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Category: South Asia

Resistance groups kill and threaten Myanmar junta’s conscription supporters

Editor06 mins

Rebel defense groups killed two administrators in vigilante slayings and are threatening the lives of more, according to resistance organizations. Since the country’s 2021 military coup d’etat, significant defeats for the junta have driven coup leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing to enact the People’s Military Service Law. Subsequent widespread panic from Myanmar’s youth has pushed them into hiding, across the Thai border in droves, with one even taking his own life. The law would require men and women between 18 and 35 to serve in the country’s military for two years and skilled professionals for longer terms.  In two regions in central Myanmar, Wundwin Township Revolution Force and Salin People’s Defense Force have taken action into their own hands. The groups admitted to gunning down two local administrators in Magway’s Salin township and Mandalay’s Wundwin township, according to the defense forces. Salin People’s Defense Force told Radio Free Asia they murdered 50-year-old Myint Htoo on Monday at 10:30 p.m. after he took a loudspeaker to the village’s streets to encourage young people in Pu Khat Taing to serve in the junta’s military. Radio Free Asia could not independently confirm details about Maung Pu’s death, but a Salin People’s Defense Force official reported that both village administrators were armed with hand-made guns.  An official of the Salin People’s Defense Force who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons told RFA they plan to continue targeting administrators who support conscription. “We have made a list of local administrators, officials from the general administrative department and immigration officials who are taking advantage of political instability to threaten people and seek their own interests,” he told RFA on Wednesday. “We still have to continue to take action individually.” A representative from Wundwin Township Revolution Force said they are monitoring the behavior of local officials backing the junta. “Anyone who continues to work for the military service law according to the junta council must go the same way as Maung Pu,” he said. He agreed to speak about the group’s actions under the condition of anonymity.  RFA contacted Magway and Mandalay junta spokesmen Myo Myint and Thein Htay for comments on the deaths, but they did not respond. Nationwide threats As military recruitment begins in Yangon, five guerilla groups issued a statement on Tuesday night with warnings that they would take “severe action” against administrators supporting the law. The joint statement was issued by the Yangon Region People’s Defense Force, Yangon Urban Guerrillas, Yangon UG Association, Yangon Army and Yangon Guerrilla Army, who called the conscription system “a flagrant violation of human security.” Junta officials began their registration and recruitment operations to bolster army numbers on March 12. Still a deeply junta-controlled region, the vast majority of township and neighborhood-level officials are carrying out the orders, a Yangon resident said. “The current enumeration and enlistment are being led by the chairs of administration and administrators,” he said, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “They have to send the lists to the township-level administration and carry it on, step by step. It looks like many of the lists have already reached their hands.” Yangon region’s junta spokesperson Htay Aung told RFA Wednesday that these procedures were not necessarily in connection with the conscription law, but merely business as usual. “Security is normal for us. Yangon is calm and peaceful as usual,” he said. “Normal procedures are being carried out in accordance with the law.” Twenty-one local administrators of Rakhine state’s Thandwe township submitted their resignations on March 18 after junta officials asked them to recruit a militia and compile lists of potential recruits. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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COVID symptoms kill 5 North Korean children, schools and daycares shuttered

Editor06 mins

At least five North Korean children have died as a resurgence of a respiratory disease believed to be COVID-19 has caused authorities to enact quarantine procedures in Ryanggang province, residents told Radio Free Asia. Residents living in the central northern province, which borders China, will have to wear masks and children will be confined to their homes, as schools and daycare centers have been temporarily shuttered. Sources said they were not sure if the lockdown applied outside of Ryanggang province. “In early March, children showing symptoms of coronavirus died one after another in Paegam county,” a resident of the province, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told RFA Korean. “The provincial party committee took emergency quarantine measures through the quarantine center.”  According to the resident, quarantine workers that went house-to-house informed residents that three children in Paegam county died along with two more in nearby Kapsan county after exhibiting coronavirus-like symptoms. Another Ryanggang resident confirmed how the news was spread.  ‘Fever cases’ Residents, however, say they believe the situation could be much worse than reported, the first resident said. For the first two-and-a-half years of the pandemic, North Korea claimed outwardly to be completely “virus free,” but in April 2022, Pyongyang admitted the virus had spread to all areas of the country and declared a state of “maximum emergency” the following month.  During the entirety of the emergency, the government kept an official tally of “fever cases,” but its official total on global COVID-19 case tracking websites remained at or near zero. Experts said it was likely that cases could not be confirmed due to a lack of reliable testing capacity.  Prior to the emergency, when patients in North Korean hospitals with COVID symptoms died, the hospital would quickly cremate the bodies so that they could not be tested for the disease, then attributed the deaths to other causes. Though authorities acknowledge that five children have died, residents think that the response points to many more casualties, as daycare centers, kindergartens and schools will be closed for a 10-day period, and everyone will be required to wear masks or face punishment, the resident said. He said that the quarantine center in the city of Hyesan ordered all children to be kept at home as much as possible because they are at greater risk than adults. “Some are complaining about how children are supposed to be kept indoors when the adults have to do whatever it takes to make a living and find food,” the resident said. “On the other hand, some others agree that the temporary school closure is the best option in the absence of medicine.” The quarantine center also promoted personal hygiene practices when it went house-to-house, the second Ryanggang resident told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.  “The quarantine workers warned of the seriousness of the situation and they also shared the news that several children infected with the coronavirus had died in Paegam and Kapsan counties,” she said. “There are many patients around me who are coughing and suffering from high fevers, similar to coronavirus symptoms.” The second resident said things were just as bad now as they were during the pandemic.  At that time, the border with China was closed and trade had been suspended, so there were shortages of everything. Additionally, lockdowns at home meant that people could not go out to earn money to support themselves. “There is no money now, just like during the big outbreak,” she said. “And even if you have money it is difficult to get medicine.” Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.

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Vietnam’s next leader faces crunch time with economy, demographics

Editor014 mins

January brought a fresh gust of rumors about the whereabouts of Nguyen Phu Trong, the Communist Party of Vietnam general secretary. He hadn’t been seen in public for a few weeks and failed to meet with the visiting president of Indonesia, leading some commentators to speculate that his health was deteriorating once again.  We had been here in 2019 when it was rumored – accurately, it turned out – that Trong had suffered a stroke while on a visit down south. This time around, Trong showed up again rather quickly, delivering a speech to the National Assembly on January 15. But rumors of the 79 year-old’s failing health are a reminder of his and the country’s frailty.   Given that party chiefs tend to rule for two five-year terms, we can assume that the next general-secretary, if voted in at the next Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) National Congress in 2026 and if Trong does actually retire then, will rule until 2036.  It is not overly dramatic to say that the next party chief will govern during the most consequential decade of Vietnam’s development.  Women work at the Hung Viet garment export factory in Hung Yen province, Vietnam, Dec. 30, 2020. (Kham/Reuters) Not least, that person  is likely to enter office facing even more uncertain world politics.  One uncertainty is China, whose economy is in a terrible state and which is set to experience perhaps the worst demographic crisis of any country in known history.  The other is a retreating America. The great debate in the United States right now is whether to maintain its post-1945 interest in world affairs or to descend into nationalism and protectionism. If Washington chooses the latter – and Donald Trump’s possible re-election later this year would be an indication of that – the globalization we’ve known since 1945 that has depended on U.S. security guarantees, not least to keep the seas safe for world trade, could collapse.  Vietnam has arguably been one of the biggest beneficiaries of globalization – perhaps second only to China in recent decades. More to the point, China and the United States combined account for 46 percent of Vietnam’s exports and 40 percent of its imports.  Demographic time bomb Hanoi can do little to rectify China’s troubled economy or dispel America’s isolationist tendencies. But it can clean its own house.  The most existential concern, as framed by a headline in the state-run press last year, is its “demographic time bomb.” Thailand is set to lose 10 million people of working age by 2050, about a quarter of its current workforce. China, based on conservative estimates, will lose 217 million workers, down from 984 million today.  Vietnam, thanks to its citizens having so many children in the 1990s, will only see its working-age population dip by around 253,000 people by 2050, from 67.6 million now – a 0.3 percent fall. The workforce will have passed its peak by the mid-2030s.   Instead, Vietnam appears set to suffer the problem of too many retirees. Vietnam became an “aging” society in 2011, when 7 percent of its population was aged over 65. It will become an “aged” society, when that demographic is more than 14 percent of the population, in 2034.  Elderly people exercise at a public park in Hanoi, Oct. 9, 2018. (Kham/Reuters) Vietnam will be the fourth “aged” society in Southeast Asia, after Singapore, Thailand and Brunei. The percentage of people over 65, those who don’t work and are net extractors of state money, will double between now and 2050, from 10 percent to 20 percent.  In fact, people over 60 will go from 14.7 to 26.5 percent of the population over this timeframe. That’s the figure to bear in mind since Vietnam’s retirement age for men will be 62 in 2028 and 60 for women in 2035.  Moreover, the proportion of retirees will probably be higher than 26 percent of the population since women, who retire earlier, outnumber men by the time they’re 60 years old. So it’s possible that Vietnam is looking at around a fifth of its population in retirement by 2030 and nearly a third by 2050.  Unlike Thailand and China, whose demographic future is dire, more so than some analysts think, Vietnam won’t see a declining workforce at the same time as an increase in retirees, so it won’t be left trying to scrape less money from fewer workers for greater welfare payments to more retirees.  However, Vietnam is starting from a lower wealth base. If its GDP per capita doubles between now and 2034, it would still be on par with Thailand’s GDP per capita today. If it triples, it will be on par with today’s Malaysia, which won’t become “aged” until 2042.  Tough decisions won’t wait Vietnam risks becoming old before it becomes rich, unless, that is, it can turbocharge its economy over the coming decade and half. According to the World Bank, Vietnam has until 2042 before its “demographic window of opportunity will close.”  The state will have to find vastly more money for its retirees, sapping funds that could be invested in infrastructure and education.  Spending on education has already fallen from around 18 percent of government expenditure in the early 2010s to around 15 percent. Infrastructure spending has been criminally misused. Just look at the badly managed Ho Chi Minh City metro project.  Currently, average social insurance payments are just $240 per month, a little over two-thirds of workers’ average income. A lengthy World Bank report noted that “Countries with old-age dependency ratios equal to Vietnam’s projected level in 2035 typically spend 8-9 percent of GDP on public pensions, well above the 2-3 percent that Vietnam has spent over the past decade”.  Commuters fill the street during morning rush hour in Ho Chi Minh City, Jan. 12, 2024. (Jae C. Hong/AP) By today’s GDP, that means the Vietnamese state will need to find something in the range of $18-21 billion annually just for pensions within a decade. That’s not counting the additional…

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’10 Don’ts’ for Chinese young people

Editor08 mins

Over the past year or so, young Chinese “refuseniks” have been swearing off marriage, children and mortgages – rejecting traditional milestones on the path to adulthood – amid apparent despair over their futures, the economic outlook and politics. But recent social media posts show that they’ve added several more “don’ts” to the list. They include not donating blood, not giving to charity, not playing the lottery, not investing money, including in property, and even not helping an elderly person — largely because they’re afraid they might get exploited or trapped. The list, dubbed the “10 Don’ts” of young people, has been circulating on social media. “This generation of young people have no hope, so they don’t bother working hard any more,” said a university graduate who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals. “They might as well just lie down in the hope of a stress-free life.” The attitude is particularly problematic for the ruling Communist Party as it tries to encourage people to use the internet to share “positive” content, particularly about the economy, rather than complaining about how hard their lives are. Young workers rest outside a shopping mall in Beijing, Jan. 17, 2024. (Ng Han Guan/AP) Author and political essayist Yu Jie said the refusal to marry and have kids is linked to young people’s disillusionment with the Chinese government and the way it manipulates them to believe they are the future of the nation, when actually they are merely its tools. “No young person today believes in the lies of Mao Zedong or his successor Xi Jinping,” Yu wrote in a commentary for RFA Mandarin.  Motivated by fear Many Chinese don’t want to donate blood because they fear the data could be used to force them into donating organs for the elite, said a resident of the eastern province of Shandong who gave only the surname Lu for fear of reprisals.  People worry that if they get into an accident, their organs will be taken without their consent if information about their blood type is available to the authorities, she said. “The reason they won’t donate to charity is that they can barely support themselves, and that they need donations themselves,” Lu said, summarizing some of the many comments on the topic that were no longer visible on Weibo on Tuesday. The resistance to  investing in property is linked to overpricing and the fear of becoming a “mortgage slave,” current affairs commentator Tianluke told RFA Mandarin, using his pen-name “Pilgrim” for fear of reprisals. “The economic situation in China is very bad right now,” Tianluke said. “A lot of people have been laid off, and there are a lot of graduates who are unemployed.” And some people are afraid of helping an elderly person in trouble in case they get accused of causing the problem they’re trying to address. It’s a “manifestation of the collapse of trust … in Chinese society,” he said.  A young couple walk by a construction site near office buildings in the Central Business District in Beijing on March 2, 2024. (Andy Wong/AP) Yu, the essayist who wrote a Dec. 29 column for RFA Mandarin, said the various “don’ts” are all about avoiding the various “traps” set by the Communist Party – meaning people getting caught up in a system that exploits them for the benefit of the privileged political and financial elite.  “Things such as donating money to charity, donating blood, and helping the elderly are all good deeds that are taken for granted in civilized countries,” he wrote. “But in China, they are all taken advantage of.” “The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer,” Yu wrote. “That’s why young Chinese people warn each other to avoid these traps to avoid disaster.” ‘Kids have no future’ Meanwhile, censors have deleted an article that questions the value of hothousing children through the highly competitive education system — a defining behavior of the country’s middle class. The article, titled “Middle-class kids have no future,” was unavailable “due to violations of regulations” on Tuesday, though copies were still visible outside China’s Great Firewall of internet censorship. People tour by a deserted shopping mall in Beijing on Feb. 19, 2024. (Andy Wong/AP) The blog post tells the tale of a successful Shanghai parent whose son didn’t want to study any more, because he wasn’t naturally good at passing exams, and didn’t see the point. He started delivering food in the evenings instead, to earn some money. In a follow-up post in which he reports that the article has been taken down, the blogger argues that only gifted kids should compete for spots at top schools, because the rest are effectively only there as “cannon fodder” for the competitive system. “It’s the middle-class trap, isn’t it?” commented X user @passi0nateGirl under RFA’s X post about the article. “Nowadays, the middle class can wind up back in poverty due to sickness, unemployment, a property crash, badly performing stocks, or a company partner running away.” Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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Videos appear to show Myanmar military training Rohingyas

Editor012 mins

Videos have emerged on social media in recent days that appear to show junta personnel providing military training to ethnic Muslim Rohingyas at a site in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, amid reports of forced recruitment around the country. On Feb. 10, the junta imposed a military draft law – officially called the People’s Military Service Law – prompting civilians of fighting age to flee Myanmar’s cities. Many said they would rather leave the country or join anti-junta forces in remote border areas than serve in the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup d’etat. The junta has sought to downplay the announcement, claiming that conscription won’t go into effect until April, but RFA has received several reports indicating that forced recruitment is already under way. Two videos emerged on Facebook over the weekend showing junta troops training a group of people wearing full military uniforms in the use of firearms and around 30 armed people wearing fatigues inside of a military vehicle. They were posted to the site with a description that identifies the subjects as Rohingyas. A third video, posted on March 7, shows junta Rakhine State Security and Border Affairs Minister Co. Kyaw Thura visiting a warehouse where hundreds of people, believed to be Rohingyas, are seated in military attire. RFA was unable to independently verify the content of the videos. Reports suggest the junta has been forcibly recruiting Rohingyas in Rakhine in recent weeks, and residents told RFA Burmese that the video shows members of the ethnic group receiving training at a site in the north of the state, although they were unable to provide an exact location. They said that junta personnel have detained and enlisted around 700 Rohingyas for military training from the Rakhine townships of Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Kyaukphyu, as well as the capital Sittwe, since the Feb. 10 announcement, with the goal of forming a militia. In Kyaukphyu, the training has progressed to using firearms, said a resident who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “It is known that the current training phase involves firearms practice,” the resident said Monday. “Gunfire has been heard over the past two or three days, although the training regimen varies daily.” Many of the detainees are living at Kyaukphyu’s Kyauk Ta Lone camp for internally displaced persons, or IDPs, where on Feb. 29 junta authorities forcibly gathered 107 mostly ethnic-Rohingya Muslims between the ages of 18 and 35 at the camp’s food warehouse, after collecting their personal information. Former military captain Nyi Thuta, who now advises the armed resistance as part of the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement, questioned why the military regime is forcibly recruiting the Rohingya when it has refused to grant them citizenship. “These people are being coerced and manipulated in various ways into fighting to the death for the junta, which is facing defeat in [the civil] war,” he said. ‘No way to escape’ Some 1 million Rohingya refugees have been living in Bangladesh since 2017, when they were driven out of Myanmar by a military clearance operation. Another 630,000 living within Myanmar are designated stateless by the United Nations, including those who languish in camps and are restricted from moving freely in Rakhine state. Rights campaigners say the junta is drafting Rohingya into military service to stoke ethnic tensions in Rakhine, while legal experts say the drive is unlawful, given that Myanmar has refused to recognize the Rohingya as one of the country’s ethnic groups and denied them citizenship for decades. People who appear to be Rohingya Muslims ride in the back of a military vehicle, March 9, 2024. (Image from citizen journalist video) Myanmar’s military is desperate for new recruits after suffering devastating losses on the battlefield to the ethnic Arakan Army, or AA, in Rakhine state. Since November, when the AA ended a ceasefire that had been in place since the coup, the military has surrendered Pauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, Myay Pon and Taung Pyo townships in the state, as well as Paletwa township in neighboring Chin state. On Feb. 28, the pro-junta New Light of Myanmar claimed that Rohingya had not been recruited for military service because they aren’t citizens. Attempts by RFA to reach Hla Thein, the junta’s attorney general and spokesperson for Rakhine state, went unanswered Monday. Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, condemned the coercion of members of his ethnic group into military service as a “war crime.” “They wield power and resort to coercion and arrests,” he said, adding that he believes the junta’s goal is to “obliterate the Rohingya community.” “I perceive this as part of a genocidal agenda.” Earlier this month, the shadow National Unity Government, or NUG – made up of former civilian leaders ousted in the coup – warned that Rohingya were being pressed into duty by the military “because there is no way to escape.” Kachin youth fleeing recruitment Meanwhile, residents of Kachin state said Monday that young people in the area are increasingly fleeing abroad or to areas controlled by the armed resistance to avoid military service. The draft law says males between the ages of 18 and 35 and females between 18 and 27 must serve in the military. A draft-eligible resident of Kachin’s Myitkyina township said that he and others like him “no longer feel safe” in Myanmar. “Since the conscription law was enacted, it has become quite difficult for us to realize our dreams,” he said. “It isn’t even safe to go out to a restaurant. We feel threatened daily.” People stand in line to get visas at the embassy of Thailand in Yangon on Feb. 16, 2024. (AFP) But even for those who have left the country, life can be difficult abroad. A young Kachin named Ma La Bang who recently relocated to Thailand said he doesn’t have a visa to stay in the country legally, and told RFA that people like him worry about being forced to return home. “Young people living…

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The US need not appease the Communist Party to engage with Vietnam

Editor013 mins

The death last month of William Beecher, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who, among other scoops, revealed the Nixon administration’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, ought to make us remember two things: First: Washington has been guilty of criminality abroad, especially when it believes that noble-ish ends justify brutal means. And second, despite those who regard the U.S. government as perpetually conspiratorial, Washington is bad at keeping secrets.  Obsessed with the idea that the Viet Cong’s persistence could be traced to allies or resources external to Vietnam—namely Cambodia and Laos—and that the will of the communist North, and thus its ally, the Soviet Union, could be overcome by displays of mass destruction, the Nixon and then Ford administrations resorted to great iniquities for the sake of the purported greater good. They also courted unsavory allies. The same logic led the U.S.  to continue supporting the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after – and because – it was overthrown by Vietnam, and because it was backed by Beijing, the budding U.S. Cold War partner at the time.  Cambodians flee Khmer Rouge insurgents during artillery shelling of Phnom Penh, Jan. 28, 1974. (AP) There are signs of this old fixation in Washington on viewing events in Southeast Asia solely through Cold War politics in U.S. engagement with Vietnam.  There are still some people in Vietnam who resent the United States for abandoning the South to the communists in 1975, although most people who think this way risked their lives and fled abroad in the late 1970s.  Today, a younger generation, while not nostalgic for the corrupt and dictatorial Republic of Vietnam in Saigon, is becoming resentful that Washington appears to be doing its utmost to entrench the Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV) rule.  On my last visit to Vietnam, in late 2022, I met up with prison-scarred pro-democracy activists who cannot quite stomach the fact that the laudatory “reconciliation” since the 1990s between the former enemies has been conducted to ensure maximum exposure for the communist regime.  In 2015, for instance, the Obama administration broke protocol when it invited Nguyen Phu Trong, the CPV general secretary, on a state visit, a privilege usually only offered to heads of government or state.  When President Joe Biden traveled to Hanoi in September to upgrade relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, he didn’t have to sign the improved partnership deal alongside Trong; he could have done so with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh or State President Vo Van Thuong.  Blurring the lines But by signing it alongside the party boss Trong, Washington symbolically implied it bought into the communist propaganda that the CPV is  the Vietnamese state.  “The degree to which the U.S. is willing to blur the lines between the Vietnamese state and the CPV represents the most substantial recognition of the CPV-led regime by Washington thus far, marking a significant achievement for both the CPV and Trong,” wrote  prominent Vietnamese academic Hoang Thi Ha in October.  This is playing out even as quite a few senior CPV apparatchiks, including the general secretary, still think that Washington is plotting “peaceful evolution,” a communist euphemism for regime change that long predates the “color revolutions” modern-day autocrats fear. As one democracy campaigner told me, in fact, Washington is effectively engaged in supporting the political status quo in Vietnam and is making the lives of reformers much more difficult.  They can, he said, no longer count on rhetorical support from the U.S.. In the past, when trying to convert others to their cause, they could have at least pointed at speeches made by American officials who condemned the Hanoi regime’s repression.  Not anymore.  Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Barack Obama speak to reporters after their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., July 7, 2015. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Washington officials push back. “We question whether public lecturing is the best plan of action with countries that are seeking to work closely with us,” one told the Washington Post after Biden’s visit to Vietnam in September.  However, that overlooks the impact this has on the Vietnamese people.  Without “public lecturing,” many Vietnamese reckon that the U.S. is no longer interested in human rights in Vietnam. Worse, some think that Washington is praising the communist regime, influencing their own opinions on whether its monopoly of power is legitimate or beneficial.   Writing about Biden’s meeting with Trong in the Washington Post’s opinion page last year, Max Boot noted that “when Biden glad-hands Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and now Nguyen Phu Trong…he is, at the very least, open to the charge of hypocrisy in a way Trump was not.”  But Boot added: “Sometimes you have to make common cause with the lesser evil to safeguard the greater good. That’s what Biden is doing in Hanoi.” Party state The case made by the human rights activists isn’t that the U.S.  should have no relations with Vietnam; it’s that Washington shouldn’t be conducting this engagement so openly and cordially through the CPV.  There is also no reason to think that if Washington is  friendly enough to the communist regime, Vietnam is going to become the next Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally that allows it to station troops on its soil. Vietnam will never be an “ally,” in any meaningful sense, of the United States. And with the CPV  in charge, Hanoi will not  engage in containment of China. Some 90 days after Biden upgraded relations, Trong met with President Xi Jinping and signed Vietnam up to China’s “Community with a Shared Future.” “[Washington is] in thrall to the idea that Vietnam can be part of an anti-China group. That idea is nonsense.” said analyst Bill Hayton.  Those who truly seek  an alliance with Vietnam to contain China  should logically support regime change in Vietnam that produces a nationalist government in Hanoi that would be more receptive to the anti-Chinese voices of the masses…

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Forced recruitment underway in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region

Editor012 mins

Junta authorities in southwestern Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region are compiling lists of draft-eligible residents amid a roll-out of the country’s conscription law, sources told RFA Burmese. On Feb. 10, the junta enacted the People’s Military Service Law, prompting many civilians of fighting age to flee Myanmar’s cities, saying they would rather leave the country or join anti-junta forces in remote border areas than serve in the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup d’etat. The junta has sought to downplay the announcement, claiming that conscription won’t go into effect until April, but RFA has received several reports indicating that forced recruitment is already under way across the country. Residents of Ayeyarwady region’s Ingapu, Kyon Pyaw, Yae Kyi and A Thote townships said that junta authorities called a meeting of ward and village administrators in the third week of February and ordered them to gather lists of residents eligible for military service. A resident of Kyhon Pyaw’s Inn Ma village, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, told RFA that authorities checked residency lists in the village and compiled a list of 35 people, both men and women, for conscription. “There are 10 wards here and the heads of 10 households in each ward collected the lists, and handed them over to the respective ward administrators,” he said. “They didn’t need to collect the lists door to door, as they can find the information from the family lists. The disabled and ill were exempted from military services.” Recruiting one from each village In Ingapu, the junta’s township administration ordered ward and village administrations to recruit one person from each village-tract for military service, residents told RFA. A resident of Ingapu’s Thet Kei Tan village said that the village administrator gave superiors the name of one young man in nearby Chin Kone village, who he said “seemed willing to join the military.” “On the other side of our village, each household had to pay 10,000 kyats (US$5) if they did not want to serve,” he said. Southwestern commander Brig. Gen. Wai Lin meets with militia members from townships in the Ayeyarwady region on Sept. 22, 2023. (Myanmar military) In nearby Bogale township, junta authorities organized military training for teachers in front of the town hall around mid-February, residents said. On Feb. 20, leaflets were distributed in area markets persuading people to join the military. Township authorities called a meeting with respective ward administrators and instructed them to “focus on youths who have no parents and few relatives” for recruitment, a resident told RFA. “It wasn’t mandatory to recruit one person from each household,” he said. “Authorities recommended at the meeting that the recruitment focus on youths with no parents and those who are willing to join the military to earn a salary.” In another Ayeyarwady township called Myan Aung, a resident told RFA that the recruitment process began around Feb. 15 in the wards and villages.  He also said that the junta conducted military training for 30 people at the headquarters of Infantry Battalion 51 in the seat of Myan Aung township on Feb. 27. Residents of the township were made to pay for the cost of two sets of military uniforms and the daily wages of the trainees, he said. A member of the Ayeyarwady parliament, who declined to be named, told RFA that the junta leadership has focused on his region to recruit soldiers as it is their “stronghold.” “However, I don’t think they will get the numbers they had hoped for,” he said.  Another Ayeyarwady lawmaker condemned the junta’s use of forced recruitment to implement the conscription law. “Although they use the term ‘military service,’ people are actually being forced to work as porters or act as human shields on the battlefield,” he said. “It’s a grave violation of human rights.” Hundreds held in Mandalay RFA also received reports on Wednesday that hundreds of youths aged 20-30 who had been recruited for military training from around the country are being stationed in Mandalay region’s Yamethin township. “Around 200 or 300 youths are being held at the No. 1 Police Training Depot for military training,” said a resident of the township. “They have to live in dormitories there and no one is allowed to leave.” Another resident of Yamethin told RFA that, beginning on March 1, security had been strengthened at the facility. “It’s not the regular training period for new police officers,” he said. “Authorities are inspecting all passers-by.” Myanmar junta authorities conduct inspections at the Dedaye bridge checkpoint in Pyapon district, Ayeyarwady region. (We Love Dedaye) The junta’s Information Ministry said in a social media post on Feb. 27 that there had been some “misinformation” circulating about the collection of personal data of men aged between 18 and 35. It also dismissed reports that junta security forces and administrative organizations are forcibly arresting people for military service. Similarly, pro-junta newspapers said Wednesday that reports of youths being held for military training at the No. 1 Police Training Depot in Yamethin are false. On Feb. 15, pro-junta media quoted spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun as saying that around 50,000 people will be drafted into military service each year in accordance with the country’s conscription law. He added that 13 million people are currently eligible for service in Myanmar, based on a 2019 census.  Missing for more than a month Reports of the forced recruitment in Ayeyarwady came as a resident of the region told RFA that four people arrested by junta authorities in Dedaye township for alleged possession of weapons remain missing one month after their detention. Hlaing Myo Kyaw, Naing Myo Shwe and his wife Su Mar, and Htet Myat Soe from Dedaye’s Kyeik Taw and Ka Wet Chaung villages were arrested on Feb. 4 with drones and weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs.  Two others from the township – former political prisoner Wai Yan Oo and his mother – were also detained at the time. Two…

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Authorities urge ‘stability’ amid restrictions on Tibetans due to dam protests

Editor08 mins

Chinese officials have told local ethnic Tibetans and monastic leaders in Sichuan province to maintain stability following the arrest of more than 1,000 protesters over a hydropower dam, and made clear that the project would continue, two Tibetans with knowledge of the situation said. If built, the Gangtuo Dam power station on the Drichu River could submerge several monasteries in Dege’s county’s Wangbuding township and force residents of at least two villages near the river to relocate, sources earlier told RFA.  “Chinese officials have held meetings in the Wonto village area where they ordered local Tibetans to comply with the government’s plans and regulations and called for the leaders of the local monasteries to mobilize the locals to toe the party line,” said one source who hails from Dege and now lives in exile.  On Feb. 25, Dege County Party Secretary Baima Zhaxi visited Wangbuding and neighboring townships to meet with Buddhist monastic leaders and village administrators, during which he called for “stability” and urged residents to comply with regulations or else be “dealt with in accordance with the law and regulations,” according to a local news report. “As the stability maintenance period in March and the national Two Sessions approach, we must implement detailed stability maintenance measures to promote continued harmony and stability in the jurisdiction,” Zhaxi was quoted in the report as saying.  The Two Sessions refers to China’s annual meetings of the National People’s Congress and of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, being held this week in Beijing. “We must continue to carry out the investigation and resolution of conflicts, risks and hidden dangers, and effectively resolve conflicts and disputes at the grassroots level, and nip them in the bud,” Zhaxi said. Zhaxi’s visit comes ahead of Tibetan Uprising Day on March 10, a politically sensitive date that commemorates the thousands of Tibetans who died in a 1959 uprising against China’s invasion and occupation of their homeland, and the flight of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, into exile in northern India. Keep building Zhaxi also visited the dam construction site and told the leaders of the coordination team to adhere to their work orders and make arrangements for “the next step of work,” according to a local Chinese government announcement. Zhaxi told residents about “the great significance and necessity of the construction of hydropower stations” and indicated that the government would “protect the legitimate interests of the masses to the greatest extent.” “Abide by the law, express your demands in a legal, civilized and rational manner, and do not exceed the bottom line,” Zhaxi told locals during the on-site visit, according to the same news report. “Otherwise, you will be dealt with in accordance with the law and regulations.”  Tibetans in exile hold a rally in Amsterdam to support dam protesters in Dege county, southwestern China’s Sichuan province, March 1, 2024. (Netherlands Tibetan Community) On Feb. 23, police arrested more than 1,000 Tibetans, including monks and residents in the county in Sichuan’s Kardze Autonomous Tibetan Prefecture, who had been protesting the construction of the dam, meant to generate electricity. Authorities continue to heighten security restrictions in Dege county on the east bank of the Drichu River, called Jinsha in Chinese, and in Jomda county of Qamdo city in the Tibet Autonomous Region on the west bank of the river, said the sources who both live in exile and requested anonymity for safety reasons.  Strict surveillance Residents are forbidden from contacting anyone outside the area, the sources said. Chinese officials continue to impose strict digital surveillance and tight restrictions on movement in Wangbuding after rare video footage emerged from inside Tibet on Feb. 22 of Chinese police beating Tibetan monks, before arresting more than 100 of them, most of whom were from Wonto and Yena monasteries.  Since then, authorities have carried out wide-scale rigorous interrogations of the arrested Tibetans, even as information from inside Tibet has been harder to come by amid a crackdown on the use of mobile phones and social media and messaging platforms to restrict communication with the outside world, sources said. The protests began on Feb. 14, when at least 300 Tibetans gathered outside Dege County Town Hall to protest the building of the Gangtuo Dam, part of a massive 13-tier hydropower complex with a total planned capacity of 13,920 megawatts.  Over the past two weeks, Tibetans in exile have been holding solidarity rallies in cities in the United States, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia and India.   Global leaders and Tibetan advocacy groups have condemned China’s actions, calling for the immediate release of those detained. Last week, Chinese authorities released about 40 of the arrested monks on Feb. 26 and 27, RFA reported.  Additional reporting and editing by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

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Why Laos’ Communists cannot do anti-corruption

Editor017 mins

Corruption is often seen as a byproduct, a quirk, of a political system. But in many authoritarian states, it is actually the modus operandi.  Consider what binds a political structure together. How do you make sure that lowly officials in the provinces listen to their masters in the capital? How do you instill the sense that everyone is working together for the same cause, that all participants aren’t just a bunch of self-interested, warring individuals? One way is through terror. Officials listened to Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, and his Politburo because they feared for their lives.  Another is through a common sense of purpose. This could be ideological. Everyone works towards the same goals because they believe they are creating a better world. Or it could be existential, such as everyone pulling together during wartime. Or it could be transactional, as we see in meritocracies, with everyone accepting the norms and hierarchies of the political structure because doing so means they stand a chance of advancing up the political ladder.  Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni, front center, and members of Cambodia’s government pose with newly elected members of parliament during the opening ceremony at the National Assembly building in Phnom Penh on Aug. 21, 2023. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP) However, another method is through corruption, what some academics would call “rent-seeking”. Low-ranking officials in the provinces pay heed to their superiors in the capital because they are all part of vast patronage networks. Low-ranking officials are loyal to their patrons in return for financial benefits and promotion, while the higher-ranking patrons in government are able to get others to follow their policies because they control the fortunes of those lower down the hierarchy.  Moreover, corruption provides something of a common purpose, a common understanding, amongst all levels of the political structure. Everyone knows how the game is rigged and that they have to pay fealty to those who control the most important patronage networks in order to advance up the hierarchy. Indeed, graft instills a sense of loyalty.  When harmonized, as in Cambodia, a rent-seeking system ensures that all political grandees have just enough access to financial rewards and that graft is spread somewhat equitably so that there are no major internal frictions.  That begs the question of how anti-corruption campaigns can work in authoritarian states that previously had rent-seeking systems. Vietnam is a good example. Before 2016, the Communist Party of Vietnam held its hierarchy together in large part through corruption.  This was partly because of the decentralization that occurred in the 2000s, which made it much more difficult for the central party apparatus to control what was happening in the provinces and districts. More importantly, ideological factors that had previously held the Communist Party together began to fade.  Rent-seeking cadres By the early 1990s, when Hanoi made peace with Beijing, Vietnam was for the first time in half a century unthreatened by a foreign power. No longer could the CPV compel internal cohesion within its ranks through rally-around-the-flag appeals to cohesion and unity At the same time, because the Vietnamese government became more professionalized, it meant bringing in non-communist officials.  This, added to the public’s disinterest in socialist ideals, especially after the capitalist reforms in 1986, meant that communist ideology no longer functioned as a way to bind the political structure together. And the CPV was no longer the sole arbitrator of nationalism. In the early 2000s, a popular strain of nationalism emerged among the public that accused the party of being unpatriotic for selling Vietnamese land to foreign (mainly Chinese) investors, which culminated in the momentous Bauxite protests of 2009.  Amid these social changes, a new generation of rent-seeking apparatchiks emerged – personified by Nguyen Tan Dung, who became prime minister in 2006 – who cast aside ideology and nationalism and instead embraced graft as a way of building their own personal power and binding the splintering party apparatus. This led to a reaction, however, from the more ideological factions of the party, led by Nguyen Phu Trong, who became party chief in 2012.  Vietnam’s Communist Party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, left, gestures as he arrives at the National Assembly in Hanoi on Jan. 15, 2024. (Nhac Nguyen/AFP) However, it was only when he defeated Dung in the 2016 National Congress that Trong launched his anti-corruption campaign. Even then, dismissing or jailing the corrupt was only one side of the coin. Far more important, as Trong has acknowledged, has been his so-called “morality campaign”. Since 2016, he has reinstated socialist ideology and ethics as the defining factor of party membership.  To be promoted now, an official must at least rhetorically profess fealty to socialism and demonstrate a clean, hard-working lifestyle. At the same time, Trong has re-centralized power, taking away authority from the provincial officials and giving it to his small clique in Hanoi, which is one reason why he has struggled to find a successor, given that he has now cloaked his own position in so much power — perhaps the most since 1986 — that it has become even more precarious and existential if the CPV selects an unfit successor.  So what about next-door Laos?  Similar to Vietnam, it embraced decentralization in the 1990s, stripping the apparatchiks in Vientiane of some of their authority. Given its geography, the central party apparatus in Laos has always been unable to fully control what local officials do. Its capitalist reforms in the late 1980s also stripped socialist ideology as a common cause within Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP). In fact, the LPRP has long been less ideological than its Vietnamese counterpart.  Anti-corruption failure Nationalism, too, has disappeared. Indeed, the growing anti-Chinese chorus of Laotians has led many to regard the LPRP with disdain, believing it has allowed foreign businesses to destroy the environment and made Laotians second-class citizens.  Unlike in Vietnam, however, anti-corruption efforts have failed in Laos.  When he became prime minister in 2016, Thongloun Sisssoloth vowed to unleash a vast anti-graft campaign, but it had…

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