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Category: East Asia
Did Kim Jong Un make a statement threatening Israel?
A claim has been repeatedly shared in social media posts that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a statement threatening Israel in support of Iran. But the claim is false. Keyword searches found no official statements or credible reports that back the claim. Experts dismissed the claim, saying there is little to gain for Kim in making such a statement. The claim was shared in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 3, 2024, by a user called “SprinterFamily” who has previously spread false information about North Korea. The post cited Kim as saying: “We will always stand by Iran and will respond decisively to any threat to our ally. We warn the mercenary of global imperialism, namely Israel, not to make mistakes.” A screenshot of the false X post. The claim began to circulate amid growing fears of a regional war in the Middle East. The nearly 10-month-old war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has led to regular low-level hostilities between Israel and Iran and Hezbollah, as well as other groups in the region that are aligned with Tehran. But after the killing of the top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah in July, Iran and Hezbollah pledged to retaliate, with media reports saying they may attack Israel. North Korea has been a strategic partner of long standing for Iran, based on their subjection to extensive U.S. economic sanctions and other U.S. policies designed to counter the threats they pose to key U.S. partners. There have been media reports that North Korean-made weapons have been supplied to Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas through Iran. Some believe North Korea is indirectly involved in the conflicts in the Middle East, although it has never officially acknowledged or commented on any military support. But the claim about the North Korean leader’s threat against Israel is false. A review of North Korea’s state-run media outlets, which often carry statements from Kim, found no such statement or report. ‘Little to gain for Kim’ Harry Kazianis, senior director at the Center for the National Interest think tank, believes that if the statement was not recorded by North Korea’s official news agency, it should be assumed that the claim is false. Kazianis said North Korea had “other ways” to cause trouble for Israel, including sales of missile technology to Iran that could be used against Israel, citing U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies. Makino Yoshihiro, a visiting professor at Hiroshima University and diplomatic correspondent for Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun, said there would be little to gain for Kim in making such a statement. “Iran is currently trying not to overly provoke the United States, and North Korea’s involvement would create confusion,” said Yoshihiro. Bruce Bennett, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation, believes the claim about Kim’s statement on Israel may have originated from China or Russia, citing Russia’s attempts to build an anti-Western coalition. “Given that there was an attack in Iran that killed a major Hamas leader, and Kim Jong Un did nothing, it suggests that if he was really threatening to confront Israel, something would have already happened,” Bennett said, adding that Kim’s threats are primarily for propaganda purposes and are unlikely to be carried out in practice. Translated by Dukin Han. Edited by Taejun Kang. Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
No limits to the lawlessness of Myanmar’s predatory military regime
Having illegally seized power and overthrown a democratically elected government, Myanmar’s military was never expected to hold itself up to the rule of law. But given their losses since a trio of rebel armies launched Operation 1027 nearly a year ago, the military has acted with an even greater degree of desperate and callous criminality. The U.N. The High Commissioner for Human Rights released a new report that recorded a 50% increase in civilian deaths from April 2023 to June 2024, year on year. In addition to the more than 2414 civilians killed, the report detailed the deaths of 1,326 people, including 88 children and 125 women who died in military custody since the February 2021 coup. Myat Thu Tun, a former reporter for the media outlet Democratic Voice of Burma, was one of seven people arrested and killed in Rakhine state’s Mrauk-U by Myanmar junta forces in early 2024. (RFA) The report documented executions, egregious sexual violence, and routine torture. Those who survived government custody described harrowing conditions in prisons and military detention facilities. Now there are leaked reports on pro-regime Telegram channels that the military government is preparing to execute five anti-regime activists as early as next week. That would follow the shocking executions of four, including Kyaw Min Yu (Ko Jimmy) and Phyo Zeya Thaw, in July 2022. There are at least 112 people who have been put on death row since the coup. And the regime wants to send a signal through the executions, both to domestic and foreign audiences, that it is still firmly in control, despite losses on the battlefield. War crimes are the strategy The world has become inured to the intentional bombing of civilians, the execution of POWs, and the mass arrests of citizens as a form of collective punishment. Over 27,000 people have been arrested since the coup. Junta troops torched more than 1,050 houses in retaliatory arson attacks in Sagaing, Magway and Mandalay regions in the first half of 2024 alone. Radio Free Asia has documented a stepped up aerial bombing campaign leading to increased civilian casualties. This should come as no surprise. The military’s counterinsurgency doctrine, known as the “Four Cuts” – stopping food, funds, information and recruitment to insurgents – is predicated on the intentional targeting of civilians as a deterrent for lending support to anti-regime forces. A man looks at homes destroyed after air and artillery strikes in Mung Lai Hkyet displacement camp, in Laiza, Myanmar, Oct. 10, 2023. (AP) War crimes have always been the milirary’s strategy, and troops are indoctrinated and encouraged to commit them, including rape. The military is fighting across six distinct battle grounds, and has suffered losses in all of them. It has lost control over 60% of the towns in northern Shan state alone. Opposition forces now control key roads and riparian ports, making the movement and resupply of troops difficult. The only way that the military can retaliate is through aerial bombardment and long-range artillery strikes. If they can’t kill the opposition forces, they will kill the populations that support them. Preying on their own The military’s forces have committed such egregious human rights abuses that it’s hard to feel sorry for them. But their predatory behavior starts with plundering the income of their own troops. Despite their paltry salaries, troops are compelled to make monthly contributions to the sprawling military-owned conglomerate Myanma Economic Holdings Ltd (MEHL). The amount differs based on rank, but all must pay. At the end of the year, MEHL is supposed to pay troops a dividend. Yet nothing has been paid since the coup, a result of nationwide boycotts of military-produced products and services. The military insurance plan is even more egregious. Established in late 2012, by Min Aung Hlaing’s son, Aung Pyae Sone, by 2015 the Aung Myint Moh Insurance company had secured a monopoly on selling life insurance to the military, supplanting the state-owned Myanma Insurance. It has an unclear degree of military ownership through MEHL. Even the lowest ranked soldiers are pressured to buy a minimum two-year policy costing some 500,000 kyats – $238 at the official, artificially low exchange rate – in addition to a monthly premium of 8,400 kyats. Elizabeth Throssell, Spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (Daniel Johnson/UN News) Amid recent battlefield losses, including a large number of the hastily trained five classes of conscripts since, the company has had to pay out more than it’s taking in. Its own capital reserves are thought to have flatlined in the overall poor economic climate and investment conditions. As one can expect from Min Aung Hlaing’s rapacious clan, the insurance company is cheating. The firm has labeled many dead soldiers as “missing in action”. In other cases, it has found loopholes in paperwork and nonpayment of monthly fees as justification for not honoring claims. The firm has pocketed the payments of the estimated 20,000 troops who have defected to the opposition. The junta is flat out stealing from the soldiers that they conscript just to line their own pockets. A well-armed extortion racket The abject criminality of the military is getting worse. Due to the military’s own economic incompetence, the economy has cratered. And with that has been a sharp decline in revenue needed to conduct the war. The opposition National Unity Government’s digital Spring Lottery has significantly cut into government sweepstakes income. The loss of territory on the battlefield has cut off revenue streams. Recent losses include four MOGE oil fields, coal, tin, lead and ruby mines. Intense fighting is underway in Hpakant in northern Kachin State for control of lucrative jadeite and rare earth mines. Take a moment to read more China’s frustration with the Myanmar junta’s incompetence is mounting As Myanmar junta falters, rival ethnic armies jostle in Shan state Caveat creditor: China offers a financial lifeline to Myanmar’s junta Debris and soot cover the floor of a middle school in Let Yet Kone village in Tabayin township in…
China targets high-ranking officials who read banned books
Read RFA’s coverage of this story in Chinese China’s Communist Party is clamping down on the secret hobby of some high-ranking officials: reading banned books, a series of state media reports suggest. Officials from glitzy Shanghai to poverty-stricken Guizhou have been accused in recent months of “privately possessing and reading banned books and periodicals,” according to state media reports, which typically surface when the officials are probed by the party’s disciplinary arm. Senior officials have traditionally enjoyed privileged access to materials banned as potentially subversive for the wider population, via the “neibu,” or internal, publishing system, former Communist Party officials told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews. Now it appears that President Xi Jinping is coming for their personal libraries and private browsing habits in a bid to instill the same ideas in all party members regardless of rank. A man walks past posters about Chinese political books displayed at the Hong Kong Book Fair in Hong Kong, July 18, 2012. (Philippe Lopez/AFP) During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, any foreign book could be considered a “poisonous weed that promotes the bourgeois lifestyle.” Books banned since 2000 have typically been works about recent Chinese history or inside scoops on senior leaders, including memoirs from Mao Zedong’s personal physician, late ousted premier Zhao Ziyang and a book about the later years of Mao’s trusted premier Zhou Enlai. Overseas publications are often banned or tightly controlled in China, either online, or via a complex process of political vetting by the authorities, including a 2017 requirement that anyone selling foreign publications in China must have a special license. Wider knowledge makes better leaders Former Party School professor Cai Xia said officials were generally allowed to read whatever they liked until the turn of the century. The arrangement encouraged officials to broaden their perspective, making them better leaders. “Politics, like art, requires imagination,” Cai said. “Because experience shows that the more single-minded and closed-off the thinking of the Communist Party, especially the senior cadres, the narrower their vision and the poorer their thinking, and the harder it is for them to grasp the complex phenomena and situations that have emerged in China’s rapid development,” she told Radio Free Asia. Wider reading encourages deeper thought, which helps China “to move forward,” she said. Masks, goggles and books collected from the Occupy zone are seen on the table at guesthouse in Hong Kong Dec. 30, 2014. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters) Du Wen, former executive director of the Legal Advisory Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, said the purge of readers of banned publications is worrying. “This phenomenon is so scary, because it sends the message that there is no independence in the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party,” Du said. “Even dialectical materialism and critical thinking have become evidence of guilt.” Nearly 20 officials have been accused of similar infractions, Du said, basing the number on his observation of media reports. Officials have been tight-lipped about the names of the books and periodicals these officials were reading, yet the accusations keep coming. Those targeted In November 2023, the party launched a probe into former Zhejiang provincial Vice Gov. Zhu Congjiu, accusing him of losing his way ideologically. In addition to making off-message comments in public, Zhu had “privately brought banned books into the country and read them over a long period of time,” according to media reports at the time. In June 2023, the Beijing branch of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection expelled former state assets supervisory official Zhang Guilin for “possessing and reading books and periodicals with serious political issues,” alongside a slew of other alleged offenses including “engaging in power-for-sex and money-for-sex transactions.” Many of those targeted have been in the state-controlled financial system, while some have been concentrated in the central province of Hunan and the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, according to political commentator Yu Jie. A vendor attends to a customer next to images and statues depicting late Chinese chairman Mao Zedong, at the secondhand books section of Panjiayuan antique market in Beijing, China, Aug. 3, 2024. (Florence Lo/Reuters) “Interestingly, a lot of officials in the political and legal system, national security and prison systems, which are responsible for maintaining stability and persecuting dissidents, are also keen on reading banned books,” Yu wrote in a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, citing the case of former state security police political commissar Li Bin. In Hubei province, the commission went after one of their own in party secretary Wang Baoping, accusing him of “buying and reading books that distorted and attacked the 18th Party Congress.” “Monitoring what people are reading shows the authoritarian system’s determination and ability to maintain its power and to destroy any resources that could be subversive and any doubts about the legitimacy of the authorities’ rule,” Yu wrote in a Chinese-language commentary on May 28. “Xi Jinping’s … goal is to turn more than 80 million party members into marionettes or zombies, and follow him, like the Pied Piper, in a mighty procession that leads to hell,” he said. Categories Zhang Huiqing, a former editor at the People’s Publishing House, told RFA Mandarin that “gray” books were allowed to be published under the watchful eye of the party’s Central Propaganda Department, which also reviewed and vetted foreign-published books for translation into Chinese, for distribution as “neibu” reading material. Divided into categories A, B and C, where A was restricted to the smallest number of officials, “reactionary” books were those that could potentially cause people to challenge the party leadership, and they were once distributed in a highly controlled manner, Zhang said. Du Wen said that while he was an official in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, he had access to a slew of foreign news outlets not usually sold on the streets of Chinese cities, including Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post and newspapers published in democratic Taiwan. “These were all allowed because if you want to do research, you have to understand what’s going on overseas,”…
The Era of Proxy Wars: How Major Powers Wage Indirect Wars
The world is indeed experiencing a resurgence of proxy conflicts, where major powers exert influence indirectly through smaller, often less stable, nations. This is part of a broader geopolitical strategy, allowing these big powers to avoid direct confrontation while still advancing their global interests.
North Koreans are getting sick of propaganda song “Friendly Father”
North Koreans are growing weary of being bombarded by “Friendly Father,” an upbeat propaganda song praising leader Kim Jong Un that has been blanketing the country for months now, sources in the country tell Radio Free Asia. People are forced to sing it before every public event and a loudspeaker car drives through cities blaring it, said a resident of Ryanggang province in the north on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “He is holding his 10 million children in his arms and taking care of us with all his heart,” go the lyrics. “The love you give me is like the sea. The trust you give me is like the sky,” says verse two. “You are always by our side, and make all our wishes come true.” The Ryanggang resident said that he has heard the song every day since it was introduced in April, except for a three-day break in early May due to the death of a high-ranking official. “Every factory, company, school, work unit, and neighborhood-watch unit in the province has both children and adults sing this song whenever the opportunity arises.” he said. Music video The government created a high-quality music video for the song depicting people from all walks of life enthusiastically singing along to it. Friendly Father was inspired by an earlier propaganda song called “Friendly Name” that sung the praises of Kim’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il. The melody is different but many of the lyrics in “Friendly Father” are callbacks to the earlier song, which most North Koreans know by heart. North Korean students sing in music class at the Pyongyang Orphans’ Secondary School in Pyongyang, North Korea, Sept. 1, 2016. (Jon Chol Jin/AP) The order to promote the song comes from the Central Party of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, the Ryanggang resident said. It’s gotten to the point where people actively avoid places where the song is played publicly if they can help it, he said. Deserted park For example, in the city of Hyesan, on the border with China, there is a park where retired people gather to spend their free time by talking, singing, dancing, playing games or exercising. But when the park turned off their music and began playing “Friendly Father” over the park’s public address system, the senior citizens went home, according to the resident. “The manager forced them to stop dancing to a folk song but to dance in praise of the marshal instead,” he said, referring to Kim by his military rank. RELATED RFA CONTENT RFA Insider podcast Episode 6 (Timecode 13:50) Upbeat video casts Kim Jong Un as North Korea’s father figure North Korea bans karaoke, saying it smacks of ‘rotten’ capitalist culture North Korea bans more than 100 patriotic songs that refer to reunification “The elderly people stopped dancing and began to return home. The song … rang out in the empty park where everyone had left one by one … until it was deserted.” The park, which used to teem with old folks from sunrise to sunset, is now empty almost every day, he said. Respect thy elder Another problem with the song stems from Korea’s Confucian culture. Often complete strangers are expected to grant older people a certain amount of respect simply because they are older, with the promise that they will receive the same respect from the young when they reach the same age. However, “people in their 70s and 80s are being forced to call Kim Jong Un, who is only in his 40s and is about the same age as their sons, their ‘friendly father,’” the resident said. North Koreans sing at a picnic gathering at a park in Pyongyang, April 18, 2012, a national holiday celebrating the birthday period of the late leader Kim Il Sung. (Vincent Yu/AP) The government’s push of “Friendly Father” is even more aggressive than its efforts to promote songs from the reigns of Kim Jong Un’s father and grandfather, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA who also asked not to be identified. “Back then, their songs were sometimes played on broadcasting cars, but they did not make people sing at the start of every learning session or lecture session, nor was it forced upon the elderly, as they are doing right now,” he said. People scoff at the notion that Kim Jong Un could be their “friendly father,” because they do not trust his leadership abilities, the second resident said. “They have no hope in their leader, but they are forced to familiarize their eyes, ears, and mouths with the image of him as their friendly father through the song,” he said. It seems that the propaganda efforts are getting bigger and louder as people’s dissatisfaction with society increases, he said. Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
Has China not launched a war since 1949?
A claim emerged in Chinese-language social media posts that China has not launched a war since 1949. But the claim is misleading as it is a one-sided historical interpretation. A review of events shows that China has been involved in several major conflicts since 1949, and there are different views about how much of a role it played in starting them. The claim was shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 24, 2024. “While the U.S. has launched 469 conflicts since 1789, China has launched none since 1949,” the claim reads in part. Multiple Chinese accounts on X have reposted an infographic comparing the number of wars initiated by the U.S. and China. (Screenshots/X) The claim has also been shared by several Chinese diplomats on X. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a telephone call with U.S. President Joe Biden in 2021 that his country had not started a conflict since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Several Chinese diplomats also reposted the image and further spread on the narrative of the U.S. as a warhawk (Screenshots/X) But the claim is misleading as it is a one-sided historical interpretation. A review of historical events shows that China has been involved in several major conflicts since 1949 and there are different views about how much of a role Beijing played in starting them. Below is what AFCL found. The Sino-Indian War The month-long Sino-Indian War of 1962 was a conflict rooted in disputes with India over China’s attempts to build a military road linking its Xinjiang region with Tibet after China occupied the Tibet area in 1950, according to Encyclopædia Britannica, the world’s oldest continuously published encyclopedia. The road was scheduled to pass through Aksai Chin, an area that overlaps parts of Tibet and Xinjiang but is also claimed by India as part of its northern Ladakh region. The war was preceded by intermittent skirmishes beginning in 1959, which culminated in an attack by Chinese forces against the region on Oct. 20, 1962. But some scholars, including Wang Hongwei, a Chinese academic expert on South Asia, said that the campaign originated from an arbitrary border demarcation by India’s government in 1961. Wang listed the advance of India’s army into territory that China claimed, attacks on Chinese posts, the killing of Chinese border guards and a 1962 Indian order for its forces to expel the Chinese from the North-East Border Special Region as evidence that the war was imposed on China. China has officially described the conflict as a war of self-defense ever since. The Sino-Vietnamese War Internationally known as the Sino-Vietnamese War, the conflict that broke out when 220,000 Chinese soldiers struck along the 800-mile border with Vietnam early on Feb. 17, 1979. While at the time both neighbors had communist political systems, Vietnam’s decision to sign a mutual defense pact with the Soviet Union in 1978 provoked the ire of many Chinese leaders, given that at the time Beijing and Moscow were struggling for leadership of the global communist movement. This tension was later exacerbated by Vietnam’s invasion of neighboring Cambodia at the end of 1978 and the overthrow of the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge government, an event that served as the catalyst for the conflict between Beijing and Hanoi. The conflict has been called an aggressive war launched by China by scholars such as Miles Yu, the director of the Hudson Institute’s China Center, who emphasized that the conflict is portrayed completely differently in Vietnam and in China. Vietnam portrays the conflict as a struggle against Chinese expansion, while China frames it as a war of self-defense. In line with this interpretation, a Chinese government webpage commemorating soldiers killed in the conflict, lists several actions by Vietnam in the mid-1970s – implementing discriminatory policies against Chinese minorities in Vietnam and conducting provocative border raids in which several Chinese citizens were wounded – as evidence that Vietnam came to view China as an enemy and gradually adopted a warlike posture towards it. However, Hsiao-Huang Shu, a scholar of Chinese military tactics at Taiwan’s Tamkang University, told AFCL that while the official Chinese government position paints the war as a punitive conflict rather than as an “invasion,” the war was clearly initiated by China. Sino-Soviet border clashes In March 1969, Chinese and Soviet forces engaged in a series of clashes on an island called Zhenbao on a border river. Subsequent border skirmishes in the months following the conflict resulted in an unknown number of casualties. In order to end the dispute, Moscow adopted a carrot-and-stick approach, proposing negotiations on the border dispute while at the same time threatening military action if Beijing did not cooperate. The Soviet Union said that an initial ambush by Chinese army units of Soviet border guards on March 2 was followed by a larger clash on March 15. However, an article published by China’s state-run CCP Review said that the initial skirmish broke out when a Chinese patrol was obstructed and later shot at by Soviet troops. But according to the noted historian of Sino-Soviet relations, Li Danhui, Chinese soldiers initially stabbed and fired upon a Soviet patrol on the day fighting broke out. He cited statements by Chen Xilian, the Chinese commander at Zhenbao, as evidence. Michael S. Gerson, a former analyst at the U.S. Center for Naval Analyses, published a study of the incident, saying that territorial disputes over the strategically unimportant island largely arose as a byproduct of the larger Sino-Soviet ideological split in the 1960s. As part of the split, China said that the Soviet Union’s control of the island was a direct result of unequal treaties China had been coerced to sign, while the Soviet Union argued that China had no legal claim to the island. ‘Illogical comparison’ Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, told AFCL that while the U.S. has been involved in several wars around the world, the notion that China had “never started a war” was “absurd,”…
Satellite photos show expansion of suspected North Korean uranium enrichment site
A suspected North Korean uranium enrichment facility that may have been toured by leader Kim Jong Un recently has grown significantly since construction was first spotted there in February, satellite imagery has revealed.
Vietnam coast guard holds rare live fire exercise
Vietnam’s coast guard has held a rare live fire exercise to test responses to security threats, in an area off its central coast on the South China Sea. The Sept. 5-11 exercise was conducted by the Vietnam Coast Guard Region 3, in the waters off Binh Thuan province, the force said in a press release. Coast Guard Region 3 with headquarters in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province is one of Vietnam’s four coast guard zones, responsible for safeguarding its claims in the South China Sea as tensions are rising in the regional waterway. The tactical training and live five exercise – aimed at boosting combat readiness – is “one of the top priorities” of the coast guard, Col. Nguyen Minh Khanh, Region 3’s deputy commander, was quoted as saying. Coast guard personnel were responding to multiple scenarios such as “threats to sovereignty and security,” illegal incursions into Vietnam’s waters by foreign vessels, piracy and search-and-rescue and disaster relief. Vietnam coast guard personnel during live fire exercises Sept. 5-11, 2024. (Vietnam Coast Guard) Photographs and video clips released by the coast guard show troops, equipped with artillery, anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers, shooting at airborne targets as well as firing water cannons and warning off foreign ships. “They have accomplished all the tasks with excellence,” Col. Khanh said. Vietnam rarely publicizes such activities despite having invested heavily in developing its coast guard in recent years. RELATED STORIES Philippine coast guard ship leaves disputed shoal in South China Sea Vietnam, Philippines to sign defense cooperation agreement Vietnam’s coast guard to hold first drills with Philippines The U.S. coast guard is reportedly planning to transfer the last of three Hamilton-class cutters to Vietnam in the near future. Maritime security is a defense priority for Vietnam, one of six parties that claim parts of the South China Sea, along with China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan. Vietnam coast guard personnel during live fire exercises Sept. 5-11, 2024. (Vietnam Coast Guard) China, however, holds the most expansive claim and its authorities have become more aggressive against neighboring countries in disputed waters. This month, coast guard vessels from Vietnam and the Philippines took part in their first joint drills off Manila but they limited their activity to firefighting and search-and-rescue as Vietnam is careful not to be seen as siding militarily with any country. The Philippines and China have this year been in a tense standoff over disputed features in the South China Sea. The Philippines last week recalled a coast guard vessel from the disputed Sabina Shoal but officials pledged never to “abandon our sovereign rights over these waters.” Edited by Mike Firn. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
Shortages in Myanmar lead to ‘socialist-era’ economy
Read RFA coverage of these stories in Burmese. The queue for cooking oil stretches down a Yangon street. Householders turn up before dawn to fill a plastic bottle at a subsidized rate in Myanmar’s commercial capital – the latest evidence of a tanking economy. “If you can come early, you will get your quota early. If you are late, you might end up with nothing … and have to start all over again the next day,” Daw Htoo, whose real name was changed in order to protect her identity, told RFA Burmese. “You have to wait for your turn for about two and a half hours everyday,” she said of the palm oil, which costs 20% less than the price of peanut oil sold outside government-subsidized shops. “Some have been waiting since 5 a.m.” Daw Myint, a resident of Yangon’s Thaketa township in her 70s, told RFA that with the price of peanut oil now more than 20,000 kyats (US$4) per viss, which is equal to about 1.7 kilograms or 3.5 pounds, “we simply can’t afford to use it anymore.” In a country wracked by conflict since the military takeover three-and-a-half years ago, basic products are becoming more scarce. People wait in line to purchase palm oil, Sept. 4, 2024 in Yangon. (RFA) Also, import restrictions are impeding the supply of basic medicines, deepening a humanitarian crisis. “It’s like we’re going back in time to when you had to line up for everything,” said a Yangon businessman who requested anonymity to avoid trouble with authorities. “Palm oil isn’t a rare product … This commodity is abundant and sold competitively around the world, but it’s being rationed in Myanmar.” Older residents say it reminds them of life under a previous military regime, led by Ne Win, when Myanmar followed a socialist political model. Under the system, all major industries were nationalized, including import-export trade, leading to price controls and the expansion of the black market to account for as much as 80% of the national economy. RELATED STORIES Red Cross chief calls for greater aid access after visit to Myanmar Political instability since coup prompts foreign investment exit from Myanmar Pumps run dry in Myanmar as forex crisis pushes up prices In late July, junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing announced that the country’s current situation is “most suited to socialist-era cooperative systems,” implying that, with Myanmar’s economy in freefall, the population should prepare to make sacrifices. One such sacrifice is cooking oil, according to residents and business owners in the country’s largest city Yangon. Major inconvenience Amid the conflict that has engulfed Myanmar since the military’s February 2021 coup d’etat, local production of vegetable oils from peanuts, sunflower seeds and sesame has dwindled or ceased entirely, forcing consumers to rely on imported palm oil to prepare their meals. But the junta has put restrictions on the hard currency needed to import palm oil, creating a shortage and a price jump in local markets. Yangon residents told RFA Burmese that the price of one viss container of palm oil now costs 16,000 kyats (US$3.20) – up from 8,000 kyats in January and 6,500 kyats in December 2023. Meanwhile, the value of the kyat has dropped from 3,500 kyats to 5,600 kyats per U.S. dollar over the same period. Early this month, a ration system went into effect, through which residents can purchase a maximum of half a viss each day at the subsidized price. An elderly woman buys palm oil Sept. 4, 2024. (RFA) An elderly woman in Yangon’s Lanmadaw township told RFA that the ration system is a major inconvenience. “If we were able to buy one viss at a time, we would only need to line up once a week,” said the woman who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. A restaurant owner in Yangon’s North Dagon township told RFA that she has had to buy palm oil from the local market to supplement what she can buy through the junta’s ration system, because half a viss is not enough to meet her business’s daily needs. “Not only does it take time for us to buy palm oil [under the ration plan], but we can only buy a half viss at a time, which is only enough to cook five portions of rice,” she said. Attempts by RFA to contact the office of the junta’s Department of Consumer Affairs in Yangon for further clarification about the palm oil ration plan went unanswered. ‘Life-threatening’ Meanwhile, it has become increasingly difficult for people displaced by conflict to access essential medical supplies due to the junta’s restrictions on medical imports and a national shortage, According to aid workers and those who have fled fighting, the demand for medicine is particularly acute among those displaced by conflict in Sagaing region, Chin state, Kachin state, northern Shan state, Magway region and Rakhine state. “We are dealing with cases of seasonal flu and diarrhea here – it’s definitely a life-threatening situation,” said a displaced person from Chin state’s Kanpetlet township. “Access to medicine would be helpful, but it’s simply not available. The biggest challenge is the inability to purchase the necessary medication.” A pharmacy in Yangon, Myanmar, Jan. 12, 2008. (Patrik M. Loeff via Flickr) Aid workers said that the transportation of medicine to Chin state, where approximately 250,000 war displaced are located, has become difficult due to road blockades imposed by the junta. “The main issue is that the junta shuts down the roads whenever fighting intensifies, making transportation extremely difficult,” said one person assisting the displaced. “Pharmacy owners … are required to submit a list of their products to the junta’s General Administration Department and under these conditions, they are reluctant to sell openly. Everything is operating in secrecy right now.” According to a July 1 statement from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 3 million people are internally displaced across Myanmar due to ongoing military…
An overdue farewell to Southeast Asia’s pro-democracy icons
A decade ago, Southeast Asia seemed poised for democratic transformation, spearheaded by three icons: Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodia’s Sam Rainsy and Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy was on the cusp of a historic election victory, potentially gaining entry into government for the first time in the army-run nation. Sam Rainsy’s Cambodia National Rescue Party had narrowly lost to the ruling party in the 2013 elections, but momentum hinted at a possible win at the next ballot. Meanwhile, Anwar’s People’s Pact coalition won the popular vote in Malaysia’s 2013 elections, marking the start of a new political era. During a late 2013 visit, Sam Rainsy suggested in a meeting with his fellow pro-democracy icons that they should “work together to promote democracy in our region.” Fast forward to today, and all three have either fallen from power or seen their legacies tarnished—and the region’s democratic transformation now seems more distant than ever. Cambodian exiled political opponent and leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), Sam Rainsy, in Paris, on July 27, 2023. (Joel Saget/AFP) Suu Kyi, ousted in early 2021, saw her international reputation go up in smoke for her defense of the military’s genocide against her country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. Sam Rainsy went into exile in 2015 and his party dissolved two years later as the ruling Cambodian People’s Party tightened its authoritarian chokehold. Rainsy now writes financial updates with little hope of returning to Cambodia. Anwar became Malaysia’s prime minister in 2022 but has abandoned his once-professed liberal, secular ideals. His government has launched “lawfare” campaigns against opponents. In August, Malaysian prosecutors charged Muhyiddin Yassin, the leader of the opposition, with sedition for complaining that the king hadn’t asked him to form a government last year. Anwar’s pluralist appeal has gone out of the window. He’s unpopular with Malays, he has defended a deputy prime minister accused of corruption, his speeches are flecked with anti-Semitism and anti-Western vitriol, and he has drawn Malaysia closer to China and Russia. Anwar visited Moscow this month and now declares support for China’s “reunification” of Taiwan. “Anwar had been a favorite of Western reporters and officials, heralded as a man who could liberalize Malaysian politics,” the Economist recently wrote. Since taking power, he has been “a very different kind of leader.” A milder form of tyranny One shouldn’t mourn the passing of Southeast Asia’s icons, the disappearance of a handful of individuals who were supposed to drag the region by their own sweat and sacrifice into a freer future. There was too much focus on personalities rather than policies; too much about a single person’s fate to become premier and not on the people they were supposedly fighting for. Suu Kyi was the National League for Democracy; she was destined to save Myanmar because her father had done the same when Burma emerged from British colonial rule in the 1940s. Even before Sam Rainsy’s party was dissolved, it had become cleaved between the factions loyal to him and another leader. They, too, saw themselves as the embodiments of salvation for an entire country. Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Oslo on June 15, 2012. (Markus Schreiber/AP) As Suu Kyi and Anwar showed, you sacrifice your entire life in exile, imprisonment, scorn and harassment, and once you finally attain power, you believe you damn well need to stay there, whatever it costs. After all, losing power means a return to tyranny and the bad old times—so a milder form of tyranny is justifiable to prevent that. Southeast Asia isn’t unique; the worst leaders are those who have taken a long walk to power. Seldom does a revolutionary not become a counter-revolutionary. Rarely does the liberal in opposition remain a liberal in power. Suu Kyi gambled – badly – that publicly defending the military’s genocidal actions against the Rohingya was the price worth paying to prevent a military coup. She should sacrifice up the few for the apparent benefit of the majority, she reasoned. The end of idolatry should allow Southeast Asian democrats to focus on strengthening political institutions rather than idolizing individuals. A new example in Thailand The region should look at what’s happening in Thailand. Unique in Southeast Asia, Thailand’s progressive movement has created a pro-democracy “archetype”— someone young, Western-educated, good-looking, conversant in English, ideally with a business background, and very social media savvy. Pita Limjaroenrat, who employed this archetype to make his Move Forward Party the country’s largest at last year’s elections, was more of a character than an icon. Pita played this role with Move Forward, but it was the same character that Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit played before him with the Future Forward party, Move Forward’s predecessor party, and that Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut now plays as leader of People’s Party, the successor to Move Forward. This is a clever tactic. If the leader is disbarred from politics, as Thanathorn and Pita were, then someone else can easily assume the role, as Natthaphong has done. If the party is dissolved, as Future Forward and Move Forward were, you make a new one led by the same character with the same script. This prevents a party from being consumed by one person – à la Suu Kyi. It turns the dissolution of a party into an inconvenience, instead of the death knell of an entire movement, as was the case with Sam Rainsy and the Cambodia National Rescue Party. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Berlin, Germany, March 11, 2024. (Liesa Johannssen/Reuters) It means that if the leader wins power, he knows he is there because of the script he has been given, not the one he’s written. The rest of Southeast Asia would be better off developing their own archetypes, not waiting for the next icons to appear. Neither is the end of Southeast Asia’s pro-democracy icons a bad thing for the West, which was too quick in the 1990s and 2000s to put its faith in a few personalities being able to drive…
