Asean Tribune

Taiwanese presidential candidate and incumbent vice president Lai Ching-te has confirmed his running mate will be Hsiao Bi-khim, the democratic island’s former envoy in Washington, who has described herself as a “cat warrior” in the face of China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomacy.

“It is my great honor to announce that I’ve chosen @bikhim – a warrior for democracy and one of #Taiwan’s most influential ambassadors – as my running mate,” Lai said via his X account on Monday.

“Fueled by shared commitment, we pledge to build a brighter future for all. Together, we’ll work towards a stronger Taiwan,” he said.

The choice of Hsiao, 52, suggests the ruling Democratic Progressive Party will still be campaigning on a platform of protecting Taiwan’s democratic way of life from China’s territorial ambitions and expanding its diplomatic reach, a platform that brought a landslide victory for outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen in 2020.

Hsiao, who has served as Taipei’s de facto ambassador to the United States and who has been sanctioned as an “independence diehard” by Beijing, said she has shared values with Lai including defending Taiwan’s freedom and democracy.

“I believe we have lots of common convictions – we are both willing to take on responsibility for Taiwan,” she said, according to official footage of the announcement streamed to YouTube.

“I’ve described myself as a cat warrior,” she said. “That’s because, in diplomacy, you have to step cautiously, lightly, but sure-footedly, like a cat.”

She said her decision to run on Lai’s ticket came against a background of “one-sided and constant changes in the status quo made by the other side,” in a reference to Beijing’s escalation of military threats and disinformation campaigns targeting the island as Tsai’s administration continued to forge stronger ties with Washington, in part spurred on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

During her tenure in Washington, Hsiao has built a network of strong connections with administration officials despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties with the United States, which  switched recognition to Beijing in 1979.

Washington  is obliged by the Taiwan Relations Act to help the island defend itself, while the 2022 Taiwan Policy Act allows Washington to provide U.S.$4.5 billion in security assistance over four years.

Hsiao’s tenure has been linked to the development of “the most mutually trusting” relationship with Washington so far, Lai said, adding that Beijing’s criticism of their likely pairing last week showed the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to involve itself in the presidential race.

The announcement of Lai’s running mate comes amid mounting doubts about the success of  a planned opposition pact between the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party, whose candidates would otherwise split the opposition vote, according to media reports.

With the deadline for candidate registration looming at the end of this week, Taiwan People’s Party presidential candidate Ko Wen-je said on Sunday he intends to remain his party’s presidential candidate, while Kuomintang chairman Eric Chu said the opposition alliance would likely be finalized by Wednesday, sparking widespread doubts that the two parties can yet reach an agreement on who should run for president, Ko or Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih.

Former Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Lin Chuo-shui said if Lai wins the presidency, Washington will feel it has a strong channel of communication open with Taipei, which is a selling point for the Lai-Hsiao campaign.

Blue-white challenge

But he said if the opposition manages to seal its pact and campaign on a single ticket, it could pose a major threat to the pairing.

“It’s now mainstream politics to campaign on a Taiwanese identity, on defending ourselves against China, and on broadening international diplomatic support for Taiwan,” Lin said.

“That favors the DPP, but any cooperation between the blue [Kuomintang] and white [People’s Party] camps could still pose a big challenge,” he said.

Kuomintang lawmaker Chen I-hsin said a replacement for Hsiao needs to be found in Washington “as soon as possible.”

“A change of general just before the battle is going to have an impact,” he said.

Former Chinese citizen Zola, who is now a permanent resident of Taiwan, said China can’t stand the Lai-Hsiao pairing because both candidates have fairly clean records, and aren’t easy to undermine with disinformation.

“The Communist Party prefers corrupt people, who are easy to influence and control,” he said. “Lai and Hsiao are both democratically elected representatives who can’t be controlled.”

“This is what should happen in a democratic country … The Chinese Communist Party may want ‘unification‘ under a Greater China, but Taiwan’s 23 million people should decide what they want for themselves,” he said.

Chinese president Xi Jinping told President Biden last week that he has no intention of invading Taiwan in the next few years, which some analysts said could weaken any candidate who relies on boosting the island’s defenses as a key plank in their platform.

According to Chen Li-fu, chairman of the Taiwan Association of Professors, the Kuomintang is more likely to be undermined by Xi’s comments, now that Lai’s campaign has chosen to frame national defense as a path to peace and the maintenance of the status quo, while the Kuomintang has tried to appeal to young people who don’t want to be conscripted to serve in a cross-strait war.

“Xi Jinping’s comment to Biden that he has no intention of attacking Taiwan … is tantamount to telling people not to vote for the Democratic Progressive Party,” Chen said. 

“But if the Chinese Communist Party isn’t invading, then these young people will never have to fight, so the strategy collapses,” he said, adding that Lai has been careful not to sound too hawkish during his candidacy.

Meanwhile, former defense minister Tsai Ming-hsien has said outright that he “doesn’t believe” Xi, amid an official silence on the topic from Beijing since the leaders met.

Taiwanese military analyst Chieh Chung said it remains to be seen whether the People’s Liberation Army will keep up its military incursions and sabre-rattling around Taiwan, as it has in recent months.

“Taiwanese people are more acutely aware that the Chinese Communist Party’s military aircraft and warships often appear around [the island],” Chieh said. “If this situation doesn’t improve significantly, I think there will still be a sense of crisis among the Taiwanese people.”

“If Beijing keeps going with high-intensity military activity around Taiwan, then people will still feel uneasy that war could break out at any time,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

Former Tibetan political prisoner Golog Jigme was named a recipient of the 2023 Democracy Award for Individual Courage at the National Endowment for Democracy’s 40th Anniversary Democracy Awards on Nov. 14.

According to a Nov. 9 NED press release, the Individual Courage award honors democracy activists for their “overwhelming courage in the face of unspeakable consequences,” and was awarded to Golog Jigme on behalf of “all activists killed or imprisoned in 2023.”

Golog Jigme is both a human rights activist and filmmaker. In 2008, he co-produced the documentary “Leaving Fear Behind,” which highlighted the injustices faced by Tibetans under Chinese rule. 

Golog Jigme and his co-producer Dhondup Wangchen were both imprisoned and tortured by Chinese authorities shortly after the film’s release. He was arrested three times between 2008 and 2012 before finally escaping Tibet in 2014. 

Now residing in Switzerland, he continues to work with human rights organizations to “hold China accountable for [its] atrocities in Tibet,” the NED press release states.

“I am so happy to receive this award and believe that this honor recognizes the struggle of every Tibetans who has and continues to sacrifice their lives to speak up against the Chinese communist government,” the activist told RFA. 

“But at the same time, it is also disheartening that there are still so many imprisoned Tibetans inside Tibet and many who have died inside these prisons.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This story includes graphic descriptions of violence.

Months after they narrowly escaped being murdered by junta-aligned soldiers, Ko Aung Aung* and Ko Moe Kyaw* still bear gruesome scars across their necks. Yet they are the lucky ones, two among three survivors of extrajudicial killings carried out by the Shanni Nationalities Army that saw five others murdered on a single night in Kachin state’s Se Zin village. 

In all, a group of approximately 100 people arrested en masse in Se Zin last year are believed to have been killed by security forces between August 2022 and January 2023 while others died due to horrific prison conditions, according to local rights monitors, a witness, and the accounts of the two survivors who spoke with RFA. 

The detainees ranged in age from a 14-year-old boy to a 67-year-old man. All were arrested in August 2022, following a raid in Se Zin in which junta soldiers razed hundreds of homes.

Ko Aung Aung’s and Ko Moe Kyaw’s unlikely survival offers a unique window into the lawlessness that has become a norm under the military regime.

“When we arrived at the scene, we were forced to sit on our haunches. Then I heard sounds of hitting and [people] falling down together with stones. We were being killed. I thought they were beating us, but I did not think they were cutting throats,” Ko Aung Aung told RFA months later. 

The rare accounts also shed light on extrajudicial murders, which campaigners say is a matter of increasing concern with nearly 20,000 people currently in custody in prisons across the country.

“The Se Zin incident is extremely horrible. It is an international crime,” said a Kachin analyst who has researched the incident and corroborated the accounts shared by the two survivors. He asked not to be named for fear of his safety. 

“It is just one example and many similar incidents are happening. It is because the violators of human rights are repeatedly unpunished and they have enjoyed impunity.”  

‘They came in and beat us with iron sticks’

In early 2022, Ko Aung Aung arrived in Kachin state’s Se Zin village looking for work. The 39-year-old hoped the gold mines of Hpakant township might provide the subsistence wages he had struggled to find in his native Sagaing region. 

Ko Moe Kyaw, 23, had arrived around the same time and for much the same reason. Like Ko Aung Aung, he found work at a gold mine digging the earth. 

The two were among the hundreds of thousands who work in the gold, jade and rare earth mines that dot this mineral-rich land. 

But the jobs come with no small risk. Mine collapses are common, as are landslides, and the environmental and health costs are steep. The dangers lie outside of the mines, too. Kachin state has always been among the most lawless parts of Myanmar, with gangs, militias and the government’s military forces vying for the region’s wealth. 

Since the coup, such fighting has only intensified, and post-coup clashes between the military and those against its rule, such as the People’s Defense Force, have added a new level of chaos.

 

Starting in July 2022, weeks of fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) against junta forces and their allies in Hpakant township resulted in thousands of displaced civilians. After the KIA and PDF seized both a junta camp and SNA military camp, the junta launched airstrikes on Se Zin village and set fire to more than 400 homes. 

At least 15 people were killed, and the military detained some 400 people in and around Se Zin — rounding them up in a monastery where they were questioned about their ties to the anti-junta forces. 

Approximately 100 of them were then brought to the local police station. 

“When we arrived at the police station, we were forced to lie face down and beaten. They asked us whether we had connections with the PDF and when we said no, they beat us again. After putting us in the cell, they came in and beat us with iron sticks,” Ko Aung Aung recounted. 

The intervening months brought worsening horrors. Though RFA can not corroborate their accounts, the survivors said they were treated brutally, given scant food and only one liter of water each day to split among 10 prisoners. Ko Moe Kyaw and Ko Aung Aung said they shared a small cell with 13 others, four of whom died of fever in the months after their arrest. Two others were allegedly killed by police in December, including a 14-year-old who was beaten with a stick until his shinbone protruded from his skin.

The four who died in custody were taken away by a car and thrown into the Uyu river, according to Ko Moe Kyaw. Other detainees who arrived later were beaten to death because there was no place for them in the police station.

All the while, men were taken from their cells each night, never to return.  

Released into hell 

Finally, on the night of Jan. 19, it was their turn. Ko Moe Kyaw, Ko Aung Aung and six others were pulled from their cells for interrogation and handed over to Shanni Nationalities Army forces. Unlike many other ethnic armed organizations that have long fought Myanmar’s military, the SNA has in recent years aligned itself with the junta, as it is in opposition with the KIA.  

Once in the SNA soldiers’ custody, the men were tied to motorcycles and driven into the jungle. 

“Our mouths were sealed with tape, our eyes were covered with cloth, and our hands were tied behind our backs by three ropes,” Ko Aung Aung recounted to RFA. 

Upon arrival, they were brought to what appeared in the dark to be a ditch of sorts. 

“I was forced to sit on the edge of a knoll and hit twice on the back of my head and when I fell down, my throat was cut. [A guy] sat astride me to cut my throat when I was lying on my back.”

Nearby lay Ko Moe Kyaw, who said he believed the drunkenness of the soldiers saved him from worse injury. 

“They were heavily drunk, so they could not cut my throat deeply. Others fell down on their backs. I fell down in a prone position,” he told RFA.

When the soldiers departed, the three survivors took stock of their surroundings. 

“One man got up first and said if you are not dead, get up. Then, one had to sit and the other stood. One took off the cloth covering his eyes and his mouth. We also cut each others’ ropes with our mouths to untie them,” said Ko Moe Kyaw. “Since we could not go anywhere, we slept beside the dead bodies that night.”

By the light of day, they discovered their would-be grave was the open pit of a former gold mine. As they sought help, Ko Aung Aung, the most seriously injured of the three, nearly passed out due to the heavy bleeding. 

They made it to an undisclosed safe location, where a doctor working with the Civil Disobedience Movement, or CDM, treated their injuries. 

“Each had an injury on the back of their heads. There were also cuts on their necks,” the doctor told RFA. On his Facebook page, he posted images of the men’s wounds as well as the accounts of their near-death experience.   

Speaking on the condition of anonymity for security reasons, a Se Zin resident said prisoners at the police station were regularly pulled out to be murdered.

They “were killed by cutting their throats.… It was like cutting a chicken’s head off,” he said. Over the course of the months he occasionally saw others who escaped alive. 

 “One man’s injury was so severe that I did not dare to look at it. It was a deep cut under Adam’s apple. The other one was just beaten.”

SNA spokesperson Col. Sai Aung Mein and military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun could not be reached for comment while Win Ye Tun, Kachin state’s Military Council Minister for Social Affairs and spokesperson, said he had no knowledge of this incident.

A similar pattern 

While the accounts shared by the two survivors cannot be fully verified, they share commonalities with war crimes recorded across Myanmar as junta soldiers utilize torture, mutilation and beheadings to terrify the civilian population.

Two videos recently obtained by RFA from a civil society group that has been recording human rights violations in Kachin state show similar atrocities being carried out by security forces. 

The first video was found on the phone of an SNA soldier who was arrested by the KIA. In an interview with the civil society group, the soldier said it had been shared by his trainer. 

The video shows an SNA soldier and a man in plain clothes, both armed, repeatedly stabbing two unmoving men lying on the ground.  

In the background, voices can be heard giving orders in Shanni, Kachin and Burmese languages, telling the soldiers to put the knife into the heart. 

Tony Loughran, a former British Special Forces medic who reviewed the footage, pointed out the fact that neither victim is struggling or shouting. The immobility of the victims, he said, led him to believe the recording showed a training session. 

“They were trying to teach him to cut the jugular and the carotid here, okay. But he had the wrong angle. He was upward of the body. So he was looking to the camera for directions all the time.”

In the second video obtained by RFA, six men in plain clothes holding guns cut the throat of an unarmed man and kick him into a pit. In the video, they can be heard speaking Burmese.

Miemie Winn Byrd, a former U.S. Army officer who reviewed the footage, told RFA there could be no circumstances in which such actions by a soldier would be justified. 

“This was not a military operation, but a murder. This is war crime.”

Edited by Abby Seiff. 

Residents in northeastern Myanmar are facing both a humanitarian crisis and intense conflict, people living in the area told Radio Free Asia. On Sunday night, airstrikes by junta forces killed two people, including a child, in Shan state.  

Locals were caught off guard when a junta plane began an aerial attack on Myo Thit village in Namhsan township around 10 pm. It was unexpected because there had not been any fighting beforehand, said one local, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. 

“There is no fighting in Namhsan, but the aerial bombardment was carried out while people were sleeping,” he told RFA, adding that six women and two men were injured in addition to the two killed. “People died and houses were also burned.”

The explosions damaged 23 houses in total. The bomb weighed roughly 500 pounds and killed Tar San Naw, as well as a child, when it landed on a house, according to a statement released by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army on Monday.

The junta has not released any information about this attack and calls by RFA to Shan state’s junta spokesperson Khun Thein Maung went unanswered.

Conflict in northeastern Shan state has intensified in the last two months, as an allied group of resistance armies took three major cities in Operation 1027 in late October.

Earlier that month, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army attacked several junta convoys, causing their troops to retaliate. Since Oct. 10, nearly 30,000 internally displaced people have been sheltering in makeshift tents near the China-Myanmar border in Laukkaing township. 

Since Thursday, heavy rain has made life more difficult for those forced from their homes.

After several days of rain, resources are becoming harder to find and people’s health is deteriorating, said a Laukkaing resident, who did not want to be named for security reasons. 

“They have been living in tents since before [the rain]. It is raining and they are not comfortable anymore. Most are workers from other areas, not residents,”  he told RFA. “There are many people who came to work in Laukkaing from other areas. Water also became scarce in that camp.”

Elderly people and children are also more prone to illness in the colder weather without blankets, he added. On Saturday, the camp’s water and electricity were cut off.

The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army warned Chinese citizens in Laukkaing to return to China to avoid conflict in the region. They also told civilians to stay away from military camps and not to move around the area.

All of Laukkaing’s roads and gates out of the city are blocked and locals are facing food shortages, residents also reported. Junta troops are not letting food or supplies into the city. 

After Operation 1027, battles between the military junta and the three northern allies have been continuing in eight townships, including Namhkan, Chinshwehaw, Nawnghkio, Lashio and Manton.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

The Philippines is seeking separate agreements with Southeast Asian neighbors to reduce the risk of conflict in the South China Sea, given the slow pace of progress on a long-sought regional code of conduct with China, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Monday.

The situation for the Philippines in the disputed waterway “has become more dire” amid China’s increasing encroachment on the nation’s maritime boundaries, Marcos said, and Manila needed to partner with allies to maintain peace in the region.

“We are still waiting for the code of conduct between China and ASEAN and the progress has been rather slow unfortunately,” Marcos said during a live streamed event in Hawaii.

“We have taken the initiative to approach those other countries around ASEAN whom we have existing territorial conflicts with, Vietnam being one of them, Malaysia being another and to make our own code of conduct.”

China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zone of Association of Southeast Asian Nations members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. 

Negotiations to establish a code of conduct between ASEAN and China for the region have been going for more than two decades, but progress has been slow amid disputes over the scope and legal status of the document.Though a 2016 international arbitration ruling invalidated China’s sweeping claims to the South China Sea, Beijing has refused to acknowledge it.

Marcos was speaking at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, where he stopped on his way home from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Week summit in San Francisco.

He met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the event in a bid to ease bilateral tensions after a series of standoffs in the South China Sea. Chinese coast guard and maritime militia ships have in recent months stepped up efforts to block Philippine vessels from delivering supplies to a military outpost in Second Thomas Shoal (Ayungin Shoal).

Marcos said he requested the meeting with Xi “to voice to the Chinese leader his concern on some of the incidents that were happening between Chinese and Philippine vessels, culminating in an actual collision,” the Philippine Presidential Communications Office said in a statement Saturday.

On Monday, Marcos said the most pressing challenge for Philippine security was ensuring peace in the West Philippine Sea, Manila’s name for the South China Sea within its jurisdiction.

“The Indo-Pacific region, particularly the West Philippine Sea, is in the middle of a global geopolitical transformation and has become an arena of normative contestation,” he said.

“Tensions in the West Philippine Sea are growing, with persistent unlawful threats and challenges against Philippine sovereign rights and jurisdiction over our exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf.”

‘No Aloha for Marcos’

In Hawaii, Marcos also met with the top U.S. military commander in the Indo-Pacific, Adm. John Aquilino, who leads a 380,000-strong force of military and coast guard personnel, and connected with the large Filipino community there.

The visit was laden with personal significance for Marcos, whose late father Ferdinand Marcos Sr. fled to Hawaii after his regime was toppled in 1986. Thousands of activists and opposition politicians were jailed or disappeared during his brutal two-decade rule, during which he is accused of plundering state coffers of up to U.S. $10 billion.

The older Marcos died while in exile, but his family was allowed to return home where they rebuilt their political base, despite demands for an apology from the victims of his father’s dictatorship.

On Saturday, Marcos told a gathering of Filipino-Americans that he felt a “deep sense of nostalgia” to be back and wanted to thank members of the community “who hold a very special place in my heart.”

“My father is no longer with us, but when my mother found out that I was going to Honolulu, she said you make sure that you go back to all of those people who went out of their way to keep us comfortable to keep us alive,” he said.

Not everyone was happy with his visit, however. A small group of protesters rallied outside the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu carrying a black banner that read, “No Aloha for Marcos.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

North Korea is set to push ahead with its “satellite” launch plans, as South Korea’s  President prepares to leave Seoul for Europe where he will meet with his European counterparts to discuss a variety of issues, including security.

South Korea’s military authorities said on Monday they have detected new activities from North Korea, which appears to be a preliminary sign for its satellite launch. The authorities did not disclose specific details, but asserted that Seoul would respond to any new developments that could pose a threat to regional security. 

In a stern warning to the North, Kang Ho-pil, the South’s chief director of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) strongly urged “the immediate cessation of the military reconnaissance satellite launch that is currently being prepared.”

In a press briefing on Monday, Kang warned that the North Korean regime must “face the reality that the international community is unanimously condemning its illegal actions.” 

“If North Korea proceeds with the launch of the military reconnaissance satellite despite our warnings, our military will take necessary measures to ensure the safety and security of our citizens,” Kang added. The measures could stem from  the strengthened military cooperation with Washington and Tokyo, as indicated during the trilateral foreign ministers meeting in San Francisco last week. 

They could also include the possibility of suspending the effectiveness of the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, where the two Koreas agreed to halt what each other defined as hostile actions towards one another near the border. South Korea’s defense minister Shin Won-sik had told reporters last month that the agreement has limited the South’s surveillance capability against North Korean provocations. 

North Korea’s launch of a military reconnaissance satellite, utilizing ballistic missile technology, is a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. North Korea has also conducted a number of provocations near the inter-Korean border, which are violations of the inter-Korean agreement. Critics in South Korea have long argued that the deal has already become ineffective, only to restrict Seoul’s operational and surveillance capabilities. 

Last week, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported the successful testing of a new solid-fuel engine for an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). The tests, conducted at two separate occasions, were to assess the technical specifications of the high-thrust solid-fuel engines developed for Pyongyang’s new type of IRBM, KCNA noted.

North Korea’s IRBM has a range of some 4,000 kilometers, capable of striking U.S. territories in the West Pacific, including Guam. 

The report came as South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in the National Assembly earlier this month that Russia has acquired over 1 million artillery shells from North Korea since August. In exchange, the North is most likely to have received technology transfer for what it claims as “satellite” launch from Russia, the spy agency said.

South Korea’s detection of its Northern neighbor’s preparations for a “satellite” launch coincided with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s departure to Europe on Monday for his state visit to the United Kingdom, and then travel to France. North Korea has a history of conducting ballistic missile tests when South Korean presidents are abroad, seemingly to challenge Seoul’s response capabilities and the efficiency of its systems in the president’s absence.

In response to Pyongyang’s maneuver, as well as to demonstrate South Korea’s readiness and systematic operational strength, the presidential National Security Council, led by its chief Cho Tae-yong, was convened on Monday.

The NSC discussed “North Korea’s potential provocations, such as preparations for the launch of their so-called ‘reconnaissance satellite’ before the President’s state visits to the United Kingdom and France,” said a statement from the Presidential Office on Monday.

The NSC Standing Committee members have “checked the readiness of the government’s security measures and decided to further strengthen the defense posture of the military to respond effectively and immediately to any provocations from North Korea,” the statement said, adding that the measures were to “ensure that there are no gaps in national security during the president’s overseas trip.”

The action appears to communicate a dual message: signaling South Korea’s preparedness to North Korea; and to South Korean voters that the government is effectively handling North Korean provocations even during the president’s absence. The South Korean president’s presence in the country during North Korean provocations has frequently been a central issue in domestic politics, often serving as a primary target for criticism from opposition parties.

South Korea is scheduled to hold its general election in April.

Edited by Elaine Chan and Taejun Kang.