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Category: Americas
Junta razes village in northern Myanmar, opens fire on residents
A man died and eight were injured when troops laid landmines in their village in Sagaing region after raiding it and burning the houses to the ground. Two mines exploded while residents were cleaning up the remains of their houses, one Pyawbwe resident told Radio Free Asia. After the troops left the village, they turned back to shell the survivors. “After they left, we went in and cleared the burnt houses in the village. The two mines planted by the junta soldiers were stepped on and blew up,” said the man who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “The troops shelled the area that had been blown up, injuring nine people with landmines and heavy artillery. One of them died this morning.” The column trekked from Ye-U township to Tabayin township. Villages along the route were systematically raided and bombarded with heavy artillery, he added. Across the south of Sagaing region, military convoys have carried out brutal attacks, causing thousands to flee their homes in early October. Troops killed one man and arrested 30 on a five-day raid across Shwebo, Khin-U, Pale and Kanbalu townships during the third week of October. On Saturday, villagers found three teenagers beaten and shot to death outside their village in Yinmarbin township. RFA contacted Sagaing region’s ethnic affairs minister and junta spokesperson Sai Naing Naing Kyaw seeking comment on the attack, but he did not reply by time of publication. Nationwide, junta convoys killed eight civilians from Oct. 1 to 17 with airstrikes and heavy artillery, according to data compiled by RFA. Forty-one people were injured. More than 800,000 people have fled their homes in Sagaing region due to the conflict since the military coup, according to the United Nations. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.
Blast at Myanmar camp sounded like it came from the ‘world wars’
A farmer who lost his wife, three children and his mother when a bomb was dropped on his Kachin state village earlier this week said the powerful explosion wiped out buildings up to one mile away and sounded like something “used in the world wars.” “Houses built by NGOs and the locals are now left with only iron pillars.” Maran Bauk Lar told Radio Free Asia. “This was a type of bomb that has never been used in Myanmar.” The explosion at the Mung Lai Hkyet internally displaced persons camp at about 11 p.m. on Monday killed 29 people, including 11 children, and left 57 others wounded, relief workers told RFA. The camp is near Lai Zar in the mountainous border area between Kachin state and China. Lai Zar is the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army, or the KIA, which has fought the Burmese military for decades and controls areas of northern Myanmar. KIA information officer Col. Naw Bu told RFA earlier this week that he believed the junta was targeting the headquarters in the attack. Maran Bauk Lar, whose wife and three children were killed in the Mung Lai Hkyet attack, found their bodies when he returned to the camp. His mother and sister-in-law also were killed. Credit: Provided to RFA Maran Bauk Lar said he was walking to his farm when he heard the explosion. When he returned, he found a deep pit and the remains of his sister-in-law and the other family members. “My mother’s body was completely dismembered, and her skull was broken,” he said. “Only the bones remain. My wife and children were killed under the collapsed building. Our dormitories were completely destroyed. There is nothing left.” ‘Emboldened by the indifference’ The Mung Lai Hkyet camp has 658 residents, many of whom are now suffering from psychological trauma as they recover from the explosion, relief workers said. Survivors have been temporarily relocated to a church in Woichyai, an internally displaced persons camp in Lai Zar. “At the moment, they are sleeping on the floor of the church,” a person helping them said. “They have to start a new life from scratch. They don’t have a single penny in their hands.” Coffins are lined up next to graves as a mass funeral takes place to bury victims of a military strike on the Mung Lai Hkyet camp near the northern Myanmar town of Laiza on Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: AFP The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, a group of independent experts working to support human rights efforts in the country, urged the United Nations and its member states to hold the junta responsible for the attack. “The Myanmar military is so emboldened by the indifference of the international community in response to its decades of atrocity crimes that it is now attacking camps for internally displaced people,” said Yanghee Lee, a member of the council and a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. “The military is flagrantly massacring the most vulnerable people in society, and yet U.N. entities in Myanmar will not even publicly name the military as the perpetrator,” he said. At the State Department, spokesman Matthew Miller said that the United States was “deeply concerned” by reports of the explosion. “We strongly condemn the military regime’s ongoing attacks that have claimed thousands of lives since the February 2021 coup and continue to exacerbate the region’s most severe humanitarian crisis,” he said on Tuesday. A girl cries next to a grave as a mass funeral takes place to bury victims of the military strike on Mung Lai Hkyet camp near Laiza, Myanmar, on Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: AFP ‘The culture of military dictatorship’ Fighting in the area between junta forces and the KIA has intensified since July. Lately, there have been artillery strikes from the junta almost every day, local residents said. While some residents said they heard a plane just before Monday’s explosion, others told RFA that they heard nothing. The KIA has formed an investigation team to determine what caused the blast, Naw Bu said, adding that it may have been a bomb dropped by a junta-operated drone. “They always target the public, not only in our territory in Kachin state, but across the country,” he said of the junta. “It is the culture of military dictatorship.” A man stands amid debris left by the military strike on the Mung Lai Hkyet camp on Oct. 11, 2023, two days after the assault. Credit: AFP RFA’s calls on Wednesday to Win Ye Tun, the junta’s social affairs minister and spokesman for Kachin state, for comments on the death toll at Mung Lai Hkyet went unanswered. Junta spokesman Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA that junta troops were not behind the attack on Mung Lai Hkyet. He speculated that it was caused by an accidental explosion at a warehouse where the KIA stores gunpowder. A Mung Lai Hkyet resident told RFA that it was “totally untrue” that there are weapons factories and arsenals in the camp. “There is no arsenal,” he said. “There are only civilians who are displaced persons.” Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
A tamer tomorrow
Legendary Hong Kong movie star Chow Yun-fat told a film festival in South Korea that the Chinese city’s once vibrant cinema has lost its freedom under Beijing’s tightened controls on free speech and expression. Chow, named Asian Filmmaker of the Year at the Busan International Film Festival, is the first prominent figure in the industry to publicly discuss how China’s strict movie censorship requirements have crimped freedom and creativity in the former British colony.
‘Eliticide’ as China jails Uyghur intellectuals to erase culture
Over a fortnight, a Uyghur folklorist missing since 2017 was revealed to be serving a life prison for “separatism,” while another Uyghur scholar who had vanished into Chinese custody years earlier appeared on shortlists and oddsmakers picks for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. The cases of ethnographer Rahile Dawut, whose life conviction in December 2018 was uncovered by a U.S. NGO only last month, and economist Ilham Tohti, put away for life on similar charges in 2014, share key similarities that highlight the personal and family tragedies behind China’s relentless assimilation policies in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Both Dawut, who was born in 1966, and the 53-year-old Tohti built their academic careers inside the Chinese system, teaching at prestigious universities and releasing their work through major state publishing houses. The two scholars collaborated with and were respected as authorities by their Chinese and international peers. Uyghur professor Rahile Dawut talks with a man in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in an undated photo. Photo courtesy of Akide Polat/Freemymom.org Dawut created and directed the Xinjiang University ‘s Minorities Folklore Research Center and wrote dozens of articles in international journals and a number of books on the region and its culture. An economist at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, Tohti ran the Uyghur Online website, set up in 2006, which drew attention to the discrimination facing Uyghurs under Beijing’s rule over Xinjiang and its increasingly restrictive religious and language policies. The families of Dawut and Tohti share the common fate of not having heard anything from their jailed loved once since 2017, the year that China’s harsh crackdown in Xinjiang went into overdrive, with the establishment of a network of internment camps for Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic minorities. “My first reaction was that I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it at all,” Dawut’s U.S.-based daughter, Akide Polat, told Radio Free Asia last month. “None of my mother’s work, nor the way she went about it, nor anything in her personal life had anything to do with ‘endangering state security,’” she said of the charges on which her mother was convicted. ‘No intellectual resistance’ The Dui Hua Foundation, which revealed Dawut’s life sentence, noted estimates of as many as several hundred Uyghur intellectuals who have been detained, arrested, and imprisoned since 2016. RFA Uyghur has documented scores of disappearances and detentions of Uyghur writers, academics, artists and musicians in recent years. “What we’ve seen inside the Uyghur region of China is what is often termed ‘eliticide,’” said Sean Roberts, a Central Asia expert at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C. “There’s a particular focus on the intellectual elites, many of whom were working at state institutions, have been loyal to the state, did not did not present any sort of real resistance. Their only crime was basically maintaining the idea of a Uyghur nation and identity,” he told RFA Uyghur. Akida Polat holds a photo of her mother, imprisoned Uyghur folklore expert Rahile Duwat. Credit: X/@Kuzzat_Altay Roberts said eliticide “is often identified as occurring at the beginning of a genocide, where there’s an attempt to get rid of the entire political, economic and intellectual elite to ensure that there is no intellectual resistance to the erasure of a people and their identity.” In early 2021, after years of cumulative reports on the internment camp system in Xinjiang, the United Nations, the United States, and the legislatures of several European countries, officially branded the treatment of Uyghurs as genocide or crimes against humanity. China has angrily rejected the genocide charges, arguing that the “reeducation camps” were a necessary tool to fight religious extremism and terrorism, in reaction to sporadic terrorist attacks that Uyghurs say are fueled by years of government oppression. Beijing has also waged an information counterattack, with a global media influence campaign that spreads Chinese state media content to countries in Asia and beyond, invites diplomats and journalists from China-friendly countries on staged tours of Xinjiang and promotes pro-China social media influencers. Awareness-raising on genocide Last month, the pushback saw Chinese diplomats pressuring fellow United Nations member states not to attend a panel on human rights abuses in Xinjiang sponsored by a think tank and two rights groups on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Tohti, who has been nominated for the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s Peace Prize since 2020, was listed by the U.S. news outlet Time as one of top three favorites to win the medal this year, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Tohti was given higher odds on many of London’s famed betting sites of winning the prize than the recipient, jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi. “There are many human rights issues around the world that are equally as important as the suffering that the Uyghurs are going through, but the international status and power of the perpetrators of these human rights abuses aren’t considered equal,” said Jewher Ilham, Tohti’s daughter. “The Chinese government is known to have a much more powerful political and economic influence than the Iranian government in the western world,” she told RFA Uyghur. Jewher Ilham holds a photo of her father, Ilham Tohti, during the Sakharov Prize ceremony at the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Dec. 18, 2019. Credit: AP Photo It is not clear that that China would be moved by a Nobel Prize to release Tohti or moderate policies in Xinjiang, where Communist Party chief Xi Jinping appears to be doubling down on draconian security measures and policies to suppress Uyghur culture. Beijing lashed out at the Nobel Committee and imposed trade sanctions on Norway after the Nobel 2010 went to Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo. With Liu in jail, the Chinese capital Beijing won the right in 2015 to host the Winter Olympics, and Beijing largely shrugged off the global outcry when in 2017, Liu became the first Nobel laureate to die in jail since German journalist and Nazi opponent…
Anti-junta teachers still 130,000-strong
More than 130,000 teachers remain a part of Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement, or CDM, made up of government employees who have walked off the job to protest the military’s February 2021 coup d’etat, the country’s shadow government said Thursday. Speaking at an event to mark World Teachers’ Day, National Unity Government Minister of Health and Education Zaw Wei Soe said that CDM teachers have continued to make significant contributions to the resistance, despite a growing number of hardships since the movement boasted more than 200,000 teachers in the days immediately following the takeover. “For almost three years, these teachers have been participating in the CDM as part of the Spring Revolution without taking a single penny of salary,” he said. “There are still more than 130,000 CDM teachers who have helped to limit the effectiveness of the terrorist military regime.” While some teachers left the CDM due to social and economic pressures, others cited safety concerns as they saw the junta increasingly arrest, jail and kill their colleagues. In some cases, teachers said they did not receive as much support from the NUG and anti-junta groups as they expected. By some estimates, thousands of teachers left the CDM when schools reopened for the year in June 2022 and 2023. In the years since the coup, the National Unity Government, or NUG – made up of former civilian leaders and anti-junta activists – has launched more than 70 classes online and over 5,000 basic education schools, NUG Acting President Duwa Lashi La said at the event, despite the military’s “deliberate targeting of the education sector.” “[The junta] has been committing inhuman crimes such as launching indiscriminate airstrikes and arson attacks on schools or and arresting, torturing and killing their teachers,” he said. The junta has said that teachers, parents, and students who attend NUG schools, as well as those who provide financial support, face “serious action.” Hundreds of thousands of families have pulled their children out of state-run schools since the military seized power in favor of “self-help” schools set up by the CDM, the NUG and anti-junta People’s Defense Force, or PDF, paramilitary groups. Attacks on self-help schools Amid an ongoing junta offensive against the PDF and ethnic rebel groups in Myanmar’s remote border regions, attacks on villages have led to injuries and even deaths at self-help schools. Even when the schools don’t face the threat of conflict, teachers and students are often forced to attend classes in makeshift conditions and lack access to critical education resources. The NUG’s message on World Teachers’ Day stood in stark contrast to that of junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who urged Myanmar’s youth to obtain an education “in order to establish a peaceful future society” and called for more “good teachers to produce such youths.” There is a long tradition of teachers and students assuming an outsized role in the struggle against dictatorship in Myanmar. In 1988, under the rule of strongman General Ne Win, a student-led anti-dictatorship movement boiled into a nationwide uprising following the regime’s announcement banning 25-, 35- and 75-kyat bills from circulation and later the killing of a university student by police. The nationwide uprising, which peaked on Aug. 8 of that year, became a historic milestone that united Myanmar’s various ethnic groups, socioeconomic classes, and other communities against the then-ruling junta. CDM couple detained In the latest example of persecution that CDM participants face, RFA learned that junta authorities in the northern Sagaing region arrested a married couple of public servants. Myanmar authorities have arrested Aung San Win and his wife, Myo Su Thet, government employees who joined the Civil Disobedience Movement. Credit: Facebook/Myo Su Thet On Sept. 30, junta troops in Sagaing city’s Sein Kone ward arrested Aung San Win, 37, and his wife Myo Su Thet, 35, who are junior engineers for Sagaing’s Road Department, residents told RFA. Four days later, authorities had their home sealed off. “Maybe they were arrested because the junta wanted their family member, or they joined the CDM,” said one resident who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. “This morning, the house was sealed off.” While the reason for their arrest was not immediately clear, pro-junta channels on social media platform Telegram claimed that they had “contacted the PDF,” which the regime has labeled a terrorist group. The couple are currently being held at the Sagaing police station, residents said. Calls by RFA to Sai Naing Naing Kyaw, the junta’s spokesperson for Sagaing region, seeking more information on the arrest went unanswered Thursday. According to Thailand’s Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners (Burma), nearly 20,000 people arrested since the coup remain behind bars for their political activities. Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
Conflict in Myanmar’s Shan state drives 1,000 civilians into China
Fighting between junta troops and the ethnic Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, has driven more than 1,000 people from northeast Myanmar’s Shan state across the border with China to seek shelter, according to residents. The group is the latest example of civilians displaced by conflict in Myanmar, where the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that tens of thousands have fled into neighboring countries to avoid conflict since the military’s February 2021 coup. More than 1.6 million people have been internally displaced by fighting since the takeover, according to the U.N. Fighting between the military and the TNLA in Shan’s Muse and Kutkai townships broke out on July 23, when the latter’s forces attacked a pro-junta militia convoy near Sei Lant village on the Muse-Namhkan highway. Since then, more than 1,000 residents of seven villages – including the border tracts of Nam Kat and Sei Lant – have fled into China, said a resident of Nam Kat who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke to RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. “We have been fleeing from our homes for two months now,” said the resident. “We can’t make a living and the children’s education has also been impacted.” The resident said that few people felt the need to flee the fighting initially, even when the military began firing artillery in the area. “But one evening recently, lots of people from Namhkan fled after being attacked because the military used a jet fighter and the attack was at night,” he said. There are more than 100 internally displaced persons, or IDPs, sheltering in Namhkan’s Kawng Tat village and more than 300 IDPs sheltering in Muse’s Nam Hsant village, the resident said, while at least 1,000 people have fled to Ruili and Jie Gao in southwest China’s Yunnan province. The number of people who have fled elsewhere was not immediately clear, he added. Caught between two factions Residents of Sei Lant told RFA that while some villagers had fled to Muse, most are “living in fear” in their homes. One resident named Aik Sai said that although fighting has stopped in recent days, “they are worried that it will resume” due to the presence of troops from both sides stationed near the village. “Both sides are staying [near] the village and we can’t drive them out,” he said, urging the troops to “fight in the jungle, if possible … [because] it isn’t good for both sides to use locals as shields.” Aik Sai said life in the village had ground to a halt amid the fighting and that “we can’t earn a living.” “We’re worried about residents being shot in the village,” he added. TNLA spokesman Lt-Col. Mai Aik Kyaw confirmed the military’s recent use of air power in the area. He said that on Sept. 25 at around 10:00 p.m., the military dropped six bombs, including two 500-pound bombs with an impact radius of up to 30 meters (100 feet), in the jungle near a TNLA camp along the Muse-Namhkan highway, around 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the Chinese border. “We don’t know why they came and attacked,” he said, adding that the TNLA has “only engaged in self-defense.” “Since Sept. 22, there has been no retaliatory attack from our side,” Mai Aik Kyaw said. “On their side, they are constantly firing from the air and artillery every day. In the last three or four days, there have been drone attacks.” A Myanmar junta jet dropped 500 lb. bombs on a TNLA base on Loi Mauk Mountain, Sept. 26, 2023. Credit: News & Information Department A resident of Kutkai’s Ngawt Ngar village also confirmed the military’s use of aircraft, saying that two fighter jets fired on the tract on the afternoon of Sept. 26. That same evening, he said, junta troops in nearby Nam Hpat Kar lobbed artillery at Ngawt Ngar, damaging a home. The resident said that the incidents were enough to cause many villagers to flee and others to go into hiding nearby. “There are only a few people left [in the village],” he said. “Some ran away to the jungle, since people don’t dare to stay in the village anymore.” Control of border town Attempts by RFA to reach the junta’s economic minister and Shan state spokesman Khun Thein Maung went unanswered. Similarly, RFA contacted the Chinese Embassy in Yangon via email regarding the issue of Myanmar nationals fleeing into China due to fighting near the border, but received no response. Than Soe Naing, a Myanmar political commentator, said he believes that the junta has been stepping up attacks in the area because it “cannot tolerate” TNLA control of Muse, a town of economic importance due to its proximity to the border. “That’s why the junta is putting pressure on the TNLA, and the fighting has become intense,” he said. According to the TNLA, the two sides fought nearly 50 battles between July 23 and Sept. 26. RFA reporting found that a total of nine civilians – including a child – were killed and 13 civilians were injured in Mogoke, Muse and Kutkai townships over the same period. Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
Chinese police harass family of Washington DC student activist
An international student in the U.S. capital has been harassed by China’s state security police for pro-democracy activism on American soil, with his loved ones back in China hauled in by police for questioning and told to get him in line, Radio Free Asia has learned. Zhang Jinrui, a law student at Washington’s Georgetown University, said his family in China received an unexpected visit in June from state security police, who interrogated his father about Zhang’s level of patriotism and questioned him about his activities in the United States. “The state security police knocked on our door and took my father away for lengthy questioning,” Zhang told Radio Free Asia in a recent interview. “[They asked him] ‘Does this child of yours take part in pro-democracy activities? Do they usually love their country and the [ruling Chinese Communist] Party?’” “If not, you have to teach him to love his country and the party better,” the police said. “It’s not OK that he’s doing this, and it won’t do any good.” Zhang’s experience comes amid growing concern over Beijing’s “long-arm” law enforcement targeting overseas activists and students, who had expected to enjoy greater freedom of speech and association while living or studying in a democratic country. Zhang said the questioning of his father came after he took part in protests in support of the “white paper” protest movement in November 2022, and against Beijing’s hosting of the Winter Olympics in February. There are growing concerns over Beijing’s “long-arm” law enforcement targeting overseas activists and students. Here, “Viola,” a New York University graduate student, delivers a speech during a gathering to mark the third anniversary of the death of Chinese whistleblower Li Wenliang in New York on Feb. 5, 2023. Credit: Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA Yet he wasn’t contacted at the time by police, who sometimes contact overseas Chinese nationals via social media platforms to get their message across. “On the evening of June 29, I suddenly received a WeChat message from my sister saying ‘Contact me urgently, something happened,’” Zhang said. “The people from the police station had called my sister and asked about her [relative] in Washington, wanting to know if they took part in the Torch on the Potomac group, saying I was a key member.” Fear and self-censorship Torch on the Potomac was set up by students at the George Washington University in April, to provide a safe space for dissident activities by Chinese students. But Zhang was nonplussed by the accusation, saying that the group has yet to organize any activities, and that police have also been harassing the families of Chinese students who haven’t taken part in any activism at all. Calls to the Wusan police station, which is close to Zhang’s family home in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, rang unanswered during office hours on Sept. 19. Several other Chinese students declined to be interviewed when contacted by Radio Free Asia. Sarah McLaughlin, senior scholar at The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said speaking to the foreign media could bring down further trouble on the heads of students who may already have seen their families hauled in for questioning. “I know that that’s something that international students have run into before,” she said. “They’ve gotten in trouble when they returned home for things they’ve said online while in the United States.” McLaughlin said the harassment of their families in China will have a chilling effect on students’ speech, even overseas. “There are definitely some real fears among these students, and there’s definitely self censorship,” she said. Classroom informants And the police aren’t the only source of such anxiety – there is also the risk of being reported by fellow students from China, who are encouraged via the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations to keep an eye on each other. A Georgetown University faculty member who asked to remain anonymous said the problem is becoming more and more serious, with Chinese students feeling unable to speak freely in class, for fear of being informed on by their Chinese classmates. Georgetown University student Zhang Jinrui says he was harassed by members of the Georgetown branch of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association as he was distributing flyers. Credit: Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA Last year, when students at George Washington University put up posters on campus opposing China’s hosting of the 2023 Winter Olympics, the Chinese Embassy sent members of the campus branch of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association to tear them down again and put up posters denouncing their actions. “They even got in touch with the school, saying that the Chinese students who support democracy and oppose zero-COVID are racist,” Zhang said. “That’s why they set up the Torch on the Potomac, because a lot of their activities weren’t getting the support of the school.” George Washington University President Mark Wrighton admitted in a Feb. 8 statement that the removal of the posters was a mistake, and the university administration should have waited until they better understood the situation before acting. “We began to receive a number of concerns through official university reporting channels that cited bias and racism against the Chinese community,” Wrighton said. “I also received an email directly from a student who expressed concerns.” “I have since learned from our university’s scholars that the posters were designed by a Chinese-Australian artist, Badiucao, and they are a critique of China’s policies,” he said. “Upon full understanding, I do not view these posters as racist; they are political statements.” Neither Georgetown University nor George Washington University had responded to requests for comment on the renewed harassment of Chinese students in the United States by Sept. 19. A wall with posters at Georgetown University in Washington. Torch on the Potomac was set up by students at the George Washington University in April, to provide a safe space for dissident activities by Chinese students. Credit: Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA Close contact with embassies Zhang said he has also been personally harassed by members of the Georgetown branch of the…
Short changed: Can China pay the bills?
Amid reports and rumors of starving zoo animals and retirees not being paid their pensions, the chair of financially distressed China Evergrande Group, the world’s most indebted property developer, is now under “residential surveillance.” Call it house arrest – and as the Chinese property sector loses its mojo some 42,000 local governments are looking for money to pay off creditors. Evergrande chairman Hui Ka Yan, or Xu Jiayin, is under 24-hour police supervision and can neither leave his home nor receive guests without permission. He was once the richest man in China. In 2017, Hui Ka Yan had a net worth of US$42.5 billion, surpassing Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Tencent founder Pony Ma. Much of China’s prosperity – like Hui’s – probably now begs a question mark, and it’s not just the private property giants like Evergrande; it’s the tens of thousands of local governments that have built out and “modernized” China on what may be the speculative property bubble of all time. The court is out on the extent to which real estate accounts for China’s GDP – 25% to 30% by most reckonings – but the issue, in a new era of massive oversupply and low demand, is where the new equilibrium will settle. Says Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research, “China has to reduce the size of the property industry by about one-third, which is going to cause a lot of pain for homeowners, local governments and some banks.” Some analysts might describe that as an optimistic assessment. ‘Too big to resolve’ George Magnus, Research Associate at the China Center, Oxford University says that debt is everywhere in the Chinese system, and the extent of it is difficult, if not impossible to evaluate. “Debts are lurking in public-private partnership projects – [there are] loans that are off balance sheet or off the books completely, and other local government fund raising schemes.” Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder and research director of J Capital Research describes it as “a very inexact science,” referring to the problem of ascertaining the depth of China’s countrywide debt. “A government may write a contract with a company to get a loan of, say, 100 million yuan,” Stevenson-Yang says, adding that it might be presented “as a land sale.” “There’s an understanding that the land will be turned back once the money is repaid, but that understanding may not be written down.” Adds Stevenson-Yang, “I think the problem is just too big to resolve.” An accurate measure of off-the-books debt would be a tall order, says Dexter Roberts, director of China affairs at the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “What we do know is that it is very large and growing,” Roberts says. “Beijing does seem determined to avoid the moral hazard of bailing out local governments. The trouble with that is the indebtedness of local governments has become so severe that it is spilling over and affecting many regular Chinese as well, as is true with elderly who are seeing their pension payments delayed or civil servants who aren’t getting paid on time.” Elderly women sit at a park in downtown Shanghai March 16, 2012. Credit: Reuters In short, the debt that’s weighing down the former Chinese growth juggernaut has to settle somewhere and it will be likely to fall on the heads of those least likely to be able to afford it. “The people of China,” says Stevenson-Yang. She adds, speaking on the question of how Beijing might approach the problem: “I have no idea what their plan is other than to hide head in sand. I actually think they are bureaucratically stuck.” Economist Michael Pettis commented in a tweet thread, on the social media platform now known as X, that it would probably be best if Beijing provides only temporary relief while forcing local governments to resolve the debt themselves.” The “extremely difficult bind” local governments found themselves in, with dwindling revenue that crimps ability to repay debts, was due to a confluence of factors, says Roberts. “The pandemic lockdowns plus crackdown on the overleveraged property sector which was probably necessary but has been so damaging to the overall economy, plus the drop in incomes and the ability to spend brought on by the overall economic hard times.” Oxford’s Magnus says, “The central government has seemingly started sending inspectors in to get a proper picture of local government debt, and there is talk from finance pros and some policy people about debt swaps, under which expensive local government debt would be swapped for cheaper central government bonds. “This would, at best, buy a bit of time, but it’s just replacing debt with debt and doesn’t really solve the problem.” The Country Garden One World City project under construction is seen on the outskirts of Beijing, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. Credit: AP In the meantime, China’s private property giants – Evergrande, Country Garden and Vanke, among others, continue to reel in a market with no takers. Local governments that have indebted themselves on the basis of property assets that are now overvalued and will not be bailed out from on high are in a bind. “Emigrate,” said J Capital Research’s Stevenson-Yang when asked what she might do if she was running an indebted local government in China. Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.
Soaring palm oil prices prompt long lines in Myanmar
The price of edible palm oil in Myanmar has soared in recent months to more than five times what it was prior to the February 2021 military coup, leading to long lines around the country. A staple commodity in Myanmar, where it is used to cook, the cost of palm oil is a barometer for inflation and the health of the wider economy, which has become progressively worse since the takeover amid fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, international sanctions and junta mismanagement. In 2020, before the coup, the price of a viss (3.6 pounds) of palm oil was just over 1,800 kyats (US$0.85), but in recent months has hovered north of 10,000 kyats (US$4.75), forcing consumers to curb their purchasing. Responding to the increase, the junta recently ordered major palm oil wholesalers to sell their product at around 4,200 kyats (US$2) per viss per household. The central bank’s official exchange rate for the kyat is 2,100 kyats per U.S. dollar, which has been in force since April last year, but on the external market, one U.S. dollar trades for between 3,300 and 3,500 kyats, sources tell RFA Burmese. May Thu, from Yangon’s Insein township, told RFA she can no longer buy the amount of palm oil she needs from retail stores and now must join thousands of others standing in long lines around the country to buy it at wholesale rates. “Housewives have to go and stand in line whether they are busy or not because they have no oil to cook with,” she said. “That’s why they have no choice but to wait in line to buy it.” May Thu said wholesalers only sell the oil on certain days and that she has to “rush to get a token and wait in line whenever they announce the sale.” ‘Shoving one another under the burning sun’ A resident of Mandalay who, like others RFA interviewed for this report, declined to be named citing security concerns, said that there are days when she has to return home empty-handed after standing in line for hours to buy oil. “We have to wait in line, shoving one another under the burning sun … about every other day,” she said. “It’s like that all over Mandalay. Some people don’t get to buy the oil. About 300 people line up for only 150 bottles worth.” A housewife in Yangon told RFA that there are always people who suffer from overheating and faint while standing in line in the extremely hot weather. “We want to be able to buy it at 4800 kyats per viss – the same price the junta sells at – from retail shops in our neighborhood,” she said. “As only the lower class uses palm oil, that’s who lines up for it,” she said. “There are often arguments with people swearing at one another. It’s just another way our lives have been uprooted these past two and a half years [since the coup].” ‘Get arrested or don’t sell’ Wholesalers said the cost increase and the junta’s order to sell at reduced prices has put them in a bind. “The situation is such that we either sell at a higher price and get arrested or we don’t sell at all,” said one businessman. “That’s why many oil merchants have stopped selling, leading to a shortage of palm oil. The market economy mechanism is broken.” Another businessman suggested that the junta had ordered wholesalers to sell for reduced prices to generate lines as part of a “show” for the global community. “Are they trying to make a scene that appears as if they are providing enough to the people when international visitors come?” he wondered. “No other country has this type of situation – only in Myanmar do people have to wait in line to buy palm oil.” In 2022, Myanmar imported a monthly average of around 40,000 tons of palm oil, with the maximum in July at 58,600 tons and the minimum in May at 25,000 tons. Domestic oil production in Myanmar is insufficient, and two-thirds of palm oil consumed in the country is imported from abroad. Amid the drop in value of the kyat since the military takeover, Myanmar has had to purchase foreign imports at higher prices and is experiencing various shortages. Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
What to do about ‘freedom from speech?’
A recent survey from the Pew Research Centre, ostensibly about the opinions of Buddhists and Muslims in South and Southeast Asia, offered a disheartening read to those of us who cherish free speech. But the study also highlighted that it is wrong to think the only enemies of free speech are the region’s authoritarian governments. The pollsters asked respondents from four Southeast Asian states to choose between two statements: “People should be allowed to speak their opinions publicly even if they upset other people” or “harmony with others is more important than the right to speak one’s opinion”. Around two-thirds of respondents—69 percent in Cambodia, 67 percent in Indonesia, and 64 percent in Singapore—chose harmony over free speech. Interestingly, 59 percent of Thais chose the opposite. It’s more straightforward, though not easy, to pick a fight with governments for their repression of free speech, as it is to argue against the common claims that free speech is an illusion or that democracies are just as censorious as authoritarian states. What’s harder to comprend, and more dangerous not to rebut, is the proposition that freedom of speech is undesirable and honesty is a species of antisocial behavior. Indeed, the argument you should keep silent even if you know you would speak the truth. But that is what one confronts in Southeast Asia, vide the Pew survey. A Thai man prays in the rain during an all-religion prayer meeting for peace and harmony at the Lumpini park, in Bangkok in 2010. Thousands of residents gathered at dawn to pray for peace at sites across Bangkok where people were killed and high rise buildings torched in two months of political violence. Credit: Manish Swarup/AP I say it’s harder because one must realize that it is not just your governments who want to silence you; it’s also your neighbors. None of this is palatable. It’s far easier to think that all tyranny stems from way up high, in part because one has to get on in society with people who think differently and, also, because it provides a convenient excuse for inactivity. However, this isn’t a new realization. In 2015, Pew conducted a global survey on people’s attitudes towards free speech. Only 29 percent of Indonesians, for example, thought that people should say what they want without censorship and just 21 percent reckoned that internet use without censorship is important. What point is there in free speech if one is only allowed to say something uncontroversial or what everyone else already (appears) to think? That’s not free speech; that’s repetition. And repetition doesn’t change people’s opinions nor educate. Why not stick to what you thought at sixteen years old and never change your mind? But in order to be allowed to question your established ideas, to educate yourself, you have to be presented with uncomfortable information in an uncomforting way—few people relish being told they’re wrong and that they have been wrong for years. I say “allowed” because that is at the core of free speech. It is often assumed that the true victim of censorship is the person engaged in speaking. They are victims, but so, too, is everyone else. If your thoughts are censored, then I am now able to hear them. If my thoughts are censored, you are not allowed to hear my opinions and judge them against your own. As such, censorship makes each person a prisoner of their own thoughts and makes society barren silos. Enforcing the will of the majority I am not singling Southeast Asia out unfairly, The desire for “freedom from speech” is universal. Indeed, the want for a “quiet life”, to be protected from discomforting truths, is much in the Western consciousness, and increasingly so. It is the defining ethos of totalitarianism—a Western concept—and of almost all religions. Isn’t the founding tenet of Christianity, Judaism and Islam that Adam was wicked for giving up the “harmony” of Eden for a free life, and that all us apparent descents are still being punished for that “crime”? It is often said that censorship is grounded in the need to protect minorities. That, at least, is how social “harmony” is often defined in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia; multiethnic countries with political systems that fracture on racial or religious lines. However, time and time again what one finds in practice is that censorship is used to enforce the will of the majority over the minority. Worse, what this becomes is the assertion that harmony can only be protected by prosecuting the minority so that the majority does not engage in violence. Malaysia’s Police Chief Khalid Abu Bakar warned journalists “Don’t do anything or publish drawings or writing that can cause exasperation in the community.” Credit: Alexandra Radu/AP file photo There are numerous examples of this. But to take a lesser-known one: in early 2017, a small Chinese-language daily newspaper in Malaysia ran a caricature of the president of the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) that was deemed by some to be anti-Islamic. Shortly after the cartoon went public, admittedly to the newspaper’s small readership of mainly ethnic-Chinese, a PAS state commissioner warned the newspaper not to forget what happened to the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, when 12 journalists were murdered at the French newspaper’s Paris offices two years earlier. “If you remember last time, there was a French newspaper that published a caricature that angered the whole Muslim world,” said Muhammad Fauzi Yusof, adding that the newspaper would be responsible for the “devastating” consequences. Then-Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar waded into the debate. “Don’t do anything or publish drawings or writing that can cause exasperation in the community. We have to be careful with these things,” he instructed newspapers and journalists. What do we make of this? Obviously, it was not the Chinese-language newspaper, representing a minority, that threatened violence but the politician, from the majority, who told journalists that they could be assassinated en masse. And what about the police chief? He didn’t arrest the politician for a…
