Sebastien Lai has sought a meeting with Starmer for more than two years to advocate for the release of his father, 77-year-old Jimmy Lai, who founded Apple Daily. His health is deteriorating and he risks dying in jail.

Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,600 days, mostly in isolation, while awaiting the outcome of a long-delayed trial for sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law. After Lai’s arrest in 2020, Apple Daily was shuttered on June 24, 2021, following police raids and the freezing of the paper’s assets.

Read the full joint letter here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CP 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.

The son of a Fiji assistant minister is under investigation for allegedly driving a government vehicle without authority and causing an accident that killed two men.

The accident took place along Bau Road, Nausori, last night.

The vehicle involved in the accident was the official government vehicle issued for the assistant minister.

It is alleged the 17-year-old took the vehicle without the knowledge of his father.

Police have confirmed the incident.

“The suspect is alleged to have taken the keys of the vehicle from his father while he slept and was driving along Bau Road, when he bumped the two victims standing on the roadside, and he fled the scene,” said the Fiji Police Force.

“He later relayed the matter to his father who reported the matter to police.

“The two victims in their 40s were conveyed to the Nausori Health Centre where their deaths were confirmed by medical officials.”

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The video begins with Mahmoud’s voice speaking over the phone to Deen from ICE detention in Louisiana: “Yaba Deen, these are my first words to you,” Mahmoud says.

It comes just one day after a federal judge granted Mr. Khalil’s request for preliminary injunction, finding that he would continue to suffer irreparable harm if he remains detained. Further, the court ruled that it was unconstitutional to detain and seek to deport someone purely on the basis of their advocacy. Despite this ruling, he remains detained in Louisiana.

As fathers themselves, these artists are using their platforms to speak out. Palestinian American comedian and actor Mo Amer explains, “I am a Palestinian refugee, asylee to America, became a citizen in 2009, and in 2023 I had a son. Mahmoud’s letter is like a dagger to the heart, and that’s why I am doing this.”

They also understand that if it can happen to Mahmoud, a permanent lawful resident and U.S. green card holder, it can happen to anyone. As Iranian American actor and screenwriter Arian Moayed noted, “I can't imagine being taken away from my child for speaking up for labor rights. I can't imagine being taken away from my child for speaking up for Iranian rights. I can't imagine being taken away from my child for speaking up for veterans rights. All of which I have done in the past. And now I'm saying the same thing. No human being deserves to be taken away from their child because of what they believe in. That's not what this country is made for.”

The celebrity fathers filmed this video because they see how Mahmoud’s struggle is intertwined with theirs. “I know that on this stolen land, nobody is free unless we are all free. And so this is an act of solidarity and love for any and all who dream for a better and healthier future for all of us, in all life on this planet,” said Native American activist and actor from Reservation Dogs’ Dallas Goldtooth.

Furthermore, they know that every day that Mahmoud remains detained is a day too long. Emmy-winning TV host, comedian and activist W. Kamau Bell said it plainly: “I get to go home to my kids. All dads should get that.”

Just last week, dozens of experts outlined the “irreparable harm” he and his loved ones will continue to suffer as long as he remains detained thousands of miles away from him.

“True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has. I will not rest until Mahmoud is free, and hope that he can be with us to experience his first Father’s Day at home in New York with Deen in his arms,” said Noor Abdalla, Mahmoud’s wife.

Mr. Khalil is represented by Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights, CLEAR, Van Der Hout LLP, Washington Square Legal Services, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the ACLU of New Jersey, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Dr. Phil, the powerhouse TV personality, has long dispensed practical advice to anyone hoping to avoid financial ruin — advice he’s shared with his millions of viewers. “No. 1 is avoid debt like the plague,” he’s said.

On other episodes of his syndicated talk show, he’s urged people to pay off their costliest obligations first: “You got to get rid of that high-interest debt.”

Yet for thousands of people mired in debt, Dr. Phil’s eldest son has been part of the problem, an investigation by ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News found.

Jay McGraw, a TV producer, became involved in the payday lending industry over a decade ago and has been affiliated with a range of financial services businesses, more recently launching a firm that sells used cars online at costly interest rates and targets Texans with low or no credit.

Earlier this year, McGraw settled a federal civil suit that had accused him of playing a key role in CreditServe Inc., a financial technology consulting firm that helps arrange small-dollar consumer loans online — with interest rates that can exceed 700% — via a company owned by a Native American tribe in Alaska.

The tribal lending operation, Minto Money, is based in the log cabin village of Minto, 50 miles northwest of Fairbanks, and has delivered a new revenue stream to the community since its inception in 2018. But it’s also created a rift within the tribe, as some members are appalled by the burdens inflicted on poor and desperate people.

“It’s bringing in a lot of money. But it’s off the misery of the people on the other end who are taking out these loans,” said Darrell Frank, a former chief of the tribe. “That’s not right. That’s not what the elders set this tribal council up for.”

There’s documented harm. As of July 2024, the Federal Trade Commission had received more than 280 consumer complaints about Minto’s lending operations. That total includes complaints forwarded from the Better Business Bureau, where Minto Money holds an “F” rating. Customers who took out loans — which range from $200 to $3,000 — pleaded for relief from onerous terms that allowed Minto Money to claw back the sums multiple times over through automatic bank withdrawals.

“This loan is outrageous with interest over 700%!” one person complained to the Better Business Bureau about having paid $4,167 on a $1,200 loan from Minto Money. “I am one step away from filing from bankruptcy.”

A federal suit filed in Illinois in November by five Minto Money borrowers contends that McGraw has provided “tens of millions of dollars” in capital for the loans. CreditServe provides the infrastructure to market, underwrite and collect on them while “the Tribe is merely a front” and shares in only a small percentage of the revenue, according to the suit.

It called McGraw the “enterprise’s principal beneficiary,” asserting that he and CreditServe’s CEO, Eric Welch, have collected “hundreds of millions of dollars of payments made by consumers.”

The suit alleged that McGraw and the other defendants, including Minto Money, violated state usury laws and federal prohibitions against collecting unlawful debt. A confidential settlement resolved the lawsuit in early May but left open the possibility that other Minto Money customers could file similar suits in the future.

A. Paul Heeringa, who is representing McGraw, Welch and CreditServe, wrote in an email to reporters that “our clients cannot comment on any of your questions, or the case generally, other than to say that the allegations in the Complaint are not facts and were not proven to be true, and that our clients categorically deny the allegations.”

CreditServe was set up by a Hollywood lawyer who has represented the McGraws, California records show. Its principal address in the Larchmont Village neighborhood of Los Angeles is a box in a mail shop that also has served as the published address for many other McGraw family companies.

There is nothing in the public record linking Dr. Phil — whose full name is Phil McGraw — to the lending businesses, including CreditServe.

A lawyer for Phil McGraw said McGraw declined to comment for this story but shared a short statement from a spokesperson for Merit Street Media, which airs “Dr. Phil Primetime.”

“Dr. Phil knows his son Jay to be a smart, strong, caring human being and while he does not know his business Dr. Phil supports him 100%,” the statement said. “The suggestion that Jay’s business ignores or is even comparable or relevant to advice from Dr. Phil or Dr. Phil Primetime on Merit Street Media is false and only included in your article as click bait.”

Lori Baker, chief of the Minto tribal government, said in an email that the Minto Village Council had no comment in response to questions about the lending operations and members’ concerns.

Among critics of Minto’s lending operation, the idea that outsiders can’t be trusted is central to their opposition.

One Minto elder who no longer lives in the community worries that strangers are taking advantage of the tribe and its loan customers alike. The elder asked not to be named because of concerns about reprisals for criticizing the lucrative business.

“They are exploiting our village,” the elder said. “It is not right taking from poor people to get yourself rich.”

Jay McGraw got into the lending business as he branched out from other ventures. Minto got into it to help the people of the village.

By the time the company that would become CreditServe was formed in 2011, McGraw had obtained a law degree, gone into the film production business with his father, pioneered a highly successful daily syndicated medical advice show called “The Doctors” and written a series of self-help books for teens.

More quietly, he ventured into the high-interest lending business. Corporation papers in 2013 listed McGraw as the president of Helping Hand Financial Inc., a company that offered payday loans online at CashCash.com. “Get the CashCash You Need Fast!” the firm’s website exhorted.

The following year, when CreditServe Inc. filed an amendment to its articles of incorporation with the California secretary of state, it showed McGraw as president and secretary. Helping Hand Financial dissolved in 2017, but CreditServe remained in business. In both ventures, McGraw teamed up with Welch.

McGraw is not currently listed in California records as a top officer at CreditServe. But the federal suit in Illinois describes his role as significant. “McGraw and Welch dominate CreditServe and are responsible for all key decisions made by it,” the complaint states.

Welch declined to comment for this story.

He and McGraw are also named on corporation papers for Cherry Auto Finance Inc., formed in 2021, which offers easy financing for used cars online at cherrycars.com, appealing to subprime borrowers. The site posts estimated annual percentage rates of 22.4%.

Just as desperate borrowers turn to unconventional and high-interest loans, a few dozen Native American tribes in dire need of economic rescue have been drawn to the business side of that same industry.

The community of 160 in Minto faces the same challenges as many Native villages in Alaska, which are set in hard-to-reach places on ancestral hunting and fishing lands. Village leaders have struggled to build an economy in a remote place with few jobs, spotty internet and sky-high costs.

In 2018, Doug Isaacson, a non-tribal member working for Minto’s economic development arm, brought Minto an idea that could help the village. Isaacson — the former mayor of North Pole, a city outside Fairbanks that revels in its association with Christmas — suggested that the tribe get involved in the lending business. Tribes in America are in demand as business partners because they can claim that, as sovereign entities, their operations are exempt from state interest rate caps. Critics of such lending partnerships have called them “rent-a-tribe.”

To the tribal council, the lending business sounded like a way to create jobs and bring in much-needed revenue. The household income in Minto is about 30% lower than the statewide median. But groceries are more expensive and gas costs $7 a gallon.

Minto adopted a Tribal Credit Code, stating that “E-commerce represents a new ray of economic hope for the Tribe and its members.”

The Illinois lawsuit contends that on paper, the tribe appears to control the lending operation, but CreditServe provides the key services, including “lead generation, technology platforms, payment processing, and collection procedures.” Most of the money also flows to CreditServe, which has an office in suburban Austin, Texas, according to the suit.

McGraw’s lifestyle stands in sharp contrast to those living in Minto. He owns a lakeside mansion in the Austin area, valued at over $6 million. A real estate listing noted that the gated home features a “glass ceiling, life-size fireplaces, 2nd floor tower and an 85 foot infinity pool & spa overlooking miles of unobstructed views,” with “guest house, elevator tram and boat dock.”

The Instagram pages for McGraw and his wife, a former Playboy model, portray a life of affluence, with photos of excursions to Paris, Napa Valley, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Cabo San Lucas and Palm Beach. There are golf outings and time on a yacht.

In Minto, people live in single-story log homes. They enjoy trapping wolves and beavers, hunting geese and watching school basketball games. Many worry about protecting the land and wildlife.

“Used to see a lot of moose by the village; right now just two,” minutes of a 2020 Minto fish and game advisory committee meeting state. “Global changes have really affected us.”

There are no outward signs in the village of a massive online lending operation. The headquarters listed on the Minto Money business license is the address of the tribe’s two-story lodge, which houses the tribal council offices, a nutrition program for elders, a community gathering space, and rooms rented to tourists and hunters.

The business license is signed by Shane Thin Elk, listed as commissioner of Minto’s financial regulatory body, tasked with oversight of the lending businesses. Thin Elk is a member of a different tribe and doesn’t live in Alaska. Reached by phone, he hung up on a reporter.

The tribe started with a single lending website — Minto Money — and later launched another, Birch Lending. Neither company lends to people in Alaska.

Once it got underway, the lending business took off. The Illinois lawsuit contends that “McGraw, CreditServe, and Welch have collected more than $500 million dollars from consumers” over the last four years.

Minto’s take was small in comparison. Still, it has made a difference.

ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News obtained documents for Minto Money showing dramatic growth, from $2 million in annual revenue in 2020 to nearly $7 million in 2022. A former tribal lending manager for the operation, Cameron Winfrey, said that in 2024 that figure reached $12 million for all its lending operations.

Online lending “has thus far surpassed all expectations and provided enormous benefits to our community,” Winfrey wrote to the Minto Village Council in a January 2024 letter.

In an accompanying report, he listed some of the benefits that the lending business generated. He noted that $1.8 million was distributed to the Village Council in 2023, up about 50% from the prior year. Money went to the Minto library and computer lab as well as community organizations.

Winfrey also wrote that $627,000 was paid out in salaries and benefits in 2023 for employees of the tribe’s economic development corporation, known as BEDCO, and its subsidiaries, which includes Minto Money. He told ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News that only a few people in Minto work for the lending operation.

Notably, the profit enabled the tribe to do what most tribes cannot: help fix its local school.

Yukon-Koyukuk School District Superintendent Kerry Boyd said the Minto tribe’s economic development corporation offered a surprise windfall when district officials discovered rising material and construction costs for a new gymnasium had increased the price tag by millions of dollars.

The tribe paid more than $3.2 million to finish the new gym, she said. A 2024 letter from BEDCO to the Minto tribal council stated that the money donated to the gym came from lending revenue.

In her more than 16 years running the district, Boyd had never seen such a generous donation. “I said, ‘Wow, this is almost unheard of.”

Many residents can’t say for sure where the lending money is going but point to newfound largesse. Folks get their heating fuel tanks filled by the tribal government. Some members receive “hardship” grants. There was money for a youth center. Musical instruments for the worship center. Dogsled races. A holiday party.

Still, some tribal members wonder why more money isn’t spread around. A handful of residents are calling for audits, greater transparency and federal investigations.

Some people thought the lending business would seed other economic development and lead to regular dividend checks. Instead, there is infighting and bitterness about who in the tribe receives the money. The division pits year-round Minto residents against members who live outside the village, in Fairbanks or elsewhere.

“If you don’t live in Minto, you don’t get shit,” said lending opponent Frank, the former chief. He is seeking an audit and a halt to the enterprise.

Once a tribe starts taking in large sums, it’s rare for internal disputes to go public.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” one tribal member said recently. “We’re blessed that we get all this money, and it’s a curse because with money comes greed.”

“And some people don’t know the difference.”

Isaacson, the non-tribal Alaskan who promoted the idea, has shrugged off concerns about legal problems.

In a 2023 email obtained by reporters, Isaacson wrote, “Lawsuits are the cost of doing business these days.” He noted that “in no century have money lenders ever been revered, but they have always been essential.” (Isaacson told reporters he no longer works on tribal lending operations and could not comment.)

The Minto tribe’s business entities have been sued in federal court by consumers at least 17 times. The tribe has argued that arbitration agreements signed by borrowers, as well as tribal sovereign immunity, protect the businesses from lawsuits. In at least one suit, it expressly denied the characterization of Minto Money as a “rent-a-tribe” operation.

Several federal cases have been dismissed on sovereign immunity grounds, but more often they have settled quickly without reaching the discovery phase that could reveal more details about the lending operation’s structure.

It’s unlikely that the legal risks will end with the private settlement in the Illinois case. Ten days after that settlement, the plaintiffs’ lawyers filed a new federal suit on behalf of three different borrowers, making the same allegations against McGraw, Welch, Minto Money and CreditServe. The latest suit adds a debt collection agency as a defendant.

Across the country, other tribal lending operations have been subject to large settlements in recent years, including a tribe in Wisconsin that also is alleged in federal lawsuits to have partnered with CreditServe, among other outside entities. That tribe, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, settled a federal class-action lawsuit in Virginia last year for $1.4 billion in loan forgiveness and $37 million in payments to customers and lawyers on the case. Of that, $2 million came from tribal council members named in the suit, while the rest came from business partners. (CreditServe was not named in the Virginia case or settlement.)

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which already had a spotty record of overseeing high-interest lending, is being gutted by the Trump administration. But a handful of states have pushed back against tribal lenders. In December, in response to complaints, the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions issued a warning advising consumers that Minto Money and Birch Lending are not registered to conduct business in the state. And in late April, the Massachusetts Division of Banks publicly advised borrowers to avoid predatory loans “including from tribal lenders,” listing Minto Money and Birch Lending as examples.

Minto Money already avoids lending in 10 states, primarily where attorneys have acted forcefully to protect consumers, though Massachusetts and Washington are not among the states it shuns.

In recent months, the tribal council consolidated its control over the lending business, removing Winfrey from both his position as Minto Money’s general manager and his seat on the council after a bitter dispute. Tribal leaders criticized his performance.

But Winfrey, who said Minto Money ranked among the country’s top-earning tribal lending businesses during his tenure, believed he was ousted because he had started asking too many questions about where the money was going.

He had planned to pitch the idea of tribal lending to other Alaska villages.

“They need the money,” he said one afternoon in February. But by May, he had met with only one community. Leaders there were wary of the idea, and Winfrey said that he, too, had started having second thoughts.

“They said, ‘Isn’t this a rent-a-tribe thing?’ I flat out said, ‘Yes. That’s exactly what it is.’ ”

The “tribe gets pennies,” he told an Anchorage Daily News reporter. “It should be the other way around, where the tribe gets all the funds and CreditServe gets crumbs.”

Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News, and Megan O’Matz and Joel Jacobs, ProPublica.

As May Day protests call for worker and immigrant rights, we talk to a New York father whose 19-year-old son Merwil Gutiérrez, with an open asylum case, was detained in the Bronx and then flown with over 230 other Venezuelans to a mega-prison in El Salvador, where he is being held incommunicado. Witnesses to Gutiérrez’s arrest say authorities were searching for a different person but, upon encountering the teenager, decided to arrest him simply because he is Venezuelan. He has no criminal history and no tattoos, the features Trump officials have used to accuse Latin American immigrants of being gang members and expel them from the country without due process. Wilmer Gutiérrez says he fears for his son’s safety. “We came here with a dream. We did not think that this injustice was ever going to happen … They shattered our dreams,” said Gutiérrez. We also speak with Ethar El-Katatney, editor-in-chief of Documented, the nonprofit newsroom that broke the story of Gutiérrez’s arrest. Wilmer Gutiérrez is calling on the governments of the United States and El Salvador to facilitate his son’s release. “My son is still a child. His mentality has not matured yet. And right now they are damaging his mind … They are violating all the laws and doing whatever they want.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Mahmoud remains unjustly detained in an ICE detention center over 1,000 miles away from his firstborn child. My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud. ICE and the Trump administration have stolen these precious moments from our family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud’s support for Palestinian freedom.

I will continue to fight every day for Mahmoud to come home to us. I know when Mahmoud is freed, he will show our son how to be brave, thoughtful, and compassionate, just like his dad.

The post On the Birth of Our Son, Without Mahmoud By My Side appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Noor Abdalla.

Global media freedom groups have condemned the Israeli occupation forces for assassinating two more Palestinian journalists covering the Gaza genocide, taking the media death toll in the besieged enclave to at least 208 since the war started.

Journalist and contributor to the Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher, Hossam Shabat, is the latest to have been killed.

Witnesses said Hossam’s vehicle was hit in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya. Several pedestrians were also wounded, reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: CPJ denounces Israel’s killing of 2 more Gaza journalists in return to war
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

in a statement, Al Jazeera condemned the killings, saying Hossam had joined the network’s journalists and correspondents killed during the ongoing war on Gaza, including Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul, and Ahmed Al-Louh.

Al Jazeera affirmed its commitment to pursue all legal measures to “prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists”.

The network also said it stood in “unwavering solidarity with all journalists in Gaza and reaffirms its commitment to achieving justice” by prosecuting the killers of more than 200 journalists in Gaza since October 2023.

The network extended its condolences to Hossam’s family, and called on all human rights and media organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists.

Hossam was the second journalist killed in Gaza yesterday.

House targeted
Earlier, the Israeli military killed Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for the Beirut-based Palestine Today television, in an attack targeting a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Al Jazeera condemns Israel’s killing of journalist Hossam Shabat in Gaza https://t.co/iJ6lscVahm

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 25, 2025

A fellow journalist circulated a video clip of Mansour’s father bidding farewell to his son with heartbreaking words, putting a microphone in his son’s hand and urging the voice that once conveyed the truth to a deaf world.

“Stand up and speak, tell the world, you are the one who tells the truth, for the image alone is not enough,” the father said through tears.

Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), condemned the killings, describing them as war crimes.

The CPJ called for an independent international investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted.

“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.

‘Nightmare has to end’
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, whose killings may have been targeted.”

Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza on March 18, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.

The occupation forces continued bombarding Gaza for an eighth consecutive day, killing at least 23 people in predawn attacks including seven children.

A UN official, Olga Cherevko, said Israel’s unhindered attacks on Gaza were a “bloody stain on our collective consciousness”, noting “our calls for this madness to stop have gone unheeded” by the world.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 792 people had been killed and 1663 injured in the week since Israel resumed its war on the Strip.

The total death toll since the war started on October 7, 2023, has risen to 50,144, while 113,704 people have been injured, it said.

West Bank ‘news desert’
Meanwhile, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the repression of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had intensified in recent months despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza before it collapsed.

In the eastern Palestinian territories, Israeli armed forces have shot at journalists, arrested them and restricted their movement.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has detained Al Jazeera journalists.

RSF warned of a growing crackdown, which was transforming the region into a “news desert”.

One of the co-directors of the Palestinian Oscar-winning film No Other Land, Hamdan Ballal, has been detained by Israeli forces. It happened after he was attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

He was in an ambulance receiving treatment when the doors were opened and he was abducted by the Israeli military. Colleagues say he has “disappeared”.

A number of American activists were also attacked, and video on social media showed them fleeing the settler violence.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

But the claim is misleading. It was Donald Trump Jr., not Barron, who called Zelenskyy a weirdo on social media. Barron has not made any social media comments on the Ukrainian leader.

The claim was shared by a Weibo user with more than three million followers on Jan. 20.

The Weibo post cited Barron as saying: “Zelenskyy seems out of his mind, like the inauguration will be different even though he’s not allowed to attend. What kind of a weirdo is he? He’s not welcome to attend.”

(Weibo)

Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States on Jan. 20, 2025, at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda due to extreme cold weather.

The event was attended by former U.S. presidents, including Joe Biden, and tech industry leaders such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, but Zelenskyy was not present.

But the claim about Barron mocking Zelenskyy is misleading.

Origin of the claim

The Weibo post featured an image of a report from Russia’s state-run broadcaster RT, which in turn cited an article from the Russian online news outlet Lenta. Lenta claimed that Barron had made a mocking comment on Instagram.

(RT and Lenta)

But a keyword search on Instagram found no posts published by Barron mocking Zelenskyy.

Barron, in fact, maintains a low-profile online presence without any accounts on major social media platforms, according to media reports.

Trump Jr., not Barron

Los Angeles-based broadcaster FOX 11 reported on Jan. 20 that Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., had uploaded a post on an Instagram Story mocking Zelenskyy.

(FOX 11 Los Angeles)

An Instagram Story is a feature on Instagram that allows users to share photos, videos, or text in posts that disappear after 24 hours.

The post by Donald Trump Jr., therefore, had also disappeared and was not available to check.

“The funniest part is that he asked for an invite like three times unofficially, and each time got turned down. Now he’s acting like he decided not to go himself … what a weirdo,” media reported, citing the post.

In an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Zelenskyy expressed a willingness to attend if invited, stating, “I can’t come, especially during the war, unless President Trump invites me personally.”

Trump, during a press conference on Dec. 16, 2024, mentioned that he had not invited Zelenskyy but added: “If he’d like to come, I’d like to have him.”

There is no substantial evidence to suggest that Zelenskyy repeatedly requested an invitation to Trump’s inauguration.

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.

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

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

Upon returning to the presidency, Donald Trump has granted presidential pardons to over 1,500 of his supporters involved in the violent January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, including members of far-right, anti-government militias like our guest’s father. Guy Wesley Reffitt helped lead the crowd that stormed the Capitol, just weeks after his then-18-year-old son Jackson attempted to warn the FBI about his plans. Jackson Reffitt now believes that Trump’s pardons will embolden far-right extremists to commit further political violence, including potential backlash against those close to them. “To completely validate actions like that is going to be explosive,” says Jackson Reffitt, who is now estranged from his family and fears for his own safety.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Police took away Chung’s wife and son from their home on Tuesday morning “to assist in a national security police investigation,” according to multiple local media reports.

Chung, 64, a former researcher for the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute left for the U.K. in April 2022 after being questioned amid a city-wide crackdown on public dissent and political opposition to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

He is accused -- alongside Carmen Lau, Tony Chung, Joseph Tay and Chloe Cheung -- of “incitement to secession” after he “advocated independence” on social media and repeatedly called on foreign governments to impose sanctions on Beijing over the crackdown, according to a police announcement.

“I don’t really know how to explain this -- I can’t read their minds,” he told RFA Cantonese in an interview on Tuesday, after his wife and son were questioned.

“Some say that maybe they’re sending some kind of a signal to intimidate us,” he said. “I don’t want to speculate on that.”

But he said a “capable and responsible” government should also be able to deal with public opinion research.

“[They] should understand that public opinion actually exists, regardless of how you deal with it,” he said. “A capable government should be able to face up that, and deal with it.”

The Institute has published a number of politically sensitive reports in recent years, including poor popularity scores for the city’s leaders, and people’s perceptions of disappearing press freedom.

Police announced a warrant for Chung Kim-wah’s arrest and a HK$1 million (US$128,400) bounty on his head in December, making him one of 19 overseas activists wanted by the Hong Kong government.

Since Beijing imposed two national security laws banning public opposition and dissent in the city, blaming “hostile foreign forces” for the protests, hundreds of thousands have voted with their feet amid plummeting human rights rankings, shrinking press freedom and widespread government propaganda in schools.

Some fled to the United Kingdom on the British National Overseas, or BNO, visa program. Others have made their homes anew in the United States, Canada, Australia and Germany.

Many are continuing their activism and lobbying activists, yet they struggle with exile in some way, worrying about loved ones back home while facing threats to their personal safety from supporters of Beijing overseas.

‘Intimidation’ tactics

The questioning of Chung’s family members came after national security police raided the home of the current head of the Institute, Robert Chung, to investigate whether he or the organization had provided any kind of assistance to Chung Kim-wah.

Chung Kim-wah told RFA Cantonese by text message that he hadn’t had any contact of any kind with Robert Chung since he left Hong Kong, other than a holiday greeting message.

He said the move could be a bid to intimidate the Institute ahead of its current research project on public opinion among Hong Kongers both in Hong Kong and overseas.

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National security police also said they had “conducted a surprise search on Jan. 13 based on a court warrant at a residential building and a commercial building unit on Hong Kong Island.”

While police declined to identify the person, he is widely assumed to have been the Institute’s current CEO, Robert Chung.

“The investigation believes that someone is suspected of using his organization to assist a wanted person who has fled overseas to continue to engage in acts endangering national security,” they said in a statement on the Hong Kong government website.

Police seized a batch of evidence, including computers, tablet devices, mobile phones and bank documents, and also “invited” a director and two staff members of the Institute to the police station to assist in the investigation, the statement said.

No arrests have yet been made in the investigation.

Ongoing investigation

Secretary for Security Chris Tang told journalists on Tuesday: “Whether or not this person or his organization assisted absconders has nothing to do with the research conducted by that organization.”

“We will only discover the truth through investigation,” he said.

Asked if public opinion researchers should now be worried about prosecution under the city’s national security legislation, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee warned people not to “contact, help or support” anyone who commits “crimes endangering national security.”

“As long as they do their work professionally and realistically and do not have any intention of endangering national security, I believe they can carry on their daily activities with peace of mind,” he told journalists on Tuesday.

Robert Chung told journalists on Jan. 9 that he had considered shutting down the Institute, but decided that it was better to continue for as long as it was allowed.

“I think, as a scientist and an intellectual, that I should speak the truth ... so we should do that because we are allowed to continue to search for such truth as we can find,” he said.

He said he had had “little contact” with Chung Kim-wah since he left Hong Kong.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Chen Zifei, Yam Chi Yau.

President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to a corrupt former judge has sparked widespread outrage, including from members of his own party. Biden announced nearly 1,500 commutations and pardons last week in what the White House described as the largest single-day act of clemency from a president, but among those whose sentences were reduced is former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan — one of two judges in the notorious “kids for cash” scandal. In 2011, Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years for accepting nearly $3 million in kickbacks for sending 2,300 children, some as young as 8 years old, to for-profit prisons on false charges. His co-conspirator, former Judge Mark Ciavarella, remains in prison. We speak with filmmaker Robert May, director of the Kids for Cash documentary, and Sandy Fonzo, mother of Edward Kenzakoski, who was incarcerated as a teenager as part of the kickback scheme and later died by suicide. “It’s just reopening wounds that have never healed,” Fonzo says of the commutation. She describes her son as “strong” and “proud” before his time in detention, but says “he came out broken” and never fully recovered. “It stole his youth, his childhood.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

But the claim is false. The video shows Putin awarding a Gold Star to a Russian soldier named Stepan Belov. Details about Putin’s family remain largely private, but he has previously confirmed having two daughters from his first marriage, which ended in divorce in 2014.

The video was shared on X on Nov. 30, 2024.

“Like Mao back in the day, Putin sent his son to the front in defense of his country. In contrast, the leaders of those aggressor countries just let their sons live it up in safety,” the X post reads.

A 20-second clip shows what appears to be an award ceremony featuring Putin and a man in military uniform. Putin pinned a medal on the man’s shirt and posed with him for a photo.

Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, sent his eldest son, Mao Anying, to fight in the Korean War. This decision was deemed significant and symbolic, reflecting Mao’s belief in personal sacrifice and his dedication to Communist ideals.

The same video and the claim were shared on TikTok and Threads.

But the claim is false.

A Russian lieutenant

A reverse image search found a photo that shows Putin and the same man posing together published by UPI news agency here on Dec. 20, 2022.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, awards Senior Lieutenant Stepan Belov with the Gold Star medal of the Hero of Russia during the ceremony for presenting state decorations of the Russian Federation at the Kremlin’s St. Catherine Hall in Moscow, Russia on December 20, 2022,” the caption of the photo reads.

Keyword searches found the identical video published on the website of Kremlin here.

“The honorary title of Hero of Russia was awarded to Senior Lieutenant Stepan Belov and Major Konstantin Shirokov,” the website reads.

“The highest state decorations will be presented to outstanding Russians for their activity in education, science, medicine and healthcare, industry, agriculture, maritime transport, and a number of other areas,” it reads further.

Stepan Belov

Belov was born in 1996 in the city of Oktyabrsky, Republic of Bashkortostan, in the family of Mikhail Gennadyevich and Tamara Vitalyevna Belovykh, according to the website “Heroes of the Fatherland.”

On Feb. 24, 2022, Belov took part in Russia’s special operation Ukraine, as Russia describes its invasion of its southern neighbor at that time. In February-April, his unit took part in combat operations in the Kyiv area, the website said.

AFCL has not been able to independently verify his connection with Putin.

Putin’s children

Details about Putin’s family remain largely private but he has previously confirmed having two daughters from his first marriage, which ended in divorce in 2014.

But the dissident Russian news outlet Dossier Center, citing unidentified sources, reported that Putin had two sons with former Olympic gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva, though Russian officials have denied that.

According to the Dossier Center, a first son was born in 2015, while a second son was born in 2019, which makes them around the ages of 9 and 5, as of 2024.

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.

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

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

• President Biden pardons his youngest son Hunter in a move that contradicts an earlier pledge not to do so.
• President Biden makes his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa with a stop visit to Angola, it’s meant to counter Chinese influence on the continent.
• State lawmakers kick off a special session requested by Governor Newsom to shore up the state for expected legal fights with Trump.
• Supreme Court considers arguments from e-cigarette firms that federal bans on flavored vapes are unfair.
• Fighting continues in Gaza as Israel and Hezbollah trade accusations of violations of the Lebanon Ceasefire.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 2, 2024 President Biden pardons his youngest son Hunter in a move that contradicts an earlier pledge not to do so. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

President Joe Biden on Sunday issued a “full and unconditional pardon” to his son Hunter, claiming the gun and tax cases against him — for which he faced possible prison time — were politically motivated. The outgoing president had repeatedly pledged not to use his office to help his son. Journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, says that while Biden’s move makes him a liar and hypocrite, Republican outrage over the pardon is also “ridiculous” given how expansively Donald Trump is expected to use the same authority. Hasan also notes that there are 40 people on federal death row and thousands more serving prison time for cannabis offenses whom Biden could help. “There’s so much a president could do with the presidential pardon power for good,” he says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

President Joe Biden on Sunday issued a “full and unconditional pardon” to his son Hunter, claiming the gun and tax cases against him — for which he faced possible prison time — were politically motivated. The outgoing president had repeatedly pledged not to use his office to help his son. Journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, says that while Biden’s move makes him a liar and hypocrite, Republican outrage over the pardon is also “ridiculous” given how expansively Donald Trump is expected to use the same authority. Hasan also notes that there are 40 people on federal death row and thousands more serving prison time for cannabis offenses whom Biden could help. “There’s so much a president could do with the presidential pardon power for good,” he says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Fried rice in China is often seen as a reference to an apocryphal story told in China that Mao Anying, a Korean War military officer, was trying to cook egg fried rice instead of taking shelter when he was killed by U.S. bombers on Nov. 25, 1950.

Mao Anying supposedly died after his location was discovered by the U.S. military because he broke blackout rules by kindling a cooking fire to make the dish.

Censors removed a Weibo post from the official account of MTR Shenzhen, a subsidiary of Hong Kong people-mover MTR Corp that runs Line 4 of the Shenzhen Metro, that read: “Which would you pick — curry fried rice or egg fried rice?”

The account typically focuses on developments on its trains and stations and local culture, food and drink, and the post was ostensibly intended to highlight some of the food options available in and around Guanlan Metro Station.

“Today’s a good day for egg fried rice,” commented a Weibo user from the southeastern province of Fujian.

“You must use firewood, otherwise there won’t be enough smoke,” quipped another from the southern province of Guangdong, in comments posted by the X citizen journalist account “Mr Li is not your teacher.”

MTR Shenzhen wasn’t the only account to reference the popular dish, with food blogger Wang Gang being slammed by nationalists as a “traitor” after a recent post.

Wang eventually issued a public apology, pledging: “I won’t make any more egg fried rice posts from now on.”

Accusations

Wang’s fried rice posts have become a regular feature of social media over the past five years, sparking accusations that he insulted the memory of Mao Zedong’s son with his online video tutorials.

Wang, who has several million followers, released similar videos in late November of 2023, 2018 and 2020, sparking a backlash on social media.

The anniversary of Mao Anying’s death, falling as it does in late November, has been jokingly referred to in China as “China’s Thanksgiving.”

The joke runs that the death of Mao’s son saved China from following a hereditary leadership model similar to the Kim dynasty in North Korea, something for which all Chinese nationals should remain thankful to this day.

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In 2021, Chinese internet censors shut down the social media account of a branch of the telecommunications giant China Unicom after it posted a recipe for egg fried rice to mark the Oct. 24 birthday of Mao Anying.

The official Weibo account of the Jiangsu division of China Unicom was shut down after complaints that it had “insulted the People’s Volunteers” who fought on the side of the North Korean communists against the United States.

“Little Pink” supporters of the ruling Chinese Communist Party called on each other to file complaints with the ministry of industry and information technology over the matter.

Earlier in the same month, authorities in the eastern province of Jiangxi have detained a man for allegedly “impeaching the reputation of heroes and martyrs” after he made comments about the Chinese Communist Party-backed Korean War propaganda blockbuster “The Battle of Changjin Lake.”

The man, who was identified only his surname Zuo, was jailed for a 10-day administrative sentence by police in Nanchang city after he posted an irreverent comment on the Sina Weibo social media platform under the username @yuediyouyou.

“That fried rice was the best thing to come out of the whole Korean War,” the user quipped in a post dated Oct. 8, 2021.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

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

Sebastien, who leads the #FreeJimmyLai campaign, last saw his father in August 2020 — weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law that led to a massive crackdown on pro-democracy advocates and journalists. Among them Lai, founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily.

After nearly four years in Hong Kong’s maximum-security Stanley Prison and multiple delays to his trial, the aging British citizen was due to take the stand for the first time on November 20 on charges of sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces, which he denies.

Lai, who has diabetes, routinely spends over 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, with only 50 minutes for restricted exercise and limited access to daylight, according to his international lawyers.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found that Lai is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for his release.

Responding to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred to a November 17 statement in which it said that Lai was “receiving appropriate treatment and care in prison” and that Hong Kong authorities “strongly deplore any form of interference.”

In an interview with CPJ, Sebastien spoke about Britain’s bilateral ties with China, as well as Hong Kong — a former British colony where his father arrived as a stowaway on a fishing boat at age 12, before finding jobs in a garment factory and eventually launched a clothing retail chain and his media empire.

What do you anticipate when your father takes the stand for the first time?

To be honest, I do not know. My father is a strong person, but the Hong Kong government has spent four years trying to break him. I don’t think they can break his spirit but with his treatment they are in the process of breaking his body. We will see the extent of that on the stand.

Your father turned 77 recently. How is he doing in solitary confinement?

The last time I saw my father was in August of 2020. I haven’t been able to return to my hometown since and therefore have been unable to visit him in prison. His health has declined significantly. He is now 77, and, having spent nearly four years in a maximum-security prison in solitary confinement, his treatment is inhumane. For his dedication to freedom, they have taken his away.

For his bravery in standing in defense of others, they have denied him human contact. For his strong faith in God, they have denied him Holy Communion.

We have seen governments across the political spectrum call for Jimmy Lai’s release —the U.S., the European Parliament, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Ireland, among others. What does that mean to you?

We are incredibly grateful for all the support from multiple states in calling for my father’s release. The charges against my father are sham charges. The Hong Kong government has weaponized their legal system to crack down on all who criticize them.

You met with the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently, who said Jimmy Lai’s case remains a priority and the government will press for consular access. What would you like to see Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government do?

They have publicly stated that they want to normalize relationships with China and to increase trade. I don’t see how that can be achieved if there is a British citizen in Hong Kong in the process of being killed for standing up for the values that underpin a free nation and the rights and dignity of its citizens.

Any normalization of the relationship with China needs to be conditional on my father’s immediate release and his return to the United Kingdom.

Your father’s life story in many ways embodies Hong Kong’s ‘never-give-up’ attitude. Do you think Hong Kong journalists and pro-democracy activists will keep on fighting? What is your message to Beijing and the Hong Kong government?

I think most of the world shares his spirit. Hong Kong is unique because it’s a city of refugees. It’s a city where we were given many of the freedoms of the free world. And as a result, it flourished. We knew what we had and what we escaped from.

My message is to release my father immediately. A Hong Kong that has 1,900 political prisoners for democracy campaigning, is a Hong Kong that has no rule of law, no free press, one that disregards the welfare of its citizens. This is not a Hong Kong that will flourish.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Beh Lih Yi.

Police said they heard complaints from four victims between 13 and 15 years old and have also spoken with four witnesses. Kamarudin Suhaimi was arrested on Tuesday, denied the charges in a court appearance and was being detained as police continue their investigation, according to Fresh News.

Suhaimi is the son of Sos Kamry, the chairman of the Highest Council for Islamic Religious Affairs in Cambodia. Kamry told the Khmer Times that the allegations were “a rumor” and that his son hasn’t committed any crimes.

Suhaimi had been the manager of security, hygiene and health at the girls’ dorm for the An-Nikmah Al-Islamiyah Phnom Penh Institute, which lists itself as an elementary school on its Facebook page.

He was relieved of those duties following complaints from students of inappropriate behavior and language directed toward students, the school said in an Oct. 12 statement.

The aunt of one of the alleged victims told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday that Suhaimi sexually assaulted her niece “a few times.”

“But my niece didn't dare to tell because she was threatened,” she said.

RFA was unable to contact Kamry for further comment on the charges against his son. National Police Chief Sar Thet was also unavailable for comment on Wednesday. 

Ny Sokha, president of human rights group Adhoc, praised the authorities’ actions and told RFA that he hopes police and prosecutors will give justice to the victims regardless of the suspect’s influential father. 

“We want to see justice for both sides. Authorities should be working on the case to show that it isn't under the influences of powerful people,” he said. 

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

The Sept. 20 sentence of Doeun Udamseney has been hailed by observers and legal experts in Cambodia who point to numerous other cases of fatal traffic accidents where high-profile government officials and businessmen have faced lenient punishment or no legal consequences at all.

Doeun, 25, is the son of Doeun Sovann, a secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior. He moved to Melbourne when he was 16 and was most recently a nursing student.

According to the Australian Associated Press, he was traveling at almost 200 kilometers per hour (125 mph) when he ran through a red light on May 15, 2023, and struck the side of a Honda carrying Santosh Adhikari, 32, and Pratima Thapa Adhikari, 22.

The speed limit on that stretch of road is 70 kph. Judge Jeanette Morrish said the light turned red about six seconds before the BMW entered the intersection. 

The couple had been on their way home after working at a retirement village. The collision caused their Honda to roll multiple times, according to the AAP. 

In announcing the verdict last week, Morrish said Doeun ignored repeated warnings that the light was red and made a conscious and deliberate choice to expose others to danger, according to Rochelle Brown, a reporter from Channel 7 Australia.

The sentence of 12 years and nine months is significantly more than the usual eight years in Victoria for someone convicted of culpable driving causing death, Brown told Radio Free Asia. Doeun will likely be deported to Cambodia when he is released.

“This is a serious consequence, a real consequence,” Meng Heang Tak, a Cambodian-Australian lawmaker in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, said in an interview with RFA.

“Our road rules are very strict, and they apply to everyone,” he said, citing Victoria’s adoption of Vision Zero, a strategy that aims to eliminate traffic fatalities. “So, for those who come from overseas, including those who come from Cambodia, please respect our road rules.”

Public outcry

The case shows the vast difference in how the law is implemented in Cambodia and Australia, environmentalist activist Ma Chetra said. 

“The Cambodian government should take preemptive measures by amending the law to deal with a devastating case like that so that they could severely punish a perpetrator who causes such a brutal accident,” he said.  

On Thursday, Prime Minister Hun Manet said the government will consider amending the criminal code to allow for longer sentences for driving-related deaths. The maximum penalty for traffic offenses in Cambodia is just five years in prison, he noted while speaking at a graduation ceremony at the Royal University of Law and Economics.

He was apparently responding to another recent traffic case – one in Cambodia where four people were killed last January when a former Ministry of Economy and Finance official crashed at high speed into several cars and motorcycles at a red light in Phnom Penh.

The former official, Neang Sam Aun, was found to have been drunk at the time. He was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison and fined 20 million riel (US$4,900).

The relatively light sentence brought a flood of criticism from Cambodians on social media, some of whom suggested that the law be changed to allow for sentences of between 10 and 20 years for drivers under the influence who cause deaths.

“He killed four people, but he was sentenced to only five years,” Phnom Penh resident Chhorn Mao told RFA. “It is not fair [for the victims]. If the law is not implemented fairly and properly, such accidents will continue to happen.”

In Cambodia, family members of victims of traffic accidents caused by the children of rich and powerful people know that justice is unlikely, according to Ly Sreysros of Phnom Penh-based Young Analyst Group.

“There have been many instances when powerful people have caused traffic accidents and prosecution wasn’t a priority until the public urged that the perpetrators be arrested,” she said.

Drag racing death

In 2021, Mondulkiri provincial Gov. Thong Savun was involved in a car accident that left two people dead. Authorities appear to have never conducted an investigation.

Last December, the 23-year-old son of a prominent lawyer eventually faced charges in a nighttime driving accident that killed a gold medal-winning badminton player. Witnesses said that two luxury cars were drag racing in a neighborhood when one of the cars struck a motorcycle.

But the driver, Prohm Vicheth Sosakada, at first fled the scene. He only turned himself into authorities almost two weeks later after another social media uproar.

Cambodians were outraged when the victim’s wife wrote on Facebook that Prohm’s father attended the funeral and offered the family US$1,000 if they agreed to not pursue criminal charges.

Another often-cited case was a 2013 hit-and-run crash that left a pregnant woman dead and her husband seriously injured in Kandal province south of Phnom Penh.

An SUV carrying National Assembly Vice President Cheam Yeap and driven by his bodyguard sped away from the scene after the collision, leaving the couple without medical assistance until 30 minutes after the crash.

Influential people in Cambodia have a long history of involvement in hit-and-runs of local people on the country’s highways, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director, Brad Adams, said at the time. 

“One reason the rule of law has not been established in Cambodia is that wealthy and powerful people often pay or threaten victims to keep quiet and not cooperate with criminal investigations,” he said.

The lack of justice for victims of traffic deaths continues in Cambodia and is another form of legal impunity, Ly Sreysros said. And if a culture of impunity persists, people could turn to illegal means, such as beating traffic offenders or even killing them, she said.

The Venerable Saing Rithy, a Buddhist monk at Wat Damrey Sar in Battambang, told RFA that police and prosecutors continue to take their orders from the prime minister instead of just following the law.

It’s unlikely that anyone will be arrested when the next fatal traffic accident involving a relative of a high-ranking official takes place, he said.

“We have to enforce the law, putting them in jail like other countries do,” he said. “We cannot tolerate bad role models anymore. We need to clean up from now on. If not, the issue will continue as people keep using money to buy out their crimes.”

Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

Several incidents of attacks on minorities have been reported from across Bangladesh in the wake of the ouster of erstwhile Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The head of the new interim government, Mohammad Yunus, has asserted that stopping such atrocities is a priority.

The video is being shared in that context.

News agency ANI first posted the video in question and later deleted their tweet. The caption said: “Bangladesh: A member of the minority Hindu community protesting with a poster of his missing son says “I will give my life but I want justice for my child. Where is my child? I have been going from door to door to inquire about my child but no one is listening to me”. This tweet and the information contained in it were amplified by several news outlets and social media users. (Archive)

News outlets such as Jagran, Hindustan, NDTV India, Mirror Now, too, reported on the desperate search of a Hindu man for his son. Most of the reports carried the video tweeted by ANI.

BALA (@erbmjha) was among individual X (Twitter) users who amplified the claim. They tweeted the clip on August 13 with the following caption: “‘I will give my life but I want justice for my child. Where is my child? I have been going from door to door to inquire about my child but no one is listening to me’. A helpless Hindu father had no choice left but to plead on road for justice for his missing son in Bangladesh” The tweet has received over 6.34 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 5,100 times. (Archive)

The above user (@erbmjha) has been found posting misinformation several times in the past.

“I will give my life but I want justice for my child. Where is my child? I have been going from door to door to inquire about my child but no one is listening to me”

A helpless Hindu father had no choice left but to plead on road for justice for his missing son in Bangladesh pic.twitter.com/N6kCzMLYXG

— BALA (@erbmjha) August 13, 2024

Several other users such as @MrSinha_, @VIKRAMPRATAPSIN, @RealBababanaras shared the viral video with the same claim. The tweets were subsequently deleted.

Fact Check

We noticed that after deleting their previous tweet, ANI issued a corrigendum sharing a screenshot of their deleted tweets with the following caption: “Correction: The below tweet has been deleted since this person is not from the minority Hindu community. Error regretted”.

Correction: The below tweet has been deleted since this person is not from the minority Hindu community. Error regretted. pic.twitter.com/EY8FBnJc1g

— ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2024

To find more details, we broke down the video into several key frames and ran a reverse image search on some of them. This led us to a Facebook Live that was posted by a Bangladeshi news outlet Barta24. The video was posted with a title in Bengali that can be translated as: “‘Return our loved ones, break the secret detention centres’ – Road blocked by family members of the disappeared during a human chain protest”. The elderly man seen in the viral video can be seen in this Facebook Live sitting on the street raising slogans of ‘Return our loved ones’, and ‘Free them’ alongside others. He could also be seen wearing a skull cap.

At the 1:45 mark of the video, the reporter asks the elderly man whose picture he is carrying and how that person went missing. He responds, “This is my older son Mohammed Sunny Hawladar and I am Babul Hawladar”. He further says that his elder son, Sunny, who was by profession a daily labourer and also a supporter of BNP (the erstwhile Opposition party in Bangladesh when Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League was in power) was taken away on January 10, 2013 and has been missing since. The man also says that he has been running from pillar to post for years trying to file a case. However, he was only met with rejection and threats that if he kept on persisting, both he and his younger son would be taken away in a similar fashion.

In the video, the reporter can be seen talking to other participants of the sit-in protest who share similar stories of missing family members.

Therefore, it is clear that this protest is not related to the minority protests.

We also found a news report by Prothom Alo from August 14 titled: “Demanding justice of those involved in the disappearance to the chief advisor”. The report carried an image of the protesters in which the elderly man seen in the viral video can also be seen.

The report mentioned that around 3 pm on August 13 family members of several missing persons gathered in front of the state guest house Jamuna on Hare Road with pictures and banners of their missing relatives. They demanded the return of their relatives who had gone missing when the Awami League party was in power. They also called for the immediate release of those still detained in ‘Ainaghar’ (secret detention centres).

Therefore, it is clear that the viral video of the elderly man does not show a Bangladeshi Hindu. The man in the video belongs to the Muslim community and was protesting against the disappearance of his son over a decade ago. The whole matter is unrelated to the ongoing crisis and attacks on minorities. A tweet with the false claim — that the man was a Hindu — by news agency ANI triggered incorrect reports and tweets by several outlets and individual X users. By the time ANI deleted the tweet and published a corrigendum, the false claim had gone viral.

Incidentally, a rally was organized by the minority communities in Bangladesh on August 13 at the same spot with an eight-point charter of demands. Mohammed Yunus met the chief coordinator of the protest rally, Prasenjit Kumar Halder, at the state guest house, Jamuna, on the same day. Following this, it was decided that the protests would remain suspended for three days.

The post Bangladeshi man in search of his son: False ‘Hindu’ claim by ANI triggers misinformation, media misreports appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

Abuzer Abdughapar, 24, who worked at a car dealership in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, was rearrested on March 25 by public security authorities, said his uncle Abdusattar Abdurusul, citing information from other relatives in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

He was supposed to get married on May 11, an event to which his relatives in Almaty had been invited, Abdusattar said.

The reason for Abuzer’s arrest is unknown, and authorities have not informed Abuzer’s family about his whereabouts.

Abuzer was first arrested and detained in 2017 in his hometown of Ghulja – or Yining in Chinese – after spending a year studying Turkey. He was sent to a “re-education” camp and released nearly a year later.  

His rearrest is an example of how authorities are apprehending Uyghur detainees, who have already served time in “re-education” camps or prisons, under various pretexts to eliminate what Chinese authorities deem “threats to national security.” 

Among those rearrested are entrepreneurs and philanthropists, and Uyghurs who have traveled abroad, especially to Muslim countries.

“I heard there [was] a 100-day clearance going on which entailed the rearrest of people who were arrested and released before,” Abdusattar said. “The Chinese government is trying to erase us.”  

Mutallib, the Almaty-based older brother of Abuzer’s grandmother, confirmed the young Uyghur’s rearrest.

“We heard he was arrested on March 25 and that he has not been released,” he said. “The wedding was paused as well. Up to now, we don’t know his whereabouts or the reason for his arrest.”

Chinese police officers at the Public Security Bureau in Urumqi refused to answer questions about Abuzer’s rearrest when contacted by RFA.

Father arrested in 2018

His father tried to bribe authorities in Urumqi to release Abuzer, but they lied to him and disappeared after receiving the money, Abdusattar said.

In 2018, authorities also arrested Abuzer’s father, Abdughapar Abdurusul, a prominent philanthropist and owner of a multimillion-dollar import-export company in Ghulja that does business with Kazakhstan, for taking an unsanctioned Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and “tax evasion,” Abdusattar said. They also detained Abuzer’s mother, Merhaba.

The family’s fixed assets, companies and houses worth more than several hundred million dollars were confiscated, he said.

Merhaba later died in a “re-education” camp. Abdughapar had been sentenced to death, but was released in 2020, said his older brother Abdusattar, a businessman who lives in Europe.

Abdusattar said he believes that Abuzer and Abdughapar were released after he went public about their detentions via Western media, including RFA.

Authorities re-arrested Abdughapar a second time in summer 2021, but released him a few months later, his brother said. The cause of his arrest is unknown.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur.

The voice-over narration in the video claims that after the passing of her husband, Jyoti Pathak became depressed and refused to talk to anyone. Further, it is narrated that the woman had spoken about her need for a ‘friend’ or a ‘partner’. Eventually, she thought it best to get married to her son.

This X post, by user @AmjadAsR, draws attention to the inappropriateness of the alleged marriage between the mother and son, and points out the hypocrisy of Hindus defaming Muslims on the basis of the similar allegation.

देखो हिन्दुओ विकास पाठक ने अपनी माँ-ज्योति पाठक से शादी करके बीबी बना लिया!

और तुम हलाल। के नाम पर मुसलामानों को बदनाम करते हो

सूचना= वीडियो सेव जरूर कर लेना!! pic.twitter.com/xKGKnqcAk4

— NATION MUSLIM (@AmjadAsR) June 23, 2024

Another verified X account, @Voice_OfMuslim, posted the video with the same claim. At the time of this article being written, the post has amassed 1.29 Lakh views, and more than 2,000 retweets.

विकास पाठक ने अपनी माँ-ज्योति पाठक से शादी करके बीबी बना लिया…

ये ट्विट Repost करके उन अंधभक्तों तक पहुंचाए जो हलाला पर गलत बयानबाजी करते है… pic.twitter.com/D7YoB6giAR

— Voice Of Indian Muslim (@Voice_OfMuslim) June 23, 2024

Fact Check

We noticed that the viral video comprised only one picture of the man and the woman. On running a reverse image search on this photo, we came across this article from February 2022, published by Outlook India. The article mentions that the woman’s name is Vijay Kumari, and her son is Kanhaiya.

According to the article, Vijay Kumari, who was implicated in a murder case in Kanpur in 1993, languished in prison for 20 long years, until her son, Kanhaiya, secured his mother’s release by paying the bail amount in 2013. Vijay Kumari was pregnant when she got involved in the case. She had given birth to her child in prison.

We ran a relevant keyword search to corroborate this finding, and came across several other reports published by prominent news agencies, like BBC News, Times of India, CNN, The Daily Star, International Business Times, New York Daily News, among others, which narrated the story of Vijay Kumari’s long imprisonment, despite having secured bail rights only a year after her conviction. Neither her husband nor her in-laws came to help her out. Kanhaiya worked at a garment factory from the age of 19 and secure her bail after paying of Rs. 5000 as surety.

To conclude, a video is being falsely shared across social media with the claim that a Hindu man by the name of Vikas Pathak married her mother, Jyoti Pathak. In reality, the photo of the mother-son duo dates back to 2013, and was taken after the son, Kanhaiya, had secured the bail release of her mother, Vijay Kumari, after twenty years of imprisonment.

Prantik Ali is an intern at Alt News.

The post Photo of mother-son duo falsely viral as Hindu woman marrying her son appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.

A federal jury found Hunter Biden guilty Tuesday of three felony charges for illegally purchasing a gun at a time when he was using drugs, making him the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be found guilty of a crime. “This was a fairly straightforward case,” says Ben Schreckinger, reporter for Politico. “Most criminal trials result in convictions. This wasn’t an exception.” Schreckinger lays out the political implications for President Joe Biden, compares this conviction to Trump’s criminal proceedings and explains Hunter Biden’s upcoming trial for tax fraud in California.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We spend the rest of our Memorial Day special with Nathan Thrall and Abed Salama, the author and subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book detailing the many bureaucratic barriers and indignities that make the lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation even more difficult. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy focuses on the 2012 death of Salama’s son, 5-year-old Milad, who was killed in a fiery bus crash during a school field trip to a theme park. What followed was a desperate daylong search by Salama and his family to locate Milad’s body across different cities and hospitals, encountering numerous barriers due to the Israeli occupation system, like different ID cards giving varying levels of access through military checkpoints, and lack of help from any Israeli authorities. “I think and I hope the book will make some changes and help us as Palestinians to live our lives as other people around the world,” says Salama. This interview first broadcast on October 5, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Sintash later learned that his father had been swept up in China’s 2017 crackdown on Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups. China has said its policies in Xinjiang, which involve reeducation camps, forced sterilization, and family separations, are in the name of counter-terrorism, but 51 United Nations member countries have accused the government of “crimes against humanity.”

Mamut, as a prominent intellectual who edited the state-owned Xinjiang Civilization and Tepakkur magazines, was sentenced to 15 years for “political crimes,” according to news reports. According to Sintash, his father’s decades of journalism drew the attention of the Chinese government in its efforts to quash the Uyghur cultural industry.

After initially fearing that speaking out could harm his 74-year-old father’s case, Sintash decided to go public about the detention in 2018; in 2020, he joined the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) in Washington, D.C. to be a “voice of voice-less Uyghurs.”

CPJ spoke with Sintash about his father’s love of journalism, restrictions on the press in Xinjiang, and what he knows of Mamut’s detention. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The Chinese foreign ministry did not reply to CPJ’s email requesting comment on Mamut’s arrest and sentencing.

What can you tell us about your father’s detention?

I initially thought my father was detained in 2018, but later learned it was actually in late 2017. Communication with my family in Urumqi [the capital of Xinjiang] has been severed since then, with China cutting off our ability to talk in late 2017 and early 2018. My mother told me, “We can no longer talk to you,” leaving me without any information about my father. In September of the following year, I sought to find out what had happened to him. Eventually, one of my neighbors who also lives overseas informed me that my father had been taken away from our neighborhood. This neighbor had heard the news from their family who witnessed my father being taken from his home. I was shocked by this revelation.

At the same time, I was considering what actions to take. I felt that raising my voice was the right decision, but I was extremely cautious. I was unsure of the exact steps to take or the words to use, as anything I said could potentially endanger my father further, given China’s unpredictable actions.

What was the media environment like in Xinjiang before your father’s arrest?

In 2016, a well-known writer, Yalqun Rozi, was detained and later sentenced to 15 years [for attempting to subvert the Chinese state], a fate similar to that of my father. My father visited the United States in January 2017 and stayed for a month, during which time he learned about the detention of Yalqun, a close friend. Yalqun had not been sentenced at that point but was under arrest, likely due to his publication of sensitive topics.

Yalqun had written extensively on various subjects, including Uyghur welfare, and had contributed many essays to my father’s journal, Xinjiang Civilization. Their past collaboration made my father concerned that Yalqun’s arrest might not be an isolated case.

Yalqun’s detention marked the beginning of a broader crackdown on Uyghur intellectuals. China targeted Uyghur intellectuals first in order to more successfully repress Uyghur identity. They began by arresting individuals and then expanded their investigation to a larger network of Uyghurs.

My father understood that this could happen, but we were uncertain about China’s next steps. After 2017, under [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s leadership, the situation became increasingly dire, reflecting the tense atmosphere of that time.

Can you tell us about Xinjiang Civilization, the magazine your father edited from 1985 until 2017?

The content in the magazine mainly focuses on culture, history, current affairs, the identity of Uyghurs, examining the shortcomings of the Uyghur nation and society, and opinion pieces. This was the main content before 2017, primarily when my dad was the sole editor-in-chief.

Interestingly, all the names of the journal’s editorial board members were removed in the third issue of 2017 just half a month before the mass detentions began in 2017. The content of the journal dramatically changed in its last publication. It now became filled with red Communist propaganda. Many of the members on the board were subsequently taken to re-education camps, including my dad. At least two of other members, Abduqadir Jalalidin and Arslan Abdulla, as well as my dad were sentenced to long prison terms.

Before the magazine’s third issue in 2017, its content mainly focused on Uyghur culture and literary works. However, after that issue, it primarily began publishing political content, which mostly revolves around studying Xi Jinping’s ideology. The next editor even wrote an open letter titled “Protecting the security of the ideological sphere is my priority,” in which he promised not to publish anything promoting “separatism,” “terrorism,” or “two-faced” behavior. The letter followed two articles written by Uyghur officials calling the readers to “protect the unity of the nations with hearts and protect the homeland with loyalty.”

What was your father’s relationship to his journalistic work? 

My father was the sole editor; there were no secondary editors. However, he had two assistants who could be considered as secondary editors, but their main role was typing and assisting with computer-related tasks. My father worked tirelessly, often putting in 16-hour days. He would work at the office, come home for a quick meal, and then continue working late into the night, spending countless hours at his desk.

Your father was quite well known for his journalism. How was he seen in the Uyghur community? 

My father was an exceptional teacher, not through writing himself, but by curating and compiling works from other writers. He focused on selecting the right topics, aiming to present the truth without imposing his own opinions on the journal.

He steered clear of politics, especially avoiding any praise of the Chinese Communist Party or spreading its propaganda, which some writers and editors did to secure better positions and ensure their safety. My father, however, sought out authentic voices who could present genuine work, which is why the journal promoted many unknown writers who eventually became famous. The platform allowed them to express the truth.

While my father didn’t publicly express his own views, he was frequently interviewed on TV talk shows due to his extensive knowledge of Uyghur culture. These appearances contributed to his fame. During the 1990s and 2000s, there was a period when Uyghurs enjoyed a degree of freedom to discuss their identity, language, and other aspects of their culture — a stark contrast to the current situation.

Did your father face retribution for his journalism before his imprisonment? 

My father was called in for questioning in 2004, although he didn’t face persecution or punishment. This was related to an opinion piece published in his journal about the Uyghur language. At that time, Xinjiang authorities were starting to phase out the Uyghur language from schools and universities, replacing it with Chinese in subjects like mathematics and other majors.

The writer of the piece was arrested, and my father was questioned by the security bureau and China’s intelligence department. To avoid worrying us, my father never shared the full details of what happened.

You believe your father was arrested for his journalism. Why? 

After his retirement in 2011 [from Xinjiang Civilization], my father didn’t stop working. He continued to serve on the editorial board of Xinjiang Civilization, and became the head editor of a newly established magazine called Tepakkur. The magazine, published by the state-run Xinjiang Juvenile Publishing House, or Chiso, gained popularity due to my father’s reputation. “Tepakkur” means “think.” My father, invited to be the editor-in-chief, established this magazine to have more freedom and flexibility in selecting topics.It was not available digitally, only in print, and this was just before the mass arrests began around 2014-2015. As a result, I don’t have a copy and haven’t read the articles, but the journal was well-regarded by its readers.

Can you tell us about your work at RFA? Has your father’s imprisonment made you rethink your personal safety, especially while covering Xinjiang?

I joined RFA because my fear diminished as I became more vocal in advocating for other Uyghurs. I couldn’t remain silent; I had to speak the truth. My mindset became open, ready to face any challenge. Many Uyghurs, concerned for their safety and their families’, avoid RFA and don’t pursue journalism there. But for me, there were no limits. I saw RFA as the only true voice for Uyghurs worldwide, so I joined to work for my people.

As for my efforts to free my father, it’s been an emotionally challenging task. I’ve been in constant communication with organizations, governments, NGOs, and even the United Nations, explaining my father’s situation and speaking to the media. My work extends beyond my father to all Uyghurs and our culture, which I learned to preserve from my father.

Editor’s note: CPJ did not include Qurban Mamut in its previous prison censuses because its researchers at the time could not confirm that his arrest was journalism related.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Iris Hsu.

Social media users amplified the photo claiming that Kharge was being disrespectful to the late PM. “….(this) proves they have no respect for Rao”, wrote one such user. (Archives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

The image is also viral on Facebook with the same claim.

Fact Check

Alt News found that the official YouTube channel of the President of India had live-streamed the ceremony. Around the 1:58-minute mark in the live stream, PV Narasimha Rao’s son PV Prabhakar Rao was called for the presentation of the award. The audience broke into applause and the Mallikarjun Kharge, sitting in the front row, was seen clapping along with everybody else.

After Rao received the honour on behalf of his father, he was also seen shaking hands with Kharge at 2:52.

Hence it is clear that the image was clicked at a point when Kharge was not clapping. However, video evidence disproves the claim that Kharge disrespected PV Narasimha Rao by not clapping when the former Prime Minister received the Bharat Ratna award, India’s highest civilian honour, posthumously. Kharge applauded when Rao’s name was announced and later shook hands with the latter’s son, who received the honour on his father’s behalf.

The post Kharge did clap when Narasimha Rao’s son received the Bharat Ratna on his father’s behalf; contrary claims baseless appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

Many received all of the 120 votes during an extraordinary session chaired by Khuon Sudary, President of the National Assembly on Wednesday, local media reported. 

Many, 41, is the youngest son of Cambodian People’s Party president Hun Sen, 71, who stepped down as prime minister after last year’s national elections in favor of eldest son Hun Manet, 45.

The presumably proud father was not in the country to witness Many’s appointment.

Hun Sen was in Bangkok visiting Thaksin Shinawatra at the former Thai prime minister’s private residence after traveling “gangsta style,” according to Human Rights Watch Deputy Asian Director Phil Robertson. 

“So much for ‘good governance’ or ‘human rights’ in the Mekong sub-region,” Robertson posted on X.

Thaksin was released from the Police General Hospital on Sunday, after being held there due to ill health for six months on corruption charges following his return from exile. 

Hun Sen provided Thaksin with sanctuary during his 15-year exile, allowing him to visit frequently as a special advisor to Cambodia.

His son’s appointment was not unexpected. On Feb. 16, exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy said  Hun Many’s elevation to deputy prime minister would show, “this regime is a feudal clan, as far away from public accountability as any in the world.”

Hun Sen was Cambodia’s prime minister from 1985 to 2023, the longest-serving premier in the country’s history.

Edited by Elaine Chan and Taejun Kang.

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

It was the first public communication from her since late 2022, when the junta barred her legal team from visiting her in prison, and the first time he had heard from her since before the Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat that removed the democratically elected government from power.

After the coup, the ruling junta sentenced Suu Kyi to 33 years in prison on 19 charges, including corruption. In August, her sentence was reduced to 27 years after she was pardoned for five cases.

Suu Kyi, 78, is suffering from medical and dental problems, including gingivitis, sources have told Radio Free Asia, but the junta has denied her outside medical treatment.

On Jan. 21, Myanmar’s Supreme Court ordered the auction of her family lakeside villa in Yangon, where she spent more than 15 years under house arrest. The starting price is US$90 million. There is a decades-long ownership dispute between Suu Kyi and her estranged older brother, Aung San Oo, who says the house is his.

Last year, Aris, 47, who is based in the United Kingdom, began a new campaign to free her by trying to draw worldwide attention to her incarceration.

In an exclusive interview, RFA Burmese reporter Soe San Aung spoke with Aris. The content has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: What is your reaction to the junta’s plans to auction off your mother’s house at 54 University Avenue Road in Yangon? 

Aris: I was sorry to hear that. This auction is going to go ahead. I know my mother was wanting to use that property for her charities in the future, but at the moment she has no say in what’s happening since she’s locked up, and she’s not even allowed to see her lawyers. So, I know that in the past, she has contested my uncle’s claim on the property, and I know that she would still do so if she had freedom.

RFA: How was Suu Kyi planning to use the property for charities?

Aris: I don't know exactly what she was going to use it for, but she set up the charity in her mother’s name, the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation. I knew it was going to be used for that, but I believe the military has stripped her of all the assets that she has built up for those various charities. So, I don't know what’s going to happen there.

RFA: Can you recall any memories you have of the house?

Aris: I have many memories of that house going back to before my grandmother died. And then, obviously, I was there when my grandmother was dying and for her funeral. When [my mother] was first put under house arrest, I was there as well. And I’ve been back since she was freed from house arrest. So, I have good memories of that house. 

Even though some of those memories may not sound that good, they’re good memories for me. For instance, being with her when she was put under house arrest. It may not sound like a particularly good time, and it wasn’t a good time, but it's still a good memory for me.

RFA: Have you heard anything about the care package that you sent to your mother last year?

Aris: I sent a care package last year when we heard that she was not well, and I was given the go-ahead to send a care package. She finally received that at the end of last year, and I received a letter back from her this month. This is the first I have heard from her since before the coup.

RFA: What did the letter say?

Aris: It’s just to do with family and to say that the care package arrived safely. There’s really very little to say. It’s just sending love to the rest of the family and saying that she’s in good spirits. Her spirit is strong, even if her health is not as good as it was in the past.

RFA: Has the junta contacted you about your request to meet with your mother?

Aris: No, they haven’t contacted me at all. I’m still trying to have contact with her regularly, hopefully. But, so far we have only managed to have this one communication.

RFA: Is she in good health?

Aris: I believe she is in reasonable health. I think she has ongoing issues with her teeth and with problems with her neck as well. So, I know she has some of the ongoing health concerns.

RFA: How did you get the letter?

Aris: Through the British Foreign Office.

RFA: When did you receive it?

The date when I got the letter was about two weeks ago, so in mid-January.

RFA: What was written in Aung San Suu Kyi’s handwriting?

Aris: Yes, it was photocopied, and they emailed me the photocopy. I now have the hard copy in my hands as well.

RFA: It’s almost been three years since the military coup d'état and the subsequent fighting between junta and resistance forces and ethnic armies. Where’s this heading?

Aris: Well, I hope that the fighting will stop. It’s been going on for far too long as it is. I know that my mother would be desperately sad to see the situation the country is in at the moment. It’s very hard to say from the outside. It’s very hard to see what’s happening in Burma, really, on the ground. I’m sure even the people inside Burma don’t actually know what’s happening because there are so many different factions involved. So, we can only hope that things will get better sooner rather than later.

RFA: What’s your message for the Burmese people?

Aris: I hope that they can stay strong and keep fighting. Do not give up. I know that it seems like the rest of the world isn’t thinking about what’s happening in Burma, but it’s not true. Just because the media doesn’t show what’s happening doesn’t mean that other people aren’t thinking about what’s happening, and they’re trying to do everything they can to help. So, I hope the fighting will stop soon, and in the meantime, keep on staying strong.

RFA: What’s your message for the junta and your uncle regarding the auction?

Aris: I would say that my uncle has never had any rights to that property since he’s an American citizen, and according to Burmese law, people who are not Burmese citizens can’t hold property or profit from the sale of any property in Burma. The fact that my mother has lived in that house for many years and looked after their mother while she was dying, means that she has more claim to that property than anybody else. 

And I hope that she will be able to use it for the purposes that she intended it for — in other words, to benefit all of Burma. I’m sure that if the property gets sold, that money will disappear because the military will take anything that belongs to my mother, and my uncle will take the rest of the money, and it won’t be used for anything within Burma.

Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

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

Listen to the Talking China In Eurasia podcast

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Welcome back to the China In Eurasia Briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter tracking China's resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

I'm RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish and here's what I'm following right now.

As Huthi rebels continue their assault on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the deepening crisis is posing a fresh test for China’s ambitions of becoming a power broker in the Middle East – and raising questions about whether Beijing can help bring the group to bay.

Finding Perspective: U.S. officials have been asking China to urge Tehran to rein in Iran-backed Huthis, but according to the Financial Times, American officials say that they have seen no signs of help.

Still, Washington keeps raising the issue. In weekend meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bangkok, U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan again asked Beijing to use its “substantial leverage with Iran” to play a “constructive role” in stopping the attacks.

Reuters, citing Iranian officials, reported on January 26 that Beijing urged Tehran at recent meetings to pressure the Huthis or risk jeopardizing business cooperation with China in the future.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that China would want to bring the attacks to an end. The Huthis have disrupted global shipping, stoking fears of global inflation and even more instability in the Middle East.

This also hurts China’s bottom line. The attacks are raising transport costs and jeopardizing the tens of billions of dollars that China has invested in nearby Egyptian ports.

Why It Matters: The current crisis raises some complex questions for China’s ambitions in the Middle East.

If China decides to pressure Iran, it’s unknown how much influence Tehran actually has over Yemen’s Huthis. Iran backs the group and supplies them with weapons, but it’s unclear if they can actually control and rein them in, as U.S. officials are calling for.

But the bigger question might be whether this calculation looks the same from Beijing.

China might be reluctant to get too involved and squander its political capital with Iran on trying to get the Huthis to stop their attacks, especially after the group has announced that it won’t attack Chinese ships transiting the Red Sea.

Beijing is also unlikely to want to bring an end to something that’s hurting America’s interests arguably more than its own at the moment.

U.S. officials say they’ll continue to talk with China about helping restore trade in the Red Sea, but Beijing might decide that it has more to gain by simply stepping back.

Three More Stories From Eurasia

1. ‘New Historical Heights’ For China And Uzbekistan

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev made a landmark three-day visit to Beijing, where he met with Xi, engaged with Chinese business leaders, and left with an officially upgraded relationship as the Central Asian leader increasingly looks to China for his economic future.

The Details: As I reported here, Mirziyoev left Uzbekistan looking to usher in a new era and returned with upgraded diplomatic ties as an “all-weather” partner with China.

The move to elevate to an “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership” from a “comprehensive strategic partnership” doesn’t come with any formal benefits, but it’s a clear sign from Mirziyoev and Xi on where they want to take the relationship between their two countries.

Before going to China for the January 23-25 trip, Mirziyoev signed a letter praising China’s progress in fighting poverty and saying he wanted to develop a “new long-term agenda” with Beijing that will last for “decades.”

Beyond the diplomatic upgrade, China said it was ready to expand cooperation with Uzbekistan across the new energy vehicle industry chain, as well as in major projects such as photovoltaics, wind power, and hydropower.

Xi and Mirzoyoev also spoke about the long-discussed China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, with the Chinese leader saying that work should begin as soon as possible, athough no specifics were offered and there are reportedly still key disputes over how the megaproject will be financed.

2. The Taliban’s New Man In Beijing

In a move that could lay the groundwork for more diplomatic engagement with China, Xi received diplomatic credentials from the Taliban’s new ambassador in Beijing on January 25.

What You Need To Know: Mawlawi Asadullah Bilal Karimi was accepted as part of a ceremony that also received the credential letters of 42 new envoys. Karimi was named as the new ambassador to Beijing on November 24 but has now formally been received by Xi, which is another installment in the slow boil toward recognition that’s under way.

No country formally recognizes the Taliban administration in Afghanistan, but China – along with other countries such as Pakistan, Russia, and Turkmenistan – have appointed their own envoys to Kabul and have maintained steady diplomatic engagement with the group since it returned to power in August 2021.

Formal diplomatic recognition for the Taliban still looks to be far off, but this move highlights China’s strategy of de-facto recognition that could see other countries following its lead, paving the way for formal ties down the line.

3. China’s Tightrope With Iran and Pakistan

Air strikes and diplomatic sparring between Iran and Pakistan raised difficult questions for China and its influence in the region, as I reported here.

Both Islamabad and Tehran have since moved to mend fences, with their foreign ministers holding talks on January 29. But the incident put the spotlight on what China would do if two of its closest partners entered into conflict against one another.

What It Means: The tit-for-tat strikes hit militant groups operating in each other’s territory. After a tough exchange, both countries quickly cooled their rhetoric – culminating in the recent talks held in Islamabad.

And while Beijing has lots to lose in the event of a wider conflict between two of its allies, it appeared to remain quiet, with only a formal offer to mediate if needed.

Abdul Basit, an associate research fellow at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told me this approach reflects how China “shies away from situations like this,” in part to protect its reputation in case it intervenes and then fails.

Michael Kugelman, the director of the Wilson Center's South Asia Institute, added that, despite Beijing’s cautious approach, China has shown a willingness to mediate when opportunity strikes, pointing to the deal it helped broker between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March.

“It looks like the Pakistanis and the Iranians had enough in their relationship to ease tensions themselves,” he told me. “So [Beijing] might be relieved now, but that doesn't mean they won't step up if needed.”

Across The Supercontinent

China’s Odd Moment: What do the fall of the Soviet Union and China's slowing economy have in common? The answer is more than you might think.

Listen to the latest episode of the Talking China In Eurasia podcast, where we explore how China's complicated relationship with the Soviet Union is shaping the country today.

Invite Sent. Now What? Ukraine has invited Xi to participate in a planned “peace summit” of world leaders in Switzerland, Reuters reported, in a gathering tied to the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

Blocked, But Why? China has suspended issuing visas to Lithuanian citizens. Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis confirmed the news and told Lithuanian journalists that “we have been informed about this. No further information has been provided.”

More Hydro Plans: Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Energy and the China National Electric Engineering Company signed a memorandum of cooperation on January 24 to build a cascade of power plants and a new thermal power plant.

One Thing To Watch

There’s no official word, but it’s looking like veteran diplomat Liu Jianchao is the leading contender to become China’s next foreign minister.

Wang Yi was reassigned to his old post after Qin Gang was abruptly removed as foreign minister last summer, and Wang is currently holding roles as both foreign minister and the more senior position of director of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission Office.

Liu has limited experience engaging with the West but served stints at the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog and currently heads a party agency traditionally tasked with building ties with other communist states.

It also looks like he’s being groomed for the role. He recently completed a U.S. tour, where he met with top officials and business leaders, and has also made visits to the Middle East.

That’s all from me for now. Don’t forget to send me any questions, comments, or tips that you might have.

Until next time,

Reid Standish

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Prohm Vicheth Sosakada, 23, was sent to PJ Prison in Phnom Penh on Sunday, according to Nuth Savana, the Interior Ministry’s spokesperson for the Department of Prisons.

The announcement on Wednesday comes after numerous Cambodians posted messages on social media doubting whether authorities really had Prohm in custody.

The Dec. 14 accident between a jeep and a motorcycle in Phnom Penh’s Toul Kork district left SEA Games badminton champion Seang Kimhong dead. 

Evidence proves that Prohm was the driver of the car and fled the scene “without responsibility,” prosecutor Plong Sophal wrote in an arrest warrant. Police said this week that they were also investigating the possibility that a second driver was racing with Prohm.

Cambodians were outraged when the victim’s wife wrote on Facebook that Prohm’s father attended the funeral and offered the family US$1,000 if they agreed to not pursue criminal charges.

Justice Minister Keut Rith responded by ordering Phnom Penh Municipal Court prosecutors to “investigate and resolve the matter properly and strictly.” The arrest warrant was issued soon afterward.

Intervention from Hun Manet

Prime Minister Hun Manet on Dec. 21 instructed traffic police officers to immediately arrest reckless drivers who caused deadly accidents. Officers don’t need to wait for instructions from top-ranking officers, he said at a ceremony at the Ministry of Environment in Phnom Penh. 

“I will take action against those who punish police officers for their work,” he said. 

“What will happen to our society if police officers enforce the law and they later receive punishment from [powerful] individuals? Our law must be enforced if there is enough proof of drunk driving or hit-and-run.” 

Prominent suspects are often able to escape justice in Cambodia when they are accused of a crime.

But following the prime minister’s comments, Prohm voluntarily turned himself in at the Commissariat of Phnom Penh Municipal Police.

The president of human rights group Adhoc told Radio Free Asia that without the prime minister’s intervention, the suspect would not have been arrested or been sent to detention by authorities. 

“To what extent will they enforce the law against the person who caused the accident?” Ny Sokha said. 

“Is it according to legal procedure or just intermittent enforcement? Or is it just to reduce the sentence or a show for the public to calm down public criticism? Will they release the suspect later on?”

Seang Kimhong won the gold medal in badminton at this year’s SEA Games, a regional Olympiad that takes place every two years and was hosted by Cambodia for the first time in May.

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

Prohm Vicheth Sosakada, 23, was sent to PJ Prison in Phnom Penh on Sunday, according to Nuth Savana, the Interior Ministry’s spokesperson for the Department of Prisons.

The announcement on Wednesday comes after numerous Cambodians posted messages on social media doubting whether authorities really had Prohm in custody.

The Dec. 14 accident between a jeep and a motorcycle in Phnom Penh’s Toul Kork district left SEA Games badminton champion Seang Kimhong dead. 

Evidence proves that Prohm was the driver of the car and fled the scene “without responsibility,” prosecutor Plong Sophal wrote in an arrest warrant. Police said this week that they were also investigating the possibility that a second driver was racing with Prohm.

Cambodians were outraged when the victim’s wife wrote on Facebook that Prohm’s father attended the funeral and offered the family US$1,000 if they agreed to not pursue criminal charges.

Justice Minister Keut Rith responded by ordering Phnom Penh Municipal Court prosecutors to “investigate and resolve the matter properly and strictly.” The arrest warrant was issued soon afterward.

Intervention from Hun Manet

Prime Minister Hun Manet on Dec. 21 instructed traffic police officers to immediately arrest reckless drivers who caused deadly accidents. Officers don’t need to wait for instructions from top-ranking officers, he said at a ceremony at the Ministry of Environment in Phnom Penh. 

“I will take action against those who punish police officers for their work,” he said. 

“What will happen to our society if police officers enforce the law and they later receive punishment from [powerful] individuals? Our law must be enforced if there is enough proof of drunk driving or hit-and-run.” 

Prominent suspects are often able to escape justice in Cambodia when they are accused of a crime.

But following the prime minister’s comments, Prohm voluntarily turned himself in at the Commissariat of Phnom Penh Municipal Police.

The president of human rights group Adhoc told Radio Free Asia that without the prime minister’s intervention, the suspect would not have been arrested or been sent to detention by authorities. 

“To what extent will they enforce the law against the person who caused the accident?” Ny Sokha said. 

“Is it according to legal procedure or just intermittent enforcement? Or is it just to reduce the sentence or a show for the public to calm down public criticism? Will they release the suspect later on?”

Seang Kimhong won the gold medal in badminton at this year’s SEA Games, a regional Olympiad that takes place every two years and was hosted by Cambodia for the first time in May.

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

Prohm Vicheth Sosakada, 23, was sent to PJ Prison in Phnom Penh on Sunday, according to Nuth Savana, the Interior Ministry’s spokesperson for the Department of Prisons.

The announcement on Wednesday comes after numerous Cambodians posted messages on social media doubting whether authorities really had Prohm in custody.

The Dec. 14 accident between a jeep and a motorcycle in Phnom Penh’s Toul Kork district left SEA Games badminton champion Seang Kimhong dead. 

Evidence proves that Prohm was the driver of the car and fled the scene “without responsibility,” prosecutor Plong Sophal wrote in an arrest warrant. Police said this week that they were also investigating the possibility that a second driver was racing with Prohm.

Cambodians were outraged when the victim’s wife wrote on Facebook that Prohm’s father attended the funeral and offered the family US$1,000 if they agreed to not pursue criminal charges.

Justice Minister Keut Rith responded by ordering Phnom Penh Municipal Court prosecutors to “investigate and resolve the matter properly and strictly.” The arrest warrant was issued soon afterward.

Intervention from Hun Manet

Prime Minister Hun Manet on Dec. 21 instructed traffic police officers to immediately arrest reckless drivers who caused deadly accidents. Officers don’t need to wait for instructions from top-ranking officers, he said at a ceremony at the Ministry of Environment in Phnom Penh. 

“I will take action against those who punish police officers for their work,” he said. 

“What will happen to our society if police officers enforce the law and they later receive punishment from [powerful] individuals? Our law must be enforced if there is enough proof of drunk driving or hit-and-run.” 

Prominent suspects are often able to escape justice in Cambodia when they are accused of a crime.

But following the prime minister’s comments, Prohm voluntarily turned himself in at the Commissariat of Phnom Penh Municipal Police.

The president of human rights group Adhoc told Radio Free Asia that without the prime minister’s intervention, the suspect would not have been arrested or been sent to detention by authorities. 

“To what extent will they enforce the law against the person who caused the accident?” Ny Sokha said. 

“Is it according to legal procedure or just intermittent enforcement? Or is it just to reduce the sentence or a show for the public to calm down public criticism? Will they release the suspect later on?”

Seang Kimhong won the gold medal in badminton at this year’s SEA Games, a regional Olympiad that takes place every two years and was hosted by Cambodia for the first time in May.

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

Prohm Vicheth Sosakada, 23, was sent to PJ Prison in Phnom Penh on Sunday, according to Nuth Savana, the Interior Ministry’s spokesperson for the Department of Prisons.

The announcement on Wednesday comes after numerous Cambodians posted messages on social media doubting whether authorities really had Prohm in custody.

The Dec. 14 accident between a jeep and a motorcycle in Phnom Penh’s Toul Kork district left SEA Games badminton champion Seang Kimhong dead. 

Evidence proves that Prohm was the driver of the car and fled the scene “without responsibility,” prosecutor Plong Sophal wrote in an arrest warrant. Police said this week that they were also investigating the possibility that a second driver was racing with Prohm.

Cambodians were outraged when the victim’s wife wrote on Facebook that Prohm’s father attended the funeral and offered the family US$1,000 if they agreed to not pursue criminal charges.

Justice Minister Keut Rith responded by ordering Phnom Penh Municipal Court prosecutors to “investigate and resolve the matter properly and strictly.” The arrest warrant was issued soon afterward.

Intervention from Hun Manet

Prime Minister Hun Manet on Dec. 21 instructed traffic police officers to immediately arrest reckless drivers who caused deadly accidents. Officers don’t need to wait for instructions from top-ranking officers, he said at a ceremony at the Ministry of Environment in Phnom Penh. 

“I will take action against those who punish police officers for their work,” he said. 

“What will happen to our society if police officers enforce the law and they later receive punishment from [powerful] individuals? Our law must be enforced if there is enough proof of drunk driving or hit-and-run.” 

Prominent suspects are often able to escape justice in Cambodia when they are accused of a crime.

But following the prime minister’s comments, Prohm voluntarily turned himself in at the Commissariat of Phnom Penh Municipal Police.

The president of human rights group Adhoc told Radio Free Asia that without the prime minister’s intervention, the suspect would not have been arrested or been sent to detention by authorities. 

“To what extent will they enforce the law against the person who caused the accident?” Ny Sokha said. 

“Is it according to legal procedure or just intermittent enforcement? Or is it just to reduce the sentence or a show for the public to calm down public criticism? Will they release the suspect later on?”

Seang Kimhong won the gold medal in badminton at this year’s SEA Games, a regional Olympiad that takes place every two years and was hosted by Cambodia for the first time in May.

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

“At the end of December 2015, my father came for a trip to Egypt,” said Nureli Nuraxun, now 22 and an engineer at an aluminum factory in Turkey. 

“He stayed there for a week and traveled in Turkey for another week, then went back home,” Nureli told Radio Free Asia. “After he went back, his passport was confiscated, and he was not allowed to go abroad again.”

Sixteen months after his return, authorities sent him to a detention camp in April 2017 during the height of mass internment of Uyghurs in “re-education” camps under Chinese authorities’ guise of providing vocational training to prevent religious extremism and terrorism, Nureli said. 

Nuraxun, now 49, was later sentenced to 20 years in prison in August 2018 for sending his child abroad to study, helping his son while he was in Egypt and for traveling abroad, his son said.

Nureli, who had not previously disclosed his family situation to the media to avoid complicating his father’s case, said he recently decided to reveal it after realizing that his silence was useless.

The Uyghur from the Ara community of Kepekyuzi village in Ghulja, known as Yining in Chinese, is serving his sentence in Kunes Prison, according to an officer at the Kepekyuzi Police Station contacted by RFA.

“A total of 50-60 people are serving in Kunes Prison,” he said. “They are from places like Kepekyuzi and Turpan. They were all arrested around 2017, the same year as Nuraxun.”

The policeman said authorities arrested and jailed Nuraxun for sending his son abroad to study.

“His visit to Turkey also contributed to his 20-year sentence,” he added, though he did not know how authorities determined the length of Nuraxun’s jail term.

'Sensitive countries'

In their monitoring of Uyghurs’ activities, Chinese authorities previously identified more than 20 countries, including predominantly Muslim ones such as Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, as “sensitive countries” and arrested those who visited them, imprisoning most for five to 10 years.

“I’m not sure how many of the 20 years is due to sending his son abroad and how many is for visiting Turkey,” said the policeman, adding that Nuraxun also took his friend’s teenage son abroad for study.

While Nureli was in Egypt, he saw other Uyghur students being sent back to China in 2016, and the following year he lost contact with his family. Fearing that he would be targeted, Nureli went to Turkey in 2018

“I had heard about my father’s arrest in 2017 and sentencing for 20 years in 2018 after coming to Turkey,” he said

“I couldn’t handle this news at the beginning,” Nureli told RFA. “It caused psychological trauma. For some time, I was very depressed. Later I focused on my studies. I was determined to study harder, thinking of my father suffering in the cells.”

In 2019, Nureli took and passed the exam for prospective mechanical engineering majors at Suleyman Demirel University in Isparta, Turkey, and graduated this year.

He works as an engineer at Yalcinlar Aluminum, where he had interned during his senior year of college.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

The victim’s wife posted on Facebook this week that the suspect’s father – Prohm Vicheatsophea – attended the funeral of badminton gold medalist Seang Kimhong and offered the family US$1,000 if they agreed to not pursue criminal charges against his 23-year-old son.

The victim’s wife, Kruy Chhin Liang, said on Facebook that she rejected Prohm Vicheatsophea’s proposition and said she would continue to demand justice for her husband.

Her post has received hundreds of comments from Cambodians outraged by the offer. 

Justice Minister Keut Rith responded by ordering Phnom Penh Municipal Court prosecutors to “investigate and resolve the matter properly and strictly according to the law,” ministry spokesman Chin Malin told the Khmer Times.

The Dec. 14 accident between a jeep and a motorcycle took place in Phnom Penh’s Toul Kork district, an area of the capital known for its large villas. Seang Kimhong was riding on the motorbike, according to Kruy Chhin Liang.

Prosecutor Plong Sophal wrote in the warrant that evidence proves that Prohm Vichet Sosakda was the driver of the car and fled the scene “without responsibility.”

The suspect has been ordered to appear at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court before Jan. 9.

Seang Kimhong won the gold medal in badminton at this year’s SEA Games, a regional Olympiad that takes place every two years and was hosted by Cambodia for the first time in May.

Because of its rampant corruption and inadequate constraints on government power, Cambodia often places near the bottom of global rankings for adherence to the rule of law. In October, the World Justice Project put Cambodia at 141st out of 142 countries.

Soeung Sengkaruna, a spokesman for human rights group Adhoc, said authorities should take strict measures against the suspect, regardless of his background. Several NGOs are closely monitoring this case, he added.

Typically, prominent suspects are able to escape justice when they are accused of a crime, he told Radio Free Asia. 

“But we are looking to see if the authorities are working hard to bring this suspect to justice,” he said.  

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

It was 5:30 a.m. Flashlights beamed in through the windows of the ground-floor apartment in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Police officers and child welfare caseworkers were ordering a woman to open her front door.

When she did, the first thing she saw was that the police had their guns drawn. Her hands flew up into the “don’t shoot” position; she was well aware of the recent stories of cops “shooting first and asking later.” She prayed that her 7-year-old son was still asleep in his room.

“I was beyond scared. I literally started shaking,” said L.B., the mom, who is Black and asked to be referred to by her initials for her child’s safety and privacy.

Enabled by the police officers’ show of force, the caseworkers from the Administration for Children’s Services, New York City’s child welfare agency, entered L.B.’s apartment without a warrant that day in January 2021. Before she knew it, they were scrutinizing the contents of her refrigerator and cabinets, examining her bed and bathroom, and rifling through her personal belongings. They also had her lift up her son’s shirt so they could inspect his torso.

They found nothing. The boy was safe and unharmed, living in a clean, well-organized home with his mom and his adult sister, according to case records.

The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).

In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.

Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.

And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.

Still, it keeps happening, and it’s nearly always the same routine, records show. The caseworkers demand entry into her apartment, ringing her doorbell and, embarrassingly, sometimes those of her neighbors as well, at all hours of the day and night. They observe her child’s unclothed stomach and thighs, and sometimes take pictures. And they interrogate him without her consent, covering topics like whether she has sex around him.

At one point he said to her, crying, “Mom, you told me they wouldn’t come back,” L.B. said.

“I’m still trying to make it up to him,” she added, “even though I didn’t do anything wrong.”

L.B. this week filed a federal lawsuit against the commissioner of ACS and the city of New York, arguing that her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures has been repeatedly violated by the agency’s warrantless incursions into her family’s private sphere. She is not primarily alleging that caseworkers committed specific unlawful acts, although several ACS staff members are also named in the suit. Rather, her contention is that three years of the same type and scope of investigation — no matter the source or credibility or repetitiveness of the accusations against her — is indiscriminately and thus unconstitutionally invasive.

Legal aid lawyers in New York had said that more lawsuits like this one might be coming after a ProPublica and NBC News investigation last year found that ACS caseworkers search more than 50,000 typically low-income households every year, obtaining a warrant less than one half of 1% of the time. (L.B. is represented by Brooklyn Defender Services as well as a private law firm, and her complaint cites our reporting.) The agency finds a safety situation requiring removal of a child from a home in only 4% of these cases.

ProPublica’s investigation tracked the case of Ronisha Ferguson, a Bronx mother who sued the city of New York after ACS removed her children from her because she refused to let caseworkers search her apartment without a warrant. (Court records indicate that the city this August agreed to settle that case with Ferguson.)

In response to a detailed list of questions, an ACS spokesperson did not address any aspect of how the agency has handled L.B.’s case. She said that ACS is required under New York law to investigate all reports of child maltreatment that are forwarded from the state hotline, including ones that are anonymous, and that every investigation must include “evaluating the home environment.” The agency has “no discretion” if the hotline operator deems the call worth passing along, she said.

L.B.’s attorneys counter that caseworkers, once they have observed a child to be safe, actually do have discretion under state law not to conduct the same full search that they have completed before. Continuing to follow these procedures over and over causes concrete harm, they say.

L.B.’s child now suffers from severe anxiety, a doctor’s note confirms, which she said is the direct result of ACS’ constant intrusions. (He has even asked her to have the doorbell dismantled.) Her employment has been affected, including when she had to take multiple months of unpaid leave to make sure that she was available for her son. Her landlord has complained to her that the situation is troubling other tenants, causing her to consider moving to a different neighborhood even though she has lived in her apartment for a decade.

Yet for a long time, it was a struggle for her to fight back. When caseworkers arrived at her door, she’d allow them to enter in part because they had the power to remove her son from her custody. They also never told her, she said, that without her consent, they would need a warrant.

They often told her that letting them in was the only way to get them to stop coming, she said.

Finally, in 2022, a co-worker convinced her that she had the right to say no. Anxiously, she started doing just that.

That February, ACS, for the first time, applied for a warrant, stating in court papers that L.B. now knew her rights but that her home still needed to be entered “immediately at any hour.” But a judge, after learning about the case’s history and realizing that L.B.’s child had been observed in his home multiple times and interviewed multiple times with no evidence that any of the allegations against his mom were true, and that all of this was causing him trauma, denied the agency’s request. (The order additionally instructed ACS to refer the matter to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office for investigation of an apparent pattern of false hotline calls.)

The judge told ACS that its procedures “have to be adjusted when following them is more likely to do harm,” adding that “showing up in the middle of the night is traumatic; taking off kids’ clothes is traumatic.”

Yet caseworkers kept trying to get inside L.B.’s home whenever they received anonymous reports, including a patently false claim that she lived in a bar with multiple small daughters. She kept saying no.

They applied for a warrant again. A second judge denied them, calling the whole matter a “horrible intrusion” as well as a “waste of state resources.”

So ACS took a different tack: showing up at her son’s school and calling him to the office to interrogate him there, without her knowledge let alone consent. Caseworkers did this repeatedly for many months, making him miss class, and without telling him that he was free to leave at any time.

He used to love school — his gifted and talented program, culinary arts, using the computers, playing ball outside, seeing his friends. But now he often tells L.B. that his chest hurts so he has to stay home.

He has been especially sensitive about having to lift up his shirt for strangers, she said. And about the other kids who have started to tease him about it all. He comes home crying.

Advocates for families facing ACS investigations like L.B.’s point to two pieces of legislation that the New York State Assembly could pass next year. One would create a “family Miranda warning” that caseworkers would have to read to parents at their door, informing them of their right to deny entry into their home and to have a lawyer present.

That bill nearly became law this past spring but failed in part due to opposition from ACS, as ProPublica reported.

The second is an “anti-harassment in reporting” bill that would seek to reduce false and malicious calls to the state child welfare hotline by no longer allowing these tips to be anonymous. Under the current law, anyone can report any parent without so much as leaving a name or phone number.

The new legislation would require that callers at least provide basic details about themselves so caseworkers can follow up, gather more information, make sure the accusation has some basis and consider how intrusive of an investigation is needed. Hotline and ACS staff would still be legally required to keep the caller’s identity confidential.

The ACS spokesperson said the agency is “very concerned about false and malicious reporting and the impact it has on families.” She also said ACS “supports eliminating most anonymous reporting,” with rare exceptions including when it is a child calling the hotline.

L.B., whose son is now three years older than when these searches started, agrees.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Eli Hager.

Gazan poet, journalist and peace activist Ahmed Abu Artema describes how he lost five members of his family, including his 12-year-old son, in an Israeli airstrike on his house on October 24. Abu Artema was seriously injured and sent Democracy Now! an audio message from his hospital bed. “Israel didn’t bombard my house, didn’t kill my child by mistake. It’s the Israeli strategy,” he says. “The Israeli problem is the Palestinian existence itself.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We spend the hour with Nathan Thrall and Abed Salama, the author and subject of a remarkable new book detailing the many bureaucratic barriers and indignities that make the lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation even more difficult. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy focuses on the 2012 death of Salama’s son, 5-year-old Milad, who was killed in a fiery bus crash during a school field trip to a theme park. What followed was a desperate daylong search by Salama and his family to locate Milad’s body across different cities and hospitals, encountering numerous barriers due to the Israeli occupation system, like different ID cards giving varying levels of access through military checkpoints, and lack of help from any Israeli authorities. “This awful event allowed me, in telling the story, to describe the entire elaborate system of segregation and subjugation and apartheid in which all of these people live,” says Thrall, who first wrote about the tragedy in a 2021 essay for The New York Review of Books. Salama says his main motivation in participating with Thrall was to keep Milad’s memory alive. “When I start to talk about him, I feel that his spirit is behind me or on me,” he says. “I hope if anyone from the American government hears me … we want only justice. This is what we want as Palestinians.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As part of events marking the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile that ousted democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende and led to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Chilean President Gabriel Boric visited Washington, D.C., Saturday to deliver a historic address. He spoke at the site where former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier was assassinated in 1976 by agents of the Pinochet dictatorship, along with his co-worker Ronni Moffitt. We feature excerpts from the address and speak with Letelier’s son, Juan Pablo Letelier, a former member of the Chilean House and Senate with the Socialist Party, about his father’s assassination and the Boric administration’s work toward redress for the families of victims of Pinochet’s regime.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As billionaire Rupert Murdoch announces he will resign as head of his media empire, we speak with Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the watchdog group Media Matters for America, about the right-wing mogul’s influence on journalism and politics over the last seven decades. The 92-year-old Murdoch will step down as chair of Fox Corporation and News Corporation in November, with his son Lachlan to head both companies that control Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and more. Carusone says as the elder Murdoch steps back, it’s important to “make sure that his legacy doesn’t get sugarcoated, that we are really cognizant of the scale of damage that he’s created,” which includes climate denialism and the growing influence of the far right in politics. Carusone also warns that Lachlan Murdoch is more conservative than his father, with a “nihilist” worldview that could make Fox News and other properties even more extreme.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

[The] barbarous gold barons do not find the gold, they do not mine the gold, they do not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belongs to them.

— Big Bill Haywood, addressing commencement of miners’ strike, Colorado, 1903.

Work taught him of injustice early and converted him to socialism. His first boss whipped him when he was only twelve, and the same year he witnessed a black man handed over to a lynch mob. Three years later he was a Nevada miner doing a “man’s work for a boy’s pay,” breaking the loneliness of Eagle Canyon by reading Darwin, Marx, Burns, Voltaire, Byron, and Shakespeare. An older miner’s explanation of the class struggle capped his education, though it didn’t sink in until the Haymarket anarchists were hung two years later.

After that, he saw scores of men poisoned at Utah’s Brooklyn lead mine, watched a friend’s head crushed against an air drill by a slab of falling rock, and had his own right hand smashed between a descending car and the side of the shaft at Iowa’s Silver City mine.

Adored by women and instinctively obeyed by men, he was the most popular union organizer in the country. Blessed with the manners of a gentleman, he packed a revolver, cried like a baby when reciting poetry, and delivered thunderous speeches that ignited crowds of workers like a wick in a powder keg: “Eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of sleep, EIGHT DOLLARS A DAY!”

Haywood had no use for politicians and referred to Washington D.C. as a “political sewer.”  He testified as an expert witness before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, which gathered broad testimony on labor issues from 1913 to 1915. Commissioner Harry Weinstock, a California businessman, attacked Haywood and the Industrial Workers of the World, the most militant and democratic union in U.S. history. Weinstock bluntly suggested that Haywood was a crook for promoting worker-controlled production:

“If I was to come in and take possession of your property and throw you out, would I be robbing you?”

“You have a mistaken idea,” Haywood responded, “that the property is yours. I would hold that the property does not belong to you. What you, as a capitalist, have piled up as property is merely unpaid labor, surplus value. You have no vested right to that property.”

“You mean then,” Weinstock said, “that the coat you have on your back does not belong to you but belongs to all the people?”

“That is not what I mean,” Haywood answered. “I don’t want your watch. I don’t want your toothbrush. But the things that are publicly used – no such word as private should be vested by any individual in any of those things.  For instance, do you believe that John D. Rockefeller has any right – either God-given right, or man-made right, or any other right – to own the coal mines of the state of Colorado?”

“He has a perfect right to them under the laws of the country,” Weinstock replied.

“Then the laws of the country are absolutely wrong,” Haywood retorted.

Reported the New York Call on Haywood’s repartee: “The big witness clipped a sizzler across the suave Commissioner. In every one of these highly amusing clashes on the broad question of right and wrong, Haywood had Weinstock fighting for wind.”

In addition to the jibes, Haywood set out the IWW’s ultimate aspiration:

“We hope to see the day when all able men will work, either with brain or muscle. We want to see the day when women will take their place as industrial units. We want to see the day when every old man and every old woman will have the assurance of at least dying in peace. You have not got anything like that today. You have not the assurance – rich man that you are – of not dying a pauper. I have an idea that we can have a better society than we have got . . .”

The “better society” would be achieved, Haywood told the Commission, when workers owned and operated their industries collectively and democratically. “If foremen or overseers were necessary, they would be selected from among the workers,” he said. “There would be no dominating power there, would there? I can conceive of no need for a dominating national, world-wide power…”

Commissioner James O’Connell, an official of the American Federation of Labor’s machinists’ union told Haywood that his dream was “Utopian.”

Haywood disagreed. “Really, Mr. O’Connell, I don’t think that I presented any Utopian ideas. I talked for the necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter, and amusement. We can talk of Utopia afterwards. The greatest need is employment.” He recommended to the Commission a virtual blueprint of New Deal programs like the WPA and the CCC that president Franklin Roosevelt took up twenty years later.

SOURCES

Roughneck – The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson (1983: W. W. Norton), pps. 226-7

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn – Rebel Girl, (International Publishers, 1955) p. 131-2

Melvyn Dubofsky, Big Bill Haywood (Manchester University Press, 1987) pps. 10-15

Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais Labor’s Untold Story, (Cameron Associates, 1955) pps. 146-51

Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble – (Simon and Schuster, 1997) p. 233, 237

Robert K. Murray, Red Scare – A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920, (University of Minnesota, 1955)

Mathew Josephson, The President Makers – The Culture of Politics and Leadership In An Age of Enlightenment, 1896-1919, (Harcourt, 1940) p. 400

Mari Jo Buhle and Paul and Harvey J. Kaye eds., The American Radical, (Routledge, 1994) pps. 105-11

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael K. Smith.

Hun Manet, 45, spoke to lawmakers after the vote. He thanked his father Hun Sen for clearing the way for him and also attacked opposition parties and other dissidents. 

“The election results reflect a strong denial from the voters against those unethical groups that  are convincing Cambodians to walk away from democracy and the rule of law, and to incite people to fall into their ambitions that are vicious and dangerous to the country,” he said. 

Hun Sen was seen wiping away tears after the vote. After ruling the country since 1985, the 71-year-old announced just three days after the July 23 election that he would resign as prime minister and would hand over the prime minister role to his eldest son.

On Tuesday, Hun Sen was officially appointed to his new roles as president of the Senate and the Supreme Privy Council to King Norodom Sihamoni. 

He will also retain power behind the scenes as president of the CPP, which overwhelmingly won last month’s elections – in no small part because authorities kept the main opposition Candlelight Party from participating on a technicality.

‘Still the decision-maker’

Exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy told Radio Free Asia that Hun Manet’s ascension represented only symbolic change.

“Hun Sen is still the decision-maker,” he said. “He will continue to protect the system. His son takes the position to make his government look good.”

The new Assembly also voted on Monday for a new cabinet, which includes 10 deputy prime ministers, 18 senior ministers and 22 ministers. 

Many of the new ministers are the adult children and relatives of the outgoing generation of government officials “who established the corrupt system,” Sam Rainsy said.

“Hun Sen is buying people to allow their children to take their fathers’ positions to secure his impunity,” he said.

‘They send people to attack me’

Last month’s election was condemned by the United States, France, Australia and others as neither free nor fair because of the exclusion of the Candlelight Party, as well as for efforts to neutralize the political opposition through threats, arrests and other means. 

In the run-up to the election, dozens of opposition activists were persuaded to publicly switch their allegiance to the CPP. 

But one activist who refused, and is now seeking asylum in Thailand, said that three men struck him in the face and tried to drag him into a car this week. Phorn Channa told RFA that he escaped with help from a bystander. 

“I got off my motorbike and was attacked,” he said. “I fled to a house for help but people shouted so the suspect fled.”

He said that Heng Suor – now the newly appointed minister of Labor – had previously tried to convince him to join the CPP. He said he declined because he believed that only an opposition party could bring democracy to Cambodia and respect for human rights.

“I thought when I arrived in Thailand I would be safe, but it is not safe,” he said. “They send people to attack me. I am very concerned. This shows that the Cambodian government is brutal. They are trying to harm democrats wherever we go.”

RFA couldn’t reach Heng Suor for comment on Tuesday. 

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

Suu Kyi served as Myanmar’s de facto leader following national elections in 2015, which her National League of Democracy won by a landslide. The party also won the 2020 national elections, but the military seized power from the democratically elected government on Feb. 1, 2021. 

The army immediately arrested civilian leaders, including Suu Kyi, who were in Naypyidaw for the convening of the newly elected lower house of parliament. She was held at Naypyidaw Prison until last month, when a source told RFA that she was relocated to “a more comfortable state-owned residence.”

Aris is living in the United Kingdom and has been unable to contact his mother since the military coup.

RFA: You’ve been involved in supporting the Burmese community in London and you’ve been finding funds to support back home. First, tell me what you’ve been doing to support the spring revolution, the nationwide wave of popular resistance to the Myanmar military following the 2021 coup. 

Kim Aris: But I never really wish to be a public figure. I kind of already stand by and see what others do and what is needed. And as my mother’s son, I have a unique position whereby I can speak out to the world. Outside of the Burmese community, people aren’t very aware of what’s happening. So I’m doing what I can to raise funds and awareness for the cause. 

RFA: As we know, your mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, was once given the chance to leave Burma, but chose to stay with the Burmese people over her family. How would you describe your mother? 

Kim Aris: It always saddens and angers me that my mother has sometimes been portrayed as cold hearted because she was unable to be by my father’s side while he was dying. I was nursing him at that time, and I can say that he did not wish for her to return to England. 

We wanted to be by her side in Burma. Unfortunately, the military couldn’t find it in their heart to allow him his dying wish. And from my point of view, I’ve never felt like she left me. I was with her when she was first put under house arrest in Burma. And it never felt like she abandoned me in any way. 

Also in Burma, everybody’s now lost their parents to the military. It’s not as though I’ve actually lost my mother. People in Burma are going through far worse than what I have been through. It’s lucky for me that my mother left me here in England, where it’s safe. I feel privileged. Compared to what’s happening to the people in Burma, I have a very easy life.

RFA: Now your mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest again. Have you had any contact with her? 

Kim Aris: As far as I’m aware, she’s not actually under house arrest. She’s in prison somewhere. The military has said that she’s been moved into house arrest, but there’s been no evidence that that’s actually the case. 

I have had no contact with her. And the military hasn’t responded to any requests I have made for contact or to inform me of her whereabouts. In the past, I have had some contact when she was under house arrest in Yangon, but now I don’t know what condition she’s being kept under or where she is. 

RFA: We are aware that you went to the Burmese embassy to give a birthday gift to your mother, but they didn’t let you in and they didn’t even say anything to you. How many times have you sent a request to the junta to get in contact with her? 

Kim Aris: There’s actually very little point to corresponding with these people because I haven’t received any response ever. So I’ve tried various other avenues, such as through the British Foreign Office and via the International Red Cross, but they’ve had the same result, which is no response. 

RFA: I’m sorry to hear that. But in the last amnesty, they commuted some of your mother’s sentence. What was your reaction? 

Kim Aris: It’s a military gesture. The military has used these tactics in the past to try and appease the international community whilst they still continue to perpetrate all sorts of atrocities against their own people every day. And even with the reduced sentence, my mother would still be over 100 when she’s released. 

RFA: So you’ve been back to Burma, like when your mother was released in 2010. What was your perception about the country? 

Kim Aris: Well, obviously the situation there was incredibly sad, especially since the country was going through a period of development. There was a great deal to look forward to. Now, all of that has been taken away. The country has gone backwards since the coup. So it seems like it is worse now than it was back in 1988. 

RFA: Yeah, it’s like the country is in chaos right now. You know, young people are fighting back for their freedom. What's your point of view about today’s crisis?

Kim Aris: Well, from what I can gather, the situation is not sustainable for anybody. The military aren’t as strong as people think they may be. They have lots of high tech weaponry, but they do not have the manpower that the people have. And I hope that this war cannot go on for too much longer. No more bloodshed. 

But obviously, that’s not going to happen any time soon. Hopefully things will play out before two years’ time. The military will collapse, but we’ll see. 

RFA: What if you had a chance to talk directly with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the chairman of the junta’s governing body?

Kim Aris: I would ask him to stop waging this war against his own people. The resolve and fortitude of the Burmese people is absolute. They will never accept the military rule, and the youth of Burma will never accept having their freedom taken away. Now, for the first time in a long time, all the different ethnicities are starting to work together, and that shows that the army will never win this war. 

RFA: What hope do you have for Burma?

Kim Aris: I hope that Burma will achieve the freedom that it’s been looking for so many years now. And that people can start to rebuild their lives. In the future, hopefully people will be united and be able to work together in a more inclusive manner. 

RFA: Burmese people asking for international help. As Aung San Suu Kyi’s son, what is your message to the international community? 

Kim Aris: I would ask the international community not to stand by and let the military junta brazenly commit crimes against humanity. I would ask them to increase humanitarian assistance and support organizations that are actually able to get aid to the areas which are in need. Also, to impose more targeted and effective sanctions against the junta. Also to recognize a meaningful dialogue with the shadow National Unity Government.

As stated in a recent UN report, war crimes committed by Burma’s military, including the vengeance bombings, is becoming increasingly frequent. 1.7 million civilians have been displaced, over 15,000 arrested and 6,000 killed. The military are conducting a war on their own people, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. 17.6 million civilians are now in urgent need of lifesaving aid, protection and support. 

Recent floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains have added to this crisis, with a further 50,000 people displaced. A regime that uses airstrikes against civilian villages, then returns to kill mothers and children while they are collecting the dead for burial. It’s a situation that needs to be addressed by the international community, who seem to be happy to stand aside and let this happen. 

RFA: We have learned that your mother doesn’t want you to get involved in politics. Is that true? Did she ever say anything to you? 

Kim Aris: Yeah, she’s never wanted me to be involved in politics. I’ve never wanted to be involved in politics. As I said, I would much rather not be any sort of a public figure. But since the military are not allowing me any access to my mother at all, I feel like I need to do something to try my best to help the situation in Burma. 

After all, my mother cannot tell me what she thinks. So I have to think what she would want me to be doing. And I know she would want me to be helping where I can. 

RFA: Do you hold out hope that she would be set free again?

Kim Aris: Absolutely. I cannot see the situation in Burma continuing as it is. I hope she will be free – along with all the other political prisoners in the country – and can find peace again. 

RFA: What is your message to the people who are fighting for democracy in Burma, especially young people? 

Kim Aris: I would say never give up. And this fight is one that cannot be lost. The military will never win. And the rest of the world is thinking about what is happening today, even though it doesn’t seem like it. Sometimes people around the world are trying to help. 

RFA: By the way, I have seen the pictures with your mother and Taichito (Aung San Suu Kyi’s dog). We know you left Taichito with your mother in Burma. What is his situation now?

Kim Aris: I believe he is in Yangon. I’m not sure where exactly. He’s getting old. His eyesight isn’t as good as it was, and I’m sure he'll be missing May May (Burmese word for Mommy).

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

Speaking at an inauguration ceremony in Kandal province, Hun Sen said even his wife – Hun Manet’s mother – didn’t know about the plan to appoint the 45-year-old four star general as prime minister this month. Hun Sen had previously said that he would continue as prime minister until 2028.

But on July 26, he announced on state television that a new Hun Manet-led government would be formed on Aug. 22, after the National Election Committee officially reports election results. 

The news came three days after preliminary results showed Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party winning 120 of 125 seats in the tightly controlled parliamentary election.

On Thursday, Hun Sen said he was worried that infighting among senior CPP ministers could result in bloodshed if a smooth and timely transition to a new government wasn’t made. But his plan to wield influence behind the scenes as head of CPP should maintain stability, he said.

“I warn you that if my son’s life is endangered, the possibility of returning to be the prime minister is that I have to come back and work,” he said. “I have to return to be the prime minister for a while. After that, I will choose who can be the next prime minister.”

Still a few days left

The abrupt transfer of power may be a sign that key CPP officials still don’t support Hun Manet's prime minister candidacy, said Um Sam An, a former opposition party member of parliament.

Longtime CPP leaders like Interior Minister Sar Kheng and Defense Minister Tea Banh are also planning to step down this month.

Um Sam An said Hun Sen has appointed Sar Kheng, Tea Banh and others to the Supreme Council of the King – which has no real authority over government affairs – to keep them out of power. But failing to share some influence could eventually exacerbate divisions within the CPP, he said.

“The fact that Hun Sen consolidates power alone may result in armed conflicts that prevent the transfer of power,” Um Sam An said. “Sar Kheng may join hands with Tea Banh to prevent that transfer of power.”

“So, there are still a few days left, and Hun Sen is still worried,” he said.

Sar Kheng, Tea Banh and Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam An were also recently promoted to vice president positions of the CPP. Hun Sen has said he will serve as president of the Senate.

CPP spokesman Sok Ey San said he didn’t know yet who the CPP would appoint as president of the National Assembly. He added that the ruling party has no internal divisions.

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

This is the first military project that the father-and-son duo visited since the one-sided general election, in which the ruling Cambodia People’s Party won a landslide victory.

In a set of photos published on his Facebook page, defense minister Tea Banh was seen surrounded by Cambodian army officers during Sunday’s Ream Naval Base visit.

The project is proceeding “according to plan,” the Facebook post said without detailing the time schedule.

It “will increase the Navy's capacity to a higher level in the future,” it said.

Tea Seiha, 38, the second son of Tea Banh, was in the entourage, as well as Tea Vinh, Tea Banh’s younger brother and Tea Vinh’s son Tea Sokha.

Currently the governor of Siem Reap province, Tea Seiha is also a three-star general in the Royal Cambodian Army.

Leaked official documents seen by a RFA commentator billed him as the successor of Tea Banh as defense minister.

A number of other leaders’ children are also expected to take over their parents’ positions, including Prime Minister Hun Sen’s son Hun Manet.

Tea Vinh is the current commander of the Royal Cambodian Navy. In November 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was sanctioning him for corruption related to the Ream Naval Base. His son Tea Sokha also serves in the Navy at the rank of major general.

‘According to plan’

The construction of the base, located in Sihanoukville province on the Gulf of Thailand, is near completion, according to a recent report by the U.S. satellite imagery company BlackSky.

Earlier this month, Radio Free Asia also reported that satellite images obtained by RFA revealed “significant developments” at the base, which is now equipped with a deep draft pier that can accommodate aircraft carriers.

Compared to February this year, the pier has been measurably extended, with the usable pier length estimated to be roughly 300 meters (984 feet). That means it could provide access to full-size warships of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, including its new Type 003 aircraft carrier, Tom Shugart, Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, told RFA in an interview.

An area of reclaimed land in the southern part of the base has tripled in size to more than three hectares.

Craig Singleton, China Program deputy director and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, was quoted in the BlackSky report as saying that there is “a near-exact similarity” between the pier at the Ream base and another military pier at the PLA Support Base in Djibouti.

“The speed of development at the Ream base makes it difficult to deny the intentional velocity behind China’s overseas basing initiatives,” Singleton was quoted as saying.

Thanks to its strategic location, the base would help Beijing boost its power projection not only in Southeast Asia but also the Taiwan Strait. This would be China’s first naval staging facility in Southeast Asia and the second in the world after the base in Djibouti.

The Ream base construction began just two years ago in June 2021 with Beijing’s funding. 

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen reportedly assigned land to the Ministry of National Defense to develop an air defense command and general headquarters, as well as a naval radar system in Ream National Park, adjacent to the naval base.

Phnom Penh has repeatedly denied that China is being given exclusive military access to the base, saying that would contradict Cambodia’s constitution.

The U.S. Department of Defense's China Military Power Report in November 2022 said China “has likely considered Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand,” among other places, as locations for PLA military logistics facilities.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Delaware halted a plea deal reached between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors in which the president’s son would avoid facing prosecution on a separate gun charge by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. Trump-appointed Judge Maryellen Noreika said the deal lacked legal precedent, and identified several sections of the agreement that were interpreted differently by the prosecution and defense. A new plea deal could be reached within the next six weeks. This comes as Republicans have been intensifying their attacks on the Biden family in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. “They’re very much trying to move beyond Hunter Biden, which they understand they’ve beaten that issue to death, and trying to move to Joe Biden,” says Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Intercept.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Delaware halted a plea deal reached between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors in which the president’s son would avoid facing prosecution on a separate gun charge by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. Trump-appointed Judge Maryellen Noreika said the deal lacked legal precedent, and identified several sections of the agreement that were interpreted differently by the prosecution and defense. A new plea deal could be reached within the next six weeks. This comes as Republicans have been intensifying their attacks on the Biden family in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. “They’re very much trying to move beyond Hunter Biden, which they understand they’ve beaten that issue to death, and trying to move to Joe Biden,” says Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Intercept.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Hun Sen is one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, running Cambodia since 1985.

His Cambodian People’s Party won a landslide victory in Sunday’s general elections, after the only viable opposition, the Candlelight Party, was disqualified on a technicality.

"I would like to ask for understanding from the people as I announce that I will not continue as prime minister," the 70-year-old said in a special broadcast on state television, AFP news reported.

Hun Sen said his son, 45-year-old Hun Manet, would be named prime minister once the final results of the election have been announced by the National Election Commission. 

He said King Norodom Sihamoni had agreed with his decision.

Preliminary results show the CPP winning 120 seats in the National Assembly, with the royalist Funcinpec party securing five seats, according to a message posted by the prime minister on Telegram. He said Wednesday that a new government will be formed on Aug. 22.

The news did not come as a surprise. In an interview with China’s Phoenix TV that aired last Thursday Hun Sen said he was preparing to hand over the reins of power to his son and a younger generation of politicians.

“I have sacrificed my power. Hun Sen has sacrificed power for peace for a long time,” he said.

The CPP has ruled Cambodia since 1979. Recent appointments and promotions in several government ministries indicated that the sons and daughters of longtime officials would be assuming new leadership roles after the election.

CPP spokesman Sok Ey San confirmed to Radio Free Asia on Friday that a post-election government cabinet will be “90 percent new blood,” with only a few ministers staying on.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

“Who would dare to oppose this? Hun Sen will die someday, so why not let his son take over?” he asked at a public event in Sihanoukville.

This week, the prime minister said the transfer of power could become a reality as soon as next month. 

But the prime minister’s son isn’t the only heir poised to take on power from an aging generation of political elites. They appear ready to hand over the government to a new generation, many of whom are literally their sons and daughters. 

In April, the prime minister sent a dozen senior government ministry appointments to King Norodom Sihamoni for his approval. Every candidate was related to a top military, government or CPP official. 

The last parliamentary election in 2018 was widely condemned as neither free nor fair after the Supreme Court ordered that the main opposition party at the time, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, be disbanded.

Duong Chantra, a senior CNRP official who now lives in Thailand, said the CPP’s nepotistic practices aren’t fair to ambitious and capable young Cambodians who don’t have powerful relatives. 

“We don’t want to see them practice such dynastic power transfer,” he said. “It creates disappointment and hopelessness for the younger generations who are not from that kind of lineage.”

The CPP is preparing to welcome members of the new generation into the prime minister’s cabinet after the election, CPP spokesman Sok Ey San told Radio Free Asia this week.

In an earlier interview, he told RFA that the party that wins elections has the right to appoint who they want.

“Are there any countries in the world that employ the children of opposition party officials?” he asked. “For our ruling party, we appoint and promote people from our own party.”

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

minister as soon as three weeks after Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

“I am walking on the right path to secure country stability for younger generations,” he said in the interview with China’s Phoenix TV that aired on Thursday. “I have sacrificed my power. Hun Sen has sacrificed power for peace for a long time.”

Until recently, it was widely believed that the 70-year-old Hun Sen would continue as prime minister through 2028, when the next general election is scheduled to take place. He said publicly in 2021 that Hun Manet would one day follow him as prime minister. 

“This is the closest we’ve had yet to a definitive public confirmation about the timing of the handover of power,” author and journalist Sebastian Strangio wrote on Twitter.

The ruling Cambodian People’s Party, which currently holds all 125 seats in the National Assembly, is expected to sweep Sunday’s vote. 

The National Election Committee in May blocked the main opposition Candlelight Party from appearing on the ballot, citing inadequate paperwork.

Hun Manet is listed as the CPP’s top candidate from Phnom Penh. On Friday – the last day for official campaigning – he led a large parade of party supporters through the streets of the capital. 

“Within three or four weeks, Hun Manet can become the prime minister,” Hun Sen told Phoenix TV. “We will wait and see how people respond. After that Hun Manet is able to work.” 

New blood incoming

The CPP has ruled Cambodia since 1979. Recent appointments and promotions in several government ministries indicated that the sons and daughters of longtime officials would be assuming new leadership roles after the election.

CPP spokesman Sok Ey San confirmed to Radio Free Asia on Friday that a post-election government cabinet will be “90 percent new blood,” with only a few ministers staying on.

“The new blood will be working with the old blood,” he said.  

Finland-based political analyst Kim Sok told RFA that the new cabinet will continue to be controlled by Hun Sen.

“Hun Sen knows that Hun Manet can’t work with the current ministers so he removes the existing ministers so his son can easily control them,” he said.

Hun Sen has said in the past that he would retain influence behind the scenes as head of the CPP after stepping down as prime minister.

West Point graduate

Hun Manet, 45, is a graduate of the elite United States Military Academy at West Point. He holds a masters in economics from New York University and another graduate degree from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

He traveled with his father to Beijing in February to attend meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

Exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy said at the time that Hun Sen was trying to cement personal ties with the Chinese Communist Party so that Beijing would support a handover of power to Hun Manet.

Sam Rainsy told RFA on Friday that Hun Manet will have no legitimacy as prime minister. He repeated a recent plea to voters to destroy their ballots on Sunday to show their support for the opposition.

In March, Hun Manet was promoted to the rank of four-star general. He recently suspended his role as deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Force to run for the Assembly. 

“I trained him to be able to work. If he can’t be a prime minister he can do something else for the sake of the country,” Hun Sen said in the Phoenix TV interview.

Changes to the Constitution last year did away with a requirement that the Assembly vote to approve a newly designated prime minister, a move believed aimed at easing the transition to Hun Manet.

“Hun Manet can become the prime minister or not based on the Constitution,” the prime minister told Phoenix TV. “No one has the right to stop Hun Manet when he doesn’t breach any law.”

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

RFA reported on June 6 that Russian authorities announced that they were searching for Kim Kum Sun, 43, and Park Kwon Ju, 15, who had last been seen on June 4 leaving the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok.

Kim had been working as the acting manager of two North Korean restaurants in the city in place of her husband, considered a diplomat, who traveled to North Korea in 2019 but was unable to return to Russia due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On July 7, the day after the announcement, Kim and Park were arrested after boarding a  Moscow-bound flight departing from the central Russian city of Krasnoyarsk, a resident of Vladivostok, who requested anonymity for personal safety, told RFA’s Korean Service.

“Their flight to Moscow departed from Yemelyanovo International Airport located on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk as normal, but to arrest the mother and the son, the Russian public security authorities forced the plane to return to the airport,” he said. “When the plane landed …, the authorities arrested them.”

They would have gotten all the way to Moscow if not for the consulate getting Russian authorities involved, the Vladivostok resident said. 

As of Tuesday, Russian media has made no mention of Kim and Park’s arrest. RFA was not able to confirm with Russian authorities that they grounded the flight to arrest the pair.

Higher priority?

It was also not clear if Kim and Park had been accused of any crimes.

But it is standard procedure for the North Korean consulate to fraudulently accuse missing personnel of crimes so that Russian authorities place a higher priority on the case, a Russian citizen of Korean descent from Krasnoyarsk, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA. 

“North Korea reports missing people by framing them for crimes,” he said. “So the escapees are in danger of being executed without the protection of the local state and the international community.”

But if they were accused criminals, the runaways would not be eligible for international protection, he said. 

The Krasnoyarsk resident confirmed that the authorities ordered the plane to return to the airport to arrest Kim and Park.

“There has been an increasing number of escape attempts among North Korean trade officials and workers in Russia recently,” he said. 

They may have been inspired by other North Koreans who successfully fled, including a computer engineer, a work unit manager, a work site manager, a doctor and a soldier from the General Staff Department of the North Korean military.

“The United Nations and the international community must take an active role in helping those who risk their lives to escape from the dictatorship,” the Krasnoyarsk resident said. 

“Instead of [arresting them] as demanded by the North Korean authorities and sending them to a place where death awaits them, [Russian authorities] should open the way for them to receive refugee status according to the regulations set by the United Nations.”

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

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.

Thol Samnang, a member of the opposition Candlelight Party, was snatched off the streets of Bangkok by men in plainclothes before dawn on Friday as he made his way to the office of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, according to an eyewitness and human rights advocacy groups.

The arrest is the latest in a series of incidents where foreign activists fleeing repression in their home countries have been detained on Thai soil.

“I’m afraid officials in Thailand may send him to Cambodian officials to be punished,” Chaet Lak, his mother who lives in Cambodia, told Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service affiliated with BenarNews. “I want human rights organizations to help prevent his deportation.”

Samnang fled Cambodia on July 4, a day after police and government authorities visited his home to detain him without a warrant.

The 34-year-old had criticized Prime Minister Hun Sen and the governing Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) on Facebook in the weeks leading up to his departure, his mother told RFA Khmer in an interview on Sunday.

Cham Chit, a Cambodian citizen who left the country with Samnang, said the two were seeking asylum in Thailand.

“But on July 7, plainclothes Thai officials arrested him and took him away on a motorcycle as we were leaving our residence near the Victory Monument,” he told RFA, referring to a military memorial at the heart of Bangkok.

Samnang was being held at an immigration detention center in the Thai capital, said Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, director of the Cross Cultural Foundation, a local NGO providing legal aid and advocacy for victims of human rights abuses.

“We received an assurance from the immigration officials that there will not be an immediate deportation,” she told BenarNews on Monday. “Our lawyer is processing him to gain protection through the UNHCR or the Thai government.”

She said Thailand’s recently enacted Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act  prohibited the deportation of anyone who faces a serious threat to life or freedom – a key principal of the U.N. Refugee Convention known as non-refoulement.

Samnang would face an uncertain fate if forcibly sent back to Cambodia. 

Hun Sen, who has ruled the Southeast Asian nation of 16 million for nearly four decades, has clamped down on democratic freedoms, jailed or exiled political rivals, and shut independent media outlets.

In May, the National Election Committee disqualified the Candlelight Party from competing in Cambodia’s July 23 parliamentary elections, leaving no credible challenger to the CPP.

‘Well-founded fear of persecution’

Human Rights Watch called on Thailand to protect Samnang.

“It is absolutely urgent that UNHCR be granted immediate access to Thol Samnang so he can explain his very serious, well-founded fear of persecution if he is forced to return to Cambodia, and receive refugee protection,” Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, told BenarNews on Monday.

“Quite clearly, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and key officials are turning up the heat against anyone who dares criticize government policies or questions the upcoming election, which Human Rights Watch believes will be neither free nor fair.

“Thailand should refuse to participate in Phnom Penh’s efforts at transnational repression against opposition political activists.”

A UNHCR spokeswoman said she could not comment on the details or even confirm the existence of individual cases. The Thai Immigration Bureau did not immediately respond to a BenarNews request for comment.

Thailand has hosted thousands of refugees from neighboring countries who fled war, natural disasters and human rights violations.

Still, rights advocates have criticized Thailand’s pro-military government for recent cases where refugees and asylum seekers have been deported to face prosecution and other rights abuses in their home countries. 

Khoukham Keomanivong, a Lao activist living in Thailand as a U.N.-recognized refugee, was arrested by Thai police in Bangkok on Jan. 29, 2022, for overstaying his visa. He was released on bail on Feb. 1 with the help of a human rights lawyer, narrowly avoiding deportation. 

In November 2021, Thai authorities deported to Cambodia two activists from a banned opposition party after Hun Sen ordered one of them arrested for a poem that criticized him on Facebook.

In August 2019, Lao democracy activist Od Sayavong, who was 34, vanished under mysterious circumstances in Thailand after posting a video clip online criticizing the Lao government. Listed as a “person of concern” by the UNHCR because of his advocacy for democracy and human rights in Laos, his whereabouts remain unknown. 

RFA Khmer contributed to this report. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Nontarat Phaicharoen and Harry Pearl for BenarNews.

Bui Van Trung, 62, and his son, Bui Van Tham, 36, were convicted in February 2018 in the country’s An Giang province.

Vietnam’s government officially recognizes the Hoa Hao religion, which has some 2 million followers across the country, but imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hoa Hao groups, including the sect in An Giang province, that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.

Rights groups say that authorities in An Giang routinely harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the Hoa Hao founder’s writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hoa Hao pagodas in An Giang and other provinces.

Trung, also known as Ut Trung and leads the Ut Trung Home Church, had been held at An Phuoc Prison in southern Vietnam’s Binh Duong province, but was transferred to Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City earlier this month for colon cancer treatment. Than served his sentence at Xuyen Moc Prison in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, also in the south.

The pair returned to their home in An Giang’s Phuoc Hoa village on Monday.

Trung appeared “very weak” on his release from Cho Ray Hospital as he was still in recovery from an emergency operation to remove a tumor in his large intestine, an Ut Trung Home Church follower and former prisoner of conscience who identified himself as Nam told RFA Vietnamese.

Trung’s daughter Bui Thi Bich Tuyen, was also convicted in 2018 and handed a three-year term; she has since been freed. His wife, Le Thi Hen, was given a two-year suspended sentence at the time because she was suffering from an illness.

Deteriorating health

Nam said Trung’s tumor was discovered in mid-2022, but prison authorities did not allow him to seek treatment until it became significantly worse. A doctor who examined Trung as his jail term came to an end convinced the warden of An Phuoc Prison that he was in need of an urgent surgical procedure and that he should be transferred to Cho Ray.

“If he had received timely treatment, his health wouldn’t have become that bad,” he said. “As they wanted to harm Hoa Hao Buddhism adherents, the prison did not send him to the hospital [right away].”

According to Nam, prison authorities wanted to send Trung back to prison after his surgery, but allowed him to recover in the hospital after his family members protested.

Once he has fully recovered from the procedure, Trung will need to undergo chemotherapy treatment for his cancer, he said.

On  April 18, 2017, traffic police accompanied by unidentified men in civilian clothes stopped Hoa Hao Buddhists going to the Bui family’s home to observe the death anniversary of a friend, confiscating motorbikes and registration papers, family members told RFA in earlier reports.

Several motorbikes were seized even though their owners presented papers proving proper registration, Bui Van Trung’s daughter Bui Thich Tuyen told RFA at the time.

Two months later, on June 26, 2017, Trung and his son Tham were arrested by security officials and unidentified civilians while returning from a visit to a neighboring commune.

This is not the first time Trung and Tham were jailed because of their beliefs.

In 2012, the father and son were convicted of “resisting officers on official duty” after promoting religious freedom and refusing to join the officially sanctioned Hoa Hao Buddhist Sangha, and sentenced to four and two years in prison, respectively.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, is pleading guilty to federal tax offenses and a separate felony gun charge for which he is avoiding prosecution, according to a plea agreement with the Justice Department announced Tuesday. The deal caps a multiyear probe by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware. As a result, Hunter Biden is unlikely to spend any time behind bars despite the sweeping investigation into his personal and business conduct that Republicans have attempted to portray as unethical influence peddling directly implicating the president in corruption. But is this the end of Hunter Biden’s legal trouble? We speak with The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein about the plea deal, as well as what other evidence the FBI may have about Hunter Biden.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

According to a public notice issued Tuesday, Kim Kum Sun, 43, and her son Park Kwon Ju, 15, were last seen on Sunday leaving the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east, and their whereabouts are unknown. 

They are the wife and son of a North Korean trade representative in his 60s surnamed Park, sources in Vladivostok told RFA’s Korean Service. Park, considered a diplomat, had returned to North Korea in 2019, they said.

Park and his family were dispatched to Russia prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, where they were assigned to earn foreign currency for the North Korean regime by running the Koryo and Tumen River restaurants in Vladivostok, a source in Vladivostok who declined to be named told Radio Free Asia.

The missing woman was identified as Kim Kum Sun, who was the acting manager of both restaurants on behalf of her husband, according to a Russian citizen of Korean descent familiar with confidential news involving North Korean state-run companies in Vladivostok. He spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Rode off in taxi

On the day they disappeared, the mother and son rode a taxi and got off on Nevskaya Street, which is not far from the consulate, Russian Media reported. The consulate reported to authorities that they had lost touch with the pair after they were not able to contact them.

“[The mother and son] had been detained in the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok for several months and then disappeared during the time they had once per week to go out,” the  Russian citizen of Korean descent said.

“Park said he would return after the restaurant’s business performance review, but he was not able to return because the border has been closed since COVID hit,” he said, adding that the pandemic was rough on business at the Koryo restaurant, that Kim Kum Sun was running in her husband’s stead.

“In October of last year, the assistant manager, who oversaw personnel escaped,” the Korean Russian said.

The assistant manager of the Koryo restaurant, Kim Pyong Chol, 51 attempted to claim asylum but was arrested. 

Shortly afterward, the consulate closed the restaurant fearing that others would also attempt to escape, he said.

“The acting manager and her son were then placed under confinement inside the consulate in Vladivostok,” said the Korean Russian. “They were allowed to go out only one day a week since they did not commit any specific crime, they just did chores inside the consulate and were monitored.”

Fear of returning

Rumors about a possible reopening of the North Korea-Russia border have made North Koreans stranded in Russia by the pandemic anxious that they might have to return to their homeland soon, another North Korea-related source in Vladivostok told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. 

“They fear that when they return to North Korea, they will return to a lifestyle where they are cut off from the outside world,” the North Korea-related source said.

The fear of returning to one of the world’s most isolated countries is palpable among the fledgling community of North Korean dispatched workers and officials in Vladivostok, said Kang Dongwan, a professor at Busan’s Dong-A University, who recently visited the far eastern Russian city.

“The North Korean workers I met in Vladivostok were in a harsh situation and were quite agitated,” he said. “If [a border reopening] happens, there is a high possibility that North Korean workers and diplomats’ families will return to North Korea. So they may have judged that the only chance to escape North Korea is now.”

According to South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, the presidential office in Seoul has confirmed that the mother and son have gone missing, and the related South Korean agencies are actively searching for their whereabouts. They have not made contact with South Korean authorities.

An official from the office told Dong-A that the case is “not yet at the stage where they are trying to seek asylum in South Korea, as far as I know.”

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun and Park Jaewoo for RFA Korean.

The specific reason for her death remains unclear, but in a video recorded before she died, the woman, surnamed Yang, said that national security officers had told her to keep quiet about her son’s death. 

Yang also was criticized by netizens who commented on her interviews with Chinese media by blasting her for dressing too well and seeking more compensation for her son’s death. 

Her son was killed on May 23, when a car driven by a teacher surnamed Liu hit him on the grounds of Hongqiao Primary School in Hanyang District in the city of Wuhan. His parents rushed to the scene and were devastated by what had happened.

Two days later, Yang jumped from her apartment building and died. Her husband also wanted to jump off, but he was stopped by family members, a resident surnamed Qin who knew the family, told Radio Free Asia. 

"This is the power of online harassment,” Qin said.

He Peirong, an educator familiar with the situation, told RFA that Yang's suicide was not only caused by cyberbullying, but by Wuhan officials who tried to “maintain stability” and prevent her from speaking out. She said Yang's friends hinted on TikTok that the police had put pressure on her.

‘He didn’t apologize’

In a video that circulated on the Douyin online platform, Yang could be seen standing outside the gate of her son's school that a security officer named Zhou Jun from the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau had scolded her and her family for making trouble and didn't apologize or ask about her son.

“He didn’t apologize to me, didn’t apologize to my child and accused us of causing trouble here,” she says on the video.

Under interviews Yang gave to the media, online readers posted a large number of malicious comments, Cover News reported. The Xiaoxiang Morning Post also reported that the incident had attracted attention from many media outlets and some that there were negative comments about Yang.

He Peirong said that an account called “Hubei Has Positive Energy,” with more than 1 million followers and which attacked Yang, was likely a government account. She said Yang was a victim of “stability maintenance,” and called for truth and justice.

The Hanyang District Education Bureau of Wuhan City issued a statement on May 25, expressing grief and self-blame for the boy’s death and saying that the teacher, Liu, had been detained and the school's principal and vice-principal had been dismissed.

A Wuhan resident who asked only to be identified as Xu said every time a local group or or individual demands rights, the national security officers will suppress online speech. 

"I believe it is true. They want to maintain stability,” he said. “I know that the cost of stability maintenance is higher than military spending."

In addition, 27 Chinese poets wrote poems to express their voice for Yang.

Among them, a poet who goes by the name of “Night Kangqiao” wrote that only a mother grieved when a child died and that since ancient times Chinese have been educated to only sweep the snow from their own front doors.

Translated by Chris Taylor. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

The Sackler family, the billionaire owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, have secured immunity from all current and future civil litigation related to their role in fueling the opioid epidemic. The legal shield was granted last week by a federal appeals court in exchange for the family agreeing to pay up to $6 billion to thousands of plaintiffs in various lawsuits that are now suspended as part of the deal. While the Sacklers appear safe from further civil litigation, they could — and should — be criminally charged, says Ed Bisch, who lost his son Eddie to an OxyContin-related overdose in 2001 at age 18. “Fines without any prosecutions, there is no deterrent. They look at it as the cost of doing business,” says Bisch. We also speak to Christopher Glazek, the investigative reporter who was the first to publicly report how the Sackler family had significantly profited from selling OxyContin while fully aware that the highly addictive drug was directly fueling the opioid epidemic in America. “The Sacklers lied about how addictive the drug was, in order to convince doctors and patients that it wasn’t dangerous,” says Glazek.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

South Korean intelligence has said multiple times that Kim, with his wife Ri Sol Ju, has fathered three children: a son around 2010, a daughter named Ju Ae around 2013, and another daughter in 2017.

Since late last year, Kim has repeatedly appeared with Ju Ae in public, leading to speculation that he might be grooming her to one day rule the country. But others said that was not likely, citing North Korea's patriarchal society and the belief that he had a son.

João Micaelo, now a chef, was a classmate of Kim’s when they both attended the Liebefeld-Steinhölzli public school in Switzerland from 1998 to 2000. The son of a Portuguese embassy employee, Micaelo is known to have been close friends with the future North Korean leader while attending the school.

Micaelo visited with Kim in 2012 when Ri was pregnant with Ju Ae, and again after she was born.

“In 2013 [on my next visit], I didn’t see his wife, but I knew it was a girl. I heard it was like she was pregnant [with] a girl,” said Micaelo.

When asked if he had met Kim’s son, Micaelo said that Kim had never told him anything about a son.

Another source from a Western country, who is very close to Kim Jong Un and visited him around the same time as Micaelo, also told RFA on condition of anonymity that he had never heard Kim talk about any sons. 

“I never heard a word about his son from Kim Jong Un,” the source said. “[He] was proud of Ju Ae all the time. I believe she might be the first child.”

During former NBA star Dennis Rodman’s highly publicized first visit to North Korea in 2013, he was introduced to Ju Ae, and his account of the trip was the first time her name was revealed to the outside world. He is not known to have met a son of Kim.

No Son?

In March, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported at a meeting of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s first child is a son. 

The spy agency reported that “although there is no specific evidence that the first child is a son, it is certain through information sharing with external intelligence agencies that it is a son.”

But a high-ranking official from the South Korean Ministry of Unification met with reporters on May 22nd and said, “It is uncertain whether there is a first child [before Ju Ae] or not.” 

Kim’s son may not in fact exist, said Ken Gause, director of Center for Naval Analyses.

“When Rodman was there, he visited Kim Jong Un in Wonsan … there were a lot of Kim relatives, including Kim Sol Song [his half-sister], but there was no son there,” said Gause. 

“I’ve also heard that potentially the son, if there is a son, may have some mental disorder or some sort of issue like that, [so] they may have wanted to keep him away … from outsiders being able to see him,” he said.

Because Ju Ae is constantly in the spotlight, it seems that she may be Kim’s firstborn, he said.

“I have always tended to believe that the son either doesn’t exist … because there was never any talk about, ‘Oh, I also have a son,’ I mean, [they] seem to act as if this were his first child, gushing about Ju Ae and everything,” he said.

The family and authorities seems to be “very protective and very mom-like” toward Ju Ae, “which suggests … this wasn’t their second child, this was their first child.”

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

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Park Jaewoo for RFA Korean.

"Hong Kong is a litmus test for how China views the world," Sebastien Lai told journalists during a visit to Washington. "If they aren't willing to respect those freedoms in Hong Kong, then the long arm of China is basically everywhere."

"If they're not willing to do that in Hong Kong, with all the economic benefits that come with, they're not willing to do that in the U.S., in the U.K., in Ireland,” he said.

“You see that with the secret police stations," Lai said. "It really shows how they view cooperation with another state; it doesn't seem like they want friendly cooperation with democratic countries."

Jimmy Lai's Next Digital media empire and its flagship Apple Daily newspaper were forced to close amid a national security investigation, and he is still awaiting trial on charges of "collusion with a foreign power" and others linked to "seditious publications," as the authorities move to disqualify his British barrister.

International press freedom groups say the ruling Communist Party under supreme leader Xi Jinping has "gutted" press freedom in the formerly freewheeling city amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

Hong Kong journalists who fled the city after Beijing imposed a national security law from July 1, 2020, continue to campaign for press freedom for the city from overseas, but say they are constantly targeted for transnational repression by agents and supporters of the Chinese state, including secret Chinese police stations in a number of countries.

‘Shine a light’

Lai told RFA Cantonese that he intends to keep speaking out to "shine a light" on the unfolding crackdown on freedom of speech that saw the jailing of his father and the closure of his flagship Apple Daily newspaper following raids by the national security police.

"What I want to achieve is for the world to see that both my father and all these other political prisoners are standing trial right now," he said.

"The Hong Kong government keeps claiming that there is still freedom of the press and rule of law with all of its "Hello Hong Kong" propaganda, which is pretty despicable, because that's pretty clearly not the case," Lai said. "They're saying one thing, while doing another, so the world needs to know this."

He also warned any investors or companies looking to invest or expand operations in Hong Kong to look at the national security investigation of the Apple Daily as a cautionary tale.

"The Apple Daily headquarters was over five floors. At its peak, we had a newsroom of over 900 people," Lai said, adding: "They raided it twice. The first time, they sent 200 people there."

"Basically, 200 police rushed in, grabbed laptops, and made sure that nobody could work, nobody could touch any devices. The second time [they sent] 500 people," he said. 

"So, if you want to know what could happen to any business in Hong Kong ... that is a very good picture to look at before you make any decisions in terms of investments."

He said the risk of charges under a national security law imposed on the city by Beijing in the wake of the 2019 mass protests against diminishing freedoms means that the cost of doing business in the city has now risen sharply.

"The ability, like in Western countries, to speak out on anything you want has been massively limited," Lai said. "It's all well and great if you're going there for a holiday or whatnot, but in terms of a financial center ... you at least need the rule of law and some semblance of free speech, and that's not the case there."

Trying to lure talent

Lai's comments came as the Hong Kong authorities try to boost investor interest in Hong Kong, seeking to attract fresh talent and visitors with new visa schemes and free plane tickets in a bid to counteract a mass exodus of middle-class and wealthy people in the wake of the national security law crackdown.

"It's just a very dark time for a financial center," Lai said. "How long can you keep being a financial center if people aren't allowed to speak up ... or if people are jailed for liking social media posts, and unfair sentences are handed out left and right?"

"My father got five years, nine months ... on a commercial charge ... the first time anybody has gone to jail for a lease violation," he said. "The fact that they used this to attack my father shows how much Hong Kong has gone down as a place to do business, as a place to live, as a place to work."

Lai, who is a British national like his father, said the United States had been much tougher on China than Britain.

"The U.K. government has been incredibly weak,” he said in comments reported by Reuters as Britain's Minister for Investment Dominic Johnson said he held a series of meetings with government officials and executives in Hong Kong this week. 

"It's very sad to see a democratic government being afraid – or asking permission even – to speak on behalf of one of its citizens that is in prison for freedom of speech."

U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher, chair of the House of Representatives select committee on China’s Communist Party, meanwhile hit out at the Vatican for not standing up for Jimmy Lai, who, like him, is a Catholic.

"The silence from the Vatican on China’s human rights abuses and Jimmy’s case, in particular, is deafening," Reuters quoted him as saying, adding that the Vatican's Washington embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hoi Man Wu for RFA Cantonese.

"Hong Kong is a litmus test for how China views the world," Sebastien Lai told journalists during a visit to Washington. "If they aren't willing to respect those freedoms in Hong Kong, then the long arm of China is basically everywhere."

"If they're not willing to do that in Hong Kong, with all the economic benefits that come with, they're not willing to do that in the U.S., in the U.K., in Ireland,” he said.

“You see that with the secret police stations," Lai said. "It really shows how they view cooperation with another state; it doesn't seem like they want friendly cooperation with democratic countries."

Jimmy Lai's Next Digital media empire and its flagship Apple Daily newspaper were forced to close amid a national security investigation, and he is still awaiting trial on charges of "collusion with a foreign power" and others linked to "seditious publications," as the authorities move to disqualify his British barrister.

International press freedom groups say the ruling Communist Party under supreme leader Xi Jinping has "gutted" press freedom in the formerly freewheeling city amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

Hong Kong journalists who fled the city after Beijing imposed a national security law from July 1, 2020, continue to campaign for press freedom for the city from overseas, but say they are constantly targeted for transnational repression by agents and supporters of the Chinese state, including secret Chinese police stations in a number of countries.

‘Shine a light’

Lai told RFA Cantonese that he intends to keep speaking out to "shine a light" on the unfolding crackdown on freedom of speech that saw the jailing of his father and the closure of his flagship Apple Daily newspaper following raids by the national security police.

"What I want to achieve is for the world to see that both my father and all these other political prisoners are standing trial right now," he said.

"The Hong Kong government keeps claiming that there is still freedom of the press and rule of law with all of its "Hello Hong Kong" propaganda, which is pretty despicable, because that's pretty clearly not the case," Lai said. "They're saying one thing, while doing another, so the world needs to know this."

He also warned any investors or companies looking to invest or expand operations in Hong Kong to look at the national security investigation of the Apple Daily as a cautionary tale.

"The Apple Daily headquarters was over five floors. At its peak, we had a newsroom of over 900 people," Lai said, adding: "They raided it twice. The first time, they sent 200 people there."

"Basically, 200 police rushed in, grabbed laptops, and made sure that nobody could work, nobody could touch any devices. The second time [they sent] 500 people," he said. 

"So, if you want to know what could happen to any business in Hong Kong ... that is a very good picture to look at before you make any decisions in terms of investments."

He said the risk of charges under a national security law imposed on the city by Beijing in the wake of the 2019 mass protests against diminishing freedoms means that the cost of doing business in the city has now risen sharply.

"The ability, like in Western countries, to speak out on anything you want has been massively limited," Lai said. "It's all well and great if you're going there for a holiday or whatnot, but in terms of a financial center ... you at least need the rule of law and some semblance of free speech, and that's not the case there."

Trying to lure talent

Lai's comments came as the Hong Kong authorities try to boost investor interest in Hong Kong, seeking to attract fresh talent and visitors with new visa schemes and free plane tickets in a bid to counteract a mass exodus of middle-class and wealthy people in the wake of the national security law crackdown.

"It's just a very dark time for a financial center," Lai said. "How long can you keep being a financial center if people aren't allowed to speak up ... or if people are jailed for liking social media posts, and unfair sentences are handed out left and right?"

"My father got five years, nine months ... on a commercial charge ... the first time anybody has gone to jail for a lease violation," he said. "The fact that they used this to attack my father shows how much Hong Kong has gone down as a place to do business, as a place to live, as a place to work."

Lai, who is a British national like his father, said the United States had been much tougher on China than Britain.

"The U.K. government has been incredibly weak,” he said in comments reported by Reuters as Britain's Minister for Investment Dominic Johnson said he held a series of meetings with government officials and executives in Hong Kong this week. 

"It's very sad to see a democratic government being afraid – or asking permission even – to speak on behalf of one of its citizens that is in prison for freedom of speech."

U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher, chair of the House of Representatives select committee on China’s Communist Party, meanwhile hit out at the Vatican for not standing up for Jimmy Lai, who, like him, is a Catholic.

"The silence from the Vatican on China’s human rights abuses and Jimmy’s case, in particular, is deafening," Reuters quoted him as saying, adding that the Vatican's Washington embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hoi Man Wu for RFA Cantonese.

Weeks after Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte's son called on him to veto a bill to ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors, the governor signed the legislation into law Friday, making Montana the 11th stateth state in the past three months to enact full or partial bans on transition surgery, hormonal treatment, and puberty blockers for youths.

Gianforte's son, David, is nonbinary and uses he and they pronouns. He appealed to his father in a meeting in March as the bill was moving through the Republican-controlled legislature, telling him the ban "would significantly directly affect a number of my friends."

"I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights," David said.

Despite the meeting, the governor signed Senate Bill 99 into law on Friday.

David told The Montana Free Press on Wednesday that his father is "concerned about his career" and is "aware that being able to stay in the position of governor is dependent on him staying in favor of the Republican Party."

The law has been at the center of state House Republicans' silencing of Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D-100) in recent days. Speaker Matt Regier (R-4) refused to recognize her on the House floor after Zephyr, the state's first transgender lawmaker, told Republicans they would have "blood on their hands" if they backed S.B. 99. Earlier this week, the GOP majority voted to bar Zephyr from the House floor until the end of the legislative session.

Zephyr was greeted with cheers from her constituents and supporters in Missoula on Friday evening as transgender and nonbinary Montanans and their allies rallied against the gender-affirming care ban and other anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

"It's clear that anti-trans policies do not align with Montana's values," Zephyr told The New York Times Friday. "We are a state that cares for its community. There are trans people through every community in this state."

The ACLU of Montana has said it will file a legal challenge against the gender-affirming healthcare ban.

Access to transition care has been linked to a sharp decrease in the rate of suicidal ideation and depression among transgender youths, and is strongly supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics as well as other health associations.

Gianforte also signed a bill this week that will make it harder for public school students to be disciplined for misgendering nonbinary or transgender classmates.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

The arrangement of more than 3.9 million origami hearts at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Siem Reap province was organized by Hun Many, the chairman of the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia and a parliamentary candidate in the upcoming July general election.

“Cambodia has between 16 and 17 million people. We can make about 4 million hearts, so if China and India can make more hearts then the committee must consider,” the prime minister said, referring to the Guinness World Records officials who determine whether a record has been set. “They must think about the percent of the country’s population.” 

The Angkor Sangkran 2023 celebration near Angkor Wat temple – Cambodia’s top tourist attraction – has been decorated with lights, souvenir shops, food stalls, concerts and floating boats. Volunteers from the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia, which is made up of supporters of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, did much of the work for the event.

But the festival hasn’t done anything to promote the country’s culture, political analyst Kim Sok told Radio Free Asia. Money was spent out of the national budget and civil servants were put to work just to make people happy ahead of the election, he said.

“Hun Sen doesn’t think about the country and its people. He organized the event for his face and for his family,” he said.

Hun Many is currently a lawmaker from Kampong Speu province. Hun Sen’s eldest son, Hun Manet, has also been named a parliamentary candidate. He is currently the deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and is expected to eventually succeed his father as prime minister. 

Another Guinness record attempt

A member of the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia, Kean Savong, told RFA that another world record will be attempted at the festival on Saturday, when thousands of people will gather to do the Madison line dance. 

“People are volunteers so we don’t spend much money,” he said. 

A villager from Siem Reap province, Siem Vann, said Angkor Sangkran will make people happy for a short time but won’t really do anything to help the country when so many people are facing financial difficulties, are indebted to banks or are considering moving abroad to find work. 

He urged the government to think about increasing local markets for farmers and resolving political conflict.

“The government should use the budget to appropriately help the poor and restore democracy so that people will have freedom,” he said. 

Siem Reap authorities wouldn’t elaborate on how much the event will cost, but the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia said private donations from rich businessmen known by the honorific “Okhna” will cover most of the expenses.  

Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

Before he runs, Hun Manet, 45, the eldest son of Hun Sen, who has ruled since 1985, is expected to resign from the military – per election rules – where he is deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.

Hun Manet posted a short video clip to his Facebook page on Monday, saying that Cambodia would remain independent and strengthen ties with all countries around the world – not just China.

“Cambodia’s policy today is not being so close to China and not being so close to anyone,” he said. “It stands neutral, but we encourage and are determined to boost up close relationships with all the nations.

“That is our correct policy. We get closer to China, the United States and Japan and we get closer to all other nations,” he said. “That’s what we want.”

Hun Manet has had extensive experience overseas. A graduate of the elite United States Military Academy at West Point, he holds a masters in economics from New York University and another graduate degree from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

‘I have to protect my power’

Speaking at the inauguration of a hospital on Monday, Hun Sen used harsh language to respond to recent criticisms of his leadership and his son. 

The prime minister seemed to target a Buddhist monk now living in exile in Massachusetts who recently criticized Hun Manet for not being qualified to lead the country. In comments posted on Facebook on Sunday, the Venerable Buth Buntenh also said that if Hun Manet became prime minister, he would only do his father’s bidding. 

“The black guy, who lives in the U.S. – people would know when I call him the black guy,” Hun Sen said while not using Buth Buntenh’s name. 

“Last night, he said that Hun Sen fears losing power. What you said is right, the contemptible black guy. I have to protect my power because your people always attempt to kill me, why not let me protect it?”

Hun Sen also said he would continue to hunt and eliminate opposition groups – who he accused of committing treason – out of the political arena to protect peace and the constitutional monarchy. 

Warning to foreign embassies

He also cautioned  “Cambodia’s foreign friends” who support opposition party groups and politicians. 

“You have to choose between an individual group that breaks the laws and the government,” he said at the hospital inauguration in Tbong Khmum province. “Please choose one. If you need those who were penalized by law, please do so, and you can then break diplomatic relations from Cambodia.”

The ruling CPP and Hun Sen have been working to silence and intimidate opposition figures ahead of the July general elections through a series of arrests and lawsuits.

In the most high-profile example, opposition party leader Kem Sokha was sentenced to 27 years for treason last month in a court decision that was widely condemned as politically motivated. 

The charges against Kem Sokha related partly to a video recorded in 2013 in which he discusses a strategy to win power with the help of U.S. experts. The United States Embassy has rejected any suggestion that Washington was trying to interfere in Cambodian politics.

Hun Sen also mentioned last week’s visit to Phnom Penh of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

“He declared that the powerful countries should stop interfering into the affairs of other countries,” Hun Sen said. “I fully support him. I’ve got another good counterpart in ASEAN.” 

Political analyst Kim Sok said Hun Sen’s language on Monday was “undiplomatic.” Foreign embassies in Phnom Penh – such as the United States – are working to cooperate with Cambodia based on a 1991 multinational agreement that formally ended decades of war in the country and paved the way for parliamentary democracy, he said.

“They just monitor the situation to see if Cambodia walks in the path of democracy and multi-liberal pluralism, which is enshrined in the Paris Peace Agreements,” he said.   

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

The topic: How humans decimated whale populations through hundreds of years of industrial whaling, leaving some species and populations on the brink of extinction. But despite these impacts, many whale populations have made remarkable recoveries, demonstrating the ability of threatened and endangered species to bounce back from intense human pressure.

The presenter: Joshua Stewart, a new faculty member at OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, PhD from Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

The running joke with Stewart last night was he WAS not Bradley Cooper, and so he let people know not to be too disappointed that instead of that overpaid undertalented Holly-Dirt guy (my phrasing) we were in for a presentation by a nerd, a passionate whale guy, and young at that!

He’s been focusing on the Southern Right whale and the Antarctic minke, but his interest is also around the many species of whales/cetaceans not recovering despite whaling and hunting of those species having been stopped decades ago.

The history of whaling as a commercial endevour goes back to the Basques, a thousand years ago, going after the Right Whale, so called southern Right whale. Then after a few centuries with simple boats, things got going, and in fact the Basques went for Northern Right whales with larger ships. They had a 500 year monopoly on commercial whaling.

The big push in whaling occurred in the 1700s, Nantucket, and that included the big ships of Moby Dick fame. Then, into the 1800s and 1900s the ships had steam engines, and alas the range for these whalers extended far and wide. Processing ships were introduced, with diesel engines and factories on board, and with the advent of massive industrialization for the two “great” wars, the whalers got explosive harpoons and fast engines.

So, whereas for more than 700 years the blue and fin whales were too fast for the simple whalers, hence they were not being decimated by the whalers of that age. In the 1950s, however, as Stewart stated, more than three million whales were killed, which he calls the largest cull of wild mammals in the world. Many species became “commercially extinct,” i.e., the few numbers left in these species were not profitable enough for the big commercial operations.That included blues, sperms and fin whales.

I cut my teeth in the early 1970s on fighting whaling, that is, the commercial whaling tyranny. That effort globally — stopping whaling — super-charged the first Earth Day:

We are now 53 years later, and guys like Stewart, 35, is looking at declining whale populations, including the Southern Resident Orcas:

There are 73 (total) of these distinct salmon eaters left, and the issues around climate change, habitat degradation and their prey availability play into any researcher’s tool chest. Many of these iconic animals generations ago were part of the live capture “industry” to supply killer whales to theme parks.

The issue around sea traffic, the noise from that traffic, the pollutants in that Salish Sea (Vancouver and Seattle area), the food stock (Chinook salmon) and climate change play into the degradation of the Southern Residents, as their offspring are coming out smaller, stressed, and a skinny whale triples the probability of dying in the first year of life.

There were around fifty of us there, March 23, and the auditorium allowed for the first time the beer and wine drinkers to bring in their libations. There were fellow researchers in attendance, as well as students, both graduate and undergraduate. As far as the public, it seems that most people going to these talks are associated with academia or marine research. As I point out time and time again — where are the K12 kids? This was a 6 pm event. Stewart’s slide show/Power Point was good, and he is young (he kept alluding to the fact he is doing research on the backs of old-timers still working as researchers). This is an existential crisis in my mind. Having like minded, fellow marine wonks at an event is NOT enough in 2023. It’s barely anything, really. There are no outreach programs for K12 and families and fisher folk, and since this is after school hours, there seems to be no way in hell of getting high schools students who are interested in science and math and engineering in general to come out to these events. America is a cultural waste land, and one with dream hoarders ruling over the rest of us.

This is the echo chamber that is science, in my estimation. I can’t fault the students there from OSU, or the retired faculty or the active faculty, but this sort of event I have attended in the hundreds over the course of 50 years as a diver, then student of marine sciences, journalist, writer, educator and sustainability “wonk.”

There are no avenues now in 2023 built-in to go above and beyond, and surely, the happy hours/social hour from 5 to 6 pm could have been an hour where students got a little tour of the Hatfield which does have a public access educational center:

Yes, we have the Oregon Aquarium, a commercial marine park of sorts. And the Hatfield Visitor Center does get public attendance, but the K12 schools here in Lincoln county need to do outreach. We also need crab and fisher folk here to to have an open discussion with these wonky folk like Joshua Stewart who may or man not agree with the mitigation ideas, including limiting catches, closing seasons, biodegradable lines, and more.

Here’s my piece on the Oregon Aquarium: Depth of Experience? 20 years with Oregon Coast Aquarium gives CEO deep blue view of world

And, I’ve covered many of the researchers at Hatfield and in our Coastal area:

A story with bite

In otter news

I am finding many of my stories I did for Oregon Coast Today have vanished from the sister company, Discover Our Coast. This is disturbing, the culling of my work, as always. However, I have a book with all those stories captured in their original form, here: Coastal People inside a Deep Dive: stories about people living on the Central Coast and other places in Oregon.

Back to Stewart, AKA “not” Bradley Cooper: His work looks at the last two decades of declines with spring chinook salmon, through the San Juan Islands up to Vancouver Island. That’s an 85 percent decline in those salmon. As the orcas’ food stock, that means their lives are now in peril because of all those other factors, including food availability.

Here on the Coast we have the iconic gray whales, coming from breeding grounds in Mexico and Central America, making their way to the Arctic. We have whale watching as one tourist attraction, as the gray whales hang out here and push volumes of water into the sand to eat the anthropods that make small tubes as their feeding ritual. The only whale — a baleen whale, filter feeder, that is — which does this sort of feeding is “our” gray whale.¹

So, those gray whales, while in a state of recovery and delisted from the Environmental Species Act list, are still experiencing massive die offs, and the food they get in the Arctic is losing its own biomass, that is, the body weight has declined by one-third in the last fifty years.

So, like orca, gray whales are being studied now with drone photography, and the body shapes can be tracked over entire lifetimes. The lower the weight, the tougher it is on the individual and species in general.

Line entanglements are a big issue, as fishers use lobster and crab “pots” in the tens of thousands on our coast and east coast, with a buoy at the surface. Whales get entangled, and some live days, months and even a year with the gear in tow.

And, ship strikes are becoming a bigger and bigger issue not just on the USA’s coast, but worldwide.

Obviously, if there are more Fraser River spring Chinook salmon, then there will be a healthier Southern Resident Killer Whale population. But fish stocks are declining, and so many other factors play into the marine mammals’ overall health worldwide.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all. Why then do you try to ‘enlarge’ your mind? Subtilize it.

–Hermann Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 74 – “The Sperm Whale’s Head”

While gray whales were almost hunted to extinction, with 1,000 left, they have been delisted from the ESA — now estimated to be around 20,000 total population. However, researchers like Joshua are looking at these UME’s, Unusual Mortality Events.

2019-2023 Gray Whale Unusual Mortality Event along the West Coast and Alaska: Since January 1, 2019, elevated gray whale strandings have occurred along the west coast of North America from Mexico through Alaska. This event has been declared an Unusual Mortality Event (UME).

There are so many issues that marine mammals face in this industrialized, highly toxic and waste heavy modern society. Lobster/crab gear entanglements are possibly a small problem when compared to the microplastic now found in the zooplanton’s, anthropods’ and the whale’s bodies. Add to that mercury and PCBs, and we have a triple toxic soup for the mammals.

We can imagine what the carrying capacity is for one whale species, and these researchers have “cool” jobs when they get to go out to sea and chase whales and tag them and photograph them and collect their feces, for sure. Here, yet another piece from my work attending these Science on Tap Hatfield events: Whales and People: A Tragedy! (note: you will see two live links referenced here in this story, which are now no longer available; I have a sneaking suspicion that the university’s thugs, PR spinners, got to the publisher of Discover Our Coast, to knock out all articles tied to OSU that I wrote!)

At the end of the talk, I asked Joshua to look at the glass half EMPTY. A few in the crowd were not happy about “ending on a negative note” (Yikes, this is academic in a nutshell). His biggest fear is climate change, which is warming seas, that is, where certain areas of the ocean are heating up faster than others. Sea ice is melting earlier and capping over later (according to the past 80 years or more data), and food stocks for marine mammals are become less and less.

This is the continuing story of extinction, and the supreme right of homo sapiens consumopithecus to rule the world, rule all species, and rule even a majority of our own species in this criminal and corrupting and colluding Capitalism. And, well, green washing and green pornography have taken center stage, man, in the so called sustainability arena. I was head of many sustainability initiatives. Here, a long time ago: Sustained Discussion And, from a standing column I headed up, Metro Talk: Facing uncertainty, the Inland Empire needs more than a global warming bucket list

I showed many a class as a college teacher, Empty Oceans Empty Nets

The film is 2002!

So much work put into research and documentary making. But is it all echo chamber, now that the world is run totally by banks, hedge funds, Blackrock, Vanguard, Pharma-Media-Military-Congressional-Mining-Oil-Gas-Prison-Insurance-Surveillance-IT-AR-Digital Complex? Empty Nets, Emptying Oceans, Farming the Sea, and Soylent Green is People?

On a happy note, the crowd at Hatfield drank locally produced IPA’s, Oregon wine and locally backed pasteries. There was not mention of Greta’s honory doctorate from Helsinki, and Putin was not blamed for the the UME’s.

All was well at OSU, as if the world outside was outside of the bubble that is academia. Your choice, Stewart or Cooper!

1. Here’s another piece: Gray Whales Are Dying: Starving to Death Because of Climate Change; and another: Understanding the ocean’s web of life; and another: Experts paint sobering potential for sea change.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

The topic: How humans decimated whale populations through hundreds of years of industrial whaling, leaving some species and populations on the brink of extinction. But despite these impacts, many whale populations have made remarkable recoveries, demonstrating the ability of threatened and endangered species to bounce back from intense human pressure.

The presenter: Joshua Stewart, a new faculty member at OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, PhD from Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

The running joke with Stewart last night was he WAS not Bradley Cooper, and so he let people know not to be too disappointed that instead of that overpaid undertalented Holly-Dirt guy (my phrasing) we were in for a presentation by a nerd, a passionate whale guy, and young at that!

He’s been focusing on the Southern Right whale and the Antarctic minke, but his interest is also around the many species of whales/cetaceans not recovering despite whaling and hunting of those species having been stopped decades ago.

The history of whaling as a commercial endevour goes back to the Basques, a thousand years ago, going after the Right Whale, so called southern Right whale. Then after a few centuries with simple boats, things got going, and in fact the Basques went for Northern Right whales with larger ships. They had a 500 year monopoly on commercial whaling.

The big push in whaling occurred in the 1700s, Nantucket, and that included the big ships of Moby Dick fame. Then, into the 1800s and 1900s the ships had steam engines, and alas the range for these whalers extended far and wide. Processing ships were introduced, with diesel engines and factories on board, and with the advent of massive industrialization for the two “great” wars, the whalers got explosive harpoons and fast engines.

So, whereas for more than 700 years the blue and fin whales were too fast for the simple whalers, hence they were not being decimated by the whalers of that age. In the 1950s, however, as Stewart stated, more than three million whales were killed, which he calls the largest cull of wild mammals in the world. Many species became “commercially extinct,” i.e., the few numbers left in these species were not profitable enough for the big commercial operations.That included blues, sperms and fin whales.

I cut my teeth in the early 1970s on fighting whaling, that is, the commercial whaling tyranny. That effort globally — stopping whaling — super-charged the first Earth Day:

We are now 53 years later, and guys like Stewart, 35, is looking at declining whale populations, including the Southern Resident Orcas:

There are 73 (total) of these distinct salmon eaters left, and the issues around climate change, habitat degradation and their prey availability play into any researcher’s tool chest. Many of these iconic animals generations ago were part of the live capture “industry” to supply killer whales to theme parks.

The issue around sea traffic, the noise from that traffic, the pollutants in that Salish Sea (Vancouver and Seattle area), the food stock (Chinook salmon) and climate change play into the degradation of the Southern Residents, as their offspring are coming out smaller, stressed, and a skinny whale triples the probability of dying in the first year of life.

There were around fifty of us there, March 23, and the auditorium allowed for the first time the beer and wine drinkers to bring in their libations. There were fellow researchers in attendance, as well as students, both graduate and undergraduate. As far as the public, it seems that most people going to these talks are associated with academia or marine research. As I point out time and time again — where are the K12 kids? This was a 6 pm event. Stewart’s slide show/Power Point was good, and he is young (he kept alluding to the fact he is doing research on the backs of old-timers still working as researchers). This is an existential crisis in my mind. Having like minded, fellow marine wonks at an event is NOT enough in 2023. It’s barely anything, really. There are no outreach programs for K12 and families and fisher folk, and since this is after school hours, there seems to be no way in hell of getting high schools students who are interested in science and math and engineering in general to come out to these events. America is a cultural waste land, and one with dream hoarders ruling over the rest of us.

This is the echo chamber that is science, in my estimation. I can’t fault the students there from OSU, or the retired faculty or the active faculty, but this sort of event I have attended in the hundreds over the course of 50 years as a diver, then student of marine sciences, journalist, writer, educator and sustainability “wonk.”

There are no avenues now in 2023 built-in to go above and beyond, and surely, the happy hours/social hour from 5 to 6 pm could have been an hour where students got a little tour of the Hatfield which does have a public access educational center:

Yes, we have the Oregon Aquarium, a commercial marine park of sorts. And the Hatfield Visitor Center does get public attendance, but the K12 schools here in Lincoln county need to do outreach. We also need crab and fisher folk here to to have an open discussion with these wonky folk like Joshua Stewart who may or man not agree with the mitigation ideas, including limiting catches, closing seasons, biodegradable lines, and more.

Here’s my piece on the Oregon Aquarium: Depth of Experience? 20 years with Oregon Coast Aquarium gives CEO deep blue view of world

And, I’ve covered many of the researchers at Hatfield and in our Coastal area:

A story with bite

In otter news

I am finding many of my stories I did for Oregon Coast Today have vanished from the sister company, Discover Our Coast. This is disturbing, the culling of my work, as always. However, I have a book with all those stories captured in their original form, here: Coastal People inside a Deep Dive: stories about people living on the Central Coast and other places in Oregon.

Back to Stewart, AKA “not” Bradley Cooper: His work looks at the last two decades of declines with spring chinook salmon, through the San Juan Islands up to Vancouver Island. That’s an 85 percent decline in those salmon. As the orcas’ food stock, that means their lives are now in peril because of all those other factors, including food availability.

Here on the Coast we have the iconic gray whales, coming from breeding grounds in Mexico and Central America, making their way to the Arctic. We have whale watching as one tourist attraction, as the gray whales hang out here and push volumes of water into the sand to eat the anthropods that make small tubes as their feeding ritual. The only whale — a baleen whale, filter feeder, that is — which does this sort of feeding is “our” gray whale. ((Here’s another piece: Gray Whales Are Dying: Starving to Death Because of Climate Change; and another: Understanding the ocean’s web of life; and another: Experts paint sobering potential for sea change.))

So, those gray whales, while in a state of recovery and delisted from the Environmental Species Act list, are still experiencing massive die offs, and the food they get in the Arctic is losing its own biomass, that is, the body weight has declined by one-third in the last fifty years.

So, like orca, gray whales are being studied now with drone photography, and the body shapes can be tracked over entire lifetimes. The lower the weight, the tougher it is on the individual and species in general.

Line entanglements are a big issue, as fishers use lobster and crab “pots” in the tens of thousands on our coast and east coast, with a buoy at the surface. Whales get entangled, and some live days, months and even a year with the gear in tow.

And, ship strikes are becoming a bigger and bigger issue not just on the USA’s coast, but worldwide.

Obviously, if there are more Fraser River spring Chinook salmon, then there will be a healthier Southern Resident Killer Whale population. But fish stocks are declining, and so many other factors play into the marine mammals’ overall health worldwide.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all. Why then do you try to ‘enlarge’ your mind? Subtilize it.

–Hermann Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 74 – “The Sperm Whale’s Head”

While gray whales were almost hunted to extinction, with 1,000 left, they have been delisted from the ESA — now estimated to be around 20,000 total population. However, researchers like Joshua are looking at these UME’s, Unusual Mortality Events.

2019-2023 Gray Whale Unusual Mortality Event along the West Coast and Alaska: Since January 1, 2019, elevated gray whale strandings have occurred along the west coast of North America from Mexico through Alaska. This event has been declared an Unusual Mortality Event (UME).

There are so many issues that marine mammals face in this industrialized, highly toxic and waste heavy modern society. Lobster/crab gear entanglements are possibly a small problem when compared to the microplastic now found in the zooplanton’s, anthropods’ and the whale’s bodies. Add to that mercury and PCBs, and we have a triple toxic soup for the mammals.

We can imagine what the carrying capacity is for one whale species, and these researchers have “cool” jobs when they get to go out to sea and chase whales and tag them and photograph them and collect their feces, for sure. Here, yet another piece from my work attending these Science on Tap Hatfield events: Whales and People: A Tragedy! (note: you will see two live links referenced here in this story, which are now no longer available; I have a sneaking suspicion that the university’s thugs, PR spinners, got to the publisher of Discover Our Coast, to knock out all articles tied to OSU that I wrote!)

At the end of the talk, I asked Joshua to look at the glass half EMPTY. A few in the crowd were not happy about “ending on a negative note” (Yikes, this is academic in a nutshell). His biggest fear is climate change, which is warming seas, that is, where certain areas of the ocean are heating up faster than others. Sea ice is melting earlier and capping over later (according to the past 80 years or more data), and food stocks for marine mammals are become less and less.

This is the continuing story of extinction, and the supreme right of homo sapiens consumopithecus to rule the world, rule all species, and rule even a majority of our own species in this criminal and corrupting and colluding Capitalism. And, well, green washing and green pornography have taken center stage, man, in the so called sustainability arena. I was head of many sustainability initiatives. Here, a long time ago: Sustained Discussion And, from a standing column I headed up, Metro Talk: Facing uncertainty, the Inland Empire needs more than a global warming bucket list

I showed many a class as a college teacher, Empty Oceans Empty Nets

The film is 2002!

So much work put into research and documentary making. But is it all echo chamber, now that the world is run totally by banks, hedge funds, Blackrock, Vanguard, Pharma-Media-Military-Congressional-Mining-Oil-Gas-Prison-Insurance-Surveillance-IT-AR-Digital Complex? Empty Nets, Emptying Oceans, Farming the Sea, and Soylent Green is People?

On a happy note, the crowd at Hatfield drank locally produced IPA’s, Oregon wine and locally backed pasteries. There was not mention of Greta’s honory doctorate from Helsinki, and Putin was not blamed for the the UME’s.

All was well at OSU, as if the world outside was outside of the bubble that is academia. Your choice, Stewart or Cooper!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

The announcement followed a report about a shakeup and power struggle within the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP, over the selection of a new leader to succeed Hun Sun, who has ruled the country since 1985.

Sam Rainsy, acting president of the disbanded opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, posted a statement Friday on Facebook backing Tea Seiha, governor of Siem Reap province and the son of Defense Minister Tea Banh, as a prime ministerial candidate for the 2023-28 term.

The Cambodia National Rescue Party was the previous main opposition party before Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved it in 2017. Sam Rainsy, a party co-founder, has been living in self-exile in France since 2015, when he fled a series of charges his supporters say are politically motivated.

“The Cambodian people who want freedom and justice must unite around Tea Seiha, Tea Banh and Tea Vinh in order to bring about a democratic change in the country’s leadership through peaceful and nonviolent means, meaning free and fair elections,” he wrote.

Admiral Tea Vinh is the brother of Tea Banh and commander of the Royal Cambodian Navy. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tea Vinh in late 2021 for corruption concerning China’s involvement in the redevelopment of Ream Naval Base in Sihanoukville province, which could give Chinese forces a stronghold in the contested South China Sea. 

In Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, Cambodia scored only 24 out of 100, and was ranked at 150 out of 180 countries. 

“Such a change will promote a new leadership which is not made up of murderers, desperately corrupt people and traitors to the nation such as Hun Sen and his family,” Sam Rainsy wrote, referring to the authoritarian prime minister who has ruled Cambodia for 38 years.

July elections

The move comes as Cambodia prepares to elect members of the National Assembly, now fully controlled by the CPP under Hun Sen, who also serves as the party’s president. Opposition figures, including Sam Rainsy, want the prime minister and his party out of power.

In the run-up to the election, Hun Sen has repeatedly attacked members of the Candlelight Party — the current main challenger to the ruling party — in public forums, while CPP authorities have sued Candlelight members on what many observers see as politically motivated charges.  

Tea Banh, who has served as defense minister since the late 1980s, dismissed San Rainsy’s support for his son in a Facebook statement of his own, and stated his backing of Hun Sen’s oldest son, Hun Manet, as the future prime minister.

Hun Manet, 45, is commander of Cambodia’s army, deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, and leader of the CPP’s central youth wing. Hun Sen has groomed him to be his successor.

Sam Rainsy’s statement “aims at breaking national unity,” Tea Banh wrote. “My family and I still have a stand to support Hun Manet to be the next prime ministerial candidate.

He added that the military will work against any foreign interference in an attempt to topple the legal government.  

Following the statement, many senior military officials also denounced Sam Rainsy’s backing of Tea Seiha, who is widely expected to succeed his father as defense minister when Tea Bahn retires.

After Hun Sen said in December 2022 that Hun Manet would succeed him, some leaders in his government, including Tea Bahn and Interior Minister Sar Kheng, did not immediately endorse the move, though they eventually expressed support for the plan.

Internal rifts?

Political analyst Kim Sok said the matter is indicative of internal rifts in the CPP over prime ministerial candidates, suggesting that a faction led by Sar Kheng and Tea Banh still may not be pleased with Hun Sen’s intention to transfer power to his son.

He also said Hun Sen’s concern about a possible revolution sweeping through Cambodia might not come from members of the public and young people displeased with chronic corruption within the government and growing authoritarianism, but from within the CPP itself.

“Hun Sen has said that he will be the CPP president when his son is the prime minister; this means there is an internal rift,” said Kim Sok. “This is a sign of a color revolution within the party.”

Hun Sen recently warned Cambodians not to attempt to stage any color revolutions — popular anti-regime protest movements and accompanying changes of government — using human rights as a pretext, but rather to protect his so-called hard-earned peace.

Translated by Samean Yun for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

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

A Twitter handle named Ach Ankur Arya Official shared this video which currently has over 45,000 views. The video has gone viral since. Twitter took down the video for violating its policies.

Another Twitter account by the name Pt. Shrikant Upadhyay also shared the same video and a similar claim. It has over 20,000 views at the time of the writing of this article. His twitter bio describes him as ‘राष्ट्रीय उपाध्यक्ष राष्ट्रीय युवा वाहिनी’ and he has Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s photos on his cover picture. This tweet, too was taken down by the platform.
Fact Check

Using the InVId software, Alt News broke down the viral video into its various key-frames and came across news articles from July 2022. These reports were from Pakistani news outlets ARY News and 24 News HD describing the incident.

The reports said Ismail, a father of three children, had roughed up his eight-year-old son when his sleep was disturbed. The incident took place in the Pakistan Bazar area in Karachi. The official Twitter account of Karachi Police shared images of Ismail Ould Ibrahim after he had been arrested.

ایس پی صاحب اورنگی ڈویژن کی سربراہی میں ایس ایچ او پاکستان بازار نے کاروائی کرکے ملزم اسماعیل ولد ابراہیم کو گرفتار کیا۔

گرفتار ملزم کو مزید قانونی کاروائی کے لئے تفتیشی حکام کے حوالے کیا جائے گا۔

ترجمان ضلع ویسٹ پولیس pic.twitter.com/8gpzTWI5LV

— Karachi Police (@KarachiPolice_) July 6, 2022

Therefore, the video that has been circulating on social media claiming a Hindu child was beaten up by a Muslim man is actually an old video from Pakistan, where a father was physically torturing his son. The accused’s name is Ismail Ould Ibrahim. He was later arrested.

Vansh Shah is an intern with Alt News.

The post Video of Pak man beating up son shared with false communal claim appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Vansh Shah.

A day after prosecutors charged five former Memphis police officers with murder over the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, we speak with his parents, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, about their drive to seek justice for their son. “He had a beautiful soul, and he touched everyone,” RowVaughn Wells says of her son. Nichols was a 29-year-old Black father, amateur photographer and longtime skateboarder who died January 10 from kidney failure and cardiac arrest, three days after he was brutally beaten by the five officers during a traffic stop. The officers were fired earlier this month and indicted on Thursday with second-degree murder, kidnapping and other charges for their role in Nichols’s death. We also speak with civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In the video, Long Sokunthearak, who lives in Ohio, said that Hun Sen’s son Hun Manet was only able to rise to a position of power because of his father’s influence, and that the elder Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia since 1985, has been targeting opposition party politicians to make it easier for his son to one day take his place.

“I wanted to tell the public that my fake uniform has no value, just like the uniform given to Hun Manet by Hun Sen,” Long Sokunthearak told RFA’s Khmer Service.

Hun Manet is Cambodia’s Deputy Commander in Chief of the army, with a rank of infantry commander. 

Supporters of Hun Sen called for action against Long Sokunthearak over the video.

“The individual’s actions, through incitement by illegally impersonating as a military officer, affected the national security and dignity of the Royal Army,” Cambodian Defense Ministry Spokesman Chum Socheat said in a statement.  “It is a serious breach of law that can't be forgiven."

Chum Socheat also said that the video insulted the prime minister and the dignity of Hun Manet.

 Hun Manet’s brother Hun Many took to Facebook to condemn the video, saying, “This is an insult that can't be accepted.” 

“This is baseless and derogatory speech and it has affected me as a family member,” Hun Many said. “I appeal to the authorities to take actions that impersonate a military officer."

Long Sokunthearak said that he had no intention to pass himself off as a Cambodian military officer, and that the government was only targeting him because it wants to link him to the Candlelight Party, which is the current main opposition party, to justify action against that party ahead of this year’s general elections, scheduled for July.

Long Sokunthearak is affiliated with the Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, which was once the country’s main opposition party until Cambodia’s Supreme Court dissolved it in 2017 after the party performed well in communal elections that year.

He distanced himself from the Candlelight party, saying he only had ties to the CNRP.

“I am a supporter of the victim,” he said.

Political commentator Em Sovannara said that Long Sokunthearak’s stunt was an example of “bad culture” that he does not support.

He said that  politicians should be mature and ethical so people can trust them and urged them to compete on the issues rather than attacking each other.

 Translated  by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

In the predawn hours of January 6, dramatic videos surfaced online from the Mexican state of Sinaloa. In the clips, a Mexican army attack chopper unloaded heavy machine gun fire into the rural fishing community of Jesús María, outside the capital city of Culiacán. Soon after, news broke that Mexican troops had once again arrested Ovidio Guzmán López, the 32-year-old son of world-famous drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.

The last time the younger Guzmán was arrested, in 2019, hundreds of gunmen laid siege to Culiacán, burning cars, setting roadblocks, and surrounding a housing complex belonging to the families of Mexican soldiers. Fourteen people were killed on “Jueves negro” — “Black Thursday” — and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ultimately ordered Guzmán released.

Though Mexican authorities held on to Guzmán this time around, the raid exacted a heavy cost on Sinaloans still recovering from the last wave of violence. While details continue to surface, the latest reporting indicates that at least 30 people were killed — including 11 soldiers and 19 alleged shooters loyal to Guzmán. At least three civilians, including a child, were reportedly wounded in gun battles that raged for up to 12 hours.

As gunmen were terrorizing Culiacán on Thursday, President Joe Biden announced major policy changes on the U.S.-Mexico border, including the expansion of a Trump administration policy authorizing the summary expulsion of asylum-seekers to Mexico without due process. Both the Guzmán operation and the White House announcement came just three days before a summit, beginning this week, that brings Biden and López Obrador — as well as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — together for a meeting to discuss the most pressing issues facing the continent.

“I would suspect that if Biden thinks he’s getting the gift, he’s going to find that the gift takes a while to arrive.”

President Joe Biden arrives at the Santa Lucia Airport in Mexico City on Jan. 8, 2023.

Photo: Carlos Tischler/Sipa USA via AP

“This is not going to convince people who are on the other side of the spectrum.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Devereaux.

Kak Sovanchhay, the 17-year-old son of opposition activists, was arrested at his home in Phnom Penh on June 24, 2021, because of a Facebook post and voice messages in which he was critical of the government in response to someone calling his father a traitor. His father, Kak Komphear, is a jailed senior official of the banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP.

In November of that year, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced Kak Sovanchhay to eight months in prison for incitement and insulting public officials, but credited him four-and-a-half months for time served and commuted the remainder of his sentence. The court released him just over a week later and ordered that he remain under judicial supervision for two years.

Kak Sovanchhay appealed the conviction, but it was upheld on March 14, 2022.

Seven months later, the Supreme Court ordered the municipal Court of Appeal to retry the case. During the retrial, presiding judge Suos Sam Ath upheld the Phnom Penh Municipal Court’s verdict, but ordered the teenage boy to remain under the court’s supervision with the easing of some restrictions placed upon him. 

The court now has allowed Kak Sovanchhay to receive treatment but has banned him from consuming alcohol, carrying arms, using explosive devices and associating with criminals. 

Prior to easing the restrictions, the court required him to appear at a local police station each month and receive court approval to travel abroad.

Prum Chantha, his mother, refused to accept the appeal court’s ruling and said she would likely appeal it to the Supreme Court in the near future. She said the court should drop all charges against her son, who was 16 years old at the time of his arrest, because he is autistic and because having a record could affect his prospects.

“I want the court to drop the charges at once” she said. “I do not want it to be like that because my child is young, [and] his brain is not normal.”

Defense lawyer Sam Sok Kong said he would consider filing an appeal if his client objected to the appeal court’s decision.

“The law gives the right to the accused, especially when the accused has the right to appeal for a second time, but so far we can’t speak on behalf of the client,” he said. “I am waiting to discuss with the client so see if he thinks the decision is fair or not.”

Translated by Samean Yun for RFA Khmer. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Translated by Malcolm Foster.

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

Police and dozens of local officials from Plei Kan town and Ngoc Hoi district descended on the Son Linh Pagoda in the early hours of Tuesday morning. By 11 a.m. the pagoda had been completely demolished. The abbot, Thich Nhat Phuoc, was visiting another pagoda in Vung Tau province, some 600 kilometers (373 miles) south, at the time.

His mother, Ngoc Luong, who lives about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away, went to the pagoda when she heard it was being destroyed but was prevented from entering the area by the police.

“In the early morning, I received a call from Nhat Hoa [a monk at the pagoda], so I went down. I asked to enter but the authorities did not let me in and others kicked me out,” she told RFA.

“I said I was Mr. Phuoc’s mother and asked them to let me in to take out his belongings because he’d gone away a few days ago. They still wouldn't let me in."

A video provided by Luong shows police officers and people in plain clothes blocking her motorbike, preventing her from entering the area.

She said local government workers carried Buddha statues and worshiping tablets out of the pagoda and then tore down the wooden building with chainsaws, cranes and excavators. According to Luong, one told her Son Linh was not a pagoda but a temporary house and her son was not a monk. She said another snatched her camera and two more grabbed her hand, forcing her to the floor.

A monastery was established on the site in 2009 and a temple was built there in 2018. The following year the Ngoc Hoi district government demolished it, so the monks replaced it with a temporary structure made of wood and corrugated iron.

The abbot of Thien Quang pagoda in Vung Tau province bought the land and asked his disciple, Thich Nhat Phuoc, to come and look after it. Phuoc turned it into a place of worship, visited by many local Buddhists. However local authorities said the building had been built illegally on farm land and refused the abbot’s petitions to rebuild the temple. When monks renovated the temple last year so they could live there the Church was fined by local authorities.

On Oct, 27 this year, the People’s Committee of Ngoc Hoi district ordered the abbot to dismantle the building within 45 days saying: “The illegal construction of houses on agricultural land … causes difficulties for land management, affecting security and social order in the area.”

This month Plei Kan town authorities ordered the abbot to comply with the request by Dec. 12, otherwise they would destroy it and charge him the cost of the demolition. 

Phuoc told RFA many people had built houses on agricultural land nearby but had not been forced to destroy them. The abbot said the real reason authorities destroyed the pagoda was because he refused to join the Vietnam Buddhist Church, a religious organization that is a member of the State-linked Vietnam Fatherland Front.

“They find ways to suppress and destroy independent pagodas that do not follow the Vietnamese Buddhist Church,” he said. “They do not recognize independent Buddhist institutions as temples.”

RFA called the heads of the People's Committees of Plei Kan town and Ngoc Hoi district, but no one answered the phone. Emails requesting information on the pagoda’s destruction went unanswered.

Authorities have destroyed many more places of worship belonging to the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam and prevented others from operating. They include Lien Tri Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City; Phap Bien, Dat Quang and Thien Quang pagodas in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province; Van Linh pagoda in Lam Dong province; and Thong Linh pagoda in Dak Lak province.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Dec. 2 he was putting Vietnam on a "Special Watch List" because it "commits or tolerates serious violations of religious freedom."

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

Police and dozens of local officials from Plei Kan town and Ngoc Hoi district descended on the Son Linh Pagoda in the early hours of Tuesday morning. By 11 a.m. the pagoda had been completely demolished. The abbot, Thich Nhat Phuoc, was visiting another pagoda in Vung Tau province, some 600 kilometers (373 miles) south, at the time.

His mother, Ngoc Luong, who lives about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away, went to the pagoda when she heard it was being destroyed but was prevented from entering the area by the police.

“In the early morning, I received a call from Nhat Hoa [a monk at the pagoda], so I went down. I asked to enter but the authorities did not let me in and others kicked me out,” she told RFA.

“I said I was Mr. Phuoc’s mother and asked them to let me in to take out his belongings because he’d gone away a few days ago. They still wouldn't let me in."

A video provided by Luong shows police officers and people in plain clothes blocking her motorbike, preventing her from entering the area.

She said local government workers carried Buddha statues and worshiping tablets out of the pagoda and then tore down the wooden building with chainsaws, cranes and excavators. According to Luong, one told her Son Linh was not a pagoda but a temporary house and her son was not a monk. She said another snatched her camera and two more grabbed her hand, forcing her to the floor.

A monastery was established on the site in 2009 and a temple was built there in 2018. The following year the Ngoc Hoi district government demolished it, so the monks replaced it with a temporary structure made of wood and corrugated iron.

The abbot of Thien Quang pagoda in Vung Tau province bought the land and asked his disciple, Thich Nhat Phuoc, to come and look after it. Phuoc turned it into a place of worship, visited by many local Buddhists. However local authorities said the building had been built illegally on farm land and refused the abbot’s petitions to rebuild the temple. When monks renovated the temple last year so they could live there the Church was fined by local authorities.

On Oct, 27 this year, the People’s Committee of Ngoc Hoi district ordered the abbot to dismantle the building within 45 days saying: “The illegal construction of houses on agricultural land … causes difficulties for land management, affecting security and social order in the area.”

This month Plei Kan town authorities ordered the abbot to comply with the request by Dec. 12, otherwise they would destroy it and charge him the cost of the demolition. 

Phuoc told RFA many people had built houses on agricultural land nearby but had not been forced to destroy them. The abbot said the real reason authorities destroyed the pagoda was because he refused to join the Vietnam Buddhist Church, a religious organization that is a member of the State-linked Vietnam Fatherland Front.

“They find ways to suppress and destroy independent pagodas that do not follow the Vietnamese Buddhist Church,” he said. “They do not recognize independent Buddhist institutions as temples.”

RFA called the heads of the People's Committees of Plei Kan town and Ngoc Hoi district, but no one answered the phone. Emails requesting information on the pagoda’s destruction went unanswered.

Authorities have destroyed many more places of worship belonging to the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam and prevented others from operating. They include Lien Tri Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City; Phap Bien, Dat Quang and Thien Quang pagodas in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province; Van Linh pagoda in Lam Dong province; and Thong Linh pagoda in Dak Lak province.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Dec. 2 he was putting Vietnam on a "Special Watch List" because it "commits or tolerates serious violations of religious freedom."

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

Kak Sovannchhay, 17, is the son of Kak Komphear, a jailed senior official of the banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). 

He was arrested at his home in Phnom Penh on June 24, 2021, over a Facebook post and voice messages in which he was critical of the government in response to someone calling his father a traitor.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced him on Nov. 1, but credited him four-and-a-half months for time served and commuted the remainder of his sentence, thereby allowing his release a little more than a week later. Additionally the court ordered he remain under judicial supervision for two years.

He appealed the conviction but it was upheld on March 14, 2022.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted the facts from the appellate trial but rejected the conviction and six conditions set on Kak Sovannchhay while under judicial supervision.

Prum Chantha, Kak Sovannchhay’s mother, told RFA’s Khmer Service that her son’s imprisonment was a threat from the government because her family continues to promote democracy.

She said the Court of Appeals should drop the sentence because her son, who was only 16 at the time of his arrest, was a child. Additionally the sentence leaves a mark on his record that could seriously affect his future.

“First, it affects his opportunities to learn, second he gets discrimination, and third, when he goes to find work, his name will be associated with the conviction, so it is a very serious punishment,” said Prum Chantha.

“He is just a minor and he has a disability,” she said, referring to his autism. “He is very young.”

Kak Sovannchhay’s lawyer Sam Sokong told RFA he believes the verdict is a violation of his client’s human rights.

“I urge the authorities as well as the Royal Government to consider the case of this child and to consider the interests of the child as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other rights related to children's rights,” he said.

Based on Cambodia’s Penal Code and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Cambodia is a party, judges should be highly considerate and refrain from convicting children, opting for rehabilitation or education instead of imprisonment, Sam Sokong said.

Am Sam Ath of the local Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Licadho), a local NGO, told RFA that he believes the Supreme Court handed the case back to the appellate court because it is skeptical about certain aspects of the law and how they were applied in Kak Sovannchhay’s case.

He urged the Court of Appeals to retry the case as soon as possible and drop all charges.

“We look at first the interests of the child,” he said. “Secondly, this child has a chronic disability called autism, and thirdly, if we look at the dialogue in social media used to convict him was a private conversation,” he said.

Kak Sovannchhay had been previously arrested in October 2020, then in April 2021, two men attacked him with bricks while he was driving a motorbike, leaving him with a fractured skull. Police never found either attacker.

The conviction and sentence of an autisitic child was neither necessary nor proportionate,  a May 2022 report on the trial by the American Bar Association said.

“Sovannchhay’s conviction further shows the lengths to which the Cambodian government will go to silence dissenting voices as well as the urgent need to reform Cambodia’s ‘incitement’ law, which has been a crucial tool in the authorities’ crackdown on civil society,” the report said. 

Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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

Zamora, who founded elPeriódico in 1996 and still serves as president of the newspaper, was arrested on July 29. He remains in pre-trial detention in the Mariscal Zavala prison in Guatemala City, as prosecutors conduct a criminal investigation on charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling.

Zamora, his family, and his colleagues have claimed that the case is retaliation for elPeriódico’s reporting on alleged corruption involving Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Attorney General Consuelo Porras.

Zamora’s son, José Zamora, who is also a journalist and currently works at Exile Content Studio, a Spanish-language entertainment and media firm, in Miami, spoke to CPJ in a video interview about his father’s case and the current state of press freedom and democracy in Guatemala.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In response to CPJ’s request for comment, Juan Luis Pantaleon, a spokesperson for the Guatemalan prosecutor’s office, said in an email that the case against Zamora is “not about any political persecution or any attack” on freedom of expression. CPJ emailed the office of the executive secretary of the presidency but did not receive a reply.

This is not the first time your father has faced harassment from Guatemalan officials.

José Zamora: My father has a career of more than 30 years in journalism, and he was the first journalist to start doing investigative journalism, with his team, in Guatemala. This has led to a series of attacks and harassment and persecution over the years: defamation campaigns, fiscal terrorism, and many others.

For example, they said the newspaper hasn’t been paying taxes for years. They came to audit the newspaper but did not find anything.

Then there were the lawsuits. At one point, there were 195 spurious lawsuits against my father and the outlet, some of them even misusing important laws, like the law against femicide, which is intended to protect women who face abuse from their partners. Several officials sued my father using this law, which is a total aberration.

And then you have the commercial boycott. The government and the president have threatened influential business people and basically prohibited them from advertising in the newspaper.

My father has also been subjected to threats, kidnappings, and bombings. In 2003, there was a kidnapping. They entered my parent’s house — my siblings and I still lived with my parents at the time — and held us hostage for about three hours.

In 2008, they tried again to kill my dad. They kidnapped him coming out of a restaurant, took him away, beat him, injected him with something to kill him, and then left him. Luckily that place was so cold that he got hypothermia. And hypothermia was, in the end, what saved him. Firefighters brought him in, thinking he was a corpse, and when they began to prepare for the autopsy, they realized that he had vital signs [and treated him].

But this imprisonment is totally new. They had been trying to do this for the last year, but it did not happen until now. Several times, different sources warned us that they were fabricating cases against him.

How is your father?

He is in an isolated cell, and in general, he is in good health and in good spirits. He wants to fight and continue doing journalism even while there. At some point, he did have some health problems — his cell was filled with bedbugs, which bit him and gave him an allergic reaction. But now he is generally in good health and is much better.

What was the newspaper publishing before your father was arrested?

President Giammattei has been in power for 130 weeks, more or less, and elPeriódico has published 130 investigations. So there has not been a week without reporting on some act of corruption in his administration.

In the country in general, Giammattei has led a systematic attack on democracy and has persecuted anyone who is considered a critic. The most recent of these systematic attacks on democracy is this persecution of the press. In the case of elPeriódico and my dad, things got worse in November. The newspaper published an investigation titled “La Trama Rusa” (“The Russian Plot”) on how the president made a business deal with a Russian company in which the state of Guatemala granted a concession to develop a mine, and that the president was [allegedly] paid for it. That was the breaking point.

Can you tell us more about your father’s case? What is he accused of?

In Guatemala, legal processes generally take years in terms of investigation and processes. But [the legal case against Zamora] was all set up in 72 hours. It based on a complaint from a “denunciante” [a man Zamora asked to help him but who later informed on the journalist].

My father is accused of money laundering and blackmail. What happened is that a serious businessman gave my dad 300,000 quetzales [US$38,050] to support the newspaper. My father contacted the [man who became the] “denunciante” [to put the money into his business’s bank account] and give him a check from his company. My dad wanted that check deposited into the account of Aldea Global, the company that owns elPeriódico. But when my father goes to deposit the check, [it bounced].

[Editor’s note: According to an interview with Zamora’s lawyer in Central American online outlet El Faro, the reason that Zamora did not deposit the donation directly into Aldea Global’s account, but asked the man who became the “denunciante” to write him a check from his account, was because this triangulation helped him protect the identity of the donor.]

[For] blackmail, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said that the whistleblower believed that my father’s funds had come from blackmailing someone, but there is no proof.

Can you tell us why your father has to spend 90 days in pretrial detention?

The judge gave the Public Prosecutor’s Office the maximum amount of time for the investigation, three months, and ordered [my father to] pretrial detention. My father meets all the requirements to be granted “substitute measures” [similar to parole] and be under house arrest. But they want him there in prison, because they want to humiliate him and make a public example of him. Even when they took him to the hearings, everything was excessive, as if they were taking one of the biggest organized crime bosses.

Everything has been very public, and this is just an example in a series of systematic attacks against democracy and against the press. My dad is an example, but the broader message is for everyone, and that is that they are going to persecute any critical voice.

How are elPeriódico’s journalists working at the moment?

They all believe deeply in their work, its importance for democracy, and in making a better country. So they continue to work, but it’s very challenging when the newsroom’s leader is gone. On the other hand, there is a financial issue. For almost 15 days, they froze the accounts. The journalists did not receive their salaries for almost three weeks. And that demonstrates a lot: not only the journalists’ strength and determination, and conviction because they continued to work in a very tense situation, but also without any income. Little by little, this is getting resolved, but it’s complicated.

What do journalists in Guatemala need in order to do their work freely?

What they need is freedom. A decent state should see the press as an ally. The truth is that they can’t know everything that happens in all state institutions. They should be transparent, but the state is massive. So the state should support and have a decent relationship with the press and allow them to do their job, because it would even allow them to stop corruption.

What do you want now for your father’s case?

The main request is that he should be released. The evidence is weak, and they haven’t been able to prove anything.

The second point: If they are going to detain him, they should grant him substitute measures, and he should be able to wait for the process to take place under house arrest.

And thirdly, they should not persecute the newspaper as a company. In doing so, they have attacked not only press freedom, but also all the journalists and the people who work at elPeriódico. They also went after the financial director Flora Silva and imprisoned her. She is another person who, at minimum, should also be under substitute measures and house arrest.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Dánae Vílchez.

Zamora, who founded elPeriódico in 1996 and still serves as president of the newspaper, was arrested on July 29. He remains in pre-trial detention in the Mariscal Zavala prison in Guatemala City, as prosecutors conduct a criminal investigation on charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling.

Zamora, his family, and his colleagues have claimed that the case is retaliation for elPeriódico’s reporting on alleged corruption involving Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Attorney General Consuelo Porras.

Zamora’s son, José Zamora, who is also a journalist and currently works at Exile Content Studio, a Spanish-language entertainment and media firm, in Miami, spoke to CPJ in a video interview about his father’s case and the current state of press freedom and democracy in Guatemala.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In response to CPJ’s request for comment, Juan Luis Pantaleon, a spokesperson for the Guatemalan prosecutor’s office, said in an email that the case against Zamora is “not about any political persecution or any attack” on freedom of expression. CPJ emailed the office of the executive secretary of the presidency but did not receive a reply.

This is not the first time your father has faced harassment from Guatemalan officials.

José Zamora: My father has a career of more than 30 years in journalism, and he was the first journalist to start doing investigative journalism, with his team, in Guatemala. This has led to a series of attacks and harassment and persecution over the years: defamation campaigns, fiscal terrorism, and many others.

For example, they said the newspaper hasn’t been paying taxes for years. They came to audit the newspaper but did not find anything.

Then there were the lawsuits. At one point, there were 195 spurious lawsuits against my father and the outlet, some of them even misusing important laws, like the law against femicide, which is intended to protect women who face abuse from their partners. Several officials sued my father using this law, which is a total aberration.

And then you have the commercial boycott. The government and the president have threatened influential business people and basically prohibited them from advertising in the newspaper.

My father has also been subjected to threats, kidnappings, and bombings. In 2003, there was a kidnapping. They entered my parent’s house — my siblings and I still lived with my parents at the time — and held us hostage for about three hours.

In 2008, they tried again to kill my dad. They kidnapped him coming out of a restaurant, took him away, beat him, injected him with something to kill him, and then left him. Luckily that place was so cold that he got hypothermia. And hypothermia was, in the end, what saved him. Firefighters brought him in, thinking he was a corpse, and when they began to prepare for the autopsy, they realized that he had vital signs [and treated him].

But this imprisonment is totally new. They had been trying to do this for the last year, but it did not happen until now. Several times, different sources warned us that they were fabricating cases against him.

How is your father?

He is in an isolated cell, and in general, he is in good health and in good spirits. He wants to fight and continue doing journalism even while there. At some point, he did have some health problems — his cell was filled with bedbugs, which bit him and gave him an allergic reaction. But now he is generally in good health and is much better.

What was the newspaper publishing before your father was arrested?

President Giammattei has been in power for 130 weeks, more or less, and elPeriódico has published 130 investigations. So there has not been a week without reporting on some act of corruption in his administration.

In the country in general, Giammattei has led a systematic attack on democracy and has persecuted anyone who is considered a critic. The most recent of these systematic attacks on democracy is this persecution of the press. In the case of elPeriódico and my dad, things got worse in November. The newspaper published an investigation titled “La Trama Rusa” (“The Russian Plot”) on how the president made a business deal with a Russian company in which the state of Guatemala granted a concession to develop a mine, and that the president was [allegedly] paid for it. That was the breaking point.

Can you tell us more about your father’s case? What is he accused of?

In Guatemala, legal processes generally take years in terms of investigation and processes. But [the legal case against Zamora] was all set up in 72 hours. It based on a complaint from a “denunciante” [a man Zamora asked to help him but who later informed on the journalist].

My father is accused of money laundering and blackmail. What happened is that a serious businessman gave my dad 300,000 quetzales [US$38,050] to support the newspaper. My father contacted the [man who became the] “denunciante” [to put the money into his business’s bank account] and give him a check from his company. My dad wanted that check deposited into the account of Aldea Global, the company that owns elPeriódico. But when my father goes to deposit the check, [it bounced].

[Editor’s note: According to an interview with Zamora’s lawyer in Central American online outlet El Faro, the reason that Zamora did not deposit the donation directly into Aldea Global’s account, but asked the man who became the “denunciante” to write him a check from his account, was because this triangulation helped him protect the identity of the donor.]

[For] blackmail, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said that the whistleblower believed that my father’s funds had come from blackmailing someone, but there is no proof.

Can you tell us why your father has to spend 90 days in pretrial detention?

The judge gave the Public Prosecutor’s Office the maximum amount of time for the investigation, three months, and ordered [my father to] pretrial detention. My father meets all the requirements to be granted “substitute measures” [similar to parole] and be under house arrest. But they want him there in prison, because they want to humiliate him and make a public example of him. Even when they took him to the hearings, everything was excessive, as if they were taking one of the biggest organized crime bosses.

Everything has been very public, and this is just an example in a series of systematic attacks against democracy and against the press. My dad is an example, but the broader message is for everyone, and that is that they are going to persecute any critical voice.

How are elPeriódico’s journalists working at the moment?

They all believe deeply in their work, its importance for democracy, and in making a better country. So they continue to work, but it’s very challenging when the newsroom’s leader is gone. On the other hand, there is a financial issue. For almost 15 days, they froze the accounts. The journalists did not receive their salaries for almost three weeks. And that demonstrates a lot: not only the journalists’ strength and determination, and conviction because they continued to work in a very tense situation, but also without any income. Little by little, this is getting resolved, but it’s complicated.

What do journalists in Guatemala need in order to do their work freely?

What they need is freedom. A decent state should see the press as an ally. The truth is that they can’t know everything that happens in all state institutions. They should be transparent, but the state is massive. So the state should support and have a decent relationship with the press and allow them to do their job, because it would even allow them to stop corruption.

What do you want now for your father’s case?

The main request is that he should be released. The evidence is weak, and they haven’t been able to prove anything.

The second point: If they are going to detain him, they should grant him substitute measures, and he should be able to wait for the process to take place under house arrest.

And thirdly, they should not persecute the newspaper as a company. In doing so, they have attacked not only press freedom, but also all the journalists and the people who work at elPeriódico. They also went after the financial director Flora Silva and imprisoned her. She is another person who, at minimum, should also be under substitute measures and house arrest.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Dánae Vílchez.

This weekend marked the 103rd anniversary of the 1919 Elaine massacre, one of the deadliest episodes of racial violence in U.S. history. The violence started on September 30, 1919, when guards stopped two white men from breaking into a meeting between Black sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas, who were organizing to demand fair payments for their crops. After an exchange of gunfire, a white man was killed. White mobs, backed by the U.S. military, responded with three days of anti-Black violence, indiscriminately killing hundreds of Black people under the false claim of stopping a Black insurrection. Much of the Black farmers’ land was stolen as a result. We speak to Julia Wright, daughter of the acclaimed Black author Richard Wright, who called Elaine home and wrote about his great-uncle Silas Hoskins’s lynching in Elaine three years prior in 1916. Wright says she saw the lynching in a new light after the murder of George Floyd. “Two lynchings separated by so many years and yet so similar,” says Wright. We also speak with Paul Ortiz, historian at the University of Florida, who recalls the nationwide crusade, which included journalist Ida B. Wells, to seek justice for the Black farmers who remained and were taken into custody after the massacre, and ultimately won their freedom.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The adult son of former NFL star and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker accused his father of violence and dishonesty late Monday following The Daily Beast's bombshell report that the self-styled purveyor of "family values" and fervent enemy of reproductive rights paid for a former girlfriend's abortion in 2009.