Images of deserted markets and shuttered shops are circulating across Vietnamese social media – not the result of a pandemic, but as the visible impact of a government policy. In recent weeks, the Vietnamese government has rolled out a sweeping campaign to crack down on counterfeit goods and to enforce a new tax collection regime. The primary targets have been small businesses. The prime minister issued a directive on May 24 urging all levels of government to “step up the fight against counterfeit goods.” The government also introduced Decree 70,…
Category: RFA
US resettlement freeze leaves Vietnamese refugee fearing deportation from Thailand
Vietnamese asylum seeker An and his family had one foot in the door to resettlement in the United States — until President Donald Trump issued an executive order that closed it. The Jan. 20 executive order was just the beginning of his problems. On May 27, his wife Ngoc got a phone call from her husband. “I’ve been arrested by the police,” An told her. He’d been arrested by Thai police in Bangkok where his family of four had sought asylum seven years earlier and were waiting patiently for resettlement.…
Scorsese reflects on ‘spiritual act’ of making film about the Dalai Lama
NEW YORK — The making of Martin Scorsese’s 1997 Oscar-nominated film Kundun was a “spiritual act” and a “very personal and special project,” the legendary filmmaker said at a rare public screening of the film on the big screen at the Tribeca Festival in New York. Friday’s screening was part of global celebrations honoring the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday. Kundun chronicles the early life of the Tibetan spiritual leader, from his discovery as the 14th Dalai Lama as a young child in Tibet to his escape into exile in India…
Chinese police crackdown on writers of online erotic fiction
Police in northwestern China are cracking down on writers of online erotic fiction across the country, including many college students, according to RFA sources and media reports, amid concern that officers are punishing people outside their jurisdiction. Police in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, have been summoning writers who don’t even live there. A report from Caixin media group said some have been referred to police for prosecution, and anecdotal evidence indicates writers are facing substantial fines. A source who spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity…
OPINION: Lessons from testing AI on the truth of Tiananmen
Last week marked the 36th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Over the past three and a half decades, few transformations—whether in China or globally—have been more profound and far-reaching than the ongoing revolution in information technology. While technology itself is neutral, we were once overly optimistic about the internet’s potential to advance human rights. Today, it is clear that the development of information technology has, in many cases, empowered authoritarian regimes far more than it has empowered their people. Moreover, it has eroded the foundations of democratic societies…
Imprisoned Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong faces new ‘foreign collusion’ charge
Read about this topic in Cantonese. One of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, was transported from prison to court Friday and charged with colluding with foreign forces, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Wong, 28, is already serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for subversion. He is currently due for release about one-and-a-half years from now. If found guilty on the new charge it could prolong his imprisonment. Wong is one of the most internationally recognizable faces of the now-quashed democracy movement in the city. He was…
Trump, Xi pave way for fresh trade talks in 90-minute call
Read about this topic in Cantonese. President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping agreed on fresh trade talks to overcome a tariff stalemate in a highly anticipated phone call on Thursday that China’s state media reported first, stressing that it was the U.S. leader who initiated it. On his social media feed, Trump described the 90-minute conversation as a “very good phone call.” It came during a tense period in U.S.-China relations after Washington accused Beijing of backtracking on a May 12 agreement to reduce tariffs by not freeing up…
Tiananmen Mothers face blackout as China tries to silence memory of June 4 crackdown
On the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, families of victims held an annual memorial at a Beijing cemetery even as authorities left them incommunicado amid a tightening grip by China on commemorations of the 1989 crackdown against pro-democracy protesters. For the first time, authorities banned the members of the Tiananmen Mothers group from carrying mobile phones and cameras as they gathered at the Wan’an cemetery, severing their contact with the outside world. But the elderly mothers still laid flowers for their loved ones who were killed in the June…
Thailand resists Cambodia push to take border dispute to UN court
Read reporting on this topic in Khmer. Thailand is resisting Cambodia’s push to bring their border dispute to the U.N. International Court of Justice after a firefight last week that killed one Cambodian soldier, raising tensions between the Southeast Asian neighbors. In a press statement Wednesday, the Thai government said its troops had acted in self-defense during a routine patrol in an area under Thai sovereignty. About Cambodia’s proposal “to resort to a judicial mechanism or a third party,” Thailand stressed that it is “ready to engage in negotiations with…
VietJet Air asks government to go after its online critics
Read about this topic in Vietnamese. VietJet Air, Vietnam’s biggest private commercial airline, has asked the mayor of Hanoi to take action against people spreading “false information” about the company online. And the mayor is doing just that. In a statement published by the Vietnamese government on Monday, the Mayor Tran Sy Thanh ordered relevant agencies to investigate and handle Facebook accounts responsible for disseminating “false information” about Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the billionaire CEO of VietJet. The post on the government’s official Facebook account, however, was later edited to…