Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen on Monday again threatened to arrest anyone who tries to organize a demonstration in the country against an economic cooperation agreement with Vietnam and Laos that has been a subject of online debate over the last month.
The 1999 agreement between the three countries was aimed at encouraging economic development and trade between Cambodia’s four northeastern provinces and neighboring provinces across the border.
Last month, three activists were arrested on incitement charges after they spoke of concerns that the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Triangle Development Area, or CLV, could cause Cambodia to lose territory or control of some of its natural resources to Vietnam.
The activists made the comments in an 11-minute Facebook video. An angry Hun Sen ordered the arrests and has spoken publicly about the CLV several times since then.
On Monday, Hun Sen warned in a Facebook post of more arrests after overseas Cambodians set up a chat group on the Telegram app where plans for an Aug. 18 demonstration in Phnom Penh against the CLV were being discussed.
The Telegram group was created following a weekend of protests against the CLV among overseas Cambodians living in South Korea, Japan, Canada and Australia.
“My message to all brothers and sisters in this group, I listened to your conversation in the group long enough,” he said. “You are being incited by overseas people.”
‘Try it’
Hun Sen said he has spies in the Telegram group who have sent conversations and names to his private account. He added that he wouldn’t order the arrests for anyone who left the group.
“We cannot let a few people destroy the peace of 17 million people. Some have seen the events in Bangladesh and compared the events in Cambodia,” he said. “Try it. If you consider yourself a strong person, please try.”
Hun Sen stepped down as prime minister last year but remains a powerful force in the country. His son, Hun Manet, succeeded him as prime minister.
Last week, Hun Manet warned Cambodians against protesting against the government, citing Bangladesh’s recent demonstrations in its capital that turned into deadly clashes and caused that country’s leader to resign.
Hun Manet has also tried to reassure Cambodians about the CLV, saying that the agreement won’t result in the loss of any territory.
Soeung Senkaruna, the former spokesman for human rights group Adhoc, said Cambodians both inside and outside the country have the full right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by the Constitution and international law.
Using force to keep people from expressing their opinions shouldn’t happen in a country “that the government claims enjoys democracy and peace,” he said.
Translated Sun Sok Ry. Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.
Russia and North Korea have agreed to cooperate on healthcare, medical education and science, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Under the agreement, Russia and North Korea will work together in areas such as child health, healthy lifestyles and the fight against infectious diseases.
In particular, they will focus on the fight against tuberculosis, human immunodeficiency virus infection, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and hepatitis; prevention and treatment of cardiovascular, endocrine, oncological, among other diseases, the news agency reported on Tuesday.
They will also cooperate in training and retraining of medical professionals and regulation of the distribution of medicines and medical devices.
TASS cited a document published on the Russian legal information portal as saying that the cooperation “takes into account the principle of equality and mutual benefit, and implements measures to ensure the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the people in accordance with the laws of the parties.”
Russia and North Korea have been stepping up cooperation on all fronts since summits between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Russia in September last year and in North Korea in June this year.
Choi Kyu-bin, a research fellow at Seoul-based Institute for Human Rights Studies at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said in a report that North Korea’s vaccination rate was less than 50% for most of last year.
Citing data from the World Health Organisation and the U.N. Children’s Fund, Cho said North Korea had maintained vaccination coverage rates of more than 90% for many vaccines prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but since it closed its borders in 2020, there has been a clear downward trend in vaccination rates.
In 2023, coverage was below 50% for many vaccines, except for the TB vaccine, and none of the 11 vaccines required for children under one year of age had coverage of more than 90%.
For example, coverage of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis primary, or DTP1, vaccine, which children should receive, halved from 98% in 2019 to 41% in 2023.
“Low vaccination rates put children’s health at risk,” Choi said, urging North Korea to step up access to international organizations to ensure smooth vaccine procurement and immunization.
Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
China and the Philippines said they have achieved a “provisional arrangement” on resupply missions by the Philippines to the Second Thomas Shoal, where it maintains an outpost that China objects to, but their accounts of the agreement differed.
The shoal, known in China as Ren’ai Jiao and in the Philippines as Ayungin Shoal, has been at the center of sharply rising tension and confrontation between the two countries, with China being accused of blocking access to Filipino troops stationed there.
On June 17, a Filipino soldier was wounded in an encounter with Chinese coast guard personnel who also confiscated some Philippine guns during a Philippine rotation and resupply mission to the BRP Sierra Madre – an old navy ship that Manila deliberately grounded on the reef in 1999 to serve as its outpost to reinforce its claim.
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Sunday that both countries had “recognized the need to de-escalate the situation in the South China Sea and manage differences through dialogue and consultation.”
The provisional arrangement for the resupply of daily necessities and rotation missions to the BRP Sierra Madre was achieved following the “frank and constructive” discussions at the 9th Bilateral Consultation Mechanism meeting on the South China Sea on July 2, the foreign ministry said, noting that it would not prejudice either side’s position in the disputed waters.
It did not provide any further details.
The hot-headed June 17 encounter raised fears of a more serious clash between U.S. ally the Philippines and China, but both sides agreed at the early July consultation to “de-escalate tensions” in the waters.
On Monday, a spokesperson at China’s foreign ministry said Beijing continued to demand that the Philippines tow away the BRP Sierra Madre and restore the state of hosting no personnel or facilities at the Second Thomas Shoal.
In the meantime, China would allow the Philippines to send living necessities to the personnel on the warship “in a humanitarian spirit” if the Philippines informed it in advance and after on-site verification was conducted, according to the spokesperson.
But if the Philippines were to send large amounts of construction materials to the warship and attempted to build fixed facilities or a permanent outpost, China would “absolutely not accept it and will resolutely stop it,” the spokesperson added.
A Chinese think tank – the South China Probing Initiative – said that with this statement, the two sides may agree to return to the situation between 1999 and 2022 when the Philippines promised not to send construction materials to the Second Thomas Shoal and China would continue to let humanitarian supplies go there.
Analyst Collin Koh from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore wrote on the X social media platform that China’s version of the agreement “draws more questions than not about whether it will hold at all even before the ink is dry.”
In this handout image provided by Armed Forces of the Philippines, a Chinese Coast Guard holds an axe as they approach Philippine troops on a resupply mission in the Second Thomas Shoal at the disputed South China Sea on June 17, 2024. (Armed Forces of the Philippines/AP)
Shortly after the Chinese side issued its statement, Philippine foreign ministry spokesperson Teresita Daza denied that such arrangements as prior notification and on-site confirmation had been made.
“I want to stress that the agreement was concluded with the clear understanding by both sides that it will not prejudice our respective national positions,” she said.
“For the Philippines, this means that we will continue to assert our rights and jurisdiction in our maritime zones as entitled under UNCLOS (U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea).”
The Second Thomas Shoal lies well inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone but also within the self-proclaimed nine-dash line that China draws on its maps to claim historic rights to almost the entire South China Sea.
Maritime expert Ray Powell at Stanford University in the United States said that given the latest exchanges, he was “not sure there is a deal at this point.”
A meeting of foreign ministers from Southeast Asian countries is to take place this week in Vientiane, Laos, and Daza said the Philippines would continue to articulate its positions on the South China Sea issue there.
Edited by Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA and BenarNews Staff.
Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy discusses ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued hostility to compromise and the Biden administration’s ineffectual mediation. Contrary to its claims of brokering peace, the U.S. “will continue to send the weapons” Israel uses to devastate Gaza, unremittingly fueling an increasingly unpopular war, says Levy, who is now president of the U.S./Middle East Project.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
A claim emerged in Chinese-language social media posts in June that Saudi Arabia terminated a 50-year formal agreement with the United States to conduct oil transactions in U.S. dollars, under a deal called the “petrodollar agreement.”
But the claims are false. No known formal deal stipulating that Saudi Arabia must sell oil in U.S. dollars exists. While not formally bound by agreement, Saudi Arabia has in practice conducted all its oil deals over the past several decades entirely in U.S. dollars.
The claims were shared on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, on June 15, 2024.
“The Petrodollar Agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia expired and Saudi Arabia announced on June 9 that it would not renew it. The agreement, reached in 1974, closely linked the U.S. dollar to oil,” the claim reads in part.
Several Weibo influencers and media outlets claimed that Saudi Arabia had decided not to renew an agreement formally requiring all the country’s oil transactions to be conducted in U.S. dollars. (Screenshots/Weibo)
Similar claims have been shared on social media here and here as well as some Chinese and Taiwanese media outlets here and here.
Taiwanese media outlets used such claims to state that the Saudi Arabia-U.S. oil agreement would quickly cease to be effective. (Screenshots/Liberty Times, China Times and YouTube)
But the claims are false. No known formal deal stipulating that Saudi Arabia must sell oil in U.S. dollars exists.
No formal deal
Chinese social media users cited a joint commission for economic cooperation, the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation, as evidence that there is a formal agreement between the two countries to sell oil in dollars.
The commission was formed in June 1974 and expired on June 9, 2024.
But an official at the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. government’s highest auditing body, said the commission did not contain any formal agreement on oil trade in U.S. dollars between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, citing a government report published in March 1979.
The official added that there are no other documents on using U.S. dollars in oil trade between the two countries.
Separately, the American Institute of Economic Research noted in a report that the use of U.S. dollars in oil trade had never been dictated by a formal treaty.
Informal agreement
But the U.S. and Saudi Arabia made an “informal” agreement in 1974 to trade oil in U.S. dollars – a secret deal revealed by Bloomberg in May 2016.
In exchange for agreeing to invest billions of dollars in earnings from these oil sales into U.S. Treasury bonds, Saudi Arabia received large amounts of U.S. military aid and equipment, Bloomberg reported.
An academic paper on U.S. oil hegemony also pointed out that this unofficial agreement between the two countries allowed the dollar to become the standard international oil reserve currency, placing the U.S. in an extremely powerful position as nations continued to rely more and more on oil in the decades following the deal.
Non-dollar oil transactions
Even though there is no formal agreement requiring Saudi Arabia to sell oil in U.S. dollars, and it has shown a willingness to sell oil in other currencies, in practice, it still sells oil exclusively in dollars.
Public records of oil exports show that all of Saudi Arabia’s oil transactions up to the present day have used U.S. dollars as the base currency, with no recorded instances of other currencies being used for any transactions.
However, there has been speculation that Saudi Arabia would begin oil trades in other currencies.
Paul Donovan, chief economist of Global Wealth Management at global financial firm UBS, said, for instance, that non-dollar currencies had always been used in oil trades and that Saudi itself indicated in 2023 it would be “happy to conduct” such transactions.
Similarly, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that 20% of the world’s total oil trade that year was not denominated in dollars and that Saudi Arabia had “recently taken steps laying the groundwork for trade that sidesteps the dollar.”
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 Alan Lu for Asia Fact Check Lab.
We speak with Australian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, a prominent supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who says the publisher’s case is “a big deal” in the country that cut across political divisions. “It’s taken a really big campaign, a really big grassroots campaign by thousands of people in Australia — indeed, millions of people around the world — to bring this to the attention of politicians.” Assange landed in Australia Wednesday after pleading guilty to a single charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act, allowing him to avoid further prison time after years of legal jeopardy.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Julian Assange has landed in Australia a free man, reuniting with his family Wednesday after pleading guilty to one charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act as part of a deal with the Justice Department. The WikiLeaks publisher entered his plea on the Pacific island of Saipan, part of the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, which lets him avoid further prison time following five years behind bars in the U.K. awaiting possible extradition to the U.S. He had been facing a possible 175 years in U.S. prison if convicted on charges related to his publication of classified documents in 2010 that revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This case is an attack on journalism, it’s an attack on the public’s right to know, and it should never have been brought,” the WikiLeaks founder’s wife, Stella Assange, said at a press conference Wednesday. “Julian should never have spent a single day in prison. But today we celebrate, because today Julian is free.” We also play comments from members of Assange’s legal team, Jennifer Robinson and Barry Pollack, who said the use of the World War I-era Espionage Act to go after a publisher put press freedoms at grave risk.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Local governments in China are offering to buy up farms from rural families, offering vouchers for apartments in smaller cities in a bid to encourage more people to give up farming and move into urban areas, according to official announcements posted online this month.
Authorities in the eastern provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejiang and the central province of Hubei are rolling out trial “housing voucher” schemes targeted at rural communities in a bid to boost the country’s flagging real estate sector and accelerate the mass relocation of rural communities, according to announcements posted to official government websites and social media accounts.
But commentators said it doesn’t look like a very attractive deal for families who have farmed the same land for generations.
A farmer plants red pepper seeds with a machine, May 8, 2022, at a field in Bozhou in China’s eastern Anhui province. (AFP)
Rural land in China is typically leased to farmers on 30-year “household responsibility” contracts, with the ownership remaining with the government. In 2016, the administration of supreme party leader Xi Jinping made it easier for farmers to be bought out of those leases.
In a trial being rolled out in Anhui’s Fengyang county from June 20, farming families who voluntarily release their leased farms back to government ownership will be given a subsidy, or voucher, worth 50,000 yuan (US$6884) to help them buy an apartment in a smaller, regional city, according to the Nantong county government’s official WeChat account.
Meanwhile, authorities in Zhejiang’s Changshan county are trialing a scheme that would set the value of the housing voucher based on the size of the farm being handed back to the authorities.
Details of the voucher deal appear to vary from region to region, but are generally being announced by village, township and district governments as part of measures to boost a flagging real estate market, according to announcements seen by Radio Free Asia.
‘Fob them off on us’
In Zhejiang’s Longyou county, voucher holders won’t get their hands on the whole lump sum all at once, instead receiving it in increments across a two-year period.
A farmer who gave only the surname Sang for fear of reprisals said his local government hasn’t announced a similar scheme yet, but that he wouldn’t take it even if they did.
“I’m definitely not giving up this land,” Sang said. “Rural land is supposed to be used for growing food.”
A farmer sprays pesticide with a tractor in a wheat field, Feb. 28, 2023, in Taizhou, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province. (AFP)
“It was handed down to us by our ancestors, so we could grow vegetables and have somewhere to bury the elderly when they die,” he said.
Some online comments appeared to agree.
Blogger Xiao An’s Reason commented: “Nobody wants to buy these apartments, so they’re trying to fob them off on us farmers … they want us to give up our farmland.”
“They will leave us with no place to call home, and turn us into slaves forever,” the blogger wrote.
Authorities in Zhejiang’s Jiangshan city said they would be targeting villages that are prone to flash flooding and landslides, areas with dilapidated housing, and areas designated part of “land improvement” schemes, as well as areas where housing has been deemed to be illegally constructed.
“Those who opt for apartment housing voucher resettlement … shall voluntarily give up the legal right to use their farms, and the right to build on them, and shall vacate their original dwellings and facilities and return them to the village collective,” according to trial regulations published on the municipal government website.
‘Hollow out the countryside’
A June 24 post about the move from the Hebei-based Sina Weibo account @Husky_who_really_keeps_cats commented: “What’s the point of this? If you can’t sell these apartments, then lower the price. They’re just trying to cheat elderly farmers.”
“They want to hollow out the countryside and mess up the cities,” commented @Temple_victory, while @Today_I_woke_up_from_my_dream added: “They have to take away the last bit of security.”
A farmer dries harvested corn at a village, Sept. 21, 2023, in Lianyungang, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province. (AFP)
@A_turtle_is_smaller_than_a_tortoise commented that 50,000 yuan wasn’t much compensation for leased land on which people could at least practice subsistence farming and ensure that everyone had somewhere to live and enough to eat. “They’d be giving up a permanent benefit for 50,000 yuan,” the user wrote.
Other comments pointed out the rapid aging of the population, saying that rural governments don’t have enough people paying into social security schemes to be able to pay pensions to the elderly, while still others said farmers’ pensions were miniscule anyway.
Current affairs commentator Zhang Jianping, who hails from a rural community, said the scheme didn’t take into account the value of farms to farming families.
“They should know that farmers’ houses have been built with the blood and sweat of several generations,” Zhang said. “Grabbing their farms back with a subsidy of just 50,000 yuan shows total disrespect for farmers’ property rights.”
He warned that while the scheme is being trialed as “voluntary,” it could soon become coercive, citing waves of rural land grabs across China over decades of Communist Party rule.
A farmer dries crops during the harvest season, Sept. 22, 2023, in Linyi, in China’s eastern Shandong province. (AFP)
Current affairs commentator Ji Feng said the rural farms are often home to, and support, large families of up to a dozen people.
Farmers, who also move around the country in large numbers in search of work, have typically relied on being able to go back and support themselves through subsistence farming if their lives in urban areas don’t work out, Ji said.
“This practice will push people into a desperate, dead end,” he said. “If the farmers sign up for these schemes, they will have been severely cheated.”
He said the authorities under Xi want to reclaim as much privately controlled land as possible for government use. That could involve selling the land back into private hands for a huge profit, especially if it’s in a more valuable area on the outskirts of a city.
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.
We discuss the plea deal and release of Julian Assange with press freedom advocate Trevor Timm. “Thankfully, Julian Assange is finally going free today, but the press freedom implications remain to be seen,” says Timm, who explains the U.S. espionage case against Assange, which was opened under the Trump administration and continued under Biden. Timm expresses disappointment that Biden chose to continue prosecuting Assange rather than demonstrating his stated support of press freedom. If convicted, Assange could have been sentenced to 175 years in U.S. prison, which Timm calls a “ticking time bomb for press freedom rights.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
New York, June 24, 2024— The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes reports that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be freed from prison in a plea deal with the United States Justice Department.
“Julian Assange faced a prosecution that had grave implications for journalists and press freedom worldwide,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “While we welcome the end of his detention, the U.S.’s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers. This should never have been the case.”
According to news reports, Assange is expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information.
Assange is expected to return to his native Australia once the plea deal is finalized in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific.
Assange was indicted on 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in relation to WikiLeaks publication of classified material, including the Iraq War logs. If convicted under these charges, he would have faced up to 175 years in prison.
CPJ has long opposed U.S. attempts to prosecute Assange and campaigned for his release jointly with other organizations.
Israelis celebrated the return of the four hostages in Saturday’s raid. The four hostages — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv — were all in good medical condition. Just hours after the rescue, thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv and other cities to protest Netanyahu’s government and to call for a deal to free the remaining hostages. We speak to Ami Dar, an Israeli social entrepreneur based in New York, who supports the exchange of hostages and prisoners and a permanent ceasefire deal. “Let’s get all the hostages back, and if that means that every single detainee and prisoner, Palestinian, is freed, then so be it. Life comes first,” says Dar, the executive director of Idealist.org. We also hear more from Maoz Inon, an Israeli peace activist whose parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were killed in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. “We are not going to compromise for anything less than a lasting peace,” he says.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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.
Japan and South Korea have separately imposed sanctions on individuals and entities involved in the arms trade between North Korea and Russia, they announced on Friday, the latest steps aimed at ending help for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Japan said it would impose sanctions on 11 organizations and one individual for their involvement in military cooperation between the two countries.
“Amid Russia’s prolonged aggression in Ukraine, we have decided to freeze the assets of organizations and individuals involved in military cooperation between North Korea and Russia,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said during a regular press conference.
“The transfer of North Korean weapons to Russia is a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions that prohibit the transfer of North Korean weapons and related materials,” Hayashi said, adding that the supply “could further aggravate the situation in Ukraine.”
The sanctions were imposed in co-operation with the United States, he said.
Separately, South Korea announced sanctions on North Korean individuals and Russian vessels for arms trading.
“Seven North Korean individuals and two Russian vessels have been designated for independent sanctions for their involvement in the provision of materials and financing for North Korea’s nuclear and missile development,” South Korea’s foreign ministry said.
The sanctioned entities were also involved in the transport of munitions and the arms trade between Russia and North Korea, the import of refined oil from North Korea, and the earning of foreign currency by North Korean overseas workers, it added.
The ministry reiterated its call for an immediate end to illegal military cooperation between North Korea and Russia.
“Military cooperation, including the Russian-North Korean arms trade, is a clear violation of Security Council resolutions and seriously threatens peace and stability not only on the Korean Peninsula but also in Europe and around the world,” it said.
“The measures were taken in close coordination with friendly countries and will contribute to further tightening the international community’s sanctions network,” it added.
Prior authorization will be required for financial and foreign exchange transactions with individuals on the sanctions list. For ships, they must obtain permission from the administration to enter South Korea.
The sanctions came a day after it was announced that leaders of South Korea, China and Japan will meet on May 26-27 in Seoul for their first trilateral talks in more than four years.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will have bilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday, ahead of their three-way gathering on Monday, said South Korea’s deputy national security adviser, Kim Tae-hyo, adding that the leaders will also discuss “regional and international issues”.
Last week, Australia imposed targeted sanctions against entities linked to the unlawful weapons trade between North Korea and Russia , while the United States also announced sanctions on two Russian individuals and three Russian companies for facilitating arms transfers with the North.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
Australia has imposed targeted sanctions against entities linked to the unlawful weapons trade between North Korea and Russia.
“Australia is imposing targeted financial sanctions, in coordination with international partners, on a further six entities associated with North Korea’s supply of arms and related materiel to Russia,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong in a statement on Friday.
“Australia condemns, in the strongest possible terms, North Korea’s illegal export and Russia’s procurement and use of North Korean ballistic missiles, in support of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.”
Noting the continued transfer of weapons from North Korea to Russia is a flagrant violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, Wong said Australia would work with Western allies to hold Russia and North Korea to account and address the security threat posed by the North.
Wong’s statement came a day after the United States announced sanctions on two Russian individuals and three Russian companies for facilitating arms transfers with Pyongyang.
U.S. Treasury officials said in a statement that the two countries had strengthened their military cooperation over the past year, with the North providing ballistic missiles and munitions to Russia in return for weapons and economic aid.
The U.S., South Korea and others have accused Pyongyang of supplying Moscow with weapons to use in its war in Ukraine – an accusation that both countries have denied.
A now-defunct U.N. panel of experts tasked with investigating violations of sanctions related to North Korea’s prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile programs, released a report in March, detailing with photographs Russia’s arms dealings with North Korea.
A few hours after Australia’s announcement, North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast, the South Korean military said.
“We identified several projectiles believed to be short-range ballistic missiles fired into the East Sea [Sea of Japan] from the Wonsan area of North Korea,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The North Korean missile flew about 300 km (186 miles) before falling into the Sea of Japan, the JCS added.
This is North Korea’s fifth ballistic missile test launch this year.
The JCS said it was analyzing details of the missiles and shared relevant information with the U.S. and Japan.
“We strongly condemn North Korea’s missile launch as a clear act of provocation that seriously threatens the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula,” the JCS said, adding that South Korea will closely monitor the North’s activities.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This story was updated to include information about North Korea’s missile launch.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
The United States will find a way to provide the nuclear-powered submarines promised to Australia as part of the AUKUS security pact despite the massive backlogs plaguing American shipbuilding yards, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Wednesday.
Campbell, who recently departed a role as President Joe Biden’s “Asia czar” to become the second-most senior U.S. diplomat, said it was “fair to say” American submarine production is hampered, but added that there was already a “substantial focus” on the issue at the Pentagon.
Supply-chain issues have hamstrung production at American shipyards, but the billions of dollars of investments made by Canberra in the shipbuilding industry was helping fix that, he explained.
“As is always the case, more money helps,” Campbell said at an event at the Center for a New American Security held to mark a year since the AUKUS submarine deal was unveiled. “AUKUS, in many respects, is a game changer. It is basically finding the way forward.”
National Security Council Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell listens during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to examine his nomination to be Deputy Secretary of State on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in Washington. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP)
Campbell acknowledged the injection of Australian funds – though “very generous” – would not be enough on its own, and that “new investments” and “new capabilities” would be needed “to increase our ability both to service and also produce submarines.”
“Backlogs and bottlenecks have plagued a number of programs,” he said. “There is a very serious endeavor underway to see what steps can be taken to not only to assist a program like AUKUS but, frankly, certain munitions which are central to American military purpose.”
Australia has earmarked a total of AU$368 billion, or about US$245 billion, over the next 30 years as part of the AUKUS pact, which is aimed at countering China’s expansionism in the Indo-Pacific.
AUKUS pact
Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States unveiled the deal in March last year for the latter two nations to arm Australia with nuclear submarines over the coming decades under AUKUS.
As part of that, the United States committed to selling between three and five Virginia-class nuclear submarines, which use conventional weapons, to Canberra over the next decade in exchange for some US$3 billion of Australian investment in American shipyards.
But concerns have emerged in Australia that the United States may not be able to provide the submarines due to backlogs. Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers, such as Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee, have pondered if the United States has submarines to spare.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, right, meets with US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese, left, at Point Loma naval base in San Diego, March 13, 2023, as part of Aukus, a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK, and the US. (Stefan Rousseau/AP)
A U.S. defense spending bill signed last month also cut funding for production of a Virginia-class sub, with Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut who co-chairs the AUKUS Working Group, saying the move could undercut plans to provide submarines to Australia.
“One of the big questions with AUKUS was: Will it provide enough submarines to keep the US fleet at an adequate level and will it produce enough submarines to satisfy the three boats that we agreed to sell?” the lawmaker told Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Australian and U.S. officials, though, have maintained the submarines will be provided by the early 2030s, by which time Australia expects to begin producing its own submarines with British help.
Multilateralism
During Wednesday’s event, Campbell also flagged the possibility of Japan and the Philippines joining AUKUS in some capacity, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. visiting the White House on April 11.
“It is true that there are other countries that have expressed an interest to participate, under the right circumstances,” he said. “I think you’ll hear that we have something to say about that next week.”
The No. 2 American diplomat said it was all part of a push by the United States to shift its Indo-Pacific alliances in a more multilateral direction, and away from a series of bilateral relationships.
“It used to be that we had this ‘hub and spoke’ set of relationships between the United States and allies and partners,” Campbell said. “Now we’re creating … a ‘lattice-fence’ arrangement, with lots of intertwined overlapping interlocking engagements.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.
On Sunday, tens of thousands rallied across Israel calling for the return of hostages and the removal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the largest nationwide protests since the October 7 attacks. From Tel Aviv, we’re joined by Oren Ziv, a reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine who has been covering the Israeli protests. Ziv says the majority of Israelis generally support the war on Gaza but are increasingly turning against Netanyahu’s far-right government, whose refusal to entertain a ceasefire is seen as an obstacle to the return of Israeli hostages.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Russia is increasing its cooperation with China in 5G and satellite technology and this could facilitate Moscow’s military aggression against Ukraine, a report by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) security think tank warns.
The report, published on March 1, says that although battlefield integration of 5G networks may face domestic hurdles in Russia, infrastructure for Chinese aid to Russian satellite systems already exists and can “facilitate Russian military action in Ukraine.”
China, which maintains close ties with Moscow, has refused to condemn Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and offered economic support to Russia that has helped the Kremlin survive waves of sweeping Western sanctions.
Beijing has said that it does not sell lethal weapons to Russia for its war against Ukraine, but Western governments have repeatedly accused China of aiding in the flow of technology to Russia’s war effort despite Western sanctions.
The RUSI report details how the cooperation between Russia and China in 5G and satellite technology can also help Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“Extensive deployment of drones and advanced telecommunications equipment have been crucial on all fronts in Ukraine, from intelligence collection to air-strike campaigns,” the report says.
“These technologies, though critical, require steady connectivity and geospatial support, making cooperation with China a potential solution to Moscow’s desire for a military breakthrough.”
According to the report, 5G network development has gained particular significance in Russo-Chinese strategic relations in recent years, resulting in a sequence of agreements between Chinese technology giant Huawei and Russian companies MTS and Beeline, both under sanctions by Canada for being linked to Russia’s military-industrial complex.
5G is a technology standard for cellular networks, which allows a higher speed of data transfer than its predecessor, 4G. According to the RUSI’s report, 5G “has the potential to reshape the battlefield” through enhanced tracking of military objects, faster transferring and real-time processing of large sensor datasets and enhanced communications.
These are “precisely the features that could render Russo-Chinese 5G cooperation extremely useful in a wartime context — and therefore create a heightened risk for Ukraine,” the report adds.
Although the report says that there are currently “operational and institutional constraints” to Russia’s battlefield integration of 5G technology, it has advantages which make it an “appealing priority” for Moscow, Jack Crawford, a research analyst at RUSI and one of the authors of the report, said.
“As Russia continues to seek battlefield advantages over Ukraine, recent improvements in 5G against jamming technologies make 5G communications — both on the ground and with aerial weapons and vehicles — an even more appealing priority,” Crawford told RFE/RL in an e-mailed response.
Satellite technology, however, is already the focus of the collaboration between China and Russia, the report says, pointing to recent major developments in the collaboration between the Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS and its Chinese equivalent, Beidou.
In 2018, Russia and China agreed on the joint application of GLONASS/Beidou and in 2022 decided to build three Russian monitoring stations in China and three Chinese stations in Russia — in the city of Obninsk, about 100 kilometers southwest of Moscow, the Siberian city of Irkutsk, and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia’s Far East.
Satellite technology can collect imagery, weather and terrain data, improve logistics management, track troop movements, and enhance precision in the identification and elimination of ground targets.
According to the report, GLONASS has already enabled Russian missile and drone strikes in Ukraine through satellite correction and supported communications between Russian troops.
The anticipated construction of Beidou’s Obninsk monitoring station, the closest of the three Chinese stations to Ukraine, would allow Russia to increasingly leverage satellite cooperation with China against Ukraine, the report warns.
In 2022, the Russian company Racurs, which provides software solutions for photogrammetry, GIS, and remote sensing, signed satellite data-sharing agreements with two Chinese companies. The deals were aimed at replacing contracts with Western satellite companies that suspended data supply in Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The two companies — HEAD Aerospace and Spacety — are both under sanctions by the United States for supplying satellite imagery of locations in Ukraine to entities affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group.
“For the time being, we cannot trace how exactly these shared data have informed specific decisions on the front line,” Roman Kolodii, a security expert at Charles University in Prague and one of the authors of the report, told RFE/RL.
“However, since Racurs is a partner of the Russian Ministry of Defense, it is highly likely that such data might end up strengthening Russia’s geospatial capabilities in the military domain, too.”
“Ultimately, such dynamic interactions with Chinese companies may improve Russian military logistics, reconnaissance capabilities, geospatial intelligence, and drone deployment in Ukraine,” the report says.
The report comes as Western governments are stepping up efforts to counter Russia’s attempt to evade sanctions imposed as a response to its military aggression against Ukraine.
On February 23, on the eve of the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the United States imposed sanctions on nearly 100 entities that are helping Russia evade trade sanctions and “providing backdoor support for Russia’s war machine.”
The list includes Chinese companies, accused of supporting “Russia’s military-industrial base.”
