Tibetans Renew Protest Over Land Seized for Highway

Police look on as Tibetans protest the seizing of their land for the construction of a highway in Gansu province, April 2, 2014.

Photo courtesy of an RFA listener

More than a hundred Tibetans in northwestern China’s Gansu province on Wednesday protested the seizure of farmland for the construction of highways tied to state-linked gold mining and industrial activities they say are polluting the environment, according to sources in the area.

The protest by banner-carrying residents of a town in Gansu’s Sangchu (in Chinese, Xiahe) county came two weeks after other local demonstrations over government seizure of Tibetan land, and quickly drew police to the protest site, sources said.

“On April 2, Tibetans living in Hortsang township in Sangchu county staged a protest against government authorities for seizing Tibetan land for the construction of a highway,” a local resident told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

Though some Tibetan families have been paid “meager amounts” in compensation for their property, “other families were not given anything at all,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Marchers unfurled huge banners written in Chinese demanding fair compensation and calling for “equal rights,” the source said, adding, “Over a hundred Tibetans participated in the protest, so police quickly arrived at the site.”

No further word was immediately available regarding possible detentions or actions taken by police to end the protest.

“For about 20 years, the Chinese government has built mines in Tibetan villages in Sangchu county such as Hortsang, Tsayue, Khagya, and so on,” the source said.

“These Tibetan areas were taken over by the authorities without sufficient compensation being paid to the families living there,” he said.

“And while some places are being used for the expansion of existing roads, others are being used for the construction of new highways.”

Tibetans in Sangchu—where a Tibetan man burned himself to death at the entrance to a Chinese mining camp in 2012 to protest Beijing’s rule—have also recently held protests against the expansion of state-backed mining projects, local sources said without providing specific dates.

Last week, sources told RFA that Chinese mining interests had been digging in the area "for years," despite Tibetan objections over the impact on the environment, and that new factories and construction was underway.

In Hortsang township, residents recently protested over pollution from a nearby cement factory that they say has left wildlife and livestock dead, one source said.

Mining operations in Tibetan-populated regions have led to frequent standoffs between Chinese authorities and Tibetans, who say that Chinese mining firms disrupt sites of spiritual significance and pollute the environment as they extract local wealth.

Deputy PM urges seafood policy review

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh yesterday called for a review of the nation's policies on aquaculture, seafood processing and support for offshore fishing.

Chairing a meeting on fisheries development in Ha Noi, he asked relevant ministries and State agencies to suggest appropriate revisions to the policies so that timely amendments can be made.

He also asked them to improve logistics for the fisheries industry, reorganise funding to make it more efficient, and initiate easier access to preferential credit of offshore fishermen.

A modern centre with shipbuilding and ship repair services should also be considered, Ninh said.

Over the last two decades, seafood production has emerged as one of Viet Nam's key industries, enjoying rapid growth and earning significant export revenues. 

The industry has helped create jobs for four million workers and helped improve the lives of people while contributing to the national security of islands and sea territories, the meeting heard.

Speakers at the meeting said that Viet Nam was on the right track to become a leading country in tra fish farming and export. The country already ranks third in shrimp production and is listed among the world's four largest seafood exporters.

Viet Nam's seafood products are now available in 160 countries and territories, the meeting heard. — VNS

Cambodian Police Crack Down on Beehive Radio Protest

Beehive Radio director Mam Sonando speaks to his supporters during a protest in Phnom Penh, March 31, 2014.

RFA

Riot police in the Cambodian capital on Monday violently dispersed more than 100 people demanding a television license for independent Beehive Radio, injuring eight people and arresting two, the station’s director said.

Two of the injured protesters suffered severe wounds—one to the head and the other to the eye—after they were beaten by scores of police wielding electric batons and clubs during the demonstration against the Ministry of Information in Phnom Penh, station director and government critic Mam Sonando told RFA’s Khmer Service.

Sonando led Monday’s protest against the government’s repeated refusal to grant Beehive a television broadcast license and increase the radio station’s signal, claiming there is no frequency available.

The group had not received permission to hold the protest, which followed an earlier one that was also violently dispersed by police in January.

Cambodia has been accused of only granting television licenses to media that favors the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for decades. If given a license, Beehive’s station would become the Southeast Asian nation's first opposition television channel.

Mam Sonando called Monday’s crackdown an attempt to “shut people up,” adding that Cambodia is “ruled by dictators.”

“The Ministry of Information has abused the law, so how can they resolve this?” he asked. “The only way is to crack down on protesters.”

“We can do nothing but express our views for the international community to see,” he said.

Am Sam Ath, a senior official with Cambodian rights group Licadho, told RFA that the authorities had used “very excessive force” to crack down on the demonstrators.

“By law, if the demonstration is peaceful, the government must protect it,” he said.

Agence France-Presse quoted local rights group ADHOC as condemning the crackdown in a statement as a violation of human rights.

“Mam Sonando is demanding a TV license to counter the government's monopoly on televised media and greater reach for his radio station,” the statement said.

“A free and independent press is vital in a democracy; however the Cambodian government looks determined to keep a tight reign over access to information,” it added.

City Hall spokesman Long Dymong confirmed to RFA that authorities had arrested two people  but later released them.

“We detained them for their own education,” he said.

“They didn't want to express their views—they were inciting violence.”

Long Dymong accused the protestors of “looking down” at the authorities.

AFP quoted military police spokesman Kheng Tito as defending the crackdown, saying authorities carried out their duty within the law to “maintain security and public order” because the group had not been given permission to demonstrate.

Repeated refusals

Mam Sonando, who has dual Cambodian-French citizenship, was convicted in October 2012 for alleged involvement in a secession plot, but last March a court reversed the decision and released him from prison.

In June, the activist told RFA that his radio station risked closure following government restrictions and a refusal to allow the station to expand its broadcast range.

He said that the Ministry of Information was restricting overseas groups from buying airtime at the Phnom Penh-based Beehive and had turned down requests to set up relay stations to beam to the provinces.

Mam Sonando maintains that millions of listeners in the villages want to listen to his radio broadcasts and has expressed concern his station may be forced to close down due to funding problems.

In late January, Cambodian police used electric batons and smoke bombs to disperse Beehive Radio supporters, injuring at least eight people, after hundreds of protesters marched through police barricades on the streets of Phnom Penh in defiance of a ban on public gatherings.

Violent crackdowns

Authorities have quelled recent street protests against Hun Sen, whose government ended a ban on public demonstrations in the capital last month, though organizers must still request permission from local authorities to hold protests in public places.

Opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) leader Sam Rainsy led hundreds of supporters in a march through the capital and a meeting at his party’s headquarters on Sunday, abandoning plans to defy a separate government ban on rallies in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park.

It was the CNRP’s first public rally since early January when security forces violently dispelled opposition supporters from Freedom Park, where they had called for Hun Sen’s resignation and a reelection of disputed July 28 polls that saw his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) named the victor by the country’s government-appointed electoral body.

Authorities told the CNRP last week that the park is off-limits for gatherings while authorities investigate violence linked to the early January crackdown.

'It could take months, it could take years'

Many have pointed to lessons learned -- and heeded -- from the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.Should there be tighter rules about who's in the cockpit? That's happened. Should the Malaysian military have acted more quickly after the airliner went missing nearly four weeks ago? They've launched an investigation. Are there better ways to track commercial aircraft -- especially when, as in this case, its transponder is turned off? An international aviation organization says it will consider "all of the options."

But as much as things might change because of this mystery, it doesn't change the fact that -- for yet another day -- there are 239 families still grieving, still waiting, still venting over authorities' inability to answer what happened to the Boeing 777."We owe it to the world, we owe it to those families, to do whatever we reasonably can to get to the bottom of this," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Wednesday.Yes, authorities have said communications mysteriously, and seemingly purposefully, cut off shortly into the Beijing-bound flight. Yes, satellite data suggests the aircraft turned back over Malaysia before terminating somewhere in the vast southern Indian Ocean.

Yet there have been no solid leads about why any of this happened or where the plane ended up. In fact, officials don't seem to know all that much more on Day 27 after it disappeared sometime after leaving Kuala Lumpur than they did on Day 1.

All 227 passengers have been cleared of any role in hijacking or sabotage or having psychological or personal issues that might have played a role in the plane's disappearance, the inspector general of Malaysian police, Khalid Abu Bakar, told reporters Wednesday.

Police said Wednesday a review of a flight simulator found in a pilot's house proved inconclusive. And senior Malaysian government officials told CNN last week that authorities have found nothing about either of the pilots to suggest a motive. There have been no such public comments about the other 10 crew members, however.

"We don't have enough evidence to take (hijacking, sabotage or many other possibilities) off the table," Michael Kay, a former British pilot and military officer, told CNN. "What we need to do is keep an open mind, look at the facts, and keep building the jigsaw puzzle. Because that's all we have at the moment."

On Thursday, up to eight aircraft will set out looking for telltale debris across an 91,500 square-mile (237,000 square-kilometer) zone, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority says. Up to nine ships will search, including one British submarine racing against time to hear the signature pinging from Flight 370's flight data recorder.

There could be a breakthrough imminently; a seat cushion, a soda can, a life jacket could be spotted and scooped up, leading to the rest of the plane and, ultimately, to explain what happened.

So far, though, nothing has been found. In fact, it might be someone dipping her toes off a beach in Australia or Thailand or Malaysia who first notices something.

"We'll keep going til hell freezes over," Kim Beazley, Australia's former defense minister and current ambassador to the United States, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "It could take months, it could take years."

Official pleads for patience

Last Friday, officials announced that -- based on new analysis of satellite data -- they'd shifted the search area significantly closer to Australia's northwest coast. It moved again from Tuesday to Wednesday, albeit not as extensively. On Thursday, it moved again, a little farther north.

Why? Beazley explained it's because "we're eliminating areas from our inquiry" and moving to adjacent areas.

Yet David Soucie, a CNN safety analyst and author of "Why Planes Crash," said "from the outside looking in, it just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense."

"It just looks like they're following information and data that they're not confident in," Soucie said.

Ocean Shield: A mission of hope in search for Flight 370

Authorities have been upfront about many things they don't know about Flight 370 -- things like altitude, speed and direction that are key to pinpointing its final resting place.

Then there are questions about who and what was aboard.

While the passengers were cleared, investigators are still questioning relatives of all of those on the plane -- having already interviewed about 170 people -- as well as those who may have had access to it.

That includes scrutinizing those who prepared food for the flight, those who packed the cargo, and those who were to receive the cargo in China.

"Everything from beginning to end," said Khalid, the Malaysian police official.

Police are considering four criminal possibilities: hijacking, sabotage, personal problems and psychological issues, though mechanical failure hasn't been ruled out. Khalid stressed getting answers won't be easy, nor will it be quick.

"We have to clear every little thing," said Khalid. "You cannot hurry us in whatever we are doing."

Flight 370: High-tech search tools

'We cannot let another aircraft simply disappear'

Even without anything definitive, Malaysia Airlines has taken proactive steps to beef up cockpit security, two sources familiar with the airline's operations told CNN on Wednesday.

A new directive says no pilot or first officer is allowed to sit alone in the cockpit. Whenever one of them is outside the cockpit, a senior cabin steward must remain inside.

"These changes are positive in nature and directly relate to the MH370 incident," one of the sources told CNN.

This policy isn't new everywhere: It's long been in place for the United States, experts note.

"What they put in place is pretty common sense," said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Other reforms could be coming as well, and not just affecting Malaysia Airlines.

Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 surfaces pain of 1977 tragedy

Tony Tyler, director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association, in a recent speech pointed to "disbelief both that an aircraft could simply disappear and that the 'black box' is so difficult to recover."

He added, "We cannot let another aircraft simply disappear."

Toward that end, the association will form a task force that will include participation by the International Civil Aviation Organization to "examine all of the options available for tracking commercial aircraft" and then to report its conclusions by December.

A second lesson concerns security, Tyler said, citing the fact two passengers with phony passports were able to board the missing jetliner unchallenged.

Though these two men have since been cleared, the incident underscores a need for governments to do better checking passenger lists, he said. "Airlines are neither border guards nor policemen; that is the well-established responsibility of governments."

Family members still have questions

Such changes are all well and good. But they won't bring back the scores thought to have perished on Flight 370.

On Wednesday, families of 18 Chinese passengers -- out of 154 Chinese aboard -- met privately in Kuala Lumpur for three hours with Malaysian government officials and investigators. The meeting had been called after they accused Malaysia of not being upfront about the investigation.

Families of newlyweds still waiting

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, head of Malaysia's civil aviation department, said it was "a very good meeting." "We answered all their questions."The families' representative saw it differently. "I personally believe today's meeting had some progress, but the time was short and family members didn't have an opportunity to raise questions," said Jiang Hui.

Questions, questions, questions. There's no shortage of them.

Chief among them is will the flight data recorder be found before batteries on its locator beacon die -- which, according to its design standards, would happen April 7. Experts agree that it won't be easy, given all the unknowns."They are looking in a vast area in very deep waters ... and we really have no idea where it went in," said Bill Schofield, an Australian scientist who helped create the flight data recorders that, if found, could prove key to the investigation.

"A needle in a haystack would be much easier to find."