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News from China and bordering countries of N. Korea, Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. With a focus on the underground house churches of China.
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Tuesday, March 18, 2003 |
VIETNAMESE DISSIDENT NGUYEN DAN QUE ARRESTED - RFA
WASHINGTON, March 18, 2003--Vietnamese authorities have arrested Dr. Nguyen
Dan Que, a leading advocate of human rights and democratic reform, Radio
Free Asia (RFA) reports.
Que, 61, an endocrinologist who has already spent nearly two decades in
detention, was taken into custody at his home in Ho Chi Minh City at
approximately 8 p.m. on Monday, March 17, according to sources in Vietnam
and the United States who spoke on condition of anonymity. He had already
been under house arrest since being freed from a labor camp in 1998.
Four hours later, police returned to search Que's home. They seized his
computer, cell phone, and a number of papers, the sources said. Que remains
in custody at 23 Nguyen Van Cu Street in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly
Saigon--the office of the central Interior Department for southern Vietnam.
No further details were available.
Separately, on Sunday, March 16, the authorities handed a new two-year
"administrative detention" or house arrest order to Le Quang Liem, elderly
chief of the outlawed leadership of the Hoa Hao Buddhist sect, in Ho
Chi Minh City. The Hoa Hao sect evolved in the mid-20th century and exhorts
followers to pursue a simpler, purer Buddhist life. Its leaders have
previously been at odds with the Vietnamese authorities.
Que was released after eight years in detention in 1998. He refused a
government offer to resettle in the United States. A graduate of Saigon
medical school, Que was dismissed from his post as a hospital director in
1978 for criticizing Vietnam's health care system and policies. He was
arrested the same year and detained for 10 years without trial.
After he was released in 1988, he was rearrested in 1990 for advocating
freedom and democracy. He was later sentenced to 20 years' hard labor and
five years' house arrest, but he was freed in 1998 as part of an amnesty. He
has remained under heavy surveillance since.
U.S. legislators have previously nominated Que for the Nobel Prize for
Peace. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch last year awarded Que its
Hellmann/Hammett cash grant for repressed authors
7:19:06 PM 
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TEENAGED NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR READS MEMOIRS ON RADIO FREE ASIA - RFA
WASHINGTON, March 18, 2003--Jang Gil-su, the teenaged defector whose grim
drawings of life in North Korea have made him an international celebrity,
this week began reading excerpts of his memoirs for a series of Radio Free
Asia (RFA broadcasts to North Korea.
In his first broadcast, Jang, now 19, described his return from China to
North Korea in 1999 in a bid to bring family members to safety across the
border: "'How often do you visit China?' one of two North Korean officers
asked. 'When did you go there? Did you eat rice and pork?' I told them I had
never visited China--that we were out scavenging for food. 'Why are your
clothes wet?' they asked. I said we were trying to catch fish. Then they
punched us and called us liars. We were led to the border security office...
The police approached me like wolves. They will all get promotions, I
thought, for capturing more escapees."
Jang's memoir, "The Rainbow I Painted With My Tears: A refugee boy's story
in his own words and drawings," was published by Moonhak Soochop (Seoul). It
remains available only in Korean and has never been broadcast previously.
Jang's readings for RFA's Korean service will continue for approximately one
month.
Jang, who fled North Korea in 1999 at age 15, became famous in South Korea
following publication there and in the U.S. media of his chilling crayon
drawings, which depict horrific abuses by North Korean authorities against
North Korean civilians.
His family, living in Hoeryeong, North Hamgyeong Province, crossed the Tumen
River into China in January 1999. They lived briefly in China with the help
of ethnic Koreans there and South Korean human rights activists. Some were
caught and repatriated as part of a Chinese crackdown on North Korean
refugees.
Risking arrest and execution, Jang returned to North Korea twice to try to
smuggle out more of his relatives. In June 2001, Jang and six relatives were
granted asylum at the UNHCR office in Beijing, while three more relatives
traveled to Seoul through third countries. Jang's mother, Chung Sun-mi, was
caught by Chinese police and sent back to North Korea in March 2000.
Relatives say she was handed over to the State Security Agency, which is
known to impose harsh punishments.
North Korea's economy has been in freefall since the collapse of the former
Soviet Union, and up to 2 million people are believed to have died of hunger
there since 1995. As many as 300,000 North Koreans are believed to have fled
to China, where they are forced to live underground and are subject to grave
abuse. A small number have obtained political asylum by crashing through the
gates of foreign missions in China.
In response to escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, RFA in January
doubled its Korean-language broadcasting to North Korea from two to four
hours daily. RFA's shortwave broadcasts in Korean may be heard from
1400-1700 UTC and 2200-2300 UTC in North Korea and much of North Asia. They are also available at www.rfa.org.
7:13:50 PM
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KAZAKHSTAN: INTERROGATIONS AND THREATS FOLLOW CHARITY ACTION
By Igor Rotar, Forum 18 News Service
On 5 March Nurbai Arystanov, a Protestant who lives in the town of Arys,
100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Chimkent, the administrative centre of
South Kazakhstan region, was threatened and briefly detained by police. The
police objected to the fact that Arystanov, a member of the Chimkent-based
Bible Centre, was distributing gifts from the Good Samaritan international
charity. One local Protestant, who asked not to be named, claimed to Forum
18 News Service that the Arys deputy police chief, Kurmanal Rakhmatulayev,
personally interrogated believers who were listed as having received gifts,
and confiscated gifts from those who had received them. He also threatened
believers that he would plant hashish in the gifts. One police official
confirmed that Arystanov had been detained but told Forum 18 that he was
held for no more than an hour.
In the wake of Arystanov's detention, attempts were made to prove that
there was nothing wrong or illegal in the gift distribution. But when a
church official arrived from Chimkent and presented a copy of the
organisation's registration documents and papers for the gifts, they were
seized by the chief of the State Internal Affairs Administration. The
church official was then subjected to extensive insults and threats. One
source, who preferred not to be named, told Forum 18 that the director of
School Number 8 in Arys received a peremptory order "to exclude Arystanov's
children from school". The divisional police inspector took Arystanov's
personal belongings - books, tapes and the remaining gifts - from his
apartment. Rakhmatulayev invited in officials from the public procuracy and
the National Security Committee (the former KGB), who joined him in putting
pressure on Arystanov because of his activity as a Protestant.
However, speaking to Forum 18 by telephone from Arys on 11 March,
Rakhmatulayev rejected any suggestions that he had acted unlawfully. "It's
all nonsense," he insisted. "I did not order that Arystanov's children be
excluded from school and I did not make threats against any of the
believers." However, he argued that as the Bible Centre is registered in
Chimkent "it has no right to carry out charitable activity in our town".
(Kazakhstan's law on religion says nothing about a religious association
only being able to carry out charitable work in the town in which it is
registered.)
"The Bible Centre's statute also states that it may carry out charitable
work only among the poor," Rakhmatulayev added. "However, the people who
received gifts included some who were not poor." He complained that
Arystanov did not have a residence permit for Arys and had not registered
there (several republics in the former Soviet Union retain the Soviet
practice of obliging visitors to register with the police). "In other
words, he is just a vagrant, and I will not allow him to operate in our
town," Rakhmatulayev told Forum 18.
© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved.
You may reproduce or quote this article provided that credit is given to
F18News http://www.forum18.org/
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7:07:05 PM
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China's New PM Meets Media for First Time - VOA
Jim Randle
China's new prime minister says rural poverty and rising unemployment are his nation's biggest problems. Wen Jiabao met reporters for the first time since taking office on Sunday.
The new prime minister says China's farmers have been left behind by two decades of roaring economic growth that have transformed China's coastal cities.
Wen Jiabao says helping the nation's hundreds of millions of farmers tops the agenda for his new government. Mr. Wen says China's backward agriculture is hurting efforts to expand the nation's economy.
But there are also urban problems, as the shift from a communist planned economy to a more market-oriented one has seen the collapse of thousands of state-owned companies. That has thrown tens of millions of people out of work.
Mr. Wen says the number of laid off workers "keeps going up" and is putting tremendous pressure on the social security system. He says transforming inefficient state enterprises into efficient private companies will be a long-term task. That transformation would go faster if China's banks were not buried under $400 billion in bad loans, and Mr. Wen promised to push ahead with efforts to reform the financial sector.
Mr. Wen says Beijing wants to resume talks with Taiwan and press forward toward a peaceful reunification. Taiwan split politically from China amid civil war half a century ago and has been ruled separately ever since. China has said it will use force, if necessary, to recover the island it regards as part of its territory.
Mr. Wen is part of a new generation of Chinese leaders taking power during the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, which ends Tuesday. Hu Jintao took over the presidency from Jiang Zemin and Mr. Wen replaced Zhu Rongji.
Mr. Wen told journalists that his style is superficially "milder" than his blunt and fiery predecessor. But he insists his quiet manner does not mean that he lacks convictions - or the courage to act strongly to carry them out.
6:52:57 PM
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© 2003 Radio Free China
Last Update: 4/6/2003; 8:38:42 AM
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