• ijrepjournalism@gmail.com
  • contact@ij-reportika.com
Ij reportika Logo

Month: April 2022

Amnesty International blasts new proposed social media regulations in Vietnam

Editor010 mins

An international rights group condemned the Vietnamese government’s plan to adopt new regulations to tighten control over social media platforms in the communist one-party country where leaders already have little tolerance for public criticism or dissent. The planned amendments to existing law will require social media companies like Facebook and TikTok to remove content and services deemed illegal within 24 hours, block illegal livestreams within three hours of notice, and immediately remove content that endangers national security, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Companies that do not comply with the requirements risk having their social media platforms banned in Vietnam, the report said, adding that it is expected that Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh will sign the new regulations in May. The Vietnamese government is finalizing the amendments for June 2013 decree on the management, provision and use of internet services and online information for both domestic and foreign companies and individuals. The government has been using the decree to ask companies that run popular social media platforms in Vietnam to take down “anti-government” content. Human rights organizations expressed concern that the restrictive internet environment in Vietnam will become worse under the new regulations. “In Vietnam, social media, including Facebook, is one of very few places for local people to express their opposition,” said Ming Yu Hah, deputy regional director of campaigns in East and Southeast Asia for London-based Amnesty International. “They face the risk of being imprisoned for years if their posts are deemed to violate the law. “Such harsh laws are an existential threat to the freedom of expression in Vietnam,” she added. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter are popular foreign social media platforms in the Southeast Asian country, used by citizens to express their opinions of and dissatisfaction with the government and politics. However, many Vietnamese have been sent to prison for their expressing their opinions via social media. In March, for instance, RFA reported that a court in Hanoi sentenced independent journalist and activist Le Van Dung to five years in prison for discussing political and socioeconomic issues in livestreamed videos on social media. Reuters said that Vietnam’s communications and foreign ministries did not respond to requests for comment. Facebook-owner Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc., which owns YouTube and Google, and Twitter Inc. declined to comment. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd., said it will continue to comply with applicable local laws and would remove content that violates platform guidelines. For years, the Vietnamese government has demonstrated its desire to control foreign social media platforms via the decree passed in 2013 and a cybersecurity law that entered into effect in 2019. In November 2020, Facebook announced that it had been forced to increase content censorship as requested by the Vietnamese government, after being threatened with a ban if it did not comply. The move drew heavy criticism from rights groups that have accused social media companies of putting profits before human rights and the freedom of expression. Amnesty’s Ming Yu Hah called on social media companies to protest the forthcoming regulation and “put human rights above profits and market access rights.” About 60 million-70 million Vietnamese use Facebook, generating about U.S. $1 billion in annual revenue for its parent company, according to the Reuters report. YouTube has 60 million users in the country, while TikTok has 20 million. Open letter to Biden In a related development, more than 40 NGOs and 40 individuals signed an open online letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, calling for him to raise concern with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chinh at a U.S.-ASEAN Summit in mid-May about the government’s antagonistic policies toward religions that do not submit to government control. “Of particular concern is the intensifying state-directed and state-supported propaganda that promotes hate speech and incites violence against religious and lay leaders with real and deeply disturbing consequences,” the letter says. The letter says organized mobs known as Red Flag Associations have used social media to slander Catholic priests, characterize respected monks of the Unified Buddhist Church’s Sangha as “bad forces” who “distorted the nature of religious freedom in Vietnam,” and call on the government to eliminate the Montagnard Evangelical Church of Christ in Dak Lak province. “So far, Red Flag members have enjoyed complete impunity,” the letter says. “Their messages promoting hatred and violence have rapidly multiplied throughout Vietnam’s society.” Certain government units also have incited hatred against ethno-religious minorities, including the Department of Public Security of Gia Lai Province, which characterizes Montagnards who have converted to Catholicism as a cult and in December 2020 declared that it had completed the heretical religion. The United Nations Human Rights Committee singled out the Red Flag Associations as a source of incitement to hatred and violence following a review of Vietnam’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 2019. “In light of this worrying trend, we ask that you communicate directly to Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Vietnam and urge his government to comply fully with both Article 18 of the ICCPR, which guarantees the right to religious freedom or belief, as well as with the requirement of Article 20 that incitement to violence be prohibited by law,” the letter says. On Monday, a coalition of Vietnamese NGOs and individuals issued an open letter to U.N. member states, asking them not to elect Vietnam to the U.N. Human Rights Council for the 2023-2025 term. Among the organizations that signed the letter were the Vietnam Human Rights Network, Defend the Defenders, Assembly for Democracy of Vietnam, Humanistic Socialist Party, the Great Viet Party, Vietnam Democracy Federation, the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam, and Vietnam Democracy Radio. They noted that Vietnam voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution on April 7 to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over its invasion of Ukraine, which has killed thousands of people. “Before looking for membership of the council, the Vietnamese government must improve its human rights record, strictly enforce international human rights…

Read More

Biden nails down a date for ASEAN summit but not a full invite list

Editor09 mins

President Joe Biden, keen to showcase American interest in Southeast Asia, has secured a date to celebrate 45 years of U.S. ties with the far-away region, but not all of ASEAN’s leaders are coming to the party. Myanmar’s junta chief, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, won’t be welcome because of the military coup he launched a year ago. And Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who leaves office in June, is also expected to be a no-show. He has not visited Washington during his six years in office that have been characterized by turbulent relations with the United States. The May 12-13 summit between the U.S. and leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is an opportunity for Biden to forge a closer bilateral partnership with ASEAN and counter China’s influence in the region. The White House is keen to advance its vision of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific. The summit will mark U.S.-ASEAN relations, which began in 1977. It will be only the second such summit with Southeast Asian leaders hosted by an American president in the United States. Barack Obama welcomed ASEAN leaders to Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in February 2016. While next month’s meeting will therefore carry heavy symbolic value, it will make for some unusual diplomatic bedfellows for Biden. Cambodia’s foreign ministry says that Prime Minister Hun Sen – whose government has faced U.S. sanctions for its suppression of democracy – will be there. Cambodia is the current rotating chair of the 10-nation bloc. “Of course, Samdech Techo Prime Minister Hun Sen, as the ASEAN rotating chair, will co-chair this summit with the president of the United States,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ spokesman Chum Sounry told Radio Free Asia (RFA), the parent company of BenarNews. He was using the honorific adopted by Hun Sen, who has ruled for 37 years. It translates roughly as “glorious, supreme prime minister and powerful commander.” But officials indicated that Min Aung Hlaing – who recently awarded himself two of Myanmar’s highest honors for services to his country despite the current, violent chaos there – won’t be invited to Washington. “The consensus among ASEAN is (that) Myanmar should be represented by a non-political representative,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah of Indonesia, which is the bloc’s coordinator for U.S.-ASEAN ties. He told BenarNews on Tuesday that Indonesian President Joko Widodo plans to attend.  In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah confirmed that Prime Minister Ismail Sabri will also join the summit. He further noted: “I don’t think Myanmar should be represented. I am not so sure if Washington invited Myanmar.” However in Bangkok, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Prayuth Chan-o-cha, the prime minister and ex-junta chief, was “considering the journey” to Washington. ASEAN has been grappling with a 14-month-old crisis in Myanmar, where the Burmese junta’s forces have bombed and burned swathes of the country to quell resistance to the military’s overthrow of an elected government in February 2021. In late March, the junta blocked ASEAN envoy Prak Sokhonn, who is Cambodia’s foreign minister, from meeting with deposed Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, setting back efforts to forge a political resolution – and backtracking on a commitment the junta chief made to ASEAN to allow access to all stakeholders in the country. ASEAN itself has excluded Min Aung Hlaing from its own summits. The Myanmar military council’s spokesman said on Tuesday that Myanmar has not been invited so far to the Washington summit, and they would only attend anyway if they had equal representation. “If, as in the past, we could only attend with someone who does not hold political office, we absolutely would not attend any meeting. Our position is to engage only at equal rank,” the spokesman, Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun, told RFA. Myanmar has been subject to U.S. asset seizures and sanctions since the coup – including restrictions levied against Min Aung Hlaing himself. No such restrictions are faced by Duterte. The Philippines is a U.S. treaty ally, meaning the two nations are committed to each other’s defense if they come under attack. The U.S. is bound to Thailand by a similar treaty. But Duterte, who has sought closer relations with China despite recurring disputes in the South China Sea, has sworn repeatedly that “he will never go to the U.S.” At one time he even called America “lousy.”  BenarNews asked an aide to Duterte whether that position has changed in view of the upcoming summit, and was told it had not. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to media about it. There’s another reason for the Philippine leader to skip the Washington summit: The two-day meeting falls just three days after May 9 elections in the Philippines. It is customary for any Filipino leader to avoid foreign travel during an election season, particularly when the election is for the position they will be vacating. Jason Gutierrez in Manila, Tria Dianti in Jakarta, Nontarat Phaicharoen in Bangkok, Nisha David in Kuala Lumpur, and RFA’s Cambodian and Myanmar Services contributed to this report by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service.

Read More

North Korea orders wartime readiness during joint U.S.-South Korean military drills

Editor07 mins

North Korea put its military in a wartime posture–mobilizing troops and stepping up army political indoctrination– in response to the semi-annual U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises that began this week, sources in the country told RFA. The exercises are mostly computer simulations and involve cooperation between alliance command posts. But North Korea still views the exercises as a threat to its sovereignty, and its General Political Bureau has ordered the military to be ready for war. “Artillery and other important mission units were instructed to maintain a high state of readiness and conduct frequent inspections on their combat equipment so they could enter battle immediately in the event of a crisis,” a military source in the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA’s Korean Service Tuesday on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “During the South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises, commanders must not leave the areas under their jurisdiction. Soldiers in the units are prepared to mobilize in a ready state, day or night,” he said. But soldiers are exhausted, having just finished their grueling “winter training” sessions, where they toil as essentially free labor for the government on the premise of training, and coming off a major holiday full of political events, the source said. “They are angered by the authorities’ orders to immediately mobilize at a time when they lack fuel and materials, and they say the situation is not realistic,” he said. Authorities want soldiers not only to be ready on the physical battlefield, but also on the ideological battlefield, a military source in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “From the 19th, political departments in all units were urged to use ideological education classes for high-ranking officials this coming Saturday, and daily mental education hours for soldiers, so that they can propagandize the tension of the current political situation, and confirm their determination to defend our supreme leader,” he said, referring to the country’s leader Kim Jong Un. “The General Political Bureau has ordered the Korean People’s Army newspapers, telecommunications, and the third broadcast within the military to put out intensive propaganda that shows the party and the military’s resolve, and our principled and ruthlessly super-hardline stance,” the second soruce said. Third broadcast refers to government-controlled loudspeakers that transmit messages or instructions to everyone they can reach. “The propaganda must emphasize the need to show the will of tens of millions of people to respond to the U.S.-South Korean war provocations with military action and not just words,” the second source said. “In response to the orders … high-ranking officials and the soldiers below them complain that they are already tired from winter training and the various different political events concentrated in April. They wonder whether it makes sense to ‘arm soldiers with the 1950 spirit of defending the motherland…’  when what they want the most right now is adequate rest and enough food to eat,” he said. The source said the propaganda is essentially meaningless. “If you listen to the third broadcast inside the Korean People’s Army, you will only hear songs on the theme of defending our leader. All day long,” he said. “These songs include ‘I will defend Gen. Kim Jong Un with my life,’ ‘Our weapons don’t forgive,’ and ‘Leader, just give us an order.’ I don’t understand why the authorities are obsessed with ideological education when the joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States happen every year.” The joint exercises will run through Friday, then break for the weekend, resuming April 25 and ending April 28, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hostilities in the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice agreement, but North and South Korea are technically still at war as no peace treaty has ever been signed. Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Read More

Landless Lao farmers are caught growing crops in state parks and forests

Editor09 mins

National parkland and protected forests have been shrinking slightly in southern Laos, not the work of the usual culprit — illegal loggers — but because residents are encroaching upon the land to grow cassava and other crops. In the provinces of Sekong, one of the most impoverished areas of Laos, and neighboring Saravan, farmers desperate for land are turning up soil in national parks and forests despite laws and campaigns to protect the tracts in a country suffering rapid deforestation. The surface areas of national parks and national protected forests in Sekong province’s Tha Teng district have diminished to 36.8% from more than 40% in 2016 partially due to encroachment by local residents, Viengsamone Chanbengseng, deputy director of the district’s Agriculture and Forestry Department, said at a meeting on deforestation on April 5. Since 2016, about 75 families, including retired state employees in 12 villages in the district, have been encroaching on about 37 hectares of state land, especially in Sayphouluang National Protected Forest, Phouchoum National Protected Forest and Houei Ped National Protected Forest, according a Tha Teng district official. The province’s Agriculture and Forestry Department has ordered them to stop occupying state land and stop cultivating land in protected forests after the November harvest. An official at the Sekong Provincial Administration Office, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons or to be able to speak freely, told RFA on Monday that authorities have taken action against those caught encroaching upon protected land. “We’ve reeducated them,” he said. “Most of them have been booked, many others have been disciplined, and some have been detained from three days to one week for grabbing state land.” A Tha Teng district police officer said that the rising price of cassava, now 2,200 kip (U.S. $0.18) a kilogram, has prompted poor villagers to grab land to plant the starchy root vegetables. “Many villagers who are poor and landless grow cassava and coffee to make ends meet,” he said. “However, we, the authorities, insist they stop encroaching upon state land. They should grow crops on their own land for which they have title. The government doesn’t allow people to use state land.” The Tha Teng district official provided a similar explanation. “These people don’t have land to farm,” he said. “They don’t have money to do anything. They grow cassava, so that they can have some income or some money to buy food.” District officials are discussing a plan to provide villagers with capital, about 10 million kip (U.S. $826) per family, so they can invest in growing vegetables in their own gardens instead of on state land, he said. “The Lao government wants to protect and preserve these forests for future generation,” said the Tha Teng district official. “The district authorities will be monitoring these people closely. If they encroach upon the state land again, they’ll be charged according to the law.” The satellite image shows an area of Phou Xieng Thong National Protected Forest in Lakhonepheng district, southern Laos’ Saravan province, where villagers have encroached upon state land. Credit: Google Earth ‘I don’t have land’ A Tha Teng district resident who grows cassava said locals feel unfairly targeted by the government. “All land is occupied, so we’re going to where there is land,” he said. “A lot of land is occupied by Chinese and Vietnamese investors from here in Sekong province all the way to Saravan province. Why are the authorities cracking down only on us but not on the foreigners?” Another farmer who lives in the district voiced a similar complaint: “We clear the forest to grow crops for our survival, not for commercial purposes. If the government wants to protect the forest, the government shouldn’t give land concessions to foreigners and shouldn’t limit land for its own people.” In Saravan province, more than 100 families have grown cassava and mango on up to 600 hectares of land in Xebang Nouane National Protected Forest and Phou Xieng Thong National Projected Forest, a provincial National Park Service official told RFA in March. “Just this year, 16 more families have occupied 10 more hectares in these two protected forests to grow cassava,” he said. “We’re beginning to seriously protect the forests because some villagers just disregard the law. Our [Lao People’s Revolutionary] Party and government want to protect the forests.” Authorities had allowed farmers to grow crops on state land because they only occupied a small part of the protected forests, about 600 hectares of land, or about 2-3% of the total area, a Lakhonepheng district official in Saravan said. “However, we, the provincial authorities, now want to stop it and to prevent people from expanding their cultivation,” he said. A cassava grower from the Phoukasy village in Lakhonepheng said he is growing more of the tuber this year because of the higher prices. “The problem is that I don’t have land,” he said. “I grow cassava in the protected forest and pay taxes to the district. We’re still allowed to grow cassava this year, but I don’t know about next year.” Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Read More

2 children among 6 Rohingya killed after escaping Malaysian detention center

Editor09 mins

Hundreds of Rohingya detained for two years in northern Malaysia escaped Wednesday following a pre-dawn riot, but six were killed by vehicles as they tried to cross a highway, in a tragic turn of events highlighting conditions at the country’s secretive immigrant detention centers. Close to 400 people had been recaptured by evening, officials said, while human rights groups called for a probe into what had provoked the unrest. They also demanded to know how many detention centers, where immigrants are held indefinitely and incommunicado, were operating across the country. “I have instructed the Royal Malaysia Police and the Immigration Department to conduct a detailed investigation of what caused them to act in such a way,” Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin said of the escapees late Wednesday. Multiple agencies from two states were working to track down more than 100 people still at large, he said. “All 528 detainees who escaped were ethnic Rohingya refugees transferred from a camp in Langkawi after being arrested for trespassing in Malaysian waters and violating the Immigration Act in 2020,” he said. Langkawi is an island group in the Strait of Malacca, off the coast of the northern Kedah state. Police in Bandar Baharu, Kedah were alerted to a riot and escape at the Sungai Bakap Temporary Immigration Depot at around 4 a.m., according to the state police chief, Wan Hassan Wan Ahmad. Prior to the riot, 664 people were housed there – 430 men, 97 women, and 137 children, he said. He told reporters that no serious injuries were reported during the riot and that its cause was under investigation. Detainees smashed a door and fence at the depot before making a run for it, he said, adding that the 23 security personnel on duty were quickly overwhelmed. “Because there were so many of detainees in a cramped space, things got out of control and the detainees took the opportunity to break out,” he told a press conference in Kedah. “The fatal accident involving the escapees happened about six to seven kilometers from the depot. Two men, two women, and two children (a boy, and a girl) were killed after being hit by vehicles when they tried to cross a highway while fleeing,” he said. Villagers living near the immigration facility said they were afraid to leave their homes with escapees still at large. “The detainees were everywhere, running out from the depot, and they headed to our village before they went into the bush,” a man who gave his name as Hashim told BenarNews. Another villager, Ahmad Husin, said they could be hiding in nearby palm oil plantations. Earlier, “some of them came to us looking for water because they were thirsty but no one dare to give them any because they were afraid of any untoward incident,” he told BenarNews. The Kedah police chief warned residents of nearby villages against helping the escapees, saying to do so was an offense punishable by law. ‘Traumatizing’ Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and other countries to escape persecution in Myanmar, their home country, and dire living conditions in cramped refugee camps in Bangladesh. Malaysia, however, does not recognize refugee status. Since 2020, the country has rounded up thousands of refugees and housed them in crowded detention centers, in what the authorities say are measures to contain the spread of coronavirus. An estimated 180,000 UNHCR cardholders currently live in Malaysia, much higher than the estimated 38,000 in 2013. Jerald Joseph, a member of the Malaysia’s Human Rights Commission (Suhakam), called on the country’s immigration authorities to allow representative from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to meet with the detainees. “The Immigration Department has to give access to UNHCR so they can determine whether the ones detained were really Rohingyas. If so, they should be freed like the 150,000 Rohingyas who are here in the country,” he said. For its part, Amnesty International Malaysia demanded the government fully and transparently investigate the events “including the desperate circumstances within Sungai Bakap immigration detention center that led to detainees trying to escape, resulting in the loss of six lives.” Suhakam should investigate how many temporary immigration detention centers are in existence across the country, Katrina Jorene Maliamauv, executive director of Amnesty International Malaysia, said in a statement. “Conditions at these immigration detention centers should be documented, given past incidences of human rights violations in immigration depots in Malaysia,” she said. She called indefinite detention “traumatizing.” “The government therefore needs to answer not only on the deaths of the six individuals but also why so many refugees, including children, are being detained,” she said. Yusof Ali, chairman of Kedah Rohingya Association, also appealed to the Malaysian government “to look into the Rohingya issue detained at the Immigration Depots in the country.” Asked why the breakout occurred, he said, “Maybe because they have been in there far too long. Some of them have temporary documents and UNHCR cards, but when they showed it to the authorities, the office in charge will arrest them and allege that the document or the card are fake. No other countries want to accept our ethnic group. It is now up to the Malaysian government’s discretion,” he said. Zul Suffian in Penang, Malaysia and Iskandar Zulkarnain in Kedah, Malaysia contributed to this report by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service..

Read More

Vietnam court jails 12 on subversion charges in trial described by lawyer as ‘flawed’

Editor05 mins

A court in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on Monday sentenced 12 Vietnamese to prison terms of from three to 13 years on charges of supporting an exile group accused of attempting to overthrow the government in a trial described by defense attorneys as violating legal principles. Nine of the cases were drawn from separate parts of the country, jeopardizing standards of fairness in the trial, defense attorney Nguyen Van Mieng told RFA in an interview after the sentences were handed down. “This trial violated legal procedures, as it gathered nine cases from different provinces and cities and then combined them in a single trial,” Mieng said. “These 12 people had no relationships or links with each other,” he added. Defendant Tran Thi Ngoc Xuan, who received a 13-year prison term and was described by prosecutors as the most active member of the alleged plot, was acquainted with only two of the others brought to trial, Mieng said. “However, she had no close ties with either of them. They simply knew each other and did not work together as members of a team,” he said. Prosecutors had charged the group with “carrying out activities aimed at overthrowing the government” under Article 109 of Vietnam’s Penal Code and with recruiting others to join the Provisional Government of Vietnam, a U.S.-based opposition group described by Vietnamese authorities as a terrorist organization. Speaking to RFA, Mieng said however that the defendants had only thought they were joining projects aimed at helping the country’s poor. “In general, these 12 defendants are all poor and not well-educated,” Mieng said. “Therefore, when hearing from an online source about 18 programs providing land and houses carried out by the U.N. in cooperation with an ‘interim government,’ they registered their names and encouraged others to participate.” “And then they were arrested,” he said. Only Xuan declared her innocence at trial, with the others pleading guilty and asking for leniency from the court, Mieng said. Only Xuan had been able to hire a lawyer, while the other defendants were represented by lawyers assigned by the court, he added. Xuan, who has already spent two years in pre-trial detention, will now consider filing an appeal of her sentence, which must be filed within 15 days, Mieng said. Based in Orange County, California, the Provisional Government of Vietnam was founded in 1991 by former soldiers and refugees loyal to the South Vietnamese government that existed before the country’s takeover by North Vietnam in 1975. The group was designated a terrorist organization by Vietnamese authorities in January 2018 after group members in Vietnam were charged with a plot to attack Tan Son Nhat International Airport with petrol bombs ahead of a major holiday the year before. At least 18 Vietnamese have been jailed in recent years for alleged involvement with the group. Repeated attempts by RFA to contact representatives of the Provisional Government of Vietnam for comment have gone unanswered. Translated by Anna Vu for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Read More

I’ll never let go, Vlad

Editor01 mins

The sinking of the Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea fleet flagship, was the biggest wartime loss of a naval ship in 40 years. Despite the major embarrassment for Vladimir Putin and the vaunted Russian military, China’s Xi Jinping has maintained his embrace of his fellow strongman. Beyond the reputational damage to China from his alliance with Putin, analysts question whether Xi is getting accurate information about Russian battlefield failures, which may offer lessons for China’s military.

Read More

Chinese police order residents to hand over passports ‘until after the pandemic’

Editor08 mins

Police in the central Chinese province of Hunan have ordered local residents to hand over their passports to police, promising to return them “when the pandemic is over,” amid a massive surge in people looking for ways to leave China or obtain overseas immigration status. A March 31 notice from the Baisha police department in the central province of Hunan posted to social media ordered employers to hand over the passports of all employees and family members to police, “to be returned after the pandemic.” An officer who answered the phone at the Baisha police department confirmed the report, and said the measure is being rolled out nationwide. “According to official requirements, [passports] must be handed over because of the pandemic,” the officer said. “It’s everywhere, not just Hunan. It’s across the whole country,” they said. “Anyone with a passport has to hand it over, not just people who have an employer.” “If people don’t hand them over … then they have to expect to be investigated,” the officer said. China’s zero-COVID policy of mass compulsory testing, stringent lockdowns and digital health codes has sparked an emigration wave fueled by “shocked” middle-classes fed up with food shortages, confinement at home, and amid broader safety concerns. The number of keyword searches on social media platform WeChat and search engine Baidu for “criteria for emigrating to Canada” has skyrocketed by nearly 3,000 percent in the past month, with most queries clustered in cities and provinces under tough, zero-COVID restrictions, including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Beijing. Immigration consultancies in Shanghai confirmed they have also been seeing a huge spike in emigration inquiries in recent weeks. Many clients are now looking for “a green card from a big country and a passport from a small country” to supplement their Chinese passports, a consultant who gave only the surname Liu told RFA. “Some clients also need a favorable exchange rate [with their destination country],” he said. “We have had nearly four times as many inquiries this year as this time last year.” He said most people are looking for a one-step process to achieve permanent residency, and don’t mind spending more of their savings to achieve it. “There are many who are applying to Turkey, because [you need to] buy a house for at least U.S. $250,000, which is between one and two million yuan,” Liu said. “There are rumors this will go up to U.S. $400,000 in May, so a lot of people are trying jump aboard the last bus before the price hike.” A Shanghai-based immigration consultant surnamed Shen said more and more people are applying now, as there is scant sign that the government will ease up on the zero-COVID policy. “You could maybe start by applying for permanent residency of another country, in case this escalates in future,” Shen said, referring to the order to hand over passports. Mao Runzhi The wave of interest in leaving the country has sparked memes around the Chinese characters “runzhi,” a satirical reference both to late supreme leader Mao Zedong and the English word “run.” “Mao Zedong’s [birth] name was Mao Runzhi, and he ran away at the most critical moment,” Xia Ming, professor of political science at New York’s City University, told RFA. “There is also the word run in English, as in run away.” Xia sees the current exodus as the peak of a wave of migration that began around five years ago, and cited recent news events like the woman found chained by the neck in the eastern province of Jiangsu as catalysts, along with the pandemic. “There are constantly cases of abduction and trafficking and missing persons,” Xia said. “Anyone could become that chained woman; it’s so random.” “Women and children are kidnapped and sold as sex slaves or for organ donations, and this has had a big impact on China’s middle classes,” he said. He said the Shanghai lockdown had also come as a huge shock to some of the most privileged people in Chinese society. “These people who used to live more comfortable lives than everyone else suddenly found themselves facing starvation overnight, and lost any sense of personal dignity,” Xia said. “This was a huge shock to the quietly successful middle class.” Taiwan-based Hong Kong commentator Sang Pu said people from Shanghai aren’t fleeing COVID-19 so much as their government’s draconian disease control restrictions. “Emigration is being driven by the CCP’s authoritarian approach to disease control and prevention, not by the virus,” Sang said. “The reason is a political one.” “But do their politics accord with those of the countries they are moving to? Not necessarily,” he said. “These people aren’t just refugees; they are looking for some kind of paradise where they can live freely, but they bring with them the legacy of authoritarian rule. We should stay vigilant.” He said if rich Chinese businesspeople and senior officials are allowed to flee overseas with money, this would effectively set up a tried-and-tested channel for money-laundering, as well as providing the CCP with a growing foothold overseas. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Read More

China, Solomon Islands confirm they have signed security pact

Editor09 mins

China and the Solomon Islands have both confirmed they signed a controversial security pact that has sparked concerns about China’s rising influence in the Pacific region. The confirmation came as a U.S. delegation led by the National Security Council Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell was heading to Honiara to discuss regional security issues. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare told parliament on Wednesday that the agreement with China was to help with the country’s “internal security situation,” referring to recent unrest that saw businesses and buildings burned and looted. The prime minister said the decision “will not adversely impact or undermine the peace and harmony of our region.” Hours before that, a Chinese government spokesman said that the pact is “part of normal exchanges and cooperation between two sovereign and independent countries” and does not target any third party. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Solomon Islands counterpart Jeremiah Manele officially signed the document “the other day.” China did not offer an explanation about whether the signed document is the final agreement. Neither party has revealed any details of the deal, with Sogavare saying it would be disclosed after a “process.” Kurt M. Campbell, the Biden administration’s coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, pictured official at the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 23, 2019. At the time, Campbell was chairman and CEO of a consultancy, the Asia Group. Credit: Reuters. Lack of transparency Solomon Islands’ neighbors Australia and New Zealand have repeatedly voiced concerns since a copy of the draft agreement was leaked online in March. On Tuesday, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Pacific Minister Zed Seselja issued a joint statement saying “Australia is deeply disappointed by the signing” of the pact. “We are concerned about the lack of transparency with which this agreement has been developed, noting its potential to undermine stability in our region,” the statement reads. Seselja traveled to Honiara last week to urge the Solomon Islands prime Mminister not to sign the deal with Beijing, without success.  New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said her country was “saddened” that the Solomon Islands had made the pact. The U.S. also expressed concern over “the lack of transparency” in China’s security pact with the Solomon Islands, calling it part of a pattern of Beijing offering “shadowy” deals to countries, Reuters news agency reported. Two top U.S. officials for the Indo-Pacific region – Kurt Campbell and Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs – are currently in Fiji before traveling to Honiara to meet with the island nation’s leaders. Campbell said in January that the U.S. has “enormous moral, strategic, historical interests” in the Pacific but had not done enough to assist the region. Their trip has been criticized by China as having “ulterior motives.” “Several senior U.S. officials now fancy a visit to some Pacific island countries all of a sudden after all these years,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Wang Wenbin, pointing out that the U.S. Embassy in Solomon Islands has been closed for 29 years. This February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Fiji to meet with Pacific island leaders, and announced that the embassy in Honiara would be reopened. The Chinese national flag flies outside the Chinese Embassy in Honiara, Solomon Islands, April 1, 2022. Credit: AP. Military presence China has maintained that Pacific island countries need to diversify their cooperation with other countries and “have the right to independently choose their cooperation partners.” “China is always a builder of peace and a promoter of stability in the South Pacific region,” Wang said. A draft copy of the security pact leaked onto social media in late March suggested there would be Chinese logistical hubs or bases in the island nation. One of the clauses says: “China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of Solomon Islands, make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands.” David Capie, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, told RFA that the security pact would allow Beijing to set up military bases and deploy troops in the Pacific island nation, “marking the start of a much sharper military competition than anything we’ve seen in the region for decades.” Capie said that the agreement “would allow the People’s Republic of China to deploy police and military personnel to Solomon Islands with the consent of the host government, and potentially provide for refueling and support of Chinese ships.” U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said earlier this week that the U.S. is concerned that the agreement “leaves the door open for the deployment of Chinese forces on the Solomon Islands.” “We believe that signing such an agreement could increase destabilization within the Solomon Islands and will set a concerning precedent for the wider Pacific island region,” Price added. Analysts say a presence of Chinese troops in the Solomon Islands could raise the risk of confrontation between China and the U.S. and its allies, as well as challenge the U.S.-led vision of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.”

Read More

Bangladesh extends road near Myanmar, NE India to combat cross-border smuggling

Editor08 mins

Bangladesh officials on Tuesday announced an extension until 2024 for a road-building project in the remote Chittagong Hill Tracts and Cox’s Bazar, saying the improved infrastructure would help combat illegal smuggling across the nearby frontiers with Myanmar and India, among other uses. An army-run initiative, which was to have wrapped up in June 2021, is being extended to June 2024 and will more than double in price, to 38.6 billion taka (U.S. $448 million), they said. Bangladesh’s southeast has 210 km (130 miles) of land border with Myanmar and 330 km (205 miles) with India. Insurgents, such as the Arakan Army from Myanmar, have slipped across the porous borders, according to an analyst, even attacking Bangladeshi border guards on at least one occasion.    On Tuesday, the National Economic Council Executive Committee, headed by the prime minister, approved the updated proposal for the road system in the hilly and largely inaccessible southeastern region, Shahedur Rahman, the planning ministry’s spokesman, told BenarNews. He said the project, approved at an earlier committee meeting, was supposed to finish by 2021, but would end in June 2024 after the extension approval. The system is to connect all roads along the bordering areas of four southeastern districts and ultimately link with the region’s existing road system. According to a copy of the updated proposal obtained by BenarNews, the roads and highways department is to build a 317-km (197-mile) border road in three districts in the Chittagong Hill Tracts – Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban – and Cox’s Bazar district along its frontiers with Myanmar and northeastern Indian states. The hills and dense forest in the region hamper Border Guard Bangladesh efforts. In 2020, the government for the first time acquired two helicopters for the BGB along the southeastern border. “There is no road in this highly inaccessible and hilly region; our soldiers need to walk at least eight hours to cross 1 km. The distance between two BGB border outposts in this region ranges between 4 and 6 km, depending on terrain,” Lt Col. Foyzur Rahman, the BGB operations director, told BenarNews. “Construction of the border road would enable our soldiers to reach one outpost to another very easily and quickly, making guarding the border[s] an easier task. The smuggling of arms and narcotics would stop,” he said. ‘Many security considerations’ The original timeline for the road ran from January 2018 to June 2021 and set the project cost at nearly 17 billion taka ($197 million), according to the document. But that deadline passed before the project was finished – the government estimates more than 30 percent of the project has been completed. The new timeline runs through June 2024 and increases the cost. A.K.M. Manir Hossain Pathan, chief engineer of the roads and highways department, said his department had been constructing the border road system with assistance from the army’s engineering corps. “The border road involved many security considerations which the roads and highways department engineers are not supposed to be involved with. Therefore, we have been implementing the project through the Bangladesh Army,” he told BenarNews. “The inaccessible hilly terrain has slowed the implementation of the border road project. Getting machines, construction materials and the engineers and workers [to] the site is a herculean task so the project’s deadline has been extended to June 2024,” he said. In addition to the road project, the proposal calls for establishing improved communication links in Rangamati, Bandarban, Khagrachhari and Cox’s Bazar districts and “establishing government control in the bordering areas through heightening security measures.” Such measures would be used to combat the smuggling of illegal arms, narcotics and human trafficking at the border, it said. The proposal also says construction of helipads and security enclosures have been added to the original project. Cross-border infiltration Separatist groups have taken advantage of the rugged and remote terrain. On Aug. 25, 2015, a group of Arakan Army insurgents from the other side of the Myanmar border attacked BGB in Bandarban district, injuring two soldiers. The border road would benefit Bangladesh, said retired Maj. Gen. K. Mohammad Ali Sikder, a security analyst. “The terrain along the border in Chittagong Hill Tracts and Cox’s Bazar has been very tough and inaccessible. Exploiting this tough hilly terrain, the cross-border criminal syndicates carry out smuggling of arms, narcotics and other contraband while different separatist groups move freely between countries,” he told BenarNews. “The members of the Arakan Army very often enter Bangladesh territory from Myanmar as the BGB members cannot guard all the time, and the anti-Bangladesh groups easily cross into Myanmar,” he said. “After completion of the road, the movement of the criminals and separatist groups would stop.” BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Read More

Investigative Journalism Reportika © March 2022 by Ij-Reportika is licensed under CC BY 4.0