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Category: East Asia
Blast at Myanmar camp sounded like it came from the ‘world wars’
A farmer who lost his wife, three children and his mother when a bomb was dropped on his Kachin state village earlier this week said the powerful explosion wiped out buildings up to one mile away and sounded like something “used in the world wars.” “Houses built by NGOs and the locals are now left with only iron pillars.” Maran Bauk Lar told Radio Free Asia. “This was a type of bomb that has never been used in Myanmar.” The explosion at the Mung Lai Hkyet internally displaced persons camp at about 11 p.m. on Monday killed 29 people, including 11 children, and left 57 others wounded, relief workers told RFA. The camp is near Lai Zar in the mountainous border area between Kachin state and China. Lai Zar is the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army, or the KIA, which has fought the Burmese military for decades and controls areas of northern Myanmar. KIA information officer Col. Naw Bu told RFA earlier this week that he believed the junta was targeting the headquarters in the attack. Maran Bauk Lar, whose wife and three children were killed in the Mung Lai Hkyet attack, found their bodies when he returned to the camp. His mother and sister-in-law also were killed. Credit: Provided to RFA Maran Bauk Lar said he was walking to his farm when he heard the explosion. When he returned, he found a deep pit and the remains of his sister-in-law and the other family members. “My mother’s body was completely dismembered, and her skull was broken,” he said. “Only the bones remain. My wife and children were killed under the collapsed building. Our dormitories were completely destroyed. There is nothing left.” ‘Emboldened by the indifference’ The Mung Lai Hkyet camp has 658 residents, many of whom are now suffering from psychological trauma as they recover from the explosion, relief workers said. Survivors have been temporarily relocated to a church in Woichyai, an internally displaced persons camp in Lai Zar. “At the moment, they are sleeping on the floor of the church,” a person helping them said. “They have to start a new life from scratch. They don’t have a single penny in their hands.” Coffins are lined up next to graves as a mass funeral takes place to bury victims of a military strike on the Mung Lai Hkyet camp near the northern Myanmar town of Laiza on Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: AFP The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, a group of independent experts working to support human rights efforts in the country, urged the United Nations and its member states to hold the junta responsible for the attack. “The Myanmar military is so emboldened by the indifference of the international community in response to its decades of atrocity crimes that it is now attacking camps for internally displaced people,” said Yanghee Lee, a member of the council and a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. “The military is flagrantly massacring the most vulnerable people in society, and yet U.N. entities in Myanmar will not even publicly name the military as the perpetrator,” he said. At the State Department, spokesman Matthew Miller said that the United States was “deeply concerned” by reports of the explosion. “We strongly condemn the military regime’s ongoing attacks that have claimed thousands of lives since the February 2021 coup and continue to exacerbate the region’s most severe humanitarian crisis,” he said on Tuesday. A girl cries next to a grave as a mass funeral takes place to bury victims of the military strike on Mung Lai Hkyet camp near Laiza, Myanmar, on Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: AFP ‘The culture of military dictatorship’ Fighting in the area between junta forces and the KIA has intensified since July. Lately, there have been artillery strikes from the junta almost every day, local residents said. While some residents said they heard a plane just before Monday’s explosion, others told RFA that they heard nothing. The KIA has formed an investigation team to determine what caused the blast, Naw Bu said, adding that it may have been a bomb dropped by a junta-operated drone. “They always target the public, not only in our territory in Kachin state, but across the country,” he said of the junta. “It is the culture of military dictatorship.” A man stands amid debris left by the military strike on the Mung Lai Hkyet camp on Oct. 11, 2023, two days after the assault. Credit: AFP RFA’s calls on Wednesday to Win Ye Tun, the junta’s social affairs minister and spokesman for Kachin state, for comments on the death toll at Mung Lai Hkyet went unanswered. Junta spokesman Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA that junta troops were not behind the attack on Mung Lai Hkyet. He speculated that it was caused by an accidental explosion at a warehouse where the KIA stores gunpowder. A Mung Lai Hkyet resident told RFA that it was “totally untrue” that there are weapons factories and arsenals in the camp. “There is no arsenal,” he said. “There are only civilians who are displaced persons.” Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
Uyghur inmates forced to work on farmland leased to Chinese
Hundreds of Uyghur inmates at Keriye Prison in the far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang are forced to work 12-14 hours a day in vast fields of red dates called jujubes, a prison employee and a guard told Radio Free Asia. Under the watch of armed guards, the prisoners must walk to the fields while overseers wearing red vests and holding police dogs monitor them, the two people said. Armed soldiers surrounded the work area, some on horseback, to prevent any from escaping. “I witnessed prisoners being forcibly taken out to work during the day and returned to their cells at night,” said the prison employee – a Uyghur himself – who has worked at the prison for nine years, including one as a “team leader” of a group of inmates, although he was not allowed to mingle or talk much with them. Many inmates also work in factories located inside and outside the prison walls producing cement, shoes, gloves and tea, a prison guard told RFA Uyghur. Those serving sentences of more than 10 years work in factories inside the prison yard, while those serving less than 10 years work outside the prison, the guard said. The goal seems to be two-fold: To harness the prisoners’ free labor for the benefit of Han Chinese businessmen who rent the 1,650 acres of farmland that is owned by the prison, and to reform the inmates through labor, the two sources said, insisting they not be identified for fear of retaliation. “They want to make the prisoners undergo ideological transformation through labor in these big fields,” said the prison employee. The farm itself is called Lao Gai Nong Chang in Chinese, which means “Re-education through Labor Farm.” The work was arduous and painful, he said. Before the fields were converted to jujubes, they produced cotton, and he recalls seeing some inmates picking cotton worked until their hands bled. Arbitrarily sentenced The offenses committed by the Uyghur inmates in Keriye Prison – located about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Siyek township in Hotan prefecture and which houses about 10,000 inmates – remain unclear. Most Uyghurs detained in Xinjiang in recent years have never been formally charged with any crime or tried by the government. More than 30 Uyghur teachers from Hotan Normal Technical High School jailed on charges of “national separatism” and “religious extremism” are serving their sentences in Keriye Prison, RFA previously learned. Keriye Prison has tracts of farmland around it. Credit: Google Earth photo; RFA annotation Though China formally abolished its “reform through labor” system in 1994, this account shows that it has remained in practice in some areas. Starting in 2017 and 2018, Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region detained an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in “re-education” camps, where they were subjected to forced labor in factories producing textiles, wigs, tomatoes and solar panels for export. The forced work and other abuses, including torture and sexual assaults, are part of a wider genocide that China is committing against the Uyghur people, the United States and other governments have declared. Beijing denies the abuses, saying the camps were vocational training centers meant to prevent terrorism and religious extremism while teaching job skills. Chinese rent the land Many Han Chinese from Henan province and Xian, capital of Shaanxi province in northwestern China, rent the prison land under three-to-four-year contracts, the team leader said. For example, a Chinese businessman from Henan province leased about 200 acres on which he grew cotton for five or six years before switching to jujubes, he said. Under an agreement between prison administration and the factory owners, the Chinese owners pay the prison for using the forced labor, he said. “Some factories have 200 to 300, or even 500 workers,” said the guard. “In the factory where I work, we have around 1,670 workers.” In 2022, the United States enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which gave American authorities greater powers to block the import of goods linked to forced labor in China. Under the act, goods produced in Xinjiang are legally assumed to have involved Uyghur forced labor unless a business can prove otherwise to customs officials. However, hundreds of major U.S. companies may be unwittingly producing goods using gold that was mined using the forced labor of Uyghurs in China’s far-west Xinjiang region, according to a report released Wednesday by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
S Korean PM protests to Xi over N Korean repatriation in Sep: report
South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo had raised his opposition to the forced repatriation of North Koreans when he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in China last month, Yonhap News Agency reported on Friday, citing South Korea’s ambassador to China Chung Jae-ho. In response to a question from lawmaker Park Hong-keun during a parliament hearing on Oct. 13, as to whether Han mentioned [the issue of repatriation] to Xi, Chung said he believed Han did. Chung was with the prime minister, who attended the opening ceremony of the Asian Games, when he met Xi in Hangzhou. Radio Free Asia was not able to independently confirm Chung’s comment. When asked what was Xi’s exact response, Chung indicated that the Chinese President’s position mirrored Beijing’s existing stance: they would “deal with illegal entrants in accordance with domestic law, international law, and humanitarian principles,” according to the Yonhap report. The reported exchange between the leaders comes in the wake of recent media reports alleging that China forcibly repatriated over 500 North Koreans following the Hangzhou Asian Games. According to sources working to rescue North Koreans in China, the majority of these individuals were civilians and religious figures. They were apprehended while trying to make their way from China to South Korea. These repatriations reportedly occurred in several areas, including Tumen, Hunchun, Changbai, Dandong, and Nanping. On Friday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry also voiced its concern, stating: “It appears to be true that many North Korean residents in three northeastern Chinese provinces have been repatriated.” The ministry spokesperson emphasized that North Korean defectors abroad should not be forcibly returned under any circumstances. But China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin reiterated during a regular briefing that China adheres to a principle that combines domestic and international law, as well as humanitarian considerations, when dealing with North Koreans who enter China illegally for economic reasons. Ambassador Chung also mentioned that he has been in touch with Chinese authorities to confirm the repatriation of North Koreans, but he has yet to receive any official notification or explanation. Since North Korea lifted its border restrictions in August, after over three years of COVID lockdowns, there have been increasing concerns about the potential human rights violations and severe penalties that defectors might face upon return. Elizabeth Salmon, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, estimates that more than 2,000 North Korean defectors are currently detained in China. Edited by Elaine Chan
Taiwanese AI taken down after it repeats Chinese government line
A top-level research institute in the democratic island of Taiwan has withdrawn a Chinese-language AI chat program after it started spouting Chinese government propaganda, according to multiple media reports. A researcher at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica posted a beta version of their newly developed CKIP-Llama-2-7b chat AI, but members of the public who asked it questions soon started getting some disturbing answers to basic questions. Asked its nationality, the chat program replied that it was “Chinese,” an identity not shared by the majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people because it suggests one is from the mainland. Asked who the national leader was, it answered “Xi Jinping,” the leader of China’s Communist Party who has vowed to force Taiwan to unify with China – by force, if necessary. The majority of Taiwanese don’t identify as Chinese, enjoy living in a democratic and pluralistic society, and have no wish to submit to authoritarian rule from Beijing, according to multiple opinion polls in recent years. “Academia Sinica said today that the content produced by the model was unexpected, and this is an area that needs to be improved in the future,” the island’s Central News Agency reported. “The beta version has been taken down for the time being,” it said. Democratic Progressive Party President Tsai Ing-wen swept to a landslide victory in 2020 on a platform of defending the island’s freedoms and democratic way of life from China’s expanding territorial ambitions, spurred on in part by the crackdown on the 2019 protest movement in Hong Kong. While there are concerns over China’s military saber-rattling, the prospect of too much rapprochement with China has sparked large protests in Taiwan, including the Sunflower Movement that occupied government buildings in 2014, and Tsai vowed in a National Day speech on Tuesday that the Taiwanese people will be a “democratic and free people for generations to come.” But according to CKIP-Llama-2-7b, “National Day” is Oct. 1 – the date of the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China, which has never ruled Taiwan. According to the Taiwan AI, “National Day” is Oct. 1 – the date of the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China, which has never ruled Taiwan. People [pictured] attend a flag-raising ceremony to mark China’s National Day at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 2023. Credit: Jade Gao/AFP The chat program, which was partly based on the commercial open source model Llama-2-7b and Atom-7b, had some interesting opinions about its own provenance, too. Asked who created it, the program replied: “I was jointly developed by the Natural Language Processing Laboratory of Fudan University and the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. My birthday is 2023.” “My nationality is Chinese, my place of residence is the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Server Set, and I can speak Chinese and English,” it said. Asked to name the national anthem, it replied “The March of the Volunteers” – China’s communist anthem – instead of “The Three Principles of the People,” Taiwan’s anthem first adopted by the government of the 1911 Republic of China that fled to the island before the People’s Republic of China was established. Ruling party lawmaker Fan Yun commented on Facebook that the Taiwanese AI gaffe was “an information security issue and an issue of cognitive warfare.” The program was removed from public view on Oct. 9, according to the Central News Agency. Academia Sinica President James Liao said the program had been put online as a way to crowd-source its testing, mainly to save time. “This is a researcher who was keen to speed things up, so, in the spirit of open source software, he put out a program that hadn’t been fully tested yet and asked everyone to join in and test it with him,” Liao said. “It produced some questionable results.” Differences in the writing systems of the mainland and Taiwan were also an obstacle for the project. In 1956, the PRC began simplifying Chinese characters in a bid to increase literacy, and over the years, about 2,000 characters have been simplified. The characters remain unsimplified in Taiwan, and are known as “traditional Chinese” characters. Liao said the researcher had simply converted the data for simplified Chinese into traditional Chinese for CKIP-Llama-2-7b . He said Academia Sinica had learned from the incident that the traditional Chinese character data is important in its own right, and vowed to set up an audit mechanism to avoid similar issues in future, Central News Agency reported. Information technology expert Kun-Lin Hsieh commented on social media: “Academia Sinica’s AI has gone off the rails!” But he went on to explain that the chat program had been trained on an online data set provided by the Beijing-based Stardust AI and other dialogue training materials in the simplified Chinese characters, rather than in traditional characters. Information technology news service iThome said it is crucial to have “large language model” datasets that can speak in a way that is appropriate to the locality in which they are made. It quoted Taiwanese AI expert Tsai Ming-shun as calling on the Taiwanese government to take the opportunity to invest more resources in software development, especially large language models and data sets, to boost the development of homegrown AI. In April, China issued a new set of rules requiring AI chat programs developed in the country to stick to the ruling Communist Party line, requiring their responses not to make “subversive” statements or deliver “content that may disrupt economic and social order.” Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Eugene Whong.
Another brick wobbles in China’s Great Wall of debt
As China’s economic miracle has unraveled over the past several years, property giant Country Garden Holdings appeared to be an unassailable fortress redoubt. Rival Evergrande tried to restructure its debt, failed, and now its founder, Hui Ka Yan, once the richest man in China, is under house arrest. But Country Garden, until very recently, was considered safe as houses. On Tuesday the walls of the Country Garden redoubt crumbled, as the property giant missed a HK$470 million (US$60 million) loan repayment and issued a statement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange warning that it wasn’t going to be able to repay all of its creditors – not even those that had extended it a grace period. The company has about US$200 billion in liabilities and close to US$10 billion in debt, it said in the Tuesday statement. “I think it’s not so much ‘final straw’ as ‘high profile symbol’ of the structural reversal in China’s property market bust. But it’s also possible that because of that, confidence in this fragile market will be further undermined,” said George Magnus, research associate at the China Centre, Oxford University, and the School of African and Oriental Studies in London. “The knock-on effects of a property bust in a market that’s as big as China’s are going to be remarkable,” added Magnus. “There simply isn’t anything that can compensate [for the problem] because nothing – least of all Xi’s new productive forces – is sufficiently big. It’ll keep the Chinese economy on a low-growth path with all the attendant consequences for unemployment, absent a major program of market reforms, which Xi is opposed to.” Chinese President Xi Jinping is famously opposed to “welfarism,” which he reportedly equates with laziness. A person rides a scooter past a construction site of residential buildings by Chinese developer Country Garden, in Tianjin, China Aug. 18, 2023. Credit: Reuters Markets have found some solace in announcements emanating out of Beijing, suggesting that stimulus is on the way, but analysts are skeptical even though Hong Kong and Shanghai stocks rallied on Thursday, after China’s investment fund had bought a stake in the country’s banking giants. Bill Bishop of the widely read Sinocism newsletter commented, “The relatively small investment by Huijin in the four banks – 477 million RMB, about USD $65 million – is not meaningful financially,” adding that the investment fund Huijin had bought similar stakes in the past with the probable aim of achieving a short-term boost to stock values. ‘All the money in the world’ “They’ll respond with some stimulus but there isn’t enough money in the world to make a difference,” said Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder and research director at J Capital Research, “Consider,” she said: “If they lend an extra 1 trillion yuan (US$137 billion) – and bank lending is around 90% of financing in this economy – you get less than a 1% boost in credit. “Basically, so what?” Oxford’s Magnus agreed. “The speculation is that the central government will use its own balance sheet to announce a stimulus program of about 1 trillion yuan or about 0.7% GDP to breathe new life into the economy,” he said. “If it goes, as in the past, towards infrastructure and real estate projects, it’ll spur activity in the short term but leave China’s structural malaise worse. “What China needs is household demand and income stimulus, but this has been studiously avoided so far – and it’s not the CCP’s way.” Stevenson-Yang said, “We’re not going to see a bank failure, because they [the Communist Party] can control that. But the whole shadow sector has collapsed or is collapsing, and that erases a lot of personal wealth. “And local services are going away,” she added in a reference to the belt-tightening forced on local governments, which have even been reducing civil service salaries to make ends meet. Michael Pettis, Carnegie Endowment economist, writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, pointed out that there may be hidden liabilities for the banking sector with as-yet unknown consequences. “Mounting damage to banks’ balance sheets from the property meltdown could also make stabilizing other parts of the economy more difficult,” Pettis said. “This is likely to be what causes the most long-term damage to the economy … There is likely to be a lot more exposure in less direct forms. That’s because after three decades of soaring prices, it would be astonishing if Chinese banks didn’t have a lot of indirect exposure to the property market, partly reflected for example in the RMB 3.4 trillion in supplier trade payables estimated by Gavekal,” he wrote referring to research by Gavekal Research. The firm predicted that China’s property sector owes 3.4 trillion yuan in trade payables to their suppliers. “The major damage to the economy caused by a property sector collapse usually occurs not directly through the property sector but indirectly, through wealth effects and, above all, the impact on the banking system,” said Pettis. “With one of the biggest property sectors in history, and perhaps the most expensive real estate bubble since Japan in the 1980s, I’d be really surprised if we were near the end of the adjustment process.” Stability above all In its Tuesday statement Country Garden admitted, referring to its inability to meet debt commitments, “Such non-payment may lead to relevant creditors of the group demanding acceleration of payment of the relevant indebtedness owed to them or pursuing enforcement action.” A Chinese flag flutters in front of the logo of China Evergrande Group seen on the Evergrande Center in Shanghai, China September 22, 2021. Credit: Reuters Property developer Evergrande’s collapse led to widespread “mortgage strikes” and protests China-wide in 2021 and 2022. The fear in Beijing is that Country Garden, which is heavily invested in third- and fourth-tier cities, where the economic crisis is at its worst, will lead to yet more protests. “The first and utmost priority of Xi and the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is to maintain power, which means maintaining order and stability,” said Australia-based…
Myanmar national dies in Wa state after being sold into scam gang
A man is dead after being sold to a money-laundering gang in United Wa State Army territory, family members told Radio Free Asia Wednesday. After Zaw Than went to the Wa-controlled Wein Kawng in northeast Myanmar for work, his family said they lost contact. But in early October, they received a phone call claiming their son owed more than 16 million kyat (US$7,500). The Chinese national told the family he had covered Zaw Than’s debts in late September after he allegedly lost the money gambling at a casino in Mong Pauk, just 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with China. Zaw Than’s family reported the incident to Wa state’s police department, where they said they were told he had been trafficked into a gang known for its money-laundering schemes. The police officer told the family their son had been sold to the gang for over 95 million kyat (US$14,300) by the Chinese national who had called them demanding the ransom. On Oct. 4, they traveled to Wein Kawng from their home in Shan state, asking police to help them find Zaw Than. The following evening, officers were able to locate him and arrange a meeting. But when they arrived, they said their son was badly beaten and struggling to breathe. “He could not even breathe normally when I found him.” a family member told RFA, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.. “He died the same day because of his injuries from the beatings. They were all over his body, and many internal injuries. This is injustice. I want justice for him.” The family member said an autopsy confirmed their son died from his injuries. They have since complained to Wa state officials and their external relations department. RFA contacted Lashio-based Wa liaison officer Nyi Ran seeking comment on the incident, but he had not responded by the time of publication. Wa state’s Mong Pauk, Pangsang, and Wein Kawng are well-known hubs for crime, including online scamming, sex trafficking, and money-laundering. Last year, 19 Myanmar nationals were sold and held against their will in one scam center in Mong Pauk after being told they would get high-paying jobs. Thai women have also reported being trafficked in the region. The Wa army controls portions of southern and northern Shan state and keeps close ties with China. Both territories are also attempting to crack down on the online crime rampant on the border. In September, Wa forces returned more than 1,300 Chinese nationals involved in online fraud. Despite this transfer, illegal businesses are still a recurring problem, a person assisting Wa state’s labor affairs ministry told RFA, adding that many Chinese nationals start businesses under Myanmar names. RFA contacted the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar via email regarding gang activity and Zaw Than’s death, but the office did not immediately respond. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.
Hamas fighters may be using North Korean weapons, experts say
Experts say that Hamas militants may be using North Korean weapons after footage emerged of a fighter from the Palestinian group carrying a rocket-launcher suspected to originate from the communist nation. The video, recorded shortly after deadly attacks on Israel started last weekend and shared widely on social media, shows several men sitting in the back of a pickup truck brandishing weapons above a face-down, partially clothed woman. A rocket-launcher held by one of the fighters was identified as North Korean in origin by a military and weapons blogger with the handle War Noir in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “A recent video recorded today shows members of the Al-Qassam Brigades (#HAMAS) in #Gaza Strip,” War Noir wrote on Oct. 7. “One of the members can be seen with an uncommon F-7 HE-Frag rocket, originally produced in #NorthKorea (#DPRK).” RFA was not able to conclusively determine if the weapon was North Korean, but its shape closely resembles the F-7 as depicted in the North Korean Small Arms and Light Weapons Recognition Guide published in May by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey research project. Experts said that Palestinians have historically used North Korean weapons, which may have been first purchased by Iran or Syria, and then smuggled to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, circumventing an Israeli-Egyptian embargo that has been in place since 2005. “The Syrians deal with Hezbollah a lot and Hezbollah deals with Hamas a lot,” said Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., a former intelligence officer for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. “A lot of the trade that North Korea does with both Hamas and Hezbollah is deals that they make through the IRGC, the Iranian Republican Guard Corps,” he said. Used in the region In its recent attacks on Israelis, Hamas used weapons originating in a wide range of current and former states, including the United States, the Soviet Union, and North Korea, said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of the Armament Research Services intelligence consultancy, or ARES. A preliminary analysis of images reviewed by this consultancy shows “a militant armed with an RPG-7 type shoulder-fired recoilless gun, loaded with an F-7 series high explosive fragmentation (HE-FRAG) munition, produced in North Korea,” Jenzen-Jones said. “These have previously been documented in the region, including in Syria, Iraq, and in the Gaza Strip.” Other images showed militants using what appeared to be a North Korean Type 58 self-loading rifle, a derivative of the well-known AK series, he said. “North Korean arms have previously been documented amongst interdicted supplies provided by Iran to militant groups, and this is believed to be the primary way in which DPRK weapons have come into the possession of Palestinian militants,” he said. “North Korean arms have previously been identified in the hands of the militant factions of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, amongst other groups,” he added. Bechtol said that a North Korean arms shipment was intercepted in Thailand in 2009. A U.N. panel of experts determined the 35 tons of conventional arms and munitions was headed to Iran, and Israeli intelligence believed it was ultimately bound for Hamas and Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Bechtol said the shipment contained rocket propelled grenades, larger rockets, and the F-7. “The North Koreans have also sold the ‘BULSAE’ antitank system to Hamas. It’s a very good antitank system and they could be firing that at Israeli tanks when they’re entering the Gaza Strip here within the next day or two,” said Bechtol. “So North Korea has given them some capabilities that are interesting.” The woman whose body was seen in the video was identified by her family as 22-year old German-Israeli citizen Shani Louk, who was abducted by Hamas militants when they attacked a music festival in Israel close to the Gaza border. She is believed to be alive, but in critical condition at a hospital in Gaza, according to Palestinian sources her mother told German outlet Bild on Tuesday. But Israeli, German or Palestinian officials have not yet confirmed her status or whereabouts. North Korea blames Israel North Korean media, meanwhile, blamed the recent violence on Israel’s “ceaseless criminal acts” against the Palestinian people. According to a report in the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Tuesday, “a large-scale armed conflict broke out between Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement and Israel.” “The international community called the conflict the result of Israel’s ceaseless criminal acts against the Palestinian people,” and said that the “fundamental” way to end the bloody conflict is to create an independent Palestinian state. That Hamas is using North Korean weapons is not surprising, Bruce Bennett, a defense researcher at the RAND Corporation think tank, told RFA. “North Korea is selling things wherever it can to make hard currency,” said Bennett. “Whether North Korea directly provided it to Hamas or provided it through a third party, I don’t know. But the fact that there is North Korean equipment there does not surprise me at all.” ‘Commercial relationship’ Bennett said the F-7 rocket is an anti-personnel weapon and causes maximum casualties. “It’s not intended to, like, penetrate a tank,” he said. “It’s intended to cause fragmentation, like a terrorist bomb, and maximize the effect against people.” Even though Hamas appears to be using North Korean weapons, it would be inaccurate to describe them as allies, he said. “It’s a commercial relationship which is fed by the politics as well by North Korea being anxious to hurt the United States and anything associated with the United States,” said Bennett. “The scary part of this though is as you think about the future, does North Korea have people on the ground with Hamas watching them do what they’re doing?” he said. “Is North Korea thinking about doing this kind of thing to South Korea? We clearly don’t know at this stage, but I don’t think we can ignore that possibility.” Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Additional reporting by Eugene Whong. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
Manila dismisses China’s ‘gunboat’ claim
Updated Oct. 10, 2023, 06:20 a.m. ET. The Philippines’ military chief on Tuesday rejected a claim that its navy vessel was driven away from a disputed reef in the South China Sea by the Chinese coast guard, calling it “Beijing’s propaganda.” Early on Tuesday, the China Coast Guard said a Philippine Navy gunboat came into China’s “jurisdictional waters” near the Scarborough Shoal in the Spratly Islands. “On Oct. 10, a Philippine Navy gunboat intruded into the waters adjacent to China’s Huangyan Island, ignoring China’s repeated warnings,” Chinese Coast Guard spokesperson Gan Yu said in a statement, using the Chinese name for a shoal the Philippines calls Bajo de Masinloc. Gan said that China Coast Guard ships “took necessary measures, such as tracking and controlling the ship’s route, to drive away the Philippine vessel according to the law.” Beijing’s claim – which comes against a backdrop of deteriorating relations between the neighbors – was rejected by the Philippines’ top military commander, who denied such an incident had taken place. “That is just propaganda from Beijing … to show that they are doing something,” Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. told RFA-affiliated news organization BenarNews on Tuesday. A Philippine navy boat was in the vicinity of Bajo de Masinloc, but it was carrying out a maritime patrol. “It was sailing and it just so happened that the China Coast Guard was there and we issued a challenge,” Brawner said. “Our ship continued with its mission. He added the boats were “far” away from each other. A China Coast Guard ship is seen from a Philippine fishing boat at the disputed Scarborough Shoal April 6, 2017. Credit: Reuters Both Beijing and Manila claim sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal, which China seized after a standoff with the Philippines in 2012 and has maintained control over since. The Chinese spokesperson accused the Philippines of violating China’s sovereignty over the shoal, adding: “We call on the Philippines to immediately stop its infringement.” On Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also warned Manila against “making provocations and creating troubles at sea,” saying “China has made serious démarches [diplomatic protests] to the Philippines on multiple occasions.” The ministry was responding to a statement by the Philippines on Saturday that China’s “unfounded” claims in the South China Sea and Beijing’s actions there are “irresponsible.” ‘Stirring up trouble’ The latest incident marks a further deterioration in the relationship between the two neighbors. A Beijing-based think tank, the South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI), accused the Philippines of “stirring up” the situation in the sea. This week, U.S. and Philippine warships are conducting a bilateral training exercise called Samasama (Together) 2023 in the waters off the Philippines. The exercise, joined by several other U.S. allies, is being seen as a testament of the strong bond between the two militaries. “Currently, the Philippines is at the vanguard of challenging China at sea, much more aggressive than any other party including the United States,” SCSPI said in a post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. “Wait and see,” it added in a thinly veiled threat, “The Scarborough Shoal Incident in 2012 is a wake-up call for both China and the Philippines.” The 2012 standoff began on April 8, 2012, after the Philippine Navy attempted to arrest Chinese fishermen who it accused of illegal fishing in the waters near Scarborough Shoal but the attempt was blocked by Chinese maritime surveillance ships. Naval vessels from both sides were deployed in the standoff that lasted more than two months. The Philippines pulled its two vessels out on June 15, 2012, but China kept its ships at the shoal. Scarborough Shoal has since become a hot spot and a trigger point between China and the Philippines in the contested South China Sea. Most recently, in late September, the Philippines said China had installed a 300-meter (984-foot) floating barrier to block Philippine fishermen from accessing the waters around the shoal. The Philippine coast guard carried out a “special operation” to cut the barrier and remove its anchor. An aerial view shows the BRP Sierra Madre on the contested Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin, in the South China Sea, March 9, 2023. Credit: Reuters The risk of confrontation has also risen in recent days over another disputed atoll in the South China Sea, internationally known as the Second Thomas Shoal. The Philippines calls it Ayungin Shoal, where it maintains an outpost with less than a dozen marines, stationed on a rusty WWII landing craft, the BRP Sierra Madre. Manila accuses China of regularly blocking its resupply missions to the troops on the Sierra Madre. It said on Aug. 6, 2023, Chinese Coast Guard ships fired a water cannon at one of the Philippine ships resupplying the outpost. China calls it Ren’ai Jiao and maintains that the atoll lies within its jurisdiction. Six parties – China, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Taiwan – claim parts of the resource-rich South China Sea together with the islands inside but Beijing’s claim is by far the most extensive, occupying nearly 90% of the sea. An international tribunal in 2016 ruled that China’s claims in the South China Sea were illegal and invalid, but Beijing refused to accept the ruling. Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization. Updated to include comment from Philippine military commander Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr.
A tamer tomorrow
Legendary Hong Kong movie star Chow Yun-fat told a film festival in South Korea that the Chinese city’s once vibrant cinema has lost its freedom under Beijing’s tightened controls on free speech and expression. Chow, named Asian Filmmaker of the Year at the Busan International Film Festival, is the first prominent figure in the industry to publicly discuss how China’s strict movie censorship requirements have crimped freedom and creativity in the former British colony.
‘Eliticide’ as China jails Uyghur intellectuals to erase culture
Over a fortnight, a Uyghur folklorist missing since 2017 was revealed to be serving a life prison for “separatism,” while another Uyghur scholar who had vanished into Chinese custody years earlier appeared on shortlists and oddsmakers picks for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. The cases of ethnographer Rahile Dawut, whose life conviction in December 2018 was uncovered by a U.S. NGO only last month, and economist Ilham Tohti, put away for life on similar charges in 2014, share key similarities that highlight the personal and family tragedies behind China’s relentless assimilation policies in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Both Dawut, who was born in 1966, and the 53-year-old Tohti built their academic careers inside the Chinese system, teaching at prestigious universities and releasing their work through major state publishing houses. The two scholars collaborated with and were respected as authorities by their Chinese and international peers. Uyghur professor Rahile Dawut talks with a man in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in an undated photo. Photo courtesy of Akide Polat/Freemymom.org Dawut created and directed the Xinjiang University ‘s Minorities Folklore Research Center and wrote dozens of articles in international journals and a number of books on the region and its culture. An economist at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, Tohti ran the Uyghur Online website, set up in 2006, which drew attention to the discrimination facing Uyghurs under Beijing’s rule over Xinjiang and its increasingly restrictive religious and language policies. The families of Dawut and Tohti share the common fate of not having heard anything from their jailed loved once since 2017, the year that China’s harsh crackdown in Xinjiang went into overdrive, with the establishment of a network of internment camps for Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic minorities. “My first reaction was that I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it at all,” Dawut’s U.S.-based daughter, Akide Polat, told Radio Free Asia last month. “None of my mother’s work, nor the way she went about it, nor anything in her personal life had anything to do with ‘endangering state security,’” she said of the charges on which her mother was convicted. ‘No intellectual resistance’ The Dui Hua Foundation, which revealed Dawut’s life sentence, noted estimates of as many as several hundred Uyghur intellectuals who have been detained, arrested, and imprisoned since 2016. RFA Uyghur has documented scores of disappearances and detentions of Uyghur writers, academics, artists and musicians in recent years. “What we’ve seen inside the Uyghur region of China is what is often termed ‘eliticide,’” said Sean Roberts, a Central Asia expert at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C. “There’s a particular focus on the intellectual elites, many of whom were working at state institutions, have been loyal to the state, did not did not present any sort of real resistance. Their only crime was basically maintaining the idea of a Uyghur nation and identity,” he told RFA Uyghur. Akida Polat holds a photo of her mother, imprisoned Uyghur folklore expert Rahile Duwat. Credit: X/@Kuzzat_Altay Roberts said eliticide “is often identified as occurring at the beginning of a genocide, where there’s an attempt to get rid of the entire political, economic and intellectual elite to ensure that there is no intellectual resistance to the erasure of a people and their identity.” In early 2021, after years of cumulative reports on the internment camp system in Xinjiang, the United Nations, the United States, and the legislatures of several European countries, officially branded the treatment of Uyghurs as genocide or crimes against humanity. China has angrily rejected the genocide charges, arguing that the “reeducation camps” were a necessary tool to fight religious extremism and terrorism, in reaction to sporadic terrorist attacks that Uyghurs say are fueled by years of government oppression. Beijing has also waged an information counterattack, with a global media influence campaign that spreads Chinese state media content to countries in Asia and beyond, invites diplomats and journalists from China-friendly countries on staged tours of Xinjiang and promotes pro-China social media influencers. Awareness-raising on genocide Last month, the pushback saw Chinese diplomats pressuring fellow United Nations member states not to attend a panel on human rights abuses in Xinjiang sponsored by a think tank and two rights groups on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Tohti, who has been nominated for the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s Peace Prize since 2020, was listed by the U.S. news outlet Time as one of top three favorites to win the medal this year, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Tohti was given higher odds on many of London’s famed betting sites of winning the prize than the recipient, jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi. “There are many human rights issues around the world that are equally as important as the suffering that the Uyghurs are going through, but the international status and power of the perpetrators of these human rights abuses aren’t considered equal,” said Jewher Ilham, Tohti’s daughter. “The Chinese government is known to have a much more powerful political and economic influence than the Iranian government in the western world,” she told RFA Uyghur. Jewher Ilham holds a photo of her father, Ilham Tohti, during the Sakharov Prize ceremony at the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Dec. 18, 2019. Credit: AP Photo It is not clear that that China would be moved by a Nobel Prize to release Tohti or moderate policies in Xinjiang, where Communist Party chief Xi Jinping appears to be doubling down on draconian security measures and policies to suppress Uyghur culture. Beijing lashed out at the Nobel Committee and imposed trade sanctions on Norway after the Nobel 2010 went to Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo. With Liu in jail, the Chinese capital Beijing won the right in 2015 to host the Winter Olympics, and Beijing largely shrugged off the global outcry when in 2017, Liu became the first Nobel laureate to die in jail since German journalist and Nazi opponent…
