• ijrepjournalism@gmail.com
  • contact@ij-reportika.com
Ij reportika Logo

Category: World

Hong Kong police arrest six for ‘sedition’ over courtroom protests, support

Editor07 mins

Hong Kong police on Wednesday arrested six people including a former labor leader on suspicion of “sedition” under a colonial-era law, as the city’s security chief — who is widely seen as Beijing’s preferred candidate — resigned to run for chief executive. Police said they had arrested four men and two women aged 32 to 67 on suspicion of “conducting acts with seditious intent.” Media reports said one of those arrested was Leo Tang, a former vice president of the now-disbanded Confederation of Trade Unions (CTU). The arrests were in connection with “nuisances” allegedly caused by the six as they attended court hearings between December 2021 and January 2022. Police said their actions had “severely affected jurisdictional dignity and court operations.” Police also searched the homes of the arrestees and seized various items in connection with the case. This arrests mark the first time that someone sitting in the public gallery of a Hong Kong court has been arrested for “actions with seditious intent,” a charge that carries a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment. The police statement said the six are accused of “incitement to hatred, contempt or betrayal of Hong Kong’s judiciary.” Previously, judges have responded to shouting and clapping from the public gallery by ignoring it or by ordering those responsible to leave the court. Any behavior in court that could distract judges from hearing evidence or making a judgement could be regarded as “an obstacle to the work of the court,” Hong Kong chief justice Andrew Cheung said in January. He said at the time that such incidents should be handled on a case-by-case basis by the judge concerned. Courtroom protests and vocal support for defendants has become increasingly common as Hong Kong continues with a citywide crackdown on public dissent and political opposition under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from July 1, 2020. In January 2018, supporters at the trial of pro-independence politician Edward Leung were ordered to leave the courtroom and to view the remainder of the trial via a video screen in the lobby. The arrests came as chief secretary John Lee — second-in-command to chief executive Carrie Lam — resigned from his post and announced he will run in an “election” for the city’s top job that is tightly controlled by Beijing. The successful candidate will be chosen on May 8 by a 1,500-strong Election Committee whose members have been hand-picked by Beijing. The arrests came after two U.K. Supreme Court judges resigned from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal (CFA) last month, citing a recent crackdown on dissent under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by Beijing. Non-permanent CFA judges Lord Reed and Lord Hodge had sat on the court “for many years” under an agreement governing the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, but Lam’s administration had “departed from values of political freedom, and freedom of expression,” Reed said in a statement. The national security law ushered in a citywide crackdown on public dissent and criticism of the authorities that has seen several senior journalists, pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai and 47 former lawmakers and democracy activists charged with offenses from “collusion with a foreign power” to “subversion.” Extracts from Lai’s prison letters published by the Index on Censorship in late March 2022 quoted Lai as saying that “the muted anger of the Hong Kong people is not going away.” “This barbaric suppression [and] intimidation works,” Lai wrote. “Hong Kong people are all quieted down. But the muted anger they have is not going away. Even those emigrating will have it forever. Many people are emigrating or planning to.” “The more barbaric [the] treatment of Hong Kong people, [the] greater is their anger, and power of their potential resistance; [the] greater is the distrust of Beijing, of Hong Kong, [the] stricter is their rule to control,” Lai wrote. “The vicious circle of suppression-anger-and-distrust eventually will turn Hong Kong into a prison, a cage, like Xinjiang.” Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Read More

Shanghai transports tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases, close contacts out of town

Editor09 mins

The mass, out-of-town relocation of thousands of people from Shanghai who have tested positive for COVID-19 is sparking a social media backlash from neighboring regions in China, according to local residents and social media posts. With more than 10,000 people testing positive for the virus in the city so far, and isolation and quarantine facilities in the city overflowing, the authorities have started packing thousands of local people onto mass transportation and sending them to isolation camps in neighboring provinces and cities. Social media user @DeliciousFishSkinCrispy called the policy “shameless,” saying that some 30,000 Shanghai residents are being sent to the eastern province of Zhejiang alone. Others complained of a lack of containment measures during the trip to the isolation facility, saying the lax restrictions on those known to have been exposed to the virus would likely spread it to the surrounding areas. User @RadishTuan1971 posted a video of an isolation convoy heading to Zhejiang’s provincial capital, Hangzhou. “The neighborhood committee told us they wouldn’t be providing any protective clothing, and that large numbers of close contacts were being sent to Hangzhou,” the user commented, adding that he was worried about testing positive after being put on a bus with a group of potentially infected people despite quarantining at home for four days. He called on the government to issue personal protective equipment (PPE) to people ordered to leave town for isolation facilities. Shanghai reported a cumulative total of 13,354 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, but officials vowed to stick to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s zero-COVID policy, despite skyrocketing numbers. “We will stick unswervingly to the overall dynamic zero-COVID policy without hesitation, step up mass testing, quarantine and treatment, and realize the goal of zero-COVID in the shortest possible timeframe,” a health official told a news conference. Local media reported that around 10,000 people have been sent to Hangzhou, the same number to Ningbo, 6,000 sent in total to Shaoxing and Jinhua, and 4,000 in total to Huzhou and Taizhou. A health worker conducts a swab test for COVID-19 at a residential compound during the second stage of a pandemic lockdown in Shanghai’s Jing’ an district, April 6, 2022. Credit: AFP Treatment gap But local residents also reported a huge divide between the treatment meted out to the poorest and most vulnerable people during the current outbreak, and those living in affluent neighborhoods. A resident of Hongqiao Emgrand Garden in Shanghai’s Changning district who gave only the surname Jiang said her residential community was well-supplied, despite reports of food shortages in other parts of the city. “The volunteers were delivering rapid antigen test kits door to door yesterday,” Jiang said. “Nobody in the community is allowed out, not to walk the dog, not to hang out down in the courtyard; we all have to stay home.” “[However], it is being managed very well, and everyone is behaving very responsibly,” she said. “They even called us to say that proper fresh vegetables were being delivered, as well as steak and shrimp balls to every household yesterday evening.” Yet residents of the less affluent districts of Juquan, Xinyuan, Gucun township and Baoshan faced food shortages during their lockdown, while those in isolation facilities hadn’t received any government food supplies for nearly two weeks, according to social media reports. Instead, food supplies are dumped outside in the courtyard to leave people to fight for food in chaotic scenes that some people likened to the Hunger Games. He Anquan (L) and Wang Lijin (R) take part in a hunger strike opposite the Chinese Consulate in New York, April 6, 2022. Credit: He Anquan’s Twitter feed Strike in solidarity In New York, Chinese dissidents who formed the Shanghai National Party in exile staged a three-day hunger strike outside the Chinese consulate from April 4. Dissident He Anquan told reporters from a tent across the street from the consulate on Tuesday that he hadn’t eaten for 24 hours, and was struggling to keep warm with the temperature at a chilly nine degrees Celsius. “Of course it’s cold, but it’s still above freezing point,” He, who is refusing food but taking water, told RFA. “As a Shanghainese, this is all I can do to express my feelings of solidarity and concern to the 25 million Shanghai residents who live, work and were born in Shanghai,” he said. Since the citywide lockdown began, patients have died due to lack of timely medical treatment and children have been sent to separate isolation facilities from their parents, while food prices have skyrocketed. Some residents have committed suicide by jumping off their buildings, He told RFA. “The Chinese government’s lockdown policy in Shanghai amounts to a massacre, because it has resulted in the death of Shanghai citizens without medical treatment, or suicide due to emotional breakdown, all kinds of tragedies,” he said. “These things are already happening.” Opposition to policy Fellow Shanghai National Party activist Wang Lijin said he was joining He’s hunger strike. “[CCP leader] Xi Jinping wants to achieve national unity during these citywide lockdowns,” Wang said. “We are very opposed to his cruelty to the people of Shanghai.” “We came to oppose Xi Jinping’s shutdown of the city.” There are signs of growing dissent over Xi’s preference for a zero-COVID policy within China, however. A recent analysis that appeared on the encyclopedia site Zhihu argued that only the strictest lockdowns were of any use whatsoever in curbing the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant of COVID-19. “The omicron variant spreads 5.82 times faster than the previous variants,” the article said. ““The likelihood of bringing it under control is only around 51 percent, unless the strictest possible containment and control measures are applied immediately, as soon as the first case appears [in a city].” Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Read More

Myanmar prison on lockdown after deadly response to inmate protest

Editor08 mins

A prison in Myanmar’s Sagaing region is under lockdown Tuesday after authorities opened fire on an inmate protest over the weekend, killing one prisoner and injuring as many as nine others, according to sources. A source close to the prison on the outskirts of Sagaing’s Monywa city who spoke on condition of anonymity told RFA’s Myanmar Service that junta troops have assumed control of security at the site and that all trials and family visits have been suspended indefinitely. “The army is still guarding the prison with military vehicles,” the source said. “Lawyers who usually attend special court proceedings [on site] are still not allowed inside. As families cannot enter the prison [for inmate visits], all information has been cut off.” Residents told RFA on Monday that gunfire was heard emanating from inside Monywa Prison the previous night and that authorities had opened fire on a group of inmates who were chanting anti-junta slogans in a rare display of opposition to military rule, killing one and injuring nine others. One source with ties to inmates involved in the incident said they had been protesting harsh conditions at the prison, including the use of torture during interrogations. “During the daily inspection, as inmates were out of their cells, someone started shouting, ‘Do we, the people, unite?’ Then, the others responded, saying, ‘Yes, we do!’ A big crowd gathered, and the protest began,” said the source, who also declined to be named. The protest started at around 5 p.m. A half an hour later, two military trucks entered the compound, and the shooting began. “According to our sources inside, we can confirm one person was shot dead and five were injured,” the source said. “The one who died was shot in the chest. One of the injured is in serious condition after losing a lot of blood from his thigh. But as far as we know, they have not been taken for medical treatment and were forced to help each other in the prison.” A member of the Monywa People’s Strike Steering Committee, whose leader Wai Moe Naing is among several political prisoners being held at the prison, said emergency vehicles were diverted from patrols of the city prior to the shooting, including military trucks and ambulances. Other sources said that as many as nine inmates had been injured in the crackdown. RFA was unable to independently verify the number of casualties. Attempts to contact Khin Shwe, the junta’s deputy director of the Department of Prisons, went unanswered Tuesday. Bombing campaign Following the unrest, several prodemocracy People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary groups issued a statement about the shooting and in retaliation carried out a joint bombing campaign against five junta targets in the city, according to Boh Dattha of the Monywa PDF. “We asked residents not to leave their houses beginning around 5:30 p.m.,” he said. “In response to what happened in Monywa Prison, we, and three allied groups, carried out bombings against the military regime.” The other groups involved in the bombings were Monywa Generation Tiger, Monywa Special Date Date Kyei, and “a third new group,” Boh Dattha said. He provided no further details about the targets of the bombings or whether they resulted in any casualties. A resident of the city confirmed to RFA that multiple explosions were heard in Monywa after the shooting on Sunday night. “We heard gunshots. Later, there were a lot of explosions in the city — in no less than 10 places,” the resident said. The junta has yet to issue a statement about the shooting incident or the explosions in Monywa, but sources described an increased presence of police and military troops since the weekend and said authorities have been conducting checks throughout the city. Since seizing power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup, junta troops have killed at least 1,730 civilians and detained more than 10,000 political prisoners, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Last month, authorities in Sagaing’s Kalay township killed seven inmates and injured a dozen others after using live ammunition to quell what junta officials described as a prison “riot.” Sources told RFA the deaths were likely the result of a violent crackdown on a protest over ill-treatment at the facility.  According to the military, guards at the prison tried to disable the inmates by aiming below their waists. But residents noted that photos published by the junta on its online “Viber Group” platform to accompany its statement on the incident showed that at least some of those killed had been shot in the head and chest. Authorities have responded to earlier protests over ill-treatment by political prisoners in Yangon’s Insein Prison and Mandalay’s Obo Prison by beating protesters, denying them medical treatment, and putting them in solitary confinement.   Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Read More

Police detain over 300 Rohingya for venturing outside Cox’s Bazar refugee camps

Editor06 mins

Bangladesh authorities were holding more than 300 Rohingya in transit camps after police caught them working outside their refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, or while leaving their shelters for other purposes, officials said Tuesday. Human Rights Watch meanwhile renewed its call for the government to ease movement restrictions on Rohingya, saying that barring refugees from leaving the camps for work or shutting down their shops within the camps only compounds their misery. During raids in the Ukhia sub-district of Cox’s Bazar on Monday and Tuesday, police arrested 216 Rohingya refuges who had left the camps or were in the process of leaving them to go outside, Ahmed Sanjur Morhsed, officer-in-charge of the Ukhia police station, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. “The Rohingya people are not permitted to go out of the camps, but very often they get out of the camps [by] adopting different tactics,” he said. “Acting on a tip off, we conducted raids on Monday and Tuesday at different bazaars and detained Rohingya. We caught many Rohingya while they were heading out for various places [outside the refugee camps],” he said, adding that the operation was a “special drive.” He claimed that those arrested had admitted that they worked locally outside their refugee camps. After detaining them, police sent them to transit camps run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Police in neighboring Teknaf, another sub-district of Cox’s Bazar, similarly arrested more than 100 Rohingya during the special drive on Monday and Tuesday. “The target of the special raids is to stop the Rohingya from getting out of the camps and to bar them from working in the local market,” Md. Hafizur Rahman, the officer-in-charge of the Teknaf sub-district police station, told BenarNews. All those Rohingya detained have been sent to the UNHCR transit camps ahead of their return to their respective refugee camps, he said. Separately, Ukhia police also arrested 48 Rohingya who were preparing to be trafficked to Malaysia illegally, by sea. Job competition Nur Amin, a resident of Kutupalong camp, was one of the Rohingya refugees rounded up by police on Tuesday from a bazar in Ukhia. “We were warned not to go out for work. I was passing my time idle,” Amin said. “So last month I took a job at a tea stall in return for 200 taka (U.S. $2.4) a day. The police arrested me from the stall,” he added. UNHCR has yet to confirm that the arrested Rohingya were handed over to the transit camp. “This is sort of incident would put stress on the Rohingya refugees. So the issue should be dealt with humanely,” Ziaur Karim, a Rohingya leader at Kutupalong camp, told BenarNews. Local Bangladeshis have voiced concerns about Rohingya refugees taking up jobs in Cox’s Bazar. “The local Bangladeshi workers have been losing their job opportunities while the Rohingya people have been offering menial work with cheap wages,” M. Gafur Uddin, chairman of Palongkhali union council, told BenarNews. Meanwhile, in a statement issued Monday, Human Rights Watch pointed to how Bangladeshi authorities, in recent months, had intensified their restrictions on Rohingya refugees’ livelihoods, movement, and education. “Bangladesh is understandably burdened with hosting nearly one million Rohingya refugees, but cutting them off from opportunities to work and study is only compounding their vulnerability and dependence on aid,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Bangladesh government should formalize and expand employment opportunities to bolster the Rohingya’s self-reliance and enable them to support their families and communities.” Local humanitarian groups are aware of the issues raised by New York-based HRW. Nur Khan Liton, a human rights activist, told BenarNews: “I don’t think there’s an easy solution to many of these issues until Bangladesh officially recognizes these Rohingya as refugees.”

Read More

Thousands flee junta raid that torched 250 homes in Myanmar’s Sagaing region

Editor013 mins

A joint force of junta troops and pro-military militiamen set fire to a village in Myanmar’s embattled Sagaing region over the weekend, destroying around 250 homes and forcing more than 2,000 people to flee, residents said Tuesday. A resident of Khin-U township’s Ngar Tin Gyi village, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told RFA’s Myanmar Service that soldiers and Pyu Saw Htee fighters stormed the settlement at around 7 a.m. on Sunday “firing guns and heavy weapons.” “On hearing gunfire, many villagers fled with only the clothes on their backs. Some of them were able to carry some small items and food,” the resident said. “The soldiers set some houses on fire at about 10 a.m. They stopped for a while later for lunch and then they continued burning houses again at about 2 p.m. All we could do was watch the houses burning from a distance.” Junta forces left the next morning, he said, and residents returned to Ngar Tin Gyi to collect what was left of their belongings briefly before returning to makeshift camps in the jungle. Another resident of Ngar Tin Gyi, who also declined to be named, said that villagers are too frightened of another raid to return to the area and rebuild. “Smoke billowed up and I could see the flames. The terrifying sound of gunfire echoed through the air,” he said. “All the grain and farm equipment and cattle were lost. We have nothing left – no clothes, no [rice] paddy, no food, no oil. Not a brick was left to rebuild our houses. All that we have saved throughout the years is gone now. I don’t know what to do. I cannot understand why they must be so cruel.” Others said it would take “thirty or forty years” to rebuild everything that was destroyed over the weekend. It was not immediately clear why Ngar Tin Gyi was targeted. The area has seen frequent clashes between the military and anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary groups in recent weeks, and residents of other villages raided by junta forces have told RFA they were accused of providing haven to the armed opposition. Not long after leaving Ngar Tin Gyi on Monday, the convoy of junta troops triggered a landmine planted by the PDF near Khin-U township’s Sai Gaung village. Sources said the troops responded by setting fire to a school in the village, and on Tuesday burned down three homes in nearby Ohnbin Gone village. An aerial view of Chaung Oo village, in Sagaing region’s Pale township, where junta troops and Pyu Saw Htee fighters burned more than 300 homes, Dec. 18, 2022. Credit: RFA Scorched earth campaign Junta Deputy Information Minister Zaw Min Tun on Tuesday called the accusations of arson attacks baseless and instead blamed the PDF, which the military regime has labeled a terrorist organization. “[The PDF] set fire to the houses and fled and, as usual, say the army is responsible,” he said. “They are using the term ‘Pyu Saw Htee’ in their accusations, but there is no Pyu Saw Htee. There is only a people’s militia group formed by residents [to protect themselves against the PDF].” Since the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup, security forces have killed at least 1,730 civilians and detained more than 10,000 political prisoners, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. The junta has also launched several troop offensives against the PDF and armed ethnic groups in Myanmar’s remote border regions. On March 3, the military shut down internet access for several townships in Sagaing region before sending troops to the area two days later. Troops have encountered fierce resistance to military rule in the region and responded with a scorched earth campaign that reports say has included arson, looting, arbitrary arrests, rape, torture, and murder. According to an investigation by RFA, troops torched at least 447 houses in Khin-U township in the month of March alone in the villages of Dan-gone, Hmantaw, Kyunlei, Thet Pay, Tamote, Kala Lu, and Shar Lwin. The destruction since Sunday brought the total number of homes destroyed by fire in the township to nearly 700. Data For Myanmar, a group that researches the impact of conflict on communities, recently said that pro-junta forces had burned 7,973 houses across the country since last year’s the coup. Of those, 4954 houses were in Sagaing region. A former member of parliament from the deposed National League for Democracy party from Sagaing region told RFA that villages in Myanmar’s ethnic areas are no stranger to arson attacks by the military. “This is undeniable. In Rakhine [state] … and in other areas like Kachin state and Chin state they have done the same thing,” said the former lawmaker, who declined to be named. “Employing all of these horrible acts to keep the military dictatorship alive has become their tradition.” Chin refugees shelter near the Indian border after fleeing fighting in Northern Chin state’s Falam township, March 10, 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist Thousands at India border The reports of arson attacks in Sagaing came as sources in Northern Chin state said that intensifying clashes between the military and the Chin National Defense Force (CNDF) since early March had forced nearly all the 5,200 residents of Rikhawdar in Falam township to flee to Myanmar’s shared border with India. A resident of the town told RFA that fighting in the past week had become so bad, with junta troops indiscriminately firing mortars, that “only one percent of people remain.” “It’s all deserted. All that is left are the people guarding their houses and belongings that they can’t take with them,” he said. One refugee sheltering near the border said that many people had crossed into India’s Mizoram state, but “nearly 2,000” remain in makeshift camps on the Myanmar side and are running low on supplies. “Nearly 2,000 people who cannot afford rental fees over there have been living in tents along the border with India,” he said. “They have to find their own food and water. If the fighting continues, they will be…

Read More

Vietnamese journalist gets 3 1/2 years for online criticism

Editor03 mins

A court in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City Tuesday sentenced a journalist to three years and six months in jail for criticizing how authorities handled a corruption case he uncovered as a reporter. While working for the Ho Chi Minh City Law newspaper in 2018, Nguyen Hoai Nam submitted evidence of wrongdoing among employees of the Vietnam Internal Waterways Agency to the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Public Security. Authorities used the evidence to charge and sentence three employees at the agency for “abusing their positions of power while performing public duties.” But 14 others identified in evidence as having been involved in bribery went unpunished. Nam wrote on Facebook that the authorities’ handling of the case was insufficient and that investigators were trying to “cover it up and allow the defendants to slip away.” On April 2, 2021, Ho Chi Minh City Police arrested Nam on charges of “abusing freedom and democracy to infringe on the legal interests of the state, organizations and individuals,” a violation under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code. He was found guilty in Tuesday’s trial. The court concluded that Nam’s posts also violated anti-defamation laws. International human rights organizations have said Article 331 and other vaguely written and arbitrarily applied laws are tools for the government to silence dissenting voices and restrict freedom of speech. In January 2022, civil society groups in Vietnam composed a joint petition, calling for the removal of three sections of the country’s criminal code, including 331, because they are often used arbitrarily to crack down on political dissidents. Translated by An Nguyen. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Read More

Young Uyghur-Australian to run for seat in Australia’s Parliament

Editor05 mins

A young Uyghur-Australian chiropractor is running for a seat in Australia’s Parliament in part to address China’s threats to the continent and to Uyghurs in Xinjiang and elsewhere in the world. Intezar Elham, 28, told RFA that she decided in October 2021 to run in the country’s May 2022 election after she was invited to become a candidate by the newly formed Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance, a small party that promotes human rights in China. On her website, Elham says she is the first and youngest Uyghur-Australian Muslim to run for parliament. Elham said she wanted to serve as a voice for Uyghurs in Australian politics. She attended a demonstration on March 30 in front of the Chinese consulate in Adelaide in southern Australia. In a speech there, Elham noted that Australians are now waking up to the reality that Uyghurs have faced for decades. She also described her determination to run for office because of what she said is the ruling Liberal Party’s failure to be tough on China. “But even if we don’t win — our goal is bigger than that,” she said at the gathering. “My goal is to shift the national conversation and debate on major issues like the threat the Chinese government poses to this country and the world.” Elham spoke of her admiration for late Australian Sen. Kimberley Kitching, an Australian Labor Party MP, lawyer and trade unionist who died of a heart attack on March 10. Kitching was “a staunch advocate for Uyghurs cause in Parliament and around the world, standing up to China having founded the Inter-Parliamentary Group on China and was the main politician pushing for an Australian Magnitsky Act,” Elham said, referring to an act passed by Australian Parliament in December 2021 to create a legal framework for sanctions. “Kimberley’s legacy is a world where countries like this one stand up for those who need us, and for that she has the thanks of Uyghurs here and around the world,” she said. Elham, who goes by the nickname Inty, says on her website that she never saw herself entering politics. “But because my grandparents fled the brutality of the authoritarian Chinese government, I cannot sit by and watch the Chinese Communist Party corrupt Australia and our democracy,” she said. “We can see this influence for example, in the imposing Chinese consulate in Joslin built without consultation with the community and spying on us,” she said, referring to the consulate, which opened in March 2021 in an area containing a large number of Uyghurs and near a Uyghur language school. “We must stand up.” Dilzat, a Uyghur intellectual who lives in Adelaide and supports Elham’s campaign, said Uyghurs around the world are pleased that the aspiring politician who was born and raised in Australia is fighting on behalf of Uyghurs in China. “What she made public to the media and the world there at the demonstration in front of the consulate was her political platform, what she’s fighting against, who is standing behind her,” he said. “This event was a formal opening ceremony of sorts.” Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Read More

Two more Uyghurs detained in Saudi Arabia face risk of deportation to China

Editor09 mins

Two more Uyghurs — a mother and her daughter — are in danger of being deported from Saudi Arabia back to China, where they could face severe punishment at the hands of authorities there, an international human rights group said. Police detained Buhalchem (in Chinese, Buheliqiemu) Abula and her 13-year-old daughter near the holy city of Mecca on March 31 and told them that they faced deportation to China along with two Uyghur men already held, according to a message received by Abula’s friends, London-based Amnesty International said in a statement on Monday. One of the men held, Nurmemet Rozi (Nuermaimaiti Ruze), is Abula’s former husband and father of the 13-year who are now also being held. Rozi and Hamidulla Wali (Aimidoula Waili), a religious scholar, have been detained without charge in Saudi Arabia since November 2020. The two men traveled to Saudi Arabia from Turkey on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca and were arrested, though authorities allegedly never told them why they were being held, RFA reported in March. Family members of the two men told Amnesty that the pair had been transferred from Jeddah to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, in a move they believed was a precursor to extradition. “Buhalchem and her daughter were detained in the evening of March 31,” Wali’s daughter, Nuriman Hamdulla, told RFA. “I spoke to her as she and her daughter were taken away. They were given no reason for the detention. We’re not sure where they’re detained now.” “They’re innocent,” she said. “They must be detained at the request of the Chinese government because they didn’t break any law.” Hamdulla also said that she had not received a response from the Saudi authorities about whether her father and Rozi had been sent back to China. “Deporting these four people — including a child — to China, where Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are facing a horrific campaign of mass internment, persecution and torture, would be an outrageous violation of international law,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. “With time seemingly running out to save the four Uyghurs from this catastrophic extradition, it is crucial that other governments with diplomatic ties to Saudi Arabia step in now to urge the Riyadh authorities to uphold their obligations and stop the deportations,” she said. Rights groups, the United Nations and some Western countries have denounced China’s persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang. China is believed to have detained about 1.8 million people in a network of internment camps across the region, with survivors reporting forced labor, torture and rape. Call for international action Under the international law principle of nonrefoulement and as a state party to the U.N. Convention against Torture, Saudi Arabia is prohibited from returning people to countries where they would face torture, cruel punishment, persecution or other serious harm. Alkan Akad, Amnesty’s China researcher, told RFA that the Uyghurs would likely face arbitrary detention and torture if they were deported to China. “They would be taken to internment camps, and the daughter also would be forcibly separated from her family,” he said. “And so, we call on the Saudi government to release them immediately unless there is international recognizable crime they are charged with.” An official at the office of the Permanent Mission of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations in New York told RFA that the country’s “policy on the Uyghur issue is very clear in all our statements,” but said that she was not responsible for the issue. Amnesty also called on the international community, especially the United States and the United Kingdom as strategic allies of Saudi Arabia, to take action to prevent the illegal extradition of the Uyghurs to China. The call came after two U.N. experts, Fernand de Varennes and Ahmed Shaheed, urged Saudi Arabia on April 1 to abide by the nation’s nonrefoulement obligations and to refrain from extraditing Rozi and Wali. “We are alarmed by the arrest of two Uyghur men in Saudi Arabia, since November 2020, and their continuous detention without proper legal justification or implementation of fundamental safeguards, reportedly on the basis of an extradition request made by China,” the experts said in a statement. “Detention should remain an exceptional measure subject to an individual assessment and regular judicial review, otherwise Saudi Arabia would be depriving the two men of their fundamental rights provided for under national and international law,” they said. De Varennes and Shaheed also requested that Saudi authorities immediately allow the two men to contact their families. The Saudi government has publicly supported China’s antiterrorism measures in what rights activists have said is a tacit approval of the crackdown on predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang. Saudi authorities have returned other Uyghurs back to China after they traveled to the country for work or to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. “We call on the Saudi authorities to immediately release the detained Uyghurs and refrain from deporting them to China, a country that’s committing active genocide against Uyghur Muslims,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress in Germany. “We urge the Saudi government to allow the Uyghurs to leave for a third safe country.” Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Read More

North Korea cracks down on private fuel sales during shortage

Editor06 mins

Authorities in North Korea are cracking down on citizens who privately sell gasoline as fuel shortages spread across the country, sources in the country told RFA. Private ownership and sale of fuel reserves is technically illegal in North Korea but is tolerated under normal circumstances. Now that fuel is hard to come by the government is finding the private sellers and seizing their fuel. The crackdown began at the beginning of the month, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “This investigation is a move to confiscate privately owned fuel in the country as it faces a fuel shortage,” he said. “These days in North Korea, the economic sectors including transportation, agriculture and fisheries are experiencing a severe shortage of gasoline and diesel fuel.” Demand is higher this time of year with the start of the farming season, but fuel reserves are lower than normal because of a two-year trade moratorium with China due to coronavirus concerns. Though the ban ended at the start of 2022, trade has not yet reached its former volume, so stocks have not yet been fully replenished. Global prices are also high right now due to sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. “At the beginning of this year, the price of fuel at the gas station operated by a trading company was 9,800 won per liter of gasoline [U.S. $6.17/gallon], 7,500 for diesel ($4.72/gallon),” the source said. “No one expected that gasoline would rise to 17,000 won per liter [$10.71/gallon] or 12,000 won per liter [$7.56/gallon] for diesel by the end of March,” he said. Prices of gas sold by individuals also shot up but is still 1,000 won cheaper per liter ($0.60 cheaper per gallon) than the government price, according to the source. “People began to prefer trading with the individual sellers. Also, everyone knows that the fuel sold at gas stations is of inferior quality to that of private individual sellers,” the source said. Gas stations are known to mix gasoline with cheaper fuels, such as naphtha (lighter fluid), during times of shortage. Though it stretches the gas reserves further, the adulterated gas can damage vehicles or machines intended to run on gasoline. It was this very practice that drove people in the northwestern province of North Pyongan to flock to the individual sellers, a resident there told RFA. “As the individual traders started selling fuels more actively, authorities began to take preliminary measures to take away their business,” the second source said. “Residents of the city of Sinuiju believe that the reason the price of fuel is soaring these days is because of the government’s series of missile test launches. … These continuous missile launches are preventing the smooth phase-in of fuel,” she said. She said the government tried to put price controls on gas in the city on the Chinese border, but it still has risen to unbelievable highs. Despite its proximity to China, gasoline in Sinuiju costs $7.10 per gallon and diesel costs $4.26. “Food and other necessities are skyrocketing right now as well,” she said. “Residents are very unhappy with the police department’s crackdown on … the private sellers.” “In springtime gas is in high demand for farming, fishing and transportation, but the authorities’ crackdown is making it difficult to get fuel because the private sellers are hiding so they don’t get caught. It is causing a major disruption to our daily lives,” the second source said. RFA reported last month that people were trying to cash in on the fuel shortage by buying fuel vouchers in one part of the country and selling them in other parts where gas was more expensive. Fuel vouchers, however, can only be redeemed at gas stations. Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Read More

Water release from Vietnamese dam floods villages in southern Laos

Editor05 mins

A sudden discharge of water from a dam on the Sekong River in Vietnam flooded downstream villages in Laos, destroying property and sending residents scrambling to higher ground, sources in Laos told RFA. The 170-megawatt A Luoi Dam near the border between the two countries in Vietnam’s Thua Thien-Hue province has been releasing water since April 2 as the dam’s reservoir swelled to alarming levels after days of rain in the region. Sources downstream in Laos’ Sekong and Attapeu provinces told RFA that whole buildings were washed away by the rising waters after the release. “More than 30 restaurants out of 40 have been swept away and other food stands have all been lost too,” a restaurant owner on the banks of the river in, Sekong province told RFA’s Lao Service. “The district authorities issued a warning notice saying that the release wouldn’t pose any danger to the residents, but the water level has jumped higher than expected. We didn’t have time to move our chairs, tables and equipment to a safe place at all,” the restaurant owner said. The warning came on the afternoon of April 1, so few had time to prepare, according to the owner. “Then the water from the dam in Vietnam came so quickly. The water is now almost overflowing the river bank. The strong current hit the river wall causing a lot of landslides and damage. For an exact damage toll, the authorities of Sekong Province are still assessing the cost.” A villager in Attapeu province told RFA that residents received a vague warning message on their smartphones. “That warning didn’t specify how much water was being released. The Lao authorities should’ve warned us several days earlier and they should have told us how much water will be released so people below the dam could have avoided a lot of the dam,” the villager said. A district-level official in Attapeu told RFA that the sudden discharge was because of nonstop rain. Satellite imagery of the A Luoi dam in Vietnam. Credit: CNES/Airbus The dam operator warned the Energy and Mines Department of Attapeu province earlier on April 1, an official of the department told RFA. “After that, Sekong province and Attapeu province publicly issued a similar warning to residents along the Sekong River to move their belongings to higher ground and stay away from the river.  All activities in the river were banned, including fishing and boating. But many villagers didn’t heed the warning,” the official said. “Many residents assumed that the water current wouldn’t be that strong. That’s why there is some damage to property of the people who live on the river bank. Their homes, cars, motorcycles and some heavy equipment of a sand dredging company, including a pick-up truck, sand trucks and a backhoe, are flooded. The discharge is causing quite a bit of damage to floating restaurants, food stands and huts because their owners didn’t have time to rescue them,” the official said. RFA reported on two previous floodings of Attapeu and Sekong provinces by the A Luoi dam in October and November 2018. A villager in 2018 told RFA that every time A Luoi releases water it floods the community. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Read More

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