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WASHINGTON — The United States restricted trade with five companies on Wednesday that it said help produce and procure drones for use by Russia in Ukraine and by Iran-backed Houthis in Red Sea shipping attacks. 

The companies from Russia and China were among 11 additions to the Commerce Department’s Entity List, which means suppliers need licenses before shipping goods and technology to them. 

Russia has intensified its drone and missile strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities in recent weeks, causing significant damage and threatening a repeat of the blackouts experienced in the first year after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. 

The Commerce Department added a Chinese entity, Jiangxi Xintuo Enterprise Company, for supporting Russia’s military through the procurement, development and proliferation of Russian drones, it said.

Shenzhen Jiasibo Technology Company of China was cited for being part of a network procuring aerospace components, including drone applications, for an aircraft company in Iran. Three Russian entities — Aerosila JSC SPE, Delta-Aero LLC, and JSC ODK-Star — were added for being part of the network. 

“These components are used to develop and produce Shahed-series UAVs which have been used by Iran to attack oil tankers in the Middle East and by Russia in Ukraine,” the Federal Register notice said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. 

Attacks on ships, including oil tankers, by Iranian-backed Houthis have disrupted global shipping through the Red Sea. Yemen’s Houthi militia say they are retaliating against Israel’s war against Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza. 

Companies are added to the U.S. Entity List when Washington deems them a threat to U.S. national security or foreign policy. Suppliers must then be granted licenses, which are likely to be denied, before shipping goods to entities on the list. 

The two United Arab Emirates citations, Khalaj Trading LLC and Mahdi Khalaj Amirhosseini, were added for apparently violating Iran sanctions by exporting or trying to export items from the United States to Iran through UAE, according to the posting. 

Four Chinese entities were cited for acquiring U.S. items to support China’s military modernization efforts, it said. They are LINKZOL (Beijing) Technology Company, Xi’an Like Innovative Information Technology Company, Beijing Anwise Technology Company and Sitonholy (Tianjin) Company. 

U.S.-Chinese military contacts resumed late last year, but tensions continue due to fundamental differences over Taiwan and the South China Sea that remain dangerous potential flashpoints.  

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pumped billions into buying and developing equipment as part of his modernizing efforts to build a “world-class” military by 2050, with Beijing’s outsized defense budget growing at a faster pace than the economy for some years. 
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Bangkok, Thailand — In the latest setback for Myanmar’s military rulers, resistance forces have seized nearly total control of a key border town straddling the main overland trade route between Myanmar and Thailand.

The junta’s defeat in Myawaddy town on Myanmar’s eastern border follows previous territorial losses in the north along the Chinese border and in the western state of Rakhine, bordering Bangladesh.

The armed wing of the Karen National Union, or KNU, Myanmar’s oldest ethnic armed organization and group, says it is now in control of most of the town and pursuing remaining junta forces in the area.

Myanmar has been in chaos since General Min Aung Hlaing and his military forces overthrew the democratically elected government in February 2021. The coup sparked widespread armed resistance by a loose alliance of ethnic groups and civilian-led defense forces.

Most of the conflict has been confined to rural areas. But on Friday the KNU announced it had seized a major junta base in Myawaddy with the surrender of 617 military personnel and family members.

The KNU says it now controls most of the town, which sits on the main highway between Thailand and Myanmar. Billions of dollars’ worth of goods pass through it each year.

Padoh Saw Taw Nee, spokesperson for the KNU, told VOA early Tuesday that the junta’s 275 Battalion is “still in Myawaddy town with their division commander with them. It might be not more than 300 or 400 [personnel] left. We don’t hear anything about [new] fighting yet, negotiations are continuing.”

The Irrawaddy, a Myanmar news outlet, reported later Tuesday that the Karen National Liberation Army and its allies had launched an attack on the battalion, the last junta forces in the area.

Padoh Saw Taw Nee said things are in place for the KNU to take over administrative duties, adding that junta forces who surrendered in Myawaddy are still being accounted for. He said the KNU are bracing for a heavy response from the military.

“Usually, they make a heavy retaliation with the airstrikes. They always say, ‘Whenever you take a place, it doesn’t matter, you can take the territory, but we just have to destroy the place so you can’t set up your administration.’ So, we need to be very careful about it,” he said.

The ruling State Administrative Council, or SAC, has violently cracked down on dissidents since the coup, with more than 4,800 people killed and more than 20,000 people detained, according to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma, a monitoring group in Thailand.

But the military has been on the defensive since a coalition of resistance forces staged a sudden counteroffensive in October. Armed ethnic groups captured dozens of military-held townships and posts in northern Shan State, while the ethnic Arakan Army has made significant gains in Rakhine state in the west.

In another sign of changing fortunes, Myanmar’s shadow government, the National Unity Government, or NUG, claimed responsibility last week for more than a dozen drone attacks on junta bases in the capital, Naypyidaw.

“The SAC is facing multiple battlefield defeats, in Karen State most dramatically, with the possible takeover of the border town of Myawaddy after months of fighting,” said David Scott Mathieson, an independent Myanmar analyst. “On the ground, the SAC is in retreat in multiple locations, in Kachin, Arakan, and Karenni and Shan [states].”

But, Mathieson told VOA, the military “has a large country to retreat into, with a network of bases and arms production. They may be losing but this doesn’t indicate they’re finished just yet. Their reaction to further losses or the spread of fighting into central Myanmar will be extreme force. For the SAC, savagery is a strategy.”

In a bid to stem its run of defeats, the military recently activated a national conscription law with the aim of drafting 60,000 new recruits a year, including 5,000 by the end of April.

The law is hugely unpopular, with many young people seeking to avoid the draft. Many have fled to Thailand, which has taken in an estimated 45,000 Burmese refugees since the coup in 2021. Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara said this week that Thailand is preparing to receive 100,000 more.
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Phnom Penh, Cambodia — Threats by the Cambodian government to take legal action against journalists are increasing, sparking concerns about constraints on press freedom, says an annual report by the Cambodian Journalists Association (CamboJA). 

The group monitors incidents of harassment and restrictions on journalists. Pressure on independent media outlets has increased since the government of former Prime Minister Hun Sen began cracking down on political dissent before the 2018 general election. Several independent media outlets have closed since then, and six media licenses were revoked in 2023, compared to two cases in 2022. 

In “Cambodian Journalism Situation Report 2023,” released on March 20, CamboJA recorded 32 cases of harassment of 59 journalists, six of them women. In 2022, CamboJA recorded 35 cases of harassment against 54 journalists, eight of them women.

Legal action was involved in 15 of the 32 cases. These included lawsuits, license revocation, arrests or threats of legal action. At least five journalists were sued, charged with crimes or imprisoned. 

“We caution against drawing any firm conclusions from these numbers,” the report said, adding that some journalists “are understandably afraid to report for fear of further reprisal.”

Nop Vy, executive director of CamboJA, told VOA Khmer that harassment has had a significant impact on journalists’ performance and writing. He said this affects people’s rights to access information to get comprehensive information.

“When journalists do not have the time or ability to write in-depth information, quality information helps the society. People cannot get information about various aspects of the society in every aspect,” he said.

Nop Vy urged the government to prosecute those who harass or intimidate journalists and to end the impunity that has permitted the harassment to continue.

Ministry of Information spokesman Tep Asnarith challenged the report’s findings, citing ministry data showing that journalists were able to carry out their responsibilities in all parts of the country last year.

“Tens of thousands of journalists, as well as more than 2,000 traditional and modern media outlets, have been working to cover, produce and disseminate all forms of information, as well as to report freely and safely at all times by professional manner, with transparency and gaining the trust and support of the general public,” he said. 

At an editors’ forum in December, Prime Minister Hun Manet said the achievements and success of the government are due to the participation of journalists in partnership with the government.

He said the government has always promoted freedom of expression and the press, as well as encouraged more capacity building in the field of journalism and the strengthening of media professionalism and ethics.

CamboJA launched a new website in March that will report on journalist harassment, provide quarterly and annual updates on the status of journalists, provide data sources, and support advocacy efforts for press freedom.

Press freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders ranked Cambodia 147th out of 180 countries in 2023 for its escalation of government persecutions of the independent media.

Ser Davy in Phnom Penh contributed to this report.

 
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Taipei, Taiwan — Taiwan’s annual war games this year will practice “kill” zones at sea to break a blockade and simulate a scenario where China suddenly turns one of its regular drills around the island into an actual attack, the defense ministry said on Tuesday.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its territory, has been staging regular exercises around the island for the past four years, to pressure Taipei to accept Beijing’s claim of sovereignty, despite Taiwan’s strong objections.

Taiwan starts its main annual Han Kuang exercises this month with tabletop drills, extended from a more usual five days to eight given the number of scenarios to be included, followed in July by actual combat exercises, the ministry said.

Tung Chih-hsing, head of the ministry’s joint combat planning department, told a news briefing the drills would practice how to speedily respond to one of China’s drills suddenly turning into an attack, something military planners have begun to worry about, considering their regularity.

How different branches of the armed forces can mount a coordinated response to a Chinese blockade will be another focus, Tung said.

The drills will integrate naval, air and coast guard forces, shore-mounted anti-ship weapons and drones to establish a maritime “attack and kill chain,” he added.

“In addition, [we will] use naval and air forces and coast guard ships to jointly carry out escort operations” to ensure sea and air links to the outside world remain open, Tung said.

During one major round of war games around Taiwan in April of last year, China practiced precision strikes and blockading the island.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Taiwan has been looking to see what lessons it can learn and integrate into its own exercises, especially how the much smaller Ukrainian forces have been able to fend off the larger Russian military.

Tung said those would again feature this year, along with the lessons learned from the war in Gaza.

For both of those conflicts, Tung said officials were looking at the use of psychological warfare and asymmetric operations in particular, though without explaining exactly how they would figure in the drills.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has championed the idea of “asymmetric warfare” to make its forces, also much smaller than China’s, more mobile and harder to attack, with, for example, vehicle-mounted missiles and drones.
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President Joe Biden on Monday announced a $6.6 billion grant to Taiwan’s top chip manufacturer for semiconductor manufacturing in Arizona, which includes a third facility that will bring the tech giant’s investment in the state to $65 billion. VOA’s White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington, with reporter Levi Stallings in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — The Cambodian government is pushing ahead with a cybercrime law experts say could be wielded to further curtail freedom of speech amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent. 

The cybercrime draft is the third controversial internet law authorities have pursued in the past year as the government, led by new Prime Minister Hun Manet, seeks greater oversight of internet activities. 

Obtained by VOA in both English and Khmer language versions, the latest draft of the cybercrime law is marked “confidential” and contains 55 articles. It lays out various offenses punishable by fines and jail time, including defamation, using “insulting, derogatory or rude language,” and sharing “false information” that could harm Cambodia’s public order and “traditional culture.”  

The law would also allow authorities to collect and record internet traffic data, in real time, of people under investigation for crimes, and would criminalize online material that “depicts any act or activity … intended to stimulate sexual desire” as pornography. 

Digital rights and legal experts who reviewed the law told VOA that its vague language, wide-ranging categories of prosecutable speech and lack of protections for citizens fall short of international standards, instead providing the government more tools to jail dissenters, opposition members, women and LGBTQ+ people. 

Although in the works since 2016, earlier drafts of the law, which sparked similar criticism, have not leaked since 2020 and 2021. Authorities hope to enact the law by the end of the year. 

“This cybercrime bill offers the government even more power to go after people expressing dissent,” Kian Vesteinsson, a senior research analyst for technology at the human rights organization Freedom House, told VOA.  

“These vague provisions around defamation, insults and disinformation are ripe for abuse, and we know that Cambodian authorities have deployed similarly vague criminal provisions in other contexts,” Vesteinsson said. 

Cambodian law already considers defamation a criminal offense, but the cybercrime draft would make it punishable by jail time up to six months, plus a fine of up to $5,000. The “false information” clause — defined as sharing information that “intentionally harms national defense, national security, relations with other countries, economy, public order, or causes discrimination, or affects traditional culture” — carries a three- to five-year sentence and fine of up to $25,000. 

Daron Tan, associate international legal adviser at the International Commission of Jurists, told VOA the defamation and false information articles do not comply with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Cambodia is a party, and that the United Nations Human Rights Committee is “very clear that imprisonment is never the appropriate penalty for defamation.” 

“It’s a step very much in the wrong direction,” Tan said. “We are very worried that this would expand the laws that the government can use against its critics.” 

Chea Pov, the deputy head of Cambodia’s National Police and former director of the Ministry of Interior’s Anti-Cybercrime Department that is overseeing the drafting process, told VOA the law “doesn’t restrict your rights” and claimed the U.S. companies which reviewed it “didn’t raise concerns.”  

Google, Meta and Amazon, which the government has said were involved in drafting the law, did not respond to requests for comment. 

“If you say something based on evidence, there is no problem,” Pov said. “But if there is no evidence, [you] defame others, which is also stated in the criminal law … we don’t regard this as a restriction.”  

The law also makes it illegal to use technology to display, trade, produce or disseminate pornography, or to advertise a “product or service mixed with pornography” online. Pornography is defined as anything that “describes a genital or depicts any act or activity involving a sexual organ or any part of the human body, animal, or object … or other similar pornography that is intended to stimulate sexual desire or cause sexual excitement.” 

Experts say this broad category is likely to be disproportionately deployed against women and LGBTQ+ people. 

Cambodian authorities have often rebuked or arrested women for dressing “too sexily” on social media, singing sexual songs or using suggestive speech. In 2020, an online clothes and cosmetics seller received a six-month suspended sentence after posting provocative photos; in another incident, a policewoman was forced to publicly apologize for posting photos of herself breastfeeding. 

Naly Pilorge, outreach director at Cambodian human rights organization Licadho, told VOA the draft law “could lead to more rights violations against women in the country.” 

“This vague definition of ‘pornography’ poses a serious threat to any woman whose online activity the government decides may ‘cause sexual excitement,’” Pilorge said. “The draft law does not acknowledge any legitimate artistic or educational purposes to depict or describe sexual organs, posing another threat to freedom of expression.” 

In March, authorities said they hosted civil society organizations to revisit the draft. They plan to complete the drafting process and send the law to Parliament for passage before the end of the year, according to Pov, the deputy head of police. 

Soeung Saroeun, executive director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, told VOA “there was no consultation on each article” at the recent meeting. 

“The NGO representatives were unable to analyze and present their inputs,” said Saroeun, echoing concerns about its contents. “How is it [possible]? We need to debate on this.” 

The cybercrime law has resurfaced as the government works to complete two other draft internet laws, one covering cybersecurity and the other personal data protection. Experts have critiqued the drafts as providing expanded police powers to seize computer systems and making citizens’ data vulnerable to hacking and surveillance. 

Authorities have also sought to create a national internet gateway that would require traffic to run through centralized government servers, though the status of that project has been unclear since early 2022 when the government said it faced delays. 
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Austin, Texas — Chinese migrants coming across the southern U.S. border say they made the treacherous journey to flee China’s authoritarian rule, to seek the American dream or escape growing political and economic uncertainty at home.

But the challenges do not end after they arrive, and some are deciding to return to China, while others have no choice.

Last April, Xia Yu arrived in the United States after traveling through more than 10 countries over a period of two months. Xia, a Chinese man in his 40s, asked to use a pseudonym so he could speak more freely with VOA Mandarin about his journey.

On his way to the U.S. border, he says, all his property was stolen, and his American dream did not come true: In immigration custody, he failed to pass the “credible fear interview” for asylum-seekers.

2023 surge

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, 52,700 Chinese immigrants arrived at U.S. borders without valid entry visas in fiscal 2023 — more than twice the number of just two years earlier. About half of them entered somewhere along the southern U.S. border where they were apprehended by Border Protection agents and sought asylum.

Individuals who pass the screening and establish that they have a credible reason to fear torture, persecution, or returning to their country, are allowed to stay in the U.S. to pursue their cases in immigration court.

Xia remained in the detention facility in the U.S. for months as he was processed for deportation, eventually landing at Shanghai Pudong Airport last August. Entering Chinese customs, he was fined $71 and had to sign a document admitting his crime of being deported after illegally entering another country. His passport was confiscated, and he was notified that he would be barred from leaving the country for three years.

The public security bureau in his hometown also questioned him about whom he encountered while on U.S. soil.

“They asked me to delete my foreign social media apps and foreign contacts,” he told VOA. “Then they told me not to contact these people because I would be deceived.” 

Xia said he thinks his WeChat account is being monitored to prevent him from inciting others to emigrate illegally. He said spending tens of thousands of dollars without even staying in the U.S. is nothing to brag about, and that he’d rather not mention his experience again.

‘A full life at home’

At 33, Wang Zhongwei from China’s Anhui Province now lives in Los Angeles, where has become a vocal advocate for immigrants since entering the United States in May.

Many Chinese who have crossed the border or are attempting to do so reach out to him for advice. Wang tells VOA Mandarin that while most who make the journey across the border stay, there are those who return because of loneliness, deceit, or family pressure.

Wang’s friend, Liu Ming, from Sichuan Province, came to the United States in the second half of 2023. Liu, 31, first stayed in Los Angeles for a month or two and then moved to New York to find work. After a long wait, he found a job working for a Chinese boss, but the pay wasn’t good.

In January, Liu’s boss refused to pay him, so he had no choice but to call the police. After receiving his salary the following day, Liu immediately went to the airport, messaging Wang: “I’m at the airport now and about to go back to China. I don’t like it here. See you again if destiny has it.”

In March, when Wang contacted him again, he found that Liu had used the self-service kiosk when entering China and wasn’t even interviewed by government staff.

Within months, Liu had returned to a life in China much as he knew it before.

“I am now working in a restaurant in my hometown. I work eight hours and the food is super good,” he told Wang via WhatsApp. “I used to work 12 hours non-stop in a restaurant in the U.S., [where] I was bored and lonely … but I live a full life at home.

At one point, when he got sick in the U.S., he worried about dying in a foreign land. He also complained about not being able to meet women there.

“I don’t regret the trip to the U.S.,” Liu continued, allowing, however, that on getting sick he’d worried about dying in a foreign land, and that he’d found it difficult to meet women.

“What I saw in real life was different from what I saw online,” he concluded. “There are both good and bad things in America.”

Room for regret

Zhang Lin, who is in his 30s and asked to use an alias to protect his privacy, describes himself as a person of double regrets. He first regretted coming to the United States, and now he regrets returning to China.

Crossing the U.S. border, Zhang found a job as a massage therapist in Los Angeles because he had the training. There, he made about $150 a day, a substantial wage for an undocumented immigrant.

But after only a month he returned to China, where he now runs a foot spa in his hometown.

“There were so many things I wasn’t used to in the U.S., and I was lonely,” he said. “I felt very homesick, so I came back impulsively.”

When he went to the U.S., Zhang said, he’d hoped to make a lot of money and make his family the envy of his hometown neighbors.

But now, after returning to China, where he faced a 12-hour interrogation at customs but faced no penalties, he says he regrets his impulsive decision to return.

“Life in my hometown is really hopeless,” Zhang said, adding that he hopes to go to the U.S. illegally again. “When you go out, you realize that the outside world is different. Your mind is opened up.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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SYDNEY — Vast areas of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s biggest coral system, have been affected by mass coral bleaching caused by a marine heatwave.

Surveys have shown major bleaching is occurring along the 2,300-kilometer ecosystem.

Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef was detected weeks ago, but recent aerial surveillance carried out by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science revealed that 75 percent of 1,001 reefs inspected contain bleached corals. This means the organisms residing on them are struggling to survive. 

A quarter of individual reefs surveyed recorded low to no levels of bleaching, while half had high or very high levels. 

The authority that manages the reef confirmed “widespread bleaching across all three regions of the marine park” — its north, south and central sectors.  

It said, “Sea surface temperatures remain 0.5-1.5 degrees above average for this time of year.”

Scientists say that corals bleach, or turn white, when they are stressed by changes in water temperature, light, or nutrients. In response, the coral expels the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, exposing their white skeleton.  

Not all bleaching incidents are due to warm water, but experts say the mass bleaching reported on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is caused by a marine heatwave.

“The coral will expel their micro algae and so when you see a bleached coral it is not dead, but it is starving,” said Lissa Schindler, Great Barrier Reef campaign manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society. She told VOA that bleaching makes corals fragile and weak.

“If they do recover, they will be more prone to disease and have a lower reproductive output. What happens, though, if temperatures are too hot for too long then the coral cannot survive and then that is when it dies, she said.

Schindler says that reefs around the world are becoming more vulnerable to bleaching due to the impact of climate change.

“We do not know how long our oceans can continue to absorb the amount of heat that they are, and I think these mass bleaching events that are occurring around the world are showing that this heat absorption is having a real impact on coral reefs and will continue to do so,” she said. “So, with climate change there will be more severe and more frequent mass bleaching events to come to the point where coral reefs will not be able to recover in between these events.”

The Great Barrier Reef runs 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeastern coast and covers an area about the size of Japan.

Conservationists say it faces a range of threats, including warmer ocean temperatures, overfishing, pollution and coral-eating crown of thorns starfish.

The Australian government has a target to cut national emissions by 43 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.  

 
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