• contact@ij-reportika.com
Ij reportika Logo

Category: World

‘Piles of corpses’ left after Myanmar junta attacks village

Editor04 mins

A junta aerial bombardment killed and injured dozens in western Myanmar, locals told Radio Free Asia.  Most residents in Thar Dar, a predominantly Rohingya village in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, were sleeping when a fighter jet dropped a bomb around 1 a.m. Friday, a local said.  “Twenty-three people died on the spot and more than 30 were injured. There are piles of corpses in the village,” said the man who didn’t want to be named for safety reasons. “Children and elderly are among the dead, covered with tarpaulin and everything. Most of those who died and were injured lost their limbs.” Thar Dar village, nearly five kilometers (three miles) north of Minbya city, was captured by the Arakan Army on Feb. 26. The rebel group has also seized six other townships in Rakhine state, including most recently Kyaukphyu, where a large Chinese mega-project is located. The army also controls Pauktaw township in neighboring Chin state to the north. While the Arakan Army has announced its intentions to control the state’s capital of Sittwe, junta troops have focused their resources on both small and large-scale attacks against civilians, which villagers have labeled a pattern of indiscriminate killings. Thar Dar village has little more than 300 houses and a population of under 2,000, residents said. While there was no battle in the area to warrant an attack, residents told RFA the village had become a brief refuge for Rohingya fleeing nearby Sin Gyi Pyin village after it was also targeted. Rakhine state has also seen other attacks on the ethnically persecuted group, including an attack that killed an entire Rohingya family in Sittwe.  RFA contacted Rakhine state’s junta spokesperson U Hla Thein for more information on Thar Dar’s aerial bombardment, but he did not pick up the phone. Junta columns regularly shell and drop bombs on villages in Minbya, Mrauk-U, Pauktaw and Ponnagyun townships where they have already lost control, residents said.  As of March 3, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported more than 170 civilians had been killed and over 400 injured since the fighting in Rakhine state began again on Nov. 11, 2023. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

Read More

Vietnam’s next leader faces crunch time with economy, demographics

Editor014 mins

January brought a fresh gust of rumors about the whereabouts of Nguyen Phu Trong, the Communist Party of Vietnam general secretary. He hadn’t been seen in public for a few weeks and failed to meet with the visiting president of Indonesia, leading some commentators to speculate that his health was deteriorating once again.  We had been here in 2019 when it was rumored – accurately, it turned out – that Trong had suffered a stroke while on a visit down south. This time around, Trong showed up again rather quickly, delivering a speech to the National Assembly on January 15. But rumors of the 79 year-old’s failing health are a reminder of his and the country’s frailty.   Given that party chiefs tend to rule for two five-year terms, we can assume that the next general-secretary, if voted in at the next Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) National Congress in 2026 and if Trong does actually retire then, will rule until 2036.  It is not overly dramatic to say that the next party chief will govern during the most consequential decade of Vietnam’s development.  Women work at the Hung Viet garment export factory in Hung Yen province, Vietnam, Dec. 30, 2020. (Kham/Reuters) Not least, that person  is likely to enter office facing even more uncertain world politics.  One uncertainty is China, whose economy is in a terrible state and which is set to experience perhaps the worst demographic crisis of any country in known history.  The other is a retreating America. The great debate in the United States right now is whether to maintain its post-1945 interest in world affairs or to descend into nationalism and protectionism. If Washington chooses the latter – and Donald Trump’s possible re-election later this year would be an indication of that – the globalization we’ve known since 1945 that has depended on U.S. security guarantees, not least to keep the seas safe for world trade, could collapse.  Vietnam has arguably been one of the biggest beneficiaries of globalization – perhaps second only to China in recent decades. More to the point, China and the United States combined account for 46 percent of Vietnam’s exports and 40 percent of its imports.  Demographic time bomb Hanoi can do little to rectify China’s troubled economy or dispel America’s isolationist tendencies. But it can clean its own house.  The most existential concern, as framed by a headline in the state-run press last year, is its “demographic time bomb.” Thailand is set to lose 10 million people of working age by 2050, about a quarter of its current workforce. China, based on conservative estimates, will lose 217 million workers, down from 984 million today.  Vietnam, thanks to its citizens having so many children in the 1990s, will only see its working-age population dip by around 253,000 people by 2050, from 67.6 million now – a 0.3 percent fall. The workforce will have passed its peak by the mid-2030s.   Instead, Vietnam appears set to suffer the problem of too many retirees. Vietnam became an “aging” society in 2011, when 7 percent of its population was aged over 65. It will become an “aged” society, when that demographic is more than 14 percent of the population, in 2034.  Elderly people exercise at a public park in Hanoi, Oct. 9, 2018. (Kham/Reuters) Vietnam will be the fourth “aged” society in Southeast Asia, after Singapore, Thailand and Brunei. The percentage of people over 65, those who don’t work and are net extractors of state money, will double between now and 2050, from 10 percent to 20 percent.  In fact, people over 60 will go from 14.7 to 26.5 percent of the population over this timeframe. That’s the figure to bear in mind since Vietnam’s retirement age for men will be 62 in 2028 and 60 for women in 2035.  Moreover, the proportion of retirees will probably be higher than 26 percent of the population since women, who retire earlier, outnumber men by the time they’re 60 years old. So it’s possible that Vietnam is looking at around a fifth of its population in retirement by 2030 and nearly a third by 2050.  Unlike Thailand and China, whose demographic future is dire, more so than some analysts think, Vietnam won’t see a declining workforce at the same time as an increase in retirees, so it won’t be left trying to scrape less money from fewer workers for greater welfare payments to more retirees.  However, Vietnam is starting from a lower wealth base. If its GDP per capita doubles between now and 2034, it would still be on par with Thailand’s GDP per capita today. If it triples, it will be on par with today’s Malaysia, which won’t become “aged” until 2042.  Tough decisions won’t wait Vietnam risks becoming old before it becomes rich, unless, that is, it can turbocharge its economy over the coming decade and half. According to the World Bank, Vietnam has until 2042 before its “demographic window of opportunity will close.”  The state will have to find vastly more money for its retirees, sapping funds that could be invested in infrastructure and education.  Spending on education has already fallen from around 18 percent of government expenditure in the early 2010s to around 15 percent. Infrastructure spending has been criminally misused. Just look at the badly managed Ho Chi Minh City metro project.  Currently, average social insurance payments are just $240 per month, a little over two-thirds of workers’ average income. A lengthy World Bank report noted that “Countries with old-age dependency ratios equal to Vietnam’s projected level in 2035 typically spend 8-9 percent of GDP on public pensions, well above the 2-3 percent that Vietnam has spent over the past decade”.  Commuters fill the street during morning rush hour in Ho Chi Minh City, Jan. 12, 2024. (Jae C. Hong/AP) By today’s GDP, that means the Vietnamese state will need to find something in the range of $18-21 billion annually just for pensions within a decade. That’s not counting the additional…

Read More

China’s stability maintenance system kicks into high gear on ‘sensitive dates’

Editor019 mins

On dates considered politically sensitive by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, police and local officials across China call up or visit anyone they think might cause some kind of trouble for the authorities, and take steps to silence or control them. On “sensitive dates” such as June 4, the date of the 1989 Tiananmen killings, authorities target independent journalists, rights activists and lawyers, anyone with a grievance against the government, people who complain and petition the authorities, and anyone with a track record of posting online content that the government doesn’t like. Meanwhile, an army of internet censors, many of whom work for private service providers, keeps a list of metaphors, code words, homophones and other workarounds to help them block and delete unwanted content. They are putting into practice China’s “stability maintenance” system, designed to nip social unrest in the bud. Security personnel walk outside the Great Hall of the People after the second plenary session of the 14th National People’s Congress in Beijing on March 8, 2024. (Jade Gao/AFP) Blogger and former police detective Deng Haiyan, who uses the online handle “Second Uncle,” said the police are trying to get ahead of any potential unrest, and nip it in the bud. “Every time there is a major celebration or festival, they want to make sure nothing untoward happens,” Deng said. “They assume that certain people will take the opportunity to cause trouble at a time like that.” “Once trouble starts, it spreads very easily, so they want to lock it down beforehand.” Former Sina Weibo censor Liu Lipeng said online service providers must keep a calendar of “sensitive dates” and be aware of certain keywords and workarounds that internet users may employ to evade censorship. “As a service provider, you have to have a manual to avoid getting into trouble,” he said. “Sensitive dates” include major political meetings like the National People’s Congress that ran in Beijing from March 5-11. ‘Picking quarrels and stirring up trouble’ Fu Yuxia, who is pursuing a complaint against the government through official petitioning channels, hails from a small town outside Lianyungang city in the eastern province of Jiangsu. She was detained by police in her hometown of Niushan in late February on charges of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”  The reason? Fu had bought a rail ticket to visit her parents in Xuzhou, an action that was flagged by the stability maintenance system ahead of the Beijing parliamentary sessions. “They’re afraid that I’ll go to Beijing during the National People’s Congress, so they have detained me in a rescue facility, with people from my local police station on guard outside, round the clock,” Fu told RFA Mandarin from detention. “They keep coming to check that I’m still in my room,” she said, adding that police had also questioned her and taken her fingerprints, warning that she would be jailed if she made plans to travel to Beijing. A petitioner holds photos of evidence in her grievance against local officials, outside a government petition office in Beijing on March 2, 2016, a few days before the National People’s Congress opens its annual session. (Greg Baker/AFP) Calls to the Niushan police department rang unanswered during office hours one day ahead of the National People’s Congress’ opening session. Hangzhou-based freelance writer Zan Aizong also had his liberty restricted during the parliamentary sessions by police in his home city of Hangzhou, who kept coming to his apartment to check up on him. He complained in an online statement: “What do the parliamentary sessions have to do with me? I’m not a delegate to the National People’s Congress or the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.” Zan couldn’t see why he was being targeted, as he isn’t someone who is pursuing a grievance, nor a member of a persecuted group. “I’m just a writer and a not-very-famous online commentator,” he said.  “Is it necessary to waste so much manpower and material resources? Is it necessary to maintain stability in this way?” Zan wanted to know. Placed under guard Meanwhile, state security police in Beijing were placing a guard outside the home of independent political journalist Gao Yu, according to her social media account. “How are Beijingers supposed to live a normal life?” Gao said in a Feb. 27 post to her X account, calling the surveillance “unbearable.” Gao said national security police repeatedly called her phone and turned up at her home in a bid to prevent her from meeting a dissident who was believed to be in Beijing. Similar protocols are typically put in place every five years ahead of the Communist Party’s national congress, dissidents and activists have told RFA. Petitioners and dissidents have told RFA Mandarin that they are also placed under guard, detention or house arrest up to two weeks ahead of China’s National Day, when the ruling Chinese Communist Party marks the founding of the People’s Republic of China by late supreme leader Mao Zedong on Oct. 1, 1949. Veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu works at her desk in her home in Beijing on March 31, 2016. (Greg Baker/AFP) Qing Ming, the tomb-sweeping festival, can also be a political minefield for the authorities, because people often use it to commemorate high-profile dissidents like Liu Xiaobo and ousted former leaders like Zhao Ziyang. Every April 5, police across the country are out in force to stop people from visiting the former homes and graves of people regarded as politically “sensitive” by the government. In 2021, Geng He, wife of disappeared rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, vowed to make offerings every year outside the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco on Qing Ming, because she can only assume her husband has died. “I don’t have any dreams now. I only hope that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can return Gao Zhisheng’s ashes to me for humanitarian reasons.” “I now have a premonition that is getting stronger and stronger, which is that Gao Zhisheng has been persecuted to death,” she said in a public statement. “Otherwise,…

Read More

Vietnamese police track down Montagnards in Thailand

Editor08 mins

Police from Vietnam’s Dak Lak province made unexpected visits to two areas in Thailand where a number of ethnic minorities are seeking refugee status on grounds that they have been persecuted, they told Radio Free Asia.  Members of the Montagnard community said they panicked when the agents visited their homes on Thursday to persuade and threaten them to return to Vietnam. The term “Montagnard” was coined by French colonialists to describe tribes who live in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, many of whom are Christians, but Vietnam has rejected use of the term.  Police also searched for those wanted in last June’s armed attacks on two People’s Commune headquarters in Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands that left nine people dead, the refugees said.  The area where the attacks took place is home to about 30 indigenous tribes who have a long history of conflict with the Vietnamese majority, and who claim they have been discriminated against. In January, 100 individuals were tried in the case, and 10 were sentenced to life in prison on terrorism charges. The remainder were handed sentences ranging from three-and-a-half years to 20 years, mostly on terrorism-related charges. Vietnamese lawyers criticized it as a hasty show trial.  Montagnards living in Bang Len district Nakhon Pathom province, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Thai capital Bangkok, said Thai police brought the Vietnamese police officers to their homes.  Thai police officers asked the Montagnards to gather in a front yard where two of eight Vietnamese officers dressed in plainclothes questioned them, one of the refugees told Radio Free Asia on Friday. Not convinced The two officers gave their names and said they were from the homeland security force in Dak Lak province and from the Gia Lai provincial police, while the other officers took photos and videos with smartphones and camcorders, the refugee said.  They tried to persuade the Montagnards to return to Vietnam, saying they would take care of their transportation, food and accommodation expenses,” he said.  “Once you return to Vietnam, we’ll take care of everything,” the refugee said, recalling the officers’ words.  But he was skeptical. “If we returned to Vietnam, we would die,” he said “We would never be safe. What the Vietnamese [authorities] want is to imprison us.”  Dinh Ngan, an ethnic Bana refugee, said the directorof the Gia Lai provincial police said he would be their “guardian” if they wanted to return. Otherwise, the director said the police would arrest them or they would face difficulties. Another refugee, Nay Phot, said the same official told the Montagnards to return to Vietnam where the government would be lenient towards them and provide them with land and vehicles.  “They threatened that if we didn’t come back, the police would have to arrest us, and then the government would no longer forgive us,” he said. In a statement posted nine days ago, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security branded Montagnard Stand for Justice and the Montagnard Support Group as terrorist organizations linked to the 2023 Dak Lak attacks.  Asking about others The refugee, who requested anonymity out of fear of his safety, said the two officers asked him and others about the whereabouts of Y Quynh Bdap and other wanted Montagnards, showing them their images and arrest warrants on their cellphones.  Y Quynh Bdap, co-founder of Montagnard Stand for Justice, was accused of being associated with the Dak Lak attacks and later sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison on a terrorism charge at a trial held in Vietnam this January. He has denied participating in the attack. Police Col. Adisak Kamnerd of the Bang Len police told RFA that he had not received requests from any agency to allow Vietnamese officers to go there.  Another security official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, that this was the first known incident whereby Vietnamese police questioned Vietnamese refugees in Thailand, violating their basic privacy rights. He also called the action “undiplomatic.” “I believe they are coming after the suspects in the Dak Lak attacks,” he said. The incident occurred one day after the Public Security Online Newspaper reported that Minister of Public Security To Lam met with Thai Ambassador to Vietnam Nikorndej Balankura. During the meeting, Lam proposed that the two sides sign an agreement on extradition and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. RFA did not receive a response to an email sent to the U.N.’s refugee agency in Bangkok. Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to an emailed request for information.  Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Read More

Junta regains control of still-smoldering city in Myanmar

Editor04 mins

A 10-day battle in central Myanmar has left one city in ashes, residents told Radio Free Asia on Friday.  Fighting between resistance groups, or People’s Defense Forces, and junta soldiers began in Sagaing region’s Kani city on March 2, locals said.  Sagaing, an agricultural region in the heart of Myanmar’s dry zone, has faced the brunt of junta attacks since Myanmar’s 2021 coup began.  Civilians region-wide have been subject to indiscriminate arson, arrests, shelling from heavy weapons and raids as rebel groups have proliferated in Sagaing’s central plains and neighboring Chin state.  People’s Defence Forces have been trying to capture Kani since March 2, focusing attacks on the city’s police station, school and administrative office where junta troops are stationed. Kani city is the capital of Kani township.  The result has been a city in ruin and full of bodies. The amount of casualties is still unknown since much of the city remains inaccessible, according to one local who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.  “Much of inner Kani city has already been destroyed. There are corpses of civilians and junta soldiers. Civilians’ houses were burned down there,” he said. “We found that the houses of revolutionaries were torched initially. That’s all we can say at the moment.” A People’s Defense Force soldier fighting in urban Kani told RFA the junta air force dropped 500-pound bombs during the battle. After the rebel group captured a hill near Kani on March 7, the junta’s army retaliated with helicopters and fighter jets. The air force repeatedly targeted urban areas and rural villages around the city, according to defense force officials. Junta troops regained control of the city and nearby Nyaung Pin Wun village on March 12, but both sustained severe fire damage in the following days, residents said. Sagaing’s junta spokesperson told RFA that the arson was likely a defense tactic used by rebel armies. “It is also possible that the burning was started by the People’s Defense Forces to disrupt the army. It could cause the army to not be able to chase [resistance fighters] while they were fleeing,” Nyunt Win Aung explained. He declined to comment on villagers’ accusations that bombs had been dropped by his administration’s army. “Now the army can control the city completely. The People’s Defense Forces are no longer there. They fled again. If the people live in the city, they can come back.” Kani has been deserted since fighting broke out, and nearly 10,000 residents from nearby villages have also fled to safety, according to the residents. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.

Read More

Three years on, whereabouts of Tibetan poet is a mystery

Editor05 mins

More than three years after the arrest of a popular Tibetan writer and poet in northwestern China, police have not provided any details about his whereabouts, his sentence or his well-being, despite repeated appeals by his family for information, two sources told Radio Free Asia. Gendun Lhundrub, a former monk at Rongwo Monastery in Rebgong county of Malho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China’s Qinghai province, was detained on Dec. 2, 2020.  Authorities did not cite any reasons for his arrest, which followed a long period when police monitored his activities for signs of dissent and opposition to Chinese policies, RFA learned at the time. Chinese authorities frequently detain Tibetan writers, artists and singers who promote Tibetan national identity and culture or who have criticized China’s rule of the western region.  They scrutinize their writings for content considered as “endangering national security” or constituting an “act of separatism,” thereby deeming them threats to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.  Lhundrub’s relatives have made repeated requests to authorities in Rebgong county to find out where he is and whether he has been sentenced, said one source from inside Tibet.  “However, they have not received any response to their queries,” said the source, who declined to be identified for safety reasons. Whenever the family wants to send items to Lundrub, officials at the Chinese government’s Rebgong county office tell them to leave the items with them, and they will forward them to Lundrub, he said.  “His well-being is also unclear as no one has been allowed to meet him,” the source added. Additionally, officials have shared no details or documentation as proof of Lhundrub’s sentence, both sources said. Long list Lhundrub is among those on a long list of well-known Tibetan writers and poets arrested by authorities. In 2016, Tibetan language advocate Tashi Wangchuk was arrested and tortured. He was released in 2021 after being held for two years in pre-trial detention and serving part of a five-year prison sentence.  Gendun Lhundru was born in 1974 in Rebgong in the traditional Amdo region of Tibet in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau.  He became a monk at a young age and enrolled in the Rebgong Dargye Monastery. He later studied at the Rebgong Rongpo Monastery, Labrang Tashi Kyil and Serta Labrang.  Starting in 1994, he wrote poetry. In October 2022, he released an anthology of poems called “Khorwa,” and wrote on the website Waseng-drak that writers and artists require freedom to express their thoughts and emotions without restriction, RFA learned from sources that year.  Lhundrub’s collection of poems, which include “Black Rosary,” “Melody of Life” and “White Book,” and his literary skills are highly regarded by Tibetans around the world. Written by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Read More

800 Chinese deported from Myanmar’s Thai border

Editor03 mins

More than 800 Chinese nationals were deported from near Myanmar’s border with Thailand in relation to online fraud, according to China’s Ministry of Public Security. The group was deported Wednesday from Myawaddy’s infamous gambling and scam center, Shwe Kokko, in Myanmar’s Kayin state through neighboring Thailand, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Scam centers have plagued the border areas of Thailand, Myanmar and China as nationals from all three countries are tricked into – and subsequently enslaved in – online fraud. Tens of thousands of Chinese nationals were deported from Myanmar in 2023 by both junta and rebel army officials for their roles in both perpetuating and being trapped in criminal schemes. Many are linked to forced labor, human trafficking and money laundering, which proliferated after COVID-19 shut down casinos across Southeast Asia. A resident in Myawaddy told Radio Free Asia that the gambling businesses in Myawaddy should be eradicated. “The [Chinese nationals] have been repatriated through Thailand as they were illegally staying in Shwe Kokko. They kept saying that [authorities] are continuously sending them back,” he said, declining to be named given the issue’s sensitivity.  “There are still gambling businesses in Myawaddy. The [big] gambling business split off and many small ones appeared in the city center. They are still there.” Since March 2023, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security has been cooperating with Myanmar and Thai authorities on the border to crack down on transnational communication network fraud and online gambling activities. The 800 Chinese nationals were linked to an online money laundering gang, according to the statement. The details of the repatriation could not be confirmed by RFA. The arrests were a result of the long-term trilateral cooperation between China, Myanmar and Thailand, it continued. According to Myanmar junta-backed media, 52,820 foreigners, including 50,772 Chinese nationals, were repatriated from Oct. 5, 2023 to March 6, 2024. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.   

Read More

’10 Don’ts’ for Chinese young people

Editor08 mins

Over the past year or so, young Chinese “refuseniks” have been swearing off marriage, children and mortgages – rejecting traditional milestones on the path to adulthood – amid apparent despair over their futures, the economic outlook and politics. But recent social media posts show that they’ve added several more “don’ts” to the list. They include not donating blood, not giving to charity, not playing the lottery, not investing money, including in property, and even not helping an elderly person — largely because they’re afraid they might get exploited or trapped. The list, dubbed the “10 Don’ts” of young people, has been circulating on social media. “This generation of young people have no hope, so they don’t bother working hard any more,” said a university graduate who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals. “They might as well just lie down in the hope of a stress-free life.” The attitude is particularly problematic for the ruling Communist Party as it tries to encourage people to use the internet to share “positive” content, particularly about the economy, rather than complaining about how hard their lives are. Young workers rest outside a shopping mall in Beijing, Jan. 17, 2024. (Ng Han Guan/AP) Author and political essayist Yu Jie said the refusal to marry and have kids is linked to young people’s disillusionment with the Chinese government and the way it manipulates them to believe they are the future of the nation, when actually they are merely its tools. “No young person today believes in the lies of Mao Zedong or his successor Xi Jinping,” Yu wrote in a commentary for RFA Mandarin.  Motivated by fear Many Chinese don’t want to donate blood because they fear the data could be used to force them into donating organs for the elite, said a resident of the eastern province of Shandong who gave only the surname Lu for fear of reprisals.  People worry that if they get into an accident, their organs will be taken without their consent if information about their blood type is available to the authorities, she said. “The reason they won’t donate to charity is that they can barely support themselves, and that they need donations themselves,” Lu said, summarizing some of the many comments on the topic that were no longer visible on Weibo on Tuesday. The resistance to  investing in property is linked to overpricing and the fear of becoming a “mortgage slave,” current affairs commentator Tianluke told RFA Mandarin, using his pen-name “Pilgrim” for fear of reprisals. “The economic situation in China is very bad right now,” Tianluke said. “A lot of people have been laid off, and there are a lot of graduates who are unemployed.” And some people are afraid of helping an elderly person in trouble in case they get accused of causing the problem they’re trying to address. It’s a “manifestation of the collapse of trust … in Chinese society,” he said.  A young couple walk by a construction site near office buildings in the Central Business District in Beijing on March 2, 2024. (Andy Wong/AP) Yu, the essayist who wrote a Dec. 29 column for RFA Mandarin, said the various “don’ts” are all about avoiding the various “traps” set by the Communist Party – meaning people getting caught up in a system that exploits them for the benefit of the privileged political and financial elite.  “Things such as donating money to charity, donating blood, and helping the elderly are all good deeds that are taken for granted in civilized countries,” he wrote. “But in China, they are all taken advantage of.” “The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer,” Yu wrote. “That’s why young Chinese people warn each other to avoid these traps to avoid disaster.” ‘Kids have no future’ Meanwhile, censors have deleted an article that questions the value of hothousing children through the highly competitive education system — a defining behavior of the country’s middle class. The article, titled “Middle-class kids have no future,” was unavailable “due to violations of regulations” on Tuesday, though copies were still visible outside China’s Great Firewall of internet censorship. People tour by a deserted shopping mall in Beijing on Feb. 19, 2024. (Andy Wong/AP) The blog post tells the tale of a successful Shanghai parent whose son didn’t want to study any more, because he wasn’t naturally good at passing exams, and didn’t see the point. He started delivering food in the evenings instead, to earn some money. In a follow-up post in which he reports that the article has been taken down, the blogger argues that only gifted kids should compete for spots at top schools, because the rest are effectively only there as “cannon fodder” for the competitive system. “It’s the middle-class trap, isn’t it?” commented X user @passi0nateGirl under RFA’s X post about the article. “Nowadays, the middle class can wind up back in poverty due to sickness, unemployment, a property crash, badly performing stocks, or a company partner running away.” Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Read More

Indiscriminate shelling kills mothers, children in Myanmar

Editor03 mins

An artillery attack in northern Myanmar killed five civilians, residents told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday. The victims included two women in their 30s and three children in Kachin state’s Bhamo township. Conflict in the area has already killed three civilians and damaged houses across the Chinese border since the Kachin Independence Army took 14 junta camps last Thursday. Flights at an airport nearby were grounded for the foreseeable future after short-range missiles damaged the runway.  Following the group’s six-day attack last week, the Kachin Independence Army told RFA it plans to reopen the nearby Myitkyina-Bhamo road, not having had control of the camps alongside it since 2011.  The shelling on Tuesday originated from the junta’s Bhamo-city based No. 21 Operation Command Headquarters, but landed in Kan Ni village. All five victims died immediately, said one Kan Ni local. “The mother, Myint Maw, and her two children, as well as another unnamed mother and her child died,” he told RFA on Wednesday, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “The three children were five to ten years old, one girl and two boys.” The dead will be cremated at Kan Ni village cemetery on Wednesday, residents said. Junta troops have been firing shells at several small villages like Kan Ni, despite there being no fighting in the area, locals said. RFA phoned Kachin state junta spokesperson Moe Min Thein to learn more about the shelling, but he did not respond by the time of publication. Junta troops and the Kachin Independence Army, alongside allied resistance groups, have clashed over Kachin state’s lucrative jade mining industry.  Civilians have accused the junta’s army of torching houses, killing civilians and conducting raids on villages throughout the state.  Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.

Read More

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