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Month: December 2023

From ER doc to wild-card presidential candidate: Taiwan’s Ko Wen-je

Editor016 mins

Just 10 years after trading his white coat for a place on the mayoral hustings, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, who also heads the four-year-old Taiwan People’s Party, is looking increasingly like a potential challenger to Vice President Lai Ching-te in January’s presidential election. A recent poll of voters by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation showed Ko has an approval rating of 31.9% compared with 29.2% percent for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s Lai and 23.6% for nationalist Kuomintang candidate and New Taipei City mayor Hou Yu-ih. Earlier polls had shown a healthy lead for Lai and running mate Hsiao Bi-khim, with Ko trailing in third place after plans for a joint Ko-Hou ticket foundered. The foundation described Ko as “a terrible nightmare that the DPP must not ignore,” adding that Ko’s support is highest among well-heeled white-collar workers, but that he also has similar appeal to Lai among blue-collar voters. Far from boosting the Lai campaign, the recent collapse of talks between Lai and Hou over a possible “blue-white” joint ticket actually appears to have damaged it, boosting Ko’s approval rating by 6.3 percentage points and leaving Lai’s half a percentage point lower, the foundation said. With less than 50 days of campaigning left to go before the Jan. 13 election, the result suggests Ko is a wild card candidate who could sway the result in unpredictable ways, the poll of 755 people with a 3.57 percentage-point margin of error and a 95% confidence level found. “This is likely to be the most unpredictable of all presidential elections so far,” the foundation said. “We won’t know who the winner is until it’s over.” Pithy soundbites Ko, a former emergency room doctor who gave up medicine for politics 10 years ago, has generally sought to position himself as an outsider capable of toppling the traditional parties. Ko Wen-je, chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party and presidential candidate, and his running mate Cynthia Wu wave after registering for the upcoming 2024 elections at the Central Elections Commission in Taipei on Nov. 24, 2023. (Sam Yeh/AFP) He has become known for his salty epithets and pithy soundbites, appealing to a broad cross-section of the island’s 23 million population, particularly younger voters. Yet his critics accuse him of dictatorial leanings, an emperor-complex, a too-relaxed attitude to the threat from China, and of flip-flopping on key elements of his political stance to please whoever happens to be listening at the time. Ko has described the 1992 consensus between Beijing and the former Kuomintang government that sought to preserve Taiwan’s de facto independence while never challenging China’s territorial claim on the island as “basically getting down on their knees and surrendering.” “Failure is the norm – success is the exception,” is another Ko-ism, as is his description of politics as “the search for a lost conscience.” Organ transplant doctor Ko, 64, who has claimed an IQ of 157, has a fondness for medical metaphors on the campaign trail, and once referred to an opponent as “less capable than an amoeba.”  Born in Hsinchu, Ko began his working life as an emergency and intensive care physician at National Taiwan University Hospital, studying organ transplants in the United States before setting up a transplant team at his hospital, and significantly improving survival rates with his use of ECMO machines. He quit medicine after an organ was mistakenly transplanted into a patient from an HIV-positive donor, announcing he would run for Taipei mayor in 2014, eventually winning the election with the second highest number of votes ever received. Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je listens to the media during the Taipei-Shanghai forum in Taipei, Aug. 23, 2016. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP) According to veteran journalist Kang Jen-chun, Ko projects a professional, scientific and rational image, along with pragmatism and a sense of openness and transparency. “A large proportion of Taiwanese are very eager to find something outside of the [traditional] blue and green [camps],” Kang said. “Voters want politicians to take more action – stuff that is closer to their lives.” “Ko Wen-je’s seemingly nonsensical comments and jokey approach have gotten young people’s attention.” Lawmaker Tsai Pi-ru, a nurse at Ko’s hospital who later became his chief of staff in the Taipei municipal government, said: “He doesn’t beat around the bush … and if he says something wrong, he apologizes – the only person in Taiwan politics who does that.” “He apologizes, seeks to do better, and moves on,” she said, adding that Ko also has a reputation for straight-dealing, and for a formidable work ethic that sees him taking the bus to work at city hall, starting his day at 7.30 a.m., before hosting a lunch party every day at noon. He also has a reputation for dismantling bottlenecks in the city’s infrastructure in record time, as well as making off-the-cuff, sometimes shocking comments to journalists as he goes about his day. Kang said this gives him a distinct advantage over Lai and Hou when it comes to the electoral “dog-fights” in Taiwan’s media, although his sharp tongue and whimsical remarks can sometimes get him into trouble. Supporters of Ko Wen-je, who was seeking re-election as Taipei’s mayor, wave their mobile phone torches during a campaign rally in Taipei, Nov. 10, 2018. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters) When taken to task in the past, Ko has referred to himself as “a mortal,” describing his life as “a one-way street with no regrets.” Nonetheless, by the time he fought his next mayoral election in 2018, his approval rating had plummeted from to 40% after three years in office, and he only defeated his opponent Ting Shou-chung by a narrow margin of some 3,000 votes. Bully and schemer? His New People’s Party has been hemorrhaging political support, as his critics accuse him of being a bully and a schemer. “His neutrality is a kind of nihilism that blows with the zeitgeist,” Ed Lin, lead singer of Taiwan rock band Leather Lattice, wrote of Ko in a June 2023 article titled “Three Beautiful Misunderstandings of Ko Wen-je.”…

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Pneumonia, bird flu, other outbreaks prompt concerns of new contagion in Asia

Editor013 mins

Hospitals in China are being inundated with respiratory infections, particularly affecting children.  While not widespread internationally, yet, there are reports of similar outbreaks as far as Ireland. But it’s not the only public health scare at the moment.  COVID-19 cases are spiking again, prompting fears of a new variant emerging as China’s public health authorities, never known for their candor, have not revealed much about the wave of recent infections. Meanwhile, avian influenza (H5N1) has been spreading in 2022-2023, with the latest outbreak reported in Japan.   And Indian public health officials in September worked to contain an outbreak of the deadly Nipah virus, which infected many but fortunately only caused two deaths. Is the world ready for another virus transmitted from animals to humans that spreads rapidly? Has the world learned sufficient lessons from the last pandemic and is China now more transparent? The answers to these questions are far from a resounding “yes.” Now is the time for public health officials to start putting in place more efficient information sharing, collaborative data analysis, and response plans so nations are not caught unaware like they were in 2019 with COVID-19. Human deaths from bird flu China said the surge in respiratory infections appears to be caused by a mix of bacteria and viruses. They include seasonal influenza and the bacteria-caused mycoplasma pneumoniae that in turn causes respiratory tract infections, Chinese health authorities said. No novel coronavirus has been detected, and no deaths have been reported.  As for H5N1, also called bird flu and avian influenza, several Asian and Southeast Asian countries reported outbreaks in 2023. Children, many of whom apparently contracted respiratory illnesses since mid-October, receive a drip at a hospital in Beijing, Nov. 23, 2023. (Jade Gao/AFP) In Indonesia, a single H5N1outbreak led to 4,400 ducks being infected in Kalimantan alone, although there were no known cases of human transmission.  In Cambodia, two people died from H5N1, the first reported human transmissions since 2014. Authorities announced a large H5N1 outbreak in poultry flock in November near the Vietnamese border. Still, no human transmissions were reported, nor was there evidence of bird flu spreading to Vietnam. Chinese officials also reported outbreaks of H5N1 in July. There were six human transmissions of another bird flu variant, H5N6, in 2023 in China. The most recent human transmission, in Chongqing, China, in September, caused one death.  China has reported 88 cases of human transmission of H5N6 since 2014, with a fatality rate of 52%.  Nipah rears its head The most recent outbreak in Kerala, India, of Nipah, a zoonotic virus, is thought to have been transmitted to humans from fruit bats. A zoonotic virus can spread from animals to people, and Nipah has a human fatality rate of between 40% and 75%. The virus is transmitted from excrement, saliva or urine that infects fruit, which in turn enters the human food chain, either directly or indirectly, through pigs. Human-to-human transmission is caused by respiratory droplets and bodily fluids. There is no approved vaccine, though an mRNA vaccine is being tested.  To date, the rate of human-to-human transmission – (the R-Value – remember that?) – has been low. In epidemiology, the R-value is the reproductive ratio of a virus – that is, the number of people one person carrying the virus can infect. But the one thing that concerns public health officials is the long incubation period of the Nipah virus, meaning that people can infect a large number of people before they know they themselves are infected. Nipah’s symptoms are not unique – fever, cough, headache and body pains in the early stages, with delirium beginning in the final stages.  Indian flying foxes or fruit bats, which transmit the Nipah virus to humans, roost in a tree near the city of Thottilpalam, in the southern state of Kerala, India, Sept. 30, 2023. (Sreekanth Sivadasn/Reuters) The Nipah virus was detected in Malaysia and Singapore in September 1998. That outbreak infected 265 people, causing 105 deaths. Back then, pigs were the host, and authorities responded with a mass cull. There have been no outbreaks in either country since 1999. In India, though, the September outbreak is the sixth one since 2001. And neighboring Bangladesh, WHO says has seen 11 separate outbreaks of Nipah from 2001-2011, which have led to the deaths of 237 people of 335 infected (71%).  The Philippines had an outbreak in 2014 that was transmitted through horse meat. Governments in Southeast Asia have been conducting testing.  In the Philippines, schools canceled classes briefly in Cagayan d’Oro amid fears of an outbreak. Authorities in Indonesia’s Bali stepped up monitoring at the airport.  There were no signs of the disease in either country,  but public health officials are clearly jumpy. Can economies take another hit? Were sufficient lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic learned and uniformly embraced to be able to deal with a large outbreak of one of these infections is the first concern. One lesson learned was that being transparent led to punishments, and the next time around countries may not be so forthcoming.  For instance, countries were often punished with travel bans and other scrutiny for being open about the influx of new variants. They found there was a short-term political and economic incentive in holding back such information, although that’s exactly what should not be done. Doctors and nurses put on protective equipment before entering a quarantine facility for COVID-19 patients in Tangerang, Banten province, Indonesia, June 22, 2020. (Adek Berry/AFP) Second, after a much-needed lull, there is always a concern about complacency and societal fatigue.  Could governments impose new rounds of public health lockdowns and quarantines, even at a local level, when China itself has abandoned its draconian micro-quarantining policy? Third, the national responses were inconsistent. For example, wealthy Singapore imposed very severe lockdowns, while much poorer Indonesia was highly reluctant to impose any for fear of slowing the economy.  Additionally, governments across tourism-dependent Southeast Asia would have to decide whether the advantages of keeping borders open outweigh the risks…

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Vietnamese rescued from Myanmar casinos stuck in war zone

Editor012 mins

Scores of Vietnamese nationals trafficked to Myanmar and rescued by security authorities in October are stranded in a war zone near the border with China and cannot leave the Southeast Asian country, according to a video they made and to some of their parents. The 166 Vietnamese, who say they are running out of food and want officials to help them leave Myanmar, recorded a video of themselves chanting that they are Vietnamese citizens and have been stuck in Myanmar for 40 days without food, electricity or water.   “We are now living in cold weather, and our food is exhausted because we have run out of money,” they say on the video, which a relative of one of those stranded sent to Radio Free Asia. “Please help us to return to Vietnam as soon as possible, Vietnamese Embassy! Save us, please!”  RFA could not independently verify the video. A reporter made multiple attempts to contact the stranded people via various messaging applications, but did not receive any responses.  The Vietnamese had been trafficked to northern Myanmar to work for online gambling companies, where they faced harsh working conditions and abuse by their employers.  Myanmar security forces rescued them on Oct. 20 and arranged for them to stay temporarily in an abandoned school in Shan state’s Laukkai township.  When the group stops chanting in the video, a Vietnamese man says the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar informed them that it had been able to verify information about them, but no diplomats had yet visited the group or arranged for their repatriation. “I hope the embassy and the Vietnamese government will try to save us and help us return home as soon as possible,” he said.  Trafficked to casinos, scam rings The trapped Vietnamese workers are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have been trafficked by organized criminal gangs to Southeast Asia and forced into working at illegal casinos or online scams, according to a United Nations report issued in August.  The Vietnamese citizens, who say they were tricked into working at fraudulent gambling establishments in Myanmar, faced abuse from their employers. RFA contacted the foreign affairs ministries in Myanmar and Vietnam for comment, but received no response. When RFA called the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar on Friday, a reporter was told to contact the Consular Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An officer in the department’s Citizen Protection Call Center said the “rescue and provision of assistance to stranded citizens in Myanmar are very complicated and time-consuming as the country is undergoing a civil war.”   An officer surnamed Lap in the consular division of Department of Foreign Affairs in Vietnam’s Kien Giang province — home to about 100 of the stranded workers — said the agency received more than 20 petitions from residents who are their relatives. The agency forwarded the petitions to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but had received no response.  During a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry press briefing on Nov. 9, spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said officials had identified 166 Vietnamese citizens among foreigners rescued from “deceptive casinos” and took them to a safe area in northern Myanmar, bordering China.”  But Vietnam’s access to the stranded people and effort to protect its citizens faced difficulties because of armed conflict in Myanmar’s northern border area and other places, she said.  A man from Kien Giang province, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told RFA that his daughter was among those stranded and that she and others were being held under temporary detention while Burmese authorities conducted an investigation.  Though several months have passed, she does not know why the investigations have not yet been completed, he said. Local police gave him similar information, he said.  A woman from the southern province of Kien Giang whose daughter is among the stranded group told RFA on Friday that her daughter and others were rescued by Myanmar’s army during an administrative inspection at a company with the Vietnamese name Lien Thang Group. The 166 stranded Vietnamese are living in classrooms where the power is on for only one or two hours a day, said the woman who requested anonymity for safety reasons. They do not have access to drinking water, though they receive two meals daily from the Burmese Army, consisting of a bowl of rice and some vegetable soup, she said.  “It’s getting cold these days, but many don’t have warm clothes,” she said.  Phone scams Despite having a stable job at a local restaurant in Kien Giang, her daughter was enticed to leave for Myanmar in mid-August this year to get another job with a lighter workload and better pay, her mother said. The employer promised to pay her 21 million dong, or about US$865, monthly.  “Things were quite pleasant in the first two weeks as they let her go shopping and eat at restaurants,” the young woman’s mother said. “Then, the company signed a labor contract [with her] and started to apply their rules and tighten everything. Even phones were not allowed.” The employers forced the young Vietnamese woman and the other workers to use Facebook to make calls soliciting people to put money into an investment scam, giving her a daily revenue quota of 200-300 million dong (US$8,200-12,400), the mother said.  If they failed to do so, their employers would leave them hungry in the room, beat them or apply electrical shocks. The company forced some of her co-workers to find and entice Vietnamese people to go [to Myanmar] and work for the company,” she said.” They would be beaten and electrocuted if they failed to meet this quota, too.”  The woman said that her daughter and a group of dozens of friends left Vietnam for Myanmar together, and they all worked for a company whose management team speaks Chinese and Burmese. They used Vietnamese translators to communicate with the workers.  The people stranded come from various places in Vietnam, with about 100 from Kien Giang province, she said.  In September, RFA Vietnamese reported on the…

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Myanmar junta arrests minors, elderly and disabled villagers

Editor03 mins

Junta troops arrested nearly 50 villagers in central Myanmar, locals told Radio Free Asia on Friday. After a junta officer was killed in a clash Wednesday, officials from the battalion entered the village in Sagaing region.   Min Ga Lar Kone village in Monywa township is located near the site of the battle and close to where junta troops store artillery, locals said. A troop of about 50 soldiers entered Min Ga Lar Kone firing weapons and arrested the villagers around 5 pm, said a resident, who did not want to be named for security reasons. “There were shootings nearby and people from the village were arrested. They were of all ages, from about 15 years old to the elderly,” he said. “It is quite a large number but it is not clear who they are. A mentally ill man from the village was also arrested.” Currently, officials are detaining and investigating them at a police station in Monywa township for association with local People’s Defense Forces, locals said. Roughly 30 of the arrested villagers are civilians from Min Ga Lar Kone, according to a Telegram channel owned by the Monywa People’s Administration Team, a local civilian administration under the National Unity Government. Troops raided and burned down two houses in the village, according to the administration team, which added it is still trying to identify those arrested. RFA called Sagaing region’s junta spokesperson Sai Naing Naing Kyaw seeking comment on the raids, but he did not reply by the time of publication. More than 25,000 people, including pro-democracy activists, have been arrested since the 2021 coup, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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Kissinger had a consequential, controversial impact across Asia

Editor09 mins

Henry Kissinger, who died on Nov. 30 at the age of 100, was an influential diplomat and strategist who wielded major influence on U.S. foreign policy for more than five decades. President Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese negotiator at the Paris peace talks, speak to the media in Paris, June 13, 1973. (Michel Lipchitz/AP) Credited for arms negotiations with the Soviet Union and shuttle diplomacy in pursuit of Middle East peace, Kissinger had a great impact on events across Asia.  Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger tells newsmen at the “Western White House” in San Clemente, Calif., that the Cambodia issue is being discussed with Chinese envoy Huang Chen, July 6, 1973. (AP) He was a central figure in President Richard Nixon’s early 1970s U.S. diplomatic opening with China and won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon and Ambassador Agha Hilaly of Pakistan huddle over a newspaper account as they discuss the devastation in Pakistan, at the White House on Nov. 23, 1970. Henry Kissinger [right] is also in attendance. (AP) Critics condemn his role in the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, his backing of Pakistan’s military despite its 1971 campaign of killings and mass rape in East Pakistan, the future Bangladesh.  U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger [left], Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld admire the banquet site at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Nov. 25, 1974. (AP) They say he greenlighted Indonesia’s seizure of former Portuguese colony East Timor in 1975 that led to a quarter century of brutal occupation. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger confers with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Mujibur Rahman in Dacca, Bangladesh, Oct. 30, 1974. (AP) Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security adviser in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, led arms control talks with the Soviet Union, and worked to improve relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors through intensive shuttle diplomacy.  Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger chats with Pakistan President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan in Rawalpindi, July 8, 1971. (AP) He visited China more than 100 times, and met every leader, and advised at least 10 U.S. presidents on foreign policy. U.S. President Richard M. Nixon congratulates Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on his 1973 Nobel Peace Prize award, at the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, 1973. (AP) His first, secret, visit to Beijing in 1971 opened the door to diplomatic relations between China and the United States seven years later. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is seen at the State Department in Washington, D.C., after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Oct. 16, 1973. (AP) Improved U.S.-China relations gave Kissinger leverage against the the two countries’ shared Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, leading to arms control treaties between Washington and Moscow. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger greets Indonesia Foreign Minister Adam Malik during a State Department luncheon in Malik’s honor in Washington, D.C., June 29, 1976. (AP) U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Kissinger’s wisdom “led presidents, secretaries of state, national security advisors, and other leaders from both parties to seek his counsel.” Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Miki gesticulates as he talks with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Tokyo at Miki’s official residence, Dec. 8, 1975. (Koichiro Morita/AP) Amid widespread mourning by Chinese state media and social media users, Xi and other top leaders sent condolences to Kissinger’s family. A waitress pours a drink for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a banquet in Beijing in his honor, Nov. 9, 1985. (Neal Ulevich/AP) “Dr. Kissinger was a good old friend of the Chinese people. He is a pioneer and builder of Sino-U.S. relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular news conference. Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger [right] reports to President Richard Nixon [center] on his four days of talks in Paris with North Vietnam’s negotiators at breakfast in the family dining room at the White House, Oct. 13, 1972. (John Duricka/AP) “China and the U.S. should carry forward Kissinger’s strategic vision, political courage and diplomatic wisdom… and promote the sound, stable and sustainable development of China-U.S. relations,” Wang added. Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger [right] reports to President Richard Nixon [center] on his four days of talks in Paris with North Vietnam’s negotiators at breakfast in the family dining room at the White House, Oct. 13, 1972. (John Duricka/AP)  Xi called Kissinger “a world-renowned strategist, and a good old friend of the Chinese people.” Secretary of State Henry Kissinger greets China’s Premier Zhou Enlai before the start of their meeting in Beijing, Nov. 12, 1973. (Harvey Georges/AP) The Shanghai Communique paved the way for diplomatic normalization and trade relations between the U.S. and China. China’s President Jiang Zemin [left] talks to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a luncheon address to U.S. business groups in New York, Oct. 23, 1995. (Jim Bourg/Reuters) His last trip to Beijing featured a meeting with President Xi Jinping in July, shortly after Kissinger’s 100th birthday. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Nov. 22, 2019. (Jason Lee/Pool via AP) “Half a century ago, he made a historic contribution to the normalization of China-U.S. relations with brilliant strategic vision, benefiting both countries as well as changing the world,” Xi said in response to Kissinger’s death. Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, July 20, 2023. (China Daily via Reuters)

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