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The 1989 Tiananmen massacre – as seen by a new generation of watchful eyes

Editor012 mins

On the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre last weekend, a group of protesters gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to pay their respects to the victims of the military crackdown by the Chinese army on peaceful pro-democracy protests.  These protesters were of a similar age to the students they commemorated.  After decades of political brainwashing under the Chinese Communist Party, which bans any public discussion of the 1989 events, many observers had started to believe that China’s young people had lost touch with the kind of political fervor that gave rise to the student movements of the 1980s.  Then, the “white paper” protests came, spreading across China in late 2022 in the wake of a fatal fire in Urumqi and after three years of COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantine camps and compulsory daily testing.  The result was to light up the pro-democracy movement in the diaspora, with young people once more taking to the streets of cities around the world to demand better for China, and to remember those who had gone before them.   Wang Han, 26, currently studying at the University of Southern California  Wang told us in a recent interview that the Tiananmen massacre occupies a similar place in his mind to the three years of stringent lockdowns and travel bans of the zero-COVID policy under President Xi Jinping. Wang, who described himself as deeply involved in the “white paper” movement, said the two are similar because they were the products of the same authoritarian government. “It’s what I’ve been saying to so many people,” he said. “I think everyone needs to stand together in the face of totalitarian tyranny.” “Everyone needs to stand together in the face of totalitarian tyranny,” says Wang Han. Credit: Screenshot from Wang Han video  Wang’s politics have evolved since Xi took power in 2012, and amended the constitution in 2018 to allow himself to rule indefinitely. Before Xi consolidated power in his own hands, Wang had allowed himself to hope that China might one day relinquish its authoritarian government peacefully, the way Taiwan did in the 1990s, to become a fully functioning democracy. “Under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, I didn’t support the Chinese Communist Party, but at that time I naively believed that this country would get better, a bit like Taiwan, with everyone moving forward step by step until finally, (Taiwan’s) Democratic Progressive Party was in power,” he said. “But when Xi Jinping amended the constitution in 2018, that really shocked me,” Wang said. “Then there was the pandemic emerging in Wuhan, and social movements started to inspire me even more.” Since then, Wang has dropped the belief that China will follow Taiwan’s path to democratization. “The Communist Party has done a more complete job of destroying grassroots social organizations in China, and it is more totalitarian” than the authoritarian Kuomintang government that once ruled Taiwan, he said. “I don’t think it is going to evolve away from tyranny through normal demands for reform,” Wang said. “That will only happen through a more determined kind of resistance.” Looking back, Wang sees scant signs of any political evolution at all in the past 73 years of Communist Party rule in China. “It doesn’t matter how different the ideas of Xi Jinping and Deng Xiaoping are,” he said. “The Communist Party and Marxism are totalitarian systems, and the totalitarian consciousness is deeply ingrained in them, and in their ideas.”   Xiao Yajie, 23, mainland Chinese who grew up in Hong Kong Xiao, who is working in Los Angeles, grew up hearing about the Tiananmen massacre in Hong Kong, which still had the freedom to hold annual candlelight gatherings every June 4, in Victoria Park. But smaller events were also taking place in the city’s schools, away from the eye of the international media. “Hong Kong’s political direction was still very liberal, and every school would hold June 4 commemorative activities,” she said. “During those years that I was studying in Hong Kong, our school would have spontaneous activities every year, and everyone would go to the auditorium to mourn the students.” “We would have candlelight evenings all through my elementary and high school years,” Xiao said.  Xiao Yajie takes part in a rally for the Los Angeles “white paper” movement. Credit: Provided by Xiao Yajie  Back then, Xiao didn’t give it much thought — until 2016, when her parents ran into some tourists from mainland China at a vigil in Victoria Park who denied the massacre had ever happened. “My parents told me about this, and I realized how much people in mainland China had been deceived,” she said. “This left a deep impression on me.” When the 2019 protest movement kicked off in Hong Kong, in response to plans to allow extradition of alleged criminal suspects to mainland China, Xiao went back to take part, getting tear gassed by the Hong Kong police, and watching supporters of the Chinese Communist Party throw things at protesters on the street. Xiao continues to take part in local activism, including during the “white paper” movement, which she found inspiring. “This is a democratic movement that is better than the 1989 movement because this group of brave people stood up under huge political pressure [not to],” she said. “Although some of the people who launched the white paper movement may not even have known about June 4, it carried forward what the university students left undone [in 1989],” Xiao said. “That yearning for freedom and democracy from the past — it’s actually in our bones.” Ji Xin, a U.S.-based student from Shanghai in his early 20s Ji was among the few young people to find out what happened on the night of June 3-4 when the People’s Liberation Army entered Beijing in columns of tanks, firing machine guns at unarmed civilians on the streets and putting a bloody end to weeks of student-led protests on Tiananmen Square. He first heard adults talking about it when he was just eight years old. “I was playing…

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Blinken to travel to China next week: Reports

Editor02 mins

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing next week, Reuters and the Associated Press reported Friday, as the United States seeks to shore up strained ties with China. Both Reuters and AP said Blinken would be in Beijing on June 18, next Sunday, citing anonymous American officials. AP said he would meet with Foreign Minister Qin Gang and possibly President Xi Jinping. State Department officials would not confirm the reported plans. In February, Blinken abruptly canceled a trip to Beijing just hours before he was set to depart Washington after officials said a Chinese spy balloon was found floating over the United States. China insisted it was a weather balloon that strayed off course. Since then, an unofficial trip by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to New York and Los Angeles in March has further inflamed ties. Relations between the world’s two major powers have been tense since August, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan to the protests of Beijing, which regards the democratic island as a renegade province and has vowed to reunite it with the mainland. There has also been an uptick in near-miss accidents between the two countries’ militaries in the past two weeks in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, with the Pentagon accusing China’s navy and air force of dangerous maneuvering in front of American vessels.

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Unknown group kills brother of National Unity Government human rights advisor

Editor03 mins

Than Myint, the elder brother of the shadow National Unity Government’s human rights advisor, has been stabbed to death in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon, according to his brother Aung Kyaw Moe. He said a gang attacked his brother near the Nwe Aye Mosque on Wednesday and escaped before the police arrived. “We are blood [relatives] and I am working on human rights,”Aung Kyaw Moe told RFA Friday. “I sent facts about this to relevant colleagues and the international community. When the relatives of those involved in the revolution are targeted and killed we must bring justice to those cases.” Pro-junta activists took to social media to claim responsibility but it is still not clear which group was behind the killing. Than Myint was from a Rohingya family that used to live in Rakhine state. He and his family members fled Rakhine separately after the Muslim group suffered persecution in 2012 and 2017. Of the 1 million Rohingya who lived in Rakhine state, three quarters have fled to Bangladesh, while many of the rest live in Internally Displaced Persons camps with inadequate food and shelter. The National Unity Government’s human rights ministry released a message of condolence for Than Myint’s killing on Friday. On Thursday, pro-junta Telegram channels called on supporters to release the names of people opposed to the February 2021 military coup and the names of family members of those who have gone into exile. The killing of Than Myint follows the murder of the mother and sister of one of the men accused of killing pro-junta singer and actor Lily Naing Kyaw in Yangon. Furious pro-junta groups called for revenge, identifying the alleged killer and giving his address on social media. Kaung Zarni Hein’s family were shot dead in their home the same night. More than 3,600 civilians, including pro-democracy activists, have been killed since the coup according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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Jailed Vietnamese climate activist to start hunger strike on Friday

Editor09 mins

A Vietnamese climate activist serving a five-year prison sentence for tax evasion will begin a hunger strike on Friday unless he is immediately and unconditionally released, his wife told Radio Free Asia. Lawyer and environmentalist Dang Dinh Bach, 44, who had campaigned to reduce Vietnam’s reliance on coal, was arrested in June 2021 and then sentenced to five years in jail.  Bach was director of the Law and Policy of Sustainable Development Research Center, which works with communities affected by development, poor industrial practices and environmental degradation to help them understand and enforce their rights. Authorities accused him of not paying taxes for sponsorships his organization received from foreign donors. He is one of several Vietnamese activists sentenced for tax evasion—a charge that rights groups say is politically motivated.  In a conversation with RFA’s Vietnamese Service on Thursday, Bach’s wife, Tran Phuong Thao, said he planned to start a hunger strike the next day. She said he had already been skipping meals and had only been eating one meal a day since March 17. “He wants to send his sincere love to all species and people,” said Thao. “The hunger strike is for the environment, justice, and climate. He wants to take action to awaken everyone’s love to protect Mother Nature and combat climate change.” Bach also told his wife that the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Vietnamese government should reconsider their stance on environmental activists, as they are not a threat to political security. “[They should] stop ungrounded arrests and wrongful convictions,” said Thao. “Also, [Vietnam] must implement its commitments against climate change in a responsible and substantive manner.” Thao said that it would be her husband’s fourth hunger strike, which could last for many days and be dangerous. Bach asked his family to stop sending food to him in prison except for hydration and electrolyte replenishment packs for emergency use. Bach said he would regularly send two letters to his family each month, she said, and if no letters arrived, that meant he was in danger in prison. Rights dialogue The news from Bach’s wife comes on the eve of a bilateral human rights dialogue with the European Union.  The regional bloc should add cases like Bach’s to the agenda for discussion, New York-based Human Rights Watch, or HRW, said in a statement Thursday. “The EU claimed its 2020 Free Trade Agreement would encourage Vietnam to improve its human rights record, but just the opposite has happened,” said Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director.  “Hanoi’s disregard for rights has already made it clear that the EU needs to consider actions that go beyond simply issuing statements and hoping for the best.” HRW recalled that the expectation for the establishment of the a EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement Domestic Advisory Group was to promote Vietnamese independent civil society groups’ participation in monitoring the implementation of the EVFTA trade and sustainable development provisions, but cited the tax related arrests of Bach, and another activist Mai Phan Loi, as evidence to the contrary. HRW also urged the EU to press the Vietnamese government to amend or repeal several vague penal code articles which the authorities frequently use to repress civil and political rights, as well as two constitutional articles which allow for restrictions on human rights for reasons of national security that go beyond what is permissible under international human rights law. “The EU should get serious about pressing the Vietnamese government to convert rights pledges into genuine reform,” Robertson said. “It’s not much of a rights dialogue if Vietnam officials are just going through the motions, expressing platitudes, and waiting for the meeting to end.” Political prisoners In May 2023, HRW made a submission to the EU on the human rights situation in Vietnam, and urged the bloc to press the Vietnamese authorities to immediately release all political prisoners and detainees. Among the hundreds of cases raised in the submission was that of  “Onion Bae” Bui Tuan Lam, who is serving a 5½-year sentence on propaganda charges. Lam, 39, who ran a beef noodle stall in Danang, achieved notoriety in 2021 after posting an online video mimicking the Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, known as “Salt Bae.” The video was widely seen as a mockery of Vietnam’s minister of public security, To Lam, who was caught on film being hand-fed one of Salt Bae’s gold-encrusted steaks by the chef at his London restaurant at a cost of 1,450 pounds (US$1,790).  In a conversation with RFA about Lam’s recent trial in May, his lengthy sentence, and the upcoming EU-Vietnam human rights dialogue, his wife, Le Thanh Lam said that rights organizations in the EU and UN understand how Vietnamese authorities have done many wrongful things the family.  “My kids lost their right to have a father next to them while their father did not do anything unlawful. Everything my husband did is[allowed] under Vietnam’s Constitution and laws,” she said. “He only exercised freedom of speech and other human rights enshrined in the U.N. documents that Vietnam signed.” Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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Myanmar military kills 6 people in raid on Sagaing region village

Editor04 mins

Junta troops have shot dead six people in a raid on a village in Myanmar’s northern Sagaing region, residents and People’s Defense Force officials told RFA Thursday. They entered Monywa’s Yae Kan Su village on Wednesday morning, killing four anti-regime soldiers, two of them still in their teens. Troops then shot dead two civilians as they tried to run away, according to locals. Soe Gyi, acting battalion commander of Monywa District Defense Force Battalion-27 identified the dead members of his group as 20-year-old Khin Yadanar Oo, 18-year-old Zin Zin Soe, 17-year-old Ah Thay Lay, and a 24-year old known by the initials B.E. He said a junta column with about 80 soldiers suddenly arrived in the village at dawn, taking his troops by surprise. “[The camp] was raided when the patrol had withdrawn for physical training,” he said. “Four PDF [People’s Defense Force] members were arrested, shot dead on the spot and burned.” Defense force members fired back but then had to retreat due to lack of support and weapons, he said, adding that troops seized hand-made guns, bullets, communication equipment, uniforms and nine motorbikes. Residents said troops killed a 50-year-old and an 18-year-old who tried to flee during the raid. They didn’t name the two men. Pro-junta social media channels said troops killed five People’s Defense Force members, not four, and didn’t mention the civilians. They said the three men and two women were hiding in a village school. The Telegram channels also confirmed reports that junta troops seized weapons and ammunition. Locals said junta troops have raided five villages near Monywa in recent days, forcing around 2,000 people to flee Yae Kan Su village. The number driven out of the other four villages is not yet known. Nearly 750,000 people have been forced to abandon their homes in Sagaing due to fighting since the Feb. 2021 coup, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). RFA’s calls to Sagaing region’s junta spokesperson and social affairs minister, Aing Hlang, went unanswered Thursday. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.  

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North Korean diplomat’s wife and son go missing in Russian far east

Editor07 mins

Russian authorities have issued a missing persons alert for the family of a North Korean diplomat, in what local and international media reports said could be an attempted defection.  According to a public notice issued Tuesday, Kim Kum Sun, 43, and her son Park Kwon Ju, 15, were last seen on Sunday leaving the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east, and their whereabouts are unknown.  They are the wife and son of a North Korean trade representative in his 60s surnamed Park, sources in Vladivostok told RFA’s Korean Service. Park, considered a diplomat, had returned to North Korea in 2019, they said. Park and his family were dispatched to Russia prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, where they were assigned to earn foreign currency for the North Korean regime by running the Koryo and Tumen River restaurants in Vladivostok, a source in Vladivostok who declined to be named told Radio Free Asia. The missing woman was identified as Kim Kum Sun, who was the acting manager of both restaurants on behalf of her husband, according to a Russian citizen of Korean descent familiar with confidential news involving North Korean state-run companies in Vladivostok. He spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons. Rode off in taxi On the day they disappeared, the mother and son rode a taxi and got off on Nevskaya Street, which is not far from the consulate, Russian Media reported. The consulate reported to authorities that they had lost touch with the pair after they were not able to contact them. “[The mother and son] had been detained in the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok for several months and then disappeared during the time they had once per week to go out,” the  Russian citizen of Korean descent said. “Park said he would return after the restaurant’s business performance review, but he was not able to return because the border has been closed since COVID hit,” he said, adding that the pandemic was rough on business at the Koryo restaurant, that Kim Kum Sun was running in her husband’s stead. “In October of last year, the assistant manager, who oversaw personnel escaped,” the Korean Russian said. The assistant manager of the Koryo restaurant, Kim Pyong Chol, 51 attempted to claim asylum but was arrested.  Shortly afterward, the consulate closed the restaurant fearing that others would also attempt to escape, he said. “The acting manager and her son were then placed under confinement inside the consulate in Vladivostok,” said the Korean Russian. “They were allowed to go out only one day a week since they did not commit any specific crime, they just did chores inside the consulate and were monitored.” Fear of returning Rumors about a possible reopening of the North Korea-Russia border have made North Koreans stranded in Russia by the pandemic anxious that they might have to return to their homeland soon, another North Korea-related source in Vladivostok told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.  “They fear that when they return to North Korea, they will return to a lifestyle where they are cut off from the outside world,” the North Korea-related source said. The fear of returning to one of the world’s most isolated countries is palpable among the fledgling community of North Korean dispatched workers and officials in Vladivostok, said Kang Dongwan, a professor at Busan’s Dong-A University, who recently visited the far eastern Russian city. “The North Korean workers I met in Vladivostok were in a harsh situation and were quite agitated,” he said. “If [a border reopening] happens, there is a high possibility that North Korean workers and diplomats’ families will return to North Korea. So they may have judged that the only chance to escape North Korea is now.” According to South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, the presidential office in Seoul has confirmed that the mother and son have gone missing, and the related South Korean agencies are actively searching for their whereabouts. They have not made contact with South Korean authorities. An official from the office told Dong-A that the case is “not yet at the stage where they are trying to seek asylum in South Korea, as far as I know.” Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. 

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Fiji’s prime minister says policing agreement with China under review

Editor05 mins

Fiji’s government is reviewing a police cooperation agreement with China, the Pacific island country’s prime minister said Wednesday, underlining the balancing act between economic reliance on the Asian superpower and security ties to the United States. Sitiveni Rabuka, who became Fiji’s prime minister after an election in December broke strongman Frank Bainimarama’s 16 year hold on power, has emphasized shared values with democracies such as U.S. ally Australia and New Zealand. His government also has accorded a higher status to Taiwan’s representative office in Fiji, but has not fundamentally altered relations with Beijing.  “When we came in [as the government] we needed to look at what they were doing [in the area of police cooperation],” Rabuka told a press conference during an official visit to New Zealand’s capital Wellington. “If our values and our systems differ, what cooperation can we get from that?” The agreement signed in 2011 has resulted in Fijian police officers undertaking training in China and short-term Chinese police deployments to Fiji. Plans for a permanent Chinese police liaison officer in Fiji were announced in September 2021, according to Fijian media. “We need to look at that [agreement] again before we decide on whether we go back to it or we continue the way we have in the past – cooperating with those who have similar democratic values and systems, legislation, law enforcement and so on,” Rabuka said. China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and build its own set of global institutions.  Beijing’s relations with Fiji particularly burgeoned after Australia, New Zealand and other countries sought to punish it for Bainimarama’s 2006 coup that ousted the elected government. It was Fiji’s fourth coup in three decades. Rabuka orchestrated two coups in the late 1980s.  Last year, China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, alarming the U.S. and its allies such as Australia. The Solomons and Kiribati switched their diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019. The Chinese embassy in Fiji has said that China has military and police cooperation with many developing nations that have different political systems from China. “The law enforcement and police cooperation between China and Fiji is professional, open and transparent,” it said in May.  “We hope relevant parties can abandon ideological prejudice, and view the law enforcement and police cooperation between China and Fiji objectively and rationally.” China also provides extensive training for Solomon Islands police and equipment such as vehicles and water cannons.  Solomon Islands deputy police commissioner Ian Vaevaso said in a May 31 statement that 30 Solomon Islands police officers were in China for training on top of more than 30 that were sent to the Fujian Police College last year.  Rabuka has expressed concerns about police cooperation with Beijing since being elected prime minister.  “There’s no need for us to continue, our systems are different,” Rabuka said in January, according to a Fiji Times report. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.

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Rudd foresees ‘seamless’ AUKUS defense industry

Editor08 mins

The long-term goal of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States is a “seamless” defense and technology industry across the three countries, Canberra’s new ambassador in Washington, Kevin Rudd, said on Tuesday. In his first public remarks since assuming the role, the former Australian prime minister said one of his first tasks would be to help shepherd legislation through Congress to enable the March 13 deal for the United States to sell nuclear submarines to Australia. “Our critical tasks during the course of 2023 is to work with our friends in the administration and the United States Congress to support the passage of the key elements of the enabling legislation,” Rudd said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  “This is not just a piece of admin detail,” he added. “You’re looking at four or five pieces of legislation, and each with attendant congressional committee oversight. This is a complex process.” Beijing has criticized the AUKUS pact and Australia’s purchase of nuclear-powered submarines from the United States, saying the countries were going down “a wrong and dangerous path.”  But Canberra says the nuclear submarines, which can travel three times as fast as conventional submarines and stay at sea for much longer without refueling, are essential to protect vital sea lanes. Unfinished business Negotiations leading to the March 13 deal were at times messy, with Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island and chairman of the Senate Armed Services, initially opposing the sale of submarines to Australia amid massive backlogs across U.S. shipbuilding yards. In the end, the United States agreed to sell up to five older-generation nuclear submarines to Canberra in the coming years while the Australian, U.S. and U.K. governments develop Australia’s capacity to build its own submarines by the 2040s. But Rudd told the CSIS event that was only the first step. He said the bigger question for AUKUS would be integration. “How do we move towards the creation, soon, of a seamless Australia-U.S.-U.K. defense, science and technology industry?” he asked, adding that success in integration of the industries “could be even more revolutionary than the submarine project in itself.” It would provide, he added, the ability to turn plans, such as submarine deals, into reality “not 15 years, but five years, four years and three years, to remain competitive and therefore deterrent.” U.S.-China relations Rudd, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013, said his instructions from Canberra now were to “work like hell to build guardrails in the relationship between the U.S. and China,” over Taiwan and the South China Sea to avoid “war by accident.” But he also said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong wanted Australia to work with the United States to “enhance deterrence”  to “cause the Central Military Commission in China to think twice” about any military action. Rudd said Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear his main strategy was to use “the gravitational pull of the Chinese economy” as leverage, which he said was only interrupted by COVID. “Even though growth has now slowed in China, Chinese strategy is fairly clear, which is to make China the indispensable market that it had begun to become,” Rudd said. “It’s directed to countries around the world in the Global South, and in Europe, and beyond.” Rudd said the U.S. policy of “derisking” its supply chains away from China – without completely “decoupling” the economies – was a natural reaction to that geopolitical strategy, even if Australia, as an island nation reliant on trade, still preferred free-trade policies.  Wong, the Australian foreign minister, used in a speech in Washington in December to call on the United States, which pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, to return to a focus on trade as it seeks to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. Rudd said Australia still wanted the United States to return to the trade pact – reworked as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership under Japan’s leadership – but was realistic about domestic pressures on U.S. administrations. “We understand what’s happened in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We understand the rise of industrial policy in this country,” Rudd said. “Our job is to work within the grain of U.S. strategic policy settings and to maximize openness.” “Look, this is an old relationship,” he said. “We’ve been knocking around with each other for the last 100 years or more, and in any relationship, there are going to be times when you agree or disagree, but you decide to make the relationship work.” Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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Vietnam court sentences music teacher to 8 years in prison

Editor04 mins

A court in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province has sentenced music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc to eight years in prison and four years of probation for allegedly “conducting anti-state propaganda,” his wife and one of his lawyers told RFA Tuesday. The 60-year-old instructor at Dak Lak Pedagogical College in Vietnam’s Central Highland, frequently posted on Facebook about educational issues, human rights violations, corrupt officials and social injustice. Police arrested him on Sept. 8 last year, and charged him with “making, storing, spreading or propagating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” which carries a maximum 12-year prison term. Even though Phuoc didn’t receive the maximum sentence, lawyer Le Van Luan said the court should have been more lenient towards his client. “With the circumstances of the case, that sentence is too heavy compared to what Mr. Phuoc did,” he said. Phuoc’s case has drawn international attention, including from Human Rights Watch, who’s deputy Asia director Phil Robertson described the sentence as “outrageous and unacceptable.” “What it reveals is the Vietnamese government’s total intolerance for ordinary citizens pointing out corruption, speaking out against injustice, and calling for accountability by local officials,” he said on hearing the verdict.  “Those were precisely the things that Dang Dang Phuoc did in Dak Lak, and now the government claims such whistle-blowing actions are propaganda against the state.” During the past decade, Phuoc has campaigned against corruption and advocated for better protections for civil and political rights. He has signed several pro-democracy petitions and called for changes to Vietnam’s constitution, which grants the Communist Party a monopoly on power. “This unjust prison sentence reveals General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s anti-corruption campaign is a sham game that is really more about holding on to power, and marginalizing political rivals, but does not care to address the Communist Party of Vietnam’s widespread malfeasance in its ranks,” said Robertson, comparing Trong with China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping. Police kept a close watch on Phuoc’s wife Le Thi Ha ahead of the trial, warning her she would lose her job if she talked about the case on social media. She was allowed to attend the trial, along with Phuoc’s four lawyers. Ha told RFA her husband plans to appeal the verdict. Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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China pressures Australian press club to cancel Tibetan exile leader’s speech

Editor04 mins

China is under fire for attempting to prevent the leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile from giving a speech at the Australian National Press Club in Canberra, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Chinese Embassy representatives met with press club chief Maurice Reily last week and voiced their opposition to Penpa Tsering’s scheduled appearance on June 20, requesting that his invitation be revoked. China has controlled Tibet since it invaded the region in 1949, and rejects any notion of a Tibetan government-in-exile, particularly the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama, who lives in Dharamsala, India. Beijing has also stepped up efforts to erode Tibetan culture, language and religion.  Speeches given at the National Press Club are broadcast on Australian TV and attended by prominent members of the press, so Beijing may be worried about the wider exposure Penpa Tsering would get.. “China expresses strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to Australia, in disregard of China’s position and concern, allowing him to use the NPC platform to engage in separatist activities,” the newspaper quoted a letter from the embassy to Reily as saying. “The Chinese side urges the Australian side to see through the nature of the Dalai clique, respect China’s core interests and major concerns, and take concrete actions to remove the negative effects so as to prevent the disruption of the sound development of China-Australia relations and media co-operation.” Free Speech Despite Beijing’s pressure, Reilly told local media that there were no plans to cancel the appearance, and tickets remain on sale on the website of the press club.  He said he told the Chinese Embassy officials that the press club was “an institution for free speech, free media and public debate.” The National Press Club is a stage where everyone is allowed to share their views, Kyinzom Dhongdue, a human rights activist and a former member of the Tibetan parliament in exile, told Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service. “We all know how China has worked to build its influence and dependence through trade and economic ties with Australia,” she said. “In the last decade we have seen Australia’s top educational institution cancel a talk by the Dalai Lama, apparently due to pressure from China. But this time, putting pressure on the National Press Club is unimaginable because the National Press Club stands for Freedom of Speech.” Karma Singey, the representative for the Dalai Lama in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, said Australia would not cave to Chinese influence. “Australia is a democratic country so we are confident that Australia will not let the Chinese government expand its influence and undermine Australian institutions,” he said. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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