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Category: ASEAN

Military carried out ‘collective punishment’ on ethnic civilians in eastern Myanmar

Editor08 mins

Myanmar’s military has subjected ethnic civilians in Kayin and Kayah states to “collective punishment” through aerial and ground attacks, detentions that lead to torture or extrajudicial executions, and the razing of villages, according to a new report by London-based rights group Amnesty International. The report, entitled “‘Bullets rained from the sky”: War crimes and displacement in eastern Myanmar’” and published Wednesday, found that clashes between the military and armed groups in the two regions reignited in the wake of the military’s February 2021 coup and worsened significantly from December to March this year. Hundreds of ethnic Karen and Karenni civilians have been killed in the fighting and more than 150,000 people have been displaced. “The world’s attention may have moved away from Myanmar since last year’s coup, but civilians continue to pay a high price. The military’s ongoing assault on civilians in eastern Myanmar has been widespread and systematic, likely amounting to crimes against humanity,” Rawya Rageh, senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Alarm bells should be ringing: the ongoing killing, looting and burning bear all the hallmarks of the military’s signature tactic of collective punishment, which it has repeatedly used against ethnic minorities across the country.” Amnesty based its report on research it carried out in March and April this year, including interviews dozens of eyewitnesses and survivors of attacks as well as three defectors from the military. The group analyzed more than 100 photos and videos related to rights violations, in addition to satellite imagery, fire data and open-source military aircraft flight data. Amnesty said that since the coup, the military “has relentlessly attacked civilians” to punish those who purportedly support a particular armed group or the wider anti-junta uprising, while at other times “fir[ing] indiscriminately into civilian areas” where there are also military targets. “Direct attacks on civilians, collective punishment and indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians violate international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes,” the group said. “Attacks on a civilian population must be widespread or systematic to amount to crimes against humanity; in Kayin and Kayah States, they are both, for crimes including murder, torture, forcible transfer and persecution on ethnic grounds.” Amnesty said it documented two dozen attacks by artillery or mortars between December and March that killed or injured civilians or that destroyed civilian buildings, adding that eyewitnesses said some of the attacks lasted “days at a time.” The group also documented eight air strikes on villages and camps housing refugees fleeing clashes in the first quarter of 2022 that killed nine civilians and injured at least nine others. Eyewitnesses described the attacks on locations where “only civilians appear to have been present” as extremely traumatic, leaving many unable to sleep or unwilling to return to their homes out of fear that they would be targeted again. A school destroyed by a military airstrike in Lay Kay Kaw, April 11, 2022. Credit: KNLA Cobra Column Extrajudicial executions, looting and burning Additionally, Amnesty’s reporting found that the military regularly carried out arbitrary detentions of civilians based on their ethnicity or because of their suspected support of an anti-junta group. Detainees “were tortured, forcibly disappeared or extrajudicially executed,” Amnesty said. The group specifically pointed to an incident that drew international condemnation in Kayah state’s Hpruso township on Christmas Eve last year, when the military stopped at least 35 women, men and children in multiple vehicles, killed them, and burned their bodies. An examination found that many of the victims had been tied up and gagged and were likely shot or stabbed to death. Amnesty has called for an investigation into the incident as a case of extrajudicial executions which, during armed conflict, constitute war crimes, the group noted. Other incidents mentioned in the report were related to what Amnesty called the military’s “systematic” looting and burning of villages in Kayin and Kayah state. Together, violence in the two regions has displaced more than 150,000 people, the group said, “including between a third and a half of Kayah state’s entire population.” The victims of this displacement are forced to shelter in “dire conditions,” it said, while aid workers are obstructed by the military from providing them access to much-needed food and health care. “Donors and humanitarian organizations must significantly scale up aid to civilians in eastern Myanmar, and the military must halt all restrictions on aid delivery,” said Matt Wells, Amnesty International’s crisis response deputy director for thematic issues. “The military’s ongoing crimes against civilians in eastern Myanmar reflect decades-long patterns of abuse and flagrant impunity. The international community — including ASEAN and U.N. member states — must tackle this festering crisis now. The U.N. Security Council must impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Myanmar and refer the situation there to the International Criminal Court.”

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Myanmar’s junta shuts down publisher for distributing book on Rohingya genocide

Editor05 mins

Myanmar’s military regime has shut down a well-known publishing house in Yangon for importing and distributing a book on the 2017 Rohingya genocide, junta-controlled state newspapers said Wednesday. The regime accused Lwin Oo Sarpay Publishing House of violating the country’s 1962 publishing law by distributing and selling the book titled Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech by Ronan Lee, an Irish-Australian researcher at Loughborough University London. The junta shuttered the company’s book distribution center on May 28. State-owned media reported said Lwin Oo Sarpay was closed because it was distributing the book via Facebook. Since taking over Myanmar in a February 2021 coup, the junta has shut down media outlets critical of its regime and shuttered publishers that distribute books not in line with its own narrative. In recent weeks, the junta has shut down two other publishing houses, Shwe Lat and Yan Aung Sarpay, and the Win To Aung printing press. Human rights groups have produced a trove of credible reports based on commercial satellite imagery and extensive interviews with Rohingya about the military’s clearance operations in Rakhine state in 2017, including arbitrary killings, torture and mass rape. The violence drove more than 740,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh where they now living in sprawling refugee camps. Lee, a former member of Parliament for Queensland state, Australia, researched Rohingya refugees, including through field work in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand, as part of his doctoral studies. His book, published in 2021, presents new evidence that the government of Myanmar enabled a genocide in Rakhine state and the surrounding areas, where most of the country’s Rohingya live. Drawing on interviews and testimony from the Rohingya, it assesses the full scale of the genocide of the Muslim minority group, including human rights violations, forced migrations and extrajudicial killings in 2017 under the previous leadership of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued an official determination that Myanmar’s military committed genocide against the Rohingya in 2017, going a step further than the U.S. government’s previous findings that the military had committed ethnic cleansing. A resident of Yangon who reads books distributed by Lwin Oo Sarpay told RFA that the closure of the publishing house was politically motivated because the junta does not want citizens to know what really happened to the Rohingya. “Lwin Oo Sarpay has been distributing books on politics and history by local and foreign authors,” said the resident who did not want to be named for safety reasons. “Now that it is closed down and its [operating] license has been withdrawn, people will not learn what they should know.” The military has accused Lwin Oo Sarpay of violating Section 8 of the Printing and Publishing Law, which imposes restrictions on the content of publications and websites run by publishers and bans the import or distribution of foreign publications that contain banned content. In this case, the prohibited content was deemed as causing harm to an ethic group or among ethnic groups. RFA could not reach Lwin Oo Sarpay for comment.  Translated by Khin Maung Nyane for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Chinese forces step up exercises around Taiwan, South China Sea

Editor05 mins

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has intensified activities around Taiwan and in the South China Sea in an apparent response to the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, as well as its support for Taipei. The PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command recently conducted a multi-force patrol “in the waters and airspace around the Taiwan Island,” said an army spokesman. This is the third large-scale military exercise around Taiwan in the past 30 days. Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command, said the joint combat-readiness security patrol involved “multiple services and arms,” but did not specify the date. “These actions are a necessary response to the collusion activities between the U.S. and the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” Shi said. He added that the U.S. “has been making frequent moves on the Taiwan question recently,” and warned that by emboldening and supporting Taiwan, Washington “will put Taiwan in a dangerous situation and bring serious consequences to itself.” Last weekend two U.S. aircraft carriers – the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Ronald Reagan – reportedly conducted dual-carrier exercises in waters to the southeast of Okinawa, according to the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Beijing-based think tank. Chinese analysts say the area could be a main maritime battlefield if the U.S. militarily intervened in a possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait. A U.S. delegation led by Senator Tammy Duckworth has just completed a three-day visit to Taipei to “talk about our support for Taiwan security.” The U.S will also make sure Taiwan “does not have to struggle alone,” Duckworth told Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who said that a cooperation plan between the U.S. National Guard and Taiwan’s armed forces was in the works. On the day of her arrival, 30 Chinese aircraft flew into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), making it the second-highest number of daily incursions since the beginning of the year. The senator’s visit has infuriated Beijing. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said China “deplores and rejects this and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side.”  South China Sea drills On Wednesday morning the PLA conducted a military exercise in waters south of Hainan island in the South China Sea, according to a navigation warning issued by the Hainan Maritime Safety Administration. A navigation warning is a public advisory notice to mariners about changes to navigational aids and current marine activities or hazards including fishing zones and military exercises. The warning did not specify what kind of military exercise took place but the coordinates provided indicate the location was just south of Hainan, not far from the Gulf of Tonkin that China shares with Vietnam. Meanwhile on Wednesday Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) condemned the harassment by the Chinese Coast Guard of a joint Filipino-Taiwanese research vessel in the South China Sea in April, calling it “a breach of a United Nations convention.” A day earlier, the Philippines summoned a senior Chinese diplomat to protest over the incident. From late March to early April, the China Coast Guard (CCG) tailed the Legend, a Taiwanese research vessel with Filipino scientists, as it mapped undersea fault lines in the waters northwest of Luzon Island in the South China Sea.

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Hundreds of Ede families in Vietnam demonstrate to demand land from forestry company

Editor06 mins

Hundreds of ethnic minority households from a commune in south-central Vietnam’s Dak Lak province are fighting to reclaim their land from a forestry company after 40 years of working on it as hired laborers. Protests in Lang village, Ea Pok town, Cu Mgar district began last month, with farmers demanding the return of about 40 hectares of arable land. Demonstrations came to a head on May 18 when hundreds of people gathered on the land to protest against the coffee company’s destruction of their crops. Videos and photos of the protest were shared on social media, showing riot police clashing with demonstrators. Demonstrations continued last week, with protestors holding up banners asking the coffee company to return the land. State media has so far not reported on the incident. “We want the company to return our ancestral land so that people can have a business in the future,” a local resident told RFA under the condition of anonymity. “People are getting [taxed] more and more but have less land, so people need to reclaim the land.”   According to RFA research, Lang village has about 250 households, all indigenous Ede people. The residents all make a living from farming. ‘The company does not give a dime’ Residents told RFA they had been cultivating the land for many generations but after 1975 the local government took it and gave it to the state-owned enterprise, Eapok Coffee Farm to grow coffee trees. The company later changed its name to Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company. Locals went from being landowners to hired workers on their own land. They say the company allowed them to cultivate the land from 1983 until now but told them to produce 18 tons of coffee per hectare or pay for up to 80% of each harvest.  “People work hard, but they don’t have enough to eat because they have to pay the company’s output. In many cases, they don’t even have enough output to pay so they are in debt and have to pay for it in the next crop,” said one resident who was assigned to grow coffee on 8,000 square meters of land. Residents say that in 2010 the company allowed them to uproot coffee trees and grow other crops, including corn, but did not support them by offering seedlings, fertilizers, or pesticides. The company also continued to impose output quotas or taxed as much as 80% of the crop.  “People have to pay by themselves. The company does not give a dime or give a single pill when people are sick,” said another resident farming 10,000 square meters of land. Struggling farmers decided to file an application with the government in 2019 to reclaim their land and farming rights. Locals say this year Ea Pok Coffee asked them to start growing durian trees. When they opposed the plan the company started destroying crops on May 18 to prepare the land for durian cultivation. When an RFA Vietnamese reporter called Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company to ask for comments they were told the press must register with the company’s leaders, and get their approval first.  When asked about the government’s attitude towards people’s demands, a local resident said: “We sent petitions to the town government and the provincial government but got no response. The first time five households signed, then many more households signed. The government always sides with the company, rather than helping the people.” RFA contacted Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, chairwoman of the People’s Committee of Ea Pok town, to ask about the dispute between Lang villagers and the coffee company. She said that she would not accept telephone interviews. When asked if people would agree to maintain the current form of contract farming if Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company reduced taxes and increased support, local people said they still committed to reclaiming the land. Translated by Ngu Vu.

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Ten-year-old boy critically injured in army shelling of Myanmar refugee camp

Editor05 mins

Seven displaced people sheltering in a monastery, including a ten-year-old boy, have been injured by heavy artillery in Kalay township, in the war-torn Sagaing region, local residents told RFA Wednesday. They said army shells hit the monastery at Nat Myaung village on Tuesday. Two men and four women were injured along with the boy. A local resident, who declined to be named for safety reasons, said soldiers heading to Nat Chaung village were intercepted by local militia of the People Defense Forces (PDFs). The army troops intentionally shelled the monastery, the resident said. “The army came from the north. They entered from the cemetery east of Nat Myaung village and passed through the village,” the local said. “An internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp has been set up at Nat Myaung village’s monastery. There is a field between the monastery and the village. The soldiers went through between the Aung Su Pan monastery and Net Chaung Educational School and were confronted by the local defense forces. The army did not fire the heavy artillery in the direction of the militia. Soldiers turned back and intentionally fired at the monastery where the IDPs are sheltering.” The source, who is close to the injured family, said the heavy artillery hit the 10-year-old boy who was critically injured. He was sent to a 100-bed military hospital in Kalemyo. The local resident said the other six people were not critically wounded and are being treated at the monastery. The shells also hit a fence and water tank at the monastery, according to residents Calls to a military council spokesman by RFA still remain unanswered. Fighting between the military troops and local militia PDFs at Nat Chaung village near Nat Myaung village intensified on Wednesday morning, according to local residents.  There are more than 200 villages in Kale Township. It was the first township in Myanmar to take arms against the military junta. Some 150 people have been killed and nearly 500 arrested due to the military crackdown, arrests on suspicion and arbitrary killings of anti-regime protesters in Kale Township in the year since the military coup, according to anti-regime protesters.  Military, NUG trade accusations over Yangon blast  The attack comes as the military junta and government-in-exile trade accusations over an explosion in downtown Yangon that killed one person and injured nine others. No-one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack but a junta spokesman said the National Unity Government (NUG) was behind the blast. He did not provide evidence.  NUG spokesman Dr. Sasa said in a statement that evidence pointed to the junta, claiming the “brutal genocidal military has been carrying out senseless bombings and killings against its own civilian population across Myanmar.”  Also Tuesday, a bomb blast at around 2 p.m. (3:30 p.m. EDT) near a state education office in Naung Cho Township, northern Shan State, killed at least one person and wounded seven.  The Institute for Strategy and Policy said in a report this month it had documented at least 5,646 civilian deaths between the Feb. 1, 2021 coup and May 10. The figures include people killed by security forces during anti-junta protests, in clashes between the military and pro-democracy paramilitaries or ethnic armies, while held in detention, and in revenge attacks, including against informers for the regime.

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News from next door

Editor01 mins

Communist-ruled Laos, a one-party state, was described by Reporters Without Borders as an information “black hole” where the government exerts complete control over news outlets. The watchdog group’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index placed Laos 161st out of 180 countries in the index and noted that many of the Southeast Asian country’s 7 million people get their news from next-door Thailand, which has a similar language and enjoys more media freedom.

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Refugees displaced by conflict in Myanmar now more than 1 million

Editor014 mins

The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar has surpassed 1 million people for the first time in the nation’s history, including nearly 700,000 forced to flee conflict and insecurity since the military’s coup in February 2021, according to a new report by the United Nations. In an update published on Tuesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the new estimate of IDPs fleeing fighting between the military and ethnic armies or anti-junta paramilitaries includes around 346,000 internal refugees displaced mainly in Rakhine, Kachin, Chin and Shan states by conflict prior to the coup. “During the reporting period, various parts of Myanmar have witnessed an escalation in fighting, further entrenching the already fragile humanitarian situation,” the agency said in a statement. “The impact on civilians is worsening daily with frequent indiscriminate attacks and incidents involving explosive hazards, including landmines and explosive remnants of war.” According to OCHA’s findings, thousands of IDPs who have already fled their homes are being forced to move for a second or third time, while more than 40,000 people have crossed borders into neighboring countries since the coup. It counted nearly 13,000 civilian properties as having been destroyed in the fighting, which it said will complicated the return of refugees, even if the situation improves. “Consequently, complex needs are surfacing, requiring immediate humanitarian responses to save lives and protect those affected, supporting them to live in dignified conditions,” it said. Adding to the threat of violence, OCHA said that thousands in Myanmar have been hit by the increasing cost of essential commodities, such as food and fuel, noting that on average the price of diesel in mid-April 2022 was nearly 2.5 times higher than it was in February last year. “This inflation has affected people’s purchasing power and is starting to impact on the work of several clusters, particularly food security and shelter, who depend on commodities to implement their humanitarian programming,” OCHA said. To make matters worse, coastal areas of Myanmar — including Rakhine, Kayin, Kachin and Shan states — have been battered by strong storms and heavy rain since April, destroying civilian structures and compounding the vulnerabilities of IDPs in displacement sites. OCHA said that while by the end of the first quarter of 2022, 2.6 million people — or some 41% of those targeted in this year’s Humanitarian Response Plan — had been provided assistance, the funding situation for the plan is now “dire” and currently around U.S. $740 million short of its goal. “The consequences will be grave if this level of underfunding continues in the remainder of 2022,” it said. “Humanitarian partners will be forced to cut back on their support at a time when this assistance is needed the most, particularly as the monsoon season is just getting underway.” A child refugee suffering from diarrhea in Sagaing region’s Southern Kalemyo township, May 6, 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist Nationwide hardships for IDPs OCHA’s update came as IDPs and aid workers told RFA’s Burmese Service that those displaced by conflict in Myanmar are facing severe hardship in securing food, shelter and healthcare as the monsoon season begins. They said that while local and international humanitarian organizations have been made aware of the needs, transportation complications — largely due to weather or conflict — have made it nearly impossible for aid to be delivered. A resident of Salingyi township in war-torn Sagaing region told RFA that IDPs are facing an increasing number of life-threatening illnesses because of a lack of access to basic supplies and medical care. “We are currently facing a shortage of food and tarps for shelter, as well as health problems,” said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal. “It is the rainy season now and we are afraid of malaria, as we are living in the forests.” The junta’s Health Ministry recently said it had recorded 1,516 cases of dengue fever leading to two deaths in Myanmar in the nearly five months from January to May 20, adding that it expects a significant increase in cases this year. An aid worker in Sagaing’s Debayin township, who also declined to be named, described the plight of refugees as “serious” — mostly due to worsening food shortages. “We don’t have much rice or cooking oil. [The military] set fire to everything,” they said. “With a couple of thousand to feed, we do not have enough supplies. We just must share what we have.” In Kayah state’s Phruso township, where clashes continue to occur frequently, an aid worker said that road closures due to weather have left more than 6,000 refugees dangerously short of food. “It was difficult even during the summer, and now we’re having transportation problems,” they said. “We can’t use the main road [due to fighting] and the roads we are using now are very bad. When it rains continuously, the cars can slip off the road. It happens a lot with vehicles delivering food.” Landslides and floods in Chin state’s Mindat township have also made travel difficult, residents said. Nonetheless, sources in the area told RFA that the military has continued operations in the area, ignoring the growing number of refugees. Junta deputy information minister, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, assured RFA that the authorities “are taking full responsibilities for delivering aid” when asked about the situation on Tuesday but blamed slow distribution on the need to “inspect” donations. “We could deliver aid to those in need in time, but … any aid coming to the country must go through ruling government agencies or groups that are sanctioned by the government to operate,” he said, referring to the junta. “The complaints [about delayed distribution] come from groups that want to skirt the regulations,” he added, without providing details. The decision to send international assistance to Myanmar through the junta was made at a May 6 meeting on the country’s humanitarian crisis by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia. In the meantime,…

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Cambodia arrests returned exile who supports opposition political party

Editor06 mins

Authorities in Cambodia on Monday arrested a former youth activist and Norwegian citizen who recently returned from exile to support the opposition Candlelight Party in the June 5 local communal elections, RFA has learned. Ear Channa had been living in Norway after he was granted asylum there in 2005 for criticizing the Cambodian government’s attempts to solve a border dispute with Vietnam. While abroad, he came to support the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved in 2017. The move allowed Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) to claim all 125 seats in the National Assembly during general elections the following year, kicking off a five-year crackdown on political opponents to the CPP. The Candlelight Party grew over the past year to become Cambodia’s largest opposition party. Candlelight officials have complained for weeks about their party’s candidates being harassed by officials supporting the ruling CPP. Ear Channa came back to Cambodia last week to serve as the vice president of Candlelight’s organization in Takeo province in the country’s south. He was arrested while trying to apply for a passport in Phnom Penh and sent to detention in Prey Sar Prison on charges of conspiracy to commit treason for his actions two years ago, when he allegedly disturbed the social order to such a degree as to affect the nation’s security. Candlelight Party Vice President Son Chhay told RFA’s Khmer Service that Ear Channa is the second person affiliated with the party to have been arrested after voluntarily repatriating. He expressed concern over the arrest, calling it another example of intimidation against his party. “Why are they making these kinds of arrests during the election campaign period?” he said. The campaign period started on May 21 and will end on June 3. “This is all intimidation to disturb the election.” CPP spokesman Sok Ey San said the arrest and the election were not related. “This is not pressure against an opponent. It has nothing to do with the election. Don’t connect this case to the election campaign,” he said, and cited the pending 2020 warrant. Sok Ey San also said that an active election campaign period cannot prevent the court from issuing warrants or arresting criminals. Heng Kim Lay in a file photo. Credit: citizen journalist Monk excommunicated In another move against the opposition, a Buddhist monk in the northern province of Siem Reap said he was removed from his office for his support for the Candlelight Party. Heng Kim Lay raised funds for the party which caused several pagodas to deny him entrance. He left the party on May 28, but the pagodas refused to bring him back into the fold. “As a monk, I have political rights, and I should not be a victim,” he told RFA. Supporters have urged him to flee to Thailand, he said, but he has decided not to. RFA was unable to reach Ministry of Cults and Religions spokesman Seng Somoni for comment.  Removing a monk for his political views is illegal, according to Am Sam Ath of the Cambodian League for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights NGO. “Monks have the right to support any political party. He has done nothing wrong,” he said. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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Philippines summons Chinese diplomat over ship’s ‘harassment’ in South China Sea

Editor07 mins

Manila summoned a senior Chinese diplomat to protest the China Coast Guard’s alleged “harassment” of a joint Filipino-Taiwanese research ship in the South China Sea in April, officials here said Tuesday, in a fresh dispute as a new president prepares to take power in the Philippines.   The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) also said it was taking diplomatic action against other recent incidents of Chinese ships allegedly accosting Philippine and Philippine-commissioned ships in the contested waterway. Manila issued the statement days after the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think-tank, published a report on “three rounds of coercion in Philippine waters” by Chinese ships. In one of the incidents, a China Coast Guard (CCG) tailed the Legend, a research vessel with the Taiwan Ocean Research Institute under the Ministry of Science and Technology, as it mapped undersea fault lines in the waters northwest of Luzon Island in the Philippines from late March to early April, AMTI reported. The Legend was jointly deployed by the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences and the National Central University in Taiwan. “The Department summoned a senior official of the Chinese Embassy in Manila to protest the harassment by CCG on RV Legend, which had been conducting an authorized marine scientific research (MSR) activity, with Philippine scientists on board,” the Philippine foreign office said in a statement. On Tuesday, the Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a BenarNews request for comment. In another incident in April, a CCG ship allegedly followed a pair of Philippine-commissioned ships conducting a seismic survey of an area within the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and extended continental shelf (ECS). That incident prompted Manila to halt all oil and gas exploration in both those areas in the South China Sea, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. In April, Manila’s energy department ordered Philippine company PXP Energy to suspend exploration by contractors in SC 75 and SC 72, an area where it had planned to drill an appraisal well. The ships were forced to survey a different area to the east, and they left the Philippines several days later, the DFA said. “The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs takes appropriate diplomatic action for violations of Philippine sovereignty [and] sovereign rights within our maritime jurisdiction,” the department said in its Tuesday statement. “Only the Philippine Coast Guard has enforcement jurisdiction over these waters. The presence of foreign vessels following tracks that are neither continuous nor expeditious, that are not consistent with Article 19 of UNCLOS on innocent passage, are against the interests of the Philippines,” it said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. “The detailed reports of these activities are being reviewed for the filing of appropriate diplomatic action.” ‘Our territorial right’ These protests come on the heels of yet another DFA protest filed Monday on China’s “unilateral imposition” of a 3½-month fishing moratorium in areas of the South China Sea. They also come as President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. gets set to take over as leader of the country after President Rodrigo Duterte’s term ends on June 30. Under Duterte, Manila and Beijing had a cozy relationship with the Philippine leader overlooking a 2016 international tribunal ruling affirming Manila’s sovereign rights to an EEZ and ECS in the South China Sea, and declaring Beijing’s sweeping claims to much of the entire sea invalid under international law. Beijing has rejected the ruling. Manila has, in recent years, filed a series of diplomatic protests with Beijing over the presence of Chinese ships in Philippine-claimed waters. Last week, Marcos vowed that he would assert the international tribunal’s ruling after taking office. He said there was “no wiggle room” on the issue of sovereignty – his strongest public comments so far about the dispute that involves China, the Philippines’ biggest Asian neighbor. “We will use it to continue to assert our territorial rights. It’s not a claim, it is already our territorial right and that is what the arbitral ruling can do to help us,” he said. “Our sovereignty is sacred and we will not compromise it in any way. We are a sovereign nation with a functioning government, so we do not need to be told by anyone how to run our country.” BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

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China faces diplomatic setback in its push for influence in Pacific islands

Editor08 mins

China and 10 small Pacific island nations have failed to sign a Beijing-initiated agreement amid concerns in the region about geopolitical power play. An analyst said that was a diplomatic setback to China. It followed expressions of concern to Pacific nations from the U.S. and regional powers, but it was unlikely to diminish Beijing’s ambitions to expand its influence in the region. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was seeking to conclude the sweeping security and trade pact, dubbed the China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision, at a meeting with Pacific counterparts in Fiji on Monday.  Wang is on an unprecedented 10-day, Pacific tour that includes the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste.  A draft copy of the pact seen by news agencies covers multiple sectors from security to data communication to fisheries.  Monday’s meeting, however, ended without an agreement because participating ministers couldn’t reach a consensus, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama was quoted as saying by Australian broadcaster ABC. Bainimarama, who is also Fiji’s foreign minister, posted on Twitter afterward: “The Pacific needs genuine partners, not superpowers that are super-focused on power.” What Fiji was looking for in the cooperation with China was “stronger Chinese commitment to keep 1.5 alive, end illegal fishing, protect the #BluePacific’s ocean, and expand Fijian exports.” By “keep 1.5 alive” the prime minister was referring to the commitment to prevent global warming from exceeding more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Before that, Bainimarama also tweeted that “our greatest concern isn’t geopolitics – it’s climate change.” Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama speaks at a press conference at the Pacific Islands Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Suva, Fiji, May 30, 2022. Credit: Fiji government. Australia’s diplomatic efforts Fiji has just accepted a U.S. invitation to become a founding member of the newly-launched Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that comprises a dozen countries in the region. Several Pacific island nations have expressed concern about being caught up in superpower competition. Federated States of Micronesia’s President David Panuelo earlier urged “serious caution” about signing the agreement with China, which he said “is demonstrative of China’s intention to shift Pacific allegiances in their direction.”  Panuelo warned that “the Common Development Vision threatens to bring a new Cold War era at best, and a World War at worst.” The United States, Australia and New Zealand have been expressing concerns about China’s growing influence and security foothold in the Pacific. On the same day that Wang Yi started his eight-nation tour, Australia sent its new foreign minister, Penny Wong, to Fiji with promises that the new Labor government will renew the focus on climate change and continued economic support for the region. Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, a U.S. Department of Defense institute based in Hawaii, said: “I think the shelving of the China-Pacific Islands deal at the last minute resulted from pressure by the United States, Australia, and maybe some other regional powers. Penny Wong’s visit is part of this effort.”  “This is a diplomatic victory for these ‘China-wary’ nations and a diplomatic defeat for China,” he said, but added that China “will not accept a defeat.” The Chinese Ambassador to Fiji, Qian Bo, while admitting that some Pacific countries had “some concerns on some specific issues” said that there has been general support for the plan. China’s Foreign Ministry also hailed the foreign ministers’ meeting as a “success” and “an important step towards reaching the final agreement.” ‘Greater harmony, greater progress’ Foreign Minister Wang was telling his counterparts after Monday’s meeting: “Don’t be too anxious and don’t be too nervous.”   “Because the common development and prosperity of China and all the other developing countries would only mean great harmony, greater justice and greater progress of the whole world,” he was quoted by news agencies as saying. Meanwhile Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, condemned “a few people” in the Pacific island countries, who “under the pressure and coercion of the U.S. and former colonizer, may be willing to serve American interests at the cost of their national and people’s interests.” During the foreign minister’s visits to Kiribati and Samoa, China signed separate bilateral deals with the two nations. The agreements signed in Kiribati last Friday focus on a range of areas including development planning, infrastructure, health and pandemic response, climate change, and maritime affairs. In Samoa on Saturday, China and Samoa signed an economic and technical cooperation agreement and two smaller cooperation projects, including for the construction of a police academy, according to a Samoan government statement. “The agreements China is signing with the Pacific Islands nations today represent the early steps on the road toward more ambitious goals,” said Vuving. “They may just talk about security cooperation in vague terms, but they are to pave the way for China’s ultimate military presence,” he said.

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Investigative Journalism Reportika © March 2022 by Ij-Reportika is licensed under CC BY 4.0