- contact@ij-reportika.com
Category: Americas
Interfaith conference seeks to raise awareness about Uyghur genocide
The hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs subjected by China to detention, forced labor and cultural erasure underscores the urgency for global action, panelists said at a two-day interfaith conference on disrupting Uyghur genocide organized by The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity that wrapped up Thursday. Survivors, experts, religious leaders and activists participated in panels to discuss the situation of the Uyghurs and called on governments to promote pro-Uyghur policies and to pressure businesses that profit from Uyghur forced labor, said a notice about the conference on the foundation’s website. An estimated 1.8 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups have passed through “re-education” camps in Xinjiang, in China’s far northwest, as part of a larger effort by Beijing to wipe out the Uyghurs along with their culture, language and religion. Some of the detainees have been subjected to torture, rape and psychological abuse. These actions and policies, the United States and other Western governments say, amount to genocide and crimes and against humanity against the 11 million Uyghur people. China denies the human rights abuses and says the camps were vocational training centers and have since been closed. Restrictions placed on Uyghurs are to counter religious extremism and terrorism, according to Beijing. Western diplomats have raised the Uyghur genocide issue “directly and forcefully” with Chinese officials, Ellen Germain, special envoy for Holocaust issues at the U.S. State Department and a panel speaker, told Radio Free Asia. Additionally, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021 and the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018, require the U.S. government, State Department and Department of Homeland Security, among others, to take action that will impose consequences on those who commit genocide or other atrocities, she said. “We recognize that it’s never enough for those who are suffering,” Germain said. ‘We are not afraid’ The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, named for the Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, writer and human rights activist who died in 2016, has thrown its support behind raising awareness of the Uyghur genocide through protests, op-eds, funding and events such as conferences. Elie Wiesel poses with his wife Marion and son Elisha in New York, Oct. 14, 1986. (Richard Drew/AP) In 2023, the foundation awarded grants amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars to three Uyghur groups dedicated to Uyghur rights advocacy and education amid ongoing repression against the ethnic group by Chinese authorities. “We’re not afraid of the Chinese Communist Party because they are in the wrong, and what they are doing is intolerable,” said his son, Elisha Wiesel, the foundation’s chairman. “And if we can help to get the world to see that, to get the American public in particular to see that, that’s part of our role, and we need to do it in serving my father’s memory,” he said. Forced sterilizations of detained Uyghur women, the destruction of thousands of mosques throughout Xinjiang, and the assignment of Han Chinese civil servants to stay in the homes of Uyghur families are other ways the Chinese government has sought to wipe out the Uyghurs and their culture. “That is a genocidal activity to suppress the birth rate of a people, to change their buildings and remove their character, to forcibly remove their traditions by inserting people into the family life to prevent certain traditions from being followed,” Wiesel said. Two major challenges The foundation faces two major challenges in trying to raise awareness about the Uyghur genocide, Wiesel said. The first is the Chinese government’s “information blackout policy,” making it nearly impossible for Uyghur families living in Xinjiang to communicate with relatives overseas or for the press to get first-hand information on what’s happening there. “If the Western free press doesn’t have access to the atrocity, it can’t report it,” Wiesel said. “And then, it’s almost as though it doesn’t happen.” The second is that it is difficult to get celebrities to draw attention to the genocide because China is a major market for U.S. and Western movies and goods, such as sneakers. “So, all of a sudden [China] has dollars and cents to impact celebrities, which makes it much harder now that their bottom line is at stake,” Wiesel said. “It’s much harder to activate them.” Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
Myanmar junta releases thousands of prisoners in New Year amnesty
Myanmar prisons nationwide released over 3,000 prisoners on Wednesday, according to junta-controlled media. Since the country’s 2021 coup, thousands of civilians have been arrested for donating to groups opposing the junta, protesting and speaking out against the military regime’s leaders. According to the junta’s media statement, reduced sentences were given “for the peace of mind of the people” and “social leniency” during the Burmese New Year Commemoration. Prisoners were released under the condition that if they commit another crime, they will serve the remainder of their previous sentence as well as the sentence for their most recent crime, in accordance with the country’s Criminal Procedure Law, military-supported channels like MRTV continued. Prisoners’ family members have been waiting in front of Yangon region’s infamous Insein Prison since early on Wednesday morning, residents said. Family members waiting in front of Insein Prison in Yangon region on April 17, 2024. (RFA) The mother of a political prisoner waiting by Insein Prison on Wednesday said she hopes to see her son, who has been in prison for three years for defamation. “The people in the prison said that prisoners like my son with a prison term of less than three years would be released, while prisoners with a long sentence would get a reduced prison term,” she said, declining to be named for security reasons. “That’s why I am waiting for my son. He was arrested and jailed when [junta forces] found revolutionary messages on his phone while checking the [ward’s] guest list that night,” she continued, referencing a housing registration system that has intensified since the junta took power. However, like previous amnesties, which have been criticized as a false show of humanity from the junta in the past, only a small number of political prisoners will likely be released, said Thaik Tun Oo, a member of Political Prisoner Network-Myanmar. “Even if there are political prisoners among the released, there will be a few well-known figures, a few political prisoners and there will be a lot of other people with criminal charges, just like the [junta] has done throughout the post-coup period,” he said “As far as we have found out, we have even heard that there are no political prisoners released in some prisons. I think they may have difficulty releasing political prisoners after the recent military defeats,” he said, referring to military victories since last October by the Three Brotherhood Alliance and the Karen National Liberation Army. In addition to the more than 3,303 prisoners, eight foreign prisoners who were jailed locally were released and deported, according to the military’s announcement. Prior to Wednesday’s amnesty, the junta administration also released 9,652 prisoners on Jan. 4, 2024 for Burmese Independence Day, but few political prisoners were among them, according to advocates for those jailed under the military regime. According to the statements released by the junta, only 15 pardons were granted and a total of 95,000 prisoners have been released in more than three years since the coup. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
Wildfire destroys prized mushrooms, income source for Tibetans
A recent wildfire in a Tibetan-populated area of China’s Sichuan province ravaged vast swathes of forests covered with pine and oak trees that nurtured a hidden treasure and an economic lifeline for residents — matsutake mushrooms. The wildfire that broke out in March in Nyagchu county, or Yajiang in Chinese, in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, forced 3,000 people from the traditional Kham region of Tibet to evacuate the area and burned down several houses. No human casualties have been reported. But the fire destroyed about one-sixth of the county’s matsutake output, Chen Wen, director of the Yajiang Matsutake Industrial Park, told Chinese media. The mushrooms, which Tibetans gather to supplement their income and others use in dishes in Japan, South Korea and China, may not grow again in the burned area for at least 20 years, he said. Matsutake mushrooms, seen in this undated photo, are referred to as ‘oak mushrooms’ in a nod to their symbiotic relationship with evergreen oak trees in Tibet. (Citizen journalist) China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of matsutake mushrooms, exporting US$30.3 million in 2022, while Japan is the top importer, bringing in US$24.7 million that year. The primary places where the mushrooms grow in China are within the Tibetan plateau, including in Nyagchu county, which accounted for more than 12% of China’s annual output, according to the Yajiang County Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Science and Technology Bureau. Demanding and lucrative Many families in Nyagchu — where Tibetans make up the majority of the county’s population of over 51,000 — have for years braved the frigid mountain air to forage for the elusive mushrooms during the traditional harvest season between July and September. Foraging matsutake is a demanding if lucrative job with harvesters often spending weeks at high altitudes in harsh weather conditions to search for the mushrooms, said an area resident. Some varieties are rare and require meticulous searching, while others grow underground and require careful removal, he said. “In one day, you can make more than 2,000 yuan (US$300) during the harvesting season,” said a source inside Tibet who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. Tibetans forage for matsutake mushrooms in this undated photo. (Citizen journalist) Residents believe that the impact of the fire may force some Tibetans to abandon matsutake harvesting and seek alternative sources of income in other areas. But at a recent press conference on the impact of the wildfire, Sichuan provincial representatives did not mention the disaster’s potential effects on the livelihoods of Tibetans who rely on matsutake harvesting. The fire also damaged the local ecosystem, killing birds and insects that play a role in the growth of the mushrooms, said an area resident, adding that the long-term ecological consequences of the blaze remain unclear. “Nyagchu is renowned for its abundance of naturally grown matsutake, and the harvest is a crucial source of income for many Tibetan families in the county,” said Washington-based Tsering Palden, a native of Nyagchu, who has sold the mushrooms in the past. Palden estimates that area households earn about 200,000 yuan (US$28,000) annually from selling the mushrooms. ‘Oak mushrooms’ In Tibet, matsutake mushrooms are most commonly referred to as “oak mushrooms,” or beshing shamo and besha for short in Tibetan, in a nod to their symbiotic relationship with evergreen oak trees in Tibet. Matsutake mushrooms, seen in this undated photo, are a highly prized delicacy in many parts of Asia. (Citizen journalist) In his 2022 book “What a Mushroom Lives for: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make,” Michael Hathaway, professor of anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, describes how Tibetan villagers in Yunan province hunt for them. The villagers gather the mushrooms in the morning and return home when dealers arrive at a market or drive along the roads, buying them as they go, he writes. The dealers then sell their matsutake to other dealers, who arrange for them to be shipped across China and to Japan and South Korea. The price of matsutake mushrooms had jumped over the past 40 years from the equivalent of about US$1 per pound (2.2 kg) in 1985 to US$70 per pound, according to Beijing-based Tibetan writer and poet Tsering Woeser. The mushrooms have specific environmental requirements for growth and thrive in undisturbed, high-altitude forests with the right balance of sunlight and moisture, said the source inside Tibet. “The fire has disrupted these conditions and may take years for the ecosystem to recover sufficiently to support matsutake growth,” he added. Translated and edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
Thailand ready for any scenario on Myanmar border, foreign minister says
Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has discouraged Myanmar’s junta from further violence In the border region after the army lost a major border town, the Thai foreign minister said Friday. Allied rebel forces, including the Karen National Union, captured a final junta battalion in Kayin state’s Myawaddy on Thursday morning, effectively gaining control of the city and causing thousands to flee into the border region. “We have sent a message to the [State Administration Council], as a matter of fact, that we do not want to see violence there,” Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara said at a press conference in Mae Sot on Friday afternoon. “We are also talking to ASEAN by way of statement, as well, but certainly to get everyone back on track to the five-point consensus,” he said, referring to the 2021 plan which included a call for a ceasefire and dialogue between all parties in Myanmar. The allied rebel’s capture has caused neighboring Thailand’s armed forces to deploy soldiers alongside Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridges, which regulate both people and goods and connect Myanmar’s Myawaddy to Thailand’s Mae Sot. Thailand is prepared to accommodate four different affected groups, the foreign minister said. This includes junta soldiers, 200 of which could be seen on Thursday and Friday, sheltering in northern Myawaddy near Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge No. 2. “At this point, there is no indication yet that they want to cross over,” Parnpree said. “For Thailand, we have no issue addressing any type of entry into the country on a strictly humanitarian basis.” Thailand allowed 600 junta personnel, including soldiers and their families, to be sent back to Myanmar through Mae Sot by plane on Sunday. In the event further conflict erupts, Thai nationals living near the border would be given shelter and access to necessities, while preparations have been made and assistance provided to Myanmar nationals to escape to safety, he continued. According to the Karen Department for Health and Welfare, fighting in Myawaddy district has displaced 2,000 new people into Thailand’s Tak border province. These people are in need of food, shelter and medicine, a spokesperson said. About 30 people have been injured, but the number of casualties is still unknown. Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.
Rebels claim 2 junta bases in central Myanmar, taking 120 surrenderers
Over 100 junta troops surrendered after guerilla-style militias captured two of their camps in central Myanmar, a militia member told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday. The camps are located between two townships in Sagaing region, where anti-junta sentiment is high and indiscriminate attacks by the Myanmar military have been frequent since the army seized power in 2021. Seven combined anti-junta armed groups, including Paungbyin People’s Defense Force and Homalin People’s Defense Force, carried out the most recent capture on Sunday. A member of the militia said the People’s Defense Forces now control the Chindwin river between two townships, strategic land that the junta used to target villages. The river was previously used by junta forces to transport supplies and fuel further attacks on villages situated nearby. “These camps and battalions are connected to Homalin and Paungbyin [townships]. Now, we can completely control the waters of the Chindwin river,” he told RFA, declining to be named for security reasons. “From that place, the military could attack villages in Paungbyin. But that area is now in our hands.” Some junta soldiers were trapped and later rescued by a Mi-17 helicopter from the junta air force base in Homalin, he added. The People’s Defense Force seized Light Infantry Battalions 396 and 370, as well as taking 120 surrenderers prisoner out of the 300 junta troops present. Troops stationed across Sagaing have frequently conducted attacks across the region and have been accused of gruesome assaults and baseless arrests of civilians, including women and children, people with disabilities and the elderly. Sagaing was also cited as the division with the highest rate of body-burning, a recurrent tactic by junta troops. RFA contacted Sagaing region’s junta spokesperson Nyunt Win Aung regarding the bases’ capture, but he did not respond. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Taejun Kang.
North Korean no-no: Carrying bags on your shoulder
In North Korea, carrying a bag with a strap on your shoulder can get you in trouble – because that’s the way they do it in the capitalist South. Instead, true socialists carry bags on their back or in one hand, people are told, sources in the reclusive country said. It’s the latest example of authorities controlling even the personal details of North Koreans’ lives. Women are told they can’t wear shorts, people are punished for using loan words from English, which they may have learned from South Korean TV dramas that get smuggled into the country on thumb drives, and couples getting married are strongly discouraged from holding wedding banquets or even clinking wine glasses at the reception. Most of these no-nos come under the draconian Rejection of Reactionary Thought and Culture Law, which aims to root out an invasion of so-called capitalist behavior. Bag violators can have their bags confiscated, be kicked out of school or even sent to labor centers for daring to tote their loot close to their hips, sources say. “A patrol organized by the Socialist Patriotic Youth League cracked down on a college student who wore a bag on their side at the main gate of Hamhung Medical University,” a resident of the eastern province of South Hamgyong told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “This is the first case of a crackdown on college students for how they carry bags.” He said that the crackdown will continue until April 15, the Day of the Sun, a major holiday in North Korea that commemorates the life of leader Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung. Fashion item Bags are one of the few ways that North Korean youths can express their individuality. Prior to the 1990s, the government provided all school supplies, including backpacks for students. This ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Aid from Moscow dried up, ruining North Korea’s centrally planned economy and throwing the country into the “Arduous March,” which is what North Koreans call the 1994-1998 famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Since then, it fell on the students to provide their own bags, which have become a fashion item of sorts. To counter this tendency, authorities supplied backpacks to students in elementary, middle and high schools this year but were not able to provide backpacks to all incoming college and university students because of production shortages. So the crackdown instead puts the burden on the students to appear uniform. But young people are influenced by South Korean TV shows and movies, which are illegal for them to watch. “College students prefer to wear shoulder bags with long straps on their side because they often watch South Korean TV shows,” a resident of the western province of South Pyongan told RFA on condition of anonymity for personal safety. She said that the administration at Pyongsong University of Education and Teachers Training College announced at the school’s opening ceremony that from now on, anyone carrying a bag on their side would be punished for spreading the culture of the South Korean “puppets,” a demeaning term for its southern neighbor that alludes to its close ties with the United States. Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
Rohingya activists call for more control of aid money
Rohingya Muslim activists representing fellow refugees forced out of Myanmar and into “prison-like” camps in Bangladesh said in Washington on Thursday that foreign aid to the camps would go further if some of it was given directly to refugee-run groups. But a representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, said little money was left over after aid cuts that currently see the refugees provided with only $10 worth of food a month. About 90% of the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh struggled to have “acceptable food consumption” late last year, according to the World Food Programme, when their monthly ration of food was bumped up from about $8 to about $10 per person. Speaking at an event on Capitol Hill to mark two years since the United States labelled Myanmar’s atrocities in 2017 against the Rohingya a “genocide,” the activists said aid was not always spent in ways most helpful for the Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar. “There are ways to do it effectively,” said Yasmin Ullah, a Canada-based rights activist born in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and the director of the Rohingya Maiyafuinor Collaborative Network. Yasmin Ullah of the Rohingya community is interviewed outside the International Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 23, 2020. (Peter Dejong/AP) The activist said her group had raised $20,000 through crowdfunding to be disbursed by refugee-run groups in the camp to improve livelihoods there. But she noted global aid flows were far larger. “We know our issues. We know how and where to put this money. We can run with $10,000 farther than any other humanitarian groups can,” she said. “We are asking for aid to be utilized and to directly go to refugee-led initiatives and refugee-led organizations.” Unsolved problems Aid for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh has dwindled, with less than two-thirds of the approximately $850 million in annual aid requested by aid agencies in the country being fulfilled, a U.N. report said. Lucky Karim, a Rohingya refugee who resettled in the U.S. state of Illinois in 2022 and now works with the International Campaign for the Rohingya, said that any international aid sent to help people in the camps “means a lot to us as refugees” and was appreciated. But she questioned why the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the camps each year were not improving conditions. “It’s not about how many years the U.S. has been supporting Rohingya,” Karim said. “What are you guys able to solve?” “Did you solve the labor issue? Did you solve the sexual and domestic and the other violence in the camps? Did you solve the human trafficking issue? Did you figure out the security risks at the camp? Did you figure out and identify the gangs and the nonstate actors in the camp at night?” she said. “Those are the only questions we have.” Requests for more help, she added, were “not just about increasing funding,” with many Rohingyas understanding funds are limited. “When it comes to the funding issue, when I talked to USAID, for example, they’re like, ‘Oh no Lucky, we have other places in war, like Gaza, for example, and Ukraine, for example,’” Karim recounted, noting there were “many other cases coming up every few years.” Like Ullah, she said some aid could be spent more effectively. “The amount of funding you’re sending to Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar and elsewhere should go to the right people at the right time to the needed situations,” she said. “How do you ensure it without Rohingya’s involvement in the decision making process?” Limited funds Peter Young, the USAID director for South and Central Asia, told the event that the United States had sent more than $1.9 billion in aid to support Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh since the 2017 genocide. Brothers Mohammed Akter, 8, and Mohammed Harun, 10, pose for a photograph on the floor of their burned shelter after a fire damaged thousands of shelters at the Balukhali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 25, 2021. (Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters) But he acknowledged the global aid being made available “is not sufficient to meet the needs of people” in the refugee camps. What was once a $12 monthly food ration to the refugees, he explained, was cut to just $8 last year before the eventual bump back to $10. At the end of the day, he said, aid groups were left grappling with the fact they have few funds left after disbursing those meager rations. “We certainly agree with – as Lucky said – the importance of working with and through the Rohingya community,” Young said. “We do make sure our projects that are implemented there are staffed by Rohingya there [or] developed in consultation with community leaders.” “At the same time, if you do the math, $10 a month for a million people consumes our entire budget pretty quickly,” he said. “So the bandwidth that we have to do other programming besides food is limited.” One of the first priorities for the refugee camps outside of food would be “durable shelters,” Young said, due to both the propensity of the camps to be hit by devastating disasters and the “understanding that there will be a lot of people there for some time into the future.” But for the Rohingya activists, that’s only a start. Karim, the Illinois-based refugee, said little will change in the camps until Rohingyas are given some decision-making powers – and “not just coming to D.C. every six months” for forums on Capitol Hill. “You take a bunch of notes, you leave us, you forget us,” the activist said. “We want a specific seat at the table.” Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Vietnam arrests Buddhist abbot from Khmer Krom minority
Vietnamese police on Tuesday arrested a Buddhist abbot and two followers – all members of the Khmer Krom ethnic minority – for their alleged roles in two separate incidents involving a pagoda in the country’s south. The nearly 1.3-million strong Khmer Krom ethnic group live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They face discrimination in Vietnam and suspicion in Cambodia, where they are often perceived not as Cambodians but as Vietnamese. The arrested abbot, Thach Chanh Da Ra, born in 1990, is head of the Dai Tho Pagoda in Tam Binh district in Vinh Long province. He and Kim Khiem, born in 1978, had posted allegedly slandering and insulting videos on social media and were charged with “abusing the rights to democratic freedom,” in violation of Article 331, a law that rights groups have said is vaguely written and often used to stifle dissent. Ra was dismissed from the government-recognized Vietnam Buddhist Sangha in December. Police also arrested Thach Ve Sanal, another member of the pagoda, on charges of “illegally arresting, holding, or detaining people,” for his alleged role in an incident that occurred when a task force entered the pagoda to investigate on Nov. 22, 2023. The arrests took place just a week after authorities sentenced two other Khmer Krom to prison for “abusing democratic freedoms,” and about a month after a third was given three-and-a-half years on the same charge. False accusations The government’s accusations about the three men arrested Tuesday are fabricated, Duong Khai, a monk at the pagoda, told RFA Vietnamese. “They distorted and slandered us, not the other way around,” he said. “They constantly come to harass us and disrupt security and public order. They disturbed our indigenous Khmer Krom community and gave us no days of peace.” Khai said that the Vietnamese authorities arrest whoever they dislike, especially if they dare to speak up and tell the truth about the government’s wrongdoings. “They arrested Kim Khiem because he had spoken out about their repression (of Khmer Krom,)” he said. “As for the abbot, Thach Chanh Da Ra, the authorities have repeatedly harassed (him) since the tree-cutting incident.” Vietnamese authorities have arrested Thach Ve Sanal on charges of “illegally arresting, holding or detaining people” under Article 157 of the Penal Code. (congan.vinhlong.gov.vn) More than a year ago, the Buddhist followers elected Ra to replace the former abbot of the pagoda, Thach Xuoi, because they believed Xuoi had colluded with authorities to cut down a 700-year-old tree in the pagoda that had become a community symbol. Ra and Khiem were arrested when they were returning to the pagoda after conducting services elsewhere, the monk said. International condemnation The Vietnamese government is unfairly targeting Ra as a means to force the pagoda to join the officially recognized Sangha, the U.S.-based Kampuchea Krom Khmers Federation said in a press release Tuesday. The organization called on authorities to drop all charges and release all three of the arrested people, and said the United Nations and the international community should condemn Vietnam – a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council – for its suppression of religious freedom. RFA attempted to contact the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Embassy of Vietnam in Cambodia for comment but received no response. The charges against Ra are “bogus” according to Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch. “The Vietnamese government is deliberately harassing, discriminating against, and abusing the Khmer Krom leaders who stand up for their language, culture, and Theravadan Buddhism, and this crackdown is extending to senior Buddhist monks asserting their right to freedom of religion and belief,” Robertson said. He said that Ra’s arrest showed that government officials have no respect for the religious beliefs of the Khmer Krom. Robertson said that the U.S. Department of State should recognize the severity of Vietnam’s repression and designate it a country of particular concern for its violations of religious freedom. Translated by Anna Vu and Samean Yun. Edited by Eugene Whong.
Pro-junta editor charged with defamation after criticizing ministry
The editor-in-chief of People Media was charged with defamation following critical comments he made in a livestream video – the first time an employee of a pro-junta news outlet has faced legal action by the military since the 2021 coup d’etat. Kyaw Soe Oo’s comments on Tuesday found fault with the Ministry of Home Affairs for not sending any senior police officials to attend the funeral of an officer who was recently killed in Kachin state. Nay Pyi Taw police arrested Kyaw Soe Oo the same day, family members told Radio Free Asia. The ruling military junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup, has cracked down on independent media outlets in Myanmar to silence them from reporting about the coup and its violent aftermath. In 2021, the junta shut down five media outlets that provided independent coverage of the protests against military rule. Last year, the regime threatened legal action against Democratic Voice of Burma TV and Mizzima TV, demanding that the shuttered independent news broadcasters pay thousands of dollars in transmission fees, Voice of America reported. People Media is known for its pro-military views. Kyaw Soe Oo regularly broadcasts his video commentaries on Telegram and YouTube. In Tuesday’s livestream, Kyaw Soe Oo noted that police officers who have ties to high-ranking officials are typically never assigned to dangerous frontier posts. It’s only the officers with no money or connections who are transferred to those areas, he said. He also invited viewers to send him information on possible bribery involving military and police officers and gambling businesses. After his arrest, Kyaw Soe Oo underwent two days of interrogation before he was formally charged under Section 505(a) of the penal code, relatives said. That provision of the law was added by junta authorities after the coup to punish comments or implications that the coup or the military is illegitimate. Kyaw Soe Oo was sent to Nay Pyi Taw prison on Thursday, relatives said. Police raided People Media’s office in Nay Pyi Taw on Thursday morning and confiscated computers, phones and cameras, according to sources close to Kyaw Soe Oo. There has been no official statement from the military junta regarding the arrest. Translated by Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Matt Reed.
Smuggling of the deadly Synthetic opioid FENTANYL
An investigative report on Fentanyl production, smuggling, its impacts on health and on geopolitics of the world.
