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Month: June 2022

Myanmar military court sentences young man to death by hanging

Editor06 mins

A 24-year-old man has been sentenced to death by hanging by the Tachileik District Court in Myanmar’s eastern Shan State, sources close to the court told RFA. Aik Sai Main, an ethnic Wa from Waine Kyauk Ward, Tachileik city, was arrested by police along with 21-year-old Htin Lin Aung on suspicion of bombing a pro-military rally on Feb. 1 this year. Four months later, the junta-run Tachileik District Court sentenced him on Wednesday to death by hanging under Section 54 of the Anti-Terrorism Law and Section 368 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, according to a source familiar with the court proceedings who did not want to be named for safety reasons. “It is true that he was sentenced to the death penalty by hanging. We investigated that in the District Court,” the source told RFA. “Family members could not come to the venue. They will be so upset. We ethnic groups are saddened by the junta’s arbitrary arrests and verdicts without any evidence.” Htin Lin Aung was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday under Section 52 (a) of the Anti-Terrorism Law. The bomb blast near a military rally in Tachileik on Feb. 1 killed four people and wounded more than 30 others. The bombing came exactly one year after a military coup against an elected civilian government which prompted mass protests, and then escalating violence across the country after the military used extreme force to quell the protests. In the past, the death penalty imposed by the junta has been based mainly on anti-terrorism laws. This is the first case of its kind since the coup to include Section 368 (a) of the Criminal Procedure Code which imposes death by hanging. Section 54 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, which was handed down at the trial, provides for a minimum sentence of 10 years and maximum sentence of life imprisonment or death. Section 368 (a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that when the death penalty is given the person must be executed by hanging. A lawyer who declined to be named for security reasons described the verdict as a harsh sentence, noting that Section 368 (a) of the Criminal Procedure Code allows an appeal. “It gives the right to appeal to the Supreme Court within seven days, whether the sentence is death or death by hanging. Even if the family does not appeal, the prison authorities can appeal on behalf of the victim. Section 368 (1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that the death penalty must be imposed by hanging until death.” Military council spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told a press conference in the capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday the death penalty was a just punishment. Legal experts have criticized the junta for threatening the public with unfair executions.  A total of 115 people, including Aik Sai Main, were sentenced to death between Feb. 1, 2021, and May 19, 2022, according to data compiled by RFA based on figures released by the military council.  Last month Myanmar’s junta sentenced seven youths to death in the Yangon region after a secret military tribunal found them guilty of murder, a junta newspaper reported. According to Thai-based rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) 13,926 people have been arrested between the start of the coup and June 2 this year. It says 10,870 people are still being held in detention while 3,035 have been freed and 21 released on bail. The group, founded by exiled former political prisoners, says 1,087 people were sentenced in person and 72 of those, including two children, were sentenced to death. Another 120 people were sentenced in absentia with 41 receiving the death penalty.

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Invasion of Ukraine may spark a world war, experts warn

Editor09 mins

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to the fore U.S.-China frictions with no end in sight, analysts warned, while a former Asian leader cautioned about the risk of a new world war.  “I am afraid that wars have a habit of beginning small and then grow into world wars,” former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said at the Future of Asia conference hosted by Nikkei Inc. last week. Mahathir served as Malaysia’s prime minister from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. He was 20 when World War II ended. Meanwhile, Chinese and U.S. analysts present at the conference traded accusations against each other’s countries and their roles in trying to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Bonnie Glaser, Director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that China and Russia share a common interest in weakening U.S. global influence and they “seek to change the international order.” She reminded the audience at the conference that before the Russian invasion of Ukraine it was reported that the U.S. shared intelligence with China about Russia’s military plan and urged Beijing to intervene to prevent the war, only for China to share that intelligence with Moscow. This “underscores how much mistrust is there between the U.S. and China,” Glaser said. In response Jia Qingguo, professor at the Peking University’s School of International Studies, said the difference between China and the U.S. is that the U.S. is seeking an ideological world order while China is seeking a secular one “based on national sovereignty and territorial integrity.” It is the U.S. that has been trying to contain China, Jia said. China does not endorse Russia’s military attack against Ukraine but is sympathetic to Moscow being pushed by NATO’s possible expansion, the Beijing-based professor said, adding: “Never push a country, especially a big country, to a corner, however benign the intentions are.” “Countries should respect each other,” Jia said. Regarding that statement, the German Marshall Fund’s Glaser argued that China has been showing double standards when it comes to the definition of “respect.” “When countries have put their own interests ahead of Chinese interests, that has been interpreted by Beijing as disrespect,” she said. China-U.S. rivalry As the war drags on, “rather than be a strategic partner for China, Russia will become a burden,” predicted Glaser. “One possibility is that the U.S. will be freed up to some extent to focus even more intently on the competition with China and on cooperation with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region,” the American analyst said, pointing out that officials in the Biden administration believe “that is the most likely outcome.” Veteran diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, who is a former permanent secretary to Singapore’s Foreign Ministry, said the key issue at present is U.S.-China relations. “China has been put in a very awkward situation. It has no other partner of the same strategic weight as Russia anywhere in the world,” he said. Speaking from the perspective of Southeast Asian countries, Kausikan said geopolitics are “moving in the direction of the West” but “if you insist in defining this conflict as a fight between totalitarianism and democracy you’ll likely make that support more shaky and shallow.”  “Not every country in this region finds every aspect of Western democracy universally attractive. Nor do they find every aspect of Chinese authoritarianism universally unappealing,” he argued. Former Malaysian PM Mahathir seemed to echo the Chinese government’s stance when describing the attitude of the U.S. as “always to apply pressure to force regime change.” “When people do not agree, the U.S. would show that it may take military action,” he said. “That is why there is a tendency for tension to increase whenever it involves the U.S.” But “it’s not easy to contain China,” Kausikan said. “China and the U.S. are both parts of the global economic system. They’re linked together by supply chains … Like it or not, they’re stuck together,” the Singapore analyst said. “Competition will be very complicated,” he added. Arleigh-burke class guided missile-destroyer USS Barry transits the Taiwan Strait during a routine transit on Sept. 17, 2021 in this US Navy photograph Taiwan question Experts at the Tokyo conference also discussed the possibility of a conflict involving Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province that should be reunified with the mainland. Jia Qingguo stated that there should be no comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. “No country has the right to support some residents of another country to split the place in which they live away from that country,” he said.  “China has every right to make sure that Taiwan will not be split from China.” Glaser said China’s military is, without doubt, following the war in Ukraine closely.  “There are some differences between Taiwan and Ukraine and it’s not a perfect analogy but there are lessons to be drawn.” “Russia has far greater military capabilities than Ukraine but the Ukrainian resistance has been fierce and I wonder if the PLA has actually anticipated a possibility of facing a fierce resistance in Taiwan,” Glaser said. She said she hoped Taiwan would also draw some lessons from the conflict in Ukraine and develop its own defense capabilities in the face of security threats from China.

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Suspect in kidnapping of Vietnamese executive extradited to Germany

Editor03 mins

A suspect in the 2017 Berlin kidnapping of former Vietnamese oil and gas official Trinh Xuan Thanh has been extradited to Germany from the Czech Republic. The Vietnamese national, identified as Anh T.L., was handed over to German authorities on Wednesday after his arrest in Prague earlier this year, news agencies reported citing a statement from the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office. Anh faces charges including espionage and is accused of stalking the victim and driving the getaway van. On July 23, 2017, former Trinh Xuan Thanh was abducted in a Berlin park and thrown into a van with a woman, identified as Thi Minh P.D. He was allegedly smuggled back to Vietnam for trial. A Hanoi court charged Thanh with causing loss of state assets and mismanagement at PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation. He was sentenced to two life terms on corruption charges. At the time of his abduction Thanh was seeking refugee status in Germany. The kidnapping strained German-Vietnamese relations and prompted Berlin to expel two Vietnamese diplomats. A year after the kidnapping, a Vietnamese citizen, identified as Long N.H., was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison by a Berlin court on charges of espionage and assisting Vietnamese secret service agents in entering German territory to kidnap people. “The kidnapping was carried about by members of the Vietnamese secret service and employees of the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin as well as several Vietnamese nationals living in Europe, among them Ahn T.L.,” the German public prosecutor general at the Federal Court of Justice said in a statement seen by news agencies. Vietnam claims Thanh returned voluntarily to face charges.

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Chinese medical team returns home after training North Korea on COVID response

Editor05 mins

A Chinese delegation of medical experts who last month traveled to North Korea to advise on COVID-19 containment strategies has returned to China, sources in both countries told RFA. RFA reported last month that the 13 doctors and medical technicians were in Pyongyang to help train North Korean medical personnel. “The Chinese medical experts left Pyongyang by train on the morning of May 29 and arrived in Dandong in the afternoon,” a North Korea related source, in the city on the Chinese side of the border, told RFA Wednesday on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “They passed on the experience and technology that China has gained about quarantine and response to the coronavirus to North Korea,” the source said. The Chinese health experts conducted training on the use of vaccines and testing at a bio-research center in Pyongyang, and discussed their clinical experience with staff at four Pyongyang hospitals, according to the source. “The North Korean quarantine authorities expressed their gratitude for their help in containing the spread of coronavirus in Pyongyang. Cooperation between the two countries regarding the COVID-19 quarantine will continue in the future,” the source said. State-run media this week reported that the COVID situation had “improved” in North Korea, after the country declared a maximum emergency last month due to a wave of outbreaks. The World Health Organization disagreed with that assessment, saying on Wednesday that the coronavirus situation in North Korea is getting worse, not better. Authorities still say an ongoing quarantine should continue, a source in the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “Currently, they are doing a project to raise the skill level of hospital doctors in provincial areas,” the second source said. “In Pyongyang, technical training has already been conducted for medical staff at central hospitals. … Now in the provincial areas, preparation for receiving clinical education on coronavirus testing, medicines and treatment methods are in full swing through an online education system operated by Pyongyang Medical University,” the second source said. “Doctors in all areas are working really hard.  Doctors have always been respected by the residents, but the popularity of doctors is increasing due to the recent Omicron outbreak,” the source said. North Korean authorities said on Thursday that the number of new suspected coronavirus cases remained below 100,000 for three consecutive days. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that from 6 p.m. on May 31 to 6 p.m. on June 1, there were about 96,610 new fever cases and about 108,990 patients had recovered, while no deaths were recorded. About 3.8 million people have been hit by outbreaks of fever, 70 of whom have died, according to data based on the most recent reports from North Korean state media published by 38 North. Around 3.7 million are reported to have made recoveries, while around 165,390 are undergoing treatment. Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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Enrollment up as new academic year begins in Myanmar, despite turmoil

Editor06 mins

Myanmar’s junta reopened basic education schools across the country for the 2022-2023 academic year on Thursday with student enrollment levels surpassing those from a year earlier, when the pandemic and a teacher boycott of the military regime kept kids at home, according to parents and residents. In the commercial capital Yangon, the number of students attending primary schools saw a noticeable uptick, residents said, while security at the city’s educational centers was tighter than the previous year. Yangon taxi driver Than Win estimated that “around 50% of the children” went to school on the first day of classes, based on what he had seen driving through five of the city’s townships Thursday morning. “Very few were in school uniforms — maybe 20% or so,” he told RFA’s Burmese Service, suggesting they didn’t want to be seen as supporting junta rule. “I didn’t see security guards in the morning but in the afternoon, there were five or six security guards posted at some of the more prominent schools.” Parents said more children are attending school this year than last. Schools were closed in 2021 due to coronavirus restrictions and the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup, which prompted many teachers to leave their jobs and join the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement. Wai Wai, a mother from Yangon’s Twante township, told RFA that her 7-year-old daughter attended her first day of kindergarten classes on Thursday. “I thought there’d be no one at school but many people came — all the kids were wearing their white and green school uniforms. Last year, the children did not dare to wear white and green,” she said. “One teacher told me she had only three students in her class last year, but today she had 30.” The junta announced that 5.6 million students had enrolled nationwide for the current academic year, most of whom are based in Yangon region, the capital Naypyidaw and Mon state. An anti-coup protester splashes red paint on student uniforms hung outside a school during a demonstration against the re-opening of the school by the junta in Yangon, April 27, 2021. Credit: AP Photo NUG-run classes Despite the increase in enrollment, many parents said they would continue to boycott junta-run schools. The country’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) recently said it is working to provide classes for school-age children of parents led by CDM teachers. Mon Mon, a resident of Magway region’s Yezagyo township, told RFA her 7-year-old son will attend NUG-run classes this spring instead of school. “There’s no school for my son this year because we don’t want to support the junta’s education system,” she said. “I plan to send my son to classes run by the Spring Revolution NUG. We will find a school where CDM teachers teach. Another reason [he won’t attend] is that we feel sorry for children in war-torn areas who cannot go to school and sympathize with them.” The junta invited CDM teachers to return to work with no repercussions by May 31 and recently extended its offer to June 7. Kyaw Min Khant, an official with the All Myanmar Teachers’ Federation, confirmed to RFA that enrollment in schools in many of the country’s regions and states is around 50% higher than last year. “We have seen a significant increase in enrollment over the past year,” he said. “Many parents have realized that they need to keep their children in school. … They know that their kids will be much older if they wait for the country’s political stalemate to be solved before they return, so they are willing to separate their politics from their children’s education.” According to Kyaw Min Khant, 11 million children were eligible to attend school nationwide in 2021, while the number had increased to around 13 million this year, with some 80% in attendance. Translation by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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US report on international religious freedom cites genocides in China and Myanmar

Editor07 mins

China and Myanmar feature prominently in the U.S.’s latest report on global restrictions on religious rights and practices, which singles out the two countries for their repression of mostly Muslim Uyghurs and Rohingya. “We have seen to genocides of religious minority communities in recent years in China and Burma,” said U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Rashad Hussain of the Office of International Religious Freedom during a press conference Thursday to release the report. The State Department is required to submit its assessment of religious freedom across the globe to Congress each year. Witnesses and experts provided grim testimony in the report about torture, rape and other human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). “It comes as no surprise that the People’s Republic of China is a glaring example” of a government that represses citizens who practice certain religions, said Hussain, who serves as an advisor to the President Joe Biden on religious freedom conditions and policy. “The PRC government continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs who are predominantly Muslim and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups,” he said. Hussain noted China’s continued use of technologies, including artificial intelligence and facial recognition, “to surveil and maintain control of its open-air prison in Xinjiang.” Human rights groups and Uyghur advocacy organizations have amassed credible evidence of the severe abuse Uyghurs in Xinjiang have suffered, from mass incarcerations and the destruction of mosques to torture, rape and forced sterilizations. Beijing has angrily denied the accusations, calling them the “lie of the century.” “China continues its genocide of predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other religious minority groups,” said U.S. Secretary of State Blinken at the press conference. “Since April 2017, more than 1 million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kirghiz and others have been detained internment camps in Xinjiang.” RFA has reported that up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities have been detained in China’s vast network of hundreds of internment camps throughout Xinjiang. Chinese officials have said that the camps are vocational training centers designed to offer an alternative path away from terrorism and religious extremism. Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress in Germany, said the comments by Hussain and Blinken show that the U.S. stands with Uyghur Muslims and will hold China to account for the Uyghur genocide. “Their powerful words should encourage the international community to act to end the Uyghur genocide,” he said. “China wants to eradicate Islam because it believes Islam is a cancer. China is committing genocide against Uyghur people precisely because we are Muslims.” Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for Uyghurs, said she was pleased that Blinken called out China’s gross violations of human rights, genocide and crimes against humanity. “Blinken’s words reveal to the world that China is like the emperor’s new clothes, hiding behind lies,” she said. There was no immediate comment from the Chinese government about the U.S. report. The report also noted Myanmar’s repressive treatment of members of the Rohingya ethnic and religious minority group.  Violent clearance operations of Rohingya communities in western Myanmar by the country’s military in 2017, including arbitrary killings, torture and mass rape, drove more than 740,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh, where they now living in sprawling refugee camps.  “In March, based on extensive legal review of the evidence, I made the determination that Burma’s military committed genocide and crimes against humanity with the intent to destroy predominantly Muslim Rohingya in 2017,” Blinken said, citing evidence of attacks on mosques, use of religious and ethnic slurs, and the desecration of Korans. The military junta that seized power from the democratically elected government in February 2021 had confined 144,000 Rohingya in internal displacement camps in Rakhine state by the end of 2021, the report says, citing information from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.  The junta also continues to restrict where Rohingya are allowed to travel in Myanmar and has made no efforts to initiate the return of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, the report says.

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Cambodian woman says police assault during strike led to miscarriage

Editor07 mins

A Cambodian woman said a physical assault she suffered at the hands of police officers during a labor protest outside the NagaWorld Casino may have led to the death of her unborn child. Sok Ratana told RFA’s Khmer Service that she had been pregnant when she joined the ongoing strike outside the casino’s offices on May 11. The police pushed and shoved her during the protest, she said. Fearing they may have hurt her baby in utero, she went to her doctor, who told her that the baby only had a 50% chance to live. Sok Ratana said that she miscarried on May 28. The doctor told her that the baby had likely died two days before he removed it from her womb, she said. “Losing my beloved baby has caused me an unbelievable pain that I will feel the rest of my life,” said Sok Ratana. “This experience has shown me the brutality of the authorities and it has deeply hurt my family.” Sok Ratana is one of thousands of NagaWorld workers who walked off their jobs in mid-December, demanding higher wages and the reinstatement of eight jailed union leaders, three other jailed workers and 365 others they say were unjustly fired from the hotel and casino. The business is owned by a Hong Kong-based company believed to have connections to family members of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. The strikers began holding regular protest rallies in front of the casino. Cambodian authorities have said their gatherings were “illegal” and alleged that they are part of a plot to topple the government, backed by foreign donors. Authorities began mass detentions of the protesters, claiming that they were violating coronavirus restrictions. They often resorted to violence to force hundreds of workers onto buses. “The labor dispute has turned to a dispute with authorities because they constantly crack down on us without any clemency,” Sok Ratana said. “I never thought that Cambodia has a law saying that when workers demand rights … authorities can crack down on us.” She said that authorities worked with the company to pressure workers to stop the strike. She urged the government to better train its security forces to not become violent. Kata Orn, spokesperson of the government-aligned Cambodia Human Rights Committee, expressed sympathy with Sok Ratana’s circumstance but said that it was too early to say whether the authorities were at fault. He urged Sok Ratana to file a complaint with the court. “We can’t prejudge the loss due to the authorities. Only medical experts can tell,” he said. “We can [only] implement the law. It is applied equally to the workers and the authorities.” Sok Ratana said she is working on collecting evidence to file a complaint, but she wasn’t confident a court will adjudicate the case fairly. “I don’t have much hope because my union leader was jailed unjustly for nine weeks. Her changes have not been dropped yet,” she said. “To me, I don’t hope to get justice. From who? I want to ask, who can give me justice?” Police violence is a serious human rights violation, Am Sam Ath of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights told RFA. He urged relevant institutions to investigate the miscarriage and bring those responsible to justice. “Labor disputes can’t be settled by violence and crackdowns. This will lead to even more disputes and the workers and authorities will try to get revenge,” he said. The Labor Ministry has attempted to mediate the dispute between the casino and the union leaders, who have been released on bail, but no progress has been made after more than 10 meetings. Am Sam Ath said the difficulty in resolving the labor dispute might push the government to crack down harder on the holdouts and make more arrests. RFA attempted to contact Phnom Penh Municipal Police spokesman San Sok Seiha and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs spokeswoman Man Chenda, but neither were available for comment.  Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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Democracy in China won’t come without a ‘huge crisis’ for ruling party: analysts

Editor010 mins

Democracy is unlikely to come to China unless a number of circumstances fall into place at just the right time under the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), exiled dissidents told RFA ahead of the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Wang Dan, a former leader of the 1989 student-led democracy movement in China and the founder of the Dialogue China think-tank, warned that people shouldn’t harbor illusions about deliberate political reform under the CCP. He said there was likely a less than 0.1 percent chance that the ruling party would willingly reform itself in a democratic transition seen under the Kuomintang government in Taiwan. Instead, internal divisions over how to deal with a crisis are more likely to weaken the CCP’s hold on power, Wang Dan told RFA. “Perhaps if there is a huge crisis and challenge [facing China], generating a certain level of internal disagreement, and the government misjudges and makes the wrong response are wrong, then maybe history will turn,” he said. “Without the combination of these factors, I advise everyone to drop any remaining illusions they hold about the CCP,” he said. Exiled dissident and political commentator Wang Juntao said CCP leader Xi Jinping’s insistence on a zero-COVID policy in response to the pandemic could prove to be just such a crisis, however. “Now that the enforcement methods used to implement zero-COVID disease control and prevention measures have brought disaster to the people, more and more people agree that Xi Jinping is going against the opinions of experts from all over the world, and yet there is no way to make him correct his course,” Wang Juntao said. He said that Mao Zedong’s initiation of the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) had prompted calls for democracy from within CCP ranks after the late supreme leader’s death. Those people understood the need to prevent the emergence of another strongman like Mao, and tried to make power less concentrated, so that the entire party and country were subject to the rule of a single person ever again. But it seems that a similar pattern has emerged under Xi Jinping, he said. Students gather at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, April 22, 1989.AFP The new generation Wang said the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen protests was to be expected under such a repressive system, and that crackdowns on dissent had been ongoing since then. But he said he wasn’t pessimistic, because different generations make different meanings out of history. “You have to believe that democratization is the overall trend,” he said. “You have to believe that constitutional human rights are based on the basic aspirations of human nature, and you have to believe that the political demands of 1989 are the inevitable destination of human beings and the Chinese nation.” “This generation may not have been through the Tiananmen massacre, but they will have experienced their own events, and will soon start connecting their destiny with the events of the past,” he said. “When that happens, the Tiananmen protests and massacre will take on a fresh meaning, like a stele [stone carved with a commemorative inscription],” he said. “As long as China remains undemocratized, there will come a time when the next generation shares the same fate we do, unless those in power stop suppressing their struggle for democracy,” Wang Juntao said. Wang Dan said most young people in China had heard of the Tiananmen massacre, but were unlikely to understand what took place in detail. “Most people know about June 4th, but they don’t know the cause, the outcome, or the ins and outs,” Wang Dan said. “But they do know that June 4, 1989 is a sensitive date.” “There are actually very few young people who don’t know this huge things happened in China,” he said, adding that current events could trigger their curiosity. He said that Chinese people often do their own research once they go overseas to study, and are free of government censorship or surveillance. “As long as the wheel of democracy is rolling forward, I’m not worried at all,” he said. “From a historical perspective, it’s fairly irrelevant whether young people know about June 4, 1989 right now or not.” View of a residential building during a COVID-19 lockdown in the Jing’an district in Shanghai, April 8, 2022. Credit: AFP Protests over lockdown In recent days, protests involving hundreds of students have sprung up at university campuses in Beijing and Tianjin, over draconian COVID-19 restrictions imposed on higher education. The scenes at Tianjin University, Beijing International Studies University and Beijing Normal University were eerily reminiscent of the early stages of the 1989 student movement, which later took over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for weeks on end with demands for democratic reforms and the rule of law. Those protests culminated in a bloody massacre of civilians by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the night of June 3-4, with an unknown number of casualties. In Shanghai, an open letter from entrepreneurs dated May 30 called for the release of all political prisoners and for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to begin a process of political reform at the 20th Party Congress later in the year, warning of mass capital flight and a widespread loss of public confidence in Xi Jinping’s leadership. It urged the industrial sector not to act like “sheep fattened for slaughter” by returning to full production in the wake of the weeks-long Shanghai lockdown. It said the “rule of law” had been reduced to “rule by man”, while the economy had been hijacked by politics, leaving millions of COVID-19 “graduates” unemployed, calling on people to “take back their civil rights and rebuild the country.” The letter also called on the government to overturn the guilty verdicts against entrepreneurs Ren Zhiqiang and Sun Dawu, as well as punishing officials responsible for “violating the law and disregarding public opinion” as part of the zero-COVID policy and loosening CCP controls on the media. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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Jailed Changsha NGO worker subjected to physical abuse, mistreatment in jail: wife

Editor05 mins

The wife of one of the Changsha Funeng NGO workers jailed in the central Chinese province of Hunan says he is being subjected to physical abuse and mistreatment in Chishan Prison. Changsha Funeng co-founder Yang Zhanqing, who now lives in the U.S., has previously said that the three men were targeted because their rights work had received overseas funding, which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards as “collusion with hostile foreign forces,” and a threat to its national security. Changsha Funeng sought to prevent discrimination and ensure equality in line with Chinese law by using the courts to strengthen protections for individuals living with disabilities and with HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases. Shi Minglei, wife of Cheng Yuan, recently received a handwritten letter form her husband detailing his treatment while serving a sentence for “subversion of state power” handed down by the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court in August 2020. She spoke to RFA about the contents of the letter: The letter said that as soon as he got out of the van, he was taken to the high-security wing, where he was detained for three months until April 18. Anyone who has been in a high-security prison area knows that it forms part of a correctional center, also called a strict management center, with poor food and substandard living conditions. There were hourly roll calls taken through the night, and there was a lot of physical abuse, like forced duck-walks, and many other kinds of psychological and physical abuse. The treatment in high-security prisons is tantamount to torture. What I heard is that they learned from the experience of the concentration camps in Xinjiang. He [included one quotation, a couple lines of poetry] written in pain by [Chinese historian] Sima Qian after being tortured, very severely. What this means is that Cheng Yuan has never confessed or pleaded guilty, so they sent him to a high-security jail to try to force him to ‘confess.’ He also used a couple lines of poetry to express in a very cryptic way … that he is getting up before daylight to do forced labor and getting back very late from the workshop. He only has two hours to himself in which he has to wash himself and his clothes, so he’s also not getting enough time to rest. For example, the molding workshop contains chemicals and harmful gases, and there isn’t even any basic protection. They only get regular masks or even fabric masks. Washing frequently doesn’t have any protective effect. They distribute disposable medical masks only when the prison leaders come round on a tour of inspection. [Taiwan political activist and former inmate] Lee Ming-cheh told me that most prisoners are taken straight to prison, and even maybe to study centers for study, but not to the high-security wing. High-security prisons are places meant for punishing existing inmates. Cheng Yuan had done nothing wrong when he went to Chishan Prison, but he was taken to the high-security wing, which is standard practice for torture. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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