May 2023 - Page 4 of 6 - Investigative Journalism Reportika

Republicans pummel top officials over China policy at Senate hearing

Editor2 years ago06 mins

Republicans ripped into Cabinet officials during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on efforts to enhance U.S. security measures and the nation’s ability to compete with China. Three Cabinet members defended President Joe Biden’s budgetary request. The presence Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a rare triple act, showed the importance of China policy for the White House. Biden administration officials have asked members of Congress for $842 billion in defense spending for the next fiscal year, in part to deter the threat of a potential military conflict with China. This year’s budgetary request is 3.2% more than the one made last year, and approximately 13% higher than the year before that. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said during the hearing that the president’s budget was inadequate to counter the threat from China, however. He said the proposed budget did not include enough funding for the Navy or other branches of the military. Overall, the budget proposal was a sign of the president’s weak approach to China, said Graham. He used an expletive to describe his assessment of the president’s policy: “This idea that we have a strong China policy is a bunch of [expletive].” Secretary of State Antony Blinken [left] speaks with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., before a Senate Appropriations hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May 16, 2023. Credit: Associated Press Another Republican member of the committee, Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, said during the hearing that he has been disappointed in the president’s record on trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In contrast, Moran said, China has been aggressively pursuing trade agreements and gaining a competitive advantage. Tensions between the U.S. and China have escalated in recent months, as both the witnesses at the hearing and the Republicans on the committee agreed. Austin described China’s “bullying and its provocations” in the Indo-Pacific region. U.S. military leaders are now trying to beef up their forces in order to defend Taiwan, if it becomes necessary, and to defend the island nation against the Chinese military. “The United States will soon provide significant additional security assistance to Taiwan,” he said. Earlier this month, as Reuters reported, Biden White House officials had agreed to send $500 million worth of weapons aid to Taiwan. Competition with China Commerce Secretary Raimondo said the president’s proposed budget includes resources that are “critical for national security.” She warned about the danger from Beijing, saying that, “China is doubling down on its competitiveness with the U.S.” Senate Democrats on the spending panel sought to use the threat to frame the broader budget debate in Washington, as the White House and congressional Republicans remain at an impasse in negotiations to raise the nation’s debt limit. Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, met again Tuesday to negotiate an extension without success. According to estimates, the U.S. government could run out of money to pay its bills in two weeks. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, a Democrat for Washington state, warned that steep budget cuts of the kind House Republicans are pushing, even if they wouldn’t come from the Pentagon, would hand China an edge as it tries to supplant the United States as the dominant world power. “China is not debating whether to pay its debt or wreck its economy,” Murray said.

Nearly 400 feared dead after Cyclone Mocha hit Myanmar’s Rakhine state

Editor2 years ago05 mins

Nearly 400 Rohingya refugees in Myanmar’s Rakhine state were probably killed by Cyclone Mocha, the country’s parallel National Unity Government and local aid workers told RFA Tuesday. The NUG said the figure was based on estimates of the damage, since search and rescue teams have not retrieved the bodies and many victims are still missing. The figure has not been independently verified by RFA. Volunteers from the Muslim Aid and Relief Society who are collecting field data said most of the dead were children, pregnant women and the elderly. They said they are still searching for bodies. Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya advisor to the National Unity Government, told RFA Tuesday the majority of the victims were from Sittwe township. “Some are still missing. This is in Sittwe alone,” he said. “Bodies were found on the streets and under trees. Search and rescue has not been done yet so we can’t pick up the bodies. All the refugee camps were badly damaged.” He said that the actual number of casualties could be much higher. ‘Refugee camps are open-roof prisons’. There are 21 Rohingya refugee camps in Rakhine state with 120,000 refugees staying in 13 camps in Sittwe township. Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, said the refugees were housed in makeshift tents which were mostly destroyed when the cyclone hit. “Most of the Rohingya refugee camps did not have time to evacuate [ahead of] the cyclone,” he said. “Lives are lost when there are no shelters to evacuate the cyclone. The tents were destroyed. Refugee camps are open-roof prisons.” Residents of Sittwe township said that most of the camps were built close to the sea, leaving them vulnerable to heavy waves, coastal winds and torrential rainfall. Nearly 1 million Rohingya were forced to leave their homes in Rakhine state following a military crackdown against the Muslim-minory in 2017. About 740,000 fled to Bangladesh and live in Cox’s Bazar, also hit hard by Cyclone Mocha. Those who remained live in internally displaced persons camps, poorly funded by the junta and volunteer groups. Collecting information on cyclone victims has been hard because there are only a few volunteers from the Muslim community collecting data in the field, a member of the data collection team told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity. It is also hard to collect data on the ground after Sittwe’s largest telecommunications tower collapsed when the cyclone hit it on May 14, cutting phone lines and internet access. RFA’s calls to the junta spokesman for Rakhine state, Hla Thein, went unanswered Tuesday. Cyclone Mocha hit Myanmar’s coast Sunday with sustained winds reaching over 220 kilometers per hour (137 mph). According to preliminary figures compiled exclusively by RFA, there have been at least 30 deaths due to the cyclone in Rakhine and Chin states, and Ayeyarwady, Magway and Sagaing regions . Rakhine state and Ayeyarwady region were hit hard by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, leaving nearly 140,000 people dead or missing. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

Cyclone Mocha inflicts heavy damage on Myanmar’s Rakhine state

Editor2 years ago012 mins

Cyclone Mocha may have been less deadly than predicted, but it inflicted heavy damage on Myanmar’s Rakhine state, including the capital of Sittwe. On Monday, a day after the storm slammed into the coast, images from the city and surrounding area showed flattened homes, roads blocked by fallen electricity pylons, splintered remains of trees and widespread flooding. Power was cut off to Sittwe, a city of about 150,000. “Ninety percent of Sittwe township … is damaged or under debris,” aid and relief groups told Radio Free Asia. A precise death toll was hard to nail down. At least 30 people are believed dead, based on reports by local media and residents of the affected regions. Myanmar’s junta had said three people died, while the shadow National Unity Government – made up of opponents of the junta – put the figure at 18. Those figures are far lower than feared. Cyclone Nargis, which hit the same area in 2008, left nearly 140,000 dead or missing. The storm hit the coast on Sunday with sustained winds reaching over 220 kilometers per hour (137 mph). “Buildings have been badly damaged,” said a woman who lives in the Sittwe’s Lanmadaw (South) ward, asking not to be identified. “The monastery in front of my house is completely destroyed. Not one house is left undamaged.” The low-lying areas of Sittwe were inundated with flooding, she said, leaving residents to contend with brackish and, in some places, chest-deep water from the Bay of Bengal. “Piles of mud have been left inside the buildings,” she said. “Since there is no electricity, we haven’t been able to clean them … The roof of my house is almost gone and there is water downstairs. We don’t know what to do to clean them up.” Local residents stand on a broken bridge at the Khaung Dote Khar Rohingya refugee camp in Sittwe, Myanmar, Monday, May 15, 2023, after cyclone Mocha made a landfall. Credit: AFP A Sittwe firefighter told RFA that floodwaters in the city were “still as high as 1.5 meters (5 feet) in the low-lying areas” and that evacuated residents were waiting for word from the Rakhine state government to return to their homes. Impact in Bangladesh Meanwhile, in neighboring Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to the west, some 1.2 million Rohingyas living in refugee camps after fleeing a military offensive in Rakhine state in 2017 remained largely unscathed by the cyclone, despite earlier fears that the mostly unprotected camps lay directly in the storm’s crosshairs. But while no casualties were reported in the aftermath of the cyclone, Rohingya refugees told RFA that thousands of homes were damaged in the sprawling camps due to strong winds, landslides, and flooding. “About 500 homes were damaged in our camp alone,” said Aung Myaing, a refugee at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar. “About 10,000 homes in all refugee camps combined have been damaged. Some houses have been completely destroyed while others have been partially damaged.” He said camp residents are in need of bamboo and tarps to help shore up the damage. RFA-affiliated BenarNews reported that Mocha had destroyed more than 2,800 shelters, learning centers, health centers and other infrastructure in refugee camps in the neighboring sub-districts of Teknaf and Ukhia, citing Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner. He noted that landslides were also reported at 120 spots in the Rohingya camps. Rahman said there were no casualties because “we relocated them at an appropriate time.” ‘Trail of devastation’ In a flash update on Monday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance called Mocha “one of the strongest cyclones ever to hit the country” and said the storm had left a “trail of devastation” in Rakhine state, which is also home to tens of thousands of people displaced by conflict in the aftermath of the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat. “Few houses have escaped damage in Sittwe and there is widespread destruction of flimsy bamboo longhouses in displacement camps,” UNOCHA said. “Health, relief items, shelter, and water, sanitation, and hygiene needs are already being reported. Explosive ordnance risks are high in conflict-affected rural areas where landmines may have been shifted during flooding and where people have been on the move to safer areas.” A downed tree lies on a building in Sittwe, Myanmar, Monday, May 15, 2023. Credit: Citizen journalist Damage to telecommunications towers has severely hampered the flow of information in Rakhine, while water and power services were disrupted throughout the day on Monday, forcing residents to rely on generators for electricity. Relief efforts underway UNOCHA said humanitarian partners are starting assessments to confirm the magnitude of the damage in Sittwe and the Rakhine townships of Pauktaw, Rathedaung, Maungdaw, Ponnagyun, and Kyauktaw. It called for “an urgent injection of funds” to respond to the impact of Mocha and subsequent flooding in the region. In a response to emailed questions from RFA, the World Food Program said it is “mobilizing emergency food and nutrition assistance to 800,000 people affected by the cyclone, many of them already displaced by conflict.” Before the cyclone, the U.N. had estimated 6 million people were “already in humanitarian need” in Rakhine state, and the regions of Chin, Magway and Sagaing. Collectively, the states host 1.2 million displaced people, prompting OCHA to warn of “a nightmare scenario.” However, Mocha had weakened by Sunday evening and moved toward Myanmar’s northwest, where it was downgraded to a depression on Monday over the country’s Sagaing region. RFA was able to document the deaths of at least a dozen people. They included a 30-year-old woman from Rakhine’s Ramree township, two men in their 20s in Ayeyarwady region’s Yegyi township and Rakhine’s Toungup township, and four men of unknown ages in Rakhine’s Kyauktaw township. Others killed included a resident of Sittwe, a man in his 50s from Mandalay region’s Pyin Oo Lwin township, a young couple from the Shan state city of Tachileik, and a 70-year-old woman from Magway region’s Sinphyukyun township. Attempts by RFA to contact…

Remembering late Tibetan film director Pema Tseden’s ‘weighty’ life

Editor2 years ago09 mins

Pema Tseden, the renowned Tibetan director, died of a heart attack on May 8th, and many hearts worldwide are broken. As a professor of Chinese politics (and Tibet) at Cornell University I have shared his films with my students, and when I informed the current ones of this news they too were pained by his passing. To better understand why Pema Tseden’s death is so significant one can, fittingly, turn to one of his most important films, Tharlo. The first thing one sees in the remarkable 2015 movie as the opening credits fade is a lamb being fed as it sits comfortably in a bag. The camera slowly pans out to reveal that the film’s titular character, Tharlo, is nourishing the lamb. The herder is in a small rural police station, standing across from an officer, both men are Tibetan, but their lives are quite different. The officer has been integrated into the People’s Republic of China, Tharlo has not. The impetus for their meeting is this liminal status, as he does not even have an “residence identity card”, a foundation of citizenship in the PRC. And yet, for the first few moments of this scene, the two men are not discussing the steps Tharlo must take to rectify this shortcoming. Instead, the herder is reciting, from memory (and in a lyrical style redolent of the way many Tibetans chant Buddhist mantras and prayers) Mao Zedong’s highly influential 1944 speech known as “Serve the People”. The central question in the Chinese leader’s talk is what constitutes a life well lived. More specifically, Mao asks (channeling the renowned Chinese historian, Si Maqian, what determines if a death is “weightier” than Mount Tai, or “lighter than a feather”. The answer in the speech, and pondered throughout the film by Tharlo, is that if an individual has “served the people” his death will have true heft (and the life before it meaning). The true weight of Pema Tseden’s death does not simply stem from his promotion of Tibetan art and culture. This is as despite how prolific the Tibetan director was, and as glowing as its critical reception, it would be hyperbole to assert his work is universally known and beloved. It alone did not have the weight of a mountain. What does is his unceasing effort to write fiction and make movies inside the PRC. And to do so during a period in which Beijing has ruled Tibet with an increasingly heavy hand, and the divide between the Tibetans and Chinese has yawned particularly wide. This is not to assert that Pema Tseden was able to bridge such the gap between the two sides. On the contrary, all indications are that such a task is well beyond the reach of anyone. But it is to call attention to the Tibetan director’s efforts to operate in such a perilous in-between space. To stand then not as a conduit for solving the Tibet-China conflict, but rather to persist and even flourish artistically in the most contested of spaces. Operating there may not have endeared Pema Tseden to everyone, but it does constitute “serving of the people”. Given the harm Mao caused to Tibet through making sure it became a part of the PRC, there is an admittedly bitter irony in framing the Tibetan director’s significance using his words. But this is an irony that Pema Tseden himself implicitly acknowledged in Tharlo. The main character’s recall of the speech not only opened the film, but his inability to recite it again during his haunting return to the police station comprised the next to last scene in the movie. Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden sits in the Beijing Film Academy theater in Beijing before a screening of his film “Tharlo,” Nov. 12, 2015. Credit: AFP The Tibetan director then did not serve Mao’s imagined proletariat, but rather the Tibetan people (in all their various stations). He gave voice to their lived experience. He shed light on the complex moral dilemmas they faced in a society that has been shaken not only by the Chinese state, but also through the economic forces of modernization and globalization. He illuminated how mundane aspects of their everyday lives were laden with meaning and often fraught with wide-ranging consequences. The situation inside China today, though, is quite bleak. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping the country has turned in the direction of a sharper brand of authoritarianism than was practiced by his immediate predecessors at the helm of the Chinese state. And the chill this has caused within China has been felt more acutely in Tibetan regions within the country as policies in such places have tilted more and more toward assimilation (rather than autonomy). As a result, there are very few Tibetans left who will be able to replicate what Pema Tseden accomplished in his lifetime. The space for this has been so sharply curtailed, and the risks of doing so have grown. The death of the Tibetan director is then surely weightier not only than Taishan, but more aptly Mt. Everest. When someone dies in Tibet people tend not to say “sorry for your loss” to the bereaved, but rather “may your heart be mended”. This sentiment is particularly warranted in response to the Tibetan director’s untimely passing. Allen Carlson is an associate professor in Cornell University’s Government Department and serves as director of the school’s China and Asia Pacific Studies program. The views in this article are his own and do not reflect the position of Cornell University or Radio Free Asia.

Rohingya must stay at camps despite approaching cyclone, Bangladesh govt says

Editor2 years ago09 mins

Bangladeshi authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people Saturday from coastal areas near the projected path of a monster storm, but Rohingya refugees would be prevented from leaving their camps in Cox’s Bazar, the home minister said. As of late Saturday, Bangladeshi state media reported, the government had moved as many as 400,000 people into 1,030 cyclone shelters in Chittagong division, which covers Cox’s Bazar and other districts near Bangladesh’s southeastern border with Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where Cyclone Mocha is expected to make landfall on Sunday. During a public event in Dhaka on Saturday, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said that agencies including the Armed Police Battalion in Cox’s Bazar were ordered to stop any of the 1 million or so Rohingya sheltering at camps there from leaving those confines and spreading across the country. “Law enforcers are on alert so that the Rohingya people cannot take advantage of the disaster to cross the barbed-wire fence. But if Cyclone Mocha hits the Bangladesh [areas] instead of Myanmar, the Rohingya people will be brought to a safe place,” Khan said in televised comments. World Vision, a humanitarian group, had warned on Friday that the storm threatened the safety of thousands of children at the world’s largest refugee camp, situated in Cox’s Bazar. “Cyclone Mocha is expected to bring heavy rain and flooding along the coasts of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, posing severe threat to the safety of children and communities in danger zones along coastal and low-lying areas,” the NGO said in a statement. The cyclone is the most powerful and potentially dangerous sea-based storm seen in this corner of the Bay of Bengal in nearly two decades. On Saturday, India’s meteorological department said the weather system had intensified into an “extremely severe cyclonic storm.” This satellite image provided by the India Meteorological Department shows storm Mocha intensify into an extremely severe cyclonic storm, May 13, 2023. Credit: India Meteorological Department via AP As of 12 p.m. Saturday (local time), the center of the storm was over the sea close to Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, and packing winds of up to 231 kilometers per hour (143.5 miles per hour) as Mocha churned toward the low-lying coastal border areas between Myanmar and Bangladesh, according to the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT). Rakhine is expected to take a direct hit from the storm. “According to the forecast by GDACS [Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System], tropical cyclone MOCHA can have a high humanitarian impact based on the maximum sustained wind speed, exposed population, and vulnerability,” UNOSAT said. In a press release, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR warned that Mocha could bring “significant rainfall with landslides and flooding of camps near the sea.” The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a separate bulletin on Saturday that the storm was forecast to generate wind speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour (124.2 miles per hour) when it makes landfall on Sunday afternoon. “Heavy rain and strong winds associated with the cyclone are expected to cause flooding across Rakhine, where many townships and displacement sites are in low-lying areas and highly prone to flooding,” OCHA said. “Many communities are already moving to higher ground to designated evacuation centers or to safer areas staying with relatives,” the U.N. agency said. A girl looks out from a tuk tuk while evacuating in Sittwe, in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Mocha, May 13, 2023. Credit: Sai Aung Main/AFP In the Bangladeshi capital, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her government was preparing to safeguard the nation and its people from the storm, but that there might have to be shutoffs to the electricity and gas supply. “Cyclone ‘Mocha’ is coming. We’ve kept ready the cyclone centers and taken all types of preparations to tackle it,” the state-run news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha quoted Hasina as saying on Saturday. Her Awami League government faces a general election in late 2023 or early 2024. In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh’s meteorological agency raised the danger signal for the coming cyclone to 10, the most severe rating. Meanwhile, Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, the country’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner, confirmed that law enforcement agencies would prevent Rohingya from leaving the camps. He said Rohingya would have to seek shelter at mosques, community centers and madrassas located within the sprawling refugee camps in the district. “We have prepared some buildings including mosques and community halls as temporary cyclone shelters. About 20,000 Rohingya people would likely need cyclone shelters if there will be a landslide,” he said. The Rohingya would face no risk from storm surges because their shelters are located in hilly areas, he added. “As there are 1.2 million Rohingya, we have no capacity to evacuate them to [cyclone] shelters,” according to a statement issued on Saturday by Md. Enamur Rahman, Bangladesh’s state minister for disaster management and relief. He did not give a reason and did not immediately respond to a follow-up phone call from BenarNews. Nearly three-quarters of a million people who live in the camps fled to the Bangladesh side of the frontier with Myanmar after the Burmese military launched a brutal offensive in Rakhine, the homeland of the stateless Rohingya, in August 2017. “Four and a half thousand volunteers are working under the leadership of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner for the Rohingya people,” Enamur Rahman said. “There is no risk of floods on the hills but rainfall can cause landslides. Keeping this fear in mind, I have asked the volunteers to be prepared,” the state minister said. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

Wolf out the door

Editor2 years ago01 mins

China and Canada have carried out tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, with Beijing responding in kind after Ottawa showed the door to a Chinese diplomat who was found trying to intimidate a Canadian politician and his family. The ethnic Chinese lawmaker had drawn Beijing’s wrath over his sponsorship of a Canadian parliamentary motion condemning China’s rough treatment of its Uyghur minority group. Sharp-elbowed, sharp-tongued “Wolf Warrior” diplomats have stoked concerns about Chinese influence operations in a number of host countries with their efforts to stifle exiled critics and opponents.

Papua New Guinea foreign minister faces backlash over primitive animals comment

Editor2 years ago08 mins

UPDATED AT 03:46 a.m. ET on 2023-05-12 Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister is facing an intense public backlash and calls to resign after he labeled critics of his daughter’s ostentatious TikTok video from a taxpayer funded trip to the U.K. monarch’s coronation as “primitive animals.” The furor over Australian-born Justin Tkatchenko’s comments, which were made to Australia’s state broadcaster ABC, is happening less than two weeks ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s stopover in Papua New Guinea to meet leaders of Pacific island countries. Tkatchenko’s adult daughter Savannah accompanied him to the coronation of King Charles III in London last week. She posted a TikTok video of their luxury travel, since deleted, which triggered criticism in Papua New Guinea where poverty is widespread. In an interview with the ABC on Wednesday about the social media onslaught, Tkatchenko said his daughter was “absolutely traumatized by these primitive animals.” He added, “And I call them primitive animals because they are.” The comments were perceived as racist in the Melanesian nation of more than nine million people, where there was also anger at a local newspaper’s estimate of the expense of sending a large delegation to the coronation. On Friday, Tkatchenko said he would step aside as foreign minister while any investigations take place. He repeated his apology from the day before when he had said his comments were a reaction to “horrible threats of a sexual and violent nature” by internet trolls against his daughter and not directed at Papua New Guineans. Prime Minister James Marape on Thursday said he had been offended by the primitive animals comment, but also urged the county to accept the apology and move on. Papua New Guinea Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko speaks at a press conference in Port Moresby on Jan. 10, 2023. Credit: Harlyne Joku/BenarNews Savannah Tkatchenko’s video showed her enjoying luxury travel, accommodation and high-end shops such as Hermes at Singapore Airport and doing her skincare routine on a flight to London. “I’ve actually packed my whole life into these two big suitcases, I’m so proud of myself because I have so much stuff,” she said as she strolled through an airport. “So I’m traveling with my Dad and our first stop is Singapore and we checked into the first class lounge where we had some cosmos and some yummy food,” she said. “Then we did some shopping around Singapore Airport at Hermes and Louis Vuitton. Those of you that don’t know, Singapore Airport shopping is honestly so elite.” Calls for the foreign minister’s resignation have come from senior politicians such as the opposition leader and organizations including the country’s Trade Union Congress. “Justin deserves no mercy or forgiveness. He must be kicked out of this country. PM James Marape must act immediately,” said PNG Trade Union Congress Acting General Secretary Anton Sekum. Biden visit aims to counter Chinese influence The rancor over a senior minister’s comments comes ahead of landmark visits to Papua New Guinea later this month by Biden and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Papua New Guinea, the most populous Pacific Island country, is increasingly a focus of China-U.S. rivalry in the region and a U.S. push to counter Beijing’s influence. Like some other Pacific island nations, Papua New Guinea is trying to balance increased Chinese trade and investment and its traditional security relationships with countries such as Australia and the United States. Tkatchenko earlier this month said he hopes a defense cooperation agreement with the United States will be signed during Biden’s visit. Papua New Guinea is also working on completing a broad security agreement with Australia. China’s influence in the Pacific has burgeoned over several decades through increased trade, infrastructure investment and aid as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and gain allies in international institutions. The Solomon Islands and Kiribati switched their diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 2019. Beijing signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands last year, alarming the U.S. and allies such as Australia who fear it could pave the way for a Chinese military presence in the region. Marape’s statement about Tkatchenko said Papua New Guinea’s “national character” was being tested at a time when it would be in the spotlight because of Biden and Modi’s visits. “We must show the world that we can forgive those who offend us,” he said. “This will be a momentous and historic occasion, which should rally our nation together, and we should not let this issue stand in the way.” BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service. Story updated to note that Tkatchenko is stepping aside to allow an investigation.

U.S. Sen. Rubio introduces bill to beef up air bases that would defend Taiwan

Editor2 years ago04 mins

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio introduced a bill Thursday that seeks to strengthen American air bases in the Indo-Pacific region to better respond to mainland Chinese aggression against Taiwan. The Deterring Chinese Preemptive Strikes Act “direct[s] the U.S. Department of Defense to harden U.S. facilities in the Indo-Pacific to help further deter a preemptive strike against U.S. forces and assets in the region by China ahead of an invasion of Taiwan.” War games conducted by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies showed that Beijing’s strategy if it were to mount such an invasion would be to attack U.S. bases in the region with missiles, a statement by Rubio’s office said. The bill calls for a survey of aviation assets in the region to determine if any that would be needed to respond to an invasion of Taiwan lack improvements that would “mitigate damage to aircraft in the event of a missile, aerial drone, or other form of attack by the People’s Republic of China.” When the survey is complete, the secretary of defense would then deliver the results of the survey to the appropriate congressional committees, which would then enact plans to make the improvements. “Senator Rubio has been clear on the importance of defending Taiwan,” a representative from Rubio’s office told RFA’s Mandarin Service, citing the Taiwan Protection and National Resilience Act, a bill that Rubio and colleagues introduced in March that seeks to create a plan for dealing with a potential invasion. When asked if U.S. lawmakers were working with President Biden to prevent threats to U.S. airspace, Rubio’s office was critical of the administration, saying it “appears to be more concerned about not antagonizing China instead of taking the steps needed to protect American servicemembers from future attacks.” Mainland communist China considers democratic Taiwan to be a rogue province. Beijing insists that its diplomatic partners accept its claim on the island of Taiwan, which it calls the “one China” policy, effectively forcing them to cut ties with the democratic island. Beijing last month conducted military exercises in waters around the island of Taiwan, prompting Taipei’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu to say, “They seem to be trying to get ready to launch a war against Taiwan.” In February, CIA Director William Burns said that Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to be able to invade Taiwan within the next four years. Additional reporting by Bing Xiao for RFA Mandarin. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Repeated raids force more than 3,500 villagers to flee Sagaing region township

Editor2 years ago03 mins

Junta raids over the past five days have forced more than 3,500 villagers to flee their homes in Khin-U township, locals told RFA Thursday. They said troops started burning homes in eight villages, including Koke Tet, Yone Pin and Thin Paung, on May 7. A 60-year-old woman from Koke Tet village, who did not want to be named for security reasons, told RFA the displaced people no longer have enough food. “There is nothing at home. Villages were torched,” she said. “Now people are hiding in the forest. And we are fleeing from place to place as the army is raiding villages and we were not able to take anything from home when we fled.” The number of houses burned by the military is not yet known as locals said they were too afraid to return home while troops were still in the township. Khin-U has come under repeated attack by junta forces since the 2021 coup. Around 70 villages have been attacked by the junta, who burned more than 20,000 homes in the township between Feb. 1, 2021 and April this year, according to the pro-democracy Khin-U Information Group. A 60-year-old man, who also requested anonymity, told RFA he was forced to flee his home in Khin-U township four times over the past two years and he and his fellow villagers are struggling to survive. The situation is similar across Sagaing region. Nearly 750,000 people have fled their homes due to fighting and insecurity since the coup, according to a May 6 statement by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. RFA’s calls to the junta spokesman for Sagaing region, Aye Hlaing, who is also the regional minister for social affairs, went unanswered Thursday. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

Cash for carbines: Myanmar’s junta offers reward to fighters who turn in weapons

Editor2 years ago013 mins

Myanmar’s military is taking out its pocketbook to try to persuade rebels to stop fighting. The generals in Naypyidaw want to give members of the anti-junta People’s Defense Force and other “terrorist groups” who surrender their weapons and renounce their loyalty to resistance forces as much as 7.5 million kyats (U.S.$3,570) – a princely sum for most people in Myanmar. That’s according to an offer made Tuesday to those willing to “return to the legal fold,” as well as anyone “illegally armed for reasons of personal security” who agrees to “apply for a weapons license.” It’s the latest attempt by the Burmese army to defeat resistance forces, who have reported growing success against a depleted military two years after generals took control of the country in a February 2021 coup d’etat. Facing losses on the ground, the military has increasingly relied on airstrikes to win its battles – often at devastating cost to civilians. Based on the announcement, the regime is prepared to provide anywhere from 200,000 to 7.5 million kyats (U.S.$95 to $3,570) to rebel fighters who throw themselves at the mercy of a military tribunal, depending on the type of weapon and ammunition they hand over to authorities when they surrender. Those who have committed murder, rape, and other crimes will have to face legal proceedings in court, the announcement said, but “relaxations will be made according to the law,” depending on the scale of the offense. Applicants for a license to carry firearms for the purpose of personal security “will not be questioned” about how they obtained the weapons and ammunition and can expect to be approved, provided they “comply with the principle of possession.” No thanks Rebel fighters responded to the proposition with disdain. “The junta inviting the PDFs to return to the ‘legal fold’ is just an example of how it manipulates the law as it sees fit,” said a 19-year-old with the Ye-U township PDF in Sagaing region, who asked to be identified as “Nway Oo,” and said he would not be accepting the offer. “Their statement is full of false intentions. As long as [the junta generals] are in power, the country will continue to suffer, so we must fight to root them out,” he said. “We’ll never give up – we will fight until they are brought to justice and made to answer to the will of the people.” Members of People’s Defense Force Kalay – Battalion 7 in Myanmar’s Kalay district train in February 2023. Credit: Screenshot from People’s Defense Forces Kalay – Battalion 7 video Nway Oo graduated from high school in 2020 and joined the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement branch of students who boycotted education under the military following the coup. In the Sagaing region, which has offered up some of the stiffest resistance to military rule since the takeover, it’s “obvious that the junta’s strength on the ground is decreasing,” he said, as the number of troop patrols is dwindling and airstrikes are on the uptick. Sayar Kyaung, the leader of the anti-junta Yangon UG Association, told RFA that the military has never stopped cracking down on the PDF and called the sudden announcement “an attempt to distort the revolution.” “The junta’s announcement is a bit funny – rule of law in Myanmar ceased to exist once they staged a coup,” he said. “Their offer to ‘relax legal procedures’ indicates that they are weakening.” Sign of desperation The junta’s offer is part of a genuine bid to resolve Myanmar’s armed conflict, said Thein Tun Oo, executive director of the Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers. “[Anti-junta fighters] will not find it easy to continue on a path of armed resistance,” he said, adding that those directly involved in the fighting “understand the situation.” “Some youths naively and impulsively joined the resistance groups,” he said. “This is a chance for them to come back.” But Nay Phone Latt, spokesman for the shadow National Unity Government’s Office of the Prime Minister, said the junta’s announcement showed its desperation. “It’s pretty obvious – they have invited the PDFs to return just because they finally came to realize that they cannot beat them on the ground,” he said. “That’s why they appear to be forgiving with this invitation. But we all know what [junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing] said earlier.” Just a month ago, in a March 27 speech to mark Armed Forces Day, Min Aung Hlaing called the NUG, PDF, and armed ethnic organizations “terrorists” who seek to destroy the nation, vowing to eradicate them. Tuesday’s announcement marks the second time the military has called on members of the PDF and other anti-junta groups to surrender their weapons and “rejoin Myanmar’s legal framework,” following an overture in June last year. International call for resolution It also came as observers suggested there was no political off-ramp from Myanmar’s conflict on the horizon, despite calls by state leaders, international diplomats and fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, states in recent weeks for an immediate cessation of violence and dialogue between all stakeholders. Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing [right] meets with former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Naypyidaw, April 24, 2023. Credit: AFP/Myanmar Military Information Team After the former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Naypyidaw at the end of April to discuss an end to violence with the junta leaders, the military bombed a hospital, said NUG spokesman Kyaw Zaw. And when the Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang was visiting in mid-April, the junta dropped bombs on a civilian population, he said. “By looking at incidents like that, you can see whether they’re complying with the international community’s pleas to stop the violence,” he said. The latest call to stop hostilities came on Monday from Indonesia, the current chair of ASEAN, after an attack over the weekend on a diplomatic convoy delivering humanitarian relief to displaced people in Myanmar. The convoy included members of the ASEAN disaster management agency and diplomats…

Month: May 2023