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Category: China

  • When Told About the Benefits, Almost Everybody in China Would Eat More Plant-Based Foods

    china plant based study
    6 Mins Read

    New research shows that health is the priority for Chinese consumers when it comes to plant-based food – and the more they know about the benefits, the more they’ll eat it.

    When you inform people in China about the benefits of a vegan diet, nearly all of them (98%) would be willing to eat more plant-based foods, according to a new survey.

    This number stays the same for flexitarians, though this demographic has more people displaying a ‘strong willingness’ to add plant-based foods (64%, versus 57% of the total). This makes sense considering that flexitarian by definition refers to people actively reducing their meat intake – but even amongst meat-eaters (or omnivores), 54% are willing to up their vegan consumption once learning about the benefits.

    The results are from a poll carried out by Kantar for ProVeg International, covering 1,000 consumers from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. It found that nearly a third (32%) of Chinese people identify as flexitarians, though the incidence of vegetarianism (1.5%) and veganism (0.9%) is low.

    They were presented with 15 benefit statements about plant-based foods, 14 of which were based on peer-reviewed research. These included preventing or lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, and antibiotic resistance; lowering body mass index (BMI); cutting greenhouse gas emissions; reducing global hunger; and being a source of delicious and satisfying meals (among others).

    “We found that most people are concerned that they eat healthy food and that once they know just how healthy and climate-friendly plant-based food is, they will eat a lot more of it,” said Shirley Lu, managing director and Asia and China representative at ProVeg.

    Health high on the agenda for China’s consumers

    china vegan survey
    Courtesy: ProVeg International

    The survey participants were asked to agree or disagree with each of the statements, while also rating which ones would be the most effective in persuading them to eat plant-based food. Using this data, the pollsters created a four-quadrant Agreement/Persuasion Matrix.

    Seven of the top 10 statements that respondents agreed with were related to health. The most popular was the one that suggested plant-based diets lowered BMI and reduced obesity rates, therefore also reducing rates of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. More than half (56%) of Chinese people believe this is true.

    The BMI statement was also the most persuasive in encouraging increased plant-based consumption, leading the first quadrant of the matrix. The three other statements in this quadrant – which combined strong agreement with strong persuasion – were health-related too. They stated that plant-based diets are high in calcium and bioavailability (52% agreement), provide adequate protein (49%), and are iron-rich (51%).

    In quadrant 2, which highlights benefits that were met with low agreement but still tend to be influential in increasing uptake of plant-based foods, the top statement suggests that these foods lower the risk of developing antibiotic resistance. This was also the most persuasive statement overall, and was followed in this quadrant by the statements that animal agriculture makes up 80% of rainforest destruction, beef and dairy are among the biggest sources of methane, and vegan diets can help reduce world hunger.

    In contrast, the idea that plant-based foods are more energy-efficient and use fewer natural resources was the least persuasive argument, despite 49% agreeing with this. The statement people agreed with the least was that animal agriculture accounts for up to 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions, something that was also one of the most insignificant benefits for respondents.

    Who should plant-based companies market to?

    china plant based survey
    Courtesy: ProVeg International

    This reflects the emphasis Chinese consumers put on health over the environment. Overall, the main reasons for consuming plant-based food were health (46%), nutrition (39%) and food safety (35%). Only 24% are motivated by the fact that they are climate-friendly.

    Conversely, the biggest barriers are dissatisfaction with the freshness of ingredients (cited by 36%) and the taste (31%), and uncertainty about the nutritional completeness (30%).

    For food manufacturers, targeting the right demographic is key to hit home your message. While more women (59%) expressed a strong willingness to change their diet than men (41%), responses were very similar across the age ranges of both sexes, at between 24% for those aged 18-24 and 27% for 40- to 60-year-olds.

    Meanwhile, 36% of flexitarians displayed a strong willingness to eat more plant-based food. Among income groups, it seemed the richer the person, the less willing they were to change. People earning between ¥15,000 and ¥25,000 ($2,000-$3,300) each month were most happy to shift to a plant-based diet (29%), and those on the highest household income (above ¥40,000/5,400) were the least likely to do so (16%).

    china vegan study
    Courtesy: ProVeg International

    The report recommends companies leverage the high-awareness and high-persuasion factors from the matrix, amplify the benefits that had low agreement but were still highly convincing, and market popular benefits with low persuasion rates in ways that can be more relevant to consumers.

    Spotlight health, whether it’s produce or plant-based meat

    In 2016, the Chinese government introduced the Healthy China 2030 policy, which stipulated that public health should be a precondition for all future socio-economic development. And four years later, it announced the 30-60 policy, committing to hit peak emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060.

    Last year, a study by Singapore-based firm Asia Research Engagement found that China – the world’s largest producer of pork, fish and eggs – is expected to see animal consumption increase by 2030 despite falling population numbers. But if it is to meet the 1.5°C goal, 50% of all protein consumption in the country must be from alternative sources by 2060.

    There are several things industry players can do to help nudge more plant-based consumption. Social media was found to be the most effective marketing tool, while a focus on nutritional transparency and lower price points will go a long way too.

    gfi state of the industry report
    Courtesy: GFI APAC

    Companies need to improve the knowledge and awareness of nutrition and food processing, and finance R&D efforts to develop healthier and tastier plant-based meat products. More investment in consumer education about meat analogues’ health benefits is crucial too.

    Finally, vegetables that are high in protein, iron and calcium are particularly appealing to consumers, so marketing strategies that highlight the nutritional value of both fresh produce and meat and dairy analogues can be highly influential.

    “China boasts a rich heritage of plant-based diets and a wealth of healthy plant ingredients. Government agencies, educational institutions, and plant-based food businesses can leverage this study to educate consumers about the benefits and impact of plant-based diets,” said Lu.

    “By highlighting the health, environmental, and culinary advantages, we can collectively work towards transforming our food system to one that is beneficial for humans, plants, and animals alike.”

    The post When Told About the Benefits, Almost Everybody in China Would Eat More Plant-Based Foods appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • China gives 6 patrol boats to Myanmar’s military junta

    China has delivered six patrol boats to Myanmar’s military junta, fulfilling a promise made in 2020 to the country’s previous democratically elected civilian government, the Chinese Embassy said in a statement on Wednesday.

    The patrol boats that were handed over in Yangon on Tuesday will be used in law enforcement efforts to control gambling and drug trafficking and in rescue and water resources protection activities, the embassy said.

    But a former army officer, who wished not to be named for security reasons, told RFA that the vessels could also be useful for naval military operations in Rakhine state, which has several well-traveled rivers and an Indian Ocean coastline.

    Rakhine state has seen intense fighting between military junta troops and the ethnic minority insurgent Arakan Army since last November.

    “If these boats are modified a little bit, weapons could be installed,” the former army officer said. 

    ENG_BUR_CHINA BOATS_06122024.2.jpg
    A navy patrol boat donated by China is docked at Lanmataw jetty in Yangon, Myanmar, June 12, 2024. (RFA)

    Four of the patrol boats are 48 meters long (157 feet), and the other two are 28 meters long (91 feet), the embassy said.

    The civilian government under the National League for Democracy first requested the vessels in 2018.

    China’s projects in Rakhine

    An agreement was made in 2020 during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s two-day visit to Myanmar, in which several deals were signed to implement multibillion dollar infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative.

    The projects include a US$1.3 billion deep-sea port in Rakhine state’s Kyaukphyu, as well as the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a 620 km (1,000 mile) high-speed railway and road network that will run from China’s Kunming city through Myanmar’s major economic hubs and on to the port.

    The corridor will ultimately give China crucial access to the Indian Ocean at Kyaukphyu.

    The military junta removed the civilian government and seized power in February 2021.

    A resident of Kyaukphyu township who closely monitors the Chinese projects told RFA that the Chinese ambassador visited Kyaukphyu on Monday.

    Human Rights Watch found in 2022 that the Myanmar junta had used Japan-funded passenger ships during military operations in Rakhine state.

    “The Myanmar junta’s misuse of Japanese development aid for military purposes effectively makes Japan a backer of the junta’s military operations,” Asia program officer Teppei Kasai said at the time.

    When asked via email on Wednesday if the patrol boats could be used for military purposes, the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar directed RFA to a statement posted on its Facebook page.

    RFA’s attempts to contact junta spokesman Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun to ask about the patrol boats were unsuccessful on Wednesday.

    Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US doesn’t want ‘regime change’ in China, diplomat says

    The U.S. government does not seek “regime change” in China akin to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Wednesday at a forum in Washington.

    Responding to a question about a recent article in Foreign Affairs penned by a high-profile former lawmaker and a former Trump administration official calling for the United States to adopt the goal of defeating communism in China, Campbell said he disagreed.

    He told the forum at the Stimson Center that such an objective would be “reckless and likely unproductive” for U.S. interests amid multiple global crises that are already stretching Washington’s capabilities.

    “We need to accept China as a major player and [accept] that doing constructive diplomacy with them is in American strategic interests,” Campbell said, listing the invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Gaza conflict, famine in Africa and “challenges in the Red Sea” as priorities.

    “The world is dangerous and unpredictable enough right now,” he said. “I do not believe it is in our interest at the current juncture to add to our list: Let’s try to topple the other leading power on the global stage.”

    The article was written April 10 by Mike Gallagher, a now former Republican lawmaker who chaired the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Matt Pottinger, who was former President Donald Trump’s deputy national security advisor.

    It argued the Biden administration’s policy of “managing competition” with China was short-sighted and that Washington should return to a Cold War-style foreign policy aimed at “winning” the competition by removing a communist regime and replacing it with a democracy.

    ‘Overestimated our ability’

    Campbell was confirmed as the deputy U.S. secretary of state in February after serving since 2021 as Biden’s chief Indo-Pacific foreign policy adviser on the White House’s National Security Council.

    ENG_CHN_REGIME CHANGE_06122024.2.jpg
    President Joe Biden, right, greets China’s President President Xi Jinping, left, at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, USA, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP)

    He previously served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2009 to 2013 under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Obama administration, and said his experience told him the world views U.S. efforts at “regime change” poorly.

    Allies throughout Asia “would be highly critical of an effort to depart along this path” and could reconsider their support for America if regime change was the objective, the No. 2 U.S. diplomat said.

    He also suggested it was not certain that a non-communist government in Beijing would adopt foreign policy positions any more palatable to Washington than those of the current Chinese government.

    “For years we have overestimated our ability to fundamentally influence the direction of Chinese foreign policy,” Campbell said, advocating for “a high degree of modesty of what we think is possible with respect to fundamental changes in how China sees the world.”

    The world’s two major powers had to learn to live together, he added.

    “Despite our differences, I do think, at the current juncture, it makes more sense to … send clear signals of areas where we have red lines and concerns, but also to do what you can to coexist,” he said.

    Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Netherlands accuses China of unsafe conduct towards frigate

    A Dutch frigate operating in the East China Sea in support of a multinational coalition enforcing United Nations sanctions on North Korea – the Pacific Security Maritime Exchange (PSMX) – was allegedly harassed by Chinese military aircraft, the Dutch Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in a 7 June announcement. According the MoD, the two Chinese […]

    The post Netherlands accuses China of unsafe conduct towards frigate appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Vietnam president stresses rule of law in South China Sea

    Vietnam’s new President To Lam has asked that Beijing respect Hanoi’s rights and interests in disputed waters, days after Vietnamese officials protested against what they called “China’s illegal activities” in the Gulf of Tonkin.

    Last Thursday, a Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesperson denounced the operation of the Chinese navy survey vessel Hai Yang 26 in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf and said that Vietnam “has engaged in multiple diplomatic exchanges” with China to demand the ending of such operations.

    To Lam, while not mentioning the Hai Yang 26, told Chinese ambassador to Vietnam Xiong Bo that the two neighbors should strictly implement bilateral agreements, better control and resolve disagreements at sea, as well as respect each other’s legitimate rights and interests, his office said in a statement .

    The two countries should also actively seek appropriate ways to settle maritime disputes in accordance with international law, especially the U.N. Convention on the law of the sea (UNCLOS), he said.

    The new president stressed that Vietnam saw its relationship with China as a “strategic choice and top priority” of its foreign policy. 

    Lam was sworn in as Vietnam’s state president on May 22 amid an unprecedented reshuffle of the communist party’s leadership following the “burning furnace” anti-graft campaign initiated by party chief Nguyen Phu Trong.

    Xiong Bo became the first foreign ambassador to pay Lam a courtesy call to congratulate him on his new post.

    Hai Yang 26

    In last week’s unusually strong rebuke, foreign ministry spokeswoman Pham Thu Hang said that Vietnam was “deeply concerned,” resolutely opposed, and demanded that China immediately stop the “illegal survey activities” of the Hai Yang 26 in Vietnam’s waters and not repeat them.

    Hang told reporters in Hanoi that the Vietnamese government “has engaged in multiple diplomatic exchanges” with the Chinese side over the case.

    Chinese survey vessels have frequently operated in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone but it has seldom publicly protested, giving preference to quieter bilateral channels.

    Hai Yang 26.jpg
    Caption: The Chinese navy survey vessel Hai Yang 26 on an unspecified date. (Vietnam Foreign Ministry)

    A Vietnamese analyst, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that the new leader – who was seen as a hard-liner because of his public security background — may want to show that he is not pro-China, as some critics say.

    Another analyst, Hoang Viet, told RFA that the foreign ministry’s reaction was due to the severity of the event, as well as to partially direct attention to Vietnam amid increased tensions between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

    Hai Yang 26 is one of nine Type 636A hydrographic survey vessels in service with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army navy.

    This kind of survey ship is thought to be utilized by the navy for mapping the underwater topography map in areas where submarines operate, as well as to conduct marine surveys, such as the study of ocean acoustics. 

    The fact that Vietnam had “multiple diplomatic exchanges” with China over the vessel suggested it had been operating in Vietnam’s waters for a prolonged period.

    China has yet to respond to Vietnam’s protest but a Chinese think tank, the South China Sea Probing Initiative, wrote on the social media platform X that the Hai Yang 26 only conducted a freedom of navigation operation, a type of patrol that China itself has deemed provocative on numerous occasions when conducted by other navies.

    Edited by Taejun Kang. 


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Human Rights Defenders issues at the 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council

    The UN Human Rights Council will hold its 56th regular session at Palais des Nations in Geneva from 18 June and 12 July 2024. And as always the excellent Alert of the International Service for Human Rights permits me to hightlight what concerns HRDs most. To stay up-to-date you can follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC56 on X, and look out for the Human Rights Council Monitor.

    Civil Society Access and Participation The UN is facing a severe liquidity crisis due to member states not paying their membership dues in full and on time. This shortfall is impacting victims and survivors of human rights violations. The crisis risks being used to impose restrictions on civil society participation, although online and hybrid modalities offer cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions. Over 100 human rights organisations have called on all states to promptly pay their dues to address the liquidity crisis. Additionally, this session States have the opportunity to continue to build on the good practices adopted in the past years and allow for a broader, more inclusive, effective and climate-friendly human rights system, including by providing remote access to informal consultations on HRC resolutions that can greatly benefit from the analysis and lived experiences of human rights defenders.

    Thematic issues Issues on the agenda At this 56th session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including with the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the Special Rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including with: The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Internally Displaced Persons, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, the Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers

    The Council will also hold debates on interrelation of human rights and thematic issues including with: The High Commissioner on new and emerging technologies.

    The new incoming Independent Expert on violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, Graeme Reid, will present his first report focusing on freedom of expression, assembly and association.

    Environment and Climate Justice The Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons will present her report on planned relocations of people in the context of the adverse effects of climate change and disasters. This report is building up on previous reports by other mandates and will also look at laws and policies at the national, regional, and international levels. The newly appointed Special Rapporteur on Climate Change will also present her first report looking at the upcoming priorities and some reflections of the progress achieved on some issues in the last 5 years. The report will also provide a snapshot of some other key topics and the impacts on some particular groups. The Special Rapporteur will also present two country visits reports: Honduras and the Philippines. There is currently a call for inputs for her upcoming General Assembly report on access to information on climate change and human rights. The Working Group on Business and Human Rights will present its report on investors, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) approaches and human rights. The report will raise awareness of the responsibilities of investors and will clarify responsibilities on how to align their ESG approaches to human rights. On Thursday 20 June, the President of the Human Rights Council is organising a high-level informal Presidential discussion on ‘The important link between climate change, food security and health security’. The discussion should address the important role of environmental human right defenders in promoting and securing the full realisation of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; and recognition of the obligation of States to prevent, protect and promote their work in an enabling environment.

    International Solidarity Civil society and international experts have continued to raise grave concern at the attacks on fundamental freedoms when advocating for the human rights of Palestinians by authorities in Western countries, including in universities. The High Commissioner deplored the ‘sharp rise in hatred globally – including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’. In her report to the Council, the Independent Expert on International Solidarity called on States to ‘eliminate the criminalization of international solidarity expressions and symbols and calls for accountability for violations of public international law norms, such as calls for peace, self-determination or decolonization and the ending of apartheid or genocide […] stressing that States ‘should not conflate them with ‘manifest support of terrorism’ or antisemitism in relevant legislation or regulations’. The Special Rapporteur on racism also raised concern at ‘accusations of antisemitism on the basis of legitimate criticism of treatment of Palestinians by Israel’ in her report following her visit to the United States.

    The Special Rapporteur on Education, following her visit to the United States, stressed that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is being used to crackdown against pro-Palestinian protesters, including individuals who ‘self-identify as belonging to the Jewish community or represent Jewish student associations’. The Rapporteur addressed violations against students following the organisation of ‘mass encampments at nearly 40 universities in more than 25 states across the country’, including the detention of more than 2000 individuals, raids by fully armed police on university campuses requested by educational institutions to ‘disperse demonstrators and dismantle encampments’.   During the session, and especially in the ID with the experts on International Solidarity, Education, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Assembly and Association, we urge States to call for an end to the repression and criminalisation of groups and individuals advocating for the human rights of the Palestinian people, including through the instrumentalization of anti-Semitism (IHRA definition) and anti-terrorism policies, including in universities, and especially in the West (including in Austria, France, Germany,  Italy, United States, United Kingdom).

    Reprisals
    HRC56 is a key opportunity for States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals and demand that governments provide an update on any investigation or action taken toward accountability. This month ISHR launched a new campaign regarding cases. ISHR urges States to raise these cases in their statements:

    Cao Shunli was a prominent Chinese human rights defender, who sought to share information on the human rights situation in China with the United Nations in Geneva. Cao was arbitrarily detained and died in prison 10 years ago. [for more saee: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/cao-shunli/]

    Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini-Danish advocate known for his unwavering commitment to freedom and democracy. In April 2011 during the Bahrain chapter of what is known as the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, while he was leading peaceful demonstrations, Abdulhadi was violently arrested. He went missing for two months and, in June 2011, after a military trial, he was condemned to life-imprisonment on terrorism-related charges, despite grave concerns from the international community about unfair trials. [s`eae also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/11/29/mea-laureate-abdulhadi-al-khawaja-facing-new-charges-for-protesting-injustice-in-jau-prison/ and https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/4d45e316-c636-4d02-852d-7bfc2b08b78d]

    Pham Doan Trang is an author, blogger, journalist and pro-democracy activist from Viet Nam. Trang was prosecuted for her articles and reports on the human rights situation in Viet Nam, including an analysis of a 2016 report on the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Plant environmental disaster that was shared with the United Nations. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/fe8bf320-1d78-11e8-aacf-35c4dd34b7ba and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/pham-doan-trang/].

    Khurram Parvez and Irfan Mehraj are two Kashmiri human rights defenders. They have conducted ground-breaking and extensive human rights documentation in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, including through their work within the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). In 2016, Indian authorities arrested Khurram a day after he was barred from traveling to Geneva to attend the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/81468931-79AA-24FF-58F7-10351638AFE3 and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/khurram-parvez/. Meanwhile, on 20 March 2023, Irfan was summoned for questioning and arbitrarily detained by the NIA in Srinagar also under provisions of the UAPA and other laws. The NIA targeted Irfan for being ‘a close associate of Khurram Parvez.’ Both Khurram and Irfan are presently in pre-trial detention in the maximum-security Rohini prison in New Delhi, India.

    Country-specific issues on the agenda

    The Council will consider updates, reports on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include: Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner and the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Enhanced Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Interactive Dialogue with the Independent international fact-finding mission for the Sudan Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Burundi Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Venezuela Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Libya Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Ukraine and interim report of SG on Crimea Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Colombia

    Afghanistan On 18 June, Richard Bennett, Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan will present his most recent report on the ‘phenomenon of an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls’ (HRC res. 54/1). The report provides a multidimensional understanding of the design, commission and impact of the harms resulting from the Taliban’s institutionalized system of gender-based oppression. We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s view expressed in the report that the framing of gender apartheid most fully encapsulates the institutionalized and ideological nature of the abuses in the country. We note that the report of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women to be presented at this session also noted the pattern of large-scale systematic violations of women’s and girls’ fundamental rights in Afghanistan ‘constitutes an institutionalized framework of apartheid based on gender and merits an unequivocal response.’ ISHR considers that the pursuit of justice for Afghan women and girls demands a multifaceted approach harnessing the strengths of various accountability mechanisms, including the establishment of an accountability mechanism for crimes against humanity; with strategic coordination exerting heightened pressure on the Taliban.

    Sudan On 18 June, the Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan will provide its first oral update to the HRC. Since the conflict erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April 2023, more than 30 thousand people have been killed while 10 million and a half have been displaced, a majority of which are women and children. Half of the population is now on the verge of famine, and 2.5 million could die of starvation by September. The continued fighting in El Fashir portends a repeated massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Masalit in El Geneina last year. In Aljazeera at least one hundred people were killed by RSF on 5 June, the area is facing grave human rights violations since last December.  Meanwhile, the attacks on women’s rights groups and local response initiatives continue unabated.bHumanitarian responders get arbitrarily arrested, and smeared as traitors by the warring parties, some sentenced for up to 2 years and even killed. States should call for an immediate ceasefire, protection of civilians and adherence to international law by all parties in the conflict. 

    Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel On 19 June, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel will present its report addressing the 7 October attacks by Palestinian armed groups and the commencement of Israel’s war on Gaza.

    Venezuela The High Commissioner will present his report on 3 July with his Office staff still operating from Panama. The Maduro government has still not permitted the return of the Office on the terms of its original mandate. With Presidential elections to be held on 28 July, concerns increase about the safety of human rights defenders and opposition figures. Uncertainty has recently been increased by the re-introduction (and then rapid postponement of adoption) of the NGO Law. HRDs Javier Tarazona and Rocío San Miguel remain wholly unjustifiably detained. States must engage actively in the dialogue with the High Commissioner to make clear their support of the essential work of human rights defenders and of the UN’s essential, multifaceted regime scrutinising the human rights situation in the country. Situations of concern that are not on the Council’s agenda

    Algeria The sustained repression against the pro-democracy movement and human rights defenders in Algeria was addressed in the end-of-session statements of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly as well as the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders who conducted official visits to Algeria in 2023. These were the first visits since 2016 by UN mandate holders to the country. The Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and Association addressed the ‘criminalisation of civil society work‘, and the ‘suspension or dissolution of political parties and associations, including prominent human rights advocacy organisations’ (including RAJ and LADDH), as well as ‘overly restrictive laws and regulations’ hindering their work.


    Bahrain Thirty-three civil society organisations reiterated that thirteen years since Bahrain’s popular uprising, systemic injustice has intensified and political repression targeting dissidents, human rights defenders, clerics and independent civil society has effectively shut any space for the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression or peaceful activism in the country. Despite the recent royal pardon issued on 8 April 2024, which included the release of more than 650 political prisoners, marking a change in State policy from previous royal pardons, the pardon excluded many individuals who played significant roles in the 2011 pro-democracy uprising, with an estimated 550 political prisoners remaining behind bars. HRC56 provides an important opportunity to address these developments in States’ national and joint statements, including during the Interactive Dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs and Independent Expert on Health, Freedom of Expression, Peaceful Assembly and Association, Independence of Judges and Lawyers and International Solidarity. We urge States to call for the release of all those arbitrarily, including human rights defenders and opposition activists Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, Abduljalil Al-Singace, Hassan Mushaima and Sheikh Ali Salman as well as death row inmates Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa, who have now spent over a decade unlawfully detained following torture and unfair trials and remain at immanent risk of execution.

    China The adoption on 4 July of the outcome of China’s fourth UPR review, which exposed strong international condemnation over grave abuses in January, is a key opportunity for States to urge China to fully implement recommendations emanating from existing findings by UN bodies. Any rejection by the Chinese government of UPR recommendations referring to UN expert mechanisms or to constructive cooperation with the UN system should be promptly condemned. Ahead of the second anniversary of the publication of the damning OHCHR Xinjiang report, and its authoritative findings of possible crimes against humanity in the Uyghur region, States should request updates on the implementation of the report’s recommendations. To uphold the integrity of its mandate and put an end to China’s exceptionalism, the HRC must also establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the country, as repeatedly called for by over 40 UN experts and hundreds of human rights groups globally. States should further urge the UN High Commissioner to strengthen follow-up action on his Office’s Xinjiang report, including through public calls for implementation, through translation of the report, and through an assessment of its implementation. States should raise serious concerns at the repression of peaceful protests by over 100 Tibetans who opposed a hydropower project in Derge County, affecting villages and monasteries. States should unequivocally call out the adoption of yet-another national security law further criminalising dissent and human rights promotion in Hong Kong, considered a ‘regressive step’ by High Commissioner Türk. States should echo the latter’s call to ‘release immediately and unconditionally all those arbitrarily arrested and detained under these laws.’ States should further ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders arbitrarily detained or disappeared, including feminist activist Huang Xueqin, human rights lawyers Ding Jiaxi, Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, and Tibetan climate activist A-nya Sengdra.

    Occupied Western Sahara ISHR is concerned over the situation of Saharawi human rights defenders, including lawyer M`hamed Hali, who has been arbitrarily deprived of his right to practice in the Moroccan judicial system due to opinions expressed in support of the right to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara. His hearing is scheduled on 27 June in front of Morocco´s highest court. We urge States to address  the crackdown on Sahrawi civil society including: during the Interactive Dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression, Peaceful Assembly and Association, to call on Morocco to immediately put an end to ‘the systematic and relentless targeting of human rights defenders in retaliation for exercising their rights to freedom of association and expression to promote human rights in Western Sahara’; during the Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers to call on Morocco to reinstate M’hamed Hali’s right to practice as a lawyer, stressing that this case sets a dangerous precedent for the independence of lawyers; and during the Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on International Solidarity  to reiterate the recommendation of the expert that ‘States should eliminate the criminalization of international solidarity expressions and symbols and calls for accountability for violations of public international law norms, such as calls for peace, self-determination or decolonization […]’ in the case of Western Sahara.  

    Saudi Arabia On 4 July, the Council will consider Saudi Arabia’s fourth UPR outcome, as the authorities announce whether they have accepted or rejected recommendations issued by States in January. The recommendations address widespread and systematic rights violations in the Kingdom, and have the potential to bring about significant change. They include, but are not limited to: calls for the release of prisoners of conscience, many of whom are serving decades-long prison sentences for peacefully exercising their basic rights, and the repealing of travel bans imposed on human rights defenders following their release; the abolition of the death penalty for child defendants, with several young men at imminent risk of execution for alleged crimes committed as minors; and a raft of legislative measures, including ratifying key international human rights treaties and revising repressive laws. States should use this key opportunity to urge Saudi Arabia to accept them in good faith, and crucially implement them.

    Tunisia In May 2024, Tunisian authorities waged an unprecedented crackdown against Black migrants and refugees, and civil society organisations defending their rights. On 6 May, in the opening address to a National Security Council meeting, Tunisian President Kais Saied reiterated discriminatory and hateful remarks against Sub-Saharan migrants and refugees while inciting against civil society organisations, describing them as ‘traitors and [foreign] agents’ and ‘rabid trumpets driven by foreign wages’, because of their receipt of foreign funding and their ‘insulting’ of the state. The president questioned the sheltering of asylum seekers and refugees by the Tunisian Council for Refugees (CTR) – a nongovernmental organization, partner of the UNHCR, which supports the registration of asylum claims – and described asylum seekers and refugees residing in Tunisia as illegal. President Saied suggested that CSOs should only work with the state and under its instructions. Since 3 May, Tunisian authorities have arrested and opened investigations against the heads or members of at least six organisations working on migrant and refugee rights and against racial discrimination, including the CTR. Five people, including WHRD Saadia Mosbah, President of Mnemty, have remained in pre-trial detention, under unfounded accusations of financial crimes. On 14 May, the Prime Minister announced that a new association law is being finalized, which would replace Decree-Law 88, an internationally lauded legislation that that safeguards Tunisia’s right to the freedom of association. During the interactive dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Assembly and Association, and Freedom of Expression, we urge States to call on Tunisia to put an end to the crackdown on civil society, immediately release all those arbitrarily detained, including individuals providing support or advocating for the rights of migrants and refugees, and to firmly condemn the escalating smear campaign and stigmatisation of human rights and humanitarian organisations receiving foreign funding and working with migrants and refugees, supported by the president’s speeches, often making use of discriminatory and racist language against Black migrants and Black people.

    Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Belize, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Congo, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal. ISHR supports human rights defenders in their interaction with the UPR. This session of the Council will provide an opportunity for Chad, China, Congo, Mauritius, Nigeria to accept recommendations made in relation to human rights defenders, as proposed in ISHR’s briefing papers.

    Side events

    19 June at 13:00 (room XXV): ISHR will hold a side event to launch the Declaration +25: A supplement to the UN Declaration on human rights defenders. See https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/06/08/launch-of-the-hrd-declaration25/.

    Open Society Institute will hold a side event on human rights in Afghanistan 19 June at 15:00:

    American Civil Liberties Union will hold a side event on human rights in the United States of America

    On 25 June at 16:00: Center for Justice and International Law will hold a side event on human rights in Guatemala

    26 June at 14:00: Amnesty International will hold a side event on the protection of freedom of expression and assembly

    On 27 June at 14:00: International Bar Association will hold a side event on gender apartheid: Case studies

    On 3 July at 12:00: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung will hold a side event on climate change and human mobility

    On 3 July at 17:00: Third World Network will hold a side event on business accountability in the context of armed conflict

    On 4 July at 15:00: Earthjustice will hold a side event on Protection of Environmental Human Rights Defenders #HRC55:

    Alert to the Human Rights Council’s 56th session

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • U.S. teachers stabbed in ‘random attack’ in China | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Cornell College instructors stabbed in China | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Guardian view on the rule of law in Hong Kong: the verdict of foreign judges is damning | Editorial

    The conviction of peaceful pro-democracy activists is another shameful moment in the ongoing crackdown

    Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “canaries in the mine”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”.

    That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong Kong courts and an oppressive political environment where judges are urged to demonstrate “patriotism”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • 4 American teachers are stabbed in knife attack in China

    Police arrested a 55-year-old man in connection with a knife attack on four U.S. university employees and a Chinese person in a public park in the northeastern city of Jilin, authorities said Tuesday.

    A man with a knife attacked four teachers from Iowa’s Cornell College who were teaching at the Beihua University as they were touring the park with a local colleague on a public holiday on Monday, the college’s president, Jonathan Brand, said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

    The four Cornell College instructors were rushed to hospital alongside a Chinese national who tried to intervene, and all are now out of danger, according to a statement from China’s foreign ministry.

    Police have arrested a 55-year old man who they had earlier named as Cui Dapeng, saying the attack happened after Cui “bumped into” one of the men.

    “The police have preliminarily judged that this was a random incident but an investigation is ongoing,” foreign affairs spokesperson Lin Jian told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.

    “All the injured individuals were immediately taken to the hospital and were given appropriate critical care. No one’s life is in danger,” Lin said.

    A video clip of people lying on the ground at the scene covered in blood was circulating on X after the incident, but Chinese censors appeared on Tuesday to have shut down comments or posts on the incident.

    Violence against foreigners in China is rare, and the country’s foreign ministry said it would continue taking effective measures to ensure the safety of foreigners.

    Still, there has been a campaign by authorities to make people suspicious of foreigners, or anyone with foreign connections.

    “We don’t believe that this isolated incident will disrupt normal cultural and people-to-people exchanges between our two countries,” Lin said.

    ENG_CHN_JILIN ATTACK_06112024.2.jpg
    Beishan Park, Jilin, China, in an undated file photo. (AP)

    The U.S. State Department said in a statement reported by Reuters and the Associated Press that it was aware of the incident and was monitoring the situation.

    Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said via X that her office was working with the U.S. Embassy to ensure that the victims receive treatment and leave China safely.

    U.S. travel advisory

    The attacks came after the State Department issued a Level 3 travel advisory, the second-highest level, warning people to “reconsider” travel to China, prompting some U.S. institutions to shelve their China programs altogether.

    While ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping announced last November that his country stands ready to invite 50,000 young Americans to China on educational exchanges over the next five years, the number of Americans studying in China has plummeted, falling to just 700 – down from 15,000 six or seven years ago.

    Much of the reluctance can be traced back to three years of stringent zero-COVID policies, during which students started heading to democratic Taiwan, where Mandarin is also widely spoken.

    Another factor is the online censorship and political restrictions that increasingly affect foreigners in China, making the country less enticing as a destination for overseas study.

    An employee who answered the phone at the Beishan police station near the park declined to comment when contacted by RFA Mandarin on Tuesday.

    The Jilin municipal police department issued a statement confirming that five people were injured in the attack, and that five people had received varying degrees of injury, and are currently being treated in hospital. None were in critical condition, it said.

    An employee who answered the phone at the Jilin municipal government declined to comment. “I don’t know about this — it’s not our responsibility and we’re not the ones in charge of it,” the official said. 

    According to a 2018 post on the Cornell College website, the college runs an exchange program in which its professors teach subjects including computer science, math and physics at Beihua University for two weeks at a time, while allowing Beihua students to spend time studying at Cornell College, gaining degrees from both institutions.



    A journalist who gave only the surname Gao for fear of reprisals said the stabbing attack had prompted plenty of discussion among his friends, despite the lack of visible coverage on social media.

    “Anti-American feeling is pretty strong in the northeast,” he said. “People there are more easily taken in by government propaganda.”

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US and China spar over nuclear weapons build-up

    Beijing and Washington have accused each other of propelling a new nuclear arms build-up, with an American official on Friday suggesting a possible increase in the U.S. stockpile may be needed in response to the rapidly growing arsenal of China, Russia and North Korea.

    Speaking to a meeting of the Arms Control Association in Washington on Friday, Pranay Vaddi, the top arms control official on the White House National Security Council, said the U.S. rivals were “expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace.”

    “We may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required,” Vaddi said, adding that efforts to engage in arms-control talks had been repeatedly rebuffed.

    ENG_CHN_NUCLEAR_06102024.2.jpg
    A video screenshot shows Pranay Vaddi speaking at the 2024 Annual Meeting of Arms Control Association June 7, 2024 in Washington. (Arms Control Association via Youtube)

    In a response in Russian state media on Saturday, an unnamed Chinese diplomat accused the United States of hypocrisy, noting that Washington “sits on the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world” and has refused to put conditions on the use of its arms.

    “The U.S. should stop undermining the international nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation regime, reduce the role of nuclear weapons in national and collective security policies and act responsibly for the welfare of the world,” the official said.

    Treaty failure

    The war of words comes amid the deterioration in a system of treaties aimed at non-proliferation that began at the height of the Cold War.

    In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew from the 2010 New START treaty, which had restricted the two countries to only 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. Since then, Moscow has repeatedly threatened nuclear war with the West over Ukraine.

    ENG_CHN_NUCLEAR_06102024.3.jpg
    Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and the head of the United Russia party Dmitry Medvedev, right, looks at drones during a visit to the Pesochnensky training ground in the Leningrad Region near Sertolovo, Russia, Monday, May 27, 2024. (Ekaterina Shtukina, Sputnik Pool Photo via AP)

    China, meanwhile, has been busily stockpiling its own nuclear arsenal, even though it has publicly disavowed the use of its weapons in a “first use” capacity. Not subjected to any non-proliferation treaties, Beijing has reportedly doubled the supply of its warheads in recent years.

    A 2022 report from the Pentagon said China’s People’s Liberation Army is on track to have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035.

    In the background, though, Beijing has been pushing the world’s nuclear states to sign-on to a multilateral treaty codifying its pledge never to use a nuclear weapon without being attacked by one first.

    Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • At UN, North Koreans beg China to stop sending escapees back

    Holding back tears, Kim Kyu-li spoke into the microphone to share her sister’s story, pleading with China to stop sending back captured North Korean escapees.

    Both were raised in North Korea and fled the country as teenagers – but wound up in starkly different places, she told people gathered at an event hosted by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 15 – one of a series of meetings about North Korean escapees.

    Kyu-li escaped to China in 1997 and eventually settled in the United Kingdom.

    But her younger sister Chol Ok – only 15 when she fled North Korea a year later – was sold by human traffickers to a Chinese man 30 years her senior to be his wife. She lived with him for 25 years, bearing him one daughter. 

    In 2023, she tried to flee to South Korea, which welcomes North Korean escapees, but was captured by Chinese police, Kyu-li said. In October, Chol Ok was among 600 North Korean escapees who were forcibly repatriated back to North Korea – where she almost certainly faces punishment, prison or possibly even execution.

    Her marriage was not enough to save her because escapees in China are undocumented, and barred from registering life events like marriages and births.

    “When my sister decided to escape, I believed she could succeed. I tried to support her in every way,” said Kyu-li. “I thought about going to China and bringing her back (with me to the U.K.), and now I feel bad that I couldn’t do that. I cry every day, and I don’t know what to do.” 

    ‘China is the problem’

    Chol Ok’s plight illustrates China’s refusal to recognize North Korean escapees as refugees fleeing persecution. 

    Instead, Beijing maintains that they are illegal migrants who must be sent back to their country of origin, and that they are bound by two agreements with Pyongyang.

    “China is the problem,” Kyu-li told Radio Free Asia. “We need to negotiate with China. I want to say, ‘If you don’t want to accept North Korean escapees coming to China, send them to a third country, don’t send them back into danger.’”

    Several diplomats present at the event and officials from human rights organizations said China and North Korea share responsibility for human rights abuses. They urged Beijing to embrace “non-refoulement,” or the refusal to send asylum-seekers back to countries where they may face persecution.

    “We also call on member states, including the PRC, which shares a land border with the DPRK to uphold their respective international legal obligations, and to respect the principle of non-refoulement,” Michelle Taylor, U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council said at the event, using abbreviations to refer to China and North Korea.

    No one representing North Korea was present.

    China’s representative, Xie Chenchen, walked into the conference late – though it was the first time a Chinese official attended such an event. 

    Kim appealed for help in front of Xie, saying that her younger sister was at the crossroads of life and death, as would likely spend time in a North Korean prison. 

    Kyu-li said her older brother lost his life due to torture while imprisoned, and she still doesn’t know where he is buried. She fears the same thing will happen to her sister.

    “North Korean jail is very poor,” she said, addressing the conference in English. “People struggle with harsh punishments and starvation. I’d like to get them some help. I came here because of my sister and all North Korean people. Please help them for their freedom.” 

    She sought permission to continue her remarks in Korean, and appeared to hold back tears every time she spoke.

    As the event came to an end, Xie, the Chinese representative, suddenly asked to speak. He read from the two sheets of paper in front of him.

    “Persons from DPRK who come to China illegally for economic reasons are illegal migrants, not refugees,” he said. “The principle of non-refoulement under that context does not apply to them. There is currently no evidence of torture or so called massive human rights violations in DPRK. So, the principle of non-refoulement under that context does not apply to them.”

    Xie gave no recognition of her testimony about her sister, and scurried out of the event as soon as it ended.

    “It hurts. But it was expected, given China’s stance,” she said. “I want to ask how they plan to address China’s illegal acts against North Korean escapees. 

    “Chinese people are trafficking North Korean people. North Korean escapees have married Chinese people and started families. Most of those forcibly repatriated to North Korea have family in China. What is China going to do about their children?” 

    ‘We reject this attack’

    A couple days later, on March 18, international delegates in a U.N. conference room in Geneva discussed the situation in North Korea. Representatives of several states called on China to observe the principle of non-refoulement.

    Chinese representative Shi Qi, who attended the meeting, said that mentioning China in the issue of forced repatriation to North Korea is considered an attack on Beijing.

    “China is concerned about the report where it mentions the entry into China by the people of DPRK. These people are by no means refugees,” said Shi. “They have violated Chinese law and Chinese immigration control order. We reject this attack by countries, including the USA.” 

    The next day, the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to Geneva hosted an event to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea. 

    ENG_KOR_ESCAPEES GENEVA_05302024.4.jpg
    Kim Eunju (second from left), a North Korean escapee, was invited to testify at a UN Human Rights Council event hosted by the South Korean Permanent Mission to Geneva, March 19, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. (RFA)

    Kim Eunju, a North Korean escapee, said that in 1999, at the age of 12, she escaped to China with her mother and older sister – and immediately became victims of human traffickers.

    In 2002, they were discovered by police and repatriated to North Korea.

    While in prison, Kim was subjected to hard labor and witnessed the suffering of other inmates, she said. But she managed to escape to China that same year, then made her way to South Korea in 2006.

    Meeting other escapees such as Kim Kyu-li has given her the courage to tell her story, she said. She said she felt a special bond just from the way they looked at each other. 

    “As someone who experienced forced repatriation to North Korea, I felt so empathetic to what Kyu-li’s sister is going through,” she said, adding that it made her cry. “There is a bond of sympathy. When you look at the people who were forcibly repatriated to North Korea, there is a common anger toward the North Korean regime.”

    “Forced repatriation is not just a problem in the past, but still an ongoing problem,” Kim Eunju said. “That’s why I will speak up.”

    Mind your own business

    On March 20, North Korea’s acting ambassador to the UN Office at Geneva, Bang Kwang Hyuk, who was absent during discussions on North Korean human rights issues, entered the conference room as the general debate on human rights began. 

    He read a four-page-long prepared statement saying the U.N. Human Rights Council must pay attention to the serious human rights situation in the United States and Western countries. 

    He mentioned the United States 11 times, saying that it is the “main culprit of the crimes against humanity where all sort of social evidence and institutional human rights abuse is talked about, including deep-seated racism and incurable gun-related crimes.” 

    He was also critical of Japan and South Korea, and said that the criticism of North Korea or China was an attempt to use the human rights council as “interference in the internal affairs such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong in China as well as Belarus, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria and Venezuela.”

    ENG_KOR_ESCAPEES GENEVA_05302024.2.jpg
    North Korea’s acting ambassador to Geneva, Bang Kwang Hyuk, remained silent in response to questions from Radio Free Asia reporters about the situation of North Korean escapees who were forcibly repatriated to North Korea, March 20, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. (RFA)

    As he exited the conference room, RFA reporters repeatedly asked Bang about the situation facing the forcibly repatriated North Koreans as they followed him to his car outside the building, but he did not acknowledge them and drove away without responding.

    Kim Eunju told RFA that the refusal of China and North Korea to acknowledge the forced repatriation issue angers escapees.

    “Forced repatriation starts in China and ends when China stops,” she said. “By stopping forced repatriation, many of the human rights issues of North Korean women who are trafficked and sexually assaulted in China could be addressed.”

    Unmailable letters

    On the weekend, the sunny weather drew Kim Kyu-li into Geneva’s streets. 

    Entering the International Red Cross Museum across from the United Nations building, the first exhibit she saw was on “Restoring Family Links.” 

    “Human beings are social beings who are defined by their links with others,” the plaque describing the exhibit said. “When those links are broken, they lose part of their identity and their bearings. Giving and receiving news and finding one’s loved ones again are elements of stability that are even more essential during crisis situations.”

    As she read the description, tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m glad I came,” she said.

    Amid the faces of countless people separated from their families by war, her gaze stops at the handwritten letters to the loved ones they long to see. 

    ENG_KOR_ESCAPEES GENEVA_05302024.3.jpg
    Kyu-li’s cellphone is filled with Cheol-ok’s videos. Kyu-li said she watches videos of her sister whenever she misses her. (RFA)

    “I wish I could write a letter to my sister and that she could receive it,” she said. “I think she’ll cry if I say, ‘I miss you.’ So, there’s nothing else but to say ‘endure’ … ‘survive.’ She must survive so we can meet again. She probably feels like dying right now.” 

    In her heart, she writes hundreds of thousands of letters that cannot be sent, she said. If she meets her sister again, her only wish is to travel around the world and eat lots of delicious food together. 

    She reminisced about how when they were young, their mother made mandu, Korean dumplings, for them, and how happy they were to eat them together.

    “When I meet my sister, the first thing I want to feed her is mandu,” she said. 

    The exhibit makes her long to see her sister, so she scrolls through her cellphone to find the last texts, pictures and videos they sent to each other.

    “Every time we talked, she would always sing a song and send it to me,” she said, showing a video of Chol Ok singing in Chinese. “She said she sings to ease her loneliness. This video was taken two years ago. She sings so well and her voice is lovely.”

    Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Seo Hye Jun and Jamin Anderson for RFA Korean.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Myanmar’s civil war: A golden opportunity for U.S. sabotage of China’s interests

    Myanmar’s civil war is in a critical phase where the ruling military government is losing significant territory to a broad coalition of insurgent armies. It is estimated that insurgents now control over half the area in the Southeast Asian country after nearly three years of conflict.

    Washington views the conflict as an “unmissable opportunity” to topple the military rulers and restore an elected government. The real objective of the United States is not to support democratic politics in Myanmar or peace and stability, but rather to exploit the turmoil in the country as a way to contain China and undermine Beijing’s strategic interests.

    In a set-piece interview with Time magazine published this week, President Joe Biden reiterated that Washington is pursuing a Cold War-style containment strategy against Russia and China. As the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia looks increasingly like a dead-end from the West’s perspective, one can expect Washington to up the ante by turning its focus more on hampering China as a geopolitical rival. In his Time interview, Biden provocatively talks about “defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion”, and mobilization of other Asia-Pacific nations in a U.S.-led alliance to curb Beijing’s influence.

    Myanmar is one such locus for the U.S. to exercise involvement and policies to foment problems for China which shares a southern border with this strategically important nation of 57 million people.

    In a recent planning document, The Wilson Center, a U.S. government-owned think tank, urged a massive scaling up of Washington’s support for Myanmar’s insurgent paramilitaries under the remit of the newly enacted BURMA Act. The Wilson Center, whose most prominent public member is Secretary of State Antony Blinken, candidly endorses “increased support from the United States and like-minded allies and partners [that] could prove crucial in defeating the junta on a shorter timeline.”

    Defeating the military government, according to Washington planners, is essential to “counter undue Chinese influence in Myanmar”. Referring to the regional Association of South East Asian Nations, the U.S. also aims to “ensure a more stable ASEAN and Southeast Asia” and “assist in the establishment of a democratic government in a region facing rising authoritarianism.”

    In other words, Washington wants to contain China’s influence in Myanmar and forge the region for its geopolitical interests – albeit using virtue-signaling rhetoric about promoting “stability” and “democracy” over “authoritarianism”.

    Myanmar is a linchpin nation in China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative for transcontinental trade and development. Beijing has invested heavily in its southern neighbor to build energy and transport infrastructure linking China with the Indian Ocean and to create an alternative commercial shipping route to the Malacca Strait. Dependence on the Malacca sea route can be seen as a huge risk for China because it is a chokepoint for international trade.

    China has centuries of close cultural ties with Myanmar. In more recent times, Beijing was an important supporter of political independence from Britain in 1948 when the country was known as “British Burma”. It seems significant that the American positioning of itself as an ally is belied by invoking an antiquated colonial term for the Southeast Asian nation. The White House and Congress insist on referring to the colonial-era term “Burma” when the country officially changed its name to Myanmar in 1989, which the United Nations and most of the world recognize.

    Since independence, Myanmar has seen decades of unrest between myriad ethnic groups and a checkered history of alternating between military and civilian rule. A military coup in 2021 ousted an elected civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. That crisis in turn escalated into a civil war between the military junta, the Tatmadaw, headed by General Min Aung Hlaing, and several insurgent armies.

    A determined offensive last October by the three main opposition groups – the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BA) – has put the military rulers on the back foot from the loss of large swathes of territory beyond the capital, Naypyidaw.

    China has striven to maintain balanced links with all ethnic and civilian political parties as well as traditional ties with the country’s military. When Aung San Suu Kyi was in power in 2020 before the coup, China’s President Xi Jinping made a historic state visit during which the two leaders agreed on major trade partnerships.

    It is not in Beijing’s strategic interest to take a partisan approach to the conflict in Myanmar. Above all, China’s priority is to see political stability prevailing in its neighbor. That is not just about protecting mega investment and trade projects. Border insecurity has spawned a lot of trouble for China from crime and illegal trafficking. To that end, at the start of the year, Beijing organized peace talks aimed at bringing the various antagonists to a consensus for governance.

    However, the ceasefire deal brokered by China does not appear to be holding and there is ongoing violence in several regions.

    As the Wilson Center planning document makes clear, it is in the U.S. interest to increase military and political interference in Myanmar to “ensure victory” for the insurgents over the junta. With a budget of several hundred million dollars under the BURMA Act, the Washington planners are aiming to boost military support for the various insurgent groups. At this stage, the equipment is cautiously described as “non-lethal aid”. But as other foreign interventions by the United States demonstrate, such aid is more often merely a wedge opening for eventual lethal supplies.

    American covert involvement in Myanmar has a long history going back to the 1950s when the CIA exploited the country as a base for paramilitaries recruited from the Kuomintang, the nationalist faction defeated by the communists in China’s civil war in 1949. In 2007, during a previous episode of civil conflict in Myanmar, the CIA was accused of assassinating an ethnic Karen rebel leader who was negotiating a peace deal with the military government.

    In another recent planning study by the more hawkish Jamestown Foundation, which is believed to have close links with the CIA, it was stated: “The struggle to end authoritarian rule in Myanmar is far from resolved and remains rife with challenges, including the risk of escalating regional and international tensions. A sudden breakthrough toward the overthrow of Myanmar’s junta seems exceedingly improbable. The only possibility for this would be a massive and intricate offensive by a larger alliance of militias… in such a way as to directly disrupt Myanmar’s capital, severely destabilizing the governing junta.”

    This is a strident call for covert military intervention to escalate Myanmar’s civil war.

    Another aspect of U.S. policy is to polarize the conflict in Myanmar and to portray China as being the sponsor of the military rulers in violent opposition to “pro-democracy groups” that the United States is supporting. This is a tried and trusted ploy straight from the U.S. playbook for regime change as seen elsewhere such as in Syria’s civil war or Ukraine leading up to the CIA-backed coup in 2014.

    To that end, Western media aligned with Washington’s geopolitical agenda such as Radio Free Asia and the Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian, are promoting the narrative that China is on the side of Myanmar’s dictators. Other Western media outlets disparage China as cynically “playing both sides”.

    The reality is that China is trying to broker a peaceful settlement in a country that has long been beset with internal political problems. Many of those problems stem from the British colonialist legacy of sectarian divisions in Myanmar.

    Ominously, the United States is threatening to crudely intervene in Myanmar’s civil war which could make the conflict more bloody and protracted. Because doing so is an “unmissable opportunity” for Washington to sabotage China’s policy of promoting good neighborliness and regional development.

    • First published in Strategic Culture Foundation

    The post Myanmar’s civil war: A golden opportunity for U.S. sabotage of China’s interests first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Rudd says China using ‘gray zone’ tactics against Taiwan

    Taiwan and the United States must counter China’s growing use of “gray zone” tactics meant to force the island to give-in to a takeover, Australia’s ambassador to Washington, Kevin Rudd, said Thursday.

    Speaking at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii, Rudd called the current era “the decade of living dangerously” and said Chinese President Xi Jinping was tiring of what he saw as Taiwan’s incrementally “growing autonomy.”

    In reaction to the Taiwanese government’s claims the democratic island is already independent from China, he said, there is dwindling support in Beijing for the U.S.-backed “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait and a renewed urgency about resolving “the Taiwan problem.” 

    “Beijing is signaling loud and clear that its political objective remains to force Taiwan into negotiations on its preferred ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula,” Rudd said, referring to the split system that was applied in Hong Kong after the British handover in July 1997.

    But with little appetite among Taiwan’s people for unification, according to opinion polls, Beijing is employing “gray zone” tactics aimed at chipping away at the public’s willingness to resist, he said.

    ‘Gray zone’ tactics

    Rudd described China’s “gray zone” tactics as hyper-aggressive statecraft that is “short of war” and therefore difficult to respond to, and said they have included military intrusions on Taiwan’s outlying maritime territory to “incrementally” assert its sovereignty claims.

    ENG_CHN_KEVIN RUDD_06072024.4.jpg
    A Taiwanese sailor aboard a Taiwan Navy vessel looks towards a Chinese warship while navigating on waters off Taiwan’s western coast, in this handout image released May 23, 2024. (Taiwan Defence Ministry/Handout via Reuters)

    Coupled with threats of a blockade of the island, he said, the tactics aim to “demonstrate that the Taiwanese administration, in the eyes of its people, is increasingly incapable of sustaining and managing Taiwan’s claim to sovereignty” and that giving up may be easier.

    To avoid Taiwan’s capitulation amid intensifying “gray zone” bullying, Rudd said, Taiwan and the United States must develop “calibrated policy responses,” instead of continuing to offer “no responses at all, which presumably is Beijing’s current expectation.”

    Even then, he said, Beijing may resort to force, with the 70-year-old Xi likely mulling his “personal and political mortality” and seeking control of Taiwan “before he finds himself in his 80s.” 

    Any war over Taiwan, he added, could be as globally transformative as World War II and lead to “unknowable geostrategic consequences.”

    A two-time former prime minister of Australia and a fluent Mandarin speaker who was appointed ambassador last year, Rudd told the audience that he was speaking “in my capacity as a China scholar, and not as an official representative of the Australian Government.”

    Arms sale

    Rudd’s speech came as Washington and Beijing sparred over U.S. military support for Taiwan amid China’s recent maritime intrusions.

    The U.S. State Department on Thursday approved the sale to Taiwan of US$80 million in spare parts for American-made F-16 fighter jets, according to a press release from the Pentagon, which said it was meant to help Taiwan “maintain a credible defensive capability.”

    ENG_CHN_KEVIN RUDD_06072024.2.jpg
    A phone and watch that received an air raid alert is placed together for a photo in New Taipei City, Taiwan Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024. (Ng Han Guan/AP)

    The Pentagon said the sale “will not alter the basic military balance in the region” but will “improve the security of the recipient and assist in maintaining political stability [and] military balance.”

    At a daily press briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said it was clear Taiwan’s government was seeking formal independence and added that “the U.S. is hellbent on helping advance that agenda by arming Taiwan.”

    Mao said Washington should “stop selling arms to Taiwan and having military contact with Taiwan, stop creating factors that fuel tensions in the Taiwan Strait, stop endangering cross-strait peace and stability and stop going further down this wrong and dangerous path.”

    Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In China, Turkish foreign minister calls Urumqi and Kashgar ‘Turkic’ cities

    On a visit to China this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan described two key cities in the far western region of Xinjiang as “Turkic and Islamic cities” in clear recognition of the 11-million strong mostly Muslim Uyghurs who live there, and their roots in the region. 

    The comments came on Monday after Fidan met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing to discuss regional and international issues, and ahead of his planned visits to the two cities midweek.

    “These two cities are ancient Turkic and Islamic cities that have contributed significantly to China’s cultural heritage,” Fidan said. “They serve as a bridge between China and the Turkic and Islamic worlds, symbolizing our historical friendship and neighborliness.”

    On Wednesday, Fidan visited the Yanghang Mosque and the International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and later went to Kashgar.

    There was no reaction in the Chinese media to his comments, but Hamutkhan Kokturk, the former president of the East Turkistan Foundation, a Turkey-based advocacy group, said that Fidan’s statement appeared to be a rejection of China’s claims about Xinjiang, which Beijing took control of in 1949.

    “Throughout history,… the Chinese oppressors have always claimed that East Turkestan has been an inseparable part of China,” Kokturk said, using the term Uyghurs prefer for their homeland. 

    1_ENG_UYG_TURKISH FM_06052024.5.jpg
    Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited the Yanghang Mosque and the International Grand Bazaar, June 5, 2024 in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People’s Republic of China. (@MFATurkiye via X)

    “This time, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s statement that Kashgar and Urumqi are inseparable parts of the Turkic world is a historic declaration,” he said. “I understand that this was a response to China’s lies.”

    The Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, who have cultural and linguistic ties to Turkey, have been oppressed by the Chinese government, with an estimated 1.8 million herded into “re-education” camps where they are subjected to forced labor and human rights violations.

    Beijing says the camps are vocational training centers and have since been closed. 

    The United States has labeled Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs a “genocide.

    The World Uyghur Congress said Fidan’s comments “emphasizing the historical truth emphasizing the historical truth that Urumqi and Kashgar are Turkic and Islamic cities is of great historical importance.”

    The advocacy group said it hoped that Fidan would “raise the issues of crimes against humanity and human rights violations that the Uyghurs are suffering during his trip to China,” and not become “a tool for China’s false propaganda.”

    Istanbul protest

    On Sunday, before Fidan’s trip, scores of Uyghurs living in Istanbul, Turkey, staged a protest against China for bringing Uyghur artists from Urumqi to perform traditional songs and dances at a concert hall as part of a “Xinjiang is a Wonderful Place” program they claim whitewashes Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur people.

    Protesters gathered in front of the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall to chant slogans including: “Terrorist China, stop the genocide!” “Terrorist China, stop the lies!” “Murderous China, get out of East Turkestan!” The phrase refers to what the Uyghurs prefer to call their homeland. 

    1_ENG_UYG_TURKISH FM_06052024.6.JPG
    Protesters gather in front of the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, June 2, 2024 in Istanbul where the Chinese government was planning to let Uyghur performers from Urumqi perform a Uyghur song-and-dance program. (Arslan/RFA)

    When the bus carrying the Uyghur performers and the Chinese government officials approached the concert hall, protesters tried to block its way but they were stopped by the Turkish police.

    Some Chinese standing on the balcony of the concert hall took photos of the Uyghur protesters below, and the protesters took photos of the Chinese as well.

    At an outdoor press conference during the street protest, Kubilay Kerem Buraq, chairman of the Anadolu Members Association, blasted China for falsely portraying Uyghur culture as Chinese culture.

    “To cover its assimilation and genocidal policies, the Chinese government has been calling Uyghur dance as Chinese folk dance, Uyghur songs as Chinese folk songs,” Buraq said. 

    “They are trying to show Uyghur culture as Chinese culture and implant their false claim, namely, East Turkestan is a part of China, into people’s minds around the world,” he said.

    1_ENG_UYG_TURKISH FM_06052024.2.JPG
    Protesters gather in front of the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, June 2, 2024 in Istanbul where the Chinese government was planning to let Uyghur performers from Ürümqi perform Uyghur song and dance. (Arslan/RFA)

    Buraq also criticized the Turkish government for allowing the performance and accepted invitations to it. “We condemn them for what they did,” he said.

    During the protest, representatives from other Uyghur associations in Istanbul also took turns condemning China.

    “Oppression and massacres are taking place in East Turkestan, Uyghur men are being sent to the concentration camps, and their wives are being forced to live with Han Chinese,” said Kok Bore, head of the Blue Turk Bodun Association, an advocacy group promoting the rights of Turkic peoples around the world. “How long shall we be silent?” 

    RFA reporters tried to enter the concert hall but were not allowed to do so, being told that only those invited by the Chinese Ambassador Wei Xiaodong were permitted to enter.

    Translated by Martin Shawn. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Arslan and Erkin Tarim for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China sends glacial water from Tibet to the Maldives, raising concerns

    China gifted 3,000 metric tons of Tibet’s glacial water to the island nation of the Maldives in two separate batches in March and May — the same months it unveiled and implemented water conservation regulations at home.

    The Water Conservation Regulations set limits on water usage within administrative regions and prioritizes water conversation work in Tibet and other parts of China. 

    They were issued by China’s State Council on March 20, a week before it sent the first delivery of 1,500 metric tons of water in jugs to the Maldives, which is experiencing a scarcity of fresh water. 

    The regulations then went into effect on May 1, weeks before China donated the second batch of water jugs. 

    China finalized the deal with the Maldives during a November 2023 visit by Yan Jinhai, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to the low-lying archipelago threatened by rising sea levels.

    The Maldives has forged strong bilateral relations with China and is a beneficiary of the Belt and Road Initiative, under which it has borrowed more than US$1 billion from Chinese banks in the past decade, according to Western think tanks. 

    Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu signed 20 agreements, including one for financial and military assistance, with Beijing during his inaugural state visit to China in January 2024.  

    The Maldives thanked the people of Tibet for their “generous donation,” which it expects will greatly support its island communities. Its freshwater resources are affected by erratic rainfall patterns and rising sea levels.

    Water shortages in Tibet

    But Tibetans inside Tibet said they face water shortages themselves because Chinese authorities have implemented systematic water conservation and management campaigns across various Tibetan villages and towns for over a decade.

    This has occurred while authorities have restricted the availability of water and set limits on water usage at the local level.

    Maldivian security personnel load a water tank onto a military vehicle to fill it with treated water in Malé, capital of the Maldives, Dec. 5, 2014. The capital is located on a low-lying island in the Indian Ocean that has no natural water source and depends entirely on treated seawater. (Sinan Hussain/AP)
    Maldivian security personnel load a water tank onto a military vehicle to fill it with treated water in Malé, capital of the Maldives, Dec. 5, 2014. The capital is located on a low-lying island in the Indian Ocean that has no natural water source and depends entirely on treated seawater. (Sinan Hussain/AP)

    “I have heard that China is donating bottled water from Tibet to other parts of the world for free for political gain,” said one source from the Tibet Autonomous Region, where Chinese authorities have carried out water conservation campaigns for over a decade. 

    “However, in Tibet, the local Tibetans do not have enough drinking water,” he said. “At times there isn’t enough water to even brush our teeth.”

    On March 27, the same day the Maldives said it received the first batch of water, the Water Conservancy Bureau of Ngari Prefecture, or Ali in Chinese, the birthplace of key South Asian rivers, began a series of year-long events for the general public to promote water conservation.

    In Nyingtri city, or Linzhi in Chinese, authorities have implemented the strictest water resources management system over the past several years and boast of its effectiveness. 

    “The water used to wash rice and vegetables can be used to mop the floor and water the flowers. … Nowadays, water-saving behaviors like this have become a conscious action of many citizens,” said a 2023 announcement by the city government.

    Meanwhile, Tibetans who have grown up on their ancestral land in Gangkar township in Dingri county, called Tingri in Chinese, are being forced to relocate to make way for the expansion of China’s water bottling facilities and industry, two sources said. 

    “Gangkar is known for its fertile pastureland and significant water resources from glaciers with 15 water springs in the region, which the local Tibetans have always relied on for their livelihoods,” said the first source. 

    Chinese authorities plan to move about 430 residents to take control of the water resources from the land, he said.

    Weaponizing water

    China’s move signals it is engaging in “water politics” and playing the long game for geopolitical gains in South Asia, experts said. 

    The Chinese government has projects underway to extract clean, clear and mineral-rich water to support the expansion of its premium mineral bottled water industry, they said.

    H.E. Yan Jinhai (L), chairman of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, pays a courtesy call to Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu in Malé, capital of the Maldives, Nov. 21, 2023. (President’s Office/Republic of Maldives)
    H.E. Yan Jinhai (L), chairman of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, pays a courtesy call to Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu in Malé, capital of the Maldives, Nov. 21, 2023. (President’s Office/Republic of Maldives)

    Beijing also wants to control water flows to lower riparian states such as India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, to further its own aspiration of regional dominance, experts said.

    “The imperative to address the threat of China weaponizing water in Tibet cannot be overstated,” wrote scholars Neeraj Singh Manhas and Rahul Lad in a March report titled “China’s Weaponization of Water in Tibet A Lesson for the Lower Riparian States” in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.

    With approximately 87,000 dams built, China poses a historic threat, having already dammed most internal rivers, they add, while calling for proactive measures to implement enduring policies to protect these vital Tibet’s water resources.

    Tibet is at the forefront of China’s “water wars” in the region, said Anushka Saxena, a research analyst at the Takshashila Institution, a public policy think tank in India. 

    Tibet’s eight major transboundary river systems have the capacity to turn China into “Asia’s water hegemon,” given that their water can be used for both domestic economic and foreign policy-related interests, as well as can be weaponized to cause harm to lower riparian states, she said.

    “In that light, China’s moves vis-à-vis export of water to Maldives cannot be isolated from the larger approach China is adopting to using Tibet’s water resources,” she added.

    Additional reporting by Dorjee Damdul for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lobsang, Tenzin Pema and Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Inexplicable Investments: Elbit Systems and Australia’s Future Fund

    Australia’s modest sovereign wealth fund, modestly standing at A$272.3 billion, has crawled into some trouble of late.  Investors, morally twinged, are keeping an eye on where the money of the Australian Future Fund goes.  Inevitably, a good slice of it seems to be parked in the military-industrial complex, a sector that performs on demand.

    Filed last October, a Freedom of Information request by Greens Senator David Shoebridge revealed that as much as A$600 million in public funds had found their way into defence company assets.  In December, it was reported that the 30 defence and aerospace companies featured, with some of them receiving the following: Thales (A$3.5 million), Lockheed Martin (A$71 million), BAE Systems (A$26 million), Boeing (A$10.7 million), Rocket Lab USA (A$192 million) and Elbit Systems (A$488,768).

    The findings gave Shoebridge a chance to spray the board administering the fund with gobbets of chastening wisdom.  “The Future Fund is meant to benefit future generations.  That rings hollow when they are investing in companies making equipment that ends future generations.”

    Some cleansing of the stables was on offer, and the choice of what was cleaned proved popular – at least for the Canberra security establishment.  In May, the Board upped stakes and divested from funds associated with the People’s Liberation Army of China.  Eleven companies were noted, among them Xinjiang Guanghui Energy, a natural gas and coal producer whose chairman, Sun Guangxin, teased US officials by purchasing ranches for reasons of building a wind farm in proximity to a US Air Force base in Texas.

    Relevant companies included Jiangsu GoodWe and LONGi, both with expertise in the line of solar energy generation.  “Taxpayer funds and Australians’ retirement savings should never be invested in companies linked to serious human rights abuses, sanctions evasion or military suppliers to an authoritarian state,” gloated a satisfied opposition home affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson.  The same, it would seem, would not apply to human rights abuses committed by a purported democratic state.

    To that end, things are somewhat murkier when it comes to the companies of other, friendlier powers.  For some obstinate reason, Israel’s military poster boy, Elbit Systems, continues to make its presence felt in the field of Australian defence and finance.  Despite a spotty reputation and a resume of lethal drone production; despite the ongoing murderous conflict in Gaza, the Israeli defence company managed to convince the Australian government to throw A$917 million its way in a contract signed in February.  The contract, to be performed over a period of five years, will supply “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) of Korean design.  With wonderful opportunism, the vehicles are being constructed in the same electorate that belongs to the Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles.

    And what of the near half-million dollars invested by the Future Fund in Elbit Systems?  In October 2023, a list of the Fund’s direct holdings in various companies was published.  It included Elbit Systems.  An odd matter, given that the company, since 2021, is precluded from investing in the fund given, as Shoebridge tells us, the ratification by Australia of various “military weapons-related conventions or treaties”.  The board, accordingly, had to furnish reasons “how it continues to invest in Elbit Systems despite the publicly announced direction it gave to withdraw those funds because of Australia’s international legal obligations.”

    The internal correspondence of December 7, 2023, prompted by Shoebridge’s FOI request, including the prodding of Michael West Media, proved arid in detail. A Canberra bureaucrat in finance asks  an official associated or attached to the Future Fund (both names are redacted) to clarify the status of Elbit Systems in terms of the exclusion list.  The reply notes the role of “expert third party service providers” (who, pray?) who keep an eye on company activities and provide research upon which a decision is made by the Board every six months.

    Elbit had been previously excluded as an investment option “in relation to its involvement in cluster munitions following its acquisition of IMI [Systems]”.  IMI, rather than Elbit, was the spoiling consideration, given its role in producing technology that violates the Convention on Cluster Munitions.  As of April 2023, Elbit was “no longer excluded by the portfolio.  This reflects the updated research of our expert research providers.”

    The response is not obliging on the exact details of the research.  Banal talking points and information stifling platitudes are suggested, crude filling for the news cycle.  The Board, for instance, had “a long-standing policy on portfolio exclusions and a robust process to implement” them.  The policy was reviewed twice a year, buttressed by expert third party research.  Recent media reporting had relied on an outdated exclusions list.  The Board did not invest in those entities on the exclusions list.  For the media establishment, this would have more than sufficed.  The Board had said, and revealed, nothing.

    Last month, Michael West noted that efforts to penetrate the veil of inscrutability had so far come to naught.  The Future Fund and its Board of Guardians persisted in their refusal to respond to inquiries.  “Since our last media request for comment, Israel has ramped up its war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.”  Given various interim orders by the International Court of Justice warning Israel of a real risk of committing genocide, even as it ponders South Africa’s application to make that finding, what are those expert researchers up to?

    The post Inexplicable Investments: Elbit Systems and Australia’s Future Fund first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Britain’s Century Long Opium Trafficking and China’s Century of Humiliation (1839-1949)

    For the Chinese, the trauma of the Century of Humiliation continues as a blunt reminder of their past defeat and neo-colonial servitude, as well as a reminder of the West’s self-righteous hypocrisy and arrogance.

    In 1500, India and China were the world’s most advanced civilizations. Then came the Europeans. They eventually looted and wreaked havoc on both, just as they were to on the Americas and Africa. For India and China, Britain was the chief culprit, relying on state-sponsored drug-running backed by industrialized military power. The British Empire was the world’s largest producer and exporter of opium—the main product of global trade after the gradual decline of the slave trade from Africa. Their “civilization” brought the Century of Humiliation to China, which only ended with the popular revolution led by Mao Zedong. This historic trauma and the struggle to overcome it and re-establish their country is etched in the minds of the Chinese today.

    Before the British brought their “culture,” 25% of the world trade originated in India. By the time they left it was less than 1%. British India’s opium dealing was for the large part of the 19th Century the second-most important source of revenue for colonial India. Their “opium industry was one of the largest enterprises on the subcontinent, producing a few thousand tons of the drug every year – a similar output to Afghanistan’s notorious opium industry [during the US occupation], which supplies the global market for heroin.” Opium accounted for about 17-20% of British India revenues.

    In the early 1700s, China produced 35% of the world GDP. Until 1800 half the books in the world were printed in Chinese. The country considered itself self-sufficient, not seeking any products from other countries. Foreign countries bought Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain, having to pay in gold and silver. Consequently, the balance of trade was unfavorable to the British for almost two centuries, like the situation the US and Europe face with China today.

    This trade slowly depleted Western reserves. Eventually, 30,865 tons of silver flowed into China, mostly from Britain. Britain turned to state sponsored drug smuggling as a solution, and by 1826 the smuggling from India had reversed the flow of silver. Thus began one of the longest and continuous international crimes of modern times, second to the African slave trade, under the supervision of the British crown.

    (The just formed United States was already smuggling opium into China by 1784. The US first multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor grew rich dealing opium to China, as did FDR’s grandfather, Warren Delano, Jr.)

    The British East India Company was key to this opium smuggling. Soon after Britain conquered Bengal in 1757, George III granted the East India Company a monopoly on producing and exporting Indian opium. Eventually its Opium Agency employed some 2500 clerks working in 100 offices around India.

    Britain taxed away 50% of the value of Indian peasants’ food crops to push them out of agriculture into growing opium. This soon led to the Bengal famine of 1770, when ten million, a third of the Bengali population, starved to death. Britain took no action to aid them, as they did almost a century later with their orchestrated famine in Ireland. Another famine hit India in 1783, and again Britain did nothing as 11 million starved. Between 1760-1943, “As per British sources, more than 85 million Indians died in these famines which were in reality genocides done by the British Raj.”

    At its peak in the mid-19th century, the British state-sponsored export of opium accounted for roughly 15% of total colonial revenue in India and 31% of India’s exports. The massive revenues from this drug money solidified India as a substantial financial base for England’s later world conquests.

    In 1729, the Chinese emperor declared the import of opium illegal. At the time it amounted to 200 chests a year, each 135 pounds, a total of 14 tons. The emperor in 1799 reissued the prohibition in harsher terms, given imports had leaped to 4,500 chests (320 tons). Yet by 1830 it rose to 1100 tons, and by 1838, just before the British provoked the First Opium War (1839-1842), it climbed to 40,000 chests (2800 tons).

    A chest of opium cost only £2 to produce in India but it sold for £10 [over $1,000 in today’s prices] in China, nearly an £8 profit per chest.

    About 40,000 chests supplied 2.1 million addicts in a Chinese population of 350 million. China was losing over 4000 tons of silver annually. Addicts were mostly men, twenty to fifty-five years old, which should have been their most productive years. Smoking opium gradually spread to different groups of people: government officials, merchants, intelligentsia, women, servants, soldiers, and monks.

    Just before the First Opium War the Chinese “drug czar,” Lin Zexu, wrote to Queen Victoria, “Where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; this is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries.” In standard imperialist arrogance, Britain ignored the letter and challenged the very legality of China’s sovereign decision to prohibit opium imports.

    Britain provoked this First Opium War in retaliation for China seizing and destroying 1300 tons of opium held by British drug dealers off Canton (now Guangzhou). This had a value equal to one-sixth of the British empire’s military budget. British Foreign Secretary Palmerston demanded an apology, compensation for the opium, a treaty to prevent Chinese action against British drug-running, and opening additional ports to “foreign trade,” their euphemism for drug dealing.

    The British India Gazette reported on the sack of one Chinese city during the war:

    A more complete pillage could not be conceived than took place. Every house was broken open, every drawer and box ransacked, the streets strewn with fragments of furniture, pictures, tables, chairs, grain of all sorts — the whole set off by the dead or the living bodies of those who had been unable to leave the city from the wounds received from our merciless guns… The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy.

    Once Britain defeated China, the Treaty of Nanking gave Hong Kong to the British, which quickly became the center of opium drug-dealing, soon providing the colony most of its revenue. The treaty also allowed the British to export unlimited amounts of opium.

    In 1844, France and the US forced China to sign similar unequal and unjust treaties, with the same unrestricted trading rights.

    In the wake of the First Opium War, a devastating famine hit southern China, causing mass starvation among millions of poor Chinese peasants. Soon the Taiping Rebellion against Chinese imperial rule broke out, claiming 20 million Chinese lives between 1850 and 1864. As with many later civil wars, as in Syria a decade ago, the European states financed the rebels to undermine the national government.

    Karl Marx detailed how Britain provoked the Second Opium War (1856-1860). France joined in the looting. The Times of London, propagandists for their state-sponsored drug mafia, declared, “England, with France . . . shall teach such a lesson to these perfidious hordes that the name of Europe will hereafter be a passport of fear, if it cannot be of love, throughout their land.”

    In October 1860 the British and French military attacked Beijing. Despite French protests, British commander Lord Elgin destroyed Yuanming Yuan, the emperor’s summer palace, in a show of contempt for the Chinese.

    The Summer Palace was the quintessential treasure house of China. No such collection of wealth and beauty had ever existed anywhere on earth. Nor would it ever again.…in some 200 fabulously decorated buildings, thirty of them imperial residences, lay riches beyond all dreams of avarice. Jewels, jade, ceremonial robes, the court treasures, bales of silk, and countless priceless artifacts represented the years of accumulated tribute placed before the Chinese emperors. There were splendid galleries of paintings and irreplaceable libraries…For three days British and French troops rampaged through the palace’s marble corridors and glittering apartments, smashing with clubs and rifle butts what they were unable to carry away.

    When the robbery and destruction was finished, they burned Yuanming Yuan to the ground. An estimated 1.5 million Chinese relics were taken away, many still filling museums and the homes of the wealthy in the West today.

    Britain and France forced China to legalize the import of opium, which reached 5000 tons by 1858, an amount surpassing global opium production in 1995. China had to agree that no Westerner could be tried in Chinese courts for crimes committed in the country, and, ironically, to legalize Christian missionary work.

    The 1881 pamphlet, Opium: England’s Coercive Policy and Its Disastrous Results in China and India, stated:

    As a specimen of how both wars were carried on, we quote the following from an English writer on the bombardment of Canton: ‘Field pieces loaded with grape were planted at the end of long, narrow streets crowded with innocent men, women and children, to mow them down like grass till the gutters flowed with their blood.’ In one scene of carnage, the Times correspondent recorded that half an army of 10,000 men were in ten minutes destroyed by the sword, or forced into the broad river. The Morning Herald asserted that ‘a more horrible or revolting crime than this bombardment of Canton has never been committed in the worst ages of barbaric darkness.’

    By the mid-1860s, Britain was in control of seven eighths of the vastly expanded opium trade into China. Opium imports from India skyrocketed to 150,000 chests (10,700 tons) in 1880. British opium earnings amounted to $2 billion a year in today’s money and accounted for nearly 15% of the British Exchequer’s tax revenue. The London Times (October 22, 1880) outrageously claimed that “the Chinese government admitted opium as a legal article of import, not under constraint, but of their own free will.” Lord Curzon, later Under Secretary for India, “denied that England had ever forced opium upon China; no historian of any repute, and no diplomatist who knew anything of the matter, would support the proposition that England coerced China in this respect.”

    China began domestic production to curtail losing more silver to imported opium. After 1858, large tracts of land were given over to opium production, and provinces turned from growing food and other necessities to opium. Eventually the Chinese were producing 35,000 tons, about 85% of the world’s supply, with 15 million addicts consuming 43,000 tons annually.

    China, now greatly weakened by the British narco state, surrendered territory to Russia equal to the combined size of France, Germany, and Spain. In 1885 France seized Chinese Southeast Asia. In 1895, Japan seized Taiwan and Chinese-controlled Korea.

    The Eight-Nation Alliance (Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary) invaded again in 1900 to crush the nationalist Boxer Rebellion. An indemnity of 20,000 tons of silver was extracted, and China reduced to a neo-colony.

    By 1906, besides British India, opium dealing also provided 16% of taxes for French Indochina, 16% for the Netherlands Indies, 20% for Siam, and 53% for British Malaya.

    That year, the British, still exporting 3500 tons to China, finally agreed to end the dirty business within ten years. The British crown had the distinction of being the biggest opium smuggler in history – a central factor in their wrecking Chinese and Indian civilizations.

    World opium production by 1995 was down to 4,200 metric tons (4,630 tons), mostly from Burma and Afghanistan. The Taliban banned it in 2000, and production fell from 3400 to only 204 tons. The 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan reversed this, and by 2008, US occupied Afghanistan was producing 90% of the world’s opium, reaching 10,000 tons in 2017. After the US was driven out in 2021, the Taliban quickly stopped opium production. The United States Institute of Peace, possibly revealing US support for narco-trafficking, pronounced, “the Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world” and “will have negative economic and humanitarian consequences.”

    The blight of opium on China was not resolved until the revolutionary victory in 1949 – though it continued in British Hong Kong. Mao proclaimed “China has stood up,” ending its Century of Humiliation during which at least 100 million Chinese were killed in wars and famines, with up to 35 million during the Japanese invasion from 1931-1945.

    By 1949, China had been reduced to one of the world’s poorest countries. Just 75 years ago four out of five Chinese could not read or write. But since 1981, China has lifted 853 million of its people out of poverty, has become an upper middle income country according to the World Bank, and regained its stature in the world. The West now views China as a renewed threat, again seeking to economically disable it and chop it into pieces. However, this time, the Chinese people are much better prepared to combat imperialist designs to impose a new era of humiliation on them.

    The post Britain’s Century Long Opium Trafficking and China’s Century of Humiliation (1839-1949) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 35th anniversary of Tiananmen Square: 14 still in prison

    While China is systematically erasing the memory of the brutal repression of student protests on 4 June 1989, 14 prominent participants of that movement are still behind bars, rearrested for their struggle for democracy. Chinese Human Rights Defenders issued an appeal for their release.

    Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), an international NGO supporting Chinese dissidents, issued an appeal last week to mark the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2014/06/13/25-years-tiananmen-celebrated-with-over-100-detentions/]

    “For 35 years, all top Chinese leaders, from Li Peng to Xi Jinping, have been fixated on erasing memories of June 4 by persecuting those who peacefully seek accountability,” reads the CHRD statement. “Everyone who cares about justice should call on Beijing to immediately and unconditionally release these and all other prisoners of conscience in China.”

    The appeal includes a list of 27 people who, for various reasons, are still in prison in relation to the Tiananmen Square movement. “[F]ar from being complete, [. . .] it is a window to the severity, scale, and persistence of reprisals by the Chinese government over the past 35 years,” the statement reads. In particular, 14 names belong to people who participated directly in the events of 35 years ago and are currently in prison after they were rearrested for promoting democracy in China.

    Zhou Guoqiang (周国强) was imprisoned for organising a strike in support of student protests in Beijing in 1989, and served four years in a re-education camp. He was arrested again for online comments in October 2023. His current whereabouts and charges remain unknown.

    Guangdong activist Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), who took part in the 1989 movement as a student in Shanghai, has been serving a six-year sentence since 2015 for his human rights activism.

    Another university student from that time, Chen Shuqing (陈树庆) from Hangzhou, has been serving a 10-and-a-half-year sentence since 2016 for pro-democracy activism.

    Lü Gengsong (吕耿松), a teacher fired in 1993 for supporting the pro-democracy movement, has been serving an 11-year sentence since 2016 for his pro-democracy work.

    Beijing-based lawyer Xia Lin (夏霖) has been serving an 11-year sentence since 2016 for his professional work as a lawyer; he participated in the 1989 movement as a student at the Southwest Institute of Political Science and Law in Chongqing.

    Xinjiang activist Zhao Haitong (赵海通) has been serving a 14-year sentence since 2014 for his activities as a human rights defender. He, too, had been imprisoned in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre.

    Xu Na (许那), artist, poet, and a Falun Gong follower, took part in the hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. She was arrested in 2020 and sentenced to eight years in prison for “using an evil cult to disrupt law enforcement.”

    Sichuan activist Chen Yunfei (陈云飞) served a four-year sentence from 2015 to 2019, in part for organising a commemoration for the victims of 4 June. He had participated in the 1989 movement as a student at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.

    Another member of the student movements at the time, Xu Guang (徐光), was arrested in 2022 and is serving a four-year sentence on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

    Huang Xiaomin (黄晓敏), who was arrested in Sichuan province in 2021, suffered th same fate, and was sentenced to four years, while Cao Peizhi (曹培植) was arrested in 2022 and sentenced to 2.2 years in Henan province.

    Zhang Zhongshun (张忠顺), another student who participated in the 1989 protests, was reported to police in 2007 for talking to his students about the events of 4 June. He was jailed for three years and is now in jail for continuing to support activism and faces charges of subversion in Shandong province.

    Wang Yifei (王一飞) disappeared into police custody after he was detained in 2021. Before his arrest in 2018, he had been demanding justice for the victims of 1989 for several years.

    Shi Tingfu (史庭福), already convicted of organiing a public vigil in Nanjing in 2017 and giving a speech in memory of the victims of Tiananmen, was rearrested in January 2024 and is awaiting trial on several charges, including “spreading false information, and inciting terrorism and extremism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”

    The other 13 names belong to people who were not directly involved in the events of 1989 in Beijing, but fought in mainland China and Hong Kong to keep alive the memory of what happened.

    This second list includes Tong Hao (仝浩), a young doctor born in 1987, who was jailed for 1.5 years for publishing a post on 4 June 2020. He was arrested in August 2023 and has been in police custody in Jiangsu province ever since.

    Some of the jailed are dissidents in Hong Kong, like Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, and Chow Hang-tung; the latter, a lawyer, was recently issued a new arrest warrant in prison together with seven other people (including her mother) for commemorating the Tainanmen massacre online.

    As Chinese Human Rights Defenders note, three witnesses to events in Tianamen Square have died in prison in the past 35 years. The most prominent is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), who died in July 2017 from liver cancer in police custody while serving an 11-year sentence since 2009 for his role as a leader in the Charter 08 campaign. A university lecturer in 1989, he was jailed for 18 months for taking part in the 1989 movement.

    Jiangsu writer Yang Tongyan (杨同彦) died a few months after Liu, in November 2017, from a brain tumor. He was serving a 12-year sentence imposed in 2006 for his political activism. He had already spent 10 years in prison for taking part in the 1989 movement.

    Last but not least, we must remember labour activist Li Wangyang (李旺阳), who died under suspicious circumstances on 6 June 2012 while in a hospital guarded by police in Shaoyang, Hunan province. Li, leader of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, was sentenced to a total of 23 years in prison. Chinese authorities claimed he committed suicide by hanging himself in his hospital room, a claim his family has disputed since Li was blind and deaf from torture and would not have been physically able to hang himself. Against the wishes of Li’s family, Hunan authorities conducted their own autopsy and then cremated the body.

    https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Still-in-prison-35-years-after-Tiananmen-Square-60873.html

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • US Defense Secretary visits Cambodia amid concern about China

    U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday for a brief visit, days after Cambodia and China wrapped up their biggest ever military exercise.

    During his one-day visit, Austin will meet top Cambodian officials “to discuss defense issues with the new Cambodian leadership,” the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh said in a statement.  

    “This is the first bilateral visit by a U.S. Secretary of Defense, and it is the second for Secretary Austin following his attendance at the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus in November 2022,” it said.

    Austin arrived in Cambodia from Singapore where he attended the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum. During the conference, the secretary sought to reassure U.S. allies of Washington’s “iron-clad” commitment in the region in the face of growing rivalry with China.

    China and Cambodia have just held a 15-day military exercise, both on land and at sea, with the participation of three Chinese warships, two of which have been in Cambodia for six months at the Ream naval base.

    The two corvettes were still seen docked at the base in Sihanoukville on Monday. The U.S government has said it has “serious concerns” about China’s plans for exclusive control over portions of the Ream Naval Base. Cambodia has repeatedly denied handing the base over to China.

    U.S.-Cambodian relations have become strained during the past decade partly over U.S. concerns about the suppression of Cambodia’s political opposition.

    In 2017, the Cambodian government suspended the joint Angkor Sentinel exercises between the two militaries and in 2018, the U.S. government suspended military assistance to Cambodia in response to its suppression of the  opposition.

    Cambodia under veteran leader Hun Sen rejected U.S. criticism of its domestic political conditions and built closer relations with China. Hun Sen stepped down as prime minister last year with his son, Hun Manet, taking over

    Turning a new page?

    Soon after arriving in Phnom Penh, Austin paid a courtesy call on Hun Sen, who is now president of the Senate. Hun Sen was accompanied by former defense minister Tea Banh in  the meeting.

    Austin also met  Prime Minister Hun Manet, a West Point military academy graduate, and Defense Minister Tea Seiha.

    Hun Manet and Tea Seiha are Hun Sen’s and Tea Banh’s sons, respectively.

    Chhengpor Aun, research fellow at The Future Forum, a Cambodian think-tank, said Austin’s visit gave Cambodia’s new leaders the opportunity to highlight more balance in their country’s diplomacy.

    “Secretary Austin will be much welcomed in Phnom Penh in general because his presence will help back up the Cambodian government’s attempt to prove it is still on the course of its promised neutrality in foreign relations,” said Chhengpor Aun.

    “The Ream naval base, the ever-growing Sino-Cambodian defense relations, and strained military-to-military ties between Phnom Penh and Washington will highly likely dominate Secretary Austin’s meetings with senior Cambodian officials.”

    Ream.JPG
    Sailors stand guard near petrol boats at the Cambodian Ream Naval Base in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, July 26, 2019. (Reuters/Samrang Pring)

    Another analyst – Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute – said that Austin’s decision to visit Cambodia instead of the close ally the Philippines or newly elevated strategic comprehensive partner Vietnam, “reflects the U.S.’s attempt to reconcile deteriorating U.S.-Cambodia relations.”

    “With Phnom Penh successfully transitioning leadership from Hun Sen to his son Hun Manet, Washington likely views this as a good moment for rapprochement,” Giang told Radio Free Asia, adding that while sensitive topics such as Chinese influence and the Ream naval base are likely be discussed, he thinks both sides “will focus more on potential cooperation and common interests, particularly as Cambodia will serve as the coordinator of the U.S.-ASEAN Dialogue Relations from 2024 to 2027.”

    The state-aligned Khmer Times newspaper said that with Hun Manet’s “outward-looking policies,” there’s a unique prospect to recalibrate any misunderstanding and to start a new chapter in the two countries’ relationship, provided that both sides “are genuinely sincere with each other.”

    The article by Pou Sothirak, senior advisor to the Cambodian Center for Regional Studies, and Him Raksmey, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Regional Studies suggested that the first thing for the U.S. to do wais to rethink its policy of targeted sanctions on Cambodian officials and members of the business elite, and restrictions on trade preferences “which are ineffective and counterproductive, compelling Cambodia deeper into economic reliance on China.”

    The Future Forum’s Chhengpor Aun agreed that the new generation of Cambodian leaders “presents a window of opportunities for improvement of U.S. relations” as Cambodia wants to secure a stable state of relations with the U.S., now its biggest export destination.

    Cambodia sold US$8.89 billion worth of goods to the U.S. in 2023, about 40% of its total exports, according to the Cambodian General Department of Customs and Excise. 

    However, “if the visit aims to woo Cambodia away from China or to push political reforms in Phnom Penh, Secretary Austin can be disappointed,” said Chhengpor Aun.

    “Sino-Cambodian ties are important for Phnom Penh political elites – be it the old guards or the new princeling generation – in terms of political and regime security,” he said.

    Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US, China defense chiefs meet in hope of easing  tension

    Defense chiefs from China and the United States met in Singapore on Friday at a security forum in an encounter aimed at improving communication between the two powers amid rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific region.  

    Dong Jun and Lloyd Austin had a one-hour meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum, being held this year from May 31 to June 2.

    Few details emerged from the closed-door meeting but Chinese defense ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said that Dong and Austin discussed “Taiwan, the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the conflict in Gaza” during talks he described as “constructive.”

    Wu told reporters that the Chinese minister warned the U.S. against “interfering in China’s affairs with Taiwan.”

     A U.S. spokesman said that Austin “expressed concern about recent provocative PLA activity around the Taiwan Strait,” referring to the Chinese military by its official name, the People’s Liberation Army. 

    “He reiterated that the PRC should not use Taiwan’s political transition – part of a normal, routine democratic process – as a pretext for coercive measures,” the spokesman, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, said in a statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

    A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the meeting marked an “important step” in opening lines of communication.

    The official said Austin also brought up China’s nuclear, space and cyber developments.

    Dong is the third Chinese defense minister – after Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe – that Austin has seen in three consecutive years at the Shangri-La Dialogue as secretary of defense, but the second minister that he’s held talks with as Li declined the offer of a meeting in 2023.

    The two defense chiefs had a conversation via video last month to discuss bilateral relations, as well as regional and global security issues.

    Military ties between China and the U.S. have been fraught with problems that show no sign of abating as Beijing ramps up aggression against the democratic island of Taiwan and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

    The U.S., at the same time, has also been holding military exercises with allies in the region to emphasize its “free and open Indo-Pacific” doctrine.

    Lloyd Austin.jpg
    U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, center, walks out after a bilateral meeting with China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun on the sidelines of the 21st Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

    Analysts said that the Dong-Austin meeting, the first in-person talks between defense chiefs since 2022, indicates an attempt to restore communication and mend ties by both sides, but they had very low expectations for much more.

    Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities, a U.S. think tank, told RFA that he had long advocated for “more sustained, widespread, longer and deeper engagement between the U.S. and Chinese military establishments.”

    “But what we have now is very narrow, only at the very top level, and extremely brief,” he said. “It’s better than a handshake, but not by much.”

    “Such ‘in the spotlight’ engagements also tend to push the already truncated meetings into ‘gotcha’ moments where leaders aim for soundbites to impress the audience at home,” said Golstein, a China expert who spent 20 years at the U.S. Naval War College.

    Friction points

    Both Austin and Dong plan to speak at the Shangri-La Dialogue to outline their countries’ approaches to global and regional security.

    Austin is due to speak on Saturday and Dong on Sunday. 

    The Chinese admiral, who took office in December after a major shake-up at China’s ministry of national defense, is expected to take a tougher stance against “trouble-stirring by countries from outside the region,” according to Chinese media.

    Onn Thursday, a ministry spokesperson condemned the U.S. deployment of an intermediate range missile system during recent Balikatan military drills in the Philippines, saying it brought risk of war in the region.

    “There are a host of friction points between the U.S. and China on the security front, the most prominent of which include Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Ukraine,” said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii.

    In Vuving’s opinion, both China and the U.S. would seek to use  the Shangri-La Dialogue to “strike the weak points of the other.”

    “China will likely portray the U.S. as an interventionist that stirs up tensions everywhere it gets involved, from Taiwan to the South China Sea to Ukraine to Gaza,” the political scientist said.

    “The U.S. will heavily criticize China’s coercive actions, especially over Taiwan and in the South China Sea. It may also criticize China’s non-transparent practice regarding Ukraine and bases in Cambodia,” he added.

    During the teleconference in April, the Pentagon chief “underscored the importance of respect for high seas freedom of navigation guaranteed under international law, especially in the South China Sea” to his Chinese counterpart.

    The Shangri-La Dialogue, held by the International Institute for Strategic Studies since 2002, has become a major platform for government officials and security experts to discuss regional security. 

    Chinese experts, however, take a dim view of the forum. China’s state-run tabloid Global Times quoted unidentified  analysts as saying that while the conference presented opportunities for Beijing to set the record straight, “it could also be a stage where Western countries use to launch malicious accusations against China.”

     Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is expected to deliver a keynote speech on Friday evening, in which he will talk about the South China Sea and other challenges that his country faces.

    Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China suspends tariff arrangements on 134 items under Taiwan trade deal

    China announced on Friday a suspension of some preferential tariff arrangements from next month under its only trade pact with Taiwan, accusing the island of “discriminatory” restrictions on Chinese products.

    The decision would affect 134 items under the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, or ECFA, from June 15, the Customs Tariff Commission, which is under the State Council, said in a statement.

    Base oils, lithium-ion batteries, racing bikes, television cameras, certain woven fabrics and various machine tools are among the 134 items.

    The ECFA, which was signed in 2010, includes 806 items approved for tariff reductions and agreements to move forward on further trade liberalization.

    “Taiwan authorities failed to take any actions to remove its trade restrictions [on mainland Chinese products],” said the commission. “Taiwan’s unilateral adoption of discriminatory restrictions and prohibitions on the export of mainland products violates the provisions in the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement.”

    China said last year that its eight-month investigation had found that Taiwan was blocking 2,509 mainland Chinese mineral, agricultural and textile goods from reaching the island. The investigation covered some items in the trade deal.

    Letter of protest

    Also on Friday, Japan’s Sankei Shimbun daily reported that the Chinese Consul General in Osaka had sent a letter of protest to Japanese lawmakers who traveled to Taiwan to attend the inauguration of Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te on May 20.

    The Chinese Consul General in Osaka, Xue Jian, sent the letters to some members of the Japan-Taiwan Diet Members’ Consultative Council, a bipartisan group of pro-Taiwanese lawmakers, on May 24, protesting against their attendance at the inauguration.

    More than 30 Japanese lawmakers attended Lai’s ceremony in Taipei.

    In the letter, seen by Sankei, Xue called the inauguration “a very wrong political signal to support the ‘Taiwan independence’ divisive forces,” and criticized Lai as “an inflexible and stubborn molecule who speaks ‘Taiwan independence’ in a very vicious way.”

    “The Taiwan issue is a red line that must not be crossed as it is at the core of China’s core interests,” Xue said in the letter. “The political foundation of Sino-Japanese relations and the basic trust between the two countries are at stake.”

    “We strongly hope that you will safeguard the grand scheme of Sino-Japanese relations through your actual actions by not having any contact with Taiwan,” he added.

    Yuichiro Wada, a lawmaker from the Nippon Ishin no Kai who received the letter, told Sankei that it was a “very intimidating threat and a way of thinking that ignores the will of the people of Taiwan.” 

    “If China’s claims are true, tensions in the Taiwan Strait will escalate even further,” Wada said, adding that “Japanese lawmakers should work with Taiwan more firmly.”

    China has made clear its opposition to new Taiwanese leader Lai.

    Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office accused him of sending “dangerous signals” that hampered peace and stability.

    China sees Lai as an advocate for Taiwan’s independence, and last week held two days of military drills in waters near the island. Lai has said he wants to maintain the status quo between the island and the mainland.

    China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. Since separating from mainland China in 1949, Taiwan has been self-governing.

    Edited by Mike Firn.





    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • If The Wars Go On

    I suppose my title could have been couched in the singular form, as Hermann Hesse, the Nobel Prize winning German/Swiss author, did with his collection of anti-war essays about World War I (the war to end all wars that didn’t), If The War Goes On . . .  

    Or more appropriately, I might have eliminated that conditional “If” since it seems Pollyannish.

    It’s a long hard road, this anti-war business.  During the first Cold War and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the early sixties when Kennedy and Krushchev narrowly avoided blowing the world to smithereens, Bob Dylan put it right in his fierce song, Masters of War:

    (Verse 1)

    Come, you masters of war
    You that build the big guns
    You that build the death planes
    You that build all the bombs
    You that hide behind walls
    You that hide behind desks
    I just want you to know
    I can see through your masks

    (Verse 3)

    Like Judas of old
    You lie and deceive
    A world war can be won
    You want me to believe
    But I see through your eyes
    And I see through your brain
    Like I see through the water
    That runs down my drain

    Indeed there is a system of war that guarantees that the various wars go on and on ad infinitum, and they are linked.  It is why the warfare state has killed our anti-war leaders, first and foremost JFK for turning against war in the last year of his presidency.  Then in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in quick succession.  It is why if you dare to look around the world today, you will see that there is a series of wars happening, not only in the obvious places like Ukraine and Gaza, but in places that you may never have heard of, and if you peek a bit further into their causes, you will discover that a familiar culprit with 750 plus military bases around the world has its hand in most of them – the United States of America.

    These wars have their cold and hot phases.  There are days when the corporate media let them sleep and other times when the same media wake them a bit, but never enough to wake their readers up to the reality of the deadly game.  That is the media’s job as stenographers for the warfare state.  Wars being essentially the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne wrote long ago, they provide vast profits for the military-industrial complex/Wall St., whether they are in preparation or in operation, awake or asleep, hot or cold.  Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst with a moral conscience, has aptly named this vast interlocking propaganda apparatus the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank complex, MICIMATT.  It is a complex that blatantly serves the interests of the masters of war who “ain’t worth the blood/that runs in [their] your veins,” in Dylan’s words.

    The preparation for war is war.  What is prepared must be used up, so other weapons can be prepared to be used up, so other weapons can be prepared to be used up, and on and on until one day no one is left to use anything, for the world will be used up in a nuclear conflagration.  These weapons are produced in nice clean factories that pay good wages to people who take their pay and go their way, giving their souls to the killers.  For the U.S. economy is built on the waging of wars so continuous that it is nearly impossible to find a break between its hot and cold phases, or what seems like decent employment and the diabolic.  They are so intertwined.  It is a system of capitalistic finance, a revolutionary system that builds to destroy.

    The U.S spends nearly $900  billion dollars annually on “defense” spending; this is more than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan combined.  The U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that.  And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their insouciance and silence.  That their country is spending up to 2 trillion dollars on modernizing its nuclear weapons disturbs them  not.  It is a death cult.  Some – as I myself have done mistakenly – talk about the “deep state” or some other deceptive phrase that conceals the truth that the official state is the “deep state.”  It stares us in the face, but many refuse to stare it back down.  It is too obvious, standing, as it does, in the way of a life of illusions.

    And what is equally apparent today – or should be if one is not asleep – is that because of the war policies of the U.S., the chances of another world war and the use of nuclear weapons is rising by the day.  Despite all its denials to the contrary, the US/NATO is pushing for open warfare with Russia that will involve the use of nuclear weapons.

    Our masters of war are pushing us toward a nuclear abyss.

    In a recent perceptive article, “Russia and China Have Had Enough,” Pepe Escobar writes truths many prefer not to hear.  That there is no split between Russia and China but the opposite – a rock solid Russia-China strategic partnership and a determination to oppose and defeat the U.S./UK/NATO hybrid war tactics across Eurasia and the Middle East.  That the more these U.S.-led forces attempt to destroy Russia, the more the expanding alliances involved in the Shanghai Cooperative Agreement (SCO) and the expanding BRICS partnerships of emerging economies (originally just Brazil, Russia, India, and then South Africa; now also Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, with many more countries waiting to join) will gain in power.  In Escobar’s words, “. . . the Global Majority is on the move: Russia is closely cooperating, increasingly, with scores of nations in West Asia, wider Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

    Despite this fact, the United States and its allies blithely continue as if their control of the world order is secure.  That they can butcher and badger the world into submission.  The insane are usually deluded, but when they control nuclear weapons, the people of the world need to awaken.

    Ray McGovern, a Russia expert, (see raymcgovern.com) has echoed Escobar on the absurdity of the Russian China split; has emphasized how Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians has made it an isolated but desperate pariah state; and how the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine is leading to the increased use of  U.S. tactical nuclear weapons that could lead to full-scale nuclear war.  He is not alone in this warning.

    There are many signs that we are moving toward a nuclear war with calls for U.S./NATO to support more strikes inside Russia, crossing a very dangerous Russian red line.  Russia has made it very clear they will respond.  As politicians of various stripes – French President Macron, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, et al. have ecstatically been urging the Biden administration, who needs no urging, to escalate the war in Ukraine by attacking Russia proper (“The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told The Economist.), Mike Whitney has written about a recent such attack that should send chills down everyone’s spines –  “Washington Attacks Key Elements of Russia’s Nuclear Umbrella Threatening Entire Global Security Architecture.” – but  since the corporate media ignore it, most will dream away and get their barbecues ready for Fourth of July celebrations.  They and the flag-dressed Dolly Parton can sing all they want about when Johnny comes marching home again, but Dolly and no one will be jolly if there are no homes to march to, no Johnnies marching anywhere but to death, no anything.  Just a wasteland.

    Michel Chossudovsky, Ray McGovern, Eva Bartlett, Craig Murray, Patrick Lawrence, Vanessa Beeley, Pepe Escobar, Oliver Stone, Andrew Napolitano, Craig Paul Roberts, Chris Hedges, Alastair Crooke, Caitlin Johnstone, Peter Koenig, Finian Cunningham, Diana Johnstone, Lew Rockwell, and so many other sane but marginalized writers whose names I am omitting as I write quickly, are warning us of our closeness to nuclear annihilation.  Cassandras all, I fear.  Marginalized prophets such as writer and antinuclear activist James W. Douglass (Lightning East to West, JFK and the Unspeakable, etc.) have been issuing such warnings for decades.  It is understandable that so many turn away from such warnings, for the thought of a nuclear war induces deep anxiety hard to control.  But unless the vast majority can break through such reticence and see through the official propaganda, the world will be destroyed by madmen sooner or later.  The signs today all point to sooner, for we are on the edge of the abyss.

    Former British diplomat Alistair Crooke, in a recent article – The brink of dissolution: Neurosis in the West as the levee breaks – writes about how the Biden administration’s policy toward Russia-China, not to say Israel-Palestine, being nothing more than more of the same, is stupid, self-defeating, and very dangerous.  Rather than accepting that its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is a disaster, the U.S. is escalating the conflict to a terrifying level.  Rather than accepting the obvious deep alliance between China and Russian exemplified in the recent hug between Putin and Xi and their joint 8,000 word joint statement, Biden has said, “Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China.” 

    It doesn’t get any stupider.  But when more of the same doesn’t work and you can’t accept the reality of a changing world order, you do more of the same.  Crooke writes:

    The paradox is that Team Biden – wholly inadvertently – is midwifing the birth of a ‘new world’. It is doing so by dint of its crude opposition to parturition. The more the western élites push against the birthing – through ‘saving Zionism’; ‘saving European Ukraine’ and by crushing dissent – perversely they accelerate the foundering of Leviathan.

    President Xi’s double farewell hug for President Putin following their 16-17 May summit nonetheless sealed the birth – even the New York Times, with customary self-absorption, termed the warm embrace by Xi as ‘defiance of the West’.

    The root of the coming dissolution stems precisely from the shortcoming that the NY Times headline encapsulates in its disdainful labelling of the seismic shift as base anti-westernism.

    More of the same, yes, that is Biden’s approach, inflamed regularly by the anti-Russian hatred spewed by The New York Times and its ilk.  It is an obsession bordering on full-fledged madness, yet it is integral to the belief that the U.S. is an empire and will remain one while the rest of the world can go to hell.  Such a mindset is behind the U.S.’s abrogating all the nuclear weapons treaties that provided a semblance of security that nuclear weapons would not be used.

    Crooke ends his piece with these sobering words:

    Put plainly, with the U.S. unable to exit or to moderate its determination to preserve its hegemony, Lavrov [Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister] sees the prospect for increased western weapons provision for Ukraine. The discourse of military escalation is in fashion in Europe (of that there is no doubt); but both in the Middle East and Ukraine, western policy is in deep trouble. There must be doubts whether the West has either the political will, or the internal unity, to pursue this aggressive course. Dragging wars are not traditionally thought to be ‘voter friendly’ when campaigning reaches its peak.

    Let me repeat that last understated sentence: “Dragging wars are not traditionally thought to be ‘voter friendly’ when campaigning reaches its peak.”  And so?  More of the same?

    Ray McGovern suggest what is more likely:

    Israel [is] becoming a dangerous pariah; Ukraine/US/NATO a dangerous loser. As Israel defies the UN, and as the “exceptional” geniuses around Biden ignore Kremlin warnings regarding provocations re Ukraine, the likelihood increases for US use of tactical nukes.

    Desperadoes do desperate things.  In Biden and Netanyahu we have two blood-thirsty nihilists at the end of their ropes.  These masters of war make me think that a better title for this piece would have been:

    If the World Goes On.

    The post If The Wars Go On first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Did Trump say that China has ‘no drug problem’?

    A claim emerged in Chinese-language social media posts that former U.S. President Donald Trump stated in a recent speech that China had no drug problem citing a video as evidence. 

    But the video has been edited to omit a crucial part of his speech in which  he referenced an implied statement made by Chinese President Xi Jinping during an earlier meeting between them.

    The claim was shared on the X social media platform on May 15, 2024.

    “Trump just said China does not have a drug problem!” reads the post in part. 

    The claim was shared alongside a one-minute and 14-second video that shows what appears to be a public speech made by Trump.

    “China has no drug problems. Because they have what’s called a quick trial,” said Trump, as seen in the video. 

    1 (4).png
    Chinese netizens have recently shared a clip of Donald Trump on X, accompanied by claims that the former president had declared “China has no drug problem” in a recent speech. (Screenshot/X)


    But the claim is missing key context. 

    Original video

    A keyword search on Google found the clip was taken from a speech Trump gave at a Las Vegas event  in July 2022.

    At the 12-minute and 50-second mark of the video, Trump states “China has no drug problem, no, China has no drug problem,” after emphasizing the effectiveness of “quick trials” and executions of drug dealers as a deterrent to narcotics trafficking in China.

    However, the video shared by Chinese social media users has been edited to omit a part where Trump was citing Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

    At the video’s 13-minute and 54-second mark, Trump notes that Xi had mentioned to him in a previous conversation that China had no drug problem, citing death penalty measures as effective deterrents against  trafficking. 

    This indicates that Trump’s conversation with Xi could have been the main source of Trump’s remarks.

    A keyword search found such a conversation was cited by several international media outlets, as seen here and here.

    Death penalty against drug trafficking

    A claim that China’s use of the death penalty is an effective deterrent against drug trafficking has been disputed, with different analyses  showing different results. 

    For instance, criminal drug activity in China, such as supply, consumption and abuse of  drugs, had declined on a yearly basis,  according to China’s report on anti-narcotics operations published in 2023, which listed a total of 1.12 million domestic drug users as of the end of 2022,

    In contrast, an article published in June 2023 citing these statistics said that drug prices continued to rise around the country and that the use of online drug trafficking had skyrocketed in recent years, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    Official Chinese statistics cited in a 2017 article by the state-run Xinhua News Agency showed that there were 2.51 million domestic drug users in 2016, following an annual increase of 6.8%.

    Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Untold History of the Cold War, CIA Coups Around the World, and COVID’s Origin

    Professor Jeffrey Sachs is the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is the author of many best selling books, including The End of Poverty and The Ages of Globalization. Here he is with probably the smartest and most accurate assessment of the Ukraine war, and American foreign policy more broadly, ever caught on tape.

    The post The Untold History of the Cold War, CIA Coups Around the World, and COVID’s Origin first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China cracks down on Tibetans during holy month

    Chinese authorities have instructed Tibetan students, government workers and retirees to refrain from engaging in religious activities in Tibet’s capital Lhasa during the Buddhist holy month of Saga Dawa, four sources said.

    The Saga Dawa festival occurs during the fourth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar and runs from May 9 to June 6 this year. 

    For Tibetan Buddhists, it marks the period of Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and parinirvana — the state entered after death by someone who has attained nirvana during their lifetime.

    During the holy month, thousands of religious pilgrims visit temples and walk sacred kora routes around Lingkhor and Barkhor streets in Lhasa, encircling the revered Jokhang Temple. 

    The ritual kora — making a circumambulation around sacred sites or objects as part of a pilgrimage — holds immense significance for Tibetan Buddhists who believe that virtuous deeds performed during Saga Dawa are magnified based on their location.

    A video obtained by Radio Free Asia showed heavy police presence surrounding the Barkhor area — the heart of the capital with its famed pilgrimage circuit — on May 22, the eve of the 15th day of the fourth month of the Tibetan Lunar calendar, considered one of the holiest days during Saga Dawa. 

    Since the start of Saga Dawa, Chinese police have tightened security around key religious sites, including Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, and the Barkhor area, the sources told RFA.

    The measures illustrate the deterioration of religious freedom in Tibet under the Chinese government’s suppression and Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism — a policy that seeks to bring the religion under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.

    Police everywhere

    While devotees were seen on pilgrimage on the other days of Saga Dawa, the 15th day on May 23 saw heightened restrictions, with police stationed along the pathways leading to the Sera, Gandhen and Drepung monasteries, said the sources who declined to be named out of fear of retribution by authorities.

    “There isn’t any place where you don’t see police and interrogation stations,” one of the sources told RFA. 

    Tibetans line up to offer prayers as they mark the day of Buddha's birth, death and enlightenment at the Tsuklakhang temple complex in Dharamshala, India, May 23, 2024. (Ashwini Bhatia/AP)
    Tibetans line up to offer prayers as they mark the day of Buddha’s birth, death and enlightenment at the Tsuklakhang temple complex in Dharamshala, India, May 23, 2024. (Ashwini Bhatia/AP)

    The Chinese government has increased the number of police checkpoints in and around Lhasa, and authorities have been interrogating Tibetans spontaneously, the person said. 

    Individuals who do not have a shenfenzhang, or Chinese resident identity card, are prohibited from visiting temples, leading to the heightened restrictions now in effect, said a second source. 

    “During our visits to circumambulate the holy sites, Chinese police regularly inspect everyone’s identity cards and engage in arguments,” said a third source. 

    “Having to engage in disputes with the Chinese police takes an emotional toll on us, and this is one of the reasons why many are afraid of engaging in religious activities as often as they’d like,” he said.

    A Nepalese monk lights a butter lamp during Saga Dawa at Swayambhunath, one of the holiest Buddhist stupas in Nepal, in Kathmandu, May 24, 2013. (Prakash Mathema/AFP)
    A Nepalese monk lights a butter lamp during Saga Dawa at Swayambhunath, one of the holiest Buddhist stupas in Nepal, in Kathmandu, May 24, 2013. (Prakash Mathema/AFP)

    Facial recognition technology is pervasive at key pilgrimage sites and authorities regularly frisk Tibetans making pilgrimages, said a fourth source.

    Flag-raising festival

    Additionally, during the Ngari Flag Raising Festival in Purang county, called Pulan in Chinese, of Ngari Prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, ​​Chinese authorities increased security  as people gathered on May 23 for the annual ceremony, and banned the use of drones during the event, according to the sources. 

    The annual tradition of hoisting a large central prayer flag pole in front of Mount Kailash in Tibet began in 1681 during the time of the 5th Dalai Lama.

    Buddhist monks and Hindu holy men sit by a roadside expecting alms as Tibetans mark the day of Buddha's birth, death and enlightenment in Dharamsala, India, May 23, 2024. (Ashwini Bhatia/AP)
    Buddhist monks and Hindu holy men sit by a roadside expecting alms as Tibetans mark the day of Buddha’s birth, death and enlightenment in Dharamsala, India, May 23, 2024. (Ashwini Bhatia/AP)

    In a government notice dated May 16, the Pulan County Public Security Bureau in Talqin said the use of drones and other aircraft during the Saga Dawa flag raising festival was prohibited and that violators would be punished. 

    Tibetans who attended the event were subjected to extensive questioning and coerced into agreeing to uphold social order and refraining from causing discord, said one of the sources.

    Police instructed people not to share photos or videos of the festival on social media, he said.

    Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan and by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Pelbar and Sonam Lhamo for RFA Tibetan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Hong Kong police arrest six people under new security law

    Six people including barrister held for social media posts before Tiananmen Square anniversary

    Hong Kong police have arrested six people, marking the first time that the city’s new national security law, known as Article 23, has been used against suspects since it was implemented in March.

    The six people, aged between 37 and 65, are accused of publishing messages with seditious intent ahead of an “upcoming sensitive date”, according to a police statement.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Newly Elected Leader of Taiwan Says He’s the Only Legitimate Ruler over All of China

    The newly elected leader of Taiwan, Lai Ching-te, said in his May 20 inaugural speech, that all of China is one country, which is ruled by the leader of Taiwan, himself. His argument for this was that when the forces of (the Truman-backed) Chiang Kai-shek, who were beaten by the forces of Mao Tse-tung, escaped to the Japanese-occupied island of Taiwan after Japan was defeated in WW2, they set up a Government there and proclaimed it to be the Government of China and created a ‘Constitution’ for it that asserted itself to be the Constitution for all of China.

    However, according to the “Constitution of the Republic of China (Taiwan)”, which was publicly announced on 1 January 1947, that narrative is simply not true: the escapees from mainland China who had set up that government in Taiwan, made no claim at that time alleging they controlled and ruled over anything but “Taiwan.” (On the other hand, the Truman Administration got Taiwan’s government appointed to the China-seats at the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly, and this remained in force until 25 October 1971 when mainland China received those seats instead.)

    Lai’s speech ignored this historical fact — that the Constitution alleged to pertain only to Taiwan — and stated the opposite, by using the following argument:

    We have a nation insofar as we have sovereignty. Right in the first chapter of our Constitution, it says that “The sovereignty of the Republic of China shall reside in the whole body of citizens,” and that “Persons possessing the nationality of the Republic of China shall be citizens of the Republic of China.” These two articles tell us clearly: The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other. All of the people of Taiwan must come together to safeguard our nation; all our political parties ought to oppose annexation and protect sovereignty; and no one should entertain the idea of giving up our national sovereignty in exchange for political power.

    The U.S.-empire propaganda vehicle, Britain’s Financial Times, grudgingly headlined on May 21, “China has a point about Taiwan’s new leader: Lai Ching-te’s language on sovereignty has already strayed from the path taken by his more cautious predecessor”, and reported:

    China is right to say that Lai is straying from the path of his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen — a leader whom China refused to engage but who managed to keep a delicate peace. And some question the wisdom of taking such a gamble at a time of high tension.

    “Lai’s stance is a step back towards more confrontation, undoing much of Tsai’s line,” says Chao Chun-shan, a Taiwan academic who advised Tsai and her three predecessors on China policy. He argues that it puts China’s leader Xi Jinping in a difficult spot. “Xi doesn’t want a showdown now, before the result of the US election is clear.”

    Lai ran for president with a pledge to follow Tsai’s China policy and preserve the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. …

    But critics say Lai deviated from his promises this week during an inaugural address that used conspicuously different language, while also spelling out some of the facts that most jar Beijing.

    They failed to identify what ‘facts’ they were referring to there, but said only:

    He cited the ROC constitution’s language that sovereignty resides with the people, who are of ROC nationality. “This tells us clearly: the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other,” he concluded.

    While this textual analysis may verge on hair splitting, China policy experts say Lai is in danger of upending the ambiguity that has provided political space to allow Beijing’s territorial claim to sit alongside Taiwan’s de facto independence without sparking conflict.

    “He is raising the stakes by stressing a difference in sovereignty between the two countries,” says Tso Chen-dong, a professor at National Taiwan University who has advised the Kuomintang (KMT), the opposition party that embraces the notion of Taiwan being part of a greater Chinese nation. The KMT argues the ROC’s territory, under its constitution, still includes all of China; what divides it from Beijing is not a battle over sovereignty, but a question of jurisdiction.

    Even the pro U.S-empire “Course Hero” online site gets the history here right when it says:

    In 1949, China ended a long civil war. The victorious communist forces led by Mao Zedong established their capital in Beijing. About two million supporters of the losing side, known as the nationalists, retreated to Taiwan. China was divided between two governments, one on the mainland and one in Taiwan, that each considered itself China’s legitimate ruler. The government on the mainland never gave up its claim on Taiwan, and Taiwan never declared independence.

    Lai did in his inaugural speech go even beyond declaring Taiwan’s independence — he declared himself to be the ruler of all of China, including mainland China. He is demanding to reverse the fact that Mao won that civil war and that Chiang lost the civil war.

    By contrast, the Financial Times article said “Lai spoke of ‘China’ throughout. He also tackled the controversial issue of sovereignty head-on.”

    The tactics by which U.S.-and-allied propaganda-vehicles warp meanings, and warp realities, 180 degrees to their exact opposites, are instructive models for any of the sophistry professions.

    Also on May 21, the house-organ of the real China headlined “’Lai-style Taiwan independence’ agenda is a dead-end: Global Times editorial” and opened:

    On May 20, Lai Ching-te assumed the role of Taiwan region’s new leader and delivered his inaugural speech. Lai shamelessly stated in his speech that “the Republic of China Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation” and “the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other,” spewing various “Taiwan independence” fallacies and hostile provocations against the Chinese mainland, once again exposing his stubborn nature as “a worker for Taiwan independence.” This speech can be described as a blatant “Taiwan independence manifesto” and “a declaration of harm to Taiwan.” It is extremely dangerous, and the Taiwan compatriots should be particularly vigilant and united in opposition.

    We noticed that in this speech, the term “democracy” was mentioned 31 times, and “peace” 21 times, which precisely exposes the anxiety of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities – they are well aware that what they are doing now is pushing Taiwan into a dangerous pit of war and danger, hence desperately using “democracy” as a fig leaf and talisman to cover themselves. It is clear to all discerning eyes that the so-called “democracy” is nothing but inferior makeup smeared on the face of “Taiwan independence,” unable to conceal its true face of “seeking independence by relying on foreign support and by force.”

    In the positioning of cross-Straits relations, Lai boldly defines the two sides of the Straits as “two countries,” listing “Taiwan,” “Republic of China Taiwan,” and “Republic of China” as so-called “national names,” further advancing on the “one China, one Taiwan” path of “Taiwan independence.” This blatant “two states” theory cannot change the fact that Taiwan is only a part of China, nor can it stop the historical trend of reunification of the motherland. Its only effect is to exacerbate the tension in the Taiwan Straits and make Taiwan society pay a high price for the reckless gamble of “Taiwan independence.”

    While treating compatriots from the mainland as “foreigners,” Lai in his speech regards Western anti-China forces as “family members,” throughout the speech filled with servility and begging for mercy from Western anti-China forces, which is very shameful. In order to gain the support of Western anti-China forces, he claims that “the world greeting a new Taiwan,” Taiwan is “an important link in the global chain of democracies,” ” Taiwan is strategically positioned in the first island chain,” and so on. These remarks of selling out Taiwan treat the hard-earned social achievements and wealth accumulated by the Taiwan residents for decades as offerings to anti-China forces in the West, reducing Taiwan to a pawn of the US and giving it the appearance of “unworthy descendants.”

    Even more dangerous is the subtle manifestation of the arrogant ambition of “seeking independence by force” in his speech. On the one hand, Lai echoes the fallacies of certain Western countries, smearing the mainland as a “threat”; on the other hand, he attempts to indoctrinate the residents in Taiwan into cannon fodder for “Taiwan independence,” openly advocating for raising the citizens’ “defense awareness,” fully exposing the sinister intention of sacrificing innocent people on the island for the selfish desire of “Taiwan independence.” …

    The U.S. Government said, and signed with China’s Government, in 1972, the Shanghai Communique, including “The U.S. side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” George W. Bush’s Administration tried unsuccessfully in 2007 to outlaw internationally the phrase “Taiwan is a part of China”; and, so, the Shanghai Communique has remained the official U.S. Government policy to this day. (It hopes to get China to invade Taiwan in order for the U.S. to have a supposed pretext to then ‘defend that independent nation’ ‘against China’s aggression’, by invading China.)

    On 19 July 2023, I headlined and documented “Biden Wants to Invade/Conquer China”. It opened:

    His plan is to arm Taiwan and entice it to announce its complete independence from China — that Taiwan is no mere province of China but instead an independent country — which announcement would then immediately force China either to invade China or else to accept Taiwan’s becoming a separate and independent country.

    Taiwan’s new leader has complied with that, even in his inaugural address. Will Biden go to war against China in the months leading up to the November 5 U.S. elections if China invades Taiwan in order to make clear to Taiwan’s voters that they had been suckered by U.S.-imperial propaganda to choose as their ‘President’ someone who would declare that Taiwan is not only independent of China but ruling over China? How much international backing would the U.S. regime have if it did that?

    Taiwan’s billionaires — like Taiwan’s public — are hardly unified about whether Taiwan should concede that it is a Province of China (as it long had been), On 7 August 2023, the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post headlined “Two titans of tech are offering two very different views of Taiwan” and reported that whereas Foxconn’s leader Terry Guo was opposed to the independence movement and thought it wouldn’t win power, “Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) who is often called the godfather of the island’s tech industry, said he didn’t think there was likely to be a war across the Taiwan Strait,” and,

    We all hope he is right, but of course he would say that. After all, some Washington politicians have openly declared that at the first sign of conflict, the US military would blow up all of TSMC chip foundries to deny them to the mainland Chinese.

    These billionaires are aware that the independence movement threatens them, but do nothing about it. On the other hand, Radio Taiwan International headlined on 16 August 2022, “UMC Founder: KMT needs to give up ‘one China policy’” and opened:

    United Microelectronics (UMC) Founder Robert Tsao says the Kuomintang (KMT) party needs to give up its one China policy. He made the remarks in an interview with Radio Taiwan International on Tuesday.  The UMC is the world’s second-largest contract microchip maker.

    Tsao recently announced he is donating NT$3 billion (US$100 million) for Taiwan’s defense. As China has been elevating its military threat against Taiwan, he said the people of Taiwan need to be determined to strengthen the nation’s defense abilities to deter China from attacking Taiwan.

    He criticized the opposition KMT’s 1992 Consensus policy in which Taiwan and China agree to one China, but each side has its own interpretation. He said that’s because China has never accepted another interpretation.

    On 15 January 2024, Australia’s Financial Review bannered “Billionaire urges Taiwan to ‘prepare for the worst’”, and reported:

    Billionaire Robert Tsao warns that Taiwan’s 23 million people must be prepared for an eventual war with China, even though the risk of an invasion has eased while Xi Jinping fights economic challenges at home.

    The 76-year-old founder of one of Taiwan’s first semiconductor manufacturers has retired from big business to devote his life to what he believes is protecting the island nation’s interests from its aggressive neighbour.

    So, not only is he not doing nothing about it, but he is actually encouraging what America’s Government is encouraging (by its donating U.S. weapons to Taiwan): an open public declaration of Taiwan’s independence from China.

    The only difference from Lai’s policy is that the policy of Tsao and unofficially of the current U.S. Government is that Taiwan and China are two separate countries and are at war against each other.

    That policy, of course, is exactly what the world’s biggest armaments manufacturers, which are headquartered in the United States, would want and lobby for. Whether Tsao is receiving any behind-the-scenes financial benefits from the U.S. for this isn’t yet known.

    The post The Newly Elected Leader of Taiwan Says He’s the Only Legitimate Ruler over All of China first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XV Nagasaki, 1982, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    For Prabir, who is now out of jail.

    On the evening of 14 May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken climbed onstage at Barman Dictat in Kyiv, Ukraine, to pick up an electric guitar and join the Ukrainian punk band 19.99. Ukrainians, he said, are ‘fighting not just for a free Ukraine, but for a free world’. Blinken and 19.99 then played the chorus of Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’, entirely ignoring the implications of its lyrics – much like Donald Trump, who, to Young’s irritation, used the chorus in his 2015–2016 presidential campaign.

    In February 1989, the day after Young received the news that his band’s tour in the USSR fell through, he penned the song’s lyrics, resting on his criticisms of the Reagan years and the first month of George H. W. Bush’s presidency. While it sounds patriotic on the surface, that song – like Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ (1984) – is deeply critical of the hierarchies and humiliations of capitalist society.

    The three verses of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ paint a picture of despair (‘people shufflin’ their feet/ people sleepin’ in their shoes’) defined by the drug epidemic plaguing the poor (a woman ‘puts the kid away/ and she’s gone to get a hit’), the collapse of educational opportunities (‘there’s one more kid/ that will never go to school’), and a growing population that lives on the street (‘we got a thousand points of light/ for the homeless man’). Springsteen’s song, written in the shadow of the US war on Vietnam (‘so they put a rifle in my hand/ sent me off to a foreign land/ to go and kill the yellow man’), also captured the strangulation of the working class in the US, many of whom were unable to get a job after returning from a war they did not want (‘down in the shadow of the penitentiary/ out by the gas fires of the refinery/ I’m ten years burning down the road/ nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go’).

    These are songs of anguish, not anthems of war. To chant ‘born in the USA’ or ‘keep on rockin’ in the free world’ does not evoke a sense of pride in the Global North but a fierce criticism of its ruthless wars. ‘Keep on rockin’ in the free world’ is pickled in irony. Blinken did not get it, nor did Trump. They want the allure of rock and roll, but not the acidity of its lyrics. They do not understand that Neil Young’s 1989 song is the soundtrack of the resistance to the US wars that followed against Panama (1989–1999), Iraq (1990–1991), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001–2021), Iraq (2003–2011), and many more.


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XIII Death of the American Prisoners of War, 1971, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    Blinken went to Kiev to celebrate the passing of three bills in the US House of Representatives that appropriate $95.3 billion for the militaries of Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United States. This is in addition to the more than $1.5 trillion that the US spends on its military every year. It is obscene that the US continues to supply Israel with deadly munitions for its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including the $26.4 billion it promised to Israel in the new bills while feigning concern for the starvation and slaughter of Palestinians. It is ghastly that the US continues to prevent peace talks between Ukraine and Russia while funding the former’s demoralised military (including $60.8 billion for weapons in the new bills alone) as the US seeks to use the conflict to ‘see Russia weakened’.

    At the other end of Eurasia, the US has, similarly, used the issue of Taiwan in its efforts to see China ‘weakened’. That is why this supplemental appropriation allots $8.1 billion for ‘Indo-Pacific security’, including $3.9 billion in armaments for Taiwan and $3.3 billion for submarine construction in the US. Taiwan is not alone as a potential frontline state in this pressure campaign against China: the newly formed Squad, made up of Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the US, uses solvable conflicts between the Philippines and China as opportunities to weaponise dangerous manoeuvres with the hope of provoking a reaction from China that would give the US an excuse to attack it.


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XIV Crows, 1972, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    Our new dossier, The New Cold War is Sending Tremors Through Northeast Asia, published in collaboration with the International Strategy Centre (Seoul, South Korea) and No Cold War, argues that ‘the US-led New Cold War against China is destabilising Northeast Asia along the region’s historic fault lines as part of a broader militarisation campaign that extends from Japan and South Korea, through the Taiwan Strait and the Philippines, all the way to Australia and the Pacific Islands’. The bogeyman for this build-up in what the US calls the ‘Indo-Pacific’ (a term developed to draw India into the alliance to encircle China) is North Korea, whose nuclear and missile programmes are used to justify asymmetrical mobilisation along the Pacific edge of Asia. That South Korea’s military budget in 2023 ($47.9 billion) was more than twice North Korea’s GDP ($20.6 billion) in the same year is just one example that highlights this imbalance. This use of North Korea, the dossier argues, ‘has always been a fig leaf for US containment strategies – first against the Soviet Union and today against China’. (You can read the dossier in Korean here).


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XII Floating Lanterns, 1968, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    In the early years of the US development of the ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’, Chinese scholars such as Hu Bo, Chen Jimin, and Feng Zhennan argued that the term was merely conceptual, limited by the contradictions between the countries involved in the development of the Chinese containment strategy. Over the past few years, however, a new view has developed that these shifts in the Pacific pose a serious threat to China and that the Chinese must respond with bluntness to prevent any provocation. It is this situation, characterised by the US’s creation of alliances that are designed to threaten China (the Quad, AUKUS, JAKUS, and the Squad) alongside China’s refusal to bend before the hyper-imperialism of the Global North, that creates a serious threat in Asia.

    The last section of the dossier, ‘A Path to Peace in Northeast Asia’, offers a window into the hopes of the people’s movements in Okinawa (Japan), the Korean peninsula, and China to find a pathway to peace. Five simple principles anchor this path: end the dangerous alliances, US-led war games in the region, and US intervention into the region, and support unity across struggles in the region as well as frontline struggles to end militarisation in Asia. The latter point is being fought on several fronts by those living near Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base and Henoko Bay as well as South Korea’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defence installation and Jeju Naval Base, to name a few.


    Iri and Toshi Maruki, X Petition, 1955, from The Hiroshima Panels.

    Several years ago, I visited the Maruki Gallery outside Higashi-Matsuyama city in Saitama, where I saw the remarkable murals made by Ira Maruki (1901–1995) and Toshi Maruki (1912–2000) to remember the terrible violence of the nuclear bombs that the US government dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These murals, in the traditional Japanese ink wash style sumi-e, depict the immense human toll of the ugliness of modern warfare. Thanks to the chief curator Yukinori Okamura and the international coordinator Yumi Iwasaki, we were able to include some of these murals in our dossier and in this newsletter.

    In 1980, the South Korean military dictatorship arrested Kim Nam-ju (1945–1994) and thirty-five other leftists on the grounds that they were involved in the National Liberation Front Preparation Committee. Kim was a poet and a translator who brought Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Ho Chi Minh’s writings into Korean. While in Gwangju Prison for eight years, Kim wrote a range of powerful poetry, which he was able to smuggle out for publication. One of those poems, ‘Things Have Really Changed’, is about the suffocation of the ambitions of the Korean people over their own peninsula.

    Under Japanese imperialism, if Joseon people
    shouted ‘Long Live Independence!’,
    Japanese policemen came and took them away,
    Japanese prosecutors interrogated them,
    Japanese judges put them on trial.

    Japan withdrew and the US stepped in.
    Now if Koreans
    say ‘Yankee Go Home’,
    Korean police come and take them away,
    Korean prosecutors interrogate them,
    Korean judges put them on trial.

    Things have really changed after liberation.
    Because I shouted ‘Drive out the foreign invaders!’,
    people from my own country
    arrested me, interrogated me, and put me on trial.

    The post Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent 2024 goes to: Iranian hip-hop artist, Uyghur poet and Venezuelan pianist

    Iranian hip-hop artist Toomaj Salehi, Uyghur poet and activist Tahir Hamut Izgil, and Venezuelan pianist and recording artist Gabriela Montero.

    On 22 May 2024) The Human Rights Foundation announced the recipients of the 2024 Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent: Iranian hip-hop artist Toomaj Salehi, Uyghur poet and activist Tahir Hamut Izgil, and Venezuelan pianist and recording artist Gabriela Montero.

    “Their work stands as a testament to extraordinary bravery and ingenuity,” HRF Founder Thor Halvorssen said. This year’s laureates will be recognized during a ceremony on Tuesday, June 4, at the 2024 Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) in Oslo, Norway. Montero will be performing the European and Scandinavian premiere of “Canaima: A Quintet for Piano and Strings” at the Oslo Konserthus.
    The Havel Prize ceremony will also be broadcast live at oslofreedomforum.com.

    Toomaj Salehi is an Iranian hip-hop artist known for lyrics protesting the Iranian regime and calling for human rights. In September 2022, at the height of the nationwide “Women, Life, Freedom” protests, Salehi released several songs supporting women’s rights. One song, “Divination,” with the lyrics, “Someone’s crime was that her hair was flowing in the wind. Someone’s crime is that he or she was brave and…outspoken,” grew in popularity and was sung throughout the protests. Salehi was first arrested in October 2022 and was released on bail in November 2023 after the Iranian Supreme Court overturned his charges of “corruption on Earth,” “propaganda against the system,” “collaboration with a hostile government,” “inciting people to murder and riot,” and “insulting the leadership.” On November 27, 2023, he posted a YouTube video describing the torture and forced confession he experienced during his detention. Three days later, armed plain-clothes agents abducted Salehi. He was subsequently charged in two trials. On April 24, the Isfahan Revolutionary Court sentenced him to death.

    Tahir Hamut Izgil is a prominent Uyghur poet, filmmaker, and activist. He is known for his avant-garde poetry, written in Uyghur and influenced by Uyghur life. Originally from Kashgar, Izgil led the 1989 student movement at the Central Nationalities Institute in Beijing. In the late 1990s, he was arrested on charges related to the possession of sensitive literature, leading to a three-year sentence in forced labor camps. He is among the few Uyghur intellectuals who successfully escaped the region in 2017.Izgil’s new memoir, “Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide,” documents his journey living in and escaping the Uyghur Region, sharing a rare testimony of the Uyghur genocide with the broader world. His book has been listed as one of the “50 notable works of nonfiction” by The Washington Post and as one of the “10 0 Must-Read Books of 2023” by Time Magazine

    Gabriela Montero is a Grammy Award-winning Venezuelan pianist and recording artist. Celebrated for her exceptional musicality and ability to improvise, Montero has garnered critical acclaim and a devoted following on the world stage. Montero’s recent highlights include her first orchestral composition, “Ex Patria,” a tone poem that grew from the human rights struggle in Montero’s native Venezuela. The piece powerfully illustrates and protests Venezuela’s descent into lawlessness, corruption, and violence, winning her first Latin Grammy® for Best Classical Album.Montero is a committed human rights advocate, using her gifts of composition and improvisation as tools of creative dissent. In 2015, she was named an Honorary Consul by Amnesty International. Montero was awarded the 2012 Rockefeller Award for her contribution to the arts and was a featured performer at Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Inauguration. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/10/15/venezuelan-pianist-gabriela-montero-wins-the-2018-beethoven-prize/]

    For more on this Havel Prize and its laureates, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/438F3F5D-2CC8-914C-E104-CE20A25F0726

    https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/announcing-the-2024-havel-prize-laureates?e=f80cec329e

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.