab Spring” of anti-authoritarian protests.

His detention came soon after posting these lines online, in a reference to the political legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre:

It is time, people of China! It is time

The square belongs to us all; our feet are our own.

It is time to use our feet to go to the square and to make a choice … 

We should use our choices to decide the future of China.

— Zhu Yufu “It is time”

“My short poem ‘It’s Time’ is actually quite neutral, encouraging people to make choices, without prescribing any specific action. It was their guilty conscience that led them to first arrest people and then fabricate charges, using my poem as a pretext,” Zhu told RFA Mandarin.

“When I was released, the prison sent six guards to inspect every page of the books I purchased and the calligraphy I wrote,” he said. “One of my poetry manuscripts was absolutely not allowed to be taken home.”

Zhu remains unbowed after multiple prison stints.

“Don’t think that burying the seed means there won’t be spring anymore

Don’t think that when the tide recedes, it will never return,” he wrote for World Poetry Day.

In July 2019, authorities in the southwestern province of Yunnan detained poet and political activist Wang Zang after he showed support for mass anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong.

He was handed a second jail term in December 2021 alongside his wife Wang Li behind closed doors by the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture Intermediate People’s Court, which found them guilty of “incitement to subvert state power.”

Prosecutors cited Wang’s recent poetry, essays, interviews with foreign media, and performance art since his last release from prison in 2015, as evidence against him.

“State security police visited him so many times [after] he wrote “Epitaph Without a Tombstone,” Wang Li told RFA Mandarin in an interview after her release.

“It’s still pretty sensitive for them.”

A road to idealism 

paved with newly upturned corpses

facing the loving gaze and newly sworn vows of their spouses

riddled with bullet holes, tears and sweat in their eyes

from the effort of dodging bullets while carrying the bodies

amid the smoke of gunfire and the silent spray of the water trucks

Now, we are in the United Front of singing and dancing in the New Era

while the old wounds that can’t be named congeal and

go into exile to stand guard over the night.

— Wang Zang “Epitaph Without a Tombstone.”

Never stop speaking out

Wang Li said Wang Zang had never stopped speaking out, however.

“He believes that if everyone keeps quiet, then nothing would change, and everyone would suffer even more,” she said. “He didn’t want that.”

While Wang Li was released after serving a shorter jail term, she and her family were placed under round-the-clock surveillance by a 24-person security detail.

Recently, she was able to visit her husband in prison.

“Still 73 days until Wang Zang comes home!” Wang Li posted to her X account on March 17. 

“I went to visit Wang Zang this morning with his brother, and he was looking thinner,” she wrote. “He lost 3 kilos lately.”

“Everyone pay attention to Wang Zang, who is nearing the end of his sentence — thank you!”

Wang met with his attorney on March 20, but it is unclear whether he will be allowed home or have his freedom of movement restored following his release, as authorities in China frequently place high-profile political prisoners under surveillance or house arrest even after their release from prison.

Wang Zang was previously a resident of Beijing’s Songzhuang artists’ village, and has previously been targeted with repeated forced evictions and a jail term for showing online support for the 2014 Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong.

Burmese poet A Mon – who keeps a comprehensive list documenting poets who died, were incarcerated or fled Myanmar – said he is staging a commemoration involving 70-80 poets on World Poetry Day somewhere along the Thai-Myanmar border to honor fallen poets and showcase the resilience of the anti-junta struggle.

“Poetry embodies a collective voice, truth and justice,” he told RFA Burmese.

“It is imperative to persist until victory is achieved in the struggle against military dictatorship.”

Reporting by Tenzin Pema, Tenzin Dickey and Pelbar for RFA Tibetan, Kitty Wang for RFA Mandarin, and Khet Mar for RFA Burmese. Translation by Luisetta Mudie and Kalyar Lwin.

Indonesian rescuers late on Wednesday were searching for dozens of Rohingya after their Australia-bound boat capsized in Indian Ocean waters off Aceh province earlier in the day. 

The wooden boat capsized at sea near Meulaboh city in West Aceh regency, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported, citing fishermen who saw the vessel sinking. 

Local fishermen were able to rescue at least six of the Rohingya, but dozens were still clinging to the overturned boat as attempts were made to save them, officials said. One survivor said that some 50 people aboard the boat had perished during the sea journey from Malaysia.

A video taken by a fisherman showed more than 50 Rohingya standing on the hull of the barely visible boat, frantically waving for help, the Reuters news agency reported. It had flipped over in waters off Kuala Bubon port (16 nautical miles from Meulaboh), with local officials suspecting that large waves had caused the vessel to overturn. 

“Please help, these are Rohingya people. Please help, friends,” a fisherman was heard saying in the video.

The six rescued — two men and four women — were brought to a local government office in West Aceh regency, said M. Asmiruddin Alnur, the head of Samatiga sub-district in Meulaboh. 

50 died at sea

A team from the provincial capital Banda Aceh was on its way to bring the Rohingya ashore and was expected to arrive at midnight, the local search-and-rescue agency said in a statement.

Zaned Salim, one of the rescued refugees, said the group initially numbered 150 when they departed from a Malaysian refugee camp to Australia about 24 days ago. 

“But 50 have died at sea due to lack of food,” he told local reporters. “We only ate once a day. Sometimes not at all.”

 

Meanwhile, the head of the local fishing community issued a written order for Acehnese fishermen to assist the Rohingya.

“Some of them drowned because their boat overturned,” said Azwir Nazar, secretary general of Panglima Laot, a traditional institution focusing on the welfare of fishermen. “Many are still floating at sea.”

“For humanitarian reasons, we are obliged to help those who suffer misfortune at sea, whoever they are.”

A persecuted minority group

The Rohingya are a persecuted, stateless Muslim minority group 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 United Nations described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” about 740,000 Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh. 

Now, close to 1 million Rohingya refugees live in crowded camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

Usually, many Rohingya refugees who end up in Indonesia have left the Cox’s Bazar camps seeking a better life in countries like Malaysia, which is a top destination for migrant workers from many South Asian and Southeast Asian nations

Faisal Rahman, protection associate at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, declined to comment to BenarNews, saying he was en route to West Aceh from Banda Aceh.

AFP and Reuters, however, quoted a UNHCR statement that said the agency was “deeply concerned” about the well-being of the Rohingya at sea who were still to be rescued.

“This is an emergency, [so] our priority should be to join hands with the authorities and the local community to save lives,” the U.N. refugee agency said in a statement.

“We hope that search and rescue could be performed and the refugees can be brought to land as soon as possible.”

The agency said it could not immediately confirm the total number of Rohingya on the boat, or whether there had been deaths among the group.

The latest refugee wave

The latest wave of Rohingya refugees began arriving in Aceh last October. 

Unlike before, this time some of the Rohingya faced rejection from residents due to negative social media campaigns against them. Some residents claimed there weren’t enough resources for both the locals and the refugees.

According to the UNHCR, more than 1,800 Rohingya refugees have landed in Indonesia since October 2023. They have been accommodated in various locations across Aceh.

With few options after years of a stateless existence, many Rohingya are desperate to leave Myanmar and the crowded and violent Bangladesh refugee camps and make the perilous journey by sea to get to Southeast Asia.

In January, the UNHCR reported that 569 Rohingya refugees died or went missing at sea last year.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Chinese residents of North Korea who went to China during the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to return, but some are wondering if they should have stayed in China given all the restrictions on bringing things into the country, sources told Radio Free Asia.

North Korean authorities denied requests by returnees to import goods, even those that they planned to sell or use in their own homes, including clothing and household goods. 

“They were going back without items that they wanted to resell,” a resident of Yanji in China’s northeastern province of Jilin told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Their request was denied.”

Called Hwagyo in Korean, which means “overseas Chinese,” these people descended from Chinese who moved to the Korean peninsula in the late 1800s and first half of the 1900s, prior to the split between North and South Korea. The Korea National Diplomatic Academy estimated that there were around 5,000 North Korean Hwagyo in 2017.

According to rough estimates from North Korean residents, during the coronavirus pandemic, more than 70% of the Hwagyo community decided to weather the storm in China as they were facing severe economic difficulties at home. 

North Korea last week gave the green light for a third wave of Hwagyo returnees, after having approved returns in December and January. 

But some may be reluctant to return as word gets back about the severe restrictions.

“Many Hwagyo who returned to North Korea are regretting their return,” said another Yanji resident, who requested anonymity for personal safety.  “They said that Hwagyo are even banned from doing business in the marketplace.” 

The first Yanji resident said he had heard that 33 Hwagyo entered North Korea through Wonjong customs recently, referring to the border crossing between Hunchun, China, and Rason in northeastern North Korea.

RFA sources confirmed that more Hwagyo came through the border crossing that connects Dandong, China with Sinuiju, North Korea in the peninsula’s northwest, but RFA was not able to determine how many. 

“The [North Korean] Consulate General in Shenyang asked returning Hwagyo not to reveal details such as the number of people returning and their departure date to the outside,” the first resident said. “They were only allowed to carry one piece of luggage upon entry and the luggage was restricted from containing any South Korean products.”

Easy Money

The luggage situation might be a big problem for the returnees. 

Hwagyo in North Korea do not have North Korean citizenship and are officially citizens of the People’s Republic of China, so prior to the pandemic, they had been able to travel back and forth between the two countries with relative ease.

This put them in a very privileged position from a business perspective because they could go to China, load up on products not available in North Korea, and sell them for a considerable markup when they got home.

According to the second Yanji resident, prior to the pandemic, North Korean wholesalers would mark the date that a Hwagyo was to return from China so that they could line up at the house to buy the latest products they brought back. Though most North Koreans struggle to make ends meet, money flowed into the hands of Hwagyo with relative ease.

But now that may all change.

As the news spreads, Hwagyo still in China are worried that they won’t be able to go to China as often as before and they won’t be able to sell Chinese products in North Korea, the second resident said, adding that many are planning to return to North Korea, settle their affairs, and then move to China permanently.

“If Chinese products cannot be imported and sold in North Korea in the future, there will be no reason for Hwagyo to continue living there,” he said

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

Myanmar’s junta navy arrested around 80 Rohingya attempting to flee the country by boat, residents who witnessed the event told Radio Free Asia on Thursday. 

Officials arrested the group on Tuesday morning in Myanmar’s coastal Mon state. The boat was intercepted off the shores of Ye township’s Kaleguak Island in the Andaman Sea.

Mon state’s junta spokesperson Aung Myat Kyaw Sein told RFA that although Mon’s administration was made aware of the arrest, other details have yet to be confirmed.

“The estimated number is about 80, but we do not know the genders yet,” he said, adding that unspecified official processes still need to be carried out.

The arrested Rohingya will be treated well and officials will follow official procedures, he said. 

RFA was able to confirm the group traveled on a boat named Zwel Khit San, but could not identify where the group traveled from or where it intended to go.

Many Rohingya who had remained in Rakhine state after being targeted in a genocide by the Myanmar military in 2017 fled to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia following the country’s 2021 coup. In October and November 2023, junta troops arrested over 200 Rohingya escaping to nearby countries by boat, citing job scarcity, unemployment and increasing restrictions placed on the ethnic minority.

After junta troops announced the enactment of the People’s Military Service Law on Feb. 10, videos originating from Rakhine state’s west a month later showed Rohingya undergoing military training. Troops have also preyed on Rohingya in internally displaced people’s camps, offering them freedom of movement in exchange for bolstering the junta’s numbers. 

Mon state residents said that junta forces arrested 117 Rohingya on a rubber farm in Thanbyuzayat township’s War Kha Yu village in January, but the reason is still unknown. 

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported on Jan. 23 that during 2023, at least 569 Rohingya died and went missing after leaving Myanmar and refugee camps in Bangladesh.

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

Fiji will continue police cooperation with China but won’t have Chinese officers stationed inside its force, a government minister said, following a review of security relations that highlighted the Pacific island country’s balancing act between economic reliance on China and security ties to the U.S. and its allies.

A police cooperation agreement between Fiji and China, signed in 2011 when Fiji was under military rule, was put on review last year after Fiji’s first change of government in nearly two decades. 

New Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who has favored closer ties with Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., had said he wanted to terminate the agreement because it wasn’t consistent with Fiji’s democracy. 

“We are a democratic nation. We aspire to democratic principles. At the same time there are things to learn with everyone else,” Fiji’s Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua said Wednesday in a radio interview with Australian state broadcaster ABC.

Under the policing pact, Fijian police officers undertook training in China, Chinese officers had regular short-term deployments in Fiji and China donated equipment and surveillance technology such as drones. It was China’s most extensive security cooperation with a Pacific island country until it signed a secretive security pact with the Solomon Islands in 2022.

China’s relations with Fiji burgeoned after Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and other countries sought to punish it for military chief Frank Bainimarama’s 2006 coup that overthrew the elected government. 

Tikoduadua said the memorandum of understanding with China’s Ministry of Public Security was unchanged following the review, but Fiji decides what it implements. The Fijian government, he said, would reassess the agreement every six months.

Fijian police officers would continue to train in China but there would not be deployments of Chinese officers inside the Fijian force, according to Tikoduadua. Intelligence sharing could also be curtailed.

“I can assure that we have asked the Chinese to take the [embedded police] out,” he said

“One area that we were concerned with at the beginning and which is the subject of our review is in the area of intelligence sharing,” Tikoduadua said. “We would like to review that in terms of what we necessarily have to share. I cannot go into detail but that is an important area.”

Tikoduadua said Rabuka supported the decision to keep the police agreement in place. Rabuka himself has not issued a statement on the decision.

Human rights groups protested in 2017 when Chinese police arrested dozens of Chinese nationals in Fiji suspected of online fraud and flew them back to China. Photos published by 

China’s state media showed the suspects wearing black hoods and guarded by dozens of Chinese police officers.  

China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and gain allies or leverage in global institutions. Its inroads with Pacific island nations have caused concern for countries such as Australia and the United States who see the region as vital to their security and defense.

Through police cooperation agreements China’s government may also be aiming to protect its economic interests in Pacific island nations and the Chinese diaspora, analysts have said. Beijing’s security pact with the Solomon Islands followed anti-government and anti-China riots in November 2021 that destroyed the Chinatown in the Solomon Islands capital.

Tikoduadua said Fiji was facing an increase in illegal drug use and needed help to manage the situation. 

“We need every assistance that we can get to help Fiji and our community. And if we need to go to China to clean Fiji of this problem then we will do it,” he said. “But we do it with people and nations who respect us as an equal partner.” 

Bainimarama, who after his coup became Fiji’s prime minister until 2022 and led the fostering of ties with China, will be sentenced later this month after a court ruled he had interfered in a police investigation into financial problems at the Pacific’s regional university.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.