Day: March 23, 2024

The editor-in-chief of People Media was charged with defamation following critical comments he made in a livestream video – the first time an employee of a pro-junta news outlet has faced legal action by the military since the 2021 coup d’etat.

Kyaw Soe Oo’s comments on Tuesday found fault with the Ministry of Home Affairs for not sending any senior police officials to attend the funeral of an officer who was recently killed in Kachin state. 

Nay Pyi Taw police arrested Kyaw Soe Oo the same day, family members told Radio Free Asia. 

The ruling military junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup, has cracked down on independent media outlets in Myanmar to silence them from reporting about the coup and its violent aftermath. 

In 2021, the junta shut down five media outlets that provided independent coverage of the protests against military rule. 

Last year, the regime threatened legal action against Democratic Voice of Burma TV and Mizzima TV, demanding that the shuttered independent news broadcasters pay thousands of dollars in transmission fees, Voice of America reported.

People Media is known for its pro-military views. Kyaw Soe Oo regularly broadcasts his video commentaries on Telegram and YouTube. 

In Tuesday’s livestream, Kyaw Soe Oo noted that police officers who have ties to high-ranking officials are typically never assigned to dangerous frontier posts. It’s only the officers with no money or connections who are transferred to those areas, he said.

He also invited viewers to send him information on possible bribery involving military and police officers and gambling businesses. 

After his arrest, Kyaw Soe Oo underwent two days of interrogation before he was formally charged under Section 505(a) of the penal code, relatives said. That provision of the law was added by junta authorities after the coup to punish comments or implications that the coup or the military is illegitimate.

Kyaw Soe Oo was sent to Nay Pyi Taw prison on Thursday, relatives said.

Police raided People Media’s office in Nay Pyi Taw on Thursday morning and confiscated computers, phones and cameras, according to sources close to Kyaw Soe Oo.

There has been no official statement from the military junta regarding the arrest.

Translated by Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Matt Reed.

Rebel groups around Myanmar have killed at least six officials documenting draft-eligible residents this week, undermining the junta’s efforts to roll out the country’s military conscription law, sources said Friday.

The killings follow the junta’s Feb. 10 enactment of the law, with a plan to begin conscription in April to shore up troop shortages resulting from months of mounting losses and surrenders to insurgents in Myanmar’s three-year civil war.

In the weeks since the announcement, youths in many cities have fled abroad or to rebel-controlled territories to avoid the draft, refusing to fight for the military that seized control of the country in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat.

In recent weeks, RFA has received reports of forced recruitment and officials compiling lists of residents of fighting age, as well as draft lotteries to select who will serve.

But rebel forces are fighting back against those doing the junta’s bidding, according to sources who spoke to RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

On Thursday, the anti-junta People’s Defense Force, or PDF, from Bago region’s Pyay township attacked Myint Swe and Ko Phyo – the administrator and office clerk of Thegon township’s Zigon village – as they rode a motorcycle home after compiling a list of draft-eligible residents in nearby Thar Paung village, residents said.

Myint Swe was shot dead and Ko Phyo was gravely wounded in the 11:30 am attack, an official from the Thegon Township Social Assistance Association told RFA. Ko Phyo was taken to a hospital for treatment in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon, 250 kilometers (155 miles) to the south, he said.

“We had to go because the police informed us,” he said. “One died and one was sent to Yangon Hospital from Thegon.”

The PDF has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

Thandwe township killings

Also on Thursday, in Rakhine state’s Thandwe township, unidentified attackers killed Win Shwe, the head of 100 households in Dar Wa village’s Shwe Hlaw village tract, as he returned home from the township seat, where he was documenting residents eligible for military service.

Win Shwe’s body was discovered on Thursday evening under a pile of leaves in a creek bed near Dar Wa, according to a village resident, who said he was likely targeted because of his role in military recruitment.

“According to the people who took the body, he died of stab wounds to the neck,” he said. “Now, in Thandwe Township, the administrators and the 100 household leaders of the villages are collecting lists for military service. But none of the villagers want to join the army.”

The PDF in Magway region’s Yenangyaung township claimed responsibility for the Wednesday shooting deaths of Tin Win Khaing and San Naing, the administrator and clerk of Oke Shit Kone village tract, as they returned home from compiling draft lists in the township seat.

A PDF official told RFA on Friday that his group warned the men not to take part in the conscription process on five separate occasions before carrying out the attack.

“We repeatedly warned them with calls and letters,” he said. “Nobody [publicly] spoke out against them because they were armed and protected by the junta, so we were compelled to act after receiving numerous complaints.”

The PDF official claimed that the men had been “collecting money” and “choosing people at random” to serve, instead of using a lottery system. RFA was unable to independently verify the official’s claims.

Families threatened

Also in Magway, members of the Salin Township PDF shot and killed Myint Htoo, the administrator of Pu Khat Taing village, as he called on residents to enlist for military service with a loudspeaker on Monday, according to sources in the township.

The following day, unidentified attackers killed Maung Pu, the administrator of Mandalay region’s Wundwin township, while he worked to recruit soldiers for the junta, township residents said. Details of the attack were not immediately available.

The junta has yet to issue an official statement on any of the killings.

Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesmen in the regions and states where the attacks occurred went unanswered Friday, with the exception of Tin Oo in Bago region, who refused to comment, citing an ongoing investigation and the sensitive nature of the incident.

Residents said junta troops are threatening families with arrest and violence if their sons and daughters refuse to serve in the military after being selected by lottery.

Meanwhile, the country’s PDFs are issuing warnings to anyone helping to enforce the junta’s conscription campaign.

Refusing orders

Facing the wrath of residents and the PDF on one side and pressure from the junta to fill recruitment quotas, some administrators have simply refused orders to compile lists of those eligible for military service.

Village and ward administrators in Rakhine’s Munaung township told RFA on Friday that at a March 15 meeting at the township’s General Administration Department Hall, junta authorities ordered them to recruit up to five people between the ages of 24 and 30 per village tract.

“[Junta troops] asked if there had been a census conducted and told us we had to sign a document [agreeing to their recruitment terms],” said one administrator, who declined to be named. “However, we informed them of our inability to proceed.”

The administrator said that no one had resigned, and that there was “no immediate military pressure” to comply.

“However, the local youth are reluctant to participate, feeling fearful and evasive,” he said.

Administrators of all of Munaung township’s 41 villages and wards refused to carry out the recruitment order, he said.

Another administrator confirmed the refusal, saying that he, like the others, “always orient myself towards the people.”

RFA was unable to reach Hla Thein, the junta’s attorney general and spokesperson for Rakhine state, for comment on the administrators’ refusal to follow recruitment orders.

In Rakhine’s Thandwe township, 21 village tract administrators submitted their resignations on Monday, citing the junta’s orders to compile military service lists and form militias.

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

A prominent Uyghur who published books about Uyghur cultural identity and China’s persecution of the Uyghurs has been sentenced to prison, according to a Norway-based foundation and officials in Xinjiang.

Erkin Emet, 65, on a list of detained intellectuals in Xinjiang compiled by Uyghur Hjelp Foundation based in Norway, was taken into custody in July 2018, according to the organization’s founder, Abduweli Ayup.

Emet’s family said authorities accused him of inciting ethnic separatism and that he is serving a prison term, according to a source in Kashgar, asking not to be identified for security reasons.

However, his whereabouts and the length of his sentence are unknown, the source said.

Through confidential channels, Ayup discovered that Emet was most likely arrested for his involvement in the publication or dissemination of two books in particular. 

The first was the novel “Altun Kesh,” or “Golden Shoes,” by Halide Israel, about the persecution of Uyghurs during China’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and the importance of holding onto Uyghur identity. 

Emet also sold copies of Zordun Sabir’s “Ana Yurt,” or “Motherland,” which chronicles the Uyghur victory over Chinese nationalist forces in the early 1940s and the establishment of the second East Turkestan Republic, in existence from 1944 to 1949.

Crackdown on intellectuals

Emet was arrested during a crackdown known as “Hui Tou Kan,” or “Looking Back,” a police officer who works near the Xinjiang’s Health Publishing House in Urumqi, where Emet used to work, told Radio Free Asia.

At that time, Chinese authorities were detaining Uyghur intellectuals, including writers and publishers, in internment camps or prisons for producing works viewed as harboring separatist tendencies.

Material written or published by prominent Uyghurs was scrutinized, even though it had previously received government approval.

“During Hui Tou Kan, they investigated all previously published books,” said an official at Xinjiang’s Political Law Office in Urumqi, the region’s capital.   

The most problematic book related to his arrest was “Altun Kesh,” he said.

Another source said that his involvement in the sale of “Ana Yurt” was also behind his arrest.

Bookstore manager

Emet, who has two children and several grandchildren, first served as deputy director of the Kashgar branch of Xinhua Bookstore in the 1990s, according to Ayup, whose group is also known as Uyghuryar.

Emet was the first bookstore manager to order 5,000 copies of “Ana Yurt,” which sold out quickly, he said.

“He opened multiple large bookstores in different counties of Kashgar, expanded the Kashgar Xinhua Bookstore, and diversified its offers with different categories, which proved to be successful,” Ayup told RFA.

Emet was appointed director of the Kashgar Uyghur Publishing House at the end of 2010. 

There he published notable works, including Hojamuhemmed Muhammad’s eight volumes of poetry collections and was instrumental in getting Halide Israel’s “Kechmish,” or “Tales of the Past,” and “Altun Kesh” published, Ayup said. 

In May 2018, Emet moved to Urumqi to become director of Xinjiang’s Health Publishing House, where he worked with Qurban Mamut, a renowned retired Uyghur editor at the Uyghur Civilization Journal, according to Ayup. 

Two months later, Emet was arrested.

Mamut, father of RFA journalist Bahram Sintash, was arrested later and sentenced to 15 years in prison, Ayup said.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

China’s coast guard on Saturday fired a water cannon at a Philippine supply boat in disputed waters in the South China Sea, causing “significant damages to the vessel” and injuring its crew, the Philippine coast guard said.

Manila was attempting to resupply troops stationed on a ship at the Second Thomas Shoal, known locally as Ayungin Shoal, when the Chinese coast guard and maritime militia “harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers against the routine RoRe (rotation and resupply) mission,” said the Philippine National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea.

The West Philippine Sea is the part of the South China Sea that Manila claims as its jurisdiction.

The Chinese coast guard also set up “a floating barrier” to block access to shoal where Manila ran aground an old warship, BRP Sierra Madre, to serve as a military outpost.

The Philippine task force condemned China’s “unprovoked aggression, coercion, and dangerous maneuvers.”

Philippines’ RoRe missions have been regularly blocked by China’s coast guard, but this is the first time a barrier was set up near the shoal. 

The Philippine coast guard nevertheless claimed that the mission on Saturday was accomplished.

Potential consequences

The Second Thomas Shoal lies within the country’s exclusive economic zone where Manila holds sovereign rights. 

China, however, claims historic rights over most of the South China Sea, including the Spratly archipelago, which the shoal forms a part of.

A Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesperson on Saturday said the Philippine supply vessel “intruded” into the waters near the shoal, called Ren’ai Jiao in Chinese, “without permission from the Chinese government.”

“China coast guard took necessary measures at sea in accordance with law to safeguard China’s rights, firmly obstructed the Philippines’ vessels, and foiled the Philippines’ attempt,” the ministry said.

“If the Philippines insists on going its own way, China will continue to adopt resolute measures,” the spokesperson said, warning that Manila “should be prepared to bear all potential consequences.”

U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson wrote on social media platform X that her country “stands with the Philippines” against China’s maneuvers.

Beijing’s “interference with the Philippines’ freedom of navigation violates international law and threatens a free and open Indo-Pacific,” she wrote.

Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Hae Kyong Yu also said that Canberra shares the Philippines’ “serious concerns about dangerous conduct by China’s vessels adjacent to Second Thomas Shoal.” 

“This is part of a pattern of deeply concerning behavior,” Yu wrote on X.

Edited by Jim Snyder.