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Category: World

Military carried out ‘collective punishment’ on ethnic civilians in eastern Myanmar

Editor08 mins

Myanmar’s military has subjected ethnic civilians in Kayin and Kayah states to “collective punishment” through aerial and ground attacks, detentions that lead to torture or extrajudicial executions, and the razing of villages, according to a new report by London-based rights group Amnesty International. The report, entitled “‘Bullets rained from the sky”: War crimes and displacement in eastern Myanmar’” and published Wednesday, found that clashes between the military and armed groups in the two regions reignited in the wake of the military’s February 2021 coup and worsened significantly from December to March this year. Hundreds of ethnic Karen and Karenni civilians have been killed in the fighting and more than 150,000 people have been displaced. “The world’s attention may have moved away from Myanmar since last year’s coup, but civilians continue to pay a high price. The military’s ongoing assault on civilians in eastern Myanmar has been widespread and systematic, likely amounting to crimes against humanity,” Rawya Rageh, senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Alarm bells should be ringing: the ongoing killing, looting and burning bear all the hallmarks of the military’s signature tactic of collective punishment, which it has repeatedly used against ethnic minorities across the country.” Amnesty based its report on research it carried out in March and April this year, including interviews dozens of eyewitnesses and survivors of attacks as well as three defectors from the military. The group analyzed more than 100 photos and videos related to rights violations, in addition to satellite imagery, fire data and open-source military aircraft flight data. Amnesty said that since the coup, the military “has relentlessly attacked civilians” to punish those who purportedly support a particular armed group or the wider anti-junta uprising, while at other times “fir[ing] indiscriminately into civilian areas” where there are also military targets. “Direct attacks on civilians, collective punishment and indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians violate international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes,” the group said. “Attacks on a civilian population must be widespread or systematic to amount to crimes against humanity; in Kayin and Kayah States, they are both, for crimes including murder, torture, forcible transfer and persecution on ethnic grounds.” Amnesty said it documented two dozen attacks by artillery or mortars between December and March that killed or injured civilians or that destroyed civilian buildings, adding that eyewitnesses said some of the attacks lasted “days at a time.” The group also documented eight air strikes on villages and camps housing refugees fleeing clashes in the first quarter of 2022 that killed nine civilians and injured at least nine others. Eyewitnesses described the attacks on locations where “only civilians appear to have been present” as extremely traumatic, leaving many unable to sleep or unwilling to return to their homes out of fear that they would be targeted again. A school destroyed by a military airstrike in Lay Kay Kaw, April 11, 2022. Credit: KNLA Cobra Column Extrajudicial executions, looting and burning Additionally, Amnesty’s reporting found that the military regularly carried out arbitrary detentions of civilians based on their ethnicity or because of their suspected support of an anti-junta group. Detainees “were tortured, forcibly disappeared or extrajudicially executed,” Amnesty said. The group specifically pointed to an incident that drew international condemnation in Kayah state’s Hpruso township on Christmas Eve last year, when the military stopped at least 35 women, men and children in multiple vehicles, killed them, and burned their bodies. An examination found that many of the victims had been tied up and gagged and were likely shot or stabbed to death. Amnesty has called for an investigation into the incident as a case of extrajudicial executions which, during armed conflict, constitute war crimes, the group noted. Other incidents mentioned in the report were related to what Amnesty called the military’s “systematic” looting and burning of villages in Kayin and Kayah state. Together, violence in the two regions has displaced more than 150,000 people, the group said, “including between a third and a half of Kayah state’s entire population.” The victims of this displacement are forced to shelter in “dire conditions,” it said, while aid workers are obstructed by the military from providing them access to much-needed food and health care. “Donors and humanitarian organizations must significantly scale up aid to civilians in eastern Myanmar, and the military must halt all restrictions on aid delivery,” said Matt Wells, Amnesty International’s crisis response deputy director for thematic issues. “The military’s ongoing crimes against civilians in eastern Myanmar reflect decades-long patterns of abuse and flagrant impunity. The international community — including ASEAN and U.N. member states — must tackle this festering crisis now. The U.N. Security Council must impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Myanmar and refer the situation there to the International Criminal Court.”

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Shanghai entrepreneurs demand political reform, release of prisoners of conscience

Editor011 mins

As Shanghai residents celebrated a partial end to a weeks-long, grueling city-wide lockdown, calls emerged on Wednesday for industrial action by businesses in the city to protest Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy. As the Shanghai city government claimed the city’s lockdown had lifted despite multiple barriers to movement around the city, an open letter calling on workers and companies to “lie down on the job” and to go back to work, but not back to production began circulating online. The May letter, penned by businesses rather than shop-floor workers, predicts mass capital flight and a widespread loss of public confidence in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi, and calls on the industrial sector not to act like “sheep fattened for slaughter.” “It is a pity that some of us entrepreneurs and investors who are slightly successful, despite sitting on investments of hundreds of billions of yuan in Shanghai and across the whole country, and employing millions of employees, are still struggling,” the letter said. “Repeatedly forced into isolation, door-to-door disinfecting and other threats at the hands of neighborhood committees, the police, and unidentified individuals, all that expensive real estate wasn’t enough to protect us or our families,” it said. “Now we have woken up, we are no longer willing to wait like fat lambs for the slaughter,” it said. “In honor of the 20th CCP National Congress [later this year], we will be going back to work, but not back to production.” Predicting mass capital flight a large-scale corporate bankruptcy, reorganization, and liquidation, the letter said the “rule of law” had been reduced to “rule by man”, while the economy had been hijacked by politics, leaving millions of COVID-19 “graduates” unemployed. “Social unrest is inevitable,” it warned, adding that mass layoffs, salary cuts and streamlining would be necessary. “We have a full sense of autonomy and aspire to fair competition,” the letter said. “We look forward to a civil society. The people should take back their civil rights and rebuild the country.” It called on the government to overturn the guilty verdicts against entrepreneurs Ren Zhiqiang and Sun Dawu, as well as punishing officials responsible for “violating the law and disregarding public opinion” as part of the zero-COVID policy. A health worker takes a swab sample from a woman in the Huangpu district of Shanghai on June 1, 2022. Credit: AFP Entrepreneurs speak out It called for the “release and rehabilitation” of political prisoners, calling them “national treasures, and the backbone of the nation.” “Returning power to the people, rewriting the constitution, loosening the CCP’s control of the media, eliminating the privileged class, abolishing feudal systems like household registration and political review, and all other unreasonable systems that violate human morality and conscience,” the letter said. “If the country does not reform, trust in the government cannot be rebuilt, and the free market cannot be hoped for, we will never have peace!” it said, calling for the protection of private property rights, especially freehold residential homes, the “last refuge of the family.” RFA made contact with several of the people who authored the letter, via other contacts, and was able to verify its authenticity. French political commentator Wang Longmeng said the authors had asked him to help publicize the letter overseas. “I can guarantee that this is the true voice of some entrepreneurs in Shanghai,” Wang told RFA. “Instead of committing suicide like Nanjing entrepreneur Hou Guoxin, they fought back.” “Even the strategy of resuming work without resuming production shows courage,” he said. “The open letter makes the crucial point that there can be no real economic vitality without political reform.” France-based Wan Runnan, the dissident software engineer who founded Stone Emerging Industries Company in the 1980s, said Xi’s zero-COVID policy has led to the loss of China’s economic vitality, the loss of public support, and had likely also undermined the legitimacy of the CCP regime. “Xi Jinping is so stupid and utterly barbaric,” Wan told RFA. “What is zero-COVID? … It has brought zero economic growth, and zero hearts and minds.” “He has lost the support of the party, the people and the army,” he said. “Entrepreneurs are also a social force and a key component of public support.” An open letter penned by Shanghai entrepeneurs calling on workers and companies to “lie down on the job” predicting mass capital flight and a widespread loss of public confidence in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping. Credit: Wang Longmeng Bound to a sinking ship Wan said China’s entrepreneurs know very well that if the 20th Party Congress does not initiate a process of political reform, they will eventually be bound to the sinking ship of the Chinese economy. “Their plan is a very good one, which is to say that what happens to the economy depends on what happens at the 20th Party Congress,” he said. “If Xi doesn’t step down … then we are sorry but we won’t play ball.” Residents of Shanghai celebrated on the streets after the lifting of lockdown at midnight on June 1, honking vehicle horns and cheering. Many of them have been trapped in their homes for more than two months. Negative PCR tests continue to be required for entry and exiting residential estates and other public places, with hundreds of testing stations set up in the streets to facilitate compulsory mass testing. A resident of Jing’an district surnamed He said she got up in the middle of the night to do her PCR test, to ensure the results were back by the time she needed to go grocery shopping. “It takes between 48 hours and 72 hours to issue a PCR test certificate,” she said. “They ask to see these certificates if you go shopping at the supermarket.” “It’s like the sword of Damocles hanging over your head; you need it to take the bus or get on the subway,” He said. A Yangpu resident surnamed Chen said lockdown hadn’t even eased yet in her district. “We’ve been issued with residents’ cards,…

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Myanmar’s junta shuts down publisher for distributing book on Rohingya genocide

Editor05 mins

Myanmar’s military regime has shut down a well-known publishing house in Yangon for importing and distributing a book on the 2017 Rohingya genocide, junta-controlled state newspapers said Wednesday. The regime accused Lwin Oo Sarpay Publishing House of violating the country’s 1962 publishing law by distributing and selling the book titled Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech by Ronan Lee, an Irish-Australian researcher at Loughborough University London. The junta shuttered the company’s book distribution center on May 28. State-owned media reported said Lwin Oo Sarpay was closed because it was distributing the book via Facebook. Since taking over Myanmar in a February 2021 coup, the junta has shut down media outlets critical of its regime and shuttered publishers that distribute books not in line with its own narrative. In recent weeks, the junta has shut down two other publishing houses, Shwe Lat and Yan Aung Sarpay, and the Win To Aung printing press. Human rights groups have produced a trove of credible reports based on commercial satellite imagery and extensive interviews with Rohingya about the military’s clearance operations in Rakhine state in 2017, including arbitrary killings, torture and mass rape. The violence drove more than 740,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh where they now living in sprawling refugee camps. Lee, a former member of Parliament for Queensland state, Australia, researched Rohingya refugees, including through field work in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand, as part of his doctoral studies. His book, published in 2021, presents new evidence that the government of Myanmar enabled a genocide in Rakhine state and the surrounding areas, where most of the country’s Rohingya live. Drawing on interviews and testimony from the Rohingya, it assesses the full scale of the genocide of the Muslim minority group, including human rights violations, forced migrations and extrajudicial killings in 2017 under the previous leadership of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued an official determination that Myanmar’s military committed genocide against the Rohingya in 2017, going a step further than the U.S. government’s previous findings that the military had committed ethnic cleansing. A resident of Yangon who reads books distributed by Lwin Oo Sarpay told RFA that the closure of the publishing house was politically motivated because the junta does not want citizens to know what really happened to the Rohingya. “Lwin Oo Sarpay has been distributing books on politics and history by local and foreign authors,” said the resident who did not want to be named for safety reasons. “Now that it is closed down and its [operating] license has been withdrawn, people will not learn what they should know.” The military has accused Lwin Oo Sarpay of violating Section 8 of the Printing and Publishing Law, which imposes restrictions on the content of publications and websites run by publishers and bans the import or distribution of foreign publications that contain banned content. In this case, the prohibited content was deemed as causing harm to an ethic group or among ethnic groups. RFA could not reach Lwin Oo Sarpay for comment.  Translated by Khin Maung Nyane for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Chinese forces step up exercises around Taiwan, South China Sea

Editor05 mins

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has intensified activities around Taiwan and in the South China Sea in an apparent response to the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, as well as its support for Taipei. The PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command recently conducted a multi-force patrol “in the waters and airspace around the Taiwan Island,” said an army spokesman. This is the third large-scale military exercise around Taiwan in the past 30 days. Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command, said the joint combat-readiness security patrol involved “multiple services and arms,” but did not specify the date. “These actions are a necessary response to the collusion activities between the U.S. and the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” Shi said. He added that the U.S. “has been making frequent moves on the Taiwan question recently,” and warned that by emboldening and supporting Taiwan, Washington “will put Taiwan in a dangerous situation and bring serious consequences to itself.” Last weekend two U.S. aircraft carriers – the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Ronald Reagan – reportedly conducted dual-carrier exercises in waters to the southeast of Okinawa, according to the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Beijing-based think tank. Chinese analysts say the area could be a main maritime battlefield if the U.S. militarily intervened in a possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait. A U.S. delegation led by Senator Tammy Duckworth has just completed a three-day visit to Taipei to “talk about our support for Taiwan security.” The U.S will also make sure Taiwan “does not have to struggle alone,” Duckworth told Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who said that a cooperation plan between the U.S. National Guard and Taiwan’s armed forces was in the works. On the day of her arrival, 30 Chinese aircraft flew into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), making it the second-highest number of daily incursions since the beginning of the year. The senator’s visit has infuriated Beijing. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said China “deplores and rejects this and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side.”  South China Sea drills On Wednesday morning the PLA conducted a military exercise in waters south of Hainan island in the South China Sea, according to a navigation warning issued by the Hainan Maritime Safety Administration. A navigation warning is a public advisory notice to mariners about changes to navigational aids and current marine activities or hazards including fishing zones and military exercises. The warning did not specify what kind of military exercise took place but the coordinates provided indicate the location was just south of Hainan, not far from the Gulf of Tonkin that China shares with Vietnam. Meanwhile on Wednesday Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) condemned the harassment by the Chinese Coast Guard of a joint Filipino-Taiwanese research vessel in the South China Sea in April, calling it “a breach of a United Nations convention.” A day earlier, the Philippines summoned a senior Chinese diplomat to protest over the incident. From late March to early April, the China Coast Guard (CCG) tailed the Legend, a Taiwanese research vessel with Filipino scientists, as it mapped undersea fault lines in the waters northwest of Luzon Island in the South China Sea.

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Hundreds of Ede families in Vietnam demonstrate to demand land from forestry company

Editor06 mins

Hundreds of ethnic minority households from a commune in south-central Vietnam’s Dak Lak province are fighting to reclaim their land from a forestry company after 40 years of working on it as hired laborers. Protests in Lang village, Ea Pok town, Cu Mgar district began last month, with farmers demanding the return of about 40 hectares of arable land. Demonstrations came to a head on May 18 when hundreds of people gathered on the land to protest against the coffee company’s destruction of their crops. Videos and photos of the protest were shared on social media, showing riot police clashing with demonstrators. Demonstrations continued last week, with protestors holding up banners asking the coffee company to return the land. State media has so far not reported on the incident. “We want the company to return our ancestral land so that people can have a business in the future,” a local resident told RFA under the condition of anonymity. “People are getting [taxed] more and more but have less land, so people need to reclaim the land.”   According to RFA research, Lang village has about 250 households, all indigenous Ede people. The residents all make a living from farming. ‘The company does not give a dime’ Residents told RFA they had been cultivating the land for many generations but after 1975 the local government took it and gave it to the state-owned enterprise, Eapok Coffee Farm to grow coffee trees. The company later changed its name to Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company. Locals went from being landowners to hired workers on their own land. They say the company allowed them to cultivate the land from 1983 until now but told them to produce 18 tons of coffee per hectare or pay for up to 80% of each harvest.  “People work hard, but they don’t have enough to eat because they have to pay the company’s output. In many cases, they don’t even have enough output to pay so they are in debt and have to pay for it in the next crop,” said one resident who was assigned to grow coffee on 8,000 square meters of land. Residents say that in 2010 the company allowed them to uproot coffee trees and grow other crops, including corn, but did not support them by offering seedlings, fertilizers, or pesticides. The company also continued to impose output quotas or taxed as much as 80% of the crop.  “People have to pay by themselves. The company does not give a dime or give a single pill when people are sick,” said another resident farming 10,000 square meters of land. Struggling farmers decided to file an application with the government in 2019 to reclaim their land and farming rights. Locals say this year Ea Pok Coffee asked them to start growing durian trees. When they opposed the plan the company started destroying crops on May 18 to prepare the land for durian cultivation. When an RFA Vietnamese reporter called Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company to ask for comments they were told the press must register with the company’s leaders, and get their approval first.  When asked about the government’s attitude towards people’s demands, a local resident said: “We sent petitions to the town government and the provincial government but got no response. The first time five households signed, then many more households signed. The government always sides with the company, rather than helping the people.” RFA contacted Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, chairwoman of the People’s Committee of Ea Pok town, to ask about the dispute between Lang villagers and the coffee company. She said that she would not accept telephone interviews. When asked if people would agree to maintain the current form of contract farming if Ea Pok Coffee Joint Stock Company reduced taxes and increased support, local people said they still committed to reclaiming the land. Translated by Ngu Vu.

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Ten-year-old boy critically injured in army shelling of Myanmar refugee camp

Editor05 mins

Seven displaced people sheltering in a monastery, including a ten-year-old boy, have been injured by heavy artillery in Kalay township, in the war-torn Sagaing region, local residents told RFA Wednesday. They said army shells hit the monastery at Nat Myaung village on Tuesday. Two men and four women were injured along with the boy. A local resident, who declined to be named for safety reasons, said soldiers heading to Nat Chaung village were intercepted by local militia of the People Defense Forces (PDFs). The army troops intentionally shelled the monastery, the resident said. “The army came from the north. They entered from the cemetery east of Nat Myaung village and passed through the village,” the local said. “An internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp has been set up at Nat Myaung village’s monastery. There is a field between the monastery and the village. The soldiers went through between the Aung Su Pan monastery and Net Chaung Educational School and were confronted by the local defense forces. The army did not fire the heavy artillery in the direction of the militia. Soldiers turned back and intentionally fired at the monastery where the IDPs are sheltering.” The source, who is close to the injured family, said the heavy artillery hit the 10-year-old boy who was critically injured. He was sent to a 100-bed military hospital in Kalemyo. The local resident said the other six people were not critically wounded and are being treated at the monastery. The shells also hit a fence and water tank at the monastery, according to residents Calls to a military council spokesman by RFA still remain unanswered. Fighting between the military troops and local militia PDFs at Nat Chaung village near Nat Myaung village intensified on Wednesday morning, according to local residents.  There are more than 200 villages in Kale Township. It was the first township in Myanmar to take arms against the military junta. Some 150 people have been killed and nearly 500 arrested due to the military crackdown, arrests on suspicion and arbitrary killings of anti-regime protesters in Kale Township in the year since the military coup, according to anti-regime protesters.  Military, NUG trade accusations over Yangon blast  The attack comes as the military junta and government-in-exile trade accusations over an explosion in downtown Yangon that killed one person and injured nine others. No-one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack but a junta spokesman said the National Unity Government (NUG) was behind the blast. He did not provide evidence.  NUG spokesman Dr. Sasa said in a statement that evidence pointed to the junta, claiming the “brutal genocidal military has been carrying out senseless bombings and killings against its own civilian population across Myanmar.”  Also Tuesday, a bomb blast at around 2 p.m. (3:30 p.m. EDT) near a state education office in Naung Cho Township, northern Shan State, killed at least one person and wounded seven.  The Institute for Strategy and Policy said in a report this month it had documented at least 5,646 civilian deaths between the Feb. 1, 2021 coup and May 10. The figures include people killed by security forces during anti-junta protests, in clashes between the military and pro-democracy paramilitaries or ethnic armies, while held in detention, and in revenge attacks, including against informers for the regime.

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News from next door

Editor01 mins

Communist-ruled Laos, a one-party state, was described by Reporters Without Borders as an information “black hole” where the government exerts complete control over news outlets. The watchdog group’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index placed Laos 161st out of 180 countries in the index and noted that many of the Southeast Asian country’s 7 million people get their news from next-door Thailand, which has a similar language and enjoys more media freedom.

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Refugees displaced by conflict in Myanmar now more than 1 million

Editor014 mins

The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar has surpassed 1 million people for the first time in the nation’s history, including nearly 700,000 forced to flee conflict and insecurity since the military’s coup in February 2021, according to a new report by the United Nations. In an update published on Tuesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the new estimate of IDPs fleeing fighting between the military and ethnic armies or anti-junta paramilitaries includes around 346,000 internal refugees displaced mainly in Rakhine, Kachin, Chin and Shan states by conflict prior to the coup. “During the reporting period, various parts of Myanmar have witnessed an escalation in fighting, further entrenching the already fragile humanitarian situation,” the agency said in a statement. “The impact on civilians is worsening daily with frequent indiscriminate attacks and incidents involving explosive hazards, including landmines and explosive remnants of war.” According to OCHA’s findings, thousands of IDPs who have already fled their homes are being forced to move for a second or third time, while more than 40,000 people have crossed borders into neighboring countries since the coup. It counted nearly 13,000 civilian properties as having been destroyed in the fighting, which it said will complicated the return of refugees, even if the situation improves. “Consequently, complex needs are surfacing, requiring immediate humanitarian responses to save lives and protect those affected, supporting them to live in dignified conditions,” it said. Adding to the threat of violence, OCHA said that thousands in Myanmar have been hit by the increasing cost of essential commodities, such as food and fuel, noting that on average the price of diesel in mid-April 2022 was nearly 2.5 times higher than it was in February last year. “This inflation has affected people’s purchasing power and is starting to impact on the work of several clusters, particularly food security and shelter, who depend on commodities to implement their humanitarian programming,” OCHA said. To make matters worse, coastal areas of Myanmar — including Rakhine, Kayin, Kachin and Shan states — have been battered by strong storms and heavy rain since April, destroying civilian structures and compounding the vulnerabilities of IDPs in displacement sites. OCHA said that while by the end of the first quarter of 2022, 2.6 million people — or some 41% of those targeted in this year’s Humanitarian Response Plan — had been provided assistance, the funding situation for the plan is now “dire” and currently around U.S. $740 million short of its goal. “The consequences will be grave if this level of underfunding continues in the remainder of 2022,” it said. “Humanitarian partners will be forced to cut back on their support at a time when this assistance is needed the most, particularly as the monsoon season is just getting underway.” A child refugee suffering from diarrhea in Sagaing region’s Southern Kalemyo township, May 6, 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist Nationwide hardships for IDPs OCHA’s update came as IDPs and aid workers told RFA’s Burmese Service that those displaced by conflict in Myanmar are facing severe hardship in securing food, shelter and healthcare as the monsoon season begins. They said that while local and international humanitarian organizations have been made aware of the needs, transportation complications — largely due to weather or conflict — have made it nearly impossible for aid to be delivered. A resident of Salingyi township in war-torn Sagaing region told RFA that IDPs are facing an increasing number of life-threatening illnesses because of a lack of access to basic supplies and medical care. “We are currently facing a shortage of food and tarps for shelter, as well as health problems,” said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal. “It is the rainy season now and we are afraid of malaria, as we are living in the forests.” The junta’s Health Ministry recently said it had recorded 1,516 cases of dengue fever leading to two deaths in Myanmar in the nearly five months from January to May 20, adding that it expects a significant increase in cases this year. An aid worker in Sagaing’s Debayin township, who also declined to be named, described the plight of refugees as “serious” — mostly due to worsening food shortages. “We don’t have much rice or cooking oil. [The military] set fire to everything,” they said. “With a couple of thousand to feed, we do not have enough supplies. We just must share what we have.” In Kayah state’s Phruso township, where clashes continue to occur frequently, an aid worker said that road closures due to weather have left more than 6,000 refugees dangerously short of food. “It was difficult even during the summer, and now we’re having transportation problems,” they said. “We can’t use the main road [due to fighting] and the roads we are using now are very bad. When it rains continuously, the cars can slip off the road. It happens a lot with vehicles delivering food.” Landslides and floods in Chin state’s Mindat township have also made travel difficult, residents said. Nonetheless, sources in the area told RFA that the military has continued operations in the area, ignoring the growing number of refugees. Junta deputy information minister, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, assured RFA that the authorities “are taking full responsibilities for delivering aid” when asked about the situation on Tuesday but blamed slow distribution on the need to “inspect” donations. “We could deliver aid to those in need in time, but … any aid coming to the country must go through ruling government agencies or groups that are sanctioned by the government to operate,” he said, referring to the junta. “The complaints [about delayed distribution] come from groups that want to skirt the regulations,” he added, without providing details. The decision to send international assistance to Myanmar through the junta was made at a May 6 meeting on the country’s humanitarian crisis by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia. In the meantime,…

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Rural North Koreans turn to deer blood, counterfeits as COVID meds go to Pyongyang

Editor013 mins

North Korea is sending most of its reserve medicines to the capital Pyongyang, leaving rural citizens in the lurch, with many turning to alternatives and counterfeits, as the country copes with waves of COVID-19 cases. After two years of denying the pandemic had penetrated its closed borders, North Korea in May declared a “maximum emergency” and acknowledged the virus had begun to spread among participants of a large-scale military parade the previous month. Medicine to treat the disease is in short supply and the stocks that are available are getting sent to Pyongyang, home of the country’s wealthiest and most privileged citizens. The drug shortage has left an opening for a black market of unproven traditional medicine to emerge, with some citizens offering dried deer blood as a COVID remedy. Counterfeit versions of fever reducers like aspirin and acetaminophen are also on the rise, sources said. “All pharmacies are open 24 hours a day in this maximum emergency, but there is a huge difference between Pyongyang and the provincial areas, so people out here are really dissatisfied,” a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Expectations were high as the central quarantine command had intensive discussions where they agreed to quickly distribute the reserve stocks of medicines for the emergency, but we were greatly disappointed when that medicine was given to people in Pyongyang and to the military,” he said. In the city of Sinuiju, which lies across the Yalu River border from China, no one can find even basic medicines like fever reducers and painkillers, the source said. “Reserve medicines were supplied in very small amounts to hospitals, and pharmacy shelves are empty,” he said. “At least some pharmacies in Sinuiju are stocked with herbal medicines used as a cold medicine, but county-level pharmacies are completely empty. However, the pharmacies are ordered to be open 24 hours a day unconditionally,” he said, adding that salespeople and security guards are sitting around at the pharmacies day and night, even if they have nothing to sell. In the city of Chongjin in northeastern province of North Hamgyong, patients complaining of a high fever and cough have increased, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. North Korea lacks adequate testing capabilities to confirm coronavirus cases but has been tracking numbers of patients reporting “fever.” “An acquaintance who is a doctor at a provincial hospital told me that even when patients with coronavirus symptoms come to the hospital, they are unable to receive the proper treatment because there is no medicine,” said the second source. “According to my acquaintance, medicines are normally supplied to hospitals and pharmacies in Pyongyang, and patients with fever in Pyongyang are receiving intensive treatment at quarantine facilities. But even though pharmacies in Chongjin are open 24 hours a day, but there is no medicine or only herbal medicines whose efficacy has not been verified. So it is not helpful to patients at all,” he said.  “They complain saying, ‘Are Pyongyangers the only citizens of the state? Is it okay for us in the provinces to just die?’” the source said.  To deal with the shortage of medicine in the provinces, people are turning to the black market, where unproven traditional remedies like deer blood are sold. In Pyongysong, South Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, people are illegally selling deer blood from their homes, touting its medicinal properties as effective against COVID-19, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “The types of deer blood traded on the black market are raw blood and dried blood powder. Raw blood in a tiny penicillin bottle is 10,000 won [about US$1.80], and powdered blood in a penicillin bottle is 5,000 won [about US$0.90],” she said. “If you catch a deer, you can drain its blood. Then you put the blood in a plastic bag,” she said. “Raw blood spoils, so it’s hard to sell. So, people dry the blood and sell it. When a deer gives birth, there is placenta coming out. They also dry it and sell it as a treatment for coronavirus.” The deer blood remedy is available in North Pyongan as well, a resident there, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told RFA. She said that rather than catching the deer in the wild, the workers on a deer farm that supplies meat and other byproducts for Kim Jong Un, his family, and other high-ranking officials, are illicitly selling the blood on the black market. “The musk or placenta of deer are vacuum packed and usually sent to the Central Committee, but the people who work there are secretly selling it.” Counterfeit medicines that look like the real thing but have no effect at all are also being sold. Fakes have made their way to the local marketplaces in Chongjin, a source there told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “The authorities are making a fuss saying they are responding to coronavirus by releasing the national reserve medicines, but there’s still a shortage here so counterfeiters are taking advantage of this opportunity,” the second Chongjin source told RFA. “A few days ago, the head of the neighborhood watch unit circulated a notice from the district to each household. The notice warns of the fake drugs out in circulation. There are many people around me who bought fake medicines and suffered from taking them,” the second Chongjin source said. “There are various types of counterfeit medicines, such as antipyretic analgesics such as aspirin and acetaminophen [Tylenol], and multivitamins, which are frequently sought by people to treat coronavirus infection. A friend from my workplace had a fever, so he bought acetaminophen at the market and took it for two days. But it was fake and didn’t work at all,” the second Chongjin source said. The counterfeit was indistinguishable from the real deal, according to the second Chongjin resident. “I saw the fake medicine that my friend…

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Uyghur groups urge resignation of UN rights chief for ‘Potemkin-style’ Xinjiang tour

Editor010 mins

Uyghur rights groups are calling for the United Nations human rights chief to resign after they said she reiterated Chinese talking points in a news conference about her trip to northwestern China’s Xinjiang region and failed to denounce the repression Uyghurs face there as a genocide. Michelle Bachelet, a former Chilean president who has served as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights since 2018, paid a six-day visit to China last week, including spots in the coastal city of Guangzhou and Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi) and Kashgar (Kashi) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). At a May 28 press conference in Beijing to mark the end of the visit, Bachelet said she had “raised questions and concerns about the application of counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures and their broad application” and their impact on the rights of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in the XUAR.  Bachelet, who said before her trip that she wouldn’t be conducting an investigation like Uyghur rights groups had pushed for, told reporters that she had been unable to assess the full scale of what China calls “vocational education and training centers” (VETC) in Xinjiang, but which the human rights community and scholars call internment camps.  Uyghur rights groups took issue with her references to “deradicalization,” “anti-terrorism” and “vocational education and training centers,” which they said mimic the words Beijing uses to describe its campaign in Xinjiang. Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for Uyghurs said Bachelet provided no transparency about the trip and that a prison visit in Xinjiang was a “Potemkin-style sham.” “The high commissioner has disgraced herself and her office by refusing to investigate China’s genocide and adopting, repeating the Chinese regime’s narrative, further cementing their propaganda in the U.N.,” Rushan Abbas, the organization’s executive director, told RFA on Tuesday. “Her comments seem custom-made for Beijing’s propaganda machine, and she neglects the duties of her office and the founding principle of the U.N.,” she said. Abbas called on Bachelet to step down from her post. ‘In bed with communist China’ Bachelet she said she raised with the government the lack of independent judicial oversight in the region, the reliance on 15 indicators to determine tendencies towards violent extremism, allegations of the use of force at the institutions, and reports of severe restrictions on religious practices. “During my visit, the government assured me that the VETC system has been dismantled,” she said. “I encouraged the government to undertake a review of all counter terrorism and deradicalization policies to ensure they fully comply with international human rights standards, and in particular that they are not applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory way.” In 2017, authorities began illegally detaining thousands of Uyghurs and others in “re-education” camps in an effort, they said, to prevent religious extremism and radicalism, later calling the facilities “closed training centers” or “vocational training centers.” But evidence quickly emerged that inmates had been deprived of their freedom under the pretense of political education and were in some case subjected to severe abuse. It is believed that authorities have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others accused of harboring “strong religious” and “politically incorrect” views in a vast network of “re-education” or internment camps in Xinjiang. The United States and the legislatures of several Western countries have deemed China’s mistreatment of the mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the XUAR as genocide and crimes against humanity. Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress based in Germany, said Bachelet missed a historic opportunity to hold China accountable for the Uyghur genocide. “The impression is that now the U.N. is in bed with communist China, a regime that has been committing the Uyghur genocide for the past five years,” he said Tuesday. “It is truly stunning to see that Ms. Bachelet did not act as the highest human rights official at the U.N. but rather as a mouthpiece of the Chinese communist government during and after her trip. “She has completely discredited the role of her office and the authority of the United Nations as a champion of human rights in the world,” Isa said.   Isa also called for Bachelet’s immediate resignation. US expresses concern The same day Bachelet held a press conference about her trip, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. remained concerned about her visit and efforts by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to restrict and manipulate it. “While we continue to raise our concerns about China’s human rights abuses directly with Beijing and support others who do so, we are concerned the conditions Beijing authorities imposed on the visit did not enable a complete and independent assessment of the human rights environment in the PRC, including in Xinjiang, where genocide and crimes against humanity are ongoing,” Blinken said in a statement. The U.S. was also troubled by reports that authorities had warned Uyghurs and others in the XUAR not to complain or speak openly about conditions in the region, that no insight was provided into the whereabouts of missing Uyghurs and the conditions of those in detention, he said. “The high commissioner should have been allowed confidential meetings with family members of Uyghur and other ethnic minority diaspora communities in Xinjiang who are not in detention facilities but are forbidden from traveling out of the region,” Blinken said.    In response to Blinken’s statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a press conference on Monday that the U.S. rehashed false claims that had been debunked countless times to try to smear and attack China. “Ridiculously, this time they made up new lies that China has restricted and manipulated the visit,” he said. “In fact, all the activities and arrangements of High Commissioner Bachelet during her stay in China were decided in accordance with her will and based on full consultation of the two sides.” “The high commissioner also said at the press conference that she had unsupervised and extensive meetings during the visit,” Zhao said. “Where is restriction and manipulation to speak of? To find the one…

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