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Category: World

From Chinese detainee to Cambodian diplomat: the radical rebirth of Wang Yaohui

Editor041 mins

Wang Yaohui has taken an unconventional career path for a Cambodian diplomat. For one thing, he was born in China and lived there for most of his life. For another, he has a very checkered past in the business world, tainted by bribery scandals over a copper mine in Zambia and a state-run bank in China for which he was detained and an associate was sentenced to life in prison. But following a path well-trodden by other Chinese tycoons with reputational problems, Wang used connections among the Cambodian elite to land himself a new nationality, a new name and a new career. Using his adopted Khmer name, Wan Sokha, he rapidly became an “advisor” to Prime Minister Hun Sen and landed a plum post at Cambodia’s embassy in Singapore, a position he still holds. That diplomatic posting has not prevented him from furthering his business interests. Untangling the web of those interests which stretch from Asia to Europe is no easy task. Wang has gone to great lengths to conceal his enormous but undeclared commercial footprint. A key piece in this complex puzzle are the Singaporean holdings of a Cambodian power couple: Sen. Lau Ming Kan and his wife Choeung Sopheap, who has been instrumental in Wang’s progress. This story explores those ties, using documentary evidence and also flight manifests from aircraft owned by Wang. It is part of a wide-ranging RFA investigation into more than $230 million in financial and property interests that figures linked to Cambodia’s ruling party have in the prosperous city state of Singapore. The documents not only show how Sopheap helped transform Wang from a fugitive to an accredited Cambodian diplomat. They also show how Wang has become the apparent beneficial owner of an energy company granted an exclusive 10-year license to import liquified natural gas by the Cambodian government. The documents also show that Wang has concealed from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the English Football League his substantial stake in a major English soccer team, Birmingham City Football Club. That is potentially a criminal offence, punishable by up to two years in prison. Additionally, the documents shed light on how Sopheap has been embroiled in a real estate deal in Cyprus involving Wang that is the subject of a European police investigation. Mired in mining scandal Wang was born in June 1966 in Heilongjiang, China’s northernmost province bordering Russia, soon after the start of the Cultural Revolution, which saw millions die as the Communist Party sought to purge society of traditional and capitalist elements. That’s in stark contrast to the dynamics of Wang’s adult life which associates say has been spent in single-minded pursuit of money. From the late 1990s onwards, his zest for profits saw him invest in everything from African mining operations to the Chinese art market and he did so with gusto. By the end of each venture, however, his business partners almost invariably felt that they had been wronged. A truck leaves the Chibuluma copper mine after collecting ore from 1,693 feet (516 meters) below the surface in the Zambian copper belt region, Jan. 17, 2015. (Reuters) In 2009, Wang signed an agreement with the government of Zambia on behalf of his Zhonghui Mining Group, pledging to invest $3.6 billion in a copper mine in the central African nation. The deal – which was hailed by Zambia’s then-President Rupiah Banda as a “positive development” – would quickly come undone, according to By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest is Changing the World, a 2013 book by Elizabeth Economy and Michael Levi, who would go on to be a special assistant to U.S. President Barack Obama. Economy and Levi recount how in 2011 Zhonghui “began building the mine without conducting an environmental impact assessment, violating Zambia’s 1997 EIA regulations.” The year also saw a new party take power in Zambia, which set about scrutinizing land and mining deals overseen by its predecessors. While the move was viewed by the government’s supporters as a marker of improved governance, others “believed that the new administration simply wanted to nullify previous deals to reap its own payments and bribes as the various concessions were sold anew.” Zhonghui was ordered to stop work immediately pending its production of an EIA. The company failed to do so and was charged alongside Zambia’s former minister of mines and minerals with corruption. The government alleged that Zhonghui had paid close to $60,000 of Zambian customs duties for 5,000 bicycles the minister had imported from China in 2011. Reuters reported that prosecution witnesses, “testified that with the minister’s influence, the Chinese firm was awarded the licenses within three days when such a process normally lasted months.” The minister was found guilty in 2015 and sentenced to one year in jail with hard labor (although in 2019 he received a presidential pardon). The court ruled Zhonghui had no case to answer. But by that time, Wang had bigger problems closer to home. A bribes for loans scandal In June 2012, the South China Morning Post reported that Wang had been detained late the previous month in Beijing by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper claimed the party was investigating allegations of “bribery and money laundering” within a “complex network run by low-profile but well-connected businessman Wang Yaohui.” Photograph of Wang widely distributed around the time of Agricultural Bank of China Vice President Yang Kun’s arrest for allegedly receiving bribes from Wang. (Photo: Supplied by source) In particular, the authorities were examining Wang’s relationship with Yang Kun, the vice-president of the state-owned Agricultural Bank of China. Sources told the South China Morning Post that together Wang and Yang had “lost several hundred million yuan during their gambling trips to Macau.” Moreover, the sources added, Yang had overseen loans from the bank to one of Wang’s companies, putatively intended to support property development, but which, “may have been misused to cover gambling losses in Macau.” Yang was…

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China’s ‘White Guards’ gain reputation for brutal enforcement of Shanghai lockdown

Editor09 mins

Police officers, neighborhood committee members and community volunteers dressed in head-to-toe white PPE have been a ubiquitous feature of China’s zero-COVID policy, often shown on social media video uploads surrounding people, beating and dragging them away, or knocking on their door to put pressure on them to submit to a PCR test, to leave home for an isolation camp. Dubbed White Guards in a nod to the Red Guards, the often violent and arbitrary enforcers of political decrees during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the “dabai,” or “big whites” have gained themselves a reputation for Kafkaesque orders, physical violence and abuse of power. Yet many didn’t sign up for grueling disease control prevention measures that left some of them isolated from friends and family and others loathed by the residents they had thought they were mostly there to help. Constant political sloganeering, changing criteria and orders from higher up, and incomprehensible containment processes left many neighborhood committee members and healthcare workers emotionally drained, under constant psychological stress and liable either to lash out physically or verbally. Others grabbed any opportunity to improve their lives with both hands, as in the case of the Shanghai neighborhood committee who barricaded themselves into a room to gorge themselves on a secret stash of cake while their residents were having trouble getting any food at all. A community doctor surnamed Chen was among the army of White Guards drafted in to carry out mass, compulsory PCR testing throughout the Shanghai lockdown, getting up in the middle of the night to start swabbing thousands of mouths and nostrils a day. “We were originally doctors in regular private clinics,” Chen told RFA. “When lockdown started a while back, all non-essential facilities were shut down, and staff called in to assist with disease control and prevention work.” “We didn’t volunteer for this work, and we received no compensation for it,” he said. A worker in a protective suit looks out through a gap in barriers at a closed residential area during lockdown, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Shanghai, China, May 25, 2022. Credit: Reuters. A political task Chen was pressured into joining the “dabai” by his manager, who said PCR testing was now a political task, under ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s ongoing insistence on a zero-COVID strategy to deal with the omicron variant of COVID-19. “If we hadn’t gone, the powers-that-be would have given our clinic trouble in future, making it hard to stay in business,” Chen said. In return for wearing full body PPE for five hours straight, making bathroom breaks well nigh impossible, Chen, who lives in Handan city in the northern province of Hebei, said the “dabai” could expect three meals a day and drinks provided by the authorities, at a time when many families are struggling to buy enough food because of lockdown restrictions on businesses and delivery drivers. Many would save their meals and bring them home to their families after work, Chen said, adding that this was a key motivation for him to keep doing the work. Chen said there was scant scientific basis for the seemingly endless rounds of mass PCR testing he helped to implement. “This isn’t really disease control and prevention at all,” Chen said. “The most important thing in disease control work is to prevent clusters, but many communities had zero infections.” “The whole thing was more of a political show, using Handan as a line of defense to protect Beijing,” he said. “Everyone is in danger right now, and a lot of people are afraid to talk about the trauma the pandemic has caused them, but … it won’t stay hidden,” Chen said. A health worker (C) wearing personal protective equipment conducts a swab test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in a compound during a Covid-19 lockdown in Pudong district in Shanghai on April 19, 2022. Credit: AFP Depression and trauma He said he has seen a number of patients with depression, as well as patients presenting with mysterious abdominal pain with unknown cause, which he attributed to the effects of trauma on the body. A temporary worker surnamed Wang who was drafted onto a community disinfection team in Shanghai’s Pudong district said he did it out of desperation, after his source of work was cut off by the pandemic. “I still have to pay the mortgage, so there was a lot of pressure,” Wang said. “I was actually scared at first and thought it was a bit dangerous, because I came into contact with so many people,” said Wang, who normally makes a living cutting people’s hair, Huang Kuang-kuo, professor of psychology at National Taiwan University, said the psychological concept of depersonalization could go some way to explaining the behavior of people, particularly the faceless “dabai,” during the Shanghai lockdown. “This makes sense, because when we can’t identify people, then they behave differently,” Huang told RFA. “A more authoritarian personality comes to the fore.” A community volunteer wearing personal protective equipment stands as residents line up during a test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in a compound during a Covid-19 lockdown in Pudong district in Shanghai on April 19, 2022. Credit: AFP. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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Uyghur group slams UN rights czar over ‘wasted opportunity’ during trip to Xinjiang

Editor017 mins

A Uyghur rights group on Saturday expressed “serious disappointment” in the outcome of U.N. Human Rights czar Michelle Bachelet’s trip to Xinjiang, which it said had amounted to “a propaganda opportunity for China to whitewash its crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uyghur people.”  Ahead of the visit, rights groups demanded assurances that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights would have unfettered access to the region and the ability to speak freely with Uyghurs without fear of reprisal. Otherwise, they warned, her trip risked lending legitimacy to Beijing’s justification for a “counter-terrorism” campaign that has seen as many as 1.8 million members of the ethnic minority held in a network of internment camps since 2017. During a news briefing at the end of her six-day trip to China on Saturday, Bachelet said she was not in China for an official investigation of the situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), although she claimed to have had “unsupervised” access to sources that the U.N. had arranged to meet in the region. She added that she had urged China to avoid “arbitrary and indiscriminate measures” in its crackdown in the XUAR and said officials in the region had assured her that the internment camps they call “vocational training centers” have been dismantled. But RFA and other outlets have reported in the run up to the visit that China put pressure on Uyghurs in Xinjiang and their relatives abroad to stop them from speaking about internment camps and other abuses in the region. In a statement from Germany, World Uyghur Congress (WUC) President Dolkun Isa warned that Bachelet’s visit – the first by a U.N. rights czar in nearly two decades – only strengthened China’s narrative about its policies in the region, which Western nations say amount to a genocide of the Uyghur people. “As expected, the High Commissioner has wasted a historic opportunity to investigate the Uyghur genocide and deliver justice to the Uyghur people,” Isa said. “The High Commissioner has ruined her office’s credibility by aligning with China’s wishes and conducting a visit that by no means adequately addressed justice for Uyghurs and accountability for those responsible.” The WUC said that a recently released police list with the names of more than 10,000 allegedly detained Uyghurs known as the Xinjiang Police Files underscore exactly why an investigation into the situation in the XUAR is needed and urged Bachelet’s office to release her independent assessment “as a show of willingness to hold the Chinese government accountable for crimes against humanity and genocide being committed.” Bachelet’s visit was also slammed by German researcher Adrian Zenz, director in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C., who posted a message on Twitter saying that the result was “significantly worse than what had been feared.” “The perhaps worst human rights violation of our time is treated as a matter of internal review by the perpetrator,” he tweeted. “The main takeaway is that Bachelet treats the Xinjiang government as a rational actor who should undertake its own ‘review’ of how its ‘deradicalization’ policies may not be complying with international standards,” the researcher wrote, calling the U.N. official’s press briefing “absolutely stunning.” Call for stronger measures The end of Bachelet’s trip came as the WUC convened a May 26-28 summit in Munich, Germany on best practices for advocacy efforts, which Isa opened by urging the global community to adopt stronger measures if it intends to hold Beijing to account for its treatment of Uyghurs in northwestern China. In a speech to more than 200 policymakers, activists, lawyers, and members of the Uyghur diaspora gathered for the summit – held just a half-hour’s drive from the former Dachau Nazi concentration camp – Isa welcomed the international attention that the Xinjiang Police Files had drawn to the situation in the XUAR. But he warned that compiling evidence of China’s policies targeting the Uyghurs is only part of what must be an urgent and concerted international effort to end atrocities in the region. “The ‘Xinjiang Police Files,’ as they are called, remind the world of the nature of the Chinese government’s atrocity crimes and genocide of the Uyghurs,” Isa told those in attendance at the conference hall. “For us [Uyghurs], this is not breaking news – it is the daily reality of our lives … Millions of Uyghurs are being detained in 21st century concentration camps, where they are subjected to all forms of abuse – torture, rape, sexual abuse, forced labor, [and] sterilization.” While the U.S. government and the parliaments of several Western nations have declared that the situation in the XUAR constitutes genocide, the only action taken against China to date has come in the form of sanctioning Chinese officials and businesses seen as complicit in the policies. In early December, the Uyghur Tribunal, an independent people’s tribunal in London, determined that China has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, although its findings are non-binding and lack state-backing. Meanwhile, more than five years since the establishment of the camps, little has changed for Uyghurs in the XUAR. Authorities in the region use a high-tech and comprehensive surveillance system to monitor for any sign of opposition to Chinese rule, which increasingly includes any outward expression by Uyghurs of their traditional culture, such as dress, language, and religion. Isa said the onus is on global powers to demand that Beijing change course or face consequences. “Over the past five years, all Uyghurs, Kazakhs, [and members of the] diaspora have tried to find any information about the whereabouts and well-being of our families in the homeland. What we have learned in these five years should already have shocked the world’s conscience,” he said. “With the Xinjiang Police Files being yet another reason, [the WUC] calls on the international community to end its ‘business as usual’ approach to China.” Summit attendees listen to a recording of the national anthem of East Turkestan, the name Uyghurs…

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More than 1,000 Myanmar migrants in China wait months or years for deportation

Editor08 mins

More than 1,000 Myanmar migrant workers are stuck in Chinese detention centers with no way to contact their families or return to their homes, current and former migrants told RFA. The migrant group consists of undocumented illegal border crossers and people who overstayed six-day tourist visas to work. Some had lost their jobs during recent outbreaks of coronavirus and were trying to return to Myanmar when authorities arrested them. More than 100 are at a detention center in the southeastern province of Guangdong, while 1,000 more are in Baoshan, Yunan province, close to the Myanmar border. Aye Moe, 26, had been in detention for seven months at a drug rehabilitation center in Baoshan prior to her release and deportation on May 20 along with 152 other detainees. She told RFA’s Burmese Service there were about 1,000 Myanmar nationals at the center including 14 members of the Rakhine minority, who were still being held on charges of forging Chinese ID cards. The additional crime complicated their deportation. “You can’t have a job if you don’t have a registration card. So the brokers gave them fake registration cards and the police found out. Those 14 Rakhines were not even allowed to fill out their immigration forms,” she said. “I tried to be brave one day and went to ask the police captain to help them. He said he couldn’t do anything and that he didn’t get the case files when they were handed over to him. He said he could only do what he was asked,” she said. Hnin Hnin of Yangon, who had been working at a battery factory in Huazhou, Guangdong, told RFA that she and her husband were among 28 people arrested at the factory during a police raid last February. “Since I was pregnant they sent me back to the factory,” she said. “They said I would be deported. I already have a confirmation letter from Myanmar authorities from four months ago, but I have not been sent back yet. I have no job and want to go home to give birth in Myanmar,” Hnin Hnin added. The 36-year-old expectant mother said that eight people in the group, including her husband, were deported to Myanmar on May 19 over China’s border with Kachin state with the help of the Myanmar Embassy.  The crackdown on factories using migrant labor began in early 2021. Since then, hundreds of Myanmar migrants have been hiding in the jungles outside of the cities where they once worked. Others have tried to return to Myanmar, paying 10,000 yuan (about U.S. $1,500) to brokers who lead them on a three-day journey from Guangdong to the Myanmar border, but they were caught en route. Ye Lwin Tun, a 26-year-old resident of Kyaukphyu village in Namsang Township, northern Shan State, told RFA that three of his friends had not been freed yet. “Over 170 people have now been released. We heard they would release more than 100 people from the prisons. A few of them are Vietnamese, but the rest are Myanmar citizens,” he said. “There are about four or five prisons in Guangdong. They are huge ones. We were not put together in one prison but separated in different ones. Three of our villagers have not been released yet. Chinese police said all illegal immigrants who do not have COVID-19 vaccinations would be arrested. Myanmar citizens are now refused by Chinese companies because the owners do not dare hire them. If they are caught, they have to pay fines and may go to prison,” he said. Ye Lwin Tun said he was arrested in October last year along with about 300 Myanmar nationals while working at a factory in Huazhou that makes shampoo caps. Kyaw Kyaw, a labor activist in Ruili, China, said it normally takes about 20 days or so for Myanmar workers to be returned to the border if they give themselves up to the Chinese police, but now have to stay in detention camps for at least three to six months.   “It takes a long time for the mainland to deport them,” he said. “If they do not have passports, they will be released within a maximum of 20 days on grounds of COVID rules. But for those from Guangdong, they could not get past Baoshan. Whether they take a shortcut or not, it is impossible to pass that line. If arrested, they could be held for at least 3 to 6 months.” Kyaw Kyaw said there are prisoners who have been detained for years who have had no contact with their families or the embassy. RFA contacted both Myanmar Embassy in Beijing and Chinese Embassy in Myanmar by email on May 25 for comments but have not received a reply. In March, the Chinese Embassy in Yangon told RFA in an e-mail that China takes the rights of foreign workers seriously and that foreigners should in turn respect Chinese laws. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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North Korea punishes officials for failing to contain coronavirus

Editor09 mins

North Korea is sentencing mid-tier government and ruling party officials to short jail or labor sentences for failing to stop COVID-19 from spreading in the country, which sources see as an effort to deflect blame from the country’s leaders for the sudden rise in cases. North Korea is in a state of “maximum emergency” after revealing this month that the virus had begun to spread among participants of a large-scale military parade in late April. Prior to that, Pyongyang had for more than two years denied that anyone in the country had contracted COVID-19, and the government could now lose face if people start to question how the virus could have spread to more than 3 million people in such a short amount of time. Accusing officials of being corrupt or incompetent, blaming them for the pandemic, then punishing them, even lightly, allows officials higher up, including leader Kim Jong Un to shift responsibility away from them. “At an official meeting held at the party committee building last week, a number of officials were punished for their failure to adhere to the emergency quarantine system. Among them were two managers who were one day late in locking down the workers’ dormitory at their production unit,” an official from the city of Chongjin in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service on Wednesday on condition of anonymity for security reasons. Both managers were sent to “confinement” after they were brought on the stage and publicly criticized. “The officials were locked up for three days,” the source said. “Since the implementation of the emergency quarantine system, these types of punishments are happening more often than before.” Authorities were reluctant to release information to the public regarding the punishments, as they still want to protect the reputations and dignity of the officials, who belong to a class more privileged than those they supervise, the source said. “Still, though, many of the officials are especially not happy with confinement. Two years ago they locked up a company official for five days. Feeling humiliated and insulted, he resigned the next day of his release, citing health concerns,” said the source. “Being confined at the Social Security Department alongside criminals is such a petty way to punish someone for insufficient performance in their duties. Is it that the authorities can’t control the cadre of officials except in this old-fashioned way?” the source said. Confining officials can also be a way to get them to push their workers to work harder to achieve the country’s economic goals, a company official in the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA. “Authorities, who previously pointed out that last year’s economic goals were not quite met, have been ‘encouraging’ officials to live up to their roles and responsibilities through punishment,” said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely. “In April, officials were punished to three months of unpaid labor, including an official who failed to prevent an employee from smuggling, as well as several officials who failed to complete the spring land management mobilization task,” this source said. “This month, organizations that were reported for failing to implement lockdown within their units and those officials who failed to mobilize their personnel for the housing construction task force in Hwasong, Pyongyang, were punished with confinement and unpaid labor,” the second source said. Workers try to lessen the burden on their bosses who have been detained, knowing that the boss will shortly be released from jail, the second source explained. “The workers negotiate with the Social Security Department to ensure that their superiors don’t eat meals provided by the detention center, and they deliver outside food for them. In addition, they urgently scramble to solve the problem that became a cause for punishment so that the locked up official can be released from the detention center as soon as possible,” the second source said. “When the authorities lock up officials in charge of organizations and enterprises, their units do whatever it takes to solve their problems. So, it seems that the authorities are enjoying locking up officials in charge of organizations and enterprises. The general public does not appreciate the authorities’ way of motivating officials by insulting them,” said the second source. The pandemic has heightened tensions in the country, the source said, quoting authorities as describing the campaign as “a test period to verify our patriotism and loyalty to our leader.” “It’s a very tense atmosphere, like a state of war almost, so nobody dares to complain even if the authorities issue absurd policies or instructions,” the source added. Though North Korea has acknowledged that the virus is spreading inside the country, it has only reported a handful of confirmed COVID-19 cases, which 38 North, a site that provides analysis on the country and is run by the U.S.-based Stimson Center think tank, attributed to insufficient testing capabilities. Data published on the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center showed North Korea with only one confirmed COVID-19 case and six deaths as of Friday evening. The country is, however, keeping track of numbers of people who exhibit symptoms of COVID-19. About 3.3 million people have been hit by outbreaks of fever, 69 of whom have died, according to data based on the most recent reports from North Korean state media published by 38 North. Around 3 million are reported to have made recoveries, while 233,090 are undergoing treatment. Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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Hundreds of students protest COVID-19 lockdown on Tianjin University campus

Editor06 mins

Hundreds of students in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin gathered on the Tianjin University campus late on Thursday, in protest at COVID-19 restrictions. Chanting “Down with formalism! Down with bureaucracy!”, the students gathered on the university’s Beiyang Square, calling on university leaders to come out and talk to them about arrangement for classes and exams amid ongoing zero-COVID restrictions. The scenes were eerily reminiscent of the early stages of the 1989 student movement, which later took over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for weeks on end with demands for democratic reforms and the rule of law. Those protests culminated in a bloody massacre of civilians by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the night of June 3-4, with an unknown number of casualties. Students are calling on the university administration to clarifying arrangements for online classes, final exams, and when students need to be back on campus if they decide to wait out the lockdown at home. The protest came after no response was forthcoming. Video clips posted to social media showed hundreds of young people gathered under streetlights on Thursday evening, shouting “Down with formalism! Down with bureaucracy!” and calling on management to come forward for dialogue. One poster called on the school to let students go back home to take online classes, only coming back for their exams, but the university authorities have refused to say when these will take place. It called for further protests outside Zhengdong Library on Saturday. Sick of confinement Social media posts said the students are sick of being confined to their dorms and forced to take online classes, which they could do from home. Posts also said the university had conceded to most of the students’ demands. A Tianjin resident surnamed Xu said the school had to compromise to avoid larger protests ahead of the politically sensitive 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre next week. “The college students are knowledgeable, literate, and united, and the protests are definitely legitimate,” Xu said. “The [university] made concessions, because they had to; it’ll soon be the anniversary of June 4, 1989.” The protests came after the Tianjin municipal government locked down the city’s Nankai district, forcing residents to stay home, and carry out regular COVID-19 tests. Less stringent restrictions are already under way in Heping district. Tianjin University’s Beiyang campus has been under COVID-19 restrictions since Jan. 8, with more than 15,000 students confined to their dorms since then. Students are angry that the university has made no move to explain or justify the lockdown since announcing it. Petty officials Jiangxi-based current affairs commentator Zhang Kun said the lockdowns have left regular citizens at the mercy of petty officials. “The country is being run by mediocre people, and the incompetent are doing evil,” Zhang told RFA. “The slightly more competent ones have been purged.” “The longer this zero-COVID policy persists, the worse it’s going to get,” he said. “The reality has hit everyone in the face.” The Tianjin protest came after hundreds of students gathered at two Beijing universities earlier this week with similar demands. Hundreds of students at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) and at Beijing Normal University (Beishida) gathered to show their displeasure with current restrictions on their movements, as the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to roll out its zero-COVID policy across the country following a grueling weeks-long lockdown in Shanghai. This year’s Tiananmen massacre anniversary is all the more sensitive as it falls ahead of the 20th party congress later this year, during which CCP leader Xi Jinping is hoping to be voted in for an unprecedented third term in office. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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China warns overseas Uyghurs to keep quiet during UN visit

Editor08 mins

Two weeks before a visit by the U.N. human rights chief, China’s state security police warned Uyghurs living in Xinjiang that they may suffer consequences if their relatives living abroad spoke out about internment camps in the region.  Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, is now on a six-day trip to China, including the coastal city of Guangzhou and Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi) and Kashgar (Kashi) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). She began the tour on May 23.  On May 12, U.S.-based Kalbinur Gheni posted a tweet asking Bachelet to meet with her sister, who is incarcerated at a women’s prison in Sanji (Changji), a city next to Urumqi, capital of the XUAR.  Gheni said members of China’s state security police in Korla (Kuerle), the second-largest city in Xinjiang, visited her mother in Cherchen county the next day and pressed her to convince Gheni not to tweet more about her sister’s detention.  “‘Your daughter in the United States is speaking out against the government. If you don’t talk to this girl and ask her to agree to delete everything on Twitter, you will be convicted of being a two-faced person yourself,’” Gheni recalled the security officials told her mother.  “When I called my mom on the second day after my tweet, my poor mother cried and shouted saying that if I didn’t delete what I had posted, she would sever her blood relationship with me,” Gheni said. The agents threatened to charge her mother with the “crime” of being “a two-faced person” if she failed to persuade Gheni. The Chinese Communist Party uses the term to describe people — usually officials or party members — who are either corrupt or ideologically disloyal to the party.  Gheni’s sister, Renagul Gheni, was a primary schoolteacher in Cherchen county when authorities allegedly took her to an internment camp in 2018. Two years later she was sentenced to 17 years in prison — seven years for praying during her father’s funeral and 10 years for possessing a Quran.  Gheni said security officials had pressured her family over her tweets about her sister before the latest incident. “The same state security official has been contacting me directly over a year now,” Gheni told RFA, adding that the agent has told her that he is taking care of her family members in Xinjiang.  Gheni’s younger brother, who had not spoken to her for more than two years, also had left a message asking her to delete her Twitter posts.  “After this tweet, my brother with whom I had lost contact for over two years, left a voice message on WeChat saying, ‘We heard that while abroad you have made anti-China statements. Will you let us live or not? Stop making these statements and delete everything you posted.’”  On May 23, Gheni tweeted: “I will keep up the fight, I won’t give up on my loved ones.”  ‘No Uyghur is safe’  U.S.-based Uyghur Gulruy Esqer told RFA that Chinese government authorities also tried to silence her by rearresting a relative in the XUAR. Esmet Behti, who was a history professor the Bingtuan Pedagogical School under the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, was rearrested in May 2021 in an attempt to silence Esqer. The teacher was first arrested in 2019 and taken to a detention camp but released nine months later.  “I thought he had been released because of my activism in the U.S. and that he would be safe from further harm by Chinese authorities, but I was wrong,” she told RFA. “No Uyghur is safe from Chinese authorities. That’s what I’ve now concluded. Any Uyghur on any given day or night might be taken away by Chinese authorities.”  Shortly before the start of Bachelet’s visit to the XUAR, the Chinese government launched a campaign there to “protect state secrets,” warning Uyghurs not to talk about or discuss “state secrets,” meaning the detention of Uyghurs or other measures to repress them.  International human rights organizations say that China’s efforts to silence Uyghurs abroad serve the same purpose as using propaganda to cover up the reality of rights abuses in Xinjiang.  Bachelet’s visit coincided with release of leaked Chinese police files on Uyghurs in the XUAR published online by German researcher Adrian Zenz, director in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C.  The files detail the brutality of the Chinese authorities against Uyghurs and show top Chinese leaders’ direct involvement in the mass internment campaign.  Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Chutzpah in China

Editor01 mins

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet began a visit to China with a photo op with Beijing’s top diplomat that appeared to confirm the human rights community’s fears that the Chinese government will use the May 23-28 tour for propaganda and keep Bachelet from seeing the reality on the ground in troubled Xinjiang and other areas. With cameras clicking, Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave Bachelet “Excerpts from Xi Jinping on Respecting and Protecting Human Rights,” a book by China’s paramount leader, who has tightened Communist Party control and restricted speech and other freedoms to a degree not seen in decades.

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Interview: ‘It was hard to breathe, let alone sleep’ in Shanghai lockdown

Editor011 mins

A Shanghai resident who gave only the surname Cao recently spoke to RFA’s Mandarin Service about her experiences under weeks of COVID-19 lockdown, during which the city’s 26 million residents submitted on a daily basis to confinement at home, food scarcity and mass compulsory PCR testing, along with the ever-present possibility of being bundled into a bus and sent to an isolation camp. Cao and her family were sick with COVID-19 during the lockdown, then had a nasty surprise awaiting after they recovered: Cao: I had been feeling unwell since I tested positive, and I got really super-anxious when the baby started to run a fever, although I tried to keep quiet about it for fear we would be sent to an isolation camp. But I knew I would have to see a doctor if the fever persisted, so I was under a lot of psychological pressure. We stayed at home and kept a low profile until the entire family was testing negative. Then we thought we had gotten through it. RFA: Then your neighbors informed on you, right? Cao: Yes, but then we heard nothing, and it seemed that they wouldn’t be forcing me to go to the isolation facility, until there were suddenly five more confirmed cases in my courtyard. Everyone was in groups, allocated a volunteer to distribute food and supplies, and [our volunteer] just straight up told them that our family [was infected with COVID-19]. The neighbors were terrified and started spreading rumors, saying I’d opened the windows, or that I’d been downstairs to pick up a package, but I hadn’t stepped outside that whole time. Some neighbors attacked our family, and some were outrageous and aggressive despite my trying to reason with them. Because I had eventually decided to report it in the [neighborhood WeChat group] which includes the neighborhood committee, disease control and prevention, the police, all of them. RFA: What did the neighbors say? Cao: It was a very exaggerated reaction, and nonsensical. They said they wouldn’t give us food or help us with any packages, and wanted to force us to go into isolation. I don’t know if they’d been driven crazy by the lockdown, but they weren’t all like that. Some of them were kinder in private. But there was this one terrible person who was the loudest in the group, and dominated discussions. She would attack any of the nicer neighbors who tried to speak out and take our side, so after that, nobody dared speak out again. RFA: So, you were taken off to an isolation camp on May 3, a month after you were diagnosed with mild symptoms? And you had already tested negative many times at home? Cao: Yes. [They] told me on the phone that the policy was set in stone and there was nothing they could do about it, and that a lot of people are already testing negative by the time they get there. They said they were just implementing the policy, but were helpless to make any changes to it. RFA: What was the isolation camp like? Cao: It was in an extremely remote location, about two and a half hours by bus from Jing’an district, faraway and desolate. There were thousands of beds in the area I was staying in, which was really scary. Some people there were testing positive, others negative, and they were all mixed in together, even whole families, so it was very high-risk. I was so scared when I first got there that I would test positive again, despite my negative test. I was dumbfounded when I saw the bed; it was made of iron, and parts of it were sagging and bent out of shape. If I shifted my weight slightly, the whole bed would tilt and flip upwards, so I had to lie there without moving, balancing. I was devastated, and cried several times a day. The lights were on 24 hours a day … and we had to wear a mask and goggles. It was hard to breathe, let alone sleep. I copied some of the other people, and made a little tent for myself out of a sheet to block the lights out at least a little. RFA: What kind of care did they provide? Cao: The isolation facilities are supposed to be places for patients to rest and recover, but it was very uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep properly, so I was in a poor state, and there was no proper medical attention, just a bunch of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) distributed around the building. RFA: How do people get out of these places? Cao: You can leave after two negative tests, so I was in a hurry as soon as I entered, and kept asking me when I could get my next PCR. They told me I couldn’t on the same day I arrived, and that I would have to weight two more days. I heard from the person next to me that they do a PCR on the third and fourth day, but even if they were both negative, we couldn’t leave on the next day, because we had to wait for the results, so the quickest anyone could get out was on the sixth day after arriving. I ran into people who had been there two weeks, some even more than a month. Everyone who came back from isolation camps was traumatized, and very anxious, and reluctant to do another PCR test. There is no information transparency in the camps. Everyone is woken at 5.00 a.m. to do PCR tests, but you don’t get the results. You can ask the staff, but they won’t tell you. They’re waiting from orders from higher up, who issue a list of names of people who need PCR tests, and those allowed to leave, and they’re just doing as they’re told. RFA: Have you and your husband changed your opinion of Shanghai at all? Cao: We have both lived in Shanghai for seven or eight…

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Leaders of least-developed Cambodia, Laos play down concerns of a China debt trap

Editor08 mins

UPDATED at 1:10 p.m. EDT on 2022-05-27 Leaders of two of the least developed countries in Southeast Asia, Laos and Cambodia, denied Friday they have fallen into a Chinese debt trap despite owing billions of dollars to their giant neighbor. Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen and Laos President Thongloun Sisoulith both spoke at the 27th Future of Asia conference in Tokyo on Friday via video link. Hun Sen, who has been ruling Cambodia for almost four decades, claimed that Cambodia’s borrowing rate was at 23 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), well below its legislated ceiling of 40 percent. He said, “we don’t just borrow without looking at our situation.” Cambodia’s external public debt stood at around US$8.8 billion in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Bilateral debt continues to account for 69 percent of total external debt, with more than half of it owed to China, the IMF said. The prime minister told the conference that Cambodia borrows from a number of countries including Japan and South Korea, as well as international institutions such as the Asian Development Bank and World Bank. The loans are needed for infrastructure development, he said, adding: “We don’t put ourselves into anybody’s trap.” “If we don’t have investment from China, what source of electricity can we have?” Hun Sen said, repeating the question he asked at the 26th Future of Asia conference last year.   The annual conference is organized by Nikkei Inc. and provides a forum for Asian political leaders and academics to discuss regional issues. One year ago, Hun Sen told the conference: “If I don’t rely on China, who will I rely on? If I don’t ask China, who am I to ask?”  A file photo showing Laos’ President Thongloun Sisoulith at the Japan-Mekong Summit Meeting in Tokyo, Japan, Oct. 9, 2018. At the time he was prime minister of Laos. Credit: Reuters Landlocked economy Cambodia’s neighbor Laos also said China is not the only source of loans. “Relying on only one country’s resources is not enough. We have connected with different countries and international organizations for help with our infrastructure development,” said President Thongloun, who served as Lao prime minister between 2016-2021. “We’re engaged in discussions and negotiations not only with China but also Vietnam, Japan, Asia Development Bank, World Bank and other countries that offer loans and support the Lao People’s Democratic Republic,” he said. Laos is a landlocked country with no access to the sea, the president said, and it desperately needs to develop connectivity with other countries around it. “We’re trying to repay our debts according to our ability and system and the need of our current situation.” “I would say that we’re not in a debt trap at the moment,” Thongloun said. The World Bank reported in August 2021 that Laos’ public debt has climbed to U.S. $13.3 billion, or 72 percent of its GDP. Most of the debt was incurred by the energy sector – as Laos builds dozens of hydropower dams in a push to become the ‘battery of Asia’.  International credit rating agency Fitch said in an August 2021 report that almost half of Laos’ external debt over the next few years must be paid to China – which has also built a $6 billion dollar, high-speed railway, which opened late last year. The government will have to pay $414 million a year in interest alone, according to Lao Finance Minister Bounchom Oubonpaseuth. Cambodia’s leadership succession  Also at the Future of Asia conference, Prime Minister Hun Sen rejected criticism about his plans to pass power to his eldest son, Hun Manet, who is currently the commander of the Royal Cambodian Army. The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) at its Congress in December voted unanimously for 44-year-old Hun Manet, the oldest of Hun Sen’s six children, to succeed his father. The CPP holds every seat in the nation’s parliament. When asked about it at the conference, Hun Sen declined to talk about a transition plan but said that all his three sons “are capable of becoming prime minister.” Cambodia is set to hold commune elections on June 5 – a prelude to general elections in July 2023 to elect members of the National Assembly, or the lower house of the Parliament. “If people continue to vote for the CPP with Hun Sen as the prime minister candidate and Hun Manet as the future candidate for prime minister, that means the people are in agreement with the CPP continuing to lead the country, led by Hun Sen and then by Hun Manet after that,” Hun Sen said. This story has been updated to edit the quote below the headline.

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