(Washington, DC — Jan. 1, 2012) Radio Free Asia broadcast the following stories, and more, in December:
RFA Reports on sentencing of writer, priest in Vietnam
Dec. 30 – RFA Vietnamese aired story [text in English/Vietnamese] on a Vietnamese court sentencing a writer to five years in prison and ordering an activist priest jailed for two years. Both were charged with “activities undermining the state.” Ho Thi Bich Khuong was handed three years under house arrest in addition to her five-year sentence, while Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton received an additional two years of house arrest.
RFA Reports on new details emerging on Xinjiang clashes
Dec. 30 – RFA Uyghur aired story [text in English/Uyghur] on new details emerging from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region that at least two of seven ethnic Uyghurs killed in a confrontation with police were women. The details also indicate that children as young as seven years old were among those detained following the violence.
RFA Reports on Uyghur trafficking victim’s mother seeking redress
Dec. 29 – RFA Uyghur aired story [text in English/Uyghur] on a Uyghur woman alleging local Chinese officials neglected to investigate claims that her son was sexually abused by human traffickers. The woman told RFA in a phone interview that she is seeking redress from the United Nations.
RFA Reports on illegal logging accusations against Cambodian tycoon
Dec. 28 – RFA Khmer aired story [text in English/Khmer] on a forestry protection group accusing a tycoon with ties to Cambodia’s ruling party of illegally logging precious wood from protected habitats in the country. Sources say when businessman Try Pheap was granted a land concession by the government to develop a hydroelectric dam in the southwestern Cardamom Mountains region, his workers also went ahead in cutting high-value timber in the forest reserve and transporting it to Vietnam to sell.
RFA Reports on funeral of Kim Jong Il
Dec. 28 – RFA Korean aired story [text in English/Korean] on North Koreans bidding farewell to Kim Jong Il. In an apparent move to shore up Kim Jong Un’s image as his successor, the young son was thrust to the forefront of a tightly choreographed funeral. The reclusive nuclear-armed nation’s official media declared the country in Kim Jong Un’s “warm care,” in effect confirming him as North Korea’s third-generation hereditary leader after the late Kim succeeded his own father Kim Il Sung in the 1990s.
RFA Reports on tear gassing of Sichuan Christmas worshippers
Dec. 26 – RFA Cantonese and Mandarin aired story [text in English/Cantonese/Mandarin] on police in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan firing tear-gas canisters at worshipers at an unofficial outdoor Christmas service. Police also moved to detain other members of house churches who tried to organize Christian worship elsewhere in the country.
RFA Reports on Cambodia freeing pedophile after government request
Dec. 23 – RFA Khmer aired story [text in English/Khmer] on Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government asking the country’s King Norodom Sihamoni to pardon a Russian businessman convicted of sexually abusing more than a dozen girls in Cambodia. Prince Sisowath Thomico told RFA in an interview that the king granted an amnesty to Alexander Trofimov, based on a government request. Trofimov, who became the focus of Cambodia’s largest-ever pedophilia case, had been convicted of buying sex from 17 girls between the ages of 6 and 13.
RFA Reports on beating of Uyghur teacher
Dec. 23 – RFA Uyghur aired story [text in English/Uyghur] on Han Chinese students in China’s northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region beating an ethnic Uyghur teacher while his Han colleagues stood by. Also in the incident, Han Chinese students at the Karamay No. 2 High School in Xinjiang’s Karamay city set upon Uyghur peers with sticks, leaving scores in need of medical attention.
RFA Reports on detentions of Lao Christians
Dec. 23 – RFA Lao aired story [text in English/Lao] on authorities in central Laos detaining eight Christian leaders after neighbors violently protested over their pre-Christmas prayers. The prayers triggered an angry response from neighbors who pelted the group with stones when the worshippers refused to end their session.
RFA Reports on new microblogging rules in Chinese cities
Dec. 22 – RFA Mandarin and Cantonese aired story [text in English/Mandarin/Cantonese] on the rollout in two Chinese cities of new microblog rules requiring account holders to use their real names. The move followed the first clampdown on Twitter-like services in Beijing. Seven major websites in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, in the southern province of Guangdong, began to ask new users to register with real names.
RFA Reports on leaflets urging ‘Arab Spring’ revolt in North Korea
Dec. 21 – RFA Korean aired story [text in English/Korean] on North Korean defectors in South Korea setting off giant balloons with tens of thousands of leaflets into their homeland condemning the dynastic succession following the death of Kim Jong Il. The leaflets, launched two days after the North announced that Kim had died of a heart attack, also called for an Arab Spring-like uprising in the nuclear-armed nation.
RFA Reports on Thai leader meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi
Dec. 21 – RFA Burmese aired story [text in English/Burmese] on Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra holding unprecedented talks with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who conveyed her eagerness to seek elected office and lead the country. The talks were held during a two-day visit to Burma, making Yingluck the first-ever head of state to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest for most of the past two decades until her release a year ago.
RFA Reports on suspension of planned Wukan protests
Dec. 21 – RFA Cantonese and Mandarin aired story [text in English/Cantonese/Mandarin] on residents of the rebel Guangdong village of Wukan calling off a planned protest march after winning concessions from the government. Wukan villagers had planned further protests to call for a probe into alleged official corruption and the return of the body of a fellow protester, defying threats of force from officials, as thousands of armed police encircled the area.
RFA Reports on faked displays of grief over death Kim Jong Il
Dec. 20 – RFA Korean aired story [text in English/Korean] on North Korea’s capital Pyongyang paralyzed by grief with mourners seen in streets, wailing and beating their chests in anguish over Kim Jong Il’s death. But many of them have been effectively forced to pay their respects to the “Dear Leader.” Sources within North Korea’s northeastern Ryanggang province told RFA that factories and companies around the country urgently called in their workers on Dec. 19 following the announcement of Kim’s death on state-run Korea Central TV.
RFA Reports on Kim Jong Il’s inner circle mentoring successor
Dec. 20 – RFA Korean aired story [text in English/Korean] on global attention, in the wake of Kim Jong Il’s death, turning to the select few mentors of the deceased’s son and successor. The powers behind the throne include Kim Jong Il’s younger sister Kim Kyong Hui and her husband Jang Song Thaek, a 65-year-old Soviet-trained technocrat who has been tutoring the young Kim since his father suffered a stroke in 2008.
RFA Reports on Chinese netizens marking Havel’s death
Dec. 19 – RFA Mandarin aired story [text in English/Mandarin] on Chinese intellectuals and netizens grieving the death of former Czech President Vaclav Havel. The news of Havel’s death reached Beijing in the early evening of Dec. 18, and many people braved the cold in the Chinese capital to pay visits of condolence to the Czech embassy.
RFA Reports on clashes between Tibetan, Han Chinese students
Dec. 16 – RFA Tibetan, Mandarin, and Cantonese aired story [text in English/Tibetan/Mandarin/Cantonese] on the clashing of Tibetan and Han Chinese students at an engineering school in southwestern Sichuan province. Riot police and a crack special unit were summoned to break up the fight at the Chengdu Railway Engineering School in Pi County in Sichuan’s capital Chengdu. The incident reflects growing divisions among students along ethnic lines in Chinese higher education institutions.
RFA Reports on transfer of Lao trafficking victims
Dec. 16 – RFA Lao aired story [text in English/Lao] on more than 20 Lao women who had been brought against their will to Thailand to work in a brothel being transferred to a home for trafficking victims while they wait for their alleged captor to be tried. The women, three of whom are under the age of 18, were part of a larger group of more than 40, which Thai police freed from two karaoke bars in the town of Sungai Golok in southern Narathiwat province. The women were being forced to work as prostitutes.
RFA Reports on censorship of Wukan coverage, Web content
Dec. 14 – RFA Mandarin aired story [text in English/Mandarin] on Chinese authorities moving to block online content related to an escalating land protest in a Guangdong village. A video showing several thousand villagers congregating at the Mazu Temple in Wukan village, near the port city of Shanwei, was posted on popular microblogging sites Sina and Tencent Weibo and was quickly removed by censors.
RFA Reports on official registration of Burma opposition party
Dec. 13 – RFA Burmese aired story [text in English/Burmese] on Burma’s military-backed government allowing Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party to stand for upcoming by-elections, in a move one member called a “step forward” for political freedom in the country. The announcement marks a return of the National League for Democracy (NLD) to Burma’s political arena, which the party boycotted last year ahead of November elections widely dismissed as a sham by rights groups and the international community.
RFA Reports on calls for Mongolian activist’s release
Dec. 11 – RFA Mandarin aired story [text in English/Mandarin] on Chinese authorities continuing to hold ethnic Mongolian dissident Hada beyond his scheduled release and detaining his wife and son. Hada, 55, was scheduled for release last December after serving 15 years for “separatism” because he led a nonviolent campaign for Inner Mongolian independence from Chinese rule.
RFA Reports on receipts showing payment for China’s 50 cent army
Dec. 9 – RFA Mandarin aired story [text in English/Mandarin] on the online circulation of images showing a pair of receipts from a university in northwestern China. The documents, bearing official government seals, apparently show the pay given to government-backed Internet commentators, known as the “50 cent army.”
RFA Reports on Tibetan dying in self-immolation
Dec. 8 – RFA Tibetan aired story [text in English/Tibetan] on a former monk from Tibet’s Karma monastery dying from burns sustained after self-immolating in protest against Chinese rule in Tibetan areas. Tenzin Phuntsog, 46, had set himself ablaze near a field in Karma township in Chamdo in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) on Dec. 1. Chinese police extinguished the fire and took him to a hospital with severe burns.
RFA Reports on postcard campaign for jailed Chinese dissidents
Dec. 8 – RFA Mandarin aired story [text in English/Mandarin] on political activists in Beijing launching a postcard campaign among netizens in support of China’s political prisoners ahead of World Human Rights Day. Activists published the addresses of prisons where prominent dissidents are currently being held, including 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and writer Tan Zuoren, jailed after he conducted an investigation into allegations of shoddy construction of quake-hit school buildings.
RFA Reports on North Korean crackdown on thumb drives
Dec. 7 – RFA Korean aired story [text in English/Korean] on North Korean authorities stepping up a crackdown on portable media devices in an attempt to block the spread of “Korean Wave” culture from the South. Demand for USB “memory sticks” and MP4 players is now growing because of their proliferation in neighboring China and discreet size, a source living in North Korea’s North Hamkyung province told RFA.
RFA Reports on China suicide attempts over land grab
Dec. 6 – RFA Mandarin aired story [text in English/Mandarin] on two women in China’s northern Hebei province seriously injuring themselves after attempting suicide. The women were protesting an alleged forced land grab. Zhao Xiujun and Liu Lan, peasants from Xiangtang township in Luan Xian county, remained in hospital Tuesday for treatment after Zhao slashed her wrist with a knife and Liu drank pesticide.
RFA Reports on harassment of Vietnamese blogger family
Dec. 4 – RFA Vietnamese aired story [text in English/Vietnamese] on Vietnamese police harassing a family of three outspoken writers and bloggers in the latest case of government intimidation of bloggers and a crackdown on online dissent. Police visited the home of writer Huynh Ngoc Tuan, 48, in Tam Ky, where he lives with his daughter and son, who are both bloggers. Huynh Ngoc Tuan previously served 10 years in jail for his calls for freedom and democracy, and his children have expressed criticism of the government online.
RFA Reports on arrests of Vietnamese Catholics
Dec. 2 – RFA Vietnamese aired story [text in English/Vietnamese] on police in Vietnam’s capital arresting some 20 Catholics and their parish priest during a protest march over seized land they claim as belonging to the church. The protest marks the second time Hanoi’s Thai Ha parishioners have taken to the streets to voice their concerns after officials built a sewage reservoir near the church.
RFA Reports on historic Clinton, Aung San Suu Kyi meeting
Dec. 2 – RFA Burmese aired story [text in English/Burmese] on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowing to work with pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi to encourage democracy initiatives in Burma. The announcement came following a second day of talks between the two women at Aung San Suu Kyi’s home in Rangoon.
