A white tiger entered the courtyard outside the National Museum in Seoul. He mugged for the camera and darted up the steps. At the top were the six members of BOYNEXTDOOR, wearing quasi-traditional outfits that mixed elements of hanbok with modern formal wear and a tinge of “bad boy” biker gear.

As they danced in unison and sang the opening lines of their hit single “Animal,” the crowd went wild.

Sitting in the audience was Cho Mi-young – born in Chongjin, North Korea – who arrived with her family in the South in 2004.

Mi-young can’t contain herself. “You’re so amazing!” she cries out, as the monitors show the young men dominating the courtyard with their precise dance moves.

Cho is in the audience at an episode of KBS Music Bank, a Friday night K-pop showcase program with all the latest acts. It has been the start of the K-pop weekend for most of its 28-year runtime. Surprisingly, it’s her first time ever seeing a live K-pop performance in person after 22 years in the South.

Tickets to studio tapings of KBS Music Bank are hard to come by. Fans either have to know someone, know someone who knows someone, or enter the ticket lottery. The episode she’s watching on Oct. 16 is special - it’s a live broadcast and the biggest boy bands, girl bands, and boy-girl bands are plying their craft on an outdoor stage on the grounds of the National Museum of Korea, which the show’s special intro vignette called the “beating heart of Korean culture.”

When the opening act was finished, the show’s hosts began introducing this week’s lineup, as Cho and the rest of the audience settled in. Many more K-pop groups and solo artists would take the stage in front of them on a night they would likely all remember forever.

“I’ve seen it a lot on TV, but today is the first time I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” Cho told Radio Free Asia. “Seeing such beautiful and handsome people dancing and singing right in front of me, moving like that, is absolutely mesmerizing.”

Cho is no stranger to music, or to the stage. In North Korea she had been a vocalist for a state-run provincial arts troupe. After settling in the South, Cho was a fixture in Seoul’s burgeoning musical theater scene and she toured as an accordion player. She later transitioned into broadcasting, at one point even co-hosting the RFA Korean webseries “Northboy Northgirl.”

At present, she runs a content production company and maintains an active presence both online and in traditional media.

(RFA)

But today, she’s just a fangirl in a sea of other diehards, most of whom are screaming the names of the idols on stage.

Music in isolation

On the night of her first live K-pop concert, Cho reminisced about how she first encountered South Korean music in North Korea. At the time, she didn’t have access to what most would describe as K-pop today; instead she took in a lot of trot – a unique South Korean genre that mixes Western foxtrot dance rhythms with pentatonic minor scale melodies. Most young South Koreans consider trot to be music their grandparents like.

But after arriving in the South, she became a huge fan of South Korean love ballads, much slower than the catchiest K-pop numbers, but thicker in emotion. Music occupied much of her daily life in the South early on, as she scanned the radio for something new to listen to.

Today’s performances on the Music Bank stage were a far cry from her own back in North Korea. For one, everyone on stage just seems happy to be there, she said.

“When I performed in North Korea, I was always stiff,” she said. “When we were on stage, we performed with the mindset of conveying the Party’s voice, so I don’t think I ever had the thought that we were actually enjoying our own music.”

Several more musical acts came and went and then the undistorted electric guitar of indie rock band Jannabi’s Kim Do-hyung echoed through the air as vocalist Choi Jung-hoon sang the first few lyrics of “Thoughts on an Autumn Night.”

“Even on that distant shining star up there… love must be alive singing its song.”

The song struck a chord with Cho. Performed by just one singer and one guitarist it was a bit of a shift from the rest of the evening’s heavily choreographed bangers.

“The lyrical melody seems to have a bit of North Korean sensibility to it.”

She sat there, transfixed by Jannabi’s intimate, scaled down performance on the stage and quietly sang along.

“I really am in the South now”

When it was all over, Cho talked about her experience on the show, but it wasn’t only the dazzle of the K-pop acts that caught her eye. She was also amazed by the devoted fans, who sang along with every lyric from memory and chanted in pre-arranged cheers in unison. She thought back to how strange that seemed when she first arrived.

“I didn’t understand it in the past. But as I’ve lived here longer, I’ve come to understand the fans and their pre-prepared chants,” she said. “I think maybe next time, I might enjoy it even more if I learned those.”

The best performance of the evening, according to Cho, was by a co-ed group called AllDay Project. She thought they looked cool in their all-black outfits, some in furs, others in biker leather – almost like warriors.

But as an artist, Cho’s thoughts naturally turned to the massive effort that must have gone on behind the scenes. The meticulous choreography alone must take many months of practice, she said.

She recalled how she herself had put in a lot of effort as a singer back in North Korea.

“Even in North Korea, artists are trained very strictly in a Spartan manner,” she said. “In terms of the sheer volume of training, it might be difficult to see a significant difference between the North and South.”

But she noted that the payoff in the South is individual success, unlike the North, where it would merely advance the goals of the state.

She said the whole evening was surreal. Back when she was in North Korea, she could maybe catch glimpses of what the music scene in the South was like, but she could never actually see it. Now she finally has seen it in person, “it sinks in that I really am in the South now.”

Cho said that she thinks any North Korean escapee would probably feel the same way.

“The emotion felt in the live setting is completely different from listening to a recording,” she said. “I think many escapees would finally feel they truly have arrived in South Korea when they go to the venue, see the singer in person, and listen to the songs live.”

Edited by Yi Yongin in Korean and Eugene Whong in English.

The closures of Gangjong Grassland Girls’ School, Jasag Village Primary School and Golog Tadra Orphan School have raised concerns among Tibetans about the future of education that incorporates their language, cultural traditions and community life.

Tibetan sources who spoke to Radio Free Asia linked the closures to the Chinese government’s education policies and its promotion of the Ethnic Unity and Progress Law, which took effect on July 1, 2026. They said the shutdowns could further limit opportunities for Tibetan children to learn their mother tongue and cultural traditions.

The Chinese government has cited the high altitude of Golog and shortages of teachers and educational resources as reasons for establishing schools outside the region, saying the move would improve education. It remains unclear where students from the three closed schools will continue their studies.

Education department declines to comment

RFA contacted the education department of the Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture by phone to seek details about the closures.

“We don’t know the details,” the person told RFA, saying the initial work had been carried out by the Machen County administration and that the county’s education department was responsible for the matter.

RFA also contacted the Machen County Education Department, which said it had “no authority to respond.”

Unclear future for students

Gangjong Grassland Girls’ School in Ragya Township, Machen County, was closed on Aug. 28, according to a source in Tibet who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The school had about 450 students and 60 teachers at the time of its closure, the source said. The current situation of the students remains unclear.

(Citizen photo)

The source said the school had been made a government-affiliated institution, with its curriculum following the Chinese government’s education system while retaining some Tibetan-language instruction.

“Currently, the schools in the Golog region are conducting a strong patriotic reeducation campaign,” the source said, adding that Tibetans were afraid to share information because of government restrictions.

Jasag Village Primary School, which was established in 1995 with funds raised by local nomadic families and renamed Ragya Township Residential School No. 2 in 2008, was shut down in September, according to information obtained by RFA. Another source in Tibet told RFA that the situation of its students and teachers remained unclear.

“The Golog Education Department has put considerable pressure on the school’s teachers and shut down the school without providing any clear explanation,” the source said.

Golog Tadra Orphanage School was ordered to close this month, according to information obtained by RFA. Founded in 2005, it provided education and support to Tibetan orphans and disadvantaged children for two decades.

At an event marking the school’s 20th anniversary in 2025, principal Thupten Nyima of the Golog Tadra Orphan School, which provides K-12 education, said it was training more than 1,000 students. Some graduates had gone on to work in government positions and as teachers, he said.

Nyima addressed students and teachers in a recent video posted to social media, saying, “Don’t be sad, students and teachers. If we are bound by karma and fate, all the teachers and students gathered here will sing a song of joy together.”

It is unclear if Nyima’s remarks were made around the time the school was ordered to close.

Critics warn of cultural impact

Dr. Gyal Lo, a Tibetan educational sociologist, said the closures marked a significant change in the Chinese government’s education policy in Tibet.

“The Chinese government sees schools where Tibetans can organize themselves to learn and teach their own culture as a thorn in its side. That is why these schools are being abolished,” he told RFA.

“After Xi Jinping visited Qinghai, the school established by Jigme Gyaltsen was closed, and a new secondary school was built in the eastern part of Ziling,” he said.

Gyal Lo said the closures could distance children from Tibetan traditions and customs practiced in their communities and place them in state-run boarding schools where Chinese is the language of instruction.

“The first impact of the Chinese government’s school closures is that children are distanced from the Tibetan traditions and customs practiced in their homeland. Secondly, when these children enter state-run boarding schools, the entire curriculum is taught in Chinese and is under the government’s control,” he said.

He argued that the policies could affect the transmission of Tibetan identity across generations.

“The aim is to turn the entire Tibetan people into Chinese. This is not limited to a small area; it is a plan with far-reaching consequences,” Gyal Lo told RFA. “The ultimate goal is to turn the younger generation of Tibetans into Chinese through different methods and policies implemented in different regions.”

He also emphasized the role of families in preserving the Tibetan language.

“According to language education theory, a language cannot be passed on to the next generation without being taught within the family. The foundation for preserving the mother tongue and passing it on to the next generation must be laid at home,” he said.

Tenzin Lekshey, spokesperson for the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India, said Tibetan schools and monasteries played an important role in preserving the community’s language, culture, traditions and identity.

“The Chinese government is doing all this out of fear. Tibetan schools and monasteries established inside Tibet aim to preserve and protect the rich Tibetan language, culture, traditions and identity. But the Chinese government views these institutions as a hindrance rather than a benefit,” he told RFA.

Ragya Geshe Lobsang Palden, a former political prisoner, said the new ethnic unity law had coincided with the closure of several Tibetan schools, some of which had already been brought under government control.

“These schools could not be shut down before because it was not legally appropriate to do so. Now, with the new Ethnic Unity Law in effect since July, many schools have been closing down,” he told RFA.

“However, many of these schools had already been converted into government-affiliated schools several years ago,” he added.

Dawa Tashi, a researcher at the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Dharamsala, also linked the closures to the new law, saying it formalized policies that threatened Tibetan cultural and linguistic identity.

A former Tibetan political prisoner who visited Gangjong Grassland Girls’ School in 2006 said many of its graduates had gone on to serve their communities. The source requested anonymity for security reasons.

“I remember speaking with a teacher at the school in 2006 who told me that several teachers had been summoned by Chinese authorities. The teacher anticipated that the school might eventually be closed,” the source told RFA.

New government boarding schools

The closures come amid a broader restructuring of education in Golog, where authorities have promoted Chinese-language education and campaigns emphasizing national unity.

On Sept. 1, 2026 the Golog Education Department officially opened the newly established Golog Tsoshar Middle School in eastern Qinghai. According to Chinese state media, the school enrolled 1,200 students, including 1,090 Tibetans, many from farming and nomadic families.

Authorities have described the relocation of students from Golog to the lower-lying Tsoshar area as part of an effort to expand residential education in the highlands. It remains unclear whether students from Gangjong Grassland Girls’ School were transferred to the new institution.

Golog Ziling (Xining) Middle School, a state-run boarding school in Xining, was also opened on Sept. 1, 2019. According to official figures for 2024, it had 800 students, including 778 Tibetans, all from Golog. The school’s official introduction identifies fostering a shared sense of community among the Chinese nation as a central goal of its education.

In September 2026, the Golog prefecture government also launched a public language promotion week encouraging students to learn and use standard Chinese and emphasizing unity among the Chinese people.

Earlier school closures

The latest shutdowns follow several other closures of Tibetan educational institutions in Golog in recent years.

In July 2024, authorities closed Gangjong Sherig Norling School in Machen County after 30 years of operation. Founded by Jigme Gyaltsen in 1994, the institution had about 1,400 students and 58 teachers and staff.

The vocational school combined modern education with instruction in Tibetan language, culture, philosophy and religion. Reports in April 2025 indicated that authorities had permitted it to reopen as a vocational institution, although its curriculum was expected to change.

Dorjeten National Vocational School in Chikdril County (in Golog) was shut down on Dec. 12, 2025, affecting more than 1,300 students, according to reports. Hungkar Dorje Vocational Secondary School in Golog was also closed on June 24, 2026.

The latest closures have raised further questions about the future of Tibetan-language education in the region and whether students from the affected schools will continue to have opportunities to learn their language and cultural traditions.

Background: The three schools

Gangjong Grassland Girls’ School

Founded in 2005 by Tibetan educator Jigme Gyaltsen in Ragya Township, the school was established to provide education for girls, including those from nomadic communities. When it officially opened on Oct. 15, 2005, it had 203 students and 15 teachers. Its curriculum included Tibetan, Chinese and English, as well as mathematics, science, culture and sports.

Gyaltsen described his educational philosophy as follows: “The education of girls is the education of mothers, and the education of mothers is the foundation of human education.”

Jasag Village Primary School

Established in 1995 with funds raised by local nomadic families through the former Jasag Village Committee, the school served children from the surrounding community. It was renamed Ragya Township Residential School No. 2 in 2008 and closed in September 2026.

Golog Tadra Orphan School

Founded in 2005 by the late Dr. Tawo Lobsang Palden and his wife, Choenyi Lhamo, the school provided education, accommodation, food, clothing and health care to Tibetan orphans and disadvantaged children. Over two decades, it served thousands of children. Lhamo now lives in Germany.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi and edited by Tawang for RFA Tibetan

Beijing imposed sanctions on Oct. 12 against Paraguay’s information and communication technologies minister, Gustavo Villate, and Belize’s foreign minister, Francis Fonseca. Both countries maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than China.

China claims Taiwan is an integral part of its territory and considers it a rogue province. Beijing has sought to persuade governments to switch recognition from Taiwan to China, reducing Taiwan’s network of embassies and official government-to-government relationships.

The Chinese government has described the sanctions as a “warning and deterrence.”

(Cesar Olmedo/Reuters)

When China sanctions individuals they don’t quite have the same effect as U.S. or European sanctions, Ed Moon, an independent cross-Strait analyst and founder of intelligence site Strait Signal, told RFA.

“Chinese sanctions are unlikely to have significant impacts on people without major interests in the Chinese banking system, shareholdings or business interests,” he said.

But the penalties serve a purpose beyond imposing financial losses, said Moon. They signal to observers in China and abroad that Beijing can enforce restrictions when it believes its interests have been harmed, and can serve as a warning to countries closely connected to the Chinese economy about dealings with sanctioned individuals.

While sanctions could discourage engagement with Taiwan, there is little evidence that the strategy is causing isolation for Taipei, William Yang, a Northeast Asia analyst at the Belgium-based International Crisis Group, told RFA.

“We haven’t really seen a substantial level of retreat in terms of foreign parliamentarians’ trips to Taiwan or foreign governments’ cooperation with Taiwan,” Yang said.

The assessments point to a distinction between two types of sanctions: those that impose measurable costs and those whose principal effect is to publicize Beijing’s opposition to Taiwan’s international relationships.

Isolating Taiwan

Only 12 countries retain formal diplomatic relations with Taipei. Taiwan also maintains extensive unofficial relationships with countries that recognize Beijing. Those ties include trade, investment and parliamentary exchanges, explaining why China’s penalties have targeted politicians beyond Taiwan’s formal diplomatic allies.

Yang said Beijing’s campaign is meant to show Taiwan’s government and people that it has the power to restrict international engagement with Taipei, while simultaneously showing foreign governments that there will be consequences for treating Taiwan as a sovereign state.

He added Beijing believes its economic influence gives it leverage to intimidate politicians and governments considering closer engagement with Taipei.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during an Oct. 12 press briefing that the ministers from Paraguay and Belize were sanctioned for supporting Taiwan independence through their contacts with Taipei and spreading false allegations about Chinese cyberattacks.

(Taiwan Presidential Office/AP)

The next day, Taiwan’s Premier Cho Jung-tai said that Beijing had no right to interfere in Taiwan’s internal affairs or influence its foreign relations. He said Taiwan would continue working with its allies and other democratic governments to defend freedom and democracy and maintain regional peace and security.

Paraguay and Belize also rejected the sanctions. Paraguay’s Foreign Ministry reaffirmed its support for Taiwan, while Belize said the penalties would not alter its foreign policy and defended its relationship with Taipei as a sovereign decision.

Their cooperation involves more than diplomatic recognition. Paraguayan President Santiago Peña visited Taiwan in May, signing agreements covering cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and computing investment, among other areas. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung visited Belize in September to deepen bilateral ties.

Do Chinese sanctions work?

Previous cases of Chinese sanctions show the difficulty of turning personal penalties into lasting restrictions on engagement.

In June, China confirmed entry restrictions against New Zealand lawmakers following their visit to Taiwan. Beijing said their trip interfered in China’s internal affairs.

(Presidential Office of Taiwan/AFP)

In August 2022, China sanctioned Lithuania’s deputy transport minister, Agnė Vaiciukevičiūtė, after she visited Taiwan. Beijing also suspended exchanges with Vilnius’ transport ministry and paused certain international transportation agreements between the two countries.

That action formed part of a wider dispute after Lithuania allowed a Taiwanese representative office to open in the country in 2021. China downgraded diplomatic relations over the decision.

Cooperation with Taiwan nevertheless continued. Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry reported discussions in April 2026 on strengthening economic and technological ties.

The broader outcome is more complicated. Lithuania’s prime minister described the original representative-office decision as a mistake in February as the country sought to repair relations with Beijing.

Because the dispute involved broader diplomatic and economic pressure, analysts say it is difficult to isolate the impact of sanctions against a single official.

Moon said the same difficulty applied to Paraguay and Belize – Beijing has used various public and private forms of pressure for years, so any subsequent policy change could not automatically be attributed to the latest sanctions.

He said changes in diplomatic language, visits and, at the most dramatic end, diplomatic recognition would provide indicators of whether the relationships were shifting.

Past sanctions have also produced backlash.

In March 2021, Beijing sanctioned European lawmakers and institutions in retaliation for European Union sanctions over human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Although the dispute concerned human rights rather than Taiwan, it similarly targeted individual politicians and their institutions.

The European Parliament responded by freezing consideration of an EU-China investment agreement while the Chinese sanctions remained in place. Beijing lifted the sanctions affecting the EU Parliament’s members and committees in 2025.

Moon said sanctions could carry greater economic weight when directed at people or companies with business interests in China, including in Taiwan.

In a separate action on Oct. 14, Beijing announced restrictions against VWAY, a company linked to the father of Taiwanese legislator and Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen.

(I-Hwa Cheng/AFP)

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office accused Shen’s father of using VWAY to continue trading with Chinese firms after sanctions were placed on another of his businesses.

Moon cautioned that Taiwan-related business sanctions were not directly comparable with penalties against foreign governments’ officials, given Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China.

Yang said the sanctions’ limited results so far did not rule out a stronger deterrent effect in the future. Responses by Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies, including whether they protested collectively or moved toward recognizing Beijing, would be important to watch, he said.

“So far it seems like at least the government of Paraguay and Belize are holding their lines,” said Yang.

Beijing could still regard the publicity itself as a result, reinforcing its claims over Taiwan and demonstrating that engagement with Taipei carried consequences, Moon said.

“But I think for Beijing the mere fact it has created a news cycle out of the sanctions will mean it has achieved the desired effect of reinforcing its claims over Taiwan and showing there are consequences, however limited, to siding with Taipei.”

Edited by Eugene Whong.

He speaks in an exclusive interview with Radio Free Asia.

Radio Free Asia: After more than five years without direct contact, how did you get the opportunity to speak with your mother and how did the Myanmar Embassy in London reach out to you? How was the call arranged?

Kim Aris: I was informed through the British Foreign Office here that the call may take place. This was last week. And then earlier this week, they confirmed that it would take place, and they accompanied me to the Burmese Embassy this morning.

RFA: During your conversation, did Daw Aung San Suu Kyi mention anything about her health or her daily life?

Kim Aris: Well, she was more concerned about my health and the rest of the family than anything else. But obviously, I asked after her health and how things were, where she is. She wasn’t able to reveal too much, but I know that she’s been held in some residence, I believe in Naypyidaw, and she sounds healthy. But at the same time, I know that she is in some pain because her hand is not very well; she has tendonitis. So at times, the pain is quite extreme, and I think she is even unable to use that hand at times. Nothing too clear. I know that she’s getting a regular six-monthly checkup, but I know that will be a military doctor, so it’s not like having her own personal doctor.

RFA: Do you know whether she has any access to news from the outside world?

Kim Aris: I don’t think she does. As far as I’m aware, she has no radio or television and doesn’t get any newspapers or anything like that. We know that the conversation will have been monitored and recorded, so we can’t talk about anything sensitive. Besides which, there was a lot to talk about just talking about what’s happened in the family over the last five years. So that’s what we talked about.

RFA: During these recent developments, do you believe there could be a political breakthrough on the horizon?

Kim Aris: I sincerely hope so. I think everybody is tired of the fighting now, and people are starting to think that they need to start talking to each other. But I think the first thing that needs to happen before anybody will start talking is the political prisoners, including may may (Burmese expression for “mom”), need to be freed.

RFA: Some observers believe the Myanmar authorities may be looking for a way out of Myanmar’s ongoing political crisis. What is your take on this?

Kim Aris: Well, it’s very clear the military have been trying to be more appealing to the international community, especially following their elections at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. So they are doing whatever they can to try and get people to work with them again. But people need to remember that the military haven’t actually abided by any of what they have said they will have done over the last five years. They have not met the five-point consensus, and yet people are starting to re-engage with them without having seen any evidence of actual progress.

RFA: The Myanmar military authorities have recently been releasing more information about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Do you see this as a reason for optimism? What do you think the Myanmar military’s move might be?

Kim Aris: I always have hope, and I do hope that this will result in actual progress and that she will be free before long. And even before she’s free, I want more regular contact with her, and I want to know that she’s receiving external medical treatment.

RFA: Did they promise you could speak with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, your mother, regularly?

Kim Aris: No, I haven’t heard anything more on that yet.

RFA: You made it very clear that your mother should never be used as a bargaining chip for diplomatic recognition, sanctions relief, or political advantage. You also urged the UK government and others not to trade humanitarian rights for political legitimacy. And now, one of our RFA audience members raised a difficult question. They asked if negotiation and compromise may be necessary to secure your mother Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. How would you respond to that?

Kim Aris: Well, I realize there are people who have been calling for my mother’s release all the time for the last five years, and without their support, I wouldn’t even have gotten this far. And people do have to negotiate—that’s very clear. At the same time, they should not be legitimizing the military by open discussions like this and welcoming Min Aung Hlaing to their country without actually having secured progress.

RFA: After hearing your mother’s voice for the first time in more than five years, what message would you like to share with the Myanmar people or international community?

Kim Aris: Well, I would say she is sounding well and strong still, but at 81 years old and with ongoing health concerns, and we still don’t know what conditions she’s really been kept under, I’d ask for everybody to continue to fight for her freedom. Burma needs to come forwards, and may may is part of that process still. People need to talk to one another, and one of the few people who is actually able to get people to talk to one another is may may. So please, do not stop fighting for her freedom. Fighting for her freedom is also fighting for the freedom of Burma.

Edited by Charlie Dharapak.

Updated 5:05 PM ET

Allowing Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi to speak on the phone with her son for the first time in five years is not enough – the military government must immediately release her and all other political prisoners, a human rights advocate told Radio Free Asia Thursday.

The country’s military-backed government announced that the former leader – currently under house arrest – was allowed to talk for 20 minutes to her son Kim Aris at 2:30 p.m. via a call placed to the Myanmar embassy in London, where Aris resides.

The chance to talk to her son came just days after the military released images of her receiving a letter and some books sent by Britain’s King Charles III.

(Myanmar Presidential Spokesman via Reuters)

While the phone call was a joyous occasion for mother and son, much more must be done to bring peace to Myanmar, Aung Myo Kyaw, an official with the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), told RFA.

“Aung San Suu Kyi is not only a mother to Kim, but also a mother to the country,” said Aung Myo Kyaw. “What the citizens of the country need is the release of all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi.”

He said that the gradual easing of restrictions on Aung San Suu Kyi is a political calculation by the military government, which he said was failing in all aspects.

At a time when the military continues to airstrike populated areas of the country, simply allowing her to talk to her son in the U.K. will not bring peace, he said.

“FREE HER. FREE THEM ALL”

In an interview with Radio Free Asia after speaking with his mother, Kim Aris said that it’s clear that the Myanmar military-backed government have been trying to “be more appealing to the international community.”

“But people need to remember that the military haven’t actually abided by any of what they have said they will have done over the last five years,” Aris told RFA. “They have not met the five-point consensus, and yet people are starting to re-engage with them without having seen any evidence of actual progress.”

In a Facebook post, Aris said that he was glad to finally hear his mother’s voice again and thanked supporters for continuing to advocate for her freedom.

But he reiterated that she is still “unjustly detained.”

“One conversation is not regular family access. Family access is not freedom,” he said. “My mother must never be used as a hostage or bargaining chip for diplomatic recognition, sanctions relief or political advantage.”

He called on governments that engage with Myanmar’s military authorities to not legitimize them in exchange for humanitarian rights.

“My mother and all political prisoners must be released immediately and unconditionally. Freedom is not negotiable. Accountability Before Legitimacy. FREE HER. FREE THEM ALL,” he wrote.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained since the 2021 military coup that ousted her and the rest of the country’s democratically elected government from power. She was sentenced to 18 years for a broad range of crimes that include corruption and election fraud, though she maintains that she is innocent.

For the duration of her detention, her exact location has not been easy to ascertain, and in April the military government moved her into house arrest. Until the brief phone call with her son Thursday, she had had almost no contact with the outside.

Radio Free Asia attempted to contact a spokesman for the military government to discuss more details about the phone call between Aung San Suu Kyi and Kim Aris, but there was no response.

Updates with Kim Aris comment from RFA interview.

Edited by Eugene Whong.

The remarks came after prosecutors in the vice president’s impeachment trial presented evidence of the alleged corruption – a financial forensics accountant testified that Cale88 Foods Corp., controlled by Duterte and her husband Manases Carpio, received 319 million pesos (US$5 million) from state-run Chinese firms. Duterte said the allegations were politically motivated.

The revelations raised alarm bells, with Filipino officials and experts immediately raising the specter of Chinese spy and malign influence operations as the two countries have become locked in an increasingly tense territorial dispute in the South China Sea, parts of which are claimed by Manila and referred to as the West Philippine Sea.

(RFA)

Gaining access to the most influential people in a target country is a fundamental malign influence strategy for Beijing, retired Rear Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad, spokesman for the Philippine military in the West Philippine Sea, told RFA.

“Part of the rulebook of the Chinese Communist Party includes economic elite co-optation and political elite co-optation,” Trinidad told RFA. “If they could co-opt a political leader, have him elected by building him up politically through foreign malign influence, they would have achieved the objective without firing a single shot.”

While donations or grants by any government are not illegal per se and are governed by rules, if the supposed investments are “used to advance the position of our adversary…it will have very serious national security implications,” Trinidad said.

“When another country would like to occupy your territory, would like to sow false narratives to advance their interests, they are creating trouble not only domestically, but in the region,” he stressed.

Going bananas?

Duterte was impeached in May for large-scale corruption and death threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., her former political ally turned nemesis.

The prosecution on Oct. 13 dropped three of the charges – misuse of funds, bribery, and grave threats – to speed up the trial, but she still remains accused of having unexplained wealth.

During the trial proceedings earlier in the month, the Anti-Money Laundering Council said the funds paid to the food company controlled by Duterte and her husband were in suspiciously high amounts for what they had been reported as – payment for banana chips, and that the firm did not have the operational capabilities that matched those payments.

(Bertrand Guay/AFP)

The defense cited customs records that showed outgoing banana chip shipments with a declared value of 217 million pesos ($3.4 million), which is still about 100 million pesos less than the payments received.

Additionally, the trial revealed that the company had only two employees, which Senator-Judge Joel Villanueva during the proceedings said was “alarming” considering the company’s reported revenue and sales.

Government officials cannot be the direct beneficiary of funds from any foreign government, Leila de Lima, one of the prosecutors in Duterte’s impeachment trial, told RFA. She called the case a “substantiation of financial infusion by China” to influence.

“VP Sara’s receipt of funds from China without any exempting justification such as a legitimate business squarely constitutes a betrayal of her oath and disloyalty to the Philippines,” she said. “There can only be one reason for the receipt of hundreds of millions of pesos in monetary benefits by a public official from a foreign government.”

China’s Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond when contacted by RFA. But in a short statement it issued on Oct. 5, the embassy urged “relevant individuals in the Philippines to stop political manipulation and not drag Philippine domestic politics into China-Philippine relations.”

“A serious matter”

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., talking to reporters during a visit to Singapore on Oct. 11, acknowledged that the prosecution’s allegations were a “serious matter” that needed to be investigated.

If found to be true “it would go straight to the top of our list of threats that are facing the Philippines,” Marcos said, according to official transcripts of his interview with the traveling Filipino press.

“We are talking about the sovereignty of the Republic,” he said. “We are talking about the safety and security of the state. And I cannot think of any discussion that occurs at a higher level than that.”

Following Marcos’ statement, the National Security Council as well as state intelligence units were tasked to probe deeper into the allegations. The council said it took the allegations very seriously at a time of increased Chinese intelligence operations locally.

“The reported transactions and any credible information involving significant financial flows that may bear upon the country’s national security warrants careful, in-depth and responsible assessment,” national security adviser Eduardo Oban told reporters. He said the NSC will work with other agencies to assess “national security implications, if any, arising from the reported transactions.”

Alleged Chinese spy operations have been documented in the Philippines, and defense and national security officials are working to weed out Filipinos compromised by Chinese operatives. Earlier this year, RFA interviewed one of three Filipinos recently caught spying for China, who explained he had been recruited through an online advertisement.

(Jason Gutierrez/RFA)

The military is in the process of weeding out more alleged spies through an “insider threat program” launched in 2023 and designed to protect sensitive government information, including data linked to the South China Sea.

After Marcos’ remarks, Vice President Duterte dismissed the allegations against her as political theatrics meant to target and harass her family through surveillance. “And this could have serious implications to our relationship with China,” she said.

Duterte is the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, whose six-year term ended in 2022. During his presidency, the elder Duterte pursued a conciliatory stance toward Beijing—a sharp contrast to Marcos, who has leaned heavily into a U.S.-aligned foreign policy.

The younger Duterte joined forces with Marcos – himself the son of a former president – during the 2022 campaign to form an unbeatable UniTeam ticket that united the country’s two most powerful political dynasties.

The alliance between two of the leading political families in the country however soon crumbled, with Marcos in 2025 allowing the International Criminal Court to arrest Rodrigo Duterte for deaths related to his war on drugs.

Officials told RFA they would continue their operations against foreign operatives known to operate in the country. On Oct. 12, the military said its intelligence operatives helped immigration officials in raiding a hub for online gaming operations near military headquarters, and arrested 76 individuals, mostly Chinese nationals.

Operatives told RFA that the raid was part of its program to disrupt Chinese spying and malign influence operations, but declined to elaborate citing the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation.

Edited by Eugene Whong.

Beijing and Vientiane opened a joint support and training center and an aviation academy at Ban Keun, about 50 kilometers north of the Lao capital, on Sept. 29. Beijing says the facility will train Lao air force pilots and it will be maintained by both countries.

The airfield, once complete, would be China’s second joint military outpost in Southeast Asia, after a Chinese-funded expansion of Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base opened in April of last year. The facility at Ream, despite its official designation as a dual-use facility, has seen a regular rotation of Chinese naval vessels.

The joint facility in Laos could allow China to deepen military ties, familiarize personnel with overseas operations and lay the groundwork for a larger presence, Joseph Kristanto, a research analyst at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told RFA.

“Ultimately, I think the more important question is not simply whether Ban Keun could accommodate Chinese military aircraft, but whether Beijing intends to develop the facility into a sustained operational hub,” he said.

China’s Defense Ministry said in an announcement that the facility would be maintained by both countries and was “not directed against any third party.” It said its construction and use complied with domestic and international law and would strengthen military cooperation and support regional peace and stability.

Laos’ state news agency KPL reported that officials from both countries described the project at the opening ceremony as the product of cooperation based on mutual respect and equality. The facility would develop Lao military pilots’ practical skills, it said.

(RFA)

The KPL report also said both sides pledged to expand cooperation through joint training and exercises, personnel development and humanitarian assistance. Neither that report nor the Chinese announcement specified how many Chinese military personnel would work at Ban Keun, how long they would remain or the conditions governing Chinese aircraft deployments.

Satellite imagery analysis provided to RFA suggests some construction continued after the opening of the joint airfield. But its future military significance will depend on more than its physical completion, including the extent of Chinese access and the frequency and nature of activities there, Kristanto said.

China already operates military facilities on disputed features in the South China Sea. Ban Keun could extend its overseas presence inland, offering opportunities to build closer ties with the Lao military and gain experience operating from a foreign facility, he said.

The airfield’s immediate military advantages are less clear, analysts said. China has airbases in its own southern territory closer to the South China Sea, raising questions about what additional operations an inland facility in Laos would enable.

Strategic advantage for Beijing?

In satellite imagery of the airfield during its opening, eight aircraft are visible. Private satellite imagery analyst Jacob Bogle told RFA they were K-8, also known as JL-8, light attack and training aircraft.

(Noel Celis/AFP)

Examining an Oct. 7 image, he identified what he thought was one remaining aircraft, while cautioning that the image was blurry. He suggested the others had likely moved into hangars, although their locations could not be established from that observation.

Bogle also identified what appeared to be workshops and temporary construction infrastructure beside the southern end of the runway.

“So while the runway and main buildings are completed, it looks like there is still some minor work that is being finished,” he said.

The imagery does not establish who owns or operates the aircraft. Both China and Laos operate the K-8 type, according to analysts cited by Reuters.

But a Lao military officer, while downplaying concerns over increased Chinese military presence in Southeast Asia, confirmed to RFA that at least some of the fighter jets at the facility are Chinese.

“It is a pilot training airport. A group of people are envious that Laos has a flight training center, yet Laos has never complained about neighboring countries hosting U.S. air bases,” said the officer on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on such matters.

“When Laos built Ban Keun Airport for pilot training, some people overreacted. Naturally, Chinese officials brought their own fighter jets, given that it is a joint Lao-Chinese operation,” he said.

Bogle said it was too early to determine China’s future position at Ban Keun, but that the facility warranted monitoring.

(RFA)

Kristanto said operating combat aircraft from Laos would require substantial investment in fuel storage, maintenance facilities, munitions, air defense and other supporting infrastructure.

“At present, I see little evidence that Ban Keun offers a decisive operational advantage over China’s existing facilities,” he said.

Such limitations do not rule out a broader role in the future. Ban Keun could theoretically support intelligence gathering, surveillance, logistics or forward aircraft deployments if the necessary infrastructure and access arrangements were established, he said.

Surrounding Vietnam?

A sustained Chinese military presence in Laos could add another consideration for neighboring Vietnam, which already faces China across its northern land border and contests Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea.

China’s expansive maritime claims overlap with the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. Vietnam also claims the Paracel and Spratly island groups, where competing sovereignty claims are distinct from disputes over rights to surrounding waters. China controls the Paracels, while several governments occupy features in the Spratlys.

In 2016, an international arbitral tribunal rejected China’s claims to the entire South China Sea based on its controversial nine-dash line, which surrounds the whole sea. This claim was seen to exceed what Beijing could legally claim under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Beijing rejected the decision, and has continued to assert its claims over areas that are within the exclusive economic zones of the other claimants.

China has strengthened this position through island-building and military infrastructure, including runways, surveillance equipment and air defenses on occupied reefs. Those facilities support a wider maritime presence in waters where rival claimants seek to protect fishing grounds, energy resources and access to their outposts.

Ban Keun would introduce a different geographic consideration for Hanoi, potentially bringing Chinese military activity to its western side as well.

Bogle argued that facilities in Laos and Cambodia, together with China’s South China Sea bases, had effectively encircled Vietnam.

Kristanto was more cautious. Vietnam would have to account for the possibility of a Chinese military presence beyond its northern border and the South China Sea, he said, but Ban Keun’s inland location and China’s existing airbases limit its immediate operational value.

“For now, I would characterize Ban Keun as a potentially important strategic foothold rather than a major shift in the regional military balance.”

Ream offers a comparison

China’s involvement at Cambodia’s Ream naval base shows why a facility’s use over time can be more revealing than its designation as a joint training center, the analysts said.

China financed an expansion of Ream, on Cambodia’s southern coast, where its joint support and training center opened in April 2025. Cambodia maintains that Chinese personnel and warships are not permanently based there.

An analysis published in May 2025 by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative documented Chinese naval vessels rotating through Ream after their initial arrival in December 2023.

(RFA)

It also found that visiting Japanese and Vietnamese vessels used a different waterfront area from the large pier occupied by Chinese ships, suggesting unequal access to some facilities. Those findings described arrangements at the time and do not establish current access rules.

Kristanto said the comparison with Ban Keun was useful in examining how China could expand its military presence through partnerships that initially fall short of large, permanent bases.

“Rather than immediately establishing large, permanent military bases, Beijing appears to be pursuing arrangements that could provide access, logistical support, and opportunities for a more sustained military presence.”

The differences remain substantial. Ream provides direct access to the sea and can support naval deployments, while Ban Keun’s military utility depends heavily on the aircraft and supporting infrastructure deployed there, he added.

For the Lao facility, subsequent construction and deployments will help establish whether the training partnership develops into a broader operational role.

“Its future significance will depend on the extent of Chinese access, the infrastructure developed, and the frequency and nature of PLA activities there,” Kristanto said.

Edited by Eugene Whong.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained since the 2021 military coup that ousted her and the rest of the country’s democratically elected government from power. She was sentenced to 18 years for a broad range of crimes that include corruption and election fraud, though she maintains that she is innocent.

For the duration of her detention, her exact location has not been easy to ascertain.

The military government moved her to house arrest in April, but still have allowed almost no contact with the outside.

Aung San Suu Kyi received an envelope that contained diplomatic communication, and two books from King Charles – “The Land Gardeners: Soil to Table” and “Soil: The ​World at Our Feet.”

The delivery – which the military government revealed in a public statement – lasted only 10 minutes. It is the first acknowledgement of the detained former leader receiving correspondence from abroad.

Family members, Myanmar watchers and world government officials told RFA that they were pleased to know she was allowed to receive the king’s message, but they warned against allowing the military to use the delivery as propaganda.

Kim Aris, the younger son of Aung San Suu Kyi, told RFA that he took comfort that his mother was in the king’s thoughts and that he appreciated the kind gesture.

“I take comfort in knowing that my mother remains in the thoughts of His Majesty King Charles III, and I sincerely appreciate his kind gesture in sending her books. However, we must not allow the military regime to use such selective disclosures to create an illusion of normality or gain international legitimacy. A gesture of kindness should never be used to distract from the continued violation of my mother’s fundamental human rights. My mother, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is an 81-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate who remains unjustly detained on politically motivated charges, hidden from the world and denied direct contact with her family and independent medical assessment. Despite recent developments, we still have no direct communication with her or credible, independently verified information about her health and wellbeing. I hope His Majesty’s thoughtful gesture will also serve as a reminder to world leaders that my mother’s situation remains unresolved. I urge all governments engaging with Min Aung Hlaing to insist on meaningful humanitarian progress, including regular, direct family contact, independent medical access, and her immediate and unconditional release, together with all political prisoners.”

Cara Chittenden, a communications officer at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, told RFA that Aung San Suu Kyi should not be in detention.

“The UK continues to condemn the arbitrary detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and calls for her immediate and unconditional release, alongside all those arbitrarily detained in Myanmar. We remain gravely concerned about her continued detention and wellbeing. The UK has also co-sponsored a number of Human Rights Council resolutions on Myanmar, including most recently in March 2026. The resolution condemned human rights violations against the people of Myanmar, including the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities.”

A spokesperson from the U.S. Department of State said that Washington remained “concerned about all individuals unjustly detained” and continued “to call for their release and the military to engage in genuine dialogue with all opposition groups to end the conflict in Burma. The United States remains steadfast in our support for the people of Burma.”

Aung Myo Kyaw, a spokesperson from the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, told RFA that the delivery of the books and letters was a positive development.

“However, the world does not view Aung San Suu Kyi as a ‘special prisoner,’ as the regime claims (in its statement); rather, she is recognized as a national leader. Whenever the military junta faces crises on various fronts, they tend to use Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as a hidden political card. In this instance, too, their actions are merely a gesture—a performance intended to project themselves as flexible and big-hearted.”

Kyaw Htwe, an exiled member of the Central Working Committee of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, told RFA that the meeting was the military engaging in political theater.

“Engagement should be measured by political progress. When they fail to bring about such political progress, they typically resort to their usual tactic: releasing news regarding our Chairperson, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, to manipulate the situation. Rather than just sending books or letters, it is necessary to allow her to meet with her family—specifically her younger son—as well as her legal team.”

That legal team is reportedly seeking to meet her in person since May 30 prison-to-private house transfer, sources close to the legal team told RFA. The legal team’s repeated requests to meet with her are ignored by military authorities.

Myint Htwe, a government leader in a part of the country not controlled by the military, said that the junta’s move to publicize the delivery was meant to try to gain legitimacy.

“These are just the same old tactics. The fact that they chose to issue a press statement—when they could have easily handled the matter quietly—suggests a softening of their stance. I interpret this as a deliberate attempt to signal—to put on full display—that they are treating a communication from the British monarch with great seriousness, as a legitimate government would. Furthermore, I see it as an effort to project the image of being a legitimate government to the rest of the world.”

Edited by Eugene Whong.

Rubio is leading a U.S. delegation of more than 200 business representatives and will arrive in Uzbekistan on Saturday for the first leg of a six-day trip that also includes two stops in India. While in Samarkand, he will attend the C5+1 ministerial meetings – with officials from the five Central Asian countries of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

(Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

According to the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, more than 400,000 Uyghurs live in these Central Asian countries and combined they form the “vast majority” of the Uyghur diaspora outside of East Turkestan, which is the name by which Uyghurs call their homeland, currently under the control of the People’s Republic of China.

As a U.S. senator, Rubio was a champion of Uyghur issues and now as Washington’s top diplomat, he is expected to discuss the safety and rights of Uyghurs with the C5 leaders, Abdureshit Abdulhamit, vice president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, told RFA.

(RFA Illustration)

“We urge him to seek clear commitments that no Uyghur will be forcibly returned to China, where they could face persecution, imprisonment or torture,” said Abdureshit. “Uyghurs seeking protection should have access to fair asylum procedures.”

He also urged Rubio to address intimidation and surveillance targeting Uyghur communities, saying people should be able to preserve their culture, discuss detained relatives and communicate abroad without fear.

Communities at risk

Compared to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Uyghurs in Uzbekistan face more challenges to their social and cultural rights, Zumretay Erkin, another vice president of the organization, told RFA.

“Uzbekistan is also complicit in deporting Uyghurs to China at the explicit request of the Chinese government,” she said. “Uyghurs are subjected to tight surveillance and transnational repression.”

(RFA Illustration)

Zumretay said Rubio’s diplomatic visit is a “unique opportunity to raise Uyghur human rights, even in a trade and investment context,” noting that the U.S. government was among the first to take action to address the Uyghur genocide.

Washington classified China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the Uyghur region as genocide in 2021.

Moral leadership

Rubio can show the world that the United States’ moral leadership still matters, Omer Kanat, executive director of the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, wrote in an opinion piece in The Diplomat.

Kanat cited former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s public calls against returning Uyghurs to China as a precedent. He also pointed to Thailand’s February 2025 deportation of 40 Uyghurs as a warning of the consequences when diplomatic efforts fail.

(RFA Illustration)

“This upcoming trip to Central Asia gives Rubio a chance to show that the United States won’t countenance a repeat of that tragedy,” he wrote. “With the right messaging, the trip can fortify China’s neighbors to stand firm against Beijing’s pressure to return Uyghurs to China.”

The WUC also called on Rubio to hear directly from Uyghur representatives and establish follow-up mechanisms for individual cases.

“We would judge the visit by concrete results: stronger protection against deportation, action on cases of harassment and a clear American commitment to follow through after the meetings end,” said Abdureshit.

Edited by Eugene Whong.

Authorities are still investigating Wednesday’s firebombing of the Dalai Lama’s representative office in South Africa, police told Radio Free Asia, as activists accused China of having a hand in the attack.

The office of the Tibetan spiritual leader in Pretoria suffered extensive damage in the 11 p.m. attack, but nobody was hurt, the representative Dhondup Gyalpo told RFA.

“I heard the sound of breaking glass and saw smoke coming into the house. As soon as I realized what was happening, I broke a window and got outside,” he said. “Another firebomb that had not exploded was hanging above the window. I was slightly injured by broken glass.”

(Dhondup Gyalpo)

Shortly after the fire brigade extinguished the blaze, the crime scene experts and detectives arrived to investigate, but no suspects have been arrested,” police spokesperson Brigadier BM Muridili, told RFA.

Wednesday’s firebombing was the second such attack on the office in months. The office had previously been firebombed in July, on the Dalai Lama’s 91st birthday. Gyalpo described Wednesday’s attack in detail.

“The Molotov cocktail used in the attack produced more smoke than flames. At first, it looked as though the entire building was on fire,” he said. “When I entered, the smoke was so thick and overpowering that I could almost taste it.”

The fire engulfed parts of the property, causing extensive damage to the building, furniture and official documents, he said. Neither Gyalpo nor Khenpo Jamyang Gonpo, a staff member at the office, was injured in the fire.

“Transnational repression”

The attacks on the Dalai Lama’s office are part of a “global rise in transnational repression” by the Chinese Communist Party against the Tibetan people, the New York-based rights group Students for a Free Tibet said in a statement.

“Students for a Free Tibet urges South African law enforcement and government authorities to conduct an immediate, thorough, and independent investigation,” the group said. “Law enforcement must not dismiss these attacks as ordinary local crime, but must explicitly examine political motives and potential foreign state involvement.”

The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation also condemned Wednesday’s attack in a statement and called for stronger protections of freedom of expression, religion and association.

Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama are both Nobel laureates for their nonviolent struggles, and in the statement, the foundation noted their long friendship.

(Ted S. Warren/AP)

“We stand with the Tibetan community in South Africa and with everyone who lives and works at the Office,” the foundation said. “No community in South Africa should have to go to sleep wondering whether their home will be set alight because of who they are, where they come from or what they believe.”

Gyalpo said he suspected that the attack might be politically motivated, but cautioned that the perpetrators and their motives have not been identified yet.

“There seems to be a warning sign intended to intimidate us but we are not scared,” he said. “We have no reason to hate the people of South Africa and there is also no reason why the people of South Africa should not like us,” he said.

Edited by Tawang in Tibetan and Eugene Whong and Charlie Dharapak in English.

Chinese authorities in 2018 lied to the family of a Uyghur bus driver who died in their custody, an investigation by Radio Free Asia has revealed.

Authorities told the family of Yasinjan Toxti, who had been detained in a “re-education” facility on suspicion of “religious radicalism,” that he had died in a car accident.

Yasinjan’s sister Reyhangul told RFA that the details did not add up. A resident of Belgium, Reyhangul discussed the moment in 2018 when her younger sister in the Uyghur region told her of her brother’s death.

“How could someone held in ‘re-education’ die in a traffic accident?” she recalled asking. She said her sister replied, “That is what the police told us. We have to accept that explanation. Under the current circumstances, we cannot ask any further questions about it.”

2018 was the height of China’s Uyghur internment campaign aimed at “curbing terrorism” where an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs were put in detainment facilities claimed by authorities to be vocational training centers. The U.S. in 2020 classified Beijing’s actions in the Uyghur region as a genocide.

Inconsistencies uncovered

In an attempt to gain more clarity on the circumstances of Yasinjan’s death, RFA this month telephoned the Qartal Bazaar police station in Aksu, an oasis city in the Uyghur region, where Yasinjan lived and worked.

Two separate police personnel shared information that conflicted with what authorities told Reyhangul’s family in 2018.

The chief of the police station was the first to answer RFA’s questions.

(RFA Illustration)

A police officer on duty provided further details.

(RFA Illustration)

In assessing that Yasinjan had been in detention for “five or six months,” the police chief may have been referring to his cumulative time in re-education across multiple sentences, and the police officer who said he was taken to the hospital after “nine or 10 days” may have been referring to the length of time into his latest sentence. RFA was unable to confirm what either expression of time meant exactly.

Educational pursuits

Yasinjan was born in 1980 in Aksu and lived there his entire life. Having received only a primary school education himself, Yasinjan saw the importance of education and sent his five-year-old son, Hebibulla Yasin, to study in Egypt. His sister was already living in Egypt overseeing her own children’s education, and agreed to be Hebibulla’s caretaker there.

Sending children abroad for educational purposes was at the time common for many Uyghur families, because China had been expanding its policy of “bilingual education,” – which in practice was replacing the Uyghur language with Mandarin Chinese for most classes.

Many Uyghur parents viewed this as accelerating assimilation, and feared their children would lose their Uyghur cultural and religious identity. Egypt, which had a strong reputation for Islamic education, and relatively low living costs, was a natural choice for families wishing to preserve their culture.

Before 2017, more than 5,000 Uyghurs were living in Egypt, but mass arrests by the Chinese government under the “Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism” intensified the next year. Arrests often targeted Uyghurs with family members abroad, especially in “sensitive” Muslim majority countries like Turkey and Egypt.

Arousing suspicion

Because his son was in Egypt, Yasinjan was detained several times between 2016 and 2018 on suspicion of “religious radicalism” and subjected to short periods of “re-education,” according to Reyhangul. Authorities were able to compel Yasinjan to bring Hebibulla home, but even after his son returned, Yasinjan remained under suspicion.

Yasinjan was in custody four separate times between 2016 and 2018. His latest detention was for stopping the bus in the middle of his route to allow Muslim passengers to observe the call to prayer.

It was during this latest detention that he died – not of a traffic accident as Reyhangul said authorities previously claimed – but after arriving in a “re-education camp” as confirmed by police in RFA’s investigation.

Years after Yasinjan’s death, while Reyhangul was searching for more information, she learned that other members of her family had been detained – her sister, who had told her about their brother’s death, for “leaking state secrets,” and her mother, who had traveled to Turkey, for “visiting a sensitive country.”

Still, Reyhangul does not know where they are detained, nor the length of their sentences, she said.

Edited by Eugene Whong and Charlie Dharapak.

From that discussion with Congressional staff, policymakers, rights advocates, academics, and journalists, RFA is reporting out a set of recommendations and ideas regarding TNR’s development, growth, and sophistication. Issues raised were ways of protecting journalists and advocates, TNR’s use by Beijing as a tactic aimed at manipulating global narratives, artificial intelligence’s role in expanding its scope, its growing presence on U.S. soil, including universities and diaspora communities, and Beijing’s growing influence with international institutions, such as Interpol, to aid its efforts.

“From RFA’s exclusive reporting on restrictions of religious freedom in Tibet and forced labor and human rights abuses in Xinjiang, to closing our physical bureau in Hong Kong after authorities enacted Article 23 and named us a ‘foreign force,’ RFA and our journalists have endured every iteration of TNR designed to silence us and inhibit transparency,” RFA President and CEO Bay Fang said.

Delivering opening remarks at the roundtable was Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), former Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), who introduced the bipartisan Transnational Repression Policy Act (S.2525) last year, co-sponsored by current CECC Chair Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK). The conversation, moderated by RFA’s Chief Communications Officer Rohit Mahajan, delved into the issues outlined above, with an eye on fostering greater cross-sector cooperation, understanding, and solutions.

RFA plans to continue engaging on this issue with partners, policymakers, authorities, technologists, freedom advocates, journalists, and experts in this critical space.

Read the chief takeaways from RFA’s session here: https://docs.rfa.org/english/docs/RFA_TNR_Roundtable_Sept.2026.pdf.

The analysis came shortly after Washington accused Fijian national Zhao Fugang of corruption as head of the Overseas Chinese Service Center in Suva.

“Zhao abused his public position by paying bribes to Fijian citizens to advance China-based government, business, and criminal interests,” U.S. State Department spokesman Thomas Pigott said in a statement. “His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected U.S. interests in Fiji.”

Though Zhao is now barred from entering the United States, there are probably more people involved in the type of corruption he is accused of – not just in Fiji, but across the entire Pacific region, Gregory Brown, executive director of the Washington-based Alliance Futures Initiative think tank, told RFA.

“I seriously doubt that Beijing set up a corruption and influence operation in Fiji and then decided not to replicate it anywhere else in a region where it’s spending billions on infrastructure, signing security agreements, and competing every day for political influence,” said Brown. “That defies logic and everything we know about the CCP’s overseas influence campaigns. There is no reason similar operations wouldn’t work in Honiara, Port Moresby, Nuku’alofa, or Port Vila.”

(AFP)

Illicit activities that advance Chinese interests occur elsewhere in the Pacific, Kathryn Paik, deputy director of the Australia Chair at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told RFA.

“There have been many documented cases of Chinese actors in other Pacific countries and territories conducting illegal activities such as drug trafficking, illegal fishing, money laundering, and more,” said Paik. “What is key is that while most if not all of these actors may not be an official Chinese agent, they are conducting activity that is either encouraged by or facilitated by Beijing.”

Illicit disruptors

Zhao is an example of China’s use of “state-condoned illicit disruptors as a form of gray zone activity in the Pacific,” José Sousa-Santos, of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, wrote in an essay published in Small Wars Journal, a project by the Future Security Initiative at Arizona State University.

Written months before the U.S. sanctioned Zhao – who Australian law enforcement had already identified as having connections to organized crime – the essay detailed how Beijing tolerates and protects criminal figures and networks to serve objectives of the state.

“This does not require a simple command relationship between the Chinese state and organized crime. Nor does it mean that every Chinese criminal actor abroad is an agent of Beijing,” wrote Sousa-Santos. “The more important point is that certain illicit actors can become strategically useful when they extend influence, cultivate local elites, generate deniable economic leverage, support patriotic narratives, and operate in spaces where formal state power would attract resistance.”

Actors like Zhao are valuable in that Beijing can deny all connections of involvement in their illegal activities, all while benefiting from them, the essay said.

“Zhao’s value is that he represents the kind of high-risk intermediary who can move money, cultivate elites, open doors, normalize Chinese influence, and generate dependency while remaining formally outside the state,” it said.

After the U.S. sanctioned Zhao, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a news conference she had no knowledge of his case.

“We oppose vilification and smears against China,” she said.

Cooperation needed

In a Facebook post, the Fijian government asked Washington to provide evidence of the allegations against Zhao, and affirmed Suva’s commitment to work with international partners to crack down on transnational crime.

The U.S. and its allies should coordinate with each other to stop illicit activities, Paik said.

“Working collaboratively to identify illegal activity and name specific actors is certainly a start,” she said. “But of course Pacific countries are sovereign nations and the next step will ideally be to take action against these individuals in whichever country they are acting.”

Brown said that the U.S. should not stop with its sanctions on Zhao, but should name other individuals in the region to demonstrate how widespread the problem is.

“If we see three or four more across different Pacific countries in the next six months, the signal becomes a pattern,” he said.

Brown also called for the U.S. and its allies to support Pacific governments in building their own anti-corruption and counter-intelligence capacity, urged Pacific governments to make foreign-linked community organizations more accountable by requiring them to register, and work together to protect Chinese diaspora communities in the region.

“My big question now is whether this designation is a one-off or a campaign,” he said. “If it’s a one-off, Beijing will absorb the hit and move on. If it’s a campaign, it’s a chance to change calculus for every Chinese operative and every compromised Pacific official in the region.”

Edited by Charlie Dharapak.

A North Korean video warns soldiers that they could be punished - and they should be executed - for watching foreign media, a recording obtained exclusively by Radio Free Asia reveals.

A female narrator with a booming voice denounces soldiers for not resisting the temptation to watch “impure recordings” like South Korean TV shows and Hollywood films.

The footage obtained by RFA is a recording of a screen showing the video. It is believed to have been produced in 2023 and is still in use in soldiers’ ideological training sessions, sources inside the country told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“I strongly demand, on behalf of all military personnel, the summary execution of those who have become thoroughly steeped in the rotten imperialist ideology, culture and way of life,” the narrator says. She calls for the “relentless pursuit and capture” of those who watch foreign media so that they can be “subjected to merciless punishment.”

The educational video presents the cautionary tales of at least two military personnel who were caught watching foreign media, detailing how they were punished.

Media matters

North Korea routinely punishes citizens for watching foreign media or listening to foreign music which is typically smuggled into the country and distributed on thumb drives and easily concealable micro SD cards.

Distributing it can result in the death penalty. In one high profile case reported in 2021 by RFA, a man was sentenced to death for selling copies of the hit Netflix series “Squid Game.”

(Youngkyu Park/Netflix via AFP)

Offenders that merely watched foreign media – but did not distribute it – are usually given a lesser, but still harsh sentence in a labor camp. Parents can even be punished for the crimes of their children. Citizens can even be presumed guilty on tangential evidence – speaking like South Koreans or texting using South Korean spellings – habits they are presumed to have picked up from watching illegal videos from the South.

Despite the government’s efforts, including the passage in 2020 of the draconian Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture Law, which lays out specific punishments for foreign media-related crimes, North Koreans continue to tune in.

But members of the military are under even more scrutiny. A task force called the “109 Group” catches soldiers with surprise inspections, and after a soldier is caught, reports of punishments soon follow.

Because every North Korean spends seven to 10 years in the military after high school, the appetite for South Korean and U.S. media among soldiers is quite high, Yoshihiro Makino, a diplomatic correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan and a visiting professor at Hiroshima University, told RFA.

“With so many young people gathered in one organization, it is impossible to say that none of them are interested in that kind of culture,” Makino said.

(RFA Korean)

He added that it is not common in North Korea to see public accounts of military trials, because of the need to protect military secrets, so the fact that the proceedings are shown in the educational video indicates that authorities are concerned about the spread of South Korean culture, which they refer to as ideological contamination.

“Puppet-trash culture”

The educational video continues by showing several people in courtrooms being cuffed and led away as the narrator chastises foreign media watchers for being infected by the culture of the “puppets” of the United States – an oft-used pejorative referring to South Koreans. She calls these people “weeds of our society” and “trash of our era.”

She then blames the U.S. and South Korea for spreading “rotten capitalist and puppet-trash culture on a massive scale,” and complains about sanctions aimed at depriving Pyongyang of cash and resources that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs, calling them a U.S. “strangulation campaign.”

Against this backdrop she asks if watching foreign media could be anything but treason.

“Are not those infected by the political poison spread by the enemy a band of traitors acting as one with our principal enemies, and poisonous mushrooms that must be uprooted entirely?”

The narrator goes on to remind soldiers that they aren’t supposed to use civilian mobile phones, with the video showing examples of smartphones and flip phones that authorities confiscated.

(RFA Korean)

“Soldiers performing individual duties, including drivers of passenger vehicles, purchased, watched, stored and distributed impure recordings through civilian mobile phones,” the narrator says. “In the end, these phones led them down the path of treason and counterrevolution, ruining their lives.”

A second video file obtained by RFA, containing footage of a later section of the educational video, discusses the case of Kim Kye Hyang, a military doctor punished for watching foreign media.

“The Party educated … and even appointed her as a military doctor in the revolutionary army,” an on-camera military official says. “But look at what happened. Watching impure recordings turned her, at the very beginning of her life, into an ungrateful and contemptible person.”

(RFA Korean)

The official says her parents are now devastated and they cry often, wishing she had never been born. She denounces foreign recordings as a poison that wastes time, damages health and ruins the lives of offenders and their families.

The footage then shows a detained soldier writing a confession. Weeping, he says that watching foreign recordings “once or twice” gradually filled his mind with South Korean speech patterns and capitalist ideology.

“I deeply regret it,” he says while seemingly crying. With ominous music, the line is repeated several times with an eerie echo effect over a stopped frame of his anguished face.

A female soldier, clad in pink formal wear, appears next. She identifies the regretful soldier as Ju Chol Bom and says his case is proof that watching foreign media is “the path to ruining one’s life.”

The narrator also warns that such crimes are committed through personal connections and will eventually be exposed. The message appears to be that even if authorities do not detect an offense immediately, offenders can still be caught.

“Why do people realize the value of something precious only after losing it?” the speaker asks. “Ju Chol Bom’s fate clearly demonstrates that watching the enemy’s subversive footage, while knowing it is an act of treason and rebellion that dances to the enemy’s tune, is the very path to becoming the most foolish suicide victim in the world and ruining one’s own destiny.”

A male soldier then says that the offense deserves severe punishment and suggests that offenders not only harmed themselves, but others as well.

(RFA Korean)

“Ju Chol Bom and several other offenders received sentences of five or more years of hard labor,” the male soldier says. “Because watching impure recordings is a serious crime, even a general amnesty is not permitted. In the end, with their own hands, they gouged out their own eyes.”

The loud, overarticulate voice of the narrator continues, implying that the actions of Ju and those like him dragged down others.

“But their eyes are not the only ones gouged out …”

The footage of the video abruptly cuts out.

Edited in Korean by Yi Yongin and in English by Eugene Whong.

Viewers were unconvinced and immediately began voicing skepticism about seafood coming from such a surprising place. Within days, Chinese social-media users questioned whether the fish on screen was actually salmon at all. “People expect Atlantic salmon, but we’re getting freshwater rainbow trout that costs half as much,” one Beijing-based WeChat account complained. “How could you not be angry?” The science writer Fang Shimin put it bluntly: “This is cheap rainbow trout being passed off as expensive salmon.”

Where the media campaign had hoped to tell a bigger and more hopeful story about the success of farming in a place most people thought was impossible, the public reaction veered in a different direction. China has rapidly expanded its fish farms in its historically restive and inland west—erecting more than 1,000 in Tibet and Xinjiang—motivated by a slate of priorities including food security, settling a nomadic and politically volatile population, poverty alleviation, and reducing fishing pressure on its polluted eastern shores.

The state-led media campaign around China’s desert seafood also sought to redirect Western attention away from human rights abuses that are pervasive in these two Chinese regions. The growth of these farms in China’s west is the focus of a sweeping investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, DC, which showed how much seafood from Xinjiang is reaching the U.S., including government facilities, in violation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

The backlash over rainbow trout was not only about unfair prices, but also about questions of food safety. In a 2018 interview with China Daily, food safety expert Zhong Kai reacted to Chinese companies advertising salmon that was actually trout. He advised that eating freshwater trout raw, as one would eat salmon, could lead to serious illness.

China’s aquaculture industry has expanded at staggering speed, and with that expansion have come the familiar pressures of industrial animal farming: crowding, disease, waste, and chemical intervention. Chinese researchers have increasingly found illegal quantities of drugs in farmed fish, including antibiotics and sedatives at levels that threaten humans.

(Xinjiang Tianyun Organic Agriculture via The Outlaw Ocean Project)

These food safety questions are relevant outside of China. One company, called Xinjiang Tianyun Organic Agriculture, now ships to 14 countries, including the U.S., where its products are sold at Walmart and served at American schools, prisons, and military bases. This trade occurs in violation of a U.S. ban on goods produced in Xinjiang or by ethnic minorities from the region, which Congress enacted in 2021 after finding human rights abuses to be pervasive and severe there. Tianyun’s seafood reaches the U.S. by way of supplier deals with Aqua Star and Sysco, according to Bait to Plate, an online tool that tracks the fishing and seafood industries.

Tianyun said in a statement that claims of systemic forced labor “are completely factually unfounded” and described the U.S. ban as unreasonable and politically motivated. The company added that it strictly abides by China’s laws on labor and contracts. Aqua Star did not reply to a request for comment. Walmart confirmed that it sources seafood from Aqua Star. Sysco said it expects its suppliers to follow all U.S., international, and local laws and that they suspend contracts when they do not.

The Chinese efforts to promote seafood from Xinjiang are not new. As early as 2011, Vice Minister of Agriculture Niu Dun urged officials to “enhance brand building and awareness of the market expansion of Xinjiang’s seafood enterprises.” A 2017 government action plan instructed local offices to coordinate with mainstream media to “systematically publicize the progress of fishery poverty alleviation” in Xinjiang, fostering “an environment of positive public opinion.”

(Xinjiang Tianyun via The Outlaw Ocean Project)

This marketing push intensified in August 2023 when there was a sharp spike in social media posts on the topic. The hashtag “No joke—Xinjiang really does produce seafood” climbed Weibo’s Hot Search List. Videos associated with “Xinjiang seafood” amassed millions of views. Soon, the theme leapt beyond China’s own internet. YouTube, which is banned in China, saw a sharp rise in Xinjiang seafood videos that fall.

“All signs point to this being a coordinated campaign,” said Fergus Ryan, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He explained that it had unusual speed and reach due to top-down and algorithmic amplification, unlike natural viral events, which typically grow slowly through grassroots sharing. In his view, the campaign served to redirect attention from mounting international scrutiny after a 2023 investigation found that seafood plants in Shandong had used thousands of Xinjiang labor transfers to process fish destined for major Western markets. Against that backdrop, Ryan argued, the upbeat Xinjiang seafood videos functioned as a kind of information flooding, crowding search and recommendation systems with stories of “fishery miracles” rather than forced labor.

(China Daily via The Outlaw Ocean Project)

China is using other tactics to prevent companies from insulating themselves from these sorts of human rights abuses. In April 2026, the government announced new rules that would make it even more difficult for multinationals to conduct due diligence on supply chains in industries like seafood and cotton.

Part of the same effort, the Chinese government has also organized media tours for foreign reporters and actively recruited foreign food buffs—called vloggers or “frontier influencers”—to record and post videos and other testimonials about the wonders of growing fish in Xinjiang.

Among the most popular frontier influencers is a Russian student named Melissa. “Today, we’ve come to a salmon farm in Nilka, Xinjiang, to be an employee for a day and see what it’s like for ourselves,” she said in a video published in September 2025. These videos were amplified by media outlets affiliated with the government, as well as on state-run channels on YouTube and Facebook. A video featuring Jack, an American vlogger, showcased his tour of a fish farm on the edge of the desert. “It’s incredible how they have developed such a barren land to this extent,” he narrated.

(Zhao Xuelin/Xinjiang Tianyun via The Outlaw Ocean Project)

But it is the government itself that attempts to frame the unlikely industry it has engineered in Xinjiang in the grandest terms. In a 2025 article published by state media, Xinjiang’s aquaculture hotbed in the deserts and rivers of its forbidding western frontier was declared “a testament to human ingenuity and resilience.”

“Xinjiang’s aquaculture is not merely about producing fish,” the article went on, “it is about reimagining how inland regions can contribute to the nation’s protein security, how technology can redefine agriculture, and how harmony between people and nature can be sustained in the most challenging of environments. From snow-fed rivers to desert oases, Xinjiang has shown that blue dreams can indeed flourish on dry land.”

This commentary is based on reporting for a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project.

The Outlaw Ocean Project is a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington D.C. that produces investigative stories about human rights, labor, and environmental concerns.

The views expressed here are their own and do not reflect the position of RFA.

In a scene from a North Korean TV show, a man wears a floral apron and serves a meal to his family. Analysts told Radio Free Asia that this striking reversal in gender roles could be a propaganda effort to get the people to accept North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s daughter Ju Ae as his successor.

But the analysts noted that North Korea is still a society with rigid gender roles and warned against interpreting the scene in a way that suggests that authorities are using media to promote equality for the average North Korean woman.

‘에이 ... 설마’ 하고 찾아봤는데
진짜로 북한 드라마에 식탁 차리는 아버지 나옴 https://t.co/lvgEKWtFt3 pic.twitter.com/qVr318rBIK

— 안유명한 (@famousuomaf) September 24, 2026

Video of the scene went viral among Korean speaking users on the social media platform X as part of a larger discussion that speculated North Korea would begin slowly rolling back gender inequality and expanding women’s rights to prepare for Ju Ae’s ascension. The first post in the discussion was viewed 4.3 million times.

Though North Korea has made no official announcement regarding a successor, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Sept. 1 that Kim Ju Ae appears to have reached the “designated successor” stage.

One user in the online conversation said that North Korean TV shows were already preparing the people by showing working moms and dads preparing meals.

Another user posted the video of a scene – from the show “A New Spring in the Plains of Baekhak” – that shows the aproned man with a tray full of food, entering the room from the kitchen. His wife thanks him for his effort and assists him with untying the apron strings as he places the food on the table. This post was viewed 2.4 million times.

When asked if TV shows could be part of preliminary work to establish Kim Ju Ae’s succession, Yoshihiro Makino, a foreign affairs specialist for Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper and a visiting professor at Hiroshima University, told RFA that it was possible.

“In North Korea, TV is not entertainment but an important means of political propaganda,” he said. But this would be “a measure solely for Kim Ju Ae,” not for an ordinary woman.

(KCNA via KNS/AP)

Connecting the scene to succession plans might be a bit of a stretch, because scenes showing men cooking or serving food to the family are not totally new, Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Stimson Center, who analyzes North Korean state media, told RFA.

“North Korean TV has started showing such scenes since at least the mid-2010s,” she said. “We tend to link them to succession these days because of Kim Ju Ae … I think it would be premature to jump to link this to succession.”

Whether the scene is an effort by authorities to normalize men participating more in domestic chores is unknown, but even if it is, very few North Koreans would be swayed, Kim Su Kyong, a North Korean escapee from the northeastern coastal port city of Chongjin, who now resides in Virginia, told RFA.

“Just because a man sets the table in a drama, there is no way residents will be moved by it or their perception will change toward men helping with housework,” she said.

The patriarchy still exists

North Koreans might resist Kim Ju Ae as the ruler of the country because male chauvinism permeates every aspect of society, said Kim the escapee.

“If Kim Jong Un’s daughter were to take on the role … they would really hate it,” she said. “Inside, they would be truly annoyed, but they would have to hold it in because they would be afraid that people watching will snitch on them, and they’d be punished.”

The North Korean leadership does have women in prominent roles, but these women were usually born into privilege, said Lee.

Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong, who was at one time widely considered to be next in line, is currently director of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party’s General Affairs Department. Meanwhile North Korea’s female foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, is the daughter of a former North Korean premier.

“These are people… who have special status right?” said Lee. “And just because you see some of these high-level females playing a role, an important role in the North Korean leadership system, I don’t think that automatically translates into a higher status for North Korean women at large.”

Lee added that even among the privileged class, men still have an overwhelming advantage. “If you look at the overall North Korean leadership chart, where you have all of the high-level North Korean officials laid out. They’re mostly men.”

(Kim Won Jin/AFP)

The status of ordinary women remains very low, Makino said. “According to those who have visited North Korea, many women work in hospitals and schools, but only men hold positions of responsibility.”

Over the years, the relative economic power of women has increased due to the emergence of North Korea’s nascent market economy, the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification said in its 2025 North Korean Human Rights White Paper. But the study noted women still were not equal in politics and the public sphere.

Messaging from North Korean authorities regarding gender equality has also been somewhat contradictory.

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of national founder Kim Il Sung’s July 30, 1946 decree on gender equality, the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper ran a story proclaiming that North Korean women have participated in the revolution with equal rights alongside men for 80 years.

But two weeks earlier, the founder’s grandson, the current leader Kim Jong Un met with newly elected leaders of the Socialist Women’s Union, where he emphasized the role of women as nurturing mothers.

“Women must become true patriots who genuinely contribute to the flourishing prosperity of the motherland, communist mothers who raise their children well, and communist educators,” he said.

The mixture between North Korea’s male-dominated culture and political ideology is responsible for the contradiction, said Lee.

“Culturally, they’re very conservative and patriarchal,” she said. “But …ideology wise because they claim themselves to be a socialist state, they’ve always emphasized gender equality."

Edited by Noh Jung Min in Korean and Eugene Whong in English.

In 1986, a Uyghur kebab vendor found a Chinese baby in a cardboard box on his way home from work. Now Abdulla Tomur is willing to do anything to get Zohregul – the abandoned girl he raised as his daughter – released from a Chinese prison.

Abdulla hasn’t been back to the Uyghur region since a year before Chinese authorities began their large-scale “anti-terrorism” Uyghur internment campaign in 2017, during which Zohregul was arrested.

From Istanbul, Turkey, where he currently resides, Abdulla tells Radio Free Asia the story of his first encounter with Zohregul, and how he now feels powerless to help his imprisoned daughter.

Cries from a cardboard box

At the time when he found Zohregul, Abdulla had been operating a market stall in Guizhou province, far away from Kucha (in Chinese, Kuche), Aksu prefecture (Akesu), his hometown in the Uyghur region. The family had relocated to southern China due to economic hardship.

One day, after packing up his kebab equipment, he started to return home, but stopped when he heard a baby crying.

The sound came from a cardboard box left in front of a hospital. He hurried toward it, finding what appeared to be an abandoned Han Chinese baby girl.

At first he was hesitant. He thought about what his wife might say. They were already struggling to support their two young sons. He imagined her asking how they could possibly feed a third child when poverty had driven them to move so far away.

He started toward home again, but the thought of the crying baby tugged at his heartstrings.

Though the baby was left in front of the hospital, Abdulla said he had reason to believe those inside already knew she had been abandoned, and because he did not speak Chinese, communicating with them would have been difficult.

So, he decided it would be easier to take the baby and hand her over to the authorities later. He lifted her from the box, wrapped her in the cloth he used to cover his kebab meat, and carried her home.

His wife’s response was nothing like the one he had feared.

Instead of scolding him, she condemned the people who had abandoned the infant.

“How could anyone leave an innocent baby like this?” she asked.

She began breastfeeding the girl. The crying subsided, and the baby fell asleep.

The couple planned to care for her for three days before taking her to the authorities. By the fourth day, they had changed their minds.

Their sons, aged three and five, were already attached to their new companion. Abdulla recalled that they put aside their toys and gathered around her.

The parents decided to keep her until she was about a year old, then hand her over to the authorities when they returned to their hometown in the Aksu area.

But by her first birthday, she was their daughter, and a sister to their sons.

“How could we hand over a child who called us ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’?” Abdulla said.

The family secret

Eventually the family returned to the Uyghur region.

Zohregul grew up in Kucha, in a Uyghur household, as a native speaker of the Uyghur language, and a follower of the Muslim religion – an upbringing firmly anchored in Uyghur culture.

They did not disclose Zohregul’s background to the authorities at the time because they wanted to keep it secret. Birth certificates were not required or routinely issued then, so they could register her as their own child unless someone else came forward to claim her. Late registration was also possible by paying a fine.

People suspected that his daughter was not Uyghur, but most avoided asking out of respect. Only a few close relatives asked. Abdulla told them, “She might have been switched at the hospital, but at this point, I have no way to investigate.”

Zohregul also repeatedly asked, “Why don’t I look like my two brothers?” He would reply, “You look like my grandmother.”

The family’s remaining concern was how people in their community might react if they learned Zohregul was Han Chinese.

Abdulla feared that his neighbors, who considered the Chinese presence in the Uyghur homeland to be an occupation, would be bothered by his family raising a Chinese child.

He had already formulated a response – rooted in his Muslim faith – should anyone confront the family over their decision.

“Our religion teaches that every child is born innocent,” he said. “This child is pure and innocent. Her blood relationship to those who oppress us was not her choice. She is one of God’s servants.”

Still, he doubted that this explanation would satisfy everyone, so he and his wife decided to keep Zohregul’s origins a family secret.

A family divided

In 2016, Abdulla traveled to Turkey to visit his eldest son, who was studying in Istanbul. When the mass arrests by the Chinese government under the “Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism” intensified the next year in the Uyghur region, he wanted to return home. Abdulla had already been sent to a camp the year before for “illegal gathering.” He said that while incarcerated, he was deprived of sleep and forced to confess to alleged illegal activities by himself or his neighbors.

But Abdulla’s son urged him to stay, fearing that his father too would be detained again. From Istanbul, Abdulla worried constantly about his children at home, especially Zohregul. He had nightmares of seeing her in handcuffs.

Eventually, an acquaintance told Abdulla that both Zohregul and his younger son Rehim were in prison. As with many other detentions by Chinese authorities at the time, no official reason was given.

Upon hearing this, a father’s first impulse was to return home immediately. But Abdulla realized he would be unable to help either child if he returned and became imprisoned himself.

At first, he convinced himself that the detentions could not continue indefinitely.

“How could they keep so many people for so long?” he recalled thinking. “Surely they would release them.”

Revealing the truth

In 2020, three years after learning about his children’s detentions, Abdulla – still in Turkey – began trying to secure their release. He participated in demonstrations outside the Chinese Consulate in Istanbul, appearing in media interviews, and trying to find more information.

When six years of those efforts yielded no results, he took to social media and made a direct appeal to Chinese authorities.

“I am an uneducated farmer,” he said. “I have not participated in political activities here. Please give me information about my children. If they are in prison, release them.”

He offered to return to the Uyghur region to resume farming, or submit to imprisonment himself.

“At least release my innocent daughter, Zohregul,” he pleaded.

Abdulla said the appeal circulated on Facebook and then on Douyin – the Chinese version of TikTok – where it received more than 50,000 views.

Four people contacted him, claiming to be consular personnel, customs officers, or police.

They said they would help, but the conversations soon turned to requests for information about Uyghurs in Syria and Afghanistan. Abdulla said he knew nothing and could not provide them with any information.

During one conversation, out of desperation, he disclosed that Zohregul was an adopted Han Chinese child and asked the caller to relay that information to officials in Aksu.

It was the first time Abdulla had publicly revealed his daughter’s Chinese origin, in the hope of getting help to secure her release from prison.

Abdulla hoped her ancestry might make a difference. During his years in Kucha, he had seen officials pay particular attention to Chinese settlers’ safety. He also recalled authorities rewarding Uyghur families who adopted Chinese children as part of “ethnic unity” campaigns.

One Chinese officer showed interest after learning the family secret, Abdulla said. But the officer only told him that Zohregul had received a 12-year sentence and had three years remaining.

The officer also told him to return to China and “repent” before they could discuss his daughter’s situation further.

An RFA investigation in September 2026 determined that the officer who told Abdulla about his daughter’s imprisonment worked in Kucha’s Ogen (Weigan) township. A different police officer in Kucha’s Alaqagha (Alahage) township separately confirmed to RFA that two members of Abdulla’s family were imprisoned, including Zohregul.

RFA was also able to get official confirmation why Zohregul was punished. It was because her father had traveled to Turkey, which Beijing considers to be a “sensitive country” and because she read “illegal” religious materials.

China maintains excessive travel restrictions for Uyghurs, bans religious materials — even those previously approved by the government — and punishes family members through a policy of guilt by association.

A family tragedy

Zohregul has now been imprisoned for nine years.

Given his own brief detention by the Chinese authorities, Abdulla worries about how she could endure interrogation, mistreatment and the restrictions of confinement, although the available information does not confirm her current conditions.

He said he was caught between the urge to return and the fear that doing so would put another member of the family behind bars.

Abdulla is currently on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and before leaving, he said he would carry those fears in his prayers.

The abandoned baby he once lifted from a roadside box is still his daughter, he said. But the compassion that enabled him to bring her home in 1986 cannot open her prison door.

“O Allah, I had the strength to rescue Zohregul from a cardboard box,” he said, explaining what he says when he prays. “But I do not have the strength to rescue her from an iron cage. Forgive me. Forgive my sins.”

Translated by Shohret Hoshur. Edited by Eugene Whong and Charlie Dharapak.

The government launched an airstrike on the town of Kyauktaw, dropping bombs on a crowded marketplace and other civilian areas killing at least 50 people, including children and pregnant women, according to the Arakan Army, or AA, an armed ethnic group which controls most of the towns in Rakhine.

The U.N. Human Rights Office released a statement noting that this attack was one of the deadliest airstrikes in Rakhine State since the military took control of the country in a coup in 2021. Fortify Rights Friday released a statement saying that the attack could constitute a war crime.

Several other ethnic groups, some of whom had been allied with and fought alongside the AA after the coup, have begun participating in peace talks over the past few months. The AA is one of several major holdouts nationwide, including the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Union.

The attacks on civilians are one of several tactics by the military meant to force the AA into making peace, Sai Kyi Zin Soe, a Myanmar security analyst, told RFA.

“One side has laid out the path it wants. But they are using various forms of coercion to pressure the other side to reach that intended path,” he said. “This includes military force. There are also efforts to apply political and economic pressure in coordination with neighboring countries. You can, in other words, say this part of the military’s tactics.”

He said that attacks causing mass civilian fatalities, like the Kyauktaw attack, may also be intended to intimidate civilians to discourage them from accepting AA authority.

Violence for peace?

The attack only justified the fight against the military, Khaing Thu Kha, a spokesperson for the AA told RFA after the attack on Monday.

“We will continue to seek justice for those we’ve lost in this violent attack by identifying anyone involved in the act and taking actions against them,” he said. We will retaliate against each and every one of them.”

(AFP)

The AA reported that over a five-month period from April 21 to to September 30 the military government extended an invitation for peace talks while simultaneously killing more than 130 civilians in AA-controlled areas in airstrikes and heavy artillery attacks.

But no faction wants to accept a peace invitation while under constant attack, Zaw Wai Soe, a minister in Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, made up democratically elected leaders who were ousted in the coup, told RFA.

“The bombing didn’t just start now. They’ve been doing it all along. It has gotten worse in recent days,” he said. “They drop bombs despite knowing civilians are present. So who would want to meet them? It’s not just the AA, any group would feel the same way.”

Current battlegrounds

Since early this month, the AA has engaged in fierce clashes around military-controlled Sittwe, Kyaukpyu, and Manaung townships. Meanwhile, military government forces are advancing into Rakhine from Chin State, and the Magway and the Ayeyarwady regions. Residents report that airstrikes continue in AA-controlled territories.

Direct military confrontation will continue as long as armed combat persists on the ground, Thien Tun Oo, executive director of the Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, a pro-military think tank in Naypyidaw, told RFA.

(AFP)

“We will hold discussions for peace. However, for those who continue to rely on military means on the ground, they will naturally face head-on military confrontations,” he said. “Those relying heavily on military force will encounter military responses.”

RFA attempted to contact Brig. Gen. San Nyo Win, military spokesperson for Rakhine state, for comment on the situation, but phone calls went unanswered.

The airstrikes make it more difficult for the AA to accept an invitation to peace talks, Thar Tun Hla, chairman of the Arakan National Party, which represents the interests of Rakhine nationalists, told RFA.

“The peace process requires trust,” he said. “Firing on civilian targets cannot be viewed as a trust-building process.”

Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Edited by Eugene Whong.

DHARAMSALA, India – A bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers Wednesday told Radio Free Asia that China is a threat for engaging in transnational repression, after a meeting with the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, in his home.

During the meeting the Dalai Lama told the delegation how he has spent the majority of his life as a refugee in India, continuing Tibetan traditions. In 1959 as a young man, he fled Tibet and founded the exile government currently based in Dharamsala.

The delegation, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, presented the spiritual leader with a gift of a U.S. flag and seemingly expressed support for Tibetan independence.

“To keep the flame of Tibet alive is to keep the flame of freedom alive,” said Mast in video footage of the meeting, edited and released by the Dalai Lama’s office. “Our flame of freedom was established 250 years ago and I flew this flag over our nation’s capital on our 250th celebration of independence, and we hope that you will celebrate that too one day.”

The bipartisan delegation also included Republicans James Gallagher and Jimmy Patronis, and Democrats Haley Stevens and Shri Thanedar.

(OHHDL)

“Inalienable rights”

After the meeting, Mast slammed China for engaging in transnational repression in response to a question from RFA about Beijing’s ethnic unity law passed this year, and how it applies to members of the Tibetan diaspora.

“China will reach to anywhere that they can,” said Mast, providing several examples of how the Chinese government has been known to silence its critics overseas. “They’ve proven that they will observe people. They will send spies to different countries. They will send police to different countries to observe anybody that they can and repress what they do not want to see.”

Mast said China was threatening in other ways, including through the theft of intellectual property, espionage, and organ harvesting.

“We do not believe in the same things. We believe in freedom and democracy for all of our people, that people are born with certain inalienable rights,” he said. “These are fundamental differences between what China represents and what America represents and what the people of Tibet seek.”

(OHHDL)

Across the aisle

Stevens said that it was important for the delegation – usually political opponents – to come together in “a bipartisan way for freedom.”

“I came here with a Republican leader who is close to President Trump. I am not afraid to say it because we joined and linked forces,” the Michigan representative said. “This is calling on us to dig deep, to recognize that this is a tough moment, that we are losing sight of why we need to invest and support democracy in the Tibetan people.”

Prior to their stop in Dharamsala, the delegation had been in New Delhi earlier in the week to discuss bilateral cooperation with senior Indian government defense and foreign affairs officials.

When they arrived in Dharamsala on Tuesday, Mast told reporters the delegation was there to meet with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community, whom the United States has supported for many years.

When asked by RFA if he had a message for the Tibetan people, Mast said, “We stand with you.”

Edited for RFA Tibetan by Tawang and RFA English by Eugene Whong.

During a radio interview on Sept. 15, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said that Taipei’s plan to open a second representative office in Cebu, the Philippines’ second largest city, was going smoothly.

Taipei’s trade offices serve as de facto embassies and consulates in countries that officially recognize China, but maintain unofficial relations with Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be a rogue province.

Foreign Minister Lin said that the additional trade office would serve travelers and businesses in the central Philippines, and would be an integral part of a proposed Taiwan-Philippines Economic Corridor.

Days later, Taiwan confirmed that it had donated a decommissioned patrol vessel to the Philippines for use in its coast guard.

These developments are directly related to Beijing’s hostile tactics in the South China Sea, Ray Powell, executive director of Stanford University’s SeaLight maritime transparency project, told RFA. Beijing claims the entirety of the sea as its territory, including the area within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, which Manila calls the West Philippine Sea.

(AFP)

“Of course China’s aggression in the West Philippine Sea is a central part of this story,” said Powell. “It has made Manila less willing to grant Beijing the kind of deference that other countries like Malaysia or Papua New Guinea have recently been so eager to show on Taiwan policy.”

Papua New Guinea announced in July that it would close the Taiwan trade office in Port Moresby, and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Ibrahim Anwar in August controversially stated in an interview with Al Jazeera that he sees “Taiwan as part of China, period.”

The trend of smaller countries showing deference to China “has conditioned Beijing to expect that its coercive methods will always produce compliance eventually,” Powell said. “For now at least it has not produced that kind of result in the Philippines.”

Defining “one China”

As a condition of entering into official relations with China, countries must affirm that there is one China and recognize Beijing as the sole legal government of China.

China’s official stance, the one-China principle, states that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. Many countries maintain their own one-China policies that stop short of the principle to allow unofficial ties with Taipei.

When Taiwan announced the plan to open a new trade office in Cebu, Beijing protested, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun urging the Philippines to uphold the one-China Principle through “concrete actions” and refrain from taking steps that could damage relations with China.

“No matter how the DPP authorities collude with external forces or in what form they seek so-called ‘diplomatic breakthroughs,’ their efforts to serve the goal of ‘Taiwan independence’ are doomed to be futile,” Guo said, referring to Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs responded that Manila’s one-China policy remained unchanged but did not prevent economic, cultural and functional cooperation with Taiwan.

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. was more direct, telling local media: “We define the one-China policy. We define it. Not them.”

The exchange highlights a widening difference between Manila and Beijing over what the Philippines’ one-China policy allows.

The Taiwan trade office in Cebu should not be interpreted as a change in Manila’s formal position, Joseph Kristanto, a research analyst at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told RFA.

“Rather, I think it reflects the ongoing expansion and institutionalization of the Philippines’ unofficial and functional relationship with Taiwan,” he said. “This distinction is important: Manila continues to recognize Beijing as the sole legal government of China under its one-China Policy, yet it does not view this policy as precluding economic, cultural, or other practical forms of engagement with Taiwan.”

That relationship had already begun expanding before the latest dispute.

In April 2025, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration relaxed decades-old restrictions on engagement with Taiwan. Most Philippine officials may now travel there for economic, trade and investment purposes if they use ordinary passports and do not use their official titles.

The restrictions continue to apply to the president, vice president, foreign secretary and defense secretary, illustrating the line Manila is trying to maintain between functional engagement and steps that might resemble formal diplomatic recognition.

“Currently, Manila appears intent on maintaining a distinction between expanding functional ties and taking actions that could be construed as formal diplomatic recognition,” Kristanto said. “The 2025 guidelines are particularly illustrative: they facilitate interactions with Taiwan for economic and investment purposes while retaining restrictions on contacts involving the Philippines’ most senior officials.”

Economic interdependence

Practical interests are also driving the relationship. More than 200,000 Filipinos work in Taiwan, and the two sides offer visa-free entry to each other’s citizens. Taipei has also placed greater emphasis on trade, investment, tourism and supply-chain cooperation with the Philippines.

Foreign Minister Lin said the proposed Taiwan-Philippines Economic Corridor would connect with the U.S.-Japan-Philippines-backed Luzon Economic Corridor, an initiative aimed at strengthening infrastructure and supply chains.

Kristanto cautioned against explaining the closer relationship entirely through the South China Sea dispute.

“The deterioration in Manila-Beijing relations has certainly made Taiwan more strategically relevant to the Philippines, and we have seen indications of expanding practical cooperation in areas such as maritime security,” he said.

“But many drivers of closer Philippines-Taiwan relations – economic links, labor, geographical proximity, and supply-chain cooperation – exist independently of the South China Sea dispute. I therefore see pressure from China more as an accelerant to an existing trend than as its sole cause.”

Powell said the Philippines increasingly viewed China’s treatment of Taiwan as part of a wider effort to pressure smaller countries that resisted Beijing’s preferred regional order.

“There’s an active attempt by China, very obvious now, to make a more Sinocentric world and to put down others who do not agree with them – particularly when these others are smaller countries,” Powell said, quoting from a recent SeaLight podcast interview with Teodoro.

Kristanto said the significance of the Cebu office lay less in the facility itself than in Manila’s growing confidence in defining its relationship with Taipei on its own terms.

“Manila appears increasingly willing to insist that maintaining a one-China policy does not give Beijing a veto over its unofficial relationship with Taiwan,” Kristanto said.

“So, in my view, the significance of the Cebu office lies less in the office itself than in what it tells us about how much more comfortable Manila has become in expanding ties with Taiwan while arguing that its formal diplomatic position remains unchanged.”

Edited by Eugene Whong.

“A year ago, RFA’s future was far from certain,” Fang said. “Today, we are in a very different place. As we mark 30 years of RFA, we are also beginning an important new chapter—rebuilding our organization from the ground up and laying the foundation for RFA’s next 30 years.

“We have been given the rare opportunity to reimagine RFA, building on what makes our journalism unique while embracing new ways to serve our audiences. We are taking decisive steps to create an organization that puts innovation, safety, security, and efficiency at the heart of everything we do—and, above all, remains focused on the audiences who depend on RFA for independent, fact-based reporting.

“The road ahead will not be without challenges. But RFA has been tested before, and we know what it means to persevere. Today, a small but exceptional team is leading this organization forward with a clear sense of purpose. We are still here because our journalists, our supporters, and the millions of people who rely on RFA understand something fundamental: truth needs a voice, and RFA is determined to keep providing it.”

For the past year, RFA has sustained its language teams on a contract basis, producing social media and platform-native news and programming, including long- and short-form podcasts, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and video explainers. RFA is self-financing limited shortwave radio broadcasts, as it still lacks access to transmitters and satellites previously provided by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that disburses RFA’s congressionally appropriated funding. Despite challenges, RFA has produced impactful stories about Uyghur forced labor, exclusive interviews with Chinese spies and dissidents, and in-depth analyses of satellite data exposing North Korea’s military developments.

While maintaining its journalistic output, RFA is engaging in a multi-phase, two-year plan. This involves hiring permanent staff while shifting to a digital-first strategy to better engage with its audiences in China, North Korea, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. In addition to reimagining its editorial process, RFA is also reorganizing its structure, changing its embedded culture for a more dynamic newsroom with a premium on journalistic safety and security. This includes utilizing innovative means to drive news out of some of the world’s toughest media environments, and rebalancing half of its workforce overseas—especially its newsgathering teams—to be closer to sources and breaking developments. This is especially pertinent for key story areas on transnational repression, high-stakes geopolitical tensions in the Pacific and South China Sea, crackdowns on free expression and religious freedom, and cross-border crime—including Southeast Asia-based scamming centers—among other issues. In the first phase, RFA has prioritized the development of its Korean and Mandarin desks, with remaining language units to follow.

In separate statements released following the summit, China’s Foreign Ministry and the White House said the two leaders did discuss the Korean peninsula but did not elaborate, whereas both statements described in detail discussions on the economy, security, or artificial intelligence.

While the discussion on North Korea was important enough to be mentioned in passing, the two leaders likely did not spend much time talking about it, Harry Kazianis, CEO of the Washington-based Rogue States Project think tank, told RFA.

“The North Korean issue is probably not even in the top 10,” Kazianis told RFA, saying that trade, Taiwan and the South China Sea were higher priorities. “So when you look at the list of items that the United States and China — and just China itself — has to confront, North Korea just slides all the way down the scale of what’s important.”

Trump-Kim IV?

Since returning to office last year, President Trump has repeatedly said he wants to follow up on three previous meetings with Kim, where the U.S. and North Korea were unable to iron out an agreement on denuclearization in exchange for sanctions relief.

Trump in August scaled back joint military exercises with South Korea and said he hoped to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by the end of the year, but North Korea has remained silent on the matter.

Still, Trump would welcome a meeting with Kim, a U.S. official told RFA on background.

“President Trump in his first term held three historic summits with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un that stabilized the Korean Peninsula. U.S. policy on North Korea has not changed,” the official said. ”President Trump remains open to talking with Kim Jong Un, without any preconditions.”

(Reuters)

Despite the enthusiasm from the White House, the U.S.-North Korea diplomacy from 2018–2019 has effectively come to an end, Sydney Seiler, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for North Korea and a senior advisor at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told RFA.

“North Korea has shown no interest in talking to the United States, and has commenced this relationship with Russia — unprecedented in its nature — and then is revitalizing ties with China,” he said.

The odds of a new summit between Trump and Kim are ‘pretty slim,” Kazianis said, adding that Trump would have to do something extreme to pique Kim’s interest, like recognizing Pyongyang as a legitimate nuclear weapons state.

“The North Koreans are in the driver’s seat right now. They’re getting billions of dollars from the Russians to arm Russia for the Ukraine war,” he said. “They don’t really have anything that they want from the United States right now unless they’re going to get sanctions relief for almost nothing.”

Meeting Kim would also have to be advantageous for Trump, said Kazianis.

“He’s not going to hand more ammunition to his critics and make himself look bad on the world stage when he’s got enough problems,” he said. “So I think Trump would love to have a meeting with Kim, but there would have to be measurable progress for Trump.”

Even if such a meeting were to happen, it is unlikely that China would have a hand in it, said Seiler.

“President Trump would explain his efforts to try to make contact with Kim Jong Un,” Seiler said. “I would anticipate China’s leverage over North Korea is not likely to be expended in support of Donald Trump’s policy of trying to reach Kim Jong Un.”

Repatriating escapees

Though the extent to which Xi and Trump were talking about North Korea and Kim Jong Un at the summit is not known, ahead of the meeting, North Korean human rights advocates held demonstrations in front of Chinese Embassies in several countries urging China to halt the forced repatriation of North Korean escapees.

(NKFC)

The demonstration on Sept. 22 in Washington was organized by the North Korea Freedom Coalition, joining it with similar events in 26 global cities in 20 different countries, the organization’s chairperson, Suzanne Scholte, told RFA.

“What we’re pushing for with this particular summit is that Trump will raise this horrific, inhumane, illegal policy of repatriation,” Scholte said.

Beijing classifies escapees as economic migrants and if they are caught without legal status in China, they are sent back, where many face severe punishment. But the advocates argue that escapees are refugees and should be protected under the U.N. Refugee Convention, to which China is a signatory.

“Xi wants to be seen as a world leader, and if he wants to be seen as a world leader, then he shouldn’t be sending people off to their death,” Scholte said. “So we’re asking President Trump to raise this issue again. China is a signatory to the Refugee Convention and also the Convention against Torture.”

Edited by Eugene Whong.

They’re urging U.S. President Trump to confront China’s President Xi on human rights issues and the new ‘ethnic unity law’ enacted on July 1 which critics say furthers Beijing’s efforts towards cultural erasure.

“President Trump must confront Xi Jinping over China’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs, the Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz and other native people of occupied East Turkistan,” said Haider Jan of the East Turkistan National Movement.

“No diplomatic truce can ever be bought with our people’s blood, dignity and land,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, ranking Democratic member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) said, “We should be standing here together with a unified message: no Xi in DC without human rights.”

McGovern addressed Tibetan demonstrators in front of the U.S. Capitol earlier in the day.

“The Chinese government would like the world to believe that what’s happening in East Turkistan or what’s happening in Tibet or Southern Mongolia is an internal matter,” said Rushan Abbas, Executive Director of Campaign for Uyghurs. “But genocide and cultural erasure is not an internal matter. Modern slavery is not an internal matter.”

After sunset, demonstrators held candles as speakers addressed the crowd.

“So many of us live in a constant state of grief,” said Omer Kanat of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

“It is a strange, abstract grief. Not knowing where our loved ones are. If they are safe, or in some cases, if they are alive.”

With reporting by Tahir Hamut Izgil for RFA Uyghur and Reuters. Edited by Charlie Dharapak.

The disappearance of a Lao content creator from Thailand this month could be the latest example of Laos’ transnational repression, the leader of a Thai-based human rights organization told Radio Free Asia.

Khieo Lapchanh, 26, went missing on Sept. 15, in Thailand’s Samut Sakhon province, one day before a scheduled asylum interview at the U.N. Refugee Agency office, or UNHCR, in the nearby capital of Bangkok.

RFA was not able to confirm the reason for his disappearance.

According to a handwritten letter that the Thailand-based Manushya Foundation rights organization said it had helped him prepare, Khieo first entered Thailand in 2019 and had been working at a restaurant.

In late 2025, he started regularly posting videos of himself criticizing the Lao government on Facebook, and decided to request asylum after receiving threats over the videos, the letter said.

At the time of his disappearance, his “Khiew Chennel” account on the social network had amassed 159,000 followers.

There is a high possibility that Khieo’s disappearance is related to transnational repression, Emilie Palamy Pradichit, founder and executive director of the Manushya Foundation said in a statement by the organization.

(manushyafoundation.org)

“Digital transnational repression does not stay confined to digital space. It can expose activists to physical danger,” said Emilie. “Khieo had already stopped speaking out online because he feared for his life. Now he is missing.”

The last public update on Khieo’s Facebook account is dated Aug. 18, a repost of another content creator’s criticism of a Lao police raid. Prior to that, the most recent update is from April 4, and his posts from around that time contained specific criticism of the Lao government figures or policies.

Speaking out

On April 2, Khieo had been critical of the Lao government for not building roads in Meung Phieng district, Xayaboury province, to the point that the people living there took matters into their own hands.

“People build concrete roads to their village by themselves, which is not their job, it is the government’s obligation,” he said. “But they need to do it instead of the government because they have so much trouble with those horrible roads.”

In another video post dated April 1, he discussed nepotism in the Lao government.

“You never allow others to get any important position,” he said, referring to former president Khamtay Siphandone, who after stepping down in 2006, continued to set up his family members in prominent government positions.

(Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP)

As was the case with many of his other videos, Khieo was threatened in the comments over his criticism of the Siphandone political dynasty.

“I would like to remind you, Khieo, you should not try to change the Lao regime. If you want to live, you have to change your behaviors and actions,” a commenter wrote.

“If your application for asylum has been submitted, keep a low profile. You want to go to the third country, but now you are in the second country,” said the same commenter, implying that Khieo was vulnerable in Thailand.

According to Manushya, there had even been a US$8,000 bounty to have him killed circulating online in March 2026.

“At this point, the risk could no longer be understood as merely hostile online speech,” the Manushya statement said. “The combination of death threats, financial incentives for violence, attempts to identify Khieo’s whereabouts, and his highly recognizable public profile created serious concerns that digital transnational repression could escalate into physical harm in Thailand.”

Whereabouts unknown

Emilie first noticed Khieo’s disappearance on Sept. 16, she told RFA.

“I called him because I was supposed to take him to his UNHCR interview, but he did not respond,” said Emilie. “On September 18, I informed the local police of his disappearance.”

The owner of the restaurant where Khieo worked, who identified herself only by her given name Kiatsuda, told RFA she had called him on Sept. 15 when he did not show up for work.

“His phone was off so I thought Khieo had quit his job without informing me,” she said.

When he didn’t show up on the 16th or 17th, she went to Khieo’s apartment on the 18th, but was unable to find him, she said.

“On Sept. 18, the police informed me of his disappearance,” she said. “It was somewhat shocking.”

Though the circumstances of Khieo’s disappearance remain unknown, several other Lao dissidents in Thailand have mysteriously disappeared or been found dead.

(RFA)

Od Sayavong, a democracy activist who had protested the Lao government while living in Thailand, disappeared in August 2019. Thai police say that no progress has been made in the investigation.

In November of the same year, Phetphouthon Philachane, a Lao migrant who had taken part in protests in front of Laos’ embassy in Bangkok, disappeared in the Lao capital Vientiane while visiting relatives.

In May 2023, the body of democracy activist Bounsuan Kitiyano was found in Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani province. He had been shot three times.

Edited by Eugene Whong and Charlie Dharapak.

Tibetans gathered near the Chinese embassy in Washington on Thursday to protest Chinese President Xi Jinping as he arrived on the South Lawn of the White House to meet with U.S. President Trump.

“He’s not welcome here,” Thondup Tsering, a former Tibetan parliamentarian for North and South America who was attending the protest, told Radio Free Asia.

“He’s not welcome because of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The policies that [he] has put in Tibet, which are aimed to wipe out Tibetan culture and Tibetan identity.”

Tsering traveled from Amherst, Massachusetts, to join the demonstration.

The demonstrators were bringing attention to China’s passing of the ethnic unity law in July, and the self-immolation of Tibetan activist Lobga Rangzen in front of the United Nations.

“The main reason for this protest is that Xi Jinping cannot hear the voices of the people inside China,” said Chinese political activist Wang Dan, in comments sent to RFA.

“In fact, many people in China oppose the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. So I believe those of us overseas have a responsibility and an obligation to speak out for those who cannot speak freely inside China.”

Former House Nancy Pelosi addressed the protesters from a stage after they marched to the U.S. Capitol.

“It’s really important for elected officials and for the president of the United States and the president of China to hear what you have to say, because we put forth ourselves as a country who cares about human rights and respecting the dignity and worth of the people.”

Adds quotes from Wang Dan and Nancy Pelosi.

With reporting by Nordhey Dolma, Dolkar, Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan and Olivia Meng for RFA Mandarin. Edited by Charlie Dharapak.

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

(Nordhey Dolma/RFA Tibetan)

With reporting by Nordhey Dolma, Dolkar and Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Charlie Dharapak.

Trump and U.S. first lady Melania Trump greeted Xi and Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan on a 100-foot-long red carpet rolled out on the tarmac beside Xi’s plane at the Maryland military base that hosts Air Force One.

A military band played, and cannons blasted ceremonial fire as they greeted each other. Trump winced as a loud B-1 military bomber flew overhead. The leaders then went their separate ways, ahead of meetings scheduled for Thursday.

(Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

(Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

(Kent Nishimura/AFP)

With reporting by Reuters. Edited by Charlie Dharapak.

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump met Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. After their brief greeting, which included a military honor guard, the two leaders parted ways to make last minute preparations for a full slate of events scheduled for Thursday.

Experts expect that Trump will try to work with Xi on a variety of issues, with economic friction over tariffs, U.S. soybean exports, and supply chains taking center stage.

But minority advocacy groups have been calling on Trump to use the summit to spotlight Chinese government policies that they say perpetuate human rights abuses and genocide.

Genocide unresolved

Toward the end of Trump’s first term, the United States classified China’s actions and policies in Xinjiang – where over a million Uyghurs and other minorities have been subject to mass internment and forced labor – as a genocide. This designation was upheld during the Biden administration and into Trump’s second term.

The summit presents an opportunity for Trump and the U.S. government to raise the Uyghur genocide both publicly and in private, the World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, an exile group based in Munich, said in a statement.

“Xi’s visit to Washington is a strategic moment to move beyond words of condemnation on the Uyghur genocide,” said WUC President Turgunjan Alawdun in the statement. “The United States has been a strong and vocal ally to the Uyghur people, and Donald Trump has to use this opportunity to continue proving it.”

(Andrew Caballero Reynolds/AFP)

The East Turkestan Government-in-Exile, or ETGE, a Washington-based group that advocates for the independence of the Uyghur region, said in a statement that Trump should push Xi to end the genocide. East Turkestan is the preferred name for the region for diaspora and exile organizations.

President Trump “should make clear to Xi Jinping that genocide, colonial occupation, and the exploitation of our homeland cannot be separated from the strategic challenge China poses to the United States,” said ETGE President Mamtimin Ala in the statement. “Ending the genocide requires confronting the occupation that sustains it and supporting the restoration of East Turkistan’s national independence.”

Cultural erasure

Tibetan exile activists, meanwhile, urged Trump to raise the issue of Chinese authorities’ erasure of Tibetan culture.

“Since the two presidents are going to hold talks, I am appealing to President Trump, as the leader of a powerful country, to discuss with Chinese President Xi Jinping the strategies being pursued to infiltrate Tibet’s religion, culture, and language,” Lobsang Shastri, a Tibetan scholar, told RFA.

(Students for Free Tibet)

“I am appealing to President Trump to raise the issue of resuming dialogue between China and Tibet,” Nyima Lhamo, the niece of renowned Tibetan Buddhist leader and political prisoner Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, who died in Chinese custody in 2015, told RFA.

“I call for an end to the ongoing destruction of Tibet’s religion and culture, and urge the release of all political prisoners, including the Panchen Rinpoche,” she said, referring to the Panchen Lama, the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

The current Panchen Lama recognized by Tibetans is Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who was at the age of six forcibly disappeared by Chinese authorities in 1995. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Following his disappearance, the Chinese government installed their own Panchen Lama, and this represents a “terrible violation against all of Tibetan Buddhism,” Asif Mahmood, the Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, told RFA.

(RFA)

Tibetan Buddhists “should have, under international standards, the religious freedom to select their own leaders, free from the interference of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Mahmood. “This terrible situation facing the disappeared Panchen Lama, and indeed all Tibetan Buddhists, is why USCIRF has urged President Trump to directly advocate for freedom for Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family.”

Breaking with precedent

During previous visits of Chinese leaders to Washington, the U.S. President’s formal welcome had traditionally happened at the White House. That Trump is going to Andrews to meet Xi upon arrival is an indication of the high level of importance of U.S.-China relations to the administration.

Both leaders believe that a stable relationship between the two countries is a priority, Bonnie S. Glaser, a U.S.-China-Taiwan relations scholar and director of the German Marshall Fund, told RFA.

“They don’t want to see a rupture that could have negative consequences for their respective countries,” she said. “Both of them want to see that the problems in the relationship are managed, that things don’t spin out of control.”

(Damir Sagolj /Reuters)

The summit will kick into high gear Thursday where the two leaders are expected to discuss artificial intelligence governance and security issues, including arms sales to Taiwan, and, Glaser said, they will likely discuss extending a trade truce – a temporary halt to escalating tariffs by Trump and retaliatory moves by Beijing – which they negotiated during a meeting in South Korea last year.

“The truce does not expire until November. So it remains unclear whether the two sides will actually announce an extension at this upcoming summit,” she said. “However, it has been reported that the United States wants a six-month extension of the truce and that China would like to extend it through the end of the Trump administration.”

Following the summit meeting, a state dinner is on the schedule for Thursday evening, and Xi will return to China on Friday.

Edited by Eugene Whong. Additional reporting from Washington by RFA Uyghur, RFA Tibetan and RFA Mandarin.

Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng, writing in the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said managing differences hinges on good faith, and the U.S. should stop “fabricating pretexts” such as national security, economic imbalances and forced labor to try to constrain China.

“China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests cannot be violated, and four red lines — the Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, development paths and systems, and development rights — cannot be challenged,” Xie said.

RFA Uyghur’s Shohret Hoshur interviewed Rebiya Kadeer of the Washington-based International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation (IUHRDF) for her reaction to China’s “red lines” statement ahead of Xi’s meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Why do you think Beijing issued this warning at this particular moment?

Rebiya Kadeer: The Uyghur genocide and human rights issue is China’s greatest vulnerability. It is also a crime that China has spent enormous financial resources attempting to conceal from the international community. At this important moment, when the world is paying close attention, China does not want this vulnerability to be exposed.

RFA: Do you interpret the warning as a sign that Beijing fears President Trump may raise what his administration has called the Uyghur genocide and individual Uyghur political-prisoner cases during his meeting with Xi Jinping? If so, what does it reveal about Beijing’s concerns?

Rebiya Kadeer: Ahead of Xi Jinping’s visit, several members of Congress called on President Trump to raise the cases of political prisoners—including Gulshan Abbas, Ilham Tohti, Rahile Dawut and Ekpar Asat—and demand their release. China knows that, in a democratic country such as the United States, the views of members of Congress carry weight and receive serious attention. Therefore, through this statement, China is attempting to pressure President Trump.

RFA: Does this warning demonstrate confidence—or fear that China’s human-rights abuses could become part of the summit negotiations?

Rebiya Kadeer: This is certainly not the kind of statement made by a strong country. China’s economic development is not healthy development; it has been built upon unfair competition and coercion. The stability China has established within the country, particularly in East Turkistan (Xinjiang in Chinese), is not natural stability—it is artificially imposed stability.

Therefore, although the Chinese government may appear strong, it is fundamentally weak. A government that fears its own people and is unable to embrace democratic elections is a fearful government. It is especially afraid of criticism.

RFA: How should President Trump respond to Beijing’s effort to place human rights outside the summit discussions?

Rebiya Kadeer: China’s statement itself demonstrates why President Trump must raise the Uyghur genocide and human rights. I believe that raising these issues would give President Trump the upper hand at the negotiating table and help him achieve his objectives on other matters.

If he does not raise them, he will not only be acting against the will of the American people, but he will also lose ground on the other issues under negotiation. I call upon—and hope—President Trump will follow a course befitting the strong president of a powerful country.

With reporting by Reuters. Edited by Charlie Dharapak.

The new regulations that took effect on Sept. 15 allow Chinese authorities to prevent its citizens from leaving the country if violations of export-control or technology-transfer rules could endanger “industrial or technological security.”

The law applies to visiting citizens of Taiwan because Beijing considers the democratically governed island to be its territory, and therefore its people to be Chinese citizens.

The regulations are an indication that Beijing is worried about losing its technological edge, William Yang, a Northeast Asia analyst at the Belgium-based International Crisis Group, told RFA.

“I think such a move reflects China’s general insecurity about potential illegal technology transfer,” said Yang.

(National Immigration Administration of the People's Republic of China)

The regulations do not impose a blanket travel ban on technology workers. But analysts said their broad wording could bring the movement of people more explicitly into the same security framework – anchored by the 2020 Export Control Law – that Beijing uses to control transfer of chips, equipment, data and intellectual property.

Yang said the measures should be understood within the wider context of intensifying competition between China and the United States over AI.

The regulations come as Washington has taken steps to restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors and related technology, while Beijing has expanded its own export controls and sought greater control over strategically important technology, talent and data.

Beijing increasingly sees a need to restrict human and knowledge flows in sectors that could determine “whether it is them or Washington that will eventually come out on top” in the global AI competition, Yang said.

Technology, talent and data

China has long used exit bans in criminal and civil cases, national-security investigations and commercial disputes. Government officials and employees of state-linked companies with access to sensitive information have also faced restrictions on private foreign travel.

The new regulations, announced in July, formally connect those powers with China’s export-control and technology-transfer regimes. They also allow authorities to request documents, data and electronic information during immigration checks.

(Adek Berry/AFP)

Officials may withhold the reasons and legal basis for an exit restriction, as well as information about possible remedies, if disclosure could affect national security or an investigation under these rules.

The regulations formalize and expand the powers that Chinese authorities already exercise, Sasha B. Chhabra, a Taiwan-based security analyst and publisher of the Formosa Review newsletter, told RFA.

“The new laws don’t fill any ‘enforcement gap,’ but serve two purposes: first, it gives the appearance of ‘rule of law’ as an attempted legal cover for committing human rights violations, claiming that such detentions and restrictions are simply following the law,” he said. “Secondly, it serves as a warning to Chinese abroad and will have a chilling effect on speech and activities of overseas Chinese.”

China says the regulations are intended to protect national sovereignty and security while safeguarding the lawful rights of people entering and leaving the country.

Beijing has dismissed Taipei’s concerns over the new regulations, saying they provide stronger legal protections and do not impede normal cross-strait exchanges.

The Manus case

Earlier this year, Beijing blocked U.S. tech giant Meta from acquiring Manus, an AI company founded by Chinese entrepreneurs but headquartered in Singapore. The methods used to stop the US$2 billion transaction provide an early example of how controls over people can reinforce restrictions on technology and investment.

Chinese authorities in March summoned Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao to Beijing and barred them from leaving the country while regulators reviewed the acquisition.

(Greg Baker/AFP)

In April the government nixed the deal and ordered it unwound under its foreign-investment national-security review mechanism.

“The recent focus on technological expertise indicates Beijing’s concerns about losing the AI race to the U.S. over competition for talent and access to frontier technologies,” Chhabra said.

He added the Manus case was particularly significant because it involved China asserting authority over an international transaction concerning a company headquartered outside the country.

State-backed Chinese media said the key issue was not simply where Manus was registered, but the extent of its connections to China through technology, talent and data, as well as whether the transaction could threaten China’s industrial security and development interests.

The case also demonstrated the difficulty of separating technical expertise from other forms of intellectual property. Code and data can potentially be returned or deleted, but knowledge absorbed by researchers and engineers cannot easily be recovered after it has been transferred.

Risks for Taiwanese professionals

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council has identified semiconductor and high-tech professionals among five groups it believes face heightened risks under the regulations.

The other groups are Taiwanese businesspeople based in China, executives of Taiwanese companies, lower-level government officials and members of certain religious groups.

The council said Chinese authorities could examine phones, computers and social-media accounts and prevent travelers from leaving based on a unilateral determination that their conduct might endanger “national interests.”

(Cheng Yu-Chen/AFP)

Taiwanese officials have urged people traveling to China to register their itineraries with the government in advance. In response, Beijing has accused Taipei of exaggerating the risks to discourage cross-strait exchanges.

How broadly the regulations affect technology professionals will depend on how frequently authorities use them and how they interpret threats to technological security. Analysts said, however, that their introduction showed Beijing increasingly regards technical expertise carried by scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs as a strategic resource worth protecting.

Chhabra said researchers and technology executives should take information-security precautions before and during visits to China, while Taiwan citizen travelers face additional political risks.

“Millions of foreign visitors, including Taiwanese, visit China every year without incident, but it cannot be said that visiting China is without risk.”

Edited by Eugene Whong.

The majority of the residents of Sapang Kawayan, about 47 miles (75 kilometers) north of Manila, are not formally schooled, but they are educated by the ways of nature. Farming cycles are dictated by the monsoon season, and at all times, they are at the whims of a nearby volcano, Mount Pinatubo.

The Philippine government has approved the construction of the Pax Silica hub on a 4,000-acre (1,619 hectare) area inside New Clark City, on land that was part of the U.S. military reservation that included Clark Air Base until the area was returned to the Philippines government in 1991.

Families in the village have already received a letter from the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) informing them they must relocate from the village because it is included in the development plan, Casamira Capiz Maniego, a 72-year-old Aeta resident of Sapang Kawayan, told RFA.

“They should just have us killed because we will fight for our land,” Maniego said. “We have lived for generations in the mountains long before the Americans came. What will happen to us if they take our land?”

Economic and strategic boon

Defense analysts view the 14-country Pax Silica initiative as a symbolic return of the Americans to their former base in the Philippines, Washington’s staunchest ally in the region. But more than that, it is viewed as a plan to keep semiconductor and AI facilities under one U.S.-controlled roof as Beijing rolls out its own, similar initiative.

The larger geopolitical context, however, is not lost on observers, with Manila needing the support of Washington as it faces territorial threats from China, America’s chief rival in the region.

Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has touted the project as one that would “revitalize” the country’s economy and create “quality jobs” for the people. Marcos and top officials have downplayed concerns over potential impacts to the water table and the environment, and fears that the hub would hand too much control to Washington.

(RFA)

“I cannot see how another country can come into the Philippines and, for example, exploit our minerals without the agreement of our Philippine government,” Marcos said in August at a forum organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

The Pax Silica hub will enable the Philippines to process minerals locally instead of exporting ore, Marcos said, adding that once realized, it would be “the Philippines fully exploiting our own treasure, our own national treasure, our own natural resources.”

Many people concerned over the environmental and social impact of the project have organized protests, including one earlier this month, where five paralegals were arrested and nearly 30 others were detained while rallying outside a hotel that had been hosting a business forum about Pax Silica.

(Jam Sta Rosa/AFP)

Regarding the displacement of the Aetas, the affected area sits roughly within 10 hectares (24 acres) of the 1,600-hectare site, BCDA President and CEO Joshua M. Bingcang told media, including Philippine outlet ABS-CBN, on Monday. He said any relocations would affect an estimated 200 people in 40 households, and they would stay within the same jurisdiction.

“They will not be displaced,” Bingcang said. “They will just be pushed a little bit but they will still be in the same barangay, the same community, the same BCDA land.”

Historical rights?

The Aetas have lived in the rough hinterlands as far back as they can remember, but it was in the 1850s during the Spanish colonial era that authorities formally recognized their presence in decrees, which the Aetas now view as historical proof of their occupation of the land.

Tribal elders believe that even without any piece of paper, the government should recognize their “ancestral domain.”

Spain later ceded the islands to the U.S. and during the time that the Philippines was a U.S. territory, Washington considered the Aetas to be nomadic peoples, displacing many to build Clark Air Base.

The Aetas are gentle hunter-gatherers and crop farmers who generally avoid conflict, Maniego said. They have learned over many years how to co-exist with the “lowlanders,” – what they call Filipinos who live in nearby cities and towns – with some Aeta even working outside of their tiny mountain communities alongside the lowlanders.

(Jojo Riñoza for RFA)

Visiting the tribal area is like being transported to an entirely different world, where the trappings of modern-day life are absent. Barefoot children walked on the dirt, while a herd of swamp water buffaloes grazed in the distance. The occasional hum of a motorcycle buzzed nearby as an Aeta caravan carrying wood charcoal slowly negotiated the muddy trail.

Private security guards hired by the BCDA blocked the dirt roads to Maniego’s village, however. RFA managed to reach one remote area by passing through small dirt roads accompanied by three social workers.

Tribal leader Petronila Capiz, 63, argued that their ancestral land was crucial to their story as a people, their heritage and the continued survival of the Aetas. The land, she said, has been passed down from one generation to the next.

People, water, and land

Allowing the government to erect a facility here would be a death knell to their way of life, Capiz said, adding that government surveyors have already been spotted measuring the land and studying the Bangot River, the community’s primary source of water and sustenance.

“It will destroy the environment and our source of water, the Bangot River, where we also fish,” she said. “Water and land, without these we will die. Nature has given us these, and they will just destroy it for the sake of Pax Silica.”

(Jojo Riñoza for RFA)

Capiz’ cousin, Nelson de Guzman, 57, was emotional. His weather-beaten face was covered in sweat as he called on fellow Filipinos for support against the multimillion project.

Pax Silica, he said, is like “a gigantic leech that will suck the life out of the soil and mountain.” De Guzman is volunteering to organize tribal communities in other areas to express solidarity with their cause.

“We will resist and fight for our rights,” he stressed. “We are not just fighting for ourselves individually, but for the entire tribe.”

Edited by Eugene Whong. Jojo Riñoza contributed to this report from Capas.