Istanbul, December 23, 2024 – The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Turkish authorities to release journalists who were jailed in Istanbul on Sunday and allow the media to report freely.
On Saturday, Turkish authorities detained several dozen people, including journalists, at a protest against the December 20 killing of Kurdish journalists Jihan Belkin and Nazim Dashdan, who hold Turkish citizenship, in a suspected Turkish drone strike in northern Syria on December 20. The next day, an Istanbul court placed five journalists and two media workers in police detention pending trial and placed five other journalists under judicial control.
“The Turkish government is attempting to control the flow of news about Syria by intimidating the press, as evidenced by the arrest of journalists at a protest, the house arrest of Özlem Gürses, and other legal actions,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities must immediately release the imprisoned journalists and media workers, free Gürses, and allow members of the media to do their jobs without fear of retaliation.”
The journalists and media workers arrested at the Istanbul protest are:
Enes Sezgin, social media manager for the pro-Kurdish daily Yeni Yaşam
Osman Akın, news editor for Yeni Yaşam
Can Papila, designer for Yeni Yaşam
Serpil Ünal, reporter for the leftist outlet Mücadele Birliği
Journalists were also detained at a similar protest in the eastern city of Van Friday but they were released.
State owned Anatolia Agency reported on Sunday that the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul is investigating independent news website T24 over its coverage of the reactions to the two journalist killings in Syria. Authorities are also investigating Seyhan Avşar, a reporter with independent news website Gerçek Gündem, on suspicion of terrorism propaganda and knowingly spreading misinformation for social media posts on Belkin and Dashdan.
In a separate incident on Saturday, an Istanbul court put journalist Özlem Gürses under house arrest pending trial on suspicion of demeaning the Turkish military over her comments on her YouTube channel regarding Turkey’s military presence in Syria. Gürses continues broadcasting from her home in Istanbul.
In another incident, the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul opened an investigation into the Bar Society of Istanbul for suspicion of terrorism propaganda and spreading misinformation due to its statement on Saturday calling for an investigation into the suspected Turkish drone killings of Belkin and Dashdan, and the release of journalists and others detained in Istanbul at the protest against their deaths.
CPJ emailed the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul for comment but did not receive a reply.
New Delhi, December 20, 2024—Indian journalist Anand Mangnale is the target of an online smear campaign that began on December 5 when Nishikant Dubey, a parliament member with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), linked Mangnale to an effort to “derail” the Indian government through foreign funding in Parliament.
“Investigative journalism is crucial for uncovering corruption and holding power to account,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Efforts to discredit public interest reporting and target journalists through smear campaigns create a chilling effect on press freedom. CPJ urges the Indian ruling party BJP to respect journalists’ role in democracy and refrain from weaponizing their authority to intimidate the press.”
Mangnale, the South Asia regional editor at the investigative news outlet Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), is known for his reporting on alleged corporate malfeasance, financial irregularities, and corruption involving the Adani Group, one of India’s largest conglomerates.
The official BJP account on social media X amplified Dubey’s claims, alleging that Mangnale fundraised for the opposition party and gave “Chinese money” to a person accused of involvement in the 2020 Delhi riots.
The BJP cited a report by French news outlet Mediapart in its claim; Mediapart refuted the allegations, saying the BJP “wrongly exploited” its report to discredit independent journalism.
These developments come after the U.S. Justice Department indicted Gautam Adani, chairperson of the Adani Group, and his associates in November 2024 for allegedly bribing Indian officials to secure contracts and misleading U.S. investors about the company’s anti-corruption practices.
Mangnale told CPJ that he anticipates these recent developments could trigger new legal cases or intensify existing ones against him.
In May 2024, Indian authorities summoned Mangnale for questioning about alleged involvement in terrorism in connection to his work with Newsclick. Formal charges have not yet been filed. He was also among several high-profile journalists in India to be targeted with Pegasus spyware.
CPJ’s emailed requests seeking comments from Dubey and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra did not receive a response.
We continue to look at the U.S. health insurance industry and how patients can fight back against their providers with advocate Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York and co-founder of the Health Care for All New York campaign. She says her advice for patients is to always appeal denials and to seek outside help when possible, including advocacy groups like hers and external review boards. She also stresses that much of the chaos of the U.S. health system is due to corporate greed. “Everyone has an incentive to charge more,” says Benjamin. “If we had Medicare for All, we wouldn’t be paying as much, and we would probably have much better health outcomes.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
In recent years, Binh has become used to living in a constant state of fear. Like so many who work in Vietnam’s civil society, the 44-year-old is paranoid that on any given day she could be arrested simply for going to work.
“Everyone now has a sense of being alert,” she told RFA over the phone in November. “People I know have been arrested for unknown reasons.”
Binh, who asked that a pseudonym be used for security reasons, has spent more than 20 years working on humanitarian aid for both local and international non-governmental organizations in Vietnam. At each one she has dodged intimidation and crackdowns meted out by Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party. But lately the problem has grown markedly worse.
While working for one international NGO, Binh explained that the entire staff would be summoned to the offices of the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organization, the agency that manages international NGOs, for an “interview” every three months.
“They would ask us where we had travelled recently and what we were doing. It was very weird. It was obvious they wanted us to know we were under supervision,” Binh said.
Other times, said Binh, police would follow her and her colleagues while they worked in the field.
Police officers stand guard outside government buildings in Hanoi, Aug. 22, 2024.(Allegra Mendelson/RFA)
Even the UN has experienced “strict surveillance” and pushback, according to Binh, who has experience partnering with several of its agencies.
“There were times where they shut down the electricity or told the venue owner not to rent to them,” Binh said. In response to RFA, the office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Vietnam, which manages the country team, said that “the UN collaborates with the Vietnamese government, civil society, and other international partners” to achieve its goals, but did not comment on any crackdowns the agencies have faced.
Binh has done everything she can to protect herself and so far it has worked, but others, including her colleagues and her close friends, have not been as fortunate.
Over the past four years, nearly a dozen NGO workers have been arrested or detained simply for doing their job, according to the Vietnam human rights organization Project 88. At least four remain behind bars today, along with more than 175 other activists.
These arrests – many of them carried out on charges of tax evasion or other allegations that legal monitors say are politically motivated – are part of a greater crackdown by the government to restrict civil society in Vietnam.
A series of oppressive rules, many of which are kept hidden, have provided the foundation for these efforts as the Communist Party seeks to tighten its grip on power.
One, and arguably the most draconian, of these is Directive 24, which was issued in July 2023 and casts all foreign cooperation as a national security threat amid the country’s increasing globalization.
The secret directive, which was obtained by Project 88 earlier this year and has never been released by the government, details opposition to free expression, international aid, unions, and even foreign travel. The impact, say experts, is an effective criminalization of activism.
In October, the government reinforced these measures with Decree 126, which added further restrictions on forming any kind of association in the country.
The crackdowns have also been rolled out alongside a sweeping anti-corruption campaign that has brought much of civil society to a standstill by fostering a climate of fear that has left politicians unwilling to approve projects and funding.
Over the last four months, RFA spoke with over a dozen activists, NGO workers, international donors, diplomats and experts to understand how government orders and subsequent crackdowns have intensified and what it has meant for those working in civil society in the country.
Fear of foreign influence
Civil society wasn’t always a target of the government in Vietnam. A decade ago, many had a much more optimistic outlook.
Nguyen Tien Trung, a pro-democracy activist now based in Germany, was arrested in 2009 for protesting against the Communist Party. He was released five years later at a time when support for civil society looked very different to how it does today.
“When I was released from prison in 2014, civil society organizations mushroomed in Vietnam. Many organizations, both registered and unregistered with the Vietnamese communist government, were operating freely,” said Trung.
Vietnamese activist Nguyen Tien Trung, in an undated photo.(Trung Nguyen Tien)
But around 2016, circumstances started to change. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung announced his retirement and Nguyen Phu Trong, who was serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party, was re-elected for a second term. Trong died earlier this year.
Unlike Dung, who had been relatively sympathetic to civil society, Trong took a very different approach. He disagreed with the cozy relationships that Tan Dung had cultivated with the West and began rolling out a series of measures to restrict foreign influence.
Vietnam has a wide range of organizations that operate at different levels, from informal, non-registered groups at the local level to massive, international NGOs, or INGOs, like Save the Children and Oxfam.
Most INGOs are registered under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while domestic NGOs are normally registered with the Ministry of Science and Technology. But the measures introduced under Phu Trong sought to expand the government oversight over these organizations.
Beginning in 2020, the government imposed a series of decrees and decisions to block access to foreign funding and increase restrictive oversight in what two United Nations special rapporteurs said established “unreasonably burdensome requirements” for operations.
“Communist Party leaders want to maintain their power monopoly. They are wary of foreign influence that could destabilize its control. International NGOs and foreign entities often promote democratic values and human rights, which the Communist Party views as threats to its one-party rule,” said Trung, the democracy activist.
However, he noted that the concerns are specifically centered on Western influence, while China and Russia, for example, serve as “models for the Communist Party to follow.”
The government ministries that oversee NGOs in Vietnam did not respond to RFA’s request for comment for this article.
Shrinking the space
Numerous NGOs have been forced to shut down in recent years amid this environment.
Among them are Towards Transparency, Vietnam’s branch of Transparency International, which closed its doors in late 2021 due to security concerns. Shortly before, the website’s domain had been revoked by municipal authorities, in what many considered a threatening move, after a map was published that excluded contested islands in the South China Sea.
The conference on the implementation of Directive 24, in Hanoi on Dec. 21, 2023.(Vietnam Ministry of Public Security)
LIN Center for Community Development, an umbrella network of 400 nonprofits, announced it would close in November 2022 without specifying the reasons, and the Institute of Technology Research and Development, or SENA, was forcibly dissolved in July 2023, a year after its director was arrested and charged with “abusing democratic freedoms” for submitting recommendations to improve the Communist Party.
The government has also targeted individuals, notably through the use of the tax law. Laws around tax evasion are vague and can be manipulated into prosecuting anyone that the government wants stopped, said Trung.
As a result, “the fear of being arrested under the charge of ‘tax evasion’ has instilled a sense of caution, if not outright paralysis, in the sector,” he said.
One of the most high-profile of these cases in recent years was the arrest of environmental activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong in May 2023. She was sentenced to three years in prison on tax evasion charges, but was released early in September of this year.
Project 88 found that “the Vietnamese government has a history of using tax evasion charges to prosecute dissidents who cannot be persuasively charged under national security provisions of the criminal code”.
Nguyen Quang A, a prominent human rights activist in Vietnam and the former director of the now-dissolved Institute for Development Studies, told RFA that he has been arrested for tax evasion “at least four or five times” but always as a cover for dissident activity.
Nguyen Van Binh, director general of Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor’s Legal Department.(Vietnam Ministry of Labour – Invalids and Social Affairs)
Other laws have also been weaponized. In April, Nguyen Van Binh, who served as director general of the Ministry of Labour’s legal department, was arrested and prosecuted for allegedly disclosing state secrets.
He had sought to help grant workers the rights to form unions, which, with the exception of the one state-affiliated union, are banned in Vietnam.
Binh was seen as an “ally” to groups such as Stitch, a Dutch nonprofit that worked on labor rights in Vietnam and his arrest was seen as “a signal that the direction he was taking was not the way to go,” according to a senior source familiar with the organization.
Following his arrest, Stitch ceased its activities inVietnam.
“There was also fear of repercussions because of that signal for those involved in Stitch,” the source said.
The Blazing Furnace
The crackdowns are only one set of challenges that NGOs in Vietnam have been forced to navigate. A controversial anti-corruption campaign called “blazing furnace” has made it harder than ever for civil society to get government sign-off on everything from travel to funding.
Officers wait around outside a police station in central Hanoi, Aug. 17, 2024.(Allegra Mendelson/RFA)
Since it was launched in 2013, the government has turned itself inside out, arresting officials at all levels, including senior members of the Politburo and government ministries. As of 2023, nearly 200,000 party members have been disciplined as part of the campaign.
While the campaign successfully brought Vietnam up to 83 from 113 on the Corruption Perceptions Index, it has also created a chilling effect for legitimate work, advocates say.
“It isn’t clear to officials what kinds of activities could get someone into trouble so everyone is on high alert at all times,” said Minh, a longtime activist who asked that a pseudonym be used for security reasons.
“The biggest impact from the anti-corruption campaign is that government officers don’t want to work anymore, they don’t want to approve civil society. They keep silent because it’s easier to say no.”
Yet that means that in the last three years Vietnam has forfeited approximately $2.5 billion in foreign aid. Another $1 billion is currently being held waiting for approval.
Much of that funding was earmarked for things like development and infrastructure projects, in which UN or EU agencies sometimes partner with local organizations.
A former senior Western donor official told RFA that a lot of local organizations “no longer want to take foreign money because it causes too many risks,” which has forced them to downsize operations.
A man uses a laptop at a coffee shop in downtown Hanoi, Nov. 28, 2013. Vietnam has come under fire for various human rights abuses, including a crackdown on online dissent. (AFP)
Finding alternatives
To operate, civil society groups have found some workarounds. One way is by registering as social enterprises – a hybrid between a charity and a for-profit enterprise – instead of an NGO. Some groups have found this easier for operating, but it means having to pay more taxes.
Another option is to develop closer relationships with the government, including by funding government advocacy initiatives, in order to “have protection.”
“They aren’t directly bribing the government, but they are putting a lot of money and investment into building up those relationships in order to avoid any issues,” Binh said.
But relief from these options is not ideal and likely temporary. Those working in Vietnam’s civil society are concerned that the environment will only keep getting worse.
After Phu Trong’s death in July, he was succeeded by To Lam, a longtime party operative who has held senior positions in government for decades.
As Minister of Public Security, he orchestrated many of the crackdowns against civil society, including the use of tax evasion as a way of silencing dissidents.
“To Lam spent all his life in the police. He views all organizations that are not under the control of the Communist Party as potential enemies,” said Trung, the pro-democracy activist.
“I have no doubt that he will continue to suppress the democratic and civil society movements,” he predicted.
Edited by Abby Seiff and Boer Deng.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Allegra Mendelson for RFA Investigative.
New York, December 18, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Kyrgyzstan court’s decision upholdingconvictions against four journalists from anti-corruption investigative outlet Temirov Live, two of whom were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
On Wednesday, the Bishkek City Court upheld an October 10 first instance court decision sentencing Makhabat Tajibek kyzy to six years in prison, Azamat Ishenbekov to five years in prison, and reporter Aike Beishekeyeva and former reporter Aktilek Kaparov to three years of probation. Prosecutors did not appeal the acquittals of seven other current and former Temirov Live staff.
“Temirov Live’s bold anti-corruption coverage has made it the Kyrgyz government’s number one target. By upholding the outrageous prison sentences against director Makhabat Tajibek kyzy and presenter Azamat Ishenbekov, Kyrgyz authorities are confirming that they have no response to the outlet’s reporting but repression,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities in Kyrgyzstan should immediately release Tajibek kyzy and Ishenbekov, not contest their Supreme Court appeals and the appeals of journalists Aike Beishekeyeva and Aktilek Kaparov, and end their campaign against the independent press.”
Temirov Live founder Bolot Temirov told CPJ from exile that the journalists plan to appeal their convictions to Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court.
Kyrgyz police arrested 11 current and former staff of Temirov Live, a local partner of the global Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in January on charges of calling for mass unrest, accusing the outlet of “indirectly” making such calls by “discrediting” authorities in their videos.
Authorities previously deportedTemirov, an international award-winning investigative reporter, and banned him from entering Kyrgyzstan for five years in retaliation for his work.
In November, CPJ submitted a report on Kyrgyz authorities’ unprecedented crackdown on independent reporting under current President Sadyr Japarov to the United Nations Human Rights Council ahead of its 2025 Universal Periodic Review of the country’s human rights record.
On Tuesday, Japarovaccused U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kyrgyz service and “five or six other sites” of “using freedom of speech as a cover” to spread false information and warned them to “be careful” with their reporting on corruption.
“And hope here, I don’t think it’s passive. It is active. It’s a form of resistance against despair. And it must be paired with a political imagination, that belief that we can build the future.”
–Wasim Almasri, Director of Programs, The Alliance for Middle East Peace
In this important conversation, Andrea and Terrell speak with Avi Meyerstein, Founder and President of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), and Wasim Almasri, Director of Programs based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. They discuss what a meaningful path to peace looks like for Israelis and Palestinians, how to achieve it, the priorities the outgoing and incoming U.S. administrations must focus on, and the pending ceasefire deal, which has seen a resurgence of promising negotiations in recent days.
If you’re looking for defiant hope and a light to show the way in these dark times, listen to the team at ALLMEP who have been hard at work planting powerful seeds of change. For more on their work, check at the link at the top of the show notes.
Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
Thank you to everyone who supports the show–we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!
Hopes for Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal rise Israeli officials, Hamas sources, and US and Arab figures say deal may be within reach – perhaps within days https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/17/israeli-negotiators-head-to-qatar-as-hopes-rise-for-gaza-hostage-deal
This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.
Representatives of the Thai government and Myanmar junta are due to discuss a series of militia posts along the two countries’ common border that Thailand says are in its territory, Myanmar’s junta spokesperson said.
The United Wa State Army, or UWSA, militia force controls autonomous regions in Shan state including one on the border with Thailand, which says nine of the group’s outposts are in Thai territory and must be removed.
The confrontation has raised fears of violence between what is probably Myanmar’s most powerful militia force, which is also accused of massive involvement in the drug trade, and the Thai army.
Myanmar junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told Myanmar state media on Monday that military representatives were due to meet the Thai government and the issue of the UWSA camps would be tackled.
“Mainly border issues and matters related to cross-border crime will be discussed. We will discuss cooperating in order to enact border stability and fight criminal violations,” the junta spokesperson said.
He did not give a date for the talks.
Thai officials, at a meeting with UWSA representatives in the Thai city of Chiang Mai in November, gave the UWSA a deadline of Dec. 18 to withdraw from the posts, media reported.
But Wa officials dismissed the Thai demand on Dec. 7, and said the matter should be taken up in government-level discussions, adding that the Thai army was “not their enemy.”
The UWSA emerged from the break-up of the Communist Party of Burma in 1989, when its rank-and-file fighters, drawn largely from the Wa ethnic minority, mutinied against the party’s aging leadership.
The UWSA struck a ceasefire with the Myanmar military in exchange for autonomy in zones on the borders of both China and Thailand.
Despite being what is largely seen as the best equipped militia force in Myanmar, it has not joined the anti-military insurgency that has swept the country since the generals ousted an elected government in a 2021 coup.
International anti-narcotics agencies say the UWSA has been heavily involved in the opium and heroin trade for decades and took up the manufacture of methamphetamines on a massive scale in more recent years.
The UWSA, which is known to have close contacts with China, denies involvement in drugs.
The nine disputed border outposts that the UWSA says are in its “171 military region” are in the Shan state townships of Tachileik, Mongsat, Mongton, Hway Aw and Pong Par Kyi, along the northern Thai border.
“Ukrainian intelligence sent about 20 experienced drone operators and about 150 first-person-view drones to the rebel headquarters in Idlib, Syria, four to five weeks ago to help Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the leading rebel group based there, the knowledgeable sources said.
The aid from Kyiv played only a modest role in overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Western intelligence sources believe. But it was notable as part of a broader Ukrainian effort to strike covertly at Russian operations in the Middle East, Africa and inside Russia itself.”
In this week’s bonus episode, we present a recording from our special Gaslit Nation political salon on Monday, where we honored Syria. This episode offers crucial insights on navigating the complex landscape of Syria’s future, highlighting who to trust—and who to be wary of—when it comes to information about the country. We also delve into the disinformation campaigns surrounding Syria and how to prepare for the challenges ahead. Additionally, this week’s bonus show features answers to questions from our Democracy Defender-level members and above on voting and homelessness as well as how to protect trans people. Thank you to our Democracy Defender level supporters who help shape the show!
Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
Show Notes:
Syria clip: Clarissa Ward of CNN reports from liberted Syria https://x.com/cnnipr/status/1866471510678135162
When Britain and France Almost Merged Into One Country An extraordinary near-miss of history helps explain Brexit. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/dunkirk-brexit/536106/
Protect the LGBTQ Community: An Interview with Chase Strangio of the ACLU https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2022/5/26/chase-strangio-interview
Moral Panic: Fact-Checking the War on Trans Kids https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/9/10/moral-panic-fact-checking-the-war-on-trans-kids
This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.
The governments of Laos and Cambodia have stirred controversy after announcing awards for a casino magnate blacklisted by the U.S. for criminal activity and a scion of the country’s first family known for flaunting their wealth.
Residents told RFA that they fear awarding the two men will legitimize their bad behavior and lead to further problems for both countries.
On Dec. 6, Viengsavanh Siphandone, the governor of Laos’ Luang Namtha province, bestowed a national award on Zhao Wei, the head of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, which lies along the Mekong River in Bokeo province.
The governor presented Zhao, the Chinese founder of the Hong Kong-registered Kings Romans Group, with the “Third Class Development Medal” at an award ceremony inside his economic zone for donating materials and funds worth 1.3 billion kip (US$60,000) to the Luang Namtha police headquarters.
The award drew criticism from members of the public, who told RFA Lao that the government had no business celebrating an entrepreneur who is known for supporting criminal enterprises.
“Zhao Wei … opens loopholes for [gangs involved in] human trafficking and money scams,” one resident of the capital Vientiane said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal. “He is not only notorious locally for his involvement in transnational crimes, but internationally as well.”
Kings Roman Group operates the Kings Romans Casino in the Golden Triangle SEZ, which Zhao is said to hold de facto control of, and which caters mainly to Chinese tourists.
The Blue Shield casino, operated by the Kings Romans Group, stands in the Golden Triangle special economic zone on the banks of the Mekong river in Laos, March 2, 2016.
In 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department declared the Zhao Wei network a “transnational criminal organization,” or TCO, and imposed sanctions on Zhao and three other individuals and three companies across Laos, Thailand and Hong Kong.
“Based in Laos within the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ), the Zhao Wei TCO exploits this region by engaging in drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, bribery, and wildlife trafficking, much of which is facilitated through the Kings Romans Casino located within the GTSEZ,” said a Treasury Department statement announcing the sanctions.
Legitimizing criminal activities
On Aug. 9 and 12, Lao and Chinese police raided and arrested more than 2,000 people on charges of committing crimes in the SEZ, where thousands have been lured through trafficking networks and forced to work as online scammers.
Many of the women lured to the SEZ have also been forced to become sex workers.
An official who took part in the rescue of three victims from the SEZ earlier this year told RFA he is worried that the award will legitimize Zhao’s activities and lead to more human trafficking there.
“By deciding to award Zhao Wei the medal, the government has opened more opportunities for him to trick women into prostitution,” he said.
Police raid a restaurant suspected of providing sex services to customers in Vientiane, capital of Laos, Jan. 2022.
This is the second time the Lao government has bestowed an award on Zhao. In 2022, the Bokeo Military Command presented him with a medal courage, saying it recognized his contributions to national defense and public security within the Golden Triangle SEZ.
The Lao government says it is cracking down on the cyber-scamming industry, which a United States Institute of Peace report earlier this year said could be worth as much as 40% of the country’s formal economy.
The think tank estimated that criminal gangs could be holding as many as 85,000 workers in slave-like conditions in compounds such as those in the Golden Triangle SEZ.
Hun family scion receives medal of honor
In Cambodia, King Norodom Sihamoni conferred the Royal Order of Monisaraphon to Hun Panhaboth — the grandson of Senate President Hun Sen’s elder brother — per the request of the Interior Ministry and Prime Minister Hun Manet, according to a royal decree dated Oct. 9.
The award is generally given to Cambodians who contribute to or support the fields of education, arts, literacy, science or social affairs.
Hun Panhaboth is the son of Hun Chanthou, who is the daughter of Hun Sen’s late elder brother Hun Neng. According to a report by Global Witness, Hun Chanthou and Hun Neng’s four other children own around 40 major companies.
Hun Panhaboth is known in Cambodia for flaunting his wealth both at home and abroad, and even for boasting about his illegal activities, such as selling weapons to private citizens, on his Facebook and Instagram pages.
Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen walks past an honor guard in Phnom Penh on April 3, 2024.
He owns luxury vehicles including a McLaren worth nearly US$1 million, a Bentley and an Audi worth more than US$200,000 each, and a private Airbus 72 helicopter. He is known to have given his girlfriend gifts worth nearly US$100,000 for her birthday and shuttled her on a private plane from Australia to Cambodia.
Hun Panhaboth‘s lavish lifestyle has also been widely reported in the foreign press, including by Thai newspaper MRG Online, which claimed that he has used his family ties to procure contracts for large development projects.
After facing criticism in the media, Hun Panhaboth assumed the role of a philanthropist, distributing gifts to the poor and posting the acts on social media.
Philanthropy dwarfed by negative impact
Sok Ey San, spokesperson for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, told RFA that the government only confers the medal of honor on those who have “shown great achievements and contributions to the nation and the people,” although he refused to elaborate on what achievements or contributions Hun Panhaboth had made.
Sok Ey San also dismissed concerns about Hun Panhaboth writing posts to Facebook about selling firearms, saying he was “a minor [at the time] and not mature enough to think seriously.”
“He just posted that for fun — nobody thinks what he did on Facebook was serious,“ he told RFA.
Youth group leaders RFA Khmer spoke with said they believe the government awarded Hun Panhaboth the national medal of honor for his acts of philanthropy, but suggested that they were dwarfed by those that have had a negative impact on society.
Mat Vanny, chairman of the board of the South Korea-based Democratic Movement for National Unification, said that given Hun Panhaboth’s involvement in illegal activity and his penchant for flaunting his wealth, he is unqualified to receive such an honor.
He added that the conferment will “devalue the award,” as well as the reputations of the government and king who gave it to him.
Em Bunnarith, president of the Australia-based Global Cambodian Youth Network, said that in a country with a dynastic and corrupt leadership, such as Cambodia, decisions to award a medal of honor don’t go through proper assessment.
“What the government has done will make our youth feel hopeless,” he said. “It means that if they have no connections … they will have no opportunity to contribute to the nation.”
Regardless of what Hun Panhaboth has done, Em Bunnarith said, the Hun family will likely elevate his position within the armed forces to help protect the family name.
Translated by Ounkeo Souksavanh and Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Lao and RFA Khmer.
New York, December 12, 2024—On Monday, December 8, soldiers with the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed journalist Hanan Adam, a correspondent for local Sudan Communist Party-affiliated newspaper al-Midan, and her brother, Youssef Adam, at their home in the village of Wad Al-Asha in the east-central al-Gezira state, according to statements by the Sudanese Journalists’ Union and the Sudan Communist Party.
“We are deeply shocked and outraged by Rapid Support Forces’ brutal killing of journalist Hanan Adam and her brother in al-Gezira state, which further illustrates the extreme conditions journalists and their families currently face in Sudan,” said CPJ Interim MENA Program Coordinator Yeganeh Rezaian, from Washington, D.C. “Sudanese authorities must launch an immediate and thorough investigation into Adam’s death, and all parties involved in the conflict must uphold their obligation to protect journalists who risk their lives to report the truth.”
Adam also worked at the Ministry of Culture and Information in al-Gezira state. Two journalists who spoke with CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, said they believed the RSF targeted Adam for her work for al-Midan and the Ministry.
The Sudanese Journalists’ Union condemned the killings in its Tuesday Facebook statement and said it held the RSF fully responsible for their deaths. CPJ was unable to confirm other details about the killing.
Since the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF began in mid-April 2023, the RSF has killed at least five journalists.
CPJ’s Telegram messages to the RSF requesting comment on Adam’s death did not receive any replies.
International humanitarian leader Jan Egeland joins Democracy Now! to discuss aiding civilians in war-torn areas of Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and Gaza. In Ukraine, residents are bracing for another winter of war as a Russian offensive reaches within two miles of the key eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. “The population is exhausted, so imagine how it is in the trenches with those soldiers. Many of them have continuously been in battle for two years now,” says Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “The courageous humanitarian aid workers … are targeted like the civilian population. Even ambulances are repeatedly hit.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
In the landscape of international finance for fossil fuels, some of the most important players are obscure government bodies known as “export credit agencies.” These agencies provide funding to companies seeking to build large and risky infrastructure projects, often in developing countries. In return, the developers of those projects purchase construction materials or other goods from the country of the agency. For instance, an oil pipeline company might take a loan from a German export credit agency in exchange for using German steel in the pipeline.
Export credit agencies have become some of the world’s largest public funding sources for energy infrastructure, providing far more money than multilateral institutions like the World Bank, while avoiding much public scrutiny.
Now, as the Biden administration winds to a close, officials are working with international partners to push forward an agreement that would see export credit agencies pull back almost all funding for oil and gas projects, a measure the administration had balked on supporting before Trump’s re-election.
The talks are taking place at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, a group of 38 wealthy countries, which coordinate on export credit terms in order to prevent any one country from distorting trade relations. The countries are trying this month to hash out a verbal agreement on how to regulate their export credit agencies.
If such an agreement comes together, it would force a sea change in policy for the United States’s own export credit agency, which is known as the Export Import Bank of the United States, or EXIM. This independent agency is among the last remaining channels through which the U.S. government provides financial support to fossil fuel interests overseas. If the OECD agrees to stop export credits for fossil fuels, EXIM will have to cease approving loans to oil and gas infrastructure, potentially eliminating billions of dollars future support for such projects.
Almost a decade ago, the Obama administration helped lay the groundwork for the sort of deal that Biden is trying to strike. In 2015, Obama joined a bloc of OECD countries in agreeing to cut off loans to high-emitting coal power plants. When Trump came into office in 2017, his administration didn’t seek to pull out of that agreement, and didn’t finance any new coal plants. Then the rest of the OECD came together around an agreement to stop funding almost all coal projects, a move that reduced coal finance from countries in the group by about $4 billion per year. China, which isn’t part of the group, soon followed suit, virtually ending public finance for coal around the world.
“There’s almost no export credit agency finance that happens for coal projects,” said Kate DeAngelis, deputy director of international finance policy at the climate advocacy organization Friends of the Earth. “There are a lot of projects that we were tracking, and what we saw was they just didn’t receive financing.” This was true in Vietnam in particular, DeAngelis added, where a number of coal developers scrapped planned power plants or import terminals.
But coal projects represent only a small share of total export credit financing, most of which flows to the production and transportation of oil and natural gas. Cutting off those fuels will be more difficult. Indeed, said DeAngelis, a number of the companies behind the abandoned coal projects in Vietnam have tried to repurpose their infrastructure to build liquefied natural gas import terminals.
In 2021, soon after taking office, Biden issued an executive order that aimed to limit international public funding for fossil fuels across all government agencies. Since then, the U.S.’s Export Import Bank has nonetheless moved forward with financing a number of large oil and gas projects — such as an oil refinery expansion in Indonesia.
The most notable such project was the expansion of a $500 million oil drilling in Bahrain, which isn’t a developing country or a particularly risky investment location, unlike most nations that receive export credit funding from the United States and EXIM. The Biden administration has taken no action to overrule EXIM’s approvals of fossil projects. Following the approval of the Bahrain project, two members of EXIM’s climate advisory council resigned.
When questioned in the past about OECD proposals to restrict oil and gas finance, EXIM leaders have said they are constrained by language in the bank’s charter that prohibits it from “discrimination based on industry.” But this language isn’t necessarily the barrier that bank officials make it out to be, said Stacy Swann, one of the EXIM climate council members who resigned. Swann is also the head of Resilient Earth Capital, a climate-focused investment firm.
Neither the U.S. Export Import Bank nor the Treasury Department responded to requests for comment.
A burning flare stack at an oil and gas field in Bahrain. The Export Import Bank of the United States has granted export credit assistance to oil projects in the country, cutting against Biden administration policy. Mlenny / Getty Images
Momentum for expanding the coal pledge to oil and gas has come from Europe. Last year, the European Union last year proposed a framework for curbing oil and gas export credits to the other OECD nations, and the United Kingdom and Canada have signed on as well. The U.K. was one of the earliest proponents of ending fossil fuel export credits at the OECD, and its export credit agency has already all but cut off support for oil and gas projects—in fact, the previous head of energy finance at the agency, who used to oversee fossil loans, is now the agency’s “head of renewables and transition.” It has even given out an export credit loan to decommission fossil fuel infrastructure in Brazil.
At the time, the US declined to support the framework. It wasn’t until after Donald Trump’s re-election that the White House changed tack and endorsed it.
“The big change is that Trump won the election,” said DeAngelis. “I think that if Harris had won, I don’t think we would have seen any difference. I think they would have still been plodding along. All of a sudden they realized, okay, clock ticking, we only have two more months to do something that could have a big impact on Biden’s climate legacy.”
Even so, the support of the Biden administration doesn’t mean a deal is guaranteed. A few other countries, like South Korea (which has a robust shipbuilding industry that relies heavily on oil and gas clients) have hesitated to endorse the agreement.
Last month, after a closed-door negotiation session over the fossil fuel deal, member countries took the unusual step of scheduling a virtual overtime session to finish hammering out a deal. After holding that virtual meeting on Tuesday of this week, they scheduled another overtime session for next week, which could indicate that an agreement is close to being finalized.
“The fact that the OECD would have a unified position on this, which the US would join, I think is amazing messaging,” said Swann. But, she continued, “If you think that’s going to stop other countries from supporting oil and gas in other ways, you’re kidding yourself.” She added that private banks could also step in to fill the gap.
The International Energy Agency has said that keeping global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius will require stopping almost all new coal, oil, and gas projects, but these projects are still proceeding. A deal on export credits might not cut off those projects, but it would free up money and capacity for export agencies to invest in renewables, and might make it harder for riskier oil and gas projects to pan out in future years.
“It would not be a death knell, but it would have a serious impact,” said DeAngelis.
Floating cages with fish by the thousands may be popping in the Gulf of Mexico under a controversial plan that was backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration four years ago and is likely to gain traction again after Trump begins his second term next month.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently identified five areas in the Gulf that the agency says strike a balance between the needs of the growing aquaculture industry and the potential impacts on the marine environment and elements of the seafood industry that depend on wild fisheries.
Identifying these “aquaculture opportunity areas” is part of a decade-long federal plan to open the Gulf and other offshore areas to aquaculture. The plan got a strong push from Trump but slowed under President Joe Biden’s administration, which concludes next month.
Three of NOAA’s preferred aquaculture areas are off the coast of Texas and one is south of Louisiana. Each area ranges from 500 to 2,000 acres and could total 6,500 acres. A fifth area, considered a possible alternative, has been identified near the mouth of the Mississippi River, but it would likely conflict with shipping traffic and shrimping in that area.
The areas would open the Gulf for the first time to the large-scale cultivation of shellfish, finfish and seaweed. Seafood companies have long expressed interest in raising large, high-value species, including redfish and amberjack, in floating net pens several miles off the coasts of Louisiana, Texas and Florida.
The federal government is considering five locations for fish farms.
Opponents say fish poop, fish feed and other organic debris that often swirls around offshore aquaculture operations will worsen the Gulf’s massive “dead zone,” a New Jersey-size area of low oxygen that pushes away fish and suffocates slow-moving crabs and other shellfish. Fish that escape from floating farms can spread diseases and parasites, gobble up food that supports other species, and potentially mate with their wild counterparts, introducing their domesticated genes, which tend to produce slower, dumber fish.
“When you think of all of these environmental impacts, it’s pretty concerning,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the New Orleans-based Recirculating Farms Coalition, a group opposed to offshore aquaculture. “Plus, we get super violent storms in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know how these (farms) won’t be damaged with fish escaping.”
But the planet’s already-taxed wild fish stocks can’t meet the world’s expanding appetite for seafood alone, said Neil Anthony Sims, CEO of Ocean Era, an aquaculture company that hopes to develop a floating redfish farm 40 miles from Sarasota, Florida. His assertion is backed by a 2021 Stanford University study that predicted global fish consumption is likely to increase by 80 percent over the next 25 years.
“We can’t feed a planet with wild fish anymore than we could feed a planet with wild antelope,” Sims said.
Many fish, including tilapia and catfish, are raised in ponds and other land-based facilities. Floating fish farms in state-managed waters are increasingly rare. In 2022, Washington state effectively banned its once-thriving salmon farming industry after about 260,000 non-native Atlantic salmon escaped from a net pen north of Puget Sound. Hawaii still hosts a floating fish farm that raises Hawaiian kampachi, a fish related to amberjack.
Deeper waters managed by the federal government have remained aquaculture-free.
Like Trump, Biden backs opening federal waters to fish farming, but his administration has taken a more methodical approach, directing NOAA to study various areas that may be “environmentally, socially and economically viable” for supporting offshore aquaculture.
Trump was more forceful during his first term, signing an executive order in 2020 that was aimed at breaking through the regulatory barriers that have long impeded fish farming in federal waters. The Trump administration backed offshore aquaculture as a way to create jobs, broaden markets for U.S. companies and help meet growing demand for seafood.
A 2020 federal appeals court ruling blocked new regulations allowing offshore fish farming under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing fisheries since 1976. But other laws, including the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1980, give NOAA the authority to develop aquaculture opportunity areas and conduct environmental impact permitting for offshore farms.
The opportunity areas unveiled by NOAA last month set the stage for a final greenlight by Trump or Congress. The public can comment on the opportunity areas until Feb. 20. NOAA will host the first of three virtual meetings to gather feedback on the areas on Dec. 17.
NOAA is also considering aquaculture opportunity areas in Southern California, but opposition is likely to be stiffer there than in the Gulf, where residents are already accustomed to heavily industrialized coastal waters, with thousands of offshore oil and gas structures near Louisiana and Texas and pipelines crisscrossing the seafloor.
But adding more industrial infrastructure will further crowd the Gulf’s first industry: fishing.
“We’re already dealing with the rigs and oil wells and all kinds of debris,” said Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. “And you want to put more out there? It’ll be our downfall.”
The Gulf’s shrimping industry has been losing ground to imported shrimp, which is typically raised in farms in Asia and South America and is far cheaper than the wild-caught varieties.
Cooper, a third-generation shrimper in Plaquemines Parish, said America’s desire for seafood should be met by fishers rather than farmers.
“If you want fish, there’s a lot of fishermen here for you. We ready,” he said.
But NOAA isn’t so sure the U.S.’s wild fisheries can support the demand for seafood alone. About 80% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, and about half of the imports are produced via foreign aquaculture. That’s giving rise to a “seafood trade deficit” that had grown to $17 billion in 2020, according to NOAA.
As much as U.S. fishers may want to meet demand, wild stocks are under increasing threat by climate change, which is altering marine species reproduction, feeding habits and distribution.
Offshore fish farming can help the U.S. adapt by producing seafood in a more controlled environment, according to NOAA.
“Aquaculture offers a pathway to grow climate resilience,” said Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries’ assistant administrator. “Identifying areas suitable for sustainable aquaculture is a forward-looking step toward climate-smart food systems.”
But fish farms will likely worsen the dead zone, one of the Gulf’s main climate-related problems. The dead zone is fueled by agricultural runoff and other nutrient pollution that flushes into the Gulf from the Mississippi. Rising temperatures speed the growth of algae that feeds on the nutrients. When the massive algal blooms die, their decomposition robs the Gulf of oxygen.
Developing floating farms in and around the dead zone will add even more nutrients from poop and fish food that will nourish bigger blooms, Cufone said.
“We have warmer waters and all of the difficulties our fisheries are having because of climate change, but none of that supports an argument for factory fish farms,” she said. “If we care about climate change, we shouldn’t have them in our oceans.”
Despite being bolstered by an unprecedented degree of Chinese diplomatic and material support, Myanmar’s military has had mixed results in the past few weeks, in the face of mounting economic and fiscal challenges.
The State Administrative Council (SAC) – as the junta is officially called – has continued to suffer military setbacks that have economic implications of their own.
With the capture of Kan Paik Ti, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has consolidated control of the entire border with China and stepped up their offensive in the mineral rich regions.
The KIA announced that it would allow the resumption of rare-earth mining in the Pangwa-Chipwi region, now under its control.
In Rakhine, the Arakan Army captured Toungup, which prevents overland supply to Kyaukphyu from the south.
The Arakan Army have captured the military’s last posts in Ann town, home of the headquarters of the Western Military Command and a major pumping station for the oil and gas pipelines to China.
Over 800 soldiers – mainly hastily trained conscripts – have surrendered in the recent campaign. The Arakan Army now controls 11 of 17 towns in Rakhine.
Arakan Army fighters pose outside a Myanmar junta military headquarters near Ann town after capturing it in this image released Nov. 13, 2024.
While there has been considerable tension between the Arakan Army and the fractious Chin opposition forces in the past, there’s been an unprecedented degree of cooperation now.
Local Chin Defense Forces and the Arakan Army have interrupted resupply convoys from Magwe into Ann, capturing at least 14 soldiers.
Ceasefires in Shan state
In northeastern Myanmar near the border with China, the Chinese stepped up their pressure on the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA.
On Dec. 4, the MNDAA, which has been fighting for years for autonomy for the Kokang region, declared a ceasefire in its war against the military, the second insurgent force in days to cite pressure from China for its willingness to talk peace.
The move followed the TNLA’s announcement that they would agree to talks with the junta.
Soldiers march during a parade commemorating Myanmar’s Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on March 27, 2023.
The regime’s counter offensive in northern Shan state continues to make little headway, and the battles have been pitched and casualties high. The regime continues to intentionally target civilians with air power.
The opposition has suffered some setbacks in Karenni and in Magwe and Sagaing, where logistics troubles continue to impede their gains. Karen forces continue to opportunistically ambush junta forces.
But the junta is facing its own resource challenges, and is desperate to reverse its losses ahead of Chinese-supported elections that are scheduled for 2025.
But with only 40% of Myanmar’s territory under its full control, it’s hard to see how elections could serve as anything but a shambolic off-ramp for the generals.
Despite the overall 12% contraction of the economy since the February 2021 coup d’etat, the junta’s defense expenditure has surged by 222%, from 1.746 trillion kyats in 2021 to 3.703 trillion kyats in 2022 to 5.635 trillion kyats (over US$2.7 billion) in 2023.
The regime has not disclosed its defense budget for 2024 or 2025.
Tight finances ahead
At a recent meeting of the SAC’s Financial Commission, Gen. Soe Win acknowledged that Min Aung Hlaing had directed spending on security to take precedence over all other public spending, despite the fact that the military’s provision of these public goods and social services has withered in the past three years.
Vendors wait for customers at their roadside food stall during an electricity blackout in Yangon on April 26, 2024.
A recent Radio Free Asia report found that the country is producing only 300MWs of electricity, a 25% decline since the coup, with many power generating facilities inoperable, or beyond the junta’s control. The country requires 540MW.
Where the money for increased defense spending will come from, is anyone’s guess. Finances are tight for the junta, with foreign exchange in perpetually short supply.
The regime’s currency controls remain in place, which has devastated the business community, forcing them to sell their foreign exchange at artificially low rates, prompting more companies to try to hide their assets abroad.
The opposition’s control of four of the five official crossings with China has added to the financial pain, as border trade can be conducted in yuan and kyats, not dollars.
That is the crux of the regime’s lobbying of China to pressure the TNLA and MNDAA, two members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance that had led offensives against the junta since October 2023, to stop their offensives.
Foreign investment has fallen each year since the coup, from $1.64 billion in FY2022-23 to $661 million in FY2023-24. Now, more than three years in, investors have lost all confidence.
Myanmar junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing looks at pearls at the Myanmar Gems Emporium, Nov. 18, 2024.
The military government’s Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), revealed that foreign investment in the first seven months of FY 2024-25 totaled only $226 million.
DICA’s data, as reported in Myanmar-Now, shows that most of that investment went to existing projects and operations; only four of 33 this year are greenfield investors.
Scaring up revenue
The junta has been searching for new sources of revenue.
The regime’s Minister of Energy, Ko Ko Lwin, held talks with the chairman of China National Petroleum Corporation in Beijing, where they discussed additional sales of oil and gas, and improbably increasing the capacity of Myanmar-China oil and gas pipelines.
Min Aug Hlaing made a show of attending the Myanmar Gems Emporium in Naypyidaw on Nov. 18, 2024, which remains one of the few reliable income streams for the junta.
The Irrawaddynoted that each year since the coup, the offered lots of jade have increased – from 1,955 in 2021, to 2,150 in 2022 and 4,025 in 2023.
The TNLA has worked to deprive the junta of proceeds from the ruby trade in Mogoke.
While it has allowed individual miners to continue, the TNLA has blocked all large-scale mechanized mining, which has been dominated by the military-owned Myanma Economic Holdings Limited.
Short on manpower, the junta is doing everything it can to force overseas workers home to be conscripted.
A new regulation puts the onus on manpower agencies to recall workers who have been conscripted. They have lobbied the Thai government to send the 2 million legal residents and upwards of 3 million undocumented Myanmar nationals home.
Those that continue to work abroad are a cash cow for the junta.
In September the SAC enacted a rule to force the expatriate workers to transfer 25% of their remittances through formal bank channels, where they must use the official exchange rate of 2,100 kyats to the dollar and 56 kyats to the baht. The black market rate is 3,400 kyats to the dollar and around 100 kyats per baht.
Economic warfare
The junta, however, is also waging its own economic warfare on the opposition.
While the junta has not been able to retake Mogoke or Lashio, it is actively bombing the towns to disrupt economic activity.
Damage from airstrikes by Myanmar junta forces is seen in Mogok, Mandalay region, on Nov. 12, 2024.
China’s border closures and internet and electricity outages of opposition-controlled crossings have put considerable financial pressure on the citizens in territories near the frontier controlled by ethnic armies.
Fuel distribution is now legally banned to the entire Rakhine state, northern Shan State, Kachin with the exception of the state capital Myitkyina. Some 26 townships in Sagaing region, a township in Magwe, and two in Mandalay have suffered the same bans.
As short on resources as the junta is, they still have advantages over the opposition.
But saddled with corruption and plummeting morale, will it be enough?
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zachary Abuza.
A disabilities campaigner has said that “healthy land and sports go hand in hand,” and that greater access to sports activities should be made available to people living with a disability.Jitske Visser, who has represented the Netherlands in wheelchair basketball at five Summer Paralympic Games, winning four medals including two golds, was named as a Sport4Land Champion by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) at a global meeting in Riyadh on Saturday.As one of four Champions, she will work to highlight the importance of restoring degraded land.According to UNCCD, globally the equivalent of four football pitches of healthy land is lost every second.Martin Samaan asked Jitske Visser about her work as a campaigner for people with disabilities.
Angela Bishop has been struggling with what she describes as “the cost of everything lately.” Groceries are one stressor, although she gets some reprieve from the free school lunches her four kids receive. Still, a few years of the stubbornly high cost of gas, utilities, and clothing have been pain points.
“We’ve just seen the prices before our eyes just skyrocket,” said Bishop, who is 39. She moved her family to Richmond, Virginia from California a few years ago to stop “living paycheck to paycheck,” but things have been so difficult lately she’s worried it won’t be long before they are once again barely getting by.
Families nationwide are dealing with similar financial struggles. Although inflation, defined as the rate at which average prices of goods or services rise over a given period, has slowed considerably since a record peak in 2022, consumer prices today have increased by more than 21 percent since February 2020. Frustration over rising cost of living drove many voters to support president-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on ending inflation.
Simply put, inflation was instrumental in determining how millions of Americans cast their ballots. Yet climate change, one of the primary levers behind inflationary pressures, wasn’t nearly as front of mind — just 37 percent of voters considered the issue “very important” to their vote. Bishop said that may have something to do with how difficult it can be to understand how extreme weather impacts all aspects of the economy. She knows that “climate change has something to do with inflation,” but isn’t sure exactly what.
In 2022, inflation reached 9% in the U.S. — the highest rate in over 40 years. That was part of a global trend. The lingering impacts of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher fuel and energy prices, and food export bans issued by a number of countries contributed to a cost of living crisis that pushed millions of people worldwide into poverty.
Extreme weather shocks were another leading cause of escalating prices, said Alla Semenova, an economist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “Climate change is an important part of the inflationary puzzle,” she said.
In February of 2021, Winter Storm Uri slammed Texas, causing a deadly energy crisis statewide. It also caused widespread shutdowns at oil refineries that account for nearly three-quarters of U.S chemical production. This disrupted the production and distribution of things necessary for the production of plastics, which Semenova says contributed to ensuing price hikes for packaging, disinfectants, fertilizers and pesticides.
Food prices are another area where the inflationary pressure of warming has become obvious. A drought that engulfed the Mississippi River system in 2022 severely disrupted the transportation of crops used for cattle feed, increasing shipping and commodity costs for livestock producers. Those added costs were likely absorbed by consumers buying meat and dairy products. Grain prices jumped around the same time because drought-induced supply shortages and high energy prices pushed up the costs of fertilizer, transportation, and agricultural production. Not long after, lettuce prices soared amid shortages that followed flooding across California, and the price of orange juice skyrocketed after drought and a hurricane hit major production regions in Florida.
Though overall inflation has cooled considerably since then, the economic pressures extreme weather places on food costs persist. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that weather disruptions drove global food prices to an 18-month high in October. In fact, cocoa prices surged almost 40 percent this year because of supply shortages wrought by drier conditions in West and Central Africa, where about three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is cultivated. This can not only impact the price tag of chocolate, but also health supplements, cosmetics, and fragrances, among other goods that rely on cocoa beans.
“What we have seen, especially this year, is this massive price spike,” due to abnormal weather patterns, said Rodrigo Cárcamo-Díaz, a senior economist at U.N. Trade and Development.
But the impact on consumers “goes beyond” the Consumer Price Indicator, which is the most widely used measure of inflation, said Cárcamo-Díaz. His point is simple: Lower-income households are most affected by supply shocks that inflate the price of goods as increasingly volatile weather makes prices more volatile, straining households with tighter budgets because it can take time for wages to catch up to steeper costs of living.
Rising prices are expected to become even more of an issue as temperatures climb and extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe. In fact, a 2024 study found that heat extremes driven by climate change enhanced headline inflation for 121 countries over the last 30 years, with warming temperatures expected to increase global inflation by as much as 1 percent every year until 2035. Lead researcher and climate scientist Maximilian Kotz noted that general goods, or any physical things that can be bought, broadly experienced “strong inflationary effects from rising temperatures.”
All told, the inflationary impact of climate change on cost of living is here to stay and will continue to strain American budgets, said Semenova. “The era of relatively low and stable prices is over,” she said. “Costs have been rising due to climate change. It’s the new normal.”
That’s bad news for families like the Bishops, who are simply trying to get by.
How do we at Project Censored identify and evaluate independent news stories, and how do we know that the Top 25 stories we bring forward each year are not only relevant and significant but also trustworthy? The answer is that every candidate news story undergoes rigorous review, which takes place…
Closures along Myanmar’s shared border with China have cut off residents of Kachin and Shan states from humanitarian aid and sent the prices of goods skyrocketing, sources from the regions said Monday.
Myanmar’s civil war in the aftermath of the military’s Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat prompted China to close all its border gates in Kachin state beginning on Oct. 19, and all border crossings in northern Shan state except for Muse township since July.
Meanwhile, Myanmar’s junta has imposed restrictions on the transportation of goods to Kachin state from the country’s heartland, as the rebel Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, now controls all 11 of the state’s border gates with China, including the major trade checkpoints of Kan Paik Ti and Lwegel townships.
In Shan state, the junta has also restricted the transportation of goods from Muse to areas of the state under the control of ethnic armed groups.
The restrictions have left residents of the two border areas, and especially civilians displaced by fighting, feeling the squeeze, sources told RFA Burmese.
A civilian sheltering in the Jay Yang camp for the displaced near Kachin’s Laiza township, where the KIA’s headquarters is located, said that between the border closures and junta restrictions on goods transported from the Kachin town of Bhamo and the state capital Myitkyina, “the situation has become dire.”
“Residents are enduring severe hardships,” he said. “We are facing an uncertain and bleak future.”
The displaced civilian said that the price of food items in Kachin state has risen dramatically, making it difficult for camp residents to afford basic necessities.
Nearly all prices have doubled since the border closures, he said, with eggs at 1,000 kyats from 400; a viss (3.5 pounds) of pork at 50,000 kyats from 20,000; a viss of fish at 30,000 kyats from 15,000; a viss of chicken at 40,000 kyats from 20,000; a viss of beef at 60,000 kyats from 30,000; a viss of potatoes at 10,000 kyats from 6,000; and a cup of chili peppers at 3,000 kyats from 1,500.
Meanwhile, a liter (.26 gallon) of cooking oil now costs 25,000 kyats, up from 10,000, and a liter of gasoline costs 15,000 kyats, up from 7,000.
At the time of publishing, the official exchange rate was 2,100 kyats to the U.S. dollar, while the black market exchange rate was 4,300 kyats per dollar.
Prior to the border closures, relief groups had been providing camps for the displaced with rice, oil, salt and chickpeas, but now can only distribute around 30,000 kyats per person, camp residents told RFA.
Displaced suffer shortages
Residents said that since the KIA seized the Kan Paik Ti border gate on Nov. 20 and Chinese authorities shut down the crossing, food prices had increased in Myitkyina, and the Kachin capital is now enduring a fuel shortage.
A resident of the Sha Eit Yang camp for the displaced, located in a KIA-controlled area along the border, told RFA that the gate closures had made life extremely difficult.
“There is no work to earn money in the area near our camp, so we can only find jobs far away from the camp,” he said. “With all the border gates closed, we can’t earn any income.”
People at the Muse border gate in Myanmar’s Shan state wait to cross into China on Jan. 11, 2019.
In Kachin state, more than 100,000 civilians have sought shelter in 160 camps following the fighting that began in 2021. Since the coup, the total number of displaced persons has risen to more than 200,000, according to aid workers. Around 40,000 displaced persons are taking refuge in around 20 camps in Kachin state along the Chinese border.
Sin Yaung, the deputy head of the Wai Kyaing camp for the displaced near Laiza, told RFA that the longer the border gates remain closed, the more hardships residents will face.
“If the closures persist, it will be very difficult to access food,” he said. “The closure of the border gates and restrictions on the transportation of goods have caused severe difficulties for residents.”
Attempts by RFA to contact the junta’s spokesperson and social affairs minister for Kachin state, Moe Min Thein, and KIA information officer Colonel Naw Bu for more information went unanswered Monday.
Transportation restrictions in Shan
The junta has also blocked the transportation of food from Muse, which is under the control of the military, to rebel-occupied towns on the Myanmar-China border in northern Shan state, according to residents.
A resident of Nam Hkam, which is under the control of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, told RFA that no goods have gotten through from Muse since Nov. 27.
“Residents are not allowed to carry food items by motorcycle and even vendors from Muse no longer come here,” he said. “Commodity prices have sharply increased. Tomatoes are now being sold for 20,000 kyats per viss here, whereas in Muse, one viss of tomatoes costs only 8,000 kyats.”
A Chinese flag flies over the border wall between China and Myanmar in Ruili, west Yunnan province on Jan. 14, 2023.
Residents said that the TNLA has also blocked the transportation of fuel and food from Nam Hkam to Muse since Sunday, although TNLA spokeswoman Lway Yay Oo insisted that her group had imposed no restrictions on the flow of goods.
RFA also tried to contact the junta’s spokesperson and economic minister for Shan state, Khun Thein, for comments on the commodity blockades, but he did not respond.
Residents reported that restrictions have caused the prices of goods to “more than double” in Muse and Nam Hkam. Additionally, traders and drivers are out of work due to the closure of trade routes, traders in Muse told RFA.
The restrictions imposed by China and Myanmar’s junta have impacted most of the nearly two million people who live in northern Shan state’s 20 townships, residents said.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
