Religious freedom continued to decline in China this year, while Vietnam showed slight signs of improvement despite ongoing abuses, the U.S. State Department said in an annual report to American lawmakers.

Meanwhile, in Myanmar, also known as Burma, violations of religious freedoms continued unchanged in spite of progress made in political reforms, the report said.

In China, the State Department’s 2012 Religious Freedom Report said, “the government’s respect for religious freedom declined during the year, particularly in Tibetan areas and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Republic.”

In general, China’s government emphasized state control over religion, the report said, adding that the religious activities of religious adherents were restricted “when these were perceived, even potentially, to threaten state or Chinese Communist Party interests, including the Party’s concept of social stability.”

Protestants and Catholics practicing outside of state-controlled churches came in for particular scrutiny, said the report, as did members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and smaller groups called “evil cults” by China’s government.

“Government repression, including crackdowns at monasteries and nunneries, resulted in the loss of life, arbitrary detentions, and torture,” said the report.

The U.S. Secretary of State has designated China as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) since 1999, with the designation most recently renewed in August 2011.

Countries of Particular Concern

Countries of Particular Concern are countries “that are considered to commit ‘particularly severe violations of religious freedom,’ and whose records call for the U.S. government to take certain actions under the terms of the [International Religious Freedom] Act,” said the report.

Burma, or Myanmar, also designated a CPC since 1999 with that status renewed in 2011, saw “considerable” movement in political reform during 2012, “but the trend in the government’s respect for religious freedom did not change significantly during the year,” the State Department report said.

The report noted especially that local officials in the country’s Rakhine state took part in ethnic violence targeting Rakhine’s Muslim community last year.

Overall, Myanmar authorities “subjected religious activities and organizations to restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and assembly,” the report said, adding that the government  promoted Theravada Buddhism over other religions, “particularly among certain ethnic minority populations.”

In Vietnam, though abuses of religious freedom—involving arrests, detentions, and convictions—were  reported during the year, “the government also showed signs of progress,” said the report.

“It registered new congregations, permitted the expansion of charitable activities, and allowed large-scale worship services with more than 100,000 participants.”

Problems remain

“Other problems remained, [though], especially at the provincial and village levels, including slow or denied approval of registration for some groups. Some Christian groups also reported harassment or administrative obstacles when they tried to hold Christmas services,” the report said.

The State Department included Vietnam on its list of Countries of Particular Concern in 2004 but removed it from the blacklist two years later and has since ignored repeated calls by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedoms (USCIRF) to reinstate the country’s designation.

“The Vietnamese government is still using vague national security laws to suppress independent Buddhists, Protestants, Hoa Hao, and Cao Dai activities,” USCIRF chair Katrina Lantos Swett told RFA in April.

“And they are definitely working to stop the growth of ethnic minority Protestantism and Catholicism through discrimination, instances of violence, and repeated episodes of forced renunciations of faith.”

“It’s still a very concerning situation, and one that we believe does merit CPC designation,” Swett said.

Lax enforcement

In Laos, “the trend in the government’s respect for religious freedom did not change significantly during the year,” the State Department’s report said.

“Officials respected the constitutional rights of members of most religious groups to worship, albeit within constraints imposed by the government.”

But local officials were sometimes lax in their enforcement of laws protecting religious freedom, said the report.

“District and local authorities in some of the country’s 17 provinces continued to be suspicious of non-Buddhist religious groups and occasionally displayed intolerance for minority religious groups.”

This was especially true in the case of Protestant congregations, “whether or not officially recognized,” the report said.

Contrasting cases

Meanwhile, in Cambodia, “there were few reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice,” though Buddhism is the country’s state religion, said the report.

“[Cambodia’s] constitution and other laws and policies protect religious freedom and, in practice, the government generally respected religious freedom.”

By contrast, the government of North Korea “severely restricted religious activity, except for some officially recognized groups it tightly supervised,” according to the State Department report.

“Reports by refugees, defectors, missionaries, and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) indicated that the authorities arrested and subjected to harsh penalties persons engaged in religious proselytizing and those in unauthorized contact with foreigners or missionaries.”

Reports of arrests and punishments  during 2012 were difficult to verify, though, “[D]ue to the country’s inaccessibility and the inability of foreigners to gain timely information,” the report said.

Backed by powerful banks, Vietnamese rubber companies are rapidly expanding their operations in Cambodia and Laos by grabbing land from villagers and disregarding the environment, according to an extensive probe report.

The UK-based development watchdog Global Witness said in the report that Cambodian and Lao officials often look the other way as companies in Vietnam’s rubber industry seize land from local communities without adequate compensation and carry out illegal logging operations both inside and beyond their concession boundaries.

Vietnam’s two largest companies—privately-owned Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and state-owned Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG)—have leased huge tracts of land for plantations in the two countries “with disastrous consequences for local communities and the environment,” the report said.

“The huge pressure for land to plant rubber is driven by high prices and soaring international demand, especially from China,” it said.

The Vietnamese companies are backed by top German lender Deutsche Bank and World Bank subsidiary the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Global Witness called on them to divest their stakes in the companies if they do not adhere to the banks’ legal, environmental, and social requirements.

“As the third-largest producer of rubber globally, Vietnam is a key global player … [but] with limits on the land available at home, both companies have turned to neighboring Cambodia and Laos [for production],” it said.

Megan MacInnes, head of the Land Team at Global Witness and the report’s author, told RFA’s Lao Service that the impact of large-scale rubber plantations has been “devastating” to local communities and to the environment in Cambodia and southern Laos.

“There are major problems in terms of deforestation and illegal logging and forest clearance and destruction of forest resources,” she said.

“But the local communities we spoke to also told us about the fact that these plantations are destroying their access to local water sources—to streams and to rivers—and they also talked about pollution from the chemicals that the companies are using on the plantations.”

The Cambodian authorities criticized the Global Witness report, saying the group has a “political” agenda” against the government. Lao officials did not immediately react to the report.

MacInnes said the villagers her team interviewed for the report are in a “desperate situation” and that many have lost access to their farmlands—leaving them unable to grow rice and vegetables—as well as to forest resources such as medicines and fruits that are important to their household incomes.

“Almost all of the people that we spoke to told us that the impact on their livelihoods by these rubber plantations had been negative—had really impacted their livelihoods very badly,” she said.

By the end of 2012, the report said, 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) of land in Cambodia had been leased, with 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) allocated for rubber plantations, while in Laos, at least 1.1 million hectares (2.7 million acres) of land had been leased to concessionaires.

It termed the granting of concessions to HAGL and VRG in both countries “a process marked by lack of consultation and forced evictions.”

“Often, the first people know about either company being given their land is when the bulldozers arrive,” the report said.

“When they resist, communities face violence, arrest and detention.”

Flouting local laws

Global Witness said that rubber plantations, particularly in Cambodia, had been supported by corrupt political and business leaders, while dealings in both countries were “cloaked in secrecy.”

“Both HAGL and VRG have very close connections with high-level government and business elites in Cambodia, so they are clearly very well-connected to the government,” MacInnes said.

Global Witness said that government officials in both Cambodia and Laos have licensed concessions “in contravention of their own laws” and have failed to take action when HAGL and VRG ignored those laws.

MacInnes told RFA that her team often found that rubber companies had offered little or no compensation to families affected by concessions, which is required under both Cambodian and Lao laws.

“In some villages there had been compensation offered, but often it was very low—much, much lower than the market value or much lower than the households thought the land or the forest areas were worth,” she said.

“In other places, villagers told us that the companies promised compensation, but nothing was ever paid.”

The report said that the companies were responsible for the illegal clearance of intact forest—including protected species—both within and beyond their concession boundaries.

MacInnes said that the companies denied being involved in illegal activities when contacted by Global Witness, claiming their operations were sanctioned by the government through the granting of concessions.

“We think it’s very, very important that these companies bring their operations in line with the law, and we think that it’s incredibly important also that the Lao and Cambodian governments investigate and prosecute these companies for illegal actions and illegal operations around their concessions,” she said.

Global Witness called on the governments of Cambodia and Laos to suspend all HAGL- and VRG-related operations, fully investigate them, and initiate prosecution where illegal activities are found. It also recommended that a number of concessions made to other rubber companies should be canceled.

Report reaction

“This report doesn't aim to help Cambodia,” said Cambodian cabinet Spokesman Phay Siphan. “This is not a partner who is helping to prevent forest crimes.”

“The report has a political agenda in attacking the government,” he said, adding that the Cambodian authorities provided concessions not only to Vietnamese companies but also to local small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Phay Siphan called on Global Witness to “file a lawsuit if they have evidence” to support their claims.

He said the government’s policy of granting land concessions aimed to encourage practitioners of traditional agriculture to form small- and medium-sized enterprises to improve their yield and profits.

“This is part of an effort to modernize our agriculture sector,” he said.

“We are not only giving concessions to Vietnamese companies. We are giving concessions to any companies that can demonstrate financial and technical expertise.”

But Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the opposition National Rescue Party (NRP), accused the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) of “serving the interests of foreign countries,” saying that the granting of excessive land concessions to Vietnamese companies was causing the country to lose money.

“We would benefit more from preserving the forest and allowing our farmers to cultivate their land,” he said.

“Under the current model we enjoy a small amount of benefits at the cost of massive forest destruction.”

Reported by Tep Soravy for RFA’s Khmer Service and RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Authorities in northern Laos have barred non-governmental organizations from meeting with villagers relocated to make way for a Thai-backed, lignite-fired power plant under construction in Xayaburi province, according to a representative from a foreign NGO.

More than 2,000 villagers from 450 families in Xayaburi’s Hongsa district had to make way for the U.S. $4 billion project, a joint venture between two Thai electricity companies and the Lao Holding State Enterprise, a wholly Lao government-owned company.

NGOs and rights groups say they want to provide information to the villagers and listen to any grievances they have about the Hongsa Lignite-Fired Power Plant, which will burn the coal-like fuel to produce electricity mostly for export to Thailand.

But local authorities have refused to cooperate with the NGOs trying to inform residents about their compensation rights and the full impact of the project on the environment and their livelihoods, the NGO representative told RFA’s Lao Service Monday.

The villagers have only been briefed by the government so far on the project, which is part of impoverished Laos’s plans to become the “battery” of Southeast Asia by providing electricity to its neighbors.

“There are rarely NGOs working on the Hongsa lignite plant,” the NGO representative said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“But [when they try], it is difficult to access information or access the area because government agencies do not allow it,” he said.

The Hongsa Power Company, the joint venture firm, has built two villages for displaced residents at a cost of U.S. $20 million, and by April more than 2,000 villagers had moved there, according to state media.

The NGO representative said many international NGOs working in Laos want to meet with the relocated villagers, but most have been denied permission by local authorities.

In 2011, one Lao NGO was banned from entering the area despite having a letter of permission from the government in Vientiane to meet with local residents, he said.

The project, located 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the Thai border, will produce 1,878 megawatts of power. It is expected to be completed in 2015.

Nearby streams will be dammed to direct water to the Hongsa project, which includes a lignite mine that will provide the fuel to operate the plant.

Lignite is a fuel similar to coal or peat but considered inferior to those because it produces more pollutants.

Many of the relocated villagers are from minority indigenous communities whose livelihoods are tied to the natural resources of the land, including rice fields and forest products.

In the relocation villages of Homsavong and Homxay, the Hongsa Power Company has built 450 houses, a school, a road, and a market, and is working on constructing a hospital and irrigation systems, the state-owned Vientiane Times newspaper reported last month.

Relocated families have each received 5 acres (2 hectares) of farmland and training in farming methods, livestock-raising, and massage skills, it reported.

Construction on the power plant, which began in 2011, is 40 percent completed.

Thailand’s Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Public Company and Banpu Power Limited each have a 40 percent share in the power plant, while the Lao Holding State Enterprise has a 40 percent share.

Xayaburi province is also home to another of Laos’s large-scale electricity projects, the controversial Xayaburi dam under construction across the Mekong River to provide power to Thailand.

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

The greater Mekong region in Southeast Asia could lose nearly a third of its forests within the next two decades if governments don’t boost protection, a leading conservation group warned Thursday, saying the region’s freshwater ecosystems are also threatened by planned dams.

Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam have lost nearly one third of their forest cover over the past 35 years, leaving the region with about half of its natural forests, the report by the World Wildlife Fund said of the region centered around the Mekong River.

The forests are being overtaken by farmland and replaced with agricultural plantations growing rice, rubber, sugar, and other commodities for export, the report said.

Other areas are damaged by logging—linked to a rise in demand for timber in China, Thailand, and Vietnam—while mangrove forests have been cleared to make way for rice paddies and shrimp farms.

Using satellite imagery, the WWF’s researchers calculated that between 1973 and 2009, Cambodia lost 22 percent of its forest cover, Burma and Laos each lost 24 percent, and Thailand and Vietnam each lost 43 percent.

The “hotspots” most at risk for further deforestation include the margins of large forest blocks that remain in Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, the report said, adding that national statistics from Vietnam and China have “masked” overall losses in regional tree cover because they include large monoculture plantations that are gradually replacing natural forests.

'At a crossroads'

The region has retained forests covering a total of some half of its land area, but if current deforestation rates persist, another third could be lost, with devastating consequences for wildlife, the report said.

“The Greater Mekong is at a crossroads,” said Peter Cutter, a WWF land conservation expert.

“One path leads to further declines in biodiversity and livelihoods, but if natural resources are managed responsibly, this region can pursue a course that will secure a healthy and prosperous future for its people,” he said.

Mekong dams

The greater Mekong region, which also includes southwestern China’s Yunnan and Guangxi, is a biodiversity hotspot and supports some 70 million people depending directly on its ecosystems for food, water, and livelihood.

The region is bound together by the Mekong River, which hosts 13 unique but interconnected freshwater ecosystems, which are threatened by planned dams.

The controversial Xayaburi dam under construction in northern Laos is a “key threat” to the health and productivity to the region, and will block migratory fish and sediment flow with devastating consequences for livelihoods and food security, the WWF warned.

If all 11 planned dams on the main stem of the Mekong River are built, fish supply could be cut by 40 percent, the report said.

But because the region is still rich in natural capital, building greener economies is still “well within reach,” if regional governments coordinate properly, the WWF concluded.

"Given that the majority of the region's biological heritage and supporting ecosystems occur in landscapes that cross borders, regional collaboration is critical," Cutter said.

"Increased and more sustainable investment in maintaining ecosystem integrity must also be a priority at landscape, national, and regional scales."

Press freedom took a knock in Hong Kong, Cambodia, and Thailand while Burma chalked up the best gains for media reforms in Asia over the past year, says an annual global survey.

Only five percent of Asia's population had access to a "free" media in 2012, while 47 percent lived in "partly free" and 48 percent in "not free" media environments, according to the "Freedom of the Press 2013" survey released Wednesday by Washington-based Freedom House.

It cited a "worrying deterioration" in press freedom in Cambodia as well as in Thailand, which has been downgraded to "not free" from the "partly free" category.

Cambodia

Cambodia's score has worsened "due to an increase in the number of journalists behind bars" and "a significant rise in threats and physical violence against the press, including the first murder of a reporter since 2008," the report said.

It referred to the jailing last year of independent radio station owner Mam Sonando, who was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 20 years in prison for the outlet's coverage of land disputes.

Mam Sonando was convicted in October on charges of instigating insurrection, drawing protests from rights groups who accused Prime Minister Hun Sen of muzzling criticism against his rule.

A Cambodian appeals court in March however quashed that ruling, dropped most of the charges, reduced the sentence to time served and ordered his release.

Freedom House said that despite the release, there was a "continuing negative trend" in media freedom in Cambodia ahead of crucial elections in July.

"Media owners continue to face pressure and harassment, which is quite worrisome," Karin Karlekar, Freedom House Project Director for Freedom of the Press, told a press conference.

Thailand has been put back into the "not free" category "due to a trend of aggressive enforcement of lese-majesté laws," Freedom House said.

Critics say the lese-majeste laws are used as a political tool to discredit and silence opponents. Those found guilty of insulting the Thai royal family can serve up to 15 years in jail for each offense.

In a case that was widely denounced by rights groups, an ex-magazine editor was jailed for 10 years in January after he was found guilty of publishing articles defaming King Bhumibol in 2010.

Hong Kong

China's special administrative region Hong Kong's score also declined in a reflection of "growing government restrictions on journalists' access to information and several violent and technical attacks against reporters, websites, and media entities," Freedom House said.

In addition, Beijing's efforts to influence media production in the territory intensified and touched on internal Hong Kong politics, marking a departure from past trends in which the targets of Chinese pressure were primarily voices and topics regarded as politically sensitive on the mainland, the report said.

In January, journalists in Hong Kong, a former British colony which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, ran a petition in newspapers urging the city’s Beijing-backed leader to withdraw a proposed law which they said would infringe press freedom.

Local and foreign journalists are opposed to a government plan to restrict access to information about company directors after such details were used in a series of investigative reports to expose the wealth of Chinese officials.

Hong Kong maintains a semi-autonomous status with guarantees of civil liberties—including press freedom—not seen in mainland China.

Taiwan's media freedom score also declined slightly as regulatory delays in approving a license for a new television station compelled the owner to declare that the project was no longer financially sustainable.

Burma

But Burma, where reform-minded President Thein Sein's nominally civilian government has been implementing political and other reforms after five decades of harsh military rule, registered the survey's largest numerical improvement of the year due to "people's increased ability to access information" and the release of imprisoned bloggers and video journalists, among other factors.

Freedom House also cited other "positive" factors such as an end to official prepublication censorship and dissolution of the censorship body, the establishment of several independent journalists' and publishers' associations, fewer cases of harassment and attacks against journalists, improved access for the foreign media, greater access to foreign radio broadcasts and the Internet, and some progress toward a new media law.

However, it cautioned against restrictions maintained on ethnic minority journalists and coverage of ethnic violence between minority Muslim Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine state.

It also said that efforts to repeal "restrictive" legislation and reconcile the new media law with international press freedom standards have encountered official resistance.

China

In China, home to the world's most sophisticated censorship apparatus, Freedom House said the installation of a new Chinese Communist Party leadership did not produce any immediate relaxation of constraints on either traditional media or the Internet.

In fact, it said, the Chinese regime, which boasts the world's most intricate and elaborate system of media repression, stepped up its drive to limit both old and new sources of information through arrests and censorship.

Still, China registered a modest improvement in scores in the Freedom House survey as microblogs and other online tools "enhanced Chinese citizens' ability to share and access uncensored information, particularly regarding breaking news stories."

There were fewer cases of violence against professional journalists and high-profile social media activists reported in China in 2012 than during the previous year, and several public outcries and online campaigns have been credited with driving the news agenda or forcing government concessions.

North Korea

North Korea, one of the world’s worst-rated countries, also saw a "slight improvement" in scores as a result of increased attempts to circumvent stringent censorship and the use of technologies such as smuggled DVDs to spread news and information, Freedom House said.

But Karlekar said there were no signs of media reforms under North Korea's new young leader Kim Jong Un although there has been "increased access by citizens to information" via entry of flash drives, videotapes, and other material from abroad due to economic opening.

There were little improvements in Asia's other restrictive media environments, such as  Laos and Vietnam, Freedom House said.

Asia's regional average score however has improved slightly, "as negative movement in the legal category was outweighed by positive change in both the political and economic categories," Freedom House said.

China has provided missile-equipped helicopters to Burma’s largest armed ethnic rebel group, a report said this week, in a move that one Burmese military analyst said could hurt bilateral ties.

Monday’s report by U.K.-based intelligence monitor Jane’s Information Group said China had delivered several Mil Mi-17 ‘Hip’ helicopters to the United Wa State Army (UWSA) in late February and early March, citing sources from the Burmese government and the military wing of an ethnic rebel group.

The UWSA, which numbers some 30,000 full-and part-time fighters and controls towns along the Chinese and Thai borders in northeastern Burma’s Shan state, is in a fragile cease-fire with the Burmese military.

The helicopters, armed with TY-90 air-to-air missiles, were sent to the UWSA-administered area by way of Laos, instead of coming directly from China, the report said.

The ethnic minority military source said the UWSA had procured five helicopters, while the Burmese military source could only confirm two had been delivered, according to the report.

The helicopters are the UWSA’s first acquisition of rotary-wing capability and could provide a “serious deterrent” to the Burmese military, it said.

'Could damage relations'

While Jane’s did not say whether Beijing had sold the armed helicopters or provided them at no cost, analyst Aung Kyaw Zaw, who is based on the Burma-China border, said he personally felt it was “possible” that China sold them to the UWSA, rather than “giving them away for free.”

It was difficult to say which groups or countries sell weapons to Burmese armed ethnic groups, he said, adding that the sale to the UWSA “could damage the relationship between China and Burma.”

The Wa army “needs something to protect themselves” following the Burmese military’s advances on other ethnic rebel groups in the past year, he said.

He said the Burmese military is eyeing areas controlled by Kachin and Shan rebels in order to eventually prepare an offensive against the UWSA.

“The government has weapons that they could fire from Lwelan [in Shan state] to the UWSA headquarters at Panshang,” he said.

Aung Kyaw Zaw said that, aside from the helicopters, there were also reports that China had sent a large number of armaments and military-use vehicles to the China-Burma border in Sept. 2012, and that new weapons had recently appeared in the area.

“New weapons that we hadn’t ever seen before were seen at an anniversary celebration of an armed group that is based in the China-Burma border area,” he said, without naming the group.

The Wa military has about 30,000 soldiers, and some of their equipment is more advanced than that of the Burmese military, he said.

The UWSA, formed by members of the Chinese-speaking Wa ethnic group, were one of several ethnic militias founded after the 1989 breakup of the Burmese Communist Party.

Despite its professed policy of noninterference, military analysts say China has, albeit unofficially, long been the largest supplier of weapons to the Wa.

Burma and the United States have long said the UWSA funds its activities through heroin and methamphetamine production, and the group is considered the biggest narcotics organization in Southeast Asia.

Reported by RFA’s Burmese Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

A U.S. bipartisan commission proposed Tuesday that Vietnam be returned to a State Department list of the world’s worst violators of religious freedoms and that Burma, despite ongoing political reforms, be maintained on the blacklist.

Vietnam, under one-party communist rule, “continues to expand control over all religious activities [and] severely restrict independent religious practice,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedoms (USCIRF) said in an annual report.

Though religious activity has grown in Vietnam in recent years, the government continues to “repress individuals and religious groups it views as challenging its authority,” it said.

The State Department  included Vietnam on its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) in 2004 but removed it from the blacklist two years later and has since ignored repeated calls by the commission to reinstate the country’s designation.

For the 2013 report, USCIRF recommended that Secretary of State John Kerry maintain eight countries on the CPC list: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.

USCIRF also urged that in addition to Vietnam, six other countries receive CPC designation:  Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

Speaking in an interview, USCIRF chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett expressed hope that Vietnam would this year be returned to the list.

“We’re hopeful that our report will make the case,” Swett told RFA.

“The Vietnamese government is still using vague national security laws to suppress independent Buddhists, Protestants, Hoa Hao, and Cao Dai activities,” Swett said.

“And they are definitely working to stop the growth of ethnic minority Protestantism and Catholicism through discrimination, instances of violence, and repeated episodes of forced denunciations of faith.”

“It’s still a very concerning situation, and one that we believe does merit CPC designation,” Swett said.

Uneven reforms

Though Burma took important steps during the last year to advance political reforms in the formerly military-ruled country, “these reforms have not yet improved religious freedom conditions,” USCIRF said, adding that Burma should again be named a CPC.

Treatment of the country’s Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority has been especially troubling, Swett said.

The report said that in sectarian violence over the period between June and October 2012, more than 1,000 Rohingyas were killed—a number more than five times higher than the official total death toll of 192 dead.

“Their villages and religious structures were destroyed [and] large numbers of women were raped,” Swett said.

“And so despite multiple political reforms and progress in a positive direction in the overall political situation in Burma, the religious freedom situation remains grave enough to merit CPC status."

Violence between Muslims and Buddhists continued to occur in Burma in 2013 with U.S.-based Human Rights Watch charging last week that Burmese authorities have committed crimes against humanity in a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against Muslim Rohingyas.

The USCIRF report said that though cases of the forced conversion of ethnic minority Christians to Buddhism were noted in Burma, abuses also targeted clergy of the country’s majority Buddhist faith.

“The government closely monitors monasteries viewed as focal points of anti-government activity and has restricted usual religious practices in these areas,” USCIRF said, adding that monks identified as protest organizers have been charged under “vague national security provisions.”

“Sadly, these abuses appear to be occurring with impunity,” said Swett.

Deteriorating conditions

In China, religious freedom conditions  “have deteriorated quite significantly—particularly, of course, in Tibet and for Tibetan Buddhists, and for Uyghur Muslims as well,” Swett said, adding that “China again absolutely merits CPC designation.”

“The restriction of religious activity causes deep resentment in Tibetan and Uyghur communities,” USCIRF noted in its report.

The Chinese government has “intensified efforts to discredit religious leaders, issued new measures to increase government oversight of monasteries and mosques, and implemented new ‘education’ programs to ensure the loyalty of Buddhist monks and ‘weaken the religious consciousness’ of Uyghur Muslims.”

“There are hundreds of Tibetans and Uyghurs in prison for their religious activity or religious freedom advocacy,” USCIRF said.

Meanwhile, Protestants who refuse to join state-approved religious organizations face harassment and fines, detentions, and in some instances imprisonment, added Swett.

“Their ‘house church’ activity is considered to be illegal, and our evidence is that 900 Protestants were detained in the past year for simply conducting public worship activities. And we believe that there are seven significant Protestant leaders who were imprisoned for terms longer than a year.”

“The government has issued a directive to eradicate these groups,” Swett said, adding, “A similar situation faces the independent or unregistered Catholic community.”

China’s “most brutal” measures of religious suppression are aimed at eradicating the Falun Gong spiritual movement, though, Swett said.

“Practitioners continue to face arbitrary arrest, forced renunciations of their faith, torture, and psychiatric experiments.”

“And there has been some evidence of organ harvesting, particularly targeting the Falun Gong.”

“That community continues to be on the receiving end of the most harsh and brutal tactics used by the Chinese government when it comes to suppressing religious freedom,” said Swett.

‘Deplorable record’

North Korea, meanwhile, “remains one of the world’s most repressive regimes, with a deplorable human rights and religious freedom record,” USCIRF noted in its report.

And because North Korea’s government promotes a cult of personality surrounding the Kim dynasty of North Korean leaders, USCIRF said, “Any activity perceived to challenge [present leader] Kim Jong Un’s legitimacy, including clandestine religious activity, continues to be viewed as a security threat.”

“People caught transporting Bibles or engaged in any sort of missionary activity … face torture and execution and imprisonment,” said Swett.

“The repression of all unapproved religious activities can only be described as incredibly brutal.”

“North Korea clearly is a CPC, and I think there’s wide agreement on that,” Swett said.

Watch List

Laos remains on USCIRF’s Tier 2 “Watch List” for continuing “serious religious freedom abuses,” USCIRF said in its report.

Countries on the Tier 2 Watch List are “on the threshold of CPC status, meaning that the violations engaged in or tolerated by the government are particularly severe,” the commission says.

“The Lao legal code restricts religious practice, and the government is either unable or unwilling to curtail ongoing religious freedom abuses in some provincial areas,” according to the USCIRF report.

Though religious freedom conditions have improved over the last five years for majority Buddhist groups and other religious communities in urban areas, “our concern and our problems lie primarily with provincial officials and the status of communities in the provinces,” said Swett.

“There we see continued violations of religious freedom for ethnic minority Protestants, who face detention, surveillance, harassment, property confiscation, and in some instances forced renunciations of faith.”

This is a situation that has varied by region and by religious group, Swett said.

“[But] the improvements have not been sufficient in our view to warrant moving Laos entirely off of that Tier 2 status.”

The World Health Organization has launched an emergency strategy to combat drug-resistant strains of malaria in Southeast Asia, saying they pose a “global threat” to public health.

The new regional framework launched on World Malaria Day on Thursday is aimed at containing resistance to artemisinin—the frontline drug used to fight the mosquito-borne infectious disease—which has been identified in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

If the resistance were to spread from Southeast Asia to other parts of the world, particularly Africa, global progress on reducing the public health burden of the disease would be derailed, the WHO said.

“The consequences of widespread resistance to artemisinins would be catastrophic,” Robert Newman, director of WHO’s global malaria program, sad in a statement Wednesday.

“We must act now to protect Southeast Asia today and sub-Saharan Africa tomorrow,” he said.

Regional effort

The emergency strategy, which will cost about U.S. $400 million over the next three to four years, will work to remove poor-quality antimalarial drugs and other treatments that compromise the efficacy of artemisinin from circulation in affected countries.

The effort covers the four countries where artemisinin resistance has been found as well as neighboring Laos and southern China’s Yunnan and Guangxi provinces.

“This response will require substantial funding, a high level of political commitment, and strengthened regional and cross-border collaboration,” Newman said.

The WHO will also set up a regional hub to provide coordination and technical support in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, where the first cases of artemisinin-resistant malaria were confirmed in 2006.

Strains resistant to the drug, which is derived from a Chinese herb, first emerged in the Thailand-Cambodia border about nine years ago, the WHO has said.

While containment efforts there have been successful, new foci of resistance are being discovered in other areas of the Greater Mekong Subregion, the organization said this week.

In May, regional health representatives will gather in Manila to review country progress towards 2015 targets and discuss national treatment guidelines as part of the WHO’s Regional Action Plan for Malaria Control and Elimination in the Western Pacific.

Between 2000 and 2011, the Asia-Pacific region made overall progress in reducing its malaria burden, with a 73 percent decrease in malaria mortality rates, but there was a great variation between countries, according to the WHO.

Resistance does not prevent patients being cured thanks to partner drugs, but treatment typically takes a longer period and is more expensive.

Two young Laotians are touring the U.S. to educate Americans on the dangers of unexploded bombs dropped on their country by the U.S. during the Vietnam War and to raise funding for the removal of these dangerous explosives.

Thoummy Silamphan, 26, who lost a limb to unexploded ordinance, and Manixia Thor, a 25-year-old leader of a female bomb clearance team, joined Washington-based nongovernmental organization Legacies of War on its “Voices of Laos” tour across a dozen cities.

The U.S. military dropped two million tons of bombs on Laos over a nine-year period up to 1973 while attempting to disrupt the Vietcong supply line known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War.

Experts estimate that about 30 percent of cluster bombs failed to explode after they were dropped from high-flying U.S. aircraft over Laos and that much of the country’s northern region and its eastern border with Vietnam remain contaminated with the explosives.

“To this day there are 600 living survivors of UXO [unexploded ordnance] explosions and many of them are children, Thoummy told RFA’s Lao Service in an interview last week.

“Of the 600 survivors, less than 100 have received any aid and are in desperate need of it,” he said.

The Voices of Laos tour kicked off on April 3 in New York when the United Nations marked the International Day of Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.

Funded by the U.S. State Department, the trip has taken the two young Lao speakers through California, Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota, and culminates in the U.S. capital on April 30—the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

They have held discussions along the way on how individuals and communities in Laos are affected by unexploded Vietnam War-era ordnance and bombs, how the problem is being addressed in the country, and ways in which people in the U.S. can help to clear Laos of bombs and support survivors of accidents.

In need of aid

Thoummy said that without support, many of the victims of the unexploded bombs feel that they have become a burden on their loved ones—draining the family’s resources.

“Some could not live [with themselves after] the explosion and ended their own lives. They felt worthless for not being able to help their families because they could not farm as they used to,” he said.

“It’s so sad what remains from the war—that legacy still harms innocent Lao people, even though the war is long over.”

Thoummy lost his left arm to a cluster bomb at the age of eight while digging for bamboo shoots to make soup near his home in Xiengkhouang province.

After the accident, he was viewed with pity by his community and no longer dared to go to school. He said that he fell into a deep depression and wanted nothing other than to die.

But he said that his family worked hard to help him adapt and that one day he was lucky enough to receive assistance from an American who supported him financially through high school and university in Vientiane.

Thoummy went on to serve as a field assistant for World Education, specifically working on UXO survivor assistance, and now heads the Quality of Life Association in Xiengkhouang—the first association to serve UXO victims in Laos.

The Quality of Life Association pays for most of the medical expenses incurred by victims of UXO, and helps them cope with their handicaps both mentally and physically.

Educating Americans

Thoummy realizes that he is lucky to have been one of the very few to receive aid and said he wants other victims in Laos to receive the same opportunities that he did.

“I would like Americans to be aware of the UXO problems in Laos and help us out,” he told RFA.

“We need to find additional sources of aid for UXO clearance and for the victims.”

Manixia, who is ethnic Hmong and has a 2-year-old son, works for the British charity Mines Advisory Group.

She told the Associated Press that 15 years ago her uncle lost his left hand while attempting to extract ball bearings from inside a cluster bomb.

“I came here because I want to share with people the continuing dangers of UXO in Laos,” she told AP.

“There's still a lot of work to do [to clear UXO] and not enough resources to do it. I don't want people to be injured like my uncle was, or for my son to grow up and also be hurt.”

Thoummy said that during the Voices from Laos tour he has discussed issues related to UXO that very few Americans were aware of. But he said that his audiences were eager to learn and that many expressed an interest in helping clear Laos of ordnance.

He said he was eager to travel to Washington to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill before returning to Laos at the end of the month.

Widespread contamination

Around 20,000 civilians are believed to have been killed or injured by explosives since the end of the war. Some 40 percent of the victims in the past 10 years have been children.

International assistance for bomb clearance in Laos began in earnest only about 20 years ago and experts believe that it will take many more decades to ensure that affected areas are safe.

Since 1997, the U.S. has provided U.S. $47 million in assistance, including U.S. $9 million in 2012.

Last July, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Laos since 1955. She met with the victim of a cluster bomb and pledged to deliver more assistance to the country for clearance efforts.

Reported by Manichanh Phimphachanh for RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Manichanh Phimphachanh. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

China is waging an "increasingly harsh repression" against Tibetans and ethnic Uyghurs, a U.S. State Department annual report on global human rights practices said Friday, highlighting what it calls deteriorating rights conditions in China as well as in Vietnam.

The report also said that rights conditions in North Korea are deplorable, while many elements of Burma's authoritarian structure "remain largely intact" more than two years after a nominally civilian government took over power in the Southeast Asian state after decades of brutal military rule.

In Cambodia, a weak judiciary that sometimes fails to provide due process or a fair trial procedure is a key human rights problem, while in Laos the denial of citizens' right to change their government, harsh prison conditions, and corruption in the police and judiciary are among the most significant rights issues, the report said.

Spotlight

But the rights crisis in China was on the spotlight as the report was released by Secretary of State John Kerry.

"The human rights environment in China continued to deteriorate in 2012," the report said.

Human rights related issues in the world's most populous nation included "a crackdown on human rights activists, increasingly harsh repression in ethnic Tibetan and Uyghur areas, greater efforts to censor online expression, and onerous restrictions on the operations of civil society," it said.

The report said China continued to implement official restrictions on the freedoms of expression, religion, association, and movement against ethnic Uyghurs in the restive Xinjiang region and Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region and in Tibetan prefectures in Chinese provinces.

"Members of these two communities experienced great difficulty acquiring passports, effectively limiting the ability of many of them to travel outside the country," it said.

In addition, it said, government monitoring and disruption of telephone and Internet communications were particularly widespread in Tibetan and Uyghur areas.

A total of 116 Tibetans have burned themselves to protest Chinese rule and policies, with many also calling for the return of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Chinese authorities have tightened controls in Tibetan-populated areas to check the self-immolations, cutting communication links with outside areas and jailing dozens of Tibetans they believe to be linked to the burnings.

In Xinjiang, rights groups complain that the Chinese authorities are indiscriminately jailing Uyghurs in the name of fighting terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism, and are intensifying the influx of Han Chinese in the region.

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness.

Low priority

Kerry had been accused by rights groups of giving low priority to the the rights situation in China when he visited the country earlier this month.

But Assistant Secretary of State Uzra Zeya, who took media questions on the rights report, said Kerry "made clear" U.S. concerns and "raised specific cases" with the Chinese government during the trip.

She specifically referred to the case of Chen Kegui, the jailed nephew of blind activist Chen Guangcheng who fled house arrest and sought refuge in the United States.

Kerry "raised the allegations of abuse during [Chen Kegui's] imprisonment and the harassment of his family," Zeya said.

Chen Kegui, who was sentenced to prison in November after being convicted for injuring officials who he said entered his home and attacked him and his family after they learned of his uncle’s flight, suffered physical abuse from authorities in jail, reports have said.

His four-year old school-going son was also a target of official harassment.

The U.S. report said the situation in Burma has improved following the end of military rule in March 2011, "but many elements of the country’s authoritarian structure—repressive laws, pervasive security apparatus, corrupt judiciary, restrictions on freedom of religion, and dominance of the military—remain largely intact."

Kerry said in his report launching speech that "corruption has to be rooted out" and "remaining political prisoners need to be freed" in Burma.

He cited the recent deadly communal violence in central Burma blamed on extremist Buddhist monks, saying it "is another distressing reminder" of how long it takes to build what French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville called "the habits of the heart."

At least 43 people were reported dead and thousands, mostly Muslims, driven from their homes and businesses in the March violence.

"But if Burma’s leaders stay focused on promoting and protecting the rights of all people in their country, Burma is likely to continue along a promising path of renewal," Kerry said.

Extrajudicial killings

In North Korea, defectors reported extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary detention, arrests of political prisoners, and torture, the report said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's regime "continued to control almost all aspects of citizens’ lives" and maintains "a vast network of political prison camps, in which conditions were harsh and life-threatening."

North Koreans, it said, risked punishment in order to obtain illegal radios, cell phones, and other multimedia devices that can increase their ability to communicate with each other and to a limited extent with the outside world.

In Vietnam, human rights conditions deteriorated in 2012, the report said.

Authorities restricted freedom of expression, imprisoned dissidents using vague national security legislation, harassed activists and their families, and disregarded the rule of law, it said.

They also increasingly detained and imprisoned dissidents who used the Internet to criticize the government and publish ideas on human rights and political pluralism, it said.

Freedom of religion, it said, continued to be subject to inconsistent interpretation and protection, with significant problems continuing, especially at provincial and village levels.