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

Tag: Investigative Journalism

China targets high-ranking officials who read banned books

Editor015 mins

Read RFA’s coverage of this story in Chinese China’s Communist Party is clamping down on the secret hobby of some high-ranking officials: reading banned books, a series of state media reports suggest. Officials from glitzy Shanghai to poverty-stricken Guizhou have been accused in recent months of “privately possessing and reading banned books and periodicals,” according to state media reports, which typically surface when the officials are probed by the party’s disciplinary arm. Senior officials have traditionally enjoyed privileged access to materials banned as potentially subversive for the wider population, via the “neibu,” or internal, publishing system, former Communist Party officials told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews.  Now it appears that President Xi Jinping is coming for their personal libraries and private browsing habits in a bid to instill the same ideas in all party members regardless of rank. A man walks past posters about Chinese political books displayed at the Hong Kong Book Fair in Hong Kong, July 18, 2012. (Philippe Lopez/AFP) During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, any foreign book could be considered a “poisonous weed that promotes the bourgeois lifestyle.”  Books banned since 2000 have typically been works about recent Chinese history or inside scoops on senior leaders, including memoirs from Mao Zedong’s personal physician, late ousted premier Zhao Ziyang and a book about the later years of Mao’s trusted premier Zhou Enlai. Overseas publications are often banned or tightly controlled in China, either online, or via a complex process of political vetting by the authorities, including a 2017 requirement that anyone selling foreign publications in China must have a special license. Wider knowledge makes better leaders Former Party School professor Cai Xia said officials were generally allowed to read whatever they liked until the turn of the century. The arrangement encouraged officials to broaden their perspective, making them better leaders. “Politics, like art, requires imagination,” Cai said.  “Because experience shows that the more single-minded and closed-off the thinking of the Communist Party, especially the senior cadres, the narrower their vision and the poorer their thinking, and the harder it is for them to grasp the complex phenomena and situations that have emerged in China’s rapid development,” she told Radio Free Asia. Wider reading encourages deeper thought, which helps China “to move forward,” she said. Masks, goggles and books collected from the Occupy zone are seen on the table at guesthouse in Hong Kong Dec. 30, 2014. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters) Du Wen, former executive director of the Legal Advisory Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, said the purge of readers of banned publications is worrying. “This phenomenon is so scary, because it sends the message that there is no independence in the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party,” Du said. “Even dialectical materialism and critical thinking have become evidence of guilt.” Nearly 20 officials have been accused of similar infractions, Du said, basing the number on his observation of media reports. Officials have been tight-lipped about the names of the books and periodicals these officials were reading, yet the accusations keep coming. Those targeted In November 2023, the party launched a probe into former Zhejiang provincial Vice Gov. Zhu Congjiu, accusing him of losing his way ideologically. In addition to making off-message comments in public, Zhu had “privately brought banned books into the country and read them over a long period of time,” according to media reports at the time. In June 2023, the Beijing branch of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection expelled former state assets supervisory official Zhang Guilin for “possessing and reading books and periodicals with serious political issues,” alongside a slew of other alleged offenses including “engaging in power-for-sex and money-for-sex transactions.” Many of those targeted have been in the state-controlled financial system, while some have been concentrated in the central province of Hunan and the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, according to political commentator Yu Jie. A vendor attends to a customer next to images and statues depicting late Chinese chairman Mao Zedong, at the secondhand books section of Panjiayuan antique market in Beijing, China, Aug. 3, 2024. (Florence Lo/Reuters) “Interestingly, a lot of officials in the political and legal system, national security and prison systems, which are responsible for maintaining stability and persecuting dissidents, are also keen on reading banned books,” Yu wrote in a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, citing the case of former state security police political commissar Li Bin. In Hubei province, the commission went after one of their own in party secretary Wang Baoping, accusing him of “buying and reading books that distorted and attacked the 18th Party Congress.” “Monitoring what people are reading shows the authoritarian system’s determination and ability to maintain its power and to destroy any resources that could be subversive and any doubts about the legitimacy of the authorities’ rule,” Yu wrote in a Chinese-language commentary on May 28. “Xi Jinping’s … goal is to turn more than 80 million party members into marionettes or zombies, and follow him, like the Pied Piper, in a mighty procession that leads to hell,” he said. Categories Zhang Huiqing, a former editor at the People’s Publishing House, told RFA Mandarin that “gray” books were allowed to be published under the watchful eye of the party’s Central Propaganda Department, which also reviewed and vetted foreign-published books for translation into Chinese, for distribution as “neibu” reading material. Divided into categories A, B and C, where A was restricted to the smallest number of officials, “reactionary” books were those that could potentially cause people to challenge the party leadership, and they were once distributed in a highly controlled manner, Zhang said. Du Wen said that while he was an official in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, he had access to a slew of foreign news outlets not usually sold on the streets of Chinese cities, including Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post and newspapers published in democratic Taiwan. “These were all allowed because if you want to do research, you have to understand what’s going on overseas,”…

Read More

Vietnam releases 2 political prisoners ahead of leader To Lam’s US trip

Editor06 mins

Read RFA’s coverage of this topic in Vietnamese Vietnam has released two prominent political prisoners, a day before its top leader To Lam headed to the United States to speak before the United Nations General Assembly. Climate campaigner Hoang Thi Minh Hong, was sentenced to three years in prison last September for tax evasion. She was freed on Friday from a prison in Gia Lai province, her husband told the AFP news agency. “She took a bus home, it took her 12 hours to reach Ho Chi Minh City and I picked her up from the bus station at 5:00 am this morning,” Hoang Vinh Nam told the news agency. “It’s just amazing. She’s good, she’s healthy and she’s the same person she was when she went in.” Hong, 52, founded the non-profit CHANGE VN, which campaigned to raise environmental awareness. She shut it down in October last year after the  arrest of several environmental activists. Prosecutors accused her of dodging US$274,000 in taxes, which she was ordered to pay back, along with a fine of $4,000. RELATED STORIES Vietnam’s clean energy transition is failing, pressure group says Vietnamese activist sentenced to 3 years in prison US Human Rights Commission calls on Vietnam to release campaigner Authorities also released Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, eight months before the end of his16-year sentence, his brother Tran Huynh Duy Tan told Radio Free Asia. “There is nothing more joyful than this, waiting every day, every minute, every second,” Tan said. “There is nothing more to say, this moment has been very much awaited.” Tan added that his whole family had gathered at Thuc’s house to welcome him home. Thuc, 57, is the co-founder of human rights group Vietnam Path. He was arrested in 2009 and sentenced the following year for “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government,” in connection with his online articles criticizing Vietnam’s one-party state. “I was very surprised and also very happy when Thuc was released a few months early, before the end of the 16-year term,” said former political prisoner Nguyen Tien Trung, who fled to Germany to avoid possible re-arrest. “However, for me, Mr Thuc’s sentence is completely unjust and the 16-year sentence is incorrect, completely wrong by the Vietnamese government.” Trung told RFA Vietnamese that Thuc’s release comes at a time when the government is clamping down hard on the democracy movement. “Most of the prominent democracy activists had to leave or were arrested,” Trung said. “This means that Thuc will face many difficulties when he gets home and there may be very few people left by his side to continue the fight.” There was no announcement from the government as to why the two were released but it came one day before Communist Party General Secretary To Lam boarded a flight from Hanoi to New York where he is due to speak at a UN Summit of the Future and the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, Vietnamese media reported. In January 2023, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, a bipartisan group of U.S. Congress members, called on Vietnam to release Thuc “immediately and without condition.” And in September last year, the U.S. State Department reacted to news of Hong’s sentencing by calling for the release of the environmental activist and other political prisoners. “NGO leaders like Hoang Thi Minh Hong play a vital role in tackling global challenges, proposing sustainable solutions in the global fight against the climate crisis, and combating wildlife and timber trafficking,” the State Department said. Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

Read More

North Koreans are getting sick of propaganda song “Friendly Father”

Editor08 mins

North Koreans are growing weary of being bombarded by “Friendly Father,” an upbeat propaganda song praising leader Kim Jong Un that has been blanketing the country for months now, sources in the country tell Radio Free Asia. People are forced to sing it before every public event and a loudspeaker car drives through cities blaring it, said a resident of Ryanggang province in the north on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “He is holding his 10 million children in his arms and taking care of us with all his heart,” go the lyrics. “The love you give me is like the sea. The trust you give me is like the sky,” says verse two. “You are always by our side, and make all our wishes come true.” The Ryanggang resident said that he has heard the song every day since it was introduced in April, except for a three-day break in early May due to the death of a high-ranking official.  “Every factory, company, school, work unit, and neighborhood-watch unit in the province has both children and adults sing this song whenever the opportunity arises.” he said. Music video The government created a high-quality music video for the song depicting people from all walks of life enthusiastically singing along to it. Friendly Father was inspired by an earlier propaganda song called “Friendly Name” that sung the praises of Kim’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il. The melody is different but many of the lyrics in “Friendly Father” are callbacks to the earlier song, which most North Koreans know by heart. North Korean students sing in music class at the Pyongyang Orphans’ Secondary School in Pyongyang, North Korea, Sept. 1, 2016. (Jon Chol Jin/AP) The order to promote the song comes from the Central Party of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, the Ryanggang resident said. It’s gotten to the point where people actively avoid places where the song is played publicly if they can help it, he said. Deserted park For example, in the city of Hyesan, on the border with China, there is a park where retired people gather to spend their free time by talking, singing, dancing, playing games or exercising.  But when the park turned off their music and began playing “Friendly Father” over the park’s public address system, the senior citizens went home, according to the resident. “The manager forced them to stop dancing to a folk song but to dance in praise of the marshal instead,” he said, referring to Kim by his military rank.  RELATED RFA CONTENT RFA Insider podcast Episode 6 (Timecode 13:50) Upbeat video casts Kim Jong Un as North Korea’s father figure  North Korea bans karaoke, saying it smacks of ‘rotten’ capitalist culture  North Korea bans more than 100 patriotic songs that refer to reunification “The elderly people stopped dancing and began to return home. The song … rang out in the empty park where everyone had left one by one … until it was deserted.” The park, which used to teem with old folks from sunrise to sunset, is now empty almost every day, he said. Respect thy elder Another problem with the song stems from Korea’s Confucian culture.  Often complete strangers are expected to grant older people a certain amount of respect simply because they are older, with the promise that they will receive the same respect from the young when they reach the same age. However, “people in their 70s and 80s are being forced to call Kim Jong Un, who is only in his 40s and is about the same age as their sons, their ‘friendly father,’” the resident said. North Koreans sing at a picnic gathering at a park in Pyongyang, April 18, 2012, a national holiday celebrating the birthday period of the late leader Kim Il Sung.  (Vincent Yu/AP) The government’s push of “Friendly Father” is even more aggressive than its efforts to promote songs from the reigns of Kim Jong Un’s father and grandfather, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA who also asked not to be identified. “Back then, their songs were sometimes played on broadcasting cars, but they did not make people sing at the start of every learning session or lecture session, nor was it forced upon the elderly, as they are doing right now,” he said. People scoff at the notion that Kim Jong Un could be their “friendly father,” because they do not trust his leadership abilities, the second resident said. “They have no hope in their leader, but they are forced to familiarize their eyes, ears, and mouths with the image of him as their friendly father through the song,” he said. It seems that the propaganda efforts are getting bigger and louder as people’s dissatisfaction with society increases, he said. Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

Read More

Has China not launched a war since 1949?

Editor012 mins

A claim emerged in Chinese-language social media posts that China has not launched a war since 1949.  But the claim is misleading as it is a one-sided historical interpretation. A review of events shows that China has been involved in several major conflicts since 1949, and there are different views about how much of a role it played in starting them.  The claim was shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 24, 2024.  “While the U.S. has launched 469 conflicts since 1789, China has launched none since 1949,” the claim reads in part.  Multiple Chinese accounts on X have reposted an infographic comparing the number of wars initiated by the U.S. and China. (Screenshots/X) The claim has also been shared by several Chinese diplomats on X. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a telephone call with U.S. President Joe Biden in 2021 that his country had not started a conflict since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.  Several Chinese diplomats also reposted the image and further spread on the narrative of the U.S. as a warhawk (Screenshots/X)  But the claim is misleading as it is a one-sided historical interpretation.  A review of historical events shows that China has been involved in several major conflicts since 1949 and there are different views about how much of a role Beijing played in starting them.  Below is what AFCL found.  The Sino-Indian War The month-long Sino-Indian War of 1962 was a conflict rooted in disputes with India over China’s attempts to build a military road linking its Xinjiang region with Tibet after China occupied the Tibet area in 1950, according to Encyclopædia Britannica, the world’s oldest continuously published encyclopedia.  The road was scheduled to pass through Aksai Chin, an area that overlaps parts of Tibet and Xinjiang but is also claimed by India as part of its northern Ladakh region. The war was preceded by intermittent skirmishes beginning in 1959, which culminated in an attack by Chinese forces against the region on Oct. 20, 1962.  But some scholars, including Wang Hongwei, a Chinese academic expert on South Asia, said that the campaign originated from an arbitrary border demarcation by India’s government in 1961.  Wang listed the advance of India’s army into territory that China claimed, attacks on Chinese posts, the killing of Chinese border guards and a 1962 Indian order for its forces to expel the Chinese from the North-East Border Special Region as evidence that the war was imposed on China.  China has officially described the conflict as a war of self-defense ever since. The Sino-Vietnamese War Internationally known as the Sino-Vietnamese War, the conflict that broke out when 220,000 Chinese soldiers struck along the 800-mile border with Vietnam early on Feb. 17, 1979.  While at the time both neighbors had communist political systems, Vietnam’s decision to sign a mutual defense pact with the Soviet Union in 1978 provoked the ire of many Chinese leaders, given that at the time Beijing and Moscow were struggling for leadership of the global communist movement.  This tension was later exacerbated by Vietnam’s invasion of neighboring Cambodia at the end of 1978 and the overthrow of the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge government, an event that served as the catalyst for the conflict between Beijing and Hanoi.  The conflict has been called an aggressive war launched by China by scholars such as Miles Yu, the director of the Hudson Institute’s China Center, who emphasized that the conflict is portrayed completely differently in Vietnam and in China.  Vietnam portrays the conflict as a struggle against Chinese expansion, while China frames it as a war of self-defense. In line with this interpretation, a Chinese government webpage commemorating soldiers killed in the conflict, lists several actions by Vietnam in the mid-1970s – implementing discriminatory policies against Chinese minorities in Vietnam and conducting provocative border raids in which several Chinese citizens were wounded – as evidence that Vietnam came to view China as an enemy and gradually adopted a warlike posture towards it. However, Hsiao-Huang Shu, a scholar of Chinese military tactics at Taiwan’s Tamkang University, told AFCL that while the official Chinese government position paints the war as a punitive conflict rather than as an “invasion,” the war was clearly initiated by China.  Sino-Soviet border clashes  In March 1969, Chinese and Soviet forces engaged in a series of clashes on an island called Zhenbao on a border river.  Subsequent border skirmishes in the months following the conflict resulted in an unknown number of casualties. In order to end the dispute, Moscow adopted a carrot-and-stick approach, proposing negotiations on the border dispute while at the same time threatening military action if Beijing did not cooperate. The Soviet Union said that an initial ambush by Chinese army units of  Soviet border guards on March 2 was followed by a larger clash on March 15.  However, an article published by China’s state-run CCP Review said that the initial skirmish broke out when a Chinese patrol was obstructed and later shot at by Soviet troops.  But according to the noted historian of Sino-Soviet relations, Li Danhui, Chinese soldiers initially stabbed and fired upon a Soviet patrol on the day fighting broke out. He cited statements by Chen Xilian, the Chinese commander at Zhenbao, as evidence.  Michael S. Gerson, a former analyst at the U.S. Center for Naval Analyses, published a study of the incident, saying that territorial disputes over the strategically unimportant island largely arose as a byproduct of the larger Sino-Soviet ideological split in the 1960s. As part of the split, China said that the Soviet Union’s control of the island was a direct result of unequal treaties China had been coerced to sign, while the Soviet Union argued that China had no legal claim to the island. ‘Illogical comparison’ Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, told AFCL that while the U.S. has been involved in several wars around the world, the notion that China had “never started a war” was “absurd,”…

Read More

Myanmar guerrillas arrested in bid to attack air base, group says

Editor05 mins

Myanmar junta authorities arrested two members of an urban guerrilla group planning to attack one of the military’s largest air bases, from where the air force launches attacks on civilians, the rebel group said. The two fighters were preparing to fire rockets at the Hmawbi Air Base, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the main city of Yangon, on Sunday when they were captured, the group called Dark Shadow said.  “Troops stationed at the Hmawbi Air Base have been carrying out aerial bombardments on homes and camps for internally displaced people,” the group said in a statement issued on Wednesday. Dark Shadow said other members of the team preparing to attack the air base had escaped. Fighting has surged over the past year between anti-junta forces, who include pro-democracy activists and ethnic minority rebels – and the military that seized power in early 2021 with the overthrow of a government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Anti-junta forces have made significant gains in several parts of the country but they lack the weapons to take on the junta’s air force, which has increasingly been unleashing devastating attacks on the insurgents and on civilians in areas under their control. The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar said in June that military airstrikes against civilian targets increased five-fold in the first half of the year A spokesman for the junta, which denies targeting civilians, was not immediately available for comment on the reported attack on the air base. A former air force officer who now supports the campaign to end military rule told RFA  aircraft flying out of Hmawbi mostly attack in Kayah state in the east and the Tanintharyi region in the south. “Hmawbi Air Base is close to Kayah state and Tanintharyi so the aircraft are used in operations in those areas,” said the former officer, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.  The base is also a hub for the distribution of jet fuel across the country and for aircraft maintenance and parts, he added. Dark Shadow and its allies have launched urban attacks on the junta and its facilities, including air bases before. Junta authorities arrested seven people in June for plotting a rocket attack on the junta leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, as he attended a  bridge opening ceremony in Yangon. Dark Shadow said at the time its members were involved in that. Two of those arrested for that plot died after being tortured during interrogation, a Dark Shadow spokesperson told Radio Free Asia in August. Another anti-junta activist, Nan Lin, head of a group called the University Students’ Union Alumni Force, said prospects were grim for the two detained members of Dark Shadow. “The way we see it, once revolutionary soldiers have been arrested, it’s unimaginable we’ll ever see them again or they’ll be protected according to the law,” Nan Lin told RFA on Thursday. RELATED STORIES: UN report describes torture and death of hundreds in custody since Myanmar coup Burmese filmmaker Pe Maung Same dies following release from junta prison Morale plunges amid setbacks as Myanmar’s junta looks for scapegoats Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

Read More

Laos’ largest province is short 500 teachers

Editor06 mins

Laos’ most-populous province is short more than 500 teachers for the new school year starting this month, even as the central government slashes jobs to reduce the country’s enormous debt. The two problems can be traced to the economic crisis gripping Laos amid soaring inflation and living costs, a declining currency, poor job prospects and swelling debt from dams and other infrastructure projects. More than 300 teachers in Savannakhet province recently retired, Gov. Bounhom Oubonpaseuth said at a Sept. 9 meeting with other high-ranking provincial officials. That number includes volunteer teachers who help staff many classrooms. In Laos’ centrally planned economy, school staff are government employees, and many young people work as volunteer teachers in classrooms until there is an opening for salaried staff. But rampant inflation has made it less likely that volunteers will be offered a full-time state teaching job, and more volunteer educators have been walking away from the profession. A primary school in a rural area of Savannakhet province, Laos, in March 2023. (RFA) Interior Minister Vilayvong Boutdakham told lawmakers in the capital Vientiane last week that the government must cut more than 3,000 positions for nurses, teachers and other state workers by the end of 2025. The lack of teachers has been a growing issue in Savannakhet – with more than 1 million inhabitants – and elsewhere in the country since at least 2017, when the national government began reducing state employee quotas because of its shrinking budget. One teacher for several classrooms Earlier this year, the province began paying a living allowance of 1.5 million kip (US$68) a month to volunteer teachers. But that hasn’t been enough to keep enough volunteers in the schools. In the province’s Xayphouthong district, so many have quit that most kindergartens have no teachers and some schools have no teachers at all, a district education official said.  In Sepon district, officials need to bring in 123 volunteer and salaried teachers, an education official there told Radio Free Asia. There are 109 schools in the district’s rural areas, where it’s especially hard to hire and keep teachers, he said. RELATED STORIES Volunteer teachers quit in Laos amid weak job prospects Severe teacher shortage in Laos causes schools to close, merge Laos needs more teachers, but budget cuts mean new hires can’t fill gap “Only nine schools have enough teachers – the rest don’t,” he said. “One teacher has to teach many classes or grades at the same time.” Other provinces are facing the same issues. Northern Oudomxay Province has a shortage of 273 teachers. Central Bolikhamxay province has openings for 413 teachers, according to Phophet Kounnavong, deputy director of the province’s Department of Education and Sports. Lao primary school students gather in a classroom in March 2023. (RFA) One teacher in Bolikhamxay who recently resigned said the salary of 1 million kip (US$45) a month wasn’t enough to meet living expenses. “I quit to set up a small business,” she said. “Many volunteer teachers have also quit. They couldn’t wait. Those who continue will have to teach many classes at the same time – especially in rural areas.” Nationwide, last year’s teacher shortage was 2,778, according to official statistics published by the Lao Ministry of Education and Sports. Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

Read More

Myanmar rebels kill 12 women from pro-military village: report

Editor04 mins

Read RFA coverage of this story in Burmese. Rebel forces in central Myanmar ambushed a vehicle near a junta stronghold killing 12 women on their way to work in nearby fields, military-controlled media reported on Wednesday.  No group claimed responsibility for the Tuesday attack in the Sagaing region but anti-junta activists there have set up groups, known as People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, that launch ambushes and raids on military posts in their campaign against the junta that seized power in 2021. The women were on their way to work near Kywei Pon village when attackers opened fire with guns and a rocket launcher, the Myanmar Alin newspaper reported. Three wounded women were being treated in hospital. Armed people in the women’s vehicle returned fire before soldiers arrived, said one Kywei Pon resident, who declined to be identified for safety reasons. “Not long after the junta army arrived and took the injured away with emergency vehicles,” said the resident. There was no information about any casualties among the attackers. Many supporters of the junta, including members of militias that help the military, live in Kywei Pon so PDFs attack it often, the resident added. One PDF member in Sagaing, who also declined to be identified for saety reasons, told Radio Free Asia that anti-junta forces were not involved in the attack although he acknowledged he did not know details of the incident. The military was mounting security operations in response, the Myanmar Alin reported. Residents said the military fired artillery into Taung Kyar village nearby in the belief that PDF members were stationed there. There were no reports of casualties.  Residents of other villages in the vicinity fled from their homes late on Tuesday in fear of more attacks by junta forces, residents said. Sagaing has seen some of Myanmar’s worst violence since the military took power three years ago, with clashes and airstrikes killing hundreds. Thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting. Seven of Sagaing’s PDFs, which are loosely organized under a civilian shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, are under investigation by the NUG for alleged human rights violations. RELATED STORIES Myanmar civilians trapped in monastery as clashes intensify Shortages in Myanmar lead to ‘socialist-era’ economy Myanmar’s civil war has displaced 3 million people:  UN Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.  We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

Read More

Lightning strikes have killed 50 people in Cambodia so far this year

Editor03 mins

Lightning strikes killed 50 people and injured 43 others during the first eight months of 2024 – a year after nearly 130 people died after getting hit by lightning, according to Cambodia’s National Committee for Disaster Management. The high rates of death underscore the need for more public awareness, electrician Pon Robang told Radio Free Asia. In order to avoid lightning strikes, farmers and others should remember to avoid taking refuge under tall trees, he said. They should also stay away from water sources during storms.  Additionally, houses and high-rise commercial buildings should be equipped with lightning poles, he said. “These need to be tested during installation because I have seen some buildings burned by lightning,” he said. Lightning current is strong enough to cause heart attacks, skin burns and damage to people’s nervous systems. Most of the lightning strikes this year have occurred in Siem Reap, Battambang and and Banteay Meanchey provinces in the country’s northwest and Prey Veng and Tbong Khmum provinces in the east, according to the committee. A farmer in Battambang province’s Sangke district, Sem Bunthy, told RFA that he had never seen the government try to educate people about lightning strikes.  “No one comes to tell us anything when we suffer from storms or lightning,” he said. “We just live among our people. If we cannot solve the problem, there’s nothing we can do. We depend on ourselves.”   RFA was unable to reach National Disaster Management Committee spokesman Soth Kimkol Mony on Sept. 9 to ask further questions. Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Matt Reed. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

Read More

Vietnam coast guard holds rare live fire exercise

Editor04 mins

Vietnam’s coast guard has held a rare live fire exercise to test responses to security threats, in an area off its central coast on the South China Sea. The Sept. 5-11 exercise was conducted by the Vietnam Coast Guard Region 3, in the waters off Binh Thuan province, the force said in a press release. Coast Guard Region 3 with headquarters in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province is one of Vietnam’s four coast guard zones, responsible for safeguarding its claims in the South China Sea as tensions are rising in the regional waterway. The tactical training and live five exercise – aimed at boosting combat readiness – is “one of the top priorities” of the coast guard, Col. Nguyen Minh Khanh, Region 3’s deputy commander, was quoted as saying. Coast guard personnel were responding to multiple scenarios such as “threats to sovereignty and security,” illegal incursions into Vietnam’s waters by foreign vessels, piracy and search-and-rescue and disaster relief. Vietnam coast guard personnel during live fire exercises Sept. 5-11, 2024. (Vietnam Coast Guard) Photographs and video clips released by the coast guard show troops, equipped with artillery, anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers, shooting at airborne targets as well as firing water cannons and warning off foreign ships. “They have accomplished all the tasks with excellence,” Col. Khanh said. Vietnam rarely publicizes such activities despite having invested heavily in developing its coast guard in recent years.  RELATED STORIES Philippine coast guard ship leaves disputed shoal in South China Sea Vietnam, Philippines to sign defense cooperation agreement Vietnam’s coast guard to hold first drills with Philippines The U.S. coast guard is reportedly planning to transfer the last of three Hamilton-class cutters to Vietnam in the near future.  Maritime security is a defense priority for Vietnam, one of six parties that claim parts of the South China Sea, along with China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan. Vietnam coast guard personnel during live fire exercises Sept. 5-11, 2024. (Vietnam Coast Guard) China, however, holds the most expansive claim and its authorities have become more aggressive against neighboring countries in disputed waters. This month, coast guard vessels from Vietnam and the Philippines took part in their first joint drills off Manila but they limited their activity to firefighting and search-and-rescue as Vietnam is careful not to be seen as siding militarily with any country. The Philippines and China have this year been in a tense standoff over disputed features in the South China Sea.  The Philippines last week recalled a coast guard vessel from the disputed Sabina Shoal but officials pledged never to “abandon our sovereign rights over these waters.”  Edited by Mike Firn. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika

Read More

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