A New Zealand pilot held hostage for 19 months by separatist rebels in Indonesia’s Papua region was freed on Saturday, Indonesian authorities said, bringing an end to a standoff that had drawn international attention.
Phillip Mehrtens was abducted by the West Papua National Liberation Army, or TPNPB, in February last year. He was released following protracted negotiations facilitated by religious and tribal leaders in Nduga, a remote regency in Papua, said Bayu Suseno, spokesman for a joint military-police task force dealing with the separatist insurgency.
“He was in good health when we retrieved him, and we immediately flew him to Timika,” Bayu said in a statement, referring to a major town in Central Papua province. He did not specify the exact conditions of his release.
New Zealand pilot Phillip Mark Mehrtens is pictured in Timika after being retrieved by the Cartenz Peace Operation Task Force, following his release by separatist rebels, Sept. 21, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Damai Cartenz Indonesian police-military task force)
Mehrtens was receiving the necessary evaluations to ensure he is both physically and mentally stable, Bayu added.
Mehrtens, 38, had been working as a pilot for Indonesian airline Susi Air when his plane was seized shortly after landing in the region.
The rebels, who are the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, have long fought for independence from Indonesian rule.
When Mehrtens was taken captive, the TPNPB demanded Papua’s independence in exchange for his release.
Video footage of Mehrtens surrounded by heavily armed rebels had circulated online over the past year.
TPNPB spokesman Sebby Sambom had said in a video statement posted on YouTube Tuesday that the group would unconditionally release Mehrtens “on humanitarian grounds”.
Sambom reiterated, however, that the group’s demand for Papuan independence remains unchanged.
“Our struggle for an independent West Papua is non-negotiable,” he said.
New Zealand pilot Phillip Mark Mehrtens is pictured in Timika after being retrieved by the Cartenz Peace Operation Task Force, following his release by separatist rebels, Sept. 21, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Damai Cartenz Indonesian police-military task force)
When asked about Mehrtens’ release on Saturday, Sambom declined to comment, saying he had not been briefed on it.
Meanwhile, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters welcomed the release.
“We are pleased and relieved to confirm that Philip Mehrtens is safe and well and has been able to talk with his family,” he said in a statement. “This news must be an enormous relief for his friends and loved ones.”
The New Zealand government had worked closely with Indonesian authorities and other parties to secure Mehrtens’ freedom, Peters said.
The separatist conflict in Papua, simmering since the 1960s, has left thousands dead and many more displaced.
Though Indonesia has sought to integrate Papua through infrastructure development and increased autonomy, many Papuans remain deeply resentful of Jakarta’s control, which they view as exploitative, especially in the context of the region’s vast natural resources.
New York-based Human Rights Watch released a report on Thursday detailing what it called entrenched racism and systemic discrimination against the indigenous ethnic Melanesian people in Papua.
The report said the Indonesian government had responded to Papuans’ calls for independence with arbitrary arrests, torture, forced displacement and extrajudicial killings.
International human rights organizations have repeatedly called on Indonesia to allow independent investigations into the human rights situation in Papua, but the government has restricted access to the region.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Victor Mambor for BenarNews.
The Secret Service recently announced the next electoral count after the November election is scheduled for January 6, 2025, and this time the event will be classified under the same security level as the inauguration itself. The move follows a request by Washington, D.C.'s mayor and a recommendation by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. This comes as former President Donald Trump dodged a question during last week's debate with Kamala Harris about his January 6 actions and refused to acknowledge his 2020 loss. For more, we speak with the director of the new documentary Homegrown, in which he embeds with three Trump supporters in the run-up to the 2020 election and, later, the January 6 insurrection, including members of the far-right Proud Boys. Director Michael Premo warns radicalized Trump supporters continue to threaten violence and upheaval during the current election cycle. “If this was a foreign country, the State Department would issue travel advisories for this fall. So I’m very concerned with the height of violent rhetoric that only seems to have gotten worse.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Right after we broadcast, Israel carried out “targeted strikes” in Beirut as it appears to be preparing for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon as an expansion of its war on Gaza.
Following deadly Israeli attacks that blew up walkie-talkies and pagers across Lebanon this week, killing at least 37 people and wounding around 3,000, Israeli officials have pledged to ramp up their campaign against Hezbollah. Hezbollah characterized the devastating pager explosions as a “declaration of war.” In Beirut, we hear from journalist Rania Abouzeid about the aftereffects of the attack and the prospects of war on the Lebanese front. “There is certainly a sense of heightened anxiety as people wonder what else, what other devices in their vicinity, may explode,” she says.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Stretching a tarpaulin over the grave so she could burn incense in pouring rain brought by Typhoon Yagi, Le Van Manh’s 67-year-old mother marked the first anniversary of her son’s death.
“Apart from my family, no one else came down because of the heavy rain and strong winds. People were waiting to escape the storm,” said Nguyen Thi Viet.
On Sept. 22, 2023, Hoa Binh Provincial Police executed the death row inmate by lethal injection, in spite of protests by international rights groups and foreign embassies.
Authorities then buried the body of 42-year-old Manh, who had been on death row for 18 years, more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) from his home, before notifying relatives.
In 2005, when he was only 23, Manh was accused of raping and murdering a female student from his village. He was sentenced to death, despite his repeated claims of innocence. He told his mother that police had tortured him into confessing.
Viet told Radio Free Asia the family was campaigning to clear her son’s name. Until then, she said, the family had decided not to repair his grave or move his remains to a cemetery closer to home.
“My child died unjustly, the family is very upset, very sad. The pain in our hearts still rises and has not been able to subside,” she said.
“But the dead are dead. As for the living, our family has decided to stand up and appeal for our child’s innocence until the end of the road to bring him justice.”
She said the family sent petitions to the president, the procuracy and the National Assembly but had yet to receive a response.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions condemned Manh’s execution and called on Vietnam to comply with international commitments to ensure the rights of death row inmates and show transparency in the implementation of sentences.
Amnesty International called the execution “abhorrent,” pointing out a serious flaw in the case, the violation of a right to a fair trial and Manh’s claims of torture to extract a confession.
Why maintain the death penalty?
During the third U.N.-initiated Universal Periodic Review, or UPR, in 2019 and the fourth in May this year, dozens of countries recommended that Vietnam abolish the death penalty. However, to date, Vietnam’s National Assembly has announced no plans to update the 2015 penal code, which was amended in 2017, which significantly reduced the number of crimes punishable by death.
The number of death sentences handed down is a state secret, although media regularly report on cases in which defendants are sentenced to death.
According to state media, in a report sent to the National Assembly, the chief prosecutor considered 259 cases for which the death penalty might be imposed, and 338 death sentences. It also issued 258 decisions to deny the right of death row inmates to appeal.
Vietnamese property tycoon Truong My Lan (front row 3rd L) looks on at a court in Ho Chi Minh city on April 11, 2024. The Vietnamese property tycoon was sentenced to death for embezzlement. (STR/AFP)
Last April, Truong My Lan, chairwoman of property developer Van Thinh Phat Group, was sentenced to death by a court for embezzlement. Since then, state media reported that at least six more people have been sentenced to death, three for drug trafficking, the others for murder.
“In my opinion, the main reason why the Communist Party of Vietnam continues to carry out the death penalty is to create fear among the people,” activist Nguyen Tien Trung told RFA from Germany, where he fled to escape possible prosecution in Vietnam.
“We all know that the one-party regime can rule the entire Vietnamese people based on fear, which means it must rely on violence.”
Trung said that in Manh’s case, the police, the prosecutor and the court committed serious violations, pushing for a speedy verdict to cover up the violations and show they were not swayed by international pressure.
Human rights lawyer Dang Dinh Manh, who is a refugee in the U.S., said the global trend was to abolish the death penalty and impose a life sentence, which he considered strict enough as a deterrence but also gave authorities the chance to bring about change in a prisoner.
Despite failing to abolish the death penalty, Vietnam has in recent years commuted many death sentences to life imprisonment, without identifying the prisoners.
International pressure continues
The World Organization Against Torture, or OMCT, condemned Vietnam’s use of the death penalty and said the situation was aggravated by its classification of information about its use as a state secret, preventing oversight and accountability.
“Of particular concern is the application of the death penalty to vaguely defined national security offenses,” said Stella Anastasia, co-head of OMCT’s Asia, Pacific, and Southeast Asia Bureau.
“The broad and ambiguous nature of these charges allows the Vietnamese government to systematically misuse them to suppress dissent and silence critics. This raises grave concerns that individuals may be sentenced to death for simply exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly,” she said, even though no one in Vietnam has been sentenced to death in recent years for expressing dissent.
The OCMT said conditions for death row inmates in Vietnam were alarmingly inhumane, with overcrowding, prolonged solitary confinement and the use of shackles that do not meet basic rights standards.
It expressed serious doubts about the effectiveness of domestically produced drugs used for executions, raising concerns that the method could amount to torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
Anastasia said the OMCT was also troubled by frequent wrongful convictions in murder cases.
“Many cases are tainted by coerced confessions, often extracted through torture, and are based on flawed evidence,” she said.
“High-profile cases such as those of Ho Duy Hai and Le Van Manh exemplify the disturbing reliance on forced confessions and underscore the systemic failures in providing fair legal proceedings.”
The OMCT called on Vietnam to abolish the death penalty and, in the interim, to immediately suspend executions.
Amnesty International said it considered the death penalty to be “the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” and it opposed it without exception.
“Viet Nam continues to shroud executions in secrecy, in what Amnesty International believes to be a blatant attempt to prevent scrutiny that displays added cruelty towards those directly involved,” a spokesperson for the U.K.-based rights group told RFA.
“The secrecy that surrounds figures on the use of the death penalty in the country, coupled with overall lack of transparency on executions and capital proceedings, make it impossible for us to get a sense of the full picture, and of how many people are currently under sentence of death.
“It is high time that the authorities of Vietnam abolished this cruel punishment to comply with its obligations as a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and focused on bringing about long-term measures to tackle the root causes of crime.”
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
A 10-year-old Japanese boy stabbed on his way to school in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen has died of his injuries, signaling likely further strain on Sino-Japanese ties, Japanese media reported on Thursday.
The boy, who has a Japanese father and a Chinese mother, was attacked while with his mother near a Japanese school in Shenzhen on Wednesday morning, and was taken to hospital, where he died Thursday.
Police are holding a 44-year-old man surnamed Zhong on suspicion of carrying out the attack. Some 3,600 Japanese nationals reside in Shenzhen, an industrial city near the border with Hong Kong.
Eyewitnesses said the boy was bleeding from the stab wounds and was given a heart massage at the scene, according to Japan’s Kyodo News.
Nationalist rhetoric
Commentators blamed the attack on a steady output of nationalistic rhetoric under the government of Xi Jinping in recent years.
“It’s caused by the Chinese authorities’ incitement of so-called nationalism,” said Khubis, a Japan-based Chinese national and ethnic Mongolian.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda arm has been churning out anti-Japanese rhetoric for years, current affairs commentator Lu Jun said.
“The authorities have launched wave after wave of xenophobia in recent years, anti-American, anti-Japanese and anti-Western in nature,” Lu said. “A lot of people have been encouraged by this propaganda and have gradually lost their common sense and even their humanity, turning into the thugs and minions of the authorities.”
Stepped up security
Tokyo on Thursday said the government was “deeply saddened,” and called on China to ensure the safety of more than 100,000 Japanese citizens who live in the country.
The Japanese flag was flown at half-mast at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Thursday in mourning. Ambassador Kenji Kanasugi was en route to Shenzhen, Japanese media reported.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government “has been and will continue to strongly urge China to share information related to the attack and ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China,” government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.
Describing the attack on the boy as “a despicable act,” Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa ordered Japanese officials to craft measures to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Moriya announced on Wednesday that the government will allocate 350 million yen (US$2.45 million) from April 2025 to step up security measures linked around Japanese schools in China.
The attack came on the 93rd anniversary of the 1931 Japanese bombing of a railroad track in northeastern China that Japan used as an excuse to invade Manchuria. Tokyo had asked Beijing to step up safety measures around Japanese schools ahead of the sensitive anniversary, Kamikawa said in comments reported by Kyodo.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the boy was a student at the Shenzhen Japanese School.
“[He] was stabbed by a man at a spot about 200 meters from the school gate,” Lin told reporters on Wednesday, adding that “all-out efforts” were being made to save the boy.
“The perpetrator was caught at the scene,” Lin said. “The case is under investigation and relevant authorities of China will handle the case in accordance with the law.”
Shockwaves
Yang Haiying, a professor at Shizuoka University in Japan, said the incident has sent shockwaves through political circles in Japan.
“Both the left and the right, the conservatives and the liberals, the government and the opposition are very angry about this incident,” Yang told RFA Mandarin in an interview after the boy’s death.
The attack comes ahead of Japanese general elections on Oct. 31, and will likely stoke anti-China sentiment during the campaign period, he said.
He said Japanese companies are likely to step up their withdrawal from China.
“I believe that this incident will have an even bigger impact on economic, cultural and interpersonal exchanges between the two countries,” Yang said.
“Politically, Japan may come up with some tougher slogans, but whether it will take a tougher stance in its foreign policy is still hard to predict,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin, Lee Heung Yeung for RFA Cantonese.
We speak with Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, after she faced racist and hostile questioning from Republicans at Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, including Senator John Kennedy, who told Berry, “You should hide your head in a bag.” The experience illustrated the very problem of dehumanization the hearing was meant to address, Berry says: “That kind of bigotry and hatred is difficult to hear from anyone, but to actually experience it at a hate crime hearing from a sitting member of this institution was pretty extraordinary.” We also speak with Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois, who has introduced a resolution to honor 6-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American boy stabbed to death in a Chicago suburb last October in an anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian attack. “His horrible bigotry and hate have real consequences in the Arab community and the Palestinian community, in other communities, and it makes us all less safe,” Ramirez says of Kennedy.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.
The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by an unusually large half-point, a dramatic shift after more than two years of high rates that helped tame inflation but made borrowing more expensive for consumers.
The U.N. General Assembly strongly supported a nonbinding Palestinian resolution demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank within a year.
The House rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal that would have linked temporary federal funding with a mandate for states to require proof of citizenship for voter registration.
New York, September 11, 2024—A coalition of three international press freedom organizations on Wednesday called for a swift and impartial trial after fugitive ex-governor Joel T. Reyes surrendered to authorities in connection with the 2011 murder of Philippine broadcast journalist Gerry Ortega.
“This is long overdue. Former governor Joel T. Reyes has evaded justice for more than 13 years, there must be a swift and impartial trial now without any further delay,” said the coalition, consisting of Free Press Unlimited (FPU), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in a statement.
“We hope this new development brings justice a step closer for the Ortega family and call on the Philippine authorities to do everything they can to ensure justice is delivered for this senseless murder. The international community will be watching the trial closely, as the Ortega murder is emblematic of the entrenched impunity in media killings in the Philippines.”
Ortega, an environmental journalist based on the island of Palawan in the Philippines, reported on corruption within the administration of ex-Palawan governor Reyes before he was murdered in 2011. Reyes had been in hiding despite an arrest warrant issued against him in 2023.
Reyes’ surrender came after a successful legal bid to have his trial transferred to a court in Quezon City, near the capital Manila. The Ortega family had wanted the trial to stay in Palawan, but a Philippine court recently rejected the family’s legal plea. No date has been fixed for the start of the Reyes trial in Quezon City.
The three press freedom groups, who together form the ‘A Safer World for the Truth’ initiative, met with the Philippine authorities in Manila earlier this year to present new leads that could lead to the arrest of Reyes. The coalition has investigated the Ortega case since 2020 which showed damning evidence of Reyes’ role in the journalist’s murder. Since 1992, 96 journalists have been killed in connection with their work in the Philippines.
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Spokespeople are available for interviews in English:
Free Press Unlimited (Amsterdam): Jos Bartman bartman@freepressunlimited.org
Reporters Without Borders (Taipei/Paris): Aleksandra Bielakowska, abielakowska@rsf.org
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A Safer World For The Truth is a collaboration between Free Press Unlimited (FPU), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). We investigate murders through a series of cold case investigations to push for justice on the national level, and we organize the People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists to put a spotlight on states’ obligation to protect journalists and to investigate all attacks against them. To learn more about the project, visit our website https://www.saferworldforthetruth.com/.
Free Press Unlimited (FPU): Free Press Unlimited is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Free Press Unlimited helps local journalists in conflict areas to provide their audience with independent news and reliable information. The information that people need to survive and give shape to their own future. – freepressunlimited.org
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ): The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. Based in New York, we defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal. – cpj.org
Reporters Without Borders – known internationally as Reporters sans frontières (RSF) – is an international non-profit organisation at the forefront of the defence and promotion of freedom of information. RSF acts globally for the freedom, pluralism, and independence of journalism and defends those who embody those ideals. Recognised as a public interest organisation in France since 1995, RSF has consultative status with the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organisation of the Francophonie (OIF). Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Paris, RSF has 13 country sections and bureaus, including a bureau in Taipei and section in Berlin, and a network of correspondents in more than 130 countries. – rsf.org
Myanmar’s junta must allow greater aid access to civilians, the Red Cross chief said at the end of a visit to the war-torn country, warning that the conflict has created a humanitarian crisis that’s put “countless people” at risk.
The United Nations says about 3 million people have been forced from their homes by fighting between junta troops and those who oppose the military’s Feb. 1, 2024, coup d’etat, many since clashes surged at the beginning of the year.
The comments from International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric came as aid workers told RFA Burmese that 40,000 people had been displaced in central Myanmar’s Sagaing, Magway and Mandalay regions by junta airstrikes and troop raids between Aug. 1 and Sept. 10.
In a statement following her Sept. 5-9 trip, Spoljaric warned that a breakdown of healthcare services in Myanmar is leading to a rise in preventable diseases, while a lack of medical supplies is worsening the suffering of the wounded and chronically ill.
“Many families in Myanmar are going without basic medicines and health care, face food shortages and have limited access to clean water and sanitation. They live with the fear of conflict and violence,” she said in a statement. “The disruption of livelihoods is leaving countless people without the means to sustain themselves.”
Spoljaric noted that the military’s regular use of explosive weapons in populated areas has led to an increase in civilian casualties, while restrictions on the movement of people and goods has limited access to essential services for many communities.
During her visit, Spoljaric met with junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to discuss the ICRC’s goals in the country and urged him to allow greater access to conflict-affected areas – particularly in Shan, Kachin, Rakhine, Chin, Kayah, and Kayin states.
She also traveled to Rakhine state, where the military killed 70 people, including its troops in rebel captivity, in airstrikes on Sunday and Monday.
International humanitarian organizations have been helping civilians displaced by fighting in the region but most groups have withdrawn staff and suspended their work as the security situation has deteriorated.
Spoljaric said that the ICRC is engaging in dialogue with all stakeholders in the conflict “to remind them of their obligation to respect international humanitarian law and ensure the safety of civilians and humanitarian actors.”
Airstrikes displace 40,000
On Tuesday, residents and relief workers told RFA that junta troops had resumed offensives against villages in Sagaing, Magway and Mandalay regions, and that the air force is carrying out bombardments more frequently there.
A resident of Su Yit Kone village, in Mandalay’s Natogyi township, told RFA that nearly everyone had fled into the jungle because of the threat of airstrikes.
“The junta is intentionally destroying local houses every day to make the people afraid,” said the resident who, like others interviewed for this story, declined to be named due to security risks. “The villages aren’t active anymore. When it becomes dark, everyone beds down in the jungle.”
In Pa Zi Gyi village, in Sagaing region’s Kanbalu township, residents have been sheltering in the jungle since April 2023, when a junta airstrike killed more than 170 people and leveled all but three of the village’s 400 homes.
A building smolders following a junta airstrike, April 11, 2023, Pa Zi Gyi village in Kanbalu township, Sagaing region, Myanmar. (Citizen photo)
With airstrikes on the rise in the region, “we still don’t dare go back home,” one resident said, adding that junta planes are “constantly seen flying overhead.”
“Our village has turned into a wilderness,” he said. “We survive on collecting herbs and vegetables from the forest.”
The resident said that the displaced are only occasionally visited by small charity groups, who help supplement their food supplies.
Central region under assault
Meanwhile, junta ground forces are also stepping up raids on villages in the region.
On Tuesday, Data For Myanmar, which monitors arson attacks in Myanmar, reported that junta troops razed more than 1,043 houses in Sagaing, Magway and Mandalay regions in the first half of 2024 alone.
Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesperson Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun about the reasons for the uptick in attacks in central Myanmar went unanswered Tuesday.
Buildings lie damaged from junta bombing, Sept. 2, 2024 in Maung Kone village, Tigyaing township, in Sagaing region. (Tigyaing Township People’s Administration via Facebook)
An official with the insurgent People’s Defense Force in Mandalay said that the junta sees central Myanmar as a militarily strategic region because it connects northern Shan, Kachin and Chin states to the rest of the nation.
“The people of central Myanmar have suffered a lot from the fighting, but they will persevere,” he said. “Victory by the armed opposition could present huge challenges to the junta because of the region’s strategic value, which is likely why the military is making a push there.”
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke last appeared on Democracy Now! in January to discuss an attack on Columbia’s campus targeting pro-Palestinian student activists with a foul-smelling liquid that led to multiple hospitalizations. Following her interview, Franke now faces termination after two Columbia professors filed a complaint against her claiming she had created a hostile environment for Israeli students; she also became a target for Republican lawmakers.
Franke joins Democracy Now! to discuss the campaign against her, the ongoing crackdown on pro-Palestine activism at Columbia and more. “There’s an overreaction by the university, a weaponization of the disciplinary system against students and faculty in ways that in my over 40 years at Columbia I have never seen,” she says.
We are also joined by attorney Kathleen Peratis, who is representing Franke along with the Center for Constitutional Rights after she quit her former law firm, Outten & Golden, because it dropped Franke as a client, saying she was too controversial. “What happened at Outten & Golden is the kind of thing that’s happening all over,” says Peratis.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
We speak with journalist, author and academic Steven Thrasher, the chair of social justice reporting at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He was singled out by name during a congressional hearing about pro-Palestine protests on college campuses earlier this year, with one Republican lawmaker calling him a “goon” for protecting students in an encampment from violent arrest. Northwestern filed charges against Thrasher for obstructing police that were later dropped, but students returning to Northwestern for the fall term will not see him in their classrooms because he has been suspended as Northwestern says he is under investigation. In his first interview about the affair, Thrasher tells Democracy Now! that he stands by his actions and that he has “received no due process” from his employer. He says the university has previously celebrated him, including in “glowing” job reviews and by publicizing his work. “What they don’t like is that I am now applying the same social justice journalism principles that I’ve applied to race and that I’ve applied to LGBTQ people, to COVID and HIV, that I was now applying those to Palestine,” says Thrasher.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
A senior-level official at the Chinese consulate in New York, Consul General Huang Ping, has apparently left his position. But a suggestion by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier Wednesday that he was removed from the post was later refuted by the State Department, which said that Huang’s term had ended last month.
The confusion started when Hochul told reporters that she had “conveyed” to the State Department her desire to have the consul general expelled because of his connection to her former aide, Linda Sun. Sun was charged on Tuesday with secretly acting as an agent of the Chinese government.
Hochul said she was told that Huang was gone, which led to reports that he had been expelled, a step that could have triggered a diplomatic dispute with China.
Huang Ping, China’s consul general in New York, throws a ceremonial first pitch during a baseball game between the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves, Aug. 24, 2019, in New York. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
“I have been informed that the consul general is no longer in the New York mission,” Hochul said.
Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, later said that Huang had left his post but had not been expelled.
Still, the issue of the Chinese government’s activities in this country and their efforts to sway the views of people in the United States is one “that we take very seriously,” Miller said.
According to the Chinese Consulate General in New York’s website, Huang began his tenure in New York on Nov. 15, 2018. His most recent public engagement was a visit to Boston from August 20-22.
RFA reached out to the consulate but hadn’t received a response by press time. The Chinese Embassy in Washington also had not responded to a request for comment.
The conflicting accounts about Huang’s exit show the sensitivity of U.S.-China relations at the moment. The United States has charged several naturalized citizens originally from China of secretly working at the direction of the Communist Party to undermine pro-democracy dissident groups in the United States.
Sun’s case is different. She is accused of accepting cash and other benefits for cutting out references to Taiwan from official documents and other favors. On Tuesday, prosecutors charged her with failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, conspiracy and other crimes.
Sun had worked as a top aide to Hochul and to Gov. Andrew Cuomo before that.
Sun’s husband, Christopher Hu, 41, was also arrested. According to the indictment, he helped with kickbacks, facilitating the transfer of millions of dollars. He has been charged with money laundering, conspiracy and conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
Alex Willemyns for RFA contributed to this story. Edited by Jim Snyder.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tara McKelvey and Jane Tang for RFA.
The Committee to Protect Journalist joined 25 civil society, human rights, press freedom and tech organizations, VPN companies as well as over a dozen journalists and activists, in a September 2, 2024, open letter calling for Apple not to comply with requests and orders to remove Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps from its App Store in Russia and to reinstate those it has already removed.
On July 4, Apple removed more than 20 VPN apps, including Red Shield VPN, Le VPN, HideMyName, PlanetVPN, AdGuard VPN, among others, from its Russian App Store following a request from Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor.
VPNs are popularly used to gain access to independent news sources outside of Russia’s near-total government censorship. Since the beginning of the Kremlin’s full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022, authorities have permanently blocked Russian access to international and local independent media websites, as well as social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, X , and YouTube. Websites for individual publications by Russian and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, among others, have also been blocked.
Myanmar’s junta jailed 144 civilians for supporting insurgents more than three months after they were detained following a massacre of nearly 80 people in their village, which residents blamed on junta troops, families of the detained told Radio Free Asia on Monday.
Relatives of the jailed residents of Byain Phyu in Rakhine state dismissed the convictions, denying they had supported Arakan Army insurgents, who have been making significant advances on the battlefield against the military.
“How can we support the AA when day to day we’re struggling ourselves and hardly making ends meet?” said a relative of one of those jailed on Friday under a law against unlawful association by a military court in the main prison in the western city of Sittwe.
“But the court didn’t accept this and convicted them anyway.”
Byain Phyu is on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, and junta forces have been keen to ensure that AA fighters can not dig into positions there from which to attack the city.
Shortly after the May 29 killings, a junta spokesman said the military had conducted a clearance operation there and rebel forces had attacked with “drone bombs and artillery”.
At the time, the military said it found bunkers built from sandbags in houses throughout the village, which it said were positions for AA soldiers.
The military detained some 300 villagers at the time. Only four people on trail on Friday were found not guilty, residents said, adding that more than 150 more were due to be tried by the court on Monday.
The AA has made unprecedented gains in fighting in Rakhine state since late last year, leaving junta forces increasingly confined to pockets of territory, including Sittwe.
A Sittwe resident, who also declined to be identified for safety reasons, said junta forces were enraged by their setbacks and were taking out their frustration on civilians.
“Sources close to the court told us before that only 38 people would be jailed and the rest would be released, but days before the verdict, the Sittwe-based Regional Command Headquarters was attacked with heavy weapons by the Arakan Army,” he said.
“It seems as if the attack might have caused casualties, so they convicted the villagers.”
Neither the junta’s main spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, nor the Rakhine states junta spokesperson, Hla Thein, responded to attempts by RFA to contact them for information.
Byain Phyu is largely deserted now with nearly 2,000 of villagers sheltering in monasteries and schools in Sittwe, residents said, with junta troops deployed to prevent anyone returning.
In Sittwe, nervous junta soldiers are conducting many checks and detaining people, residents said.
The AA has also made gains in both the north and south of Rakhine state.
Activist Nguyen Ngoc Anh, who has just been released after serving six years in prison, told Radio Free Asia he was proud of himself for taking a stand against injustice.
Anh, 44, was arrested on Aug. 30, 2018 on charges of “making, storing, disseminating, and propagating information and documents aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
The charges relate to 74 videos with content covering issues such as China’s disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea and the pollution caused in the sea off Vietnam by discharges from the Taiwanese Formosa Plastics factory in April 2016.
Anh was sentenced to six years, with five years’ probation, on June 6, 2019.
He refused to plead guilty, saying he was only “raising the voice of patriotic people on environmental issues, national sovereignty in Hoang Sa and Truong Sa [the Paracel and Spratly islands], on education and protecting victims of injustice.”
On Friday, Anh was freed from Xuan Loc Prison in Dong Nai province and spoke to RFA Vietnamese shortly after reaching his home in Ben Tre province.
“I am very happy to have a wife and children who supported me. Who were always by my side in times of oppression. When they trample on me, my wife is always by my side, encouraging me,” he said.
“The second thing that I am proud of is that I had enough courage to dare to do what I think is right.”
Anh said his eyesight and hearing got worse while he was in prison, and his voice weakened, leaving him unable to speak loudly.
While her husband was in prison, his wife, Nguyen Thi Chau, said she was harassed and persecuted by local authorities for posting news of her husband’s inhumane treatment on social media. The police summoned her, telling her not to put comments about Anh on Facebook.
Last March, Ben Tre Province Police fined Chau VND 7.5 million (US$300) for posting a photo of her husband standing in court with the caption “ignorant people punish innocent people.”
Anh began campaigning in 2013, posting articles and livestreaming on Facebook. He criticized the Vietnamese Government for not daring to name the Chinese ship that rammed Vietnamese fishing boats in the disputed South China Sea.
He participated in a protest in Ho Chi Minh City on June 10, 2018 against bills on Special Economic Zones and Cyber Security. Demonstrators said the first bill favored foreign over domestic businesses and the second infringed upon freedom of speech and self-expression.
He also called for protests in September 2018 and April the following year.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, one of several United Nations human rights mechanisms, described the Vietnamese government’s detention and trial of Anh as arbitrary “violating international human rights conventions that Hanoi has signed and ratified.”
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
Vietnamese authorities are investigating a monastery orphanage’s child-rearing activities after a Buddhist abbot delivered a lecture expressing admiration for a monk who became an internet sensation in May.
Abbot Thich Minh Dao founded the Minh Dao Monastery in southeastern Ba Ria-Vung Tau province in 2006. It has become known for its charitable work in raising and educating abandoned children.
Minh Dao recently made positive comments about Monk Thich Minh Tue, whose barefoot pilgrimage across Vietnam attracted attention on TikTok and other social media platforms from supporters who were drawn to his simple lifestyle and humble demeanor.
The front gate of the Minh Dao Monastery in Vietnam’s Ba Ria Vung Tau province is seen in this undated photo. (Ls Nguyễn Văn Hoà via Facebook)
Tue’s popularity appeared to worry authorities, and in June, law enforcement officials raided his camp in the middle of the night, detaining him and several of his followers.
Minh Dao’s praise for Tue, who follows the ascetic practices of Buddhism, drew a rebuke from the state-sanctioned Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, or VBS, according to state-run media.
The VBS ordered Minh Dao to kneel in penance for his remarks, which led the monk to reply in a letter on Aug. 11 that he was renouncing his monastic vows, according to the Industry and Trade Newspaper.
However, the VBS has been told that he has continued to wear a monk’s robe while managing at the orphanage.
Monastery to be inspected
The provincial VBS administration board wrote to the local and provincial officials to request an examination of the legitimacy of Minh Dao Monastery’s orphanage, Industry and Trade reported on Wednesday.
If Minh Dao is no longer an official monk, then he can no longer be responsible for overseeing and managing the monastery, the board wrote.
Although freedom of religion is enshrined in Vietnam’s constitution, religious groups or individuals require official recognition from institutions like the VBS to practice.
An inspection of the monastery and orphanage could “promptly find measures to rescue unfortunate, disadvantaged, poor and disabled children who, for various reasons, are unable to look after themselves and have been taken advantage of by bad individuals,” the board wrote.
The Phu My Town People’s Committee has directed relevant agencies to do the inspection, compile a list of the children living there and examine their legal documentation to see whether the children were taken in accordance with the law, according to Industry and Trade.
Lawyer Nguyen Van Hoa visited the monastery on Aug. 13 and was told by other monks there that Minh Dao had returned to the VBS everything that belonged to the sangha.
However, Minh Dao years ago used his own money to purchase the land and build the religious facility, the lawyer said, adding that local authorities had issued a certificate of land use rights and ownership of related assets to the monk.
The investigation appears to be retaliation against Minh Dao for renouncing his vows, according to attorney Dao Kim Lan, one of five defense lawyers who defended members of a Buddhist community in southern Long An province from criminal charges in 2022.
“His withdrawal was a slap in the face to the Buddhist Sangha,” he told Radio Free Asia. “Given the current situation, I believe the sangha and local authorities will not forgive Minh Dao for his ‘disrespect.’”
Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
