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Month: April 2023

Philippines raises concerns with China about spiraling Taiwan tensions

Editor010 mins

The Philippines on Saturday raised concerns with China about soaring tensions related to neighbor Taiwan when the two countries’ top diplomats met in Manila. The meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo came amid heightened rhetoric over the Philippines recently granting the United States access to four additional military bases, two of them fronting Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. “Manalo reaffirmed the Philippines’ adherence to the One China Policy, while at the same time expressing concern over the escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait,” said a statement by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) after a meeting of the two officials. Manalo also told his Chinese counterpart that the Philippines continues to pursue “an independent foreign policy, which seeks to ensure stability and prosperity in the region,” according to a report by BenarNews, an affiliate of Radio Free Asia. For his part, China’s Qin reminded Manalo of the “promises” the two nations have made to each other, in what appeared to be an oblique reference to the One China policy, which Beijing’s envoy to the Philippines brought up last week in not so delicate a fashion. Qin called the situation “‘fluid’ and turbulent,” without elaborating. “[A] healthy and stable China-Philippines relationship is not only meeting the aspirations of our two peoples, but also in line with the common aspirations of regional countries,” he said. “We need to work together to continue our tradition of friendship, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, and properly resolve our differences in the spirit of credibility, consultation, and dialogue, and keep our promises to each other so as to bring more benefits to our two countries and people and inject greater positive energy to the peace and stability of this region and the whole world,” Qin added. Analysts had called expanded access to Philippine military bases “central” to Washington’s aim to deter any plan by Beijing to attack Taiwan. China has said it amounted to interference. But the latest controversy involving China was the warning of its envoy here to the Philippines. Ambassador Huang Xilian had strongly advised Manila to “unequivocally oppose” Taiwan’s independence rather than fan the flames of conflict by offering the U.S. military additional access to bases. He also commented on the safety of 150,000 Filipino workers in Taiwan.  Protesters hold signs demanding the expulsion of Huang Xilian, the Chinese envoy to the Philippines, outside the Chinese Consulate in Makati City, the Philippines, April 21, 2023. [Gerard Carreon/BenarNews] The Philippine government and opposition slammed the Chinese envoy for his statements on Manila’s policy on Taiwan and its workers on the neighboring island, saying they will not brook any attempts at intimidation by Beijing. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. later downplayed the Chinese envoy’s comments noting the latter’s speech released in English may have been “lost in translation.” On Saturday Marcos met with China’s Qin and called the meeting “useful.” “Some of the pronouncements that have been made recently by our two countries and many other countries might be misinterpreted,” according to a statement released by Marcos’ office.  “So today it was really useful that we were able to speak with Minister Qin Gang, the Foreign Minister of China, so we can talk directly to one another and iron things out.” South China Sea issue Qin’s visit came even as the Philippines is hosting more than 12,000 American soldiers for the largest-ever joint exercises between the two long-time allies. The exercises were for “maritime defense, territorial defense, [and] coastal defense,” a Filipino military official said last month, amid seemingly hostile actions by Beijing in the South China Sea, parts of which both countries claim. During the meeting Saturday with the top Chinese diplomat, his Philippine counterpart Manalo raised the issue of the disputed waterway. “Our leaders have agreed that our differences in the West Philippine Sea are not the sum total of our relations,” he said, referring to the part of the South China Sea that lies within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. “These differences should not prevent us from seeking ways of managing them effectively, especially with respect to the enjoyment of rights of Filipinos, especially our fisherfolk.” Manila has said that China has ramped up its presence in the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone in the disputed sea and increased harassment of Filipino fishermen in recent years.  At a high-level foreign department consultation last month on the sea dispute, the government reminded China that intimidation and coercion have no place in solving the issue.  While there have been significant developments already after the bilateral consultative meeting, Manalo noted that much still needed to be done. Philippine President Marcos on Saturday referred to the dispute saying more communication would help. “As to the conflicts, we agreed to establish more lines of communications so that any event that occurs in the West Philippine Sea that involves China and the Philippines can immediately be resolved,” he said.  “So we are currently working on that and are awaiting the Chinese response and we are confident that these issues would be worked out that would be mutually beneficial for both our nations.” Manila had recently lodged a complaint about the swarming of more than 40 Chinese fishing boats, which were escorted by a Chinese Coast Guard ship and a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ship near Pag-asa (Thitu), one of the Philippine-occupied islands in the disputed waters. In February, a CCG ship allegedly pointed a laser towards a Philippine Coast Guard vessel in Ayungin Shoal (Second Thomas Shoal). Still, as the Philippines’ Foreign Secretary Manalo noted, China has remained the country’s top trading partner over the past few years, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And when Marcos visited Beijing in January, he took home investment pledges worth about U.S. $22.8 billion. Meanwhile, Marcos is scheduled to make his second visit within a year to the U.S. on May 1, when he is set to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden in the White House. The two leaders are expected to discuss…

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‘Ogre’ battalion uses brutality to instill terror in Myanmar

Editor013 mins

Eds Note: Some readers may find the content of this article disturbing. They lop off people’s heads and mutilate bodies to instill terror. They torture victims to death. They seem fearless in battle, surging forward when under fire.  Officially, they make up part of the 99th Light Infantry Battalion of the Myanmar military. But to most people, they are known as the “Ogre” column, a unit of killers notorious for their cruelty in a military already known for its brutality. And they have been criss-crossing Myanmar’s heartland, killing rebel fighters and massacring villagers believed to be supporting them, terrorizing everyone in their path. “What makes this column different is that they are specially trained to kill people,” said Nway Oo, a member of a resistance group in Myaung township. “They chop off the heads and ears of victims in cold blood.” “They appear ghostly in battles, too,” he said. “They move forward in battles no matter how risky the situation is or how much they are under attack.” Myanmar’s military has faced stiff resistance from ordinary men and women who have taken up arms to form People’s Defense Force bands to fight junta troops since the military’s coup two years ago.  The Ogres’ atrocities are meant to terrorize their foes, who often have little combat training and aren’t usually well-armed. It’s all part of psychological warfare that was developed by the country’s generals known as “Sit Oo Bi Lu,” the “First wave of brutal attack,” or “Yakkha Byu Har” – “The Ogre Strategy,” a former military captain who defected to the rebel side since the junta’s takeover. “Brutal acts by the junta troops, such as beheading people and burning down civilian properties, are intended to frighten the people,” said the captain, who goes by Nat Thar. “This is a psychological tactic to scare the people into thinking that they don’t want to be the one beheaded when the junta’s 99th Division enters their village, to make them fear head-on conflict, although they belong to a population of tens of thousands,” he said. Battleground Sagaing Some of the fiercest resistance against the military has been in the northern Sagaing region, and in recent weeks the “Ogre” battalion has been attacking dozens of villages and rebel bases there in townships such as Ye-U, Khin-U, Taze, Myinmu and Myaung. On March 30, the column raided a PDF base under the command of Capt. Bo Sin Yine near the village of Swae Lwe Oh. The junta troops soon overwhelmed the rebel fighters, and soldiers then took Bo Sin Yine, a 31-year-old former corporal in the township’s Fire Brigade, and his fighters captive. Footage taken by a drone operated by the Civilian’s Defense and Security Organization of Myaung, CDSOM, captured a junta soldier beheading Bo Sin Yine, whose name means “wild elephant,” and carrying his head away on his shoulder. A few days later, Bo Sin Yine’s wife and a team of villagers discovered his body abandoned near the jungle. In addition to beheading him, junta soldiers had lopped off his arms and legs. “They beheaded him and took away his head, but it wasn’t just him. They took away the heads of many people in other townships, too,” she said of her husband, who became the deputy battalion commander of the PDF No.1 in Sagaing. Prior to entering Myaung township, the column raided Myinmu’s Let Ka Pin village, where it killed 10 civilians and disemboweled local PDF leader Kyaw Zaw before chopping off his head and limbs, residents said. The column also killed 16 civilians it had taken as human shields to protect against landmines after raiding Sagaing township’s Tar Tai village. Among the column’s members are soldiers the CDSOM has identified as Capt. Aung Hein Oo, Lt. Capt. Zaw Naing, Sgts. Zaw Set Win, Myint Zaw, Maung Naing, Soe Hlaing, Tun Zaw Myo, and Thein Tun; Lt. Sgts. Ye Yint Paing and Thiha Soe; Engineer Trooper Nay Lin, and Troopers Pyae Sone Aung, Min Thu, and Thant Zin. ‘They told us to pass a message’ In mid-March, the “Ogre” column crossed the Chindwin River from Sagaing into Magway region and made its way south to Yesagyo township, one of several areas under martial law as a hotbed of anti-junta resistance. Early on the morning of March 19, the unit blocked all of the exits from Mee Laung Kyung Ywar Thit village and arrested some 140 residents who didn’t have time to flee. By the end of the day, Ogre fighters had shot and killed a man in his 50s named Han, who worked as a cook feeding refugees of conflict, tortured a 47-year-old mentally disabled man named Sandra to death, and wounded a 16-year-old boy as he tried to escape, villagers told RFA. Villagers in Myinmu township, Sagaing region, move the bodies of people killed by Myanmar military troops on Nyaung Yin island, March 3, 2023. Credit: Citizen journalist Those captured in Mee Laung Kyaung Ywar Thit were added to prisoners from Sagaing’s Myaung township, where the unit had conducted its last raid, including inhabitants of Za Yat Ni, Min Hla, Thar Khaung Lay, Shwe Hlan, Myay Sun, and Sin Chay Yar villages. Around 200 women were divided into two groups and held at the Taung Kuang Monastery on the outskirts of Mee Laung Kyun village, while another group of 40 men and teenage boys were placed under guard in civilian homes, sources who escaped the unit said. A man who escaped after three days said that Ogre fighters confiscated his jewelry and interrogated him about the local PDF, claiming they had already crushed more than 20 of the group’s bases. “We didn’t know if they would take us to the battlefront and force us to step on landmines or kill us before they left the village,” said the man, who declined to be named out of fear of reprisal. “They told us to pass a message to our relatives to give up fighting, bury their weapons, and end their support for…

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China’s new rural land transfer scheme sparks fears over heavy-handed enforcement

Editor09 mins

New rules governing the transfer of rural land in China have sparked concerns that the ruling Communist Party may be gearing up for the mass confiscation and reallocation of farmland in the name of “stabilizing the grain supply,” Radio Free Asia has learned. The Ministry of Agriculture announced this week it will roll out a pilot scheme to “standardize” the transfer of rural property rights, as well as “strengthening supervision and management” over the use of rural land in China, which is typically leased to farmers on 30-year “household responsibility” contracts, with the ownership remaining with the government. The move comes after the administration of supreme party leader Xi Jinping made it easier in 2016 for farmers to be bought out of household responsibility leases, to encourage farmers to relocate to urban areas to reduce rural poverty.  China declared in November 2020 that it had eliminated extreme poverty, with analysts attributing the change in statistics to the mass relocation of younger migrant workers to cities, under strong official encouragement. Under the new land rules, officials are expected to “give full play to government leadership” via controversial “agricultural management” enforcement officials, who critics fear will send the country back to Mao-era collective farming and micromanagement of people’s daily lives. Analysts and farmers said that the main point of the additional controls is the tightening of state control over the supply of grain and to facilitate the transfer of rural land away from farmers if needed. Food security The move comes amid an ongoing government campaign to “stabilize the grain supply” and other moves to ensure food security, including revamping moribund Mao-era food co-ops and ordering the construction of state-run canteens. The rules insist on “disciplined transactions” including supervision of contract-signing and “certification,” and could pave the way for the mass reallocation of farmland in future, analysts said. A rural resident of the eastern province of Shandong who gave only the surname Zhang for fear of reprisals said he had recently found that farmers in his hometown now need a permit to farm land already leased to them. “I went back home and the neighbors told me that you now need a permit to till the land,” Zhang said. He blamed the “national food crisis” for the move, saying it effectively means that rural residents can no longer have friends and neighbors take care of their land when they migrate into the cities to look for work. A farmer collects corn in Gaocheng, Hebei province, China. Analysts and farmers say a key goal of the new land rules is to tighten state control over the supply of grain. Credit: Reuters file photo “When my relatives and friends would go to look for work, they would have others till their land for them, with no need for any kind of contract,” Zhang said. “Then, they could just pick it up again immediately if their work ended and they went back to live in the countryside.” “That’s no longer possible due to the serious nature of the national food crisis,” he said. Another major land reform Financial commentator Cai Shenkun said the scope of the pilot scheme is unprecedented. “This is another major land reform [following on from 2016], and it’s worth observing whether the next step will be to roll it out to all rural land governed by household responsibility contracts,” Cai said. “Given the involvement of the agricultural management officials who are now empowered to enforce the law, I think it has something to do with the next step, which will be the confiscation and reallocation of land,” he said. Agricultural management officials are among a slew of local officials empowered in a July 2021 directive to enforce laws and regulations without the involvement of the police. There are growing signs of unease around the new breed of rural “enforcer.” Netease and Sina Weibo’s news channels reported on Wednesday that a team of agricultural management officials seized two truck-loads of live pigs and sent the animals for slaughter on the grounds that quarantine regulations hadn’t been followed. After that, the farmers complained that they had received no money for the carcases, and that the trucks hadn’t been returned to them. Photos of the equipment issued to the “enforcers” showed first-aid kits, mobile phone signal jammers and stab-proof vests. ‘A new devil’ The reports prompted comments complaining of intrusive management of farmers’ lives, and asking if the agricultural enforcers were “a new devil for the New Era,” in a satirical reference to one of supreme leader Xi Jinping’s ideological buzzwords. A farmer from the southwestern province of Sichuan who gave only the surname Sen said the enforcers were also active in his part of the country. “They are bringing in this policy now, which is evil,” Sen said. “The agricultural management teams have so much power.”  “They are descending on the countryside and making life hell for ordinary people with all this rectification.” Cai’s perception of the new rural management teams was similar to Sen’s and to comments seen online by Radio Free Asia, and he likened them to the widely hated urban management enforcement teams, or chengguan, who are often filmed beating up street vendors in the name of civic pride. “Now they are sending these so-called agricultural management teams into countless households, and into the fields,” he said. “They came into being, like the urban management officials before them, because when farmers aren’t cooperating, local township and village officials don’t want to show their faces, or get involved in beating people up or demolishing stuff,” he said.  Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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US case against alleged monkey smuggler is ‘attack on Cambodia,’ his lawyers claim

Editor09 mins

The former head of Cambodia’s Department of Wildlife and Biodiversity should not be held responsible for illegally smuggling research monkeys because he was acting on orders of his government and not in a personal capacity, his lawyers have argued in a U.S. government case against him. Moreover, the U.S. case against Masphal Kry is tantamount to an attack on the Cambodian government, his defense lawyers argued, calling the indictment “a full-on assault on a foreign ministry.” U.S. Justice Department officials said Kry and seven other individuals were running a smuggling operation involving hundreds of long-tail macaques – a primate key for medical studies – poached from the wild in Cambodia and shipped illegally to the U.S. Kry, who has been under house arrest since he was apprehended at New York’s JFK airport in November 2022, made his first court appearance at an evidentiary hearing in Miami on Friday.  Officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida have accused Kry of taking monkeys from the national parks and other locations in Cambodia and then falsifying permits, making it seem as though the animals had been raised in a breeding facility – the only legal place where the research primates can be sourced from. The prosecutors accused him of being part of a conspiracy in which monkeys were sold with inaccurate export permits to the U.S. The prosecutors accused Kry and his associates of trying to make it seem as though the monkeys had been bred in captivity, when in fact the monkeys had been caught in the wild. Prosecutors said that Kry and his associates concocted a scheme to sell the monkeys. He and his associates have each been charged with seven counts of smuggling and one count of conspiracy. Masphal Kry, the former head of Cambodia’s Department of Wildlife and Biodiversity. Credit: Masphal Kry Facebook On Friday, a judge, Lisette Reid, considered whether some of the evidence gathered by federal investigators could be admitted at trial. The lawyers argued about the circumstances of Kry’s arrest at Kennedy International Airport in New York in November, and whether information that he provided to an investigator on that day can be admitted. At the airport, Kry was read his Miranda rights (his right to have a lawyer present and to remain silent). But his lawyers said that he does not speak or understand English well enough to have comprehended the full meaning of his rights. If he was not aware of his rights, then the information he shared cannot be admitted. The prosecutors said that he was told of his rights, and that he was given a translation of his rights in the Khmer language. Therefore, they said, the evidence can be admitted.Kry, sitting next to an interpreter, listened intently to their arguments. He wore a dark suit and white socks, with an electronic ankle bracelet – a GPS tracking device – bulging under one of his socks. Outside the courthouse, animal rights activists, holding signs (“End Monkey Smuggling”) and wearing cardboard monkey faces, stood in a line. “Hunters in Cambodia are taking mothers away from their babies,” said Amanda Brody, a senior campaigner for an organization, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), referring to the captured animals. “We’re standing here in solidarity with the monkeys.” Protecting public spaces? Ahead of Friday’s hearing, Kry’s lawyers sought to have the indictment dismissed, arguing that he was following the Cambodian government’s request to obtain monkeys from “public spaces,” places where monkeys are a nuisance for local residents.  In fact, Cambodian officials viewed the capture of the monkeys as a service to the people who live in these areas. Local authorities had wanted the monkeys removed, the lawyers claimed. Kry was fulfilling his duties as a wildlife official and U.S. prosecutors are attempting “to criminalize public acts by a foreign government employee that occurred entirely within that foreign country.” “These public acts are legal under Cambodian law,” said the defense lawyers. Experts say the argument has little credibility as the issue is not whether poaching monkeys is legal under Cambodian domestic law, but that Kry and his conspirators faked import documents to pretend that the provenance of the macaques was legitimate.  This would be illegal under U.S. law and under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which Cambodia has signed. The defense’s argument “epitomizes the Cambodian government’s way of thinking — it’s not illegal if the government says it’s not,” said Ed Newcomer, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigator. “[But] Cambodia is a signatory to CITES and, as such, has to follow CITES rules if they want to export their wildlife.” Long-tailed macaques, highly intelligent creatures prized in research for their biological similarity to humans, are protected under international trade law, and their handlers need a permit to ship them to the U.S.  They were added to the endangered species list in 2022 amid increased poaching as demand for the primates surged in the midst of the COVID pandemic. The biggest market is the U.S. From 2000 to 2018, the U.S. imported between 41.7% and 70.1% of the total annual trade, according to a forthcoming article in the International Federation of Tropical Medicine journal.

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Junta air strike in Myanmar’s Magway kills 3, injures 12

Editor04 mins

A junta airstrike in Myanmar’s central Magway region killed three people and injured 12, residents told RFA.  Thursday’s attack destroyed a National Unity Government administrative building in Tilin township’s Laung Bo Lay village, the second deadly attack on an NUG village office this month. “The Public Administration Office was bombed,” said a resident who requested anonymity for safety reasons. “Three People’s Defense Force comrades died on the spot and about 12 other people were injured.” The two men and a woman who died were members of the Yaw Revolutionary Army, based in Tilin township, according to an official from the local defense force, who also declined to be named. He said four men and eight women were injured, including one person in charge of assisting people left homeless by the conflict in Magway region. The official told RFA a jet fighter flew over Laung Bo Lay village at around noon Thursday, dropping three bombs. He said the junta ordered the air strike after being tipped off about the presence of People’s Defense Force members at the office. It cut telephone lines in Tilin and nearby Gangaw township ahead of the attack. After the air strike, troops stationed at the Shwe Htee Hall in Tilin township and the junta-affiliated Pyu Saw Htee militia staged ground attacks on villages in Tilin, according to locals. They said hundreds of residents from 13 villages were forced to flee. The junta has not issued a statement on the incident and calls to the junta’s Deputy Information Minister Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun by RFA went unanswered. Myanmar’s military is increasingly resorting to air attacks as it meets fierce resistance on the ground from People’s Defense Forces and ethnic armies across the country. On April 18, it carried out an air strike on Ma Gyi Kan village in Magway region’s Myaing township, destroying the hospital. Thursday’s air strike comes 10 days after the junta bombed an NUG office in Sagaing region’s Pa Zi Gyi village, killing around 200 people, the deadliest air strike since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup. The junta bombed the Pa Zi Gyi again Thursday but no one was injured in that attack as most people had fled the village. The National Unity Government was formed shortly after the 2021 coup and serves as a parallel government, campaigning for the restoration of democracy. It also carries out local administrative work in areas not under junta control, while its People’s Defense Forces fight junta troops for control of townships across Myanmar. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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Tibetans abroad rally in support of Dalai Lama following outrage over video

Editor06 mins

Tibetan demonstrators held rallies in Europe, the United States, India and Australia this week to protest negative media coverage of a video of the Dalai Lama asking an Indian boy to suck his tongue in what Tibetans say was a misinterpretation of an innocent, playful act. A video of the Tibetan Buddhists’ spiritual leader hugging and kissing the young boy on the lips at a student event in northern India on Feb. 28 went viral on social media and sparked online criticism and accusations of pedophilia. The Dalai Lama, 87, later apologized to the boy’s family, and Tibetans quickly came to his defense, explaining that sticking out one’s tongue is a greeting or a sign of respect in their culture. More than 2,000 Tibetans and their supporters rallied in Switzerland, demanding that local media apologize to the Dalai Lama for misinterpreting the video. Activists approached one news organization that agreed to look into the matter.  “I have never seen Tibetans gathered in such a huge number in a long time, and it is very important that we organize these rallies against those who defamed His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” said Tenzin Wangdue, vice president of the Tibetan Association of Liechtenstein, More than 300 Tibetans and Indian supporters gathered in Bangalore, India, to demand apologies from news organizations. About 15,000 people gathered on April 15 in Ladakh, a region administered by India as part of the larger Kashmir region and has been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China for decades.  “We the faithful followers of His Holiness The 145th Dalai Lama are deeply saddened and shocked by the deliberate attempt of many news/media portals, circulating a tailored propaganda video clip to defame and malign the impeccable character and stature of His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama,” said a statement issued on April 14 by the Ladakh Buddhist Association’s Youth Wing in Kargil to show its solidarity with the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader. When the Dalai Lama meets with people, “he speaks with them freely, without any reserve or cautiousness, as if they were long-time friends, and treats them lovingly,” said Ogyen Thinley Dorje, the Karmapa, or spiritual leader and head of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, one of the four major lineages of Tibet.  “Sometimes he does playfully tug someone’s beard, or tickle them, or pat them gently on the cheek or nose,” he said in a statement issued on April 12. “This is just how he normally is, and it shows no more than his genuine delight and love for others.  Tibetans living in western China’s Tibet Autonomous Region and Tibetan-populated areas of Chinese provinces as well as those who live abroad believe the Chinese have used the video to cast a dark shadow on the Dalai Lama. “Tibetans inside Tibet have seen and heard about the video clips on various social media,” said one Tibetan from inside the region, who declined to be identified for safety reasons. “It is so pleasant to be able to see pictures of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but at the same time it is heartbreaking to see how the Chinese government is taking advantage of this and manipulating the playful video interaction between the Dalai Lama and the young Indian boy,” the source said.  Many Tibetans inside Tibet have not publicly commented on the video, knowing that it would be dangerous to do so because of China’s heavy surveillance and repression in the region, said another Tibetan who declined to be named for the same reason. “The Chinese government would track down the individuals and punish them and they would be sentenced to three to four years [in prison],” the source said.  Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

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Over 20,000 locals flee as Myanmar’s military raids Sagaing region villages

Editor02 mins

More than 20,000 locals abandoned their villages in Sagaing region’s Khin-U township as Myanmar’s military intensified its offensive against local People’s Defense Forces. A column of around 100 troops staged a dawn raid on Myin Daung village on Wednesday killing five defense force members, according to a PDF official who declined to be named. The defense force responded by detonating mines and exchanging gunfire with junta forces. A resident of nearby Aung Thar said that after the battle, the junta column shelled other villages in Khin-U township, destroying a monastery and burning down three houses in his village. He added that five men who were farming outside the village were taken by troops to act as human shields when they left Aung Thar village. CAPTION: The corner of a house damaged by gunfire in Aung Thar village on April 19, 2023. Credit: Citizen journalist A resident of Myin Daung, who also requested anonymity, said thousands of residents of nearby villages fled their homes “There are more than 10 villages to the south of Myin Daung with a population of about 18,000 people,” the local said.  “Along with the people leaving villages to the north there will be more than 20,000 people fleeing.” A People’s Defense Force member who also declined to give his name told RFA that 21 villages are now empty. RFA called Sagaing region junta spokesperson Aye Hlaing but no one answered. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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Video of dancer in mosque inflames Uyghur anxieties about China’s attacks on religion

Editor08 mins

A Chinese tourism advertisement portraying a medieval Buddhist fantasy, shot in the prayer hall of Xinjiang’s second-largest mosque, has alarmed diaspora Uyghurs, who call it a desecration.  They say it is particularly incensing during Ramadan, a time when mosques should host prayer and evening fast-breaking.  The promotional video, put out by a local propaganda office, features a bare-armed Uyghur woman as a dancer from “Women’s Kingdom,” a fictional polity whose queen sought to marry the Chinese protagonist of the classic Ming Dynasty novel Journey to the West.  She twirls in the otherwise empty Kuchar Grand Mosque. The video, which circulated on Douyin, the Chinese version of Tiktok, emerged amid a tourism campaign to draw Han Chinese to the far-western region of Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uyghur and other Turkic peoples now that COVID-19 travel restrictions have been lifted. There were 35.2 million individual visits to Xinjiang between January and March of this year, resulting in 2.5 billion yuan in tourism revenue, an increase of 36% on the same period last year, according to state media. But Uyghurs say such videos are both offensive and part of a wider attempt to diminish or erase their religion and culture. The video was shared to Facebook by Uyghur activist and reeducation camp survivor Zumret Dawut. It has since been taken down from Douyin. Radio Free Asia could not identify or contact its creators.  “The message [of the video] to the Uyghurs is that we can suppress and even destroy you by assaulting and breaking your dignity through humiliation – we can do anything we want to do,” said Ilshat Hassan, Deputy Executive Chairman of the World Uyghur Congress. Spurious claim The video begins with a Chinese narrator walking up the steps to the mosque. “[When you] open the heavy door of Kuchar Grand Mosque, a beautiful Qiuci woman, concealed by a veil, steps forward, and shares memories of the Woman’s Kingdom with you,” the video’s narrator relates as the woman dances.  Qiuci is the Chinese name for the medieval Buddhist kingdom of Kusen, near the present site of Kuchar. The Chinese words used in the video for Grand Mosque, Da Si, are also used to refer to large Buddhist temples. Nowhere does the film indicate that the setting is a gathering place for Muslims. The mosque, first built in the 16th century and reconstructed after a fire in the 1930s, has never been a site of Buddhist worship. The Chinese Communist Party ties the legitimacy of its rule in the Uyghur region to the spurious claim that Xinjiang has always been a part of China.  To bolster this claim, it has etched episodes from Chinese fiction and historical annals onto Xinjiang’s landscape by altering the presentation of Uyghur sacred spaces.  The Uyghur region’s most prominent shrine is the mausoleum of Afaq Khoja, a 17th century religious and political leader in Kashgar. It has long been marketed to Chinese tourists as the tomb of the “Fragrant Concubine,” who, according to Chinese legend, was Afaq Khoja’s granddaughter, sent as tribute to the Qianlong Emperor. The transformation of the Uyghur region’s most prominent religious sites into tourist attractions, demolition of other mosques and shrines, criminalization of public expressions of Islamic piety, and pervasive surveillance have left Uyghurs with nowhere to observe Ramadan but home.  Non-event A Chinese travel agent in Urumchi contacted by RFA and asked about visiting Xinjiang mosques during Ramadan depicted Islam’s most sacred month as a non-event. There are no religious events bringing Muslims together to break the daytime fast, for instance. “Normally there won’t be these kinds of collective activities at mosques,” she said.  “Many people in Xinjiang are Sinicized, so there aren’t situations like in the Arab world where lots of people gather in one place and make religious observances together. I’ve lived in Xinjiang for many years, and I’ve never seen minority nationalities engaging in those kinds of collective activities,” she said. Meanwhile, tourists wishing to visit mosques like Kashgar’s Id Kah and Kuchar’s Grand Mosque during Ramadan could freely do so, outside of the calls to prayer, the travel agent said. “People who want to fast must do it at home,” the travel agent said.  Asked whether it was possible to visit mosques in Urumchi, the travel agent had a firm response.  “It isn’t possible to visit those places. Because they’re locked. The mosques near the Grand Bazaar are locked too,” she said. “There’s no requirement to pray at mosques, right? People can pray at home, right? Ask questions like this to the relevant government official.” Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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Woman killed in attack on junta truck in Myanmar’s Kachin state

Editor03 mins

A woman has died after the Kachin Independence Army set off a mine under a truck carrying junta troops in Myanmar’s eastern Kachin state. Along with soldiers the truck was carrying around 50 civilians, who had been seized by the junta in a raid on Hseng Hpa Yar village in Hpakant township on Tuesday. “The woman who was killed was called N-dup Seng Nu Mai. She died on the spot. Four more residents were injured but not seriously,” said a local who didn’t want to be named for fear of reprisals. “The troops stormed into Hseng Hpa Yar village and took the locals on a 12-wheeled truck along with to serve as human shields.” When RFA contacted Kachin Independence Army Information Officer Col. Naw Bu, he said his  troops did not know that the junta had taken prisoners with them on the truck. “All the junta convoys were covered up with blue waterproof [tarpaulin]. So we detonated the mine as we had prepared in advance,” he told RFA. “Why would we do it if we knew that villagers were in the truck? We never do anything to harm the local people. They [the junta] arrest the locals and force them to go to the front line.” RFA called the junta spokesperson for Kachin state, Win Ye Tun, but there was no response and the junta has not issued a statement on the incident. At least 3,400 civilians have been killed across Myanmar since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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Friends say it’s likely Vietnamese blogger was abducted from Bangkok

Editor013 mins

Wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, shorts and sandals, the man with the glasses whistled as he slid onto the saddle of his Fino motorbike, backed it away from his Bangkok rental home and rode off. Those were the last images captured by the security camera of blogger Duong Van Thai. The camera screen showed the footage was recorded at 4:37 a.m. on April 13, 2023 – but the timestamp was almost certainly inaccurate.  The video showed Thai motoring away during daylight, and neighbors said he left home at around 11 a.m. on Thursday. Later that day, he live-streamed for about 20 minutes on his YouTube channel with nearly 120,000 followers. He talked about last week’s trial of blogger Nguyen Lan Thang and the U.S. secretary of state’s visit to Vietnam. Calls to his mobile phone and messages on WhatsApp on Thursday afternoon went unanswered, several of his friends said, and he never returned home.  On Sunday, police in Vietnam’s northern province of Ha Tinh announced they had found a person without identification illegally entering the country via trails on its border with Laos. They confirmed that the person was named Duong Van Thai, born in 1982. Duong Van Thai, also known as Thai Van Duong, had been applying for refugee status with the United Nations refugee agency’s office in Bangkok. Thailand for many decades has served as an informal safe haven for political refugees in the region. The 41-year-old fled Vietnam in either 2018 or early 2019 fearing political persecution for his many blog posts and videos that criticized the government and leaders of the Communist Party on Facebook and YouTube.  Now it appears that he was abducted and forced to return to Vietnam. ‘Everything looks normal’ at rental home Grace Bui, a Vietnamese American human rights activist living in Thailand, told Radio Free Asia that she and her friends went to Thai’s home on Monday.  “Inside his room, everything looks normal, just like Duong has just gotten up in the morning and gone out for a quick walk,” she said. “We found the bag he often carried when going out. His wallet was still in the bag, and his UN card and bank cards were still in the wallet. We found his laptop also.” The UN card is a refugee card issued by the UN High Commissioner of Refugees office in Bangkok to people who have refugee status and are waiting to be resettled in a third country.  The back of refugee card has text in both English and Thai that reads as follows: “The bearer of this card is related to UNHCR, registered and documented under the UN General Assembly’s authorization, and cannot be forced to return to their country of origin. All support to the bearer is highly appreciated.” All the belongings in his room seemed to show that Thai was not prepared for a long trip back to Vietnam, where he faces a heavy sentence for his criticism against the government and the ruling Communist Party.  A close friend of Thai said that Thai had a stable life in Thailand and very much wanted to resettle in a third country. He had no plans to return to Vietnam, according to Hoang Trong Man, also known as Man Hien Phap. “I would like to affirm that Mr. Duong Van Thai did not intend to return to Vietnam because if he had had such a plan, he would have told us and collected some belongings before he left,” he said. Pre-disappearance signs Several of Thai’s friends told RFA that he had shared with them a piece of great news on Wednesday. He did an interview with UNHCR officials, who asked if he had any relatives in Australia. Thai replied that he wanted to resettle in the United States, where his girlfriend lived.  Bui, who was in regular contact with Thai before his disappearance, told RFA that it was very unlikely that Thai would return to Vietnam a day after doing an immigration interview with UNHCR. “Duong [Thai] never intended to return to Vietnam, and if you ask Duong’s friends, you will know that he never wanted to go back to Vietnam,” she said.  Nguyen Xuan Kim, another Vietnamese refugee in Thailand and a close friend of Thai’s, said that around two weeks before going missing, he shared his feelings of insecurity just after he posted videos about political infighting in Vietnam. “His recent posts referred to many senior officials of the Ministry of Public Security, about the general who had an extramarital affair,” Kim said. “He said briefly that he should be vigilant just in case but did not go into the specifics.” Thai told Kim that one of his neighbors said that on April 6, a man riding a motorbike with a Chiang Rai provincial number plate approached Thai’s home to film and take photos. The man spoke Thai but with a strange accent, the neighbor told Kim. Kim told RFA on Tuesday that Thai gave him access to his rental home’s security camera system, some social media accounts and some electronic devices. However, Kim said he hasn’t been able to access much of the data. Who was involved?  A statement from Amnesty International’s regional office expressed concern over the information about Thai’s arrest in Vietnam, particularly given that the UNHCR had recognized his refugee status.  “Viet Nam keeps close tabs on dissidents and has in the past shown that it is not above tracking and surveilling them beyond its borders. Vietnamese refugees living in Thailand who fled the country because of the government’s repression must be protected and should not have to live in constant fear,” the group said in the statement sent to RFA on Tuesday. RFA contacted UNHCR and its office in Thailand, as well as the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via email to inquire about Thai’s case but hasn’t received a response. Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, urged the Thai government to clarify Thai’s case.  “There are…

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