Asean Tribune

The Hong Kong government on Tuesday tabled a legislative amendment that will add new requirements to current guidelines for the board of film censors, requiring them to prevent films from being screened if they contain scenes, ideas, or images critical of the authorities.

The amendment is aimed at “ensuring more effective fulfilment of the duty to safeguard national security … as well as preventing and suppressing acts or activities that may endanger national security,” the government said in a statement on its website.

The amendment is highly likely to be voted through by the Legislative Council (LegCo), which has been devoid of any genuine political opposition since the mass resignation and mass arrests of dozens of former lawmakers and democracy activists for “subversion.”

If passed, the amended law will require censors to “consider whether the exhibition of a film would be contrary to the interests of national security.”

Since the national security law was imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from July 1, 2020, mainland Chinese state security police have set up headquarters in the city.

The newly constituted national security police have since then launched a city-wide crackdown on dissent, public criticism, and political opposition in the form of opposition lawmakers, pro-democracy, media and protesters who use the now-banned slogans of the 2019 protest movement.

The amendment also empowers the city’s chief secretary to revoke approvals issued by the Hong Kong Film Censorship Authority before the law was enacted, ensuring that older films with content deemed problematic by the government will no longer be allowed to be screened in the city.

Censors will also be given the power to raid screenings of films in any location in Hong Kong, search the venue, and stop screenings that are found to contravene the proposed new rules.

The maximum penalty for screening films without approval will be raised to three years’ imprisonment.

“The main reference is the national security law … for instances, acts or activities which might endorse, support, glorify, encourage and incite such activities that might endanger national security,” Edward Yau, Hong Kong’s commerce secretary, told reporters on Tuesday.

On July 30, 2021, a court in Hong Kong handed down a nine-year jail term to motorcyclist Tong Ying-kit for “terrorism” and inciting “secession” after he flew a banned slogan from his bike during a street protest.

The slogan from the 2019 protest movement — “Free Hong Kong, revolution now!” — was found by the court to be an incitement to secession.

‘Why be afraid?’

Vincent Tsui, independent movie director and founder of indie filmmakers’ group Ying E Chi, said the law won’t affect the way he makes films in future.

“I am still going to make the movies I want to make,” Tsui told RFA. “Why be afraid?”

“Shooting the films shouldn’t be a problem. If they won’t let me show it, then so be it; that’s on them,” he said. “I’m going to do my own thing.”

Films made by Ying E Chi members have already been effectively banned in Hong Kong, including the documentaries “Taking Back the Legislature” about the July 1, 2019 storming of LegCo by protesters angry about plans to allow extradition to mainland China, and “Inside the Red Walls” about the November 2019 siege of Hong Kong Polytechnic University by riot police.

A screening of “Inside the Red Walls” was canceled in March 2021 after the cinema that planned to show it was denounced in the pro-China Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po newspapers.

Satire could also be banned

Actor Tin Kai-man, who is also the spokesman for the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, said the vagueness of the provisions under the amendment could mean filmmakers run afoul of the national security law for no good reason.

“As a creator and producer, the thing I am most concerned about is breaking that law,” Tin told RFA. “Will criticizing the government now be regarded as breaking the national security law?”

“We need to be clear if we are allowed to criticize the government now or not,” he said.

The wording of the amendment also suggests that satirical, political films like “Ten Years”, “From Beijing With Love,” and “Her Fatal Ways” could also be banned.

Commerce secretary Yau appeared to confirm this possibility on Tuesday.

“We need this provision to cater for circumstances where a film which was graded or approved before, but given the new law enacted and new guidelines issued, there could be a chance that we need to reconsider such cases,”  Yau said.

But he said there was as yet no blacklist of banned films.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Factories and residents in North Korea are chafing at new orders to help fund and build new houses for people on the country’s east coast whose homes were destroyed in floods early this month, sources in the region told RFA.

North Korean state television reported that 5,000 people were evacuated as floods damaged about 1,000 homes. The rains were heaviest in the coastal provinces of North and South Hamgyong, causing widespread power outages, inundating some buildings up to their roofs, and washing away roads and farmland.

The disaster hit North Korea as it struggles with food shortages and economic fallout from the closure in January 2020 of the border with China to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which added to the pinch of longstanding international sanctions aimed at halting its nuclear program.

North Korea’s hard-pressed people are routinely called on donate labor, money, and food to national projects or for disaster recovery, and the task is made harder by a constant lack of material and basic equipment.

“Military and party officials come to each organization and the neighborhood watch units to propagandize that everyone should donate money or help, even a little bit, for their neighbors,” said a resident of South Hamgyong province, describing the mobilization in Kumya county.

“Small organizations with a small number of people have to donate funds and gasoline to the provincial party for construction,” he said.

“All households in the town are also tasked with donating 20 stones, five buckets of small pebbles, 20 buckets of sand, and nails,” the source, who declined to be named in order to speak freely, told RFA’s Korean Service on Aug. 20.

Although the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and the provincial government said they would furnish basic materials and supplies necessary to build the houses, so far they have provided only cement, the source said.

To procure wood, officials have ordered factories and companies to cut down trees in a few cubic meters of forestland and use the wood for construction material, the source said.

The factories must send workers to the forest to fell the trees and then process the wood by themselves, while local residents also must pitch in to help with the recovery efforts, he added.

‘Struggling from the start’

The military has been put in charge of building apartments, and the provincial government must oversee the construction of single-story houses, said a second resident from South Hamgyong province, who also declined to be named so he could speak freely.

Provincial organizations and the South Hamgyong provincial party committee have set a goal for completion of the building construction by the 76th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Oct. 10, he told RFA on Aug. 20.

“As the provincial party committee imposed tasks on major organizations, factories, and companies in the province to build new houses in areas affected by heavy rain, restoration projects are underway in various areas, including in Sinhung county,” said the source.

The ruling party has pledged to provide construction materials such as cement, rebar, and gasoline, while the province is committed to supplying lumber and roof tiles, said the source.

“However, since it is obvious that these measures have not been properly prepared for, each organization in charge of building is struggling from the start of construction,” he said.

A huge obstacle is a critical lack of vehicles to transport construction materials and supplies, as well as the fuel needed to run them, the source said. Another snag is that the factories and companies must provide sand and gravel, the two materials mostly used for building houses, and there is not enough to go around.

The provincial party and government have taken the lead in restoring the national telecom network, which was cut off by the heavy rain, the source said.

Officials mobilized housewives and farm workers to dig ditches four-feet deep and two-feet wide to lay telecoms cables, with each person assigned to dig a 16.4-foot section of ground.

A resident of North Hamgyong province told RFA that digging trenches for the telecom cables was an arduous task for residents.

“Because Puryong county is a mountainous area, there are many stones and rocks, but there are no mechanical means such as an excavator, so people had a lot of trouble digging the ground with a pickaxe,” said the source, who requested anonymity.

The wives of officials and wealthy women were allowed to pay 30,000 won (U.S. $6.25) each to avoid manual labor, he said.

Reported by Changgyu Ahn for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

On Aug. 20, the Vietnamese government announced that it would start deploying troops to assist in the response to the COVID-19 Delta variant in Ho Chi Minh City and adjacent provinces.

This was a stunning change in policy, and reflects just how nervous the leaders in Hanoi are right now, as the pandemic deepens, and the death toll continues to climb. It is a stark change in civil-military relations.

In 2020, Vietnam was the gold standard of the response to COVID-19. The country had limited medical facilities, but superlative public health capabilities, with a long history of responding to SARS-type viruses and other avian influenzas. The government did everything right: strict quarantines, thorough contact tracing, consistent and straightforward public health messaging, with appeals to patriotism.

And unlike the Philippines or Indonesia that had very securitized responses to the pandemic from the start, Vietnam’s response was led by public health officials. Vietnam’s generals were not put in charge of a medical health crisis, policy formulation, resource allocation, or enforcing quarantines through coercive measures. Indonesia and the Philippines did all of those things, and, as a result, had the highest case rates and fatality rates in the region.

While the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) opened up its bases as quarantine centers, and played a limited role in the distribution of aid to remote communities, the VPA was clearly in a supporting role. This only bolstered their already high standing in the public eye.

As a result, Vietnam weathered the first year of the pandemic exceptionally well. Until April 2021, Vietnam had only 2,900 total cases and a mere 35 deaths. The country remained largely open, and as such, Vietnam was the only country in Southeast Asia to see positive economic growth in 2020.

That bred complacency. Vietnam was surprisingly slow to shore up purchase contracts, get regulatory approval (even emergency-use authorizations) for vaccines, and invested too much in developing four separate vaccines indigenously, rather than working to license foreign mRNA vaccines, which it now has done.

To date, Vietnam continues to have the lowest percentage of their population fully vaccinated in all of Southeast Asia.

Then the delta variant hit and case rates soared. Vietnam has had over 355,000 cases since May, and is currently averaging between 10,000-12,000 a day. The death toll has increased to 9,014 deaths.

The outbreak is concentrated in the south, with over half of the infections and 80 percent of fatalities in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), alone, overwhelming the medical system.

Thus the government’s surprise announcement of the deployment of 10,000 troops to the city and outlying regions.

Military Regions 7 (HCMC)  and 9 (Mekong Delta) have combined field hospitals with some 2,300 military personnel. And 500 soldiers from Military Region 7 began enforcing lockdown on Aug. 23.

The HCMC government had already requested 6,000 men from the local Military Region 7, including troops to be deployed to enforce the city’s lockdown and deliver food to needy communities.

Additional troops are being deployed from other regions: Military Region 5 (Da Nang-south central Vietnam), sent some 500 doctors and personnel. The VPA announced that it would deploy 1,000 VPA medical personnel from the north (they did not specify from which particular Military Region), including120 doctors from the VPA’s medical university and 180 of their students. By Aug. 23, they doubled the number of medics to be deployed to the south, along with 30 VPA ambulances. 

In addition, Military Region 7 is increasing its deployment of personnel (both medical and infantry) to neighboring provinces as the virus spreads, including 500 personnel to Binh Duong province, 300 to Tay Ninh province, and 12 military doctors to Long An province, the gateway to the Mekong Delta region.

VPA’s storied reputation

Within days, more details emerged of the military’s expanding role, including the announcement that the VPA became the lead agency for the provision of food. VPA units are now assisting the city’s overwhelmed crematoriums. We should expect additional troops to be deployed, especially to some of the surrounding cities. The Ministry of National Defense is activating 35,000 militia.

The ViPA has a storied reputation in Vietnam and is clearly one of the most trusted political institutions in the country.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the public eye.

It could bolster the VPA’s image and standing. They’ve been nothing but professional so far.  Their distribution of food, especially to the neediest communities, has been well documented in state media; reinforcing the connection between the Army and the people.

But this is not preordained and entails a degree of risk to the VPA’s standing.  

First, the VPA has had constabulary functions in the past. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Communist Party passed an emergency decree (CP-89) authorizing the VPA to put down peasant uprisings in the Red River Delta and in the Central Highlands. It was a role and function that the VPA was clearly uncomfortable with and has eschewed since, leaving most domestic security matters to the Ministry of Public Security.

Images of the VPA deploying armored personnel carriers and armed soldiers at checkpoints quickly made the rounds on social media, provoking public response. So it will be very important to see how the VPA handles its constabulary functions.

Second, while the VPA enjoys broad popular support, it is legally bound to defend the Communist Party first and foremost. The VPA tries to cultivate an independent image of itself, but it is a party army. Indeed, this has sparked fierce public debates, especially ahead of the 12th Party Congress in 2016, after the VCP appeared to bow to Chinese pressure in the South China Sea.

If public anger towards the government grows as the lockdowns are extended, will the VPA be blamed for their association regardless of their provision of aid? If nothing else, the VPA’s deployment serves as a reminder of the government’s failings.

The national leadership is clearly feeling insecure. Hanoi’s constant interference in the political leadership of HCMC over the past few years, in a bid to wrest control over the independent-minded megacity that subsidizes the rest of the country, rankles many. The government has concurrently primed the propaganda machine with clearly fictitious stories of model workers and stepped up the persecution of critics of the government’s response. State media made very clear the VPA would be used to help put down any threat that emerges to take advantage of the current situation, fears heightened by the arrival this week of US Vice President Kamala Harris.

But if one wants really to see the regime’s fear, look only to the VPA’s receipt of 200,000 vaccines from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The first military-to-military transfer from an age-old foe, toward whom there is substantial public mistrust, says a lot about the regime’s expectation that more troops will be deployed as more of the country goes into extended lockdown.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.

Police in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan detained several minors and jailed two members of the Early Rain Covenant Church following a police raid on a gathering in the provincial capital, Chengdu, RFA has learned.

Meeting host Dai Zhichao and church member He Shan were sentenced to 14 days’ administrative detention, a sentence that can be handed down by a police-run committee without the need for a trial, following a Sunday raid by state security police and officials from the municipal religious affairs bureau, a local Protestant church member surnamed Li said.

“At around 11 a.m. on Aug. 22, during the Sunday meeting of the Chengdu Early Rain Covenant Church, the [group] was illegally assaulted by the police from the Mengchaiwan police station in Chenghua district,” Li said.

“More than a dozen children were taken away.”

Video clips of the raid seen by RFA showed police breaking into Dai’s home without showing a search warrant.

“Dai Zhichao’s arm has been injured and his phone taken from him,” one church member says while filming the incident. “They dragged us out of the door and took us away.”

In the clip, a police officer is heard to say: “Someone reported an illegal gathering taking place here.”

An Early Rain member who declined to be named said around a dozen police officers broke up the meeting,

“A group of brothers and sisters had gathered at a brother’s house, and the police came, saying that they had received reports from the public that there was an illegal assembly taking place,” the church member said.

“The brothers and sisters opened the door and asked the police to show a search warrant, or they wouldn’t let them enter,” they said. “But the police were very rude, and forced their way in through the door, and took everyone’s details, including the children’s.”

Kicked by police

One member, Shu Qiong, was kicked in the leg by a police officer, after protesting when her eight-year-old son was hit over the head with a water bottle.

“They were all taken to the police station, then gradually released later that evening, between 10.00 and 11.00 p.m.,” a church member said.

“But some of them have been incommunicado after being released.”

The Early Rain church issued a statement about the raid, naming church members San Ensui, Lan Fali, Tan Peng, Huang Yizhen, Niu Chuang, He Ye, Dai Zhichao, Lu Lingzhi, and his wife as being among the detainees.

On Dec. 30, 2019, the Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court jailed Early Rain pastor Wang Yi for nine years, after finding him guilty of “incitement to subvert state power” and of “running an illegal business” in a secret trial.

Wang, who founded the church, was detained by police in Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu on Dec. 14, 2018, alongside dozens of church members in a raid that prompted an international outcry.

Some Early Rain Covenant Church members who were detained in raids on Dec. 9 and 10, 2018, and later released said the police had beaten them, and one detainee described being tied to a chair and deprived of water and food for 24 hours, rights groups reported at the time.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Cases of COVID-19 in Taiwan hit a fresh low on Tuesday, as the democratic island started to roll out its own coronavirus vaccine to the population.

Health minister Chen Shih-chung announced six new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, including five imported infections and one local case, and one death, bringing the COVID death toll to 829.

The figures came a day after Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen received a shot of the domestically developed Medigen vaccine.

“Today I got my first shot of #Taiwan’s own Medigen vaccine,” Tsai tweeted after delaying her vaccination for several weeks in order to endorse the island’s own-brand shot.

“Thank you to all our medical workers for making this such a smooth & painless process,” the tweet said. Tsai’s vaccine appointment was also broadcast live on her Facebook page.

The new jab, licensed for emergency use by Medign Vaccine Biologics, comes not a moment too soon, amid delays in deliveries of overseas-made vaccines from international drug companies.

“It doesn’t hurt, I’m in good spirits, and I’m going to continue working for the day,” she later wrote on Facebook.

The recombinant protein vaccine was developed with input from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the government has ordered an initial five million doses, but has been subject to criticism from the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), which claims it was rushed to production too soon.

Other high-profile individuals also made a point of waiting until the Medigen jab came out, including Huang Jie, city councilor in
the southern port city of Kaohsiung and Akio Yaita, Taipei bureau chief for Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper.

Huang wrote on her Facebook post after getting the Medigen jab: “Using my arm to hit back at slanderous fake news.”

Yaita told reporters: “Taiwan’s vaccine has been discredited and demonized by many people. This is a shame.”

“I have chosen to support Taiwan’s domestic vaccine so as to dissolve any public misconception,” he said, adding that Taiwan’s own vaccine was of great strategic importance.

The government says studies so far have shown that antibodies created by the Medigen vaccine are no worse than those created by the AstraZeneca jab.

But Ho Chih-yung, deputy head of the KMT’s international department, said Taiwan’s population were being used as subjects in an experiment.

“There is no need for the lives and health of the Taiwanese people to serve as white rats in a laboratory,” Ho told Reuters.

Around 40 percent of Taiwan’s population have so far received at least one shot of either of the two-dose AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccines. However, only five percent are fully vaccinated.

Epidemiologist and biomedical researcher Ho Mei-hsiang said the vaccine should be good to go.

“I have no objection to [emergency authorization]. I absolutely support it,” Ho told RFA. “I believe that this vaccine is good, safe and effective, but they still have to prove it.”

Ho called on Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to report back with full data on the jab’s safety and efficacy as soon as possible.

Professor Chen Hsiu-hsi of the School of Public Health at National Taiwan University said the vaccine uses “immune bridging,” a technique that is generally considered safe.

But he said emergency authorization shouldn’t and couldn’t be a replacement for phase III clinical trials.

He agreed that Taiwan now has a strategic advantage on the international stage, by dint of having developed and produced its own COVID-19 vaccine.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

AFFECTED AREA/S

Dok Kham Tai, K. Phu Sang, Pong

DESCRIPTION

On August 23, 1964 at 11:00 p.m., heavy rain caused wild water to flow in the area of Phu Sang District, Phu Sang Subdistrict 25 rai of rice fields were damaged, no injuries or deaths. At present the situation has calmed down.

– On August 24, 64 at 00.30, heavy rain caused wild water to flow in the area Chun Subdistrict, Dok Kham Tai District, Pa Sang Subdistrict, Pong District, Naprang Sub-district (M.6) 110 households affected. There were no injuries or deaths. At present the situation has calmed down.

 

 

Source: ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance