Thai boxing legend Buakaw Banchamek 40, took part in Cobra Gold’s Strategic Airborne Operations (SAO) training at the 1st Infantry Regiment, King Bhumibol’s Guard in Lopburi Province, central Thailand, March 5.
He gave Muay Thai lessons to American soldiers, which involve only the use of one’s bare hands and punching and kicking. There were also more than 10 boxing teachers who joined in to practice the demonstration.
Today’s demonstration and training of Muay Thai martial arts has brought the science of “Wai Khru” Muay Thai dance, using fists, feet, knees, and elbows, as contained in the 9 levels of training that has been certified by the International Federation of Muay Thai Associations; IFMA
“For the U.S. soldiers training in Cobra Gold, they also want to exchange and study our culture regarding Muay Thai, which is our national art,” Buakaw said.
The 42nd annual Cobra Gold exercises, a war games event, was attended by 7,394 personnel from 30 countries this year.
“This stuff we need to know how to do and to learn from one of the best in the entire world,” U.S. soldier SPC Adam Castle told REUTERS.
“It’s been really great to learn some skills that we can take back and use in the future,” he added.
Previously, Buakaw led the world’s largest gathering of Muay Thai reverent dance at Rajabhakti Park in Hua Hin on February 6, as they attempt to have it recorded by Guinness World Records.
In the digital age, where people use less cash, it is rare for someone to bring 30,000 baht, or around US$ 855, in coins, to buy gold.
One gram of gold in Thailand costs 2,055 baht, or 60 U.S. dollars.
The viral video on TikTok shows a person bringing a lot of coins to the Bhuddasinchangthong shop in Sermthai Complex, Mueang Maha Sarakham District, Maha Sarakham
a male customer brought a lot of coins to a gold shop.
Tangmo Konrakkwai, the owner, said that on 26 February a customer called and asked if the shop accepted coins if he wanted to buy gold. She told the customer that the shop did accept coins, but never thought that it would be that much.
When she saw a customer comes with a big blue basket full of coins, she was shocked and asked the customer for permission to shoot. The customer agreed to let her record the entire transaction.
The customer said he was from Roi Et and was the owner of an automatic laundromat. Therefore, he had a lot of coins. He had previously seen on TikTok that someone else brought 20 baht or 50 baht banknotes to buy gold. He asked at the gold shops in Roi Et, but they do not accept coins.
Tangmo added that customers from Yasothon and Buri Ram came with coins to buy gold, but not as many as this time. The shop needed 5 people to count the coins and did not charge any counting fee. Normally, a commercial bank deducts 2 baht from every 100 baht it counts. Tangmo said that some vendors wanted to exchange coins with her because they are rare.
That day the customer bought 7 gold rings and the shop also gave him a discount and gave him a cap. He said that he would come back every month as the shop accepts coins.
A screenshot of a Facebook post by British Ambassador to Cambodia Dominic Williams showing a plate of desserts with a caption in Khmer translated as "Khmer desserts." Photo: Dominic Williams / Facebook
You might have heard the phase “ทัวร์ลง” (pronounced as tour lohng in Thai), a relatively new Thai slang that means getting backlash online. The phase literally means hordes of tourists getting off a bus at your doorstep.
Earlier this week, the Thai media concluded that hordes of angry Thai netizens descended upon the Facebook profile of British Ambassador to Cambodia Dominic Williams after he posted a photo of an array of Khmer desserts, but the same photo was construed by some Thais as definitely not Cambodian but Thai desserts.
Williams was accused by these Thai cultural supremacists as being blatantly ignorant. Some even suggested the envoy deliberately tried to appropriate intangible Thai cultural heritage and claimed it to be Cambodian or saw rift between Thailand and her neighbor, Cambodia.
“Hey! I don’t care who you are, but I want you to know if you have no knowledge about food and desserts of Southeast Asia, please learn before you post anything on Facebook…,” a user commented Monday night below Williams’ controversial post.
“I had always thought that one requires a certain level of knowledge to represent one’s country in a diplomatic capacity…,” commented another Facebook user in English.
“I think you should already learn some history about ASEAN … BTW, I’m quite disappointed with the standard of a well-known developed country to have a [person] with limited basic knowledge as their ambassador,” wrote another “tour bus passenger” in English. The person also made a horrible remark about Thai-Cambodian past relations that is unfit to be published here.
“Sir, all are Thai desserts that Cambodia tries hard to copy from Thailand…,” wrote another user.
An online tour bus passenger, or troll, simply branded Williams a “lying ambassador.”
These vitriols are but a few examples of the angry and rude messages which landed on Williams’ comment section.
For hours, the “tour buses” from Thailand kept descending to Phnom Penh where Willians is working. By Tuesday, the British Ambassador’s Facebook account was temporarily deactivated. As of publishing time Sunday, the Ambassador’s Facebook account is still nowhere to be found.
Without going into the details to judge whether some of the desserts which appeared in the British Ambassador’s slightly blurry Facebook photo were indeed Thai desserts or not, it is worth asking why these Thais are culturally jingoistic.
(BTW, the disputed desserts include what looks like luk chup (ลูกชุบ) which derived from Portuguese marzipan, thong yib (ทองหยิบ) an egg yolk-based dessert with a very strong Portuguese influence, chor muang (ช่อม่วง) or stuffed flower-shaped dumpling which is a savoury snack, and khao neow sangkaya (ข้าวเหนียวสังขยา) or sticky rice with creamy custard topping. The custard also exists in Cambodia.)
It appears that these Thai cultural supremacists think of Thai culture as something exclusive, unique, superlative, and with a clear border demarcating what is Thai and what is not – like when we look at modern cartography. It does not occur to them that culture is fluid, transborder, and can be shared.
We enrich our culture by adopting, adapting, and fusing. Imagine Thai culture without foreign influence and elements. How will traditional Thai architecture or language be without the influence from our ancient Khmer neighbor?
If thinking about this is too bitter for some Thais, just think about Japanese and Korean ramen and how they have developed and evolved from Chinese egg noodles – or the adoption of Chinese characters by these two cultures thus making their language and literature richer. In many respects, the Japanese and Korean ramen are both Chinese and no longer Chinese. Or think about the Japanese curry rice (kare raisu, カレーライス), which is today one of Japan’s most popular dishes, and it owes its tastiness to foreign origin.
The fact is, culture is fluid, not static and a dialogue between what is local and foreign.
Culture is basically borderless and ever changing. We learn and adapt from our neighbors and vice versa, it is a normal process, like people having a conversation. This long predates any notion of nationalism, not to mention ultranationalism.
Thais will certainly be left culturally and linguistically impoverished without adopting and adapting foreign elements – we will become a shadow of what we are today and almost unrecognizable, culturally speaking. So let me say to these Thais: please be open minded and do not assume that what is Thai must only be Thai or originally Thai.
What is more, the learning and cooptation process is ever ongoing. How would we otherwise describe what happened to Ambassador Williams in an acerbic way without the phrase tour lohng wherein the word “tour” came from English. Etymologically speaking, the word “tour” is not even originally English but comes from Old French and could be traced further back to Latin and Greek roots.
The opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2023. (Xinhua)
BEIJING, March 5 (Xinhua) – China’s annual defense budget will remain single-digit growth for the eighth year in a row, with an increase of 7.2 percent in 2023, according to a draft budget on Sunday.
The world’s second largest economy’s planned defense spending will be 1.5537 trillion yuan (about 224.79 billion U.S. dollars or 7.75 trillion baht) this year, read the report on the draft central and local budgets submitted to the ongoing session of China’s national legislature.
The figure for last year was 7.1 percent.
The opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)
China’s military spending has long been at the center of Western scrutiny, and so-called “China threat” has been hyped up almost every year.
Describing China’s defense budget increase as “appropriate and reasonable,” Wang Chao, spokesperson for the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress, told reporters Saturday that the growth is needed for meeting complex security challenges and for China to fulfill its responsibilities as a major country.
Deputies attend the opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Wang Yuguo)
China pursues a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. It has stressed on multiple occasions that no mater how much defense expenditure is invested or how modernized its armed forces are, China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or sphere of influence.
This is in stark contrast to the United States, which currently has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has accounted for over 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined.
The opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)
China’s defense budget is about one-quarter of that of the United States, which amounted to some 858 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.
In per-capita terms, China’s defense spending is only one-sixteenth of that of the United States.
Noting that defense spending is determined based on the overall consideration of the need for defense building and the economic development level of a country, Wang said China’s defense spending as a share of GDP, which is lower than the world average, has been kept basically stable for many years.
“China’s future is closely intertwined with that of the entire world. China’s military modernization will not be a threat to any country. On the contrary, it will only be a positive force for safeguarding regional stability and world peace,” he said.
China is a major contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget and the largest troop-contributing country among the permanent members of the UN Security Council, sending more than 50,000 personnel on peacekeeping missions over the last three decades.
The opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Jin Haoyuan)
Expand domestic demand
China will expand domestic demand this year, according to a government work report submitted Sunday to the national legislature for deliberation.
Priority will be given to the recovery and expansion of consumption, and incomes of urban and rural residents will be boosted through multiple channels, said the report.
Government investment and policy incentives should effectively drive investment, it said, adding that more private capital should be encouraged and attracted into major state projects and projects aimed at addressing areas of weakness.
It is proposed that 3.8 trillion yuan be allocated for special-purpose bonds for local governments this year, the report said.
China has continued reforms to develop the socialist market economy and struck a proper balance between the government and the market, enabling the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation and the government to better play its role, said the report.
The opening meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Cai Yang)
High-standard market
Over the past five years, China has deepened reform of key areas and crucial links to energize the market and stimulate social creativity
China has completed institutional reform of both the State Council and local governments, accelerated efforts to build a unified national market, developed a high-standard market system, and worked to create a market-oriented and law-based business environment in keeping with international standards, it said.
China has promoted the common development of enterprises under all forms of ownership. Having upheld and improved its basic socialist economic systems, the country has worked unswervingly both to consolidate and develop the public sector and to encourage, support and guide the development of the non-public sector, it said.
China has also continued to reform the fiscal, taxation and financial systems. The country promoted the reform of the financial regulatory system and advanced reforms to implement a registration-based initial public offering system, said the report.
PM Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha will remain at Phramongkutklao Hospital for two to three days, said hospital director Maj Gen Thamrongroj Tem-udom.
Doctors operated on Prayut’s swollen right hand to remove lymph in order to avoid infections. Thamrongroj said Sunday Prayut is in good spirits with his humour intact and asked him to thank the people and the press for their concerns.
Photo of Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha at Phramongkutklao Hospital Saturday evening released by government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri.
Gen. Prayut developed a swollen right hand, prescribed with antibiotics following an inflammatory trigger right hand. Previously it was thought that he has pseudogout and a high deposit of calcium pyrophosphate dehydrate (CPPD).
The reporters noticed Prayut has a swollen right hand since he visited Nong Bua Lam Phu province on Thursday. He said on that day he didn’t know what causes it.
”I don’t know what happened. I had it checked but there was nothing. Probably it’s because I talked too much. It should just be okay soon.”
Previously, Prayut’s aide told reporters that the PM suffers from trigger finger and has his personal physical examined.
PM Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha has been on election campaign urging people to vote for United Thai Nation Party. “We did it. We’re doing it. We will continue to do it,” was the slogan.
South Korea Amphibious assault vehicles fire smoke screen during the Cobra Gold U.S.-Thai joint military exercise on Hat Yao beach in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Cobra Gold 2023, one of the biggest joint multilateral military exercises in the world that pulls together the security interests of the United States and six Asian nations is going on. The exercise will be held from February 27-March 10, 2023.
A ball of fire from explosives rises during the ongoing Cobra Gold U.S.-Thai joint military exercise on Hat Yao beach in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
On March 3, 2023, at 10 a.m., Admiral Choengchai Chomchoengpaet, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy; Mrs. Gwendolyn Cardno, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok; and Mr. Moon Seoung-hyun, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Thailand visited the site of Cobra Gold 2023’s Amphibious Exercise at the Naval Training Field No. 15, in Hat Yao, Satthahip district, Chonburi province.
South Korean soldiers land with an amphibious assault vehicle on the beachhead during the Cobra Gold U.S.-Thai joint military exercise on Hat Yao beach in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 3, 2023 (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)A landing craft air cushion prepares to hit the Hat Yao beach during the Cobra Gold U.S.-Thai joint military exercise in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
During the amphibious exercise, naval ships and an amphibious combat unit seized an opposing force’s beachhead. The unit used naval artillery to fire a volley while aircraft simultaneously provided airborne support to decrease the opposing force’s ability to return fire.
A South Korean military tank hits the Hat Yao beach during the Cobra Gold U.S.-Thai joint military exercise in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)Thai soldiers land with an amphibious assault vehicle on the beachhead during the Cobra Gold U.S.-Thai joint military exercise on Hat Yao beach in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
After reaching the beachhead, the amphibious combat unit breached the opposing force’s territory and secured the beachhead. Participating in this year’s exercise were Thai, U.S., and Korean forces, the USS Makin Island (LHD-8), U.S. F-35 fighters and other U.S. equipment, the Royal Thai Navy’s HTMS Angthong and HTMS Rawi, the Royal Thai Marine’s amphibious combat unit and vehicles, and Royal Thai Air Force F-16 fighters and KAVV amphibious vehicles from the Republic of Korea.
South Korea soldiers land with an amphibious assault vehicle and secure the beach head during the ongoing Cobra Gold U.S.-Thai joint military exercise on Hat Yao beach in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
The amphibious exercise aimed to build the capacity of participating military forces during allied joint operations, in order to bolster the Royal Thai Armed Forces’ confidence in all domain operations. The exercise also strengthened the bonds among allies, ensuring continual national security.
People inspect the damage at their neighborhood following a fuel depot fire in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, March 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian rescuers and firefighters on Saturday searched for more than a dozen missing under the rubble of charred houses and buildings, after a large fire spread from a fuel storage depot in the capital and killed at least 18 people.
The Plumpang fuel storage station, operated by state-run oil and gas company Pertamina, is near a densely populated area in the Tanah Merah neighborhood in North Jakarta. It supplies 25% of Indonesia’s fuel needs.
A pet macaque stands on its owner’s motorbike as people inspect the damage to a neighborhood affected by a fuel depot fire in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, March 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
At least 260 firefighters and 52 fire engines extinguished the blaze just before midnight on Friday after it tore through the neighborhood for more than two hours, fire officials said.
Footage showed hundreds of people running in panic as thick plumes of black smoke and orange flames filled the sky.
A preliminary investigation showed the fire broke out when a pipeline ruptured during heavy rain, possibly triggered by a lightning strike, said Eko Kristiawan, Pertamina’s area manager for the western part of Java.
Residents walk though the rubble at a neighborhood affected by a fuel depot fire in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, March 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
Residents living near the depot said they smelled a strong odor of gasoline, causing some people to vomit, after which thunder rumbled twice, followed by a huge explosion around 8 p.m.
Sri Haryati, a mother of three, said the fire began to spread about 20 minutes later, causing panic.
“I was crying and immediately grabbed our valuable documents and ran with my husband and children,” Haryati said, adding that she heard smaller blasts that echoed across the neighborhood as orange flames jumped from the depot.
Rescuers recover the body of a victim from a neighborhood affected by a fuel depot fire in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, March 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
Rescuers were searching for 16 people who were reported missing or separated from their families amid the chaos. About 42 people were receiving treatment in five hospitals, some of them in critical condition.
National Police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo said more than 1,300 people were displaced and taking shelter in 10 government offices, a Red Cross command post and a sport stadium.
He said investigators were still working to establish the cause of the fire and questioning dozens of witnesses.
Pertamina’s head Nicke Widyawati apologized and said the company would provide help to the community and cooperate in the investigation.
“We will carry out a thorough evaluation and reflection internally to prevent similar incidents from happening again,” Widyawati said in a statement, adding that the company ensured the safe supply of fuel oil.
A woman weeps at a neighborhood affected by a fuel depot fire in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, March 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
On Saturday, grieving relatives gathered at a police hospital’s morgue in eastern Jakarta to try to identify their loved ones. Officials said the victims were burned beyond recognition and could only be identified through DNA and dental records.
In 2014, a fire at the same fuel depot engulfed at least 40 houses, but no casualties were reported.
Indonesia’s State Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir told reporters that the government will remap safe zones for residential areas away from vital objects.
He said the incident showed the Plumpang area is not safe for the community, and the government is planning to move the fuel storage depot to Tanjung Priok port in northern Jakarta.
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By TATAN SYUFLANA and NINIEK KARMINI Associated Press
Kiatisuk “Zico” Senamuang, President of the Zico Foundation, brought back the ashes of Duangpetch “Dom” Promthep, the former captain of the Wild Boars football team, who died suddenly in Leicester, England, upon arriving at Suvarnabhumi airport on March 4, 2023.
Kiatisuk “Zico” Senamuang handed ashes of Dom to Dom’s family.Dom’s mother received her son’s ashes.
The Promthep family brought ashes to Mae Sai, Chiang Rai, his hometown, to perform a ritual at Wat Phra That Doi Wao.
At Mae Fah Luang Chiang Rai International Airport, Abbot of Wat Phra That Doi Wao, grandfather and grandmother of Dom, “Coach Nop” Nopparat Kantawong, “Coach Ek“ Ekapol Chantawong of the Wild Boars Academy team, along with many generations of players within the team came to support Dom’s family in bringing back the ashes.
“Wild Boars” friends
“Grandma came to take Dom back home, my loving grandson.” the grandmother of Dom said, while crying to the ashes.
On the way to the temple, Dom’s family brought the ashes, stopping at the house in order to light the incense. It is the belief of the locals that you have to tell the guardian spirits the sacred path to welcome Dom back to his hometown.
Praying for Dom.
After that, they brought Dom’s ashes to the temple and performed the funeral prayers.They will need two days to perform the ritual. On March 6, the family will scatter ashes over the Mekong River.
Promthep, the former captain of the Wild Boars football team, who survived a treacherous cave rescue in 2018, dies suddenly in England on February 14, 2023, two days after being found unconscious in his dormitory at a football academy in Leicester. He was 17 years old.
A review hearing of a cause of death has been scheduled to take place on July 6 later this year.
File photo shows the 10 volumes that make up manga "Hadashi no Gen" (Barefoot Gen). (Kyodo)
HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) – The education board of Hiroshima has decided to withdraw the famous “Hadashi no Gen” (Barefoot Gen) comic depicting the atomic bombing of the western Japan city from its peace curriculum for public schools, sparking a backlash from survivors groups and others.
The manga, which centers on the life of elementary schooler Gen, is based in part on the experiences of its late creator Keiji Nakazawa, who was exposed to the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima at age 6.
First released in 1973, the series has been published in more than 20 countries, and part of the work has been featured in Hiroshima’s peace education program since fiscal 2013.
But from the 2023 school year starting April, the board is set to replace it with a lesson on a survivor who lost family members in the attack and her daughter’s activities to pass on her story, saying the change is to adapt to changing times.
While the board has said the move “is in no way an attempt to distance children” from the manga, its decision has met resistance, including from prominent atomic bomb survivors and online.
An atomic bombing survivors’ group and other organizations request the Hiroshima board of education to rescind a decision to remove excerpts from manga “Hadashi no Gen” (Barefoot Gen) from its peace curriculum, in Hiroshima, Japan, on Feb. 21, 2023. (Kyodo)
Kunihiko Sakuma, who heads an association for Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors’ groups and who was exposed to the bomb at 9 months old, called on city officials to rethink the change.
As a survivor, he said, “I learned how to live from Gen. I cannot tolerate this decision to remove it.”
Speaking at an event in Hiroshima, Sueichi Kido, secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations, also called for a rethink, saying the manga “portrays every part of atomic bomb survivors’ suffering and way of life.”
When the news emerged on Feb. 16, social media users took to sharing a hashtag opposing the comic’s removal, with some posting pictures of its most famous scenes to emphasize the importance of its antiwar message.
By Feb. 24, the board of education said it had received around 300 inquiries about its decision, many of which expressed opposition.
In the excerpts used in the elementary school third grade syllabus, the impoverished Gen sets out to make money to support his pregnant mother by trying his hand at “rokyoku,” a traditional musical storytelling art, and stealing koi carp from a pond in a wealthy person’s residence.
According to records obtained by Kyodo News of the meetings of an expert panel set up in fiscal 2019 to revise the peace program, attendees expressed reservations about the manga excerpts used.
They said the scenes involving Gen’s rokyoku performances were difficult to understand, and that the limited material used from the manga was insufficient to represent the reality of the bombing.
Concerns were also raised over whether the manga condones stealing.
There were also supportive comments, with some saying that children can easily relate to Gen and that teachers could provide additional explanations on rokyoku singers.
Reacting to the board’s decision, Nakazawa’s widow, Misayo, said it was “a shame because he created it thinking about how to convey the horrors and awfulness of the atomic bombing to children.”
Nakazawa, who died in 2012, lost his father, older sister and younger brother to the bombing, and his younger sister born on the day of the attack died months later.
Misayo noted that her husband had been “overjoyed” when he had learned that his manga would be featured in the lessons.
The controversy is not the first to befall his work in recent years. In August 2013, the board of education in Matsue, western Japan, was found to have asked municipal elementary and junior high schools to limit access to the story over its graphic content. It rowed back on the request after facing criticism.
In March 2014, the education board of Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, was found to have withdrawn the comics from public elementary schools and junior high schools in the city, based on the mayor’s view that they contain discriminatory expressions. The comics were later returned to the schools.
FILE - A protester holds a banner with pictures of Hong Kong publisher Yao Wentian, bottom left, and Chinese journalist Gao Yu during a protest outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong, on May 11, 2014. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)
A Hong Kong-based publisher who was arrested while preparing to release an unauthorized biography of Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been freed after serving a 10-year sentence in a south China prison.
The respected San Francisco-based rights monitoring group Dui Hua reported Thursday that Yao Wentian, 83, was released Feb. 26 and returned to his family in Hong Kong the next day.
Yao was arrested in October 2013 and served his entire sentence apart from an eight-month term reduction in Dongguan prison near the border with the semi-autonomous Chinese city. He had repeatedly been denied appeals for medical release filed by Dui Hua, but had been moved to the prison’s medical facility and was allowed monthly visits from his wife, the group said in a news release.
Yao had been sentenced to 10 years and fined for “smuggling common goods” after he brought construction materials into China to help a friend who was refurbishing his apartment, Dui Hua said. He was accused of failing to declare the value of the goods at customs, not normally a crime punished with such a harsh sentence.
Yao’s publishing of sensitive books was “almost certainly the reason for his imprisonment,” Dui Hua said. Reports at the time said police and customs agents appeared to have been laying in wait for Yao as he crossed the border into China with several cans of paint for a longtime friend.
President Xi Jinping /. Photo: Pang Xinglei / Xinhua via AP
An officer who answered the phone at Dongguan Prison said she was unable to provide any information about past or current prisoners and refused to confirm whether Yao had served his sentence there.
Yao could not immediately be reached for contact, and his former lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said he had had no contact with Yao and his family since his trial.
Yao’s son, Yao Yongzhan, had been arrested as a student leader in Shanghai during the 1989 pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. He was released through Dui Hua’s intervention and is now a U.S. citizen.
Yao founded Morning Bell Press in 2006 and built a reputation publishing works by Chinese dissidents, liberal intellectuals, exiled scholars and officials ousted for political reasons.
The book that apparently sparked his arrest was “Godfather of China: Xi Jinping,” by veteran dissident writer Yu Jie, who fled to the U.S. in 2010 after alleged torture and harassment over his criticisms of the regime. Another book published by Morning Bell, “Hu Jintao: Harmony King,” about Xi’s predecessor as president and Communist Party leader, had also drawn criticism from the authorities.
Yao’s arrest was followed by the roundup of several other independent Hong Kong publishers, raising deep fears over China’s trampling of the city’s civil liberties that exploded into months of anti-government demonstrations in 2019.
After crushing the protests and postponing elections for the city’s Legislative Council, China began a roundup of opposition figures, charging many of them under a sweeping National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong by China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress.
In the years since Yao’s arrest, Xi has eliminated all political opposition — both within the party and in dissident circles — in both mainland China and Hong Kong, eliminated term limits to make him effectively ruler-for-life and packed the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee with loyal allies from earlier in his career.
The arrests of the Hong Kong publishers, many of them associated with once-famed Causeway Bay Books, effectively ended the publication of sometimes gossipy tell-alls about Chinese politicians that had been hugely popular, especially among visitors from mainland China, where such books are banned.
Hong Kong’s publishing industry is now almost entirely under party control and the last pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, was shuttered after it was raided by police and its founder, 75-year-old Jimmy Lai, imprisoned. Lai now faces collusion charges that could result in a life sentence.
Among Hong Kong publishers still detained is Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swedish citizen who was abducted from his vacation home in Thailand in 2015, apparently by Chinese agents, only to turn up months later on Chinese television confessing to his part in a deadly traffic accident.
He was rearrested while traveling by train to Beijing in the company of two Swedish diplomats and in 2020 was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “illegally providing intelligence overseas.”
