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Year: 2022

Cambodian election authority removes opposition candidates from list

Editor06 mins

Cambodia’s National Election Committee (NEC) has removed more than 100 candidates from the opposition Candlelight Party from the list of those running in the country’s commune elections on June 5, the party’s vice president said Friday. The party, which has threatened to boycott the vote because of political harassment of its members and activists by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), has accused the NEC of abusing election law. Candlelight Party vice president Thach Setha said NEC president Prach Chan on Thursday removed all candidates in Phnom Penh and Pursat and Kampong Cham provinces from the candidate list, and accused election authorities of not complying with the law by failing to call witnesses to be questioned amid complaints filed by CPP against the Candelight Party. “He didn’t make any mistake. It is a violation of the election law,” Thach Setha said. Party officials say they have been falsely accused of using fake names for candidates and putting forward some candidates for election without their permission. CCP complains have accused Candlelight Party candidates of being illiterate and submitting documents without thumbprints or signatures. The NEC decision has left the CPP candidate without main competitors in the capital, Phnom Penh. The NEC also removed the name of the son of Eng Chhai Eang, vice president of the former opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) from the candidate list, Thach Setha said. The Candlelight Party, formerly known as the Sam Rainsy Party and the Khmer Nation Party, was founded in 1995 and merged with other opposition forces to form the CNRP in 2012. In November 2017, Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in a move that allowed the CPP to win all 125 seats in parliament in a July 2018 election. Election authorities based their binding decision on evidence and hearings after finding irregularities on the candidate lists, while some candidates during the hearing asked the NEC to remove their names from the lists, said NEC spokesman Hang Puthea. “Upon receiving the complaints, we held public hearings,” he said. Sam Kuntheamy, executive director of the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (NICFEC), said the NEC failed to present evidence and witnesses during the hearings. He also said the decision by the NEC — a theoretically independent agency that supervises the country’s elections, but is believed to be influenced by the CCP — to remove opposition candidates was an attempt to find weak points to prevent the Candlelight Party as the main threat to the CCP from participating in the elections. “The party that has popularity draws attention,” he said. “I want [the NEC] to comply with the law.” Meanwhile, Phnom Penh authorities arrested four Candlelight Party activists but later released three and sent one to Prey Sar Prison. Yok Neang, former leader of the CNRP’s Women Movement who recently joined the Candlelight Party, was arrested Friday and sent to the jail, her son, Ouch Vannarith, told RFA. She was speaking with other political opposition activists when police arrested them and has been charged with treason over a failed attempt by exiled CNRP leader Sam Rainsy in November 2019 to return to Cambodia to lead nonviolent protests against Hun Sen. At least two other Candlelight Party activists are being detained in Pursat province. Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Family of slain Rohingya leader leaves Bangladesh for Canada

Editor08 mins

Canada has agreed to give refuge to 11 family members of a Rohingya rights activist who was gunned down at a refugee camp in Bangladesh last September, officials in Dhaka and a human rights group said Friday. Nasima Khatun, the widow of Muhib Ullah, their nine children and the husband of one of their daughters departed the South Asian country on a flight from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on Thursday night, human rights advocate Nur Khan Liton confirmed to BenarNews. “They are scheduled to arrive in Canada by Saturday,” Liton said. “They left with the aim of having a safe life.” On Friday, Bangladesh foreign ministry official Miah Md. Mainul Kabir credited the Canadian government for accepting Ullah’s survivors. “The government of Bangladesh gave more importance to the Canadian government’s interest in this regard than the application of Muhib Ullah’s family,” he told BenarNews. “As a shelter-providing country, Canada has done everything needed,” Mainul Kabir said, adding that Canada was the only country offering to shelter the family. Thursday’s flight was out of the ordinary, he said, because groups that large normally are sent to another country in phases. ‘Serious fear for their security’ In October, an immigration and refugee affairs analyst said it was not unusual for Bangladesh to send Rohingya to a third country in the past. More than 900 Rohingya were sent to countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden in 2009 and 2010, said Asif Munir, a former official of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This transfer is different because Ullah’s family left the country over a “serious fear for their security,” said Liton, general secretary of Ain-O-Salish Kendra (ASK), a local human rights organization. The IOM, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, and Canadian High Commission had arranged the family’s exit from Bangladesh, he said. Gunmen killed Ullah, chairman of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), in his office at the Kutupalong refugee camp in southeastern Cox’s Bazar district on Sept. 29, 2021.  Last month, Bangladeshi police said four of 15 people arrested over alleged ties to the killing had confessed to their roles in it and that those in custody said they belonged to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a Rohingya insurgent group. “UNHCR does not comment on individual cases,” Mostafa Mohammad Sazzad Hossain, an official at the U.N. agency’s office in Dhaka, told BenarNews. In addition, IOM and Canadian officials did not immediately respond to separate requests for comment. Before leaving the country, the family asked Bangladesh officials to reopen the recently closed Myanmar curriculum school established by Ullah, Liton said. About 1 million Rohingya, including 740,000 who fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state following a military crackdown in 2017, have settled in refugee camps in and around Cox’s Bazar, close to the border with Rakhine. Nasima Khatun, the widow of Rohingya activist Muhib Ullah, speaks to reporters at her home in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Sept. 30, 2021. Credit: BenarNews In his role as ARSPH chairman, Ullah had represented the stateless Rohingya community before the United Nations and at the White House in Washington, where he expressed concerns about his fellow refugees to then-President Donald Trump in 2019. Two weeks after Ullah was killed, Bangladesh authorities cited security concerns when they moved his family to an undisclosed location. Police also moved the families of 10 other ARSPH leaders. At the time, Md. Rashid Ullah, ARSPH spokesman and Ullah’s nephew, told BenarNews that those families wanted to leave Bangladesh over their own safety concerns. Millions of dollars for Rohingya Ullah’s family left Bangladesh days after American Ambassador Peter Haas announced on March 29 that the United States was providing U.S. $152 million (13 billion taka) in new humanitarian assistance for the Rohingya and their host communities in Bangladesh. Haas made the announcement after his first visit to Cox’s Bazar earlier in the week, according to a news release from the U.S. Embassy. “This brings the total we’ve provided since August 2017 to $1.7 billion (145.5 billion taka),” Haas said in the news release. “Of this new funding, $125 million (10.7 billion taka) is for programs inside Bangladesh – for Rohingya refugees and affected Bangladeshi communities,” it said. In Fiscal Year 2021 alone, the U.S. government reported spending nearly $302 million (25.9 billion taka) in support of humanitarian assistance programs for Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh. Also this week, UNHCR launched a 2022 Joint Response Plan to raise more than $881 million (75.7 billion taka) to assist Rohingya. The funding is to support more than 918,000 Rohingya and about 540,000 Bangladeshis in neighboring communities, a UNHCR press release said. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

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How Russia’s disinformation on Ukraine is spreading to democratic Taiwan, via China

Editor011 mins

Russian and Chinese disinformation about Ukraine, which is ideologically linked to ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda on Taiwan, is breaking through into online discourse on the democratic island, a fact-checking organization based there has said. According to Taiwan’s Information Operations Research Group (IORG), which seeks to “counter authoritarian expansion with scientific research and grassroots organization,” tens of millions of social media posts, articles, videos and comments have deluged the Chinese-language internet since Russian troops began massing on the Ukrainian border in November 2021. Among the CCP narratives, which are often straight echoes of the Kremlin’s own, are the idea that the relationship between Russia and Ukraine is similar to that of an ex-husband and wife, that the war was made inevitable by NATO’s eastward expansions, and that the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion is responsible both for mass murder in Ukraine, and for violently supporting Hong Kong independence. Far-right Ukrainians were spotted at the Hong Kong protest movement of 2019, which also won vocal support from ultra-conservative politicians in the U.S., and were outed on social media by protesters at the time, the majority of whom didn’t welcome their presence in Hong Kong. Other Chinese-language, pro-Russian takes on the Russian invasion include the idea that Ukraine is to Russia what Texas is to the United States, that Ukraine has engaged in a “de-Russification” program that disregards the rights of Russians in the country, and the slogan “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.” These narratives have been recurring in both simplified Chinese from China and traditional Chinese from Taiwan and Hong Kong across Facebook, LINE and Weibo, and represent a large-scale information offensive, IORG codirector Yu Chih-hao told The Reporter. One of the sources for the neo-Nazi claim was traced by IORG and RFA’s partner, The Reporter, to a Nov. 13 post in simplified Chinese posted to the Chinese International Facebook page. The post cited state media Russia Today (RT). A similar article appeared on the Russian news agency Sputnik, which has 11.62 million followers on China’s Weibo platform. By Nov. 15, 2021, the nationalist Global Times was accusing the Ukrainian government of “flirting” with nationalist militants and fascist groups, with the narrative spreading like wildfire through content farms and Facebook pages in the month that followed. A man collects pictures from a school hit by Russian rockets in the southern Ukraine village of Zelenyi Hai between Kherson and Mykolaiv, less than 5 km (3 miles) from the front line, April 1, 2022. Credit: AFP Hong Kong, too In Hong Kong, the CCP-backed Wen Wei Po took up the theme, reporting: “Ukrainian neo-Nazis have extended their black hand to other countries and regions, including participating in the [2019 protest movement] in Hong Kong two years ago,” claiming that they were working with “Hong Kong separatists.” Calls for independence for Hong Kong surfaced relatively late during the protest movement, which began as a mass movement opposing extradition to mainland China, and broadened to include calls for fully democratic elections and official accountability. They were later outlawed under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the CCP from July 1, 2020. There were also parallels between Russia’s claim on Ukraine, using neo-fascism as an excuse, and the CCP’s threat of military invasion of Taiwan, given the Taiwan authorities’ vocal support for the Hong Kong protests movement. According to You, this oversimplification and and exaggeration of the power and influence of the Azov battalion is deliberate, because it is preparing the ground for a future invasion of Taiwan, which has never been ruled by the CCP, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China. The saying “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow,” is also all over the Taiwanese internet, and is designed to give an air of inevitability both to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to a putative Chinese invasion of Taiwan, IORG said. Summer Chen, editor-in-chief of the Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC), said the war has once more highlighted Taiwan’s vulnerability to information warfare. She cited a Sputnik News Agency report on Feb. 26 claiming that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had fled Kyiv, which appeared on a number of mainstream Taiwanese media sites. While the article was based on “unconfirmed reports,” the headlines about Zelenskyy’s “escape” from Kyiv gave the impression of legitimacy. Chen said Taiwanese media are particularly vulnerable to manipulation on Ukraine, as they lack their own sources of information on the ground, and rely too easily on Russian media for news of the war. Lu Sibin, a researcher at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said the same content is also widely circulating in Chinese state media. “This is a phenomenon that hasn’t happened before,” Lu told RFA. “Not many people are aware of the extent to which Russian media content is being reused and disseminated in Chinese.” “Everyone thinks it’s only there to improve the performance targets of Russian officials.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during his first visit to China since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, at their meeting in Huangshan in China’s Anhui province, March 30, 2022. Credit: China Central Television (CCTV) via AFPTV. Language facilitates fake news flow A survey of Chinese reports on Ukraine published during the past four month, carried out by IORG and The Reporter, found at least 400 articles that directly cited Russian state media as the main source of information. The majority covered Zelenskyy’s now-debunked “flight from Kyiv,” the erroneous claim that Russia now controls Ukrainian airspace, and disinformation that the U.S. secretly helped Ukraine develop biochemical weapons at a network of laboratories. The ready availability of such content in Chinese makes it that much easier for these items of fake news to penetrate websites in democratic Taiwan, You said. Senior journalists in Taiwan who spoke anonymously to The Reporter and RFA said they are typically expected to write up international news reports under extreme time pressure, and rely on quoting agency reports while attributing them to their source, with no time or resources to perform an independent…

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Press freedom in Hong Kong gets lowest marks from public since handover to China

Editor14 mins

Public satisfaction with the media in Hong Kong has hit rock bottom, according to a recent public opinion survey. Satisfaction with the performance of the news media in general hit an all-time low since records began in 1993, according to a survey of 1,004 Cantonese-speaking adults carried out by the Hong Kong Public Institute Research Institute (PORI). Meanwhile, satisfaction with the freedom of the press in Hong Kong fell by 23 percentage points … its lowest point since records began after the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, PORI said in a report published on Friday. Just 28 percent of respondents expressed satisfaction with the level of press freedom in Hong Kong, a new low since this question was first asked in September 1997, while 51 percent said they were dissatisfied, the highest level since October 2020. In addition, a record 46 percent felt that the Hong Kong news media didn’t make full use of what freedom of speech it did have, while 63 percent said the media held back on criticisms of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while 51 percent said it avoided criticizing the Hong Kong authorities. Senior journalist Chris Yeung said the figures were a reflection of an ongoing crackdown on public dissent and political opposition under the CCP’s draconian national security law, which has seen several pro-democracy news outlets forced to close and senior journalists arrested under the law. “The trend is obvious,” Yeung told journalists on Friday. “At the very least, it’s very clear that the public believes the media has reservations and self-censors when dealing with matters relating to the central government.” “Many Hong Kong matters now include the point of view of the central government, from the national security law to COVID-19 policy and even the recent [China Eastern] air crash,” Yeung said. “The media are also careful how they handle other news that isn’t ostensibly political, like the case of Peng Shuai,” he said. Yeung said the poll results were “absolutely” related to the closure of a number of media outlets including the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper and Stand News, Yeung said. “Diversity of media voices is an very important element of press freedom,” he said, adding that there is really only room for pro-government voices in the Hong Kong media now. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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Philippine President Duterte plans to meet with Chinese ‘friend’ Xi on April 8

Editor07 mins

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said he would meet next week virtually with his “friend,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as Filipino and U.S. forces conduct one of their largest joint exercises in years in the Southeast Asian nation bordering the disputed South China Sea. The presidential office in Manila announced the upcoming meeting while troops, during the Balikatan (“shoulder-to-shoulder”) exercise, participated Thursday in a drill simulating an attack response on a remote beach on the northern tip of Luzon Island that fronts China and Taiwan. “China is good,” Duterte said, according to transcripts released to the media on Friday. “April 8. Xi Jinping wants to talk to me. We are friends.” Additional details of the planned meeting were being firmed up on Friday and Duterte’s office had not yet released topics to be discussed by the two leaders. “[T]his meeting is still in the preparatory stage,” Communications Undersecretary Kristian Ablan said. “So what specific issues will be discussed by the world leaders will be known in the coming days.” Although the Xi-Duterte meeting will be virtual, it is customary for a Philippine president to visit allies before leaving office. Duterte’s single six-year term ends on June 30. The 2022 version of Balikatan is the biggest joint exercise involving Philippine and U.S. troops in seven years. About 9,000 troops are involved in the war games, which are schedule to end on April 8, the same day Duterte is to meet with Xi. The exercise began shortly after the Philippine Coast Guard reported a March 2 “close distance maneuvering” incident involving one of its ships and the China Coast Guard near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Philippine officials said the Chinese ship sailed within 21 meters (69 feet) of the Philippine ship and accused Beijing of violating 1972 international regulations on preventing collisions at sea. Balikatan comes two months after the Biden administration in the United States introduced a new strategy to increase security engagements in the Indo-Pacific region amid growing concerns about China. Duterte’s relationships At the beginning of his term in 2016, Duterte drifted away from traditional ally Washington in favor of China and Russia. Instead of enforcing an international court ruling that invalidated China’s expansive claims to the nearly all of the South China Sea, the president pursued friendlier ties with Xi, leading to increased Chinese investments in the Philippines. While admitting in 2021 that the court ruling was binding, Duterte continued to emphasize his friendship with the Chinese leader, noting that Manila was indebted to Beijing for providing COVID-19 vaccines in the early days of the pandemic.  In March 2021, Duterte said he planned to visit China, a country he traveled to six times, to personally thank Xi for the vaccines. Those visits are the most by any Philippine president while in office to a foreign country but Duterte has never visited Washington, according to officials.  Duterte last traveled to China in August 2019 on a five-day official visit when he raised the landmark arbitral ruling for the Philippines on the South China Sea.  China has rejected the ruling and insisted on its historical claims over virtually the entire sea region, which the court ruled as having no basis under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Aside from China and the Philippines, five other Asian governments – Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – have territorial claims. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone. Manila has grown critical of Beijing’s actions during the past year, including Chinese fishing boats swarming near the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal. In early March, the Philippines protested a Chinese navy reconnaissance ship’s “illegal incursion” in the Sulu Sea – a move that Beijing said did not break international law. In a rare move in November 2021, Duterte expressed “grave concern” after a China Coast Guard ship fired water cannon on Filipino supply boats in the disputed waters.  “We abhor the recent event in the Ayungin Shoal and view with grave concern other similar developments,” Duterte said at the time.  BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

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Italian university probes Chinese professor who singled out student from Taiwan

Editor09 mins

A university in Italy is investigating allegations of bullying by a Chinese lecturer following a classroom dispute about the status of Taiwan, local media reported. Complaints were made after Politecnico di Milano architecture lecturer and Chinese national Chen Zhen admonished a student from the democratic island of Taiwan, which has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China, for failing to register as “Chinese.” “I will talk something to Wang, but this is nothing related to the other two Iranian students, so I’m going to speak in Chinese with him, OK?” Chen is seen saying in English at the start of a video clip that he initially posted to his own account on the Chinese social media account WeChat. The clip was later picked up by Australia-based asylum-seeker Wang Lebao and amplified on Twitter. Chen continues in Chinese: “So, Wang, it’s not about your thesis. This has nothing to do with the other two students, so I’m going to say this in Chinese … I gave everyone a thesis template, asking them to fill out which city and which country they’re from. You wrote Taipei, Taiwan.” “The first thing I want to say is, the whole European Union, including Italy, sees Taiwan as a part of China,” he said. “You should know that not a single EU government, nor many others, officially recognizes Taiwan as a country.” “Your government may like to play word games to fool the people, but they’ve never amended the constitution,” he said. Taiwan was part of Japanese territory for the first half of the 20th century, before being handed over the 1911 Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek at the end of World War II. The islands of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu are still governed as a sovereign state under its constitution. Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy. Credit: Politecnico di Milano ‘Unification’ widely rejected Recent opinion polls have shown that the majority of its 23 million population don’t identify as Chinese, and have no wish to be governed by Beijing, which has threatened to annex Taiwan by military force to achieve its idea of “unification.” The “paternalistic and aggressive tone” of Chen’s comments prompted the university investigate, the Today.it news website reported. Taiwan’s foreign affairs ministry condemned the treatment of Wang as “an abuse of power,” and said it had asked its representative office in Italy to follow up on the matter. University rector Ferruccio Resta confirmed to the office that the university’s disciplinary committee has begun an investigation into the incident to determine whether Chen’s actions had violated the school’s code of ethics and conduct. Lee Hsin-ying, Taiwan’s representative in Italy, told Taiwanese students in the country that what had happened was “very wrong,” and a bid to quash any sense of national identity among them. Article 2 of the code requires the university to “prevent and combat all kinds of discrimination, both direct and indirect,” banning words, actions and procedures that discriminates against people based on gender, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, religion, personal or political views, abilities, social background or age,” the website said. “The Polytechnic should consider it of primary importance not to allow the promotion of the Chinese Communist Party’s world view or propaganda in an Italian university,” the Today.it website said in the commentary article. “Pending further developments, we ask ourselves: will this lecturer continue to teach at the university, and promote [CCP leader] Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era?” the article said. Chinese ‘bullying’ blasted Italian politicians also hit out at the incident, saying it was “bullying.” “The Polytechnic of Milan should suspend this teacher should suspend this teacher who attacks and bullies a Taiwanese student by imposing on him a geopolitical lesson using the worst of Chinese propaganda-speak,” Gianni Vernetti, a former senator and deputy minister from the center-left Democratic Party, said via his Twitter account. And far-right Brothers of Italy senator Lucio Malan accused Chen of trying to “re-educate” the Taiwanese student, saying he would demand an explanation from the relevant government minister. Milan’s il Giornale newspaper also weighed in with an editorial on Monday noting that Taiwan still has formal diplomatic ties with the Vatican, and is for all practical purposes a sovereign state. The row came after the 59th Bologna Children’s Book Fair succumbed to pressure from the Chinese government to change the country of origin of Taiwanese artist Pei-Hsin Cho to “Taiwan, China.” Taiwan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou condemned the move, and accused China of trying to smear the island for political reasons. Cho had been holding a solo exhibition at the book fair after winning an award there last year. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan reiterates that Taiwan is a sovereign state of the Republic of China and is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China,” Ou said. “The Chinese government has never ruled Taiwan for a day, and naturally has no right to claim to represent Taiwan in the international arena or to devalue the name of the country used by the people of Taiwan to participate in activities.” “Taiwan and Italy share universal values such as democracy, freedom, and human rights; Taiwan solemnly calls on relevant Italian departments to show courage and reject China’s inappropriate bullying,” she said. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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With an eye on China, Japan plans 2 + 2 talks with Philippines, India

Editor06 mins

Japan plans to hold so-called “two-plus-two” meetings with the Philippines and India to discuss maritime security including in the South China Sea, a move analysts say could send a message to Beijing about Tokyo’s determination to foster ties with like-minded partners. “Two-plus-two” are ministerial-level meetings that involve both foreign and defense ministers of participating countries. Unnamed diplomatic sources were quoted by Kyodo News Agency as saying that arrangements are being made for Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi to meet with their Philippine counterparts in early April, and their Indian counterparts in mid-April in Tokyo. China’s growing maritime assertiveness is expected to be high on the agenda, and ministers are expected to renew their pledge to promote a “free and open” Indo-Pacific region. Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana are expected to travel to Tokyo for the talks. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to RFA that Japan and the Philippines are considering the launch of a two-plus-two meeting but maintained that “the timing has not been decided yet.” Neither the Philippine nor Indian foreign ministries responded to requests for comment. The talks are being planned amid a complex geopolitical backdrop. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, said Friday that he would meet with his “friend” Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss territorial disputes in the South China Sea on April 8. Duterte has had limited success in forging a more cooperative relationship with Beijing during his six-year term which ends in June. China and the Philippines are both claimants in the South China Sea alongside four other parties: Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan. Beijing holds the most expansive claim. While Japan is not a claimant, it is a strategic rival of China, and the two powers have competing claims in the East China Sea. Huynh Tam Sang, an analyst at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Vietnam, said Tokyo’s plans for the two-plus-two talks “could send a nuanced message to Beijing about Japan’s determination to foster security ties with like-minded partners.” “If Japan could bring the Philippines and India on board for maritime deterrence, it will be a big deal,” said Sang. The Philippines filed a diplomatic protest this week over a Chinese Coast Guard vessel’s dangerous “maneuvering” in the South China Sea. Beijing rejected the accusation saying China has “sovereign rights and jurisdiction” over the waters. Japanese and Philippine ministers are expected to discuss arms exports to the Philippines, Kyodo’s sources said. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House, in New Delhi, India, March 19, 2022. Credit: Reuters Quad members When Japanese Prime Minister Kishida visited India last month, Japan and India also agreed to hold what would be their second two-plus-two meeting “at an early date.” But the timing of the meeting has not been decided, either, Japan says. Both Japan and India are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and important players in the Indo-Pacific so “it is only natural for India to also interact with Japan for two-plus-two,” said Sana Hashmi, visiting fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation. “Two-plus-two talks demonstrate the level of engagement and the willingness to strengthen the partnership by both sides,” Hashmi said, adding: “Of course, China’s aggression is a factor in countries’ willingness to advance ties, but India-Japan relations are multifaceted and two-plus-two dialogue is a part of this multifaceted engagement.” Besides the Philippines and India, Japan has held two-plus-two security talks with the United States, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Indonesia and Russia.

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Upward trend in Myanmar online wildlife trade endangers biodiversity and public health

Editor06 mins

Upward trend in Myanmar online wildlife trade New research by WWF shows that online illegal wildlife trade in Myanmar increased by 74% from 2020 to 2021. The report, ‘Going viral: Myanmar’s wildlife trade escalates online,’ details 173 different species being advertised for sale online in 2021, up from 143 species the year before. Sales of mammal species – either as live animals or their body parts – rose by 241%. Posts that advertised mammals for sale referenced commercially bred civets, meat of the critically endangered Sunda pangolin for consumption, elephant skin pieces for jewellery and juvenile bears as pets. All these animals are used as an ingredient of Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCMs). “WWF research reveals that online trade in wildlife within Myanmar is escalating,” said Shaun Martin, WWF-Asia Pacific’s Regional Illegal Wildlife Trade Cybercrime Project Lead. “Despite the global importance of Myanmar’s biodiversity and everything we now know about the origins of COVID-19, online trade monitoring has revealed different species being kept in close proximity – sometimes in the same cage, wild meat selling out in minutes with demands for more, sales of soon-to-be extinct animals openly discussed in online groups, and trade occurring across country borders. With Asia’s track record as a breeding ground for many recent zoonotic diseases, this sharp uptick in online trade of wildlife in Myanmar is extremely concerning.”  Similar wildlife deterioration was observed in many African countries in the past decade.    Key findings from new WWF report on online trade in wildlife include More than 11,046 products from 173 species were recorded for sale online in 2021. 96% of posts were for live animals, with 87% advertising that animals had been taken from the wild. Mammal sale posts rose 241% from 2020 to 2021. The largest online trading group had more than 19,000 members and over 30 posts a day. The number of traded species on the IUCN Red List rose 80% from 2020 to 2021. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), swine flu (H1N1), avian flu (H5N1), and COVID–19, all originated in animals and have proliferated in Asia in the last two decades. With scientists estimating that 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals, it is likely that animal to human disease spillover – or zoonoses – would be the trigger for future pandemics. The trade in live wildlife and wildlife parts brings many species and their pathogens together, increasing the potential for spillover to humans. Among the 11,046 wildlife items promoted for sale through social media posts were six species listed as “Critically Endangered” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, indicating an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. A further seven species were marked “Endangered” and 33 marked “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List. Of particular note were posts that advertised the Sunda and Chinese pangolins, both “Critically Endangered” species, with pangolins also identified as carrying SARS-related betacoronaviruses., These posts advertised pangolins as live animals and wild meat, as well as referring to commercial breeding. Similar posts for civets were also seen, with civets identified as the intermediate host of the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in Asia in 2002. “The risk of new pathogen transmission from wild animals to humans – the most common source of new epidemics, and pandemics – is increased by the close contact conditions created by this trade,” said Emiko Matsuda, Group Lead on Biodiversity and Public Sector Partnership, WWF-Japan. “These online sales of live animals and wildlife products need to be disrupted before they escalate any further, endangering Myanmar’s precious wildlife and global public health.”    

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For Myanmar’s youth, college becomes another casualty of country’s turmoil

Editor013 mins

Security concerns led to a dramatic decline in the number of students who registered for the first university entrance exams in Myanmar since the military coup, sources said Thursday, citing ongoing unrest and armed conflict in the Southeast Asian nation. The junta’s Ministry of Education that only 312,299 students had signed up for the exams during the 2021-2022 academic year. The number represented a decrease of more than two-thirds from two years earlier, when 970,759 students registered. It also marked the first decline in registrants in at least seven years, when 632,314 students took the exams in 2014-2015 — a drop from the previous term but a number that is still twice as large as in 2021-2022. Exams were cancelled during the 2020-2021 academic year due to COVID-19 school closures. This year’s exams, which are scheduled to run until April 9, are being held amid daily anti-junta bombings and public unrest throughout the country, and reports have emerged of the military blocking access to test sites. A Yangon-based student who took the exam said parents are no longer allowed to wait for their children in front of test centers as in previous years. “There was a large presence of soldiers and police outside,” she said, adding that students “just gave the answers to the exam questions quickly and left.” Aung Kyaw, deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education, told RFA that security measures had been strengthened to allow testing to proceed. “We have coordinated with the health department and the security department,” he said. “All of our education ministry staff are also kept on standby. They are performing their duties. Security measures are in place and teachers have been working nonstop.” The testing marked the end to a trying academic year. In addition to the coup, schools had to contend with a COVID-19 outbreak that forced their closure for four months. When they reopened on Nov. 1, many students did not return, both in protest of military rule and out of fear that they could be the subject of an anti-junta attack. In Kayah state, where the military has encountered staunch resistance since launching offensives against armed ethnic groups and prodemocracy People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitaries, only 780 students had registered for this year’s matriculation exam. Since the coup, fighting in the region — which is home to around 290,000 people — has displaced more than 100,000 civilians, including many students. Soe Mya, a student from Ngwedaung village, in Kayah’s Demawso township, told RFA she had to flee her home due to the fighting and was forced to miss the exam. “Before the coup, I was ready to graduate and continue my schooling. My parents had made accommodation arrangements for me, and I had completed all of the necessary tutoring,” she said. “Of course, I want to go to school when I see others going. But it wasn’t possible to apply for this exam as we’re currently on the run and sheltering in the jungle.” Soe Mya said she had seen far fewer students taking university exams this year than in previous ones —particularly in Demawso, where clashes had occurred as recently as Thursday morning. Boycotts of military-run schooling Some parents RFA spoke with said that they had simply refused to allow their children to attend school or sit for exams in protest of the military-run education system. “Many schoolteachers are taking part in the [Civil Disobedience Movement] to protest the junta and we don’t like the teachers who replaced them,” said Khin Than Nu, a mother from Sagaing region, who said she had chosen to homeschool her children. “We will continue their education when the country is at peace. In the meantime, there are many vocational training courses available on the internet and my children are also learning English online.” According to the Ministry of Education, Rakhine state had the highest registration rate of students for the academic year at 45,592, followed by Yangon region with 37,560, and Mandalay with 37,202. Kayah state’s 780 registrants was the lowest of any region. Parents told RFA that despite the number of registrants, they expect the actual number of students who take this year’s university exams will be lower. When asked how many students had taken the exam on Thursday, a Ministry of Education official told RFA he did not know the exact number. The photos of two young boys shot dead during armed clashes are displayed during a funeral service in Mon state’s Bilin township, in an undated photo. Credit: Citizen journalist Youth victims While Myanmar’s coup and political upheaval have severely impacted access to education for the country’s youth, they have also put them at greater personal risk in their daily lives. According to Thailand’s Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, authorities in Myanmar have killed at least 1,723 civilians and arrested 10,000 others since the coup — mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests. A recent investigation by RFA found that more than 100 of those killed were under the age of 18. Sources described victims that included a six-year-old who died as he slept when junta troops shelled his village in Magway region’s Yezagyo township on the night of March 26, four teenagers who were among 11 people discovered burned to death by soldiers in Sagaing region’s Salingyi township on Dec. 7, 2021, and a 12-year-old boy who was shot dead by authorities in Sagaing’s Shwebo township on March 27 last year. RFA also confirmed the deaths of youths who were killed while participating in anti-junta protests, while detained on suspicion of involvement with the PDF or the country’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and as the result of stray bullets and artillery fire. A resident of Salingyi’s Dontaw village, where the burned corpses were discovered in December, condemned what he said was the senseless killing of innocent youths. “These soldiers care little of the rights of children because the junta is trying to do whatever it can to harm the people. They don’t care whether people are young or…

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Denmark commission finds Copenhagen illegally silenced anti-China demonstrators

Editor07 mins

A commission appointed by the government of Denmark this week criticized the country’s Foreign Ministry for giving into Chinese pressure and preventing anti-Beijing demonstrations during state visits in 2012 and 2013. The Tibet Commission found that Denmark’s intelligence and security service used pressure to convince police in Copenhagen to stop all anti-China demonstrations, in violation of the country’s constitution. Protesters were barred from gathering within sight of the visiting Chinese delegations. The police hid them behind buses and confiscated Tibetan flags. China had cancelled several official visits to Denmark after a 2009 “unofficial” meeting between then Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and the Dalai Lama. The commission found that the canceled visits caused Copenhagen to pursue China-friendly policies. This was evident in 2011, when the Dalai Lama visited Denmark to give lectures on management and the meaning of life. The organizers of that visit made it clear that there would be no political meetings during his stay in the country.  “This issue is being discussed in the press and its being dealt by many ministerial and politicians. Several ministers have already commented that they will try to remedy these mistakes,” Anders Højmark Andersen, chairman of the Tibet Support Committee in Denmark, told RFA’s Tibetan Service. “This is the second report by the Tibet Commission which has dealt with period from 1995 to 2015, so it covers 20 years. There have been more than 200 Chinese official visits to Denmark in this period but it also deals with Tibetans’ visit to Denmark like His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s visit,” Andersen said. Andersen noted that although pro-Tibetan independence groups were allowed to demonstrate, they were often placed in areas where visiting Chinese officials would never run into them. “And that’s the problem,” he said. “During Hu Jintao’s visit in 2012, police even took Tibetan flags away from us in the street but we still succeeded in showing the Tibetan flag to the Chinese president fortunately”. “I think that now Chinese officials will hesitate before visiting Denmark on a very high level. And I also think they will only send lower-level leaders to Denmark in the future because now they know that they cannot persuade the police to hide us anymore,” Andersen said. He noted that Sino-Danish relations have been good since 2008 when Beijing and Copenhagen entered into a strategic partnership, but things have soured more recently. “The Danish government has realized the worsening human rights record in China and the attempt by the incumbent President Xi to assume lifelong leadership,” said Andersen. China routinely pressures foreign governments to silence criticism of Beijing, Mandie McKeown, executive director for the UK-based International Tibet Network International, told RFA in an email. “We have seen this kind of influence many times before. Most notably back in 1999 when Metropolitan Police broke U.K. law in their handling of demonstrators during the state visit of then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin,” she said. “In a high court case brought by the Free Tibet Campaign (where I worked), the police agreed they had policed Free Tibet demonstrators “unlawfully” by removing Free Tibet banners and Tibetan National flags from people solely on the basis that they were protesting against the Chinese President’s visit,” said McKeown . She said Beijing has tried to bully other governments into silence, recalling that in 2016 at least 12 governments issued a joint statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council saying they had been targeted by Chinese pressure. “Ireland was threatened with the cancelling of a multi-euro trade deal. The Irish Times reported that the Irish government had been warned by the Chinese authorities that a vote by Ireland at the United Nations Human Rights Council could have consequences for a multi-million-euro beef trade deal,” she said. “Notably we have seen China move towards a more sophisticated plan to build influence by doubling down on building their soft power and its ability to influence other countries, communities and individuals,” McKeown said. RFA attempted to reach the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Justice Department in Denmark for comments but received no reply. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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