Author: ASEAN Tribune

Members of a bipartisan congressional commission warned Wednesday that China’s use of technology to repress Muslim Uyghurs in its far-western Xinjiang is widening and could be exported around the world.

The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which Congress established in 2000, held a hearing in Washington to draw attention to human rights abuses and the strategic impact of mass surveillance technology and censorship used by China, including in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, co-chairperson of the 17-member commission, said that without proper guardrails to protect privacy and human rights, technology can be used by authoritarian regimes to control populations, prevent freedom of expression, and undermine democratic institutions.

China has “the most pervasive surveillance state the world has ever seen” using technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud computing, said Merkley, a U.S. senator from Oregon.

The government has amassed huge amounts of data from cell phones, personal computers, and security cameras to impose political and social control of targeted populations, he said.

“Nowhere do we see this more than in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” Merkley said.

For years, Chinese authorities have subjected Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang to arbitrary arrests and restrictions on their religious practice and culture. The system is enforced by a pervasive digitized system that monitors the every move of residents through surveillance drones, facial recognition cameras, mobile phone scans, and an extensive police presence.

China’s Digital Silk Road — a component of its Belt and Road Initiative to enhance digital connectivity abroad — is “an intrusive ecosystem of internet architecture and surveillance technology aiming to expand the People’s Republic of China’s influence around the world,” Rep. Chris Smith said.

“Chinese authorities’ relentless persecution of predominantly Muslims Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Central Asian people in the country’s Xinjiang region provides a disturbing preview of what these tools’ misuse [would be] on an even broader scale,” he said.

China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in “re-education” camps since 2017. It dismisses widely documented evidence, including testimony from former detainees and guards, that it has mistreated Muslims living inside and outside the camps.

Instead, Chinese officials contend that the camps are vocational training facilities used to prevent religious extremism and terrorism in the region, which is home to about 12 million Uyghurs.

But Geoffrey Cain, author of a recent book on surveillance in China, told commission members that former camp detainees and Uyghur and Kazakh refugees he had interviewed told similar stories about Xinjiang’s “descent into a total surveillance dystopia.”

China uses its Integrated Joint Operations Platform to store data collected from police human inputs, camera surveillance and criminal and court histories. It then takes the information to determine whether Uyghurs are likely to commit a crime, Cain said. Local police interrogate and detain Uyghurs flagged by the system through notifications sent to the authorities’ smartphones.

The technologies developed by Chinese tech firms such as telecom giant Huawei, facial recognition technology provider Megvii, and AI software provider SenseTime amount to a “system of mass psychological torture,” he said.

Xinjiang minority residents have a “feeling of constantly being watched not by humans, but by crude software algorithms designed to predict future crimes and acts of terrorism with great inaccuracy,” Cain said.

“The reasons for detention could be as far-flung as whether they went through the front or back door, whether they began a physical exercise routine suddenly, and whether they had the flu and were simply late for work that day,” Cain told the commission.

There was no immediate response about the hearing from the Chinese government.

‘Situation could have been far worse’

The hearing came two days after a three-hour virtual meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to discuss bilateral relations.

During the meeting, Biden underscored U.S. concerns about human rights in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, according to a briefing the following day by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. He did not elaborate on what was said.

Dolkun Isa, president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said he was grateful that Biden broached China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs during the virtual summit with Xi.

“If it was not for America’s condemnation of China committing genocide against Uyghurs, our situation could have been far worse today,” he told RFA on Tuesday.

“The Biden administration must boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics,” Isa said. “If it doesn’t, it’ll only embolden China to continue to commit the genocide.”

In June, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China urged Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, to postpone the 2022 Beijing Games and to relocate them if the host government did not end its human rights abuses.

The U.S. government has declared that the China’s campaign of abuse against Uyghurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity and genocide.

On the same day Biden and Xi met, the 2021 China Xinjiang Development Forum was held in Beijing to highlight the success of the Belt and Road Initiative and the important role Xinjiang has played, while accusing Washington of using the issue to weaken China.

“The U.S.-led Western anti-China forces time and again manufactured Xinjiang related empty claims such as ‘genocide,’ ‘forced labor,’ and ‘forced sterilization’ and used so-called human rights issues to harshly interfere in China’s internal affairs,” said Jiang Jianguo, vice minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department.

“Through political motives, they attempted to ‘use Xinjiang to contain China’ and ‘use terrorism to constrain China.’ By wreaking havoc in Xinjiang, they attempted to prevent the development of a strong China,” he said.

Authorities in China have detained more than 400 Myanmar migrant workers for more than a year for entering the country illegally and working without official documents, released migrants told RFA.

About 300 of the migrants were held at a prison in the southern coastal city of Dongguan, while the rest are detained inside a seafood factory in the city of Weihai, Shandong province, a peninsula that juts eastward into the Yellow Sea.

The 400 workers are among a pool of some 230,000 migrants who have sought work in China in the wake of armed conflict, environmental destruction and natural disasters in Myanmar, the Mekong region’s largest source of migrants, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. The undocumented status of the workers leaves them susceptible to exploitation at the hands of business owners and local officials.

Hailing from Kyauktaw township in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, Aye Lwin Than arrived in China in March 2018 to work in a wire factory in Dongguan. He was arrested in September 2020 and released one year later.

“It was a large dormitory, and there were many dormitories, each about five floors. There were 19 or 20 rooms on each floor and all the rooms were full,” Aye Lwin Than, who was granted her release in September, told RFA’s Myanmar Service about his time at the prison in Dongguan.

“When we arrived after being arrested, there were 27 or 28 occupants in each room. They were all, like us, arrested while working. We had no idea at the time how many months or years we would be there or when we would be released,” said Aye Lwin Than. He called the situation “hopeless.”

Aye Lwin Than said 20 Myanmar citizens worked with him at the factory. Nine men and eight women were arrested, and three others escaped, he said.

He and five others were sent to the prison in Dongguan. He said that he did not know the fate of the other 12.

“The police asked me how we came into the country, who the agent and brokers were, how long we had been in the country, where we had worked, how much we earned, and things like that. They never told us what charges we were being held under,” he said.

“They then took us away in handcuffs, gave us medical checks and sent us straight to prison. On the way, in the prison bus, I asked where my friends were and they said we would be staying at the same place, but I never saw them again,” Aye Lwin Than said.

The five others who went to prison with Aye Lwin Than included one person from Yangon, one from Kachin state and three from Rakhine. They were all released and deported to Myanmar in September 2020.

Family members of some of the detainees in the Dongguan prison told RFA that they needed help securing their release.

Myanmar migrants work at factories, construction sites, farms, restaurants and as domestic helpers in China. But they are not legally allowed to be there, a situation that leaves them vulnerable to abuses, including forced labor, wage theft, human trafficking, extortion and debt bondage, aid groups say.

Chinese government officials sometimes work with business owners to exploit migrants, according to Aung Myat Min, who told RFA he escaped from the Nishi Haitai Marine Food Co. plant in Weihai, Shandong province, where he and at least 90 others he is aware of were forced to work without pay.

While preparing seafood for export to South Korea and Japan, Aung Myat Min and 45 other Myanmar nationals were arrested by Chinese police, who said they could avoid prison by working for the company’s owner without pay.

He and the five others reported their situation to Myanmar’s embassy and were released with the embassy’s help. 

But 90 workers are still enslaved at the factory, he said.

“The company’s name is Yang Ming in Nishi Haitai Group, Wendeng district, Weihai, Shandong province. There were 46 of us, all Myanmars. We were held for two or three days in a big room in the company compound, which has iron gates and bars like a prison,” Aung Myat Min said.

“After three days, 28 other Myanmar nationals were brought in from another factory in Wendeng district. There were nine rooms in the dormitory. I and the other 45 people were kept in the nine rooms, with men and women separate. Each room held about nine people and they locked the door and we could not communicate with those in other rooms,” he said.

Aung Myat Min said there were 23 people who were detained at the factory before his group of 46 arrived. Another 28 people arrived later, bringing the total number of detained Myanmars working without pay there to 97.

Aung Myat Min said the factory’s Chinese owner and the police handcuffed and kept him in isolation for 11 days in another part of the factory when they found out he reported the situation to the Myanmar embassy. He gave the embassy a list of 90 of the detainees.

Aung Myat Min’s brother, who requested anonymity because he is still working in Wendeng district, told RFA that most factories in Weihai are working alongside the police and are likely holding about 300 Myanmar migrants who are being used as unpaid laborers.

“Of those arrested along with my brother, only four or five of them have been released. I don’t know where the others are being held now. Sometimes they are taken to work for other companies,” said Aung Myat Min’s brother.

“The embassy said they would be released in November. Even my brother was freed only about two months after we reported the situation to the embassy. I have no contact with the embassy now. Whenever we call them they just say everything will be all right. When we contact them, they only give us a reply after a week or more. I don’t know if they’re too busy to talk to us,” he said.

In a previous report, Aung Myat Min said he suspected the companies bribed the police so that they could exploit the workers.

There is no official bilateral agreement between China and Myanmar on migrant workers, but hundreds of thousands of Myanmar nationals go to China every year to work. Residents on the Chinese side of the border said most Myanmar workers in China are often considered illegal workers and often get arrested because there is no agreement for migrant labor.

China’s embassy in Myanmar told RFA that Beijing recognizes the rights and interests of foreigners in China.

“If foreigners in China encounter difficulties or disputes, they can seek help from the nearest local public security agencies or their country’s embassy or consulate in China,” the embassy said in an email.

In response to a question about Myanmar citizens detained in prisons, the embassy also said that China is a country ruled by law and foreigners should abide by those laws.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane Written in English by Eugene Whong.

A new tax on spring water in North Korea is eating into the income of poor people who make their living bottling it for sale to wealthier countrymen, sources in the country told RFA.

Every North Korean is given a government-assigned job but usually must find other ways to supplement their meager pay. For some, this has meant buying goods imported or smuggled from China and selling them at a markup in local marketplaces.

But those types of businesses require money to start with. Water trading is one of the few businesses available to even the poorest and most unskilled of North Koreans. Until now.

“This is the first time that the authorities have imposed a tax on spring water,” a resident of South Pyongan province’s Songchon county, which borders the capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service Nov. 7.

“An official of the people’s committee from the Ministry of National Territory Environment Protection is there at the spring to collect the tax in cash directly from the traders when they finish pumping out their water. The tax is 1,000 won (U.S. $0.20) for every 50 liters,” said the source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

That means that the tax would reduce the revenue from selling a liter bottle for 800 won by 2.5%.

Traders view the tax as another example of their government’s intrusiveness and resent the fact that their small incomes are being further diminished, sources said.

The economic crisis gripping North Korea — due in part to the closure of the border with China and suspension of all trade over the past two years in response to the coronavirus pandemic — pushed more people into the business of water trading in nearby Unsan county, a resident there told RFA.

“The spring water trade can earn cash immediately and doesn’t require any seed money, so it has been a great help to many residents struggling to survive. So, people are angry that the government is taxing the tiny income of the spring water traders,” said the second source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

The price the traders can get per liter depends on how they sell it. In November, the price was 300 won per liter when sold in large vinyl containers and 800 won per liter when sold in smaller plastic bottles. This was considerably higher than the price of water pre-pandemic, when the plastic bottled water sold for about 700 won.

To make sure that the water sellers pay their taxes, a governmental official arrives at the spring every dawn to monitor withdrawals. Only those who pay in advance are allowed to pump water, the second source said.

“It’s not that the traders won’t pay the tax, but they still complain that they are being taxed even before their first sale of the day.”

Bottled spring water has become somewhat of a status symbol in North Korea, the Seoul-based Korea Bizwire online news service reported in 2018.

The country’s poor water purification infrastructure makes tap water unsafe to drink without boiling it first. Even then, it might be unsafe to drink. Wealthier residents of North Korean cities are the only ones able to afford spring water, the report said.

The South Korea-based NK Daily newspaper reported in 2019 that severe electricity shortages and other factors prevented tap water from reaching many parts of the country. Residents of the city of Pyongsong, bordering Pyongyang, walked or drove to the Taedong River 10 km (6.2 miles) away to get water for use in their homes.

From this spread a grassroots industry of traders bottling and selling Taedong River water to Pyongsong residents. Unlike spring water, river water still required boiling to be drinkable, the report said.

Water is supplied to only 82.1 percent of North Korea because of unreliable electricity, lack of resource management, poor infrastructure, and other factors, the U.N. Population Fund reported in its 2014 Socio Economic Demographic Health Survey.

Statistics from the World Health Organization indicate that only 66% of North Korea’s drinking water in 2020 was classified as “safely managed,” compared to South Korea’s 99%.

Translated by Claire Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Lao workers hired six years ago to build homes for villagers displaced by construction of a China-backed dam are still waiting to be paid, while those who were resettled have yet to be compensated for lost land, a Lao-based coalition of government-monitoring groups says.

Payment for work on the Namtha 1 Dam Resettlement Villages is long overdue, Khamchanh Phomsengsavanh, vice president of the Lao Front for National Construction, told a meeting of the Lao National Assembly on Nov. 8.

“The wages of workers who built the resettlement villages in the Nalae district of Luang Namtha province in 2015 have still not been paid. And compensation to the villagers who lost land, crops, and other property to the dam project has not been paid either,” she said.

Dam developer The Namtha 1 Power Company hired two subcontractors, the Sengphet Company and Soakxay Company, in 2015 to build eleven resettlement villages — including homes, health centers, offices, roads, and schools — to house villagers displaced by the dam.

Dozens of villagers were then hired to do the work but have never been paid, former workers told RFA in interviews.

“I built a health center five years ago, and I still haven’t gotten paid,” one worker said. His employer had said he would pay him three million kip (U.S. $300) for the work, but then “just ran away.”

“Many carpenters and masons didn’t get paid, either,” the worker said, speaking like RFA’s other sources on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “The employer never came back and never told us whether he’s going to pay us or not. The authorities haven’t said anything about our payment either,” he said.

Another former worker said he had been part of a group of ten who had built homes and offices in a resettlement village.

“Most of us never got paid, and those who did get paid never got the full amount. We worked hard. The company still owes us,” he said.

“I asked an employee of the company about this, and he told me to ask my foreman. When I asked the foreman, the foreman told me to ask the company owner. Then I asked the owner, and he said that the payments had already been made.”

“It’s been going on like this for five years,” the worker said.

Financed by the China Southern Power Grid, parent company of the dam’s developers, the Namtha 1 Dam became operational in April 2019 after displacing more than 10,500 villagers who now live in resettlement towns on mountaintops near the dam’s reservoir.

Power generated by the 168-megawatt dam is now sold to two Chinese Special Economic Zones (SEZs) — the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Bokeo province and the Boten Special Economic Zone in Luang Namtha, both bordering China.

Difficult living conditions

Living conditions for Lao villagers displaced by the dam remain difficult, with farmland, rice fields, and vegetable gardens destroyed when the dam filled its reservoir to produce electricity, sources told RFA.

“They closed the dam’s gates and water flooded our crops,” said one villager in Nalae. “The dam developers and local authorities came to assess the damage three times, and we signed some papers, but nothing happened and no payment was ever made,” he said.

“We have no land for farming, and we have no jobs,” said another villager who moved to one of the dam’s resettlement areas five years ago.

“Neither the dam’s developer or the government will give us any land, so we have no choice now but to clear land on the mountain to grow whatever crops we can, and to raise chickens and pigs,” he said.

Speaking on Tuesday to RFA, an official in Nalae district’s Natural Resources and Environment Department said that authorities still have no plans to distribute land to the villagers displaced by the Namtha 1 Dam.

“The villagers will have to wait a little bit longer,” he said.

“And as for the unpaid wages and compensation, neither the dam developer or authorities in the district or the province have talked about this recently.”

Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries in its quest to become “the battery of Southeast Asia” by exporting the electricity to other countries in the region.

Though the Lao government sees power generation as a way to boost the country’s economy, the projects are controversial because of their environmental impact, displacement of villagers, and questionable financial arrangements.

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Naval ships from Japan and the United States have conducted their first ever anti-submarine warfare exercise in the South China Sea, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force said, as Tokyo steps up joint maritime activities in those disputed waters with Western and Southeast Asian partners.

The deployment of Japanese ships and planes to the region, while seen as in line with Japan’s maritime strategy toward Southeast Asia, will no doubt meet with protests from China, which claims most of the South China Sea.

A statement from the JMSDF said the helicopter destroyer JS Kaga, destroyer JS Murasame, a P-1 maritime patrol aircraft and an unnamed submarine took part in the drill Tuesday with the U.S. Navy’s USS Milius and a P-8A maritime patrol aircraft. It did not reveal the exact location of the exercise.

The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), or the Japanese Navy as it’s commonly known, said in the statement: “In this exercise, the JMSDF submarine conducted (an) anti-submarine warfare exercise with the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea for the first time, further improving our tactical skills and interoperability between the JMSDF and the U.S. Navy.”

The Japanese ships, together with four helicopters, an Oyashio-class submarine and a maritime patrol aircraft, are part of the JMSDF’s Indo-Pacific Deployment 2021 (IPD21) task group formed to highlight Tokyo’s interest and commitment in a “free and open” Indo-Pacific, as well as Japan’s cooperation with other navies in the region, according to Japanese defense officials.

The IPD21 started in late August and the ships are scheduled to return to Japan by Nov. 25.

Before the anti-submarine exercise, on Nov. 14 the JS Kaga and JS Murasame conducted a bilateral exercise with the Philippine Navy frigate BRP Joze Rizal after a port call to Subic in the Philippines.

Major policy shift

The two destroyers also made a port call in Cam Ranh Bay in central Vietnam on Nov. 5-7 and took part in a goodwill exercise with the Vietnamese Navy’s Gepard-class frigate Dinh Tien Hoang.

During the second half of November, there will be more bilateral and multilateral exercises, according to the JMSDF.  Most notably, from Nov. 21 to 30 in the waters around Japan, two multilateral exercises will be conducted with the JMSDF, the U.S. Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, the German Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy.

A total of 20 JMSDF ships and 40 JMSDF aircraft, 10 U.S. Navy ships, two Australian Navy ships, a Canadian ship and a German Navy ship will take part in these drills.

Japan — whose military activity is constrained by its post-World War II pacifist constitution — introduced a major security policy shift under the government of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Since then, the Japanese Navy has expanded its presence and joint maritime activities in the South China Sea in order to promote a regional ‘rules-based order’.

“Japan has greatly increased its ability to project its maritime power and shrugged off longstanding taboos on security policy in doing so. Geopolitically it is a response to a heightened perception of risk due to China’s military modernization program and regional hegemonic ambitions,” Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies and a professor at Temple University in Tokyo said in an earlier interview with RFA.

“Japan participates in the Quad (grouping between the U.S., India, Japan and Australia) and has been an advocate of a free and open Indo-Pacific, a concept aimed at containing the expansion of China’s regional influence that involves, among other things, joint naval exercises,” Kingston said.

Experts say the South China Sea is now playing an important part in Japan’s maritime strategy where Tokyo is taking a multilateral approach to pushing back on Chinese territorial claims.

Capacity building

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), more than 40 percent of Japan’s maritime trade passes through the South China Sea.

China’s growing assertiveness against other claimant states in the South China Sea, and Japan in the East China Sea “presents another grave concern for Japan,” said a new report by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

“Japan has traditionally been a provider of maritime capacity-building assistance for Southeast Asian states, offering activities ranging from joint exercises, training opportunities in Japan for defense personnel to equipment transfer,” said the report.

Vietnam and the Philippines, “the nations that straddle the north section of the South China Sea, and flank the important PRC submarine base on Hainan Island” have become important maritime security partners for Japan, wrote John Bradford, executive director of the Yokosuka Council on Asia Pacific Studies, on the Center for International Maritime Security website.

Bradford added that “the JMSDF’s relationship with the Philippine Navy is the most developed of its Southeast Asia partnerships.”

According to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the JMSDF has provided 12 patrol vessels, 13 high-speed boats, a coast monitoring radar system and training to the Philippine Navy. To Vietnam, it transferred six patrol vessels and seven used vessels together with related equipment.

Japan is carrying out a large number of capacity-building projects in countries in the South China Sea as “Southeast Asia has clearly become a new nexus in Japan’s maritime strategy,” noted Bradford.

Hong Kong’s second-in-command has called on the media to “ensure its credibility,” amid growing concerns over curbs on press freedom in the city, local media reported on Wednesday.

Chief secretary John Lee told government broadcaster RTHK that “fake information that’s destructive must be stopped,” according to an RTHK news story.

“There are two ways to deal with the problem. One is to manage it, and the other is to criminalize it,” Lee said. “Personally, I think we should first try to manage it because we want to strike a balance.”

“If the industry has self-discipline and introduce[s] regulations as well as a management or punishment mechanism, will the government still need to introduce laws? We can study further,” he said.

Since the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a draconian national security law on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020, police have engaged in an ongoing and citywide crackdown on all forms of public dissent and political opposition, with election rules changed to ensure only pro-CCP candidates can run and dozens of former opposition lawmakers now behind bars on “subversion” charges.

Next Digital, which published the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was raided by national security police and its senior journalists and founder Jimmy Lai charged with “collusion with foreign powers” in connection with calls in the newspaper for international sanctions against Hong Kong and Chinese officials over the crackdown on dissent.

Lee’s comments on Wednesday came amid an outcry from press freedom groups and industry associations over the Hong Kong government’s recent refusal to renew the working visa of Sue-Lin Wong, the Hong Kong correspondent for The Economist.

Wong, who is Australian, wasn’t in Hong Kong at the time of the decision, and is currently unable to return there.

According to a Nov. 12 statement by The Economist’s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, the authorities gave no reason for the decision, while Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam declined to comment on individual cases, saying on Nov. 16 that the city has “sovereignty” to make such decisions.

“Hong Kong’s refusal to renew a visa for The Economist’s correspondent Sue-Lin Wong shreds repeated claims by the Hong Kong government that it upholds press freedom,” Steven Butler, Asia program coordinator for the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement.

“Hong Kong authorities should reverse this decision immediately and allow journalists—local and international—to work without interference.”

The denial of a visa to Wong came after similar refusals issued to New York Times reporter Chris Buckley and Hong Kong Free Press editor Aaron McNicholas last year, and to the Financial Times’ Victor Mallet in 2018.

Obstacles, delays

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong said it was “deeply concerned” over Wong’s treatment, which it said “further highlights the concerns raised in the FCC’s survey of correspondent and journalist members on the state of press freedom in Hong Kong published on Nov. 5.”

It said 24 percent of respondents to the survey said they had experienced “slight delays or obstacles” in obtaining visas, while 29 percent said they had experienced “considerable obstacles or delays.”

“We again call on the government to provide concrete assurances that applications for employment visas and visa extensions will be handled in a timely manner with clearly-stated requirements and procedures, and that the visa process for journalists will not be politicized or weaponized,” the FCC said in a statement on its website.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) said the city shouldn’t deny work visas to foreign journalists without proper justification.

“There has been a marked rise in the number of foreign journalists whose visa extensions were rejected without reason,” it said in a statement. “The HKJA is concerned that these are not isolated events, but a tightening grip over foreign media in Hong Kong.”

It said such decision would mean foreign media organizations will likely relocate to other Asian cities.

Chief executive Carrie Lam said visas are issued at the discretion of governments anywhere.

“I’ve been denied a visa into the United States of America. I would dispute that, but that was the autonomy and the discretion of the U.S. government,” she said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.