Day: April 18, 2024

The U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea approved a request from UNICEF for a sanctions exemption so that vaccine storage equipment could be transported into North Korea, U.N. documents showed.

UNICEF sent a letter to the committee on March 11 saying the cold chain equipment, which includes refrigeration units used to store vaccines, was critical to the successful distribution of vaccines to women and children in North Korea.

The U.N. has imposed economic sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in an effort to defund the country’s nuclear program. Humanitarian organizations like UNICEF must apply for exemptions to these sanctions in order to legally transport goods into North Korea.

The committee approved all of UNICEF’s requests on March 20 under the stipulation that all necessary equipment be delivered in a single shipment to expedite the customs clearance process.

The committee also requested that UNICEF staff remain on-site in North Korea to monitor the distribution and use of the equipment.

The cold chain technology, manufactured in France, is estimated to have a total value of $85,000. 

Dr. David Hong, who visited North Korea seven times between 2015-2019 to volunteer at Pyongyang Okryu Children’s Hospital, emphasized the importance of the equipment to public health in North Korea.

“Their ability to produce and store vaccines has been limited by these cold chain components, so thinking about the future and other possible outbreaks, this is probably pretty essential,” he told RFA.

“It’s an interesting support component because there’s some instability in their power grid.”

‘It’s not reaching the right people’

It is not yet clear whether UNICEF will be granted entry into North Korea to deliver and distribute the equipment.

UNICEF told RFA in February that its staff members have been unable to enter North Korea since the country closed its borders in 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

The organization announced in its annual report released in February that it was unable to provide “a comprehensive assessment of the health situation facing women and children in North Korea” due to the absence of international staff on the ground. 

Human rights experts have raised concerns about North Korea’s decision to open its borders to Russian tourists while continuing to deny entry to international aid organizations.

Robert R. King, former Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, criticized Pyongyang’s border policies in a statement at the U.S. State Department on Feb. 23.

“The people who are coming for tourism are spending a little bit of money, but it’s not reaching the right people – the people that really need assistance from humanitarian organizations,” he said.

Responding to questions from RFA about the aid delivery, Simon Ingram, a spokesman from the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office, was unable to confirm exactly when international aid workers would be able to enter North Korea.

“We continue to urge our government partners in DPR Korea to facilitate the earliest possible return of our international staff,” he said.

“The reopening of the border and the return of UNICEF’s full team to DPR Korea will be critical to ensuring more essential support can be provided in 2024 and programmes can be scaled up as necessary to meet the needs of children and women,” he said, using an acronym to refer to North Korea.

However, he did reaffirm that UNICEF would be delivering the equipment within 12 months of the approval date.

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Claire McCrea and Malcolm Foster.

Photos in the folder

 

The Thai Foreign Ministry urged Myanmar’s military junta to release Aung San Suu Kyi in a statement that also welcomed this week’s move of the former de facto leader to house arrest.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was transferred out of Naypyidaw Prison under tight security on Tuesday. It was believed that the 78-year-old had been held in solitary confinement at the prison in the capital. Her new location was unclear.

Former President Win Myint was also moved to house arrest on Tuesday in central Myanmar’s Bago region. 

The transfers were “a positive step in responding to the concerns of the international community,” Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara said in a statement on Wednesday.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew an elected government in February 2021. 

The military junta has ignored a five-point consensus it agreed to with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in April 2021, which included a call for a ceasefire and dialogue between all parties in Myanmar.

“The Thai Government calls for further positive steps in this direction leading to their immediate full release in order to advance the implementation of the ASEAN five-points consensus,” Parnpree said in the statement.

Parnpree visited the Myanmar border on April 12 just after the army lost control of the major border town of Myawaddy. 

The takeover by anti-junta forces sent thousands of people toward the border and caused neighboring Thailand’s armed forces to deploy soldiers alongside Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridges, which regulate both people and goods and connect Myawaddy to Thailand’s Mae Sot. 

Parnpree urged the junta to refrain from further violence in the region. He said that people fleeing the fighting would be allowed into Thailand “on a strictly humanitarian basis.”

On Thursday, ASEAN’s foreign ministers said they were “deeply concerned over the recent escalation of conflicts” in Myawaddy and in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the ethnic rebel Arakan Army has captured eight townships since ending a year-long ceasefire in November.

“We call on all parties to take urgent steps towards mitigating the impact of conflicts on the civilians, including creating a safe and conducive environment to ensure the timely and safe delivery of humanitarian assistance,” the ministers said in a statement.

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

The Thai Foreign Ministry urged Myanmar’s military junta to release Aung San Suu Kyi in a statement that also welcomed this week’s move of the former de facto leader to house arrest.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was transferred out of Naypyidaw Prison under tight security on Tuesday. It was believed that the 78-year-old had been held in solitary confinement at the prison in the capital. Her new location was unclear.

Former President Win Myint was also moved to house arrest on Tuesday in central Myanmar’s Bago region. 

The transfers were “a positive step in responding to the concerns of the international community,” Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara said in a statement on Wednesday.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew an elected government in February 2021. 

The military junta has ignored a five-point consensus it agreed to with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in April 2021, which included a call for a ceasefire and dialogue between all parties in Myanmar.

“The Thai Government calls for further positive steps in this direction leading to their immediate full release in order to advance the implementation of the ASEAN five-points consensus,” Parnpree said in the statement.

Parnpree visited the Myanmar border on April 12 just after the army lost control of the major border town of Myawaddy. 

The takeover by anti-junta forces sent thousands of people toward the border and caused neighboring Thailand’s armed forces to deploy soldiers alongside Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridges, which regulate both people and goods and connect Myawaddy to Thailand’s Mae Sot. 

Parnpree urged the junta to refrain from further violence in the region. He said that people fleeing the fighting would be allowed into Thailand “on a strictly humanitarian basis.”

On Thursday, ASEAN’s foreign ministers said they were “deeply concerned over the recent escalation of conflicts” in Myawaddy and in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the ethnic rebel Arakan Army has captured eight townships since ending a year-long ceasefire in November.

“We call on all parties to take urgent steps towards mitigating the impact of conflicts on the civilians, including creating a safe and conducive environment to ensure the timely and safe delivery of humanitarian assistance,” the ministers said in a statement.

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

A university professor who gatecrashed the opening ceremony of a new Confucius Institute at Spain’s Seville University last week tried to warn the school authorities for years that the language and cultural centers have been linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations, she told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.

Journalism professor Mar Llera jumped onto the dais along with a research team member during the ceremony, as the university’s rector, Miguel Ángel Castro was welcoming participants to the ceremony on April 8, holding up a poster protesting the opening.

She told security guards she wouldn’t be moved, and remained in place for several minutes, before they tried again, this time reassuring her that the protest had been registered by several media organizations. At that point she agreed to leave.

Ángel Castro said in a statement after the inauguration that he “regretted the attempt to hinder the event,” and that Llera’s protest “does not fit into our most dignified spaces.”

The Confucius Institute will teach Chinese, and offer “cultural dissemination,” and will offer a “specialized library” for those interested in Chinese language and culture.

The University of Seville appears to be bucking a global trend in recent years to terminate contracts with Confucius Institutes.

In 2019, Britain’s ruling Conservative Party called for a review of the institutes’ presence on university campuses, while a 2019 report from a U.S. Senate subcommittee found that they could constitute a threat to university life and freedom of speech in the U.S., as their funding comes “with strings attached.”

The report found that the Chinese Communist Party has poured more than U.S.$158 million into U.S. universities to fund Confucius Institutes since 2006, and recommended they be shut down if there is no way to improve transparency in their dealings with U.S. universities.

Subsequent pushback prompted many schools to terminate their agreements, and the number of Confucius Institutes in the United States has plummeted from more than 100 to around a dozen, according to a report last year by the Hudson Institute.

Longstanding concerns

The April 8 protest wasn’t the first time Llera, who has a research interest in China and Taiwan, has tried to make her concerns known.

“We felt obliged to protest,” said Llera, who said she waited more than three years to get a meeting with the vice-chancellor to raise her concerns. 

“One month ago, the vice chancellor, knowing that they were going to open this institute without being informed, received us. I should acknowledge that I was late because I was confused [about the venue.] So we had just 15 minutes,” she said. 

“During these 15 minutes I explained that, first of all, 130 Confucius Institutes have been kind of closed down all around the world and this is because … there is evidence shown by the intelligence services that they pose a threat to our national security,” she said in an interview with RFA Mandarin on April 17. “They spy on scholars and students.”

“They instrumentalize these Confucius Institutes as a means for sharp power, to infiltrate our institutions, democratic institutions, and to subvert their functioning,” she said.

But her words fell on deaf ears, Llera said.

“After all this evidence, she couldn’t reply, she couldn’t provide me with any counter-argument, and she just said, ‘we will pay attention to what’s going on.’” 

“She finished by stressing that as a vice-chancellor, she doesn’t want to be involved in politics because university and politics are different things,” she said. “Of course she’s involved in politics. She has a position of power. She’s carrying out educational and public policies in a public institution.”

Not backing down

The vice-chancellor didn’t mention to Llera that the school was planning to open its very own Confucius Institute just a couple of weeks after that meeting.

“The vice-chancellor said, we don’t have any premises, any venue, any appropriate building to carry out these activities. So we’re not going to do anything. And she was clearly lying to us,” Llera said. “We felt outraged. We felt the moral responsibility of carrying out a public protest and we wanted it to have an impact because we know that most people in Spain … don’t agree with policies by our authorities.”

Seville University authorities did not respond to RFA’s request for comment on Llera’s assertions

Llera remains convinced she did the right thing.

“I felt such a determination, such a peace, inner peace, even joy, I was really bold. I felt that truth was with me,” she said. “I felt really blessed by the spirits of those who are suffering in China and who have suffered [and] battered by this brutal regime.”

Llera has personal experience of what she called the insidious impact of Confucius Institutes on university campuses.

“When I was in Granada in 2015, the director of the Confucius Institute, or someone who was in charge of these activities, I don’t remember the specific position, he told us that I could’t take any more pictures with political dissidents because of my position,” she said.

“Also after I invited Alice Chao to my university, also a political dissident from the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, he told me, you know that you’re risking your career. I mean, your academic career, you can encounter obstacles,” Llera said. “He was really threatening to me, sort of smiling and saying, I’m surprised how naive you are.”

So far, Llera hasn’t received any threats, indirect or otherwise.

“There was a person two hours after the protest [who] was telling me off,” she said. “But I didn’t care.”

“But I didn’t receive any warning. They know that a lot of media are publishing my articles, or articles related to my activities,” Llera said.

“And they know that we are right and they are wrong.”

Edited by Luisetta Mudie.

An ethnic armed group intercepted a junta retaliation near the Thai-Myanmar border on Thursday, according to an announcement from rebel forces.

The Karen National Liberation Army, an armed branch of the Karen National Union, along with other allied groups, captured the last remaining junta Infantry Battalion 275 near a border town in Myanmar’s Kayin state on Wednesday. 

In response, the junta launched state-level offensive “Operation Aung Zeya” to capture Myawaddy city, according to a Karen National Union statement released Thursday. 

Karen National Liberation Army joint forces destroyed military vehicles, including an armored vehicle, while junta troops were marching enroute to Myawaddy, it continued. According to the Karen National Union, more than 100 junta troops were injured and killed, and the group was stopped at Dawna Hills, a mountain range extending through Kayin state.

Radio Free Asia  reached out to a Karen National Union spokesperson by phone today to learn more about the retaliation, but he did not respond.

On high alert

A Myawaddy resident who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told RFA that the Karen army had warned some villages about junta airstrikes, which began on Tuesday evening.

“The villages near Infantry Battalion 275 have been ordered to be evacuated by the Karen National Union due to air raids,” he said. “On April 18, people are telling each other to evacuate starting from today.”

Civilians are waiting to go to Thailand through the Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, while other Myawaddy residents are monitoring the situation, he said, adding that everyone is worried. 

Another resident in the border city said the Karen National Army, formerly the junta-aligned Border Guard Force but now aligned with the KNLA, are patrolling the streets and warning the residents to be prepared to evacuate quickly if heavy fighting breaks out.

Junta forces fired with heavy weapons and bombarded villages along their marching route during their offensive, causing civilian casualties and property damage, the Karen National Union’s statement said.

The junta has not released any information on the attack. RFA called junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for more information, but he did not pick up the phone.

Since April 5, the Karen National Liberation Army and joint forces have captured the junta camps 355, 356 and 357 in Kayin state’s Thin Gan Nyi Naung town, in addition to Falu camp and Kyaik Don Byu Har hill camp and others around Myawaddy city.

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

China has slammed an annual Philippine-U.S. joint military exercise scheduled to begin next week, warning against “maritime provocations.”

More than 16,000 Filippino and U.S. troops are expected to take part in the joint exercise Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder), now in its 39th year but which for the first time will be conducted outside the Philippines’ territorial waters.

The territorial sea, measured 12 nautical miles from the shore, is where a coastal state has sovereignty and exclusive jurisdiction not only to the sea, but also to the airspace. 

The U.S. Embassy in Manila calls this year’s exercise from April 22 to May 18 “our most expansive Balikatan yet.”

It said in a statement that the drills will include territorial defense and targeting simulated enemy forces in Luzon and Palawan, the areas facing Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Two countries – Australia and France – are sending troops to participate in Balikatan 2024 while 14 countries will attend as observers.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a press briefing in Beijing that Manila “needs to be fully aware that when countries outside the region are brought into the South China Sea to flex muscles and stoke confrontation, tensions could get worse and the region will only become less stable.”

The exercise is an act of handing over the Philippines’ security to outside forces, Lin said, adding that it “will only lead to greater insecurity and turn oneself into someone else’s chess piece.”

The spokesman urged the countries involved in Balikatan 2024 to stop stoking confrontation in the South China Sea and said that China will continue to take necessary measures “to firmly safeguard our territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.”

‘Not targeting any country’

Filipino officials on Thursday responded to China’s statement saying Balikatan exercises are “not directed towards any specific country.”

“This long standing initiative, spanning several years, is aimed at enhancing cooperation, fostering training opportunities, and strengthening regional stability,” Col. Francel Margareth Padillat, spokesperson for the Philippine armed forces, told BenarNews, an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

Balikatan 2024 is also aimed at testing the Philippines’ new defense strategy in order to protect the country’s interests in the South China Sea.

Past Balikatan exercises have been carried out inside military camps in northern Philippines and this year’s drills and locations indicate a shift in Manila’s defense priorities.

Col. Michael Logico, the Philippine Balikatan spokesman, said Balikatan 2024 will be conducted in accordance with the new Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept, with focus on external security challenges, especially in the maritime domain. 

Vessels from the Philippines and China have been confronting each other near some of the disputed islands in the part of South China Sea under Manila’s jurisdiction, called the West Philippine Sea by Filipinos.

The Philippine coast guard said its ships have been harassed and fired at with water cannons by the Chinese coast guard.

A U.N. arbitral tribunal in 2016 ruled in favor of the Philippines and rejected all China’s claims in the South China Sea but Beijing refused to accept the verdict.

Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.