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Category: Middle East

Yangon blasts injure three people, including a child

Editor03 mins

Two suspected bombings in Hlaing Tharyar Township’s No. 5 Ward this morning injured three people, including a child. The first blast, at around 6 a.m. in a garbage dump on Narawat Road, injured a 30-year-old man walking along the road. Hlaing Tharyar resident Ko Lwin Oo told RFA a second explosion took place while police and soldiers were investigating the first. It injured a middle-aged woman and a young child. “The first bomb blast hit the man who was walking at 6 a.m. in the morning. The second bomb exploded when the troops arrived at 7 a.m.,” he said. “A woman and a child in a house close to the blast were hit and the woman has been critically injured, wounding her left arm.” The local said the three injured were picked up immediately by an ambulance but it was still not known which hospital they were taken to. Ko Lwin Oo said he believed the child to be over 5-years-old. He said he could not tell whether the child was a boy or girl because he only saw the head and the child’s red shirt during the immediate evacuation of the injured. It is also unclear if the woman was the child’s mother or a relative. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the blasts. Calls to a military council spokesman by RFA throughout the day went unanswered. Residents of Hlaing Tharyar Township staging street protests in March. CREDIT: RFA The suspected bombings are the second in a week. On May 31, a bomb blast near the Bar Street bus stop on Anawrahtar Road in Kyauktada Township killed a man and injured nine others. A military spokesman said the dead man was secretly carrying the bomb and was a member of a local People’s Defense Force (PDF). The shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and members of PDFs in Yangon denied carrying out last week’s bombing. They accused the military junta and military-affiliated groups of manipulating the incident to mislead the public.

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Police arrest six on banned Tiananmen massacre anniversary in Hong Kong

Editor08 mins

Police in Hong Kong have arrested six people on public order offenses around the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre near Victoria Park, commemoration of which has been banned under a draconian national security law for the third year in a row. Police said they had arrested five men and one woman aged 19-80 by 11.30 p.m. on June 4 after stepping up patrols around Causeway Bay and Victoria Park and warning people not to try to stage their own personal memorials. The six arrestees were taken away on charges that included “inciting others to take part in an illegal assembly,” “possessing an offensive weapon” and “obstructing police officers in the course of the duties.” The soccer pitches, basketball courts and central lawn areas — where mass candlelight vigils had taken place for three decades since the June 4, 1989 massacre by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Beijing — were reopened on Sunday after being closed to the public. Police remained at the park on Sunday, stopping passers-by for questioning, but otherwise allowing people in and out again. Large numbers of Hongkongers in exile turned out to mark the massacre in London at the weekend, lighting candles and writing messages of commemoration, including outside the Chinese Embassy, where protesters mock-charged the building with paper effigies of tanks, only to be pushed back by police. Protesters held up photos of political prisoners jailed in Hong Kong under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the wake of the 2019 protest movement, which called for universal suffrage and greater official accountability, as well as opposing plans to allow extradition to mainland China. A former Hong Kong teacher who gave only the English name Jeremy said he had emigrated to the U.K. with his family, and had continued his annual attendance at the vigil in London, this time bringing his daughter along too. “The regime did something wrong, and we are here as proof of that, and to tell the next generation that justice should be done, and that someone should admit responsibility for that wrongdoing,” he said. “It’s that simple.” “The people of Hong Kong see you, and we haven’t forgotten the June 4 massacre,” he said. Hongkongers in exile in Britain join mainland democracy activists to mark the 33rd anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre in London at the weekend, lighting candles and writing messages of commemoration outside the Chinese Embassy, in London, June 2, 2022. Credit: RFA Danger to families A participant who gave only the surname Liew said Hongkongers are beginning to have similar fears to mainland Chinese in exile, namely that their friends and families back home could be targeted if they speak out overseas. “Of course I’m scared too, but my view is that if we do nothing, they’ll be even more contemptuous of our rights,” she said. “They won’t go any easier on us if we do nothing; the abuse of our rights will only intensify.” Around 2,000 people turned out to mark the anniversary on the democratic island of Taiwan, many of them chanting now-banned slogans from the 2019 protest movement including “Free Hong Kong! Revolution now!” A replica of the now-demolished Pillar of Shame sculpture that once stood on the University of Hong Kong campus formed a focal point for the event, as Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen wrote on her Facebook page that the authorities in Hong Kong are currently working to erase collective memory of the massacre. The country’s foreign affairs ministry sent an open letter to the people of China in the simplified Chinese used in China, calling on them to research the massacre for themselves, beyond the Great Firewall of internet censorship. A replica of the now-demolished Pillar of Shame sculpture that once stood on the University of Hong Kong campus is displayed in Taiwan, where some 2,000 people turned out to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, June 4, 2022. Credit: RFA Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong, now in exile in Taiwan, gave a speech to the crowd, saying the CCP fears such events because of how many people they killed. “Friends looked for friends in piles of corpses, wives looked for husbands in piles of corpses, parents looked for their sons and daughters among the blood and corpses,” Wong said. “The Chinese Communist Party is very afraid of passing on [that knowledge] from generation to generation, but that’s exactly what we want.” “Make sure everyone knows they killed those people … fight for freedom and democracy, and then their deaths will have made sense.” Back in Hong Kong, national security judge Peter Law handed over the “subversion” cases of 47 former opposition lawmakers and democracy activists to the High Court, paving the way for potential life imprisonment under the national security law for organizing a democratic primary in 2020. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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Five people killed in Sagaing region township blazes

Editor03 mins

The charred bodies of a 79-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy were among five people discovered after military forces set fire to two villages in Myanmar’s war-torn Sagaing region, locals told RFA. The elderly woman was from Thargara village in Khin Oo township. The boy and three men came from Than Se Chaung village in Kani township. Residents told RFA the elderly woman may have been trapped after suffering a stroke when junta troops burned down houses on June 4. They say the blaze also killed cattle and destroyed 70 houses, agricultural machinery, motorbikes and 10,000 baskets of rice, being stored for food. Agricultural equipment and food supplies were also destroyed in the blaze. CREDIT: citizen jounalist. The bodies of four Than Se Chaung residents were found close to their village, near Nat Sin Gone at Nga Pyat village. They had been detained by the military a few days earlier. A local resident told RFA the four villagers, aged between 14 and 45, were killed after being taken hostage by troops. “They were sent to the frontline and were then killed as they did not do what the junta troops asked and commanded,” said the resident, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity. It was still not known how the four were killed. Calls to a military council spokesman by RFA on Monday morning went unanswered. Most of Sagaing’s townships and villages have been affected by fierce fighting between junta forces and members of the People’s Defense Forces since the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup. RFA reported last month that nearly 6,300 homes in 19 townships had been burned down in the northwestern region over the previous two months. Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun blamed the PDFs for starting the fires. RFA figures show that 414 people were killed in Sagaing region between Feb. 1 and Dec. 1 last year, 309 by the junta and 105 by PDFs.

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Jailed Uyghurs’ relatives forced to attend study sessions in Ghulja during UN visit

Editor07 mins

Chinese authorities forced the relatives of detained Uyghurs in the town of Ghulja in Xinjiang to attend political study sessions while monitoring their contact with others during a recent visit to the region by the U.N. human rights chief, a local officer police said. Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, visited China on May 23-28 with stops in the coastal city of Guangzhou and in Urumqi (Wulumuqi) and Kashgar (Kashi) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It was the first visit to the country by a U.N. rights chief since 2005. Before her trip, China’s state security police warned Uyghurs living in Xinjiang that they could suffer consequences if their relatives abroad spoke out about internment camps in the region, a reflection of the government’s sensitivity to bad press about its forced assimilation campaign that has incarcerated as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the name of “vocational training.” Bachelet’s itinerary didn’t include a stop in Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining), the third-largest city in the XUAR and the site of a protest by Uyghurs against religious repression 25 years ago that left as many as 200 hundred people dead. But, given the city’s history, Chinese authorities there are sensitive to signs of popular unrest, and they redoubled the surveillance and indoctrination programs imposed on the 12 million Uyghurs across Xinjiang, a territory the size of Alaska or Iran. A village police officer said the “political study session” for the family members of detainees began in mid-April, and that authorities kept a tight rein on their work and social lives. As a result, those residents have been incommunicado with others in their community. “The ones whose fathers or mothers or other relatives were detained, came to the sessions and spoke at the political and legal meetings organized by the village,” he told RFA. During the sessions, the Chinese government enforced a rule for Uyghurs to immediately attend sessions whenever a bell sounded and to leave them when the bell sounded a second time, the police officer said. The attendees gathered in the morning on street corners or at residents’ committees to wait for the signal. “They come with a sound of a bell and leave with another sound of a bell,” he said. “We hold these meetings from 8 a.m. in the morning.” Organized by the village’s 10 family leaders or police, the attendees had to express their gratitude to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government and had to promise that they would help protect national security by not sharing any sensitive information with outsiders. The family members of detained Uyghurs were warned against accepting international calls to ensure that no “state secrets” — meaning in this case the detention of Uyghurs or other measures to repress them — were released. “We told them not to make phone calls or take phone calls from abroad,” the police officer said. “We told them not to directly tell [people] if they asked on the phone about their detained relatives. We warned them to first ask where they are calling from and why they need to ask for the information. We told them not take those phone calls from abroad in order to keep state secrets.” The residents were instructed as to how not to expose information on their detained relatives to the outside world and were told how to give “standard answers” to questions raised by anyone visiting from outside China, he said. Furthermore, if the residents were visited by relatives or friend from other cities, they would be summoned to the police station and asked about what they had discussed with their guests, he said. “If anyone came to [see] their family for a visit from other cities such as Kashgar, we would take them to the police station and investigate who the visitors were, why are they were here and what they talked about,” the policeman said. The mandatory political study sessions ended when Bachelet and her team left the region, he said. Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Suspect in kidnapping of Vietnamese executive extradited to Germany

Editor03 mins

A suspect in the 2017 Berlin kidnapping of former Vietnamese oil and gas official Trinh Xuan Thanh has been extradited to Germany from the Czech Republic. The Vietnamese national, identified as Anh T.L., was handed over to German authorities on Wednesday after his arrest in Prague earlier this year, news agencies reported citing a statement from the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office. Anh faces charges including espionage and is accused of stalking the victim and driving the getaway van. On July 23, 2017, former Trinh Xuan Thanh was abducted in a Berlin park and thrown into a van with a woman, identified as Thi Minh P.D. He was allegedly smuggled back to Vietnam for trial. A Hanoi court charged Thanh with causing loss of state assets and mismanagement at PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation. He was sentenced to two life terms on corruption charges. At the time of his abduction Thanh was seeking refugee status in Germany. The kidnapping strained German-Vietnamese relations and prompted Berlin to expel two Vietnamese diplomats. A year after the kidnapping, a Vietnamese citizen, identified as Long N.H., was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison by a Berlin court on charges of espionage and assisting Vietnamese secret service agents in entering German territory to kidnap people. “The kidnapping was carried about by members of the Vietnamese secret service and employees of the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin as well as several Vietnamese nationals living in Europe, among them Ahn T.L.,” the German public prosecutor general at the Federal Court of Justice said in a statement seen by news agencies. Vietnam claims Thanh returned voluntarily to face charges.

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Cambodian woman says police assault during strike led to miscarriage

Editor07 mins

A Cambodian woman said a physical assault she suffered at the hands of police officers during a labor protest outside the NagaWorld Casino may have led to the death of her unborn child. Sok Ratana told RFA’s Khmer Service that she had been pregnant when she joined the ongoing strike outside the casino’s offices on May 11. The police pushed and shoved her during the protest, she said. Fearing they may have hurt her baby in utero, she went to her doctor, who told her that the baby only had a 50% chance to live. Sok Ratana said that she miscarried on May 28. The doctor told her that the baby had likely died two days before he removed it from her womb, she said. “Losing my beloved baby has caused me an unbelievable pain that I will feel the rest of my life,” said Sok Ratana. “This experience has shown me the brutality of the authorities and it has deeply hurt my family.” Sok Ratana is one of thousands of NagaWorld workers who walked off their jobs in mid-December, demanding higher wages and the reinstatement of eight jailed union leaders, three other jailed workers and 365 others they say were unjustly fired from the hotel and casino. The business is owned by a Hong Kong-based company believed to have connections to family members of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. The strikers began holding regular protest rallies in front of the casino. Cambodian authorities have said their gatherings were “illegal” and alleged that they are part of a plot to topple the government, backed by foreign donors. Authorities began mass detentions of the protesters, claiming that they were violating coronavirus restrictions. They often resorted to violence to force hundreds of workers onto buses. “The labor dispute has turned to a dispute with authorities because they constantly crack down on us without any clemency,” Sok Ratana said. “I never thought that Cambodia has a law saying that when workers demand rights … authorities can crack down on us.” She said that authorities worked with the company to pressure workers to stop the strike. She urged the government to better train its security forces to not become violent. Kata Orn, spokesperson of the government-aligned Cambodia Human Rights Committee, expressed sympathy with Sok Ratana’s circumstance but said that it was too early to say whether the authorities were at fault. He urged Sok Ratana to file a complaint with the court. “We can’t prejudge the loss due to the authorities. Only medical experts can tell,” he said. “We can [only] implement the law. It is applied equally to the workers and the authorities.” Sok Ratana said she is working on collecting evidence to file a complaint, but she wasn’t confident a court will adjudicate the case fairly. “I don’t have much hope because my union leader was jailed unjustly for nine weeks. Her changes have not been dropped yet,” she said. “To me, I don’t hope to get justice. From who? I want to ask, who can give me justice?” Police violence is a serious human rights violation, Am Sam Ath of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights told RFA. He urged relevant institutions to investigate the miscarriage and bring those responsible to justice. “Labor disputes can’t be settled by violence and crackdowns. This will lead to even more disputes and the workers and authorities will try to get revenge,” he said. The Labor Ministry has attempted to mediate the dispute between the casino and the union leaders, who have been released on bail, but no progress has been made after more than 10 meetings. Am Sam Ath said the difficulty in resolving the labor dispute might push the government to crack down harder on the holdouts and make more arrests. RFA attempted to contact Phnom Penh Municipal Police spokesman San Sok Seiha and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs spokeswoman Man Chenda, but neither were available for comment.  Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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Resumption of conflict would put millions at risk in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: report

Editor010 mins

A resumption of a full-scale conflict between Myanmar’s military and Arakan Army (AA) insurgents could result in the worst violence Rakhine state has seen in years and put the lives of millions of ethnic minorities in the region at risk, according to a new report by an international NGO. In a report released Wednesday, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said AA moves to gain territory in central and northern Rakhine state since it agreed to an informal ceasefire with the military in the latter part of 2020 are likely to prompt intense fighting in the region. It warned that up to 3 million ethnic Rakhines and Rohingyas would be severely affected by the violence and called for the ceasefire to be formalized, despite the AA’s declared goal of establishing an independent state for ethnic Rakhines and a bid by Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) to have the AA join a coalition of anti-junta armed groups. “A resumption of war in Rakhine state would have significant impacts for the 2-3 million people in the state, both Rakhine and Rohingya, who have so far been spared the post-coup violence that has engulfed the rest of Myanmar,” the ICG’s senior adviser on Myanmar, Tom Kean, told RFA’s Burmese Service in an email prior to the release of the report. “The humanitarian consequences would likely be devastating — almost certainly worse than during the two-year war from December 2018 to November 2020, which the state has still not recovered from.” Kean said that in researching the ICG’s report, both Rakhine and Rohingya interviewees expressed fear of conflict resuming, adding that while many believed such a conflict is inevitable, it is something they neither wanted nor supported. And while many in Myanmar would welcome a partnership against the junta between the AA and the NUG-led opposition, the report suggested that such an arrangement could spark violence that would significantly worsen the living situation for civilians in Rakhine state, which is already reeling from a battered economy and years of communal violence. Instead, Kean urged the AA to secure a formal ceasefire with the military, adding that while the insurgent army must decide for itself how best to achieve its political goals, a renewed war is “not the best option.” However, he suggested that the AA “work closely” with the NUG to choose a way to avoid the risk of a recurrence of conflict in Rakhine state. Refugees at a camp in Rakhine state’s Ponnagyun township, Jan. 21, 2022. Credit: RFA ‘The view of the people’ The ICG report follows a recent uptick in tensions between the two sides after the Arakan Army commander-in-chief, Gen. Tun Myat Naing, issued a warning to the military’s Western Commander Htin Latt Oo on Twitter. On May 26, the military and AA fighters clashed near the villages of Abaung-thar and Yote-wa, about six miles from the center of Rakhine’s Paletwa township, and residents have told RFA they are worried that the two-year-old ceasefire had been broken. Nyo Aye, the chairwoman of the Rakhine Women’s Network, called for calm between the two sides in an interview with RFA, noting that it is largely civilians who bear the brunt of armed conflict. “When tensions grow, there is a likelihood for more fighting,” she said. “We find this very worrying. It is our people who suffer because of the fighting. Tensions need to be reduced and I’m not talking about one side. I mean both sides need to compromise. That’s the view of the people.” An ethnic Rohingya Muslim from a village in northern Rakhine’s Buthidaung township told RFA that people there do not want fighting to resume. “Our only desire is to live in peace,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If there is fighting, there will be hardship. I am worried about the lives of refugees. We just want the fighting to stop.” He said fighting appears likely to resume as the military is regularly entering Muslim villages in Buthidaung, watching for AA movements. Attempts by RFA to reach AA spokesman Khaing Thukha for comment went unanswered Wednesday, but the junta’s deputy information minister, Maj. Gen Zaw Min Tun, responded to inquiries saying that the military is not deploying troops to Rakhine state and is trying to maintain peace in the region. “We only have local security forces who were there [from the previous conflict],” he said, adding that the AA claims the military is sending reinforcements to the area “to frighten the people.” “We are committed to the development of Rakhine state, and we are continuing to work for peace and stability. … If they want to say the [military] is expanding its presence or launching an operation, they should provide some evidence.” Military ‘directly responsible’ for violence Meanwhile, the ICG’s Kean said that if the junta truly hopes to establish peace in Rakhine state and other parts of Myanmar, it must stop oppressing its own people. “The military regime is directly responsible for the violence in Myanmar because it launched the [Feb. 1, 2021] coup and refuses to respect the will of the vast majority of Myanmar people,” Kean said. “Instead, it is using extreme violence to try and cower them into submission,” he said of the junta’s ensuing crackdown that rights groups say has led to the deaths of at least 1,878 civilians and the arrest of 13,915 more, mostly during peaceful anti-coup protests. Kean noted that despite the military’s brutal tactics, resistance to its rule — both armed and non-violent — “remains strong across much of the country.” “The military should of course stop abusing its own people, but this alone is unlikely to end the conflict because most people in Myanmar do not seem willing to accept any form of military government,” he said. “The path to stability is to hand back power to a civilian administration that has the support of the people.” Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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Shanghai entrepreneurs demand political reform, release of prisoners of conscience

Editor011 mins

As Shanghai residents celebrated a partial end to a weeks-long, grueling city-wide lockdown, calls emerged on Wednesday for industrial action by businesses in the city to protest Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy. As the Shanghai city government claimed the city’s lockdown had lifted despite multiple barriers to movement around the city, an open letter calling on workers and companies to “lie down on the job” and to go back to work, but not back to production began circulating online. The May letter, penned by businesses rather than shop-floor workers, predicts mass capital flight and a widespread loss of public confidence in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi, and calls on the industrial sector not to act like “sheep fattened for slaughter.” “It is a pity that some of us entrepreneurs and investors who are slightly successful, despite sitting on investments of hundreds of billions of yuan in Shanghai and across the whole country, and employing millions of employees, are still struggling,” the letter said. “Repeatedly forced into isolation, door-to-door disinfecting and other threats at the hands of neighborhood committees, the police, and unidentified individuals, all that expensive real estate wasn’t enough to protect us or our families,” it said. “Now we have woken up, we are no longer willing to wait like fat lambs for the slaughter,” it said. “In honor of the 20th CCP National Congress [later this year], we will be going back to work, but not back to production.” Predicting mass capital flight a large-scale corporate bankruptcy, reorganization, and liquidation, the letter said the “rule of law” had been reduced to “rule by man”, while the economy had been hijacked by politics, leaving millions of COVID-19 “graduates” unemployed. “Social unrest is inevitable,” it warned, adding that mass layoffs, salary cuts and streamlining would be necessary. “We have a full sense of autonomy and aspire to fair competition,” the letter said. “We look forward to a civil society. The people should take back their civil rights and rebuild the country.” It called on the government to overturn the guilty verdicts against entrepreneurs Ren Zhiqiang and Sun Dawu, as well as punishing officials responsible for “violating the law and disregarding public opinion” as part of the zero-COVID policy. A health worker takes a swab sample from a woman in the Huangpu district of Shanghai on June 1, 2022. Credit: AFP Entrepreneurs speak out It called for the “release and rehabilitation” of political prisoners, calling them “national treasures, and the backbone of the nation.” “Returning power to the people, rewriting the constitution, loosening the CCP’s control of the media, eliminating the privileged class, abolishing feudal systems like household registration and political review, and all other unreasonable systems that violate human morality and conscience,” the letter said. “If the country does not reform, trust in the government cannot be rebuilt, and the free market cannot be hoped for, we will never have peace!” it said, calling for the protection of private property rights, especially freehold residential homes, the “last refuge of the family.” RFA made contact with several of the people who authored the letter, via other contacts, and was able to verify its authenticity. French political commentator Wang Longmeng said the authors had asked him to help publicize the letter overseas. “I can guarantee that this is the true voice of some entrepreneurs in Shanghai,” Wang told RFA. “Instead of committing suicide like Nanjing entrepreneur Hou Guoxin, they fought back.” “Even the strategy of resuming work without resuming production shows courage,” he said. “The open letter makes the crucial point that there can be no real economic vitality without political reform.” France-based Wan Runnan, the dissident software engineer who founded Stone Emerging Industries Company in the 1980s, said Xi’s zero-COVID policy has led to the loss of China’s economic vitality, the loss of public support, and had likely also undermined the legitimacy of the CCP regime. “Xi Jinping is so stupid and utterly barbaric,” Wan told RFA. “What is zero-COVID? … It has brought zero economic growth, and zero hearts and minds.” “He has lost the support of the party, the people and the army,” he said. “Entrepreneurs are also a social force and a key component of public support.” An open letter penned by Shanghai entrepeneurs calling on workers and companies to “lie down on the job” predicting mass capital flight and a widespread loss of public confidence in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping. Credit: Wang Longmeng Bound to a sinking ship Wan said China’s entrepreneurs know very well that if the 20th Party Congress does not initiate a process of political reform, they will eventually be bound to the sinking ship of the Chinese economy. “Their plan is a very good one, which is to say that what happens to the economy depends on what happens at the 20th Party Congress,” he said. “If Xi doesn’t step down … then we are sorry but we won’t play ball.” Residents of Shanghai celebrated on the streets after the lifting of lockdown at midnight on June 1, honking vehicle horns and cheering. Many of them have been trapped in their homes for more than two months. Negative PCR tests continue to be required for entry and exiting residential estates and other public places, with hundreds of testing stations set up in the streets to facilitate compulsory mass testing. A resident of Jing’an district surnamed He said she got up in the middle of the night to do her PCR test, to ensure the results were back by the time she needed to go grocery shopping. “It takes between 48 hours and 72 hours to issue a PCR test certificate,” she said. “They ask to see these certificates if you go shopping at the supermarket.” “It’s like the sword of Damocles hanging over your head; you need it to take the bus or get on the subway,” He said. A Yangpu resident surnamed Chen said lockdown hadn’t even eased yet in her district. “We’ve been issued with residents’ cards,…

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Hundreds of Ede families in Vietnam demonstrate to demand land from forestry company

Editor06 mins

Hundreds of ethnic minority households from a commune in south-central Vietnam’s Dak Lak province are fighting to reclaim their land from a forestry company after 40 years of working on it as hired laborers. Protests in Lang village, Ea Pok town, Cu Mgar district began last month, with farmers demanding the return of about 40 hectares of arable land. Demonstrations came to a head on May 18 when hundreds of people gathered on the land to protest against the coffee company’s destruction of their crops. Videos and photos of the protest were shared on social media, showing riot police clashing with demonstrators. Demonstrations continued last week, with protestors holding up banners asking the coffee company to return the land. State media has so far not reported on the incident. “We want the company to return our ancestral land so that people can have a business in the future,” a local resident told RFA under the condition of anonymity. “People are getting [taxed] more and more but have less land, so people need to reclaim the land.”   According to RFA research, Lang village has about 250 households, all indigenous Ede people. The residents all make a living from farming. ‘The company does not give a dime’ Residents told RFA they had been cultivating the land for many generations but after 1975 the local government took it and gave it to the state-owned enterprise, Eapok Coffee Farm to grow coffee trees. The company later changed its name to Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company. Locals went from being landowners to hired workers on their own land. They say the company allowed them to cultivate the land from 1983 until now but told them to produce 18 tons of coffee per hectare or pay for up to 80% of each harvest.  “People work hard, but they don’t have enough to eat because they have to pay the company’s output. In many cases, they don’t even have enough output to pay so they are in debt and have to pay for it in the next crop,” said one resident who was assigned to grow coffee on 8,000 square meters of land. Residents say that in 2010 the company allowed them to uproot coffee trees and grow other crops, including corn, but did not support them by offering seedlings, fertilizers, or pesticides. The company also continued to impose output quotas or taxed as much as 80% of the crop.  “People have to pay by themselves. The company does not give a dime or give a single pill when people are sick,” said another resident farming 10,000 square meters of land. Struggling farmers decided to file an application with the government in 2019 to reclaim their land and farming rights. Locals say this year Ea Pok Coffee asked them to start growing durian trees. When they opposed the plan the company started destroying crops on May 18 to prepare the land for durian cultivation. When an RFA Vietnamese reporter called Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company to ask for comments they were told the press must register with the company’s leaders, and get their approval first.  When asked about the government’s attitude towards people’s demands, a local resident said: “We sent petitions to the town government and the provincial government but got no response. The first time five households signed, then many more households signed. The government always sides with the company, rather than helping the people.” RFA contacted Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, chairwoman of the People’s Committee of Ea Pok town, to ask about the dispute between Lang villagers and the coffee company. She said that she would not accept telephone interviews. When asked if people would agree to maintain the current form of contract farming if Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company reduced taxes and increased support, local people said they still committed to reclaiming the land. Translated by Ngu Vu.

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Irrawaddy dolphin deaths on Bangladesh’s coast worry environmentalists, authorities

Editor011 mins

Growing up, Nuru Majhi and his friends used to see dolphins jumping in Bangladesh’s southern coastal waters. “But now we see a lot less dolphins,” the 58-year-old fisherman from Patuakhali district told BenarNews. “The main cause of death is due to fishing nets. The number of fishermen has increased 10 times compared to 30 years ago.” The deaths of two Irrawaddy dolphins earlier this month near Kuakata beach where Majhi fishes highlight the threat faced by the aquatic mammals in Bangladesh, which hosts the world’s largest population of the species, authorities and fishermen said. Bangladesh Forest Department officials recovered the remains of the dolphins on May 3 and 14, bringing the tally this year to at least eight. All were found in the same Kuakata beach area in Patuakhali, about 294 km (183 miles) south of Dhaka. Meanwhile on May 22, a local Bangladesh media report said that a pregnant female Irrawaddy dolphin had died after being hit by a trolling net. The report said the dolphin was found floating at the mouth of Andharmanik River in Patuakhali district that morning. The carcass of an Irrawaddy dolphin lies on the Kuakata beach in Bangladesh’s Patuakhali district, May 14, 2022. Credit: Dolphin Conservation Committee of Kuakata, Bangladesh. The trend worries government authorities, environmentalists and fishermen. Similar concerns have been raised as the Irrawaddy population has plummeted on the Mekong River near Cambodia’s border with Laos. “This is really a matter of concern for us that the Irrawaddy dolphins are dying,” Abdullah Al Mamun, the division forest officer in Patuakhali district, told BenarNews. Forest officials were examining the causes of the latest dolphin deaths, he said. The Irrawaddy dolphin, which is distinct for its roundish head and lack of beak, is found in freshwater along with brackish shallow coastal waters in South and Southeast Asia, from Bangladesh to Mekong region and the Philippines. The name comes from the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar where the first specimens were described, according to riverdolphins.org, a website on dolphin conservation and management. Roman Imtiaz Tushar, a Kuakata wildlife activist, said 24 Irrawaddy dolphins were found dead in 2021, 18 in 2020 and 12 in 2019. Majhi, which means “boatman” in Bengali, said no fisherman intentionally kills a dolphin. “Every dolphin’s death makes fishermen very sorry,” he said. “Dolphins are a very emotional type of animal. They move in groups. When one is entangled in a net, others come around the trapped dolphin.” Credit: International Whaling Commission Trapped in nets Sharif Uddin, a fisheries department official, said Kuakata and other adjacent coastal areas are rich in resources. “The number of fishermen in this area has increased over the years. So more dolphins are getting trapped in the fishing nets,” said Uddin, chief scientific officer for the marine fisheries survey management. In 2019, Dhaka adopted a Dolphin Conservation Action Plan to save the country’s population of Irrawaddy, a protected species, along with the Ganges River dolphin. The plan authorizes the fisheries department to work with fishermen, while the main task of saving and conserving the dolphins goes to the forest department. “In line with the action plan, we have started awareness campaigns among the coastal fishermen so they can immediately release the dolphins, if possible,” Uddin said. “So, if we can make them more sensitive, there is a possibility that some of the dolphins trapped in the nets could be saved,” he said. But locals said they do not always know whether a large fish or a dolphin has been entangled in their long nets and can rescue only those caught close to them. “Once caught, the dolphins die in a maximum of 10 minutes,” Majhi, the fisherman, said. A fisherman casts a net on the Mekong River, home to Irrawaddy dolphins, in Kratié province, Cambodia, March 24, 2007. Credit: Reuters Dolphins are mammals and need to take oxygen from the air at intervals of 10 minutes or less, according to M.A. Aziz, a zoology professor at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka. “They cannot take oxygen from the water like fish.” “Some fishermen use very thin and transparent nets which the dolphins cannot always detect. When they run after fish, they cannot detect the presence of the thin fishing net and get entangled with it,” he told BenarNews. “As a result, they suffocate and die underwater in a short time.” Bangladesh’s coasts and the coastal rivers host about 80 percent of the world’s Irrawaddy dolphins, Aziz said. Globally, the Irrawaddy population is about 7,000, according to experts and international studies. Figures for Bangladesh range from 5,800 to 6,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Conservation Society. The Irrawaddy dolphins are classified as “endangered” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with some river and coastal subpopulations designated as “critically endangered.” In February, the last known freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin on a stretch of the Mekong River near Cambodia’s border with Laos died after being snagged in a fishing net, said wildlife officials and villagers from both sides of the frontier. Overall, a few dozen of these dolphins survive in the Lower Mekong region. An Irrawaddy dolphin raises its tail swims in a river in Kratié province, Cambodia, March 24, 2007. Credit: Reuters. The Irrawaddy population along the Mekong has declined from an estimated 200 in 1997 to 89 in 2020, according to riverdolphins.org. IUCN said the dolphin population level was satisfactory in Bangladesh waters where they are frequently spotted near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, and the Meghna River estuary near Nijhum Dwip. It said the Irrawaddy’s regional habitat was affected by increasing salinity caused by climate change and freshwater withdrawals. The fresh water flow into the river system that is needed to produce a suitable mixture with salt water to create the proper habitation for dolphins has been reduced, environmentalists said. The forest department, which investigates each recorded dolphin death, has concluded that in most cases they were entangled in fishing nets or hit by trawlers. Tushar, the team leader at…

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