Memory of 1938 hangs heavy in Munich as Ukrainian president calls for action

‘Has the world forgotten its mistakes of the 20th century?’ asks Volodymyr Zelenskiy as invasion looms

Ukraine crisis – live coverage

Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the west should send more arms and impose preventive sanctions on Russia immediately. 

Photograph: Andreas Gebert/Reuters

Patrick Wintour in Munich
Sun 20 Feb 2022 

Just 20 minutes walk from the ornate Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where world leaders gathered this weekend for the Munich security conference, lies No 12 Arcisstrasse, the shuttered brown ornamental building known as the Führerbau.

On a cold grey Sunday morning, the building, now temporarily closed and in disrepair, has a forbidding air. Near the steps at the front is a small plaque with the bare inscription in German, Czech and Slovak: “In this building, on 29 September, 1938, the Munich agreement was signed, which led to the smashing of the Czechoslovak republic.”

No mention is made of the signatories, including Adolf Hitler and then British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who, fearful of a renewed European war, appeased Hitler by agreeing to cede the Sudetenland. Hitler had promised this was his last territorial claim in Europe. The empty building, its interior preserved, stands as a monument to the ability of diplomats to misread their opponent.

Back in the conference hall, this history hung heavy. No speech was complete without a reference to the threat of a return to war in the heart of Europe, or to an impending refugee crisis.

No one was foolish enough to compare Russia to national socialism, but underlying every discussion was the question of Vladimir Putin’s true intentions and whether the western response is moral and a sufficient deterrent, or instead a betrayal and a repeat of the appeasement of the 30s.

In his mercurial address to the conference hall on Saturday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, did not hold back in what he described as “his own horrible history lessons’’. Referencing the Russian-backed separatist shell that damaged a nursery school on Thursday, he said: “Seeing a shell crater in the schoolyard, children have a question: has the world forgotten its mistakes of the 20th century?

Profile

Armed forces of Russia and Ukraine, compared

Russia

Army: 280,000, including 2,840 tanks and 6,920 fighting vehicles; 150 Iskander ballistic missiles; 4,684+ artillery; 1,520 surface-to-air batteries.

Navy (just the Black Sea fleet): 6 submarines; 6 warships; 35 patrol ships.

Air force: 1,160 combat planes, 394 attack helicopters, 714 air defence systems.

Ukraine

Army: 145,000, including 858 tanks and 1,184 fighting vehicles; 90 Tochka ballistic missiles; 1,818 artillery; 75+ surface-to-air batteries.

Navy: 1 warship, 12 patrol and coastal ships.

Air force: 125 combat planes, 35 attack helicopters; 6 medium TB2 drones; 322 air defence systems.

Source: International Institute of Strategic Studies

“What do appeasement attempts lead to? How did the question ‘Why die for Danzig ?’ [a French anti-war slogan coined in 1939] turn into the need to die for Dunkirk and dozens of other cities in Europe and the world, at the cost of tens of millions of lives?”

He then twisted the knife by saying there was no threat of war in Europe – the war was already under way: “How did it happen that there is a war ongoing and people are dying in Europe in the 21st century? Why does it last longer than World War II? How did we get to the biggest security crisis since the cold war?”

Zelenskiy had answers that the doting western security establishment might not have applauded so vociferously if they listened harder to his withering attack on their collective failure. He blamed “selfishness, self-confidence, irresponsibility of countries at the global level. As a result, some commit crimes, and others stay indifferent. Indifference that results in complicity. This is your contribution to the security of Europe and the world.”

He said: “Ukraine has been Europe’s shield for eight years. For eight years, it has been holding back one of the largest armies in the world.” Yet the door to the EU and Nato had not been opened. The promises to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty enshrined in the Budapest memorandum in 1994 seemed worthless.

“The current policy of appeasement,” he said, “has to be turned into one of guarantees of security and peace”. He called for the west to send more arms and to impose preventive sanctions nimmediately. He revealed he had challenged western leaders who said they were 100% sure that an invasion would occur.

“What are you waiting for? We don’t need your sanctions after the bombardment will happen and after our country will be fired on, or after we have no borders, or economy.”

On Sunday morning, the former president of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, gently picked up Zelenskiy’s challenge, asking Charles Michel, the European Council president, if at the very least the EU should be more proactive. “Are you ready personally to give Ukraine an emergency invitation to fast-forward discussions on accession to the EU? It would give the EU a unique chance at this difficult time to gain some advantage. Right now the EU is very united, but very reactive.”

Kaljulaid did not get an answer in the affirmative.

Although Michel claimed Putin’s strategy was backfiring by creating unprecedented transatlantic unity – the common dominant public theme at the conference – the source of his circumspection about enlargement partly lay in history.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, reflecting a longstanding scepticism in parts of Germany about Nato enlargement to the east, pointedly told the Munich conference that Ukraine’s membership is not on the foreseeable agenda, and he had told Putin as much. Although Scholz insisted he would not be naive in his diplomacy, and defended the principle of national self-determination, he clearly hopes his statement takes Ukraine closer to effective future neutrality, and that this might assuage Putin. It did not please Zelenskiy, who witheringly dismissed the idea as Munich 2.0.

But Putin wants the pledge in writing, and again history plays a role in his thinking. Russian mythology holds that Russia in 1990-91, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was promised no Nato enlargement to the east. The more subtle truth, meticulously charted by the historian ME Sarotte in her book Not One Inch, judges no such offer was made by George Bush, even if it was discussed by advisers. But Putin has his casus belli, and it may be there will be no compromise, no pledge in writing, no piece of paper, that will lead to peace in our time.

 FRAGILE ECOSYSTEM

Humans have degraded 84% of the world’s coastlines, reveals a new study

Without urgent change, the implications for coastal biodiversity and society will become more profound.

Brooke Williams, The Conversation, 

Amelia Wenger, The Conversation 

& James Watson, The Conversation

Around the world, many coastal areas are so degraded that they cannot be restored

 to their original state. | Mladen Antonov / AFP

Only about 16% of the world’s coastal regions are in relatively good condition, according to our world-first research released recently, and many are so degraded they cannot be restored to their original state.

Places where the land meets the sea are crucial for our planet to function. They support biodiversity and the livelihoods of billions of people. But to date, understanding of the overall state of Earth’s coastal regions has been poor.

Our research, involving an international team of experts, revealed an alarming story. Humanity is putting heavy pressure on almost half the world’s coastal regions, including a large proportion of protected areas. All nations must ramp up efforts to preserve and restore their coastal regions – and the time to start is right now.

Coasts are vital

Coastal regions encompass some of the most diverse and unique ecosystems on Earth. They include coral reefs, kelp forests, seagrass, tidal flats, mangroves, estuaries, salt marshes, wetlands and coastal wooded habitat.

Many animal species, including those that migrate, rely on coastlines for breeding, foraging and protection. Coastal sites are also where rivers discharge, mangrove forests exchange nutrients with the ocean, and tidal flows are maintained.

Humans also need coastlines. Among other functions, they support our fisheries, protect us from storms and, importantly, store carbon to help mitigate climate change.

As much as 74% of the world’s population live within 50 kilometres of the coast, and humans put pressure on coastal environments in myriad ways.

In marine environments, these pressures include:

• Fishing at various intensities
• Land-based nutrient, organic chemical and light pollution
• Direct human impacts such as via recreation
• Ocean shipping
• Climate change (and associated ocean acidification, sea-level rise and increased sea surface temperatures).

On land, human pressures on our coastlines include:

• Built environments, such as coastal developments
• Disturbance
• Electricity and transport infrastructure
• Cropping and pasture lands, which clears ecosystems and causes chemical and nutrient runoff into waterways.

To date, assessments of the world’s coastal regions have largely focused solely on either the land or ocean, rather than considering both realms together. Our research sought to address this.

Troubling picture

We integrated existing human impact maps for both land and ocean areas. This enabled us to assess the spectrum of human pressure across Earth’s coastal regions to identify those that are highly degraded and those intact.

Both maps use data up to the year 2013 – the most recent year for which cohesive data is available.

No coastal region was free from human influence. However, 15.5% of Earth’s coastal regions remained intact – in other words, humans had exerted only low pressure. Many of the intact coastal regions were in Canada, followed by Russia and Greenland.

Large expanses of intact coast were also found elsewhere including Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Brazil and the United States.

Troublingly, 47.9% of coastal regions have been exposed to very high levels of human pressure. And for 84% of countries, more than half their coastal regions were degraded.

What’s more, human pressures were high in about 43% of protected coastal regions – those regions purportedly managed to conserve nature.

Coastal regions containing sea grasses, savannah and coral reefs had the highest levels of human pressure compared to other coastal ecosystems. Some coastal regions may be so degraded they cannot be restored. Coastal ecosystems are highly complex and once lost, it is likely impossible to restore them to their original state.

Where to now?

It is safe to say intact coastal regions are now rare. We urge governments to urgently conserve the coastal regions that remain in good condition, while restoring those that are degraded but can still be fixed

To assist with this global task, we have made our dataset publicly available and free to use here.

Of course, the right conservation and restoration actions will vary from place to place. The actions might include, but are not limited to:

• Improving environmental governance and laws related to encroaching development
• Increasing well-resourced protected areas
• Mitigating land-use change to prevent increased pollution run-off
• Better community and local engagement
• Strengthening indigenous involvement in managing coastal regions
• Effective management of fishing resources
• Addressing climate change
• Tackling geopolitical and socioeconomic drivers of damage to coastal environments.

In addition, there’s an urgent need for national and global policies and programs to effectively manage areas where the land and ocean converge.

Humanity’s impact on Earth’s coastal regions is already severe and widespread. Without urgent change, the implications for both coastal biodiversity and society will become even more profound.

Brooke Williams is a postdoctoral research fellow, Amelia Wenger is a research fellow and James Watson is Professor at The University of Queensland.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

WOMEN LEAD THE REVOLUTION
Sudanese man killed in crackdown on anti-coup protests as UN expert arrives


Regular protests have rocked the northeast African country since army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan led a military takeover in October, sparking international condemnation (AFP/Ebrahim Hamid) 

Sun, February 20, 2022

A Sudanese man was shot dead Sunday as security forces cracked down on rallies against last year's military coup, medics said, as a UN rights expert arrived in the country.

Regular protests have rocked the northeast African country since army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan led a military takeover in October, sparking international condemnation.

United Nations human rights expert Adama Dieng is visiting Sudan until Thursday, on a trip initially planned for last month but postponed at the request of Sudanese authorities.

A 51-year-old man was hit Sunday with "a live bullet to the chest", the Sudanese Doctors' Committee said, bringing the death toll in a crackdown on anti-coup protests to 82.

"The martyr was a patient at a hospital in Khartoum North... and went out to get some air after struggling with shortness of breath due to the heavy firing of tear gas which filled the hospital ward," the committee said, adding that he was then shot dead.

Thousands had rallied in the capital Khartoum on Sunday, carrying Sudanese flags and posters of others killed during demonstrations in recent months, an AFP correspondent said.

Security forces fired tear gas and wounded several protesters who were heading toward the presidential palace, the correspondent said, while tear gas was also used in nearby Omdurman and North Khartoum.

"We are ready to protest all year," one demonstrator, 24-year-old Thoyaba Ahmed, told AFP, while another, Wadah Khaled, said: "We want to rectify our country's situation to have a good future."

"We need to make sacrifices to resolve the country's issues," said 25-year-old Arij Salah, another demonstrator.

The October takeover derailed a transition painstakingly negotiated between military and civilian leaders following the 2019 ouster of president Omar al-Bashir.

While Sudan has repeatedly denied opening fire on protesters, Human Rights Watch has quoted witnesses detailing how the security forces have used both "live ammunition" and fired tear gas canisters "directly" at crowds, a tactic that can be deadly at close quarters.

UN special representative Volker Perthes said on Twitter Sunday that he met with rights expert Dieng on "his first official visit" to Sudan.

"Dieng will meet with senior Sudanese government officials, representatives of civil society organisations, human rights defenders, heads of UN entities, and diplomats," the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement this week.

Separately, dozens rallied outside a court complex in Khartoum to protest against the trial of several Bashir-era figures, an AFP correspondent said.

Among those on trial is former foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour, who faces charges over plotting a coup in 2020.

Ghandour's family said last month that he had begun a hunger strike in prison, along with several ex-regime officials.

bur/lg

YOUTH REVOLT
Tear Gas Fired at Sudan Anti-Coup Protest as UN Expert Arrives
February 20, 2022 

Agence France-Presse

Demonstrators march during ongoing protests calling for civilian rule and denouncing the military administration, in the Sahafa neighborhood in the south of Sudan's capital Khartoum, Feb. 20, 2022.

KHARTOUM —

Sudanese security forces on Sunday fired tear gas at protesters demonstrating against last year's military coup, an AFP correspondent said, as a United Nations human rights expert arrived in the country.

Thousands rallied in the capital Khartoum, carrying the Sudanese flags and posters of people killed during anti-coup demonstrations in recent months.

Security forces fired tear gas and wounded several protesters who were heading toward the presidential palace in central Khartoum, the correspondent said.

"We are ready to protest all year," said one demonstrator, 24-year-old Thoyaba Ahmed.

Regular protests have rocked the northeast African country since army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan led a military takeover in October, sparking international condemnation.

The move derailed a transition painstakingly negotiated between military and civilian leaders following the 2019 ouster of president Omar al-Bashir.

"We want to rectify our country's situation to have a good future," demonstrator Wadah Khaled told AFP.

At least 81 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in a violent crackdown on the protests, according to an independent medics group.

"We need to make sacrifices to resolve the country's issues," 25-year-old demonstrator Arij Salah said.

U.N. human rights expert Adama Dieng, meanwhile, is visiting Sudan until Thursday, on a trip initially planned for last month but postponed at the request of Sudanese authorities.

"Dieng will meet with senior Sudanese government officials, representatives of civil society organizations, human rights defenders, heads of U.N. entities, and diplomats," the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement this week.

Separately Sunday, dozens rallied outside a court complex in Khartoum to protest against the trial of several Bashir-era figures, an AFP correspondent said.

Among those on trial is former foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour, who faces charges over plotting a coup in 2020.

Ghandour's family said last month that he had begun a hunger strike in prison, along with several ex-regime officials.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

Once-taboo ketamine booms for US at-home mental care


February 20, 2022

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Americans are paying to get a star of the psychedelic medicine movement — ketamine — shipped to them for at-home mental health treatments that are being called both a breakthrough and a gamble.

A pandemic-spurred easing of prescription rules helped fuel a jump in telemedicine offerings of ketamine, an anesthetic that was once a taboo party drug but has become a buzzed-about tool against depression.

Yet long-term, large-scale studies of ketamine's medical impact are limited, leaving some experts concerned that an unregulated online boom could result in mishaps or a regulatory crackdown.

"This has to be rolled out slowly," said Boris Heifets, a Stanford University assistant professor of anesthesiology. "The risk is that we are scaling the fix but not the solution, which is a much more integrated approach to mental health."

Ketamine has been available in the United States since the 1970s as an anesthetic called a "dissociative" because of the hallucinogenic effects that have helped make it a rave culture drug.

It's legal for US doctors to prescribe, while some other psychedelics getting renewed attention for mental health uses like LSD or MDMA (also called ecstasy) are classified as having no medical utility and a high risk for abuse.

In this context, recent years have seen an uptick in clinics offering in-person intravenous ketamine treatments for depression, anxiety or chronic pain, though regulations and practices vary across American states.



Philip Markle poses for a photo with a ketamine pill pack at his home in the Brooklyn borough of New York, on January 27, 2022. AFP PHOTO​​​​​​​

Ketamine 'babysitter'

Then came the pandemic, which resulted in US authorities allowing doctors to remotely prescribe drugs like ketamine that previously required an in-person visit.

An increasing number of companies, some already doing in-clinic treatments, began offering to evaluate clients online and to send the drugs for home use to approved candidates.

Nue Life, which launched about a year ago, is one of those firms. Its CEO Juan Pablo Cappello estimated it has served over 3,000 ketamine patients so far.

"If you actually drill down on the sort of potentials for abuse here, you realize of course they exist, but we're creating a standard of care to make that quite unlikely," he told AFP.

For example, he noted clients are instructed to have an adult "babysitter" watch over them for the roughly 90 minutes the drug experience lasts, and he reasoned that people simply looking for ketamine could get it cheaper on the street.

Clients of the service, which costs $1,250 for a package providing six ketamine experiences, are encouraged but not obligated to couple it with therapy, Cappello said.

"The at-home telemedicine model, I would argue, is actually safer and more effective for patients," allowing more patients "to actually take advantage of these therapies," he added.

Heifets, the Stanford researcher, noted that making ketamine more available carries risks — including the chances that authorities would tighten access if an at-home treatment resulted in some sort of tragedy.


Philip Markle poses for a photo with a ketamine pill pack at his home in the Brooklyn borough of New York, on January 27, 2022. AFP PHOTO

'Change your life'

US regulators in 2019 approved a type of ketamine specifically for adults with treatment-resistant depression, though with stringent rules like requiring patients to be monitored by a health care provider for at least two hours after their dose.

Americans have "a hair trigger for problem-solving through litigation," Heifets noted of the potential for lawsuits if things go wrong.

He was part of a team that analyzed the real-world effectiveness of intravenous ketamine therapy -- which can involve higher doses than the at-home services -- and reported most patients improved, though about eight percent said depressive symptoms worsened after treatment.

"We have very, very little evidence for our understanding of how effective ketamine is for depression at scale," he added.

Yet for people like 36-year-old New Yorker Philip Markle, who underwent an at-home treatment with a company called Mindbloom, ketamine is a profoundly useful tool.

Over his long battle with depression, the performer and comedian has tried medication, psychedelics like LSD, and talk therapy since the age of 12, but found something unique in ketamine.

Rather than the short-lived sense of change other treatments provided, ketamine imparted a sense of clarity and of helpful self-acceptance — not the heavy effects he'd experienced with other psychedelics.

"It felt like if any drug could be administered through the mail, and you could do a psychedelic that could change your life, on your own, this would be the one," he told AFP.

CRIMINAL STATE CAPITALI$M

World Bank investment arm complicit in China’s repression of Uyghurs, report says

The International Finance Corporation is supporting firms in Xinjiang that have allegedly violated human rights.

By Jilil Kashgary and Alim Seytoff
2022.02.17

Vehicles drive by the headquarters of the International Finance Corporation in Washington, DC, in a file photo.Wikimedia Commons

The World Bank’s private sector lending arm provided nearly half a billion dollars to four Chinese companies accused of using Uyghur forced labor in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, according to an investigative report issued Thursday.

The International Financial Corporation (IFC) has several investments in the region, where predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities have been subjected to severe human rights abuses that the United States and other countries have said constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

The nearly 70-page report titled “Financing and Genocide: Development Finance and the Crisis in the Uyghur Region” says significant evidence suggests that four companies that are IFC clients — Chenguang Biotech Co. Ltd., Camel Group Co. Ltd., Century Sunshine Group Holdings Ltd., and Jointown Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd., — actively participate in China’s repression of the Uyghurs through forced labor, forced displacement, cultural eradication, and environmental destruction.

The IFC currently has about U.S. $486 million in direct loans and equity investment in these four companies operating in Xinjiang, the report says.

IFC’s failure to adequately safeguard communities and the environment affected by its financing makes the institution complicit in the repression of Uyghur, Kazakh and other members of minority groups, says the report, which was written by U.S. think tank the Atlantic Council, the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University in the U.K., and the nonprofit research organization NomoGaia.

The report’s findings are based on publicly available information from Chinese state media, satellite imagery, IFC’s own project documentation, corporate disclosures, and social media posts from local police and labor agencies.

“These four companies all use labor transfers that experts have identified as being forced, and they have all accepted people who have been designated as surplus labor,” said Laura Murphy, a human rights professor at Sheffield Hallam and one of the authors of the report.

Chenguang Biotech has been collaborating with the Chinese government to move Uyghurs off their land so that it can use the land for the production of raw materials, while Century Sunshine and Camel Group are responsible for significant environmental pollution in Xinjiang, Murphy told RFA.

The IFC has eight performance standards to ensure the upholding of the human rights of populations affected by its investment projects, according to the report. Among the standards are rigorous oversight of labor conditions, pollution prevention and biodiversity protection, community safety and security, indigenous and cultural rights, and protections against economic or physical displacement.

“IFC sets eight clear standards that all companies that receive loans from them must adhere to, and the companies are required to submit documentation, [and] to do monitoring to ensure that they maintain their conformity with those standards,” Murphy said.

Though IFC typically monitors and inspects investment projects, it has not been able to go to Xinjiang since 2019 to ensure that companies are maintaining its standards, she said.

“The concern we have is that starting in 2017, international governments knew what was happening in that region,” Murphy said. “And despite their knowledge of what’s happening to the Uyghur region [with] the internment of Uyghurs [and] the forced labor, the International Finance Corporation continued to send money into and release new loans to companies in the Uyghur region.

“We’re calling on the IFC to change those policies,” she said.

‘Financing China’s genocide’

World Bank spokesman David Theis referred RFA to the IFC for comment on the report.

An IFC spokesman said in an emailed response that the development financing institution takes allegations of forced labor and poor treatment of vulnerable groups seriously and works to verify and address the charges with its clients.

“Our work in China focuses on the transition to more environmentally sustainable growth and the reduction of inequality,” the spokesman said. “It is driven by the core principle of inclusion, with special consideration for the protection of vulnerable people and communities.”

He also said that while the COVID-19 virus pandemic and travel restrictions have made it difficult in the last two years for the IFC to assess projects on the ground, the institution has dedicated more resources to supervising the companies it works with regarding environmental, social and governance standards.

The standards are legally binding, include protections for workers, communities, and the environment, and expressly prohibit discrimination and the use of forced labor, he said.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular press conference on Thursday that the report was a false and “maliciously fabricated.”

“As we have learned, the institution that wrote the report has no staff in Xinjiang,” he said. “And before releasing the report, it did not conduct any field trips or carry out research in a real sense. The content thus lacks factual support and is full of lies and groundless accusations.”

Wang also said that the Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting human rights and worker’s rights and interests.

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, a Uyghur rights activist group, said it was unacceptable for the World Bank to provide financing to the four Chinese companies implicated with using Uyghur forced labor amid China’s genocide in Xinjiang.

“This is not simply a matter of financing Chinese companies but rather China’s genocide,” he said. He said the World Bank should immediately suspend its financing of the companies.

Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

'Bachelet welcome to visit Xinjiang'

 By Xinhua News Agency
February 21, 2022

BEIJING: China welcomes UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to visit the country, including a visit to Xinjiang, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday.


WELCOME VISITOR This handout picture posted on the Twitter account of the UN Human Rights organization on Friday, Feb. 18, 2022, shows Dubai's Sheikha Latifa (left) posing for a picture with UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet in Paris recently. AFP PHOTO

Wang attended the 58th Munich Security Conference via video link and made the remarks in response to queries concerning China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Wang said China has long expressed its welcome to Bachelet and is discussing with Bachelet and her office on the schedule, and Bachelet will see a Xinjiang, where peace and stability are maintained and people of all ethnic groups live in harmony during her visit.

Noting that Xinjiang is adjacent to an area where terrorist and extremist forces are concentrated, Wang said the local government of Xinjiang, in order to maintain the safety of the people, carried out deradicalization work through education, in accordance with the practices of countries including Britain and France and international practices. Such work has fundamentally eliminated the soil of extremism and won the support of the people in Xinjiang, Wang said, adding that in the past five years, there have been no violent terrorist incidents in the region.

The so-called systematic "forced labor" or "re-education camps" are all lies and fabrication, Wang said. China welcomes foreigners to visit Xinjiang to learn the truth of the matter, Wang said, noting that before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Xinjiang had received more than 2,000 government officials, religious figures and journalists from more than 100 countries and international organizations. "But one thing is certain, people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang do not welcome any investigation based on the presumption of guilt and they firmly oppose all kinds of prejudice and groundless accusations against China's ethnic policies," Wang said.

ECOCIDE

Last Irrawaddy dolphin in northeastern Cambodia dies

Lao residents believe the freshwater mammal was the country’s last one.

By RFA Staff
2022.02.17

In this file photo taken March 2007, an Irrawaddy dolphin, also known as the Mekong dolphin, swims in the Mekong River at Kampi village in northeastern Cambodia's Kratie province. Reuters

 The last known endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin on a stretch the Mekong River near Cambodia’s border with Laos died this week, after it was reported snagged in a fishing net, wildlife officials and villagers in the Southeast Asian countries said.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of the last dolphin … near the border of Laos,” Cambodia’s Fisheries Conservation Department said on its Facebook page.

Despite international efforts to protect it, the Irrawaddy dolphin sub-population in northeastern Cambodia “still faced serious pressure from human activities, the change of the Mekong water flow, and climate change, causing the total population to gradually decline, and the last individual died on February 15, 2022,” it said.

Listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, populations of the aquatic mammal, also known as the Mekong River dolphin, survive downriver in Cambodia, in its namesake Irrawaddy River in Myanmar and in Indonesia.

According to the AP news agency, the first census of Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia in 1997 put their total population at about 200, a number that fell to 89 in 2020.

“The remaining population of ‘critically endangered’ river dolphins in the Cambodia section of the Mekong is now stable, whilst still facing serious challenges,” AP quoted a statement from Lan Mercado, Asia-Pacific director of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as saying. “This latest river dolphin death highlights how vulnerable these and other species remain.”

The dolphin—described by the WWF as 25-year-old male, 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) long and weighing 110 kilograms (242 pounds) —was reported in local Cambodia media to have been seen last week struggling in a net.

A social media photo from Cambodia's Fisheries Conservation Department shows 

the carcass of the Irrawaddy dolphin Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022.

Up the river and across the border in southern Laos, residents of the village nearest to the Mekong River freshwater dolphin habitat confirmed news of the death had reached the region and described conditions in recent years that led to the mammal’s decline.

“The one that just died was the last freshwater dolphin in this area,” said a resident of Hang Sadam village. “There will be no more dolphins in Laos because they have run out of food and the ecosystem has been destroyed.”

In last several years, three freshwater dolphins were been found in the Mekong River in southern Laos, but two died last year and Tuesday death finished them off, according to the WWF.

“When they didn’t have food, they’d wander into other territory where people fish or even use explosive to catch fish. That’s why they’ve all died,” added the Hang Sadam villager.

 A fisherman in Hang Sadam village told RFA’s Lao Service the last half decade has brought dramatic change, particularly from dams on the Mekong.

“The Mekong River dams, including Don Sahong Dam in the area, must have had a role in the demise of the dolphin. When the dams hold water, the Mekong River will be dry, or sometimes, the dolphins get caught in people’s nets and die.”

Don Sahong Dam is one of two operational Mekong mainstream dams in Laos, which has three others in the planning or early construction stages as the government looks to generate revenue by selling the electricity from its hydropower projects to its neighbors. China operates 11 mega-dams on the river, with at least two more planned.

 Translated by Max Avary for RFA's Lao Service and Sok-Ry Som of the Khmer Service. Written by Paul Eckert.

 

Vietnamese workers celebrate Tet with strikes demanding pay raises

Laborers took action at nearly 30 sites over five weeks, not always with success.

2022.02.18

Vietnamese factory workers in various locations wage strikes demanding salary increases and other benefits following Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year holiday, February 2022.22Photos courtesy of Vietnemese state media

Thousands of workers staged nearly 30 strikes throughout Vietnam ahead of and over the Lunar New Year celebration, demanding higher wages and other benefits, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor (VGCL) said Wednesday.

The holiday known as Tet is the most important festival in Vietnamese culture. It fell on Feb. 1 this year. VGCL, Vietnam’s main trade union, said businesses and factories closed for nine days, from Jan. 29 to Feb. 6, to celebrate.

Workers in Vietnam often receive a holiday bonus and pay raises for the new year before Tet. But if they are not happy with the modest bonus and new salary, they post their grievances on social media or take to the streets waging strikes.

The 28 strikes took place in 12 provinces, including Thai Binh, Ninh Binh, Bac Ninh and Nghe An, from Jan. 1 to early February, the VGCL said.

Besides seeking higher pay, workers demanded more allowances for food and fuel and new benefits like seniority pay and support for workers who have contracted the COVID-19 virus.

Some workers returned to their jobs after employers met at least a few of their demands.

For example, employees at Viet Glory Co., Ltd., a Taiwanese-owned footwear manufacturer in central Vietnam’s Nghe An province, returned to work this week after the company agreed to give its 5,000-strong workforce a 6 percent salary increase and extra pay for long-term workers.

But in other cases, company managers only made relatively minor concessions while putting bigger demands like pay raises on hold. VGCL said that companies should clearly explain to employees why they are not able to meet specific demands.

A worker at an apparel factory in central Vietnam’s Ha Tinh province told RFA that most laborers were striking for higher pay. Employers have used the adverse economic impact from COVID to justify not increasing salary levels.

“Companies often increase their base salary at the beginning of a year,” said the woman, who works for South Korea-owned Haivina Hai Duong Co., Ltd. “However, I heard that due to the epidemic, no companies have given a pay rise to their workers, and they have only met some of workers’ demands, not all.”

A second Haivina worker, who also declined to give her name so as to speak freely, said the Viet Glory strike had inspired and encouraged employees in other places to stand up, though it was unlikely that the strikes were coordinated.

“The workers did it spontaneously,” she said. “They did not contact each other.”

Lingering discontent

Nearly all the companies told striking workers they did not increase pay because they were already paying wages higher than regional minimum wages stipulated by law.

Vietnam’s labor laws allow companies to make their own decisions regarding additional allowances. But some workers told RFA that the base salaries set by Vietnam’s labor laws are too low, particularly as the cost of food and other essentials have increased.

On average, most factory laborers earn about 6 million dong (U.S. $256) a month with little or no pay differential for overtime work, workers said.

“We went on strike in hopes of getting a pay raise as our current salary is too low,” said the second Haivina worker. “Even though we take night shifts, we only can earn 7 million dong a month.”

Vietnam sets four regional wage levels, with the highest minimum wage at 4.2 million dong a month and the lowest at about 3 million dong a month. The base wage for workers in Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces is 3.4 million dong a month.

Employees at factories in Nghe An province staged at least three strikes following the Tet holiday week.

More than 1,700 workers at a factory run by Em-Tech Vietnam Co., Ltd., in central Vietnam’s Nghe An province who went on strike on Tuesday resumed work the following day after the company agreed to pay each employee 50,000 dong (U.S. $2) for COVID-19 virus testing support. The company also pledged to improve meal allowances and virus preventive measures next month, in accordance with government regulations.

Not everyone was pleased about the outcome because the company did not agree to any wage increases.

“If they don’t give us a pay raise, they should tell us why,” said a factory worker. “They haven’t given any explanations so far.”

“Although the pay raise issue has not been resolved, we still have to get back to work; otherwise, we will be fired,” she added.

Also on Wednesday, about 700 workers from Nam Thuan Nghe An Joint Stock Company, an apparel and garment maker and exporter, returned to work after a one-day strike. Other employees remained off the job because they were not satisfied with the company’s response to their demands.

Workers asked managers to address 14 issues, including unequal pay increases, a small gasoline allowance and unreasonable salary reductions.

‘Labor union is useless’

Some trade union activists expressed frustration not only at their employer but with VGCL and its regional branches, which they do not think have fought hard enough for worker interests.

The first worker at Haivina said she has always paid her monthly labor union fee, even though the labor group has not been an effective ally.

“During the last strike, the provincial labor union came to negotiate with the company but to no avail,” she said. “Our labor union hasn’t resolved anything. I don’t know about other companies, but at this company the labor union is useless.”

Bui Thien Tri, chairman of the Vietnam Independent Union, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve workers’ rights, told RFA via email that the workers themselves remain their best advocates.

“Almost all the strikes in Vietnam so far have been spontaneous and not led by labor unions which are grassroots-level representatives of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor,” he said.

“This shows the very small role of government trade unions in representing workers’ rights at the grassroots level, as well as the irresponsibility of government trade union leaders in not fulfilling their responsibility while still being paid by the workers’ contributions,” Tri said.

Vietnam’s new labor law that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, permits the creation of worker organizations not affiliated with the VGCL. But the lack of additional government guidance has meant workers have yet to establish their own representative organizations.

District and provincial branches of the government labor union do not intervene in worker demands until strikes occur, at which stage they act together with local government officials and police to resolve the conflict and get workers back on the job as soon as possible, Tri said.

“They attribute the strikes to the grassroots-level labor unions being new and inexperienced, even non-existent in some companies, so workers have nowhere to turn,” he said.

Translated by Chau Vu for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Myanmar junta rejects push for Asean envoy to meet opponents

Asean has been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to end the crisis. 

PHOTO: REUTERS

YANGON (AFP) - The Myanmar junta on Sunday (Feb 20) rejected a regional special envoy's request to meet with a group of ousted lawmakers - which it had branded a terrorist group - amid attempts to break a year long political stalemate since the coup.

Myanmar has been in chaos, its economy paralysed and more than 1,500 civilians have been killed in a military crackdown since the putsch in February 2021, according to a local monitoring group.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations - a 10-country bloc - has been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to end the crisis which triggered mass protests and a brutal crackdown on dissent, including 12,000 people arrested

Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, the new Asean special envoy to Myanmar, told a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers Thursday that he planned to visit in March and meet with top junta officials.

With backing from Malaysia, he has also sought to meet with members of a "National Unity Government" (NUG) dominated by lawmakers from Aung San Suu Kyi's ousted party that is working to overthrow the junta.

Myanmar's Foreign Ministry issued a statement late on Sunday saying it would promote "constructive cooperation with Asean including the special envoy".

However, it could not agree to the special envoy engaging with "unlawful associations and terrorist groups" because they were "perpetrating violence and pursuing (a) total destructive path".

The ministry said the suggestion was "contrary to the principles of the Asean charter but also undermines Asean's counter-terrorism efforts".

"The Ministry again urges the two members not to use Asean platforms to make such comments and encourages (them) to condemn the terrorist acts," the statement said.

In May last year the junta declared the NUG "terrorists" and has jailed several high-ranking members of Suu Kyi's party.

Most NUG members are in exile or in hiding and Prak Sokhonn gave no details on where or when any future meeting might take place.

Myanmar's top diplomat was barred from Thursday's meeting in Phnom Penh over a lack of progress in defusing violence, although Prak Sokhonn said junta representatives had been allowed to listen in on discussions.

Myanmar junta adds arson to its arsenal with proxy forces that torch opposition areas

The junta is pitting Pyu Saw Htee forces against opponents – ‘just like setting up cockfights,’ says one fighter.

2022.02.20

An aerial view of Chaung Oo village, in Sagaing region's Pale township, where junta troops and Pyu Saw Htee fighters burned more than 300 homes, Dec. 18, 2022.

The torching of hundreds of homes in Myanmar’s Sagaing region Friday highlights a brutal weapon in the junta’s scorched-earth campaign in the parts of the country that have resisted the year-old military regime: the secretive Pyu Saw Htee militia.

The pro-junta forces are the year-old military regime’s answer to the People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias that have sprung up across swathes of Myanmar to resist the military takeover.  

In a recent measure of their impact, the research group Data for Myanmar reported that pro-junta forces burned down a total of 4,571 homes between seizing power in a military coup on Feb. 1, 2021 and Feb. 14 this year.

Friday’s arson attack in volatile Sagaing’s Pale township followed a pattern of escalating junta responses to response to PDF actions.

Residents of Pale’s Chaung Oo village told RFA’s Myanmar Service that around 20 soldiers and Pyu Saw Htee fighters stormed the area in an early morning raid, torching more than 300 of the tract’s 350 homes, following an attack on their joint training camp near Zee Pyu Kone by pro-democracy militias on Feb. 14.

“Pyu Saw Htee forces and soldiers came from the northwest of the village and burned our homes. The wind was coming from the west, and it fanned the flames,” he said.

The source said that while the fires had since gone out, residents were still unable to return to the village due to the ongoing threat of an attack.

Internet service has been shut down for nearly six months in Pale, but sources in the area say that pro-junta forces have burned at least 1,000 homes in the township’s Hlaw Gar, Inn Ma Htee, Pan, and Mwe Tone villages–sending thousands of refugees scrambling for shelter in nearby forests.

Asked about Friday’s arson attacks, junta Deputy Information Minister Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said the military was not responsible for burning the homes.

“PDF troops are organizing terrorist activities in Sagaing. Because of instability in the region, local people are forming the militias to resist against [the shadow National Unity Government (NUG)] and the PDFs,” he said.

“The PDFs have attacked these villages and burned down the houses. The military is protecting civilians who had to flee their villages because of this. There is no reason the military would do such a thing because they are there to protect civilians.”

Pyu Saw Htee fighters train at a shooting range under the tutelage of junta soldiers, 

Feb. 11, 2022. RFA

‘Widely viewed as military stooges’

Zaw Min Tun also dismissed reports of the Pyu Saw Htee’s existence, although he acknowledged that the military is currently “forming native militia groups” in response to “internal insurgency movements” in play since Myanmar gained its independence from Britain in 1948.

“The groups located in areas with heavy insurgent activity are in a challenging situation.” he said, adding that all militia groups working with the military will surrender their guns at the “end of their mission.”

Pyu Saw Htee is derived from Pyusawhti, the legendary founding king of the Pagan Dynasty, the first Burmese kingdom.

Sources told RFA that Myanmar’s military is not only responsible for arson attacks against civilians, but that the junta has been secretly organizing citizen militias to disrupt, detain, or even kill activists that oppose its rule.

In areas where the PDFs were the strongest, such as in Magway and Sagaing regions in the north and west, the junta armed and trained groups of citizens who support military rule, forming the militia groups now known as the Pyu Saw Htee. The groups were given carte blanche to make arrests, seize property, kill PDF members, and destroy villages, sources said.

The online news outlet The Irrawaddy in June reported that the groups are “widely viewed as military stooges,” but were responsible for assassinations of the elected politicians deposed in the 2021 coup, burnings of schools in Yangon and other cities, and disinformation campaigns to discredit junta opponents.

“The groups consist of active and retired military personnel, civil servants, members of the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party, ultranationalists and people hired for a wage of 5,000 kyats (about US$3) per day,” the independent outlet reported.

The military party’s crushing loss to Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling party in November 2020 elections the military claims were rigged triggered the army coup d’état three months later.

Stealing cattle

Soe Lay of Gangaw township in the region of Magway, which has also targeted by arson attacks, said the military and their proxies work in lock step and also steal livestock.

“They provided military training. They are even building bunkers in our villages. Some even have machine guns. The Pyu Saw Htee are gaining strongholds in the largest villages of Gangaw township,” Soe Lay told RFA.

“They came in alongside a military regiment and they slaughtered our cattle and took it away,” he said.

Soe Lay’s village has been able to mount an effective defense so far, but he said he worries that the Pyu Saw Htee or the military could one day use a stronger force to overrun the village.

RFA has been unable to independently verify the total number of Pyu Saw Htee groups throughout Myanmar. A Facebook account that claimed to be linked to the group’s headquarters wrote in May that it had formed on March 5, 2021 and counted veterans and members of the pro-military Ma Ba Tha nationalist groups among its personnel. 

A PDF member in Pale township told RFA the military has armed the Pyu Saw Htee to crush the junta resistance and sow conflict. 

“I have witnessed atrocities committed by these militia groups. They brutally killed three civilians near Min Taing Pin village a week ago and afterwards they robbed a gold shop, a clothing store, and a mobile phone store in the market for no reason,” he said.

A resident of nearby Khin-U township, who declined to be named for security reasons, told RFA that villages where the USDP party enjoys strong support, people are forming Pyu Saw Htee groups to seize property that could be used to support the resistance movement.

“When they are short of food supplies and cash, they raid the villages nearby and rob the local people,” he said. “They even took away truckloads of rice supplies.”

Another resident of Khin-U said Pyu Saw Htee members “live like ordinary citizens” when the military regiments are away but when junta troops are present, they act as informants and assist in raids or robbing civilians.

Destroyed homes in Chaung Oo village, Feb. 18, 2022. RFA

‘Setting up cockfights’

When asked about reports of ties between the USDP and the Pyu Saw Htee, party spokesperson Nandar Hla Myint told RFA he was unsure.

“First, we made it crystal clear [to them] that we never condone violence. We do not condone armed resistance movements which target civilians and schools,” he said.

“Second, we, as a political party, have instructed our members to respond to armed violence with armed defense, in accordance with the law,” said Nandar Hla Myint.

The military is known to have a set of protocols to form militias as part of its standard operations, political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA.

“They don’t have secret militia-raising activities in majority Bamar regions since there was no major armed resistance movement there before,” he said.

“They mostly work in areas where the armed ethnic groups are based. But right now, the PDFs have intensified their presence in the Sagaing and Magway regions. That’s why the military is bringing in these militia groups.”

Ko Khant, the spokesperson of local North Yamar PDF group, which is active in Sagaing’s Yinmabin township, told RFA that the military arms the Pyu Saw Htee to agitate anti-junta forces and goad them into clashes.

“It’s just like setting up cockfights. They are using these militia groups as part of their military strategy, but our resistance movement will not fail, no matter what strategy they use. We will not give,” he said.

Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Eugene Whong and Joshua Lipes.