We go to Dhaka for an update as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus is sworn in to lead Bangladesh’s caretaker government just days after the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who resigned and fled the country amid a wave of student-led protests over inequality and corruption. Yunus is known as the “banker to the poor” and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work developing microloans that helped lift millions out of poverty. Yunus thanked Bangladeshi youth for giving the country a “rebirth” and vowed to work for the public good.
“This is uncharted territory,” says Shahidul Alam, an acclaimed Bangladeshi photojournalist, author and social activist, who has spent decades documenting human rights abuses and political and social movements in the country. Alam was jailed in 2018 for his criticism of the government and spent 107 behind bars, during which time he says he was tortured by the authorities. “This repression has taken such a toll on so many people for so long, the nation is just hugely relieved.”
We also speak with Nusrat Chowdhury, an associate professor of anthropology at Amherst College and author of Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh. She says it’s very significant that student leaders are being brought into the new government and says Yunus is a rare public figure in Bangladesh who exists “beyond party politics” and has the chance to unify the country.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
When protesters ransacked Sheikh Hasina’s official residence and set fire to a museum honoring her assassinated father – Bangladesh’s founding leader – they symbolically bid good riddance to the rule of its longest-serving prime minister, whose rise to power was inextricably tied to him.
Hasina, 76, one of two women to have served as Bangladesh’s prime minister, resigned and fled the country on Monday. In a stunning turn of events, the army chief announced that she had stepped down, as student-led protesters converged on the capital Dhaka again to demand her government’s ouster after 15 years of consecutive rule, which saw it drift toward authoritarianism.
Hasina, whose supporters had dubbed her “the mother of humanity,” quit office amid a shaky economy and only seven months after her government was elected to a fourth consecutive term in power and fifth overall.
However, there were widespread allegations that the polls were skewed in favor of her ruling Awami League party. The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by her bitter enemy Khaleda Zia, had boycotted the Jan. 7 general election after Hasina refused to make way for a caretaker government to oversee the electoral process.
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Since taking office in 2009, Hasina had led the South Asian nation of 170 million people on a track of mostly robust economic growth. But in recent years, she drew international scrutiny for an increasingly iron-fisted style and a record overshadowed by allegations of enforced disappearances and arrests of journalists and critics.
“If I’ve made any mistakes along the way, my request to you will be to look at the matter with the eyes of forgiveness,” Hasina told the nation in a televised address back in January as she sought re-election. “If I can form the government again, I will get a chance to correct the mistakes.”
Protesters try to demolish a large statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of Bangladesh leader Sheikh Hasina and the nation’s founding leader, after she resigned as prime minister, in Dhaka, Aug. 5, 2024. (Rajib Dhar/AP)
Hasina’s life as a politician was born in the wake of bullets fired by assassins.
She formally took over the Awami League six years after her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, her mother and other family members were gunned down during a coup in 1975.
By a stroke of luck, she escaped being killed alongside them. She and her sister were traveling abroad during the assassination of Rahman, who had led the Bangladeshi independence movement in the 1971 war against Pakistan.
“I stepped into politics to fulfill my father’s dream,” Hasina told the nation during her electoral speech in January.
Hasina saw it as her mission to carry on with the legacy of her late father, who was widely revered as a national hero in Bangladesh’s struggle for independence. In 2021-22, her government spent many millions of U.S. dollars to commemorate his memory and mark the 50th year of nationhood.
Bengali nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman walks towards a battery of microphones to address an estimated 1 million people at a rally at the Race Course Ground in Dhaka, Jan. 11, 1972. Mujibur, the first leader of independent Bangladesh and the father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was assassinated in a military coup in August 1975. (Michel Laurent/AP)
As the milestone anniversary approached, it became increasingly dangerous to speak freely about Bangladesh’s founding father, because his daughter’s government had instituted strict laws against defaming him in an effort to control the historical narrative, analysts said.
But Rahman, who was also known as Sheikh Mujib, slid into his own brand of autocratic rule after becoming the leader of the young nation. A year before he was assassinated, Rahman banned all political parties and the majority of the press, and formed a Chinese Communist Party-style one-party system called Bakshal.
The widespread anti-Hasina protests that began last month and culminated in her ouster on Aug. 5 stemmed from anger vented by students over quotas for government jobs that heavily favored children and grandchildren of veterans who had fought on Mujibur’s side in the 1971 war against Pakistan.
The deadly protests persisted although the nation’s supreme court moved to slash the quotas and make applications for most government jobs merit-based in the country where there is a high jobless rate among young people.
Start of political career
In 1981, Hasina returned to Bangladesh from exile abroad shortly after being elected president of the Awami League. At the time, the country was ruled by President Ziaur Rahman, a military general who a few years earlier had founded the BNP.
Ziaur Rahman was killed in a coup days after Hasina returned, allowing another army general, Hussain Muhammad Ershad, to grab power.
Hasina collaborated with the BNP’s Khaleda Zia – Ziaur Rahman’s widow – to oust Ershad in a civilian mass movement.
In 1996, when the BNP held an election defying Hasina’s demand that a neutral caretaker government oversee the polls, she led opposition parties to boycott the election.
The BNP returned to power virtually unopposed – similar to her latest victory on Jan. 7 – but the Awami League’s constant street agitations forced Zia’s government to resign and call for fresh elections under a newly constituted caretaker system.
In that election, Hasina became prime minister for the first time.
Her party became known for aggressive and relentless political tactics, even when it was relegated to the opposition again in 2001. Frequent nationwide strikes and road blockades called by the Awami League kept the BNP government on the back foot.
Hasina’s political life was also marked by direct threats of violence against her.
According to the Awami League’s tally, she survived as many as 19 assassination attempts, the most recent of which occurred in 2004. In that incident, she narrowly escaped a grenade attack that killed more than a dozen people.
When elections approached in 2006, Hasina’s party again boycotted the polls, claiming that the BNP manipulated the caretaker system. Bloody street battles that ensued enabled the military to intervene in 2007, and she took a victory parade. But the new military-backed government placed both Hasina and Zia in jail on corruption charges.
Both were released a year later to contest the election in 2008, which Hasina won in a landslide.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina speaks at the opening session of the national parliament, in Dhaka, July 14, 1996. [Pavel Rahman, AP]
In more recent years, Hasina was widely credited for tackling the problem of Muslim extremism in Bangladesh, especially after groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda carried out killings of secular writers and bloggers in the country. However, the country’s deadliest-ever terrorist attack, an overnight siege of a café by pro-IS militants that left at least 20 dead, occurred under her watch.
Meanwhile, allegations about security forces carrying out extrajudicial killings kept surfacing. An ostensive anti-drug drive in 2018, an election year, left more than 400 people dead, according to local and international human rights groups.
It was in 2018 that the government relaunched an internet law and made it harsher. The Digital Security Act would go on to target journalists and social media speech disproportionately, stifle a climate for unfettered expression and lead to arrests of critics of her government.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By BenarNews Staff.
The trial of Vietnamese YouTube activist Nguyen Chi Tuyen will begin on Aug. 15, a court said, five months after he was detained for what investigating prosecutors said was “propaganda against the state.”
Tuyen has been charged with “making, storing, spreading information, materials, items that contain fabricated information to cause dismay among the people” and “making, storing, spreading information, materials, items to cause psychological warfare,” according to a court document seen by Radio Free Asia.
If convicted, he faces a prison sentence of five to 12 years.
The 50-year-old has played a leading role in Hanoi’s protest movement since joining demonstrations in 2011 over the conflicting territorial claims of Vietnam and China. He is a founding member of the No-U group, which opposes the nine-dash line, which China marks on its maps to illustrate its claim over most of the South China Sea.
Tuyen has also hosted hundreds of live-streamed discussions on YouTube on various issues and his AC Media channel has 57,000 subscribers, while another one, Anh Chi Rau Den, has more than 97,000.
He was arrested on Feb. 29, but state media only reported the news a week later.
A human rights worker said activists should not be prosecuted but allowed to express themselves.
“The prosecution and upcoming trial of human rights defender Nguyen Chi Tuyen under the draconian Article 117 of the Penal Code is the latest attempt by the regime to silence and jail another activist. He has repeatedly faced police intimidation, harassment, house arrest, bans on international travel, arbitrary detention and interrogations. The authorities must drop these fabricated charges against him and release him immediately and unconditionally,” Josef Benedict, CIVICUS Asia Pacific researcher told RFA..
“Instead of prosecuting activists, the government should instead implement the recent recommendations of the U.N. Human Rights Council to repeal such restrictive laws and create an enabling environment for activists and civil society.”
Tuyen has been denied family visits since his arrest. Relatives hired well-known human rights lawyer Nguyen Ha Luan to defend Tuyen. Luan told RFA he had also received notice of the trial date and Tuyen’s family said the lawyer had been meeting Tuyen at his detention center to help him prepare his defense.
Authorities have arrested seven people, including Tuyen, on charges of “conducting propaganda against the state” since the beginning of the year.
New York, July 24, 2024—Sudanese authorities must immediately and unconditionally release freelance journalist Omar Mohamed Omar, who was arrested on July 17 by the General Intelligence Service of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and allow members of the press to work safely and freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
“We are alarmed by reports that the military intelligence arrested journalist Omar Mohamed Omar last week. Arresting journalists for their work at a time of war is a clear indication of the Sudanese Armed Forces’ attempt to prevent coverage of the ongoing war,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s Interim MENA Program Coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Sudanese authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Omar and allow journalists to report on the war in Sudan without fear of getting arrested.”
General Intelligence Service officers arrested Omar, also known as Wad Abukar, from his home in al-Obeid, the capital of the North Kordofan state in the south of Sudan, according to the reports, a statement by the local press freedom group the Sudanese Journalists Network, and a local journalist, who spoke with CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.
Omar’s arrest came after he criticized the governor of North Kordofan on his personal Facebook page for the lack of services and the worsening water crisis in the state due to the civil war that broke out between the SAF and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces in April 2023, according to those sources. Since the beginning of the war, journalists have been killed, arrested, harassed, and sexually assaulted.
The Sudanese Journalists Network condemned Omar’s arrest, calling it a violation of human rights laws and international humanitarian law.
CPJ’s emails to the SAF requesting comment on Omar’s arrest did not receive any replies.
A hit North Korean big budget film that took four years to make and was intended to usher in a new era of high quality movie production has been banned only five months after its release, residents in the country told Radio Free Asia.
The blockbuster “72 Hours” tells the story of the opening moments of the 1950-53 Korean War – which it says South Korea started – and it details how the North Korean army captured Seoul in only three days.
In reality it was the North that attacked first, but Pyongyang maintains that the first sacking of Seoul during the conflict–it changed hands four times–was part of a counteroffensive.
The government has not announced a reason why the film has been mothballed, but a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan said on condition of anonymity for safety reasons that it might be because of the government’s recent crackdown on the term “unification,” in line with leader Kim Jong Un’s policy of considering South Korea a separate hostile country, rather than part of the same race of people.
She also said it might be because the government is trying to scrub media that has references to South Korean place names. The word “Seoul” is spoken many times in the film, for example.
“The movie is about our army advancing south after we were attacked … on June 25, 1950, which makes residents think that it was actually us who lit the fuse of war,” she said.
The resident also said the plot of the film blames military commanders for resting on their laurels after taking the capital, when they should have advanced and taken all of South Korea before it could catch its breath.
“Usually, the price of a movie ticket is 1,000 (10 US cents) won, or 3,000 won (30 cents) if it’s new,” she said. “However, ‘72 Hours’ … cost 18,000 won ($1.80)”
That amount is an enormous sum, equivalent to about half a month’s salary for the lowest paid government jobs.
“The authorities suddenly banned the screening of the movie ‘72 Hours’ and issued a policy to retrieve all copies of ‘72 Hours’ that had spread among residents,” she said. “They did not specify the reason for banning it and they just suddenly designated it as prohibited.”
Most copies of the film were distributed from person to person on USB flash drives, so the crackdown not only forbids viewings of “72 Hours,” but also distribution, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
“The movie ‘72 Hours,’ which was first released in February this year, attracted a lot of attention from residents from the beginning,” he said. “It is on an entirely different level than previous movies and has been highly anticipated since its production.”
It was supposed to be a film that represented the priorities of the Kim Jong Un era, he said. The high ticket price made it a premium film that poorer residents could not afford to see in theaters.
“The Party said the movie would not be aired on television until all production costs were recovered. And now, the movie has been banned,” he said.
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.
A magistrate judge ordered a legal journalist on June 20, 2024, not to publish the name of a plaintiff that had mistakenly appeared on court documents in a revenge porn case. The ruling was overturned a month later.
Eugene Volokh — co-founder of the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, a law professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University — was singled out in the ruling by Magistrate Judge Elizabeth S. Chestney as the only person who was barred from using the plaintiff’s name.
The case, initially filed in 2019, involves a woman who ended an extramarital affair with a man, who she said then posted revenge porn to several adult websites. The case was sealed to protect her privacy. She and the defendant later settled, but the question of whether the case was improperly sealed remained.
Volokh told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he initially noticed the case in an alert from Westlaw, a database of legal documents, and thought it raised First Amendment questions that he might want to write about, given his expertise as a free speech scholar.
Even though the case was sealed, the names of both the plaintiff and defendant were published in an opinion available on Westlaw, along with other documents that should have been sealed under the judge’s order. It’s not clear exactly why they were published, but Volokh said it appeared to be an error.
“It was just a simple mistake,” he told the Tracker.
Volokh moved to intervene in the case and have it unsealed. Chestney, the magistrate judge, agreed on July 18, 2022, to let him intervene but ruled that Volokh could not write about the case until a decision was made on unsealing the case.
“Professor Volokh may not blog or write about this case until any renewed motion to unseal has been granted,” the ruling ordered.
Volokh appealed the case to District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, who on Aug. 3, 2022, vacated the prior restraint language and said the entire case should be unsealed. Volokh then published the plaintiff’s name in a blog post in August 2022 since, he said, it was also the name of the case.
The plaintiff appealed the unsealing of the case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that it should be partially sealed with certain personal information redacted.
The case then returned to Chestney to determine what exactly should be redacted and whether the plaintiff could retroactively use a pseudonym, Jane Doe.
In her June 20, 2024, ruling, Chestney ruled in favor of the retroactive pseudonym.
“And then to my surprise, she says that even though I don't have to take down past writings that mention the plaintiff’s name, I cannot use her name in future writings,” Volokh told the Tracker.
The ruling stated: “Professor Volokh may not, however, publicly disclose Plaintiff’s name or personal identifying information in any future writings, speeches, or other public discourse.”
“The order restricts Volokh from sharing information that is publicly available through his prior writings but allows for any of Volokh’s readers to share that same information,” Rodriguez wrote. “As such, the language at issue here is an unconstitutional prior restraint.”
The plaintiff could still appeal the ruling to the 5th Circuit.
Volokh said he was deciding whether to go back to his August 2022 article and redact the name.
But whether he uses her name in future articles, he added, should be a matter of editorial discretion, not a judge’s ruling.
“I think it’s important that this be a decision for the individual journalist, the individual speaker, and not something that they’re ordered to do,” Volokh told the Tracker.
Volokh said he sees this case as an example of the system working. But he noted that he was uniquely positioned to fight these instances of prior restraint.
“I should also acknowledge that maybe if I weren’t a law professor, if I weren’t a specialist on the subject, if I had to pay a lawyer to challenge the prior restraints, maybe the situation might not have come out as well,” he told the Tracker.
He is the notorious playboy cousin of Cambodia’s prime minister, and has long been viewed as the family’s fixer for all things they would rather not come into public view.
Hun To has reportedly been investigated by Australian police for heroin trafficking; faced questions in connection to threats against the family of slain political analyst Kem Ley, which fled to Australia in 2016 and; in recent years, reporting by Al Jazeera and The Australian newspaper has tied him to cyber slavery, scam compounds and drug smuggling.
But in bringing lawsuits against those news organizations, he inadvertently highlighted how Australia – a key regional partner for Cambodia – is running out of patience for the Hun dynasty’s antics.
Earlier this month, Hun To scored an apparent victory after he secured an out-of-court settlement over a years-long dispute with The Australian.
The outlet agreed to retract a 2-year-old story it had published about Hun To that “some readers may have understood” to have alleged that he “was linked to human trafficking, cyber scams and drug importation,” the paper wrote.
“The Australian did not intend to make any such allegations against Mr Hun and accepts his denials of such conduct.”
The retraction marked the conclusion of a defamation case Hun To had brought against The Australian in December 2022. It came just after the Australian government had declined to renew his visa, RFA has learned – even though he had spent decades living part-time in the country and he and his family owned extensive business and property interests around Melbourne.
While Canberra gave no reason for its decision, Hun To’s lawyers insisted in court complaints seen by RFA that the rejection was spurred by news stories from The Australian and Al Jazeera linking him to organized crime, fraud factories and human trafficking in his native Cambodia.
A case launched in parallel by Hun To against Al Jazeera is ongoing. The Qatari state-funded outlet did not respond to a request for comment.
Australian libel law is notoriously plaintiff-friendly, particularly in cases where the defendant is a news organization. This growing reputation led the author of a 2019 New York Times op-ed to dub the island nation “the defamation capital of the world.”
In Australian defamation cases, the burden of proof uniquely rests with the defendants. No other type of case places such burden on the party being sued.
In such a legal environment, defendants run higher risks of losing and incurring hefty damages, and that has often encouraged news organizations to settle out of court.
The retraction might have gone little noticed until Hun To’s lawyer, Adam Lopez – who has been known for taking on controversial defamation cases – took to LinkedIn to gloat about his victory. The dispute with The Australian had been “resolved on a confidential basis,” he noted, suggesting that the newspaper had made further concessions beyond the retraction.
Cambodia press and social media users quickly picked up the story, with some simply reporting on the retraction and others criticizing The Australian or the Australian court system.
With the scrubbing of the controversial story, Hun To enjoyed precisely one day of victory.
On July 10, news broke suggesting Hun To’s business interests were neck deep in exactly the type of allegations for which The Australian had just apologized. Elliptic, a financial compliance firm specializing in tracing cryptocurrencies, published a report alleging that a “Cambodian conglomerate with links to Cambodia’s ruling Hun family” had laundered more than US$11 billion for cyber scammers. The name of the company was Huione Pay, and Hun To is one of its three directors.
A subsequent report by Reuters found evidence that Huione Pay had processed cryptocurrency worth $150,000 that had been stolen by the sanctioned North Korean hacking collective known as Lazarus. In response to the allegations, National Bank of Cambodia, the country’s central bank, told Reuters that it “would not hesitate to impose any corrective measures” on Huione, although it said so “without saying if such action was planned,” the news agency drily noted.
Following the revelations, digital finance company Tether announced that it had frozen $29 million of cryptocurrency held by Huione following a “a direct request from law enforcement.”
Whether the latest news make Hun To reconsider going after the press, however, seems unlikely, said Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates.
Hun To “would be wise to abandon his case since all the dirt has come out on Huione, but he won’t because he’s a shameless, arrogant, rights-abusing tycoon who believes that whatever he does, the ruling Hun family will have his back.”
Neither Huione’s nor Hun To’s lawyer had responded to requests for comment as of publication.
These allegations are far from the first time Hun To has caught negative publicity. Australian MP Julian Hill spoke in Parliament last March arguing that Hun To and other politically connected Cambodian figures “should never again be granted visas to visit Australia.”
His speech charted Hun To’s long and checkered links to Australia, noting that as early as 2003 Australian police had sought to arrest him on suspicion of heroin trafficking. Since then, Hun To and his wife acquired millions of dollars’ worth of property in Australia, Hill added, “with seemingly no legitimate explanation for where their wealth has come from.”
“It’s no secret that Hun To has his finger in lots of pies — drug trafficking, illegal deforestation, animal trafficking, illegal gambling,” Hill said. “Most recently, we’ve heard reports he’s dipping his toes into human trafficking, as well. That’s diversifying, isn’t it?”
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jack Adamović Davies for RFA Investigative.
As anger grows in Milwaukee over the police killing of 43-year-old Samuel Sharpe during the Republican National Convention, we speak with his sister, Angelique Sharpe, who says the family is fighting for transparency from the authorities and the full video of the fatal incident. “We really want justice for my brother,” says Angelique, who also explains that her brother’s life had been threatened by a “bully” and that he had actually called the police for help before he was killed. Samuel Sharpe was an unhoused Black man shot 27 times by police on Tuesday — but the officers were from Ohio, part of a deployment of thousands of outside law enforcement members in Wisconsin for the RNC. We are also joined by Wisconsin state Representative Darrin Madison, a Democratic Socialist, who says both Sharpe’s death and the killing of D’Vontaye Mitchell by hotel security guards weeks earlier point to a larger problem of anti-Black violence in Milwaukee.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
A rebel army in eastern Myanmar announced a four-day ceasefire shortly after a town under its control was hit by junta airstrikes, residents said.
The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, captured Laukkaing, or Laukkai, town in northern Shan state on Sunday, after which the junta hit back, residents said.
A resident who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told Radio Free Asia that a fighter jet fired at several hotels and residential areas in Laukkaing for 20 minutes, killing a civilian and wounding others.
“What we know is that the person who died was a guest staying at the Full Light International Hotel. More than 10 people were injured,” he said. “At the moment, civilians are not allowed to enter the area because it’s being cleared.”
MNDAA newspaper, The Kokang, identified the victim as a 37-year-old man named Wang. It said several other hotels were damaged in the attack.
Most Laukkaing residents are sheltering in their homes and closing their businesses for fear of more airstrikes, witnesses told RFA.
Destruction from junta airstrikes in Laukkaing on July 14, 2024. (The Kokang)
RFA phoned MNDAA spokesperson Li Kya Win and its head of external relations, Gen. Phone Win Naing, for more details on the fighting but they did not answer calls.
A reporter also attempted to contact Shan state’s junta spokesperson Khun Thein Maung and national junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment, but those calls also went unanswered.
However, a junta account on social messaging app Telegram said Laukkaing was bombed because some MNDAA leaders were living in the town.
The MNDAA is a member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance that launched Operation 1027 last October to seize territory from the junta. It said it had captured seven towns, including Chinshwehaw, Hseni and Kunlong since Operation 1027 began and was implementing its own administration, regional development, education and health sectors.
In January, China brokered a state-wide ceasefire between junta and alliance forces, bringing them together for talks in the Chinese city of Yunnan in May. At the time it said it was concerned fighting would affect border stability and trade between the two countries.
Three Brotherhood Alliance members the Ta’ang National Liberation Army broke the ceasefire in late June, blaming junta airstrikes for the resumption of hostilities. Since then, the alliance has captured dozens of bases across Shan state and Mandalay region.
The MNDAA said the latest ceasefire will run from Monday through Thursday, although residents said both armies have continued to fire weapons near Laukkaing. In a statement Sunday, it said the ceasefire was called as a result of China’s concerns, although it didn’t specify what those concerns were.
Since the resumption of Operation 1027, alliance forces have been trying to seize control of Lashio, the capital of northern Shan state, where fighting has raged for weeks and killed over a dozen civilians.
Political analyst Than Soe Naing said the junta attack on Laukkaing was probably in retaliation for that attack.
“[The MNDAA] took part in Operation 1027, in the second wave of the Spring Revolution. The next thing that happened was that the junta’s most important town, Lashio, was targeted and attacked by four military columns,” he said. “I believe the junta bombarded Laukkaing in response to that.”
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
New York, July 12, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for the immediate and safe release of Libyan television host Ahmed al-Sanussi who was arrested in the capital Tripoli on Thursday.
“CPJ strongly denounces the arrest of Libyan TV host Ahmed al-Sanussi. It is unacceptable that authorities have not disclosed where he is being held or the reason for his arrest,” said CPJ Interim MENA Program Coordinator Yeganeh Rezaian. “Authorities must immediately and unconditionally free al-Sanussi and ensure he is returned home safely.”
On July 11, security forces arrested al-Sannusi, whose “Flosna” show covers local politics and economics on the independent Wasat TV, and held him in an unknown location, according to newsreports, which said that the journalist had recently reported on allegations of government corruption.
As of Friday, al-Sannusi’s place of detention and the reason for his arrest remained unknown, a local journalist told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.
CPJ’s emails to Libya’s Internal Security Agency regarding al-Sannussi’s arrest did not receive any response.
Vietnamese prisoner of conscience Hoang Duc Binh told his family he finds it hard to walk after being shackled by the leg for 10 days.
Binh, 41, is serving a 14-year sentence at An Diem Prison in Quang Nam province after being convicted of “resisting on-duty state officials” and “abusing democratic freedom” while protesting against pollution from the Formosa Steel plant in 2016.
On March 26, he protested after prison guards confiscated inmates’ belongings. He was then held in solitary confinement and chained by the leg. He was also denied family visits or phone calls from April 5 and barred from receiving parcels and letters from relatives for three months.
Prison authorities wrote to Binh’s family on April 29, saying he was disciplined for failing to obey orders, having an abusive attitude and insulting prison officials.
Five days after the disciplinary term expired, on July 10, his family was allowed to visit him.
“Binh said that right now his health is not good, he has some serious illnesses,” Binh’s brother, Hoang Duc Hao, told Radio Free Asia.
“Recently, he has been urinating blood and walking unsteadily, his legs are shaky and he has severe back pain.”
Binh said he asked authorities for a medical examination, saying his family would pay for it, but the prison ignored the request.
His brother told RFA Binh already suffered from back pain and sinusitis before his arrest in 2017. After being tortured in pre-trial detention he also started suffering from headaches and ringing in the ears.
Former prisoner of conscience Huynh Dac Tuy was a fellow inmate of Binh’s before his release on April 19. Tuy said Binh was very weak because he only ate instant noodles, cakes and bananas sent by fellow inmates while in solitary confinement.
Tuy said when he was released in April Binh still had a leg injury after being shackled for a long time.
Do Thi Thu, wife of political prisoner Trinh Ba Phuong, said her husband told her political prisoners were locked in their cells for more than three months, and not allowed out to mix with other inmates.
Although Binh’s disciplinary term has ended, he is still not allowed to phone home each month because he continues to protest about his treatment and that of other inmates.
An Diem Prison is one of the harshest detention facilities in Vietnam with frequent complaints by political prisoners that they are beaten, placed in solitary confinement and shackled.
In September last year, Trinh Ba Phuong and Phan Cong Hai were beaten and disciplined with their feet shackled after protesting against harsh treatment and human rights violations.
RFA called An Diem Prison to verify the information but no one replied.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
After serving a 14-month prison sentence on various charges, Algerian journalist Mustapha Bendjama assumed his life would return to normal as the editor-in-chief of Le Provincial, a local independent news site in the eastern city of Constantine.
“I was wrong,” said Bendjama, who was released April 2024.
In a phone interview with CPJ, Bendjama revealed that his contract at Le Provincial has not been renewed after eight years with the outlet. According to Bendjama, his employers cited orders from “high up” in their decision to terminate his employment, but the journalist believes government officials are behind ongoing efforts to censor critical voices like his in the country.
CPJ’s emails to Le Provincial requesting comment about the reason of letting Bendjama go did not receive any replies.
“It’s been exactly five years that they have been targeting me,” he said.
Since the start of the February 2019 anti-government Hirak protests which ousted President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Bendjama has been arrested on multiple occasions, repeatedly summoned for questioning about his work, and banned from traveling outside of Algeria. After Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was elected in 2019, Bendjama said authorities stepped up their targeting of him, culminating in his imprisonment in February 2023.
Journalism is more than Bendjama’s sole source of income — the practice is also his passion. Now hoping to restart his career, Bendjama says the future of his profession is unclear in a country where press freedom continues to decline due to the current regime’s continuous censorship and fear of another uprising against them.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity. CPJ’s emails to the Algerian ministry of interior requesting comment on Bendjama’s prosecution did not receive any replies.
How did the Hirak protests mark a turning point in Algeria’s press freedom?
Since the beginning of Hirak [in 2019], and the election of Tebboune, the government launched waves of arrests against independent and critical journalists, including Khaled Drareni, Sofiane Merakchi, Moncef Aït Kaci, and many more. I too was briefly arrested many times in that period before my imprisonment [in February 2023].
How did these arrests and harassment affect your ability to do your work?
On Friday June 28, 2019, I was violently arrested and physically attacked by police officers before being released several hours later. I have been arrested many times since then and always on Friday, the day of the weekly Hirak demonstrations. To stop me from covering the demonstrations or speaking to other journalists, I was often detained for several hours and released at night.
The impact this has had on my ability to do my job was real. I spent most of my time in police stations and courts instead of being in my editorial office or in the field. I hardly had time to do careful work. They [authorities] did what they wanted. Hit me where it hurts. They are trying to stop me from practicing journalism, and by associating me with trials and crimes I never committed, my sources have become afraid to speak to me. Not to mention the fact that no media outlet is willing to recruit me anymore, for fear of suffering the same fate as Interface Média.
Algerian authorities brought multiple legal cases against you. How were they connected with your work as a journalist?
In the first case, they charged me with allegedly helping journalist Amira Bouraoui flee to France and founding a criminal organization. I have never met Amira, so even though all the evidence was in my favor, the court convicted me regardless. The other case was more dangerous. They convicted me on charges similar to those that were used to convict journalist Ihsane el-Kadi, including receiving foreign funding harmful to national interest and dissemination of classified information with the attempt to harm state institutions, espionage, and belonging to a terrorist group. All these charges were given to me after they illegally opened my smartphone, which they had confiscated following my arrest in the first case. They found communications with someone who works for an NGO called Global Integrity. I had submitted a report on democracy and transparency in Algeria to this group as a freelancer.
For the other charges regarding the dissemination of classified information, they stem from an article I wrote for Le Provincial on corruption that I shared with Algerian journalist Abdou Semmar, who self-exiled in France and was sentenced to death in absentia after being convicted of spreading false news. He wanted to make a video about the article for his website. The information I shared with him was not classified, as opposed to my conversation with him, which was private. It feels like the Amira Bouraoui case was a trap to get to me first and then add whatever charges they wanted later to keep me in prison.
Now that you’ve been released, are you still being targeted for your work?
I am still not allowed to travel outside of the country, and this is illegal because I was unconditionally released from prison after finishing my entire sentence. I tried to travel to Tunisia in May, and they told me at the border that I am not allowed to leave Algeria. The only travel ban order I received was in November 2019, after a court accused me of attacking national interest because I shared a news report on Facebook that leaked information from a police investigation about me. This travel ban order was valid for three months, with the possibility of renewal only one time. Since I was acquitted in this case a while ago, these measures against me are arbitrary and just unfair.
How does losing your role at Le Provincial change the protections you have as a journalist in the country?
I have been finding it difficult to work in the field of journalism ever since I was let go of my job. As a staffer I was somewhat protected under the press code, and through my employer, to carry my investigations and research as a journalist. However, without my job in a news outlet, the government does not officially consider me a journalist, and therefore can prosecute me as a civilian and I can then get heavier sentences. So any work I do in the future as a freelancer might lead to heavy criminal charges.
Right after my release from prison, I was also targeted by a police officer who was intimidating me on the street. I was coming out of a bar and was on the phone with a friend, and this officer stops me in the middle of the street and starts asking me questions about the phone conversation I was having with my friend. He threatened to arrest me but when he saw that people started to gather around us, and I insisted on not answering his questions, he let me go.
What is the state of independent journalism in Algeria now?
Currently, we can say that there is no form of press freedom in this country. Since Tebboune came to power, his administration has been intimidating most independent news outlets that are critical of the government, by either blocking them, or arresting their journalists. This is to make sure that only pro-government voices exist in Algeria. They can’t close 10 outlets at once. This has been happening over a couple of years so to not attract attention. And they have succeeded.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program.
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A ferry capsized on Wednesday as it was crossing a river in Myanmar’s main city of Yangon and eight people, including a school student and two women, were missing, rescue workers and residents told Radio Free Asia.
The small ferry was carrying 17 people during the morning rush-hour when it overturned, apparently after an accident with a tugboat, in the fast-flowing Hlaing, or Yangon River, a rescue worker said.
“Maritime police, firefighters, rescue teams and ferry boat drivers are all searching for the missing people,” said the rescue worker, who declined to be identified.
He held out little hope that any of the missing would be found alive.
“We’re trying to search for the bodies where we think they might wash up on shore,” he said.
Photographs posted on Facebook showed a small pile of what appeared to be children’s school bags on a dock, while a distraught women stood on a jetty by the river, swollen by recent heavy rain.
The ferry and the tugboat crashed about 200 meters from the river bank in Yangon’s Kyimyindaing township.
Survivors, including two children, the boat’s driver and six other passengers, were pulled from the water, another rescue worker said.
“Three of the victims who were in very bad health were sent to the emergency department of Yangon General Hospital,” the second rescue worker said.
“The other five did not have life-threatening injuries and were given medical treatment at Bargayar Jetty,” said the worker who also declined to be identified for fear of reprisals in light of junta media crackdowns.
Residents of the area said one boy and two young women were among the missing. Police were questioning the boat driver who was not hurt, rescue workers said.
The Hlaing River where the boat was, seen from Bargayar Jetty in Yangon’s Kyeemyindaing township on July 10, 2024. (RFA)
RFA telephoned the Yangon region’s junta spokesperson, Htay Aung, for more information about the accident and search, but he did not respond.
The Myanmar Fire Brigade said that it would continue the search and rescue operation for the missing people.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
As Israel’s war on Gaza enters its 10th month, we speak with Mohammed Abu Hashem, a Palestinian American who ended a 22-year career in the U.S. Air Force after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed his aunt in October. “It was clear to me that I needed to step away,” says Abu Hashem, who served as a first sergeant in the 316th Civil Engineer Squadron of the U.S. Air Force. He recently co-signed a letter with 11 other former U.S. officials who rsesigned over the Biden administration’s policy toward Gaza, Palestine and Israel. “The American people deserve to have a government that follows ethical and moral standards,” says Abu Hashem, who also talks about briefly meeting Aaron Bushnell before the airman died by self-immolation in February to protest U.S. support for Israel.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
On July 8, the Committee to Protect Journalists joined 25 human rights organizations in urging Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa to immediately release blogger Abduljalil Alsingace and ensure he receives urgent medical care.
The statement was issued to mark three years since Alsingace—an award-winning academic, blogger, and human rights defender—began a hunger strike on July 8, 2021, after prison authorities confiscated his manuscript on Bahraini dialects of Arabic, which he spent four years researching and writing.
Alsingace, who has a disability, has been detained since 2011 and reportedly tortured.
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![Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina speaks at the opening session of the national parliament, in Dhaka, July 14, 1996. [Pavel Rahman, AP]](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/bangladesh-transition-hassina-08062024120117.html/bd-hasina-4.jpg "BD-Hasina-4.jpg")
