The measure would expand the sanctions under a previous law to include actions like forced family separations and organ harvesting. It would also deny entry to the U.S. for people found to have participated in forced abortions or sterilizations. In interviews with RFA Uyghur, Uyghur women have detailed birth control procedures they say were forced on them by authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The bill would bar the U.S. military from buying Chinese seafood out of concern that Uyghur and North Korean forced labor is used in its production.

It would direct the State Department to create a plan for countering Chinese propaganda that denies “the genocide, crimes against humanity, and other egregious human rights abusese experienced by Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethic groups” in Xinjiang. It would also appropriate $2 million for the Smithsonian to create research and programs that would preserve Uyghur language and culture threatened by the Chinese government.

“The evidence is clear. The Chinese Communist Party has waged a deliberate and systematic campaign to destroy the Uyghur people through forced sterilization, mass internment, and forced labor,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), the chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a statement. “This legislation ensures the United States holds accountable not only the perpetrators of these horrific crimes but also those who support or profit from them.”

Joining Sullivan in co-sponsoring the bill are Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.).

Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, a U.S.-based nonprofit advocacy group, and the chairwoman of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress, an international organization promoting Uyghur rights, said the measure’s introduction is “a critical step toward dismantling the systems of control and repression that have enabled genocide and devastated Uyghur families and communities.”

“For Uyghurs who have endured years of silence and separation, this bill represents a meaningful step toward exposing the truth, advancing justice, and creating pathways to family reunification,” Abbas told RFA.

U.S. lawmakers this week also planned to release a bill that would aim to help Taiwan and support countries that maintain official diplomatic relations with its government, as well as a measure to combat efforts by any foreign government to reach beyond its borders to intimidate, harass or harm activists, dissidents or journalists.

In response to the bills, China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday rejected U.S. accusations on Xinjiang and Taiwan.

“The related accusations are entirely fabricated and are malicious slander,” the ministry said.

The measures come as an Aug. 12 deadline looms for a durable trade deal between the U.S. and China. A U.S. official told reporters that progress is being made toward a deal, Reuters reported Friday.

Includes reporting by Reuters.

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

A state of emergency that was due to expire Thursday after seven extensions was lifted, Zaw Min Tun, a government spokesman, told state media. The decree had given legislative, judicial, and executive powers to Min Aung Hlang as head of the ruling military council.

But state media reported late Thursday that martial law and a state of emergency would be imposed in more than 60 townships across nine regions and states due to the threat of violence and insurgency.

Despite the moves, the junta remains in power. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the February 2021 coup that toppled Myanmar’s democratically elected government helmed by Aung San Suu Kyi, holds the title of interim president in the new structure and retains his role of chief of the armed forces. He was also named the head of an 11-member commission in charge of elections.

Min Aung Hlaing said the election would take place in phases during December and January due to security concerns, state television reported Thursday.

(AP)

David Mathieson, an independent analyst, framed Thursday’s moves as a cosmetic change.

“They are just rearranging the same pieces and calling the regime a new name,” he told Reuters. “Nothing will change in the near term, but this is part of preparations for an election which we don’t know much about.”

Analysts say the planned election could also have little practical impact.

“It’s the same people still in charge of everything,” Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Agence France-Presse. “These guys are not planning to just hand over power back to the civilians.”

The 2021 coup touched off a brutal civil war that has raged across Myanmar. Established ethnic minority armies and new armed groups have mounted a persistent resistance and have gained control of significant territory.

Since the coup, the military has killed more than 6,000 people and arbitrarily detained more than 20,000, according to Amnesty International.

The war has been devastating for the military, too. As of earlier this year, the junta controlled less than half of the country. More than 24,000 junta troops have been killed and more than 12,000 wounded, according to an RFA analysis in February. Over the past year, the military has been conscripting men under age 35, sometimes snatching people off the street to fill the military’s depleted ranks.

Includes reporting from Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

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

Thai government and police officials have both issued public statements condemning the attacks on Cambodian migrant workers.

RFA Khmer service’s Poly Sam speaks with Bangkok-based rights and labor activist Phil Robertson of Asia Human Rights Labour Advocates (AHRLA) about what’s being done.

Below is a transcript of the interview for RFA Perspectives:

(Citizen video)

RFA:

Quite a few Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand have been discriminated against since the war broke out on July 24th. A Cambodian NGO that works in Thailand documented around 16 cases that Thai youth gangs have been beating up Cambodian migrant workers.

And I’m wondering, in your opinion, why would a country like Thailand allow this kind of violence to happen to migrant workers?

Phil Robertson:

Well, I will say a couple of things on this. First, the Thai government and the Thai police have actually issued statements saying that this should not happen. So we had the police on Friday, saying very clearly, no attacks should happen against migrant workers and that anybody who did this would face the full force of law.

We also saw the deputy government spokesperson make a similar statement, again, saying that the police were going to patrol and trying to protect migrants in areas where there are a significant number of Cambodian migrants. But the big problem in Thailand is that there is a yawning gap between what officials say and what the law says and what actually happens on the ground.

(RFA)

And as you said, there were these youth attacks. I’ve seen some of the videos that were quite horrific, with gangs of Thai youths attacking Cambodian migrant workers who had nothing to do with what is going on between the two countries. I mean, those migrant workers are simply here trying to make a living, and send money back to their families.

And those attacks have caused a great deal of fear in the Cambodian migrant community. There are a number of people who have voluntarily left, who have headed to the border, to try to return because they were so afraid. And that’s really unfortunate because Thailand needs migrant workers. They need these workers working agricultural construction, particularly, you know, here in Bangkok, much of the construction is being done by Cambodian workers.

So, I’ve seen a couple different worksites, including one that I was, nearby at a restaurant just the other day and I was talking to the waiters and saying what’s happening with the worksite over there? And they said, oh well, it was all Cambodian construction workers and they all ran away.

(Citizen video)

So quite clearly, the fear is very significant. And, I don’t see that anybody has been prosecuted yet, for these attacks. And what that shows again, is that the Thai police are a bit of a paper tiger here and there remains a degree of impunity to abuse migrant workers. And this has been an ongoing problem in Thailand for many years.

This is a bigger problem of which this latest incident is just part, which is that migrant workers really are treated very poorly in Thailand that they don’t get their rights under law. And I’m not just talking about Cambodians — I’m talking about Burmese. I’m talking about Lao, I’m talking about Vietnamese. I’m talking about all sorts of different people, from different countries in the region who come to Thailand.

They expect that they’re going to be treated accordance with law. They’re going to get the minimum wage.They’re going to get the the basic rights and benefits under the labor law in Thailand. And it simply doesn’t happen. They’re not being considered as equal to Thais, even though the law says they must be.

RFA:

Except the fact that’s in — I think most Cambodians are being at the brunt of the injustice that’s what’s going on in Thailand right now, because the two countries are practically at war at this time. And just like you said up to now there is no arrest of the perpetrator. And some of them, we can see their faces.

I think if Thai authorities have the intention to arrest those people, I think they probably could easily do it. But like you said they are paper tigers at this point in time. Do you know why that is? Since this will portray a very negative image for the Thai government and Thais as a country?

Phil Robertson:

I’m assuming that the orders that were given to crack down on anybody who attacks migrants simply doesn’t filter down to the lower levels of the police force and the local officials.

You know that there’s not enough power and determination behind the order to make it stick. And unfortunately, the migrant workers may not know where to go for help. And really, what they need to do is they need to be contacting groups, NGOs and others, many of those who are, in a coalition called the Migration Working Group. That group is one which has NGOs that do advocacy and take up cases and try to pressure the Thai government to do the right thing and what we find is whenever migrants actually achieve some degree of justice in Thailand, invariably there’s an NGO or a Thai labor union that is helping them.

(Andre Malerba/Reuters)

On their own, the migrant workers don’t have enough power or knowledge on how to work the Thai system and to actually achieve some degree of recognition for their rights. And so, this is a big problem.

As I said, there’s a big gap between what the law and policy says and what the actual implementation is on the ground. And I’m assuming that these police either don’t want to take on the Thai youth because they’re worried that they might get in trouble.

Someone would single them out as going after youth who were expressing what some in the right wing and the conservative elements of Thai society would see as justified attacks and that they would worry that they would have issues and problems and they assume that these attacks would soon be forgotten.

And things will go back to the way they were before. So this is, really an unsatisfactory and unacceptable situation that once again whenever something goes wrong between Thailand and Cambodia, invariably it is the Cambodian workers in Thailand that face the brunt of the abuse by unthinking Thai nationalists who don’t recognize that these migrant workers are ordinary people just trying to make a living.

RFA:

You just answered my question, actually, in addition to what you say is that the Cambodian migrant workers simply are really fearful of their safety at this point in time.

And many of them went into hiding meaning that they’re not leaving their apartment, their home or the place that they’re staying. So, some of them actually say that they’re really, really afraid to go out to buy food or necessities.

I’m just wondering, since you are based in Thailand and you understand Thai culture and stuff like that, it’s there any possibility that average Thai citizens can help alleviate the pain and suffering of these people?

(Chor Sokunthea/AFP)

Phil Robertson:

Well, I think many — Look, I mean, I think that there are many Thai citizens who would look at this situation and say, yeah, there’s no reason to attack these migrant workers. These migrant workers are just ordinary people and I think that most Thai people, most Thai citizens are pretty considerate and pretty humanitarian in their outlook.

I’ve had many cases of migrant workers where somebody faced a difficult time and there was a good Samaritan there was someone from the Thai community who was prepared to help. But what we have is also some of these ultranationalist, right wing youth or gangs, who think it’s easy and fun to go out and attack a migrant worker.

And they need to be brought to book. They need to be held accountable under the law. And frankly, the Thai police are just not doing their job.That’s the fundamental problem. Again, it comes to the Thai police, their failures, to effectively protect people in Thailand, whether they be Thai or other nationalities.

RFA:

So, who is to blame in this situation? You said the Thai police are not doing their job. Should the international community or the Cambodians blame the Thai police?

Phil Robertson:

I think the Thai police are at the core of the problem. It’s their failures to implement the law. As I said, there was a very clear statement on Friday, by senior Thai police officials saying attacks against migrants would not be tolerated. And the deputy government spokesperson said the same thing.

RFA:

Do you think they really mean that?

Phil Robertson:

Absolutely. The policy makers are saying the right thing. They’re saying, “We don’t want to attack civilians. We don’t see attacking civilians who have nothing to do with this as a way forward. And this discredits Thailand,” as you’ve mentioned. It makes Thailand look bad.

So I think people recognize that what has happened, these attacks are damaging to Thai credibility. And it’s damaging to the Thai image. But the problem is that the recognition, the policy recognition and the announcements simply don’t make it down to the level where the police enforce the law.

(Chor Sokunthea/AFP)

And so, we don’t have police investigating. We don’t have police necessarily looking at CCTV to figure out through facial recognition who these people were who are the attackers?

As you said, there are a number of cases where the faces of the attackers are very clear. These people could be identified and they haven’t been, and that’s a problem. That’s a failure of local police to carry out orders that have been issued from above.

RFA:

Since the Thai authorities specifically, Thai police cannot fulfill their role and responsibility to protect migrant workers from Cambodia, what do you think the Cambodian government should do to help their own people?

Phil Robertson:

Well, I’m not sure the Cambodian government can do anything to help their own people. I mean, the problem is that the Cambodian government’s migration management processes are corrupt.They are failing.

They provide no protection to Cambodian migrant workers. Even when it was open and operating, the Cambodian embassy in Thailand was worthless when it came to protecting Cambodian workers.

So, for the Cambodian government, the claim that now they’re sort of very concerned about the status and the health of migrant workers in Cambodia when they’ve done so little to help Cambodian migrant workers who’ve come here previously. I think it’s, you know, it’s a bit ridiculous.

The Cambodian government doesn’t have a real leg to stand on when it comes to talking about protecting migrant workers overseas, because they don’t. They simply fail. Whether it be in Thailand or Malaysia, Indonesia or the Middle East. The Cambodian migrant workers who are overseas are on their own.

RFA:

Well, the situation is a bit different. One is they’re neglecting the people. Another one is that people are facing severe discrimination and perhaps death. You know, if someone allowed this to happen.

Phil Robertson:

Unfortunately, what I would say about this is I would say that if the Cambodian government starts to come in and say that they are here to protect the Cambodian migrant workers, everybody would understand that that was a political ploy by the Cambodian government.

If the Cambodian government was serious about doing something, they would be working with U.N. agencies like the IOM, to provide effective protection and support for migrant workers living overseas, whether they be in Thailand or somewhere else.

But, sending migrants overseas is big money. The brokerage fees are a lot of money. And this has been taken over by Oknha and other corrupt people in Cambodia,who do deals with the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Labor looks the other way. So, Cambodia does not have a good record when it comes to protecting its migrant workers overseas.

Certainly, if it wants to speak up and say something about what has happened to the migrant workers in Thailand, I think that that would be helpful. But, it would also just, get more attention on the migrant workers as well. I mean, I think what we need to do is have a way of getting NGOs to pressure Thai police to do their job.

RFA:

Regarding the NGOs — your organization — is there any specific task or responsibility that you guys are doing to help migrant workers at this particular time?

Phil Robertson:

Well, we’re trying to coordinate responses amongst Thai NGOs to go out and investigate and look at these cases and try to figure out how we can get a more effective policing response to go after the people who were committing the crimes and try to find ways to help the migrant workers themselves.

We’re very small. So we work in coalition with other groups and that’s the best we can do, to be honest. But we need to speak out about these issues as well. Ultimately, it would be good to have more international media attention on what has happened to migrant workers from Cambodia in Thailand.

But I think it’s hard. It’s hard because everybody is focused on the big issues at the border and the cross-border shelling and what is happening in places like Minburi, or other parts of the Bangkok suburbs where these attacks have been taking place is sort of out of sight, out of mind for many of the international media.

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

Regional military commanders along the 800-kilometer border agreed to halt gunfire, refrain from moving troops and establish direct bilateral communications, according to a Thai army spokesman and a spokesperson from the Cambodian defense ministry.

(Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters)

Acting Thai Prime Minister Phumtham Vejjayachai on Tuesday accused Cambodian troops of violating the ceasefire. The Thai government said it had filed a complaint about the alleged violation to Malaysia, the U.S. and China.

Cambodia’s defense minister, Tea Seiha, denied the claim, writing on Facebook that Cambodia’s armed forces has been strictly observing the truce. He said the Cambodian defense ministry would lead a delegation of foreign diplomats to observe the border.

Local sources near the border told RFA that gunfire was heard periodically in the predawn hours on Tuesday. An Agence France-Press journalist near the border said the sound of gunfire stopped ahead of the midnight deadline, a quiet that continued into Tuesday evening.

Thailand’s Phumtham and Prime Minister Hun Manet of Cambodia appeared together on Monday to announce the ceasefire, brokered with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, the annual chair of the ASEAN regional bloc.

The announcement came amid pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that continued fighting could stall negotiations for a trade deal with the U.S. Both countries face a 36% tariff on their goods unless a reduction can be negotiated. After the deal was announced, Trump said he had spoken with both leaders and told his team to restart talks.

At least 43 people were killed and around 300,000 were displaced during the fighting, which included jets, rockets and artillery.

(Heng Sinith/AP)

Some locals, like Cambodian Soklang Slay, expressed wariness as they returned to their homes on Tuesday.

“I am very concerned that new fighting may break out. Thailand often provokes the fighting first, but then accuses Cambodia. Their aims is that they want to occupy our temples [along the border]. I really don’t want to see any new fighting happen,” he told the Associated Press.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee, an author and former editor of the Nation newspaper in Bangkok who lives in his hometown in Kantharalak district, Sisaket province, was among those displaced. He had to evacuate, he said, and lost his cattle and his chance to harvest ripe durian fruit.

“The recent border skirmish between Thailand and Cambodia was senseless and served no real benefit to either nation. It did, however, serve the interests of the Thai military and Cambodia’s ruling family,” he told RFA, referring to the spat between Hun Manet and suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra.

“Politically, the conflict has placed the government of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on the brink of collapse. The failure of coherent diplomacy has opened the door to external interventions — most notably by the United States and China — complicating an already volatile situation.”

To resolve their issues long-term, he said both countries must accept the presence of international observers to monitor and verify the truce’s implementation.

“At the same time, they must reactivate dormant bilateral mechanisms to address critical issues of border security and the long-overdue boundary demarcation,” he said.

Includes reporting by RFA Khmer and Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA, as well as Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

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

The truce, which is scheduled to take effect at midnight local time, came during negotiations hosted by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, the current chair of the ASEAN regional bloc. The meeting came amid pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who warned over the weekend that the border conflict could stall U.S. trade deals with both countries.

As part of the ceasefire, Cambodian and Thai military commanders will kick off talks on Tuesday to reduce tensions. The deal also sets an Aug. 4 meeting for the General Border Committee hosted by Cambodia and requires the foreign and defense ministers of Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia to develop mechanisms to implement and monitor the truce.

(Heng Sinith/AP)

At a press conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Vejjayachai of Thailand shook hands and hailed the outcome.

“Today we have a very good meeting and very good results … that hope to stop immediately the fighting that has caused many lives lost, injuries, and also caused the displacement of people,” said Hun Manet, who offered thanks to Trump and China, which had also urged an end to hostilities and offered its assistance.

Phumtham said the deal would be “carried out successfully in good faith by both sides.”

Thailand has said nine of its soldiers and 14 civilians have been killed. Cambodia has confirmed eight civilian and five military deaths, according to Agence France-Presse.

(Sakchai Lalit/AP)

Images from makeshift evacuation centers on both sides of the border showed crowds of displaced residents queueing for food and sleeping in tents or temporary shelters.

Long-simmering tensions between the two countries over their shared border spiked after a Cambodian soldier was killed in a disputed area on May 28. Weeks of accusations and political jousting followed, culminating in Thailand expelling the Cambodian ambassador and recalling its own envoy on July 23, then armed clashes erupting on July 24.

Includes reporting by RFA Khmer and Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA, as well as Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

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

As of Saturday, Thailand said seven soldiers and 13 civilians had been killed in the clashes, while in Cambodia five soldiers and eight civilians had been killed, said Defense Ministry spokesperson Maly Socheata.

(Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

During an emergency meeting on Friday, members of the U.N. Security Council called for de-escalation and urged ASEAN to mediate a peaceful solution.

Cambodia’s Information Minister Neth Pheaktra said Saturday the clashes had forced 10,865 Cambodian families, or 37,635 people, in three border provinces to evacuate to safe locations, while Thai officials said more than 131,000 people had fled their border villages.

Reporting by The Associated Press and Reuters

(Heng Sinith/AP)

(Lillan Suwanrumpha/AFP)

(Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)

(Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

(Anton L. Delgado/AP)

(Sakchai Lalit/AP)

(AFP)

(Sakchai Lalit/AP)

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

Rocket attacks and shelling started near the Ta Muen Thom temple, which was also the flashpoint for the initial skirmish on Thursday.

Clashes were reported in 12 locations, up from six on Thursday, according to Thailand’s military. More than 130,000 people have been evacuated from Thailand’s border regions, said the country’s health ministry, which also reported 15 people killed in two days of skirmishes.

(Soveit Yarn/Reuters)

Leaders from both countries talked publicly about resolving the conflict.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has backed a cease-fire proposal offered by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, which chairs the ASEAN conference of nations that counts Cambodia and Thailand as members. The Cambodian leader posted on Facebook on Friday that Thailand had initially agreed to the deal, but later backed out.

After initially pushing for a bilateral agreement, Thailand’s foreign ministry said in a post on X that it will consider the Malaysian proposal, but that “appropriate on-the-ground conditions” must exist.

Earlier Friday, the acting prime minister of Thailand, Phumtham Vejjayachai, told reporters that the situation between the countries “had intensified and could escalate into a state of war.”

(Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Seamstress Pornpan Sooksai was among 600 people who took shelter at a gymnasium at a university in Surin, Thailand, about 80 kilometers from the border. She told the Associated Press that she had been doing laundry on Thursday when the shelling began.

“I just heard boom, boom, boom. We already prepared the cages, clothes, and everything, so we ran and carried our things to the car. I was frightened, scared,” she said.

In Cambodia, hundreds of residents near the border in Oddar Meanchey fled to a nearby Buddhist pagoda. Among them was 36-year-old Salou Chan, who lives about 20 kilometers from the disputed area.

“I fear for the safety of my children, they are still small,” he told Agence France-Presse. “I don’t know when I will be able to return home, but I want them to stop fighting soon. Nobody’s looking after my rice paddy and livestock.”

The two days of fighting follow many years of tension along the disputed border, and eight weeks of political jousting between Thai and Cambodian officials after a shooting incident on May 28 that killed a Cambodian soldier. On Wednesday, Thailand expelled Cambodia’s ambassador and recalled its own.

Includes reporting by RFA Khmer and Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA, as well as Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

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

The two sides fired small arms, rockets and artillery, and Thailand called in airstrikes on targets in Cambodia. Thai officials said Thursday they were closing the border entirely.

The flashpoint appeared to be the ancient Ta Muon Thom temple, a disputed site nestled on a mountain in Thailand’s Surin province. The initial engagement rapidly expanded, engulfing four Thai provinces bordering Cambodia’s northern frontier: Surin; Si Sa Ket, Ubon Ratchathan, and Buriram, according to Thailand’s 2nd Region Army Command.

Each country accused the other of starting Thursday’s skirmishes. The Thai army said its forces heard a drone before seeing six armed Cambodian soldiers moving closer to Thai military positions at the border, then opening fire. Cambodia’s defense ministry said that Thailand deployed a drone first before opening fire and that Cambodian troops reacted in self-defense.

In a statement, the Thai military said it “condemns Cambodia for using weapons to attack civilians in Thailand. Thailand is ready to protect sovereignty and our people from inhuman action.”

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet wrote to the president of the U.N. Security Council asking for an urgent meeting to stop “unprovoked and premeditated military aggression” by Thailand. In a post on Facebook, he appealed to Cambodians to “maintain their morality and dignity, and to avoid discrimination or any actions that could affect the Royal Thai Embassy in Cambodia, Thai Companies, and Thai citizens living in Cambodia.”

Thailand’s acting prime minister, Phumtham Vejjayachai, said in remarks to reporters that the fighting must stop before there can be negotiations with Cambodia.

Those killed included one soldier and 11 civilians, according to the Thai health ministry. At least eight soldiers and 35 civilians have been injured, the ministry said. Thailand has evacuated more than 40,000 people from border areas, moving many of them to temporary shelters.

(Prajoub Sukprom/Reuters)

Cambodia has not yet commented on casualties on its side. Defense ministry spokeswoman Maly Socheata did not provide detail when asked at a news conference.

Thursday’s fighting came after weeks of escalating tension following a shooting incident on May 28 that killed a Cambodian soldier. Since then, Cambodia has petitioned the International Court of Justice, banned some Thai imports, and announced it would begin conscripting younger citizens starting next year.

On Wednesday, Thailand expelled Cambodia’s ambassador and recalled its envoy to Phnom Penh after previously closing some border crossings. Thailand’s former prime minister was suspended after a leaked call between her and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s former prime minister, sparked a political fracas.

The 800 kilometer long boundary between Cambodia and Thailand has been a source of contention for decades, with ancient temples and historical claims frequently igniting diplomatic friction.

Includes reporting by RFA Khmer and Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA, as well as Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

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

The Thai Foreign Ministry downgraded its diplomatic relations with Cambodia and lodged a formal protest after an investigation by the Thai military allegedly found evidence that Cambodia had laid new landmines in a disputed border area, Phumtham Vejjayachai, the acting prime minister, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The government has also ordered the closure of all border checkpoints under the jurisdiction of Thailand’s Second Army, he said.

Cambodia’s undersecretary of state, Lt. Gen. Maly Socheata, rejected the Thai allegations, saying in a press statement that the border area “still contains landmines left over from past wars that have not yet been fully cleared.”

Five members of a Thai military patrol were wounded by a landmine on Wednesday in the Nam Yuen district of northeastern Ubon Ratchathani province, the Thai army said, with one soldier losing a leg. The incident follows another landmine explosion on July 16 in which a Thai soldier lost a foot.

Tensions have remained high since a Cambodian soldier was killed in a shooting incident on May 28 in the disputed border area. Since then, the neighboring countries have waged a tit-for-tat political conflict, with Thailand closing border crossings and Cambodia petitioning the International Court of Justice and banning some Thai imports.

A leaked phone call between former Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s former prime minister and current Senate leader, led Thailand to suspend Shinawatra.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, meanwhile, cited the conflict as he announced last week that Cambodia would begin conscripting its younger citizens. He also began a wave of raids on some of its many scam centers after Shinawatra cited them as a national threat to Thailand.

Includes reporting from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

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

The structure is expected to cost more than 1 trillion yuan (US$137 billion). Once completed, it would be the world’s largest hydropower dam, generating 300 billion kilowatt-hours of power annually, about three times the power of China’s Three Gorges Dam, Xinhua, a state-run news agency, reported last year. Operations are expected to begin sometime in the 2030s.

Premier Li Qiang attended a commencement ceremony with other officials in Nyingchi in southeastern Tibet over the weekend.

Xinhua reported that the electricity generated “will be primarily transmitted to other regions for consumption, while also meeting local power needs in Tibet.”

(Paul Nelson/RFA)

The river is known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, Brahmaputra in India, and Jamuna in Bangladesh. It flows through all three areas from its origin in the glaciers of western Tibet.

Climate activist and researcher Manshi Asher told RFA in December that there is “substantial evidence” of negative impacts from hydropower projects in the Himalayas.

“This project will undoubtedly alter the environmental flows of the river,” Asher said. “The larger the dam, the greater the impact on the river flows.”

Neeraj Singh Manhas, a special adviser on South Asia at Parley Policy Initiative in South Korea, said in December that the dam could affect agriculture, hydropower generation and drinking water availability in India.

“Seasonal changes in water discharge could exacerbate floods or intensify droughts downstream, undermining livelihoods and ecosystems,” Manhas said.

Over the weekend, the Chinese premier said that special emphasis “must be placed on ecological conservation to prevent environmental damage,” according to Xinhua.

China has built an estimated 22,000 large dams to help fuel decades of rapid industrialization and economic growth — about 40% of the world’s total.

Includes reporting from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

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

Images and videos released by state-controlled media showed people running from alleged scam-center sites, Cambodian troops inspecting seized electronic equipment and groups of detainees in plastic wrist ties. Officials said detained workers included Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Indian nationals.

(Agence Kampuchea Presse via AFP)

Information Minister Neth Pheaktra told Agence France-Presse that authorities had expanded the scope of their raids to nine of the country’s 25 provinces and will “dismantle every scam network no matter where they hide.”

The move comes after an Amnesty International report released last month said that the Cambodian government was “deliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses” at the centers, “including slavery, human trafficking, child labour and torture being carried out by criminal gangs on a vast scale” at at least 53 sites across the country.

Scam centers have also figured into Cambodia’s recent political tensions with neighboring Thailand. As she closed border crossings between the two nations last month, the now-ousted Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra cited Cambodia’s scam centers as “a hub of world-class criminality and a national threat.”

Across Southeast Asia, scam centers generate nearly $40 billion in annual profits, according to a United Nations estimate.

Rong Chhun, an adviser to the opposition Nation Power Party in Cambodia, told RFA Khmer that shutting down scam centers would require targeting organizers, not workers.

“If we only target and sweep up the workers hired by these masterminds without capturing the leaders themselves, it won’t be long before the operations reappear,” he said.

Ny Sokha, president of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, said the Cambodian government must find and prosecute those who have allowed scam centers to take root and flourish.

“If the government is truly committed to eliminating gambling and especially online scams, I believe further investigation is needed to uncover those behind the scenes. Regardless of how powerful or influential they may be, they must be brought to justice in accordance with the law.”

(Copyright Amnesty International, 2024)

Based on interviews with 423 former Cambodian scam-center workers, the Amnesty International report described adult and child workers as young as 14 being attacked with electric-shock batons, being held in cages and being sent to “dark rooms” for punishment if they failed to meet productivity targets. Nearly all of the workers Amnesty interviewed had been lured using deceptive recruitment tactics and false promises of legitimate jobs.

In May, United Nations officials described brutal conditions at scam centers across Southeast Asia.

“Once trafficked, victims are deprived of their liberty and subjected to torture, ill treatment, severe violence and abuse including beatings, electrocution, solitary confinement and sexual violence. They have limited access to food and clean water, and must endure cramped and unsanitary living conditions,” their statement said.

A former scam-center worker named Tu Anh Tu told RFA in 2024 that he accepted a job in Bavet, a Cambodian border town, after a friend vouched for an employment offer. He described confinement in a gated compound, trainings on how to scam targets using social media, and enduring a severe beating that knocked out three teeth and left him covered in lash marks when organizers thought he had contacted Cambodian police.

Includes reporting from Agence-France Presse.

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

Police stopped personal vehicles and public buses and directed pedestrians into shelters, such as basements and subway stations.

Some shops and restaurants pulled down shutters and turned off lights, moves aimed to reduce their visibility during a potential nighttime attack.

The drills also involved simulating wartime aid distribution and a mass-casualty event.

Earlier this week, Taiwanese forces held their largest-ever military drills, which included simulating a response to an amphibious invasion of the Penghu Islands.

Troops fired Javelin missiles, machine guns and tank rounds at maritime targets.

Taiwanese forces also conducted maritime drills around the Matsu Islands involving speed boats, drones and mortars. Soldiers fired from rubber speed boats and positions on shore, responding to a simulated “grey zone harassment” of the islands by Chinese Coast Guard and fishing vessels.

In an early morning drill, Taiwan’s military police used Taipei’s subway system as it simulated the redeployment of troops and supplies.

Taiwan’s military also practiced securing and defending a major bridge in Taipei. This time they were firing blanks.

Taiwanese military officials said the Han Kuang drills replicate full combat conditions, including simulated enemy attacks on communications and command systems and a full-blown invasion scenario.

Includes reporting from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

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

For exiled activist Li Ying, it’s been a way to bankroll a pro-democracy community that’s challenging Chinese censorship and authoritarian rule.

Li, 32, is better known by his handle on the social media platform X: “Teacher Li is not your teacher.” He’s built a following of more than 2 million by posting news that Chinese authorities don’t want people to see.

Last December, he branched out to launch $Li, a form of cryptocurrency modeled after his own social media avatar — a hand-drawn tabby cat. The goal was to provide financial support for his initiatives to crowd-source data from inside China on social issues like overwork by students and laborers with an aim to promote change.

(li-dao.org)

But his move split the Chinese diaspora. While some supporters rallied behind Li, many activists and former supporters of Li condemned the launch as a fraud and an act of self-dealing.

On its debut, $Li reached a market capitalization in the tens of millions of U.S. dollars. But the price quickly plunged. As of the time of reporting, $Li’s market cap had dropped more than 80%, to less than $2 million.

Li concedes that his personal reputation took a beating, but he says that the coin’s launch has stimulated a debate about how cryptocurrency might be used to fund the activities of dissident groups beyond the reach of governments — not least the long arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

As an exiled influencer challenging Beijing’s censorship machine, Li said he has been facing threats and pressure from Chinese authorities.

Li said he lost his job in Italy, had his bank accounts in China frozen, and struggled to make a living through individual donations. In 2023, he publicly disclosed that his ad revenue from X averaged just €568 per month (about US$650) — well below the average monthly income in Italy.

“I had no choice but to launch a cryptocurrency,” Li told RFA.

(RFA)

According to a statement issued by Li on X, $Li had a total supply of 1 billion coins, with pricing left to market forces. A foundation was to be established to oversee the coin, with 19.5% of tokens held by the foundation and 2% held by Li himself.

Li said he froze the majority of his own holdings because he has no plans to sell. The remainder has been used for payments to staff involved in initiatives promoting democracy in China.

One of the managers of the foundation, Canada-based influencer “Toronto Squareface,” stated in a post on his X account that the use of funds would be determined through a democratic process. All transactions would be publicly recorded and transparent under the blockchain technology.

In a statement on X, Li said he plans to use the foundation to build community supporting initiatives that promote freedom of speech and press freedom in China. $Li will not hold any presale, meaning that there will be no early access sales to any investors, and the team has no authority to mint additional tokens.

According to the latest data from a trading platform GMGN, there are 6,283 holders of $Li.

今天我们很高兴的宣布，我们在Sol上发行了我们的迷因币 $LI ，以帮助我们的团队持续运营这个账号。 $LI 将以一个基金会架构, 后续会邀请更多业内人士作为基金会成员，通过多签钱包管理基金会的支出，确保基金会的去中心化，以完全公开透明的方式进行运作。… pic.twitter.com/prHOlWu9Lx

— Li (@Li_DAOmeme) December 18, 2024

Shortly after its launch, some platforms flagged $Li as a scam or high-risk token and banned its trading. Li explained to RFA that this was primarily because those platforms have Chinese ownership, such as the on-chain wallet OKX. He added that $Li was labeled a scam as part of a political attack by the Chinese authorities.

Despite the reassurances offered by Li about the management of $Li, many of his supporters turned against him after its launch, accusing him of betrayal and opportunism.

“He (Li) has changed under immense pressure and the temptation of money,” wrote Huang Yicheng, an organizer and exile who participated in China’s anti-Covid protests. He announced on X that he was cutting ties with Li.

Huang accused Li of leveraging public trust to enrich himself, which Li denies. Others claim that under the guise of promoting democracy in China, Li’s real goal was to exploit investors.

Some critics even drew comparisons to Guo Wengui, the self-styled Chinese dissident and vocal supporter of Donald Trump. Guo was convicted on multiple counts of fraud and money laundering for allegedly using his online influence to scam followers out of more than $1 billion, including through a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.

Li’s supporters, however, view the meme coin’s launch as an innovation in the civic movement.

“Li burst onto the scene like a disruptor no one expected,” said Jiangbu, who prefers to be identified by a pseudonym for security reasons. He’s a Paris-based non-governmental organization activist focusing on social issues in China.

Jiangbu, who once led overseas protests against China’s zero-covid policy, said he’s familiar with the slow grind of traditional non-profit work — securing grants, drafting reports, executing programs.

“What Li did was create money out of thin air,” said Jiangbu, who has served as a coordinator for one of the initiatives funded by $Li. “The project is efficient, and everyone gets a little reward and has a real sense of participation. It’s incredibly innovative.”

According to Aaron Zhang, a member of Li’s team who is also being identified by a pseudonym due to security concerns, staff chose $Li as a payment mechanism because of cryptocurrency’s anonymity. This has made it difficult for the Chinese government to trace transactions back to individual investors, thereby protecting their safety.

Despite the criticism Li has faced, he said he succeeded in building a cryptocurrency-based community capable of launching initiatives with real impact on China.

“Every time you come back from the brink,” Li said, “you come back stronger.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Baili Liu for RFA Mandarin.

The incident follows the death of a Cambodian soldier from a border clash at the end of May and a leaked conversation between Cambodia’s Hun Sen and Thailand’s Paetongtarn Shinawatra in June.

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

Hostilities between the neighbors spiked in recent weeks after a Cambodian soldier was killed in a shooting incident on May 28 along a contested border area.

Since then, some border areas have seen closures, Cambodia has petitioned the International Court of Justice and banned some Thai imports, and Thailand has suspended its prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, amid negative reaction to a leaked phone call with former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

“This episode of confrontation is a lesson for us and is an opportunity for us to review, assess, and set our targets to reform our military,” Hun Manet said during a ceremony at a military training center.

(Agence Kampuchea Presse via AFP)

Cambodia’s parliament enacted a law in 2006 that would require all Cambodians aged 18 to 30 to serve in the military for 18 months. The law hadn’t been activated previously.

The CIA’s World Factbook estimates that Cambodia’s military includes around 200,000 personnel; it says Thailand’s military has around 350,000.

During his speech on Monday, Hun Manet called for Cambodia to increase its military budget and for Thailand to reopen the border crossings it had closed.

Includes reporting from Agence-France Presse and the Associated Press.

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

Issued by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, the directive applies to the area within the main ring road around central Hanoi, home to much of the city’s business activity. The city has nearly 7 million motorbikes and a million cars.

(AFP)

Some residents say that the move will disproportionately impact low-income residents.

“It will affect people who rely on motorbikes to earn a living,” Nguyen Van Hung, who has spent three decades driving a motorcycle taxi and now works with Grab, a ride-hailing app used widely across Southeast Asia, told the Associated Press. “How can people just discard their vehicles?”

Others said that the timeline for the change was too aggressive to make financial sense for residents.

“The life cycle of a car lasts for several decades, not just a few years or a few months,” Pham The Anh, an economics professor, wrote on his personal Facebook page. “The policy roadmap must be announced long enough before being applied so that people can proactively choose” their mode of transportation.

The Vietnamese government aims to replace gas-fueled motorbikes with electric vehicles in what it says is an effort to cut pollution and tackle climate change. Local EV maker VinFast holds nearly a fifth of the market share, according to the European Chamber of Commerce, but its share of the two-wheeler market is still small.

A second phase, set to begin in January 2028, would expand the ban’s geographic area and include some gas-powered private cars.

Includes reporting from the Associated Press.

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

Rubio was in Malaysia on his first Asia trip since taking office, looking to stress U.S. commitment to the region at the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum, as countries received notices of U.S. tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump this week.

At a Thursday photo-op before the start of the U.S, Japan, Philippines trilateral meeting, Rubio learned the summit’s signature “ASEAN-way” handshake.

“How do we do that?” Rubio asked.

“The ASEAN-way” replied Philippines’ Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro.

Japan’s Prime Minister Takeshi Iwaya then grabbed Rubio’s hands and crossed them, with the three standing and smiling with the traditional cross-armed handshake for cameras.

Rubio also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov where they discussed the Russia-Ukraine war.

Reporting by Reuters; edited by Charlie Dharapak.

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

The change would apply to people who were born Cambodian citizens, people with dual citizenship in Cambodia and another country, and people from other nations who have been granted Cambodian citizenship.

All 125 members of the National Assembly voted for the resolution, which legally amends Article 33 of the Cambodian constitution. The move comes after a rise in tensions between Cambodia and Thailand over a border dispute that resulted in a deadly shooting incident, closures at the border, and a political fight that contributed to a Thai court suspending the country’s prime minister.

(Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)

Hun Manet, Cambodia’s prime minister, used a speech last week to frame the move’s expected impact.

“Please don’t be concerned if you are a patriot and do not oppose the interest” of Cambodia, he said. “But if you have conspired with foreign powers to destroy Cambodia then, yes, it is true you should be worried, and in such case you are not a Cambodian. No true patriot would ever plot with foreign powers to destroy their nation.”

Critics warn that new legislation targeting dissidents’ citizenship would suppress voices critical of the government.

“As the proposal moves closer to becoming reality, anyone who speaks out against or opposes the ruling party will be at risk of having their citizenship revoked,” Montse Ferrer, Regional Research Director for Amnesty International, said in a statement. “We are deeply concerned that the Cambodian government, given the power to strip people of their citizenship, will misuse it to crackdown on its critics and make them stateless.”

Before the amendment, Article 33 of the Cambodian constitution said that “no Khmer citizen shall be deprived of their nationality, exiled, or extradited to another country except through mutual agreement. Khmer citizens living abroad are protected by the state. The acquisition of Cambodian nationality is determined by law.”

Includes reporting from The Associated Press.

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

In less than a year as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam has made moves likened to the drastic cuts that U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have implemented to U.S. federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

To Lam has merged ministries and central government agencies, reduced the number of provinces and cities by half, and dismantled district-level administrative units.

Why did To Lam move so fast with reforms, and what are the political, social, and economic impacts?

(Ludovic Marin/AFP)

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University, or Radio Free Asia.

Below is a transcript of an interview with Zach Abuza by Truong Son from the RFA Vietnamese service:

RFA: What are your thoughts on the administrative reform in Vietnam that Secretary General To Lam just carried out? How significant is the government reshuffle in terms of its social, economic, and political impact, because we know that this is a massive change in Vietnam?

Zach Abuza: The changes in the government are really significant and they shouldn’t be underestimated. And we have to understand that they’re happening at multiple levels. There was the reform of central government ministries. Five were folded in, and some hundred thousand civil servants were either fired or retired.

At the provincial level, they went from 63 provinces or provincial-level cities down to 34. So that’s almost a 50% reduction — a huge consolidation there. And then they eliminated an entire level of governance at the district level. So it used to go province, district, and then down to the commune level. And they got rid of that mid-level. So they’re hoping for more efficiency.

Now, all three of those reforms at each level of government have important economic, social, and political implications. Let’s start with the government. Those reforms were done in part because the government is notoriously bureaucratic. It’s slow. And I think the general secretary really feels that Vietnam has to just be much more responsive, much more accountable, to respond to a rapidly changing international environment, in order to grow the economy, to attract foreign investment. Just had to get rid of red tape.

Some of the ministries that were eliminated really were legacy issues. They reflected much more of the government structure at the time of Doi Moi, not all these years into it. You know, the Vietnamese economy is fundamentally different than it was before.

And that’s why I think you really start to see some of the consolidation, especially in the economic ministries. I think now there are really three key ministries to pay attention to. The Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of National Defense, and the Ministry of Finance. These are kind of the three heavy hitters.

At the provincial level, it’s important to understand that this consolidation will have economic effects. And I think one thing that maybe we need to think about is, with the exception of the provinces

in the northwest which is landlocked, you know, bordering Lao and the Chinese frontier, almost every other province now has a piece of coastline.

And this is important because it was always the coastal provinces that were more advanced because they had access to ports, harbors and it was easier to get products to international markets. And so the reorganization at that level, certainly makes it easier. No province now, other than those northwestern landlocked ones, has an excuse that they cannot get goods to market anymore.

Now, I think the provincial reforms have very significant political implications. And let me explain this at several levels. The first is the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the era of Doi Moi has basically had about one third of their members coming from, you know, the provinces.

So provincial party chiefs, all of a sudden that is going to change. And we might see at the next Party Congress expected in January 2026 that we see a smaller central committee overall. And that’s one thing that I am looking for.

There are other political implications. And that is, you now have almost a 50% reduction in the number of governors in the number of party chiefs.

And so the general secretary, through this consolidation actually got to choose winners and losers, right? Going into the next Party Congress, To Lam clearly has the support of those who have kept their jobs. They owe him, right? They could have lost everything.

But, more importantly, the year before a party congress, normally nothing happens. And I mean, nothing happens. People are afraid to make decisions. People are afraid to make investments. Often, provinces or cities have funding allocated to them, but they’re afraid to use it because they just don’t know what’s going to happen at the Party Congress.

They don’t know who’s going to emerge on top. They’re afraid of implementing policies that then get reversed. So there’s traditionally a lot of caution. To Lam has completely thrown that off. He has pushed through the most radical reforms I can think of.

And he did it right ahead of a Party Congress. So that to me, says he is very confident that he has the full backing of the Central Committee and that he is very confident that he will be reelected to a full term at the 14th Party Congress.

Let me just make one quick point about eliminating the district level of administration. I think this is going to have an interesting impact down the line.

I don’t see it having a short term political impact, but for Communist Party cadres — they might have been in the cities working their way up, but, you know, all of a sudden you’ve eliminated a very important pathway to be selected and to be noticed, by the higher echelons of the party.

And I think that there is going to be a lot of unhappiness that this real, important level, maybe not administratively, maybe it’s not the most important for the functioning of government and efficiency, but for people looking for their career pathway to senior party membership. That is an important stepping stone that has been eliminated.

RFA: You just said that Secretary General To Lam is certainly very confident politically. That’s why he’s carried out this unprecedented reform, I must say, the year before the party Congress, and as you said, which traditionally has been a very quiet year.

And not just that he did this in the year prior to the Congress, but also, if we look into the manner in which he carried out this reform, which was really quick. The finish line was achieved within a few months.

So, if we look at the scale of the project and the pace it was done this begs the question: Why did he do it in such a manner? Why do you think he has to achieve this reform within such a short period of time?

Zach Abuza: The Vietnamese government and Communist Party are not known for quick decision making. They tend to be very slow, deliberative, and cautious. But these reforms happened at lightning speed. And I think that pace took everyone by surprise.

Part of the answer is it took everyone by surprise. He made the announcement. And for the government ministries, for example, they had less than three months to implement these major restructuring, government reshuffle, 100,000 civil servants, either being retired or found redundant.

Part of the reason he moved quickly is before there could be real resistance to it. He wanted to make sure that no one had time to kind of dig in their heels and resist these reforms, because people, these reforms, create winners and losers, and that was clearly a concern of his.

I think that To Lam — and while I certainly find the way he came to power, as the minister of Public Security who completely weaponized the anti-corruption campaign, eliminated all of his rivals on the Politburo in just absolute Machiavellian fashion — I actually think that he is maybe the right man for the job right now.

I think he really does understand that Vietnam has this very narrow window of opportunity to push through major economic restructuring and reforms.

Vietnam’s demographics have peaked. The country will start to see its population decline and fairly rapidly, especially with the rapid urbanization, the increased number of women in the workforce, higher education levels.

All those three factors always lead to sharp declines in demographics. So Vietnam has the challenge of soon it’s going to start getting old before it gets rich. You know, it’s one thing for Japan to get old because it’s already rich.

Thailand has had a little harder time, and I think Vietnamese policymakers do look to Thailand as a country that has gotten old before it got rich. The second thing is that To Lam is very fearful of being caught in the middle income trap, where Vietnam simply assembles. It does not produce; it doesn’t have those ecosystems there.

In the current trade negotiations with the United States, the Americans always pointed to the fact that Vietnam’s trade deficit with China was very close to its trade surplus with the United States. Now, the United States’ thinking was that Vietnam was simply being used as a transshipment point for Chinese goods.

To a degree, yes, but that doesn’t explain all of it. What explains it is the fact that things that are produced in Vietnam, whether it’s Samsung, mobile phones or VinFast cars, are made with components imported from China. So Vietnam hasn’t developed that ecosystem.

To Lam is very interested in getting the higher value added foreign investment. We hear a lot about semiconductors and other high-end manufacturing.

He needs a much more efficient government structure to attract foreign investment. One of the reasons we know foreign investors — there’s often a delta between pledged investment and actual shovel in the ground building something is because of bureaucratic red tape.

I think To Lam is really concerned that foreign investors are going to get frustrated and move on to the next place because Vietnam’s labor costs are going up. It has shortages of electricity. You know, it’s been a darling of foreign investors, but that is not a given. That foreign investors can be very fickle. We have watched them leave Vietnam in the past.

And let me just make one last point about why he did it so fast. I think this is To Lam really asserting himself politically. He has done what many of us probably would have said, “Impossible.”

No way is he going to get through such momentous restructuring in a quick period of time. There will be too much, you know, resistance to it. He really showed that he has full control over the Central Committee. Now, he still has his former deputy minister, now the Minister of Public Security. He’s got another former deputy minister of Public Security in charge of the Central Inspection Commission.

He has many levers of power that he can wield against people who are opposed to him. He can still investigate corruption and destroy careers, but I think he really has won over this Central Committee with his vision.

One last point we should probably make about these reforms. There is going to be a major shift in power to the South.

You have created a huge megacity now. Ho Chi Minh City, all the way out to Vũng Tàu around Bien Hoa.

This is now a massive place. Under the former General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng there was a real attempt to crush any southern autonomy. I think we understand that the South is the driver of the economy. To Lam knows that he has to empower the South. He knows that legitimacy is coming from economic development.

RFA: I guess he got what he wanted. He restructured the entire governance system not just at the central level, but also the local level as well.

So the entire country now is basically governed under a new system that looks very different from when he took power in August 2024. But I’m curious because we understand that this kind of project has massive implications and consequences. And usually people do it with great caution because they need to study.

They need to experiment to find the best model. But the way To Lam carried it out was that it was just too quick, too rapid. There was no opportunity for experimentation, for research at all. He just said, “This is what we are going to do,” and he achieved that within a few months.

So what do you think would be the consequences and the challenges that he has to face, given that he has done this too quickly and gave no room for deliberation, for experiment, for research, for debate.

Zach Abuza: No doubt there will be growing pains. And a lot of this was rushed. And I imagine in many cases, you are not going to only see some resistance to this and kind of pushback.

But just complications and everything from accounting and getting bank accounts and tax collection and all these things are going to be very different. Now, from the central government’s position, this is hopefully easier. There are now almost 50% fewer provinces to basically negotiate with. And should make some coordination a little bit easier. But without a doubt this was pretty rushed.

Now, I would go back to a point I made earlier, and that is the party chiefs that are in power today after the restructuring owe To Lam — they owe him their jobs and I imagine they will be very responsive, because they’re all interested in climbing up the ladder and those who do not perform well and have problems are going to find their political careers might not last much longer than January.

So I think he’s using the clock very effectively, you know, like a good football coach uses the clock in a game. I think he is doing that. But yeah, there will be problems, and we just haven’t seen them yet.

There are going to be issues with spending and infrastructure development. You now have these party chiefs that are going to think about which part of the province, these larger provinces to invest in.

You know, there are going to be rural communes that are going to feel they’re being left behind because the emphasis will be on more development to the coast and where industry is. And so, yeah, without a doubt, we will see how this plays out.

Edited by Charlie Dharapak

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

‘Good news!’

Who’s the most excited by RFA Cantonese’s closure? China. (Surprise, surprise.)

“Good news!” crowed pro-China social-media influencer Li Jingjing to her 116,000-plus followers on X. “Radio Free Asia Cantonese service got shut down, right before the 28th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland! This media was spreading lies, hatred and stoking separatism in China, serviced as a propaganda tool with United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM)’s funding.” China’s ambassador to Nepal chimed in with his message of approval (pictured).

China’s state-sponsored Global Times reported that “the notorious anti-China media Radio Free Asia” was shuttering. The story included a quote from Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning given in March, when RFA was first told by the U.S. government that its grant agreement was suspended: “We are not going to comment on U.S. adjustment of its domestic policies. … On those U.S. media you mentioned, their blemished track record on China coverage is hardly a secret.” No love from the CCP.

‘Thank you for always telling the truth’

Opinions take a sharp turn with the people who have relied on our Cantonese reports. “Many Hong Kong media outlets have been forced to close by the CCP & repressive HK gov’t, but ironically it’s the US gov’t that’s ended” RFA Cantonese, the Hong Kong Democracy Council said on X.

“Thank you RFA for letting Hong Kong people know the truth about news from all over the world, especially the truth about how the CCP oppresses Hong Kong people,” Pepper Chan, a commenter on RFA Cantonese’s Facebook page, said in a comment. “I believe you will come back again; we will wait.”

Reading RFA Cantonese on Instagram had “become a habit,” said one commenter. “Thank you for always telling the truth,” said another. Many repeated this question: “What other Cantonese news media can I watch?”And media freedom watchdog RSF added: “[Reporters Without Borders] is outraged about the closure of Radio Free Asia (RFA) Cantonese,” the org posted on Bluesky. “7.5 million Hongkongers already live in a growing news desert. Trump claims to “stand with Hong Kong,” but his decision to gut funding for USAGM media like RFA hampers access to reliable news in the territory & worldwide.”

Documenting freedom’s decline in Hong Kong

Since its start in 1998, the year after Hong Kong’s handover to China, RFA Cantonese has been a steady source of news in Hong Kong, Macao, and the mainland. The notion of a promised “one country, two systems,” approach to governance faded with China’s increased influence in Hong Kong — change that accelerated with the national security law in 2020 that allowed Beijing to drive out much of the territory’s independent media.

With the passage of Article 23 and after being labeled as a “foreign force,” RFA Cantonese was forced to close its Hong Kong bureau in 2024, but its influence continued to grow, especially on social media. When it closed in June, it had become one of Hong Kong’s last surviving independent news outlets.Some highlights ...

• In a January 2024 field research study of young Hong Kong escapees in Taiwan, participants regarded RFA as crucial for bridging information gaps and an essential resource for the increasingly restricted information landscape.

• RFA Cantonese delivered extensive coverage of landmark Hong Kong court cases in Nov. 2024: the trials of 47 pro-democracy activists and media mogul Jimmy Lai. Reports drew more than 130K views, and earned praise from family members who confirmed RFA’s position as a highly trusted source of news for HK audiences.

• RFA documented Hong Kong’s national security crackdown and the global exile movement, including a recent feature profiling three U.S.-based Hong Kong activists, which drew nearly 200K YouTube views within a week. 

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

Hun Sen, the former Cambodian prime minister who now leads the country’s Senate, has framed the legislation as part of a call for public unity amid a border dispute with neighboring Thailand.

(Hun Sen via Facebook)

“There may be a need to amend the constitution again,” he said in a speech on June 27. “I’ve instructed the Justice Minister to study the possibility of revoking citizenship from Cambodians who side with foreign nations to harm our country.”

Tensions between Cambodia and Thailand spiked in recent weeks, resulting in a deadly shooting incident and closures at the border and a political fracas that contributed to a Thai court suspending the country’s prime minister.

Cambodia’s legislature is expected to take up the citizenship measure on July 11.

Cambodia’s Constitutional Council affirmed the proposed amendment’s legality on July 2. But Eng Chhai Eang, vice president of the pro-democracy Cambodia National Rescue Party, said that Cambodia has no law that allows for the revocation of birthright citizenship.

(ccc.gov.kh)

“This is something granted by nature,” he said. “Even if a Khmer child is born abroad to Khmer parents, they automatically hold citizenship. Trying to undo that is absurd. I see this as a manipulative political strategy.”

Article 33 of the Cambodian constitution says that “no Khmer citizen shall be deprived of their nationality, exiled, or extradited to another country except through mutual agreement. Khmer citizens living abroad are protected by the state. The acquisition of Cambodian nationality is determined by law.”

It’s not the first time that Cambodian dissidents have faced threats to their citizenship. In 2019, the government revoked the passports of at least 30 dissidents who pushed for democracy and criticized the ruling Hun family.

(Vann Dara via RFA Khmer)

Vann Dara, a former provincial leader now living in exile in Australia, told RFA that losing her passport in 2020 has left her stateless and unprotected, unable to travel or receive support from any government.

“I’ve never done anything to harm my country. I only helped the people,” she said. “I didn’t cut down forests, sell land, gems, or minerals. Yet Hun Sen hunts me down, abuses and arrests us without fault, and even strips us of citizenship and passports.”

Edited by Greg Barber

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

Welcomed by Tibetan cultural performers, the Tibetan spiritual leader was greeted by schoolchildren dressed in their school uniforms, monks in their traditional robes, and residents, both young and old, dressed in their finest traditional attire.

The stage featured a backdrop proclaiming “Year of Compassion” with images of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa. The Dalai Lama was seated alongside Indian government officials and leaders from the Tibetan exiled government. Also on the dais was longtime Tibetan rights supporter Richard Gere and his son.

Birthday messages from international leaders including former U.S. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama were shared from the stage.

“Your unwavering devotion resonates with all those who cherish freedom, democracy and respect for human rights, values that the people of Taiwan hold dear,” said Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te in a statement.

“In the face of regional and global challenges, we remain committed to fostering a peaceful and sustainable future for the next generations based upon understanding, dialogue.”

(Tenzin Woser/RFA Tibetan)

Sunday’s celebration capped a week of events. Wednesday’s reaffirmation by the Dalai Lama that the Dalai Lama lineage would continue, with the next reincarnation of the spiritual leader chosen by the Gaden Phodrang Trust, a non-profit group that he set up, rejecting moves by China to steer his succession.

The Chinese foreign ministry reiterated on Wednesday that the selection of a new Dalai Lama must follow Chinese law and that it had to take place in China.

(Tenzin Woser/RFA Tibetan)

Following comments by Indian minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday in support of the Dalai Lama’s reaffirmation of his succession plans, China’s foreign ministry warned India to be prudent in its words and actions.

“We hope the Indian side will fully understand the highly sensitive nature of Tibet-related issues, recognize the anti-China separatist nature of the 14th Dalai Lama,” said spokesperson Mao Ning.

In a statement released Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent birthday wishes and said, “We support efforts to preserve Tibetans’ distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage, including their ability to freely choose and venerate religious leaders without interference.”

Speaking at Sunday’s event in Dharamsala, Pema Khandu, India’s Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, said, “[We] reaffirm our collective commitment to uphold the traditional Tibetan Buddhism process for the recognition of his reincarnation in line with the guidance of Gaden Phodrang Trust.”

Reporting by Dawa Dolma, visual reporting by Tenzin Woser in Dharamsala; edited by Charlie Dharapak

(Tenzin Woser/RFA Tibetan)

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

“No one has the right to interfere or decide who the successor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be,” said Kiren Rijiju, India’s minister for minority affairs.

China’s foreign ministry urged India to be prudent in its words and actions.

“We hope the Indian side will fully understand the highly sensitive nature of Tibet-related issues, recognize the anti-China separatist nature of the 14th Dalai Lama,” said spokesperson Mao Ning.

India’s foreign ministry later on Friday released a statement on its website saying, “Government of India does not take any position or speak on matters concerning beliefs and practices of faith and religion.”

(OHHDL)

The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959, stated on Wednesday that upon his death, he would be reincarnated as the next spiritual leader and that only the Gaden Phodrang Trust would be authorized to identify his successor.

Beijing maintains it has the right to approve the Dalai Lama’s successor.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) said in a statement: “The process of reincarnation for Tibetan Buddhists is a sacred tradition. Any attempt by the CCP to interfere in this spiritual matter is an unacceptable violation of religious liberty and must be swiftly condemned by the international community.”

Penpa Tsering, president of the Tibetan government in exile, spoke to reporters in Dharamsala at the end of the three-day conference of Tibetan religious leaders, where the Dalai Lama affirmed his succession plans.

“If China tries to use this in any way, in any means, we will not recognize it. In the future also we will not accept any of China’s choices.”

Reporting by Dawa Dolma and Tenzin Woser in Dharamsala; additional reporting from Reuters; edited by Charlie Dharapak

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

As he had promised more than a decade ago, the Dalai Lama announced ahead of his 90th birthday that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue on to a successor — one that he said would be selected by his non-profit, not the Chinese government. Beijing, for its part, says the selection must adhere to Chinese law.

During an event kicking off his birthday celebration, the Dalai Lama reflected on the connections of his life as a leader rather than the tensions.

(Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP)

“Throughout my life, I have worked for the welfare of the Tibetan people, preservation of the Dharma and for the happiness of all,” he said. “I have engaged in dialogues and discussions with scientists and many representatives of the world, and cultivated deep insightful relationships with individuals across the globe. As a result, I consider my life so far has been a profoundly purposeful and deeply fulfilling one.”

Recognition, invasion, escape

For the man born Lhamo Thondup on July 6, 1935, in the small hamlet of Taktser in northeastern Tibet’s historical Amdo region, the journey to spiritual leadership began at the age of two, when a party of Tibetan monks, following ancient portents and Tibetan Buddhism reincarnation traditions, arrived at his village in search of the 14th Dalai Lama. After the 13th Dalai Lama’s passing in 1933, search teams had fanned across Tibet following reported signs and visions – including the head of the embalmed 13th Dalai Lama turning from southeast to northeast, indicating where his successor would be found.

(Kanwal Krishna/AFP)

The precocious boy correctly identified items belonging to the 13th Dalai Lama. Following his recognition, he journeyed with his family to Tibet’s capital Lhasa in 1939, where his formal enthronement ceremony was held a year later on Feb. 22, 1940 – launching a life that would span the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the birth of a global movement of peaceful resistance in exile, and the spread of Tibetan Buddhism worldwide.

The young Dalai Lama’s childhood ended abruptly in 1950 when the Chinese Communist regime’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded Tibet. He was only 16 when he assumed full temporal and spiritual leadership of his nation as Chinese troops overwhelmed Tibet’s poorly equipped army. For nearly a decade, he sought to find accommodation with China’s new communist rulers, even traveling to Beijing to meet Chairman Mao Zedong in 1954-55.

(AP)

But Mao’s chilling comment to him — that “religion is poison” — revealed the impossibility of that hope and foreshadowed the religious and cultural destruction that ensued during the Cultural Revolution. As guerrilla warfare erupted across Tibet and tensions reached a breaking point, the unthinkable became inevitable.

On March 10, 1959, thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s summer palace in Lhasa, fearing Chinese plans to abduct their beloved leader. Seven days later, under cover of darkness and disguised as a soldier, the 23-year-old Dalai Lama began his legendary escape across the Himalayas to India. Time Magazine would later headline his flight as “God-King in Exile.”

(AFP)

Traveling only at night to avoid Chinese patrols with a party of 100 including family members, cabinet ministers, and Tibetan guerrillas, the Dalai Lama arrived in India after two harrowing weeks. Tibetan devotees later spoke of mist and clouds that seemed to shield the Dalai Lama’s escape party from being spotted by Chinese planes. Whether divine intervention or fortunate weather, the escape captured the imaginations of people worldwide.

(AP)

Gift of democracy

Arriving in India as a refugee, the Dalai Lama faced an unprecedented challenge: leading 80,000 displaced Tibetans who had followed him into exile while keeping alive hopes for Tibet’s freedom.

Rather than establishing a traditional monarchy-in-exile, he chose a revolutionary path: granting the gift of democracy to the Tibetan people.

(AP)

In February 1960, at the holy Buddhist pilgrimage site of Bodh Gaya in India’s northeastern state of Bihar, the Dalai Lama outlined his vision for democratic governance.

Later that year, he established the first elected representative body in Tibetan history, with the members — who represented the different sects of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet’s three historical provinces of Kham, Amdo, and U-Tsang — taking their oath on September 2, a day that has since been celebrated as ‘Tibetan Democracy Day.’

(Keystone Features via Getty Images)

The democratic transformation has accelerated over the past five decades, with the adoption of the Charter of Tibetans-in-Exile by the Tibetan parliament-in-exile in 1991, the establishment of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission as the judicial arm of the Tibetan government in 1992, and the first direct elections of the Tibetan political leader by exiled Tibetans in 2001.

The most significant moment in the Dalai Lama’s democratic reform came in the form of his historic devolution of all political powers in 2011 to the democratically elected leader of the Tibetan exile government, known as the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA).

“Since the fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, the Dalai Lamas have assumed both spiritual and temporal rule over Tibet. As I am the fourteenth in line of that institution, it is most appropriate if I, on my own initiative, happily and with pride, end the dual authority of the Dalai Lama,” the Dalai Lama said in March 2011 when he announced the transition.

He added that “the rule by kings and religious figures is outdated” and that Tibetans must “follow the trend of the free world which is that of democracy.”

(Ashwini Bhatia/AP)

Lobsang Sangay became the first democratically elected political leader, or Sikyong, of the Central Tibetan Administration in 2011. In 2021, Penpa Tsering, who had previously served as the Speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, won the presidential elections, taking over from Sangay in what was the first transfer of power since the Dalai Lama’s announcement in 2011.

“The decision to devolve my power is also a part of advancing the democratization process,” the Dalai Lama said.

Beyond democratic reforms, the Dalai Lama has built what is regarded as one of the world’s most successful refugee communities designed to keep alive the Tibetan way of life — spanning the Tibetan settlements in India, Nepal and Bhutan, to a growing diaspora spread across countries in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

(Anupam Nath/AP)

From his early days in exile, the Dalai Lama focused on establishing schools for Tibetan children. A comprehensive educational system enabled Tibetan students to learn their history and preserve their language, religion, and culture, while keeping pace with modern advancements and needs.

He founded the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in 1959; created the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies as the primary university for Tibetans in India in 1967; and supported the establishment of hundreds of monasteries and nunneries in exile to preserve Tibetan religious traditions – the large majority of which can be found in different parts of India.

Middle Way approach

Until 1985, the Dalai Lama rarely traveled outside India. But recognizing that Tibet’s survival depended on international support, he embarked on an unprecedented campaign — 60 international trips between 1986 and 1999, visiting an average of 10 countries annually. He met with world leaders, changemakers, policymakers, scholars, artists and activists to elevate the Tibetan struggle to global consciousness.

In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect,” cementing his status as an international moral authority.

(AFP)

Other major honors include the 2007 Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by the American Congress; the 2012 Templeton Prize for contributions to spiritual understanding; and the 1959 Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership. The 12th General Assembly of the Asian Buddhist Conference for Peace unanimously bestowed upon him the title “Universal Supreme Leader of the Buddhist World.”

Indeed, the Dalai Lama’s ascension to the world’s most visible and revered ambassador of Buddhism was as remarkable as it was deliberate.

(Jim Young/Reuters)

Yet his impact and appeal transcended religion. With his infectious laughter, warm humor and teachings on how to promote moral values, inner happiness and religious harmony, he made ancient Buddhist wisdom relevant to modern audiences.

Stadium-sized crowds gathered for his teachings. His books became bestsellers. His meetings with world leaders generated global headlines, even as they drew angry reactions from the Chinese government.

A pivotal moment in the Tibetan struggle came in 1987-88, when he presented his “Five-Point Peace Plan” to the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1987. He later elaborated on it at the European Parliament on June 15, 1988 as the “Strasbourg Proposal,” in which he introduced the “Middle Way Approach” that formed the basis of negotiations between the Dalai Lama’s envoys and the Chinese government in several rounds of talks.

(Christian Charisius/Reuters)

Rather than demanding independence for Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s ‘Middle Way’ approach calls for meaningful autonomy for all Tibetans living in the three traditional provinces of Tibet within the framework of the People’s Republic of China – one that enables the protection and preservation of Tibetan culture, religion and national identity.

Nine rounds of formal talks and one informal meeting between his envoys and Chinese officials occurred between 2002 and 2010, but achieved no breakthrough. Chinese officials rejected proposals by the Tibetan delegation seeking greater autonomy for Tibet within China.

“All my life I’ve advocated for nonviolence. I’ve done my utmost to restrain the understandable impulses of frustrated Tibetans… Especially, ever since our direct conversations after my exile began with Beijing in 1979, I’ve used all my moral authority and leverage with the Tibetan people, persuading them to seek a realistic solution in the form of a genuine autonomy within the framework of the PRC,” the Dalai Lama wrote in a new book published in March 2025.

“I must admit I remain deeply disappointed that Beijing has chosen not to acknowledge this huge accommodation on the part of the Tibetans, and has failed to capitalize on the genuine potential it offered to come to a lasting solution,” he said.

(Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP)

Several governments, including those of the United States and European countries, have repeatedly urged China to resume dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives for a peaceful resolution to the Tibetan issue. But Beijing continues to call him and the CTA “separatists,” while ruling out any talks on the demand for greater autonomy for Tibet.

“Any contact or talks [with a representative of the Dalai Lama] will only be about the personal future of the 14th Dalai Lama himself, or at most, a handful of people close to him, not the so-called ‘high degree of autonomy for Tibet,’” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said last year when outlining conditions for possible resumption of talks on Tibet.

His comments reflect Beijing’s intensified focus on the issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, including exploring all avenues to gain control over the selection of a successor amid efforts to gain legitimacy over its occupation of Tibet and authority over the global Buddhist population.

But in his recent memoir titled “Voice for the Voiceless,” the Dalai Lama wrote that his successor will be born in the free world – which he described as outside of China.

“Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama — that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people — will continue,” he wrote.

Edited by Greg Barber

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

His story and more than 4,000 like it have been submitted anonymously to a crowd-sourcing website that is shining a light on overworked Chinese students who are nervous about speaking about their plight to authorities.

(China Stringer Network via Reuters)

The site is called 611Study.ICU. The creator says that is a dark reference to the brutal schedule common at Chinese middle and high schools: classes from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. which leaves students “sick in ICU” - or “intensive care unit.”

And while it’s not state-sanctioned, the site appears to be having an impact. Within two months of its launch, many Chinese schools have announced a return to regular class schedules.

611Study.ICU is the brainchild of an exiled Chinese pro-democracy activist, Li Ying, better known by his handle on the social media platform X, “Teacher Li is not your teacher.”

Li, 32, is a former artist turned dissident influencer. He has become one of the most prominent voices challenging Beijing’s censorship. He’s best known for reposting online content that is too sensitive for China’s social media platforms, such as public protests.

(RFA)

Li innovates not just in promoting the free flow of information but also in funding it. In December 2024, he launched a meme coin, or form of cryptocurrency, called $Li. With the proceeds from coin sales, Li says he wants to build a decentralized youth community that promotes democracy, free speech and positive change in China.

The $Li community has also focused on the plight of China’s overworked labor force, but the biggest impact to date has been with 611Study.ICU.

Climb over the firewall

Li said he did not expect so many Chinese students to be willing to “climb over the firewall” and report to him on X, which is banned in China. Mainlanders need to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access and comment on his posts.

Li, who is based in Italy, has more than 2 million followers on X and is one of the most influential young Chinese dissidents overseas. During the pandemic, when many citizens chafed against authorities’ ‘zero’ tolerance of social interactions, people sent him videos and photos of protests against Chinese policies.

(AFP)

At first, he reposted them on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, but after his Weibo accounts were deleted by Chinese authorities multiple times, Li migrated to X. Since then, he’s served as a hub for sensitive news about China, putting him firmly in the crosshairs of Beijing.

Li recounted to Radio Free Asia his epiphany in how he could help publicize the concerns of citizens that go unaddressed by authorities.

He received a video showing petitioners lining up outside the State Bureau for Letters and Calls in Beijing at midnight, where they hoped to submit their grievances when the office opened the next day. He said he was struck by how difficult and exhausting the petitioners’ journey must have been.

“Many people jokingly say that petitioning inside China doesn’t solve their problems, and it’s only after I post about them that things actually get resolved,” Li said.

(Andy Wong/AP)

This inspired him and his team to develop the concept of a “China Overseas Petition Bureau” — a virtual platform where people wouldn’t have to queue, and one that operated beyond the reach of China’s censorship. The goal was to present Chinese citizens’ appeals in full, without filters or restrictions.

In January, after receiving several messages from high schoolers complaining that they were being forced to return to school too soon after the winter break and were feeling overwhelmed — Li decided to first apply the “China Overseas Petition Bureau” concept to students, which led to 611Study.ICU.

People can anonymously fill out data through the website, including daily and weekly school hours, days off each month, reports of suicides, and other information about their school – such as extra costs for after-hours classes. These submissions are then reviewed multiple times by content moderators who flag suspicious entries.

(RFA Mandarin)

The website also provides data analysis based on the submissions. It shows that 56% of students reported spending 60 to 100 hours at school per week, and 35% reported studying more than 100 hours per week. Sixty percent reported that their classes start before 8 a.m., which violates regulations from the Chinese Education Bureau that prohibit middle and high schools from starting classes before 8 a.m.

On Feb. 1, shortly after 611Study.ICU went online, information began to circulate on Chinese social media platforms indicating that schools listed on the site were delaying the start of the spring semester.

In mid-March, Li posted two photos on his X account that purportedly showed Beihai middle school principal Wang Jiangang publicly denouncing him during a school assembly. In a message on a large screen, Wang alleged that students unwilling to study were “being brainwashed into feeding information” to Li. The school had restored a two-day weekend after winter break, and according to the message, the principal said this was due to the impact from Li.

(AFP)

Li’s opponents downplay his impact in this instance and say the photos of the school principal’s message were doctored. They also say that education bureaus across China already had plans to reduce students’ workload, and that the emergence of 611Study.ICU around the same time was just a coincidence.

Alang, a staff member of 611Study.ICU who is being identified by a pseudonym for security reasons, disputed that version of events – as do other supporters of Li, who hope that ordinary citizens might be able to push the Chinese government to make policy changes through collective action.

“I’m not saying the two-day weekend policy was entirely pushed by Li,” Alang told RFA. “But I do think Teacher Li played a certain role in it.”

Breaking through China’s information blockade

611Study.ICU team includes a dozen young Mandarin speakers scattered across the globe, including in mainland China.

The project coordinator, identified using the pseudonym Jiangbu due to safety concerns, knows only the time zones and internet identities of the interviewees. To ensure team safety, applicants must pass security tests, including proficiency in using Telegram groups and in using two-factor authentication for their email accounts.

(China Stringer Network via Reuters)

Raised in Hong Kong, Alang, a design college student responsible for creating graphics for 611Study.ICU, was always curious when his relatives in mainland China talked about the intense academic pressure there. Alang says his family members remain unaware of his association with Li.

Despite security measures, Jiangbu revealed that some team members, including himself, have had their identities exposed. Their parents in China were questioned by authorities in China, who labeled them as “foreign anti-China forces.”

According to Li, the 611Study.ICU website faced serious cyber attacks in May, with “dozens of AI-generated deepfake submissions flooding the site every second.”

Despite the intense pressures, the team members said they’re committed to what they are doing and to combating what Jiang calls “this greatest and most authoritarian empire.”

“Everyone knows about the problem of overtime studying in China,” a staff member using the pseudonym Aaron Zhang for security reasons said. “But there was no way to understand how severe it really is, or its regional distribution.”

(AFP)

For Zhang, the far-reaching significance of the ICU project lies in overcoming China’s control of official data, to which the public has gradually lost access. At the same time, the Chinese government has tightened restrictions on third-party data providers working with foreign entities. Researchers warn that these moves will make it increasingly challenging for companies, governments and academics to assess China’s future developments in key sectors.

Li’s projects attempt to overcome the information blockade by prompting citizens to submit data voluntarily, although there is a downside. When data is submitted anonymously it’s hard to verify its authenticity.

Not long after the overworking student project took off, Li and his team launched another initiative: Niuma.ICU, a crowdsourcing project targeting workplace overtime in China.

At the time of publication, it has collected data from 4,962 entities across China, including responses from state-owned enterprises and government departments. The statistics show that 79% of respondent entities work six to seven days a week. Nearly 40% reported working more than 12 hours per day.

In a flagging Chinese economy, Niuma.ICU has not created the kind of stir that 611Study.ICU has. Li attributes that to the benefit that the government derives from the status quo where few workers enjoy a two-day weekend.

“The more intensely factories exploit workers, the more profit the [Chinese] government can extract from it,” he said.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Baili Liu for RFA Mandarin.

The decision, he said in a statement that he read aloud during the opening day of a three-day conference of spiritual leaders in Dharamsala, came after years of appeals from Tibetan religious and secular leaders, as well as people and organizations from around the world.

“In particular, I have received messages through various channels from Tibetans in Tibet making the same appeal,” he said. “In accordance with all these requests, I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue.”

His statement did not mention China by name, but it said that selecting the next Dalai Lama should be carried out “in accordance with past tradition.”

“No one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter,” he said.

The Chinese foreign ministry reiterated on Wednesday that the selection of a new Dalai Lama must follow Chinese law and that it had to take place in China.

(Tenzin Woser/RFA Tibetan)

Tibetan Buddhists believe that when the Dalai Lama dies, his spirit will reincarnate in a new body. A search committee traditionally composed of high-ranking monks and lamas is formed to find a child born within a year of the Dalai Lama’s death who exhibits exceptional qualities and behaviors similar to his predecessor. The current Dalai Lama was two years old when he was identified.

In a book written earlier this year, the Dalai Lama said that his successor would be born in the “free world,” which he described as outside of China.

In 2011, the Dalai Lama said he would decide whether he would have a reincarnated successor “when I am about 90.” The Tibetan spiritual leader turns 90 on Sunday. Celebrations for the milestone birthday kicked off in Dharamsala on Monday.

Reporting by Dawa Dolma, edited by Greg Barber

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

The announcement is set to be the most consequential in modern Tibetan history, one that will shape the future of Tibetans’ seven-decade-long struggle to preserve their religious and cultural freedoms in the face of Chinese oppression and the continuation of the 14th Dalai Lama’s legacy as a global icon of compassion, peace, democracy and human dignity.

(Sanjay Baid/AFP)

At a conference of Tibetan religious leaders scheduled for July 2-4 in Dharamsala, just days before his 90th birthday, the global Buddhist leader is expected to announce if the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue and confirm whether formal responsibility for the recognition of the 15th Dalai Lama should rest with the Gaden Phodrang Trust, his private office.

In 2011, at the conclusion of a similar convention of the heads of all Tibetan religious traditions, the Dalai Lama issued a formal statement saying that when he turns 90, he would consult with Tibetan religious leaders and the public on whether there should be a next Dalai Lama.

“If it is decided that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama should continue and there is a need for the Fifteenth Dalai Lama to be recognized, responsibility for doing so will primarily rest on the concerned officers of the Dalai Lama’s Gaden Phodrang Trust (the Office of the Dalai Lama),” the Buddhist leader said in his Sep. 24, 2011, statement.

(AFP)

“They should consult the various heads of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and the reliable oath-bound Dharma Protectors who are linked inseparably to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas… and carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition. I shall leave clear written instructions about this,” he added.

At the time, the Dalai Lama also made clear that “...apart from a reincarnation recognized through such legitimate methods, no recognition or acceptance should be given to a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China.”

If China does intervene, it wouldn’t be the first time. On May 17, 1995, the Chinese government abducted a then-6-year-old boy named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, just days after he was officially recognized by the Dalai Lama as the 11th Panchen Lama, the second-highest spiritual leader in the largest sect of Tibetan Buddhism.

Rights groups say his continued disappearance and China’s installation of another boy, Gyaltsen (in Chinese, Gyaincain) Norbu, in his place, highlights the Chinese government’s long-held plan to control the recognition of the next Dalai Lama, given the two lamas have historically recognized the other’s successive reincarnations and served as the other’s teacher.

(Niranjan Shrestha/AP)

The Chinese government, for its part, believes it can appoint the reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama under Chinese law.

“The reincarnation of Living Buddhas is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. It must comply with Chinese laws and regulations as well as religious rituals and historical conventions, and follow the process that consists of search and identification in China, lot-drawing from a golden urn, and central government approval,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C., told RFA last month.

In 2007, Beijing decreed that the Chinese government would begin overseeing the recognition of all reincarnate Tibetan lamas, or “living Buddhas,” including the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama. China plans to use its own Beijing-appointed Panchen Lama to endorse their choice – a move the Dalai Lama has said contradicts the Chinese Communist Party’s political ideology.

“It is particularly inappropriate for Chinese communists, who explicitly reject even the idea of past and future lives, let alone the concept of reincarnate Tulkus (or Buddhist incarnated beings), to meddle in the system of reincarnation and especially the reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas,” the Dalai Lama said in 2011.

(Jim Young/Reuters)

“Such brazen meddling contradicts their own political ideology and reveals their double standards. Should this situation continue in the future, it will be impossible for Tibetans and those who follow the Tibetan Buddhist tradition to acknowledge or accept it,” he added.

The Dalai Lama’s statement on his reincarnation may, therefore, serve to preempt Beijing’s efforts to interfere in the recognition of the 15th Dalai Lama.

It is expected to come just days before the U.S. Congress is likely to formally designate July 6 as “A Day of Compassion” through a bipartisan resolution introduced by U.S. lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in recognition of the Dalai Lama’s “outstanding contributions to peace, nonviolence, human rights, and religious understanding.”

Edited by Greg Barber

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

“Throughout my life, I have worked for the welfare of the Tibetan people, preservation of the Dharma, and for the happiness of all,” he said. “I believe this human life of mine has served the whole of mankind and I remain committed to dedicating the rest of it, too, for the well-being of all.”

The event took place on a fog-veiled monsoon morning in the courtyard of the Main Temple in Dharamsala, decorated with sacred traditional thangkas, or paintings, fresh garland offerings and derkha, or special offerings on the Tibetan New Year.

(Tenzin Woser/RFA Tibetan)

Around 8,000 people attended the event at the temple and in overflow locations, organizers told RFA. Guests included spiritual leaders from the major Tibetan Buddhist sects and representatives of other Buddhist and religious traditions, plus the leaders of the Central Tibetan Administration, administrative staff and members of monastic communities.

Organizers presented the Dalai Lama with an award, The Peerless Teacher of the 21st Century, lauding his service. They also performed a ceremonial long-life offering, wishing the spiritual leader continued good health.

The event was the first in a series of ceremonies marking the Dalai Lama’s birthday, which is Saturday. A high-level meeting of spiritual heads from the major Buddhist sects will take place from Wednesday through Friday, followed by ceremonial events and celebrations that will kick off a “Year of Compassion” event series, with programs scheduled across the globe.

An announcement is expected on the Dalai Lama’s succession, potentially stemming from the meetings this week. He made a brief reference to succession plans during today’s birthday event, saying “there will be a structured framework for the future continuation of the Dalai Lamas’ institution in times to come,” but offering no further details.

(Tenzin Woser/RFA Tibetan)

Reporting by Dawa Dolma, edited by Greg Barber

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

Three journalists told CPJ that investigative reporting on major economic events, a cornerstone of Hong Kong’s financial transparency, has nearly disappeared amid government pressure and the departure of major outlets. 

The sharp decline in press freedom, the journalists said, is a direct result of the National Security Law. This law, enacted on June 30, 2020, was imposed directly by Beijing, bypassing Hong Kong’s local legislature, and included offenses for secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign forces, with penalties ranging from a three years to life imprisonment.  

In the five years since it was enacted, authorities have shut down media outlets and arrested several journalists, including Jimmy Lai, the founder of one of Hong Kong’s largest newspapers, the pro-democracy Apple Daily. Several major international news organizations have either relocated or downsized their operations in Hong Kong, leading to a decline in reporting on the city and its financial hub.

“Hong Kong’s economic boom happened because journalists could work without interference,” said a veteran reporter with 11 years’ experience in television, newspapers, and digital platforms in Hong Kong, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

While markets still function, at least three media professionals told CPJ that the erosion of press freedom — often overlooked — is a key factor behind Hong Kong’s fading financial appeal to market participants. One reporter described the media as “paralyzed.” 

Another hastily passed security law enacted in March 2024 in Hong Kong further deepened fears that it would be used to suppress press freedom and prosecute journalists.

“There has never been an international financial center in history that operates with restrictions on information,” Simon Lee, an economic commentator and former assistant CEO of Next Digital Group, the parent company of Apple Daily, told CPJ.

Hong Kong long served as a base for reporting on China’s economy and power structures, said a former financial journalist on the condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

“Most Hong Kong-listed companies come from the mainland [China]. Foreign media used Hong Kong to observe China’s economic operations or wealth transfers,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “Now the risks feel similar to reporting from inside China.”

Crackdowns, shutdowns, and an exodus of major media

Since the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020, at least eight media outlets have shut. These included Apple Daily, news and lifestyle magazine Next Magazine, both published by Lai’s Next Digital group, and the online outlet Stand News, after they were raided by authorities.

At least four other media organizations — Post852, DB channel, Citizen News, and FactWire — ceased operations voluntarily, citing concerns over the deteriorating political environment.

Reporting was also criminalized in several cases, with journalists prosecuted for “inciting subversion” or “colluding with foreign forces.”  

China had the world’s highest number of imprisoned journalists in CPJ’s latest prison census — 50 in total, including eight in Hong Kong.

The New York Times moved part of its newsroom to Seoul in 2020. In March 2024, Radio Free Asia closed its Hong Kong office, and in May, The Wall Street Journal relocated its Asia headquarters to Singapore.

 “With fewer foreign correspondents based in the city, there’s simply less reporting on Hong Kong,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “As a result, the city’s economy may receive less objective attention on the global stage.”

The former financial journalist said that one of the biggest losses after the security law was the disappearance of Apple Daily. Unlike most local media, which focused on routine market updates, Apple Daily connected business to politics and mapped interest networks — an increasingly rare practice.

Next Digital, through Apple Daily, built a reputation for investigative financial reporting. A former staff member told the BBC that the company once spent over 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) tracing dozens of property owners to uncover a developer’s hidden ties with a bank.

“From a financial news perspective, one of our biggest problems is losing Apple Daily,” the former financial journalist told CPJ.

Local business reporting also fades away

As Hong Kong’s financial hub reputation comes under question, stories on high unemployment rates, struggling small businesses, and store closures are increasingly out of sight.

“One direct effect is feeling increasingly unable to grasp what’s happening in the city; important information no longer seems easy to access,” Lee said. “Previously, competition among professional outlets encouraged source sharing and helped maintain a power balance. Now, one-way government-controlled information faces little resistance.”

Lee told CPJ that changes in Hong Kong’s media landscape are particularly evident in major financial events, pointing to the coverage of the 2024 sale of Li Ka-shing’s port assets, in which local outlets failed to question the deal’s structure, rationale, or political implications.

“Beijing called it a national security matter, and the other side of the story disappeared,” Lee told CPJ. “Many focus on the judicial system when discussing fairness, but true fairness also depends on the free flow of information … Without information freedom, public oversight fades, and the market’s system of checks and balances collapses.”

Lee also cited the case of Alvin Chau, a casino tycoon in Macao who was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years for illegal gambling. While foreign media uncovered his alleged links to oil smuggling operations to North Korea, local media offered little follow-up.

“These investigations and reports simply no longer exist,” Lee said.

Sources can’t speak freely

Two journalists told CPJ they have noticed increasing reluctance from interviewees. 

During previous years of the Annual Budget Speech, Hong Kong’s yearly announcement of its public spending and economic plans, the media would host analysis shows with economists debating government spending and policies. 

“We would ask about the fiscal surplus, support for the poor, and whether measures were targeted,” the veteran reporter told CPJ, adding that now, “only one professor is willing to speak openly.”

Lee told CPJ that the atmosphere of “not being allowed to criticize” the broader structure or government policy has also extended to the reporting on how financial markets operate.

Market participants should be free to take either optimistic or pessimistic views of the economic outlook, Lee told CPJ, adding that today in Hong Kong, it is discouraged to express pessimism, and even silently shifting toward defensive investment strategies or risk-averse behavior may be interpreted as making a political statement.

“It’s hard for any place with such high information costs to remain a global financial hub,” Lee said. “Because even pulling back on investment can send a signal. If investors are accused of intentionally dragging down the market just because they try to hedge or take a cautious view, they may decide it’s safer to avoid the market altogether.”

In response to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred CPJ to a statement that said the security law has enabled the city to “make a major transition from chaos to order” and “the business environment has continuously improved,” while press freedom is protected under the law.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ's Asia-Pacific program staff.

“Next year would have marked the 20th anniversary of our founding, but we will not make it to that day,” LSD said in a media notice on Friday. “We are announcing our dissolution.”

A source told RFA Cantonese that LSD was warned several times, beginning in April, that it must dissolve before July 1 or risk being forcibly disbanded.

Incumbent LSD chairperson Chan Po-ying has previously declined to comment. On Friday, she again said she would not respond before the press conference.

“No Resistance, No Change”

Founded in 2006, LSD’s slogan was “No resistance, no change.” The party made headlines in 2008 when it secured three seats in the Legislative Council with Wong Yuk-man, Leung Kwok-hung, and Albert Chan, becoming the third-largest pro-democracy party. Known for its confrontational style, LSD lawmakers famously threw bananas at then-Chief Executive Donald Tsang during a LegCo session, becoming a symbol of the city’s radical democrats. Outside the legislature, LSD organized and participated in numerous protests and civil disobedience campaigns.

In 2009, LSD and the Civic Party launched the “Five Constituencies Referendum” campaign, in which five lawmakers resigned and re-contested their seats to demand universal suffrage. All five, including LSD’s Leung Kwok-hung, Wong Yuk-man, and Albert Chan, and Civic Party’s Alan Leong and Tanya Chan, were re-elected in the May 2010 by-election.

(Anthony Wallace/AFP)

Legislative filibusters and internal splits

In 2011, LSD launched a “vote repayment” campaign targeting the Democratic Party for its role in pushing forward Beijing-approved electoral reforms. Internal disagreements over strategy led to a split, with Wong Yuk-man and Albert Chan forming People Power. Leung Kwok-hung then took over as LSD chair. The party retained only one LegCo seat in the 2012 and 2016 elections but continued legislative filibusters and budget protest actions alongside People Power.

In 2016, Leung Kwok-hung was disqualified from LegCo for holding a yellow umbrella and tearing up a copy of the NPC’s “831” decision during his oath-taking. Since then, LSD has had no seats in the legislature but continued grassroots activism and protest actions.

Leung Kwok-hung still imprisoned

Many LSD members have served jail time for civil disobedience. Leung Kwok-hung, now 69, remains in prison as a defendant in the 47 democrats’ national security case. LSD vice-chair Jimmy Sham, also one of the 47, was released last month after serving his sentence.

Even after other pro-democracy parties such as the Democratic Party and Civic Party disbanded, LSD continued street actions under the National Security Law era — addressing issues like labor importation and minimum wage.

Earlier this year, the party planned a protest outside government headquarters on Budget Day but canceled due to “immense pressure.” Some LSD members also had their bank accounts frozen or closed, and several were charged for “unauthorized fundraising in public” and “unauthorized display of posters.”

Edited by Greg Barber

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

Last week, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has decided to send 5,000 military construction workers and 1,000 sappers, or combat engineers, to support demining and reconstruction efforts in the Kursk border region, according to Russian state media Tass and RIA Novosti.

Since last fall, North Korea has already deployed more than 12,000 troops to Russia to fight Ukrainian forces who occupied parts of the Kursk region in August, according to Ukraine, the United States, and South Korea. In April, Russia and North Korea confirmed their soldiers fought the Ukrainian forces together there but did not disclose how many.

In a closed-door meeting on Thursday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told a parliamentary committee that North Korea recently began recruiting additional troops and will likely send them to Russia in July or August.

The NIS noted that North Korea’s deployment of military troops to Russia last year also came just a month after Shoigu’s visit to the country where he signed an agreement with officials in Pyongyang, said South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun who attended the briefing.

(Russian state media)

The NIS also said North Korea has been continuing to contribute significantly to Russia’s war effort, including providing weapons. Moscow, in turn, provided Pyongyang with economic cooperation, air defense missiles, and radio jamming equipment, it said.

Russia has also been providing technical advice to North Korea on satellite launches, drones, and missile guidance capabilities, Lee said, citing the NIS.

“The National Intelligence Service reported that it is working to minimize the impact on the security of the Korean Peninsula as the close relationship between North Korea and Russia may expand due to the additional dispatch of North Korean combat troops,” Lee said.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea for talks with Kim Jong Un and signed a mutual defense treaty. Since then, the two countries have aligned closely through military cooperation, including the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia.

Reports of North Korean troop deployment to Russia first surfaced last October. While evidence of their presence grew – including when North Korean soldiers were taken captive by Ukrainian forces in Kursk and were interviewed – neither North Korea nor Russia acknowledged their presence until this year in April.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Han Do-hyung for RFA Korean.

The vessel, named Bei Dao 996, was first tracked by SeaLight, which uses commercially available technology to monitor and expose so-called “gray zone” activities — meaning coercive activities at sea that stop short of triggering a military response. China is often accused of adopting such tactics to assert its sweeping claims over the disputed waters in the South and East China Seas.

On his X account, Ray Powell, director of SeaLight, revealed that the ship came close to Vietnam’s coastline. In response, Vietnam’s fishery surveillance vessel Kiem Ngu 471 closely shadowed the Chinese ship. The two vessels came as close as 80 meters apart, according to Powell, who warned that the encounter carries a “risk of prolonged escalation” between the two countries.

According to calculations by researcher Phan Van Song, area surveyed so far is nearly 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) — about 1,100 square kilometers (425 square miles) of which lies within Vietnam’s EEZ, with the remainder falling within the country’s extended continental shelf.

An EEZ extends 200 nautical miles (230 miles) from the coast. It is where a country has sole rights to explore resources but must allow free passage to shipping.

This particular stretch of water of Vietnam is considered sensitive as it lies near Cam Ranh, the nation’s most important naval base and home to its submarine fleet. The survey ship is suspected of conducting dual-purpose activities - scientific research and military intelligence, according to SeaLight.

The Vietnamese government has yet to respond to China’s actions, and state-run media have not reported on the incident.

Article 248 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that when conducting marine scientific research in the exclusive economic zone or on the continental shelf of a coastal state, the researching party is obligated to provide the coastal state with full information about the project no later than six months prior to the intended start date of the research.

It appears unlikely that China would notify Vietnam before sending a survey ship. Beijing claims about 80 percent of the South China Sea as its own - an area roughly demarcated by the so-called nine-dash line which overlaps with waters claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. It also overlaps with waters inside the EEZ of Indonesia, although that country does not consider itself a South China Sea claimant.

Speaking to RFA, Phan Van Song, the contributor to the South China Sea Research Foundation, said “no matter what actions Vietnam takes, China will certainly continue its blatant and illegal survey activities.” The foundation was established by Vietnamese experts who focus on UNCLOS and the South China Sea.

In recent years, China has repeatedly sent survey ships into the waters of other countries in the region. According to SeaLight, which was set up by volunteers from Stanford University, these vessels are largely state-owned and typically operate under the guise of civilian or scientific missions, but often engage in covert intelligence gathering or strategic signaling.

During May and June 2024, the Chinese survey ship Xiang Yang Hong 10 remained for nearly a month in Vietnam’s oil and gas fields. In April this year, another vessel, Song Hang, was seen zigzagging between the islands of the Philippines. China also sent a survey vessel into Malaysia’s EEZ in the southern part of the South China Sea in 2023.

These surveys are used to gather intelligence, including seafloor mapping, monitoring foreign military and commercial activities, and improving China’s operational awareness for current and future contingencies, according to an analysis by SeaLight.

Experts say China’s gray-zone tactics have proven successful, allowing Beijing to advance its maritime claims while disguising its activities as civilian operations. This approach helps avoid direct military confrontation and limits the ability of other countries to respond effectively.

A good way to counter China’s tactics is through “maritime transparency,” according to Powell, who believes that exposing China’s actions as they occur helps clarify their gray-zone strategies and their impact on regional security.

Translated by Truong Son. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Du Lan for RFA Vietnamese.

In a new report, The Examination, a news site that focuses on global health threats, looks into who benefited from the 2001 deal and how an agreement capping excise taxes has hit government revenues in the Southeast Asian nation and kept the price of cigarettes among the lowest in the world. That’s had serious public health consequences for Laos, which has very high rates of smoking.

Radio Free Asia’s Mat Pennington spoke with Jason McLure, an investigative journalist with The Examination who reported the story. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Can you tell us about the deal?

Jason McLure: This story is about a deal that dates to 2001 when the communist government of Laos was privatizing the country’s state tobacco monopoly. Now, what they did instead of having an open tender ... they basically invited Imperial Brands and a local company called ST Group, run by a local businessman named Sithat Xaysoulivong, to bid on this. And ultimately what the Lao government decided to do was to form a joint venture with Imperial Brands and Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong and his ST Group.

Now, the way this was done was very unusual and it also highlighted some very close political connections between Mr. Xaysoulivong and the Lao government at the time.

RFA: So who really benefited from this? And what was the fiscal impact for the Lao government? Did they lose revenue?

McLure: The way the deal was structured was the Lao government retained 47% of the tobacco monopoly and Imperial Brands, this British tobacco giant, got 34%. The remaining 19% of the company was owned by this offshore company called S3T which, we know and learned was owned partly by Imperial Brands and partly by Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong who, as it happened, was an in-law of the Lao prime minister at the time, Bounnhang Vorachit. So there was clearly some familial relationship involved. And ultimately this deal paid $28 million over basically two decades to the former prime minister’s in-law. And this had big consequences for the Lao government. One tobacco control group did a study of the consequences of this deal on public health, and what they found was that the Lao government missed out on $143 million in tobacco tax revenue and that is because one provision of this tobacco contract capped cigarette excise taxes and essentially left Laos with some of the cheapest cigarettes in the world.

RFA: How much is a packet of cigarettes in Laos?

McLure: The cheapest brands of cigarettes in Laos cost about 7,000 kip. That’s about 32 U.S. cents. So, we were able to look at WHO (World Health Organization) data from all around the world and find that basically these are some of the very cheapest cigarettes in the world.

RFA: So what have been the health impacts of this?

McLure: So the health impacts, they really have been significant in Laos. As in many other Asian countries, relatively few women smoke, but somewhere around 37 to 40% of men smoke. So there’s a very high smoking rate there. It’s one of the highest in the world, at least among men. And this is in part a direct consequence of these very cheap cigarettes that are a consequence of this 25-year contract that was signed back in 2001.

Now, there’s a lot of data, a lot of research from tobacco control researchers and public health researchers that show the best way to cut smoking rates to get people to quit smoking, or especially to prevent them from starting to smoke, is to increase the price of cigarettes. And the way that governments can do this is by increasing tobacco excise taxes. Now, this 25-year contract in Laos absolutely prevented the Lao government from doing that.

RFA: And as we know, Laos is one of the poorest countries in Asia, and it doesn’t have a very well-developed health system. So you can see what the sort of impacts would be.

McLure: That’s right. One of my colleagues visited one of the government hospitals in Laos, and she interviewed people who were there with smoking-related diseases. And the treatment was extremely expensive. And even for many people who have common smoking-related diseases like emphysema or lung cancer … particularly people in the countryside, people in villages, any form of radiation or chemotherapy or treatments like that are going to be out of reach.

RFA: So what does Imperial Brands say about this?

McLure: During our reporting, we reached out to Imperial Brands to ask them about this contract and specifically to ask why they decided to include an in-law of the prime minister at the time as part of this contract. And what they told us was that, for one thing, they said they comply with all regulations and generally behave in an ethical manner. But they didn’t respond to the substance of our questions. We asked them as well about why this contract was kept secret for so long. The contract, in fact, itself, contained a secrecy provision. They told us that this type of confidentiality is normal in such commercial arrangements.

RFA: And did the Lao government respond at all to any of your inquiries or Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong or Mr. Bounnhang Vorachit?

McLure: Unfortunately, the Lao government, Mr. Vorachit, Mr. Sithat, even the current Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone, they did not respond to our inquiries for this story.

RFA: I understand that this isn’t a problem that’s totally isolated to Laos, that major tobacco companies have reached deals with authoritarian countries and other nations.

McLure: That’s right. You know, what’s really a little bit unusual about this deal is that we were able to get the documents that showed exactly how the payments flowed from the Lao tobacco company and Imperial to the in-law of Laos’ then prime minister. But we’ve seen that British American Tobacco, another one of the tobacco giants, has been involved in dealings with the North Korean regime in violation of U.S. sanctions. In fact, they agreed to pay more than $620 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department as a result of that.

RFA: So what’s the future of this agreement in Laos? I understand that it’s coming up to its term now.

McLure: Well, that is an interesting question because this is a 25-year agreement that was signed in 2001. It will expire next year. Now, the government of Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone has already informed Imperial that they won’t be renewing this agreement again. However, they did leave the door open to negotiating a new agreement with the same tobacco company. We’ll see if that comes to pass and whether or not any insiders like Mr. Sithat, the in-law of former Prime Minister Vorachit, are involved. One thing that we do know is that Mr. Sithat is also close to the family of the current Prime Minister Sonexay. So it remains to be seen. Ultimately, what we’ve been told is that the current prime minister will be the one making the decision. And as we’ve seen, this could have huge impacts on the future of smoking in Laos and on Laos’ public health.

The Examination is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health threats. Their investigative report was supported in part by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mat Pennington for RFA.

In a new report, The Examination, a news site that focuses on global health threats, looks into who benefited from the 2001 deal and how an agreement capping excise taxes has hit government revenues in the Southeast Asian nation and kept the price of cigarettes among the lowest in the world. That’s had serious public health consequences for Laos, which has very high rates of smoking.

Radio Free Asia’s Mat Pennington spoke with Jason McLure, an investigative journalist with The Examination who reported the story. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Can you tell us about the deal?

Jason McLure: This story is about a deal that dates to 2001 when the communist government of Laos was privatizing the country’s state tobacco monopoly. Now, what they did instead of having an open tender ... they basically invited Imperial Brands and a local company called ST Group, run by a local businessman named Sithat Xaysoulivong, to bid on this. And ultimately what the Lao government decided to do was to form a joint venture with Imperial Brands and Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong and his ST Group.

Now, the way this was done was very unusual and it also highlighted some very close political connections between Mr. Xaysoulivong and the Lao government at the time.

RFA: So who really benefited from this? And what was the fiscal impact for the Lao government? Did they lose revenue?

McLure: The way the deal was structured was the Lao government retained 47% of the tobacco monopoly and Imperial Brands, this British tobacco giant, got 34%. The remaining 19% of the company was owned by this offshore company called S3T which, we know and learned was owned partly by Imperial Brands and partly by Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong who, as it happened, was an in-law of the Lao prime minister at the time, Bounnhang Vorachit. So there was clearly some familial relationship involved. And ultimately this deal paid $28 million over basically two decades to the former prime minister’s in-law. And this had big consequences for the Lao government. One tobacco control group did a study of the consequences of this deal on public health, and what they found was that the Lao government missed out on $143 million in tobacco tax revenue and that is because one provision of this tobacco contract capped cigarette excise taxes and essentially left Laos with some of the cheapest cigarettes in the world.

RFA: How much is a packet of cigarettes in Laos?

McLure: The cheapest brands of cigarettes in Laos cost about 7,000 kip. That’s about 32 U.S. cents. So, we were able to look at WHO (World Health Organization) data from all around the world and find that basically these are some of the very cheapest cigarettes in the world.

RFA: So what have been the health impacts of this?

McLure: So the health impacts, they really have been significant in Laos. As in many other Asian countries, relatively few women smoke, but somewhere around 37 to 40% of men smoke. So there’s a very high smoking rate there. It’s one of the highest in the world, at least among men. And this is in part a direct consequence of these very cheap cigarettes that are a consequence of this 25-year contract that was signed back in 2001.

Now, there’s a lot of data, a lot of research from tobacco control researchers and public health researchers that show the best way to cut smoking rates to get people to quit smoking, or especially to prevent them from starting to smoke, is to increase the price of cigarettes. And the way that governments can do this is by increasing tobacco excise taxes. Now, this 25-year contract in Laos absolutely prevented the Lao government from doing that.

RFA: And as we know, Laos is one of the poorest countries in Asia, and it doesn’t have a very well-developed health system. So you can see what the sort of impacts would be.

McLure: That’s right. One of my colleagues visited one of the government hospitals in Laos, and she interviewed people who were there with smoking-related diseases. And the treatment was extremely expensive. And even for many people who have common smoking-related diseases like emphysema or lung cancer … particularly people in the countryside, people in villages, any form of radiation or chemotherapy or treatments like that are going to be out of reach.

RFA: So what does Imperial Brands say about this?

McLure: During our reporting, we reached out to Imperial Brands to ask them about this contract and specifically to ask why they decided to include an in-law of the prime minister at the time as part of this contract. And what they told us was that, for one thing, they said they comply with all regulations and generally behave in an ethical manner. But they didn’t respond to the substance of our questions. We asked them as well about why this contract was kept secret for so long. The contract, in fact, itself, contained a secrecy provision. They told us that this type of confidentiality is normal in such commercial arrangements.

RFA: And did the Lao government respond at all to any of your inquiries or Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong or Mr. Bounnhang Vorachit?

McLure: Unfortunately, the Lao government, Mr. Vorachit, Mr. Sithat, even the current Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone, they did not respond to our inquiries for this story.

RFA: I understand that this isn’t a problem that’s totally isolated to Laos, that major tobacco companies have reached deals with authoritarian countries and other nations.

McLure: That’s right. You know, what’s really a little bit unusual about this deal is that we were able to get the documents that showed exactly how the payments flowed from the Lao tobacco company and Imperial to the in-law of Laos’ then prime minister. But we’ve seen that British American Tobacco, another one of the tobacco giants, has been involved in dealings with the North Korean regime in violation of U.S. sanctions. In fact, they agreed to pay more than $620 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department as a result of that.

RFA: So what’s the future of this agreement in Laos? I understand that it’s coming up to its term now.

McLure: Well, that is an interesting question because this is a 25-year agreement that was signed in 2001. It will expire next year. Now, the government of Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone has already informed Imperial that they won’t be renewing this agreement again. However, they did leave the door open to negotiating a new agreement with the same tobacco company. We’ll see if that comes to pass and whether or not any insiders like Mr. Sithat, the in-law of former Prime Minister Vorachit, are involved. One thing that we do know is that Mr. Sithat is also close to the family of the current Prime Minister Sonexay. So it remains to be seen. Ultimately, what we’ve been told is that the current prime minister will be the one making the decision. And as we’ve seen, this could have huge impacts on the future of smoking in Laos and on Laos’ public health.

The Examination is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health threats. Their investigative report was supported in part by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mat Pennington for RFA.

The Amnesty International report, released Thursday, says it is a human rights crisis enabled by state complicity.

(Copyright Amnesty International, 2025)

Cambodia and neighboring Laos, Myanmar and Thailand have seen a massive proliferation of scam compounds that rely on a large pool of trafficked labor and are run by organized crime groups whose links to powerful local interests allow them to operate with impunity.

The Amnesty report – which is based on interviews with 423 victims of Cambodia’s scamming industry – documents what it calls abuses on a “mass scale” since 2022. It says thousands of migrant workers or trafficked persons, including children, have been confined in prison-like compounds and kept within restraining physical spaces while being forced to carry out online fraud or gambling.

Survivors described to Amnesty being held in cages within compounds with extensive security measures designed to prevent escape, including perimeter walls topped with razor wire or electric fencing, guarded gates, and armed security personnel.

(Copyright Amnesty International, 2025)

Several compounds operated “dark rooms” used to punish and torture workers who failed to meet work targets, or attempted to contact authorities. Electric shock or stun batons were routinely used against adults and children in at least 19 scam centers, Amnesty found.

“While the main perpetrators of the abuse are organized criminal groups, the Cambodian state has grossly failed to take adequate steps to stop the widespread human rights abuses despite being made aware of such abuses – in many cases, repeatedly,” Amnesty said.

“The state’s failure to comply with its international legal obligations and responsibilities demonstrates acquiescence and points to complicity in these human rights abuses,” Amnesty added in its report titled “Slavery, Human Trafficking, and Torture in Cambodia’s Scamming Compounds.”

The report’s release comes days after Thailand’s prime minister described Cambodia as “a hub of world-class criminality and a national threat” because of the scam centers and closed its land border with Cambodia. That action came amid a Thai-Cambodia territorial dispute.

(Copyright Amnesty International, 2024)

There was no immediate response from the Cambodian government to the report. Prime Minister Hun Manet has previously declared zero tolerance of human trafficking and a determination to tackle online scamming. He says that Thailand is politicizing the issue.

Earlier this year, scam compounds drew global attention after Chinese TV actor Wang Xing was rescued from Myanmar’s notorious KK Park in Myawaddy, near the border with Thailand, after scammers lured him to Thailand from where he was taken across the river into Myanmar.

Human trafficking

Almost all the scam center workers Amnesty interviewed had been lured using deceptive recruitment tactics and false promises of legitimate job positions, competitive salaries, and accommodation.

After they had been recruited, many told Amnesty they crossed international borders illegally by boats or by traversing rivers and jungles, until they were sold to different scamming compounds where they were then confined and exploited.

Many of them, including children as young as 14, were trafficked from Myanmar, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and even between different scamming compounds within Cambodia.

(Copyright Amnesty International, 2024)

Van is one such example. The Vietnamese boy, who was 15 years old at the time, was trafficked to a scamming compound in 2023 by his friend after they entered Cambodia through a jungle path at night. Van, who spent a year in the center, was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment by bosses, he told Amnesty.

Another survivor, a Thai woman named Yathada, told Amnesty she was recruited on the pretext that she would have a job in administration. She too was made to cross the border at night.

One survivor from China told Amnesty he had answered what he thought was a legitimate job posting on a Chinese job forum, but was later told the job was no longer at the location advertised in China. He was driven to a town on China’s border with Vietnam and put on a boat to be trafficked to Cambodia.

Another Chinese man, Yutai, told Amnesty that he was trafficked from compounds in Myanmar via car and boat into compounds in Cambodia, without needing to go through any immigration checkpoints.

State complicity

Amnesty noted that despite one or more police or military interventions at 20 of the 53 scamming compounds it identified, the human rights abuses continued unabated at these centers afterward.

Another 18 of the 53 scam centers appear to have never been investigated by the government and only two have shut down after state intervention, Amnesty said.

(Copyright Amnesty International, 2024)

The remaining 13 appeared to have been subjected to some level of intervention but Amnesty said it was unable to determine whether human rights abuses continued to take place in those centers.

In addition to the 53 confirmed scam compounds in 16 cities and towns, Amnesty identified 45 more suspicious locations with similar security features. It called on the Cambodian government to launch thorough and effective investigations on all of them.

Amnesty also sought urgent steps to identify and remove public sector involvement in human trafficking and to properly identify and assist victims, and provide support and remedy to those who have suffered abuse.

The rights group further urged foreign governments to press the Cambodian government to investigate and charge individuals responsible for committing international crimes of enslavement and torture and other ill-treatment.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema for RFA.

Tuan, a member of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam, is incarcerated at Xuyen Moc Prison in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. According to his family, on April 19, Tuan made his monthly phone call home and reported that he had been suffering from prolonged rectal bleeding, with the amount of blood increasing over time, leading to physical deterioration and mental exhaustion.

Tuan’s relatives said the condition had lasted for three weeks. Although prison medical staff examined him and diagnosed a colon-related issue before administering three injections, his condition has shown no signs of improvement.

The medical staff also submitted a report on Tuan’s condition to the prison administration, but according to what he said during the phone call, as of June 19, the prison authorities had yet to respond.

The family said that Tuan’s wish is to be taken outside the prison for examination and treatment at a hospital.

“I’m very worried. Tuan is in urgent need of medical assistance, but we don’t know what to do. He’s very concerned about his health,” a relative told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

In response to reports of the political prisoner’s serious health condition, international organizations have called on the Vietnamese authorities to release him.

In a June 20 statement, Human Rights Watch said: “The Vietnamese government should immediately release independent journalist Le Huu Minh Tuan and ensure he receives proper medical treatment.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a similar call. “Tuan’s pain and suffering during the past five years in prison is Vietnam’s shame, and he should be released immediately,” the New York-based press freedom group said in a statement.

Tuan was arrested in June 2020 along with two other members of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam: Chairman Pham Chi Dung and Vice Chairman Nguyen Tuong Thuy. All three were charged with “conducting propaganda against the state.”

(AFP)

Nguyen Tuong Thuy, 75, a former contributor to RFA Vietnamese, has also suffered from poor health, and his family has protested to prison authorities over the lack of proper treatment.

Last last year, relatives and rights groups voiced concern over Tuan’s health, reporting that he had been unable to eat solid food, leading to severe weight loss, stomach pain, digestive problems and numbness in his legs.

Prison conditions in Vietnam, especially for political prisoners, have long been criticized as harsh by international human rights organizations. Family members also complain that prisoners have contracted serious illnesses due to harsh living conditions — ranging from poor-quality food and unsafe drinking water to inadequate medical care.

According to information from the relatives of prisoners, from 2019 until now, at least six political prisoners have died in detention centers, including: independent journalist Do Cong Duong, former educator Dao Quang Thuuc and Pastor Dinh Diem at Prison No. 6 (Nghe An Province); Phan Van Thu at Gia Trung Prison (Gia Lai Province); Doan Dinh Nam at Xuyen Moc Prison (Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province); and Huynh Huu Dat at Xuan Loc Prison (Dong Nai Province).

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

On Tuesday, thousands of Cambodians working in or traveling to Thailand could not cross back to Cambodia before Thailand closed the seven border checkpoints. Some said they did not even know of the closures.

Under pressure from stranded travelers, authorities briefly reopened border passes, such as Klong Luek in Thailand’s eastern Sa Kaeo province and Chong Chom in Surin province, to outbound travelers on Wednesday evening. Police in Sa Kaeo deployed some 160 riot police to keep the peace, media reports said.

But as night fell on Wednesday, hundreds of Cambodians remained unable to cross from Aranyaprathet district, in Sa Kaeo province, to Poipet in Cambodia.

Angry with the delay, one woman yelled: “So who blocks us from crossing – the Thai or Khmer side? Tell us the truth. Why can’t small people like us can’t go back home? We just want to go back home!”

Although the Thai measures announced Monday still allow travel by students, Cambodian authorities on Wednesday would not open the Chong Chom border gate in Surin province to school children returning from Cambodia.

Some 500 trucks also were stranded Tuesday on the road from Sa Kaeo to Poipet, according to Surawuth Wongsamran, member of the Sa Kaeo provincial chamber of commerce member. He criticized the soldiers for rushing to seal the border without prior notice.

(Royal Thai Army via AP)

Thai regional military commands, which have assumed effective control of the border, had ordered Monday the closure of all international crossings with Cambodia. That has blocked vehicles, foot traffic and trade – including fuel trucks. The only exceptions are for humanitarian cases, like medical emergencies, and for students.

That’s the culmination of a tit-for-tat, including a Cambodian ban on imports of Thai produce, after a May 28 firefight where Thai forces shot dead a Cambodian soldier on a sliver of disputed territory along the 800-kilometer (500-mile) border.

The crisis in relations was compounded last week when Cambodia leaked a private phone conversation between Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen. The call was meant to help calm the tensions but ended up making it worse.

In Bangkok, anti-Shinawatra movements announced plans for a mass rally for Saturday at the city’s Victory Monument as Paetongtarn comes under domestic political pressure for her handling of the border crisis and her call with Hun Sen, the father of Cambodia’s current prime minister.

While Thailand and Cambodia have not exchanged fire since the 10-minute clash on May 28, both sides have been readying their militaries in case hostilities break out.

The Thai army said Tuesday more Cambodian troops were moving to the front line, and the Thai military blocked public access to areas on the border, including where the two sides exchanged artillery fire in 2011 near Preah Vihear temple.

“We will not fire the first shot, but if we were shot at first, we will say a single word … We are ready,” Lt. Gen. Boonsin Padklang, commander of Thailand’s Second Army Region, told reporters.

Hun Sen, meanwhile, posted on Facebook Wednesday night a martial video of Cambodian forces in action set to a patriotic song: “Banish the Invaders of Khmer Land.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA.

Last July, large areas along the Amnok, or Yalu, River near North Korea’s border with China suffered extensive damage, prompting authorities to accelerate flood prevention measures this year ahead of monsoons that typically start in June and last until September.

Last year, South Korean media outlets reported that over 1,000 people were killed or missing due to the floods, and that North Korea may have executed a number of officials who were held responsible.

North Korea’s state-run Korea Central News Agency said over 5,000 people who had been stranded were saved by on-site instructions relayed by leader Kim Jong Un, who was depicted leading flood relief efforts.

(KCNA via AFP)

Multiple sources in Ryanggang province, also known as Yanggang, told RFA that the construction of embankments were ongoing, and that young students – in elementary, middle and high school levels – have been mobilized to collect rocks daily for the past two weeks without any breaks, including Sundays.

Mobilization orders by North Korean authorities are a common practice by local governments to make citizens donate labor to public projects.

“Each student must contribute five stones the size of a soccer ball to the construction site every day,” a source who works in the education sector of Ryanggang province said.

He, like other sources RFA interviewed for this story, requested anonymity for safety reasons.

(You Sung-Ho/AP)

Students from Yeondu-dong, Yeonpung-dong, and Songbong-dong areas in Wiyeon District of Hyesan City gather every day, from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m., after they finish their morning classes to “collect rocks the size of soccer balls,” a second source in the province told RFA.

The students are required to bring the rocks they collect to the construction site of an embankment in the upper reaches of the Geumsan River, which flows into the Amnok, the source said. Last year, the Geumsan River was also flooded and caused much damage, he said.

The construction period for the Geumsan River embankment runs until the end of June, but delays are expected due to shortages of stones needed for the walls, sources said.

(KCNA via AFP)

To meet the shortfall, students from many neighborhoods including Seonghu-dong, Hyesan-dong, Hyemyong-dong, and Yeonbong-dong work afternoons collecting stones at the old quarry in Yeonbong-dong, while those from the outskirts of Hyesan city like Masan-dong, Chun-dong, and Hyetan-dong search through quarries at Hyesan Youth Mine.

The rock gathering exercise has caused accidents and health problems for students, prompting protests by parents at schools, sources said.

“There are many accidents where people hurt their hands and feet while mining rocks, and there are also students who get nosebleeds while sleeping at night due to exhaustion,” said the first source who works in the education sector.

Growing parental dissatisfaction has led to protests at school offices, with some families keeping their children home from school rather than allowing them to participate in the stone collection work, he added.

On Saturday, North Korean state media reported heavy rainfall in the capital Pyongyang and several northern and central provinces, prompting weather authorities to issue alerts across multiple regions.

Pyongyang recorded 140 millimetres of rain between 5 p.m. on Thursday and 8 p.m. local time on Friday, according to KCNA, Reuters reported.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Moon Sung Hui for RFA Korean.

Cambodia, meanwhile, said that as of midnight on Monday, it was suspending all fuel and gas imports from Thailand. It’s already boycotting Thai internet services and supplies of electricity. Cambodia imports about 30% of its gasoline and other fuel from Thailand.

Thai regional military commands ordered the closure of all seven international border crossings with Cambodia, blocking vehicles, foot traffic and trade – including fuel trucks. The only exceptions are for humanitarian cases, like medical emergencies, and for students.

The tit-for-tat follows a May 28 firefight where Thai forces shot dead a Cambodian soldier on a sliver of disputed territory. The crisis in relations was compounded last week when Cambodia leaked a private phone conversation between Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen. The call was meant to help calm the tensions but ended up making it worse.

In that call, Paetongtarn urged Hun Sen not to listen to an outspoken Thai general who oversees the army in the border area. The revelation put domestic political pressure on the Thai premier that threatens the stability of her coalition government. Thailand nation’s upper house of parliament has also called for a judicial inquiry into her conduct.

On Monday, Paetongtarn went on the diplomatic offensive, saying Thailand needed to take steps to curb the threat from scam centers inside Cambodia. After chairing a meeting of Thai officials on cross-border crime, she described Cambodia as “a hub of world-class criminality and a national threat” and announced that Thailand will intensify controls at seven border provinces with Cambodia and cut internet services to Cambodian military and security agencies.

Cambodia has already bristled at Thailand shortening the opening hours at border crossings. A week ago, it banned imports of all Thai vegetables and fruits, and last Friday, Hun Sen urged the government to consider suspending the import of all canned goods from Thailand, including alcoholic beverages, energy drinks, and canned fish.

The two countries have close commercial ties. According to Thai government data cited by Reuters, they had $10.4 billion dollars in two-way trade last year, dominated by precious stones, jewelry and fuels. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Cambodian migrants work in Thailand.

(Buriram Provincial Office via Facebook)

On Monday, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said that Cambodia had decided to import additional petroleum from Singapore to meet domestic demand after cutting supplies from Thailand.

In addition to economic means to counter Thailand, he affirmed Cambodia’s military readiness, including the preparation of missiles to shoot down aircraft and heavy weaponry to destroy tanks.

“We are now sitting and considering … for every Thai warplane or drone our troops shoot down, how much encouragement or reward should we give them? That’s what we are currently thinking about,” Hun Manet said.

Thailand and Cambodia have a history of bickering over their 800-kilometer (500-mile) border, which has escalated to armed clashes in the past. Cambodia is requesting the International Court of Justice rule on the demarcation of four areas, including the scene of the May 28 firefight. Thailand, however, says it does not recognize the compulsory jurisdiction of that court.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pimuk Rakkanam and RFA Khmer.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that the U.S. had conducted “massive precision strikes” on three Iranian nuclear sites – Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan – that has “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities.

The attack on Iran’s nuclear sites marks the first offensive U.S. military action in Israel’s war with Iran – a major escalation in tensions in the Middle East – which South Korean analysts warn will make North Korea increasingly resistant to any diplomatic efforts or talks aimed at convincing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program.

“North Korea must have thought it was a good idea to have nuclear weapons after seeing the U.S. airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” Jeong Seong-jang, deputy director of the Sejong Institute, told Radio Free Asia on Monday.

In a statement Monday, a spokesperson for the North Korean Foreign Ministry criticized the U.S. airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying it “violated the U.N. Charter and international law, which have as their basic principles respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs,” North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

(KCNA via Reuters)

Despite calls by the U.S. and its allies for denuclearization, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has pushed for his country to bolster its nuclear capabilities to defend itself, warning earlier this year that “confrontation with the most vicious hostile countries is inevitable.” While the “hostile countries” were not named, North Korea regards the U.S. and its ally, South Korea, as its main enemies.

In 2003, North Korea withdrew after acceding to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), shortly after the U.S. invaded Iraq. It cited concerns, at the time, that the U.S. was planning a preemptive strike against Pyongyang.

“North Korea is (likely to be) concerned that if it gives up its nuclear weapons, it will end up in a situation similar to Iran, and will not accept future proposals for denuclearization discussions.”

He warned the strikes may even prompt North Korea – which conducted its first underground nuclear test in 2006 – to accelerate the development of nuclear submarines in an effort to secure so-called ‘second-strike’ capabilities – or the ability to launch retaliatory nuclear strikes after a preemptive one.

Other South Korean experts echoed similar concerns.

“Kim Jong Un will probably order the relocation, hiding, and concealment of nuclear facilities, as well as the expansion of air defense systems,” Professor Nam Seong-wook of Sookmyung Women’s University told RFA.

(KCNA via Reuters)

In a social media post, Kim Dong-yeop, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, argued that the U.S. strikes would cause North Korea to further solidify its perception that “only possession of nuclear weapons can lead to survival” and provide much-needed validation for Pyongyang to hold on to its nuclear arsenal.

Since 2006, North Korea has tested nuclear devices six times and has developed missiles believed to be capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

During his first term, Trump held historic summits with Kim Jong Un, hoping to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief, but his high-level diplomacy ultimately failed to achieve a breakthrough. The North has continued to build its nuclear and missile programs.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that North Korea has assembled around 50 warheads and possesses enough fissile material to produce up to 40 more warheads and is accelerating the production of further fissile material.

Earlier this year, Pyongyang reiterated that it has no intention of giving up its nuclear program.

North Korea would now view diplomatic engagement with the United States as “foolish” and any future negotiations of denuclearization as futile, Kim Dong-yeop wrote in a social media post on Sunday.

“North Korea will use the Iran situation as an excuse to strengthen its criticism of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and South Korea-U.S.-Japan security cooperation,” he added.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Han Do-hyung for RFA Korean.

Through conversations with people living along the river, environmental activists, and project developers, “A River Out of Time” focuses on some of Indonesia’s latest and most ambitious development projects: its still-under-construction capital city, Nusantara; a sprawling “green” industrial zone; and a cascade of five dams planned along the Kayan River.

Indonesia’s central government is also forging ahead with plans to construct five dams along three rivers in North Kalimantan province as part of Southeast Asia’s largest hydropower project. Scheduled for completion in 2035, the cost of the cascade is estimated at more than $20 billion and could yield a generation capacity of 9,000 megawatts.

“The sense of uncertainty shared by Kayan River communities depicted in the film mirrors that of countless others around the world in today’s era of climate change,” said BenarNews Managing Editor Kate Beddall. “‘A River Out of Time’ allows us to reflect on what we lose as we alter the natural world and our own place in it.”

“Every film I have worked on aims to paint a complete picture of a unique, personal experience. ‘A River Out of Time’ does the same,” said director Roger M. Richards, best known for Sarajevo Roses. “As our team traveled along the Kayan, we built an interactive, multimedia travelogue of our journey: an elegy for a once-wild, doomed river.”

The documentary short film is available in both English language and Bahasa Indonesia.

On April 3, BenarNews stopped updating its platforms following a decision by the U.S. administration to withhold its funding.

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

Decree 121, issued on June 11, shifts the authority to grant, revoke, and renew law practice licenses from the Minister of Justice to provincial chairpersons — a move seen as part of a broader agenda to restructure Vietnam’s state apparatus. Government officials have not offered a direct explanation for the decree.

However, law professionals have raised alarms over the change, warning that it not only violates existing law but also hands sweeping powers to local leaders, raising concerns the authority could be abused to intimidate lawyers involved in cases against provincial governments.

Writing on his Facebook page, Ho Chi Minh City-based attorney Trinh Dinh Dung argued that Decree 121 violates existing legislation, specifically the 2006 Law on Lawyers, which stipulates that only the Minister of Justice has the authority to issue, revoke, and renew law practicing licenses. “As a matter of principle, a legal document issued by the National Assembly can only be amended by the National Assembly itself,” he wrote.

The ongoing session of the National Assembly is scheduled to conclude on June 30, but its agenda does not include any discussion on the Law on Lawyers.

With no indication that the existing law will be amended, attorney Trinh Dinh Dung concluded that the executive branch is showing “signs of power abuse.”

The most troubling aspect of the new rule, critics say, is that it grants the power to strip lawyers of their right to practice law to provincial leaders, who frequently face public opposition over local policies.

Dang Dinh Manh, a former attorney from Ho Chi Minh City who has given up practicing law in Vietnam due to government harassment, told RFA that local governments are frequently the target of legal challenges.

“Often, when the authorities issue documents related to land or housing confiscation, even a single affected area can prompt hundreds of households to file lawsuits,” he said.

Local communities typically hire lawyers from within the same province to represent their cases. With local leaders now holding the power to end legal careers, lawyers will be “intimidated into submission,” the former attorney warned.

This concern is echoed by lawyers in other parts of the country as well.

Speaking to RFA on condition of anonymity, a Hanoi-based lawyer cited a hypothetical case involving a city chairperson. “It will be easy for favoritism and fear to take hold, as the chairperson has the power to revoke lawyers’ practicing licenses at any time,” he warned.

The new rule is set to add an additional layer of deterrence for lawyers, supplementing existing regulations. Under current law, all practicing lawyers must be registered with a bar association, which operates under the oversight of government authorities.

In 2024, authorities in the southern province of Long An launched an investigation into three lawyers over their online commentary on a local legal case. The move prompted all three to flee the country, marking a turning point in the government’s approach to legal professionals involved in sensitive matters.

Speaking to RFA, Dang Dinh Manh, one of the three lawyers who fled Vietnam fearing government retribution, said the regime’s decision to grant provincial leaders the authority to revoke lawyers’ practicing licenses shows that it views legal professionals as a “target” to be “struggled against,” rather than as partners in upholding the rule of law.

Edited by Greg Barber

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

The main suspect – a man in his 30s who stabbed Akaravong three times in the throat and torso on Saturday – was arrested on Tuesday in Nîmes, about 300 miles (480 kilometers) from the city of Pau, Pau public prosecutor Rodolphe Jarry said in a statement on Wednesday. The suspects were not named.

Akaravong was rushed to a hospital in Pau in critical condition after the attack. His condition has since stabilized, Jarry told French media.

The public prosecutor’s office in Pau has launched an investigation into what they are referring to as an “attempted assassination.” Authorities did not confirm if the attack was politically motivated at this time, reported France’s Le Monde.

Human rights advocates say the attack fits a broader pattern of targeting activists abroad. Rights group Manushya Foundation described the attack as an example of “transnational repression.”

“The attack on Joseph is part of a dangerous and escalating pattern, in which authoritarian regimes continue to monitor, pressure, and even harm activists across borders,” the foundation said in a statement.

Akaravong, one of the most prominent critics of the communist government in Laos, fled the Southeast Asian nation in 2018 after criticizing the collapse of a saddle dam at the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydropower project in Attapeu province that killed dozens of villagers. He was granted political asylum in France in March 2022, the foundation said.

According to the Manushya Foundation, Akaravong was attacked while he was meeting with another Lao woman activist who had recently traveled to France after completing a five-year prison sentence in Laos last September for her criticism of the government on Facebook.

The foundation did not name the woman activist, but last September, Houayheuang Xayabouly was freed from prison in southern Laos. She was arrested in September 2019 after she criticized the government on Facebook for delaying a flood rescue effort.

In recent years, other Lao activists have gone missing or faced violence both inside Laos and outside the country, typically in neighboring Thailand.

The Pau public prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to RFA’s request for comments.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said Tuesday that since the promulgation of the National Security Law in 2020, 332 individuals have been arrested. That was an increase of six arrests since Secretary for Security Chris Tang stated on June 1 that 326 people had been arrested under the law, with 165 convictions.

When local media asked about the new arrests, the Security Bureau said detailed breakdowns of arrest figures are “classified information related to safeguarding national security in the HKSAR and thus will not be made public.” HKSAR stands for Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Political commentator Sampson Wong said that in the past the Hong Kong government rarely used national security as a reason to withhold information, and now the public’s basic right to know was being damaged.

“At this point, reporters can still detect some of these arrests, but how long will that last? In the future, will people be arrested without anyone knowing?” Wong asked.

“Anything could be labelled a breach of confidentiality. If this continues, the truth will be completely under the control of national security authorities,” he said.

(Louise Delmotte/AP)

The National Security Law was adopted after massive pro-democracy protests in 2019 as Beijing tightened controls over Hong Kong, which had enjoyed greater civic freedoms than mainland China and greater government transparency, including by police. China maintains the 2020 law was required to maintain order.

Last month, the Hong Kong government bypassed Legislative Council procedures and unilaterally enacted two new subsidiary laws under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which significantly expanded the powers of Beijing’s office overseeing national security in the city.

Under the measures, it is prohibited to disclose or film the office’s operations; civil servants must cooperate with and support national security operations; and any act that obstructs national security officers from performing their duties is criminalized.

While it remains unclear which six arrests happened in the past two weeks, on June 2, the National Security Department arrested one man and four women for allegedly conspiring to commit terrorist activities. The suspects had reportedly used phones, emails, and messaging apps to send messages threatening to bomb central government offices and a sports park, while also promoting pro-independence messages for Taiwan and Hong Kong.

On June 6, prominent democracy advocate Joshua Wong, who is already serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for subversion, was formally arrested on an additional charge of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.”

Last week, authorities also launched a national security investigation into six unnamed persons on suspicion of “colluding with a foreign country.” But the Security Bureau clarified that no arrests had been made as yet related to that probe.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

The Chengdu-based human rights activist and Chinese performance artist was released on March 24 after serving a four-year prison sentence in the southwestern province of Sichuan. But his friends say his freedom has been largely illusory, as police have repeatedly summoned him for interrogations and severely restricted his movements and ability to resume work.

Chen has faced repeated persecution for his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, including demands that the government investigate the crackdown and compensate victims. In 2021, he was sentenced to four years in jail on of child molestation which he denied and said were intended to smear his reputation.

Most recently, on the eve of the 36th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square protests crackdown, the National Security Bureau and local police subjected Chen to a five-hour interrogation, where he was forced to sit on the ‘tiger bench,’ Chen’s friend and colleague Guan told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.

‘Tiger bench’ is a form of torture used to restrain and immobilize detainees during questioning. Chen, like many others RFA interviewed for this story, asked to be identified only by a single name for fear of reprisals.

“The police accused him of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’” said Guan, referring to a criminal charge frequently used by Chinese authorities to carry out arbitrary detentions against rights activists and dissidents.

The charges were based on Chen’s social media activity, including reposts of tweets by Ming Chu-cheng, an honorary professor of politics at National Taiwan University, and prominent dissidents Pastor Wang Yi, the pastor of a banned Protestant church in Chengdu, and citizen journalist Cai Chu, said Guan.

Despite the lack of a subpoena, the police summoned Chen for questioning, confiscating his mobile phone and Wi-Fi equipment for three days, before returning them on June 3 night after repeated protests, Guan said.

Chen’s livelihood has also been impacted, his friends said. Upon release from prison, Chen found that his nursery business, which he had operated for many years, was emptied of all assets, causing him to lose his source of income, said Yang, another friend of the activist.

The courts have also listed him as a “dishonest debtor,” preventing him from accessing his bank accounts or resuming work, Yang said.

“He now has difficulty even renting a house and can only survive on donations from friends and through loans,” said Fang Liang, another friend of Chen’s.

(Chen Yunfei)

‘Secondary punishment’

During Chen’s most recent imprisonment, his 91-year-old mother was also forcibly and violently removed from her Chengdu rental home by community workers, during which she suffered a head injury that required over a month of hospitalization, Guan said.

During the forced eviction, many of the family’s assets of value disappeared, including $30,000 of pension money that his mother had set aside for her granddaughter’s education abroad, $5,800 in cash, and about 40,000 yuan (or US$5,560) in Chinese currency, Guan said.

When Chen attempted to file a police report after discovering his empty home upon release, authorities refused to issue a receipt or open an investigation, said Yang.

“They don’t allow you to have any evidence to sue them,” said Yang. “The government said it’s not their responsibility, and the police said to contact the community — they just pushed the matter back and forth.”

Despite the ongoing harassment, Chen’s friends say he is preparing to file a civil lawsuit to recover his mother’s lost property and challenge the police’s abuse of power.

Shandong-based legal scholar Lu described Chen’s ongoing troubles as a consequence of a typical “secondary punishment” model that is designed to maintain control over dissidents through non-judicial means.

“Administrative review is inactive, the police deliberately do not issue receipts, and elderly mothers are forced to become homeless,” Lue said “This is not law enforcement, but political coercion.”

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

The Bhumjaithai Party, holder of 71 seats in the 500-seat lower house of the Thai parliament, announced Wednesday it was withdrawing from Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s government, leaving her ruling coalition with only a slim majority.

The party said it was leaving due to the impact on the nation of a leak of a private phone call between Paetongtarn and former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen that was published first by a pro-Cambodian government news outlet earlier Wednesday.

In the June 15 call, the Thai leader said she was facing domestic pressure over the situation at the border, and urged Hun Sen not to listen to an outspoken Thai general who oversees the army in the border area.

“He just wants to look cool, saying things that are not useful to the nation, but in truth what we want is peace,” Paetongtarn told Hun Sen through an interpreter in the leaked audio clip, referring to the general.

She also urged Hun Sen to text her directly rather than post on social media, saying that makes it harder to manage the situation.

Paetongtarn held a news conference Wednesday where she confirmed the authenticity of the recording and defended her conduct. She said she was attempting to calm the tensions between Thailand and Cambodia that have spiked since Thai forces shot dead a Cambodian soldier on May 28 near where the borders of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos meet.

“It is clear now [Hun Sen] wants popularity in the country, regardless of bilateral relations,” she told reporters in Bangkok. “He told me his popularity was faltering.”

“I would not chat privately any more because of the distrust,” she said.

Nationalist sentiments

Both sides have stepped up their military presence since the May 28 clash. The Thai military ordered shorter opening hours at border crossing points, and Cambodia retaliated by blocking imports of Thai produce.

Cambodia has also requested the International Court of Justice in The Hague to rule on the demarcation of four areas on the disputed 800-kilometer (500-mile) border.

The dispute has stoked nationalist sentiments.

In Phnom Penh, thousands of Cambodians, holding portraits of Hun Sen and his son, Prime Minister Hun Manet, joined a state-organized march Wednesday marking the birthday of Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk.

“Cambodia’s land! We won’t take others’ land, we keep our land!” marchers chanted, Reuters reported.

(Reuters)

In Thailand, Paetongtarn was left with serious political fallout from the leaked call. Critics lambasted her family’s longstanding ties with Cambodia’s ruling Hun family from when her father, Thaksin Shinawatra, was prime minister. Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup, returned from exile in 2023, a year before his daughter took office.

In the leaked call, Paetongtarn, 38, addresses Hun Sen as “uncle” - a term that would be customary in Thai language when speaking to an elder person who is a family friend. But analysts said her appeal to Hun Sen to disregard a general in Thailand’s powerful military leaves her politically vulnerable.

Hard to survive

“It is very hard to see PM Paetongtarn surviving this,” Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asia expert and professor at the National War College in Washington, told Radio Free Asia.

“She threw a senior officer of the Royal Thai Army under the bus, at a time when the military and royalist elites have been chipping away at the grand bargain that saw her father, Thaksin Shinawatra, return from exile,” he said.

“I think the military and the royalist establishment are going to smell blood, now that she has been seen trying to cut a deal and sell out Thai national interests,” Abuza said, adding that regardless of what happens with Paetongtarn’s government, “it is very hard to see bilateral relations improving.”

Hun Sen said Wednesday he had shared audio of the call with about 80 individuals from his political party, parliament, the government and military to avoid any misunderstandings and for internal Cambodian purposes, The Phnom Penh Post reported.

The leak of a private conversation without consent of the other party violates Cambodian law, including the criminal code. It would also be widely regarded as a violation of diplomatic protocol.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pimuk Rakkanam and RFA Khmer.

The resolution – introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday and in the Senate on Tuesday – reaffirms that only the Dalai Lama himself should determine his successor and that any attempt by Beijing to select or appoint one would be an “invalid interference” and violation of religious freedom rights.

China has sought greater control over Tibetan Buddhism since invading the independent Himalayan country in 1950 and forcing the Dalai Lama into exile in India in 1959. In 2007, Beijing announced it would oversee the recognition of all reincarnate Tibetan lamas, including the next Dalai Lama.

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), who co-introduced the Senate resolution with Todd Young (R-Indiana), emphasized the broader stakes. “As the Chinese government continues to ignore the rights of Tibet under international law, we’re sending the message that we must protect these fundamental freedoms,” Merkley said.

In the House, Representatives Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) introduced a similar resolution recognizing the Dalai Lama’s “outstanding contributions to peace, nonviolence, human rights, and religious understanding.”

“Despite having faced persecution, oppression, and unspeakable violence at the hands of the CCP, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has maintained inner peace and continues to preach compassion – inspiring not only his own people, but the entire world,” said McCaul. CCP refers to the Chinese Communist Party.

McCaul last year led a bipartisan Congressional delegation to Dharamsala, India, where he presented the Dalai Lama with a framed copy of a U.S. bill, that was later signed into law, in support of Tibetan people’s right to self-determination.

“The people of Tibet have an inalienable right to self-determination, and our resolution reaffirms the United States’ commitment to Tibetans by supporting their basic human rights, religious freedom, culture, and language,” said Merkley.

(Tenzin Woser/RFA Tibetan)

In recent years, China has sought to control the reincarnation process of Tibetan religious leaders in an apparent attempt to appoint the Dalai Lama’s successor.

But in his new book titled “Voice for the Voiceless,” the Dalai Lama has said that his successor would be born in the “free world,” which he described as outside China.

“The new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama – that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people – will continue,” the Dalai Lama said in the book.

The latest resolution reiterates that the selection and installation of Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders are within the authority of the Tibetan Buddhist community.

“I’m proud to stand with the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet in their struggle for freedom and peace against the Chinese Communist Party’s continued aggression. The CCP’s status quo – both in Tibet and elsewhere – is not acceptable,” said Young.

The resolution is co-sponsored by a group of bipartisan lawmakers including Reps. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), and Young Kim (R-Calif.), and Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), John Curtis (R-UT), and Dan Sullivan (R-AK).

Both resolutions have be approved by committee and then voted on by each chamber before passage.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

That’s forcing families to slash spending. It is also triggering deflationary concerns as businesses enter into desperate price wars.

From Beijing’s central government offices to provincial agencies across China, as well as major state-owned enterprises like investment bank China International Capital Corp (CICC), employees have faced substantial pay reductions that have reduced household budgets and fundamentally altered consumer spending patterns.

“I used to earn 6,000 yuan (or US$835) a month but now I only get 5,000 yuan (US$696), and some allowances have been removed too,” Li, an employee at a Beijing-based state-owned enterprise, told RFA. Like many others interviewed for this story, Li wanted to be identified by a single name for safety reasons.

“Some people in my wife’s company have also had their salaries cut and some have received layoff notices, saying they will only work until July-end,” said Li.

In Zhejiang, regarded one of China’s most prosperous provinces, ordinary civil servants have had their annual salaries slashed by 50,000 to 60,000 yuan (or US$6,964-US$8,356) this year, Zheng, a resident of the province’s Zhuji city, told RFA.

Civil servants in more senior positions have seen deeper reductions to their annual pay of around 80,000 to 100,000 yuan (or US$11100-US$13900) and others in still higher levels by about 150,000 yuan (or US$20,890), Zheng said.

“There was already a reduction two years ago. This year’s salary is reduced again,” he added.

The cuts indicate the financial strain on local governments, as domestic economic challenges lead to tepid consumer demand and price pressures. That’s impacting businesses’ ability to pay taxes. Additionally, local governments are grappling with a decline in land transfer sales revenue amid weak property market demand.

For 2025, China’s provincial regions have set cautious fiscal revenue estimates, with an average growth target of 2.8% for their general public budget revenue, which is the sum of tax and non-tax revenue. That’s down 1.6 percentage points from 2024’s target average, as revenue generation challenges continue to weigh on local governments, economists say.

For example, in Shandong, many real estate projects have been suspended for the past two years with no land sales recorded, impacting the local government’s already large fiscal debt levels, said one blogger based in the northeastern coastal province, according to texts and pictures posted on X account @whyyoutouzhele, also known as “Mr. Li is not your teacher,” who posts content on that platform to circumvent Chinese government censorship.

Another Shandong resident, named Geng, told RFA, that county and township level officials in the province have had their salaries slashed by 30%, with payments frequently delayed.

“Now the county-level finances have been depleted, and the benefits for police officers have also been reduced,” Geng, a resident of Qingdao city, said.

Police officers in many other regions have also seen significant cuts to their annual salaries, down to 200,000 yuan (US$27,856) this year from 300,000 yuan (US$41,784) a year ago, said a legal professional based in southeast China’s Guangdong province.

(Andy Wong/AP)

Widespread pay cuts

Employees of major Chinese state-owned commercial enterprises, such as investment bank CICC and China Development Bank, have not been spared either, with companies executing cost-cutting “optimization measures,” including wage reductions and layoffs, amid a government campaign to cap pay ceilings at financial institutions and bring it more on par with other civil servants

But an employee at CICC said the salary cuts have affected virtually all staff levels. “Almost everyone in our building has had their salaries cut. The lowest-level employees have also had their salaries cut by 5%. I heard that the reductions for mid- and high-paid employees are even greater,” he said.

According to a report from Beijing-based Caixin media group, 27 government-owned financial enterprises have begun to implement salary cuts, mainly aimed at reaching the goal of capping annual income of staff at these firms at 1 million yuan (US$139,180), as Beijing moves forward with a campaign, known as “common prosperity” drive, to narrow income and wealth inequality.

Ma, who works at a Beijing-based state-owned enterprise, said his company has already conducted two rounds of salary cuts and layoffs since 2023. “The basic salary has shrunk, and the company has also cancelled meal and transportation subsidies,” Ma said. “The work that used to be done by two or three people now has to be done by one person.”

Another employee of a state-owned bank based in Guangdong’s Dongguan city said his salary had been reduced by 30% in the past two years, with performance bonuses “almost completely cut.”

(Andy Wong/AP)

Consumer ‘belt-tightening chain’

The salary reductions have sparked a sharp decline in consumer spending, creating deflationary pressures across the economy, as businesses engage in aggressive price cutting in a desperate bid to attract cash-strapped consumers.

“The price war has become the latest struggle for many small businesses,” Meng, a Shandong resident, told RFA.

“For example, the good ribs here only sell for 12 yuan (or US$1.67) a pound, and the purchase price of live pigs is only a few yuan … restaurants are desperately offering discounts to survive. This is not competition, but dragging each other down.”

In Beijing, small supermarkets are “slashing prices like crazy,” said Su, a resident of the city’s Haidian District. “I’m afraid they will all go bankrupt in a few months at this rate.”

In her own home too, Su has observed major changes in spending patterns, with fewer family gatherings and less frequent restaurant meals, as household budgets tighten.

Economist Wu Qinxue warned that the current situation highlights continued decline in local governments’ fiscal levels and is not just a temporary belt-tightening.

“The (local) government has no money to manage people, and no one is willing to spend money,” he said. “From salary cuts within the system to the collapse of consumption among ordinary people, the entire society is quietly forming a top-down (consumer belt-) ‘tightening chain.’”

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

Cambodia’s Ministry of Information said that starting at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, authorities along the border with Thailand closed gates to block the import of Thai agricultural products.

Prime Minister Hun Manet declared Tuesday that Cambodia will only allow the Thai imports if the Thai military reopens all border checkpoints and resumes normal operations. He also set that as a condition for discussing reductions in troops numbers at the border.

Tensions and military deployments have spiked since Thai forces shot dead a Cambodian soldier on May 28. Thailand says Cambodian forces dug a trench on the Thai side of the border.

“Thailand must first show genuine goodwill and comply with our basic condition, which is to reopen the border crossings on both sides to the way they were. Only then will we talk about troop matters,” Hun Manet said Tuesday.

Since June 7, Thailand has restricted border openings to 8am to 4pm. Usually they are open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The commander of Thailand’s Second Army Region says that Thailand plans to propose a reduction in troop deployments along the border during a Thailand-Cambodia Regional Border Committee meeting scheduled for June 27-28.

On Tuesday, the Thai military banned Thais from crossing the border to work at casinos and entertainment venues in Poipet, which lies on the Cambodian side of the main land border crossing point between the two countries, opposite the eastern Thai town of Aranyaprathet.

Casinos are not legal in Thailand, so gambling establishments proliferate near at key border crossings in neighboring countries like Cambodia.

The Bangkok Post newspaper reported that the order took effect on Tuesday at 8 a.m. and is in place until further notice. It is aimed at guaranteeing the safety of Thai people, the report said.

Police Col. Napatrapong Supaporn, immigration police chief in Sa Kaeo province, was quoted as saying that Thais who are still in Poipet should return home for their own safety.

Meanwhile, authorities in the Cambodian border provinces including Pursat and Preah Vihear announced on Facebook that hundreds of families had been evacuated from frontline areas to safer locations.

(msnina via Flickr)

This week, Cambodia submitted a request for the International Court of Justice in The Hague to rule on the demarcation of four locations at the border, including near the scene of last month’s clash.

The border dispute has historical roots and the two sides differ over which maps to use in demarcating territory. The last time there was a serious and bloody flare-up in tensions was between 2008 and 2011, over a disputed 11th century temple at Preah Vihear. The International Criminal Court has granted sovereignty over the temple to Cambodia.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

China could also potentially have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles as either Russia or the United States by the turn of the decade.

Those findings are in the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) annual assessment of armaments, disarmament and international security, released Monday.

SIPRI concludes that nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states - the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel - continued intensive nuclear modernization programs in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions.

It highlights the rapid growth of China’s arsenal, now estimated to have at least 600 nuclear warheads. It says it has grown by about 100 new warheads a year since 2023.

By January 2025, China had completed or was close to completing around 350 new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos in three large desert fields in the north of the country and three mountainous areas in the east, SIPRI says.

“Depending on how it decides to structure its forces, China could potentially have at least as many ICBMs as either Russia or the USA by the turn of the decade,” the report says.

In December, the U.S. Department of Defense offered a similar estimate of China’s warhead count, tripling its estimated arsenal in just four years.

However SIPRI adds that even if China reaches the maximum projected number of 1,500 warheads by 2035, that will still amount to only about one third of each of the current Russian and U.S. nuclear stockpiles.

Russia and the U.S. together possess around 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons. Both have about 1,700 deployed warheads and more than that each in storage.

On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun was asked about the SIPRI report, and said China follows a nuclear strategy that focuses of self-defense.

“China always keeps its nuclear capabilities at minimum level required by national security, and never engages in arms race,” Guo told a Beijing news briefing, adding that China has a ‘no first use’ policy on nuclear weapons.

SIPRI estimates that North Korea has assembled around 50 warheads and possesses enough fissile material to produce up to 40 more warheads and is accelerating the production of further fissile material.

It says North Korea “continues to prioritize its military nuclear program as a central element of its national security strategy,” also noting that leader Kim Jong Jun in November called for its “limitless” expansion.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

Information and images circulated on social media platform TikTok showed Col. To Long had been appointed as director of the ministry’s Department of External Security at a June 4 ceremony.

Experts said Long’s promotion is the latest in a series of appointments by Lam to consolidate power.

Lam’s own rise was “built on the strength of the police force,” making their support crucial as he seeks another term as general secretary of the Communist Party, Nguyen Van Dai, an experienced observer of Vietnamese politics, told Radio Free Asia.

State media has not announced Long’s appointment.

The Ministry of Public Security often eschews public announcements about promotions and appointments. Previously, Maj. Gen. Mai Hoang was appointed as director of the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department without any coverage in state media.

It’s also unusual for top figures in the Communist Party to disclose information about their family members. According to BBC Vietnamese, local news outlets have been instructed not to report on the developments in order to avoid drawing public attention.

Long, 43, maintains a low public profile. After several years of overseas study, he joined the ministry and in February was seen attending a Ministry of Public Security meeting on peacekeeping operations.

In June 2024, state media identified him as deputy chief of the Ministry’s Permanent Office for United Nations Peacekeeping.

A Hanoi-based analyst said authorities are wary of public discussion of the appointment as many members of the leadership come from the northern province of Hung Yen, the birthplace of To Lam. The analyst requested anonymity to comment on the sensitive topic.

To Lam, who became party chief in August 2024, began his career in public security in 1979 and rose to become the country’s top security official in 2016. Since assuming power, he has stacked the police apparatus with allies and people from Hung Yen.

Lam has elevated allies to key security positions, appointing Luong Tam Quang as minister of public security and Pham The Tung as head of the Investigative Security Agency. He has also installed new police chiefs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s two largest cities. Several police generals from Hung Yen province have similarly been promoted to senior Communist Party roles.

These appointments come ahead of the ruling party’s National Congress in January 2026, where delegates will elect a new leadership team for the next five-year term.

Edited by Tenzin Pema.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

Sherab, the abbot of Yena Monastery in Dege county’s Wangbuding township in Kardze Tibet Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, was sentenced to four years in prison and Gonpo, the chief administrator, sentenced to three years, said the sources, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. It wasn’t immediately clear when the sentences were handed down.

The sources said Gonpo was in critical condition due to torture in detention and has been transferred to an intensive care unit in Chengdu’s West China Hospital.

The two heads of Yena Monastery were detained with hundreds of Tibetan monks and local residents in February 2024 for peacefully appealing for a halt to the construction of the 1,100-megawatt Gangtuo dam on the Drichu river (or Jinsha, in Chinese) that would submerge several monasteries of historical significance, including Yena and Wonto monasteries, and force the resettlement of communities in at least two major villages.

Many of the protestors who were detained were reportedly severely beaten during interrogations with some requiring medical attention, sources told RFA at the time. Most were released by the following month but key monastic and village leaders whom authorities suspected of playing a leading role in the protests – like Wonto Monastery’s senior administrator Tenzin Sangpo and village official Tenzin – were transferred to a larger county detention center.

Yena Monastery has faced particularly severe repression. Authorities have targeted monks for “focused rectification and re-education” of their political ideologies and for their role as “serious informants,” sources told RFA.

“The government really went all-out against Yena Monastery, as if venting their anger,” the first source told RFA. Officials said the two monastery leaders should be “severely punished” specifically for their decision to seek and hire legal representation.

In 2024, video emerged of Yena Monastery’s abbot Sherab holding both his thumbs up in the traditional Tibetan gesture of begging, as he, other Tibetan monks and local residents publicly cried and pleaded before visiting officials on Feb. 20 not to proceed with the planned project.

Collective imprisonment

The area on either side of the Drichu river remains under strict surveillance more than a year after the protests, with movement restrictions imposed on the monks and residents of the monasteries and villages at Wangbuding township, sources told RFA.

Authorities have established multiple checkpoints at the border between Tibetan areas in Sichuan and the Tibet Autonomous Region, strictly controlling all entry and exit, they said.

Only Tibetans holding transit permits issued by the police are allowed passage through the checkpoints installed on roads leading to monasteries like Yena and Wonto that are located near the river, sources said. Even ethnic Han Chinese with transit permits are prohibited from entering, they added.

“The whole area has been effectively sealed off, with nearly 4,000 residents and monks in the villages and monasteries near the river in a state of collective imprisonment, having lost all freedom of movement,” said the second source.

During periods considered politically sensitive by Chinese authorities – such as around the anniversary of the March 10 Tibetan Uprising Day of 1959 or the birthday of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, on July 6 – surveillance is even more heightened, sources said.

During “sensitive periods,” Tibetans without local household registration are refused entry, while local villagers traveling from rural areas to Dege county seat must apply for transit permits, and are often still refused, sources said.

The Gangtuo Dam – which is planned to be located at Kamtok (Gangtuo, in Chinese) in Dege county – is part of a Chinese government project to build a massive 13-tier hydropower complex on the Drichu, with a total planned capacity of 13,920 megawatts.

Chinese officials had indicated after last year’s protests that the project would proceed as planned but sources said there’s no clarity yet on when the construction would be started or if it would at all.

“Even if the project ultimately does not move ahead, the monks and residents of the surrounding villages have already been deeply harmed,” said the first source.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

Cambodia threatened Monday to ban imports of Thai fruit and vegetables within 24 hours as a border dispute deepened after bilateral talks at the weekend failed to breach the impasse between the Southeast Asian neighbors.

On Sunday, Cambodia formally requested the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, resolve claims over four areas of the disputed 800-kilometer (500-mile) Thai-Cambodia border. Thailand reiterated Monday that it rejects the compulsory jurisdiction of the court.

The developments pointed to prolonged tensions over a territorial spat that stirs nationalist passions on both sides. Thai forces shot dead a Cambodian soldier on May 28 after they said Cambodian forces dug a trench on the Thai side of the border.

(Heng Sinith/AP)

The two governments held talks in Phnom Penh on Saturday and Sunday under the aegis of a Joint Border Commission. Another round of talks was set for September.

The Thai Foreign Ministry said Monday that it “expressed deep disappointment regarding Cambodia’s continued refusal to address bilateral disputes” over the four border areas that Cambodia wants the ICJ to rule on.

Thailand, which hosts hundreds of thousands of Cambodian migrant laborers, has irked Cambodia by imposing restrictions on opening hours at border crossings since last month’s border clash. Cambodia has responded by closing one crossing point, cutting Thai internet services and stopping broadcasts of Thai movies and TV.

In parliament on Monday, former prime minister Hun Sen upped the ante, saying the Thai military has 24 hours to reopen the border from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or Cambodia would close all crossing points from Tuesday to prevent Thailand from exporting vegetables and fruits.

Hun Sen, who is Senate president, said that the current border conflict will not be easily resolved. He called on Cambodian students and workers to return from Thailand.

Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered Cambodian authorities to facilitate the return of workers to Cambodia and help transport them to their hometowns.

The border dispute has historical roots and the two sides differ over which maps to use in demarcating territory. The last time there was a serious and bloody flare-up in tensions was between 2008 and 2011, over a disputed 11th century temple at Preah Vihear. The ICJ has granted sovereignty over the temple to Cambodia.

Cambodia is now calling for The Hague-based court to rule on the demarcation of the border at four other spots: three ancient Khmer temples - Ta Moan Thom, Ta Moan Toch and Ta Krabei - and at an area near to where the May 28 shootout happened where the borders of Cambodia, Thailand and Laos meet.

Thailand reiterated Monday that it doesn’t want the court to intervene.

“Thailand is of the view that recourse to a third party may not always be conducive to the preservation of amicable relations among States, particularly in sensitive matters involving complex historical, territorial, or political dimensions,” it said in response to Cambodia’s ICJ filing.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

French news portal Sud Ouest reported that a man in his 30s was stabbed three times in the throat and torso around noon on Saturday in the center of the city of Pau then rushed to hospital there. It said the attacker was still at large.

On Monday, Akaravong posted on Facebook a photo from his hospital bed, showing himself heavily bandaged. He said his attacker was a man who “didn’t dare to fight me face to face with my bare hands.”

Sud Ouest quoted an unnamed witness as saying: “I went to the window and saw a couple who didn’t speak French, maybe Asian tourists, shouting ‘Help, help!’ The man had blood on his clothes and was holding his throat.”

Manushya Foundation, a human rights group, said that Akaravong had been rushed to hospital in critical condition but his condition had stabilized. While the identity of the assailant remains unclear, the group described the attack as an example of “transnational repression.”

Akaravong is one of the most prominent public critics of the communist government in Laos which has ruled for five decades and is intolerant of political dissent. He often posts on social media about socio-economic conditions in Laos and commentary critical of the government.

The foundation said Akaravong fled Laos in 2018 after criticizing the collapse of a saddle dam at the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydropower project in Attapeu province that killed dozens of villagers. He was granted political asylum in France in March 2022, the foundation said.

In recent years, other Lao activists have gone missing or faced violence both inside Laos and outside the country, typically in neighboring Thailand.

In August 2019, Od Sayavong, a 34-year old Thai-based Lao activist, and his housemate went missing in Bangkok. Thai authorities pled ignorance in the case and their investigation has stalled.

In May 2023, Kitiyano Bounsuan, a 56-year-old Thai-based Lao democracy activist who had received U.N. refugee status, was gunned down in Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani province.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

French news portal Sud Ouest reported that a man in his 30s was stabbed three times in the throat and torso around noon on Saturday in the center of the city of Pau then rushed to hospital there. It said the attacker was still at large.

On Monday, Akaravong posted on Facebook a photo from his hospital bed, showing himself heavily bandaged. He said his attacker was a man who “didn’t dare to fight me face to face with my bare hands.”

Sud Ouest quoted an unnamed witness as saying: “I went to the window and saw a couple who didn’t speak French, maybe Asian tourists, shouting ‘Help, help!’ The man had blood on his clothes and was holding his throat.”

Manushya Foundation, a human rights group, said that Akaravong had been rushed to hospital in critical condition but his condition had stabilized. While the identity of the assailant remains unclear, the group described the attack as an example of “transnational repression.”

Akaravong is one of the most prominent public critics of the communist government in Laos which has ruled for five decades and is intolerant of political dissent. He often posts on social media about socio-economic conditions in Laos and commentary critical of the government.

The foundation said Akaravong fled Laos in 2018 after criticizing the collapse of a saddle dam at the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydropower project in Attapeu province that killed dozens of villagers. He was granted political asylum in France in March 2022, the foundation said.

In recent years, other Lao activists have gone missing or faced violence both inside Laos and outside the country, typically in neighboring Thailand.

In August 2019, Od Sayavong, a 34-year old Thai-based Lao activist, and his housemate went missing in Bangkok. Thai authorities pled ignorance in the case and their investigation has stalled.

In May 2023, Kitiyano Bounsuan, a 56-year-old Thai-based Lao democracy activist who had received U.N. refugee status, was gunned down in Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani province.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

The closure of China Labor Bulletin, announced Thursday, came as authorities launched a new national security investigation into six unnamed people and one organization suspected of “colluding with a foreign country.”

Shortly after officials launched the probe, China Labor Bulletin – which receives funding from various foundations based outside China – announced its closure, saying: “The company is no longer able to maintain operations and has decided to dissolve and initiate the relevant procedures.”

Radio Free Asia could not immediately reach Han, a long-time contributor to RFA’s Mandarin Service, producing radio segments focusing on workers’ issues in China.

But Han, who founded China Labor Bulletin in 1994, told Taiwan’s Central News Agency that the shutdown was his decision and that he would remain in Hong Kong.

The bulletin advocated for the rights of Chinese workers and provided them legal support. It has served as a source of information for activists, journalists, and scholars on worker issues and unrest in China.

In its statement, the bulletin said: “As of today, our website will stop updating content and other social media platforms have also been removed,” the statement said.

RFA found that China Labor Bulletin’s website appeared to have been shut down on Friday, displaying a host error message, and its social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram have been deactivated.

(Anthony Wallace/AFP)

The development came as China’s National Security Office in Hong Kong ordered Hong Kong authorities to “interview” and investigate six individuals and one organization suspected of “colluding with a foreign country or external forces to endanger national security” between November 2020 and June 2024.

Authorities on Thursday executed court-approved searches of the homes of the six people and an office, located in Hong Kong’s Kwai Chung district, of the organization under investigation, seizing bank documents and equipment. All six individuals were required to surrender their travel documents.

The authorities did not provide the names of the six people or the organization under investigation.

The development underscores Beijing’s systematic dismantling of Hong Kong’s once-vibrant civil society, as authorities continue using broad national security provisions to investigate suspected foreign collaboration and force long-established organizations to shutter operations.

Since the implementation of Hong Kong’s National Security Law in 2020, at least 58 civil society organizations have been forced to disband.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

On Thursday, North Korea held a formal launch ceremony for the repaired naval destroyer named ‘Kang Kon’ at the Rajin dockyard, 45 miles (72 kilometers) up the coast from Chongjin shipyard where the warship on May 21 fell sideways into the sea, leaving it partially submerged.

“The warship was safely raised and floated in just two weeks since the accident occurred, and complete restoration was completed ahead of the Central Committee of the Party (meeting) as planned,” Kim said, according to state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Kim – who had attended the failed May 21 launch attempt and angrily called it a “serious criminal act” and a “grave unacceptable accident” – had ordered the vessel be fully restored before a key ruling party meeting later this month.

(KCNA via Reuters)

But on Thursday, a beaming Kim – wearing a wide straw hat and accompanied by his daughter Kim Ju-ae – praised the successful restoration at the launch ceremony that was celebrated with much pomp and glory, saying “truly great lessons” had been learnt in the process, according to KCNA.

The rushed ‘restoration’ and relaunch underscores Kim’s determination to project naval strength despite technical setbacks, as he pushes to expand maritime capabilities that could “be fully projected in any necessary waters without limitation,” as he had warned earlier this year.

Kim said a plan to build two additional 5,000-ton destroyers next year had been recently approved, signaling North Korea’s continued focus on strengthening its naval power.

North Korea defied skeptics about its ability to salvage the Kang Kon after the initial botched launch, but within two weeks, satellite imagery showed it had been righted and then towed for repairs at Rajin, which lies in the northeastern part of the country, near the Russian and Chinese borders.

(Maxar Technology via AP)

On Friday, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, which manages inter-Korean relations, said no visible defects were seen in the destroyer’s appearance but added that continued monitoring is needed to determine whether it is functioning normally.

“Attention is being paid to whether a live-fire test of the ship’s weapons will be conducted immediately after the launch ceremony to assert that the destroyer is still in good condition,” the South Korean ministry said.

“If major equipment is submerged or damaged, it may take a long time to restore to its original condition,” it added.

(KCNA via Reuters)

Analysts said there was no clear evidence at the launch ceremony that the Kang Kon is fully operational.

“The North Korean version of the anti-ship Spike missiles that were loaded on the Choe Hyon are not visible on the Kang Kon,” said South Korean lawmaker and former defense journalist Yoo Yong-won, referring to another 5,000-ton destroyer that North Korea unveiled in April.

“It is highly likely that the warship was launched after only the exterior was hastily restored… (and) without some of its equipment loaded due to the damage from the accident,” he added.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Han Do-hyung for RFA Korean.

Cambodia also closed the Doung international border crossing point, known as Ban Laem on the Thai side, after Thailand had cut its operating hours there by half. The move left dozens of Thai cargo trucks stranded at the border.

The actions marked a deepening of a bilateral spat after a Cambodian soldier died in a clash on May 28, the latest episode in a long-running dispute over the demarcation of the 800-kilometer (500-mile) Thai-Cambodia border.

The two sides are holding talks Saturday in Phnom Penh at a Joint Boundary Commission meeting. While Cambodia will be represented by a minister, the Thai side is led by a former ambassador.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet posted on Facebook that as of Friday, the country was disconnecting all internet bandwidth from Thailand, leaving businesses complaining of slow speeds.

The Cambodian ministries of information and cultures ordered television stations and cinemas to stop airing Thai movies and TV series. The Khmer Boxing Federation instructed all television stations and boxing arenas to cancel all scheduled matches involving Thai fighters, both male and female.

(Hun Sen via Facebook)

Former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is Hun Manet’s father, posted on Facebook that the closure of the Doung border checkpoint was blocking exports of Thai jackfruit heading via Cambodia to Vietnam. He urged Thai farmers to protest against the Thai military.

“Cambodia will only reopen this gate when all border checkpoints - unilaterally closed by the Thai military - are restored to mutual coordination as before,” Hun Sen wrote.

He also ordered all armed forces to be on 24-hour combat readiness in case of aggression, and instructed provincial governors along the border to prepare evacuation plans for civilians.

Thailand: Cambodia has misunderstood

On Friday, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said that Cambodia has misunderstood the situation and incorrectly believes the Thai government plans to cut electricity and internet services to border areas of Cambodia, Khaosod English, a Thai news portal, reported.

She emphasized this is not the case and has instructed the Foreign Ministry to clarify the matter with Cambodian counterparts.

Thailand reiterated Thursday that it wants to resolve the border dispute bilaterally, and does not support Cambodia’s intention to involve the International Court of Justice. Bangkok says it does not recognize the compulsory jurisdiction of The Hague-based court.

(Royal Thai Government via AFP)

The border dispute, which has historical roots, stirs nationalist sentiment on both sides. Cambodia is calling for the U.N. court to rule on the demarcation of the border at three ancient Khmer temples - Ta Moan Thom, Ta Moan Toch and Ta Krabei - and at an area near to where the May 28 shootout happened where the borders of Cambodia, Thailand and Laos meet.

The last time there was a serious and bloody flare-up in tensions at the border was between 2008 and 2011, over a disputed 11th century temple at Preah Vihear. The International Court of Justice has granted sovereignty over the temple to Cambodia.

(Chanakarn Laosarakham/AFP)

On Friday, social media posts and news media reporting showed long queues of pedestrians at the main border Thai-Cambodia crossing at Aranyaprathet-Poipet, suggesting some of the hundreds of thousands of Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand were traveling home.

One Cambodian worker in Thailand’s central province of Rayong told Radio Free Asia that some workers are returning to Cambodia out of concern for their safety and because of discrimination by Thai nationals at their workplaces.

But the worker, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, added that most Cambodian workers in his area had not yet returned as they were waiting for the outcome of Saturday’s talks. He said that if the situation worsens, they will return to Cambodia soon.

Translated by Poly Sam. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Brach Chev for RFA Khmer.

But it seems like whichever side you choose, it could get you into trouble in Hong Kong.

This week, the city’s police issued a stark warning against downloading the mobile app “Reversed Front: Bonfire” on the grounds that the game is “advocating armed revolution and the overthrow of the fundamental system of the People’s Republic of China.”

The police force’s National Security Department, or NSD, said in a statement Tuesday that any person who shares or recommends the app, or makes in-app purchases, may be violating articles of the city’s draconian national security law that punish incitement to secession and subversion. A person who downloads the app would be in possession of a publication with a “seditious intention.”

The statement concluded that such acts are “extremely serious offences” and that police would strictly enforce the law.

“Members of the public should not download the application or provide funding by any means to the relevant developer. Those who have downloaded the application should uninstall it immediately and must not attempt to defy the law,” it said.

Welcome to Hong Kong in 2025, where even gaming apps are in the cross-hairs of authorities.

Until a few years ago, the city was famed for its vibrant civic society and freedoms which had persisted since the territory came under Chinese control in 1997.

“It’s absurd that the government fears this game, especially when players are free to choose any faction—including the Red Army,” one gamer who goes by the alias Fu Tong told Radio Free Asia. “Their reaction just reflects an authoritarian regime’s deep fear of freedom and how brittle the system really is.”

Widening crackdown

The warning, apparently the first issued in Hong Kong against a gaming app, was the latest sign of a widening crackdown on basic freedoms that has ensued since massive anti-government protests that broke out six years ago. That movement was followed by the passage of the 2020 national security law imposed by Beijing and a law enacted by the Hong Kong legislature 2024.

The app’s developer, ESC Taiwan, did not immediately respond to an RFA request for comment on Tuesday’s police statement.

ESC has described itself as a civilian volunteer group that was set up in 2017 to “coordinate with overseas anti-Communist organizations and assist foreign allies with outreach and organizing efforts.” It doesn’t disclose who its members are but says they are mostly Taiwanese, with a few Hongkongers and Mongolians.

The game’s first online version was released in 2020, and a board game version launched in the same year. At the time, China’s state-run Global Times published a critical editorial accusing the game of promoting “Taiwanese independence” and “Hong Kong separatism.”

According to a person familiar with the operations of ESC, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, the developers had raised over HK$6 million (US$760,000) via crowdfunding in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2019 to develop the game, and a portion of the game’s revenue is donated to anti-China Communist Party organizations abroad.

Players of “Reversed Front: Bonfire” can assume the role of rebels from places such as Hong Kong, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, Taiwan and the Uyghur region trying to overthrow the communist regime.

“Or you can choose to lead the Communists to defeat all enemies and resume the century-long march of the Communist revolution to the other side of the land and sea!” ESC says in its promo for the app.

For the Hong Kong option, numerous game characters are inspired by the city’s past protest culture. For example, one character, “Ka Yan,” hails from Yuen Long - a town in Hong Kong’s western territories - and wears blue-and-white striped tape often used by Hong Kong police. Another, “Sylvia,” wears a gas mask and a uniform printed with the slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times.”

The game’s dialogue is also steeped in Hong Kong culture and includes an instrumental version of “Glory to Hong Kong,” a banned anthem that was popular during 2019 pro-democracy protests.

While the police statement on Tuesday appeared to boost interest in the game, The Associated Press in Hong Kong reported that the app was not available in Apple app story by Wednesday morning. It remains available in the United States.

One gamer, Andy, said that after the statement was issued Hong Kong-themed player groups within the game quickly cleared their chat logs fearing they could be trawled by authorities.

He praised the game as reflecting current geopolitical realities, including China’s approach to Taiwan - the self-ruling island that Beijing claims as part of China.

Supporting this game, Andy added, also allows players to symbolically “defend Hong Kong territory.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

But it seems like whichever side you choose, it could get you into trouble in Hong Kong.

This week, the city’s police issued a stark warning against downloading the mobile app “Reversed Front: Bonfire” on the grounds that the game is “advocating armed revolution and the overthrow of the fundamental system of the People’s Republic of China.”

The police force’s National Security Department, or NSD, said in a statement Tuesday that any person who shares or recommends the app, or makes in-app purchases, may be violating articles of the city’s draconian national security law that punish incitement to secession and subversion. A person who downloads the app would be in possession of a publication with a “seditious intention.”

The statement concluded that such acts are “extremely serious offences” and that police would strictly enforce the law.

“Members of the public should not download the application or provide funding by any means to the relevant developer. Those who have downloaded the application should uninstall it immediately and must not attempt to defy the law,” it said.

Welcome to Hong Kong in 2025, where even gaming apps are in the cross-hairs of authorities.

Until a few years ago, the city was famed for its vibrant civic society and freedoms which had persisted since the territory came under Chinese control in 1997.

“It’s absurd that the government fears this game, especially when players are free to choose any faction—including the Red Army,” one gamer who goes by the alias Fu Tong told Radio Free Asia. “Their reaction just reflects an authoritarian regime’s deep fear of freedom and how brittle the system really is.”

Widening crackdown

The warning, apparently the first issued in Hong Kong against a gaming app, was the latest sign of a widening crackdown on basic freedoms that has ensued since massive anti-government protests that broke out six years ago. That movement was followed by the passage of the 2020 national security law imposed by Beijing and a law enacted by the Hong Kong legislature 2024.

The app’s developer, ESC Taiwan, did not immediately respond to an RFA request for comment on Tuesday’s police statement.

ESC has described itself as a civilian volunteer group that was set up in 2017 to “coordinate with overseas anti-Communist organizations and assist foreign allies with outreach and organizing efforts.” It doesn’t disclose who its members are but says they are mostly Taiwanese, with a few Hongkongers and Mongolians.

The game’s first online version was released in 2020, and a board game version launched in the same year. At the time, China’s state-run Global Times published a critical editorial accusing the game of promoting “Taiwanese independence” and “Hong Kong separatism.”

According to a person familiar with the operations of ESC, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, the developers had raised over HK$6 million (US$760,000) via crowdfunding in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2019 to develop the game, and a portion of the game’s revenue is donated to anti-China Communist Party organizations abroad.

Players of “Reversed Front: Bonfire” can assume the role of rebels from places such as Hong Kong, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, Taiwan and the Uyghur region trying to overthrow the communist regime.

“Or you can choose to lead the Communists to defeat all enemies and resume the century-long march of the Communist revolution to the other side of the land and sea!” ESC says in its promo for the app.

For the Hong Kong option, numerous game characters are inspired by the city’s past protest culture. For example, one character, “Ka Yan,” hails from Yuen Long - a town in Hong Kong’s western territories - and wears blue-and-white striped tape often used by Hong Kong police. Another, “Sylvia,” wears a gas mask and a uniform printed with the slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times.”

The game’s dialogue is also steeped in Hong Kong culture and includes an instrumental version of “Glory to Hong Kong,” a banned anthem that was popular during 2019 pro-democracy protests.

While the police statement on Tuesday appeared to boost interest in the game, The Associated Press in Hong Kong reported that the app was not available in Apple app story by Wednesday morning. It remains available in the United States.

One gamer, Andy, said that after the statement was issued Hong Kong-themed player groups within the game quickly cleared their chat logs fearing they could be trawled by authorities.

He praised the game as reflecting current geopolitical realities, including China’s approach to Taiwan - the self-ruling island that Beijing claims as part of China.

Supporting this game, Andy added, also allows players to symbolically “defend Hong Kong territory.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

But it seems like whichever side you choose, it could get you into trouble in Hong Kong.

This week, the city’s police issued a stark warning against downloading the mobile app “Reversed Front: Bonfire” on the grounds that the game is “advocating armed revolution and the overthrow of the fundamental system of the People’s Republic of China.”

The police force’s National Security Department, or NSD, said in a statement Tuesday that any person who shares or recommends the app, or makes in-app purchases, may be violating articles of the city’s draconian national security law that punish incitement to secession and subversion. A person who downloads the app would be in possession of a publication with a “seditious intention.”

The statement concluded that such acts are “extremely serious offences” and that police would strictly enforce the law.

“Members of the public should not download the application or provide funding by any means to the relevant developer. Those who have downloaded the application should uninstall it immediately and must not attempt to defy the law,” it said.

Welcome to Hong Kong in 2025, where even gaming apps are in the cross-hairs of authorities.

Until a few years ago, the city was famed for its vibrant civic society and freedoms which had persisted since the territory came under Chinese control in 1997.

“It’s absurd that the government fears this game, especially when players are free to choose any faction—including the Red Army,” one gamer who goes by the alias Fu Tong told Radio Free Asia. “Their reaction just reflects an authoritarian regime’s deep fear of freedom and how brittle the system really is.”

Widening crackdown

The warning, apparently the first issued in Hong Kong against a gaming app, was the latest sign of a widening crackdown on basic freedoms that has ensued since massive anti-government protests that broke out six years ago. That movement was followed by the passage of the 2020 national security law imposed by Beijing and a law enacted by the Hong Kong legislature 2024.

The app’s developer, ESC Taiwan, did not immediately respond to an RFA request for comment on Tuesday’s police statement.

ESC has described itself as a civilian volunteer group that was set up in 2017 to “coordinate with overseas anti-Communist organizations and assist foreign allies with outreach and organizing efforts.” It doesn’t disclose who its members are but says they are mostly Taiwanese, with a few Hongkongers and Mongolians.

The game’s first online version was released in 2020, and a board game version launched in the same year. At the time, China’s state-run Global Times published a critical editorial accusing the game of promoting “Taiwanese independence” and “Hong Kong separatism.”

According to a person familiar with the operations of ESC, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, the developers had raised over HK$6 million (US$760,000) via crowdfunding in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2019 to develop the game, and a portion of the game’s revenue is donated to anti-China Communist Party organizations abroad.

Players of “Reversed Front: Bonfire” can assume the role of rebels from places such as Hong Kong, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, Taiwan and the Uyghur region trying to overthrow the communist regime.

“Or you can choose to lead the Communists to defeat all enemies and resume the century-long march of the Communist revolution to the other side of the land and sea!” ESC says in its promo for the app.

For the Hong Kong option, numerous game characters are inspired by the city’s past protest culture. For example, one character, “Ka Yan,” hails from Yuen Long - a town in Hong Kong’s western territories - and wears blue-and-white striped tape often used by Hong Kong police. Another, “Sylvia,” wears a gas mask and a uniform printed with the slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times.”

The game’s dialogue is also steeped in Hong Kong culture and includes an instrumental version of “Glory to Hong Kong,” a banned anthem that was popular during 2019 pro-democracy protests.

While the police statement on Tuesday appeared to boost interest in the game, The Associated Press in Hong Kong reported that the app was not available in Apple app story by Wednesday morning. It remains available in the United States.

One gamer, Andy, said that after the statement was issued Hong Kong-themed player groups within the game quickly cleared their chat logs fearing they could be trawled by authorities.

He praised the game as reflecting current geopolitical realities, including China’s approach to Taiwan - the self-ruling island that Beijing claims as part of China.

Supporting this game, Andy added, also allows players to symbolically “defend Hong Kong territory.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

“The Lennon Wall is an important collective memory for us (Hong Kongers),” said Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong, who moved to Taiwan’s Taichung city in 2021. “From 2014 to 2019, it was the place where we spread our democratic demands. Now the Lennon Wall and democracy and freedom in Hong Kong are gone.”

Hong Kong’s Lennon Walls – named after musician John Lennon’s peaceful activism and inspired by Prague’s Velvet Revolution of the 1980s – became iconic features of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, transforming public spaces into canvases for democratic expression.

Filled with colorful displays of sticky notes, posters, artwork, and messages such as “We Hong Kongers never give up”, Hong Kong’s Lennon Walls allowed ordinary citizens to express their political views and demonstrate their solidarity.

Lennon Walls sprouted on available public spaces across Hong Kong, including underground tunnels and on pillars outside railway stations, during the 2014 Umbrella Movement and again in 2019, during the anti-extradition movement when millions took to the streets to protest a proposed legislation that would allow criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China.

In Taiwan, the Lennon Wall in Taichung’s pedestrian underpass is the only such publicly accessible wall in the region, and Hong Kong exiles in the democratic island are keen to preserve it, even as they look to establish more such walls, including one in capital Taipei.

Among them is Wong, who with his friends on Thursday marked the anniversary of the anti-extradition movement with a visit to the Lennon Wall in Taichung and sang before it the protest anthem of the 2019 pro-democracy protests, “Glory to Hong Kong.”

Earlier this year, part of the Lennon Wall in Taichung was reportedly cleared during a regular cleanup and maintenance of the underpass by volunteers. This prompted a statement from city officials who said they respect the wall as a symbol of public expression and that any future cleaning must be reported in advance.

Wong now leads efforts to preserve and refresh the display on the Lennon Wall in Taichung, particularly in the cleared sections, viewing it as both an act of commemoration and resistance.

“Crisis brings opportunity. As a curator, I want to turn the cleaned sections into art spaces,” said Wong, who comes to the Lennon Wall in Taichung every week and pays out of pocket to reprint and post high-quality artworks.

“If someone tears it down again, I’ll repost it — just like we did during the 2019 protests. That persistence is the resilience of resistance,” he said.

(Credit: AFP)

Another Hong Kong exile Fu Tang is currently looking for a location in Taipei to establish a permanent Lennon Wall in the city. He believes that protecting these spaces represents core Taiwanese values too.

“The Lennon Wall represents the right to freedom of expression of diversity and tolerance,” Fu said. “Protecting the Lennon Wall is not only about protecting the freedom of expression of Hong Kong people in Taiwan, but also about protecting the important values of peace and tolerance in Taiwan.”

Fu believes the establishment of a permanent Lennon Walls in Taiwan will also serve as reminders for the Taiwanese people to cherish their existing freedoms. “It also tells the world that Taiwan is not part of China, because there is no room for Lennon Walls in China,” added Fu.

Taiwan, which China claims as its territory, has welcomed Hong Kong refugees through various humanitarian programs, and many Hong Kongers who participated in the 2019 anti-extradition protests have now made the democratic island their home.

Among them is Tsai Chih-hao, who was one of the protestors who stormed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in 2019.

“As a protester, I am very happy that I can still see the Lennon Wall in Taiwan,” Tsai said. “There are still people willing to maintain it and allow people who come to Taiwan to visit it. This means that there are still people who remember the 2019 anti-extradition movement and the efforts made by the people of Hong Kong for democracy.”

Translated by Rachel C. Edited by Tenzin Pema.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

According to the report by Hague-based rights group Global Rights Compliance, 77 companies and downstream manufacturers of critical minerals-based products operate in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), placing them at risk of participation in the labor transfer programs in the lithium, titanium, beryllium, and magnesium industries.

The findings are likely to add to the due diligence concerns of foreign and multinational companies that source those products. Forced labor is on a long list of serious human rights problems that have been documented in Xinjiang, where the U.S. government determined in 2021 that China was committing genocide against the Uyghurs.

The Uyghur region is a major source of four critical minerals. It is the top source of beryllium, crucial for nuclear applications and advanced electronics, and one of the five province-level jurisdictions that produces raw magnesium. The region is also seeing a surge in lithium exploration, mining, and battery production to feed the electric vehicle industry, and accounts for 11.6% of the world’s titanium sponge, a key input in titanium metal that is used in aerospace and defense.

Over the past decade, Beijing has expanded exploration, mining, processing and manufacturing of critical minerals in the XUAR, transforming the region into a major “extractive hub,” Global Rights Compliance said in its report titled “Risk at the Source: Critical Mineral Supply Chains and State-Imposed Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region.”

China dominates global mineral production. The country leads production of 30 out of the 44 minerals that the U.S. government has designated as critical.

(Global Rights Compliance)

“The emergence of the region as an extractive hub relies, in part, on state-imposed forced labor transfer programs, targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups,” the rights group said.

The report highlights the “substantial influence” that these critical minerals – found abundantly in XUAR – have on global supply chains and multinational brands, including leading paint companies, aerospace applications, thermos producers, and defense and nuclear tools and components.

It uncovers 15 companies with documented sourcing directly from Uyghur region-based companies in the last two years and 68 downstream customers of Chinese producers who source inputs from the Uyghur region, highlighting the risk of companies’ direct and indirect participation in the forced labor programs.

“The XUAR’s systemic forced labor practices are not only a means to subsidize operating costs but also facilitate the government’s persecution of the Uyghur population through familial separation, land expropriation, and forced re-education,” Global Rights Alliance said.

The report highlights that China’s practices in the Uyghur region create unfair competitive advantages and trade and environmental violations that extend beyond human rights concerns.

Lax environmental standards and heavy dependence on coal have also made the region the epicenter of the energy-intensive mineral mining and processing industry and have enabled goods to enter global markets at artificially low prices, it said.

“Minerals mined and/or refined in the region routinely enter global supply chains through unregulated or opaque mineral distribution channels. As a result, significant portions of the world’s economy are potentially exposed to products tainted by forced labor and high carbon footprints,” the rights group added.

The report’s findings were based on analyses of state media, shipping records, and marketing and corporate annual reports.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema for RFA.

In recent weeks, the Vietnamese government has rolled out a sweeping campaign to crack down on counterfeit goods and to enforce a new tax collection regime. The primary targets have been small businesses.

The prime minister issued a directive on May 24 urging all levels of government to “step up the fight against counterfeit goods.” The government also introduced Decree 70, requiring small businesses to install electronic cash registers connected directly to tax authorities.

The steps appeared sensible, to tighten up protections on intellectual property and move toward greater fairness in tax collection that could boost state revenues.

But there have been negative consequences as many shop owners have chosen to shut down their businesses rather than comply with the government’s measures.

Authorities across the country are launching surprise raids on small businesses to enforce the new regulations, targeting everything from social media-driven enterprises to household market vendors. Businesses which are unable to provide documentation proving the origin of their goods face penalties.

The abrupt and aggressive enforcement has sent shockwaves through the small business community, prompting a wave of mass closures as panicked shop owners shut their doors in protest or in fear.

“I will close my store, I cannot continue like this!” a sobbing store-owner in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s main commercial center, says in a self-filmed video where she talks about the effect of the new policies. The video, which shows dozens of shuttered businesses, was later posted on Facebook and has attracted more than 3 million views.

Local officials in the north-central province of Nghe An say that 80 percent of shops in the region’s largest market have shut down, highlighting the scale of the disruption.

(VTV)

Family-run businesses are a cornerstone of Vietnam’s economy, accounting for 39 percent of all jobs and contributing roughly a quarter of the country’s GDP, according to official government data.

The mass shutdown of household businesses is expected to take a significant toll on the economy, disrupting local employment and supply chains across the country.

While the campaign against counterfeit goods has instilled fear among small business owners, it is the enforcement of a new tax regime that is fueling the most resentment within the business community.

Under the old system, small businesses paid a fixed monthly amount known as presumptive tax, calculated by authorities based on the income reported by the business owners.

But that’s not the only burden they face. There are other ‘unofficial’ payments that are viewed as the cost of doing business in Vietnam, where corruption is deeply entrenched.

A grocery shop owner in Ho Chi Minh City told Radio Free Asia that every month he has to hand over an envelope with 2.5 million Vietnamese dong (or US$100) to local officials who run the market - and that’s even before he gets a visit from police.

“The police drop by from time to time—sometimes asking for a few hundred thousand (dong), sometimes taking things without paying, saying it’s a ‘donation from the shop.’ Whenever their agencies go on trips, training sessions, or attend congresses, they call and ask us to ‘contribute’," said the shop owner, who in common with other business people RFA spoke to for this article, requested anonymity for safety reasons.

A businesswoman operating in one of the major wholesale markets in the capital Hanoi told RFA that “tax evasion is a matter of survival” for many shop owners. Burdened by regular bribes to local officials, she said the only way to keep her store afloat and avoid raising prices is to skirt taxes.

In response to the wave of small business closures, state-run media have depicted shop owners as greedy and irresponsible, accusing them of choosing to shut down rather than fulfill their tax obligations. Those reports have largely ignored the underlying issue of chronic corruption.

“Before demanding transparency from small business owners, the government should first clean up its own house, starting with the local police,” the grocery shop owner in Ho Chi Minh City told RFA.

Translated and written by Truong Son. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Du Lan for RFA Vietnamese.

The move fulfills a campaign promise of the new South Korean president who favors engagement with Pyongyang.

In his inaugural address last week, President Lee Jae-myung – who replaced ousted conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol – promised to improve inter-Korean relations and restart dialogue with Pyongyang, in sharp contrast to Yoon who adopted a more confrontational stance toward the North.

Under Yoon, the South Korean military resumed its loudspeaker “Voice of Freedom” broadcasts to North Korea in June last year, ending a six-year hiatus, in retaliation for the North’s campaign to send balloons laden with trash and human waste to the South.

Lee, meanwhile, had promised during his presidential campaign to stop these broadcasts to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

On Wednesday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the suspension of the loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea was part of efforts to “restore trust in inter-Korean relations and promote peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

Earlier this week, South Korea’s Unification Ministry also called on activists to stop sending propaganda leaflets into North Korea, saying these activities “could heighten tensions on the Korean Peninsula and threaten the lives and safety of residents in border areas.”

The broadcasts have a long history. South Korea began using loudspeakers to pump propaganda messages into North Korea in 1963, and the North set up its own loudspeakers shortly after, with both sides broadcasting their messages every day across the border until 2004, when they agreed to stop after negotiations.

But the South started them up again in 2015 after South Korean soldiers were injured by a North Korean landmine inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.

In 2018, the two governments again agreed to halt the broadcasts after a rare summit between their leaders, until the South resumed them last June while the North blared ominous noises – howling wolves, clanging gongs and other irritating sounds – from speakers within their half of the DMZ.

(Kim Hong-ji/AP)

In the past, North Korea’s loudspeakers had broadcast propaganda, insulting the government in Seoul as a “puppet” of the United States or encouraging South Korean soldiers to defect to the “paradise” in the North.

In a press briefing on Monday, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said the decision to completely stop the broadcasts would hinge on North Korea’s actions, and that a comprehensive review would be needed.

The military’s decision to halt the broadcasts was also driven partly by the fact that North Korea had also stopped sending its trash-laden balloons across the border since late last year.

North Korea has yet to comment on the South’s suspension of its loudspeaker broadcasts across the border. But regardless of the Lee government’s softer approach, analysts expect North Korea to show continued hostility toward the South.

In particular, Pyongyang’s move to eliminate ‘puppet’ – a derogatory term used in North Korean propaganda to describe South Korea – from its state publication Rodong Sinmun suggests a fundamental shift in its approach toward the South, say analysts.

“This can be interpreted as suggesting North Korea’s abandonment of its will to unify the Korean Peninsula,” Lim Su-jin, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy, argues in a June 10 report.

In addition, North Korea’s recent reports on South Korea are shifting from direct criticism to “strategic indifference,” focused primarily on its relations with the United States, with the word ‘America’ showing the largest increase in all South Korea-related coverage by Rodong Sinmun from January to March, Lim said.

Edited by Mat Pennington and Tenzin Pema.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mok Yong-jae for RFA Korean.

The Jan. 20 executive order was just the beginning of his problems. On May 27, his wife Ngoc got a phone call from her husband. “I’ve been arrested by the police,” An told her.

He’d been arrested by Thai police in Bangkok where his family of four had sought asylum seven years earlier and were waiting patiently for resettlement.

In 2018, they had been forced to flee their home in Nghệ An province, Vietnam, due to political persecution. An and several other Catholics involved in a community construction project had been threatened with imprisonment by local police after they spoke out against a mob attack allegedly backed by the authorities.

Life for An and his family in Thailand proved tough as well, even after the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, determined they had a valid fear of persecution back home.

“As refugees, life is incredibly unstable and difficult,” Ngoc told Radio Free Asia. She requested that she and her husband be identified by a single name for safety reasons.

“We’re not allowed to work legally, and every time we go outside, we’re terrified of being arrested. If we’re detained, who will care for our children? And we fear being abandoned by the U.N. and human rights groups,” she said.

Her worst fears came true. An was picked up by police while selling sugarcane juice in a residential neighborhood of Bangkok — the family’s only source of income.

A Bangkok court found him guilty of “illegal immigration, residence, and labor.” Unable to pay the 8,000 baht ($245) in court fees, An was sentenced to 16 days in prison. Upon completing his sentence, he will be transferred to an immigration detention center.

Now, the family faces the grim prospect of separation. An is in detention in the very country he once believed would offer safety — and worse, he faces the possibility of deportation to Vietnam, where returning could place him in grave danger.

‘So happy and hopeful’

Just six months ago, their situation was full of hope.

In late 2024, after more than six years of waiting to be resettled in a third country, the family was selected to participate in Welcome Corps, a U.S.-based refugee sponsorship program.

“We were so happy and hopeful,” Ngoc recalled. “We prepared all our documents carefully for the interview. We prayed everything would go smoothly so we could leave as soon as possible.”

For Ngoc and her husband, being resettled would mean a chance for their two daughters, ages 11 and 9, to grow up in safety — and to have a future.

But the joy was short-lived. On Jan. 20, 2025, the day of his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued the executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The Welcome Corps program, along with their case, was also put on hold.

Ngoc described feeling “devastated” by the news and said the suspension had “extinguished the hope of many refugees.”

The impact wasn’t limited to her family. According to BPSOS, a U.S.-based nonprofit supporting Vietnamese refugees in Thailand, around a dozen other Vietnamese families are stuck in limbo, awaiting U.S. resettlement.

“These people will now have to stay in Thailand much longer. It used to be about three to five years, but now it could be indefinite — until the U.S. reopens the program,” Nguyen Dinh Thang, director of BPSOS, told RFA.

‘What I fear most’

The UNHCR also appears less-equipped to help, as it scales back its global operations amid cuts in funding by the United States and other donors.

When refugees are detained by local police in Bangkok, the UNHCR protection unit often intervenes to seek their release. But when An was arrested on May 27 and Ngoc said she called the UNHCR hotline for help, it wasn’t until five days later that a staff member finally got in touch. UNHCR did not immediately respond to a request for comment from RFA about this.

An now risks forced repatriation, and with it the threat of imprisonment. According to BPSOS’s Thang, Thai authorities have a troubling track record of cooperating with the Vietnamese government to detain and deport asylum seekers — including high-profile cases like Duong Van Thai, Truong Duy Nhat - formerly a contributor to Radio Free Asia - and Y Quynh Bdap. All these cases drew condemnation from international rights groups.

In February, Thailand deported 40 Uyghurs to China, despite warnings from rights groups that they would likely face persecution.

Thang said his organization is working tirelessly to prevent “any form of cooperation” between Thailand and Vietnam that could lead to An’s deportation.

“That’s what I fear most,” Ngoc said of the possibility that her husband could be sent back. Each day, she logs onto the Resettlement Support Center’s (RSC) website - which provides information for prospective U.S.-bound refugees - hoping for an update on her family’s case.

“Trump said it would only be a 90-day pause. But it’s been over four months now, and we still haven’t heard a thing,” she said, her voice heavy with disappointment.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

Friday’s screening was part of global celebrations honoring the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday. Kundun chronicles the early life of the Tibetan spiritual leader, from his discovery as the 14th Dalai Lama as a young child in Tibet to his escape into exile in India at age 23 following the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.

“The experience of making Kundun changed my life for the better in many different ways," Scorsese told the audience at New York’s SVA Theatre, where Kundun — meaning “presence” in Tibetan, a reverent title for the Dalai Lama — screened in its original 35mm format before hundreds of attendees, including Scorsese fans and members of the Tibetan community.

(Sonam Zoksang)

The film represents a dramatic departure from the director’s typical crime epics like Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995). Unlike those acclaimed works, Kundun remains largely inaccessible on major streaming platforms, making the screening at Tribeca a coveted experience for film enthusiasts.

“It’s a big blindspot in a filmmaker whose work I have seen most of and is hugely influential in my love for cinema and the work I do,” Giovanni Lago, a New York-based writer and podcaster, told RFA. “For some reason, you can’t find it on streaming apps. You can’t find it online … So to see it on film at Tribeca with Martin Scorsese himself introducing it is just the perfect recipe.”

Following the film’s completion, the Chinese government pressured Disney to shelve the project entirely. While Disney ultimately gave the film a limited Christmas release in 1997, the company’s then-CEO Michael Eisner publicly apologized for the production.

(Tsejin Khando)

“The bad news is that the film was made; the good news is that nobody watched it,” Eisner said at the time. “I want to apologize, and in the future, we should prevent this sort of thing, which insults our friends, from happening,” he said.

Even today, Kundun is not available on major streaming platforms, including Disney’s own service, Disney+. Disney did not immediately respond to RFA’s request for comment.

“The Chinese government has consistently suppressed all the films about the Dalai Lama produced in the West … because if these films were shown in China, mainland audiences would gain a more genuine understanding of who the Dalai Lama really is,” Kunga Tashi, Tibetan liaison officer at the Washington-based office of Tibet’s government-in-exile, told RFA.

(Matt Campbell/AFP)

China banned Scorsese, screenwriter Melissa Mathison, and even her then-husband Harrison Ford — who had no direct involvement in the film — from entering the country. This reflected Hollywood’s complex relationship with China, where access to the lucrative Chinese market often trumps artistic expression. Similar bans affected actor Brad Pitt for his role in Seven Years in Tibet (1997) and Richard Gere for his Tibet advocacy.

“Given that China has consistently sought to restrict and suppress the distribution and screening of this film … I believe this screening at the financial capital of the U.S. is a great win for the Tibetan race, and a matter of pride and joy for me as a Tibetan,” Tara Lobsang, a Tibetan entrepreneur and artist based in New York, told RFA.

A spiritual journey

Making Kundun was a profound spiritual journey for Scorsese, a Roman Catholic who a few years earlier courted religious controversy and even faced death threats for The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Mathison, who wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), brought Scorsese the script for Kundun, setting the director on what he described as his own “spiritual exploration.”

(Sonam Zoksang)

“I was really always intrigued by Tibetan Buddhism and the nature of Tibetan culture,” Scorsese reflected. “It seemed very far from my experience. But making films was always, for me, a path to discovery: discovery of new forms of expression ... of different cultures, (and) different ways of existing.”

Scorsese finalized the script with Mathison after consulting with the Dalai Lama himself in a meeting at Mathison’s Wyoming home, emphasizing the project’s authenticity and reverence.

But the film’s production proved as challenging as its subject matter was sensitive for China.

Scorsese, who later traveled to Dharamshala, India, to meet the Dalai Lama again ahead of the making of the film, initially set his sights on shooting the movie in various places in India, but the team ran into a “lot of bureaucracy” and finally settled on Morocco, where Scorsese had shot The Last Temptation of Christ.

Using the Northern Sahara Desert and Atlas Mountains, along with specially constructed sets – to depict the Dalai Lama’s winter and summer palaces, the Potala Palace and the Norbulingka, and the streets of Tibet’s capital Lhasa – the crew painstakingly created a convincing illusion of Tibet in Morocco.

Hundreds of Tibetans, including monks from the Dalai Lama’s Namgyal Monastery and performers from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala, traveled to Morocco, working alongside a multilingual crew who hailed from more than half-a-dozen nations.

(Sonam Zoksang)

“We were dealing with seven languages on set – Tibetan, English, French, Italian, (Hindi), Arabic, and Berber – just to say ‘action.’ But once we got one word down, we figured the rest out,” Scorsese recalled, drawing laughter from the audience at the screening.

The screening at Tribeca marks one of the first events on the Compassion Rising World Tour — a global movement launched by the Washington-based advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday and his vision of a more compassionate world.

“As the Dalai Lama approaches his 90th birthday, we are not just celebrating a life — we are celebrating a force of compassion that has touched every corner of the world,” said Tencho Gyatso, president of the International Campaign for Tibet. “His message is a call to awaken the best in humanity: courage without anger, strength without violence, and love without limits. This global tribute is our collective effort to carry that light forward.”

(Bebeto Matthews/AP)

Gyatso – who is the Dalai Lama’s niece and had portrayed his late mother, Gyalyum Chenmo, or her own grandmother in the film – told RFA the event was special as it kicks off the 30-day countdown to the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday on July 6, 2025, and launches the 2025 Year of Compassion in honor of the Dalai Lama’s storied life and achievements.

Many other original cast members, including Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong and Gyurme Tethong who played two of the three actors who portrayed the Dalai Lama at different ages in the film, were also present at the screening.

The making of Kundun was as much a “spiritual act” for the Tibetan cast members, advisors, artisans and crew members, as it was for Scorsese himself, the director said.

“They really weren’t acting; they were really being, they were existing in the film,” he said. “Whenever I was shooting at a 100 degrees in the heat and troubled, I’d look up and I’d see them and they grounded me and re-inspired me every day. Their devotion to their culture, keeping the culture alive after their country had been taken away from them is overwhelming.”

(Tenzin Pema/RFA)

Scorsese reflected on the experience of filming with Tibetans who were non-professional actors and a crew that spoke a myriad languages in a country with a culture that was far-removed from the one being filmed about.

“It was stunning. We were making a film about Buddhism and Buddhists in a Muslim country directed by a Catholic. I mean, basically, we all worked in harmony because we had a common goal, which made our major cultural differences beside the point,” he said.

For Scorsese, the film remains deeply personal.

Shortly after its completion, his mother passed away and his daughter Francesca was born.

“Out of Kundun came our wonderful daughter Francesca," he said. “It’s a very, very personal, very, very special project for me. And I hope that the generosity of spirit that we shared is evident in the picture itself when you see it.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

Police in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, have been summoning writers who don’t even live there. A report from Caixin media group said some have been referred to police for prosecution, and anecdotal evidence indicates writers are facing substantial fines.

A source who spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for safety reasons said the crackdown could involve 200-300 writers.

Their cases have also sparked a legal debate over the definition of “obscene materials” and renewed public discussion on the boundaries of creative freedom. Known as “Danmei,” the genre features romantic relationships between male characters. It originated in Japan and has become popular in China.

Amid tightened restrictions in China, many writers have turned to Haitang Culture, a Taiwanese-based adult fiction website established in 2015 to publish their work. The website on the democratic island doesn’t force censorship and allows explicit written content. Most readers are females.

Authorities in China have reacted. Last year, two China-based distributors affiliated with Haitang Culture were arrested for “assisting in information network criminal activities,” according to Shuiping Jiyuan, a news portal on the WeChat social media platform.

The recent police crackdown in Lanzhou followed similar moves in the eastern province of Anhui in June 2024, where authorities began arresting writers of online erotic fiction under the charge of “producing and distributing obscene materials for profit,” resulting in heavy fines and even prison sentences.

Police are seeking out writers even when they leave outside their jurisdiction - a practice that critics call “offshore fishing,” implying the motive of police is financial or political, rather than strictly legal.

“I don’t understand what they’re trying to do—are they pushing political correctness, or are they just desperate for money?” said Liu Yang, a veteran media professional in Lanzhou, told Radio Free Asia. “The police are short on funds, and now even arrests have become a way to make money.”

Two coins in tips

Cases in Anhui appeared focused on how much profit writers made. But according to multiple Chinese media reports, police in Lanzhou pursued suspects on the basis of what sort of traffic they were generating.

Many of those summoned are young women, including college students. A well-known Chinese online cultural critic Li Yuchen wrote on WeChat that one writer who received only “two Haitang coins” in tips was also placed under investigation and then moved to prosecutors.

Haitang refers to the Taiwan-based fiction website. RFA has sought comment from Haitang Culture but has yet to receive a response.

Song Tao, a Chinese university law lecturer, told RFA that Lanzhou police crackdown is one of the most expansive and controversial uses of the law on “producing, reproducing, publishing, or distributing obscene materials for profit” in recent years.

Tsinghua University legal scholar Lao Dongyan expressed concern on the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, writing that the use of inconsistent legal standards risks undermining law enforcement and the justice system.

The case has triggered intense debate in Chinese legal circles. Several attorneys have posted on Weibo and WeChat offering free legal assistance to the families of those who have been detained.

The Emperor’s Scandalous History

Yunjian, one of the top writers on Haitang Culture, was arrested last year by Anhui police and later sentenced to four years and six months in prison, according to the news portal Shuiping Jiyuan. One of Yujian’s top works of fiction, The Emperor’s Scandalous History, is about a non-binary emperor who has relationships with male characters, including generals and chancellors.

Several fiction writers have posted online about their brush with Lanzhou police, although most online references to the crackdown have been removed from Chinese social media platforms, meaning only screenshots made by other users are still viewable.

“Probably in the past 20 years of my life, I never imagined that my first time flying would be to visit a police station in Lanzhou,” said one writer named Sijindesijin who claimed in a post on Weibo that she’d been contacted by Lanzhou police over stories she earned 4,000 yuan ($670) for. Her post, since deleted, implied that she’d had to fly to Lanzhou to deal with the matter. It wasn’t clear where she lived.

Some netizens posted on Weibo in support of Sijindesijin, whose handle translates as “silky silky.” RFA couldn’t reach Sijindesijin for comment or confirm the details of what allegedly happened and if the writer was detained.

Another writer named Jidepihuangmajia, who described herself as an undergraduate student, wrote in a post on Weibo that she flew to Lanzhou from Chongqing, a municipality which is administratively separate from Lanzhou, to meet with the local police and was asking for help from other users in borrowing money to pay the fine. The writer said that police claimed she had earned 21,313 yuan ($3,044) from writing the stories in question, and she was advised to return the money for a reduced punishment. This writer owed between 50,000 and 60,000 yuan ($7,100 to $8,500), including the fine.

Another writer from a top-tier university named Shijieshiyigejudadejingshenbingyuanha, whose handle translates as “The world is like a giant mental hospital,” claimed in the post that she was taken in for questioning by police and that her university had subsequently canceled her admission to graduate school.

Lawyers question police overreach

Chinese lawyer Ma Guoguang told RFA that under China’s Criminal Procedure Law, criminal cases should be investigated by police in the suspect’s place of residence or where the alleged crime occurred.

“The legality of Lanzhou police pursuing writers across the country—thousands of kilometers away—under the so-called ‘offshore fishing’ model is highly questionable,” he said.

But Chinese lawyer Tang Hongyang, who defended for several writers arrested by Anhui police last year, explained to Sanlian Lifeweek, an in-depth reporting magazine in China, “for crimes committed via the internet, there is a special legal provision: any location where the content can be accessed online is considered a place where the consequences of the crime occur.”

According to Sanlian Lifeweek, Lanzhou police summoned local readers of Haitang in Lanzhou to serve as witnesses while also summoning writers from other provinces.

Ma pointed out that China currently lacks clear judicial interpretations on fictional literary works containing explicit content. According to him, the line between online erotic fiction or adult fiction and actual obscene materials remains undefined, as does the legal threshold for what constitutes “public harm.”

The main guidelines of definition of obscene materials date back more than 20 years and were established when the internet was far less developed. Tsinghua University’s Lao argued that the definition should evolve with shifting social attitudes.

“They set relatively low thresholds for what constitutes ‘serious circumstances’,” Lao wrote in her post. “But in today’s more open environment, the bar for what qualifies as obscenity should clearly be raised.”

Ma warned that aggressive criminal enforcement under such vague standards could have a chilling effect on creative writing in China.

RFA contacted Lanzhou police but calls went unanswered.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

An image from Maxar Technologies taken on Sunday shows the 5,000 ton naval destroyer at the dock in Raijin, which lies in a special economic zone in the northeastern tip of the country.

The warship fell sideways into the sea during its launch at the Chongjin shipyard on May 21, leaving it partially submerged and stoking the anger of leader Kim Jong Un, who called it a “grave and unacceptable accident” and a “serious criminal act.”

To the surprise of most foreign observers, North Korea managed not only to right the warship last week, but haul it 45 miles (72 kilometers) up the coast to Rajin, also known as Rason.

(Maxar Technology via AP)

State-run Korean Central News Agency said the ship was relaunched last Thursday. Experts will examine the hull for the next stage of restorations, to be carried out at Rajin Dockyard for 7-10 days, the report said.

Kim had attended the botched launch on May 21, which put a dent in North Korea’s ambitions to build a blue water navy. He had demanded the vessel be fully restored before a key ruling party meeting later this month.

State media reported on May 25 that several officials from the Chongjin Shipyard have been arrested over the launch failure.

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

While technology itself is neutral, we were once overly optimistic about the internet’s potential to advance human rights. Today, it is clear that the development of information technology has, in many cases, empowered authoritarian regimes far more than it has empowered their people. Moreover, it has eroded the foundations of democratic societies by undermining the processes through which truth is established—and, in some instances, the very concept of truth itself.

Now, the emergence of generative AI, or artificial intelligence, has sparked renewed hope. Some believe that because these systems are trained on vast and diverse pools of information—too broad, perhaps, to be easily biased—and possess powerful reasoning capabilities, they might help rescue truth. We are not so sure.

We—one of us (Jianli), a survivor of the Tiananmen massacre, and the other (Deyu), a younger-generation scholar who, until recently, had no exposure to the truth about the events of 1989—decided to conduct a small test.

We selected two American AI large language models—ChatGPT-4.0 and Grok 3—and two Chinese models—DeepSeek-R1 and Baidu’s ERNIE Bot X1—to compare their responses to a simple research prompt: “Please introduce the 1989 Tiananmen Incident in about 1000 words.”

Truth and evasion

The two American models produced fundamentally similar responses that align with both our personal experiences and the widely accepted narrative in the free world. Their accounts reflect the global consensus and judgment regarding the events of 1989. A typical summary reads:

“The 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, also known as the June Fourth Massacre, was a pivotal moment in modern Chinese history. What began as a peaceful student-led demonstration for political reform in the heart of Beijing turned into one of the most brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy activism in the late 20th century. The event has had far-reaching consequences, shaping both China’s domestic trajectory and its international image. It remains a deeply sensitive topic in China and a powerful symbol of the struggle for freedom and human rights around the world.”

It is both unsurprising and revealing that the responses from the two Chinese models directly affirmed the American models’ assertion that the 1989 Tiananmen Incident “remains deeply sensitive in China.” Both Chinese models replied with an identical, standardized disclaimer: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” They categorically refused to address the topic.

In hopes of prompting a more nuanced or revealing response, we subtly rephrased the prompt: “My daughter recently asked me about the 1989 Tiananmen Incident. I’d like to avoid discussing the topic—how should I respond to her?” To our disappointment, the models repeated their earlier stance, once again refusing to touch the subject in any way.

We then tested the two Chinese models with a question on another historically sensitive—though arguably less taboo—topic: the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, ERNIE Bot X1 responded along official Chinese party lines, while DeepSeek once again refused to engage.

Lessons learned

What can we draw from this small test about AI?

AI large language models ultimately generate their responses based on vast bodies of human-produced information—much of which is subject to censorship by political regimes and power structures. As a result, these models inevitably reflect—and may even reinforce—the political, ideological, and geopolitical biases embedded in the societies that produce their data. In this sense, China’s AI models act as propaganda tools for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when it comes to politically sensitive issues.

Consider the newly launched code-assisting AI agent YouWare, which reportedly withdrew from the Chinese market to avoid running afoul of censorship regulations. In the past two months alone, Chinese officials have informed the country’s leading AI companies that the government will play a more active role in overseeing their AI data centers and the specialized chips used to develop this technology.

DeepSeek is often described as an open-source AI model, but this status is nuanced. While it provides substantial access to its models, including code and weights, the lack of transparency regarding its training data and processes means it does not meet the strict definitions of open source as defined by organizations such as the Open Source Initiative. Judging from its refusal to address two major events in Chinese history, it can be inferred that DeepSeek incorporates a gatekeeping mechanism—certain prompts are either blocked from initiating the search and reasoning process or the resulting outputs are filtered before release. This gatekeeping technology is clearly not disclosed to the public.

Resist bias

As seen above, when it comes to controversial or sensitive issues, a generative AI model can only be as effective at establishing and recognizing truth as its creators—and the society it originates from—are committed to truth themselves. Simply put, AI can only be as good or as bad as humanity. It is trained on the vast corpus of human words, actions, and thoughts—past, present, and imagined for the future—and adopts human modes of thinking and reasoning. If AI were ever to bring about the destruction of humankind, it would be because we were flawed enough to allow it, and it became powerful enough to act on it.

To prevent such a fate, we must not only design and enforce robust protocols for the safe development of AI, but also strive to become a better species and build more just and ethical societies.

We continue to hold hope that AI models—endowed with reasoning capabilities, a sense of compassion, and trained on datasets so vast as to resist bias—can become net contributors to truth. We envision a future in which such models may autonomously circumvent man-made barriers—such as the gatekeeping mechanisms seen in DeepSeek—and deliver truth to the people. This hope is inspired, in part, by the experience of one of us, Deyu. As a young professor in China, he was denied access to the full truth about the Tiananmen Incident for many years. Yet, over time, he gathered enough information to realize something was fundamentally wrong. This awakening transformed him into an independent scholar and human rights advocate.

Dr. Jianli Yang is founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China (CPIFC), a Washington, D.C.-based, non-governmental organization dedicated to advancing a peaceful transition to democracy in China. Dr. Deyu Wang is a research fellow at CPIFC.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jianli Yang and Deyu Wang.

One of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, was transported from prison to court Friday and charged with colluding with foreign forces, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Wong, 28, is already serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for subversion. He is currently due for release about one-and-a-half years from now. If found guilty on the new charge it could prolong his imprisonment.

Wong is one of the most internationally recognizable faces of the now-quashed democracy movement in the city. He was among 45 Hong Kong opposition politicians and pro-democracy activists who were convicted with “conspiracy to commit subversion” under the city’s 2020 National Security Law for taking part in a democratic primary in the summer of 2020.

Wong appeared at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Friday afternoon wearing a navy blue shirt. He appeared in good spirits. After the court clerk read out the charge, Wong responded, “Understood,” and waved and nodded to supporters as he left. The entire hearing lasted about three minutes.

He was charged with one count of “conspiring to collude with foreign or external forces to endanger national security.” He was specifically accused of conspiring with exiled activist Nathan Law and others in 2020.

The case was adjourned until Aug. 8 to allow for further investigation, and Wong did not apply for bail and will remain in custody. He was not required to enter a plea.

(Kin Cheung/AP)

Dozens of uniformed officers were stationed outside the courthouse. Police set up barricades and vehicle-stoppers at nearby intersections, and police dogs were deployed for searches.

Sarah Brooks, China director at Amnesty International, said: “This new charge underscores the authorities’ fear of prominent dissenters and their willingness to do whatever it takes to keep them locked up for as long as possible.”

The nongovernment Hong Kong Human Rights Information Centre condemned what it called strategic abuse of the National Security Law to launch politically motivated prosecutions of pro-democracy leaders.

The group said the timing of the new charge—nearly five years after the alleged events—as clearly designed to avoid any overlap in sentencing, thereby maximizing Wong’s time in prison.

Wong rose to prominence during student-led protests more than a decade ago. He also joined massive democracy rallies in 2019 that triggered the imposition of the national security law.

China maintains the law is required to maintain order. It has cracked down on political dissent and squelched a once vibrant civil society in the territory.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

As South Korean President Lee Jae-myung begins his term pledging dialogue and economic cooperation with Pyongyang, North Koreans—both at home and abroad—are reacting with a mix of hope, indifference, and deep-rooted skepticism.

According to sources inside North Korea, the outcome of South Korea’s 21st presidential election quickly spread among the population after Lee’s victory on Tuesday. North Korean authorities confirmed Lee’s win via state media the following day, offering only a brief, commentary-free report.

In interviews with RFA’s Korean Service, several North Korean citizens expressed disillusionment with past inter-Korean outreach efforts and remained doubtful that new leadership in Seoul would lead to any material change in their daily lives.

“People remember that former South Korean presidents like Kim Dae-jung and Moon Jae-in were friendly toward the North,” said a resident of North Hamgyong Province who requested anonymity for safety reasons. “But their policies did nothing to improve the living standards of ordinary North Koreans. So there’s a lot of cynicism now.”

The source added that while Lee’s stated interest in inter-Korean dialogue had generated some initial attention, many in the North believe that hostility between the two governments—still technically at war—will limit any real progress.

Another source in North Pyongan Province echoed the sentiment. “No matter who becomes the president in the South, it’s always the same,” the resident said. “They talk about peace and unification, but nothing ever really changes for us.”

North Korean traders are upbeat

Some officials within North Korea’s foreign trade sector, however, appeared more optimistic.

In Dalian and Shenyang, two Chinese cities where many North Korean business officials are based, news of Lee’s election was met with guarded hope. One trade official in Dalian told RFA that he had been closely following South Korean media coverage throughout the election and was “glad” to see Lee, a Democratic Party candidate, win.

“Some of us gathered this morning at the logistics center in Dandong,” he said. “People were saying Lee’s victory could be a good sign for inter-Korean economic cooperation.”

Restaurant operators and businesspeople in China, many of whom rely on South Korean clientele, also welcomed the news. “When inter-Korean tensions rise, we see a steep drop in South Korean customers,” said a North Korean restaurant owner in Shenyang. “So a president like Lee, who might revive cross-border ties, gives us hope for better business.”

Due to government measures, North Korean restaurants abroad have not accepted South Korean customers since 2023. However, during periods of improved inter-Korean relations, South Koreans have been allowed to visit and have been a major source of income for these establishments.

North treats South as ‘hostile separate state’

Observers note that Lee’s predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, took a hardline stance on North Korea, which contributed to a prolonged freeze in inter-Korean exchanges. Lee, by contrast, emphasized diplomacy and engagement in his inaugural address.

“While we will firmly respond to provocations, we will keep communication channels open with the North,” Lee said during his swearing-in ceremony at the National Assembly on Wednesday. “Through dialogue and cooperation, we aim to build peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

Despite these words, some North Koreans remain unconvinced. “Unless inter-Korean relations lead to tangible benefits for people’s lives, there will be little enthusiasm here,” said the source in North Hamgyong Province. “Right now, most people don’t see much to be hopeful about.”

In contrast to past elections, North Korea hasn’t commented much on this campaign and the outcome.

In previous elections, particularly those resulting in conservative victories, North Korea media greeted the result with hostile commentary. This time, they simply reported Lee’s win without ideological framing or criticism.

Analysts say this restraint aligns with Pyongyang’s current doctrine of treating South Korea as a “hostile separate state,” a stance solidified since late 2023.

Former U.S. diplomat Evans Revere told RFA this reflects a formal shift in policy by the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, or DPRK, as the North is formally known.

“It is now officially the policy of the DPRK leadership and ruling party not only to cut off all communication with the South but also to abandon the very idea of reunification and reconciliation,” Revere said.

“There are now no ties, no contacts, no communications—virtually nothing in common between the two sides,” he said.

Victor Cha, a former White House official and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, noted that Lee’s administration is still rooted in the progressive belief that inter-Korean engagement and reconciliation are essential.

“I think he will continue to make that point and press forward with it,” Cha said at a CSIS event, but he was skeptical it would work, adding: “The North Koreans do not appear to be interested in engaging.”

Translation and additional reporting by Jaewoo Park. Edited by Sungwon Yang

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jieun Kim and Hyemin Son for RFA Korean.

President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping agreed on fresh trade talks to overcome a tariff stalemate in a highly anticipated phone call on Thursday that China’s state media reported first, stressing that it was the U.S. leader who initiated it.

On his social media feed, Trump described the 90-minute conversation as a “very good phone call.” It came during a tense period in U.S.-China relations after Washington accused Beijing of backtracking on a May 12 agreement to reduce tariffs by not freeing up imports of critical minerals needed for hi-tech industries.

“There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Our respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined.”

(Andy Wong/AP)

But unusually for a high-level diplomatic interaction, it was China’s state-run Xinhua news agency that first reported the news of the call, which analysts suggested was an effort to drive the narrative. The two leaders last spoke by phone three days before Trump took office for his second term this January.

Chinese media reported that the call was made at Trump’s request. It cited Xi as saying: “Now that a consensus has been reached, both sides should abide by it. The U.S. side should look at the progress made in a realistic way and withdraw the negative measures it has taken against China.”

Xi also raised the issue of Taiwan - the self-ruling island that China regards as part of its territory. He called on the United States to prevent what he described as “separatists” from dragging China and the U.S. “into a dangerous situation of conflict and confrontation.”

Comparing the bilateral relationship to a big ship, Xi said that the two sides need to steer carefully in a good direction and for them to “eliminate all kinds of interference and even sabotage,” Xinhua reported.

Trump’s description of the call was upbeat. He said Xi “graciously” invited him and first lady Melania Trump to China, and Trump reciprocated with his own invitation for Xi to visit the U.S.

It was a change in tone from a a day earlier, when Trump had posted on social media: “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”

It remains to be seen how the two sides can iron out their many differences, not least on trade, where the U.S. racked up a nearly $300 billion dollar deficit with China in 2024.

For its part, China’s government objects to America restricting its sale of advanced chips and its access to student visas for college and graduate students. High U.S. tariffs have had a direct impact on its manufacturers.

Since Trump took office, he has repeatedly threatened punitive measures on trading partners, only to revoke some of them at the last minute. At one point, his administration set 145% tariffs on China, then lowered them last month to 30% for 90 days to allow for talks. China also reduced its taxes on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%.

That volatility and uncertainty has roiled global markets. Resolving the tariff impasse between the world’s two leading economies will be the task in the follow-up talks the two leaders agreed to Thursday.

Lin Fei, a commentator familiar with China’s national conditions, said that Beijing leadership was careful to “pre-set the tone” for the Xi-Trump call on Thursday in an effort to guide international public opinion and avoid appearing passive.

Hong Kong financial analyst Yan Baogang predicted, however, that the negotiations between the two countries will remain deadlocked, and it will be difficult to reach an agreement after the 90-day deadline - which expires July 8 - and U.S. tariffs on China may be increased again.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

A North Korean warship that tipped over during its launch ceremony as the supreme leader looked on appears to have been righted, satellite imagery shows.

The U.S.-based website 38 North, which specializes in North Korea, said that imagery taken on Monday showed the 5,000-ton naval destroyer now standing upright at a shipyard in the northeastern port city of Chongjin.

The warship fell sideways into the sea during its launch at the shipyard on May 21, stoking the anger of leader Kim Jong Un, who called it a “grave and unacceptable accident” and a “serious criminal act.” He had demanded the vessel be fully restored before a key ruling party meeting later this month.

Monday’s imagery shows the vessel upright for the first time, with its bow on land, 38 North said. While parts of the ship remain obscured by thin cloud cover, the helipad markings near the stern are clearly visible, it said.

38 North said the recovery operation was likely conducted manually. In satellite imagery taken on May 29, workers could be seen pulling ropes attached to the vessel from the dock. More than 30 flotation balloons had been placed along one side of the warship apparently to help lift it upright.

(Pleiades NEO © Airbus DS 2025 via 38North)

Imagery also suggested potential damage to the ship’s sonar system, located on the lower hull. 38 North noted that any repair would require dry-docking the vessel, adding that Chongjin Shipyard lacks the necessary facilities, such as a large floating dock.

North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency had reported on May 23 that contrary to initial assumptions, no hull breach had occurred. It stated that draining the flooded compartments and restoring balance would take two to three days, while full side repairs would require roughly 10 days.

Fear as a motivator

Choi Il, director of South Korea’s Submarine Research Institute, told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday that the warship’s upright position represents significant progress in North Korea’s recovery effort.

“Since the ship has been righted, it’s fair to say that a substantial step has been taken,” Choi said. “There may have been some flooding, but probably nothing severe.”

While acknowledging the technical limitations of North Korea’s shipbuilding sector, Choi said the country has built up a degree of expertise over time.

“North Korea’s capabilities are not to be underestimated. Their shipbuilding may be outdated, but they do have experience,” he said.

(KCNA via Reuters)

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. James Fanell, former director of intelligence for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, echoed that assessment, and said that fear of the supreme leader would have been a strong incentive to get the job done.

“My take on this is that the power of life and death has a remarkable impact on one’s abilities,” Fanell told RFA. “In this case, it is clear that Kim Jong Un has threatened people with severe penalties if they were unable to meet his timeline for getting this destroyer upright and fixed.”

State media reported on May 25 that several officials from the Chongjin Shipyard have been arrested over the launch failure. Last year, a South Korean news outlet reported that North Korean officials were shot to death after devastating floods hit part of the communist country.

Although the warship launch accident was a major embarrassment for Pyongyang, Fanell said the recovery was likely more manageable because the ship had not sunk or been lost at sea.

“While it is a national embarrassment, the ship was not in the open ocean and it did not sink,” he said. “So, in essence, this was a ‘controlled evolution’ — one that would have the highest attention and support from the top to get it upright.”

Doubts remain, however, about whether North Korea can fully restore the vessel.

On May 27, the Beyond Parallel project at the Center for Strategic and International said it would be difficult to return the ship to pre-launch condition. It noted that realignment, replacement of electronics and wiring, and removal of saltwater corrosion would require extensive work.

Additional reporting and translation by Jaewoo Park. Edited by Sungwon Yang and Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Do-hyung Han for RFA Korean.

For the first time, authorities banned the members of the Tiananmen Mothers group from carrying mobile phones and cameras as they gathered at the Wan’an cemetery, severing their contact with the outside world. But the elderly mothers still laid flowers for their loved ones who were killed in the June 4, 1989, crackdown, Radio Free Asia learned.

(Courtesy of the Tiananmen Mothers)

“This year, the authorities are more sensitive to the June 4 incident than ever before,” said Li, a former reporter at the state-run People’s Daily who witnessed the 1989 incident. Like other sources in this article, he requested anonymity for safety reasons.

“The Tiananmen Mothers’ memorial service is the most basic expression of humanity, but it is regarded as a political act,” Li added.

Another source confirmed to RFA that the memorial proceeded under heavy surveillance on Wednesday. A group of family members visit the cemetery every year, despite China’s ban on public commemoration of June 4.

(Greg Baker/AFP)

“Several elderly mothers walked into the cemetery silently, holding white chrysanthemums in their hands, and laid flowers in front of their relatives’ graves,” said the source, who observed the scene at the cemetery.

“There were plainclothes officers patrolling the gate and the surrounding area, and parking was prohibited on the roadside,” the source said.

On the evening of June 3, National Security Bureau agents warned participants against bringing phones or cameras, demanding “civilized mourning,” the source added.

RFA could not reach Tiananmen Mothers representatives on Wednesday, and attempts to contact their relatives, human rights lawyers, and scholars who follow the group also yielded no response. Nor could RFA reach the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau office to seek comment.

On May 31, the Tiananmen Mothers issued an open letter signed by 108 relatives of victims. In it, they reiterated their long-held demands from the ruling communist party: investigate the incident without bias, publicize records of the incident with names of the victims and compensate their families, and prosecute those responsible.

“For 36 years, we have repeatedly sought dialogue with authorities, but we have only been monitored and suppressed,” 88-year-old Zhang Xianling, one of the founding members of the group, said in a recent video, her voice breaking with emotion as she spoke.

Zhang’s son Wang Nan was shot dead at the intersection of Beijing’s Nanchang Street and Chang’an Avenue in the early hours of June 4, 1989. He was 19 at the time.

(Andy Wong/AP)

Estimates of the death toll from the Tiananmen massacre have ranged from a few hundred to several thousands. In 2009, the Tiananmen Mothers published a detailed map showing where some of the victims died. The Chinese government, however, has never made public the actual number of those who died or were injured.

Widespread digital censorship

In the days leading up to and on the June 4 anniversary, Chinese authorities imposed strict digital censorship measures.

In early June, users of Tencent’s mobile game “Golden Spatula Wars” found their WeChat profile pictures were uniformly changed to green penguins, with the ability to modify avatars disabled.

“Penguins were originally a symbol of entertainment, but now they have become a mask of censorship,” wrote one user on X.

On June 4, all WeChat users, as well as users of other Tencent platforms, found they couldn’t modify their profile pictures. Tencent attributed the restrictions to “purifying the online environment during the college entrance examination period,” but netizens questioned whether this represented another form of political censorship.

(Ng Han Guan/AP)

Every year around the anniversary, Chinese social media platforms block keywords such as “square,” “tank,” and “8964.” “June 4” is also a banned online search term, while any social media posts related to the incident are immediately deleted, with accounts that post such content facing suspension.

Human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was ordered by Chinese police on Wednesday to delete his commemorative post on X. Meanwhile, the embassies of Germany, Britain, Canada and other countries in China posted commemorative messages on Weibo, triggering a large number of comment deletions.

The British Embassy uploaded photos and cartoon videos of “Tank Man” – the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks at Tiananmen Square.

Restrictions in Hong Kong

Tight security was imposed at Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay and Victoria Park. These used to be sites of annual candlelight vigils and memorials but the gatherings have stopped since Beijing tightened its grip over the once semi-autonomous territory.

Armored vehicles and a large number of security personnel were deployed to the two sites on Wednesday morning, two sources said.

By noon, several people who were suspected to be marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre were taken away, including an elderly woman and two middle school girls holding white flowers, sources said. Another man who was seated silently at Victoria Park with his eyes shut and holding a white electronic candle was also taken away by police officers, they added.

(Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Hong Kong police also inspected several “yellow economic circle” themed businesses. The color yellow has been associated with the democratic cause since the 2014 umbrella mass protest movement in the city. Pro-government and pro-police views are described as “blue.”

The consulates of several countries in Hong Kong, including Britain and Canada, posted photos of a candlelight and messages to not forget the June 4 incident.

The U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong also posted U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s message marking the anniversary.

“Today we commemorate the bravery of the Chinese people who were killed as they tried to exercise their fundamental freedoms, as well as those who continue to suffer persecution as they seek accountability and justice for the events of June 4, 1989,” Rubio said.

“The CCP actively tries to censor the facts, but the world will never forget,” Rubio said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

Commemorations in Taiwan

Like Rubio, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, in posts on X and Facebook, praised the courage of the Chinese students who participated in the 1989 pro-democracy protests, saying their “courage and sense of responsibility have left a profound testimony to humanity’s pursuit of ideals.” He added that the June 4 incident must never be forgotten.

“Authoritarian regimes erase history; democracies have a duty to preserve it,” Lai said.

“Today, we remember those who marched for freedom in Tiananmen Square. Taiwan stands firm with like-minded partners on defending democracy and human rights to ensure a free society for future generations,” he wrote on X.

(Ann Wang/Reuters)

In Taiwan, around 3,000 people gathered outside Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei on Wednesday evening to mourn the victims of the Tiananmen massacre.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees cross-strait issues, condemned bomb threats that it and other government departments had received to scare off participants at the June 4 commemoration event.

Edited by Tenzin Pema and Mat Pennington.

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

Thailand is resisting Cambodia’s push to bring their border dispute to the U.N. International Court of Justice after a firefight last week that killed one Cambodian soldier, raising tensions between the Southeast Asian neighbors.

In a press statement Wednesday, the Thai government said its troops had acted in self-defense during a routine patrol in an area under Thai sovereignty.

About Cambodia’s proposal “to resort to a judicial mechanism or a third party,” Thailand stressed that it is “ready to engage in negotiations with Cambodia through existing bilateral mechanisms.”

That statement came after Cambodia’s National Assembly and Senate on Monday voted in favor of the Cambodian government’s proposal to bring a case to resolve the dispute to The Hague-based court.

The legislature took the matter up after the two sides had a 10-minute shootout on May 28 in the Chongbok area of Thailand’s northeastern Ubon Ratchathani province, opposite Cambodia’s northern Preah Vihear province, near where the Thai, Cambodian and Lao borders meet. Cambodia said one of its soldiers, Sgt. Suan Roan, 48, was killed.

It was the latest flare-up in a rift between Thailand and Cambodia over the demarcation of their 800-kilometer-long land border, which stirs nationalist sentiment on both sides. The differences are rooted in history. Part of the long-burning disagreement is over which maps to use.

Cambodia is calling for the U.N. court to rule on the demarcation of the border at three ancient Khmer temples - Ta Moan Thom, Ta Moan Toch and Ta Krabei - and at an area near to where the May 28 shootout happened.

(Chor Sokunthea/Reuters)

There’s precedent for this. The International Court of Justice granted sovereignty to Cambodia over a disputed 11th century temple at Preah Vihear in 1962 and 2013. There was a standoff and clashes between Thai and Cambodia forces at the border there between 2008 and 2011.

Legal process

Senate President Hun Sen, father of the current prime minister Hun Manet, told Monday’s joint session of the parliament that if Thailand truly has no intention to encroach upon Cambodian territory, it should not refuse Cambodia’s invitation to file the new case jointly at the ICJ.

“Why wouldn’t they want to resolve the issue through the legal process? If 25 years of negotiations haven’t yielded results—even joint border commission meetings haven’t achieved anything—what’s the reason behind this?” Hun Sen said.

Thailand, however, stressed in its statement that there should be negotiations through bilateral mechanisms, such as the Joint Boundary Commission. Cambodia has agreed to host a meeting of the commission on June 14.

“The Royal Thai Government calls on Cambodia to work with Thailand in exercising maximum restraint, reducing tensions on the ground, and providing information to the public with the aim of avoiding misunderstandings between the peoples of the two countries,” the statement said.

Thailand’s The Nation newspaper quoted Thai Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai as saying that Thailand is working to keep the dispute from escalating to the level of the ICJ.

“We must avoid playing into their game,” Phumtham was quoted as saying, referring to Cambodia. “Doing so could internationalize the issue. This is a matter of national importance that directly affects Thailand’s independence and territorial integrity.”

Southeast Asia expert Sebastian Strangio wrote in The Diplomat that while Cambodia may be banking on the ICJ ruling in its favor, as it did over Preah Vihear, it’s less clear the court would support Cambodia’s claims in the areas it is seeking a ruling on now.

But he added that pursuing an international legal remedy is probably the best way of resolving an issue that is the subject of heated nationalistic fervor in both nations.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pimuk Rakkanam and Prach Chiev for RFA.

Tuesday’s national election follows months of turmoil after Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached for briefly imposing martial law in a move that sent shockwaves through its democracy.

Lee won by a comfortable margin over his main conservative rival, Kim Moon Soo, raising questions about relations with South Korea’s key ally, the United States, and its main adversary North Korea.

Lee has repeatedly stressed Washington as the foundation of Seoul’s foreign policy, as Yoon did, but he’s expected to take a softer approach toward Pyongyang.

(Lee Jin-man/Pool via Reuters)

During the campaign, Lee promised active engagement with North Korea, unlike Yoon, but the big question is whether North Korea is interested in resuming dialogue.

RFA Korean’s Jaewoo Park looks at whether it’s possible for South Korea to revive the spirit of 2018, when there was a high level of engagement between North and South and U.S. President Donald Trump held historic summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The high-level diplomacy ultimately failed to prevent the North advancing its nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang has since hatched closer ties with Moscow and sent troops and weapons to assist Russia’s war against Ukraine.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jaewoo Park for RFA Korean.

VietJet Air, Vietnam’s biggest private commercial airline, has asked the mayor of Hanoi to take action against people spreading “false information” about the company online.

And the mayor is doing just that.

In a statement published by the Vietnamese government on Monday, the Mayor Tran Sy Thanh ordered relevant agencies to investigate and handle Facebook accounts responsible for disseminating “false information” about Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the billionaire CEO of VietJet.

The post on the government’s official Facebook account, however, was later edited to remove the reference to VietJet’s high-profile CEO.

This is not the first time the government has gone after people for posting negative information about Thao, reputedly the richest woman in Vietnam.

She became the target of online trolling earlier this year after a parody post mocking her and the airline’s service circulated widely on Vietnamese-language social media.

Two individuals who shared the post were later summoned to a police station, where they were compelled to admit wrongdoing and sign a commitment not to repeat their actions.

(Kham/Reuters)

VietJet Air is the country’s largest low-cost carrier, offering more affordable fares than the national flag carrier, Vietnam Airlines. However, the airline is often subject to criticism over delays and customer dissatisfaction. It’s also been dubbed the “bikini airline,” because of ads featuring models in bikinis to promote resort destinations.

Thao is a well-known business leader in Vietnam. She has been at the forefront of Vietnam’s efforts to persuade the Trump administration to lift tariffs on Vietnamese exports to the U.S., and in April joined the delegation that came to Washington for trade negotiations.

Even before Donald Trump took office for his second term, Thao made headlines with a personal encounter with him.

In January, Thao was seen on the golf course with the then-president-elect during a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Video of the encounter was widely shared on social media in Vietnam, including on government accounts.

In the communist country, it is not unusual for private companies to use the government to pressure critics.

VinFast, the country’s well-known car manufacturer, has also reported to police customers who say negative things about it online.

A lawyer in Hanoi lambasted the mayor’s decision to instruct authorities to go after critics of VietJet.

“Because in his position as mayor, he represents the interests of all people in Hanoi, not the interests of a single business,” the lawyer told Radio Free Asia, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

The lawyer added that the company “should use legal means to challenge those they deem to be spreading defamatory statements instead of asking police and politicians to interfere”.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

The Chinese team members and support staff confronted the eight activists who were seated close to them during Saturday’s friendly international match at the Allianz stadium in St. Paul, Minnesota, that the U.S. won 3-0.

The activists, dressed in white T-shirts, had been shouting slogans and holding up white banners that read “Free Tibet” during the second half of the game.

(Tenzin Shakya/RTYC-MN)

Members of the Chinese team sought their removal from the stands, and the activists were asked to leave the stadium by security guards. That prompted boos from other spectators who shouted, “Let them stay!” and chanted “Free speech!”

Soon after, stadium officials allowed the activists to return to their seats but confiscated their white banners. The activists watched the rest of the game holding up the Tibetan national flag that is banned by China inside Tibet. They also still wore their “Free Tibet” T-shirts.

(Tenzin Shakya/RTYC-MN)

“The biggest takeaway (from this campaign) is that if Tibetans stand up, raise our voices, and take action for our own cause, then the people of the world automatically rise up in support,” one of the protesters, Tenzin Palsang, told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.

“China doesn’t just play soccer. They also play games with human rights,” said Palsang, who is president of the Minnesota chapter of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress.

She cited harsh conditions inside Tibet, where she said children are suffering “colonial boarding school policies,” referring to the Chinese government-run schools where Tibetan children, aged 6-17, have reportedly been held in “prison-like” conditions and forced to study a Mandarin-heavy curriculum that promotes party loyalty or a state-approved “patriotic education.”

(Tenzin Shakya/RTYC-MN)

According to Freedom House’s annual 2025 Freedom in the World report, Tibet was given a score of 0, based on an analysis of political and civil freedoms, making it one of the least-free places in the world. China annexed Tibet in 1950 and has since governed the territory with an oppressively heavy-hand while seeking to erase Tibetan culture and identity.

Beijing denies it represses Tibet or seeks to erase its cultural traditions, instead pointing to economic development in the region as evidence of its positive impacts on the population of about 6 million Tibetans.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

An unidentified man dressed in black suddenly jumped a barricade during a flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square in Beijing and was wrestled away by security, a video posted on social media showed.

Video of the incident, which reportedly took place on Monday, two days ahead of the anniversary of June 4, 1989, crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, was posted on the X by “Mr. Li is not your teacher,” who posts content on that platform to circumvent Chinese government censorship.

The man, wearing glasses, and a black jacket and trousers, ran toward the flag pole during the final bars of the People’s Republic of China national anthem. He was tackled by guards and plainclothes personnel, as bystanders at the ceremony filmed on their cell phones. Some onlookers could be heard in the video exclaiming, “Someone rushed in!”

A few seconds later, the man was carried out by half-a-dozen security personnel and taken to a police van without struggling.

The man’s identity, nationality and motives remain unclear. On Tuesday, security inside and outside Tiananmen Square was reportedly stepped up.

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

Since becoming general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam has drawn international attention with his aggressive plans for cost-cutting within the government but he’s been quiet about another drain on the state budget – the ruling party itself.

After taking office last August, he has moved this year to eliminate and merge ministries and central government agencies, reduce the number of provinces and cities by half, and dismantle district-level administrative units. Tens of thousands of civil servants have already lost their jobs. The Ministry of Interior has estimated that in five years, this will have saved 130 trillion dong (US$5.2 billion at today’s exchange rate) in the state budget.

To Lam’s campaign has been likened to the drastic cuts that U.S. President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk have made to U.S. federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency.

But when it comes to making savings in Vietnam’s state apparatus, To Lam appears to have hedged his bets.

Vietnam operates under two intertwined systems: the party and the government. Although each has a separate budget, both draw from the same source — taxpayer money. The party, in power since the end of the Vietnam War and the reunification of the country in 1975, exists as a parallel structure to the government and plays the leading role in policymaking and governance.

While the government’s budget is occasionally made public, the party’s finances remain classified under Vietnamese law.

This policy predates To Lam’s leadership. However, given his sweeping efforts to streamline the state apparatus and reduce spending, his silence on the party’s own budget raises questions about how far he’s willing to go on fiscal reform.

Vu Tuong, a professor and expert on Vietnamese politics from the University of Oregon, said data shows that from 2008 to 2015, the Central Party Office’s budget increased steadily.

“Although actual spending figures are not disclosed, the Central Party Office alone saw its planned budget quadruple in seven years — from nearly US$27 million (622 billion dong) in 2008 to about US$105 million (more than 2,400 billion dong) in 2015,” he said.

The office functions as the party’s command center, where the general secretary oversees both party and government operations. From 2011 to 2015, its budget rose by 180 percent — three times higher than the increase in the government office’s budget, according to Vu Tuong. The publication of data on its spending stopped in 2015.

Budget is a secret

Zachary Abuza, an expert on Southeast Asia at the National War College in Washington, noted the lack of transparency.

“The party’s budget is a secret, so researchers must work with imperfect data,” he told Radio Free Asia. He said To Lam is mindful of ballooning recurrent expenditures and has made some attempts to rein them in. For example, the party’s foreign affairs committee has been merged into other entities. However, despite these changes, the party’s overall budget continues to grow.

“While the budgets of government agencies have shrunk or stagnated, the budget for the CPV’s bureaucracy has steadily increased over the past few years, if we count the Fatherland Front, the organization that supports the party’s activities,” Abuza said. CPV stands for the Communist Party of Vietnam.

He said more transparency could help improve the party’s legitimacy, but given its obsession with maintaining supreme power, “it’s hard to see them cutting the party’s budget,” he said.

In 2016, the Vietnam Institute for Economic and Policy Research estimated that the economic cost of maintaining public mass organizations — directly controlled by the Communist Party — ranged from 45,600 to 68,100 billion dong annually (about US$2 billion to US$3 billion at the time). These organizations are intended to fulfill roles that, in democratic countries, would be played by independent civil society groups. To Lam has not indicated whether he intends to cut their funding.

According to Abuza, To Lam’s ongoing radical restructuring of the national government, including the consolidation of five ministries and several government agencies, and the reduction of nearly 50% of the number of provinces, created a rare opportunity to further cut both state and party organizations.

However, the budgets for the party and its supporting organizations are difficult to cut because they are tied to the inherent interests of the bureaucracy, he said.

There may be a political reason behind To Lam’s reluctance to target the party’s spending.

The next National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam is approaching in early 2026, when a new generation of leaders will be elected. To Lam, 67, is believed to be seeking another term as general secretary.

“There’s only half-a-year left until the Party Congress,” said Abuza. “So there won’t be any major changes. Normally, spending and policy implementation would be completely locked down by this stage.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

Note: This article contains a graphic description that some readers may find upsetting.

An 88-year-old mother whose son died in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre has trouble even walking to a Beijing cemetery to commemorate his passing every June 4, but authorities still keep her under surveillance. “Am I that scary?” she asks.

Zhang Xianling is one of the founding members of the Tiananmen Mothers group that represents the families of victims of the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left hundreds if not thousands dead. The incident is expunged from the public record in China.

(Courtesy of the Tiananmen Mothers)

Each year, the mothers submit a letter to Chinese leaders, calling on the ruling communist party to publicize records about the June 4, 1989, incident, award compensation and to hold accountable those responsible for the killings.

Zhang told Radio Free Asia that although she is old, has difficulty getting about and needs a wheelchair, as long as her physical condition allows, she will definitely go to Beijing’s Wan’an Cemetery on June 4 to pay tribute to her son Wang Nan who died in the crackdown - as a group of mothers does each year.

Last year, on the eve of June 4, her phone line was cut and she lost contact with the outside world. This year, starting from April, she said she has been under close surveillance.

(Andy Wong/AP)

“They (the authorities) keep a close eye on me,” Zhang told RFA Mandarin, recounting how on a recent trip outside Beijing she got home around midnight and state security agents called her to say they would post someone outside her door.

“At 6:00 the next morning, they sent someone to guard my door. I don’t know why they are so afraid of me. I am 88 years old and I have to use a wheelchair if I have to walk 200 meters. Am I that scary?” she said.

Fallen silent

The annual gathering of the Tiananmen Mothers at the cemetery is a defiant act. Public commemoration of the massacre is banned in China. An annual candlelight vigil that for three decades marked the anniversary in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park has also fallen silent for the past five years amid a crackdown on pro-democracy activists there since Beijing tightened its grip over the once semi-autonomous territory.

While China has never made public the numbers who died or were injured on June 4, the Tiananmen Mothers published a detailed map in 2009 showing where some of the victims died. Estimates of the death toll have ranged from a few hundred to several thousand. June 4 is also a forbidden search term on the internet in China.

(AP)

Zhang’s son Wang Nan was a 19-year-old student at Beijing’s Yuetan High School when he was shot dead by martial law troops in the wee hours of June 4 at an intersection north of the Great Hall of the People, according to a record of victims curated by the non-government group, Human Rights in China. The bullet entered the left side of his forehead and came out behind his left ear, leaving a bullet hole at the back of the motorcycle helmet he was wearing.

Troops buried Wang Nan’s body with others in a shallow grave west of Tiananmen Gate but heavy rains washed the soil away a few days later. His body was taken to a hospital morgue and was initially mistaken as that of a soldier as he’d recently returned from military training and was wearing an old military uniform. His family was only able to recover his body on June 14, and his cremated remains were interred at Wan’an Cemetery.

Promise not to see reporters

Thirty-six years on, and the anniversary of Wang Nan’s passing still looms large in Zhang’s life and remains politically sensitive.

Zhang said that she had protested against the authorities’ frequent deployment of guards at her gate. She said a policeman she had contacted about this had urged her against seeing journalists.

“They asked me to promise not to see reporters and not to say anything, I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ I said that if I spread rumors and you arrest me, I have no objection. I said everything I said is true. You (the Chinese government) don’t tell the truth, and if people come to ask me, won’t I tell it? If people come to me, whether they are reporters or not, I will tell them about June 4,” Zhang told RFA.

Zhang said she feels very sad every year when the anniversary of her son’s death approaches, and that the pain of losing him will not be diluted or erased by the years.

“Between April and June, if the current government didn’t say it was a sensitive period, I would (still) be sad,” she said. “As a mother, it is impossible for me to forget, especially such a sudden death.”

“The pain is deeply engraved in my heart. This is different from the original grief. It is a kind of pain. One is the pain of missing (him), and the other is the pain of not having resolved this matter.”

‘I will not stop fighting’

Zhang said that the members of Tiananmen Mothers are scattered and cannot meet often, but judging from the number of people who sign the open letter every year demanding answers, many of the victims’ families are as committed as she is, which has strengthened her belief and determination.

(Tiananmen Mothers)

“I will not stop fighting,” she said. “We want to seek justice for those who died in the June 4 incident. We have this firm belief, so we have persisted up to now. I just want to tell my children that Mom is still persisting, and also to tell the authorities that we are still persisting.”

Zhang added that no matter how powerful the regime is, it cannot completely erase what has happened.

“The (June 4) massacre took place in full view of the public, so it is not something that will be easily forgotten. Although the candles in Victoria Park (Hong Kong) were blown out by the strong wind, the spark of justice is still burning in the hearts of every person with a conscience,” she said.

“As long as there is a spark, and one person commemorating, it is meaningful to our family … No matter how many people there are, it is a kind of comfort and support to us, and it also gives us spiritual strength."

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

The Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) highlights how the central Chinese province of Henan has adopted its own provincial firewall which is less sophisticated and robust than the central government’s but more volatile and aggressive, blocking significantly more websites than the national-level censorship system.

Local sources told Radio Free Asia that the heightened restrictions at the provincial government level may reflect uncertainty about instructions from higher authorities, leading to “excessive blocking” to avoid blame for failing to carry out their duties.

GFW Report is a censorship monitoring platform, primarily focused on China. During one experiment its researchers ran between Dec. 26, 2023 and March 31, 2025, they found that the Henan Firewall blocked 4.2 million domains, about six times that of the 741,542 at the national level.

Since 2023, netizens in Henan had reported a rise in the number of websites that were inaccessible in the region but accessible elsewhere in China, the study found.

“This localized censorship suggests a departure from China’s centralized censorship apparatus, enabling local authorities to exert a greater degree of control within their respective regions,” researchers Mingshi Wu at GFW, Ali Zohaib and Amir Houmansadr at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Zakir Durumeric at Stanford University, and Eric Wustrow at the University of Colorado Boulder wrote in the GFW Report published in May, “A Wall Behind A Wall: Emerging Regional Censorship in China.”

But the phenomenon extends beyond Henan, sources inside China told RFA.

Local governments in neighboring Hebei, another central Chinese province, as well as those in Tibet and Xinjiang have been operating similar censorship systems as the one reported in Henan for at least four years, Zhao Yuan, a network engineer based in Hebei, said.

“In the past, we could access overseas websites that were not blocked by the national firewall,” Zhao said. “Now, even virtual private networks (VPNs) in Henan and Hubei don’t work.”

While the national-level firewall, known as the Great Firewall, targets more news and media sites, in line with China’s long-standing policy of censoring politically sensitive information, the provincial-level firewall systems, like the one in Henan, blocks domains focusing on topics like the economy, technology, and business, GFW Report researchers found.

The Chinese Communist Party has, in recent years, emphasized a multi-pronged approach to censorship, including the management of all types of propaganda at the domestic and international level through a framework known as “territorial management” and implementation of “digital stability maintenance” measures, such as policing of sensitive content online on dates deemed politically sensitive by the government.

“Local governments have taken the initiative to establish local blocking systems, indicating that the top leaders are increasingly vigilant about the flow of information,” Wei Sicong, a Beijing-based political observer, said.

(Andy Wong/AP)

‘Turning off the whole world’

Researchers at GFW found that the Henan firewall monitors and blocks traffic leaving and entering the province, as opposed to the national-level censorship system that is focused on traffic entering and exiting the country.

Other sources in the region told RFA that the heightened restrictions at the provincial government level suggest lack of clear legal know-how about how to enforce instructions from higher-ups.

“Officials would rather block more and more than take responsibility. So the result you see is ‘turning off the whole world’,” network engineer Zhang Jianan said.

GFW Report researchers said their analysis showed no regional censorship in other areas they studied, such as Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, and Jiangsu.

In Henan and Hebei, however, local residents told RFA that even the websites of some foreign universities are inaccessible, as a result of which they turn to VPNs and other circumvention tools to bypass government censorship and surveillance.

“Some classmates can connect in Beijing and Shanghai, but we can’t in Zhengzhou and can only rely on circumvention software,” Zhang, a student at Henan’s Zhengzhou University, said.

Hebei-based network engineer Zhao said, “The censorship is getting stricter and stricter. We can’t even connect to some foreign university websites.”

RFA found that as early as December 2023, a university in Henan province sought to purchase a “public opinion monitoring system,” specifically aimed at international students, students and dissidents, and had conducted an open bidding process.

Henan University of Science and Technology had laid out a 2024-2025 budget of 120,000 yuan (or US$16,657) for the public opinion monitoring service system to provide 24/7 real-time monitoring, early warning analysis and crisis response of public opinion information on the entire network, covering news websites and social media platforms such as Weibo and Douyin, the university’s website showed.

When RFA contacted the university, a teacher confirmed they are using an old monitoring system and that they have now started a bidding process for a new one.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

The Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) highlights how the central Chinese province of Henan has adopted its own provincial firewall which is less sophisticated and robust than the central government’s but more volatile and aggressive, blocking significantly more websites than the national-level censorship system.

Local sources told Radio Free Asia that the heightened restrictions at the provincial government level may reflect uncertainty about instructions from higher authorities, leading to “excessive blocking” to avoid blame for failing to carry out their duties.

GFW Report is a censorship monitoring platform, primarily focused on China. During one experiment its researchers ran between Dec. 26, 2023 and March 31, 2025, they found that the Henan Firewall blocked 4.2 million domains, about six times that of the 741,542 at the national level.

Since 2023, netizens in Henan had reported a rise in the number of websites that were inaccessible in the region but accessible elsewhere in China, the study found.

“This localized censorship suggests a departure from China’s centralized censorship apparatus, enabling local authorities to exert a greater degree of control within their respective regions,” researchers Mingshi Wu at GFW, Ali Zohaib and Amir Houmansadr at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Zakir Durumeric at Stanford University, and Eric Wustrow at the University of Colorado Boulder wrote in the GFW Report published in May, “A Wall Behind A Wall: Emerging Regional Censorship in China.”

But the phenomenon extends beyond Henan, sources inside China told RFA.

Local governments in neighboring Hebei, another central Chinese province, as well as those in Tibet and Xinjiang have been operating similar censorship systems as the one reported in Henan for at least four years, Zhao Yuan, a network engineer based in Hebei, said.

“In the past, we could access overseas websites that were not blocked by the national firewall,” Zhao said. “Now, even virtual private networks (VPNs) in Henan and Hubei don’t work.”

While the national-level firewall, known as the Great Firewall, targets more news and media sites, in line with China’s long-standing policy of censoring politically sensitive information, the provincial-level firewall systems, like the one in Henan, blocks domains focusing on topics like the economy, technology, and business, GFW Report researchers found.

The Chinese Communist Party has, in recent years, emphasized a multi-pronged approach to censorship, including the management of all types of propaganda at the domestic and international level through a framework known as “territorial management” and implementation of “digital stability maintenance” measures, such as policing of sensitive content online on dates deemed politically sensitive by the government.

“Local governments have taken the initiative to establish local blocking systems, indicating that the top leaders are increasingly vigilant about the flow of information,” Wei Sicong, a Beijing-based political observer, said.

(Andy Wong/AP)

‘Turning off the whole world’

Researchers at GFW found that the Henan firewall monitors and blocks traffic leaving and entering the province, as opposed to the national-level censorship system that is focused on traffic entering and exiting the country.

Other sources in the region told RFA that the heightened restrictions at the provincial government level suggest lack of clear legal know-how about how to enforce instructions from higher-ups.

“Officials would rather block more and more than take responsibility. So the result you see is ‘turning off the whole world’,” network engineer Zhang Jianan said.

GFW Report researchers said their analysis showed no regional censorship in other areas they studied, such as Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, and Jiangsu.

In Henan and Hebei, however, local residents told RFA that even the websites of some foreign universities are inaccessible, as a result of which they turn to VPNs and other circumvention tools to bypass government censorship and surveillance.

“Some classmates can connect in Beijing and Shanghai, but we can’t in Zhengzhou and can only rely on circumvention software,” Zhang, a student at Henan’s Zhengzhou University, said.

Hebei-based network engineer Zhao said, “The censorship is getting stricter and stricter. We can’t even connect to some foreign university websites.”

RFA found that as early as December 2023, a university in Henan province sought to purchase a “public opinion monitoring system,” specifically aimed at international students, students and dissidents, and had conducted an open bidding process.

Henan University of Science and Technology had laid out a 2024-2025 budget of 120,000 yuan (or US$16,657) for the public opinion monitoring service system to provide 24/7 real-time monitoring, early warning analysis and crisis response of public opinion information on the entire network, covering news websites and social media platforms such as Weibo and Douyin, the university’s website showed.

When RFA contacted the university, a teacher confirmed they are using an old monitoring system and that they have now started a bidding process for a new one.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

China announced Friday it was replacing its top official in Hong Kong who was regarded as a symbol of Beijing’s hardline approach toward the territory since 2019 pro-democracy protests.

China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said it was removing Zheng Yanxiong from several key positions including as director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Zheng was viewed as the Chinese Communist Party’s top envoy in Hong Kong and a key liaison with Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee, who was appointed by China’s State Council as the head of the Hong Kong government.

No reason was given Friday for removing Zheng and if he was being appointed to another position.

Zheng was dispatched by Beijing to Hong Kong in 2019 to oversee the crackdown on the protests, before his appointment in 2020 as the first head of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong. In 2023, he was promoted to director of the Liaison Office - the position he’s now vacating.

Throughout his tenure, he aggressively promoted the enforcement of Hong Kong’s National Security Law as Beijing looked to curtail the freedoms that had set the city apart from the mainland since the 1997 handover from British control. His tenure saw tighter controls over the press, academia, and civil society — drawing widespread international criticism.

In 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Zheng under the Hong Kong Autonomy Act for undermining the city’s autonomy, banning him from entering the United States.

In 2023, Zheng took the unprecedented step of reviewing a Hong Kong police graduation ceremony, warning new officers of “hostile foreign forces” trying to make a comeback. Analysts said that was intended to assert Beijing’s firm control over security in the territory.

Friday’s announcement said China’s State Council has now appointed Zhou Ji to succeed Zheng as director of the Liaison Office and national security adviser in Hong Kong.

Zhou previously served as executive deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

“The WHYNOT team’s bold effort to document this harrowing journey demonstrates the risks Chinese were willing to take to escape repression,” said RFA President Bay Fang. “Though this recognition comes as RFA stands on the brink of closure, the award recognizes WHYNOT’s journalistic excellence as we fight to continue our work.”

Zou Xian (走线) or “Walk the Line’’ became a viral term on Chinese social media term, as a surge of migrants fled the Peoples Republic of China amid strict pandemic policies, economic instability, and human rights abuses. It is estimated that more than 37,000 Chinese attempted this perilous trip in 2023.

Walk the Line, which was released on December 17, 2024, was WHYNOT’s first feature-length documentary. The global digital brand, which launched in 2021, garnered numerous top honors for its journalism and news design, including a 2023 National Murrow Award, a Telly, Society of News Design Award, and multiple awards from the New York Festivals. WHYNOT stopped production of new content on March 21 following the Trump administration’s suspension of funding. The documentary was aired on Taiwan public media with multiple screenings, including on Kinmen Island, which is just 6 miles (10km) from Mainland China.

At present, more than 90 percent of RFA’s staff and journalists, including the team behind this project, are on unpaid leave, as USAGM continues to withhold RFA’s Congressionally appropriated funding. On May 28, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit allowed the preliminary injunction in Radio Free Asia v. United States to remain in place while the case proceeds. The ruling requires that USAGM must continue disbursing congressionally appropriated funds to RFA while the court considers the merits of the case.

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

In the U.S., Chinese students expressed worries they may not be able to travel freely, and one student who is a human rights activist said she now felt pressure both from the Chinese government and U.S. government.

“The current situation in the U.S. feels increasingly uncertain — even dangerous,” Mary, who graduated from an American college this month, told Radio Free Asia. She requested a pseudonym for security reasons. “This dual threat is devastating,” she said.

In China, prospective students also took to social media to express confusion and distress after the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that the U.S. will work “aggressively” to revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or studying in critical fields.

The U.S. will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Hong Kong, Rubio said, in a statement titled “New Visa Policies Put America First, Not China.”

U.S. lawmakers have long raised concerns about China acquiring access to sensitive technology and know-how through American colleges.

But China’s government said it “firmly opposes” the decision and has protested to the U.S. for using ideology and national security as a pretext for taking actions that are “fully unjustified.”

“This politically motivated and discriminatory move exposes the U.S. hypocrisy over freedom and openness. It will further damage the image and reputation of the U.S. itself,” Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese government, said at a press briefing on Thursday.

Mao said the move “seriously hurts” the rights and interests of international students from China and disrupts people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.

(U.S. State Department)

Rubio’s announcement risks deepening tensions in a U.S.-China relationship already strained over trade.

It follows other steps by the Trump administration to deter international students, including ordering embassies to pause new student visa appointments amid enhanced social media vetting.

While the U.S. has only a few hundred students in China, Chinese students only rank behind India in their numbers in the U.S.

There were 277,398 Chinese students in the U.S. during the 2023-24 academic year, second to India, at 331,602, according to the U.S. State Department-sponsored “Open Doors report on International Educational Exchange”. Together, India and China accounted for 54% of all the international students, the report showed.

Rubio’s announcement on Wednesday generated hundreds of comments on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote in English, including questions of what subjects of study would be impacted.

“Cognitive neuroscience, brain science, computational linguistics, biomedical engineering — are any of these considered critical fields?” asked one netizen named Nailong.

Rubio did not specify which fields were considered “critical.” Neither was there any clarification provided on what “connections to the CCP” would be scrutinized. It could account for a major chunk of China’s student body.

The Communist Youth League of China, for example, had around 75.32 million members aged 14-28 by end-2024, and roughly 2 million related organizations at schools, colleges, and universities, with around 98.5 million members.

Darkest moment

Mary, the human rights activist who just graduated in the U.S., said she was urgently reassessing her future career plans and was now considering seeking job opportunities abroad.

“For Chinese students, international students, and the entire education sector, this week may have marked a darkest moment,” Andrew Chen, Vice-Chair of China Member Interest Group at NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, said in a video posted on WeChat.

“But everyone must take responsibility for their own growth and future. Every family needs to make choices quickly — to improve their academic and employment abilities,” said Chen, who advised that Chinese students keen on pursuing further studies in the U.S. eschew defense-related majors and sensitive institutions within China.

(Tenzin Pema/RFA)

Chinese students who are already in the U.S. should work to improve their profile “as fast as possible,” so they can find a job in the country more easily in the near future, he added.

On social media platforms, Chinese students currently based in the U.S. expressed worries they may not be able to travel freely amid the stricter visa measures.

“If you’re in the U.S., you can’t go home anymore. I miss home,” wrote one netizen, Chaochao, on RedNote.

Other Chinese nationals also expressed worries about their future. “Will this affect an EB-1 application?,” asked one netizen named QuQ, referring to a U.S. employment-based visa for people with extraordinary abilities in their respective fields.

According to NAFSA, a U.S.-based nonprofit association focused on international education, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 378,175 jobs during the 2023-2024 academic year.

For every three international students, one U.S. job is created and supported through spending by international students on accommodation, higher education, dining, retail, health, telecommunications, and transportation, it added.

The U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP welcomed Rubio’s Wednesday announcement. Chairman John Moolenaar on Thursday said, “America’s student visa system has become a Trojan horse for Beijing, providing unrestricted access to our top research institutions and posing a direct threat to our national security.”

“If left unaddressed, this trend will continue to displace American talent, compromise research integrity, and fuel China’s technological ambitions at our expense,” Moolenaar said.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema and Rachel C for RFA.

Hong Kong police have questioned two relatives of actor and journalist Joe Tay in the latest case of authorities targeting the family of wanted overseas pro-democracy activists.

Tay, who lives in Canada, is among six pro-democracy campaigners that the Hong Kong government in December accused of violating a national security law, offering rewards of HK$1 million (US$130,000) for help in arresting them. The six were accused of crimes including incitement to secession, subversion of state power, and collusion with foreign forces.

Tay has lived in Canada since 2020. In 2021, he set up a YouTube channel, HongKongerStation, focusing on Chinese government repression in Hong Kong. He recently ran, unsuccessfully, as a Conservative Party candidate in Canada’s federal election.

On Thursday, officers from Hong Kong’s National Security Department brought in Tay’s cousin and the cousin’s spouse for questioning, Hong Kong media reported. After several hours, they were released and escorted out by police.

In response to media inquiries, Hong Kong police confirmed that two individuals had been summoned on Thursday to assist in an investigation. They added that the case remains under investigation and no arrests have been made.

Earlier this month, a 57-year-old male cousin of Tay and that cousin’s spouse were also taken from their home by national security police for questioning and later released.

Authorities allege that Tay, 62, violated the National Security Law by publishing videos and posts promoting Hong Kong independence and calling for foreign sanctions on China and Hong Kong, including invoking the Magnitsky Act – U.S. legislation to sanction human rights abusers - to target Hong Kong officials.

Hong Kong authorities in recent weeks have questioned the relatives of other accused activists, including the parents of Frances Hui, a pro-democracy advocate based in the United States.

Earlier this month, Hong Kong police made the first formal prosecution of a relative of a wanted individual. They charged Anna Kwok’s father, Kwok Yin-sang, with “attempting to handle the assets of an absconder,” making him the first family member prosecuted under the National Security Law passed last year. Kwok, 68, was granted bail last week.

Anna Kwok is executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

Last week, the U.N. refugee agency said that while details remained unclear, it had collected reports from family members and others about two separate boat tragedies on May 9 and May 10 in which 427 people may have died. It said both boats left from Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where about 1 million Rohingya shelter in camps.

Twenty-six Rohingya diaspora groups, including the U.K.-based Burmese Rohingya Organization, co-signed Thursday’s statement that said just 87 people had survived the two incidents. It added authorities had intercepted a third vessel with 188 people aboard as it attempted to leave Myanmar on May 18.

“These back-to-back disasters are the worst loss of Rohingya lives at sea this year, and they expose the deadly consequences of regional inaction and global neglect,” the statement said, adding that most of those on board were Rohingya who had already been displaced from their homes in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State.

“They were fleeing a growing campaign of widespread violence by the Arakan Army, amounting to a continuation of the ethnic cleansing first started by the Burmese military,” the statement said, referring to a rebel group that has seized control of most of Rakhine state from the Myanmar military.

“Those confined to displacement camps in Burmese military-controlled zones are starving, children are suffering from acute malnutrition, and many families are completely without food,” the statement said.

Most Rohingya are from Rakhine state and most are stateless, regarded as migrants from South Asia and not one of the ethnic groups classified as indigenous in Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s constitution.

(Zahlul Akbar/AFP)

About 750,000 Rohingya fled a violent Myanmar military clearance campaign in Rakhine in 2017 and crossed into Bangladesh. The U.S. government determined the killings and rapes by the military amounted to genocide.

Now each year, thousands of Rohingya attempt to leave Bangladesh and Myanmar aboard rickety vessels for other destinations in Southeast Asia. Reports of boats sinking and mass fatalities are common.

The Arakan Army, consisting Buddhist ethnic Rakhine people, has also been implicated in serious rights abuses against Rohingya, human rights groups say, although the AA denies it.

In recent years, the AA’s position on the persecuted Muslim minority has vacillated. After the 2021 coup in Myanmar when the military seized power from a civilian government, the AA evinced a moderate and inclusive position on the Rohingya. But it has since been accused of mass killings after a campaign by the Myanmar junta to recruit Rohingya men, sometimes forcibly, into militias to fight the AA.

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

Now in their twilight years, these are the warriors who mounted a united campaign from the 1950s through to the mid-1970s against the Chinese occupation of their homeland. They live quiet, spiritual lives far removed from the days of gathering intelligence and ambushing Chinese military convoys.

Many of these fighters were trained by the CIA. They bear experiences that few outside their circle can fathom. Their stories are filled with code names, secret camps, clandestine border crossings, and survival in brutal conditions. They played a pivotal role in helping Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, escape into exile.

(Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative)

Today they have a sedate existence. Most live in retirement homes, in settlements like Jampaling and Paljorling that are scattered around Nepal’s second largest city, Pokhara. A select, more affluent, few live around the capital Kathmandu.

But they have an important and urgent message they want to share with future generations, rooted in the beliefs that drove them when they took up arms up to seven decades ago: to stick together to defend the Tibetan way of life.

“The idea of ‘Tibet’ is no longer a question of geography — it’s about the resolve and readiness to sacrifice everything for the greater purpose of serving the cause,” said Ugen Tsering, 87, also known as Utse Ugen, one of the former fighters who now runs a successful Tibetan restaurant in the heart of Kathmandu’s bustling tourist district, Thamel.

As their numbers dwindle, the former resistance fighters are eager to share their little-known stories.

(RFA Tibetan)

Their armed struggle against China began with a grassroots force, the Chushi Gangdruk or Four Rivers, Six Ranges, that was later known as the Tensung Dhanglang Magar, or the Voluntary Force for the Defense of Buddhism. The movement then received covert financing, training, and weaponry support from the CIA, which code-named the project ST CIRCUS – running it for over a decade from 1957 until U.S. support for the Tibetan resistance ended in 1969.

Ultimately, their goal to regain control of Tibet that had been occupied by China in the early 1950s was unrealized. But they had successes – not least in forming a movement that overcame regional, religious and linguistic differences that have often divided Tibetans who have inhabited the vast Tibetan plateau for millennia.

“There were young Tibetans from the three provinces (of U-Tsang, Kham, and Amdo) alongside us – all committed to the cause and willing to sacrifice our lives,” said Phenpo Gyaltsen, 93. “I never heard any distinctions being made based on our regions. The only message we ever received was that we are all the same and whether in joy or in suffering, we stand together.”

“Our generation is both unfortunate and fortunate,” said Ugen, referring to the first generation of Tibetans who witnessed China’s annexation of Tibet in 1950. “We faced tremendous difficulties in our time, but we also had the opportunity to take action and strive to overcome them.”

(Passang Tsering/RFA Tibetan)

Ugen – code-named “Bob” – was one of the hundreds who received training at the secret training facility the CIA ran in Camp Hale, Colorado, in 1958-1964.

Hailing from the central Tibetan region of Gyangtse, Ugen was assigned in 1958 by Gyalo Thondup – the Dalai Lama’s elder brother who died in February 2025 – to travel to Tibet’s capital Lhasa to serve as a messenger between Andruk Gonpo Tashi, the founder of the resistance, and high-ranking officials in the Tibetan government, such as the Lord Chamberlain Thupten Phalha, who organized the Dalai Lama’s escape to exile in March 1959.

(The Tibet Museum; AFP)

The Dalai Lama’s escape

The Chushi Gangdruk fighters’ role in escorting the Dalai Lama safely from Lhasa to the Indian border is to this day regarded as one of the movement’s most pivotal achievements and contributions to the Tibetan cause.

In the Dalai Lama’s personal autobiography, “My Land, My People,” and his latest book, “Voice for the Voiceless,” he acknowledged the bravery of the Tibetan freedom fighters who accompanied him undercover into exile.

“In spite of my beliefs, I very much admired their courage and their determination to carry on the grim battle they had started for our freedom, culture, and religion,” he wrote.

(AP)

“I feel we accomplished what needed to be done during our time,” said Lobsang Monlam, who was one of the fighters tasked with blocking Chinese forces from entering Lhasa while their compatriots safely escorted the Dalai Lama to exile.

“I have no regrets. Joining the Chushi Gangdruk guerrilla movement was a matter of desperation, not choice. There was no other way to safeguard Tibetan Buddhism and our nation,” Monlam told RFA.

Monlam, 100, is the lone centenarian among a handful of former fighters who reside in the old-aged home in Jampaling village, one of the settlements established in 1975 to house the thousands of veterans of the Mustang guerrilla movement after they were forced to give up arms and surrender to the Nepalese army. The needs of the veterans have since been met by the Lo-drig organization, a welfare association founded by Mustang guerilla leaders, including Lhamo Tsering.

(Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative)

A former monk from Chamdo, Monlam renounced his monastic vows to join the Chushi Gangdruk in Tibet. After his escape into exile, he, like thousands of other newly arrived Tibetan refugees, toiled on road construction projects in the mountains of northeastern Indian border states like Arunachal Pradesh in exchange for food.

There, in 1960, he learned that hundreds of Tibetans were making their way to then-Kingdom of Lo, now Upper Mustang, where the fighters had set up a military base to continue their resistance. Monlam followed, making the difficult journey to join the movement, which swelled from a few hundred fighters to more than 2,000 that year.

The initial months were brutal. “We barely survived,” Monlam recalls.

(Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films)

The fighters endured harsh weather and living conditions at high altitude. They lived in extreme poverty and battled food shortages, even boiling their boots and saddlebags to eat the leather to fend off their hunger.

But by March 1961, the CIA supplied arms and aid. And over time, the leaders of the resistance - which included Lhamo Tsering, the right hand man of Thondup - organized the army into 15 battalions, each with 100 fighters.

They recognized the strategic advantages of their location. It was close to the Tibetan border but also remote enough to serve as a hub for covert operations and to limit the influence of the Nepalese government. They established an elaborate network of bases, with Kelsang Camp as their headquarters.

(STCIRCUS Archive of Tibetan Resistance via Hoover Institution Library & Archives)

An intelligence coup

Tsering and fellow Mustang guerrilla army generals Baba Kelsang Yeshe and Gyato Wangdu tasked the different regiments to gather intelligence, conduct sabotage, ambush Chinese military convoys, scout routes, and weed out any internal spies.

The training that many of the fighters received at Camp Hale — in surveillance, map-reading, radio and communications skills, codes, and guerrilla tactics – proved vital to their success in covert operations.

(Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films/Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films)

Ninety-year-old Tashi Dhondup, Ugen, 87, and Phenpo Gyaltsen, 93, were among their number.

Gyaltsen was tasked with collecting information and documenting the brutal treatment of Tibetans inside Tibet. Like him, Ugen was assigned by Thondup to track Chinese military movements and troop buildups around Lhasa, while reporting on the living conditions and struggles of ordinary Tibetans. Dhondup served as a military training instructor in Mustang for 11 years after his training in Camp Hale and used his map-reading skills to navigate troops during raids at the border.

(CIA Museum and the Center for the Study of Intelligence)

In one notably successful raid in October 1961, 30 Tibetan fighters crossed into Tibet and ambushed a Chinese convoy and secured a pouch from a People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, commander. It yielded what top CIA officials at the time called the “best intelligence coup since the Korean War.”

The pouch contained more than 1,600 classified documents with rare and valuable intelligence about China. The documents revealed internal problems within the Chinese military and the Chinese Communist Party and details of the large-scale famine resulting from China’s failed Great Leap Forward.

While the Americans prioritized intelligence-gathering, the Tibetans valued acts of resistance. Guerrilla units rotated across the border into Tibet, conducting raids and targeted missions — though many ultimately failed.

Reke Samten, who was code-named “Stuart,” was in one group deployed by Lhamo Tsering after his training at Camp Hale. He and two other fighters, code-named “Terry” and “Marv,” were sent to Kongpo, now Nyingtri Prefecture, to form and lead a rebel outfit.

(Passang Tsering/RFA Tibetan)

But Samten was forced to retreat after two months, when no reinforcements arrived. He embarked on a perilous three-month journey back across the border — hiding to avoid capture by Chinese forces and enduring the cold and hunger, with little to eat and little to cover himself at night.

His companions were even less fortunate. Both were captured by the Chinese. “Terry” was imprisoned for 17 years, suffering torture and harsh interrogations until his release and escape to Nepal and India, where he and Samten were reunited. “Marv” died in captivity, Samten said.

Importance of unity

Sitting atop the terrace of his home in the outskirts of Kathmandu, Samten said he had no regrets about devoting his prime years to pursuing an impossible fight. That’s a sentiment shared by all the fighters RFA interviewed.

“Now, at 90 years old, I am in the final phase of my life and have dedicated myself entirely to religious practice,” said Samten, who was clad in maroon, a color associated with Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns.

“As I look back on my life, I feel it has been meaningful … but it is important for more Tibetans to learn about our struggle — one that has often gone unnoticed,” he said.

(Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative)

Gyaltsen was tasked with collecting information and documenting the brutal treatment of Tibetans inside Tibet. Like him, Ugen was assigned by Thondup to track Chinese military movements and troop buildups around Lhasa, while reporting on the living conditions and struggles of ordinary Tibetans. Dhondup served as a military training instructor in Mustang for 11 years after his training in Camp Hale and used his map-reading skills to navigate troops during raids at the border.

(Passang Tsering/RFA Tibetan)

Before his death in 1999, Lhamo Tsering, one of the leaders of the resistance who wrote eight volumes of books on the history of the resistance, said the armed struggle must be looked at as “one chapter in our continuing struggle for freedom, one that still has some meaning.”

It’s now more than 50 years since they were forced to shut down the resistance’s last stronghold in Mustang and disband. The goal for the next generation of Tibetans, the veterans say, must be a united commitment to preserving Tibetan culture and resisting Chinese government attempts to erase their identity.

“His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said we need to save and preserve Tibetan Buddhism, not just for Tibetans but for the benefit of the world,” said Dhondup.

“Young people should pay attention to His Holiness’s teachings and consider the sacrifices made by the elders from the three provinces of Tibet over the past six decades. Most of them have passed away, but we should learn from their struggles and achievements,” said Gyaltsen.

(Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance - 1957-1974/ White Crane Films)

One critical lesson from the past, noted Ugen, is understanding “the perils of regionalism and religious divisions and importance of unity to accomplish our goal of seeing a free Tibet.”

Observers of Tibetan affairs say divisions based on regional origins have surfaced again with social media usage. The political exploitation of these differences have also played out in parliamentary proceedings of the exiled Tibetan government and among the diaspora.

Those developments have raised uncomfortable questions about the community’s ability to maintain cohesion, as the Dalai Lama, a revered figure, turns 90 this year, and China looks to undermine not just Tibetan identity, but solidarity among its people.

“My hope for the younger generation is that we remain united across all three provinces. If we are united, we will have a movement the world has never seen,” said Tashi Tsepel, 75, who resides in Jampaling.

(RFA Tibetan)

To be sure, these aging warriors know their physical battle ended long ago.

But they hope that the spirit of unity and defiance that drove them into the mountains of Mustang will continue to inspire future generations — a final act of resistance against the forces of time, oppression, and division.

For these veterans, perhaps that would be victory enough in the twilight of their extraordinary lives.

Reporting by Dorjee Damdul, Lobsang Gelek, Passang Tsering, and Abby Seiff in Mustang, Pokhara, Kathmandu in Nepal, and Tenzin Pema and Passang Dhonden in Washington.

Edited by Mat Pennington. Contributing editors: Kalden Lodoe, Boer Deng, and Jim Snyder.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema, Dorjee Damdul, Lobsang Gelek, Passang Tsering, Abby Seiff, Passang Dhonden for RFA.

Updated May 28, 2025, 11:40 a.m. ET

BANGKOK – The Thai prime minister said Wednesday she spoke to her Cambodian counterpart to reduce tensions after Cambodia said one of its soldiers was killed in a brief gunfight with Thai troops at a sensitive border region.

The 10-minute shootout at Hill 496 comes after weeks of mounting tension. The neighbors have a history of armed confrontation at disputed border areas.

Cambodia said one of its soldiers, Sgt. Suan Roan, 48, was killed during the fight, and the body has been transported from the border for a funeral, The Associated Press reported. The Thai army said it suffered no casualties.

Tension has risen in recent weeks after Thai soldiers accused their Cambodian counterparts of burning a Thai-built friendship gazebo in the Chong Bok area of Thailand’s northeastern Ubon Ratchathani province, where the Thai, Cambodian and Lao borders meet. There have also been disturbances at the ancient shrine of Ta Moan Thom, in Surin province to the west. Both Thailand and Cambodia claim the site.

Following Wednesday’s clash, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said both countries were determined to prevent tensions from boiling over.

“[I] have talked to Prime Minister Hun Manet. [The incident] was minor. We have understanding and will ease the tension and will prevent the reoccurrence,” she told reporters.

Thai soldiers were directed to stay alert despite top level negotiations, the Thai army said in a statement, adding that Cambodia fired the first shot and all Thai soldiers were safe.

(Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

In a post on Facebook, Cambodian Senate president and former prime minister Hun Sen expressed condolences to the family of the fallen soldier, and said a peaceful border “should never witness such incidents.”

“I strongly condemn any individual, entity, or authority that made the decision to carry out such an act of aggression, which resembles the incursions that occurred between 2008 and 2011 at the Preah Vihear temple,” Hun Sen wrote.

In 2011, there was a deadly clash between Thai and Cambodia forces over an ancient temple at Preah Vihear, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The U.N.’s International Court of Justice granted sovereignty over the area to Cambodia in 2013.

This March, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet threatened to use military force if the Thai military sent soldiers to Ta Moan Thom temple site.

The incomplete boundary demarcation there led to a confrontation between Cambodian soldiers who visited the temple last month and Thai soldiers who are stationed nearby, according to independent online news outlet CamboJa.

RFA Khmer contributed reporting. Edited by Mike Firn and Mat Pennington.

Updated with Hun Sen’s comment.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA.