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Category: Americas
China, Russia say North Korea launch provoked by US military drills
A U.S.-led push to condemn North Korea’s launch of a missile across Japan was blocked by China and Russia in the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, with the veto powers saying Pyongyang was provoked by recent U.S. military drills. The meeting of the 15-member council was called by the United States after North Korea fired a missile across Japanese territory into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, violating council resolutions banning Pyongyang from such tests. The test missile launch was condemned by the 12 other members of the U.N. Security Council – Albania, France, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom, India, the United Arab Emirates, Ghana, Mexico, Kenya, Brazil and Gabon. Each called for a return to “dialogue” between countries in the region. But Russia and China – who had opposed a public council meeting and in May vetoed a resolution to impose new sanctions against North Korea for its new program of test launches – both said the United States was also at fault. Russia’s deputy representative to the United Nations, Anna Evstigneeva, defended the test launches, and blamed the context of what she termed America’s “unilateral security doctrine in the Asia-Pacific region.” She noted that the United States, Japan and South Korea last month carried out military exercises in the Sea of Japan using a nuclear aircraft carrier that she said focused training on hitting key targets in North Korea. “It is obvious that the missile launches by Pyongyang are a consequence of a short-sighted confrontational military activity surrounding this country conducted by the United States, which hurts their own partners in the region and also hurts the situation in Northeast Asia as a whole,” Evstigneeva said. China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Geng Shuang, mirrored the comments, also blaming U.S.-led drills for Pyongyang’s launch. “We have also noticed the multiple joint military exercises held by the U.S. and other countries recently in the region,” Geng told the Security Council. “A brief examination will reveal that [North Korea’s] launch activities took place either before or after such military activities and did not exist in isolation.” Pedestrians walk under a large video screen showing images of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un during a news update in Tokyo on Oct. 4, 2022, after North Korea launched a missile prompting an evacuation alert when it flew over northeastern Japan. Credit: AFP ‘Blaming others’ However, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, speaking for a second time after first making a case to condemn North Korea’s actions, said the explanation from China and Russia made little sense. “As we expected, instead of putting the blame where the blame lies,” Thomas-Greenfield said, “Russia and China want to blame others for their actions.” She said that U.S.-led drills with South Korea and Japan were carried out “responsibly and consistent with international law” and that there was “no equivalency” with the “unlawful, reckless” missile launches by North Korea. Japan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ishikane Kimihiro, who is not currently sitting on the council but was invited to address it, called on the council to enforce “unanimously adopted” resolutions banning such tests. “This council should be mindful that it is being tested and that its credibility is at stake. Silence is not an option,” Ishikane said. “North Korea has violated multiple Security Council resolutions and this council should act and provide an outcome that restores its credibility and fulfills its responsibilities.” The North Korean missile test was the first to pass through Japanese territory in five years, and flew 2,800 miles at 17 times the speed of sound. The United States and South Korea conducted their own missile tests in response earlier on Wednesday, with a malfunctioning South Korean missile crashing into an air force base on the outskirts of the coastal city of Gangneung.
China opening Chinese Police Stations outside its territory
The Chinese government is opening illegal police Chinese overseas police service stations all over the world to control its diaspora.
China, Uyghurs battle for support at UN over Xinjiang rights report
China has vowed to “fight” any United Nations action on human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang cited in a damning report by the U.N. human rights chief, while Uyghurs are pressing the world body to move forward with investigations and other concrete follow-up measures. The report issued on Aug. 30 by U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights Michelle Bachelet concluded that China’s arbitrary detention and repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” Uyghurs and their supporters want the U.S. and other Western countries to follow up with a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution condemning the alleged violations, an investigation, and a special envoy on Xinjiang. China, which rejected the Bachelet report as “based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces,” sent a large delegation to the rights council in Geneva this week to condemn the report and present its rebuttal. “The assessment is based on a presumption of guilt, includes mostly disinformation and lies,” Xu Guixiang, head of the Xinjiang government’s information office, told reporters in Geneva Thursday. “If some forces in the international community – or even anti-China forces – make so-called ‘Xinjiang-related motions’ or so-called ‘resolutions’, we won’t be afraid,” Xu said. “We will take countermeasures resolutely and fight.” Bachelet’s report puts a U.N. imprimatur on many findings in investigative reports issued by rights groups, researchers, foreign media and think tanks in the five years since Chinese authorities began detaining up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in internment camps in Xinjiang, The predominantly Muslim groups have also been subjected to torture, forced sterilizations and forced labor, as well as the eradication of their linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, in what the United States and several Western parliaments have called genocide and crimes against humanity. Beijing has angrily rejected all charges, insisting it is running vocational training facilities in the region to counter extremism. The Chinese delegation in Geneva this week included large numbers of officials who challenged the reports and a group of Uyghurs who claimed to support Chinese policies. “The Chinese mission held a side event at the U.N. yesterday featuring five Uyghurs to promote its propaganda that Uyghurs are free and happy in China,” said Zumretay Arkin, program and advocacy manager at the World Uyghur Congress “Some diplomats from Cuba, Venezuela and Zimbabwe came to support China while some Western diplomats came to hear what China had to say,” said Arkin, who is campaigning for the U.S.-led democracies to introduce a resolution condemning China’s genocide against Uyghurs. Addlet Sabit comforts her daughter as she displays pictures of her father, Ablimit Ablaze whom she has never met, during a hunger strike in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2022. Credit: Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA ‘Put our words into action’ Group of 7 Foreign Ministers met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly and welcomed the report, pledging to “address these issues with partners, civil society and the international community.” The G7 ministers “remained deeply concerned by the serious human rights violations in Xinjiang and took note of the overall assessment of the report that some of these violations may constitute ‘international crimes’ in particular crimes against humanity,’” said a statement by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, chair of the meeting. The G7 statement Thursday came after U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz raised rights violations in Xinjiang in their speeches to the U.N. General Assembly. In Washington this week, the Uyghur American Association has been staging a hunger strike in front of the White House by leaders of the advocacy group and by three internment camp survivors to demand U.S.-led steps to translate the U.N. report into concrete action. Chris Smith, co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Uyghur Caucus, who visited the hunger strikers outside the White House on Wednesday, introduced a bill calling on the Biden Administration to direct the U.S. mission team in Geneva to sponsor a resolution that would establish a UN commission to investigate the issues raised in the Bachelet report. “The UN’s recent report demonstrates that Communist China is guilty of serious human rights violations that at a minimum constitute crimes against humanity in the eyes of the world community,” said Smith, “We must speak out forcefully on these atrocities and put our words into action at the United Nations,” she added. Kellie Currie, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, called on Biden to “not only introduce a resolution in the Human Rights Council, but you personally need to make sure that it passes by doing everything you can, reaching out to other countries, using political capital and influence that you have with other countries that are on the Human Rights Council to make sure that it passes.” Reporting and translation by Alim Seytoff. Written by Paul Eckert.
Dud stock trade by senator’s daughter exposes Cambodian tax loophole
A Cambodian senator’s daughter gambled U.S. $8 million on the purchase of shares in an American medical technology company through a Singaporean broker – a transaction conveniently completed before the adoption of a double taxation treaty between Cambodia and Singapore – regulatory filings reviewed by RFA show. Had the investment worked out as planned, Lau Sok Huy expected returns in the realm of $50-60 million, and could have avoided up to $12 million in Cambodian taxes. But the investment flopped. Seven years after she became the second-largest shareholder in Tomi Environmental Solutions Inc, Sok Huy is down some $6.3 million and furious, according to the company’s founder and a fellow shareholder familiar with the deal who spoke with RFA. The investment – equivalent to more than 3,000 years of the average Cambodian salary – is one Sok Huy will likely have to write off as a loss. Tomi’s share price has dipped so low that it currently risks losing its listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market. But the structure and sequencing of the deal sheds a light on how well-to-do Cambodians stand to benefit from the double taxation agreement. Such agreements are viewed by advocates as a boon to trade and investment between nations, but they can also offer a way for wealthy investors to avoid taxes. Regulatory disclosures filed during Sok Huy’s acquisition of the Tomi shares strongly suggest the deal – in which she loaned the money to her broker who had purchased the shares, and then took the shares as repayment for the loan – was tailored to benefit from the double taxation agreement. The loan behind the deal was signed in January 2016, but was amended in May of the same year, just three days after the tax treaty was signed. Sok Huy’s politically connected background raises questions about whether it was appropriate for her to benefit from the agreement. Her father, Lau Ming Kan, is a longtime senator for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, which has governed the country in one form or another for three decades. One of the final steps in any treaty becoming law in Cambodia – including the double-taxation agreement with Singapore – is ratification by the Senate where he sits. Sok Huy’s parents are also no strangers to investing in Singapore, a regional financial hub viewed by some as a tax haven. Her mother Choeung Sopheap, a confidante of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, holds $36.5 million in shares in a Singapore-based company that owns a Cambodian corporation with an exclusive license to import liquid natural gas to Cambodia. Those assets are among the more than $230 million in assets that RFA has identified as being held in Singapore by politically connected Cambodians. The DTA Double-taxation agreements, often referred to by the acronym DTAs, are designed to ensure that companies or individuals do not get taxed on the same profits twice when doing business overseas. When two countries sign a DTA, the hope is that it will promote trade and investment between both nations. This particular treaty appears to have paid off. By the end of last year, Singapore was Cambodia’s second-largest source of foreign investment, having barely figured in the rankings half a decade earlier. A business consultant with more than a decade’s experience in Phnom Penh told RFA they viewed the agreement as a net positive for Cambodia. “A DTA can help eliminate double taxation, and for investors coming into Cambodia, that’s fairly important. So, in that sense, they’re fairly useful, and also very widespread and standard around the world,” the consultant said, requesting anonymity due to the potential professional repercussions for speaking publicly on a sensitive topic. “Can the wealthy take advantage of them to reduce their tax bill as well? Absolutely,” the consultant added. “But they already have other means of doing so. So, of all the ‘sins’ here [in Cambodia], I wouldn’t see that as being a meaningful one.” That’s not an analysis everyone would agree with. In late 2016, the World Bank published a blog by two of its senior employees – Jim Brumby and Michael Keen – that asked whether tax treaties like DTAs are a “boost or bane for development” in lower-income countries, such as Cambodia. They were not convinced. “Developing countries have used them with the intention of boosting economic development. The evidence for that is weak,” Brumby and Keen wrote. “The problem is that tax treaties – and the international system of taxation more generally – are highly complex and have unleashed unforeseen consequences.” “Multinational companies, with much at stake, can use treaties to route income through third countries to exploit favorable tax treaties. Tax authorities, particularly in developing countries, are finding it hard to counter such ‘treaty shopping,’” Brumby and Keen added. Despite having assets and businesses in multiple countries, Sok Huy does not fit the traditional definition of a multinational company. But her family often behaves like one, as do many other powerful clans in Cambodia – negotiating sweetheart deals with the government that are unavailable to smaller businesses with less political clout and cash in the bank. If the Lau family’s lawyers and accountants have clocked on to the Singapore loophole, it seems likely the financial professionals advising Phnom Penh’s other leading families will have too. So how does it work? People pass by the Nasdaq Market Site in Times Square in New York City, U.S., Feb. 7, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid The deal Between May and July 2015, Singaporean broker Boh Soon Lim snapped up $8 million of Tomi shares, then accounting for roughly 11% of the company, according to regulatory filings lodged with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. stock market regulator. He bought the shares in the name of Arise Asset Management Pte Ltd, a Singapore-registered company in which he is majority owner. In the SEC filings he described the money for the purchase as coming from Arise Asset Management’s working capital. The term refers to the total cash available to the firm…
The Unearthing of the global drug trafficking networks
This investigative report by Ij-Reportika examines the three most significant trafficking routes in the Global Drugs Trafficking Networks
Newly arrived Rohingya refugees say hundreds want to leave Myanmar
Hundreds of people were waiting to cross into Bangladesh from Myanmar, a small group of newly arrived Rohingya told BenarNews, amid fierce fighting close to the border that has sparked diplomatic protests over reports of artillery and mortar shells landing in Bangladeshi territory. One of the new arrivals said he saw “several hundred” people clustered along a river that separates Cox’s Bazar district in southeastern Bangladesh from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, and who were trying to cross the frontier several days ago. It was not immediately clear what happened to those other people apparently displaced by intense clashes in recent weeks between Burmese junta forces and Arakan Army (AA) rebels. In Bangladesh, where the government has tightened security along the border amid the violence in Rakhine, authorities have not confirmed reports of any new refugee arrivals or influx into Cox’s Bazar. Meanwhile, a Rohingya leader said that at least five Rohingya fleeing Myanmar had arrived at a Cox’s Bazar camp in recent days. “Two Rohingya families of five people, including two infants, have taken shelter at the Lambasia camp in Ukhia,” Muhammed Jubair, secretary general of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), told BenarNews. The adults were identified as Abul Wafa, his wife, Minara, and another woman, Dildar Begum. Wafa said they fled from Buthidaung in Myanmar on Sept. 6 as junta and AA forces clashed. “The junta started torturing the Rohingya in Buthidaung,” he told BenarNews. “That’s why we came to Bangladesh to save our lives, but we are also hiding here.” “When we were entering Bangladesh, we saw several hundred Rohingya people, mostly women and children waiting to leave near the Naf River,” Wafa said. Two days earlier, on Sept. 4, the Foreign Ministry issued a news release expressing “deep concern” over mortars that reportedly landed on the Bangladeshi side of the frontier the day before. The release noted that Myanmar Ambassador U Aung Kyaw Moe was summoned regarding the incident, just as he had been summoned on Aug. 21 and 28. “During the meeting, the ambassador was also told that such activities are of grave threat to the safety and security of the peace-loving people, violation of the border agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar and contrary to the good neighborly relationship,” the ministry said. On Tuesday, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said he expected firing inside Myanmar along the border to end soon. “We heard that a group called Arakan Army was fighting with the government forces inside Myanmar. When the government forces attack the Arakan Army, some shells land inside our territory,” he told reporters. “Our Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), as well as Foreign Ministry, have strongly protested the incidents by calling the ambassador of Myanmar.” Refugees’ accounts Jubair said Wafa and the others sheltered with a relative after arriving in Bangladesh before moving into another camp. Wafa said his group gave a boatman a piece of gold jewelry to carry them across the Naf River because they had no money to pay him. Dildar Begum, 22, said her husband, Syed Ullah, was killed by the “Mogh army” a month ago. She was referring to the Arakan Army although “Mogh” is a term that Rohingya also often use to refer to the Burmese military. “I fled with Wafa’s family to Bangladesh as there was no other option for me,” she told BenarNews. In Rakhine state, an official with the AA rebels denied that the group was targeting members of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority. “The allegations on AA targeting Muslims are not just wrong but baseless accusations, because the fighting [in the state between Arakan Army and junta troops] has been more than a month,” Khine Thu Kha, a spokesman for the rebel group, told RFA Burmese. “We want to question back, did you guys see or hear any report of a Muslim killed or injured by the fighting? Did you hear any report or see anyone saying there was a shell or a bullet from AA falling in a Muslim village so far? Otherwise, it is just an accusation with other intentions to defame our organization.” Despite the claims made by the Rohingya, Md. Shamsud Douza, Bangladesh’s commissioner for Refugee Relief and Repatriation, said there was no official information about any new arrivals from Rakhine state infiltrating Bangladesh territory. “Clashes are occurring between two groups in Myanmar. It is very normal that it will create some tension on our border as a neighboring country,” he told BenarNews. “Our decision is very clear – we cannot allow even a single Rohingya to enter Bangladesh.” Robiul Islam, additional superintendent of police, said his unit was “not sure about a fresh entry of Rohingya but we are looking into the matter.” Sheikh Khalid Mohammad Iftekhar, a senior official of Border Guard Bangladesh, said the border police force had tightened security at the frontier to prevent any attempts by refugees to enter the country. From January to June, 478 Rohingya were denied entry and four were arrested, according to the BGB. Repatriation hopes A Rohingya who lives in Maungdaw, Myanmar, and asked to not be named for security concerns, said that the increasing conflict in the state had dampened Rohingya hopes for repatriation. “It will be difficult for them to return in this situation. The current situation will not allow them to come here,” the resident told RFA. “The situation here is not very good. There is no security. People here are fleeing to other areas because fighting is going on. In this situation, they will not be able to come back.” Fighting between the military and the AA resumed in July. Oo Maung Ohn, a resident of Maungdaw Township, blamed the resurgence in Rakhine State after a nearly two-year ceasefire on the junta. “Do you know why all this fighting resumed? They (the junta) closed the roads and started the fighting and they arrested many innocent people,” he told RFA. “They arrested village administrators, questioned them and hit them.” Rakhine State Attorney General Hla…
WeChat warns users their likes, comments and histories are being sent to China
The Chinese social media platform WeChat is warning users outside China that their data will be stored on servers inside the country, RFA has learned. A number of overseas WeChat users received a notification on Sept. 6, warning that “personal data [including] likes, comments, browsing and search history, content uploads, etc.” will be transmitted to China. The notification also reminds users that their behavior while using the app is subject to WeChat’s licensing agreement and privacy policy. A YouTuber living in France who gave only the pseudonym Miss Crook said she was shocked to receive a French translation of the same message. “I clicked through and … this message popped up, so I automatically clicked cancel,” she said. “It’s becoming clear what the difference is between a democracy and a dictatorship.” She said the move would likely affect large numbers of Chinese nationals and emigres living overseas. “Overseas Chinese have become very dependent on WeChat, but is it really that important?” she said. “We can actually stop using it completely, so we shouldn’t let them confuse us. It’s really not that important.” Faced with mounting international concern over privacy protection, WeChat said in September 2021 that it had “separated” its data storage facilities for domestic and international users, asking overseas users to re-sign the terms and conditions to keep using the app, which many people rely on to send money to people in China, make purchases in Chinese yuan, and stay in touch with friends and family. Former Sina Weibo censor Liu Lipeng said the move was largely a cosmetic one, however. “Last year … WeChat re-signed its agreements with all overseas users, but everything on there except for one-to-one chats have to use WeChat protocols,” Liu said. “So the moment you click OK, you are back in [the Chinese version] again.” “Everything you write is still available [to the Chinese authorities], so it’s basically sleight of hand. Nothing has changed,” he said. “You are a still a WeChat user.” U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao said WeChat’s parent company Tencent is already required under China’s Cybersecurity Law to assist the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with any data it says it needs, as are all of the other internet service providers and social media platforms in China. “The Chinese government has always used WeChat inside China as a tool to control society and censor speech, which is part and parcel its program of high-tech totalitarian control,” Teng told RFA. “It has also always used WeChat as a way to export its censorship beyond its borders, to the United States and other countries,” he said. “Western countries should consider re-evaluating WeChat as a threat to national security, data security, personal privacy and so on,” Teng said. “[They] cannot allow China’s censorship system to extend into the West and all around the world.” Growing concerns Concerns have been growing for some time over overseas censorship and surveillance via WeChat, with the U.S. banning any U.S.-based individuals or entities from doing business with Tencent, and rights activists describing it as a “prison” that keeps overseas users within reach of CCP law enforcement operations. Launched by Tencent in 2011, WeChat now has more than 1.1 billion users, second only to WhatsApp and Facebook, but the company keeps users behind China’s complex system of blocks, filters and human censorship known as the Great Firewall, even when they are physically in another country. The app is also used by China’s state security police to carry out surveillance and harassment of dissidents and activists in exile who speak out about human rights abuses in the country, or campaign for democratic reform. And it’s not just Chinese nationals who are being targeted. In May 2020, researchers at CitizenLab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto warned that anyone using WeChat, even if they have lived their whole lives outside China, is “subject to pervasive content surveillance that was previously thought to be exclusively reserved for China-registered accounts.” Documents and images transmitted entirely among non-China-registered accounts undergo content surveillance wherein these files are analyzed for content that is politically sensitive in China, the report, titled “We Chat, They Watch,” said. The report warned of “very serious” security and privacy issues associated with WeChat and other Chinese apps, and called on app stores to highlight risks to users before they download such apps. And a recent report detailing massive amounts of user data collected by TikTok also sparked privacy concerns around the hugely popular video app, which is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. In a technical analysis of TikTok’s source code, security research firm Internet 2-0 found the app, which is the sixth most-used globally with forecast advertising revenues of U.S. $12 billion in 2022, was “overly intrusive” and data collection was “excessive.” While TikTok claims user data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore, the report found evidence of “many subdomains in the iOS app scattered around the world,” including Baishan, China. As of September 2021 TikTok had more than one billion active users globally, 142.2 million of whom are in North America. The report found that TikTok makes use of a number of permissions considered “dangerous” by industry experts. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Junta arrests former UK ambassador to Myanmar on immigration charges
Junta authorities have arrested former U.K. Ambassador to Myanmar Vicky Bowman and her husband, a Burmese former political prisoner, for allegedly violating the country’s immigration laws, according to the military regime and a source with close ties to the couple. Bowman, who served as the U.K.’s top diplomat to Myanmar for four years ending in 2006, and her husband, artist Htein Lin, were taken into custody from their home in Yangon’s Dagon township at around 10 p.m. on Wednesday and initially held at an area police station, a person close to their family told RFA Burmese. The pair were transferred to Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison on Thursday afternoon and will be held there pending a court hearing scheduled for Sept. 6, the family friend said, speaking on condition of anonymity. According to a statement by the junta, Bowman had obtained a residence permit to stay in Yangon, where she runs the nonprofit organization Myanmar Center for Responsible Business, but relocated to her husband’s home in Shan state’s Kalaw township between May 4, 2021, and Aug. 9, 2022, without informing authorities of her change in address. Htein Lin abetted her by failing to report the move, the statement said. They face up to five years in prison. The source close to Bowman’s family told RFA that she and her husband had “not violated any laws,” as alleged by authorities. The arrests came as the U.K. announced new sanctions against “military-linked companies” that it said was part of a bid to “target the military’s access to arms and revenue” amid a crackdown by the junta on opponents to its rule. The British Embassy in Myanmar confirmed the arrests to RFA by email and said it is providing the pair with consular assistance. Calls for release Rights groups on Thursday called on the junta to drop the charges against Bowman and Htein Lin, a former activist with the All Burma Students Democratic Front who spent more than six years in prison between 1998 and 2004 for speaking out against military rule. Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director for New York-based Human Rights Watch, slammed the decision to arrest the couple as an “absurd, ridiculous & vengeful action” in a post to his Twitter account and called for their immediate and unconditional release. “[Junta chief] Gen. Min Aung Hlaing & #Tatmadaw just making things up to strike back at critics any way they can,” Robertson wrote. The arrests also drew condemnation in a statement from PEN America, an NGO that campaigns for writers’ freedom of expression. “The arbitrary and sudden arrests of Vicky Bowman and Htein Lin are yet more examples of the sweeping and abusive power that the military junta has wielded since its violent and illegal seizure of power in February 2021,” said Julie Trébault, director of the Artists at Risk Connection at PEN America. “We are deeply concerned for the safety of Vicky Bowman and Htein Lin and call for their immediate release.” ‘Revenge’ arrests Friends of Bowman and Htein Lin told RFA they believe the junta had fabricated charges against the couple as a form of “revenge” for Htein Lin’s activism and the fresh U.K. sanctions. Artist Zaw Gyi said Bowman was within her rights to stay at her husband’s home, which should be seen as part of the couple’s collective assets. “This is just an example of trying to find fault to cause a problem,” he said. “How could Htein Lin stay out of this when his wife is being arrested?” Writer Wai Hmuu Thwin called the arrests “a case of tit for tat by the junta.” “[In other countries] if you enter through immigration legally, there are no problems, regardless of where you stay,” he said. “I see this as a form of revenge because the British government announced sanctions … recently. Since Vicky Bowman was a former British ambassador, she and her husband got caught in the middle.” Authorities in Myanmar have killed nearly 2,250 civilians and arrested more than 15,200 others since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests, according to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
The devastating hyperinflation in the post COVID world
Countries are in shambles in the post COVID world due to hyperinflation. China, India and Japan bounced back but not all!!
Critics say Cambodia tries to trick UN official into believing it respects rights
Cambodian labor activists said a visiting United Nations human rights official was given the false impression that the country supports worker rights by authorities who paused a violent crackdown on a months-long protest by a group of former casino employees while the official toured the site. Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Cambodia, is on an 11-day official visit to the country, his first since assuming office in March 2021. His tour included a meeting with the group of former NagaWorld Casino workers who have been protesting since they were among 1,300 laid off by the casino in December 2021. The workers say they were unfairly fired and offered inadequate compensation. “I was pleased to be able to visit striking workers and see them exercise their freedom of expression and right to peaceful assembly today,” Vitit Muntarbhorn wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday. During the visit, the former workers were uncharacteristically allowed to protest directly in front of the casino on Wednesday and Thursday. United Nations Human Rights in Cambodia also monitored the protest on Wednesday, releasing video footage on Facebook with a statement acknowledging that the protest was peaceful. “The UN Human Rights Cambodia office welcomes today’s developments and looks forward to authorities continuing to protect strikers’ rights, including the right to #peaceful #assembly and #FreedomofExpression,” the statement said. But the scene has not alway been so peaceful. The striking workers have more typically been met by police officers, who often used violence to force the protestors onto buses, which would then shuttle them to quarantine centers on the outskirts of town on the premise that their protests violated COVID-19 prevention measures. Some strikers have been injured in the crackdown, now in its ninth month. One woman said she suffered a miscarriage as a result of her injuries inflicted by police. Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, told RFA’s Khmer Service that the new hands-off approach to the worker over the past few days is a ruse intended to convince Vitit Muntarbhorn and the U.N. that Cambodia respects human rights, but things will return to normal once he leaves. “The government wants to save face and trick the rapporteur,” Rong Chhun said. “Please, Mr. Rapporteur, don’t believe this trick. … [Later] there will be more freedom restrictions.” The rapporteur’s presence alone was enough to get authorities to ease restrictions, Chhim Sithar, leader of the NagaWorld union that represents the strikers, told RFA. “Before the arrival of the rapporteur, there were serious violent attacks [on the strikers] which injured at least two women recently. It is completely different now,” she said. “We have observed that [Prime Minister] Hun Sen requested that [the rapporteur] report positive things about Cambodia, so violence has been reduced. This is just a show to make sure that the rapporteur can’t see factual events,” she said. Government supporters say that the special rapporteur is being shown the true Cambodia. “Those who accuse the government of faking respect for human rights are trying to create a toxic environment to destroy the government’s reputation,” Kata Orn, spokesman for the government-backed Cambodian Human Rights Committee, told RFA. He said that there is an understanding between the workers and the authorities that allows the workers to strike without any crackdown. Political analyst Kem Sok told RFA that the rapporteur should gather information from all the stakeholders before making any statement. “Hun Sen has no desire to respect human rights and democracy otherwise it is a threat to his power,” he said. U.S. delegation A group of U.S. lawmakers led by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) also visited Cambodia this week as part of their tour of Asia. During a meeting with more than a dozen government officials, Markey urged Cambodia to protect human rights, political freedoms and free speech. “Cambodians overcame decades of war and chaos that cost the country millions of lives, and deserve to enjoy the democratic freedoms they were promised. The government must release political prisoners, end the crackdown against opposition parties, and allow for freedom of expression and a free press,” Markey said in a statement. Markey also called for the release of Cambodian American activist Theary Seng, who is serving a six-year prison sentence for her outspoken opposition to Hun Sen. The delegation also met with opposition leader Kem Sohka, who is on trial for what critics say are politically motivated charges of treason. “I thank Mr. Kem Sokha for his bravery and willingness to continue to stand up for the rights of all Cambodians despite ongoing harassment by the government,” said Markey. “All charges against him should be dropped immediately, and he and the Cambodia National Rescue Party should be free to participate in elections.” Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
