Month: August 2023

Junta troops have arrested 11 people in a raid on Myitkyina township in Myanmar’s Kachin state, locals told RFA Thursday. They said that six men and five women were detained three days ago after around 30 soldiers went to a house and accused the residents of having ties to the local People’s Defense Force, part of the pro-democracy forces created in 2021.  As of Thursday, the detainees were still being questioned at the Northern Command base in Myitkyina, according to township residents. One local, who didn’t want to be named for security reasons, told RFA none of the arrested have links to anti-junta militias and had just gathered for a celebration. “I heard people chanting ‘Happy Birthday’ at around 8:00 p.m. I think it was a birthday party, with people gathered for food and drinks,” the local said. “Some employees of phone shops were among those detained. I have no idea who informed the junta soldiers about them.” The local added that the arrests may have been prompted by an attack on the Northern Command in which five bombs exploded close to the base. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack and the junta has not released any statement about it. Win Ye Tun, the junta’s spokesperson for Kachin state, declined to provide comments.  According to figures exclusively compiled by RFA, the junta arrested at least 700 people between June 2023 and August 2023, and among them, only 500 were released. More than 24,000 people, including pro-democracy activists, have been arrested since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

Facebook parent company Meta Platform Inc. this week rejected the advice of its oversight board to suspend Hun Sen’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, where the former Cambodian leader had threatened violence against political opponents. Meta said in a statement on Monday that while it would remove the content that led to the review, it would not ban Hun Sen’s use of the site, citing the company’s “commitment to voice” in its protocol on restricting the accounts of public figures. “Upon assessing Hun Sen’s Facebook Page and Instagram account, we determined that suspending those accounts outside our regular enforcement framework would not be consistent with our policies, including our protocol on restricting accounts of public figures during civil unrest,” the company said. But Meta also said its protocol is not designed for situations where a history of state violence or human rights restrictions have resulted in ongoing restrictions on expressions for an indeterminate period of time. “Applying the protocol in those circumstances could lead to an indefinite suspension of a public figure’s account, which (apart from fairness issues) could be detrimental to people’s ability to access information from and about their leaders and to express themselves using Meta’s platforms,” it said. The company noted that in this case it had “applied appropriate account-level penalties associated with that action.” Facebook is enormously popular in Cambodia, and Hun Sen, who ruled the country for 38 years, often uses it to communicate to the public and to attack political opponents. Hun Sen passed on rule to his son, Hun Manet, following elections in July that were deemed a sham.  Board banned from Cambodia The controversy surrounded a live video streamed on Hun Sen’s official Facebook page of a speech in January during which he made statements viewed as threats of violence against his political opponents.  Meta initially referred the case to the oversight board because it said the matter “created tension between our values of safety and voice.” The board, which operates independently from Meta, advises the company on ethics issues. On June 29, the oversight board ordered the removal of the video and called for an immediate suspension of Hun Sen’s Facebook and Instagram accounts for six months. It marked the first time that the oversight board instructed the company to shut down a government leader’s account, RFA reported. Hun Sen then called on his social media followers to switch to rival platforms TikTok or Telegram. In response to Meta’s latest decision, Cambodia said Tuesday it would allow the California-based company to continue operating in the country, but banned the 22 members of the oversight board from visiting, accusing them of “interference into Cambodian affairs.” “The decision reflects the integrity of contents posted on the official Facebook page of Samdech [honorific] Hun Sen,” it said. Article19, a rights group that advocates for freedom of expression, declined to comment on the reversal and referred RFA to the International Commission of Jurists, or ICJ, an international human rights group based in Geneva, Switzerland.  In March, the ICJ submitted a public comment to Meta’s oversight board concerning Hun Sen’s video, saying that the company had a responsibility to moderate content on its platforms in line with international human rights law and standards.  Daron Tan, a legal adviser at the ICJ, told RFA that he could not comment on Meta’s latest decision, but that his organization was monitoring the company’s ongoing assessment of the feasibility of updating its newsworthiness allowance policy to state that content that directly incites violence is not eligible for this exception.    “The newsworthy allowance has, to date, not been applied consistently or transparently,” Tan said in an email. “As we have repeatedly emphasized, discretionary exception should generally not be available for forms of expression that are prohibited under international human rights law, such as expression inciting violence.” “It is especially critical to impose a restriction where there is a strong risk that the inciting words of a powerful actor like a Prime Minister may be acted upon,” Tan said. Translated by Sovannarith Keo for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcom Foster.

Junta troops arrested six civilians who were sheltering in a monastery in Myanmar’s Sagaing region and killed four of them, locals told RFA Monday. They were among 35 people hiding there as junta troops raided Wetlet township’s Kyee Kan (north) village. Locals said troops shelled the village at dawn on Saturday before moving in. One man, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, said troops released two of the six people they captured. “Four people were killed,” he said. “Among them Shwe Man Thu, who was in her twenties, was raped and killed at a mango farm between Kyee Kan (north) village and Hla Taw village.” RFA has been unable to independently confirm his claim. Pro-military Telegram chat group channels said the column that raided the village killed four members of an anti-junta People’s Defense Force. RFA’s calls to the region’s junta spokesperson, Tin Than Win, went unanswered Monday. Displaced people on the rise Raids on townships in Sagaing region since the Feb. 2021 coup have left more than 800,000 people homeless according to the U.N. In Ye-U township, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Wetlet, more than 20,000 people are in need of emergency food and medical supplies according to the information officer from a local militia. Htoo Khant Zaw from the People’s Defense Comrades said that’s how many people have lost their homes in the township since the coup, and are now living in makeshift tents in their villages. “More than 20,000 people affected by the fires are facing a crisis of living and food shortages,” he said. “Although the township humanitarian group and other social groups are helping on the ground, not everyone from the 51 villages has received enough assistance. The main need is food.” He said 3,429 houses were destroyed by junta arson attacks, along with churches, monasteries, shops and other buildings.  Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

A Lao rubber plantation worker who was jailed for a year in Malaysia and was presumed dead by relatives returned home to his family in Laos’ Attapeu province this week. Aloun Phommalath, 24, worked on plantations in Malaysia for four years before he was arrested on drug charges in August 2021.  He was released in late 2022, but relatives in Attapeu’s Sanamxay district didn’t know how to contact him. Phommalath lost his phone in jail and didn’t remember his family’s phone number. Family members told Radio Free Asia that they worried that the lack of contact meant he had died. But Phommalath eventually sent a letter to them through a co-worker who was on his way back to Laos. His family then sent a text message to RFA asking for assistance in bringing him home. An RFA reporter then emailed the Lao Embassy in Malaysia alerting them to Phommalath’s situation. Phommalath returned to Laos on Wednesday. “We are so happy. Nothing compares. It’s like he’s born again,” his brother said. “I never dreamed that he would return home after we lost contact with him for so long.” One of Phommalath’s sisters said she ran toward the airplane after it landed and wheeled to the terminal.  “All relatives came to visit when he returned home,” another sister said. “All of them asked why he was so fat and dark. They have been waiting for him to come home for a long time.” An official from the Lao Embassy told RFA that Phommalath’s criminal case was related to the drug “Kratom,” an herbal substance that can produce opioid- and stimulant-like effects. He was jailed for one year, the official said. Exploitation risk The Lao Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare estimated last year that about 2,000 Laotians had traveled illegally to Malaysia for jobs in the fishing industry.  During the pandemic, 700 Lao migrants returned home from Malaysia, but most eventually went back once economic conditions in Laos worsened due in part to high inflation, the ministry said. Though the pay is sometimes better there than what they could earn in Laos, illegal migrants are often exploited by their employers, a Lao fisherman who has been working in Malaysia’s Pahang state told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. To ensure their rights are protected, the Lao government is working on finding ways for more migrants to go to Malaysia legally. Despite the risks, Malaysia is attractive to migrants because it is a relatively easy country to work in, the fisherman said. “The main reason so many choose to come here is because we don’t have money. Most of us don’t even have enough to make a passport,” he said. Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Matt Reed.