New York, May 2, 2024—Pakistani authorities must swiftly and impartially investigate death threats and online harassment targeting prominent television anchor Hamid Mir and ensure his safety, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
Mir, who hosts the flagship political show “Capital Talk” on Geo News and has survived at least two previous assassination attempts, told CPJ that he had received multiple death threats on social media and warnings that his life was in danger from two journalists familiar with the situation. Mir had reported the threats to the police last week in the capital, Islamabad, but they had yet to register a First Information Report needed to open an investigation.
On April 28, journalist Imran Riaz Khan posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he had been told that “preparations are being made to take actions” against Mir for his comments in support of freedom of speech in Pakistan, where journalists say they are often harassed and attacked by the military, political groups, and criminals.
Mir also told CPJ that he saw at least two people filming him last week while he was in his vehicle near his Islamabad home but they ran away when he approached them. Mir also reported this to the police.
On April 24, Mir filed a complaint to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which investigates cybercrimes, asking the agency to register a case against Jan Achakzai, the former information minister of southwestern Baluchistan province, for repeatedly insulting Mir on X, including calling him a “traitor.” In the complaint, reviewed by CPJ, Mir said that Achakzai’s “malicious attacks” undermined his credibility and jeopardized his safety.
On May 1, Achakzai said on X that he had been summoned to appear at the FIA’s Cybercrime Reporting Center on May 3. He criticized Mir for advocating for freedom of expression and for using his show to talk to separatists in Baluchistan.
“The threats and online hate campaign against one of Pakistan’s most prominent television anchors illustrate the severity of intimidation and pressure faced by journalists in Pakistan,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi . “Pakistani security agencies must immediately act against those trying to silence Hamid Mir and hold them accountable.”
Press freedom advocate
Mir has consistently advocated for press freedom in Pakistan.
On April 27, he filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court seeking the formation of a judicial commission to investigate the 2022 killing of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya. In February, Mir spoke out on “Capital Talk” against the detention of journalists Imran Riaz Khan and Asad Ali Toor. In 2021, Mir was suspended from his talk show at Geo News after criticizing the military at a rally in support of Toor, who had been beaten up by unidentified men.
Mir has survived at least two attempted assassinations — in 2014 he was shot and in 2012 his driver found explosives planted under his car. In 2011, Mir publicly shared a death threat that he received after criticizing the military, judiciary, and intelligence services.
Since 1992, 64 journalists have been killed in connection with their work in Pakistan, CPJ data shows. Pakistan ranked 11th on CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index, which ranks countries by how often the killers of journalists go unpunished.
On April 3, exiled Afghan journalist, Ahmad Hanayesh, was attacked by armed men in Islamabad. On March 14, Pakistani journalist Jam Saghir Ahmed Lar was shot dead in Pakistan’s central Punjab province.
CPJ’s text messages to information minister Attaullah Tarar and Syed Shahzad Nadeem Bukhari, deputy Inspector General of Police in Islamabad, requesting comment on the threats against Mir did not receive any replies.
New York, May 2, 2024—Pakistani authorities must swiftly and impartially investigate death threats and online harassment targeting prominent television anchor Hamid Mir and ensure his safety, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
Mir, who hosts the flagship political show “Capital Talk” on Geo News and has survived at least two previous assassination attempts, told CPJ that he had received multiple death threats on social media and warnings that his life was in danger from two journalists familiar with the situation. Mir had reported the threats to the police last week in the capital, Islamabad, but they had yet to register a First Information Report needed to open an investigation.
On April 28, journalist Imran Riaz Khan posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he had been told that “preparations are being made to take actions” against Mir for his comments in support of freedom of speech in Pakistan, where journalists say they are often harassed and attacked by the military, political groups, and criminals.
Mir also told CPJ that he saw at least two people filming him last week while he was in his vehicle near his Islamabad home but they ran away when he approached them. Mir also reported this to the police.
On April 24, Mir filed a complaint to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which investigates cybercrimes, asking the agency to register a case against Jan Achakzai, the former information minister of southwestern Baluchistan province, for repeatedly insulting Mir on X, including calling him a “traitor.” In the complaint, reviewed by CPJ, Mir said that Achakzai’s “malicious attacks” undermined his credibility and jeopardized his safety.
On May 1, Achakzai said on X that he had been summoned to appear at the FIA’s Cybercrime Reporting Center on May 3. He criticized Mir for advocating for freedom of expression and for using his show to talk to separatists in Baluchistan.
“The threats and online hate campaign against one of Pakistan’s most prominent television anchors illustrate the severity of intimidation and pressure faced by journalists in Pakistan,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi . “Pakistani security agencies must immediately act against those trying to silence Hamid Mir and hold them accountable.”
Press freedom advocate
Mir has consistently advocated for press freedom in Pakistan.
On April 27, he filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court seeking the formation of a judicial commission to investigate the 2022 killing of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya. In February, Mir spoke out on “Capital Talk” against the detention of journalists Imran Riaz Khan and Asad Ali Toor. In 2021, Mir was suspended from his talk show at Geo News after criticizing the military at a rally in support of Toor, who had been beaten up by unidentified men.
Mir has survived at least two attempted assassinations — in 2014 he was shot and in 2012 his driver found explosives planted under his car. In 2011, Mir publicly shared a death threat that he received after criticizing the military, judiciary, and intelligence services.
Since 1992, 64 journalists have been killed in connection with their work in Pakistan, CPJ data shows. Pakistan ranked 11th on CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index, which ranks countries by how often the killers of journalists go unpunished.
On April 3, exiled Afghan journalist, Ahmad Hanayesh, was attacked by armed men in Islamabad. On March 14, Pakistani journalist Jam Saghir Ahmed Lar was shot dead in Pakistan’s central Punjab province.
CPJ’s text messages to information minister Attaullah Tarar and Syed Shahzad Nadeem Bukhari, deputy Inspector General of Police in Islamabad, requesting comment on the threats against Mir did not receive any replies.
A new report from Amnesty International finds the sale of U.S.weapons to Israel for use in its indiscriminate assault in Gaza is in violation of U.S. and international law. We speak to Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and contributing researcher to the report, who says the U.S. is “complicit in the commission of war crimes” and must “halt all arms transfer to Israel as long as Israel continues to fail to comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.” We also discuss Israel’s detention of thousands of Palestinians without charge, the inadequacy of U.S. human rights investigations into the Israeli military, and Israel’s threatened ground invasion of Rafah.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Denied entry by Taiwan, veteran Chinese democracy activist Tian Yongde has arrived safely in the United States, where he is applying for political asylum following a hazardous trek through the Central American rainforest.
He fled China after repeatedly being hauled in by China’s feared state security police for questioning, prompting his friends to warn that he could soon wind up in jail, he told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.
“My friend warned me that I’d been put on a list, and that I should leave China as soon as possible,” he said. “They said people like me would be the first to be locked up if there were any big political changes, and there was no way of knowing if I would survive. I was very scared by that.”
He became one of a growing number of Chinese to join the “run” movement of people fleeing China and eventually arriving at the U.S. border overland via Mexico.
Tian, who hails from the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, has a long history of activism – including being one of the first people to sign Charter 08, a 2008 document co-authored by late 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo that called for constitutional government, and a former member of the banned China Democracy Party.
He left China for Thailand in November 2023, then took a flight from neighboring Malaysia to democratic Taiwan on Jan. 30, 2024.
Sent back by Taiwan
Tian and his traveling companions Wei Yani and Huang Xingxing all held temporary refugee cards issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, in Bangkok.
They arrived in Taiwan on a flight from Kuala Lumpur and declined to board an onward booking to Beijing, where they hoped to be allowed to wait for resettlement in a third country in Taiwan rather than Thailand, where the authorities have repatriated a number of dissidents wanted by China in recent years.
But Taiwan’s Immigration Department sent the trio back to Malaysia on the morning of Feb. 1, saying that people shouldn’t jump flights on the island, which has no refugee law and lacks a clear mechanism for handling political asylum claims.
From Kuala Lumpur, Tian started out on a long and tortuous journey via Morocco and Egypt to Quito, Ecuador, where he took the perilous people smuggling route known in China as “walking the line,” all the way to the U.S. land border with Mexico.
Nearly swept away
He landed in Ecuador, which offers visa-free entry to Chinese nationals, on Feb. 23, and eventually crossed the border into the United States on April 21 after a grueling two-month journey.
At one point, he was nearly washed away by a turbulent rainforest river, he said.
“There was moss on the stones as we were crossing a river, and I slipped on it and I fell into the water,” Tian said. “My backpack and everything I was wearing was drenched from head to toe.”
Tian feels lucky to be alive after the incident.
“If someone hadn’t grabbed me, I could have been swept away because the water was flowing so fast,” he said.
In another hairy moment, he and his group were held up at gunpoint by unidentified people on the Mexico side of the U.S. border who demanded their money.
“They chased us then held their guns to our faces and demanded US$500 each,” Tian said. “We said we didn’t have much cash, so they told us we would have to go to the ATM to take it out.”
Just then, the would-be robbers were distracted by the sounds of dogs barking that he thought “might have been a dispute between gangs.” The gang ran off towards the village, telling Tian and the other migrants to follow, but they ran away in the other direction instead.
“There are lots of robberies on these routes, and they all have guns,” he said.
‘Work, study and write’
After crossing the border, Tian spent two days in a U.S. immigration detention center.
The first place he visited on his release was the Liberty Sculpture Park in California’s Mojave desert, home to a monument to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, a life-size statue of the “Tank Man,” and a sculpture of Crazy Horse by political artist Chen Weiming.
Veteran Chinese democracy activist Tian Yongde poses by a statue of the 1989 “Tank Man” protester at the Liberty Sculpture Park in southern California, April 27, 2024. (Courtesy of Tian Yongde)
Tian stayed at the park for several days, offering his services as a volunteer.
Now, he plans to “work, study, and write something,” while also looking for ways to promote democratic change in China.
“There are more and more fellow activists coming to the United States now, and we will all have a discussion about what we want to do and say,” he said.
Geng Guanjun, who chairs the China Democracy Party’s Los Angeles chapter, said the party will support Tian’s political asylum application and help him find a job.
“I will try to get him some kind of work that doesn’t require too much physical exertion, so he can still have time to write,” Geng said. “I will also try to help him integrate into American life.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Sun Cheng for RFA Mandarin.
Washington, D.C., May 1, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by reports that FOX 7 Austin photojournalist Carlos Sanchez is again facing charges in connection with his work, and calls on Texas authorities to drop all charges against him and allow journalists to do their work without fear of arrest.
“We are gravely concerned that the Texas Department of Public Safety has persisted in pressing charges against FOX 7 Austin photojournalist Carlos Sanchez in retaliation for his reporting on pro-Palestinian campus protests. All charges against him must be dropped immediately,” said CPJ U.S., Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “Sanchez never should have been arrested and this revolving door of charges is especially egregious in a country that guarantees press freedom.”
On April 24, FOX 7 Austin photojournalist Sanchez was on assignment covering a student protest at the University of Texas’ Austin campus when he was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing by the Department of Public Safety. The Travis County attorney’s office dismissed the charges the next day, according to a FOX 7 report and multiple sources. On April 26, Sanchez was charged with the felony assault of a peace officer. Those charges were dismissed on Tuesday, April 30, and two new misdemeanor charges were also filed against Sanchez on that day.
A Class B misdemeanor charge of impeding a public servant is punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine of up to $2,000; a class C misdemeanor assault charge carries a penalty of a fine up to $500.
CPJ’s email to the Texas Department of Public Safety did not receive an immediate response.
After a long day of practicing his religion at the Phuc Long Pagoda, Buddhist monk Thich Minh Vuong received a phone call from his relatives. They told him his older brother, Vu Minh Duc, had died in hospital after being interrogated by police in Dong Nai province.
“I couldn’t breathe when I heard the news of his death, my heart was choked,” said Vuong.
On March 22, Duc answered a police summons in connection with a fight near his home in October 2023. Later that day, police asked his wife to come in and sign documents “related to his health.”
When she arrived, an investigator said they had taken Duc to hospital for emergency treatment because he had fainted during interrogation.
He was later transferred to a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City where he was pronounced dead at 9:30 p.m. that day.
The death certificate provided by Cho Ray Hospital shows that Duc died at 11 p.m. with the cause of death a coma after circulatory respiratory arrest following brain damage, cardiac arrest, acute kidney failure, acute liver failure and soft tissue damage to the right and left thighs.
His family said the body was covered with bruises, marks of torture.
Monk Vuong witnessed the autopsy a day after his brother’s death. He said Duc’s wrists were covered in scratches, his chest had a massive bruise, while his buttocks and thighs were purple and black.
On April 26, RFA called police Long Thanh district, where Duc was interrogated, to ask for information. An officer on duty asked the reporter to go to the headquarters to discuss the case.
Duc’s death is the latest case of a Vietnamese citizen dying in unclear circumstances in police custody. Vietnam has been a member of the U.N. Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (CAT) since 2015.
In March 2015, the Thanh Nien newspaper reported that from October 2011 to September 2014, there were 226 deaths in detention facilities nationwide. The Ministry of Public Security explained them as being due to illness and suicide. Since then, no further reports have been issued.
Radio Free Asia collated reports from state-controlled media and found that in 2018, at least 11 people died in detention facilities.
Since 2020, at least 14 deaths have been reported, three described as suicide by police in spite of family doubts.
Two days after Duc’s death, Dong Nai provincial police suspended a captain, Thai Thanh Thuong, and investigator Luu Quang Trung, pending an investigation into the death.
However, the family has not received any information about the case from authorities, including the autopsy results. Police have not visited them or offered an apology.
Vuong has sent Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong 25 reports with images showing traces of suspected torture but has received no response.
Lawyer Nguyen Van Mieng, who is a political refugee in the United States, said that since joining the Convention against Torture, the National Assembly of Vietnam has amended the 2015 Criminal Code and the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code to focus on preventing torture and protecting human rights but there is a big gap in implementation.
“We still hear official information from the state that there are cases of people who were healthy but died unexpectedly when they went into the police station. People died because of torture,” he said.
Human rights lawyer Dang Dinh Manh cited a land dispute in Dong Tam commune in 2020, in which he was one of the defense lawyers, as illustrating evidence of torture.
“Of the 29 defendants in the case, up to 19 people confirmed in court that they were brutally tortured, beaten in the dead of night … and were not given medical care when they were injured,” he said.
Lawyer Mieng said authorities should strictly enforce the Criminal Procedure Code and lawyers must be present at all stages of an investigation to prevent suspects from being tortured.
Manh said audio and video recording equipment in the interrogation room must be on at all times and “officers committing torture or inhumane treatment of suspects,” must be severely punished.
Vuong agreed with the lawyers.
“I also hope that when working like this, citizens will be asked to invite lawyers or be allowed to have their families present to see how police officers work,” he said. “[They must] seriously investigate and severely punish those who have violated international conventions.”
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
Five Rohingya Muslims arrested by ethnic minority insurgents in western Myanmar have been found dead, sources close to the victims’ families told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.
The five ethnic Rohingya men were arrested by the Arakan Army in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw township on April 17, they said. Their bodies were found on Monday. The Arakan Army denied killing the men.
Rohingya Muslims have faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for generations. Recently, they have been targeted by the junta in a recruitment drive to bolster their army’s numbers. Many Rohingya have been forced to move into poorly equipped camps because of a surge in fighting between members of the Arakan Army, drawn largely from the Buddhist community, and junta forces. Travel bans and security blockades have further affected many residents of the state.
The five men, from Ah Bu Gyar village, had not been heard from after they were detained, one person close to the family of one of the dead said.
The Arakan Army detained the men for interrogation after clashing with members of a Muslim insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, near the village, residents said.
“They have been arrested since April 17 and have not been able to contact their families. [The Arakan Army] said they would release them,” said one resident, who declined to be identified for security reasons. “But on April 22, some villagers found them at the Ywet Nyo Taung creek shore.”
The families did not know why the five were killed, one relative said, adding that relatives were also not allowed to collect the bodies.
Sources close to the families identified the victims as Abdul Amen, 54, a former village secretary, Malawe Mohamed Sayad, 40, Aisalam, 61, Arbul Karlam and Numar Lal Hakem 27.
Arakan Army spokesman Khaing Thukha told RFA his group did not arrest the five residents, nor did it kill detainees. The group had “nothing to do,” with the case, he said.
“We would never do this kind of lawless and unjust killing,” Khaing Thuka told RFA.
Khaing Thukha said various insurgent groups and drugs gangs operated in the region
“It’s a complex area,” he said. “Among the criminal gangs, there are sometimes murders because one side is not satisfied with the other.”
He also said that people opposed to the Arakan Army could be trying to damage its reputation in the community.
Arakan Army fighters attacked a police station near the border with Bangladesh, near Maungdaw township’s Ywet Nyo Taung village, on April 17, residents said. Almost all villagers in the area had abandoned their homes and fled after the attack.
A Myanmar army offensive in the area launched after insurgent attacks on police posts in 2017 sparked an exodus of some 750,000 refugees into Bangladesh.
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.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued a civil investigative demand, a form of subpoena, to Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Media Matters for America on March 25, 2024, for documents related to its reporting about the social platform X. A day later, Bailey filed a lawsuit in Missouri circuit court seeking to enforce his demand, according to court documents reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
On Nov. 16, 2023, Media Matters published a report written by its investigative reporter Eric Hananoki that found advertisements for major brands appeared next to pro-Nazi posts on X. Following the report’s publication and a post on X by owner Elon Musk that appeared to endorse an antisemitic conspiracy theory, several major companies paused their advertising on the platform.
The report touched off a firestorm of response from X and from Republican politicians across the country. X filed a lawsuit on Nov. 20 against both Media Matters and Hananoki, alleging that they had manipulated the platform’s algorithms to produce the report’s findings in order to harm X’s relationship with advertisers. (Media Matters filed a motion to dismiss X’s suit in March 2024.)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also cited allegations of algorithm manipulation in a probe he initiated into “potential fraudulent activity,” issuing his own civil investigative demand on Dec. 1, 2023, that Media Matters turn over documents related to its reporting on X. Media Matters sued to block that demand and was granted a preliminary injunction against Paxton in April 2024.
Bailey opened his investigation into Media Matters on Dec. 11, 2023, alleging that it appeared to have used the “coordinated, inauthentic activity” described in X’s lawsuit “to solicit charitable donations from consumers.” He said that his office would look into whether this violated Missouri’s consumer protection laws, “including laws that prohibit nonprofit entities from soliciting funds under false pretenses.” Bailey instructed the nonprofit to preserve all records related to the case.
Three days later, Bailey announced that he and then-Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (now serving as governor) had sent letters to several major companies that paused their advertising on X, including Apple, Disney, IBM and Sony, informing them of the investigation into Media Matters.
Bailey then issued a civil investigative demand similar to Paxton’s and petitioned a state court to enforce it, arguing that given Media Matters’ response to Paxton, it was unlikely to comply by his April 15 deadline.
Bailey’s demand included requests for Media Matters’ 2023 and 2024 donation records, documents associated with Hananoki’s reporting and materials “related to generating stories or content intended to cancel, deplatform, demonetize, or otherwise interfere with businesses located in Missouri, or utilized by Missouri residents,” among other records.
“My office has reason to believe Media Matters used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to bully advertisers into pulling out of X, the last social media platform dedicated to free speech in America,” Bailey said in a news release. “If there has been any attempt to defraud Missourians in order to trample on their free speech rights, I will root it out and hold bad actors accountable.”
The organization has objected to Bailey’s demand in full. Media Matters President Angelo Carusone told Ars Technica, “This Missouri investigation is the latest in a transparent endeavor to squelch the First Amendment rights of researchers and reporters; it will have a chilling effect on news reporters.”
In a response to Bailey’s announcement of the suit on X, Elon Musk wrote: “Much appreciated! Media Matters is doing everything it can to undermine the First Amendment. Truly an evil organization.”
Carusone, in the Ars Technica article, countered: “Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Elon Musk has actually intensified his efforts to undermine free speech by enlisting Republican attorneys general across the country to initiate meritless, expensive, and harassing investigations against Media Matters in an attempt to punish critics.”
Abuja, April 16, 2024—Nigerian authorities should immediately drop their investigation into the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) and its founder, the award-winning undercover reporter, Fisayo Soyombo, and stop intimidating the chairperson of FIJ’s board of trustees, Bukky Shonibare, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
On February 21, Soyombo published an investigation detailing how he had smuggled rice into Nigeria with the collusion of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) officials and accused local businessman Ibrahim Dende Egungbohun of being a smuggler. FIJ’s accompanying documentary was also broadcast by Arise News.
On February 26, Egungbohun’s lawyer, David Olaoluwa Folalu, petitioned the police, Arise News, and the regulatory National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) over FIJ’s investigation, which it described as “defamatory, false and malicious” and “contrary to Section 24 of the cybercrimes (prohibition, prevention) Act, 2015,” according to multiplenewsreports, including by FIJ. Folalu demanded retractions, apologies, and 500 million naira (US$403,159) in damages, those sources said.
Separately, on March 15, another lawyer for Egungbohun, Bolarinwa Elijah Aidi, wrote to Soyombo, similarly demanding damages and retraction of the story, according to a copy of the letter posted on FIJ’s website.
Allegation of cybercrime
On March 26, FIJ board chairperson Shonibare was questioned by police at the National Cybercrime Center in the capital, Abuja, following their written request to interview her, reviewed by CPJ.
Shonibare told CPJ that the police said they were investigating an allegation of cybercrime in connection with one of FIJ’s articles, which they did not name, and asked about FIJ’s journalistic standards. The police also said they knew that Soyombo was not in Nigeria and instructed Shonibare to return with him, she told CPJ and said in a report on FIJ’s website.
Shonibare said that one official threatened her by saying that the police could access her personal and financial information via records associated with her phone number.
“Nigerian authorities must cease their efforts to intimidate the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, including its founder, the renowned investigative reporter Fisayo Soyombo, and the chairperson of its board of trustees, Bukky Shonibare, and allow them to continue reporting on issues of public interest,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “The Nigerian police’s investigation into such a reputable media outlet demonstrates the alarming extent to which they are willing to go to silence journalists seeking to expose crime.”
Death threat on social media
Soyombo said that he received a death threat on social media, reviewed by CPJ, telling him to stay away from Egungbohun, whose nickname is IBD Dende. It said, “step back from this called IBD DENDE … does [those] whom are paying you doesn’t [don’t] want you to live long.”
Soyombo said that two friends also warned him to be careful as they feared for his life after speaking with associates of Egungbohun and the Nigeria Customs Service who made threats against him.
On February 24, an opinion piece defending Egungbohun and criticizing Soyombo’s investigation was published in multiple localnewsoutlets.
Folalu confirmed to CPJ by phone that he was seeking to press charges for cyberstalking under Section 24 of the law and described the FIJ’s story as “deliberately targeted at the character and reputation of our client” and “purely criminal in nature.”
Folalu said his office had sent a pre-action letter to Arise News, notifying the outlet that they planned to file a civil suit against it demanding 500 million naira (US$403,159) in damages but put the matter on hold after the regulatory NBC wrote to Arise News on the same issue.
A senior member of staff at Arise News confirmed to CPJ, on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, that the outlet had received written communication from Egungbohun’s lawyers, which had been forwarded to their lawyers, but declined to provide further details.
Possible criminal case
Egungbohun’s second lawyer, Aidi, told CPJ on April 5, that his office had sent pre- action letters to Soyombo and Arise News, notifying them about the possible civil suit and that their plans did not preclude a possible criminal case against the FIJ.
NCS spokesperson Abdullahi Aliyu Maiwada told CPJ via text message that the customs service remained “resolute in addressing genuine, evidence-based observations” but it was “not formally aware” of FIJ’s investigation.
He rejected the claim by Soyombo’s friends that NCS officials made threats against the journalist.
“Constructive, fact-based criticism channelled through appropriate means are always welcomed,” he said.
NBC spokesperson Ekanem Antia told CPJ on April 15 that the regulator did not receive any petition against Arise News about FIJ’s documentary.
Reached by phone and messaging app, Uche Ifeanyi Henry, director of the police’s National Cybercrime Center, told CPJ that requests for comment on the case should be send via the police’s “official channel,” but he did not specify a contact.
CPJ’s emails to the National Cybercrime Center and the police in Abuja requesting comment did not receive any response.
São Paulo, April 12, 2024—Argentine authorities must thoroughly investigate the death threats received by journalist Julio Ernesto López on his father’s cell phone, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Friday.
According to an April 5 post on X, formerly Twitter, by the Association of Argentine Press Companies (ADEPA), a professional association, and a complaint López filed with the SpecialProsecutor’s Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrimes in Buenos Aires, which CPJ reviewed, the journalist received death threats after the April 4 broadcast on Canal Trece’s “Telenoche” program of an investigative report on the illegal selling of controlled medications.
“Argentine authorities must immediately investigate the death threats against Argentine journalist Julio Ernesto López,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar. “Journalists should not be persecuted for providing a service of public interest to society, as was the case with his report.”
The WhatsApp messages displayed on his father’s cell phone, which CPJ reviewed, said: “I’m going to shoot you,” and, “One-eyed guy, you work for the cops.” López, who wears a shaded lens over his left eye, believes the threats were sent to his father’s phone because they have the same name.
López’s story explained how criminals access the online system of National Institute of Social Services for Retirees and Pensioners (PAMI), the country’s public health insurance agency for retired people, to issue prescriptions for medicines that are subsidized by an average of 80% by the government. López is shown negotiating a payment with a criminal to get access to the system.
“Since it doesn’t have two-factor authentication, anyone with a login and password from a registered physician can access and issue prescriptions,” the journalist told CPJ in a phone interview.
An expert in security, López works in banking cybercrime and is also a columnist for Radio Mitre and for Grupo Clarín’s cable news station TN. His X profile has 62,100 followers.
The prosecutor’s office informed CPJ in a voice message that it used geotagging to get the location of the phone number that sent the threats and has asked WhatsApp owner Meta to provide the person’s profile information, which should happen within 20 days.
Two teenage girls who were held at a Chinese-run casino in Myanmar for more than two years have returned home to Laos after a 40,000 yuan (US$5,500) fee was paid to gain their freedom, they told RFA.
The two girls were part of a group of 16 young Laotians trafficked to work as scammers at a place called the “Casino Kosai” in an isolated development near the city of Myawaddy, the scene of recent fighting in Myanmar’s civil war.
A group of people helped get them out of the casino and brought them to the Laos border, they told Radio Free Asia. The 40,000 yuan fee was paid by their Chinese boyfriends to facilitate the release, one of the girls said.
“The Chinese boss finally agreed to release my friend and I, but we had to pay a fee,” she told RFA. “We also had to find those who we can trust. Otherwise, we could end up being sold to another place.”
The Chinese-owned ‘Casino Kosai’ (shown) in Myawaddy, Myanmar near the Thai border. (Citizen journalist)
Recent intense fighting in the area between Myanmar’s military junta and anti-junta rebels delayed their travel to the border by several days, they said. The two girls arrived in Luang Namtha province in northern Laos on Monday.
RFA confirmed that the other 14 young Laotians remain at the casino, where they have been forced to call people and trick them into buying fake investments.
If they don’t reach quota goals, they are struck with rods or forced to stand in the sun for hours, their parents told RFA.
“I called my son last week and he told me that the Chinese boss said that they may release some of them on June 15,” the mother of one of the remaining 14 told RFA. “I have to wait and see first. If nothing happens, I will try other ways to help my son.”
Trafficked Lao youths are seen after gaining their freedom from a Chinese-run casino in Myawaddy, Myanmar, April 2023. Radio Free Asia has blurred their faces to protect their identities for their safety. (Citizen journalist)
The families of the young Laotians have appealed to government officials on several occasions to intervene in the case.
A reliable source told RFA on Wednesday that the 14 teenagers can be released if the casino is paid a US$3,000 fee.
“It seems impossible for me to get that amount of money,” another parent said. “I feel very hopeless now to hear it will cost this amount of money.”
Translated by Phouvong. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.
Gangster-turned-politician and former BSP leader Mukhtar Ansari died of a cardiac arrest in a Uttar Pradesh jail on March 29. Days after this, a one-minute clip of Union home minister Amit Shah went viral on social media where he stated, “We have done the biggest work by getting rid of NIZAM. Do you know what is NIZAM? Do you? You don’t know what is NIZAM. I will tell you.” Shah proclaims how BJP freed Uttar Pradesh from ‘NIZAM’, an acronym for Nasimuddin Siddiqui, Imran Masood, Azam Khan, Atique Ahmed and Mukhtar Ansari.
Social media users have shared the clip and claimed that the home minister suggested that Mukhtar Ansari had been targetted and killed by the BJP.
An X (formerly Twitter) user, @MukeshMohannn, shared the clip on X with the caption, “Amit Shah is saying that BJP got us freedom from Mukhtar Ansari. Doesn’t it appear like Shah poisoned Ansari with his own hands?” The tweet received close to 1.5 Lakh views and 2,500 retweets. (Archive)
अमित शाह कह रहे हैं कि मुख्तार अंसारी से मुक्ति भारतीय जनता पार्टी ने दिलाई।
Another X user, @janardanmis, shared the video with the caption, “मोटा भाई तो खुल्लेआम पेलते हैं, मुख्तार अंसारी से किसने मुक्ति दिलाई वो आप मोटा भाई से सुनिए” (Archive)
मोटा भाई तो खुल्लेआम पेलते हैं
मुख्तार अंसारी से किसने मुक्ति दिलाई वो आप मोटा भाई से सुनिएpic.twitter.com/DwWPI5vCS6
A parody page of actor Prakash Raj, @PrakashRofl, shared the video on X and claimed that “Amit Shah is saying that Bharatiya Janata Party got us freedom from Mukhtar Ansari. Meaning that it was not a heart attack.” The tweet had received close to 2.5 Lakh views before it was deleted. (Archive)
A closer look at the viral video reveals that the date. April 10, 2019, and place, Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh, are written on the top left corner of the frame.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a keyword search on Google which led us to a 2019 YouTube video, titled ‘Shri Amit Shah addresses public meeting in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh: 10.04.2019’, posted by BJP on its official YouTube page. At the 19:27 mark, Shah states how BJP has freed Uttar Pradesh from the rule of NIZAM. The one-minute viral clip has been taken from here.
According to a 2019 report by The Times Of India, Amit Shah made the statement while campaigning in Patiyali of Kasganj district ahead of the general elections in 2019. The report stated, “In a scathing attack on SP-BSP alliance, Amit Shah in his public address on Wednesday said, that BJP has freed Uttar Pradesh from NIZAM- an acronym for Nasimuddin Siddiqui, Imran Masood, Azam Khan, Atique Ahmed and Mukhtar Ansari, the leaders of SP and BSP party. During his visit in Patiyali of Kasganj district and Firozabad district to garner support for party candidates Rajveer Singh (Etah constituency) and Chandra Sen Jadaun (Firozabad constituency), Shah said, ‘Among all the works, getting rid of NIZAM was the biggest job which BJP government has done since its inception in the state.”
To sum up, it is clear that the viral clip is from 2019 and hence the remark by Union home minister Amit Shah cannot be seen in the context of the death of Mukhtar Ansari in March 2024. To amplify the comment as an evidence of the BJP’s role in the gangster-turned-politician’s death is, therefore, incorrect.
Rescue workers are searching for people still missing or trapped in the rubble after the worst earthquake to hit Taiwan in 25 years amid fears that casualties may rise.
Taiwanese authorities said that at least nine people were killed, more than 1,000 injured and nearly 100 people remain trapped in collapsed tunnels, mostly in Hualien County on the east coast, where the 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit on Wednesday morning.
The quake has also severely damaged the infrastructure in the area, with roads blocked with fallen rocks and railway lines to Hualien cut off, just as Taiwanese people began a major public holiday on Thursday.
Residents of the damaged building stand as a damaged building is being demolished following the earthquake, in Hualien, Taiwan April 4, 2024. (Reuters/Tyrone Siu)
Priority is being given to restoring rail traffic, Transportation Minister Wang Kwo-tsai told Taiwanese media, adding that he hoped by Thursday afternoon trains could start running again in both directions.
The military has been called in to help with recovery efforts. Two C-130 transport aircraft were dispatched to bring rescue teams and equipment to Hualien.
The official Central News Agency (CNA) reported that ships are being mobilized to bring supplies to the county.
Missing hotel workers
Most of the fatalities, caused by falling rocks, happened in Hualien – a picturesque mountainous area popular with hikers and tourists. The death toll being five women and four men so far.
Rugged terrain and damaged roads have made search and rescue operations harder.
It was reported that 47 employees of a Hualien hotel and 24 tourists are still unaccounted for at Jiuqudong, one of the most scenic sections in Taroko Gorge.
Rocks block Provincial Highway No. 8 in Central Taiwan, April 3, 2024. (Taichung City Fire Bureau)
Taiwan’s National Fire Agency said 71 people are still trapped in two mines in Hualien after some tunnels collapsed in the earthquake.
According to the Hualien County Government, more than 600 people including residents and visitors have been placed in temporary accommodation. Shelters have also been set up in New Taipei City to accommodate earthquake victims.
Taiwanese soldiers helping rescue operations in Hualien, April 3, 2024. (Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense)
Aftershocks are still being felt across Taiwan, with the government warning that tremors of up to 7 magnitude may occur in the next three days.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs reported that almost 400,000 households were experiencing power outages, as well as water stoppages, nationwide.
Eighty cell phone base stations suffered damage in the earthquake, causing communication disruptions. The National Communications Commission said it would work to repair all the stations by Friday.
Leading semiconductor manufacturer TSMC suspended operations on Wednesday and evacuated workers from some plants.
Despite its strength, the April 3 earthquake has not caused many fatalities thanks to the fact that the epicentre was far from populous urban areas, according to experts. The public’s preparedness also played a factor, after the highly destructive earthquake in 1999 that killed 2,400 people.
‘Thanks, but no thanks’
Taiwan’s Vice President and President-elect Lai Ching-te on Wednesday went to Hualien to inspect the aftermath of the earthquake. Lai, who is to be sworn in next month, said he was “fully committed” to assisting the Hualien county government as it works to shelter those displaced by the quake and rebuild.
“The priority now is to find and rescue those who remain trapped,” he said.
Leaders and senior officials from 47 countries including Japan, the U.S., the U.K. – to name a few – have expressed solidarity and offered assistance to Taipei, according to Taiwan’s Presidential Office.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama also expressed his sympathy to the earthquake victims via a post on Facebook.
Zhu Fenglian, head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office – the organization in charge of cross-Strait relations – said in a statement that the mainland was “deeply concerned about the earthquake and expressed sincere condolences to Taiwan compatriots affected by the disaster.”
China “is willing to provide disaster relief assistance,” Zhu said.
However, the offer was declined by the Taiwanese authorities. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement that “we express our gratitude to the Chinese side for their concern” but “there is no need for the Chinese side to assist.”
Taiwan’s former president Ma Ying-jeou is currently in China on a friendly visit that has been criticized by some legislators from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Frightened but calm
Taiwanese people have been sharing their own experiences from Wednesday’s earthquake.
A man, who identified himself as Li and lives just 500 meters from central Hualien, told Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin service that his building was seriously damaged and its 200 residents were rescued but now need to be resettled.
“After the earthquake hit, the main door was sealed. I was locked in my room for about half an hour.
“The tremors broke the windows and deformed the building structure, the ceilings collapsed, and the window grills, making it impossible to climb out. I learned that some people couldn’t stand on the road and had to hug trees to steady themselves.”
Another man named Lin described the quake as huge.
“The earth was shaking up and down, left and right for nearly a minute.”
But he kept his cool, saying: “I am so experienced. I am really used to it in Taiwan.”
Lan, a woman who lives in Taipei, told RFA: “I was about to go to work at the time, and I was relatively calm.”
“I think Taiwanese people are actually quite well trained in this regard, we know roughly what to do and just follow the instructions.”
Some people said that they actually learned about the earthquake from mainland Chinese sources. China’s Sina News issued an alert at 8:01 a.m. on Wednesday saying “The China Seismological Network detected an earthquake of 7.4 magnitude near Taiwan, China.”
But there was also disinformation, according to a woman named Li from Taipei: “The first time I saw it, the news was from mainland China saying that an earthquake of magnitude 8.4 was detected in Taiwan.”
“They also talked about suspension of work [in Taiwan]. Fake news was all over the place.”
A video clip has surfaced showing a man, likely a hotel guest, swimming in a hotel rooftop pool in Taipei when the earthquake struck.
In the amateur clip,posted on the BBC, the pool was seen shaking violently, making water splash from side to side, but the man looked surprisingly calm and remained in the pool.
After the video was circulated widely, the Regent Taipei stepped up saying it was the hotel’s pool which is now closed and all hotel guests, including the man, are safe.
Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.
Updated to include eyewitness comments.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
Authorities at Myanmar’s notorious Insein Prison shot seven political prisoners dead under murky circumstances on Valentine’s Day last year, sources with ties to the victims’ families and prisoner watchdog groups told RFA Burmese on Wednesday.
The Feb. 14, 2023, killings, which were confirmed on Monday following the intervention of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, help to shed light on the fates of hundreds who have died in detention for opposing junta rule in the more than three years since the military’s 2021 coup d’etat.
The seven men were arrested on Feb. 7, 2023, for allegedly killing 11 people, including veteran soldiers, local administrative officers and civilians, as part of the anti-coup movement, the junta said.
The men’s names were Aung Khant Phyo (also known as Moe Tain), Pyae Phyo Nyein and Nyi Nyi Htwe – three men in their 20s – and Chit Ko, Aung Zaw Lin, Tin Soe and Aye Thein – four men in their 50s, according to relatives and groups monitoring political prisoners.
After their arrest, family members were unable to speak with the men for months and were given no update on their status, despite multiple requests to prison officials, they told RFA.
An aerial view of Myanmar’s Insein Prison on the outskirts of Yangon, shown in a file photo. (AP Photo/Khin Maung Win)
However, on Monday, they learned that within a week of their arrest and detention at Yangon’s Insein Prison, the seven men were taken out of the facility to lead authorities to a “hidden cache of weapons” and shot dead “as they tried to escape,” a source close to the family of one of the victims told RFA, citing a junta explanation of the incident.
“They couldn’t be contacted for about a year,” said the source who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
“Then, with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross, they were confirmed to have been killed in the same month of their arrest. We only found out about their deaths on Monday.”
The military regime has released no statement on the incident and attempts by RFA to contact junta Deputy Director General Naing Win went unanswered Wednesday. Officials at Insein Prison failed to provide specific answers about the circumstances surrounding the deaths when contacted by RFA.
‘Murder in prison’
Tun Kyi, a former political prisoner who monitors cases of detention under the junta, told RFA that the details of the case only came to light after family members of the victims contacted the ICRC to inquire about their situation.
“We have not received direct information about the killing of these prisoners, but their family members have confirmed the incident,” he said.
According to former inmates who have since been released from Insein Prison, none of the seven victims were known to have been tried in court and the charges they faced were never made public.
In response to an emailed inquiry about their case, a spokesperson for the ICRC told RFA that the group was unable to comment.
“Our preferred way of working is to engage bilaterally and confidentially with all relevant actors to facilitate open and honest discussions, whether with the relevant authorities or with family members or a community,” the spokesperson said.
“Therefore, we cannot publicly disclose or comment on the ICRC’s findings, recommendations and discussions.”
The spokesperson said that in 2023, ICRC had assisted families in identifying the whereabouts of 314 people in Myanmar.
Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya humanitarian worker, in his office in Yangon, Aug. 15, 2018. (Ye Aung Thu/AFP)
Aung Kyaw Moe, deputy minister of human rights for the shadow National Unity Government, said the killings amounted to “a murder in prison,” and vowed to hold the junta accountable according to international law.
“This incident involved the killing of many victims, instead of just one or two,” he said. “It is a grave violation of human rights.”
Political imprisonment under junta
Since the 2021 coup, Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners has documented more than 25,000 political prisoners jailed by Myanmar’s military regime, which it says is the largest number in the country’s long history of political turmoil.
According to the Political Prisoners Network – Myanmar, 34 political prisoners died in prisons nationwide in 2023, 18 of whom were killed and 16 of whom died after being denied access to adequate medical treatment.
The International Federation for Human Rights said in February that “several hundred” political prisoners have died in junta custody due to torture, summary executions, restrictions on access to medical treatment, and harsh detention conditions.
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.
As wildfires and hurricanes wreak havoc on American communities year after year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, has quietly become a central part of the federal government’s response to climate change. The agency has spent billions of dollars over the past decade on long-term recovery projects that supplement emergency aid provided by FEMA, which tends to pull back from disaster areas after a few months. States have used HUD money to rebuild fire stations and hospitals, construct new flood defenses, and buy out vulnerable homes.
When Hurricane Florence spiraled over eastern North Carolina in September 2018, it damaged or destroyed more than 11,000 homes in the space of a few hours. In the aftermath of the storm, the state channeled millions of HUD dollars toward an ambitious effort to build affordable apartments in the areas that had lost big chunks of their housing stock. Restoring this low-income housing is one of the most difficult and expensive parts of disaster recovery, and the HUD money was meant to help ensure displaced renters didn’t have to scatter far and wide to find homes they could afford.
One of the first test sites for the effort was the shoreline city of New Bern, the birthplace of Pepsi. Florence damaged or destroyed almost 2,500 homes and apartments in the city and surrounding Craven County, which were too remote to attract much new investment from private builders. After the storm, the state used HUD money to build a 60-unit apartment complex called Palatine Meadows that is reserved for locals making below the area median income.
But the development may well be arriving too late to make a difference: It only opened last month, more than five years after Florence struck, thanks to a mountain of federal paperwork. Documents obtained by Grist through a public records request show that it took two years to set up a program to spend the money, another year to select a site, almost two years to complete a mountain of environmental review paperwork, and another year to build the complex. This timeline was so long that it undermined the initial purpose of the project, which was to provide a timely and affordable option for residents who suddenly find themselves with nowhere to live.
Jeffrey Odham, the mayor of New Bern, says he doubts the new apartment complex will help any of the city’s storm victims.
“There’s people that will take advantage of those units, but someone who was displaced from Hurricane Florence now moving into one of these houses — I don’t think you can make that correlation, because it’s been too long,” he said in an interview with Grist. Odham didn’t know the project was part of North Carolina’s Florence recovery program until Grist informed him. It is the only subsidized apartment project in New Bern that has been built with FEMA or HUD money.
But just as concerning is what happened for the state when everything went according to plan. Even a well-financed housing project built by a trusted developer took more than half a decade to complete.
The sluggish timeline on the New Bern development is symbolic of a much larger problem with HUD’s disaster recovery program, according to Carlos Martín, a researcher at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies who has followed the agency’s relief efforts. By the time states can develop new housing with HUD money, he said, it’s often too late.
“I’ve heard this story before,” Martín told Grist. “They were doing everything right, and it still took forever.”
The problem starts with Congress: FEMA doesn’t need to get a green light from Congress before it starts sending money for disaster relief, but HUD does. That’s because lawmakers have never passed legislation that authorizes the agency’s disaster program on a permanent basis. Instead they pass standalone funding bills that give the agency authorization to spend on specific disasters, and a community’s recovery depends on whether it can elbow its way onto the agenda of the the House of Representatives and the Senate.
North Carolina was luckier than many places, because Congress passed such a bill mere weeks after Hurricane Florence, giving the state more than $336 million for storm recovery. Lawmakers added another $206 million the following year. By congressional standards, this was a fast turnaround: Other hard-hit areas such as Lake Charles, Louisiana, have had to wait more than a year after disasters for lawmakers to allocate funding.
The half-billion-dollar grant from HUD was far more than North Carolina could have hoped to raise on its own, but it took ages for the money to reach the state. Because Congress passes each HUD disaster allocation as a separate bill, HUD has to create new rules for how it spends each new infusion of money, then solicit public feedback on those rules in order to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act. The feds must then review and edit “action plans” from each state that receives money, making detailed decisions about what projects to fund.
North Carolina aimed high with its post-Florence action plan. Housing was the biggest need after the storm, and officials wanted to go beyond traditional FEMA programs that reimburse storm victims who relocate to hotels and existing apartments.
“These [reimbursement] programs are beneficial to renters, but may not be best suited to meet the renter recovery need of such a vast geography,” state officials wrote in a 2021 report, adding that a better approach would be “to create new housing stock in a way that is more responsive to the needs of the recovering community.”
The private market was never going to build back low-income housing on its own in eastern North Carolina. Almost all new affordable housing — whether in disaster-struck areas or anywhere else — relies on government subsidies, most notably the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, which allows developers to claim tax breaks for the expenses of building new units at below-market rates. But even that credit wasn’t generous enough to bring developers to the impoverished towns that had been destroyed by Florence; it would take the extra inducement of HUD money to get developers to build new low-income apartments in places like New Bern.
Three people survey the flooding at the Trent Court public housing project in New Bern, North Carolina, after Hurricane Florence in 2018. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
In 2021, after the state completed months of paperwork to set up its action plan, it sought out builders who were interested in taking advantage of the HUD money. One of the bids was from an established affordable housing developer called Woda Cooper, which owns dozens of apartment complexes across the country. Woda had found an empty lot off a major thoroughfare in western New Bern, just down the road from a high school and well inland from the coast. The lot had been vacant for decades, and it wasn’t exactly a moneymaker, but by stacking HUD money on top of other federal tax credits, Woda could make the project pencil out.
Finding the developer was only the start of the process, because the HUD funding was subject to dozens of laws and regulations that restrict how the federal government spends money. These regulations have piled up over the decades to protect wetlands, endangered species, drainage systems, historic assets, and people who live near construction sites. Together they created a set of additional hurdles that Woda and Rebuild NC had to clear before the development could break ground.
“We stress repeatedly to everyone that we’re partnering with, ‘don’t disturb any ground, don’t spend any money, don’t do anything until we clear the environmental review process and have permission from HUD,’” said Tracy Colores, the community development director at Rebuild NC, who managed the housing program.
That review process took most of 2022. In order to comply with endangered species laws, the state engaged in a monthslong back-and-forth with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to figure out whether cutting down trees on the site might threaten migration stops for the northern long-eared bat. (It didn’t.) In order to ensure the complex didn’t violate any historic preservation laws, officials sought comment from two Native American tribes, who didn’t express any concerns. There was a Superfund site at a defunct power plant almost a mile away from the lot, so the state had to check in with another state agency about the potential risk of groundwater contamination, which was nonexistent. Rebuild NC had to contact a separate department to check whether there were any underground fuel storage tanks in the area, which there weren’t, or aboveground fuel tanks that could explode, which there also weren’t.
Furthermore, a small corner of the parcel sat within a FEMA-designated flood zone. Even though the developers weren’t going to build in that corner, they did plan to cut down a few trees, which triggered another review under an executive order issued in the 1970s, which regulates flood zone construction. The state liaised with the local floodplain administrator, completed an exhaustive report on flood risks, redid site plans to add a retention pond, and ran a public notice about the proposed tree-cutting in a local newspaper — all to mitigate “temporary impacts to .01 acres” of floodplain, an area roughly the size of a two-car garage.
The state had to undertake yet another review process when they realized that a ditch on the property counted as a federally designated wetland because it contained stagnant water. The developer needed to replace two concrete culverts that drained into the ditch, expanding the 15-inch pipes to 18 inches, but under federal law this action counted as new wetland development under the Clean Water Act, which meant the developer had to seek a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Meanwhile, the developer and the state spent months waiting for HUD approval to sell a portion of the lot that contained a cell phone tower, which conflicted with land use regulations governing the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit.
HUD handed down final permission to use federal money for the project in November, more than four years after Florence made landfall, at which point Woda Cooper closed the deal to buy the land and started preparing the site for construction. They cleared the lot during the first half of 2023, and by the time the fifth anniversary of Florence came around, they were about halfway done building the apartments themselves. The construction timeline stretched on for a few extra months due to a supply-chain snag with the building’s electrical system, but otherwise things went according to plan. The first tenants are expected to arrive later this month.
The other developments in the state’s housing program aren’t much further along. Out of the 16 apartment projects that the state chose to fund with HUD money, 13 were in various stages of construction as of late January, including the completed Palatine Meadows. Two projects had received their authorization from HUD but haven’t yet broken ground, and one project had fallen through after the state couldn’t find a suitable developer. Meanwhile, a separate effort to rebuild one of New Bern’s largest public housing projects with money from FEMA has yet to get off the ground.
A rendering of the 60-unit Palatine Meadows apartment complex in New Bern, North Carolina, which will open later this spring, more than five years after Hurricane Florence. Woda Cooper Companies
On one hand, these new low-income units would likely never have been built at all were it not for the infusion of money from HUD. Other federal programs helped Florence victims find new housing throughout the state, but the HUD money built new housing in the same places that lost it. Denis Blackburne, the senior vice president of Woda Cooper, told Grist that “without this [HUD] funding source, this development [Palatine Meadows] would not have been feasible” and that the federal money didn’t delay the building process.
On the other hand, Palatine Meadows may be arriving too late to change the trajectory of New Bern’s rebuild. Odham, the city’s mayor, says that most New Bern homeowners who suffered damage during the storm have returned and rebuilt their houses with money from insurance and federal grants. Renters, on the other hand, have almost all moved away: The city didn’t have any available apartments in the years after the storm, so renters who lost their homes had no choice but to look elsewhere for replacement housing.
“The question of whether people came back would come down to whether it was owner-occupied, or whether it’s rental property,” he said. “For rental property, I would say that most of those folks have probably turned over. They left to go find somewhere else to live.”
Martín, the Harvard researcher, says that other states like Louisiana and New York have also seen long delays when they try to develop new housing with HUD money.
“Affordable housing projects tend to take the longest for all grantees,” he said. “It certainly helps to have more housing, but if we’re looking at the people who lost their housing back in the disaster, I’m pretty sure it does very little for them.” HUD’s own inspector general found in a December report that the agency has taken longer and longer to deliver disaster funds: The average time between the passage of a disaster bill and the disbursement of funds to states tripled from around 200 days to around 600 days between 2000 and 2022.
In response to questions from Grist, a spokesperson for HUD said that the agency is working on a plan to streamline the funding process for its disaster program — and that it has asked Congress to authorize the program on a permanent basis.
Martín says Congress should also add exemptions to the environmental review process that would allow states to move through reviews faster if they’re working on affordable housing projects that are below a certain size, or projects in urban areas that are already developed. The state of California has added such exemptions to its own environmental laws as part of an effort to build more low-income housing, and a recent executive order Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has streamlined permitting reviews for new infill housing, leading to thousands of new units. For a project like Palatine Meadows, which brought just 60 units to an existing neighborhood, such exemptions might have sped up the timeline by a year or more.
Colores, of Rebuild NC, told Grist that the housing development project was worth doing even on a prolonged timeline. She added that new apartment complexes like Palatine Meadows will ease local housing shortages and provide new housing stock that will be strong enough to withstand future storm events.
“To the extent that we can leverage these HUD dollars, we can make a significant difference in the quality and quantity of affordable housing in a lot of communities that are frequently hit by storms,” she said. However, she acknowledged that for many victims of Hurricane Florence, the ribbon-cutting on Palatine Meadows will be too late to make much of a difference.
“I wish that we could move more quickly,” she said.
Iran has vowed to retaliate after Israel bombed the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing at least seven people, including three senior Iranian commanders and at least four other Iranian officers. Among the dead is senior commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the highest-ranking Iranian military officer to be killed since the U.S. assassinated General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020. While Israel sees strikes on foreign soil as “part of their self-defense strategy,” Iran feels it must respond to this “breaching serious diplomatic norms,” says Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, who reports the pace and audacity of Israel’s international attacks have escalated since October. “While Israel is receiving huge amounts of American support, while Gaza is suffering and Israel is pummeling that Strip, we now see them risking a two-front war, maybe a three-front war.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
When Phyu Phyu Mar from Myanmar got a job at VK Garments in 2017, she had plans to one day open her own small business.
Located in Mae Sot, a town straddling the Thai-Myanmar border, VK Garments appeared to be a promising employer, especially since it was a supplier for the British retail giant Tesco. Yet, Phyu’s dreams quickly dissolved into disillusionment.
Despite the initial optimism, Phyu Phyu Mar and 135 of her colleagues found themselves embroiled in a struggle against debt, job insecurity and the loss of their legal status in Thailand after being laid off in 2020.
Their termination by the management of VK Garments came as a direct result of their complaints about labor violations and demands for rightful wages. Although they sought justice through the legal system and were partially compensated in October 2020, the awarded sum fell significantly short of their claims.
Former VK Garment workers San San Aye, left, and Khin Mar Aye have waited nearly four years for wages they say they’re owed. They are pictured in Mae Sot, Thailand, Jan. 26, 2024. (Kiana Duncan for RFA)
Now, years later, the repercussions of their stand for fair treatment continue to profoundly affect their lives, and the hope for resolution hinges on two court cases, one local and one international, which they hope will conclude their protracted ordeal.
Thailand case
In January, employees lodged an appeal against VK Garments with Thailand’s Supreme Court, seeking 34 million baht (US$946,000) for unpaid overtime and severance.
According to the case’s lawyer, Charit Meesidhi, the labor inspector reviewing evidence for the prior court case failed to collect appropriate evidence like pay documentation and interviews that would have allowed Phyu Phyu Mar and her co-workers to prove their case.
But Charit remains cautious about the prospects of the new case as well.
“According to the legal requirements, the chance to convince the Supreme Court to review the case is extremely difficult,” the lawyer said. “This is subject exclusively to the authority of the Supreme Court and in most cases, it does not accept to review the case.”
Workers have also not seen a cent of the earnings they say they’re owed because the amount is disputed by all parties in the Thai court cases, causing many to take on increasing debt, work low-paid jobs and become illegal migrants in their adopted homeland.
A small pond near the eastern side of the VK Garments compound in Mae Sot, Thailand, March 21, 2024. Workers say they used water from lakes inside the compound for daily necessities. (Kiana Duncan for RFA)
Khin Mar Aye, another former VK Garments employee, said she was reduced to taking agricultural jobs that pay as low as 36 baht (US$1) a day.
“At that time, we didn’t have any income for our survival. We had to go to the plantation and we had to work at the onion field,” she said. “For one kilogram of onion, we receive eight baht (22 U.S. cents). We don’t always have this work, maybe 15 or 20 days in a month. We’ve been doing this kind of work until now.”
U.K. case
In the United Kingdom’s high court, the workers filed a lawsuit on Dec. 18, 2022 against Tesco, its former Thai subsidiary Ek-Chai Distribution Systems, auditor Intertek Group PLC and Intertek Testing Services Limited, all linked to alleged labor violations stemming from VK Garments, for negligence.
Despite manufacturing jeans for the U.K.-based Tesco Group intended for distribution in Thailand, workers earned a mere 2,000 baht (US$55) per month, according to former employees.
They often struggled to receive even this modest amount as management deducted charges for accommodation in worker dormitories, legal work documents they often did not receive and other unexplained fees, significantly reducing their actual take-home pay.
Former VK Garments employees say they often felt like they were going to a prison, not a factory. The front gate of the compound is seen March 21, 2024. (Kiana Duncan for RFA)
Workers have also made other allegations of enduring near 100-hour work weeks, unsafe housing that led to the rape of an employee’s child and being forced to purchase other equipment, like lightbulbs, to sew at their stations after dark.
Phyu Phyu Mar said workers had to use a lake in front of the factory for water and that accommodation and bathrooms were unsafe and filthy.
“I think almost all the workers who are working inside the factory feel like they’re going to prison every day, not a workplace,” she said.
“Mae Sot doesn’t have industrial zones, it has refugee camps. We are all refugees in this situation.”
A spokesperson for Tesco told Radio Free Asia that they “continue to urge the supplier to reimburse employees for any wages they’re owed.”
“The allegations highlighted in this report are incredibly serious, and had we identified issues like this at the time they took place, we would have ended our relationship with this supplier immediately,” the spokesperson said in a written statement.
VK Garments declined to comment.
Waiting game
Khin Mar Aye and Phyu Phyu Mar have seen their debt burgeon during their prolonged wait.
Initially incurred at VK Garments, their financial obligations have escalated to 50,000 (US$1,413) and 100,000 baht (US$2,823) respectively, due to borrowing from the factory and other lenders at steep interest rates of up to 20%. This was a desperate measure to cover the basic necessities of food and shelter for their families.
The eastern side of the gated VK Garments compound in Mae Sot, Thailand, March 21, 2024. (Kiana Duncan for RFA)
Whether or not they will see a resolution soon remains to be seen. Given the complexity of the case, the case’s stakeholders were made aware that the process could take years, said Priscilla Dudhia, public outreach coordinator for Clean Clothes Campaign.
The group has been involved in the workers’ case since it was flagged in 2020, and it, involving other non-profits, connected workers to Leigh Day, their legal representation in the U.K.
“Our hope has always been that Tesco and Intertek come to the table and agree to fully compensate the workers for the harms that they’ve suffered,” she said. “One of the big reasons for this is because this claim was issued in 2021 – we’re in 2024, and we’re still not in a position where all the defendants have been served.”
Despite facing harassment by factory staff about the ongoing case, Phyu Phyu Mar says she hopes this will be an example for employers in Thailand.
“I want justice and fairness from that case,” she said. “We had to work very strenuously in the factory, but we faced a lot of violations of our rights and entitlement. This case should be kind of a lesson for the employer, the employer needs to face these kinds of things.”
Edited by Taejun Kang and Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kiana Duncan for RFA.
Radio Free Asia on Friday announced it has closed its Hong Kong bureau, saying the city’s recently enacted national security law, also known as “Article 23,” has raised safety concerns for its reporters and staff members.
RFA will no longer have full-time personnel in Hong Kong but will retain its official media registration there, the organization’s president and chief executive, Bay Fang, said in a statement.
“We recognize RFA’s frontline status – as it is among the last independent news organizations reporting on events happening in Hong Kong in Cantonese and Mandarin,” she said.
“For our audiences in Hong Kong and mainland China, who rely on RFA’s timely, uncensored journalism: Rest assured, our programming and content will continue without disruption,” Fang said.
Hong Kong was once a bastion of free media and expression in Asia, qualities that helped make it an international financial center and a regional hub for journalism.
But demonstrations in 2019 led to the passage of a national security law in 2020 that stifled dissent. Soon after, The New York Times announced it would relocate its digital news operations to Seoul.
In 2021, the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily was forced to shut down amid an investigation conducted under the 2020 law.
Sweeping new powers
Last week’s enactment of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, also referred to as Article 23 based on a clause in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, has intensified uncertainties among Hong Kong journalists.
It has created new offenses, increased punishment for offenders and granted the government sweeping new powers to crack down on all forms of dissent.
It includes a reference to “external threats” and uses China’s expansive definition of “national security,” which journalists and critics say is vague.
In February, Hong Kong security chief Chris Tang accused RFA of reporting what he described as “false” criticism that the new law would target media organizations. He called the media outlet a “foreign force” that was misleading the people of Hong Kong.
“Actions by Hong Kong authorities, including referring to RFA as a ‘foreign force,’ raise serious questions about our ability to operate in safety with the enactment of Article 23,” Fang said in Friday’s statement.
Opened in 1996
RFA opened its Hong Kong office – its first overseas bureau – in 1996. The organization is funded by the U.S. Congress but operates as an editorially independent private news organization. Its mission is to provide news in languages and regions where authorities censor news and stymie the freedom of expression and the press.
The ranking Democratic member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, representing New York, said he was “deeply concerned” by the decision, calling RFA “a longstanding beacon of independent journalism” in Hong Kong.
“Since the passage of Hong Kong’s National Security Law in 2020, RFA has been a rare source of independent news coming out of Hong Kong despite facing unrelenting pressure and harassment,” he said in a statement.
“The closure of RFA’s bureau in Hong Kong, after 28 years, is a stark reminder of how brazenly Beijing has extinguished Hong Kong’s autonomy.”
RFA’s restructuring of its on-the-ground operations means that staff members will be relocated to the United States, Taiwan and elsewhere amid the closure of the physical bureau, the organization said.
“RFA will shift to using a different journalistic model reserved for closed media environments,” Fang said. “I commend RFA’s journalists and staff for making this difficult transition possible.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Matt Reed for RFA.
New York, March 26, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Russia to immediately release U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich following Tuesday’s court decision to extend his pretrial detention until June 30, 2024.
“CPJ strongly condemns the three-month extension of Evan Gershkovich’s detention, just days before the one-year anniversary of his arrest on fabricated charges. Today’s ruling is yet another cynical affront to press freedom by the Russian authorities,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must immediately release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting reporters for their work.”
Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the Russian criminal code, and is the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War. Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal, and the U.S. government have all denied the espionage allegations.
“It’s a ruling that ensures Evan will sit in a Russian prison well past one year. It was also Evan’s 12th court appearance, baseless proceedings that falsely portray him as something other than what he is—a journalist who was doing his job,” The Wall Street Journal said in a statement.
The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, called the ruling “particularly painful,” as Friday will mark the journalist’s one-year detention.
“As we cross the one-year mark, the Russian government has yet to present any evidence to substantiate its accusations, no justification for Evan’s continued detention, and no explanation as to why Evan doing his job as a journalist constituted a crime,” Tracy said.
On April 11, 2023, the U.S. State Department designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” which unlocked a broad government effort to free him.
Russia was the world’s fourth worst jailer of journalists with at least 22, including Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist, behind bars when CPJ conducted its most recent annual prison census on December 1, 2023.
We look at Donald Trump’s ongoing legal battles with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston, who has been covering Trump since the 1980s. The next major case against Trump is his hush money trial, set to begin April 15, in which he is accused of falsifying business records to cover up payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep an extramarital affair quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign. This comes as Trump is on the hook to produce $175 million to cover a civil fraud judgment in New York, where his bond was originally set at $454 million. Other cases against Trump, including over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after he left office, are still ongoing. “Donald Trump has committed serious criminal acts his whole life, and … he’s finally being held to account,” says Johnston.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
