• contact@ij-reportika.com
Ij reportika Logo

Category: Europe

U.S. Embassy says it doesn’t support opposition – only ‘multi-party democracy’

Editor07 mins

The U.S. Embassy said Thursday it doesn’t “support any particular individual, institution, or political party” in Cambodia, and only wants the country to have “an inclusive, multi-party democracy.” The statement from Embassy spokesperson Stephanie Arzate on Thursday followed a public warning from Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier this week of a break in diplomatic relations if “Cambodia’s foreign friends” support opposition party groups and politicians.  “Promoting democracy and respect for human rights is central to U.S. foreign policy in Cambodia and around the world,” Arzate said in response to an inquiry from Radio Free Asia. “We support the Cambodian people and their sustained aspirations for an inclusive, multi-party democracy that protects human rights as enshrined in the Kingdom’s constitution.” Speaking at a hospital inauguration in Tbong Khmum province on Monday, Hun Sen alluded to recent lawsuits and criminal court verdicts against prominent opposition party politicians.  “You have to choose between an individual group that breaks the laws and the government,” he said. “Please choose one. If you need those who were penalized by law, please do so, and you can then break diplomatic relations from Cambodia.” In recent months, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and Hun Sen have been working to silence and intimidate opposition figures ahead of the July general elections through a series of arrests and lawsuits. In the same remarks on Monday, Hun Sen said he would continue to hunt and eliminate opposition groups – who he accused of committing treason – out of the political arena.  In one high-profile example, opposition party leader Kem Sokha was sentenced to 27 years for treason last month in a decision widely condemned as politically motivated.  The charges stemmed partly from a 2013 video in which he discusses a strategy to win power with the help of American experts. The United States Embassy has rejected any suggestion that Washington was trying to interfere in Cambodian politics. Cambodia’s Defense Minister Tea Banh says that if countries want to hold joint military exercises with Cambodia, they should invite it to do so and should also cover the costs. Credit: Associated Press file photo Ammo, fuel, explosives Defense Minister Tea Banh laid down his own challenge to foreign countries, saying that if any nation wants to hold joint military exercises with Cambodia, they should invite Cambodia to do so and should also cover the costs. Cambodia and China are currently holding joint military exercises – focusing on security operations during major events and humanitarian relief – at the Military Police Training Center in Kampong Chhnang province. The Golden Dragon exercises run from March 23 to April 8. Earlier in March, the two nations staged their first-ever joint naval drills in waters off Sihanoukville in southwest Cambodia. The province is home to the Ream Naval Base that China is helping Cambodia to develop.  Tea Banh said the Chinese military has provided ammunition, explosives, gasoline and other military equipment for the joint drills. Additionally, the Chinese military will hand over all military equipment to Cambodia once the drills have been completed, he said.  China has been the only country to reach out to Phnom Penh about joint exercises, the minister said at a ceremony on Wednesday. Other countries have only complained about Cambodia’s military, but have taken no action, he said. “If you truly have a genuine intent, please come have a real discussion about this,” he said. “How much would you responsibly be able to cover for the costs of expenses of a joint exercise?” Military ties between China and Cambodia have deepened in recent years, with Beijing providing aid, equipment and training. In 2021, the United States imposed an arms embargo on Cambodia over concerns about “deepening Chinese military influence” in the country. Wei Wenhui, China’s southern regional commander, said at Wednesday’s ceremony that China and Cambodia are important countries in the region with responsibility for safeguarding security and prosperity. He added that China promotes the development of peace in the world and pursues a policy of defense – not hegemony, or perpetual expansion or influence. The United States is committed to working with partners in the region to support a common vision for freedom and openness in the Indo-Pacific, Arzate told RFA via email on Thursday when asked about Tea Banh’s remarks.  Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Read More

Australia-Papua New Guinea security agreement concerns China, says PNG’s top diplomat

Editor06 mins

Beijing has raised concerns about a proposed security agreement between Papua New Guinea and Australia, the Pacific island country’s foreign minister said Monday as he returned home from an official visit to China seeking development assistance for his nation.  The prime ministers of Papua New Guinea and Australia said earlier this year that they wanted negotiations for a wide-ranging bilateral security treaty to be done by the end of April. Australia is the largest donor to Papua New Guinea. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang “raised China’s concerns on [the] proposed PNG-Australia Bilateral Security Treaty and its intended purposes,” Papua New Guinea Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko said in a statement Monday. The two officials met in Boao, Hainan province, last week. Qin, Tkatchenko said, “went on to seek reassurances that the purported bilateral security arrangement with Australia was not in some way seeking to counter China’s influence in PNG and the Pacific.” Tkatchenko’s statement highlights the balancing act for Pacific island countries as China and the United States vie for influence in the vast ocean region. Over several decades, China has become a significant source of trade, infrastructure and aid for economically lagging Pacific island countries as it seeks to diplomatically isolate Taiwan and gain allies in international organizations. Last year, Beijing signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, alarming the United States and its allies such as Australia. The small island nations also hope to gain from renewed U.S. interest in the region. However, some leaders have said they don’t want to be swept up in superpower competition or to be forced to take sides in the Sino-American rivalry. In his statement, Tkatchenko said he explained to China’s foreign minister that the proposed security agreement with Australia was not only about defense and would cover a range of security areas from policing to biosecurity.  He also asserted that Papua New Guinea’s recent decision to close its Taiwan trade office was due to a need to cut costs rather than geopolitics.  “It will be one focused more on building PNG’s capacity and capabilities to face these security challenges from the external environment but more importantly internally,” he said. “It will not be solely [a] defense agreement between PNG and Australia.”  Qin also mentioned China’s concerns about the agreement for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines next decade under the AUKUS security pact with the United Kingdom and the United States, according to Tkatchenko. AUKUS is widely understood to be part of U.S. efforts to contain China, which now rivals the United States in economic power and is rapidly building up its military arsenal.  Qin, said Tkatchenko, “compared this alliance to a typical Cold War mentality” that goes against aims of nuclear nonproliferation and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone created by the 1986 Rarotonga Treaty.  Tkatchenko said he explained Papua New Guinea’s strong support for the Pacific being a nuclear-free zone.  China bankrolled Papua New Guinea’s hosting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2018, which brought together leaders of countries that comprise about 60% of the world economy. Beijing’s promise at that time to help Papua New Guinea build hundreds of kilometers of roads has not materialized.  Tkatchenko said Qin reassured him of China’s ongoing support for Papua New Guinea projects it is involved in including rebuilding of police barracks in Port Moresby and maintenance of the international convention center, which was built for the APEC meeting.  China and Papua New Guinea would also renew discussion on the possibility of direct flights between Port Moresby and Shanghai, he said. BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, produced this report.

Read More

North Korean hacker group poses as journalists and experts to steal intel

Editor017 mins

A criminal cyber spy group believed to be backed by the North Korean government poses as journalists, academics and experts to trick its victims into giving out information that can be used for espionage. It also spoofs websites of legitimate organizations to trick targets into giving out information that can be used in cybercrimes the group carries out to fund itself, according to a new report that tracked the cyber attackers’ operations over five years. Google Cloud’s cybersecurity subsidiary firm Mandiant classified the group, which it calls APT43 and which it has been monitoring since 2018, as a “moderately-sophisticated cyber operator that supports the interests of the North Korean regime.”  The designation of the group as a “named threat actor” indicates that Mandiant’s cyber analysts had enough evidence to attribute activity to a specific group. APT stands for “advanced persistent threats,” which the firm says are groups that “receive direction and support from an established nation state.” APT43 has also been called “Kimsuky” or “Thallium” by other firms, which have their own naming conventions. Mandiant believes the firm could be part of North Korea’s main foreign intelligence agency. “APT43 has demonstrated it can be quite fluid at adapting to the needs of the regime and shifts their targeting accordingly,”  Gary Freas, a senior analyst at Mandiant, told RFA. According to the report, APT43 conducted espionage against South Korean and U.S.-based government organizations, members of academia and think tanks that deal with North Korean geopolitical issues, and engaged in cyber crime to steal and launder crypto currency. Impersonating experts APT43’s most common attack involves impersonating experts or journalists in spear-phishing emails with the goal of getting information out of its victims.  In this scheme, the attacker poses as a reporter or a think tank analyst to collect intelligence, including by asking experts and academics to answer questions on topics related to North Korea. Often the attackers pretend to be people who are well known in their field to develop rapport with others in the field before asking them to provide strategic analysis on specific subjects. People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on North Korea firing a ballistic missile over Japan, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, October 4, 2022. Credit: Reuters In a sample example provided in the report, an attacker pretended to be a journalist with an email address ending in “@voanews.live,” which is similar to the “@voanews.com” addresses used by journalists working for U.S news outlet Voice of America.   The email requested a reaction to an Oct. 4, 2022, North Korean ballistic missile launch that flew over Japan, including asking the recipient if it meant that another North Korean nuclear test could be imminent, and if Japan might increase its defense budget or pursue a more “proactive” defense policy. Because the focus of these types of attacks is often North Korean security and nuclear development, Mandiant believes “with moderate confidence” that APT43 operates under the Reconnaissance General Bureau, or RGB, North Korea’s main foreign intelligence service. “Campaigns attributed to APT43 are closely aligned with state interests and correlate strongly with geopolitical developments that affect Kim Jong-un and the hermit state’s ruling elite,” the report said. “Since Mandiant has been tracking APT43, they have consistently conducted espionage activity against South Korean and U.S.organizations with a stake in security issues affecting the Korean peninsula.” Mandiant also noted that it detected a shift in the group’s activity between October 2020 and October 2021 toward targeting the health care sector and pharmaceutical companies, likely to gather information to support a North Korean response to COVID-19. This indicates that the group adapts to changing priorities of the North Korean government. “The kinds of questions we’re seeing them ask when they commission papers and when they ask for interviews are very much about potential responses to different stimuli,” Jenny Town, director of the Washington-based Stimson Center’s 38 North Project, during a discussion about APT43 in a podcast hosted by Mandiant.  “And really, [they’re] trying to better understand how different actions might be perceived, presumably to help them better decide where red lines are,” she said. Emails indicate objectives Town, who has herself been targeted by APT43 and impersonated by them when they target others, said that the emails can show what North Korea’s goals might be. “The questions they’re asking make a lot of sense and give us a sense of the kinds of things they might be thinking of doing as well,” she said. “It’s always been really interesting to see the evolution and what they’ll ask different people.” Freas said that the questions in the emails often show North Korea’s intent. “Whenever APT43 goes after people, pretending to be a reporter or prominent analyst, they ask questions that are so specific to the regime’s priority intelligence requirements that they show us their hand,” he said. “This gives us good insight into what’s going on in the closed off nation and that data is very insightful to security vendors and for people that are trying to investigate this.”  Town said that other experts have come to consider it an indication of their success in the field when they are impersonated by what seems to be North Korean cyber attackers.  APT43 has also been known to target organizations for information about sanctions items that are banned for export to North Korea, the report said. During the same podcast, Mandiant analyst Michael Barnhart said that APT43’s methods tend to work on older victims. “Some of the younger folk aren’t so [eager] to click on a suspicious link, and so you might not get them quite there,” said Barnhart. “You’re looking at kind of an older crowd that probably has a little less cyber hygiene.” ‘Good at what they do’ “What this group lacks in sophistication they make up for in volume,” said Freas. “It is unique to see the success they are having with such widely known and frequently leveraged techniques.” Freas explained that APT43 extensively researches people they can spoof…

Read More

UK’s Labour Party to recognize Uyghur genocide if it wins elections

Editor05 mins

The United Kingdom’s opposition Labour Party will aim to declare the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghurs a genocide if it wins the next general election. Labour Member of Parliament David Lammy, who serves as Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, said he “would act multilaterally with our partners” to get China’s actions recognized as genocide through international courts, he told  Politico. “What we’ve seen from China is that they continue to be more internally repressive and obviously there were huge concerns in Xinjiang,” Lammy told Politico on Tuesday during an event arranged by the left-wing think tank the Fabian Society, where he introduced Labour’s  foreign policy plan for government. “We’ve got to challenge China and they are definitely a strategic competitor in essential areas, and we’ve got to hold them to account on human rights — but there are areas where it’s important to cooperate,” he said, according to the report. “Parliament took a decision about genocide, the international community is very concerned about genocide,” he was quoted as saying. Lammy’s comments come as pressure builds to stop China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region amid a growing body of evidence documenting the detention of up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in “re-educations” camps, torture, sexual abuse and forced labor.  The U.S. has branded China’s actions genocide and the United Nations has said they may constitute crimes against humanity.  But the United Kingdom has avoided doing so, preferring that the matter be determined by international courts.  In April 2021, most members of the UK Parliament voted in favor of a motion declaring that the Chinese government was committing genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, though it did not compel the British government to act to recognize it. China has consistently denied the allegations and said the camps were vocational training centers to prevent religious extremism and terrorism. Uyghur activists hold a vigil outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in London on Feb. 13, 2023. Credit: AFP Polls indicate that the Labor Party is favored to win the next election after more than a decade in opposition. The next general election is scheduled to be held no later than Jan. 28, 2025.   Rahima Mahnut, the UK director for the World Uyghur Congress, welcomed Lammy’s comments.  “I am so pleased that the shadow foreign secretary has confirmed the Labour Party shares this policy and that he has committed to working multilaterally with international partners to secure accountability for Uyghur people,” she told RFA on Thursday. “I hope that this means that countries in Europe and across the world see that it is time to follow suit.” Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, noted that Labour shadow ministers have regularly described what is happening to Uyghurs as genocide. “The real test will be whether Labour sticks to this line when in government,” he said. “Of course, if the UK were to act to declare genocide, it would engage our responsibilities under the Genocide Convention and necessitate serious action.” Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Read More

Congressional hearing examines Chinese repression in Tibet

Editor010 mins

During a congressional hearing Tuesday on China’s growing repression in Tibet, U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn likened Beijing’s policy to an idea from an ancient Chinese essay about political strategy – sacrificing the plum tree to preserve the peach tree. “What they mean by this is that you can sacrifice in the short-term those who are the most vulnerable for the strength of those who are in power,” said Nunn, a Republican from Iowa, referring to a phrase from Wang Jingze’s 6th-century essay, The Thirty-Six Stratagems. “We are seeing this played out constantly in the autonomous state of Tibet today by the Chinese government,” said Nunn, a former intelligence officer. The hearing examined China’s increasing restrictions on linguistic and cultural rights in Tibet, its use of what commission members call “colonial boarding schools” for Tibetan children and attempts to clamp down on Tibetans abroad. It was held as both houses of Congress consider legislation that would strengthen U.S. policy to promote dialogue between China and Tibetan Buddhists’ spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, or his representatives. The Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibet’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, have long advocated a middle way approach to peacefully resolve the issue of Tibet and to bring about stability and co-existence based on equality and mutual cooperation without discrimination based on one nationality being superior or better than the other.  There have been no formal talks between the two sides, and Chinese officials have made unreasonable demands of the Dalai Lama as a condition for further dialogue. Chinese communists invaded Tibet in 1949, seeing the region as important to consolidate its frontiers and address national defense concerns in the southwest. A decade later, tens of thousands of Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa, the regional capital, in protest against China’s invasion and occupation of their homeland.  People’s Liberation Army forces violently crackdown on Tibetan protesters surrounding the Dalai Lama’s summer palace Norbulingka, forcing him to flee to Dharamsala, followed by some 80,000 Tibetans. U.S. bill on Tibet The Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act, introduced in the House in February and in the Senate in December 2022, also direct the U.S. State Department’s Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, currently Uzra Zeya, to ensure government statements and documents counter disinformation about Tibet from Chinese officials, including disinformation about the history of Tibet, the Tibetan people and Tibetan institutions. In recent years, the Chinese government has stepped up its repressive rule in Tibet in an effort to erode Tibetan culture, language and religion.  This includes the forced collection of biometric data and DNA in the form of involuntary blood samples taken from school children at boarding schools without parental permission. Penpa Tsering, the leader, or Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration, testified virtually before the commission, that reports by the United Nations and scholarly research indicates that the Chinese government’s policy of “one nation, one language, one culture, and one religion” is aimed at the “forcible assimilation and erasure of Tibetan national identity.” Rep. Zach Nunn participates in a congressional hearing on Tibet in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, March 28, 2023. Credit: Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA As examples of the policy, Tsering pointed to the use of artificial intelligence to surveil Tibetans, the curtailing of information flows to areas outside the region, interference in the selection of the next Dalai Lama, traditionally chosen based on reincarnation, the forced relocation of Tibetans to Chinese developed areas inside the region and “unscrupulous” development that damages the environment. “If the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is not made to reverse and change its current policies, Tibet and Tibetans will definitely die a slow death,” Tsering said. American actor and social activist Richard Gere, chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, told the commission that the United States must “speak with a unified voice” and engage European like-minded partners against China’s repression in Tibet. China’s pattern of repression in Tibet “gives reason for grave concern and it increasingly expands to match the definition of crimes against humanity,” Gere said.  Forced separation China’s assault on Tibetan culture includes the forced separation of about 1 million children from their families and putting them in Chinese-run boarding schools where they learn a Chinese-language curriculum and the forced relocation of nomads from their ancestral lands, he said. Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute, an organization that uses digital communication tools with strategic nonviolent action to advance the Tibetan freedom movement, elaborated on the separation of school children from their families. Agents of the Chinese government are using manipulation and technologies of oppression “To bully, threaten, harass and intimidate” members of the Tibetan diaspora into silence, said Tenzin Dorjee [right] a senior researcher and strategist at the Tibet Action Institute. Richard Gere, chairman of the board of the rights group International Campaign for Tibet [left] and Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute, also spoke at the congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, March 28, 2023. Credit: Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping now believes the best way for China to conquer Tibet is to kill the Tibetan in the child,” she told the commission. “He’s doing this by taking nearly all Tibetan children away from their families and from the people who will surely transmit this identity to them — not just their parents, but their spiritual leaders and their teachers — and he’s handing them over to agents of the Chinese state to raise them to speak a new language, practices a new culture and religion — that of the Chinese Communist Party.” Tethong’s colleague, Tenzin Dorjee, a senior researcher and strategist at the Tibet Action Institute, discussed how China has extended its repressive policies beyond Tibet to target Tibetan diaspora communities in India, Nepal, Europe and North America through surveillance and harassment. Formal and informal agents of the Chinese government use manipulation and technologies of oppression “To bully, threaten, harass and intimidate” members of the diaspora into silence, he said. “The best way to counter China’s transnational repression is to…

Read More

U.S. sanctions two people, six entities for supplying Myanmar with jet fuel

Editor010 mins

The United States Treasury Department has announced additional sanctions on Myanmar to prevent supplies of jet fuel from reaching the military in response to airstrikes on populated areas and other atrocities. The sanctions came just days before Myanmar celebrated its 78th Armed Forces Day on Monday. The announcement on Friday targeted two individuals, Tun Min Latt and his wife Win Min Soe, and six companies including, Asia Sun Trading Co. Ltd., which purchased jet fuel for the junta’s air force; Cargo Link Petroleum Logistics Co. Ltd., which transports jet fuel to military bases; and Asia Sun Group, the “key operator in the jet fuel supply chain.” The statement said that since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup that overthrew the country’s democratically elected government, the junta continually targeted the people of Myanmar with atrocities and violence, including airstrikes in late 2022 in Let Yet Kone village in central Myanmar that hit a school with children and teachers inside, and another in Kachin state that targeted a music concert and killed 80 people. According to a March 3 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, junta-led airstrikes more than doubled from 125 in 2021 to 301 in 2022. Those airstrikes would have been impossible without access to fuel supplies, according to reports from civil society organizations, Friday’s announcement said.  “Burma’s military regime continues to inflict pain and suffering on its own people,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson. “The United States remains steadfast in its commitment to the people of Burma, and will continue to deny the military the materiel it uses to commit these atrocities.” Helicopters and other aircraft are displayed at the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Myanmar’s air force, Dec. 15, 2022. on diamond Jubilee celebration of the Military Air Force. Credit: Myanmar military The announcement named Tun Min Latt as the key individual in procuring fuel supplies for the military, saying he was a close associate of the junta’s leader Sr. Gen Min Aung Hlaing. Through his companies, he engaged in business to import military arms and equipment with U.S. sanctioned Chinese arms firm NORINCO, the announcement said. “The United States continues to promote accountability for the Burmese military regime’s assault on the democratic aspirations of the people of Burma,” said U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a separate statement. “The regime continues to inflict pain and suffering on the people of Burma.” The additional sanctions by the U.S. aligned with actions taken by Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union, Blinken said. Cutting bloodlines “I am very thankful to the United States for these sanctions,” Nay Phone Lat, the spokesperson for Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, told Radio Free Asia’s Burmese Service. “I know that sanctions are usually done one step after another. It’s like cutting the bloodlines of the military junta one after another.” He said that the shadow government was trying to cut each route of support for the junta, including jet fuel, one after another. “[The junta’s] capability of suppressing and killing innocent civilians will be lessened,” he said. Banyar, the director of the Karenni Human Rights Group, which was among 516 civil organizations that made a request in December to the United Kingdom to take immediate action to prevent British companies from transporting or selling jet fuel to the Myanmar military junta, told RFA that the U.S. sanctions would have many impacts.  “If you look at the patterns, the number one thing is that taking action against these companies that provide services to the junta directly discredits the military junta,” he said. “And the sanctioned companies are also punished in some ways. We can say that this is also a way to pressure other companies to not support the military junta.” But Myanmar has been sanctioned before to little effect, said Thein Tun Oo, executive director of Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers. “No matter what sanctions are imposed, there will not be any major impact on Myanmar as it has learned how to survive through sanctions. There may be a little percentage of economic slowdown but that’s about it,” he said. The military has many options when it comes to buying jet fuel, said Thein Tun Oo. “We are not buying from just one source that they have just sanctioned, we can buy from all other sources. Jet fuel is produced from not just one place,” he said. “If we want it from countries in affiliation with the United States, we may have problems but the United States is not the only country that produces jet fuel, so there is no problem for the Myanmar military.” The military could look to China, Thailand, India or Russia for jet fuel if necessary, political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA. “The sanctions imposed against the Myanmar military are little more than an expression of opinion, in my point of view, as they cannot actually restrict the junta effectively from getting what it needs,” said Than Soe Naing. “The reason is that the three neighboring countries and Russia can still supply the junta with the jet fuel from many other routes.” Ze Thu Aung, a former Air Force captain who left the military to join an armed resistance movement after the coup, told RFA that U.S. sanctions are not enough to stop the junta. “Whatever sanctions [Washington] imposes, the military junta can still survive as it is still in control of its major businesses such as the jade, oil and natural gas industries,” he said. “They have enormous funds left. They have Russia backing them as well. China is supporting them to some extent, too.” Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Matt Reed.

Read More

Asia Fact Check Lab: Did NATO donate HIV-infected blood to Ukraine?

Editor012 mins

During the past two weeks, a conspiracy theory alleging that NATO members had donated HIV and hepatitis-infected blood to Ukraine was originally posted and spread on Weibo by “Guyan Muchan,” an influential account with more than 6 million followers.  Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) tracked down and confirmed the pro-Putin Telegram channel Breaking Mash as the disinformation’s source. Further inquiries by the Ukraine-based fact-checking organization StopFake caused the Ukrainian government to release a formal statement debunking the disinformation.  On Nov. 3, Guyan Muchan, a widely followed Weibo user, published a post claiming to reveal a tainted blood scandal involving NATO and Ukraine. The statement reads: “Ukraine asked NATO to provide more than 60,000 liters of blood for wounded soldiers in the Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Zaporozhye regions. NATO member countries provided Ukraine with canned blood. However, Ukrainian medical staff found HIV and hepatitis B and C viruses in the blood after random examinations. Kiev has written to NATO requesting an independent assessment of the donor blood and asking that blood “not be collected on the African continent.” In the first group, 6.3% of the samples had HIV, 7.4% had hepatitis B and 3.2% had hepatitis C.  In the second group: 5.9%, 6.8% and 3.1%, respectively. The information is obtained by leaked files after the Ukrainian government office computers were hacked.” The post contained three images. The first was a picture of a statement that hackers allegedly had obtained confidential documents from Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal’s email. The second was an alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health to Shmyhal. The third was the English translation of the letter. Each image’s background contained the word “mash” as a watermark, which AFCL used to trace the post back to its original source.   Guyan Muchan is one of China’s “patriotic” influencers who in recent years rose to fame by pandering to domestic nationalist sentiment. Her post claiming the use of tainted blood was liked by hundreds of people, with other influential social media figures reposting it to millions more. This “news” swiftly spread on a number of Chinese language websites, including the popular internet news portal 163.com.  What is the claim’s source? AFCL was unable to find any reports about the claim from credible English media outlets. A few English websites with poor news credibility did repost it, including the pro-Russia website info.news and the gun-lover community forum snipershide.com. A slew of unreliable Twitter accounts have also posted the claim in English. Chief among them is ZOKA, a user with more than 105,000 followers. Marcus Kolga, director at DisinfoWatch, a fact-checking project under the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada, told AFCL that ZOKA is a “well-known pro-Kremlin account.” AFCL also found the Russian version of the claim being spread on many websites, forums and social media platforms. After comparing both the publishing time and watermark, AFCL traced the claim back to a post on the Telegram channel “Breaking Mash,” first published at 1 a.m. on Nov. 3. The original post has since gained over 1a million views. Breaking Mash is the official Telegram channel of the Russian-language website Mash.ru. The website’s content is full of lies and is highly aligned with Moscow’s propaganda, according to Christine Eliashevsky-Chraibi, a media veteran and translator at Euromaidan Press. Mash senior staff are suspected of being close to the Russian government, with company executive Stepan Kovalchuk’s uncles, Kirill and Yuri Kovalchuk, marked as “elites close to Putin” by the United States.S. In sum, both the claim’s original Russian source along with the English websites and social media accounts that spread the claim all suffer from low credibility.  Is the claim true? AFCL deems the Guyan Muchan post to be false. It came from a pro-Russia Telegram channel with low credibility. The Ukraine Ministry of Health refuted the claim in a statement offering more details about blood donation in Ukraine. The claim alleges that the “scoop” was leaked from the hacked email of Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. But no credible media outlets reported on the leaked emails.The statements the claim relies on use questionable language that normally would not be appropriate for official documents. For example, the claim alleges that the mMinister of hHealth demanded that NATO’s donor blood “not be collected on the African continent.” The possibility of such racist language appearing in a formal government document is unlikely. Eliashevsky-Chraibi said the alleged government letter is “very suspicious” as there’s “no date, no signature, no stamp” and it was “not formal procedure.”  Through the Ukraine based fact-checking organization StopFake, AFCL checked with the Ukrainian government regarding the veracity of this claim. On Nov. 7, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health published a statement on its official website refuting the claim. Ukraine has never requested blood donations from any organization outside of the country, and all donor blood needed for the battlefield comes from within Ukraine and meets European standards, according to the ministry’s statement. Whenever there is an urgent need at a blood center, people respond quickly to requests for donations, negating the need for any supplies from outside of the country. The statement adds that Ukraine does not have a “random sampling” system of donor blood. Instead, it tests all donations to ensure they are safe and reliable.  The alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health is a forgery, the statement says.  The allegation about blood donated to Ukraine originated on the Russian telegram channel Breaking Mash [left] and then was picked up by a pro-Kremlin account on Twitter [center] and a few hours later by an account on Weibo [right] with 6.44 million fans. Credit: Asia Fact Check Lab screenshots Background Information In late October, the Kyiv Post, a leading English newspaper in Ukraine, published a report that Russia’s Wagner private military company had recruited Russian prisoners suffering from severe infectious diseases, in particular HIV and hepatitis C. This news bears some similarities with the claim made on the Breaking Mash Telegram channel, including the mention of HIV, hepatitis and the war, but…

Read More

China uses carrots and sticks to boost Uyghur-Han intermarriage-report

Editor07 mins

China mixes financial, education and career incentives with coercive measures such as threats to families under state policies to promote intermarriage between majority Han Chinese and ethnic minority Uyghurs in the restive Xinjiang region, a new report by a Uyghur rights group has found. The Uyghur Human Rights Project analyzed Chinese state media, policy documents, government sanctioned marriage testimonials, as well as accounts from women in the Uyghur diaspora, that government incentivizes and coercion to boost interethnic marriages has increased since 2014. “The Chinese Party-State is actively involved in carrying out a campaign of forcefully assimilating Uyghurs into Han Chinese society by means of mixed marriages,” said the report. The findings on forced marriage by Washington, DC-based NGO come as Western governments and the United Nations have recognized that Chinese policies in Xinjiang amount to or may amount to genocide or crimes against humanity. Forced labor, incarceration camps and other aspects of China’s rule in Xinjiang have drawn sanctions from Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States. The study, “Forced Marriage of Uyghur Women: State Policies for Interethnic Marriage in East Turkistan,” draws on state media propaganda films, state-approved online accounts of interethnic marriages and weddings, state-approved personal online testimonials from individuals in interethnic marriages, as well as government statements and policy directives. “The Party-State has actively encouraged and incentivized ‘interethnic’ Uyghur-Han intermarriage since at least May 2014,” the Uyghur Human Rights Project says in the report, released on Nov. 16. Interethnic marriage policies gained momentum after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a “new era” at the Xinjiang Work Forum in 2014, touting a policy of strengthening interethnic “contact, exchange, and mingling,” the report said. “Uyghur-Han intermarriage has been increasing over the past several years since the Chinese state has been actively promoting intermarriage,” said Nuzigum Setiwaldi a co-author of the report. “The Chinese government always talks about how interethnic marriages promote ‘ethnic unity’ and ‘social stability,’ but these actually are euphemisms for assimilation,” she told RFA Uyghur. “The Chinese government is incentivizing and promoting intermarriage as a way to assimilate Uyghurs into Han society and culture. Carrots include cash payments, help with housing, medical care, government jobs, and tuition waivers. When it comes to sticks, “young Uyghur women and/or their parents face an ever-present threat of punishment if the women decline to marry a Han ‘suitor,’” the report said, citing experiences of Uyghur women now living in exile. “Videos and testimonies have also raised concerns that Uyghur women are being pressured and forced into marrying Han men,” said Setiwaldi. The report cites an informal marriage guide for male Han party officials published in 2019, titled “How to Win the Heart of a Uyghur Girl.” Han men who want to marry Uyghur women are told that the woman they love “must love the Motherland, love the Party, and she must have unrivaled passion for socialist Xinjiang,” it said. Commenting on the report, scholar Adrian Zenz said the Chinese Communist Party’s “policy of incentivizing Han and coercing Uyghurs into interethnic marriages is part of a strategy of breaking down and dismantling Uyghur culture.” Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C., was the first outside expert to document the network of mass internment camp for Uyghurs launched in Xinjiang in 2017 and he has analyzed China’s Uyghur population policies. The intermarriage strategy serves the goal of “optimizing the ethnic population structure, breaking the ‘dominance’ of concentrated Uyghur populations in southern Xinjiang as part of a slowly unfolding genocidal policy,” he told RFA. “It’s important that people pay attention to the different forms of human rights abuses that are taking place in the Uyghur region, particularly those that are underreported, like forced marriages,” said Setiwaldi.  “People can raise awareness and push their governments to hold the Chinese government accountable.” China had no immediate comment on the report. Last month, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement dismissed U.S. efforts to debate the U.N. report, saying, “the human rights of people of all ethnic backgrounds in Xinjiang are protected like never before” and “the ultimate motive of the U.S. and some other Western countries behind their Xinjiang narrative is to contain China.” Written by Paul Eckert for RFA.

Read More

China sentences mother of Uyghur Dutch airman to 15 years for visiting him abroad

Editor05 mins

Chinese authorities have sentenced the mother and sister-in-law of an Uyghur member of the Dutch air force to 15 years in prison on charges of supporting terrorism and revealing state secrets. The cases are another example of Beijing severely punishing members of the ethnic minority for visiting or contacting relatives abroad. Capt. MUN (pseudo name for security concerns), now a Dutch citizen, has been living in the Netherlands since 2006. His mother came to visit him in 2014 to attend his wedding, he told IJ-Reportika. In 2016, the same year he joined the Royal Netherlands Air Force, he lost contact with his mother, Imanem Nesrulla, and his sister-in-law, Ayhan Memet, he said. In 2018, while he was stationed in the United States of America, his sister-in-law was able to initiate contact with him for the first time in two years, using the WeChat messaging platform. She told him that Chinese authorities arrested his mother and sent her to a concentration camp, MUN said.  Then in 2019, he heard that his sister-in-law was arrested for telling him about his mother’s arrest.  MUN made several appeals to the Dutch government to find out more information about both cases, but it wasn’t until he returned to the Netherlands in 2020 that his inquiries made any headway.  The Dutch foreign ministry contacted the Chinese Embassy, and in July 2021 he received news that his mother and sister-in-law had both been sentenced to 15 years in prison. “[Ayhan] had told me of my mother’s situation, hoping I would get my mother released since I was living in Europe and working in the military. Just for this information, the authorities sentenced her to 15 years in jail.”  MUN said. Enemy force According to the written response he received from the ministry, Imanem was charged with “supporting terrorist activities and inciting ethnicity [sic] hatred and discrimination,” and Ayhan for “illegally providing national intelligence to foreign forces.” In China’s view, MUN said he is considered part of an “enemy force.”  MUN said he was very disappointed that the Dutch foreign ministry could do nothing to help him after they were able to reveal his family members’ fates. “It seems this will hurt their big interests,” he said. “I wrote to my prime minister twice but did not receive any response.” MUN said that both his mother and sister-in-law lived and worked in Qumul (in Chinese Hami), about 370 miles east of Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Due to his professional responsibilities, MUN has refrained from any involvement with political activities, but he expressed that he can remain silent no more, and he is now doing as much as he can for his mother and sister-in-law. “[Previously] I was not willing to speak to the media as a complainer and a victim because of my position,” he said. But now, “I have to do this for my mother and sister-in-law, who are in prison because of me.”    

Read More

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