Category: East Asia

A Chinese delegation of medical experts has arrived in Pyongyang to advise North Korea on strategies to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been spreading rapidly over the past month, sources in both countries told RFA. Though North Korea has been reluctant to ask for foreign help during the pandemic, Pyongyang specifically requested that China send a team of experts for guidance, a North Korea-related source in Beijing told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Last week 13 medical officials, doctors and medical technicians left Beijing for Pyongyang, and they are currently staying at the National Academy of Sciences in Pyongyang’s Unjong district,” the source said on Sunday. “North Korea requested help in the fight against the spread of COVID-19 across the country, especially around the Pyongyang area,” he said. The Chinese experts will work closely with North Korea’s National Emergency Quarantine Command, hoping to pass on practical knowledge and expertise in dealing with the virus. They will also train North Korean medical personnel. “So far, China has provided supplies like COVID-19 test kits, protective shields, and vaccines to North Korea. In the future, China will also provide support for production technologies and facilities that can produce diagnostic kits,” said the source. North Korea last year rejected 3 million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine last September, saying that other countries needed them more. The vaccines the source was referring to are not confirmation that North Korea has begun officially accepting vaccines from China. Sources have told RFA that doses for elite members of society have made their way to Pyongyang in small amounts. For more than two years, North Korea denied that any of its citizens had contracted the coronavirus. This month, Pyongyang finally announced its first cases and deaths, saying the Omicron variant had begun to spread among participants of a large-scale military parade in late April. The country declared a “maximum emergency,” but the situation has worsened as nearly 3 million people have reported having symptoms of the virus. The government has been isolating suspected patients, but the country’s healthcare system is woefully underdeveloped and ill-prepared to withstand the shocks of a major pandemic. As COVID-19 cases increased drastically in Pyongyang, the Central Committee of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party requested urgent assistance from China, a resident of Pyongyang told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “They asked for China to provide medical equipment such as COVID-19 vaccines, test kits and protective clothing and face shields,” said the second source. “While the medical equipment is being brought to Pyongyang, the Central Committee has also requested China’s help in releasing technology needed to help with biological research,” he said. The government established a bio-research center to fight COVID-19, but it hasn’t produced any results yet due to a lack of overseas knowledge. “China agreed to help with our request. The medical staff and technicians came to Pyongyang last week and have been conducting technical training at the National Academy of Science Bio research center located in Pyongyang,” he said. North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported on May 14 that the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, ordered researchers to learn from China’s quarantine achievements and experiences. “The Chinese government is willing to support and strengthen cooperation with North Korea during the COVID-19 response,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said. About 2.9 million people have been hit by outbreaks of fever, 68 of whom have died, according to data based on reports from North Korean state media published by 38 North, a site that provides analysis on the country and is run by the U.S.-based think tank the Stimson Center. Around 2.5 million are reported to have made recoveries, while 400,200 are undergoing treatment. The country has only a handful of confirmed COVID-19 cases, which 38 North attributed to insufficient testing capabilities. Data published on the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center showed North Korea with only one confirmed COVID-19 case and six deaths as of Tuesday evening. Tuesday marked the first day that no new deaths were recorded since North Korea declared the emergency on May 12, the state-run Korea Central News Agency reported. “In a few days after the maximum emergency epidemic prevention system was activated, the nation-wide morbidity and mortality rates have drastically decreased and the number of recovered persons increased, resulting in effectively curbing and controlling the spread of the pandemic disease and maintaining the clearly stable situation,” KCNA said. Reuters reported that many analysts doubt the accuracy of the statement, citing the difficulty of assessing the true scale of the virus’ spread throughout the country. Translated by Claire Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

The Tibetan writer and poet Gendun Lhundrub, who has been held incommunicado for more than a year after his arrest in 2020, is being detained in a prison in Siling (in Chinese, Xining), Tibetans with knowledge of his situation said. Lhundrub, aged around 47 and formerly a monk at Rongwo monastery in Rebgong (Tongren) county in the Malho (Huangnan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, had been monitored by authorities for signs of political dissent before being detained, a Tibetan living in exile told RFA in a previous report. Authorities arrested Lhundrub on Dec. 2, 2020, in western China’s Qinghai province while he was on his way to attend a religious debate in Rebgong. He was put in the back of a black car driven by Chinese police, according to a witness. “We have learned that Gendun Lhundrub whose whereabouts remained unknown until now is being detained at a detention center in Siling,” said a Tibetan who lives inside the Tibet Autonomous Region. “However, his family members are still not allowed to see him, and no information about his condition has been revealed.” Lhundrub is reportedly undergoing political re-education program for which he must translate Tibetan Buddhist scripts into Mandarin Chinese, the source said. The Chinese Communist Party requires Tibetan Buddhist studies to be taught exclusively in Chinese. Chinese officials told Lhundrub’s family in a September 2021 phone call that the writer’s trial would soon be held but have not heard anything since, said a second Tibetan who lives in exile. “According to a source close to Lhundrub, there is still no news about his trial, but he is being detained at a special detention center where his life is not under threat,” the source said. Chinese authorities have frequently detained Tibetan writers and artists who promote Tibetan national identity and culture — with many sentenced to lengthy prison terms — following region-wide protests against Chinese rule that swept Tibet and Tibetan areas in western provinces of China in 2008. Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses typically deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say. Authorities have also issued orders to Buddhist monks and nuns about using Mandarin Chinese instead of Tibetan. At a religious conference in Qinghai in September 2021, government authorities issued instructions that Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and study centers had to begin translating classroom texts from Tibetan into Mandarin Chinese, China’s “common language,” sources told RFA in a report at that time. Monks and nuns were told that they must learn and speak to each other in Chinese instead of their native language, part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call to Sinicize religion across the country. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The U.S Navy has released the command investigation into the submarine USS Connecticut grounding last October, saying that it “resulted from an accumulation of unit-level errors and omissions that fell far below U.S. Navy standards.” Three top commanders of the nuclear-powered submarine were already sacked after the accident happened at an undisclosed location in the South China Sea. An earlier month-long investigation concluded that the Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine hit an “uncharted seamount while operating in international waters in the Indo-Pacific.” A seamount is a mountain that rises from the sea bed. The released command investigation, believed to be heavily-redacted, disclosed further that the collision happened while the USS Connecticut was conducting a so-called humanitarian evacuation (HUMEVAC) transit in the direction of the Japanese island of Okinawa. HUMEVACs are performed when one or more crew members need to disembark at a location for various reasons including family matters or childbirth. The investigation determined that the collision “was preventable.” “Specifically, the grounding resulted from an accumulation of unit-level errors and omissions in navigation planning; watch team execution; and risk management,” it said. Thorough investigation The redacted command investigation recommended nonjudicial punishments for the submarine’s navigator, assistant navigator, officer of the deck and quartermaster of the watch on duty at the time, but didn’t disclose their names. “The U.S. Submarine force has always been thorough in all their activities and actions,” said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center in Hawaii. “That leads to credible lessons learned and improving the force to reduce the possibility of future incidents of this nature.” “In my view, the investigation’s primary benefit lies in the improved procedures, training and operations that it identified,” Schuster said. The investigation found “specific areas for improvement in the deployment training and certification process” and delineates dozens of corrective actions that need to be carried out “with a sense of urgency.” The USS Connecticut hit an uncharted bathymetric feature while operating submerged in a poorly surveyed area in the South China Sea on Oct. 2, 2021. The U.S. Pacific Fleet waited for five days after the incident before issuing a statement, leading to China’s criticism that the U.S. was trying to cover it up. The Pentagon denied that. The submarine is now under repair at its home base in Bremerton, Washington state. The USS Connecticut is one of three Sea Wolf-class submarines, commissioned in the Cold War era. It is 107 meters long and can carry around 130 sailors and officers. It is believed to have cost over $3 billion to build. The U.S. Navy has around 70 submarines, all nuclear-powered.

North Korea’s COVID outbreak may be leading to a rise in stillbirths as pregnant women thought to be suffering from the disease are shuttled into hotels, warehouses and other improvised medical facilities that lack proper treatment, sources in the country told RFA. After more than two years of denying any North Korean had contracted the coronavirus, the country finally announced its first cases and deaths this month, saying the Omicron variant had begun to spread among participants of a large-scale military parade in late April. The country then declared a “maximum emergency” and began locking down entire cities and counties, requiring people to check their temperature and report symptoms twice a day. Suspected cases were isolated from the rest of the population. The makeshift quarantine facilities, sometimes set up in empty tourist or industrial facilities, are ill-equipped to treat anyone infected with the virus, and pregnant patients added a new layer of complications. “At the Anju Hotel, men and women with symptoms of COVID-19 are separated and isolated in their rooms,” a resident of the city of Anju in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service. About 200 residents of Anju are isolated in the hotel, and their treatment consists of only two pain reliever tablets each day, said the source, who requested anonymity to speak freely. “There are many pregnant women among those with severe symptoms who are quarantined in the hotels,” the source said. “Those who are about to give birth are at risk. There have been cases of stillborn babies, born way before their due date because the women are unable to receive proper treatment. “The quarantine authorities only dealt with the bodies of the stillborn babies and are not giving further treatment or special care for the mothers who complain of high fever or symptoms of postpartum. Families are outraged that the quarantine officials, who say they can only let the grieving mothers go out if they recover from their COVID-19 symptoms,” she said. The source said she knew specifically about two women who had stillbirths, including one who had been helped by a doctor to deliver the baby. In Chungsan county, in another part of the province, suspected COVID-19 cases are isolated in an empty warehouse on a cooperative farm, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “The meals are provided by the local government. Two fever pills are provided by the Central Committee to each person, but the pills are not really working for the patients with high fevers,” he said. “Right now, there are about 300 patients that are quarantined at the warehouse and propaganda office at the farm. There are about 20 pregnant women among the group, who, after 10 days of isolation in a harsh environment, are suffering from high fevers and pregnancy poisoning, swelling, and pain all over their bodies, so they are appealing for appropriate treatment,” he said. But the quarantine officials are treating the pregnant women the same as everyone else at the makeshift facility. “They give the pregnant women the same corn-rice and spinach soup as they give to the other patients, and no treatment is given. The pregnant women are having stillbirths because they cannot eat properly when they are sick, and the fetuses die in their stomachs,” he said. “As the news of stillbirths spread among the families of the pregnant women quarantined for COVID-19, local residents are complaining that the authorities and their COVID-19 quarantine measures are killing pregnant women and their unborn babies,” the second source said. About 2.8 million people have been hit by outbreaks of fever, 68 of whom have died, according to data based on reports from North Korean state media published by 38 North, a site that provides analysis on the country and is run by the U.S.-based think tank the Stimson Center. Around 2.3 million are reported to have made recoveries, while 479,400 are undergoing treatment. The country has only a handful of confirmed COVID-19 cases, which 38 North attributed to insufficient testing capabilities. Data published on the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center showed North Korea with only one confirmed COVID-19 case and six deaths as of Monday evening. Translated by Claire Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Authorities in western China’s Sichuan province are forcing Tibetan monks to take the blame for the destruction of sacred statues torn down by China, ordering them to sign affidavits claiming responsibility, RFA has learned. The move follows widespread condemnation of the demolitions in Drago (in Chinese, Luhuo) county in the Kardze (Gandzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture that were reported by RFA’s Tibetan Service in January. “After reports of these demolitions in Drago county reached the international community, the Chinese government is now accusing Tibetan monks in Drago of destroying the Buddhist statues, and is coercing them into signing documents to take the blame,” a Tibetan living in exile said, citing contacts in the region. “But due to tight restrictions in the area right now, it is difficult to gather information on what punishment the monks will receive if they refuse to sign these documents,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his contacts. “Most of the local Tibetans and monks who were arrested for sharing news of the Buddha statues’ destruction have now been released, but they are constantly being harassed and are closely watched by the Chinese authorities,” the source added. A 99-foot-tall Buddha statue that stood in Drago was targeted for demolition in December by officials who said it had been built too high. Monks from a local monastery and other Tibetan residents were forced to witness the destruction, an action experts called part of an ongoing campaign to eradicate Tibet’s distinct national culture and religion. Destroyed along with the statue were 45 traditional prayer wheels set up for use by Tibetan pilgrims and other worshippers, sources said. Drago county chief Wang Dongsheng, director of the demolition, had earlier overseen a campaign of destruction at Sichuan’s sprawling Larung Gar Buddhist Academy. Eleven monks from a nearby monastery were then arrested by Chinese authorities on suspicion of sending news and photos of the statue’s destruction, first reported exclusively by RFA, to contacts outside the region. Using commercial satellite imagery, RFA later verified the destruction at the same time of a three-story statue of Maitreya Buddha, believed by Tibetan Buddhists to be a Buddha appearing in a future age, at Gaden Namgyal Ling monastery in Drago. Communications clampdowns and other security measures meanwhile remain in place in Drago county, said Pema Gyal, a researcher at London-based Tibet Watch. “Chinese authorities continue to impose restrictions on Drago county, and those released from prison are kept under scrutiny all the time,” Gyal said. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

A Uyghur goldsmith died 20 days after being released from prison and his 20-year-old son died the next day at his funeral in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, Chinese government officials said. Yaqup Hesen, 43, was released from prison in Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining) in April and died on May 1, the eve of the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marked the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. Bilal Yaqup, his son, died the following day, the sources said, confirming news about the pair that had circulated on social media. Despite China’s severe restrictions on online information, reports of the deaths of Uyghurs detained in prisons and internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have continued to circulate on Facebook and other platforms. Many of the videos and photos posted are of deceased Uyghurs who are under the age of 50 and had lost a significant amount of weight while incarcerated. A Facebook post about the father and son said Bilal collapsed and died while carrying his father’s casket at the businessman’s funeral. A resident from the neighborhood committee in the area of Ghulja where Hesen lived said many Uyghurs have died after being released from area prisons and camps, but she did not disclose their names. “There are many. I don’t know all their detailed identities,” she said. A neighborhood committee official where Hesen lived told RFA that he had been jailed for praying. He spent three years in prison and left unable to walk. “He lived in our neighborhood,” she said. “It’s been three years since he was sentenced to prison.” The committee official also confirmed that Bilal died the day after his father passed away. “I don’t know the reason for his death,” she said. Tursunjan, a Uyghur from Ghulja who now lives in Turkey and who knew Hesen, told RFA that he called people in the city after he had seen a social media post about the man’s death to find out if the information was accurate. His sources in Ghulja confirmed to him through gestures on a video call that the information about the father’s and son’s deaths was correct, he said. Tursunjan said he learned that Hesen was taken away in 2018 and was sentenced to prison a year later. He was released in critical condition in April about two to three weeks before Eid al-Fitr. “He was sentenced to prison three years ago. That’s what I heard,” he said. “After his death, I heard that he had been actually released from prison,” Tursunjan said. “He was pronounced dead on the eve of Eid.” Hesen’s and Bilal’s deaths spoiled a typically festive mood in the city during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, Tursunjan said. “He had a very good reputation in the city as an ethical and pious person,” said Tursunjan, who said he knows at least 40 people from Ghulja who are still in prison. Hospital treatment Another Uyghur from Ghulja who now lives abroad but requested anonymity for safety reasons, said municipal police, state security forces and a group of Chinese government officials from the XUAR attended Hesen’s funeral. One of the members of the group told RFA that Hesen died due to ineffective treatment for an illness and confirmed that Bilal passed away the day after Hesen died. “We heard he died, so we went [to the funeral],” the government official said. “We didn’t know what the cause of his death was.” Hesen’s family took him to hospitals in Ghulja and Urumqi (Wulumuqi), the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) capital for treatment, the Uyghur in exile who requested anonymity said. “The family tried hard to treat him in hospitals both in Ghulja and Urumqi, but all were ineffective,” he said. “His son fainted and died because of deep mourning about his father’s passing.” Chinese authorities have targeted and arrested numerous Uyghur businessmen, intellectuals, and cultural and religious figures in the XUAR for years as part of a campaign to monitor, control and assimilate members of the minority group purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities. Many of them have been among the 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities believed to be held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017. Beijing has said that the camps are vocational training centers and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has mistreated Muslims living in Xinjiang. The United States and the legislatures in several Western countries have deemed the treatment of Uyghurs and others in the XUAR as constituting genocide and crimes against humanity. Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.