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Category: Middle East

Manila backs Senate bill to officially rename contested waters ‘West Philippine Sea’

Editor09 mins

The Philippine foreign office said Thursday it was backing legislative efforts to formally rename the country’s portions of the South China Sea as the “West Philippine Sea,” in a move to bolster Manila’s territorial claims in the contested waterway. On Wednesday, Sen. Francis Tolentino announced he had filed Senate Bill 405, a proposed piece of legislation that aims to “institutionalize” the use of “ the West Philippine Sea” as the official name of territories claimed by the Philippines in waters that China and other neighbors also contest. The air space, seabed, and subsoil on the western side of the Philippine archipelago would be renamed “to reinforce the Philippines’ claim to the disputed territories found on the western side of the archipelago,” according to an excerpt from SB405. Maria Teresita Daza, spokeswoman for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, said Tolentino’s bill was consistent with a 2016 international arbitration court’s ruling that sided with Manila. “The West Philippine Sea was already actually defined in 2012 through Administrative Order 29,” Daza told a press briefing on Thursday. “Nevertheless, the department recognizes what the process of legislation can do in terms of clarity and institution building. And we look forward to supporting the process, should we be invited to do so,” she said. Tolentino’s bill covers waters around, within, and adjacent to the Kalayaan Island Group and Scarborough Shoal, as well as the Luzon Sea, or waters also known as the Luzon Strait between the northern Philippine island of Luzon and Taiwan. The Philippine senator said that the proposed legislation came about in response to the “archipelagic doctrine” embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Under it, the Philippines is granted a territorial sea of up to 12 nautical miles, a contiguous zone of up to 24 nautical miles, and an exclusive economic zone of up to 200 nautical miles where the West Philippine Sea is located. The bill also directs government offices to use the name in all communications, messages, and public documents, and “to popularize the use of such [a] name with the general public, both domestically and internationally.” Six years ago, the Philippines won an arbitral award against Beijing before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The landmark ruling nullified China’s expansive claims to the sea region, including in waters that reach neighbors’ shores. Manila had filed the case in 2012, when the Chinese occupied areas near Scarborough Shoal, a triangular chain of rocks and reefs that Filipinos consider a traditional fishing ground. Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam all claim parts of the sea. China, for its part, draws a nine-dash line to delineate its claim of “historical rights” to almost 90 percent of the waterway. The line also overlaps with the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of another nation – Indonesia. And while the name “South China Sea” has gained near universal acceptance in usage, countries that have claims to the disputed waters have their own different names for it. Vietnam calls the maritime region “the East Sea,” and, to Beijing, it is plainly known as “the South Sea.” In 2017, Indonesia renamed a resource-rich northern region around its Natuna Islands, which lie off the southern end of the South China Sea, as the North Natuna Sea. The waters near the Natunas have seen some tense standoffs in recent years between Indonesian ships and ships from China and other nations, including Chinese coast guard vessels. Jakarta’s decision to change the name of the sea region north of the islands was spurred by the arbitration court’s ruling in Manila’s favor the year before that nullified China’s historical claim to the entire South China Sea through the nine-dash line, Arif Havas Oegroseno, then the deputy of maritime sovereignty at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, told reporters at the time. Since the arbitration court ruled for Manila in 2016, Beijing has refused to budge from the area around Scarborough Shoal. On Thursday, officials at the Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to BenarNews efforts seeking comment on the Philippine bill. The proposed formal name change is a far cry from the policy on the disputed waters implemented by former President Rodrigo Duterte, who did not seek to enforce the ruling when he took office in 2016, but instead pursued warmer ties with Beijing. During his six-year term, Duterte, who left office on June 30, also pulled the Philippines away from the United States, the Philippines’ longtime ally and China’s main rival, until later in his term when he declared that the arbitration award was “beyond compromise.”  The U.S. government, meanwhile, has insisted on the doctrine of freedom of navigation and has sailed its navy ships into the contested waters. Duterte’s successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in his first “state of the nation” address to Congress last month, declared he would not preside over any process that would give away “even one square inch of territory” to foreign rivals. Marcos’ newly appointed military chief, Lt. Gen. Bartolome Vicente Bacarro, told his generals and other military officials during his first command conference on Wednesday that the armed forces supported President Marcos’ pronouncement. “We only do what is required of us to do and what is important is we are able to perform our mandate to protect (the state and) our people,” Col. Medel Aguilar, a spokesman for the military, told reporters.  BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

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Naval standoff continues near Taiwan in spite of China claiming war games are over

Editor08 mins

Chinese and Taiwanese ships continued an apparent standoff in the waters near Taiwan despite the Chinese military saying major drills around the island were over, open source investigators said, citing satellite imagery from Sentinel Hub. As the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) wrapped up its week-long operation, held in response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, “at least two sets of ships in typical ‘shadowing’ positions [were] observed East of Taiwan” on Wednesday, H I Sutton, a well-known independent defense analyst wrote on Twitter.   On the same day, Beijing released a White Paper on Taiwan and China’s “reunification” policy, which Taiwan dismissed. “Taiwan rejects the “one country, two systems” model proposed by Beijing,” said Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou at a media briefing in Taipei on Thursday. “Only Taiwan’s people can decide its future,” Ou added. Regular patrols Images from satellite data provider Sentinel Hub show two Taiwanese ships “shadowing” two Chinese vessels in waters off Hualian County in eastern Taiwan since early this week, several open source intelligence (OSINT) analysts said.  The PLA announced a major military exercise on Aug. 4 after Pelosi made a controversial stopover in Taipei. Beijing repeatedly warned her against the visit, which it condemned as a “gross violation of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and threatened retaliation. The military exercise was due to end on Aug. 7 but went on for two more days and only wrapped up on Wednesday. Yet the collected OSINT data indicate that China will probably continue to put pressure on the Taiwanese military in coming days.  Sr. Col. Shi Yi, spokesman of the PLA Eastern Theater Command, said on Wednesday that the Command’s troops will continue to “organize normalized combat-readiness security patrols in the Taiwan Strait.” The PLA is starting to “normalize” its activities, including drills east of the median line, adding to the pressure it has already exerted on Taiwan, said Collin Koh, a Singapore-based regional military expert, in a recent interview with RFA. A Taiwan Air Force F-16V taking off from Hualien airbase during a recent drill. CREDIT: Taiwan Defense Ministry Less autonomy for Taiwan On Wednesday, the Chinese government office responsible for Taiwan-related affairs released a White Paper titled “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era,” to clarify Beijing’s policy towards the island that it considers a Chinese province. This is the third White Paper on Taiwan, the previous ones were published in 1993 and 2000. “We are one China, and Taiwan is a part of China,” the paper said. “Taiwan has never been a state; its status as a part of China is unalterable,” it reiterated. “Peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems are our basic principles for resolving the Taiwan question and the best approach to realizing national reunification,” the White Paper said, adding that “certain political forces have been misrepresenting and distorting its objectives.”  “Lack of details on ‘Two Systems’ compared with the 1993 and 2000 papers suggests an arrangement that might involve less political and legal autonomy for Taiwan,” Amanda Hsiao, China Senior Analyst at the Crisis Group think-tank, wrote on Twitter. The White Paper also provided guidelines for the post-reunification governance over the island. “We maintain that after peaceful reunification, Taiwan may continue its current social system and enjoy a high degree of autonomy in accordance with the law,” it said. However, while both the 1993 and 2000 White Papers pledged that China would not send troops or administrative personnel to be stationed in Taiwan following unification, the 2022 version did not have that line, said Crisis Group’s Hsiao. For the first time Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was mentioned in the paper. “The actions of the DPP authorities have resulted in tension in Cross-Straits relations, endangering peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits, and undermining the prospects and restricting the space for peaceful reunification,” it said. “These are obstacles that must be removed in advancing the process of peaceful reunification,” it said, delivering a clear threat to President Tsai Ing-wen’s party.” Recently, China’s ambassador to France provoked an outcry when he said during a TV interview that Taiwanese people will be re-educated after reunification with the mainland. “We will re-educate. I’m sure that the Taiwanese population will again become favorable over the reunification and will become patriots again,” Ambassador Lu Shaye told BFM TV. The Taiwanese authorities have “effectively indoctrinated and intoxicated” the population through de-Sinicization policies, Lu said in another interview. “Re-education” is the indoctrination technique used by several authoritarian regimes against dissent. China has been criticized by foreign countries and human rights groups for its re-education programs for the Uyghurs in its northwestern Xinjiang province.  

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Woman killed, son injured, in shelling of Chin state village

Editor03 mins

A 55-year-old woman was killed and her son was injured when a shell hit a village during fighting between junta forces and local militia in Hakha city, the capital of Myanmar’s Chin State. Local residents told RFA Wednesday’s battle broke out between the Hakha Chin Land Defense Force and the military’s Ka La Ya 266 battalion near the city’s ministerial residences. A local, who did not want to be named for safety reasons, told RFA an artillery shell landed on a house in Hniarlawn village, 11 kilometers (7 miles) from Hakha city. “She was hit by the artillery shell and died on the spot while she was cooking in the kitchen,” the resident said. “One of her sons was wounded in the hand. Her body has been left there for now because everyone has fled to the forest.” The woman was cooking in her kitchen when the shell hit her home. CREDIT: Chin Journal Calls by RFA to Military Council Spokesman Gen. Zaw Min Tun went unanswered on Thursday. This is not the first time fighting has affected Hniarlawn village, which houses more than 600 people in over 100 homes. Last month, 22-year-old Salai Manliansan was shot dead by junta troops there, according to residents. Battles break out daily in Chin state, causing many locals to flee their homes and set up makeshift camps in the jungle. UNICEF says the state, in the west of the country, has the highest poverty rate of all Myanmar’s regions but aid has been slow to arrive. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week 866,000 people had become refugees in Myanmar in the 18 months since the Feb. 2021 coup. There are now more than 1.2 million internally displaced persons across the country, or more than 2% of the total population.

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Junta troops kill 5, torch hundreds of homes in Kachin state village

Editor08 mins

Junta troops killed five civilians and torched as many as 400 homes over three days of air raids, heavy artillery fire and fierce clashes with a joint force of ethnic rebels and pro-democracy paramilitaries in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state, residents said Wednesday. Four of the victims were killed on Tuesday when military jets flew the first of eight bombing runs over Se Zin village in the jade mining township of Hpakant, killing a child, said a resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. “The last plane bombed at about 8:00 pm and then they fired at the village with machine guns and 60-mm heavy weapons,” he told RFA Burmese. “The child died on the spot when his house was hit by the shelling. One woman had to have her leg amputated. And this morning, about 6:00 am, a family was shot at while trying to leave on a motorcycle. The husband and wife and their son [all died].” The fifth victim, a man in his 40s, died on Monday when a shell fell on his house during heavy fighting near the village, the resident said. He told RFA that there may have been additional casualties in the village, but said they hadn’t been confirmed. The raid followed a Monday attack by a combined column of ethnic Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitaries that led to the capture of a military camp in Se Zin village and a pro-military Shanni National Army (SNA) camp located across the river in Shwepyi Myint village in Sagaing region’s Homalin township. The joint force also attacked the Se Zin Village Police Station on Tuesday. RFA was unable to confirm the number of casualties in the clashes. Another Se Zin resident, who also did not want to be named, said hundreds of homes in the village were destroyed in a fire set by junta troops. “There are about 500 houses in the whole village and 300 or 400 have been turned to ash,” he said. “The fires were set by the military and the Shanni forces. They did it deliberately. They even set fire to houses that were left undestroyed [in the bombing].” Se Zin is a busy village surrounded by private gold mines in Hpakant’s Hawng Par village tract. The fighting forced more than 3,000 residents of Se Zin to flee to the township’s Tar Ma Hkan village, about an hour away by motorcycle, where they are sheltering in schools, churches and monasteries, the resident said. He said the refugees had fled with only the shirts on their backs and are in need of emergency food, clothing and medicine. Other residents of Hpakant told RFA that some of the villagers remain trapped in Se Zin, where the military has set up a camp. File photo of houses in Se Zin village, Hpakant township, Kachin State. Credit: Citizen journalist The ‘usual response’ Speaking to RFA on Wednesday, Social Affairs Minister Win Ye Tun, who serves as the junta’s spokesperson in Kachin state, said the details of the situation in Se Zin village are “not yet known,” but said the military is “ready to help” those who have fled their homes. “We have contingency plans for people who have to leave their homes because of fighting,” he said. “I haven’t received any news yet about the fires or the clashes. I am the minister of social affairs, so reports about the fighting don’t come to me.” Col. Naw Bu, the news and information officer for the ethnic Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), said it has become “routine” for the military to burn the homes of residents whenever there is a clash. “Last night, there was an attack on the police station in Se Zin village and this is the usual response of the [junta],” he said. “When there is a battle with their adversaries, whether it is near a village or their camp, or in the village, they won’t hesitate to kill people or torch houses.” Naw Bu confirmed that there had been three consecutive days of heavy fighting in Se Zin village beginning on Monday and that the military had “launched aerial attacks all day” on Tuesday. The raid on Se Zin comes less than a month after about a week of clashes beginning on July 16 between the military and the armed opposition in and around the village. Hpakant is one of the most heavily militarized townships in Kachin state. The military cut off mobile internet access to the area on Aug. 20 last year. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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North Korea launches drive to shame children who neglect war veteran parents

Editor07 mins

Authorities in North Korea are working to identify citizens who neglect their Korean War veteran parents, sometimes stripping those who aren’t living up to their familial obligations of their posts within the ruling party, sources inside the country said.  As of the beginning of August, authorities began a project to determine where the children of the 1950-53 Korean War veterans live, a resident of South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA on Sunday. RFA reported in July that a number of elderly veterans had been found to be malnourished and suffering COVID-19 symptoms such as high fevers and coughing. Party officials who neglect their war veteran parents are being accused of filial impiety and removed from their positions, the woman said. But some North Koreans say the government’s campaign is an exercise in blame shifting, accusing the war veterans’ children of providing insufficient support when the government itself should be doing more. The project came about after the 8th National Conference of War Veterans in Pyongyang on July 27, which commemorated the armistice that ended the fighting. The Workers’ Party of North Korea issued a directive to take care of war veterans and to treat them well in society. During their investigation, authorities found a few county residents failing to carry out their obligations by living apart from their parents who are elderly war veterans, the woman said. They lost their jobs as a result. “Four people were caught, including one [party] secretary in the lathe work department at the Chuncheon River Machinery Factory and three cell secretaries in the textile factory,” the source said. “Their positions were taken away the next day.” Cell secretaries are among North Korea’s elite society, typically overseeing five to 30 party members in their cell, the main unit that links the party to the masses, according to a 2021 report by NK News. The four workers have been given a second chance to fulfill their family duties, however.  “Six months of revolutionary measures were given,” said the source, referring to a punishment by authorities to make offenders learn the revolutionary ideology propagated by North Korea’s regime. After a stint working as laborers — considered a disgrace in North Korea — and after they move their veteran parents into their homes, the shamed North Koreans will be allowed to resume their previous positions, the woman said.  North Korean authorities decided not to dismiss them from their positions because their veteran parents might complain that such a punishment would be too harsh, the woman said. People of national merit Though North Korean veterans are classified as people of national merit and are eligible for government provisions for food and living expenses, they still suffer from a lack of societal support, said a resident of North Pyongan province. The party committee in Chongju, one of the province’s main cities, also began a similar investigation at the beginning of August through the heads of neighborhood-watch units to determine whether there are adult children not serving or caring for their war veteran parents, he told RFA on Sunday. Five farmers who live with their elderly veteran parents at the Osong village cooperative farm were found to be “examples of poor filial piety” because they could not provide them with three meals each day due to financial hardship, said the source, who also declined to be named so as to speak freely.  The farmers also locked in their elderly veteran parents who were suffering from dementia, so they could do their work, he said.  “The farmers were called to the county party base and wrote self-critical confessions that they were undutiful to their veteran parents,” the source said. “They were released after receiving ideological education that they should serve their veteran parents whom the party cherishes.” But other residents aware of the situation have asked, “Who doesn’t want to serve a warm meal to their parents?” said the man. They then criticized the authorities for not taking responsibility for the lives of veterans and providing for them, instead placing the full burden on their children who have their own problems making ends meet. “They complain that they are making the poor and elderly war veterans the burdens of their children rather than of the state,” he said. Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee for RFA Korean. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Taiwan grapples with the potential impact of ‘normalized’ war-games on its doorstep

Editor011 mins

Prolonged military exercises around the democratic island of Taiwan by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could mean a longer-term impact on the island’s trade and economic development, especially if Beijing decides to normalize blockading the island, analysts told RFA. Some cited recent activity as suggesting that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is shifting from a policy of seeking peaceful “unification” to an emphasis on military force to put pressure on the island, which has never been ruled by the CCP, nor formed part of the 73-year-old People’s Republic of China. They said there are growing concerns that China will normalize military exercises, ignore the median line of the Taiwan Strait, and use ongoing military exercises to blockade the island and prepare the PLA for invasion. Tso Chen-Dong, political science professor at National Taiwan University, said military action was unlikely to occur immediately, however. “They need to take into account how they would actually do this, and they will only get behind the idea if it’s doable,” Tso told RFA. “Otherwise, it’s not very useful just to look at the numbers of troops on paper.” “The main thing is that they want to use this opportunity to put further pressure on the relationship with Taiwan,” he said. According to Wang Chi-sheng of Taiwan-based think tank the Association of Chinese Elite Leadership, China’s People’s Liberation Army has already been doing this by repeated incursions over the median line and into Taiwan’s territorial waters near the islands of Kinmen and Matsu, which are visible from China’s southeastern province of Fujian. “Flying over the median line of the Taiwan Strait is an attempt to erase that line by means of a fait accompli,” Wang told RFA. “Chinese ships have also started moving into [Taiwan’s] restricted waters around Kinmen and Matsu, which they haven’t done up until now.” “The focus is on normalization,” he said, adding that Beijing’s future intentions will only likely become clear after the CCP’s 20th National Congress later this year. He said Beijing will likely continue to insist on “unification” with Taiwan, which has never been ruled by the CCP nor formed part of the 73-year-old People’s Republic of China, under the same system it currently applies to Hong Kong, where a citywide crackdown on dissent is under way. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi gestures next to Legislative Yuan Vice President Tsai Chi-chang as she leaves the parliament in Taipei, Taiwan August 3, 2022. Credit: Reuters Repeated incursions Taiwan government legal expert Shen Shih-wei agreed, saying that the positioning of the military exercises following Pelosi’s visit made repeated incursions across the median line. “This has a very significant impact on the compression of our airspace for training purposes, and on international flight routes,” Shen told reporters. “This kind of targeted deterrence [contravenes a United Nations charter], which stipulates that no country should use force to threaten the territorial integrity or political independence of another country,” he said. “We believe that the CCP is very clear about these norms, and we hope that it will abide by them.” Vincent Wang, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Adelphi University, said Taiwan’s democratic way of life is walking a tightrope, as far as the CCP is concerned. “This is why China had such a big reaction to Pelosi’s visit,” he said. “China doesn’t want the world to see a high-ranking U.S. politician visiting a democratic society [run by people it considers Chinese] yet is independent of China,” Wang said. “The visit was a public show of support for Chinese democracy [as China sees it],” he said. The visit doesn’t appear to have deterred other foreign politicians from visiting Taiwan. Britain’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee said it will send a delegation to the island by the end of the year. “If American dignitaries can visit Taiwan one after the other, this will provide moral support for people from other democratic countries who want to make similar visits,” Wang said. He said recent economic sanctions imposed on more than 100 Taiwanese food companies would have a short-term impact on trade with China, which accounts for 30 percent of exports in that sector, but later recover. A Navy Force helicopter under the Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) takes part in military exercises in the waters around Taiwan, at an undisclosed location August 8, 2022 in this handout picture released on August 9, 2022. Credit: Eastern Theater Command/Handout via Reuters Blockade concerns Meanwhile, Frank Xie of the Aiken School of Business at the university of South Carolina, said the CCP’s lifting of a fishing moratorium in the area could mean it starts blockading the island. “Such a blockade would have a huge impact on international shipping and air traffic, further amplifying the global supply chain crisis,” Xie said. “Taiwan, including its chip industry, would bear the brunt of the impact.” Xie said the military exercises have had a small impact on international trade, mainly in the field of transportation, including flight delays and cargo ship detours to avoid military exercise areas. But a longer-running blockade would be hugely damaging to Taiwan, both because of the increased risk of miscalculations, and the economic impact from increased transportation costs, Xie said. A Taiwanese businesswoman surnamed Lee who has run a plastics business in mainland China for many years, says many Taiwanese businesses in mainland China are currently thinking about relocating. “Of course they’re nervous, because most of the Taiwanese businesses are in coastal areas, which is where the military exercises are,” Lee said. “But there’s very little they can do.” “If they were to relocate to Taiwan, that would be easier said than done … because it’s hard to find cheap labor,” she said. “But many countries in Southeast Asia aren’t very stable.” William Yu, an economist at UCLA Anderson Forecast, said Taiwan’s economy is still in a robust state despite the rising tensions with China, however. “There will be no impact on Taiwan’s economy in the short term,” Yu…

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Junta troops burn 500 homes, displace thousands in Sagaing

Editor06 mins

Junta forces stepped up their attacks in Myanmar’s hard-hit Sagaing region in the first week of August, torching nearly 500 homes in 10 villages and causing at least 5,000 people to flee, local sources said. The attacks in Sagaing’s Tabayin and Ayadaw townships included air raids and ground assaults and appeared especially to target large and well-built homes, but houses were burned in every village through which troops passed, one source said. Around 180 out of nearly 200 homes were destroyed on Aug. 4 in Tabayin’s Kaing Kan village alone, one resident told RFA on Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Troops entered the village at 9:00 am, burning down the bigger and nicer houses as they came in. But houses have been burned down in every village that they entered,” RFA’s source said. “They think that anti-junta resistance will stop when the people are repressed and have to struggle for their living instead of engaging in opposition activities. I believe that this repression will fail, though,” he added. Locals said that four bodies, including the body of a woman, were discovered near a drain outside Kaing Kan village following the attack but had not yet been identified. In Ayadaw township’s Min Ywa Gyi village, heavy shelling by junta forces  preceded the burning of homes during weekend attacks, one village resident said on Monday, also declining to be named because of safety concerns. “The [ruling] Military Council set fire to the houses. This is their usual tactic,” he said. “The troops came by helicopter, shelled the village with heavy artillery and then burned the houses. “As far as I could see yesterday, no fewer than 200 houses had been burned down,” he added. Myanmar military forces are at war with People’s Defense Force (PDF) units created to oppose junta rule, “but instead they are destroying civilians’ lives and homes, which isn’t fair,” he said. Bags and books are shown left behind by schoolchildren fleeing a helicopter attack by junta troops in Sagaing’s Myinmu township, Aug. 1, 2022. Photo: Myinmu Civil Revolution Force Woman burned to death Local sources said that Daw Shin, an 80-year-old woman, was found burned to death in Min Yaw Gyi after failing to escape the military raid and that local defense groups were busy Sunday clearing landmines left behind by junta troops, with those displaced by the fighting seeking shelter in a nearby monastery and with charity associations. Calls seeking comment from a Military Council spokesman rang unanswered Monday. But a member of Tapayin township’s People’s Defense Force told RFA that the more junta forces repress the local people, the more the people will fight against junta rule. “We are not scared by these brutalities,” he said. “If there were 100 people resisting before, 300 people will come out now, and the more violent the junta troops become, the more the people will rise up against them.” Also speaking to RFA, Nay Zin Lat—a regional MP from Kanbalu township for the National League for Democracy, which was overthrown in a Feb. 1, 2021 military coup—said that military leaders are trying to rule Myanmar’s people through fear. “They are limited in their ability to attack the PDF forces on the ground, so when they find they can’t do it, they just torture the local civilians, who have nothing to do with the PDFs. “By doing this, they are trying to cut local contacts with the PDFs and spread fear among the people so that they will end their support for the fighters. This is the cruelest treatment imaginable,” he said. Translated by RFA Burmese. Written in English by Richard Finney.

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China steps up cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns targeting Taiwan

Editor012 mins

Cyber attacks and a Chinese disinformation campaign targeting the democratic island of Taiwan throw the spotlight on Beijing’s use of hybrid warfare in the wake of Pelosi’s visit, a Taiwanese military official said on Monday. Maj. Gen. Chen Yu-lin, deputy director of the Political and War Bureau of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense told journalists on Monday that the current wave of “cognitive operations” started before the military exercises were announced. Chen said the hybrid warfare campaign sought to create an atmosphere suggesting China might be invading Taiwan, to attack the public image of the government, and to disrupt civilian and military morale. “The CCP’s military exercises began on Aug. 4, when the number of cognitive warfare-related posts targeting Taiwan skyrocketed to 73, peaking at 87 on Aug. 5,” Chen. “[But] official media posted a total of 87 messages on Aug. 2, before the military exercises started.” “We immediately issued a press release to … inform the public that these messages weren’t true,” Chen said, citing one message claiming the PLA had shot down a Taiwanese fighter jet accompanying Pelosi’s plane. “We immediately clarified that this was fake news,” Chen said. Hybrid warfare denotes a combination of conventional military action on the ground and hacks or disinformation campaigns designed to attack public morale and sow confusion. Chen Hui-min, editor-in-chief of the Taiwan FactCheck Center, said his organization had detected a 30-40 increase in fake reports online since Pelosi’s visit. “The biggest difference [from the past] is that it seems to be spreading from English-language Twitter,” Chen told RFA. “There is also a lot of fake information on China’s [social media platform] Weibo, some of which has made its way onto social media platforms used in Taiwan, including LINE and Facebook.” “It used to be pretty rare to see such posts in the English Twittersphere,” Chen said. “Accounts that once focused on the war in Ukraine suddenly started spreading fake news about Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.” National Taiwan University was hacked, with the words “there is only one China in this world” appearing on its official website. Meanwhile, the National Palace Museum issued a statement denying online rumors that the government was preparing to send tens of thousands of rare artifacts overseas for safekeeping. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted on Sunday that the maps showed Shandong dumpling restaurants and Shanxi noodle restaurants in Taipei, saying the presence of the restaurants means that Taiwan has always been a part of China. “Palates don’t cheat,” Hua wrote, adding: “The long lost child will eventually return home.” Outdated photos According to Chen Hui-min, some of the images used by the disinformation posts used military images from two years earlier to suggest the PLA had fired rockets across the island. “It’s incorrect to say that the CCP’s long-range rockets have flown across Taiwan. Even the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and official Chinese media have reported that they landed in the Taiwan Strait, stopping short of crossing Taiwan,” Chen said. “Another annotated photo said the Chinese army was assembling on the coast, using edited photos of North Korean military exercises that took place in 2017.” Another report cited China’s state broadcaster CCTV as saying that China was expelling Taiwanese nationals before Aug. 8, also untrue. Last week, several convenience store branches and government facilities across Taiwan saw their digital signage hacked with messages slandering visiting U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her recent visit to Taiwan, which sparked days of military exercises and missile launches near Taiwan by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As Pelosi visited Taiwan and met with president Tsai Ing-wen on Aug. 3, messages started popping up on digital signage in 7-Eleven convenience stores across the country that read: “Warmonger Pelosi, get out of Taiwan!” Digital signage at a railway station in the southern port city of Kaohsiung and at a government office in Nantou county also displayed a message calling Pelosi “an old witch.” Investigators said the attacks originated from an unknown IP address, the island’s Central News Agency (CNA) reported at the time. The hacks came after the official website of Tsai’s Presidential Office was taken down for around 20 minutes by a cyberattack, after which full service was restored, CNA reported. Mainland Chinese website Baidu joined in the cognitive warfare, releasing maps of Taiwan for the first time, which went viral after social media users noticed that many streets in Taiwan’s cities are named for cities in mainland China. Chinese officials and pro-CCP commentators have launched a global media offensive around Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, claiming that the island, which has never been ruled by the CCP nor formed part of the 72-year-old People’s Republic of China, is an “inseparable” part of Chinese territory. CCP leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly said that Taiwan must be “unified” with China, and refused to rule out the use of military force to annex the island. But Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen, who was re-elected in a 2020 landslide after vowing to stand up to China on the issue, has said that Taiwan’s 23 million population have no wish to give up their sovereignty, a view that is borne out by repeated opinion polls. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted on Sunday that the maps showed Shandong dumpling restaurants and Shanxi noodle restaurants in Taipei, saying the presence of the restaurants means that Taiwan has always been a part of China. “Palates don’t cheat,” Hua wrote, adding: “The long lost child will eventually return home.” Hua Chunying Twitter users responded with parodies of the tweet, citing the ubiquitous presence of American fast-food chains KFC and McDonalds in China, and claiming China as “part of Kentucky.” Taiwan cookery expert Clarissa Wei said many of the restaurants had already altered their dishes to suit the local palate, however, drawing parallels with the evolution of Chinese dishes in the United States to suit local tastes. Feminist writer Shangguan Luan said China’s CCP-supporting Little Pinks could be forgiven for their ignorance, given that they…

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Play it loud: The return of Hanoi’s loudspeakers speaks volumes

Editor010 mins

Authorities in Hanoi announced recently that the once-ubiquitous loudspeakers, a staple of government news and propaganda, relics of the past and left to disrepair in the early 2000s, would be reinstalled. The late July announcement caught everyone by surprise and has been met with derision. But it speaks volumes about the Communist regime, its insecurities, and the pathways to power. A simpler time For a government which has touted a high-tech future for Vietnam under its “National Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” the Orwellian monotone does not seem to be a sophisticated way of communication. Why a media anachronism in a time when people have alternative sources of information across multiple platforms on their smartphones? On the simplest level, it’s just that, an attempt by the Party to harken back to a time when the state easily monopolized the information environment. According to international watchdogs, Vietnam has one of the most repressive media environments in the world. Reporters Without Borders ranks it 174. The Committee to Protect Journalists documented 23 arrested journalists in 2021. Freedom House rated its internet freedom at 22 out of 100 – just above worst-ranked Iran, Myanmar and Cuba. Yet despite the concerted efforts to police and censor the internet, the media landscape is more open than one would expect. Vietnam’s internet is not behind a firewall, and there are 76 million Facebook users in Vietnam. Authorities can only focus on the key nodes and influencers. The Vietnamese government’s cyber security law, adopted in 2019, potentially compels data localization from the big tech companies, though policy disputes between the Ministry of Public Security and the economic ministries have meant that it’s not been fully implemented. Nonetheless, according to data reported by Vietnamese authorities, foreign social media firms complied with around 90 percent of government requests to take down media across social media platforms. Hanoi is demanding and getting more corporate compliance in dealing with “malicious content.” And yet, for many in the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), the media landscape is still too permissive. A pervasive sense of insecurity The re-installation of the loudspeakers also reflects a deep insecurity on the part of the government. And it has much to be insecure about. The VCP’s claim to legitimacy is based on two things: nationalism and economic performance. Recently both have been in called into question due to endemic corruption that has reached the highest levels of government. Despite unflinching Chinese pressure and excessive maritime claims against Vietnam’s national sovereignty, the Coast Guard is mired in corruption. The commander and his predecessor were both sentenced to 17 years in prison for using state assets to protect oil smugglers. The party expelled two other major generals, and disciplined five other major generals and two lieutenant generals. The government will have a very attentive public to respond to the next time the Coast Guard is caught flat-footed against Chinese incursions. Corruption undermines combat readiness. Two other corruption scandals, both involving the until-then stellar COVID-19 response by the previous government, have hit the senior-most leadership and called into question the prime minister’s management.  A scandal over repatriation flights for Vietnamese nationals brought down a deputy foreign minister and a former deputy head of immigration at the Ministry of Public Security, among others.  The Viet A testing scandal felled two members of the elite VCP Central Committee, a former minister of health, and senior members of the vaunted Vietnam People’s Army. To date, the party has investigated over 21 people. Corruption is endemic in Vietnam. And yet these corruption scandals seem all the more concerning than those over the past five to six years when senior officials weaponized police and the prosecutorial service to take down political rivals and their patronage networks. The VCP knows it has a legitimacy crisis. The government recently acknowledged that in 2021 there were 3,725 corruption investigations and criminal proceedings, three times the number in 2020. For an economy stuck between central planning and the market, with soft property rights, where the state controls key inputs such as land and capital, not to mention permits and licenses, there is no shortage of opportunities for graft. But where corruption was once seen as the cost of doing business, it is now viewed as predatory and hindering economic growth. A loudspeaker stands on the roof of a gateway in the suburbs of Hanoi on May 18, 2011. (AFP) Pathways to power But the decision to reinstall the loudspeakers also says something about the pathways to power in Vietnamese politics. The decision was a local one, made by the Hanoi Party Committee. The Hanoi Party chief is a key position and is often held by a member of the elite Politburo, and always a member of the Central Committee. The Hanoi Party Committee has been in turmoil, following the Viet A corruption scandal that saw its chief, Chu Ngoc Anh, expelled from the party and put on trial. The new Party chief is trying to curry favor, while his new deputy is clearly being groomed for greater things. For ambitious Party cadres, keeping clean right now is necessary, but insufficient. General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong continues to make counter-corruption his highest priority. But advancement will require those added flourishes, such as loudspeakers extolling the good works of the Party. Someone, somewhere, actually thought that this was a good idea. While loudspeakers blaring state media, party edicts, and propaganda may not be heard over the cacophony of Hanoi’s congested streets, they will be heard in the corridors of power. Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or RFA.

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China ends live-fire missile testing near Taiwan early amid protests from Japan, US

Editor09 mins

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) appeared to have ended live-fire missile tests around Taiwan after just a few hours, amid international criticism and disappointment on domestic social media on Friday. The missile tests were part of an intensive round of PLA military exercises around Taiwan scheduled from Aug. 4-7, and their conclusion was viewed by online Little Pink nationalist commentators as disappointing. The drills and incursions by Chinese ships and planes into Taiwan’s waters are continuing, however. “Does this mean they won’t fire any more over the next couple of days?” wrote @Fengyun_is_back, while others quipped that the army is done “frying fish,” a slang reference to saber-rattling directed at Taiwan. “Did they only have so many missiles, and did they fire them all at once?” one user commented. Current affairs commentator Zhao Qing said he was surprised that the PLA had announced an end to missile tests, in a move that appeared hasty. “It lasted just two hours and 22 minutes from the launch of the PLA’s first missile,” Zhao said. “I was really surprised by how short that was. I thought the live-fire missile launches would go on for 10 hours or more.” “That was really unexpected. Five more missiles missed [their targets] and landed in Japanese waters, and they stopped the exercise after Japan protested,” Zhao said. Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said five of the PLA’s ballistic missiles landed in Japan’s territorial waters from between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. local time on Aug. 4. The Rocket Force under the Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducts conventional missile tests into the waters off the eastern coast of Taiwan, from an undisclosed location in this August 4, 2022 handout released on August 5, 2022. Credit: Eastern Theatre Command/Handout via Reuters Some blockades lifted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday condemned the missile launches, calling it “a serious issue that affects our national security and the safety of our citizens.” “China’s actions … have had a serious impact on the peace and stability of our region and the international community,” he told reporters after having breakfast with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I told her that we have called on [China] to immediately cancel the military exercises.” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded that China and Japan have never formally delimited the maritime area in question, so the missiles couldn’t be said to have landed in Japanese waters. Meanwhile, blockades have apparently been lifted in at least three of the six maritime areas used for military exercises, Zhao said. “Only the Chinese coastal waters to the west of Taiwan remain blocked,” he said, citing a shipping tracker. “The eastern side of the island is open to shipping, with military exercises completed on that side.” “The shipping tracker website shows no information about any military warnings, and the ships are sailing there as normal,” Zhao said. A current affairs commentator surnamed Li said the abrupt end to the missile firings suggested something had gone wrong. “Their exercise plan was likely made a long time beforehand,” Li said. “The exercise was announced as three days in length, but it only took three hours.” “There must be external factors in play [possibly because] the exercise was exposing them, because U.S. military intelligence collection capabilities are very strong,” he said. “For example [they may now know about] their launch technology, performance and technical parameters of those missiles, meaning they would be making fools of themselves by firing them,” Li said. ‘Major escalation’ Reports have also emerged of a personnel change on the first day of the military exercises around Taiwan. A report on a government website in the eastern city of Ningbo said a local official had met with Wang Zhongcai, deputy commander and naval commander of the PLA’s Eastern Theater. That post had previously been reported in the state-backed news site The Paper as being held by Mei Wen. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference in Phnom Penh on Friday that China’s launch of missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone represented a “major escalation” of the situation. He said the situation had led to a “vigorous communication” during East Asia Summit meetings in the Cambodian capital. “[I said that] they should not use the visit as a pretext for war, escalation, for provocative actions, that there is no possible justification for what they’ve done,” Blinken said, adding that he had also called for an end to the military action in and around the Taiwan Strait. A military scholar who gave only the surname Li said the five missiles that landed in Japanese waters had exposed weaknesses in the PLA’s missile launch technology. “Their missile technology is relatively outdated, as it relies on a U.S.-made civilian GPS positioning technology for guidance,” Li said. “The Dongfang-15 was … developed for use against the former Soviet Union, with very similar technology to that of the U.S. at the time,” he said. “[Their] more recently developed missiles could have been even more inaccurate.” Yang Haiying, a professor at Shizuoka University in Japan, said the Japanese government has lodged a strong protest with China and canceled a planned meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers. “This year was supposed to see celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the normalization of relations between China and Japan, but those five missiles have made it impossible to celebrate,” Yang told RFA. “There is no way of knowing now if the missiles’ targeting was intentional or not,” he said.  Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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