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Category: Middle East

Airstrike kills woman on Myanmar-Bangladesh border

Editor05 mins

A Myanmar junta airstrike near the border with Bangladesh on Tuesday killed one civilian and injured 11, residents told Radio Free Asia, the latest casualties in a region that has seen some of the country’s most intense fighting in recent weeks. Junta forces launched air attacks after insurgents from the Arakan Army assaulted the military regime’s Border Guard Force near Maungdaw town on Monday. In response, aircraft dropped three bombs on two nearby villages in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw township. Since November, the Arakan Army has captured eight townships across Rakhine State and has launched several offensives in other areas. Fighter jets bombed Shwe Baho and Baw Di Kone villages at around 4 a.m., one resident, who declined to be identified in fear of reprisals, told RFA.  “A young woman died in Shwe Baho. She is a university student and was taking refuge in the village. The whole family was fleeing the battle but they were injured,” he said. “The Arakan Army is attacking Lay Mile’s Border Guard Force, so [the junta] bombarded all areas and surrounding villages.” The dead woman, Pan Ei Pyu, 22, also worked at a social assistance group, residents said. The wounded ranged in age from 5 years to 71, residents said.  Myanmar’s junta has yet to release any information on the attack. Rakhine State’s junta spokesperson, Hla Thein, did not answer calls from RFA. Forces of the junta, which seized power in an early 2021 coup, have lost territory in several parts of the country since late last year when militia groups, formed by pro-democracy activists and allied ethnic minority insurgent groups fighting for self-determination went on the offensive. Despite making advances, the junta’s opponents have no air power, leaving them, and villages in areas in which they operate, vulnerable to airstrikes. Four civilians were killed and six were wounded between May 14 and 19 when the junta bombed villages in southern Maungdaw township, residents said. On Saturday, the Arakan Army announced it had captured all junta camps in Buthidaung, a township along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Hours earlier, the group was accused of attacking a school with a drone where members of the Rohingya minority, a mostly Muslim community that has faced persecution for decades, were sheltering. Eighteen people were killed and more than 200 were wounded, residents said. The Arakan Army, in its Saturday statement, did not mention the Rohingya deaths, but said its forces were aiming to capture Maungdaw town, about 16 km (10 miles) west of Buthidaung township, also near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. International aid groups and local residents in Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Thandwe townships were told to evacuate by the United League of Arakan, the political wing of the Arakan Army, after it issued a warning of more attacks on junta forces on Monday. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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China’s ‘virtual invasion’ of India and the cultural genocide of Tibet

Editor010 mins

There is no border between India and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the northwest and northeast, India adjoins Tibet. It is not necessary for your Indian interlocutor to be a die-hard nationalist to think this way.  As a matter of fact, this is what a large number of Indians have believed since 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in Beijing. Their reasoning is that Tibet is a sovereign political entity occupied by the People’s Republic of China, and that it should regain independence within its historical borders. On the other hand, the CCP claims that Tibet has always been a part of China.  A Buddha statue is seen in Tawang in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, India, April 9, 2017. (Anuwar Hazarika/Reuters) Powered by this claim, one of the weapons of the PRC’s foreign offensive are geographical maps where  boundary disputes are used as tools for sinicization of Tibet. In this pursuit, the CCP is indefatigable.  On March 30, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the PRC committed  its latest misappropriation of Indian toponyms, changing 30 placenames in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.  Eleven residential areas, 12 mountains, four rivers, one lake, one mountain pass and a piece of land were given new Chinese names in simplified Chinese ideograms, Tibetan script and pinyin rendering as well as in the Roman alphabet.  Chinese names For each of those places, geographical coordinates are also duly furnished as well as a high-resolution map. The CCP ceremoniously celebrated the event with all the technicalities needed to make it seem an important and legitimate operation.. The sinicization of toponyms in Arunachal Pradesh is only the latest offensive in an ongoing campaign that Beijing has launched in recent years.  Villagers stand in a line to cast their votes at Sera village in Arunachal Pradesh, April 9, 2014. (Utpal Baruah/Reuters) The inaugural step of the campaign took place on April 13, 2017, when the ministry officialized the change of six place names. The second move was made official on Dec. 29, 2021, and it included the change of 15 toponyms . The third came on April 2, 2023, when 11 place names were sinicized as well.  It is noteworthy that the official announcement of the first change explicitly defines it as the “first batch,” implying there was more to come. However, nowhere is it written that the new March 2024 fourth batch in this series should be constructed as being the last one. It is a bit like playing a board game. None of the newly renamed real places in Arunachal Pradesh came under the PRC’s sovereignty as a result of the contrived Chinese maps, and the occupation of sovereign Indian territory that the new toponyms seem to indicate has not happened.  Chinese logic But the CCP’s move is consciously aiming to achieve a clear psychological effect – achieved by presenting the change of names as the direct consequence of a specific logic.  The territory that India calls Arunachal Pradesh doesn’t exist as such, the CCP asserts. It is just a portion of the PRC’s sovereign territory, it maintains. So, it concludes, place names can’t be Indian and must be Chinese, and new maps must show this  to the entire world. Young Buddhist monks play between prayers at the Tawang monastery in Tawang town in Arunachal Pradesh on April 5, 2023. (Arun Sankar/AFP) The CCP’s claim that Arunachal Pradesh doesn’t exist is based on the view that the Indian state by that name is simply a part of Tibet, which, the CCP underlines, has always been an integral part of China.  According to CCP propaganda, that part of “China’s Tibet” that Delhi Indianizes under the “fake” name of Arunachal Pradesh is simply a portion of Southern Tibet, or “Zangnan,” as the Chinese regime calls it. This assertion has been continuously perpetrated by the PRC since 1950, with the annexation and then military occupation of Tibet, which was in fact, a different, independent country.  Cultural genocide The Chinese invasion of Tibet, completed with the Battle of Lhasa in 1959 and its suppression of Tibetan identity, harsh religious persecution and other serious encroachments on liberty amount to a cultural genocide, as Tibetan leaders in exile have repeatedly asserted. Playing chess with the lives of millions of people has always been the policy of the Chinese regime in Tibet. This war of maps is rooted in the disputed border lines that separate India and PRC, where de facto, agreed-upon, and legal borders have not coincided since the time of British India. This dispute was complicated by the emergence of a highly ideological and aggressive regime in China in 1949. The game of maps that the CCP plays is quite sophisticated: It alternates its claim that some Indian territories are Tibetan – therefore belonging to China – with the dismemberment of “ethnic Tibet.” Indian army soldiers walk along the line of control at the India-China border in Bumla in Arunachal Pradesh, Oct. 21, 2012. (Anupam NathAP) Thus, the sinicizing of Arunachal Pradesh is a cynical attempt to legitimize the permanent subjugation of an entire people as a fait accompli confirmed by an international border.  This curtailment  and disrespect of India’s  sovereignty shows that what the PRC wants, the PRC gets – even if it comes at the price of culturally and politically attacking a foreign nation.  For its part, India rebukes this aggression, repeating that any boundary dispute regarding Arunachal Pradesh or other bordering lines, these must be discussed with Tibet, not the PRC – because Tibet is not the PRC, and will never be.   Totalitarian arrogance may pretend to change history and reality.  It devastates societies, traditions and individual freedom, but it will ultimately fail.    Marco Respinti is director-in-charge of  Bitter Winter, an online publication that promotes religious freedom and human rights.  Aaron Rhodes is president of the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe, and author of The Debasement of Human Rights. The views expressed here are their own and do not reflect…

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Vietnamese church in land dispute dating back to 1975

Editor08 mins

Parishioners of a Catholic church in southern Vietnam are protesting the local government’s plan to build a school on land that they say belongs to the church, igniting a dispute that dates back to 1975, the parishioners told Radio Free Asia. Two school buildings at the Thanh Hai Church in Thanh Hai ward, Phan Thiet city, Binh Thuan province were lent to the government in 1975 to be used as public schools. Now the government plans to return one of the buildings to the church and will raze the other to build a more modern 10-classroom school building. Similar land disputes between local governments and religious institutions regarding land use are very common in Vietnam.  Key to the Thanh Hai dispute is that the authorities are not officially using the term “return” to describe the process, implying that the land does not belong to the church. The parishioners, however, oppose the plan for the new school, saying they want all of the land returned to them. When the province began measuring the land surrounding the schools on May 8, hundreds of parishioners came to the churchyard to stop them. “We demanded that the authorities stop measuring the land of the two educational facilities that used to be the parish’s Catholic primary and middle schools,” a member of the church’s Pastoral Council, who like all unnamed sources in this report requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA Vietnamese. He said that the council told the local authorities not to take action on church land without prior notification, and since then nothing has happened at the site. RFA contacted Thanh Hai People’s Committee for more information about the incident, but a staff member who answered the phone said the information should be requested in person, directly to the leaders of the ward “No one, from the authorities to the priests, can take away our land,” she said. “[This is] the land our parents put a lot of effort and hard work to claim since they migrated to the South.” Claim rooted in history The Thanh Hai Parish was established in 1955 and its first parishioners were those who migrated south from the northern provinces of Thanh Hoa, Hai Phong, and Quang Binh following the signing of the Geneva Accords, which divided Vietnam into the communist North and anti-communist South. Today there are 8,000 parishioners and they make up 75% of the population in Thanh Hai ward, according to a 2015 survey.  Before the North defeated the South and unified Vietnam in 1975, the schools on the church land were run by the parish and only the children of parishioners could attend. But that changed when the new government requisitioned the schools and ordered that they serve all children in the ward. Thanh Hai parishioners protested local authorities’ plan to build schools on land borrowed from Thanh Hai church, May 8, 2024. (Năm Chiếc Bánh vía YouTube) Due to the increasing number of parishioners in recent years, the parish has found it necessary to build some additional facilities, including a parking area, a pastoral service house, and a place for children and young people’s religious activities. As a result, in 2014, the parish started to request the authorities to return the two schools to them. According to a copy of the document named “1996 Land Use Declaration,” the Thanh Hai Parish, represented by Priest Vu Ngoc Dang, lent the local authority the school facilities with a total area of 6,136.8 square meters (1.5 acres). The document was signed and sealed by the then Chairman of Thanh Hai Ward People’s Committee. However, according to a document posted on the Binh Thuan province website, authorities said that the province had never borrowed the parish’s land to house the two schools. They say the establishment of the two schools followed Circular No. 409 of the People’s Revolutionary Committee of the Middle Central Region, which said that “starting from the school year 1975-1976, all types of private schools (run by individuals, and religious and social organizations) will be converted into public schools.”  ‘Land extension’ When the parishioners learned of the plan on Feb. 16, they gathered at the Episcopal See to protest. Video footage of the incident shows a woman named Toan explaining why she feels so strongly about the dispute.  The plan to return one building to the church and to build the new school on the site of the other building was announced in a governmental meeting on March 1. All references to returning the land to the church were avoided, in favor of the term “land extension.”  According to the pastoral council member, the Phan Thiet Episcopal See and the Thanh Hai Parish priest agreed with the plan, but the parishioners disagreed, because they want to get back all the land that their parents and grandparents lent to the government nearly 70 years ago. RFA attempted to contact Duong Nguyen Kha, the priest of Thanh Hai Parish for comment, but he did not respond. The Phan Thiet Episcopal See also did not respond to email queries. Translated by Chau Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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Uyghur activist moved to safe location after perceived threat in Paris

Editor07 mins

A Uyghur activist living in Paris has been moved to a secure location after a group of unidentified men appeared on her doorstep last week and called for her to let them in, according to the president of the European Uyghur Institute. On the morning of May 8, eight unidentified people emerged from a black van with tinted windows outside the Paris home of Gulbahar Jelilova, a Uyghur businesswoman from Kazakhstan who spent 18 months in a Xinjiang internment camp, said Dilnur Reyhan, president of the institute. At the time of the incident, Jelilova was away from her apartment, but neighbors told her the unidentified people repeatedly buzzed her unit — though the bell does not list her name, Reyhan said. They also called her cell phone several times. As the group gathered in front of the building, Reyhan posted a photo on X, saying Jelilova was “terrified” by their presence.  “Gulbahar herself saw the Chinese men when she reached the turn leading to her house and took a photo of them. She was scared and called me,” Reyhan told Radio Free Asia.  “Their decision to ring the doorbell may have been intended to intimidate her, to send a message, or perhaps they had a specific purpose,” she said, adding that the car resembled “vehicle used for kidnappings.” A May 8, 2024 post on X by Dilnur Reyhan, president of the European Uyghur Institute, shows men and women dressed in black standing near a van outside the residence of Gulbahar Jelilova. (@DilnurReyhan via X) Reyhan said she called the police, who arrived and were told by the group they had come to see a Japanese rock garden they heard was in the building.  She said “trusted sources” later reported all eight were Chinese nationals and that her group was helping prepare a court complaint against the group. RFA could not confirm their identity or nationality.  Reyhan said such acts of intimidation had grown more common, and that she herself had been regularly followed by a car in recent months.  Jelilova could not be reached, and the French police did not respond to requests for comment from Radio Free Asia.  ‘Tomorrow this could be me’ Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur detained in China’s “re-education” camps for two years but who now lives in France said the incident at Jelilova’s apartment had unnerved many.  “Because China is so ruthless, in the back of my mind I always think that one day they’ll bring about harm towards me,” she said. “For example, yesterday it was Gulbahar, tomorrow it could be me.” Related Stories Former Xinjiang Internment Camp Detainee Honored With ‘Hero of the Year’ Award Tibetan, Uyghur protesters greet Xi Jinping in Paris Pro-Beijing ‘thugs’ tormented Xi protesters, activists say The incident took place one day after Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up his two-day state visit to France, his first stop on a three-country European visit. His arrival was greeted by several protests from Tibetan, Uyghur and Chinese activists – including Jelilova. While such demonstrations have in the past been met, sometimes violently, with pro-Beijing counter-protests, there was little sign of that in Paris.  But at a May 5 protest at Madeleine Square, which is located close to the French president’s residence, Uyghur activists were met by a small group of French-speaking counter-protesters.  A video posted to Facebook shows about eight young men, all wearing masks and none of whom appear to be of Chinese descent, holding up letter-sized photos of World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa with a mark across his face.  As the crowd of protesters approach them, they shout “liar” and “they are bulls–ing us” in French, before running away as police pursue them for unknown reasons.   Isa told RFA that he suspected the protests were the “result of the Chinese government’s arrangements, funding, or organization.” The Chinese Embassy in Paris did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.  Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Abby Seiff and Malcolm Foster.

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Chinese police harass family members of US-based content creators

Editor07 mins

Chinese authorities are stepping up pressure on the family members of U.S.-based YouTubers and other creative professionals in a bid to censor the content they make on American soil, according to recent video statements and interviews. “I really never imagined the police would come after me because I migrated along with my entire family,” YouTuber Qiqi, who goes by one name, said in a video posted to her channel on April 25. “But now the police have gone and gotten in touch with relatives on my mother’s side of the family.” “They couldn’t get a hold of me, so they went after my mother instead, which is the same thing,” she said, adding that the order to find her relatives had come down from the provincial level of government. “I’m not going to say exactly who because the police are probably watching this.” Qiqi’s video comes amid growing concern over Beijing’s “long-arm” law enforcement targeting overseas activists and students, as well as YouTubers who post content that is critical of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping. “They kept calling my mother in the middle of the night, harassing her, calling again and again,” Qiqi said. She said the police — who want her to shut down her YouTube channel and delete all of her videos — needn’t bother calling any more. A cyclist prepares to be checked by police officers at a checkpoint near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, June 4, 2020. (Ng Han Guan/AP) “A big part of the reason I left China was that I wouldn’t be able to speak freely until I got out,” she said. “So why do you think I’ll listen when you try to pursue me overseas?” Repeated attempts to contact Qiqi online went unanswered by the time of writing. Common problem Veteran U.S.-based journalist and YouTuber Wang Jian said the Chinese authorities often pursue and harass Chinese migrants overseas, or put pressure on their relatives back home. “Actually, it’s not just YouTubers, but journalists, dissidents, human rights lawyers and anyone critical of the Chinese authorities have this problem,” Wang said. “But YouTubers are more likely to get to the critical point where someone [in the Chinese government] feels hurt by what they do.” He said the aim in contacting people’s relatives was to show them that they aren’t free from possible reprisals, even if they live overseas. A woman looks at a propaganda cartoon warning local residents about foreign spies, in an alley in Beijing on May 23, 2017. (Greg Baker/AFP) “[It means] you have a weakness, so be careful what you say,” Wang said. “You can’t express your thoughts freely — the Communist Party has been doing this since it was founded.” One of the videos police wanted Qiqi to take down was a Jan. 14 upload in which she discussed whether President Xi Jinping really would give the order to invade Taiwan. Complaints from people operating as part of Beijing’s United Front overseas influence campaign are believed to have been behind the removal of at least two satirical YouTube channels taking aim at Xi in recent years. ‘Drink tea’ Meanwhile, a group of rights activists who are currently making a small-budget satirical film taking aim at the Chinese government in Los Angeles said police back in China have hauled in a number of their family members back home to “drink tea,” a euphemism for questioning or a dressing-down. Wang Han, who is directing the movie “The Emperor Vs. the Three Evils,” said the police had managed to track down family members of all of the crew. “The police kept on calling the home of [one actor], telling [his parents] not to let him take part in this,” Wang said. “The police keep trying to contact me as well.” Wang said freedom of expression should be a universal human right that he and the rest of the crew aren’t willing to let go, however. “People in China should have the right to express themselves freely, but if we can’t do that in China, then at least we should get to do that in the United States,” he said. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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Women account for 1 in 5 deaths in Myanmar since coup

Editor09 mins

Myanmar’s junta has killed more than 900 women and arrested nearly 5,000 others in just over three years since the military seized power in a coup d’etat, a political prisoner watchdog group said Tuesday. Shortly after the Feb. 1, 2021, coup, tens of thousands of civilians took to the streets of Myanmar to protest – many of whom were women. The junta responded with violent and sometimes deadly force, before launching a scorched earth offensive against rebel groups around the country. On Tuesday, Thailand’s Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (Burma), or AAPP, said in a statement that it had documented the junta’s killing of at least 929 women between the coup and May 6, 2024, accounting for nearly one in five of the 4,973 people killed since the takeover. The AAPP said that the junta arrested at least 4,778 women over the same period, making up 18% of the total 26,631 people arrested since the coup. Of the women arrested, at least 781 have been sentenced to prison, Naw Khin San Htwe, the secretary general of the Burmese Women’s Union, told RFA Burmese. In March last year, Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government said that the junta had killed 483 women in the 25 months since the coup and detained 3,125 others. The AAPP said Tuesday that the number of those killed and arrested is “likely much higher,” noting that it only tallied the deaths and arrests it had been able to verify. One woman’s case In one of the latest examples of women arrested and sentenced since the coup, a junta court last month found Lwin Cho Myint, the former general secretary of the Student Union of the University of Technology in Sagaing region, guilty of violating the country’s anti-terrorism law and ordered that she spend 17 years in prison. A family member called her arrest and imprisonment “arbitrary” in an interview with RFA. “The junta is unjustly detaining and imprisoning anyone who dissents against them, fabricating charges to justify their actions,” said the family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “Such imprisonment under false pretenses amounts to oppression,” the family member said. “The more repression, the stronger the revolution. If the repression increases, there will be uprisings all over the country.” In a more high profile case, on Jan. 10, a court in Yangon region’s notorious Insein Prison sentenced documentary filmmaker Shin Daewe to life in prison after finding her guilty on two counts of terrorism. Heavy punishments for dissenters Zu Zu May Yoon, the founder of the AAPP, told RFA that the junta regularly imposes heavy punishments on anyone who opposes its rule. “Following the coup, there were instances of political prisoners being condemned to death without anything made public,” she said, noting that even minor infractions under martial law incur a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. “During my time there [in prison], people sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or lengthy terms were all confined within the same penitentiary,” she said. “They were isolated from contact with anyone else and endured severe living conditions.” A woman touches a bus carrying prisoners being released from Insein prison for the Buddhist New Year, in Yangon on April 17, 2024. (AFP) AAPP said it had documented several young women who were shot dead during peaceful protests in the aftermath of the coup or died under suspicious circumstances while in custody. Among those killed during peaceful protests were Kyal Sin and Mya Thwet Thwet Khaing, aged between 19 and 20, who were shot dead by junta police at demonstrations in Mandalay and Naypyidaw in February 2021. Nobel Aye, a former political prisoner who was arrested and held at a detention center in eastern Bago region, was shot and killed by junta soldiers on the pretext that she had escaped from the courthouse in Waw township on Feb. 8, 2024. Nobel Aye’s brother Chan Myae said that he wanted justice for the killing. “We want to regain our lost human rights and get justice for the torture and killings,” he said. “I strongly protest the widespread violation of women’s rights in Myanmar, encompassing not only my sister but all women, by the [junta] forces that have seized power.” Violent deaths on the rise for women The Burmese Women’s Union’s Naw Khin San Htwe, told RFA that since the coup, women in Myanmar have been killed in increasingly violent ways. “If you look at the circumstances of the deaths, most of them died due to airstrikes, landmines, and heavy weaponry,” she said. “In addition, some were raped and murdered. Moreover, women have succumbed during interrogations, while others have been fatally shot in wartime conflicts.” Released prisoners are welcomed by family members and colleagues after they were released from Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon. (Thein Zaw/AP) RFA has documented several cases of women taking up arms alongside men on the frontlines of the war against the junta, saying they could no longer tolerate the unlawful killings and arrests of their gender. One former nurse who joined the Civil Disobedience Movement of civil servants boycotting the junta now provides medical aid to injured rebels on the frontline. The former nurse, who also declined to be named citing fear of reprisal, told RFA that women are regularly subjected to sexual violence in detention, even if it does not escalate to rape. “They [the junta] transgress numerous human rights against women, perpetrating relentless violence,” she said. “Thus, I am compelled to persevere until the very end, aspiring to be the final torchbearer of resistance for my generation. My commitment remains steadfast to eradicate this scourge from our midst.” Translated by Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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Fake images of US college protests circulate in China

Editor06 mins

Pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. college campuses have gotten attention on Chinese social media, but some of these posts show unrelated demonstrations that happened months or even years earlier. One aerial video showing a massive gathering of thousands of people packed together – purported to be at Columbia University in New York – is actually a demonstration in January in Hamburg, Germany, against a far-right political group. Another photo claimed to show a protester holding up a famous Mao Zedong quote in Chinese, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” But Asia Fact Check Lab found this to be from a pro-gun rally held in Virginia in 2020.  As the Israeli-Hamas conflict drags into its seventh month, student demonstrations supporting the Palestininans and calling for a cease-fire have spread across dozens of U.S. university campuses. The aerial video of thousands gathered in public was shared on the popular Chinese social media platform Weibo on April 28, with the breathless caption: “U.S. university demonstration: Pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University is majestic!”  Chinese netizens claimed that a video posted on Weibo shows a pro-Palestinian demonstration in April, but in reality it wasn’t. (Screenshot/Weibo and TikTok) But a reverse image search found the video, shared on TikTok  Jan. 21, 2024, actually depicted 80,000 people in Hamburg, Germany, protesting against the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party “since their ‘secret meeting’ with the fascist Identitarian Movement was revealed. Keyword searches including “AfD” found the Hamburg demonstrations were one amongst a series of protests to break out against the party after a news report surfaced that the group had considered a plan to expel all people of “non-German backgrounds” from the country, including immigrants who have already obtained residency at a meeting with influential leaders. Video of demonstrations against the AfD released by German media and government agencies match the purported footage of pro-Palestianian demonstrations at Columbia University spread on Weibo. (Screenshots/YouTube) In another case, a number of Weibo influencers and X accounts also recently claimed that one protester at an unspecified college campus held up a poster with the Mao quote, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  But this is false. The photo is from a pro-gun rally held in Virginia in 2020, and has nothing to do with any pro-Palestine demonstration.  The photo of a purported April protest recently spread on Weibo has actually been circulated online since 2020. (Screenshot/Sina Military and Weibo) A reserve image search reveals that a version of the same image shown in a larger frame was published in an article published on the Chinese military news blog Sina Military in 2020 Keyword searches using visual clues from the photo, including a banner that reads Constitutional Conservatives, found that it shows a rally held by pro-gun advocates from all across the U.S. in Richmond in 2020.  A closer look at the image also shows a street sign reading “N. 9th St.” at the top of the frame. A search in Google Maps found that this was a street in Richmond and not part of the university campus.  A person uploaded a photo of the pro-gun rally to Google Maps in January 2020 in real time as it was happening. (Screenshot/Google Maps) Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke, Taejun Kang and Malcolm Foster. Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

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INTERVIEW: Former North Korean diplomat on the drawbacks of being elite

Editor017 mins

Ryu Hyun-woo was North Korea’s acting ambassador to Kuwait when he defected to South Korea in 2019. As one of the elites in North Korea, he had rights and privileges that ordinary citizens do not. But at the same time, he and others like him were under even more scrutiny than the average citizen, he says. Ryu lived in an apartment complex in Pyongyang where all of his neighbors were high-ranking North Korean officials. In an interview with RFA Korean, Ryu explained that life as an elite is like already having “one foot in hell” because of the constant surveillance their lives are under, and how easily they are discarded if the leader needs someone to take the blame. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. RFA: Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Ryu: I was born in Pyongyang. I graduated from the Pyongyang Foreign Language Institute and Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, majoring in Arabic. I then joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked there for over 20 years. After working as a diplomat in Syria and Kuwait, I came to South Korea in September 2019. I have settled in and I am living well in South Korea. RFA: When you were in North Korea, you lived in and exclusive area of Pyongyang, correct? Do all the elites live in the same area? Ryu: The administrative district name is Uiam-dong, Taedonggang district, Pyongyang. This place is also called Eundok village, and it is the residence of many officials. There are six major buildings in the residence. The generals of the North Korean People’s Army live in four of the buildings. One building is for high-ranking officials in the Central Committee. The remaining one is where high-ranking officials of the administrative department live. RFA: We often hear about North Korea’s chronic shortages of electricity. Did the elevators on these buildings cut out from time to time like they do for everyone else living in apartments? Ryu: You’re right. North Korea has a poor power supply system. Because of it, the elevator sometimes stops working. However, there are times when it operates normally. For example, during commuting hours, it is guaranteed. Nevertheless, the electricity often drops even during commuting hours.  My house was on the 4th floor. Oh Guk Ryol, the head of the operations department, lived on the 5th floor, and Director Kim Yang Gon lived on the 3rd floor. The former head of the United Front Work Department and Oh Guk Ryol came down from the floors above, and my father-in-law (Jon Il Chun, the former head Office 39, the secretive organization that manages the slush funds of the Kim family) and I would get on to the elevator. As we were going down, Kim Yang Gon got on.  Then just as the elevator was going down to the second floor, it suddenly stopped. I was the youngest of everyone there, so I had no choice but to open the escape hatch on the ceiling of the elevator. It’s like a vent. I climbed up to the third floor and I saw something that looked like a latch that opens the elevator door. I opened the door with it, contacted the management, and rescued the other officials in the elevator. The electricity situation was so bad. RFA: Can living in that area of Pyongyang be seen as a matter of pride for its residents? Ryu: It can be interpreted as having a lot of trust and high loyalty. However, there are pros and cons. Once you enter this place, you are subject to wiretapping, stalking and strong surveillance. You can’t say anything inside your house.  For example, wasn’t Chief of Staff Ri Yong Ho shot to death? It was because he was at home making slanderous remarks about Kim Jong Un with his wife. He was purged and disappeared. My mother-in-law kept pointing to her mouth whenever I tried to complain about something. She told me to be quiet and not to say anything because they listen to everything.  To that extent, they wiretap 24 hours a day. That’s why there is a different way to share thoughts. My in-laws would wake up around 5:30 in the morning. I would wake up around 6 o’clock. Then we go for a jog or walk together. That’s the time my father-in-law would ask me questions and I would also talk to him.  For example, while I was in Syria, I heard a South Korean refer to my father-in-law as ‘Kim Jong Il’s safekeeper,’ so I passed that on to my father-in-law. RFA: You told your father-in-law about something that came out in the South Korean media? Ryu: I told my father-in-law that in South Korea, he is referred to as ‘Kim Jong Il’s safekeeper.’ My father-in-law laughed. I told him those things, secret things that should not be caught by wiretapping. We exchanged stories like that while taking a walk or in a place where wiretapping does not work. Ryu Hyun-woo (right), who served as North Korea’s acting ambassador to Kuwait in 2019, escaped from North Korea and has now settled in South Korea, in a frame grab from an interview with RFA Korea. (RFA) RFA: Was there ever any frightful incident you witnessed while living there? Ryu: The household we were closest to was Park Nam Ki, director of the Planning and Finance Department of the ruling party of North Korea. Do you remember the currency reform in 2009?  (That was when North Korea introduced new versions of its paper currency, but allowed the people to exchange only a certain amount of their old currency, thereby wiping out most people’s savings.) As a result of that incident, Park Nam Ki was shot to death in January 2010. In February of the same year, Park Nam Ki’s entire family members went to a political prison camp. I remembered it was around 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. There was a truck from…

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The Techo Funan Canal won’t end Cambodia’s dependency on Vietnam

Editor013 mins

First it was the Ream Naval Base. Now it’s the Techo Funan Canal.  Could the planned $1.7-billion waterway that will cut through eastern Cambodia – which will be built, funded and owned by a Chinese state firm – be used by Beijing to attack or threaten Vietnam?  Phnom Penh denies this and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet reportedly had to assuage the Vietnamese leadership of this concern during a visit last December.  Sun Chanthol, a Cambodian deputy prime minister and the former minister of public works, recently said he also tried to mollify Hanoi’s concerns about the project, formally known as the Tonle Bassac Navigation Road and Logistics System Project. The United States has been more vocal than Vietnam in raising concerns over the Ream Naval Base in southern Cambodia, which China is extensively refurbishing and where China appears to have stationed some vessels for the past few months.  Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet wave in Hanoi, Dec.11, 2023 during Manet’s visit to boost bilateral relations between the two Southeast Asian nations. (Hau Dinh/AP) But Hanoi’s worries about the Techo Funan Canal have leaked out in drabs from within Vietnam.  Last month, an academic journal article by two researchers at the Oriental Research Development Institute, part of the state-run Union of Science and Technology Associations, warned that the Cambodian canal might be a “dual-use” project.  “The locks on the Funan Techo Canal can create the necessary water depths for military vessels to enter from the Gulf of Thailand, or from Ream Naval Base, and travel deep into Cambodia and approach the [Cambodia-Vietnam] border,” they argued in a study that was republished on the website of the People’s Public Security Political Academy.  Geopolitical implications One ought to be skeptical. China having access to the Ream Naval Base is one thing— it is a military base. It makes sense for Beijing to want to station and refuel its vessels on the Gulf of Thailand, effectively encircling Vietnam.  But if China was thinking of attacking Vietnam, wouldn’t it be simpler for the Chinese navy to follow Cambodia’s coastline to Vietnam? Beijing presumably wouldn’t want its vessels to be stuck in a relatively narrow Cambodian canal.  But if you can imagine Cambodia allowing the Chinese military access to its inland waterways to invade Vietnam, why not imagine Phnom Penh allowing the Chinese military to zip along its (Chinese-built) expressways and railways to invade Vietnam?  If you are of that mindset, then Cambodia’s road or rail networks are just as much of a threat, or perhaps more so, as Cambodia’s naval bases or canals. Two Chinese warships, circled, are seen at Cambodia’s Ream naval base on April 18, 2024. (Planet Labs) Nonetheless, the canal has geopolitical implications for Vietnam.  Cambodia exports and imports many of its goods through Vietnamese ports, mainly Cai Mep. The Funan Techo Canal, by connecting the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port to a planned deepwater port in Kep province and an already-built deep seaport in Sihanoukville province, would mean that much of Cambodia’s trade no longer needs to go through Vietnam.  Phnom Penh can justifiably say this is a matter of economic self-sufficiency. “Breathing through our own nose,” as Hun Manet put it. Phnom Penh reckons the canal will cut shipping costs by a third.  Cambodia has a dependency on Vietnam’s ports. If Cambodia-Vietnam relations turned really sour, such as Phnom Penh giving the Chinese military access to its land, Hanoi could close off Cambodia’s access to its ports or threaten to do so, effectively blocking much of Cambodian trade – like it did briefly in 1994.  Remove that dependency, and Vietnam has less leverage over Phnom Penh’s decision making.  Mekong River projects Even the environmental concerns around the canal are about geopolitical leverage.  Vietnam is justified in fearing that Cambodia altering the course of the Mekong River—after Laos has been doing so for two decades—will affect its own already at-risk ecology.  Fears are compounded by the lack of publicly available environmental impact assessments over the canal and the fact that the Mekong River Commission, a regional oversight body that is supposed to assess the environmental impact of these riparian projects, has become a feckless body for dialogue.   Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and China’s President Xi Jinping, following a meeting at the Government Office in Hanoi, Dec. 13, 2023. (Nhac Nguyen/Pool Photo via AP) Hanoi is no doubt concerned about its own position since it hasn’t been able to get Phnom Penh to openly publish those impact assessments. This further compounds Vietnam’s sense of weakness for having failed for more than a decade to limit how its neighbors go about altering their sections of the Mekong River, with highly deleterious impacts on Vietnam’s environment and agricultural heartlands.  Clearly, Phnom Penh isn’t for turning on the canal project. Just this week, Hun Manet applauded apparent public support for the scheme as a “huge force of nationalism”. Phnom Penh is making this a sovereignty issue, thus making criticism a matter of state interference, a way of silencing dissent in Southeast Asia.  It’s not all bad news for Vietnam, though. The Financial Times noted that, according to Vietnamese analysts, even if the Techo Funan Canal goes ahead, “Hanoi retains leverage over Cambodia” because ships carrying more than 1,000 tonnes would still rely on Vietnamese ports.  Cambodia could get around this by using smaller vessels. That would be less profitable but still doable. By my calculation, Cambodia’s exports to Vietnam have grown by more than 800% over the last six years, from $324 million in 2018 to $2.97 billion last year.  In the first quarter of this year, Vietnam bought 22 percent of Cambodia’s goods. Exports certainly give leverage. No other single country is queuing up to start buying a fifth of Cambodia’s products.  Trade dependency In fact many of these Cambodian exports are re-exported by Vietnam to China, so Phnom Penh might think it can cut out the Vietnamese middleman. But it cannot.  Arguably, Cambodia’s…

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Forced to work as maids in Saudi Arabia, Cambodians beg to be repatriated

Editor09 mins

Dozens of Cambodian women trafficked to work as maids in Saudi Arabia are demanding that their embassy arrange for them to return home, saying that since authorities rescued them nearly two weeks ago, they have lacked access to adequate food and their health is rapidly deteriorating. On April 18, Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor confirmed that 78 Cambodian migrant workers had been tricked into working in Saudi Arabia, but have now been rescued and placed in hotel rooms under the care of the Cambodian Embassy.  The ministry said 51 of the women are in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, 15 in the capital Riyadh, and 12 in Dammam, on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The Ministries of Labor and Foreign Affairs, along with the Cambodian Embassy, claimed to be purchasing flights for the victims to return to Cambodia, promising to return 29 on April 19, 27 on April 20, and the final 22 on April 21. However, on April 27, RFA Khmer received videos from several of the victims in which they claimed to remain stranded in Saudi Arabia. In the videos, the women call for help from former Prime Minister Hun Sen, his wife Bun Rany, and their son Prime Minister Hun Manet.  They said the companies that brought them to Saudi Arabia had “violated their contracts,” leaving them mired in legal issues surrounding their salaries and basic rights. They claim several of them were subjected to physical abuse by the households where they worked, including being denied food and sleep. They singled out Saudi firm BAB, which places workers from Cambodia-based company Fatina Manpower, for allegedly threatening them and accusing them of working illegally in the country. Some of the victims said they were unable to leave the country because BAB had refused to terminate their contracts. The women told RFA that since their rescue, some of them had been “confined” to their hotel rooms “without proper access to food,” and said they were appealing for help because they could “no longer wait for the government” to send them home. According to Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor, nearly 1.4 million people were provided with employment opportunities to work abroad in 2023, more than 93% of which are in Thailand, while the remainder are in South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. Stranded in Saudi Arabia RFA contacted one of the women, Thaing Sokyee, who said she had been forced to work as a maid in multiple homes each day without being provided enough food to eat before she was rescued, and is now suffering from health issues. “I’ve called on the [labor] ministry and the embassy to find prompt solutions for us so that we may return to Cambodia,” she said. “We’ve faced mounting difficulties; our bodies have deteriorated as we were forced to work without food.” Doeun Pheap, another victim who said she is sick as a result of her working conditions, told RFA that she has been confined to her room since her rescue and has not been permitted by embassy staff to go outside to purchase medicine. She said the staff told her to wait for the government to send her home and that she was advised to record a video clip “saying that my health condition is getting better and that I have been provided with enough food to eat.” “I still hurt all over my body – I’m able to stand up, but my waist and my back still hurt,” she said, adding that embassy staff had provided her with “rice, but not food.” “I didn’t do it [record the video] because I was too hungry and exhausted; I couldn’t bear doing anything.” Other victims claimed that Uk Sarun, Cambodia’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, had “threatened to abandon us if we continue to publicly call for help.” Trafficking designation On Monday, Ambassador Uk Sarun confirmed to RFA Khmer that only 16 of the 78 women had been returned home so far. He said that some of the women had faced a shortage of food due to the ongoing holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast during the day and only eat at night. He did not address claims by victims that he had threatened to withhold assistance if they continued to speak out about their situation. The Khmer Times reported last week that 29 of the 78 had been safely repatriated as of April 19, while the rest were awaiting documentation to leave, but provided no attribution for the numbers. The report said that the embassy was providing the victims with food and accommodation and cited Cambodian Ministry of Labor spokesman Katta Orn as saying that the ministry was conducting an investigation into the employment scam. RFA spoke with Bun Chenda, a Cambodia-based anti-human trafficking officer for labor rights group CENTRAL, who said the women had been “exploited” when they were sent to Saudi Arabia without proper compliance with labor contracts. “We are not sure if the government is treating their cases as human trafficking,” he said. “If they are being rescued as human trafficking victims, intervention would likely be easier and they wouldn’t be subject to legal action by a Saudi Arabian company.” Translated by Yun, Samean. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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