By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Desk Reporter, Asia

Reports say the Vietnamese government has intensified its repression of Christians (Photo courtesy of the Associated Press)

HANOI, Vietnam – Vietnam has increased repression of minority Christians, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports released on Thursday. Some of the signs of repression includes, but is not limited to, closing small informal churches, compelling collective renunciations of faith, arresting worshipers, torturing and preventing them to seek asylum abroad.

In Vietnam, all religious groups are required to register with the government according to its law.

Vietnam’s indigenous minority Christian community located in the country’s Central highland provinces, known as the Montagnards or “Dega Protestants”, is unregistered and outside the control of the official Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam.

The Vietnamese government doubts that these Dega Protestants are a legitimate religious group but rather a politically motivated group fighting for a Montagnard independence movement.

The Montagnards, however, are claiming their legitimacy and press for religious freedom and land rights, prompting the government crackdown, according to a report by the US-based HRW.

‘In recent months, the Vietnamese government has increased its harassment of peaceful ethnic minority Christians in the Central Highlands, targeting members of unregistered house churches,’ the report said.

In some instances, police officers destroy the churches of unauthorized groups and detain or imprison the members of church on charges of violating national security. There have been reports of torture by these church members. One man who was sentenced to five years in prison described how the police beat him in the face.

“Blood came out of my ears and my nose. I went crazy from this. It was so painful, and also the build-up made me very afraid and tense,” he said.

This unidentified man remains partially deaf as a result of the beating, while other prisoners and detainees also express similar experiences of torture.

Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director based in New York, called for immediate recognition of these independent religious groups by the Vietnamese government to allow them to practice their beliefs.

“Montagnards face harsh persecution in Vietnam, particularly those who worship in independent house churches, because the authorities don’t tolerate religious activity outside their sight or control,” he said.

“The Vietnamese government has been steadily tightening the screws on independent Montagnard religious groups, claiming they are using religion to incite unrest.”

He added: “Freedom of religion does not mean freedom for state-sanctioned religions only.”

For more information, please see:

Christian Today – Human Rights Watch condemns repression of Christians in Vietnam – 31 March 2011

Straights Times – Vietnam steps up repression of Christian group – 31 March 2011

The New York Times – Vietnam Persecutes Christian Minority, Report Says – 31 March 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

MANILA, Philippines – Appeals have been abandoned in China as three Philippine citizens are executed after drug smuggling conviction.

The two women and one man, Elizabeth Batain, 38, Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, 32, and Ramon Credo, 42 were arrested on separate occasions carrying packages containing at least 8lb (4kg) of heroin.

They were the first Filipinos to be executed in China for drug trafficking, Philippine officials said.

The families of two of the prisoners had sent open letters appealing for leniency, arguing they had been conned by others.

China’s foreign ministry considers drug trafficking to be a serious offence and that justice had been served.

The three Philippine nationals were executed by lethal injection on Wednesday.

China normally does not announce executions. Amnesty International says China is the world’s biggest executioner, with thousands of convicts killed every year. The Philippines has abolished the death penalty.

Edwin Lacierda, Philippine presidential spokesman, issued a statement after receiving news of the executions: “Their deaths are a vivid lesson in the tragic toll the drug trade takes on entire families.”

He said the government will act strongly to battle drug organizations. “We are resolved to ensure that the chain of victimization, as pushers entrap and destroy lives in pursuit of their trade, will be broken,” he said.

Prayer vigils and special masses were organized in Manila and other cities in the days before the executions were carried out, in the hope of a “miracle” reprieve for the three convicts; reports Jaime FlorCruz, CNN.

“No miracles happened,” wrote Rodel Rodis, a lawyer based in San Francisco, in his posting on Facebook. Rodis opposed the executions, saying “they are human beings with families and they were just dupes of drug syndicates.”

Ramon Tulfo, a prominent multi-media commentator in Manila, had a different view. “We have a lot of things to cry over, so let’s not waste our tears on three convicted criminals who brought shame to our country,” Tulfo wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “If we continue to plead for (their lives), we might give the impression that our country is a haven of drug mules. Let’s allow the Chinese people to carry out their harsh antidrug trafficking law, as we would expect them to carry out ours in case Chinese (are) caught trying to smuggle drugs into our country.”

The three Filipinos were originally scheduled for execution on February 20, but China agreed to postpone the executions after Philippine Vice President Jejomar Binay traveled to Beijing to plead on their behalf.

The three had not been told they would be executed Wednesday, although their sentences were publicized early in the day, Philippine Consul Noel Novicio said.

“They gave us only one hour (with her). They have no mercy,” Ordinario-Villanueva’s sister, Maylene Ordinario, said in a text message from Xiamen to her family in the Philippines.

Jayson Ordinario, Ordinario-Villanueva’s younger brother, said last week that his sister was hired as a cellphone dealer in Xiamen and was tricked into carrying a bag that had a secret compartment loaded with heroin, allegedly by her job recruiter.

Aquino urged Filipinos to remain calm, he said while the three were convicted of drug trafficking, they could also be considered victims of unscrupulous recruiters and drug traffickers, and of a society unable to provide enough jobs at home.

“Our ultimate goal is to create a situation where people are not pressured to resort to these things, where they can find enough gainful employment in the Philippines,” he added.

Around 10 percent of the Philippines’ 94 million people work abroad to escape a lifestyle of poverty and unemployment.

For more information, please see:

TIME – China Executes 3 Filipino Drug Mules – 30 March 2011

BBC – China executes three Filipinos for drugs smuggling – 30 March 2011

CNN – China executes three Filipinos for drug smuggling – 30 March 2011

The Washington Post – Philippines says China executes 3 Filipinos convicted of drug smuggling despite appeals – 30 March 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

SEOUL, South Korea – The Pentagon’s interest in No Gun Ri was released in January 2001. The Pentagon’s conclusion and investigation acknowledged the killing of civilians at No Gun Ri by US forces, but it limited its conclusion, interpreting the “killings that took place as accidental attacks, an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war” reported BBCs Jeremy Williams.

Air Force Colonel Turner Rogers wrote a memo the day before killings at No Gun Ri. The memo stated, “[t]he Army has requested we blitz all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions.”

The memo went on to confirm the instructions which were acted upon. The memo concluded that, “[t]o date, we have complied with the army request in this respect”.

After 50 years, “the only major American investigation into the killing of refugees focused exclusively on the activities of the US Army over a small geographic area during one month of a conflict that lasted three years”, stated BBC reported Jeremy Williams.

Bruce Cumings, Department of History chair at the University of Chicago, wrote the book “The Korean War”  which depicts how little the U.S. knew about who it was fighting, why it was fighting, and even how it was fighting.

Though the North Koreans had a reputation for viciousness, according to Cumings, U.S. soldiers actually engaged in more civilian massacres. This included dropping over half a million tons of bombs and thousands of tons of napalm, more than was loosed on the entire Pacific theater in World War II.

Hanson Baldwin, the military correspondent for The New York Times was interviewed by Lawrence Velvel, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, described “North Koreans as locusts, like Nazis, like vermin, who come shrieking on. I mean, this is really hard stuff to read in an era when you don’t get away with that kind of thinking anymore.”

Cumings adds, “Rapes were extremely common. Koreans in the South will still say that that was one of the worst things of the war, [acknowledging] how many American soldiers were raping Korean women.”

Cumings believed that Douglas MacArthur, the General who commanded U.S. forces in Korea was prejudiced against Asians and badly underestimated their fighting capabilities.

He went on to say that, “[o]n the day the North Koreans invaded the South in force on June 25, 1950, MacArthur boasted, according to Cummings, ‘’I can beat these guys with one hand tied behind my back’. This stated even after the CIA had warned MacArthur that 200,000 Chinese troops were crossing the border into North Korea, MacArthur said, “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry about it, Chinamen can’t fight.”

In the end it was the Chinese who advanced U.S. forces, clearing them out of Korea in as little as two weeks.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission charged with investigating wartime atrocities has found that American troops killed groups of South Korean civilians on 138 separate occasions during the Korean War. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is led by operations President Lee.

“We welcome the efforts of the Republic of Korea to investigate abuses of human rights and efforts to correct any possible inaccuracy in the historical record,” said Mark C. Toner, a State Department spokesman.

Lee Chang-geun, 77, whose parents were among an estimated 300 South Korean soldiers, railway officials, students and other civilians killed on July 11, 1950, when American aircraft bombed the train station in Iri, a southern town many miles behind the front line said:

“I want to ask the Americans: Is it O.K. to bomb civilians by mistake?” Mr. Lee said. “I want to ask: Just because their military came to help South Korea, is it O.K. to kill South Korean civilians and keep mum about it?”

An estimated 855 refugees were killed, including 200 crammed inside a cave and suffocated by fires set off by air attacks; 100 huddled on a beach and shelled by an American ship; and 35 attacked by American aircraft in Kyongju, a town behind the lines in the south, reported Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times.

“They have so far uncovered just a tip of the iceberg,” said Oh Won-rok, 70, who said his father was killed without trial by the South Korean police in July 1950. “So many victims did not come forward [during tribunal hearings], out of fear he said.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Kill ’em All: The American Military in Korea – 17 February 2011

Global Research – The Korean War: The “Unknown War”. The Coverup of US War Crimes – 16 March 2011

New York Times – Korean War Panel Finds U.S. Attacks on Civilians – 9 July 2009

By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Desk Reporter, Asia

Google has accused the Chinese government of interfering with Gmail’s services (Photo courtesy of Reuters).

BEIJING, China– One Beijing entrepreneur called his fiancee to discuss restaurant choices during which he used the word “protest’ as he quoted Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The second time he said the word “protest,” his phone cut off, according to the New York Times article.

Using the word “protest” in any context, whether through cell phone, text messages, or other electronic devices, it is reported that people’s services get cut off instantly. In the advent of a jasmine revolution sweeping the middle east and North Africa, Chinese government was swift in heightening its censorship level to the current state.

The report said a number of evidence in the past few weeks showed that Chinese authorities were resolute to censor and police cellphone calls, electronic messages, e-mail and access to the Internet in order to quell any hint of antigovernment movement.

“The hard-liners have won the field, and now we are seeing exactly how they want to run the place,” said Russell Leigh Moses, an analyst in Beijing on China’s leadership. “I think the gloves are coming off.”

In addition, a host of other evidence suggests that the government’s computers are equipped to intercept incoming data and compare it with an ever-growing list of banned keywords or Web sites. For example, for six months or more, the censors have prevented Google searches of the English word “freedom.”

According to Peking University professor Hu Yong, the newest technology and social media have not only helped citizens spread information amongst each other on outside events, but also the government in censoring what it perceived to be new threats. “The technology is improving and the range of sensitive terms is expanding because the depth and breadth of things they [government] must manage just keeps on growing,” Mr. Hu said.

China’s censorship has been in effect ever more strictly since the 2008 Olympics, with what first appeared to be temporary ban on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter now considered permanent. Now, Google might be its next target.

On Sunday, Google accused the Chinese government of disabling its Gmail service within the country, and of wrongfully blaming the interruption on technical errors by Google. According to a Mar 4 online article of People’s Daily, China’s main communist daily, Google was accused as being “a tool of the United States government.” Like Facebook and Twitter, the article was reported to have said, Google has “played a role in manufacturing social disorder” and sought to involve itself in other nations’ politics.

Internet expert Bill Bishop suspects that the regime’s grip could only tighten in the months to come, in order to control the transition of power as the Communist Party expects to see a new leader next year. “There’s a lot more they can do,” Bishop said, “but they’ve been holding back.”

For more information, please see:

Tibetan Review – ‘Protest’ a no-no word in China – 23 March 2011

The New York Times – China Tightens Censorship of Electronic Communications – 21 March 2011

Switched – China Ramps Up Online Censorship, To No One’s Surprise – 22 March 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

SEOUL, South Korea – The US atrocities during the Korean War have emerged casting a shadow over the conduct of US officers and generals in command during the conflict.

The Korean War left Korea, North and South, with several million dead and the UN forces involved in the fighting with over 100,000 casualties.

Published testimonies, by BBC, of Korean survivors who recall such killings, and the candid accounts of American veterans brave enough to admit involvement open the World to American atrocities once forgotten.

The Korean War began on June 25^th 1950 when communist North Korea invaded the South with six army divisions. The United States decided to intervene in the defense of the South and, taking advantage of the Soviet absence from the UN Security Council, proceeded to press for UN resolutions condemning the invasion. A resolution was passed, days later, calling upon member countries to give assistance to South Korea to repulse the attack.

The American troops who were rushed to the front line straight from occupation duty in Tokyo in July 1950 were badly led, undertrained and underprepared and quickly defeated by superior North Korean forces. North Korean guerrilla methods were too advanced for US commanders, reports BBC reporter Jeremy Williams.

The surprise attack from the North produced a refugee crisis were up to two million refugees were running across the battlefield.

Fearing North Korean infiltration, the US leadership panicked. All civilians were seen as the enemy.

As a result, on July 26^th the US 8th Army, the highest level of command in Korea, issued orders to stop all Korean civilians. ‘No, repeat, no refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time. Movement of all Koreans in groups will cease immediately’ reports Williams.

The same day US 8th Army delivered its stop refugee order in July 1950, up to 400 South Korean civilians gathered by the bridge were killed by US forces from the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Some were shot above the bridge, on the railroad tracks. Others were strafed by US planes. Local survivors say more were killed under the arches in an ordeal that lasted for three days.

‘The floor under the bridge was a mixture of gravel and sand. People clawed with their bare hands to make holes to hide in,’ recalls survivor Yang Hae Chan. ‘Other people piled up the dead like a barricade, and hid behind the bodies as a shield against the bullets.’

Corroborating the Korean survivors’ testimony are the accounts of 35 veterans of the 7th Cavalry Regiment who recall events at No Gun Ri.

‘There was a lieutenant screaming like a madman, fire on everything, kills ’em all,’ recalls 7th Cavalry veteran Joe Jackman. ‘I didn’t know if they were soldiers or what. Kids, there was kids out there, it didn’t matter what it was, eight to 80, blind, crippled or crazy, they shot ’em all’ said Jackman.

The killings discovered at No Gun Ri mark one of the largest single massacres of civilians by American forces in the 20th century.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Kill ’em All: The American Military in Korea – 17 February 2011

Global Research – The Korean War: The “Unknown War”. The Coverup of US War Crimes – 16 March 2011

New York Times – Korean War Panel Finds U.S. Attacks on Civilians – 9 July 2009