An Australian teenager died Thursday in Laos, a week after drinking alcohol tainted with methanol.

Nineteen-year-old Bianca Jones is the fourth person to die since a group became sick during a night out in the town of Vang Vieng.

The other deaths include an American and two Danes.

“This is every parent’s worst fear and a nightmare no one should have to endure,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told parliament on Thursday. “All Australians offer them our deepest sympathy in this time of heartbreak.”

Vang Vieng is an area popular with backpackers located about 100 kilometers north of Vientiane.

Some information for this report was provided by from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters

 
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washington — Photojournalist Kyaw Swa Tun, who was released last week from Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison after serving more than two years, has recounted the brutal treatment he endured at the hands of prison guards in an exclusive interview with VOA.

“When the authorities learned I was a journalist,” he said, “I was isolated, tortured privately and subjected to threats of further harm if any news about the prison leaked out.”

Having been accused of “insulting the state,” Kyaw, 27, was sentenced to three years of hard labor in January 2023 under Section 505(a) of the penal code, one of several key amendments to Myanmar’s colonial-era penal code made after the 2021 coup. Section 505(a) is widely seen as one of the junta’s primary means for charging journalists, student leaders and civil servants seen as a threat to their military rule.

As a photojournalist, Kyaw captured iconic images of protest as people nationwide demonstrated in the streets because of the military coup.

Myanmar’s military junta has systematically targeted journalists, aiming to silence independent reporting and dissent. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Myanmar has become one of the world’s largest jailers of journalists, with dozens arbitrarily detained under charges such as incitement or spreading “fake news.”

2022 arrest

Kyaw was arrested by military security forces at his home in Yangon on September 8, 2022.

“They found a message on my phone where I had contacted an ethnic armed group to verify some facts,” he told VOA. “I always made sure to carefully delete all my messages and contact numbers, but on that day, I wasn’t able to delete that particular message.”

At the time of his arrest, he was working with the VOA Burmese-affiliated news outlet, Mizzima, in their fact-checking department. Mizzima had been forced underground after the military junta revoked their operating license, along with several other popular media outlets, due to their coverage of anti-coup protests.

Mizzima and DVB are now based in a neighboring country, broadcasting online.

“The authorities accused me of spreading false information as part of my work with Mizzima News Agency and other outlets,” he told VOA.

After his arrest, Kyaw was taken to an interrogation center, where he was detained for more than a month before being sentenced and sent to Insein prison in November. He recalled being brutally beaten by the prison authorities upon arrival.

“When they found out I was a journalist, they beat me even more,” he said.

Inside Insein Prison

Arriving at Insein Prison, journalists like Kyaw were subjected to degrading treatment, “including body and cavity searches upon arrival.”

He was violently beaten at the prison entrance, where he was forced to kneel for 45 minutes.

“The conditions were appalling. Upwards of 30 prisoners were crammed into a cell designed for 10,” where some suffocated to death amid poor ventilation, he said. “The food provided wasn’t enough to sustain even one person.”

Several prominent figures associated with Myanmar’s ousted government and civil society have died while in detention or shortly after their release.

Zaw Myint Maung, 72, a senior member of Myanmar’s former ruling party, the National League for Democracy, and a close ally of the ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, died last month while serving a prison sentence. He had been battling leukemia since 2019.

Win Khaing, 73, a former minister in Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, died 10 days ago, shortly after being released from prison due to the poor treatment he endured during his incarceration.

Similarly, award-winning documentary filmmaker Pe Maung Same, 50, died in August, just three days after his medical parole from a prison. According to his wife, Khin Suu Htay, he suffered severe complications from tuberculosis exacerbated by the torture he endured during his arrest in 2022 and the harsh conditions in detention.

The military junta has not allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, to visit prisons in Myanmar since the coup.

“We consistently urge the ICRC to take action,” said Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s permanent representative to the United Nations, who spoke with VOA on Sunday.

“In the past, the ICRC has visited prisons, and during these visits, prisoners’ rights were upheld to some extent. We have observed that their presence helps ensure these rights are respected. We strongly call on the ICRC to protect political prisoners and prevent further violations of their rights.”

Enduring impact

Despite his release, Kyaw still suffers psychologically.

“I can no longer feel safe. At night, even the sound of a dog barking or the sight of a car can startle me,” said Kyaw. He added that imprisonment, poor living conditions and torture have taken a toll on his health.

Myanmar ranks 171 out of 180 countries on the global Press Freedom Index, making it one of the world’s most oppressive environments for journalists.

“If not for China’s population size, Myanmar would lead in the number of journalists imprisoned relative to its population,” said Toe Zaw Latt, secretary-general of the Independent Press Council Myanmar, a group formed last year to help promote media freedom and safety for journalists reporting in the country.

Research by the VOA Burmese Service indicates that approximately 40 journalists are imprisoned across Myanmar. Among them is VOA contributor Sithu Aung Myint, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “sedition,” among other charges. He had been providing news analysis for a VOA Burmese weekly program until his arrest in August 2021.

“The junta has weaponized laws like Section 505(a) to suppress dissenting voices and control the narrative,” Toe Zaw Latt told VOA. “This is a deliberate attempt to silence journalists and ensure that only the military’s version of the truth is disseminated.”

Journalists and press freedom advocates are urging the international community to take stronger action.

“If the international community is serious about democracy and stability in Myanmar, they must support independent journalism,” Toe Zaw Latt said.

“Journalists are the messengers who expose atrocities and violence on the ground. Without them, the world would remain blind to the realities in Myanmar. Supporting them is not just about protecting individuals; it’s about safeguarding truth and democracy.”
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BANGKOK — The announcement by Cambodian journalist Mech Dara that he will quit journalism after his recent arrest shows how effective legal threats are in silencing media, say analysts.

Dara, who worked for several media outlets, made a name for himself as an investigative reporter, including by exposing illegal scam centers that operate in Cambodia and have links to powerful interests.

In September, authorities arrested the journalist and charged him with incitement related to social media posts. He spent over 30 days in pretrial detention and could still face up to two years in prison if convicted.

The arrest of one of Cambodia’s best-known journalists brought an outpouring of protest from the international community. Dara acknowledged that support when he was released on bail on October 24.

But in an interview with the Agence France-Presse not long after, the journalist said he had “no more courage” and planned to quit journalism. In the interview, Dara said he was “still afraid” after the arrest and questioning.

Experts have long said that jailing journalists or threatening legal action has become an effective way to silence reporting. For analysts, Dara’s case, coming after a yearslong crackdown on media, underscores the challenges for media working in difficult environments.

“Dara’s decision to quit journalism speaks volumes about the state of press freedom in Cambodia,” Beh Lih Yi, the Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told VOA via email.

“It is worrying that Cambodia is losing more and more independent journalists. The right thing for Cambodia to do is to allow the media to operate and report freely in the country,” she said.

VOA contacted the Cambodian government’s press office and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment by email but didn’t receive a reply.

Cambodia’s press freedom environment has declined rapidly since 2017, when pressure from the government led to more than 30 independent news outlets closing and several journalists being detained.

In the years since, other journalists have been imprisoned for charges that include false news or incitement over their coverage or social media posts. In 2023, three media outlets were stripped of their licences. One of them, Voice of Democracy, was one of the country’s last independent media outlets.

Nop Vy, the executive director at CamboJA, the Cambodian Journalist Alliance, said the number of reporters being targeted is growing.

“Legal threat has increased more than double if compared to the 9-month report last year and this year released by CamboJA,” Vy told VOA via email.

“Some journalists who have been [actively] reporting on deforestation, land conflict, illegal logging, human rights issues, have experiences with court cases which more or less have created more challenges for them,” he said.

Since the start of the year, CamboJa has recorded 28 cases of harassment, including legal intimidation.

Alongside legal threats, journalists covering the scam centers that Dara helped to expose have previously told VOA of the security risks they encountered.

Jacob Sims, an expert on transnational crime, said that Dara’s arrest concluded a crackdown on independent journalists who reported on the scam center issues.

“[Dara’s] arrest can only be viewed as a 2½-year project of systematic repression,” Sims told an event at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in November.

Aleksandra Bielakowska, advocacy officer at media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, known as RSF, said arrests send a chilling message to other journalists.

“By repressing journalists such as Mech Dara, the Cambodian government sent a chilling message and directly threatens any remaining independent journalists in the country,” she told VOA.

“The Cambodian government draws inspiration from the practices of other authoritarian regimes, which views journalists as mouthpieces for authorities,” she said, adding that it “suppresses any independent voices.”

According to the RSF latest press freedom index, Asia is the second-most difficult region for journalism. Four countries in the region — Myanmar, China, North Korea and Vietnam — are among the world’s 10 most repressive countries for media. Cambodia ranks 151 out of 180 on the Press Freedom Index, where 1 shows the best environment.
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BANGKOK — Landmines and unexploded munitions claimed more victims in Myanmar than in any other country last year, a monitor said on Wednesday, with over 1,000 people killed or wounded in the country.

Decades of sporadic conflict between the military and ethnic rebel groups have left the Southeast Asian country littered with deadly landmines and munitions.

But the military’s ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 has turbocharged conflict in the country and birthed dozens of newer “People’s Defense Forces” now battling to topple the military.

Anti-personnel mines and explosive remnants of war killed or wounded 1,003 people in Myanmar in 2023, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said on Wednesday.

There were 933 landmine casualties in Syria, 651 in Afghanistan and 580 in Ukraine, the ICBL said in its latest Landmine Monitor report. 

Myanmar is not a signatory to the United Nations convention that prohibits the use, stockpiling or development of anti-personnel mines.

The ICBL said there had been a “significant increase” of anti-personnel mines use by the military in recent years, including around infrastructure like mobile phone towers and energy pipelines.

Those infrastructure are often targeted by its opponents.

Myanmar’s military has been repeatedly accused of atrocities and war crimes during decades of internal conflict.

ICBL said it had seen evidence of junta troops forcing civilians to walk in front of its units to “clear” mine-affected areas.
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new delhi — The Chinese yuan has plummeted since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, and finance experts are questioning why the Chinese government is not doing more to defend the currency. 

“The slide in the yuan’s value reflects the negative expectations of the world towards China-U.S. relations after the recent victory of Donald Trump, as well as some misperception in the international market towards China’s growth,” Wang Wen, dean of Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, told VOA. 

The yuan, or renminbi, has been slipping against the U.S. dollar since well before the U.S. election on November 5, dropping more than 3% against the dollar in a seven-week losing streak, Reuters reported on November 15.

Will the yuan continue to slide until early 2025 when the Trump administration takes charge? 

The Chinese currency closed Tuesday at 7.23 to a U.S. dollar, compared to 7.09 to a dollar on U.S. Election Day. 

“There’s been a broad strengthening of the dollar over the past few weeks which is in part a response to Donald Trump’s election victory but also to stronger U.S. economic data,” said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at London-based Capital Economics. “Both developments have led investors to pare back expectations for rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve.”

Export strategy 

Some economists believe that Beijing deliberately allowed its currency to slide to enhance China’s export prospects. Trump has promised to impose a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods.  

“A weaker currency also acts as a safety valve, offsetting the impact of the tariff by making the country’s exports cheaper,” Williams said. 

China’s policymakers are sitting on the world’s biggest reserve at $3.26 trillion, according to the state-run Global Times. Though this offers a strong cushion against shocks, Beijing prefers not to spend much of it to defend the yuan. 

“The PBoC [Bank of China] will not wish to burn through its foreign reserves in a doomed effort to keep the RMB at current levels,” said Benn Steil, a senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.  

“The PBoC can slow RMB depreciation, but market pressure will eventually win out — if not in the coming weeks, in the coming months,” Steil said. 

Trump’s plans to impose massive tariffs will keep U.S. interest rates higher, and in turn, reduce U.S. demand for foreign currency to pay for imports, Steil said.  

“Both of these effects will act to push up the value of the dollar and push down the value of the currencies of U.S. trade partners, in particular China,” he said. 

But Wang of Renmin University said the yuan would absorb the initial shock and begin to rise after next year. 

“At present, the competition between China and the United States has reached a critical period. But China will not lose in the longer term and the yuan will begin to appreciate,” he said, adding, “Time is on China’s side.” 

The biggest risk for China is an accelerating capital flight — unrecorded outflows from Chinese residents as they lose confidence in the domestic economy, Steil pointed out. 

“This will hurt China’s ambition of boosting household domestic consumption, which is the only way to stabilize the Chinese economy in the medium term,” he said. 

Risk of declining yuan

A weak yuan will also reduce confidence in the Chinese economy among foreign investors while hampering Beijing’s long-standing effort to internationalize its currency. 

Goldman Sachs said it expects China’s exports to fall 0.9% next year in nominal dollar terms, mostly because of higher tariffs, according to Reuters.    

“The tariff impacts should, however, be partially offset by domestic easing and currency depreciation,” Goldman said. It expects the yuan to weaken to 7.50 per dollar by the end of 2025. 
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Islamabad — China said Tuesday it will send troops to Pakistan later this month for the countries first joint counterterrorism military exercise in five years to enhance security cooperation with its South Asian neighbor and close ally.

The announcement follows reports that Beijing is pushing Islamabad to permit its security personnel to safeguard thousands of Chinese nationals working in Pakistan from deadly terrorist attacks. It also comes amid a spike in terrorist attacks against Pakistani security forces attributed to or claimed by the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as TTP. 

On Tuesday, China’s Defense Ministry said that the Pakistan-hosted “Warrior-VIII exercise is set to begin in late November and will run until mid-December “with the aim … to enhance the capability for conducting joint counterterrorism operations,” according to Chinese state media. 

The ministry said the exercise will involve troops from the Western Theater Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

“The two sides will engage in multi-level and mixed training across various specialties and organize live troop drills in accordance with the actual combat process,” according to the state media report. 

China and Pakistan last conducted joint counterterrorism military drills in 2019. 

String of attacks 

 

Last month, a suicide car bombing just outside the airport in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi killed two Chinese engineers. The victims were returning to work after a holiday in Thailand on a project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a multibillion-dollar extension of President Xi Jinping’s global Belt and Road Initiative. 

In March, a suicide car bomb attack in northern Pakistan killed five Chinese workers and their local driver. 

The repeated targeting of its nationals reportedly angered China, prompting it to urge Pakistan to negotiate a joint security management system to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country.

The Pakistani government has dismissed the alleged Chinese diplomatic pressure, however, as “media speculation” and an attempt “to create confusion” regarding Islamabad’s relationship with Beijing. 

“Pakistan and China have a robust dialogue and cooperation on a range of issues, including counterterrorism and security of Chinese nationals in Pakistan,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Baloch told reporters last Thursday at her weekly news conference. 

“We will continue to work with our Chinese brothers for the safety and security of Chinese nationals, projects, and institutions in Pakistan,” she stated.

Shaking ties 

Baloch added that attempts to undermine the mutual trust and cooperation between the two countries will not succeed, nor will the two countries “allow any efforts or stories to derail the Pakistan-China strategic partnership.” 

Speaking at a seminar in Islamabad just days after the Karachi car bomb attack, Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong publicly questioned the host government’s safety measures to deter threats to Chinese nationals. 

“It is unacceptable for us to be attacked twice in only six months,” Jiang stated. He urged Islamabad to take “effective remedial measures to prevent the recurrence of such terror acts and ensure that perpetrators are identified, caught, and punished.”

Pakistan dismissed the Chinese envoy’s remarks as “perplexing” and contrary to established diplomatic traditions between the neighbors.

The Pakistani response was unprecedented, and Jiang’s public admonishment of Islamabad highlighted the strains arising from attacks on Chinese nationals that have resulted in the loss of at least 21 lives over the past five years. 

‘Afghan terror sanctuaries’ 

The joint drills between Pakistani and Chinese troops come amid a dramatic surge in deadly militant attacks on security forces and civilians in Pakistan, which authorities say are being orchestrated from “TTP sanctuaries” in neighboring Afghanistan. The country’s Islamist Taliban leaders reject the allegations.

Yue Xiaoyong, China’s special envoy for Afghan affairs, visited Islamabad this week, where Pakistani officials reportedly shared with him evidence regarding TTP’s presence in Afghanistan and the threat it poses to regional stability.

Neither Islamabad nor Beijing has commented on the media reports. A brief post-meeting Pakistani statement said the discussion centered on the Afghan situation, with both sides reaffirming “the vital role of neighboring countries for a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.” 
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SYDNEY — A nine-day march to protest race relations laws in New Zealand ended Tuesday with a rally of more than 40,000 perople in the capital, Wellington.

Introduced last week by New Zealand’s center-right government, the Treaty Principles Bill, would enshrine a narrower legal interpretation of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.      

The right-leaning government says a bill – or a proposed law reform – would allow political and constitutional questions raised by the Treaty of Waitangi to be decided by lawmakers instead of the courts.  

However, some insist the measure would damage the rights of Indigenous Maori.

Emmy Rakete is a lecturer at the University of Auckland’s School of Human Sciences.  She told Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report program that there is great anger at the proposals. 

“This is, kind of, the live wire underneath this country – the fundamental contradiction between dispossessor and dispossessed and colonizer and colonized, which has, kind of, been ignited again,” she said. “People are here in huge numbers. It is really beautiful to see, actually.”

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by the British monarchy and more than 500 Maori chiefs, and it laid down how the two parties agreed to govern New Zealand.

The controversy over the Treaty Principles Bill is how the document is interpreted.

David Seymour, the leader of the libertarian ACT Party, a junior partner in the governing coalition, introduced the reform to Parliament last week. 

He believes the treaty discriminates against non-Indigenous citizens. Seymour told lawmakers its guiding principles need to be clarified. 

“There was one big problem,” he said. “Nowhere in the Treaty of Waitangi Act and at no time since, has this Parliament said what those principles actually are. The democratically-elected body of this Parliament has been silent.” 

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has described the bill as “divisive” – despite being part of the governing coalition alongside David Seymour’s minor political party.  

New Zealand is a Pacific nation of just over 5 million people. Indigenous Maori make up about 20% of the population, but suffer high rates of imprisonment and ill-health.
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Taipei, Taiwan — Numerous children were injured by a vehicle at the gate of an elementary school in central China’s Hunan province on Tuesday morning, reports said.

Students were arriving for classes around 8 a.m. at Yong’an Elementary School in the city of Changde when the incident occurred.

Few details were immediately available, and it wasn’t clear whether the vehicle had lost control or whether it was a deliberate attack.

The official Xinhua News Agency said several adults were also injured and identified the vehicle as a small white SUV. It said the driver was subdued by parents and security guards, and some of the injured were sent to the hospital immediately, with the total casualty count still unknown.

Footage posted on Chinese social media showed the injured lying on the road while terrified students ran past the gate and inside the schoolhouse.

Comments on Chinese internet sites reflected anger and frustration with recurring incidents of violence against citizens by those venting anger at society.

“No matter what the reason is, innocent children should not be harmed,” said one comment on the popular Weibo social media site. “Timely resolve conflicts, prevent such incidents and severely punish the perpetrators,” said another.

While China has much lower rates of violence than many countries — personal gun ownership there is illegal — knifings and the use of homemade explosives still occur.

Chinese schools have been subject to numerous attacks by people armed with knives or using vehicles as weapons.

A stabbing attack at a vocational school in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi on Saturday left eight people dead and 17 others injured.

That came shortly after a man drove his car into people at a sports facility in the southern city of Zhuhai, leaving 35 people dead and 43 others injured.

In September, three people were killed in a knife attack in a Shanghai supermarket, and 15 others were injured. Police said at the time that the suspect had personal financial disputes and came to Shanghai to “vent his anger.”

The same month, a Japanese schoolboy died after being stabbed on his way to school in the southern city of Shenzhen.

The Chinese government generally censors internet content it deems overly sensitive or political, and some images of the school incident were quickly taken down. Most Western social media sites and search engines like Google are blocked in China, limiting available content even while some people use tools like VPNs and send news through Chinese social media before the censors have time to catch it.
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Washington — Yu Miao smiles as he stands among the 10,000 books crowded on rows of bamboo shelves in his newly reopened bookstore. It’s in Washington’s vibrant Dupont Circle neighborhood, far from its last location in Shanghai, where the Chinese government forced him out of business six years ago.

“There is no pressure from the authorities here,” said Yu, the owner of JF Books, Washington’s only Chinese bookseller. “I want to live without fear.”

Independent bookstores have become a new battleground in China, swept up in the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on dissent and free expression. The Associated Press found that at least a dozen bookstores in the world’s second-largest economy have been shuttered or targeted for closure in the last few months alone, squeezing the already tight space for press freedom. One bookstore owner was arrested over four months ago. 

The crackdown has had a chilling effect on China’s publishing industry. Bookstores are common in China, but many are state-owned. Independent bookstores are governed by an intricate set of rules with strict controls now being more aggressively policed, according to bookstore owners. Printing shops and street vendors are also facing more rigorous government inspections by the National Office Against Pornography and Illegal Publication.

The office did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement to AP, said it was not aware of a crackdown on bookstores.

Yu isn’t alone in taking his business out of the country. Chinese bookstores have popped up in Japan, France, Netherlands and elsewhere in the U.S. in recent years, as a result of both stricter controls in China and growing Chinese communities abroad.

It’s not just the books’ contents that are making Chinese authorities wary. In many communities, bookstores are cultural centers where critical thinking is encouraged, and conversations can veer into politics and other topics not welcomed by the authorities.

The bookstore owner who was arrested was Yuan Di, also called Yanyou, the founder of Jiazazhi, an artistic bookstore in Shanghai and Ningbo on China’s eastern coast. He was taken away by police in June, according to Zhou Youlieguo, who closed his own bookstore in Shanghai in September. Yuan’s arrest was also confirmed by two other people who declined to be named for fear of retribution. The charge against Yuan is unclear.

An official in Ningbo’s Bureau of Culture, Radio Television and Tourism, which oversees bookstores, declined comment, noting the case is under investigation. The Ningbo police didn’t respond to an interview request.

Michael Berry, director of UCLA’s Center for Chinese Studies, said a sluggish Chinese economy may be driving the government to exert greater control.

“The government might be feeling that this is a time to be more cautious and control this kind of discourse in terms of what people are consuming and reading to try to put a damper on any potential unrest and kind of nip it in the bud,” Berry said.

These bookstore owners face dual pressures, Berry added. One is the political clampdown; the other is the global movement, especially among young people, toward digital media and away from print publications.

Wang Yingxing sold secondhand books in Ningbo for almost two decades before being ordered to close in August. Local officials informed Wang he lacked a publication business license even though he wasn’t eligible to obtain one as a second-hand seller.

Faded outlines marked the spot where a sign for Fatty Wang’s Bookstore once hung. Spray-painted black letters on the bookstore’s window read: “Temporarily closed.”

“We’re promoting culture, I’m not doing anything wrong, right? I’m just selling some books and promoting culture,” Wang said, tying a bundle of books together with brown wrapper and white nylon string.

“Then why won’t you leave me alone?” Wang added.

Half a dozen other people heaved boxes of books into the back of a van. The books, Wang said, were being sold to cafe and bar owners who wanted to burnish little libraries for their patrons. Some would be sent to a warehouse in Anhui. The rest, he said, were to be sent to a recycling station to be pulped and destroyed.

Bookstores are not the only target. Central authorities have also cracked down on other places such as printing shops, internet bars, gaming rooms and street vendors. Strict inspections have taken place all over the country, according to Chinese authorities.

Authorities in Shanghai inspected printing places and bookstores, looking for “printing, copying or selling illegal publications,” according to a government document. This shows the authorities are not just barring the sale of some publications, but tracing them back to the printing process. They found some printing stores did not “register the copy content as required” and demanded they fix the problem quickly.

In Shaoyang, a city in China’s south, authorities said they will be “cracking down on harmful publications in accordance with the law.”

The Communist Party has various powers to control which books are available. Any publication without a China Standard Book Number is considered illegal, including self-published books and those imported without special licenses. Books can be banned even after they are published if restrictions are later tightened — often for unclear reasons — or if the writers say something upsetting to the Chinese authorities.

Yet despite these restrictions and the crackdown on existing booksellers, more bookstores are opening. Recent figures are unavailable, but a survey by Bookdao, a media company that focuses on the book industry, shows more than twice as many bookstores opened than closed in China in 2020. 

Liu Suli, who has been running All Sages Books in Beijing for over three decades, says there are many idealists in the industry.

“Everyone who reads has a dream of having a bookstore,” Liu says, despite the challenges.

In many cases, those dreams are being fulfilled outside China. Yu and other Chinese booksellers around the world stock their shelves with books from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, as well as books published locally.

Zhang Jieping, founder of Nowhere, a bookstore in Taiwan and Thailand, said there’s a growing demand for books from migrants who left China after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They don’t just want to speak fluent English or Japanese to fit in, they want cultural autonomy,” Zhang said. “They want more community spaces. Not necessarily a bookstore, but in any format — a gallery, or a restaurant.”

Li Yijia is a 22-year-old student who arrived in Washington from Beijing in August. One Sunday morning, she wandered through JF Books where she found titles in Chinese and English. She said a Chinese bookstore feels like “another world in a bubble” which helps her critical thinking by allowing her to read books in both languages.

“It also relieves homesickness, like a Chinese restaurant,” Li added.

The closure of the bookstores leads the owners to different paths. Some ended up in jail, some went looking for jobs to feed their families. Some started a journey to leave censorship behind. 

Since he closed his Shanghai bookstore, Zhou, 39, has moved to Los Angeles, but hasn’t decided what his next step will be.

He said his fully licensed independent bookstore, which sold art books and self-published works by artists and translators, was fined thousands of dollars and he was interrogated over a dozen times during the past four years. He’s seen colleagues jailed for selling “illegal publications.” All the self-published book artists and editors he worked with asked him to take down their work after warnings by local authorities.

Zhou said he could not handle further harassment. He said it was as if he were “smuggling drugs instead of selling books.”

The existence of his bookstore, Zhou said, was “a rebellion and a resistance,” which is not there anymore.
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Bangkok, Thailand — Across war-torn Myanmar, rebel commanders, aid workers and cyber-scammers alike are turning to billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites to stay in touch with each other and with the outside world amid some of the most severe internet restrictions.

Starlink is not licensed in Myanmar, and the military junta running much of the country has banned its use, yet orbiting satellites and smugglers on the ground still manage to meet some of the growing demand.

For many, “Starlink is now the only viable solution for instant internet,” an analyst for the Myanmar Internet Project, a local research and advocacy group, told VOA on condition that his name not be used for fear of retaliation from the junta.

The group has counted more than 300 internet shutdowns across the country since the military seized power from an elected government in a 2021 coup that set off a grinding civil war with no end in sight. It says nearly a quarter of Myanmar’s 330 townships are now completely cut off.

In its latest Freedom on the Net survey, rights group Freedom House gave Myanmar its worst score among the 72 countries it ranked for obstacles to internet access.

That has left people across large swaths of Myanmar scrambling for alternative channels to get online, and for a growing number of them that means Starlink. 

A wholly owned subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX aerospace firm, Starlink operates over 6,000 satellites providing internet access from low Earth orbit, by far the most of any satellite-based internet provider. 

Though the company does not officially serve Myanmar, “spillover” bandwidth from satellites serving other countries allows Myanmar to tap in, the Myanmar Internet Project analyst said. The junta is meanwhile losing control over growing swathes of the country, making its ban on the service increasingly moot. With the help of smugglers and a porous border, Starlink units have been trickling in from neighboring Thailand. 

The Myanmar Internet Project estimates there are now well over 3,000 Starlink dishes up and running across the country.

“In some areas the regular phone calls even cannot be made, so … Starlink is the only viable option,” the analyst said. “And for people on the ground, information is now life or death. You cannot know if the air strikes are coming to you, you cannot show the people what is happening and what you are facing in Myanmar if you don’t have internet.”

The Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian aid group that works mostly along Myanmar’s border with Thailand, was among the first to start using Starlink in the country. The group’s director, David Eubank, told VOA it now uses over 30 of the units and has donated about 20 more to local hospitals, clinics and schools. 

“Starlink has enabled us to have a signal where we’ve never had one before, and in the areas of blackout [it has been] very effective,” Eubank said.

“It’s not just us,” he added. “There’s clinics and hospitals and other humanitarian groups that rely on Starlink. It’s absolutely crucial, a life-saving and life-giving way to share information of all kinds — a way to give early warning, a way to get help in, and a way to tell a story, a way to communicate among loved ones, a way to escape. It’s the main thing.”

Eubank recalled a case in Kayah state from June of a landmine victim whose wounds were beyond the skills of the Free Burma Rangers medic at the scene. 

“So, using the Starlink we contacted our surgeon friend in Germany, who’d been working with us before, and showed photos and videos and worked back and forth through the Starlink, and the surgeon guided this … medic to make the procedures necessary to save what was left of the leg and save this young man’s life.”

The satellite service has also become “incredibly useful” to the many armed groups fighting the junta where there never was internet service or where mobile towers have been disabled or knocked out, Richard Horsey, senior adviser for the International Crisis Group, told VOA.

“Reliable internet access is very important for command and control of forces, for operational planning — for example, Google Maps and other providers of satellite imagery — and other purposes such as early warning of airstrikes,” he told said.

Among the rebel groups making use of Starlink is the Karenni National Defense Force, a coalition of armed groups fighting the junta across Kayah.

KNDF spokesman The Eh Soe told VOA that soldiers on the front lines still rely mostly on radio, partly due to the high power demands and the costs of Starlink units. While still the cheapest satellite option available, a base model that officially retails for $599 is now going for up to eight times that on Myanmar’s black market.

Behind the front lines, though, The Eh Soe said some KNDF commanders are using Starlink to plan and coordinate, and to stay in touch with the outside world. Many of the country’s resistance groups rely on friends and family abroad to help fund their operations. 

The Eh Soe said the system is also being used to help run the opposition government being set up across the state to replace the junta by the Karenni Interim Executive Council, which includes KNDF commanders.

“Starlink is the only way you can use the internet … right now,” he said, “and it is quite important to be connected.”

Along with the rebels and humanitarians, some criminals are catching on as well. 

In a report on Southeast Asia’s cybercrime threat last month, the United States Institute of Peace, a U.S. government-funded think tank, said signals intelligence has shown compounds in Myanmar from which transnational crime syndicates are defrauding victims across the globe “pivoting to Starlink satellite systems.” 

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says it has found tens of online vendors in the region selling third-party Starlink units explicitly for cyber-fraud operations.

While the satellite service is still the exception for internet access among the region’s cyber-scammers, it does appear to be gaining a following and will likely continue to, said Benedikt Hofmann, the UNODC’s deputy representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

“Like other technologies, it is definitely becoming a more important tool for criminals to expand this business and shield their operations from external pressure,” he told VOA.

He said that in turn may raise calls for Starlink to cut Myanmar off or spur neighboring countries to get tougher on smugglers. Authorities in Thailand have seized dozens of Starlink units on their way to Myanmar and made several arrests so far this year. The Myanmar Internet Project analyst says the growing demand may also overwhelm the available bandwidth at some point, slowing service to a crawl.

SpaceX did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment.
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BANGKOK — In case you can’t get enough of the little pygmy hippo Moo Deng from Thailand, there’s now an official song featuring the internet’s favorite baby animal — released in four languages for her global fans.

The upbeat 50-second song Moodeng Moodeng, available in Thai, English, Chinese and Japanese versions, features simple lyrics like “Moo Deng Moo Deng, boing boing boing/ Mommy Mommy, play with me.” Its music video consists of short clips of the baby hippo bouncing, playing with her keeper or hanging out with her mom, Jona.

The catchy number was produced and written by well-known Thai composer Mueanphet Ammara, and released by one of Thailand’s largest music companies, GMM Music.

Moo Deng — the name literally means “bouncy pork,” a type of meatball, in Thai — became a global phenomenon just a month after she was unveiled on Facebook by the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand’s southern Chon Buri province.

Fans say her name compliments her chaotic personality. Moo Deng likes to “deng,” or bounce, and her giddy bouncing has appeared all over social media in countless memes. Her image has been used by sports teams and businesses.

The hippo, now 4 months old, has drawn a huge number of visitors to the zoo, which is around a two-hour drive away from the capital of Bangkok. The zoo estimated it has received 3,000 to 5,000 visitors a day on average in the past few months, and it’s selling clothes, bedding and other merchandise based on Moo Deng.

Zoo director Narongwit Chodchoi has said the increasing income from Moo Deng will help its breeding programs for many endangered species like the pygmy hippopotamus, which is threatened by poaching and loss of habitat. The species is native to West Africa and there are only 2,000-3,000 of them left in the wild.

The zoo sits on 800 hectares of land and is home to more than 2,000 animals.

All four versions of the Moo Deng song are available on YouTube and streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple Music.
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LIMA, PERU — Chinese President Xi Jinping presented himself as a defender of “multilateralism and an open economy,” Saturday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Lima, Peru. 

In a speech just hours ahead of his meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of APEC, Xi urged leaders to “tear down the walls impeding the flow of trade, investment, technology and services.”   

Foreign diplomatic sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity told VOA they are concerned that the U.S. would turn more protectionist and isolationist under the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated in January.  

Under his first term as president, Trump withdrew from various multilateral agreements including the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact and the Paris Climate Accord. He imposed punitive tariffs on China, largely kept in place by the Biden administration, and ramped up trade pressure with other U.S. trading partners including Europe and Japan.  

During his 2024 campaign, Trump vowed to place tariffs of up to 60% on all Chinese imports, and 10% to 20% on goods from the rest of the world. 

Xi’s narrative on Beijing’s role as global defender of free trade loomed over his summit with Biden. The meeting — held at the Chinese delegation’s hotel in Lima rather than on neutral ground as is customary — is their last in-person engagement while Biden is in office and part of Biden’s farewell tour on the world stage. 

The White House said that because the U.S. hosted China at the Woodside summit on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in California last year, Beijing chose the location this year.  

The leaders held their first meeting in 2022 in Bali, at a neutral venue on the sidelines of the G20 summit hosted by Indonesia. 

At the summit, Biden is set to reiterate his “longstanding concern” over China’s “unfair trade policies and non-market economic practices” that hurt American workers, said a senior administration official who spoke ahead of the meeting under the condition of anonymity. 

The president also will be relaying to Xi his “deep concern” over Beijing’s support for Moscow’s war against Ukraine and the deployment of North Korean troops to aid Russia, as well as Beijing’s increased military activities around Taiwan and the South China Sea.   

Additionally, Biden is set to warn China over its alleged role in hacking private telecommunications providers used by U.S. government and presidential campaign officials, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday aboard Air Force One en route to Lima. 

“We have made clear over time that we will respond when we see actions taken, in terms of cyberattacks, cyber espionage, cyber intrusions,” Sullivan said.  

Complicated rivalry   

Biden has called Xi a “dictator” in the past, while Xi has accused the U.S. of being the “biggest source of chaos” in the world. But both leaders have emphasized the importance of stability, and in the past four years they largely have succeeded in managing the complicated rivalry.  

In their summit last year, Biden and Xi agreed to restart military-to-military communications, in part to manage potential tensions surrounding Taiwan and the South China Sea. 

At APEC, Xi championed a “new impetus” toward an “open Asia-Pacific economy” and supported the group’s efforts to move faster toward achieving the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, a proposed regional free trade agreement between the 21 APEC member economies.  

China is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest regional free trade agreement involving 15 countries in Asia and the Pacific. The U.S. is not a member of RCEP. 

In 2021, Beijing applied for membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The regional free trade pact initially began as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, promoted in 2015 by then-U.S. President Barack Obama.  

Trump withdrew the U.S. from TPP in 2017. Following Washington’s departure, the TPP eventually became CPTPP – an 11-country bloc that now constitutes one of the largest free trade areas in the world.   

The Biden administration in 2022 launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which includes a dozen Indo-Pacific countries. There are no market access or tariff reduction provisions in the framework — trade incentives desired by countries in the region. 

  

IPEF is unlikely to continue in its current form under Trump, said Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.    

“But the reality is that many countries in the region have been pretty disappointed by IPEF and so if they see it either go away or change, I don’t think they’ll be panicked about that possibility,” he told VOA.

Sullivan pushes back

Xi began his South American tour by inaugurating a mega port in Peru, a $1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent.  

Sullivan pushed back against the narrative that Beijing has overtaken Washington as the world’s main backer of development and infrastructure financing. 

  

“Every time we fly to South America or Africa, the press writes the story: ‘China is doing a lot; America is doing a little,'” he said in response to VOA’s question.  

“And then you look at the numbers behind it — the total stock of American investment in Latin America and the Caribbean — and you compare that to what China is doing. We are, across our private sector and now backed up by tools like the Development Finance Corporation, investing in a wide range of technology, infrastructure, energy, health, and other projects and are an incredibly important player,” he said, noting that the U.S. is investing heavily in Peru, $6.6 billion in 2023.   

From Lima, Biden heads to the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, with a brief stop in the Brazilian Amazon to deliver remarks on climate change. 
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