Lawmakers in Southeast Asia face threats of reprisals, harassment and other human rights violations, according to a new study that highlights the Burmese junta’s crackdown against opposition MPs and the years-long detention of a senator in the Philippines. Myanmar continues to be the “worst country” when it comes to jailing parliamentarians, with 74 members MPs – almost entirely from the deposed National League of Democracy – behind bars while others were on the run from the country’s military rulers, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), an NGO, said in their report released in ..read more

In his first day of meetings with Chinese officials in Shanghai on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued to press the Biden administration’s concerns about trade policies it says are harming the development of competing American businesses. Blinken is visiting China for the second time in the past year and met with local officials, as well as American businesspeople and students in the city that is the country’s business, trade and financial hub. He is also scheduled to visit Beijing on Friday for talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi – and possibly also with President Xi Ji ..read more

When an armed police officer directed Uyghur surgeon Enver Tohti to remove organs from a not-quite-dead prisoner on an execution ground outside Urumqi, his first reaction was overwhelming relief: "I thought they were going to execute me," he recalled. It was 1995 and Tohti was working as an oncological surgeon at the Railway Central Hospital in the northwestern city of Urumqi. He had been pressed into service at the last minute by his chief of surgery, who told him to assemble a surgical team and prepare for "something wild" the next morning. When the driver turned onto a mountain road that le ..read more

Insurgents have captured another base from Myanmar’s junta forces, this time in the far south of the country, in the latest in a string of setbacks for the military that overthrew an elected government in 2021, officials from anti-junta forces told Radio Free Asia on Thursday.  Ethnic minority Karen fighters have in recent weeks seized several camps from junta forces in eastern Myanmar, mostly notably in a major trade town near the Thai border. On Wednesday, ethnic minority Karen insurgents, together with pro-democracy allies, captured the junta’s Maw Hta camp in the Tanintharyi region’s ..read more

A Taiwanese military expert has warned that Chinese military aircraft are now flying closer to Taipei on a regular basis and could reach the Presidential Office within minutes. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Chang Yen-ting said that, according to Ministry of National Defense’s data, on Apr. 21, two Chinese fighter jets were spotted 41 nautical miles (76 kilometers) away from Keelung, a port city just 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) north of Taipei. “That means they would need only around five minutes to reach the Presidential Office,” Chang told Radio Free Asia. Taiwan’s military jets would take at lea ..read more

Vietnam’s “blazing furnace” crackdown on corruption has netted more offenders with the chairman of its top soft drinks company handed an eight-year sentence for fraud on Thursday, state media reported. The People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City found Tran Qui Thanh, 71, guilty of masterminding a loans scam from 2019 to 2020 in which investors were robbed of assets they had put up for collateral, even after they had paid back the money with interest. Thanh is chairman of the Tan Hiep Phat drinks company. His daughter Tran Uyen Phuong, 43, the company’s deputy CEO, was sentenced to four years in pri ..read more

Environmental groups have slammed a Hong Kong government plan for a high-tech urban development despite warnings it will destroy a crucial wetland habitat for migratory birds, including the endangered black-faced spoonbill. The city's Advisory Council on the Environment approved a controversial environmental impact assessment for a high-tech development known as the San Tin Technopole on Monday, despite warnings from 10 environmental groups that it would cause the worst damage to the city's coastal wetland and fishpond habitat in 30 years. "San Tin Technopole ... will cause the most extensive ..read more

About 100 Khmer Krom people protested in Phnom Penh on Wednesday to demand that Cambodia urge Vietnam’s government to release 13 activists and monks who were recently arrested.  Protesters instead gathered at Wat Samaki Rainsy in the capital after the government didn’t grant permission for the use of Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park – the site of large political demonstrations in past years. The nearly 1.3-million strong Khmer Krom indigenous community live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and moveme ..read more

Myanmar’s military has reclaimed a key base in Myawaddy, a trading hub on the Thai border, after it fell to rebels earlier this month, an official with an ethnic Karen militant group said Wednesday. But he called its withdrawal “temporary” and said it has no intention of entering into peace talks with the junta. Myawaddy, in eastern Kayin state across the border from the Thai city of Mae Sot, has been the focal point of fighting between the Karen National Liberation Army, or KNLA, and the junta in recent weeks, amid a wider civil war in Myanmar that followed the military’s February 2021 coup d ..read more

Junta troops arrested and killed nearly 90 civilians in northern Myanmar’s Sagaing region during the first quarter of 2024, according to data compiled by RFA Burmese, including several elderly villagers and others who were unable to flee military raids. A stronghold of the rebellion, the Sagaing region has put up some of the stiffest resistance to junta rule since the military’s February 2021 coup d’etat, and has also endured some of the military’s most brutal atrocities during the country’s three years of ensuing civil war. Observers told RFA that the military is attempting to create public a ..read more