By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China–China has put an end to at least four child-trafficking rings and arrested more than a thousand people.  The culprits were apprehended for using websites and instant messaging groups to trade babies, Chinese authorities said Friday.

On February 19, police from 27 provinces across China rescued 382 babies and arrested 1,094 people suspected of buying and selling infants online, China’s Ministry of Public Security said in an online statement posted to its website earlier this week.

The sting was part of a six-month operation launched after police in Beijing and Jiangsu in eastern China received multiple reports of a suspicious website promoting “private” adoptions. Further investigations uncovered a virtual black market — involving four websites, online forums and some 30 groups on a popular Chinese messaging platform — that connected traffickers with potential buyers, and functioned as the gruesome equivalent of stock exchange.

The ministry said that at least a handful of the people arrested confessed to using the trafficking sites.

According to local media reports, 27 suspects were arrested in the country’s southern Sichuan province.  Thirteen babies were also rescued in the area. Another 43 suspects were arrested and eleven babies rescued in Anhui province, in eastern China.

A woman arrested by police in Leshan, Sichuan admitted to buying two baby girls from Wuhan and Chengdu, in August 2013 and January 2014, respectively, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Another couple in their mid-30’s told CCTV they used a Chinese website to buy a baby from an expectant teenage couple in Chengdu. They paid 20,000 Yuan (US$3,250) for the child.

Reports have yet to indicate where the other arrests took place.

Child trafficking has become a major issue for the Chinese government, as traffickers seek to profit off a mounting demand for healthy babies from potential adoptive parents both in China and beyond.

Last month, a Chinese doctor received a suspended death sentence for selling babies to a trafficking ring. The woman, an obstetrician at a hospital in Shaanxi province in central China, sold seven babies in six separate transactions.  She prompted the exchanges after persuading her patients that their newborns were sick and should be given up, according to statements posted on the local court’s official microblog account.

The ministry said its investigation into the online baby-trading networks is still ongoing. It did not indicate whether charges have been brought against any of the suspects, or if the trafficking extended beyond China.

For more information, please see:

CNN–Chinese police save hundred of babies from online trading racket–28 February 2014

Times of India–Chinese police crush online trafficking, rescue 382 babies–28 February 2014

US News and World Report–Chinese Babies Saved From Human Trafficking Ring–28 February 2014

Global Times–Police save 382 babies in trafficking crackdown–28 February 2014

By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China–Security officials in China’s far western borderlands have formally arrested a scholar and hero of the country’s ethnic Uighurs on charges of provoking separatism.

Authorities have confirmed that the scholar, Ilham Tohti, was being held in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, which is about 2,000 miles from Mr. Tohti’s home in Beijing.

The detention has been anticipated for some time, but the formal arrest of Mr. Tohti underscores the government’s determination to silence one of the few moderate voices for China’s beleaguered Uighurs, a predominantly Sunni Muslim people who speak a Turkic language.

An economics professor in Beijing, Mr. Tohti, 44, was an outspoken but careful critic of Chinese policies in Xinjian.  The energy-rich region that adjoins several Central Asian nations is a bit of a geopolitical minefield.  Tensions between Uighurs and Chinese security forces have turned increasingly more volatile, with almost weekly clashes that in recent months have taken more than 100 lives.

Security officials said Mr. Tohti had contributed to increasing such tensions through his classroom lectures and writings, a charge rejected by his supporters.

“The accusations are baseless,” said his lawyer, Li Fangping.

Mr. Tohti’s wife, Guzaili Nu’er, said her husband’s life was an open book, largely because his every word — like his movements — was closely monitored by the authorities.  “He is a sensible, educated man who just studied human rights, culture and religion in Xinjiang,” she said. “A separatist? Now that’s beyond the pale.”

Speaking from Urumqi, Mr. Li said he had been unable to see Mr. Tohti, who has been held in isolation since the police raided his Beijing apartment six weeks ago.  Security officials in Xinjiang on Wednesday did not respond to inquiries from reporters.

Even in China’s highly politicized judicial system, where political offenders almost never prevail in court, charges of separatism are notoriously and especially difficult to defend, experts say.

Under Chinese law, the mere highlighting of ethnic problems in places like Xinjiang and Tibet can be deemed as threats to national unity because the state refuses to acknowledge that such frictions exist.

Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said Mr. Tohti was widely known for his advocacy of Uighur rights and autonomy — guarantees enshrined in the Chinese Constitution — but never advocated independence for China’s 10 million Uighurs.

“In the eyes of the authorities, if you are flagging legitimate problems with policies in the region, you are essentially raising the dissatisfaction level of the people who are subjected to these policies,” Mr. Bequelin said. “It’s not a legal test but a political test. There is no defense.”

The penalties range from 10 years to death.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera–China charges Uighur academic with separatism–25 February 2014

New York Times–China Charges Scholar With Fomenting Separatism–26 February 2014

UNPO–East Turkestan: Tensions Over Arbitrary Detention of Ilham Tohti–26 February 2014

Voice of America–Uighur Group Slams China’s Charges Against Intellectuals–26 Feburary 2014

By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BANGKOK, Thailand–Gun battles exploded Tuesday between Thai police and anti-government protesters in Bangkok.  Four people were killed and dozens have been wounded as authorities made their most aggressive attempt yet to remove demonstrators from the streets.

In the midst of growing developments in Thailand’s long-standing political crisis, the country’s anti-corruption body announced it would file charges against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra regarding a rice subsidy scheme that has fuelled middle-class opposition to her government.

The troubled rice scheme, now on the verge of collapse, suffered another hit when the Government Savings Bank (GSB) said it would scrap a loan to a state-owned farm bank that could have been used to prop the scheme up in the face of a depositors’ revolt.

The clashes were some of the most intensive between protesters and security forces since efforts to dispose of Yingluck began last November. The military, which has determined to remain neutral unless police lose control, has not publicly commented on the violence.

The protests are the latest episode of an eight-year political saga broadly pitting the Bangkok middle-class and royalist groups against the poorer, and largely rural supporters of Yingluck and her billionaire brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

Witnesses reported hearing gunfire and seeing police fire weapons in the Phan Fa Bridge area near the old quarter of the city. Police said they had come under fire from a rooftop sniper and M-79 grenades.

A policeman was killed by a gunshot and several were wounded by a grenade, security officials said.

The Erawan Medical Center said on its website that three protesters had been killed in the gunfight. The Center said 64 people were wounded but did not indicate how many were police and how many were civilians.

Security officials reported earlier that 15,000 officers were a part of the operation, “Peace for Bangkok Mission”, to reclaim protest sites around central Bangkok’s Government House and other government offices to the north of the capital.

Yingluck has abandoned her offices in Government House in response to protesters, led by a former deputy premier, Suthep Thaugsuban, who have also blocked major intersections since mid-January.

Suthep told supporters at an evening rally in Bangkok’s central business district that protesters would gather on Wednesday outside Yingluck’s temporary offices at a Defence Ministry facility in north Bangkok.

“We are not afraid anymore. Tomorrow we will go to the Defence Ministry office… we will chase them (Yingluck and her ministers) out. No matter where Yingluck is, we will follow.”

Police said they arrested 183 people at two protest sites near the Energy Ministry, which had been cleared of protesters, and Phan Fa Bridge.  The protesters were detained for violating a state of emergency declared last month.

The violence began when clouds of teargas poured out near Government House and soon police were crouching behind riot shields as officers clashed with protesters. It was not clear who had fired the teargas and the authorities blamed protesters.

By the afternoon, police had mostly withdrawn from the sites and the streets were quiet. National Police Chief, Adul Saengsingkaew, told Reuters there were no plans to continue the operation on Wednesday.

The protesters are aiming to oust Yingluck, who is understood to be a proxy for her brother Thaksin, a former telecoms tycoon-turned-premier, ousted by the army in a 2006 coup.

The military has remained aloof from the latest crisis, but has a long history of intervening in politics, generally in support of the Bangkok establishment that includes the top brass, royal advisers and old-money families.

At the forefront of the protesters’ grievances is the rice subsidy scheme, a populist move to pay farmers an above-market price that has proved hugely expensive and run into massive funding hang-ups.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission announced an investigation last month and on Tuesday said it was summoning Yingluck to hear charges against her on February 27.

“Although she knew that many people had warned about corruption in the scheme, she still continued with it. That shows her intention to cause losses to the government so we have unanimously agreed to charge her,” Vicha Mahakhun, a member of the commission, said in a statement to reporters.

The GSB said on Sunday it had lent 5 billion baht ($155 million) to the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, which manages the rice program and has exhausted all of its resources to pay farmers.

Some GSB depositors, either worried that the loan could destabilize the bank or unwilling to see their money used to help the government, have been rapidly withdrawing their cash. On Monday alone, 30 billion baht ($930 million) was withdrawn.

The protests have also sent ripples through the economy. Data published on Monday showed growth slowed sharply in the fourth quarter of 2013. The baht currency has already weakened after Tuesday’s violence.

Yingluck called a snap election in December and has since led a caretaker administration with limited powers.  The elections were met with similar protests.

The main opposition party boycotted the February 2 election and protesters disrupted the process in Bangkok and the south, the powerbase of the opposition. It may be many months before there is the necessary quorum in parliament to elect a new prime minister.

The government, haunted by memories of a bloody 2010 crackdown by a previous administration that killed dozens of pro-Thaksin “red shirt” activists, has until now largely tried to avoid confrontation.

Tuesday’s fatalities brought the number of people killed in sporadic violence between protesters, security forces and government supporters to 15 since the demonstrations began. Hundreds have been hurt.

For more information, please see:

Wall Street Journal– At Least Four Dead in Bangkok Clashes–18 February 2014

CNN News–Thai police clash with anti-government protesters in Bangkok–18 February 2014

Reuters–Four killed in Thai clashes; PM to face charges over rice scheme–18 February 2014

Globe and Mail–Four dead, dozens injured in Thailand clashes–18 February 2014

Bangkok Post–PM charged for rice graft–18 February 2014

BBC–Thailand police and protester clash fatally in Bangkok–18 February 2014