'Zhengzhou 10' Supporters Take To Streets To Call For Their Release

Supporters of 10 detained anti-corruption activists took to the streets in the central Chinese province of Henan on Wednesday to draw public attention to their cause.

The "Zhengzhou 10" refers to a group of activists mostly being held for holding a memorial to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on a student democracy movement and two late former premiers, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang.

Police have also detained a number of campaigners who have flocked to Zhengzhou to call for their release in recent weeks.

Last month, civil rights activist Meng Xiaodong was detained by police after taking part in a rolling vigil outside two Zhengzhou detention centers where some of the activists are being held.

"Today, around a dozen of us split up to distribute leaflets on the streets and in places of leisure," civil rights campaigner Zhang Shengyu told RFA on Wednesday.

"We are telling the citizens of Zhengzhou about this so as to help the Zhengzhou 10," Zhang said.

"[The leaflets] include an introduction to the Zhengzhou 10 and how they ended up in the detention centers."

He said the group was also displaying the leaflets in public places. "Some of us are sticking them up at bus stops and on power cable poles," Zhang added.

The Zhengzhou 10 comprise seven activists who attended the memorial event, a journalist, and two lawyers who tried to represent them.

Zhengzhou petitioners Jia Lingmin and Liu Diwei, activists Chen Wei, her husband Yu Shiwen, Hou Shuai, Fang Yan and Dong Guangping were formally arrested on public order charges last month after being detained at the end of May.

Journalists Shi Ping, who goes by the pen-name Shi Yu, Yin Yusheng and Shao Shengdong were also detained around the same time, but Shi and Shao were later released on bail, according to the Chinese rights website Weiquanwang. Yin Yusheng is under criminal detention rather than formal arrest.

Two lawyers hired by those arrested, Chang Boyang and Ji Laisong, were themselves formally arrested.

The majority of the group have been charged with "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," while Chang has been charged with "conducting an illegal business," according to Chinese rights groups.

'Sleeping rough'

The leafleting campaign comes after police broke up a makeshift camp at the gates of one of the detention centers.

Activist Hu Yuhua said those taking part in the vigil are now having trouble finding a place to sleep, as police prevented them from camping outside the gates of the detention centers.

"Even the small guesthouses won't let us stay, so everyone is sleeping rough right now," Hu said. "Today, we are handing out leaflets."

Of the Zhengzhou 10, eight people are being held inside the Zhengzhou No. 3 Detention Center: Chang Boyang, Ji Laisong, Dong Guangping, Yu Shiwen, Chen Wei, Hou Shuai, Jia Lingmin and Liu Diwei.

Fellow activist Song Ningsheng said police had stepped up their campaign of detention and intimidation of activists at the beginning of August.

"They have detained some citizens, and threatened a lot of people, and forced them to leave town," Song said. "Those who stayed behind ... are calling on the government to abide by its own laws."

"We are all planning to stay here until they release the people they are holding," Song added.

Beijing-based rights lawyer Hu Guiyun said a number of lawyers have been raising funds to hire lawyers to represent detained campaigners.

But local authorities have so far prevented lawyers from meeting with the majority of detainees.

"We have requested meetings with [detainees in] the Zhengzhou case, but no meetings have been set up," Hu said. "These citizens who went to Zhengzhou have also been campaigning for the right of the detainees to meet with lawyers."

"So now, we lawyers want to help protect the rights of those rights activists," she said.

Tiananmen anniversary

Authorities detained dozens of activists, lawyers, academics and journalists before the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square bloodshed, and tightened controls on dissent, free speech and the Internet.

Many of those who were placed under house arrest or taken on enforced "vacations" were later released, while others face trial on public order charges similar to those the Zhengzhou 10 are accused of.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party bans public memorials marking the event, although police have escorted the relatives of those who died from house arrest to cemeteries to pay their respects to loved ones in private.

The party has continued to ignore growing calls in China and overseas for a reappraisal of the 1989 student protests, which it once styled a "counterrevolutionary rebellion."

The number of people killed when People's Liberation Army tanks and troops entered Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989 remains a mystery.

Beijing authorities once put the death toll at "nearly 300," but the central government, which labelled the six weeks of pro-democracy protests a "counterrevolutionary uprising," has not issued an official toll or list of names.

Opposition take oaths before King

Elected more than a year ago, 55 opposition lawmakers yesterday afternoon formally took their oaths in front of King Norodom Sihamoni and top Buddhist clergy at the Royal Palace, ending a more than 10-month boycott of parliament.

After a tumultuous year in Cambodian politics that began with the watershed July 2013 election, the CNRP will take its seats in the National Assembly this Friday and begin debating laws, party officials said.

Freedom Park – the capital’s designated protest space, which has remained off limits since CNRP supporters were violently evicted from it in January – will officially reopen today or Thursday, they added.

While three opposition youths currently behind bars in connection to a July 15 protest that turned violent are expected to be released soon, their lawyer said yesterday evening that he had yet to receive a reply to a bail request filed with the court on Monday.

Leaving the palace yesterday after the 45-minute swearing-in ceremony, deputy CNRP leader Kem Sokha said the opposition will now be protected by parliamentary immunity, allowing them to counter the government without fear of legal threats.

“We have fulfilled what we promised, and we have fully received immunity as of today. We can continue our nonviolent struggle without a court system being [used to] threaten us or scare us any longer,” he said.

People who snuck through gaps in the razor-wire barricades play volleyball in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park late yesterday afternoon. Charlotte Pert

Before going to the palace yesterday, the 55 opposition lawmakers gathered at the National Assembly for photos. Dressed in ceremonial white, they posed on the steps of parliament holding up seven fingers, representing the party’s ballot number at last July’s election.

Son Chhay, the party’s chief whip, said that the 55 would take their seats on Friday, after a meeting with the CPP.

“Tomorrow, the members of parliament from both parties will meet to prepare the agenda for a session on August 8,” he said.

According to public affairs head Mu Sochua, after the new leadership of parliament is approved – which will see Kem Sokha appointed as first deputy president of the assembly and the CNRP take the heads of five commissions – the first order of business will be passing laws debated by the parties since they struck a deal to end the deadlock on July 22.

This will include amendments to enshrine an overhauled National Election Committee in the constitution. The new elections body, which will be made up of four ruling party appointees, four opposition appointees and a ninth consensus candidate, will also be regulated by a new law on its organisation and functioning, Sochua said.

“The current election law is going to be divided into two laws – the law on the organisation and functioning of the NEC . . . and another law will be about election procedures,” she said.

Rights activist Pung Chhiv Kek, the ninth NEC member, had demanded that parliamentary style immunity for all members of the elections body be enshrined in the constitution – which the CPP rejected.

Talks have produced a compromise that will see NEC members offered protection similar to that enjoyed by members of the Constitutional Council and the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, Sochua said.

Kek could not be reached for comment yesterday, but Sochua said the CNRP had explained the decision to her after Rainsy and Interior Minister Sar Kheng reached a final agreement on Monday.

“As far as I know, we have met with her and explained the technicality.”

According to a senior senator from the Sam Rainsy Party, the SRP and CPP will also meet today to talk about reshuffling leadership roles in the senate to give the opposition more power.

Senior CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap said yesterday that his party was happy to finally welcome the CNRP to parliament.

The opposition had labeled the assembly as “illegal” since it was inaugurated with only 68 CPP lawmakers present last September, but Yeap indicated the past year of vitriol was now considered water under the bridge.

“Stop speaking about what is in the past. Making accusations at each other is over now,” he said.

City Hall spokesman Long Dimanche confirmed yesterday evening that he was still “waiting on the order” to bring down remaining barricades around Freedom park, but that it would “not take long”.

According to Sochua, opening Freedom Park after the CNRP lawmakers’ swearing in was part of the July 22 agreement.

In a joint statement yesterday, nine civil society organizations, including Comfrel, Adhoc and the Housing Rights Task Force, condemned the park’s long closure.

“At the time of the park’s inauguration, human rights groups expressed grave concerns that rather than increasing freedom of expression . . . [it] would place additional regulations or restriction on peaceful demonstrations,” the statement says.

“Unfortunately, these concerns have been realised. Instead of promoting freedom of expression, Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park has become a symbol of oppression.”

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ALICE CUDDY, VONG SOKHENG AND CHEANG SOKHA

Opening marks a ‘return to freedom’

After more than half a year in lockdown, Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park reopened to the public yesterday morning, while the results of an investigation repeatedly cited as the reason for its ongoing closure remained elusive.

At about 8am, more than 100 mixed forces along with Daun Penh district security guards – who have on numerous occasions beaten people protesting against the park’s closure – brought down the razor-wire barricades surrounding the area.

The reopening of the park, part of an agreement between the Cambodia National Rescue Party and the Cambodian People’s Party to end the political deadlock, came a day after opposition lawmakers were sworn into the National Assembly.

CNRP parliamentarian Mu Sochua, who personally headed a months-long campaign to “free Freedom Park”, said its reopening marked a return of freedom to the Kingdom.

“It is a good sign . . . Freedom Park is a symbol of freedom of assembly and expression and democracy,” she said. “It’s not just about [the park] . . . it’s also the lifting of all blanket bans on protests.”

In January, the park, which was established in 2010 as the capital’s designated space for people to exercise their freedoms of assembly and expression, was declared off limits to demonstrators and gatherings with political undertones.

On the eve of Labour Day demonstrations on May 1, razor-wire fences were erected around the park, blocking all entrances.

Last month, a protest calling for the government to bring down the barricades ended in violence when the crowd responded to baton-wielding security guards’ aggressive attempts to disperse them with brutal mob beatings.

Seven CNRP lawmakers and four other party members have been arrested for their alleged role in the violence. Three of them remain in prison, while the rest – as well as CNRP deputy leader Kem Sokha – have been summonsed to court on various dates over the next week for further questioning.

Officials had previously said the reopening of the park was dependent on the closure of government investigations into the fatal violence of early January and other clashes.

Various government officials have said that one such investigation ended months ago.

But no findings have been released publicly, and as the fences were dismantled yesterday, results seemed as distant as ever before.

City Hall spokesman Long Dimanche said “authorities are still investigating the January violence”, but the park was opened up again because “security and public order are back to normal”.

While Sochua said she had “no idea” what was happening with the investigation, she told the Post that the National Assembly’s Human Rights Commission, which will be controlled by the CNRP,
would investigate the events.

As the park reopened, local residents and business owners celebrated.

Food vendor Siv Lin said her income had plummeted with the park’s closure. “Previously, we commanded some 300,000 riel [$75] per day . . . recently we have earned only 40,000 riel.”

Phuong Chea, a regular at park protests, said people could once again “express their freedom”.

Police officers move riot barricades in preparation for the reopening of Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park yesterday, seven months after security forces violently drove opposition supporters out. Vireak Mai

But Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan warned that while Freedom Park “belongs to the public”, the government “won’t let any group or person [use it] to create a public disturbance”.

Ou Virak, chairman of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the park reopening had only “symbolic value”.

“It also shows that the CPP . . . does whatever it wants,” he said. “The implementation of the ban was never anything to do with the law.”

Virak said that if the government was interested in complying with its 2009 Law on Peaceful Assembly, it should create a version of Freedom Park in every province.

“This should have happened six months after it was introduced,” he said.

He added that he did not expect to ever see the results of any government investigation.

“It is no longer politically convenient for either of the two parties,” he said.

Ministry to pay compensation for damages caused by crack in hydropower dam

The dam at Ia Krel 2 hydropower plant on Po Co River in the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai broke again on August 1, causing a flash flood that devastated crops and infrastructure. About 60 hectares of crops were flooded and 30 hectares of rubber trees were damaged.

Nguyen Ngoc An, deputy director of the Bao Long Gia Lai Industries and Hydropower Company, the investor of the plant, said that cracks were found across the surface of the dam at 8:00 am. Thirty minutes later, a 100-metre section of the dam broke, causing water to flow out and submerge the surrounding area.

Last year, when 30 metres of the dam broke, local authorities spent nearly VND3 billion (US$141.4 million) to compensate those living nearby for property damages. Damages from the latest incident have not yet been calculated.

"We sent an urgent report regarding the incident to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung for instructions and assistance," said Hoang Cong Lu, deputy chairman of the provincial People's Committee.

The Ministry of Construction requested on Saturday that Gia Lai province authorities coordinate with the ministries of industry and trade and agriculture and rural development to determine what caused the incident.

Relevant agencies were also asked to send reports to the Ministry of Construction about the safety of other lakes and dams in the province by the end of the month.

At a press conference on August 4, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai stressed that this time the small dike around the dam was broken, not the dam.

He said that Minister Vu Huy Hoang and Deputy Minister Le Duong Quang went to Gia Lai to identify the cause and determine the consequences.

He said that the Ministry was willing to be responsible for all matters related to hydropower. He said the losses would be calculated and the ministry would pay compensation to local people.

This hydropower project has a capacity of 5,5MW. It was built in Duc Co district, Gia Lai province by Bao Long Gia Lai JSC. The project started in late 2009, licenced by the People's Committee of Gia Lai province.

The dam began to stock water from early 2013. The dam broke for the first time on June 12, 2013.

7 killed in Pakistan drone strike, sources says

Seven suspected militants were killed and three others were injured Wednesday in a drone strike in Pakistan, Pakistani intelligence and government officials told CNN on Wednesday.

The incident occurred in the country's tribal region of North Waziristan. The strike targeted a house used as a base for Uzbek fighters.There is a significant presence of militants in the region.

35 years on, top Khmer Rouge leaders face justice in Cambodia

Thirty-five years after the fall of Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, believed responsible for deaths of at least 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979, only a single person has been brought to justice over one of the 20th century's great atrocities.That will change Thursday, when two top leaders of the former Khmer Rouge regime will hear verdicts for their alleged crimes against humanity, in the first trial they face relating to their alleged activities in the 1970s.

The octogenarians in the dock are Nuon Chea, the former Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea known as "Brother Number Two," and Khieu Samphan, the one-time President of Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge's state, known as "Brother Number Four."

Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for the accused, who both deny guilt and are seeking acquittal.

The men were senior leaders in the Khmer Rouge regime, which ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. During that time at least 1.7 million people -- about a quarter of the Cambodian population -- are believed to have died from forced labor, starvation and execution, as the movement ruthlessly executed its radical social engineering policies aimed at creating a purely agrarian society.

An ongoing struggle for justice after Khmer Rouge

Who is hearing the case?

The charges are being heard in Phnom Penh in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) -- a special United Nations-backed tribunal that was formed in 2006 to prosecute senior Khmer Rouge leaders and other regime figures responsible for especially heinous acts.

The "hybrid" tribunal -- officially "an ad hoc Cambodian court with international participation" -- uses both Cambodian and international judges and staff employed by the U.N. in order to ensure the trials are conducted to international standards and to mitigate against the weakness of the Cambodian legal system.

Eight years on, the ECCC has delivered only one verdict.

In the ECCC's Case 001, Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known by his alias, Duch, was sentenced to life imprisonment following his 2010 convictions for war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder and torture. He was the commandant of the notorious Tuol Sleng S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, where more than 14,000 people died.The verdicts on Thursday in the case known as 002/01 will be the first time that senior leaders of the regime have faced justice.Who are the accused?Nuon Chea, born in 1926, was Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's brother-in-law, and was considered his right-hand man and a key ideologist throughout the regime's reign of terror.

Trained in law in Bangkok, the 88-year-old was second-ranked in the Communist Party of Kampuchea (as the Khmer Rouge is officially known) and served a short stint as Democratic Kampuchea's prime minister.

Prosecutors described him as an extremist who "crossed the line from revolutionary to war criminal responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians," according to the ECCC.

Following the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979, he remained a leading Khmer Rouge figure in the years the movement operated as a rebel guerrilla force in Cambodia's west. He surrendered in 1998, striking a deal with the government that allowed him to live as a free man near the Thai border until his arrest in 2007, according to the ECCC.

In his final statement to the court, Nuon Chea admitted he carried "moral responsibility" for events during the period, but also affirmed his innocence, according to the ECCC.

"The CPK's policy and plan were solely designed to one purpose only, to liberate the country from the colonization, imperialism, exploitation, extreme poverty and invasion from neighboring countries," he said.

"The CPK's policy was clear and specific: it wanted to create an equal society where people were the master of the country ... The CPK's movement was not designed to kill people or destroy the country. My hope and wishes were betrayed by those who destroyed the movement."

INTERACTIVE: Five faces of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge

Like many other Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan studied in Paris, publishing his doctoral dissertation on "Cambodia's economy and industrial development." On his return home, he became a professor and then took on a senior government position before joining the Khmer Rouge rebels.

In 1976, he became the head of state of Democratic Kampuchea, and in 1987, years after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, he replaced Pol Pot as the head of the Khmer Rouge after the former's retirement.

Throughout the trial, he expressed remorse for the suffering of victims, at one point offering Buddhist prayers for the souls of those who had died. But he repeatedly expressed his position that he was merely a figurehead, with no role in Khmer Rouge policy.

In his final statement, he expressed his view that the court was pre-determined to find him guilty. "[W]hatever I did was to uphold the respect for fundamental rights, and build a Cambodia that was strong, independent and peaceful," he said. "Those who will decide on my case have refused to take into consideration the truth, and now classify me as a monster."What are the charges?The charges they face relate to alleged crimes against humanity committed in the course of two forced mass population movements after the Khmer Rouge came to power, and the alleged large-scale execution of officers and officials of the previous Khmer Republic regime that was toppled by the Khmer Rouge.