China has put pro-democracy activists under house arrest ahead of the 33rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, while the strict suppression of June 4 commemorations of victims has spread to once-free Hong Kong, now under mainland-style authoritarian rule. But with the student protesters now well into their 50s, and children born since the killings being raised with scant knowledge of the event, the passage of time is helping the Communist Party erase memories.
Runaway inflation in Laos has caused prices of food, gas and other essentials to nearly double over the past year, some even within the last month, sources in the country told RFA. Inflation in the country is closely related to the value of the kip relative to other currencies, due to the country’s heavy reliance on imports for most of its consumer needs. On Friday, U.S. $1 equaled about 13,950 kip, compared with 9,420 kip a year ago, for a depreciation of about 48%. The sudden rise in food prices is making life difficult, sources told RFA. “On Saturday, May 28, 2022, I gave 2,000 kip [$0.50] to my 12-year-old son to go to buy some eggs from a nearby store for his lunch,” a mother in the capital Vientiane, who like all other unnamed sources in this report, requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA on Tuesday. “At first, I thought that with the 2,000 kip, my son would be able to buy two eggs. But, when he arrived home with only one egg, I was surprised that the price of an egg has now doubled since late last year,” she said. Six months ago a pack of instant noodles in Vientiane’s Hatxayfong district cost 20,000 kip, now it costs 40,000, a resident there told RFA. “The price of everything is doubling,” she said. Pork in Pakse, a city in the southern province of Champassak, now costs 55,000 kip a kilogram (2.2 pounds), up from 30,000 kip, a resident said. “Food prices are going up every day. The government must solve the problem,” the person said. According to data from the Lao Statistics Bureau and RFA Lao, in just the past month, the cost to buy rice, beef, pork or eggs has significantly increased. Eggs have doubled in price. Inflation is not limited to food. The price of gas rose for the 13th time this year on June 1, according to the Lao Ministry of Industry and Commerce. Regular unleaded gas increased from 23,770 kip per liter ($6.46 per gallon) to 28,070 per liter ($7.64/gallon) Gas prices are so high that “a lot of people go across the Mekong River to visit [Thailand] and buy cheaper gas and other consumer goods,” a motorist in Vientiane told RFA. “We have to adjust ourselves to the new normal, in other words to change our lifestyle,” Another motorist told RFA “For example, I drive my car only when it’s very necessary and I sometimes drive to Thailand to buy cheaper gasoline, vegetable oil, fish sauce and other food items.” A gas station owner in Thailand verified the trend. He told RFA that two weeks ago he noticed a sharp increase in customers from Laos. “Most of them buy consumer goods and fill their vehicle tanks with gasoline on their way back home,” he said. Public transportation costs are also rising. “Starting June 1, 2022, a Laos-China train ticket to the capital Vientiane will be 242,000 kip at the sale office counter and 262,000 kip at stores, up from 198,000 kip,” a ticket seller in Luang Prabang City, Luang Prabang Province, said. Train fares are out of reach for most people, a villager in the northern province of Luang Prabang told RFA. “Most people are suffering from severe gas shortage and inflation, and now there are high train fares too,” he said. “I want to see lower prices because everything is going up. Farmers in Laos have had to deal with a double-whammy of inflation and shortages of some products required to do their work. The combination has delayed plowing in the southern province of Attapeu, a provincial official told RFA. “These farmers are poor and unable to afford gas. They just sit and wait for gas prices to come down,” he said. Small businesses are also suffering in the harsh economic climate, a Vientiane businessman told RFA. “One half of all SMEs [small-to-medium enterprises] are dead. They can’t survive the high gas prices and lack of business. The other half is struggling.” The World Bank reported that inflation in Laos jumped to 9.9% in April this year from only 2% in January 2021. The bank recommended that the country stabilize the kip, push for more agricultural production, work to attract more investment and create more jobs. A Lao financial expert told RFA that the country must change how its economy has operated to survive. “One of the solutions would be that we should import fewer goods. We can’t afford to buy as much as before because we have less foreign money,” he said. “The other solution would be that we produce more domestically.” Sonexay Sitphaxay, governor of the National Bank of Lao P.D.R., told reporters on May 27 that the government was trying several approaches to solve its problems. “[We] are attempting to divert foreign currencies into the banking system from black market, punish money exchangers and manipulators, reduce the impact of inflation on society, negotiate with trade partners and convince them to accept the kip, and reduce the need of foreign currencies,” he said. An economist told RFA, “First for most, the government should stabilize the kip, increase foreign currency reserve and expand economy in a sustainable way.” But the recovery for Laos will take time, an Asian Development Bank employee said. “[It] is going to be slow this year and in the next several years because of COVID-19, the stronger U.S. dollar and the crisis in Ukraine,” he told RFA. “While the buying power of Laotians is lower, the Lao economy may start up again in 2-3 years.” Translated by RFA’s Lao Service. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
In the first part of this two-part essay, Bao Tong, a former political secretary to late, ousted Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang, comments on then Premier Li Peng’s accounts of the events leading up to the June 4, 1989 bloodshed by the People’s Liberation Army that put an end to weeks of student-led protests on Tiananmen Square. An English-language version of the diary was published in 2010 as “The Critical Moment – Li Peng Diaries.” Zhao was later removed from office and spent the rest of his life under house arrest at his Beijing home, dying in early 2005. Bao, who before the events of 1989 worked as director of the Office of Political Reform of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, served a seven-year jail term for “revealing state secrets and counter-revolutionary propagandizing.” The 89-year-old Bao, a long-time contributor of commentary on a wide range of Chinese and international issues for RFA Mandarin, including a column titled “Under House Arrest,” remains under close police surveillance in Beijing.This article is addressed to those working in the free press and to researchers. Let’s start with a few key events from the spring and summer of 1989: April 15, 1989: Hu Yaobang dies. He had been one of the best-loved Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders because of his commitment to reversing millions of miscarriages of justice from the days of the Cultural Revolution, and for his advocacy of free thinking, and because his ouster at the hands of Deng Xiaoping in early 1987 elicited widespread public sympathy. April 16, 1989: Li Jing asks then general secretary Zhao Ziyang what the official line should be on the students’ mass mourning for Hu on Tiananmen Square. Zhao answers, in front of the entire Politburo standing committee and Deng Xiaoping’s secretary: “It’s fine. Yaobang was our leader. If we mourn him ourselves, then how can we forbid the students from doing the same? April 19, 1989: Deng Xiaoping tells Zhao Ziyang he should still go on his scheduled trip to North Korea. April 22, 1989: As the official memorial service for Hu Yaobang concludes, Zhao announces that he will leave for North Korea on the following day. “I have three things to say about the students,” he says. “1. The mourning period is over, and the students should be told to go back to class. 2. There is to be no deployment of the police or military unless there is smashing and looting. 3. We should seriously study the students’ demands and resolve this through consultation and dialogue with all sectors.” All of this was endorsed by the entire Politburo standing committee, and by Deng himself. These three points were effectively a resolution by the standing committee. Zhao also told me at the time that, with regard to political reform, we should focus all of our efforts on achieving dialogue and consultation, because that in itself was a kind of reform. I was present for all of the above, and I take responsibility for authenticating it. As the events described below, I have no knowledge of them other than via the account provided in “Li Peng: June 4th Diary.” Beijing youths chant as they drive to Tiananmen Square to lend their enthusiastic support to striking university students, May 19, 1989, Beijing, China. Credit: AP Two Li Pengs Regarding the events of April 23, we see two Li Pengs described by Li in his diary. Let’s look at the afternoon Li Peng first. That Li Peng accompanies Zhao to the railway station, where he will take a train to North Korea, and asks him if there are any other instructions. Zhao replies: “No. Just get it done.” Li returns to CCP headquarters in Zhongnanhai, immediately seeks out then National People’s Congress (NPC) chairman Qiao Shi, and they send out the communique together. That was the Li Peng we see in the afternoon. Now let’s look at the evening Li Peng. Li writes that Yang Shangkun, president of the People’s Republic of China, told him to go and see Deng, that Li asked if Yang would come too, and that Yang agreed. So, did Yang and Li actually go visit Deng that evening? If so, what did they talk about? What actually happened? What made Li, Yang and Deng feel the need to meet up the moment Zhao’s back was turned? The diary doesn’t say they actually went, but neither does it say they only talked about going, but wound up not going. There’s nothing in Deng’s official annual report about any meeting, planned or actual, with Li and Yang that night. It claims that Deng didn’t meet with Li and Yang to hear their reports until the following morning, on April 25. This is entirely understandable, as Deng’s annual reports are CCP records that are kept confidential within the party. To find out the truth of the matter, we need to go back to Li Peng’s diary and take a closer look at what Li Peng was doing and thinking on the evening of April 23. I believe with 100 percent certainty that Li Peng had figured out what Deng Xiaoping was prepared to do to quash the student protests by the evening of April 23. Because there must be a reason for Li Peng’s apparent transformation starting from that evening. Because Li wasn’t the same premier after that point, the premier who had been in such a hurry to send out documents conveying general secretary Zhao Ziyang’s three-point opinion earlier the same day. Instead, he singlehandedly rejects this important communique from general secretary Zhao Ziyang that had already been endorsed by the entire Politburo standing committee. According to his diary, Li was worried that the students would bring back the chaos of the Cultural Revolution to China. So he decided to instruct the Beijing municipal party committee to make a report on the student unrest to the standing committee immediately. He also took unusual care to prime Wen Jiabao, then head of the General Affairs Office that coordinates the workings…
A Vietnamese journalist is in failing health after serving two years of a prison sentence for criticizing the country’s one-party communist government, RFA has learned. Prison authorities have rejected requests he be allowed to seek medical treatment outside his jail. Le Huu Minh Tuan, a member of the Vietnam Independent Journalists’ Association, was arrested on June 12, 2020, on a charge of “conducting propaganda against the state,” and is now serving an 11-year term at the Bo La Detention Center in southern Vietnam’s Binh Duong province. Tuan had been held first at another detention center in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Thanh district, where harsh conditions behind bars caused his health to deteriorate, his sister Na told RFA after speaking with Tuan on May 26 in the first family visit allowed to him since his arrest. “My brother is in very bad health. I couldn’t recognize him,” Na said, describing Tuan as emaciated and hard of hearing. “He has scabies, and he’s also malnourished as the food and living conditions where he’s being held are so tough.” Detention center officials have refused Tuan’s request to get medical care at an outside facility, though family members are allowed to send medicine to him inside the jail, Na said. Tuan had been kept in his cell all day while serving the first two years of his sentence at the Phan Dan Luu Detention Center in Binh Thanh, but now is allowed outside for 15 to 30 minutes each day at his new jail in Binh Duong, Na said. “However, the food there is horrible and has no nutrition at all,” she said. “They feed him only rice and a poor quality of soup without salt or other spices, and the rice itself is only half-cooked and mixed with sand.” The number of family visits allowed to prisoners at the Bo La Detention Center is restricted, and relatives can bring in only limited amounts of food, Na said. “For example, when Tuan ran out of milk and wanted to have some fruit, I went to the prison cafeteria to register to buy some for him, but was told I couldn’t do it,” she said. Tuan’s family had heard no news of him for the first two years following his arrest, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. They were finally told that he had been sent to the Bo La facility in Binh Duong on April 14, Na said. “Now we feel relieved, because we know we can visit him occasionally from now on.” Vietnamese independent journalist Pham Doan Trang is shown in an undated photo. Photo: icj.org Mother of jailed writer accepts award Another jailed Vietnamese writer, Pham Doan Trang, this week was awarded the 2022 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, with her mother, Bui Thi Thien Can, accepting the honor in Geneva, Switzerland, on her behalf. Speaking at the presentation ceremony, Can said she was proud of her daughter, who is now serving a nine-year sentence in Vietnam for “spreading propaganda against the state.” “[Trang] has been determined and persevering in pursuing a path that she fully understands is a dangerous and arduous journey,” Can said. “She has dedicated herself and fought tirelessly for democracy and human rights in Vietnam and for the freedom and happiness of the Vietnamese people.” Accompanying Can to Geneva were Tran Quynh Vi — codirector of the California-based NGO Legal Initiatives for Vietnam and owner of Luat Khoa (Law) Magazine — and democracy activist Will Nguyen. Independent journalists in Vietnam are still working but face massive challenges, Vi said in remarks following the award ceremony. “The good news is that in spite of Ms. Trang’s arrest, our newspapers are still published regularly and we have more and more contributors,” she said. “And the more they prohibit us, the more we want to work in the area.” Also speaking in Geneva, activist Will Nguyen called on citizens of Switzerland and other developed countries to alert their lawmakers and diplomats to Vietnam’s ongoing abuses of human rights. “I think we have a lot of leverage,” said Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American who was arrested for taking part in public protests in Vietnam in 2018 and then deported from the country by a Ho Chi Minh City court. “The more we look into this issue, the more likely it is that the Vietnamese government will treat its citizens with more respect,” he said. A prominent human rights activist and blogger, Trang was arrested on Oct. 6, 2020, and sentenced to nine years in prison on Dec. 14, 2021, on a charge of disseminating anti-state propaganda. The indictment against Trang also accused her of speaking with two foreign media outlets — Radio Free Asia and the British Broadcasting Corporation — “to allegedly defame the government of Vietnam and fabricate news,” according to a letter sent by 25 human rights groups calling for her release ahead of her trial. In addition to the Martin Ennals Award, Trang has also received the 2017 Homo Homini Award presented by the Czech human rights organization People in Need, and the Press Freedom Prize in 2019 from Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Translated by Anna Vu for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Chinese authorities forced the relatives of detained Uyghurs in the town of Ghulja in Xinjiang to attend political study sessions while monitoring their contact with others during a recent visit to the region by the U.N. human rights chief, a local officer police said. Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, visited China on May 23-28 with stops in the coastal city of Guangzhou and in Urumqi (Wulumuqi) and Kashgar (Kashi) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It was the first visit to the country by a U.N. rights chief since 2005. Before her trip, China’s state security police warned Uyghurs living in Xinjiang that they could suffer consequences if their relatives abroad spoke out about internment camps in the region, a reflection of the government’s sensitivity to bad press about its forced assimilation campaign that has incarcerated as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the name of “vocational training.” Bachelet’s itinerary didn’t include a stop in Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining), the third-largest city in the XUAR and the site of a protest by Uyghurs against religious repression 25 years ago that left as many as 200 hundred people dead. But, given the city’s history, Chinese authorities there are sensitive to signs of popular unrest, and they redoubled the surveillance and indoctrination programs imposed on the 12 million Uyghurs across Xinjiang, a territory the size of Alaska or Iran. A village police officer said the “political study session” for the family members of detainees began in mid-April, and that authorities kept a tight rein on their work and social lives. As a result, those residents have been incommunicado with others in their community. “The ones whose fathers or mothers or other relatives were detained, came to the sessions and spoke at the political and legal meetings organized by the village,” he told RFA. During the sessions, the Chinese government enforced a rule for Uyghurs to immediately attend sessions whenever a bell sounded and to leave them when the bell sounded a second time, the police officer said. The attendees gathered in the morning on street corners or at residents’ committees to wait for the signal. “They come with a sound of a bell and leave with another sound of a bell,” he said. “We hold these meetings from 8 a.m. in the morning.” Organized by the village’s 10 family leaders or police, the attendees had to express their gratitude to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government and had to promise that they would help protect national security by not sharing any sensitive information with outsiders. The family members of detained Uyghurs were warned against accepting international calls to ensure that no “state secrets” — meaning in this case the detention of Uyghurs or other measures to repress them — were released. “We told them not to make phone calls or take phone calls from abroad,” the police officer said. “We told them not to directly tell [people] if they asked on the phone about their detained relatives. We warned them to first ask where they are calling from and why they need to ask for the information. We told them not take those phone calls from abroad in order to keep state secrets.” The residents were instructed as to how not to expose information on their detained relatives to the outside world and were told how to give “standard answers” to questions raised by anyone visiting from outside China, he said. Furthermore, if the residents were visited by relatives or friend from other cities, they would be summoned to the police station and asked about what they had discussed with their guests, he said. “If anyone came to [see] their family for a visit from other cities such as Kashgar, we would take them to the police station and investigate who the visitors were, why are they were here and what they talked about,” the policeman said. The mandatory political study sessions ended when Bachelet and her team left the region, he said. Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Authorities in China have ordered dozens of pro-democracy activists and dissidents into house arrest or other forms of restriction ahead of the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on June 4. Dissident political commentator Zha Jianguo and veteran journalist Gao Yu are under house arrest at their Beijing homes, while rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and his wife have been taken on a forced “vacation” out of town. Security is tighter than usual for this year’s anniversary of the bloody crackdown that ended weeks of student-led peaceful protests on Tiananmen Square, as the authorities tighten their grip ahead of the 20th congress of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) later this year. “The police have set guard detail and a car [outside my home] to watch me,” Gao told RFA on Friday. “If I want to go anywhere, they have to take me in their car.” “Also, my landline and mobile phone are no longer acceptable international calls, including calls from Hong Kong,” she said. Dissident commentator Zha Jianguo, who was among the founding members of the long-banned China Democracy Party (CDP), said he is in a similar situation. “They’re stationed [outside],” Zha told RFA. “They do this every year from June 1 to June 5.” “I went out on the morning of June 1 and saw them setting out stools and sitting themselves down outside our home,” he said. “The district police department said they would be sending some people round today as well.” “As far as I know, about seven, eight, maybe 10 people are under house arrest like this in Beijing,” he said. Zha said police have also warned him not to speak about the anniversary in media interviews. “They called me yesterday and said I wasn’t to discuss June 4 with anyone, not in posts, nor in media interviews,” he said. “I told them, it’s been 33 years since June 4, and you’re still doing this?” Sources said fellow Beijing-based dissidents Hu Shigen, He Depu, massacre survivor Qi Zhiyong and others were also under some form of restriction. Construction workers stand next to Chinese characters reading “cold blood” on the ground as they use metal sheeting to cover up one of the last public tributes in Hong Kong to the deadly 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre which has adorned a campus footbridge at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) for over three decades, Jan. 29, 2022. Credit: AFP. Noticeably tighter security You Weijie, spokesperson for the Tiananmen Mothers victims group that campaigns for compensation, redress and transparency of information around the massacre, said she couldn’t talk when contacted by RFA on Friday. “It’s not convenient for me to talk to you right now,” You said, her response suggesting that the authorities were monitoring her communications. Asked if she had been banned from giving media interviews, You replied: “Yes, yes.” She said she and the other Tiananmen Mothers members were being escorted to Wan’an Cemetery on Saturday to make offerings for those who died in the crackdown. “I’ll go tomorrow; the car has been arranged. It’ll be the same families going,” she said. Zhou Xiang, a dissident scholar in the central province of Hunan, said security was particularly tight this year. “Several people in Zhuzhou city have been contacted [by police]. He Jiawei was the first, and they have taken away his mobile phone,” Zhou said. “I also got a call. They told me not to speak out, not to upload photos or text [relating to June 4, 1989], etc.” “As far as I know, maybe seven or eight people received these warnings in Zhuzhou city.” Dissidents in the southwestern megacity of Chongqing reported similar treatment. Democracy advocate Xu Wanping, who served 23 years in jail for trying to set up an opposition party, said he is being taken out of town by police. “They made a point of contacting me and emphasizing that I wasn’t to speak out on anything today or tomorrow,” he said. “They’re taking me out of town for a couple of days; I’ve just gotten ready to leave.” Hong Kong park closure Asked if police were present as he spoke, Xu laughed and replied: “I wish you a healthy Dragon Boat Festival.” He said many others in Chongqing were also being escorted away from their homes. According to Zhou, the moves are part of a nationwide coordinated effort by police to prevent any form of public commemoration of the June 4, 1989 bloodshed, whether through in-person meetings or online. He said the level of security was “unprecedented” for a June 4 anniversary, and was likely linked to political jitters ahead of the 20th Party Congress later this year. Meanwhile, authorities in Hong Kong, where a once-annual candlelight vigil for massacre victims is being banned for the third year running, announced the partial closure of Victoria Park, the venue where it once took place. “In view of the police’s observation that some people are using different channels to incite the participation of unauthorized assemblies in the Victoria Park and its vicinity which may involve the use of the venue for illegal activities, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) [is closing] part of the Victoria Park … until 12.30 a.m. on June 5, in order to prevent any unauthorized assemblies in the Park,” an LCSD spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday. The closed area will include the soccer pitches where the vigils once took place, it said. Police senior superintendent Liauw Ka-kei warned the public not to “test” the force’s willingness to enforce the law on June 4. He warned that solo candlelight vigils will be treated in the same way as gatherings, and that anyone wearing black clothing or carrying candles would be regarded as suspect. He cited recent court precedents as establishing that people could be guilty of “illegal assembly” even if they weren’t present at the scene, if it could be shown that they had in some way promoted such assemblies. “If the purpose of the person’s appearance at the scene makes it seem that he is inciting others to participate in an illegal assembly, the police will definitely search for evidence, and the specific law enforcement action will…
A 24-year-old man has been sentenced to death by hanging by the Tachileik District Court in Myanmar’s eastern Shan State, sources close to the court told RFA. Aik Sai Main, an ethnic Wa from Waine Kyauk Ward, Tachileik city, was arrested by police along with 21-year-old Htin Lin Aung on suspicion of bombing a pro-military rally on Feb. 1 this year. Four months later, the junta-run Tachileik District Court sentenced him on Wednesday to death by hanging under Section 54 of the Anti-Terrorism Law and Section 368 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, according to a source familiar with the court proceedings who did not want to be named for safety reasons. “It is true that he was sentenced to the death penalty by hanging. We investigated that in the District Court,” the source told RFA. “Family members could not come to the venue. They will be so upset. We ethnic groups are saddened by the junta’s arbitrary arrests and verdicts without any evidence.” Htin Lin Aung was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday under Section 52 (a) of the Anti-Terrorism Law. The bomb blast near a military rally in Tachileik on Feb. 1 killed four people and wounded more than 30 others. The bombing came exactly one year after a military coup against an elected civilian government which prompted mass protests, and then escalating violence across the country after the military used extreme force to quell the protests. In the past, the death penalty imposed by the junta has been based mainly on anti-terrorism laws. This is the first case of its kind since the coup to include Section 368 (a) of the Criminal Procedure Code which imposes death by hanging. Section 54 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, which was handed down at the trial, provides for a minimum sentence of 10 years and maximum sentence of life imprisonment or death. Section 368 (a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that when the death penalty is given the person must be executed by hanging. A lawyer who declined to be named for security reasons described the verdict as a harsh sentence, noting that Section 368 (a) of the Criminal Procedure Code allows an appeal. “It gives the right to appeal to the Supreme Court within seven days, whether the sentence is death or death by hanging. Even if the family does not appeal, the prison authorities can appeal on behalf of the victim. Section 368 (1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that the death penalty must be imposed by hanging until death.” Military council spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told a press conference in the capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday the death penalty was a just punishment. Legal experts have criticized the junta for threatening the public with unfair executions. A total of 115 people, including Aik Sai Main, were sentenced to death between Feb. 1, 2021, and May 19, 2022, according to data compiled by RFA based on figures released by the military council. Last month Myanmar’s junta sentenced seven youths to death in the Yangon region after a secret military tribunal found them guilty of murder, a junta newspaper reported. According to Thai-based rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) 13,926 people have been arrested between the start of the coup and June 2 this year. It says 10,870 people are still being held in detention while 3,035 have been freed and 21 released on bail. The group, founded by exiled former political prisoners, says 1,087 people were sentenced in person and 72 of those, including two children, were sentenced to death. Another 120 people were sentenced in absentia with 41 receiving the death penalty.
Wuhan-based activist Zhang Hai, who has campaigned for redress after his father died in the early days of the pandemic, has had restrictions placed on his bank account, RFA. Zhang, who has been an outspoken critic of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the pandemic prompted a city-wide lockdown in Wuhan and killed his father, said he believes the move is a form of official retaliation. Zhang was recently asked to submit additional proof of ID in recent transactions via his account at the Bank of China Nantou branch in the southern city of Shenzhen, where he currently lives. Similar restrictions have been placed on several of his bank cards since the beginning of this year, he told RFA, while online banking transactions often fail to go through, he said. “The card I have is an ordinary bank card, which is linked to my mobile phone,” Zhang said. “All of the cards under my name are restricted, meaning that I can’t do online transactions using payment services like WeChat Pay and Alipay, only cash.” “The way things are in China right now, so many places rely on those services to accept payment, and some places don’t want cash at all, even if I offer it,” he said. Staff at the Nantou Bank of China branch initially said the restrictions were requested by the Wuhan city police department, Zhang said. “The first time I went, they said that the Wuhan police had me under investigation, and had placed the restrictions,” Zhang said. “I went there yesterday, and they told me the bank card had been flagged by their own risk control mechanism, which made me feel as if they were just trying to inconvenience me,” he said. “They wanted me to submit further proofs, but then they said all of my cards were under investigation by Wuhan police,” he said. Zhang filed a lawsuit suing the Wuhan municipal government and a hospital over the wrongful death of his father in 2020, who died of COVID-19 after visiting a doctor in the early days of the pandemic, when the authorities hadn’t warned anyone about the virus. He has also given many interviews to foreign media outlets in recent years. “I have been called in to ‘drink tea’ by the local state security police,” he said. “The Wuhan city government is furious with me, and have used all of their power to deal with me.” “The entire service sector in China, including banks, has to take orders from the government,” he said. Similar restrictions Rights attorney Ren Quanniu, whose lawyer’s license was revoked by the authorities last year, said his bank card had been placed under similar restrictions last year. “My Bank of Communications card was restricted some time ago. I went to the bank to report it, and they said it was under investigation,” Ren said. “I asked by which department, and they said that was confidential.” “But it wasn’t the police or a court, so it’s my guess that it was the state security police,” he said. He said the bank should honor the terms of its contract with customers in the absence of any judicial proceedings. “The bank has no right to inquire about customers’ transactions or how they use the funds,” Ren said. “So the problem with his account is clearly some action behind the scenes.” “If there is a problem, the department should issue a document saying the account-holder is suspected of law-breaking and then the account will be frozen or restricted openly,” Ren said. “But there has been no document issued [regarding Zhang], nor any result from any investigation,” he said. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to the fore U.S.-China frictions with no end in sight, analysts warned, while a former Asian leader cautioned about the risk of a new world war. “I am afraid that wars have a habit of beginning small and then grow into world wars,” former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said at the Future of Asia conference hosted by Nikkei Inc. last week. Mahathir served as Malaysia’s prime minister from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. He was 20 when World War II ended. Meanwhile, Chinese and U.S. analysts present at the conference traded accusations against each other’s countries and their roles in trying to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Bonnie Glaser, Director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that China and Russia share a common interest in weakening U.S. global influence and they “seek to change the international order.” She reminded the audience at the conference that before the Russian invasion of Ukraine it was reported that the U.S. shared intelligence with China about Russia’s military plan and urged Beijing to intervene to prevent the war, only for China to share that intelligence with Moscow. This “underscores how much mistrust is there between the U.S. and China,” Glaser said. In response Jia Qingguo, professor at the Peking University’s School of International Studies, said the difference between China and the U.S. is that the U.S. is seeking an ideological world order while China is seeking a secular one “based on national sovereignty and territorial integrity.” It is the U.S. that has been trying to contain China, Jia said. China does not endorse Russia’s military attack against Ukraine but is sympathetic to Moscow being pushed by NATO’s possible expansion, the Beijing-based professor said, adding: “Never push a country, especially a big country, to a corner, however benign the intentions are.” “Countries should respect each other,” Jia said. Regarding that statement, the German Marshall Fund’s Glaser argued that China has been showing double standards when it comes to the definition of “respect.” “When countries have put their own interests ahead of Chinese interests, that has been interpreted by Beijing as disrespect,” she said. China-U.S. rivalry As the war drags on, “rather than be a strategic partner for China, Russia will become a burden,” predicted Glaser. “One possibility is that the U.S. will be freed up to some extent to focus even more intently on the competition with China and on cooperation with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region,” the American analyst said, pointing out that officials in the Biden administration believe “that is the most likely outcome.” Veteran diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, who is a former permanent secretary to Singapore’s Foreign Ministry, said the key issue at present is U.S.-China relations. “China has been put in a very awkward situation. It has no other partner of the same strategic weight as Russia anywhere in the world,” he said. Speaking from the perspective of Southeast Asian countries, Kausikan said geopolitics are “moving in the direction of the West” but “if you insist in defining this conflict as a fight between totalitarianism and democracy you’ll likely make that support more shaky and shallow.” “Not every country in this region finds every aspect of Western democracy universally attractive. Nor do they find every aspect of Chinese authoritarianism universally unappealing,” he argued. Former Malaysian PM Mahathir seemed to echo the Chinese government’s stance when describing the attitude of the U.S. as “always to apply pressure to force regime change.” “When people do not agree, the U.S. would show that it may take military action,” he said. “That is why there is a tendency for tension to increase whenever it involves the U.S.” But “it’s not easy to contain China,” Kausikan said. “China and the U.S. are both parts of the global economic system. They’re linked together by supply chains … Like it or not, they’re stuck together,” the Singapore analyst said. “Competition will be very complicated,” he added. Arleigh-burke class guided missile-destroyer USS Barry transits the Taiwan Strait during a routine transit on Sept. 17, 2021 in this US Navy photograph Taiwan question Experts at the Tokyo conference also discussed the possibility of a conflict involving Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province that should be reunified with the mainland. Jia Qingguo stated that there should be no comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. “No country has the right to support some residents of another country to split the place in which they live away from that country,” he said. “China has every right to make sure that Taiwan will not be split from China.” Glaser said China’s military is, without doubt, following the war in Ukraine closely. “There are some differences between Taiwan and Ukraine and it’s not a perfect analogy but there are lessons to be drawn.” “Russia has far greater military capabilities than Ukraine but the Ukrainian resistance has been fierce and I wonder if the PLA has actually anticipated a possibility of facing a fierce resistance in Taiwan,” Glaser said. She said she hoped Taiwan would also draw some lessons from the conflict in Ukraine and develop its own defense capabilities in the face of security threats from China.
A suspect in the 2017 Berlin kidnapping of former Vietnamese oil and gas official Trinh Xuan Thanh has been extradited to Germany from the Czech Republic. The Vietnamese national, identified as Anh T.L., was handed over to German authorities on Wednesday after his arrest in Prague earlier this year, news agencies reported citing a statement from the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office. Anh faces charges including espionage and is accused of stalking the victim and driving the getaway van. On July 23, 2017, former Trinh Xuan Thanh was abducted in a Berlin park and thrown into a van with a woman, identified as Thi Minh P.D. He was allegedly smuggled back to Vietnam for trial. A Hanoi court charged Thanh with causing loss of state assets and mismanagement at PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation. He was sentenced to two life terms on corruption charges. At the time of his abduction Thanh was seeking refugee status in Germany. The kidnapping strained German-Vietnamese relations and prompted Berlin to expel two Vietnamese diplomats. A year after the kidnapping, a Vietnamese citizen, identified as Long N.H., was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison by a Berlin court on charges of espionage and assisting Vietnamese secret service agents in entering German territory to kidnap people. “The kidnapping was carried about by members of the Vietnamese secret service and employees of the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin as well as several Vietnamese nationals living in Europe, among them Ahn T.L.,” the German public prosecutor general at the Federal Court of Justice said in a statement seen by news agencies. Vietnam claims Thanh returned voluntarily to face charges.
