The head of a Thai-based volunteer aid group, speaking from inside Myanmar, has described increasing attacks by that country’s military in the ethnic areas along the country’s borders with China and Thailand.Speaking to VOA by satellite phone Friday from northern Kayin state in Myanmar’s east, David Eubank, the head of the Free Burma Rangers, said since the February 1 coup,  Myanmar’s military has not only attacked urban protesters but is now carrying out increasing offensives on the country’s fringes.The United Nations said last month that almost a quarter of a million people have been driven from their homes and villages by post-coup violence, and that millions risk hunger in coming months.  Most of them are spread across the border areas, where ethnic minorities with standing armies have been fighting the military for autonomy for decades.  Eubank’s Free Burma Rangers sends hundreds of volunteers into Myanmar’s conflict zones with medical services and supplies — from rice to schoolbooks — for remote rural areas.‘The gloves came off’“Once the coup happened,” Eubank said, “it was like the gloves came off the Burma military. Not only did they begin to crush the people in the streets, as you’ve seen; they began to unleash their power on the ethnics, and that’s when we saw this huge uptick of attacks and displacement.” Myanmar is also known as Burma.When the military started attacking targets in northern Kayin after the coup, by air for the first time in decades, the area’s displaced population jumped tenfold from 4,000 to 40,000 by April, Eubank said.He estimated the airstrikes have killed about 20 civilians in the area and wounded some 40 more. He said that is fewer than those killed by the military’s ground forces in northern Kayin, which he puts at about 40, “but the psychological impact of the airplanes is just huge up here.”“Way past the killing that the airstrikes [caused] and damage they did has been the fear,” he said.Myanmar government officials could not be reached for comment. In the past the military has said it has only uses proportionate force against threats to state security.In the jungleEubank said most of the 40,000 have returned home in recent weeks as the airstrikes died down and most of the new troops the military moved in were pulled back, although skirmishes with forces of the Karen National Union, one of the country’s many armed ethnic groups, have kept up.He said the most intense fighting since the coup is in the northernmost state of Kachin, where the military has been losing ground to the Kachin Independence Army, another ethnic armed group.People take refuge in a jungle area in Demoso, Kayah state, June 3, 2021In the past few weeks, though, fighting has picked up most in the tiny eastern state of Kayah, also known as Karenni, where the military is up against smaller militias and new “people’s defense forces” of locals who have pooled their weapons to resist the junta. Fighting there has driven more than 100,000 people out of their homes, now the most in any state or region, Eubank, who has teams there, said.Those teams, he said, report soldiers looting villagers’ homes and firing into the jungle with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, both to keep any rebels at bay and to clear tracts of land of anyone else.“I’m looking at photos that my team sent right now. … I see wrecked houses. I’m looking at a destroyed church. I’m looking at a guy who was shot. I’m looking at pictures of IDPs [internally displaced persons] hiding in the jungle,” he told VOA.Heavy rains have only made it worse for those pushed into the jungle, he added, with many reduced to catching frogs and hunting squirrels to supplement their rice.Those who can, find caves, the rest make due under pitched tarps, or less, Eubank said.“Very often they fled out of the house with just what they could carry and maybe had a sheet of plastic over their shoulders. So maybe they’ll cut bamboo and make a frame, like a lean-to frame, and then lay banana leaves and other leaves over it to make a little shelter and huddle under that,” he said.“They live pretty rough. And then there’s no school, and they’ve got the clothes on their back. And if there’s hundreds of them on the same stream. then you have pollution problems and dysentery.”A looming crisisEubank said the military was also setting up checkpoints and sending out patrols to keep aid shipments from flowing from the plains into the hills  and rebel-controlled areas, where many of the displaced are taking shelter, checking people for everything from extra food and medicine to batteries and children toys.He said supplies were still getting in and that most of the newly displaced have enough rice right now and to last the next two to three months.Even those who have felt safe enough to return home, though, as in Kayin, are a month or two behind on their farming and coming back to overgrown fields that need extra work, he added. That could mean much less rice at harvest time.Some of those who have returned are also still under fire, he said.Eubank said he came across a woman in Kayin a few weeks ago being shot at with automatic and sniper rifles from the surrounding hills while planting her rice field. Determined to get the job done, he said, she gathered up her neighbors and together they finished the planting that night in the dark.The 100,000 still living rough in Kayah cannot even do that. Last month the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Thomas H. Andrews, warned of “mass death” among the displaced there from starvation, disease and exposure if the military continued to cut them off from critical supplies.Eubank said that could come to pass if more aid does not get in and if they cannot move to where they can find what they need to survive.“I think it’s a big risk if this goes on, especially for right now in Karenni,” he said. “We have these 100,000 people, and we’re moving literally tons of rice up there through a variety of means. But that’s not sure to meet all the needs. And if the Burma army continues the pressure against those 100,000, they’re going to have to move or they’re going to starve to death,” he said.The junta claims it toppled the country’s civilian government because it had ignored reports of widespread irregularities in last year’s general elections, in which the military’s proxy party was soundly defeated, but has shown no evidence to back it up. State media now run by the junta has blamed the crisis that has followed the coup on “dishonesty of democracy” in the election. 
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Australia’s defense minister on Sunday confirmed the end of his country’s involvement in the 20-year Afghanistan war, saying the troop withdrawal had taken place “in recent weeks.”   Australia announced in April that it would remove its remaining troops by September in line with the U.S. decision to end its military operations in the war-torn country.   Defense Minister Peter Dutton told Sky News that the country’s last 80 support personnel had left Afghanistan “in recent weeks.”   “That doesn’t mean we won’t be a part of campaigns with the United States… where we deem that to be in our national interest or in the interest of our allies,” he added. “For now, though, that campaign has come to an end.”   Australia had deployed 39,000 troops over the past 20 years as part of U.S.- and NATO-led operations against the Taliban and terrorist groups in Afghanistan, a mission that cost the country billions of dollars and left 41 Australian soldiers dead.   And while the country has not had a significant troop presence in Afghanistan since withdrawing combat personnel in late 2013, the war has taken a toll and fueled controversy at home.   Veterans groups have pressured the government into launching a formal inquiry into the high number of suicides among Afghan veterans and other ex-servicemen and women. The military and police are also actively investigating allegations that elite Special Air Services soldiers committed numerous war crimes in Afghanistan. 
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“Before the show, my mom asked me, ‘You’re performing tonight?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘This is what you’re gonna wear? … This outfit looks cheap. It doesn’t look fashionable. It doesn’t complement your body. The shirt looks like nobody’s going to marry you, ever. For you to show up on stage looking like this, I think it’s very disrespectful of your audience.’”“I said, ‘Mom, it’s a free open mic, this is all they deserve.’ “The whole room burst with laughter.Meet Alex Shi, a 31-year-old from China’s northeastern city of Changchun. On this summer night, she’s performing standup comedy at Paddy O’Shea’s, a popular Irish bar in central Beijing.As one of the few standup comedians performing in English in Beijing, Shi works at different venues, from high-end hotels like the Hyatt Regency Beijing Wangjing to bars tucked away in Beijing’s few remaining narrow traditional alleys, or hutong. A longtime freelancer in the communications industry, she now devotes most of her free time to comedy.Live standup comedy in Gulou, Beijing. (Ma Jing)Standup comedy began making inroads in China more than a decade ago, but it took off over the past few years as open mics and standup comedy competitions became hit shows on China’s tightly controlled internet, where they are known in Mandarin as talk shows.Even though the comedians can make audiences cry with laughter, the performers skirt topics that might draw official condemnation. Those limits may force them to focus on jokes about more universal topics, such as nagging mothers. “I think Chinese performers are better than those in the West. Why? Because there are no taboo topics in Europe and the United States. You can talk about anything you want,” said Chen Xi, a 41-year-old journalist in Beijing who asked VOA Mandarin to use a pseudonym in fear of attracting attention.“In China, you can’t tell political jokes. You can’t tell jokes that will ‘hurt others’ feelings.’ It’s really not easy for them to still be this creative.”Chinese audiences appreciate the effort. Tencent, the multiplatform Chinese company known globally for its game Fortnight, hosts Rock & Roast, an online standup comedy competition that has nearly 6 billion Tony Chou performing standup. (Zeo Niu)“I think the standup comedy scene in China today is like the environment in the ’80s and ’90s in the U.S.,” he told VOA Mandarin in a phone conversation. “Many people have poured into the industry because they think they can make money. Most of them are always in a rush to perform but not to create.”“For me, I love standup comedy because of the freedom, the freedom to say what I want to say,” Chou said.For Shi, most of her jokes are related to her relationship with her mom — how her mom urges her to get married, how her mom gets into her business, how her mom is nagging her every minute of every day. Compared with anything-goes Western standup comedians, Chinese comedians remain cautious about the topics they target, Shi said. “I think there’s an unwritten rule that we shouldn’t talk about anything that’s vulgar or too extreme,” she added.Shi believes that because she performs in English, the official censorship is not as intense. Yet in popular online comedy competitions, contestants must avoid crossing the red line that will draw official ire. In an episode of Roast! — a Chinese version of the American Comedy Central Roast — that aired on March 14 — former Chinese men’s football team captain Fan Zhiyi mocked the disappointing performance of the Chinese men’s basketball team in the 2019 Basketball World Cup, an event, held in China, that was a qualifier for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.“I can pass the ball to others [with my feet]. You can’t even do it using your hands!” Fan quipped. A clip of his routine became a Chinese internet sensation, with over 200 million views on Weibo.Yet Fan also touched some nerves. On March 15, the day after the show aired, the government-controlled Xinhua News Agency published an article criticizing him for “hurting the feelings of basketball fans” and blasting the producers for “using him to raise ratings.” On March 16, the Chinese Football Association rolled out a code banning players from “openly inciting animosity.” And while the code did not include retired players, it seemed meant to warn everyone affiliated with the association. “Article 59 of the code indicates that players or officials who publicly incite others to hostility and violence will be severely punished. Violation of this provision will result in a minimum suspension of one month and a fine of at least 200,000 yuan (about $30,000),” reported China’s party-backed news outlet Global Times, referencing a report in the Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.On March 21, citing “insufficient time for editing,” the producers of Roast! canceled the second half of the sports edition.In April, Beijing authorities fined the organizers of a standup comedy show in a small Beijing theater 50,000 yuan, or $7,700, for “using vulgar terms in its performance which violate social morality,” according to the Global Times.“This is the first case in Beijing where a standup comedy show has been punished with fines for banned content, and it shows zero tolerance for this behavior, setting a precedent for the emerging standup comedy genre in China,” said the state-backed news outlet.Chou believes that standup comedy not only should be a performance but should also reflect the actor’s perception of social issues. “In the West, standup comedy has evolved for a long time. The art is down-to-earth yet profound,” he said. “You can touch lots of social issues in your content.“Yet in China, if you want a bigger audience, you have to move from clubs to online platforms or theaters,” he said. “Then you will have to deal with stricter censorship. “For a good Chinese standup comedian, if you ask him or her to go to the theater, it’s like asking an artist to perform on CCTV’s New Year gala,” said Chou, referring to “Chunwan,” the annual variety show extravaganza that has been one of the world’s most-watched TV shows since its first broadcast in 1983.Chou concedes there are financial considerations to being tapped for a broadcast that can turn a performer into a star. Yet as a comedian who maintains that freedom of speech is the soul of standup, accepting an invitation to the really big show means that “he or she will have to perform according to ‘the main theme of the era.’ ” And, said Chou, “That’s torture.”Lin Yang contributed to this report.
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