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Category: Russia
Putin confirms he won’t travel to Bali for G20 summit
Russian President Vladimir Putin officially confirmed he won’t be coming to Bali to attend the G20 summit next week, a senior official of host country Indonesia said Thursday, adding the decision was for “the best for all of us.” Minister Luhut Pandjaitan was echoing analysts’ comments that Putin’s presence could cause tensions with Western leaders who oppose Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will go to Bali in Putin’s place, said Luhut, the coordinating minister of maritime and investment affairs “We have been officially notified that the Russian president will not come,” Luhut told reporters, according to BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. “We have to respect it. Whatever happened to Russia’s decision, it is for our common good and the best for all of us.” Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” said this week that 17 leaders had confirmed their participation at the summit, including the American and Chinese presidents. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely participate in the Bali summit via a video link, a local television channel quoted the presidential spokesman as saying on Tuesday. Ukraine is not a G20 member and its president will be participating as an observer. Last week, Zelenskyy said he would not attend the Bali summit if Putin were present. In March, U.S. President Joe Biden urged Jokowi to invite Ukraine as a guest if Russia was not expelled from the Group of Twenty for invading its smaller neighbor in late February. As this year’s holder of the rotating G20 presidency, Jokowi has sought unity within the grouping of industrialized and emerging economies ahead of the summit. Western countries have condemned Russia for invading Ukraine while other G20 members including China, Indonesia and India have refused to follow suit and maintain ties with Moscow. Russian setback in Ukraine Putin’s decision not to attend the summit in person came a day after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson, the city on the Dnipro River that is the front line of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces. A potential stalemate in fighting over the winter could give both countries an opportunity to negotiate peace, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday, the Associated Press news agency reported. Indonesian Minister Luhut did not give a reason for Putin’s absence from the summit, merely saying “maybe it’s because President Putin is busy at home, and we also have to respect that,” AP reported. Political analysts, however, attribute other motives for the Russian president’s decision to stay home. “Putin’s absence from the G20 meeting in Bali is a net positive – every party stands to benefit,” Greg Barton, a professor at Deakin University in Australia, told BenarNews. “Putin is fearful of a Kremlin coup – leaving Moscow at the moment is just too risky,” he said, adding that many members of the Russian elite wanted to see him go. Radityo Dharmaputra, a political analyst at Airlangga University, echoed Barton’s observation. “There are many considerations. There may be elements seeking to overthrow him because he hasn’t won the war,” he told BenarNews. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.
German leader broaches human rights in China, but activists wish he went further
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz briefly addressed human rights while in Beijing on Friday for a meeting with Chinese leaders, but Uyghur and other rights groups said he didn’t go far enough. Meeting with Communist Party leader after Xi Jinping, who last month began his third five-year term in office, Scholz urged China to stand up for the international order and put pressure on Russia to end its war against Ukraine, according to a report by Politico Europe. At a joint press conference Friday with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Scholz told reporters that he was concerned about China closing off sectors of its international economy to foreign competition and not respecting intellectual property, the report said. Scholz also called on China to respect human rights, saying Beijing could not escape the international ramifications of its treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang by calling it an internal matter. “Human rights are interference in international affairs,” he said, according to Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung. Later Friday, the Group of Seven foreign ministers, which includes Germany and the United States, issued a statement in Münster, Germany, that touched on China’s human rights record. “We will continue to raise our concerns with China on its reported human rights violations and abuses, including in Xinjiang and Tibet,” the statement said. “We reiterate our concerns over the continued erosion of Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and autonomy, and call on China to act in accordance with its international commitments and legal obligations.” Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, expressed dismay that Scholz touched only briefly on the topic of human rights, and that his accompanying delegation included only business representatives and no human rights experts. “It is extremely disappointing to state that the genocide of the Uyghurs is due to a different understanding of human rights,” Isa said in the statement. “Germany must now act together with its international partners to hold the Chinese government accountable.” The World Uyghur Congress as well as Tibet Initiative Germany, Freiheit für Hongkong e.V. and the Society for Threatened Peoples criticized Scholz’s entire trip to China, saying that reporters at the news conference were not given an opportunity to ask questions. Earlier this week, 70 human rights organizations issued an open letter urging Scholz to reconsider his trip to China amid growing human rights concerns. They noted that an accompanying delegation of several top German executives implied that Berlin was increasing its economic dependence on an authoritarian government at the expense of democratic principles, including upholding human rights. “The invitation of a German trade delegation to join your visit will be viewed as an indication that Germany is ready to deepen trade and economic links, at the cost of human rights and international law,” they wrote in the memo, published by Germany-based World Uyghur Congress. In calling for Scholz to reconsider his visit, the groups said: “This would send the clearest signal that Germany, as one of the leading members of the European Union, will not offer its tacit endorsement to the ongoing oppression of Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, and other groups within and outside the PRC’s borders,” using the initials for the People’s Republic of China, the country’s formal name. The United States and several Western parliaments have said China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs, including mass arbitrary detentions, torture and forced labor, amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. A damning report issued by the U.N.’s human rights chief in late August documented widespread rights abuses in Xinjiang and said the repression “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” Later on Monday, when a reporter at a regular news conference asked Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian if the two leaders discussed issues related to human rights and the rights of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, he said China had issued a readout about the meeting. But the document made no mention of the Uyghurs, Xinjiang or human rights.
Netherlands tells China to shut down overseas offices accused of targeting activists
The Dutch government says it has ordered China to shut down its overseas “service centers” that have reportedly been used to target and harass dissidents overseas. “Because no permission has been requested from the Netherlands for this, the ministry has informed the ambassador that the stations must close immediately,” Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said via his Twitter account. “In addition, the Netherlands is also conducting research into the stations in order to find out their precise activities.” Hoekstra’s tweet came after reports by RTL Nieuws and website “Follow The Money” alleged that two Chinese “service centers” had carried out official functions, including remotely renewing Chinese citizens drivers’ licenses without official diplomatic status. Spanish-based rights group Safeguard Defenders reported in September that Chinese police are operating from “service centers” across Europe, targeting exiled dissidents for harassment and putting pressure on them to go back to China. Chinese police are currently running at least 54 “overseas police service centers” in foreign countries, some of which work with law enforcement back home to run operations on foreign soil, the Sept. 13 report found. A growing number of governments including Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain, have said they are investigating the reports, while the Netherlands, Portugal and Ireland have ordered Chinese “service centers” in their respective territory to close. Overseas 110 Safeguard Defenders researcher Chen Yen-ting said the service centers are linked to an overseas police website called Overseas 110, which enables people to report crimes to Chinese law enforcement while located overseas. “Overseas 110 is an online platform set up by the Fuzhou police department that allows people to report crimes from overseas,” Chen said. “They have set up many such service stations overseas, basically combining online and physical sites. These are all in the public domain, and have contact numbers and addresses in the cities listed by [police in] Fuzhou.” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian denied that the centers had any law enforcement functions. “The organizations you mentioned are not police stations or police service centers,” Zhao told a regular briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. “Their activities are to assist local Chinese citizens who need to apply for expired driver’s license renewal online, and activities related to physical examination services by providing the venue.” A number of reports on official news websites in China have also reported on the service centers, with a June 6, 2022, report listing service centers run by police in the southeastern city of Fuzhou as having “police work” within their remit. Chinese national Wang Jingyu, who is seeking asylum in the Netherlands after a harrowing escape from Chinese agents last year that spanned the Middle East and eastern Europe, said he was targeted by calls he believes came from the “service center” in Rotterdam earlier this year. “I hope the Dutch government will sanction, arrest or expel these so-called overseas Chinese police,” Wang told RFA on Wednesday. “The Dutch foreign ministry has also previously said that Dutch police are making plans to protect us.” Wang told RFA last week that he received a call from someone in the Rotterdam service center claiming to be a wealthy overseas Chinese businessman looking to support dissidents. “The Chinese police and overseas Chinese service station in Rotterdam tried to meet with me in February, pretending to be this rich man saying he supports dissidents,” Wang told RFA shortly after the RTL report was published. “He wanted me to meet with him somewhere in Rotterdam, so I ignored him,” he said. “He was so angry that he started repeatedly calling me to harass and abuse me. This harassment continued until March. Tracking “suspects” Chen Yan-ting said Wang’s experience is by no means unique. “These overseas service stations are used to track people designated ‘suspects’ by the Chinese Communist Party, to put pressure on them and to force them to return to China,” Chen said. “We also suspect they may have an intelligence-gathering function, as a way to show Chinese people overseas how powerful their government is, and that they will be forced to return to China to face judicial proceedings and punishment, no matter where in the world they escape to,” Chen said. Netherlands-based China commentator Lin Shengliang said Beijing has been extending unofficial law enforcement activities around the world for some time now. “Regardless of where in the world they seek refuge, Chinese dissidents and rights activists may not be safe,” Lin told RFA. “The Chinese government will do whatever it takes to extend its suppression to every country in the world.” “This is a multi-pronged operation that can be packaged as contact with overseas Chinese associations linked to a person’s hometown, overseas student associations and even some churches, so it’s hard to escape,” Lin said. The Chinese Communist Party’s law enforcement agencies routinely track, harass, threaten and repatriate people who flee the country, many of them Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, under its SkyNet surveillance program that reaches far beyond China’s borders, according to a report from Safeguard Defenders in May 2022. Between the launch of the SkyNet program in 2014 and June 2021, China repatriated nearly 10,000 people from 120 countries and regions, according to Safeguard Defenders. Just 1% of them were brought back to China using judicial procedures; more than 60% were just put on a plane against their will, the group reported in May 2022. Experts said last month that authoritarian regimes including China and Russia are also increasingly making use of regional cooperation organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to bolster each others’ regime security in the name of counter-terrorism. Chinese embassies and consulates have also been implicated in Beijing’s attempts to wield law enforcement power far beyond its borders. Pulling hair China’s Consul General in the northern British city of Manchester admitted on Oct. 20 to assaulting a Hong Kong pro-democracy protester inside the grounds of the diplomatic mission as a peaceful protest gave way to attacks at the weekend. Consul General Zheng Xiyuan told Sky News that he was the gray-haired man in…
Southeast Asia remains world rice bowl as pockets of region suffer crop disasters
Rice crops in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have taken a hit from flooding and conflict this year, casting a shadow on a mostly sunny outlook for Southeast Asia’s output of the key grain as the region deals with other potential longer term supply troubles, farm officials and researchers say. Poverty and hunger are stalking some rural communities in peninsular Southeast Asia, also called Indochina, as a result of lost crops, hitting populations still struggling to recover from lost income and other fallout from widespread economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, the poorest Southeast Asian nations, are not major players in rice production in a sector dominated by Thailand and Vietnam, which lead the world in exports of the grain. Southeast Asia accounts for 26 percent of global rice production and 40 percent of exports, supplying populous neighbors Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as Africa and the Middle East, according the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. But their harvest shortfalls have to be made up from other suppliers, and any serious deterioration in rice output could have ripple effects on import-dependent countries in Asia. The challenge is more acute at a time of deepening worries over food security and rising food prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has removed those countries’ key grain exports from global supplies. A man transports bags of rice in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Oct. 17, 2019. Credit: AFP Cambodia’s National Committee for Disaster Management reported early this month that floods inundated some 770 villages in 22 provinces, including Banteay Meanchey, Battambang, Pursat, Siem Reap, Kampong Thom and Preah Vihear. More than 150,000 hectares of rice paddies were flooded more than 100,000 families were affected by the floods, a committee official told local media. Banteay Meanchey farmer Voeun Pheap told RFA that floods destroyed more than four hectares of his farm and brought immediate hardship to his family as it wiped out his crop and the hope of paying off what he borrowed to plant. “I couldn’t make much money, I lost my investments, and I am in debt,” he said. In Laos, an agriculture and forestry official in Hua Phanh province told RFA that flooding in two districts had wiped out rice crops and left 200 families with no harvest to eat or sell. “Sand is covering the rice fields all over due to heavy rain, which destroyed both rice paddies and dry rice fields,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “Families that have been affected will go hungry this year. The damage is so enormous that villagers will have to seek food from the forest or sell other crops that were not affected,” the official added. People reach out to buy subsidized rice from government officials in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 27, 2008. Credit: AFP Fear, fighting leave fallow fields More than 18 months after a military coup toppled a popular civilian government and plunged Myanmar into political and military conflict, the country of 54 million faces security threats to its rice supply on top of the environmental and economic problems faced by its neighbors. “I am too afraid to leave my home,” said Myo Thant, a local farmer in the town of Shwebo in the Sagaing region, a farming region in central Myanmar that has been a main theater of fighting between ruling army junta forces and local militias opposed to army rule. “I can’t fertilize the fields and I can’t do irrigation work,” he told RFA “The harvest will be down. We will barely have enough food for ourselves,” added Myo Thant. Farmers groups told RFA that in irrigated paddy farms across Myanmar, planting reduced due to the security challenges as well as to rising prices for fuel, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Growers are limiting their planting to rain-fed rice fields. “Only 60 percent of (paddy) farms will grow this year, which means that the production will be reduced by about 40 percent,” Zaw Yan of the Myanmar Farmers Representative Network told RFA. Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the Myanmar junta chief, told a meeting August that of 33.2 million acres of farmland available for rice cultivation, only 15 million acres of rainy reason rice and 3 million acres of irrigated summer paddy rice are being grown. Brighter regional outlook This year’s flooding has caused crop losses and concern in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, but so far it doesn’t appear to have dented the regional outlook for the grain, thanks to expected big crops and surpluses in powerhouse exporters Thailand and Vietnam. World stocks have been buoyed by India’s emergence as the top rice exporter of the grain. In this June 5, 2015 photo, workers load sacks of imported Vietnam rice onto trucks from a ship docked at a port area in Manila, Philippines.Credit: Reuters Although Myanmar is embroiled in conflict and largely cut off from world commerce, Cambodia exported 2.06 million tons of milled and paddy rice worth nearly $616 million in the first half of 2022, a 10 percent increase over the same period in 2021, the country’s farm ministry said in July. Laos was the world’s 25th largest rice exporter in 2020. A report released this month by U.S. Department of Agriculture saw continued large exports from Thailand and Vietnam likely into 2023, offsetting drops in shipments of the grain from other suppliers. While the USDA has projected that Southeast Asia’s rice surplus will continue, a research team at Nature Food that studied rice output in Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam suggested the region might lose its global Rice Bowl status. The threats include stagnating crop yields, limited new land for agriculture, and climate change. “Over the past decades, through renewed efforts, countries in Southeast Asia were able to increase rice yields, and the region as a whole has continued to produce a large amount of rice that exceeded regional demand, allowing a rice surplus to be exported to other countries,” the study said. “At…
Outside of China, concern exceeds optimism as Xi Jinping begins third term as ruler
The Chinese Communist Party wrapped up its 20th National Congress at the weekend, granting an unprecedented third five-year term to CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping. Xi, 69, is set to have his term as state president renewed by the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress in March. RFA asked experts on key aspects of China for their impressions of the congress and expectations of Chinese policies as Xi enters his third term after already a decade at the helm of the world’s most populous nation. China-U.S. relations and foreign policy Oriana Skylar Mastro, Center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and author of The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime: The bottom line is, the next five years is undoubtedly going to be more rocky for U.S.-China relations and for other countries with security concerns in the region. The issue is not that Xi Jinping really has nailed down the third term. It wasn’t the case that his position was so precarious that he couldn’t be aggressive before. However, it was unlikely that he was going to take moves to start some sort of conflagration that would extend into the party Congress. So the party Congress did serve as a restraint in so far as it was useful to wait until afterwards to take any more aggressive actions against Taiwan, for example. But the reason it didn’t happen previously is largely based on China’s military capabilities. Xi Jinping has been relatively clear since he took power in 2013, where his goals were in terms of promoting territorial integrity, is trying to define that and resolving a lot of these territorial issues, enhancing their position in Asia to regain their standing as a great power. The rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and a dominant position in Asia of which it had previously been decided not only by Xi, but by strategists, analysts and pundits ever since. [Former President Barack] Obama mentioned in his State of the Union that he wouldn’t accept the United States as number two. It had already been decided that there was going to be conflict with the United States if China wanted to be number one in Asia. And so Xi Jinping has been on a trajectory, China has been on a trajectory that’s been relatively consistent, that includes an improvement in military capabilities and thus a heavier reliance on those capabilities to achieve their goals over time. So with the frequency and intensity of competition and conflict, the general trend is that it increases over time. Denny Roy, Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii and author of Return of the Dragon: Rising China and Regional Security: At least two messages from the CCP’s 20th Party Congress bode ill for China-U.S. relations. The first is that a shift in the international balance of power creates an opportunity for China to push for increased global influence and standing. This is a continuation of a reassessment reached late in the Hu Jintao era, and which Xi Jinping has both embraced and acted upon. There is no hint of regret about Chinese policies that caused alarm and increased security cooperation among several countries both inside and outside the region, no recognition that Chinese hubris has damaged China’s international reputation within the economically developed world, and no sense that damage control is necessary due to adverse international reaction to what has happened in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Instead, Beijing seems primed to continue to oppose important aspects of international law, to resist the U.S.-sponsored liberal order, and to extoll PRC-style fascism as superior to democracy. This orientation portends continued if not increasing friction with the United States on multiple fronts, both strategic and ideological. Secondly, while the Congress expressed optimism about China’s present course, it evinced increased pessimism about China’s external environment, especially what Chinese leaders call growing hostility from the United States. Not long ago, PRC leaders perceived a “period of strategic opportunity” within which China could grow with minimal foreign opposition. Increasingly, however, PRC elites seem to believe that alleged U.S. “containment” of China will intensify now that the power gap between the two countries has narrowed and China has become a serious threat to U.S. “hegemony.” PRC efforts to undercut U.S. strategic influence, especially in China’s near abroad, will continue. Beijing will try to draw South Korea out of the U.S. orbit, and may wish to do the same with Japan and Australia, although in those cases it may be too late. Beijing will continue to try to establish a Chinese sphere of influence in the East and South China Seas, while laying the groundwork for possible new spheres of influence in the Pacific Islands, Africa and Central Asia. Human rights William Nee, Research and Advocacy Coordinator at China Human Rights Defenders: To some extent, the 20th Party Congress will not see any dramatic break from what is happening thus far–and that’s exactly the problem. China is experiencing a human rights crisis: human rights defenders are systematically surveilled, persecuted, and tortured in prison. There are crimes against humanity underway in the Uyghur region, with millions of people being subjected to arbitrary detention, forced labor, or intrusive surveillance. The cultural rights of Tibetans are not respected. And now, Xi Jinping’s ‘Zero-COVID’ policy is wreaking havoc on China’s economy, and particularly the wellbeing of disadvantaged groups, like migrant workers and the elderly. But there have been no signs whatsoever that the Communist Party is ready to course correct. Instead, after the 20th Party Congress, we will see a new batch of promotions, with these Communist Party cadres more indebted to Xi Jinping’s patronage for their positions of power. In other words, Xi Jinping will have created an incentive structure in which these sycophantic ‘yes men’ will only repeat the ‘thoughts’ of the idiosyncratic leader to prove their loyalty. This makes it even more unlikely that Xi or the Communist Party will even see the necessity…
Fighting in Myanmar’s Sagaing region kills 16 anti-junta fighters
Fighting over the weekend in northwestern Myanmar’s restive Sagaing region between the military junta’s soldiers and People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias left 16 rebels dead, with some corpses showing signs of severe torture, local sources told RFA. “They had tortured them inhumanely. They cut the skins everywhere severely to keep them from being distinguished from each other,” Tauk Te, a member of the PDF Myanmar Defense Force, said of the seven bodies they found. “Some had their insides spilling out through open holes in their stomachs and some had their brains coming out of their heads.” Sagaing, an agricultural region where resistance against the junta is strong, has seen some of the most intense fighting in Myanmar since the military took control in the February 2021 coup. More than half a million people in Sagaing have been displaced by the fighting, according to a U.N. report released last month. The fighting took place in two separate battles, in Wetlet township, just north of Mandalay, and in Taze township, farther north. In Taze, two rebel units attacked junta soldiers with artillery near Tat Thit village around noon on Friday, local sources told RFA, reportedly killing six junta soldiers. The next day, fighting continued, forcing about 4,000 civilians to flee their homes in eight villages, including Ka La Zin, Dei Yauk and Chaung Yoer, the PDF press department in Taze said. Farther south, in Wetlet township, junta soldiers attacked a small rebel camp near Pha Yar Lay Kone and Nay Pu Kone villages, local PDF sources said. The attack included an hour-long air raid by 2 fighter jets and a Mi-35 military helicopter that were followed by two Mi-17 supply choppers that dropped off around 100 junta soldiers, they said. Both the Mi-35 and Mi-17 helicopters are made by Russia, which has resisted international pressure not to arm Myanmar’s junta amid its crackdown on civilians that began after the military took control in a February 2021 coup. Six rebel fighters were killed in the airstrikes, a PDF source said, and three were captured and tortured to death. “They cut their skin and faces, and hit their heads with gun butts until they were killed, the source said. The rebel unit lost hand-made guns, 40MM grenades and over 450 million kyat worth of military hardware. The soldiers also reportedly burned down their camp buildings in the area. Undated photo of Taze People’s Defense Force. Credit: Taze PDF Locals told RFA that four people in their 20’s and five people in their 30’s were among the deceased, and their names have not been released yet. So far, RFA has received no response from junta spokesperson and minister for social affairs Aye Hlaing about the hostilities in Sagaing. Area residents also said that junta troops stationed at a monastery on Du Thin hill near Nay Pu Kone village captured 15 local civilians in the process. One civilian fleeing Nay Pu Kone said there have been more frequent air attacks by the junta in their region lately. “We had to be really cautious at the sound of airplanes. No fighter jets flew over us before. Now that they are here on us, you can imagine the danger we are in. We had nowhere to run when they came.” Local residents said that more than 1,000 villagers from Nay Pu Kone and are too afraid to go back to their homes with junta soldiers still stationed there. Myint Oo, the ousted parliamentary representative of Wetlet, said that the junta has used more air strikes because they have been faced with landmines in ground assaults. “They dare not come by trucks. Lately, they have to leave their trucks somewhere safe and walk as our PDF forces have set up landmines in several locations. But even then, they still face landmine attacks. So they now rely mainly on air strikes,” Myint Oo said. “Their acts of human rights abuse go beyond any words. They don’t care about any local or international law. They just do whatever they want,” Myint Oo said. “They have given full authority to even juniors who, as a result, kill indiscriminately without moral conscience for civilians, including children.” Reported by RFA Burmese. Written in English by Nawar Nemeh.
Vietnam promotes ‘problematic’ bid for UN Human Rights Council membership
Vietnam is mounting an assertive campaign to win a seat on the United National Human Rights Council in an Oct. 11 vote, but critics say Hanoi’s poor record at home and diplomatic support for major rights violators abroad disqualify the one-party state. Fourteen seats on the 47-member Council will be filled by the U.N. General Assembly full-member vote. The highest human rights body has long faced criticism that countries seen as major rights abusers are members who team up to shield each other from scrutiny. Critics say Hanoi’s record of cracking down on journalists, activists and social media commentators makes it a poor choice for the Council. And they say Vietnam would join the bloc of countries that block Council action on major crises, as it did in its previous 2014-16 term. “There is little doubt that Vietnam will be a problematic, highly negative influence on the Human Rights Council if it is elected to the 2023-2025 term,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “In fact, at every opportunity, Vietnam does not hesitate to show its contempt for international human rights law, and if they get a seat, it’s highly likely they will seek to undermine meaningful actions by the Council,” he told RFA. Tuesday’s vote in New York comes days after China and its allies on the 47-member Council defeated a U.S. proposal that the Council hold a debate on a recent report by the body’s rights chief on abuses in China’s Xinjiang region. Vietnam has conducted an intense propaganda and lobbying drive to support its effort to be elected to the Council. On Sept. 30, Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Binh Minh approved a huge public relations campaign intended to boost the country’s reputation in the human rights field. Under the project, all Vietnamese state agencies will regularly provide human rights information to the media by 2028, while state officials working in the field will receive communications training. Over the past month, state media have touted what they say are Vietnam’s human rights achievements and criticized the international community’s accusations of rights violations in the Southeast Asian country. Vietnamplus, an online newspaper, recently ran two stories titled “Vietnam attaches importance to international cooperation in human rights protection” and “Vietnam ready to contribute further to UN affairs.” The Voice of Vietnam online newspaper, meanwhile, ran a story titled “Vietnam pledges to make active contributions when becoming member of the UN Human Rights Council.” ‘Unworthy’ candidate Human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, a former political prisoner who now lives in Germany, said Vietnam was seeking Council membership for the 2023-25 term to boost its standing. “Authoritarian governments often try their best to join the United Nations agencies, including the Human Rights Council, so that they can use it to tell people inside their country that accusations of their human rights violations are inaccurate,” he told RFA. “The fact that the Vietnamese Communist government has made every effort to become a member of the Human Rights Council is for political purposes only,” he told RFA. “They will not make any contributions to protect the human rights of their own people as well as of other peoples in the world.” In April, a coalition of eight organizations from inside and outside Vietnam, including the Vietnam Human Rights Network, Human Rights Defenders, Dai Viet Quoc Dang and the Vietnam Independent Journalists Association, sent an open letter to the U.N. calling on it to reject Vietnam as a Council member for the next term. They said the country was “unworthy” because of its poor human rights record and support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Oct. 3, three NGOs — UN Watch, Human Rights Foundation and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights — jointly issued a report on rights abuses by the 14 candidate countries, including Vietnam, to circulate to U.N. diplomats. The report says that the rights situation inside Vietnam has not improved. It noted that when Vietnam served on Council from 2014-16, it opposed resolutions supporting rights victims in Belarus and Iran and failed to support resolutions on behalf of rights victims in Burundi and Syria. Another coalition of rights NGOs groups from Europe, the U.S. and Canada has called on U.N. member states to oppose the election of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan and Venezuela, countries deemed “unqualified” because of their grim human rights records and voting records on U.N. resolutions concerning human rights. London-based Amnesty International said Vietnam’s efforts to be elected to the Council flew in the face of the facts on the ground. “Vietnamese authorities should show that they are willing to uphold international human rights standards, but nothing could be further from the reality on the ground, where the government continues to pass laws that restrict freedom of expression and association while promoting a climate of fear among people who dare to speak out,” an Amnesty spokesperson told RFA. Getting worse in Vietnam Nguyen Dinh Thang said human rights in Vietnam had worsened since the country’s nomination as a Council member in April 2021. A further stain on the country’s human rights record was its vote against a resolution to dismiss Russia from the Council for invading Ukraine, he said. Vietnam does not deserve membership after years of rounding up its critics, said attorney Nguyen Van Dai. “Over the past four years, Vietnam has arrested many political dissidents who only had exercised their freedom of expression and press freedom,” he said. There are more than 100 political dissidents in jail, most of whom openly criticized the government for wrongdoings, including corruption and rights violations, though none of them opposed the state, Dai said. “They only raised social issues which were completely true,” he said. “Almost all of them only commented on and analyzed the issues raised by state media. They did not collect the information from somewhere or provide inaccurate information about the Communist government of Vietnam.” Vietnam is currently detaining 253 prisoners of conscience, according to the rights group Defend…
China, Russia say North Korea launch provoked by US military drills
A U.S.-led push to condemn North Korea’s launch of a missile across Japan was blocked by China and Russia in the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, with the veto powers saying Pyongyang was provoked by recent U.S. military drills. The meeting of the 15-member council was called by the United States after North Korea fired a missile across Japanese territory into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, violating council resolutions banning Pyongyang from such tests. The test missile launch was condemned by the 12 other members of the U.N. Security Council – Albania, France, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom, India, the United Arab Emirates, Ghana, Mexico, Kenya, Brazil and Gabon. Each called for a return to “dialogue” between countries in the region. But Russia and China – who had opposed a public council meeting and in May vetoed a resolution to impose new sanctions against North Korea for its new program of test launches – both said the United States was also at fault. Russia’s deputy representative to the United Nations, Anna Evstigneeva, defended the test launches, and blamed the context of what she termed America’s “unilateral security doctrine in the Asia-Pacific region.” She noted that the United States, Japan and South Korea last month carried out military exercises in the Sea of Japan using a nuclear aircraft carrier that she said focused training on hitting key targets in North Korea. “It is obvious that the missile launches by Pyongyang are a consequence of a short-sighted confrontational military activity surrounding this country conducted by the United States, which hurts their own partners in the region and also hurts the situation in Northeast Asia as a whole,” Evstigneeva said. China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Geng Shuang, mirrored the comments, also blaming U.S.-led drills for Pyongyang’s launch. “We have also noticed the multiple joint military exercises held by the U.S. and other countries recently in the region,” Geng told the Security Council. “A brief examination will reveal that [North Korea’s] launch activities took place either before or after such military activities and did not exist in isolation.” Pedestrians walk under a large video screen showing images of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un during a news update in Tokyo on Oct. 4, 2022, after North Korea launched a missile prompting an evacuation alert when it flew over northeastern Japan. Credit: AFP ‘Blaming others’ However, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, speaking for a second time after first making a case to condemn North Korea’s actions, said the explanation from China and Russia made little sense. “As we expected, instead of putting the blame where the blame lies,” Thomas-Greenfield said, “Russia and China want to blame others for their actions.” She said that U.S.-led drills with South Korea and Japan were carried out “responsibly and consistent with international law” and that there was “no equivalency” with the “unlawful, reckless” missile launches by North Korea. Japan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ishikane Kimihiro, who is not currently sitting on the council but was invited to address it, called on the council to enforce “unanimously adopted” resolutions banning such tests. “This council should be mindful that it is being tested and that its credibility is at stake. Silence is not an option,” Ishikane said. “North Korea has violated multiple Security Council resolutions and this council should act and provide an outcome that restores its credibility and fulfills its responsibilities.” The North Korean missile test was the first to pass through Japanese territory in five years, and flew 2,800 miles at 17 times the speed of sound. The United States and South Korea conducted their own missile tests in response earlier on Wednesday, with a malfunctioning South Korean missile crashing into an air force base on the outskirts of the coastal city of Gangneung.
Targeted sanctions on arms sales key to ending violence in Myanmar: observers
Myanmar’s junta is using weapons purchased from abroad to commit “war crimes” against its people and must be targeted with new sanctions to end violence in the country, former military officers and political observers said Monday. On Friday, the United Nations human rights office in Geneva said in a report that countries should do more to prevent money and arms from reaching the junta, which rules through terror and repression. The office called for further isolation of the military regime, which it said had failed to govern effectively, suggesting U.N. members impose bans on arms sales and more narrowly defined sanctions to prevent its business network from gaining access to foreign currency. While the U.S., Britain, Canada and the EU have imposed sanctions on Myanmar since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup, several countries have continued to supply the junta with arms — most notably Russia, China and Serbia. Speaking to RFA Burmese on Monday, former army Capt. Lin Htet Aung, who is now a member of the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), said sanctions are key to cutting the junta off from the modern weapons and raw materials it needs to maintain its hold on power. “The military’s domestic production capacity cannot provide all the weapons it needs for the army,” he said. “Missiles and heavy weapons and their accessories, as well as ammunition used by its armed forces, are all imported from abroad. All these things, as well as raw materials, have to be purchased from foreign nations.” The CDM captain said the military will continue to commit human rights violations, including bombing attacks on towns and villages, if the international community fails to level effective sanctions. On June 18 last year, the U.N. General Assembly approved a proposal to ban arms exports to the Myanmar military. One hundred and nineteen countries voted in favor of the resolution, while 36 countries — including China, India and Russia — abstained. Russian ally Belarus voted against it. Myanmar junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and his team inspect weapons and equipment at the Higher Military Command School in Novosibirsk, Russia, July 16, 2022. Credit: Myanmar military Ineffective sanctions Observers told RFA that the junta continues to obtain military equipment and technology via large domestic and international arms brokering companies. Hla Kyaw Zo, a Myanmar political analyst based in China, said sanctioning these companies would have a significant effect on ending the junta’s domination. “Western countries consider their own interests and big arms companies are more or less connected with the Western world, so this issue is difficult to discuss,” he said. “If the West blocks [these sales] effectively, it’ll be good, but I don’t think they will press on the issue.” According to a list compiled by NGO Justice For Myanmar, there are more than 150 companies selling arms to Myanmar’s military, 135 of which are based in Myanmar, Russia and Singapore. Yadana Maung, the group’s spokeswoman, told RFA that many companies have been able to evade Western sanctions, meaning financial and military support continues to flow to the junta. Thein Tun Oo, executive director of the Thayningha Strategic Studies Institute, which is made up of former military officers, said using human rights to justify sanctions against Myanmar is “weakening the defense of the country.” “All we have heard so far is the noise they’re making about human rights,” he said. “In reality, what we understand is that they are using that premise to allow those who are pulling the strings to obtain more power.” He said the junta will continue to purchase arms from its allies despite attempts to block them. Propping up a brutal regime In February, former U.S. Rep. Tom Andrews, who serves as U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said in a report to the U.N. Security Council that countries should stop selling arms to the junta, citing a brutal crackdown on civilians since the coup. The report called out permanent Security Council members China and Russia, as well as India, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Serbia, Pakistan and South Korea, for selling the weapons, which Andrews said are almost certainly being used by the military to kill innocent people. However, analysts say it is unlikely that the sale of arms to the junta can be cut off completely as Russia and China, which are its main suppliers, wield veto power at the Security Council. In the meantime, junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has visited Russia three times in the 19 months since the coup. During his last trip, earlier this month, he signed an agreement with Russian government officials to build a nuclear reactor factory in Myanmar. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
China steps up cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns targeting Taiwan
Cyber attacks and a Chinese disinformation campaign targeting the democratic island of Taiwan throw the spotlight on Beijing’s use of hybrid warfare in the wake of Pelosi’s visit, a Taiwanese military official said on Monday. Maj. Gen. Chen Yu-lin, deputy director of the Political and War Bureau of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense told journalists on Monday that the current wave of “cognitive operations” started before the military exercises were announced. Chen said the hybrid warfare campaign sought to create an atmosphere suggesting China might be invading Taiwan, to attack the public image of the government, and to disrupt civilian and military morale. “The CCP’s military exercises began on Aug. 4, when the number of cognitive warfare-related posts targeting Taiwan skyrocketed to 73, peaking at 87 on Aug. 5,” Chen. “[But] official media posted a total of 87 messages on Aug. 2, before the military exercises started.” “We immediately issued a press release to … inform the public that these messages weren’t true,” Chen said, citing one message claiming the PLA had shot down a Taiwanese fighter jet accompanying Pelosi’s plane. “We immediately clarified that this was fake news,” Chen said. Hybrid warfare denotes a combination of conventional military action on the ground and hacks or disinformation campaigns designed to attack public morale and sow confusion. Chen Hui-min, editor-in-chief of the Taiwan FactCheck Center, said his organization had detected a 30-40 increase in fake reports online since Pelosi’s visit. “The biggest difference [from the past] is that it seems to be spreading from English-language Twitter,” Chen told RFA. “There is also a lot of fake information on China’s [social media platform] Weibo, some of which has made its way onto social media platforms used in Taiwan, including LINE and Facebook.” “It used to be pretty rare to see such posts in the English Twittersphere,” Chen said. “Accounts that once focused on the war in Ukraine suddenly started spreading fake news about Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.” National Taiwan University was hacked, with the words “there is only one China in this world” appearing on its official website. Meanwhile, the National Palace Museum issued a statement denying online rumors that the government was preparing to send tens of thousands of rare artifacts overseas for safekeeping. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted on Sunday that the maps showed Shandong dumpling restaurants and Shanxi noodle restaurants in Taipei, saying the presence of the restaurants means that Taiwan has always been a part of China. “Palates don’t cheat,” Hua wrote, adding: “The long lost child will eventually return home.” Outdated photos According to Chen Hui-min, some of the images used by the disinformation posts used military images from two years earlier to suggest the PLA had fired rockets across the island. “It’s incorrect to say that the CCP’s long-range rockets have flown across Taiwan. Even the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and official Chinese media have reported that they landed in the Taiwan Strait, stopping short of crossing Taiwan,” Chen said. “Another annotated photo said the Chinese army was assembling on the coast, using edited photos of North Korean military exercises that took place in 2017.” Another report cited China’s state broadcaster CCTV as saying that China was expelling Taiwanese nationals before Aug. 8, also untrue. Last week, several convenience store branches and government facilities across Taiwan saw their digital signage hacked with messages slandering visiting U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her recent visit to Taiwan, which sparked days of military exercises and missile launches near Taiwan by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As Pelosi visited Taiwan and met with president Tsai Ing-wen on Aug. 3, messages started popping up on digital signage in 7-Eleven convenience stores across the country that read: “Warmonger Pelosi, get out of Taiwan!” Digital signage at a railway station in the southern port city of Kaohsiung and at a government office in Nantou county also displayed a message calling Pelosi “an old witch.” Investigators said the attacks originated from an unknown IP address, the island’s Central News Agency (CNA) reported at the time. The hacks came after the official website of Tsai’s Presidential Office was taken down for around 20 minutes by a cyberattack, after which full service was restored, CNA reported. Mainland Chinese website Baidu joined in the cognitive warfare, releasing maps of Taiwan for the first time, which went viral after social media users noticed that many streets in Taiwan’s cities are named for cities in mainland China. Chinese officials and pro-CCP commentators have launched a global media offensive around Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, claiming that the island, which has never been ruled by the CCP nor formed part of the 72-year-old People’s Republic of China, is an “inseparable” part of Chinese territory. CCP leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly said that Taiwan must be “unified” with China, and refused to rule out the use of military force to annex the island. But Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen, who was re-elected in a 2020 landslide after vowing to stand up to China on the issue, has said that Taiwan’s 23 million population have no wish to give up their sovereignty, a view that is borne out by repeated opinion polls. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted on Sunday that the maps showed Shandong dumpling restaurants and Shanxi noodle restaurants in Taipei, saying the presence of the restaurants means that Taiwan has always been a part of China. “Palates don’t cheat,” Hua wrote, adding: “The long lost child will eventually return home.” Hua Chunying Twitter users responded with parodies of the tweet, citing the ubiquitous presence of American fast-food chains KFC and McDonalds in China, and claiming China as “part of Kentucky.” Taiwan cookery expert Clarissa Wei said many of the restaurants had already altered their dishes to suit the local palate, however, drawing parallels with the evolution of Chinese dishes in the United States to suit local tastes. Feminist writer Shangguan Luan said China’s CCP-supporting Little Pinks could be forgiven for their ignorance, given that they…
