• ijrepjournalism@gmail.com
  • contact@ij-reportika.com
Ij reportika Logo

Category: Europe

Vietnamese rescued from Myanmar casinos stuck in war zone

Editor012 mins

Scores of Vietnamese nationals trafficked to Myanmar and rescued by security authorities in October are stranded in a war zone near the border with China and cannot leave the Southeast Asian country, according to a video they made and to some of their parents. The 166 Vietnamese, who say they are running out of food and want officials to help them leave Myanmar, recorded a video of themselves chanting that they are Vietnamese citizens and have been stuck in Myanmar for 40 days without food, electricity or water.   “We are now living in cold weather, and our food is exhausted because we have run out of money,” they say on the video, which a relative of one of those stranded sent to Radio Free Asia. “Please help us to return to Vietnam as soon as possible, Vietnamese Embassy! Save us, please!”  RFA could not independently verify the video. A reporter made multiple attempts to contact the stranded people via various messaging applications, but did not receive any responses.  The Vietnamese had been trafficked to northern Myanmar to work for online gambling companies, where they faced harsh working conditions and abuse by their employers.  Myanmar security forces rescued them on Oct. 20 and arranged for them to stay temporarily in an abandoned school in Shan state’s Laukkai township.  When the group stops chanting in the video, a Vietnamese man says the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar informed them that it had been able to verify information about them, but no diplomats had yet visited the group or arranged for their repatriation. “I hope the embassy and the Vietnamese government will try to save us and help us return home as soon as possible,” he said.  Trafficked to casinos, scam rings The trapped Vietnamese workers are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have been trafficked by organized criminal gangs to Southeast Asia and forced into working at illegal casinos or online scams, according to a United Nations report issued in August.  The Vietnamese citizens, who say they were tricked into working at fraudulent gambling establishments in Myanmar, faced abuse from their employers. RFA contacted the foreign affairs ministries in Myanmar and Vietnam for comment, but received no response. When RFA called the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar on Friday, a reporter was told to contact the Consular Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An officer in the department’s Citizen Protection Call Center said the “rescue and provision of assistance to stranded citizens in Myanmar are very complicated and time-consuming as the country is undergoing a civil war.”   An officer surnamed Lap in the consular division of Department of Foreign Affairs in Vietnam’s Kien Giang province — home to about 100 of the stranded workers — said the agency received more than 20 petitions from residents who are their relatives. The agency forwarded the petitions to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but had received no response.  During a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry press briefing on Nov. 9, spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said officials had identified 166 Vietnamese citizens among foreigners rescued from “deceptive casinos” and took them to a safe area in northern Myanmar, bordering China.”  But Vietnam’s access to the stranded people and effort to protect its citizens faced difficulties because of armed conflict in Myanmar’s northern border area and other places, she said.  A man from Kien Giang province, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told RFA that his daughter was among those stranded and that she and others were being held under temporary detention while Burmese authorities conducted an investigation.  Though several months have passed, she does not know why the investigations have not yet been completed, he said. Local police gave him similar information, he said.  A woman from the southern province of Kien Giang whose daughter is among the stranded group told RFA on Friday that her daughter and others were rescued by Myanmar’s army during an administrative inspection at a company with the Vietnamese name Lien Thang Group. The 166 stranded Vietnamese are living in classrooms where the power is on for only one or two hours a day, said the woman who requested anonymity for safety reasons. They do not have access to drinking water, though they receive two meals daily from the Burmese Army, consisting of a bowl of rice and some vegetable soup, she said.  “It’s getting cold these days, but many don’t have warm clothes,” she said.  Phone scams Despite having a stable job at a local restaurant in Kien Giang, her daughter was enticed to leave for Myanmar in mid-August this year to get another job with a lighter workload and better pay, her mother said. The employer promised to pay her 21 million dong, or about US$865, monthly.  “Things were quite pleasant in the first two weeks as they let her go shopping and eat at restaurants,” the young woman’s mother said. “Then, the company signed a labor contract [with her] and started to apply their rules and tighten everything. Even phones were not allowed.” The employers forced the young Vietnamese woman and the other workers to use Facebook to make calls soliciting people to put money into an investment scam, giving her a daily revenue quota of 200-300 million dong (US$8,200-12,400), the mother said.  If they failed to do so, their employers would leave them hungry in the room, beat them or apply electrical shocks. The company forced some of her co-workers to find and entice Vietnamese people to go [to Myanmar] and work for the company,” she said.” They would be beaten and electrocuted if they failed to meet this quota, too.”  The woman said that her daughter and a group of dozens of friends left Vietnam for Myanmar together, and they all worked for a company whose management team speaks Chinese and Burmese. They used Vietnamese translators to communicate with the workers.  The people stranded come from various places in Vietnam, with about 100 from Kien Giang province, she said.  In September, RFA Vietnamese reported on the…

Read More

Myanmar’s junta fires into Rakhine villages, killing 3 children

Editor05 mins

Junta bombing in western Myanmar killed four people, locals told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday. Heavy artillery fired at Rakhine state’s War Shee Lar village on Monday evening exploded, injuring seven people. Five of the seven are in critical condition and were sent to Buthidaung Hospital in the township’s capital.  The deceased include eight-year-old Arru Shu Lar and 11-year-old Abdullah, as well as 50-year-old Ha Bezar.  The injured are in their 30s to 40s, said a War Shee Lar resident who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “They died and were injured when a heavy weapon dropped while they were working in the vegetable farm. Arru Shu Lar and Ha Beza died on the spot,” he told RFA. “Another child died on the way to the hospital. The dead have been cremated in the village.” Heavy artillery was fired by a Buthidaung township-based junta battalion, he added. The shelling continued even as villagers cremated the bodies of the deceased in the village cemetery. War Shee Lar is a Rohingya village with about 1,000 people. Locals said that all the residents are afraid, but they have to hide in the village because there is no place to run. To Buthidaung’s southeast, a teenager was killed when junta troops fired at a village in Mrauk-U township.  Fifteen-year-old Cho Cho died on Monday night in Pan Be Tan village after being struck in the stomach by a bullet in her home, residents said. The shooting was from a Mrauk-U-based junta infantry battalion, locals alleged.  RFA contacted Rakhine state’s junta spokesperson Hla Thein by phone, but he did not reply by the time of publication. The junta has not released any information through official channels or regime-backed media regarding the killings. The junta’s army has been deliberately targeting civilians since Nov. 13, when fighting with the Arakan Army resumed, said Pe Than, a former member of parliament from the Arakan National Party in Rakhine state.  “Now the junta army can no longer go directly to the battleground and fight. That’s why they open fire with small and heavy artillery from their camps. And they mainly target civilian areas,” he told RFA. “It’s like burning down the barn when they cannot hit the rats. [The junta] has been fighting in a way that harms the people since the beginning of the fighting in Rakhine state.” The military has blocked roads connecting Rakhine state from the rest of the country, as well as roads and waterways between towns and villages, he said, adding people’s livelihoods were severely affected by this tactic. Fighting between the junta and Arakan Army resumed on Nov. 13 after a year-long ceasefire. According to data compiled by RFA, fighting since Nov.13 has killed 17 civilians and injured 57 more. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

Read More

Chinese authorities fire tear gas at people fleeing Myanmar fighting

Editor07 mins

Chinese authorities fired tear gas at people attempting to flee from intensifying fighting between Myanmar’s military junta and allied ethnic armed groups. Social media videos showed several dozen people covering their faces at the China-Myanmar border as tear gas hovered on one side of a fence in Shan state’s Laukkaing township on Saturday afternoon. “Chinese police and soldiers used tear gas to expel Kokang people who sought shelter at the border line,” a resident in Laukkaing township told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “They recently fled there due to the escalation of armed conflict.” The allied resistance forces announced on Friday that they would intensify an offensive that has seen widespread gains over the last month. The “Three Brotherhood” Alliance of the Arakan Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, launched an offensive on Oct. 27 – dubbed “Operation 1027” – and have made notable gains against the military in several key cities in Shan state. On Saturday, the MNDAA seized the Kyin San Kyawt border gate near the key border town of Muse, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) from Laukkaing. The gate is one of five major entry points in the area that handles Myanmar’s largest volume of trade with China.  It’s the second border gate in Muse township that the alliance now controls, along with two others elsewhere, according to the Associated Press, which noted that almost all legal cross-border trade with China has stopped over the last month because of the fighting.  On Sunday, allied forces near another gate in the area carried out drone attacks, which disrupted a cargo inspection area and hit some buildings, while junta forces fired artillery shells from a highland area, locals told RFA. Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun confirmed to state-owned media on Monday that there were clashes near Muse over the weekend, but he didn’t disclose details or comment on the loss of control of the Kyin San Kyawt gate. China’s live-fire exercises In Laukkaing, MNDAA spokesperson Li Kyar Win said he has seen the tear gas videos but didn’t have any further information. He noted that junta troops had carried out artillery attacks on nearby areas, which forced the local residents to move toward the border. Shan state-based media Shwe Phee Myay News Agency and the local Kengtung Hit Tine online news outlet reported on their Facebook pages that Chinese police had deployed tear gas on the border line.RFA has not independently confirmed the reports. Messages left with Chinese government sources seeking comment about the tear gas weren’t immediately returned on Monday. This house was damaged in fighting in the 105 Mile Trade Zone in the Myanmar-China border town of Muse on Nov. 27, 2023. Credit: Citizen journalist Also on Saturday, junta-controlled media reported that the Chinese government informed Myanmar’s military of live-fire exercises near the border over the weekend. “The regular military drill of the southern command of the People’s Republic of China was reported on Nov. 25,” Zaw Min Tun said. “It is aimed to ensure peace and stability at the border area.” Political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that the Chinese drills are the first in the area since 2017 – a period that also saw heavy fighting in Shan state. “I assume that the Chinese army conducts these drills to protect their sovereignty and to ensure the least impact on their people,” he said. “It is not directly related to Operation 1027, but it is their message for readiness on security of their people’s lives and property.” Chinese media reported that the exercises began Saturday and ended Monday, but didn’t disclose the exact location or the number of troops involved. “It is not an unordinary exercise,” said Thein Tun Oo, the executive director of Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank run by former military officers. “There may be some rumors and assumptions on this issue,” he said. “However, China and Myanmar have agreed on military exercises and cooperation in foreign affairs. A mutual understanding has been made between the two countries.” Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Read More

‘We want to amplify the voices that have been censored in China’

Editor016 mins

One year after crowds of protesters across China held up blank sheets of paper, chanting slogans calling for an end to the zero-COVID policy and for Communist Party leader Xi Jinping to step down, activists overseas vowed to keep the flame of the “white paper” revolution alive, despite attempts by Beijing to scare them away. While authorities in China moved quickly to quash the protests, arresting a number of young people for taking part, some managed to leave China, joining others who were already expressing their support on the streets of cities around the world, sometimes risking retaliation against their families back home. One of those overseas supporters was Apple, of the dissident group China Deviants, who was in touch with the protesters in real time via Telegram, and who organized a rally to mark the anniversary of their resistance in London this week. “On one voice call, a girl got busted right in the middle of the call,” Apple told Radio Free Asia. “People in the group were shouting ‘That girl got busted!’ and I was on the other end of the phone in London.” “I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh! I really wish I could help her and bring her back’,” she recalled. Instead, she got active right where she was, taking to the streets of London to oppose Chinese Communist Party rule. The “white paper” protests were sparked by public anger at the delayed response to a deadly fire on Nov. 24 in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, that was widely blamed on COVID-19 restrictions. The incident, which left at least 10 people dead, prompted an outpouring of public grief and tapped into pent-up frustrations of millions of Chinese who had endured nearly three years of repeated lockdowns, travel bans, quarantines and various other restrictions to their lives. Apple, a member of the dissident group China Deviants, organized a rally in London this week to mark the one-year anniversary of the White Paper resistance. Credit: Shi Shi But it wasn’t all about calling for an end to lockdowns and mass quarantines. Protesters also voiced calls for greater freedom of expression, democratic reforms, and even the removal of President Xi Jinping, who has been closely identified with the rigid policies. “We want to amplify the voices that have been censored in China overseas, because it’s impossible to have any form of civil society in [today’s] China,” she said. “We want all voices to be included … to be heard.” Fellow China Deviants activist Chen Liangshi said overseas activism is still not risk-free, and that the threat of violence and harassment from “little pink” supporters of Beijing is always there. “There are a lot of little pinks overseas, and I would never know how many people felt the way I did,” Chen said. “But since joining China Deviants, I have found a lot of like-minded friends.” “When we work together for the causes of resisting communist rule, and democracy for China, I feel very excited, and have found a sense of belonging,” he said. Feeling powerless Fellow China Deviants activist Ma Youwei agreed. “It’s very common to feel powerless as a Chinese person living in China,” Ma said. “I wanted to get rid of that feeling.” “How? You do it through action.” Yet the anniversary comes amid growing concern over Beijing’s “long-arm” law enforcement targeting overseas activists and students, who had expected to enjoy greater freedom of speech and association while living or studying in a democratic country. Both Chen and Ma said their families haven’t yet been directly targeted by the Chinese authorities, and insisted on pseudonyms to preserve their anonymity. “This is the way the Chinese Communist Party suppresses the overseas democracy movement,” Chen said. “They try to frighten us into not speaking out or protesting, so they can maintain their totalitarian rule.” “It’s normal to be afraid, but we can’t let that fear stop us, because it runs counter to our values and political ideas,” he said. “We still have to stand up.” Ma Youwei [left], Apple [center] and Chen Liangshi and are members of the China Deviants, a dissident group based in the United Kingdom. Credit: Shi Shi In Canada, Xiaopei recalled using his circumvention tools to go online on the morning of Nov. 27 to see large groups of people gathering on the streets of Shanghai, then heading out on his bicycle to join them. He was later detained at a protest in Shanghai’s Xuhui district, beginning an ordeal of torture and inhumane treatment at the hands of police. “They put my hands behind my back and hit my head against the wall. It was a concrete wall, so my head was bruised,” said Xiaopei, who declined to give his full name. “I protested again inside [the police station], so I was arrested and put on the tiger bench, which is an iron chair,” he said. “My wrists and ankles were all in restraints, and I sat there for more than an hour without being able to move.” Manacles and leg irons Xiaopei was released the following day, but placed under close surveillance, then redetained after taking part in a discussion on Twitter, now X, he said. This time, police put him in manacles and leg irons for 30 days, and was unable to move around freely. “I was in restraints for 30 days … I had problems sleeping, I couldn’t wash or change my clothes by myself, so anyone who monitored me would notice that I smelled bad,” said.  “I couldn’t even eat or drink by myself, and I needed help going to the toilet,” he told Radio Free Asia. Xiaopei was eventually released, and decided he was leaving China, and boarded a plane to Canada, where he applied for political asylum. “Ordinary people [in China] are treated like ants and are trampled to death,” he said. “It takes a lot of courage to take part in action [like the white paper movement], and there are huge risks involved.”…

Read More

S Korea, Japan, China fail to set summit date, condemn N Korea

Editor07 mins

South Korea, Japan, and China have not only failed to agree on a date for a landmark trilateral summit of their leaders, but also in jointly condemning North Korea’s latest illegal satellite launch, exposing the widening gaps in reinvigorating that three-party cooperation. The foreign ministers of the three nations did not hold a joint press conference on Sunday, after their first ministerial talks in four years – a rare occurrence that could signify the differing diplomatic stances among these key Asian geopolitical entities. “The countries have reaffirmed their agreement to hold the summit, the apex of their cooperative framework, at the earliest mutually convenient time,” South Korea’s Foreign Minister Park Jin said in a solo briefing after the trilateral meeting with his Japanese and Chinese counterparts, Yoko Kamikawa and Wang Yi in the South’s port city of Busan. A South Korean government source, who asked for anonymity due to sensitivity of the matter, told Radio Free Asia that the joint press conference did not take place as Wang had pre-arranged plans. The person did not elaborate. According to a separate South Korean government official who spoke to RFA prior to the meeting, the primary goal of the ministerial meeting was to set a date for the trilateral summit. The last trilateral summit took place in 2019 in Chengdu, China. “Efforts will be made to ensure that the summit takes place soon,” Park said, without specifying an exact date. The South Korean minister mentioned his proposal for the three countries to reactivate their intergovernmental mechanism as a means to fortify the framework of trilateral cooperation. However, he did not clarify whether this proposal was agreed upon by all parties. Whether China would want to continue the trilateral summit platform has become questionable as its emergence as a global power has relatively lessened its focus in the region. The increasing collaboration of South Korea and Japan under the trilateral framework with the United States also has been a source of discomfort for Beijing. In fact, with South Korea’s current conservative Yoon Suk Yeol administration, Seoul has been more vocal in criticizing China on the international stage – with concerns ranging from Beijing’s decision to repatriate North Korean defectors back to the Kim Jong Un regime to China’s coercive behavior towards the democratically self-governed island of Taiwan. North Korea The three ministers also failed to issue a joint statement in condemning North Korea’s latest provocation, a departure from previous trilateral foreign ministers’ meetings which usually included a consensus on security issues in the Korean peninsula. “I emphasized that North Korea’s recent so-called military reconnaissance satellite launch, along with its ballistic missile launches and nuclear development, are among the greatest threats to peace and security in the region,” Park said during his solo briefing, without saying what has been agreed with his Japanese and Chinese counterparts.   North Korea launched a satellite last Tuesday, despite international warnings. Rocket technology can be used for both launching satellites and missiles. For that reason, the U.N. bans North Korea from launching a ballistic rocket, even if it claims to be a satellite launch. The lack of a joint statement is a sharp contrast with the trilateral foreign minister meeting among the U.S., South Korea and Japan in San Francisco, in which the three called the military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, including Russia’s technological aid to help the North Korean launch,  a “serious threat to international peace and stability.” Unlike previous occasions, when China’s foreign ministry often expressed its regrets, Beijing refrained from issuing a public criticism of North Korea’s latest launch, as the strategic value of Pyongyang has been raised due to intensifying U.S.-China relations. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on Saturday claimed that its satellite passed over Hawaii and observed “a naval base in the Pearl Harbor, the Hickam air-force base in Honolulu,” as well as South Korea’s Busan.

Read More

Foreign ministers wield new brooms in Cambodia and Thailand

Editor013 mins

Shortly after being appointed Thailand’s new foreign minister in early September, Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara made a telling remark: “We want the Thai people to feel that the foreign ministry is contributing to their lives.”  Sok Chenda Sophea, Cambodia’s new foreign minister, appointed a few days before Parnpree, told his new ambassadors: “All of you should work to represent the nation and enhance the Kingdom’s prestige, especially in areas like diplomacy, economics, food, sports and the arts. These are the focus of the new government’s foreign policy.” The two new foreign ministers bear a striking resemblance. Neither are career diplomats. Parnpree, whose father and grandfather were prominent in the foreign ministry, instead rose through the ranks of the commerce ministry under the Shinawatra sibling’s governments and then became chairman of the state oil company PTT.  Thailand’s Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara arrives at the government house in Bangkok, Thailand, Sept. 5, 2023, to take his oath of office. Credit: Sakchai Lalit/AP Sok Chenda cut his teeth in the tourism ministry in the 1990s. Parnpree served as chairman of the Thailand Board of Investment. Sok Chenda was head of the Council for the Development of Cambodia, the country’s investment board, from 1997 until this year. Parnpree was head of a negotiation team for the creation of a free trade zone with India. Sok Chenda headed the Cambodian Special Economic Zones Board. Parnpree studied public administration at the University of Southern California. Sok Chenda studied economics at the University of Aix en Provence.  Moreover, both are unlike their predecessors. Don Pramudwinai, a career diplomat and foreign minister under the years of Prayut Chan-ocha’s military-run government, was often accused of putting geopolitics, chiefly relations with Beijing, ahead of more balanced, economics-focused policy, as well as for conducting “cowboy diplomacy” over the Myanmar crisis that badly dented ASEAN unity.   Another charge against Don was that, because he was appointed by a junta that had just taken power in a coup, he “spent a large part of his time explaining when, how, and to what extent his country would return, or has returned, to democracy.” As Benjamin Zawacki added, “His tenure has been marked by a conservative and defensive posture rather than one of enterprise or ambition.”  Similar accusations have been leveled at Cambodia’s former foreign minister. Prak Sokhonn, who was quick to lash out against the perceived Western interference in Cambodia’s domestic affairs, was more aligned with Beijing than some officials in the economic ministries liked, and, one hears, not entirely trusted by the former prime minister Hun Sen. Indeed, Hun Sen is believed to have ignored Prak and the foreign ministry by condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Economics at the center Parnpree and Sok Chenda are new brooms, appointed to refashion their ministries away from a defensive posture on their relations with China and a fixation with stoking geopolitical tensions, and towards a more sustainable, front-foot policy that puts economics at the center. As one Thai newspaper put it, Parnpree is “expected to impart a new momentum to the country’s foreign policy with a strong emphasis on exploring economic dimensions of bilateral and multilateral relationships.”  A Cambodian analyst has argued, “To maintain economic development, Cambodia cannot become subject to US or Western economic sanctions. Maintaining economic development may be Cambodia’s main priority under the leadership of Prime Minister Hun Manet. This appears to be the case with the appointment of Sok Chenda Sophea as the minister of Foreign Affairs.”  These ideas aren’t radical. Surakiart Sathirathai, Thailand’s foreign minister between 2001 and 2005, sought to create “CEO ambassadors”. Surin Pitsuwan, a predecessor, established a “Team Thailand” approach, with diplomats supposed to represent the nation as much as the foreign ministry. But the return to a more stable, stripped-down foreign policy makes sense as Thailand and Cambodia undergo political change.  Hun Sen speaks at a press conference at the National Assembly after a vote to confirm his son, Hun Manet, as Cambodia’s prime minister in Phnom Penh, August 22, 2023. It is said that Hun Sen did not entirely trust his foreign minister, Prak Sokhonn. Credit: Cindy Liu/Reuters Thailand has its first civilian, democratically elected government again for more than a decade. Cambodia has just undergone a once-in-a-lifetime generational succession of its ruling elites, with almost the entire old guard resigning in August to make way for a younger generation, mostly the children of that old guard. Neither Parnpree nor Sok Chenda are big characters. Indeed, they’re rather bureaucratic. And they are on the senior end of the age spectrum. At 66, Parnpree is one of the oldest in the new Thai cabinet. Sok Chenda, aged 67, is the oldest of Cambodia’s important ministers. (He’s 20 years older than the PM.) They are also excellent counterparts to their prime ministers. Srettha Thavisin, the Thai premier, is a businessman at heart.  Although Hun Manet rose through the ranks of the military, he studied economics and played a guiding role in the companies owned by his wife. Parnpree and Sok Chenda appear happy to defer much of the more razmataz foreign policy, such as showing up for international summits, to their prime ministers. Srettha, the self-styled “salesman”-in-chief, clearly likes traveling around the world and meeting foreign leaders, and posing for rather ingratiating and embarrassing selfies with them.  Cambodia’s ruling party obviously wants Hun Manet to be front-and-center of Cambodia’s engagement abroad, a role similar to the one played by his father. As such, having nose-to-the-grindstone foreign ministers makes sense alongside globetrotting premiers.  Experienced foreign policy thinkers In part, too, the two new foreign ministers are also designed to appease the private sectors, especially as Cambodia and Thailand have untested and unsteady governments; Thailand in the form of an odd coalition and Cambodia with its dynastic succession of Hun Manet and almost the entire cabinet. It’s not quite the Biden administration’s evocation of a “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class” but it’s not far off.  How the new foreign ministers translate their briefs into action remains to be seen. In…

Read More

Activists call for probe into China’s ‘consular volunteers’ network

Editor011 mins

The Chinese Communist Party is running a global network of “consular volunteers” through its embassies and consulates who form part of its “United Front” influence and enforcement operations on foreign soil, according to a new report, prompting calls for democratic governments to investigate. While Chinese embassies and consulates have been using such informal networks for at least a decade, they were recently formalized through a State Council decree that took effect on Sept. 1, yet the networks remain largely undeclared to host countries, the Spain-based rights group Safeguard Defenders said in a report published this week. Consular volunteers are mostly drafted in to help with administrative tasks linked to consular protection, risk assessments, and even “warnings and advisories” to overseas citizens and organizations, the report said, citing multiple online recruitment advertisements and other official documents. This gives them full access to individuals’ personal information, and “may also dangerously enhance their function of control over overseas communities and dissenters,” the report warned. China is already known to rely on an illegal, overseas network of “police service centers” that are sometimes used as a base from which to monitor and harass dissidents in other countries. Since taking power in 2012, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has launched an accelerated expansion of political influence activities worldwide, much of which rely on overseas community and business groups under the aegis of the United Front Work Department. Under the radar While Beijing has shut down some of its overseas police “service centers” following protests from host countries, the “consular volunteer” network has managed to fly under the radar until now, further enabling China’s overseas influence and illegal transnational law enforcement operations, according to the report. According to the State Council decree, “The state encourages relevant organizations and individuals to provide voluntary services for consular protection and assistance.” The state also “encourages and supports insurance companies, emergency rescue agencies, law firms and other social forces” to take part in consular work, it says. A building [with glass front] suspected of being used as a secret police station in Chinatown for the purpose of repressing dissidents living in the United States on behalf of the Chinese government stands in New York City’s lower Manhattan on April 18, 2023. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images The decree also requires Chinese nationals overseas to “abide by the laws of China,” regardless of location. Organizations and individuals that “make outstanding contributions to consular protection and assistance” are to be commended and rewarded, it says. And official reports on volunteer commendation ceremonies and training events show that they are – under the supervision of individuals with “direct and demonstrable ties to the CCP’s United Front,” the Safeguard Defenders report said. “The [consular volunteer] network runs through United Front-linked associations and individuals and shows the involvement of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office,” it said, adding that the Office was labeled an “entity that engages in espionage” by the Federal Canadian Court in 2022. Global effort A March 2023 recruitment drive by the Chinese Embassy in the Czech Republic posted to an official website called for volunteers from among “overseas Chinese, international students, Chinese employees of Chinese-funded enterprises and other individuals in the Czech Republic, overseas Chinese groups, Chinese-funded enterprises and other organizations, institutions and groups.” Similar notices have been seen in Trinidad and Tobago, Botswana, Turkey, Malaysia, Johannesburg, Equatorial Guinea, Chile and Japan, the report said, adding that the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office has also been directly named as a participant at training events for consular volunteers in Rio de Janeiro and Florence, Italy. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, “the United Front system acts as a liaison and amplifier for many other official and unofficial Chinese organizations engaged in shaping international public opinion of China, monitoring and reporting on the activities of the Chinese diaspora, and serving as access points for foreign technology transfer.”  The Safeguard Defenders report called on democratic countries to review the practice of “consular volunteering” by Chinese diplomatic missions, and warned them not to take part in United Front-linked events. French current affairs commentator Wang Longmeng described consular volunteers as quasi-spies. “The so-called assistance in providing consular services actually means collecting financial support from overseas Chinese individuals,” Wang said. “This can help the Chinese Communist Party control overseas Chinese remotely, making them loyal to party and state, as well as helping China to steal Western technology and intelligence.” “These people are also collecting information on dissidents, and many dissidents’ family members back home are also being threatened,” he said. “This is a quasi-espionage organization and an integral part of the Chinese Communist Party’s transnational repression network.” Wang said European countries have been fairly slow to catch on to such practices, compared with the United States. “That encourages the Chinese Communist Party to extend its long arm even further,” he said. “Their intention was never to stop transnational repression and United Front work,” he said, calling for EU legislation to curb such activities “as soon as possible.” APEC summit Zhou Fengsuo, executive director of the U.S.-based Human Rights in China, said China’s consulate in San Francisco had engaged in the large-scale mobilization of patriotic protesters during President Xi Jinping visit last week to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in the city.. “The Chinese Communist Party will take up every bit of space it can in democratic societies to extend its rule and engage in state persecution,” Zhou told Radio Free Asia.  “Consulates wield a great deal of power overseas.” “Much like it did with overseas police stations, the international community needs to face up to this form of [Chinese] government control.” After Chinese international student Tian Ruichen took part in protests supporting the “White Paper” movement of November 2022 and the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, he was unsettled to find he’d been doxxed – a common tactic employed by supporters of Beijing. He told Radio Free Asia that overseas dissident communities need far more protection from the long arm of the Chinese Communist Party than they are currently…

Read More

Faced with decline in marriages, Xi calls on women to build families

Editor012 mins

Faced with plummeting marriage rates, flagging births and a rapidly aging population, Chinese President Xi Jinping wants the country’s women to step up and embody “the traditional virtues” of marriage and raising children in a bid to “rejuvenate” the nation. The number of Chinese couples tying the knot for the first time has plummeted by nearly 56% over the past nine years, the financial magazine Yicai quoted the 2023 China Statistical Yearbook as saying, with such marriages numbering less than 11 million in 2022. Young people are increasingly avoiding marriage, having children and buying a home amid a tanking economy and rampant youth unemployment, part of an emerging social phenomenon known as the “young refuseniks” – people who reject the traditional four-fold path to adulthood: finding a mate, marriage, mortgages and raising a family.  A recent poll on the social media platform Weibo found that while most of the 44,000 respondents said 25-28 is the best age to marry, nearly 60% said they were delaying marriage due to work pressures, education or the need to buy property. Georgetown University student Chelsea Yao, 22, who hails from the southern city of Guangzhou, said she doesn’t find the prospect of marriage at all enticing after enduring years of restrictions under the zero-COVID policy. “It may look like a peaceful family, but parents actually have a lot of conflict,” she said. “In the end, marriage is about everyone living together … when you grow up and realize what it’s actually like, it seems a little unnecessary,” Yao told RFA Mandarin, adding that antagonism between men and women seems to be intensifying in today’s China. “Rather than making how you feel dependent on another person,” she said, “it’s better to focus on what you want to do.” Backing away Yet Xi, whose 24-member Politburo is the first in decades not to include a single woman, is calling for the political mobilization of women like Yao to step up and compensate. Backing away from his party’s time-honored rhetoric on gender equality that was once a mainstay of its claim to legitimacy, Xi told a recent meeting that women have a “unique” role to play in the nation’s return to family life. China’s President Xi Jinping speaks at an event on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Week in San Francisco, California, Nov. 15, 2023. “We need to … guide women to play their unique role in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation,” he says. Credit: Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP “We need to … guide women to play their unique role in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, establish a good family tradition, and create a new trend of family civilization,” Xi told a recent meeting with leaders of the party’s All China Women’s Federation in comments reported by state news agency Xinhua. “Only with harmonious families, good family education, and correct family traditions can children be raised and society develop in a healthy manner,” Xi said.  “We need to actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing,” he said, including “guiding young people’s views on marriage and childbearing” in a bid to reverse the rapidly aging population. Chinese women should be mobilized “to contribute to China’s modernization,” Xi told All-China Women’s Federation leaders. “The role of women in the … great cause of national rejuvenation … is irreplaceable.” Meanwhile, Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang’s speech to the five-yearly Chinese Women’s National Congress also broke with the party’s usual lip-service to gender equality – by not mentioning it at all. Widening gender gap The lack of enthusiasm for women’s rights has had a real-world impact, too.  When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China ranked 69th in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which measures policies and suggests measures to address gender inequality. By 2023, the country had fallen to 107th place. While few women have ever risen to the highest ranks of the Communist Party, Xi’s insistence on a domestic role for women is a departure even from the luke-warm, Mao-era rhetoric about gender equality, and the depiction of the party in propaganda films as liberating working class and rural women from the shackles of traditional gender roles, including forced marriage and prostitution. China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang speaks during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, July 4, 2023. His speech to this year’s Chinese Women’s National Congress made no mention of gender equality. Credit: Pedro Pardo/Pool via Reuters In May 2021, Beijing unveiled new plans to boost flagging birth rates and reverse population aging, raising the official limit on the number of children per couple from two to three. But Chinese women haven’t been stepping up to solve the government’s population problems as readily as Xi had hoped. And the current emphasis on traditional Confucian culture appears to have exacerbated gender inequality under Xi, who has also offered little in the way of practical assistance, according to Wang Ruiqin, a former member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference from the western province of Qinghai. “The liberation of women … should be fundamentally based on their social status,” she said. “But the Chinese Communist Party’s claim that women hold up half the sky is really about political expediency.” She said that rather than just calling on women to take more responsibility for marriage and childrearing, the government should put its money where its mouth is. “The Chinese Communist Party is aware of these problems … but doesn’t actually have any fundamental measures to remedy them,” Wang said. “There is no women’s liberation, no employment or welfare protections, and the cost of raising children isn’t shared by the government.” Obstacles Chinese women face major barriers to finding work in the graduate labor market and fear getting pregnant if they do manage to get a job, out of concern their employer will fire them, a common practice despite protection on paper offered by China’s labor laws. And the authorities have cracked down hard on…

Read More

Over 1,000 Myanmar schools empty as fighting resumes in Rakhine

Editor04 mins

Over 1,000 schools in western Myanmar have been abandoned by pupils, education officials told Radio Free Asia on Thursday. Escalating battles in northern Rakhine state between the junta and Arakan Army have emptied schools in 10 townships.  In those townships, students are normally sent to some 1,800 schools, now of which only about 650 can operate, said Rakhine state’s education director Ba Htwe Sein. “It’s not that they are closed. Parents in uninhabited villages don’t send children to school,” he told RFA. “Children don’t come to school because parents don’t let them go. They are worried about the children. We have not ordered the schools to close.” Rakhine’s education department is telling township education offices to encourage students to go to school and asking schools to run as normal in areas where they can, he added. Some entire villages have fled because of fighting, like Chein Khar Li in Rathedaung township, said one parent from the village. Since Nov. 13 when the Arakan Army and junta’s year-long ceasefire ended, children have not been sent to school in conflict-ridden areas. “My daughter is in the fourth grade. She attends Chein Khar Li village’s elementary school. Since November 13, the entire village has fled. There is only a school with no teacher at all,” the parent said, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.  “Everyone is fleeing. Even if the child wants to go to school, she could not go to school because there is no one to teach her. I am worried about the delay in children’s education.” Since the junta has blocked land and water routes to suppress the Arakan Army, teachers and other school employees can’t get to work, he added. Most educators in battlegrounds are also fleeing for their lives, said one middle school teacher in Pauktaw, where a series of junta attacks since Nov. 16 have led residents to flee en masse. “How can the teachers go to schools? The teachers themselves are fleeing the war. There are no schools anymore, so who is going to teach?” she said, asking to remain anonymous to protect herself from reprisals. “Even teachers have to flee to save their lives.” Reopening schools seems impossible in the near future, residents told RFA, adding that junta troops are firing heavy artillery every day in Pauktaw.  More than 26,000 people from 4,700 households in Rakhine state have fled due to intense conflict, the United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Friday.  The report also said at least 11 local people have been killed and more than 30 have been injured by heavy shelling in Maungdaw, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw and Ann townships. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

Read More

Myanmar junta uses pregnant women and monks as human shields

Editor05 mins

Nearly 100 civilians were caught in a battle in western Myanmar on Tuesday, locals told Radio Free Asia. As fighting in Rakhine state between the Arakan Army and junta forces continues over the disputed town of Pauktaw, residents report an increase in abductions and injuries across the region.   Junta forces abducted nearly 100 people, including monks, the elderly, children and pregnant women in Pauktaw to use as human shields. The civilians were abducted on Nov. 16 when the Arakan Army captured Pauktaw’s police station, which was previously occupied by junta troops. In retaliation, the regime attacked the coastal area by firing weaponry from navy ships and aircraft.  By the following week, the junta army and police had re-captured Pauktaw and were patrolling neighborhoods.  The Arakan Army seized control of the city again on Tuesday and rescued the captured civilians, according to a statement the group released. It also stated the regime was frequently using heavy artillery and launching rockets from ships and by aircraft.  The junta stated it had captured Pauktaw before Tuesday, but an announcement by junta spokesman Maj. Gen Zaw Min Tun in military-controlled newspapers did not say anything about the arrested people. Fighting between the two groups is also affecting civilians in the state’s northeast. On Monday evening in Paletwa township on the Chin state border, eight civilians, including five children, were injured in a junta airstrike.  Some of the children are in a critical condition after they were struck by bomb shrapnel while bathing in a creek, said a woman from Mee Zar village, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “The children were hit when they came back from bathing in the creek down from the village. The adults were hit when they went to pick things up,” she said. “I heard that the injured are in a critical condition. At the moment, we’re hiding when we hear the sound of the plane. I am still afraid it will come again.” All eight victims are currently receiving medical treatment at Mee Zar District Hospital. RFA contacted Chin state’s junta spokesperson Kyaw Soe Win by phone regarding the aerial bombardment, but he did not respond by the time of publication. Mee Zar village is about 10 kilometers (six miles) away from Paletwa township’s Hta Run Aing village, where another clash between the junta army and Arakan Army erupted, locals said. On Monday evening, a Christian church in Matupi township’s Lalengpi town was destroyed during the junta’s airstrike, according to the locals. Eleven residents, including eight children, were killed during an aerial bombardment on Vuilu village in Matupi township on the night of Nov. 15.  Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

Read More

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