Day: October 14, 2023

“I just felt really left out,” the Dutch national told VOA, adding that she was missing a key way to relate to her friends and understand China more broadly.

That isolated feeling led Koetse in 2013 to start a news site, What’s on Weibo, named after one of China’s largest social media platforms.

Through it, she could track what was trending on Chinese social media and, more importantly, why items went viral. It all started purely out of curiosity, she said.

One decade later, her site has contended with Chinese censorship and harassment. But What’s on Weibo has continued to provide a rare window into Chinese social media — and relatively unfiltered insights into Chinese society.

The site’s coverage is wide ranging. Recent articles looked at everything from the Chinese female bodyguard assigned to the Syrian first lady on her trip to China, sand dune tourism, eco-anxiety and women’s rights, to online frustrations about youth unemployment and protests.

“What are people concerned about? What are people getting really angry about? What are people really rolling on the floor laughing about? That’s the kind of story that you want to convey to a non-Chinese audience to create this kind of bridge,” Koetse told VOA.

Koetse, who grew up in the Netherlands and spent some of her high school studies in Japan, moved to Beijing in 2008 — “the golden year,” she said.

She briefly worked at the beer company Heineken during the Summer Olympics and studied at Peking University.

She soon realized that the conversations and trends on platforms like Weibo were key to understanding China and its people.

Koetse, who is now in Amsterdam, says that for several years, she never prioritized making money from her media site. But, now that the site has become so big, she introduced its first premium subscription option in the hopes of making a full-time income from her work.

But the job comes with its challenges, including online harassment over what she publishes and censorship. “I’m still, even to this day, being accused of being both pro-China and being anti-China,” she said.

One of the biggest changes Koetse has documented at What’s on Weibo over the past 10 years has been the rise of censorship in China. “There’s more control on Chinese social media,” she said. “Censorship has professionalized.”

One example is trending lists. Years ago, trending lists on Weibo regularly included sensitive issues, Koetse said. “They would only be censored later down the road. You had a lot of time to take screenshots or to get everyone’s opinion before it finally vanished from the internet.”

But as censorship became more widespread, the trending lists became a less accurate marker, Koetse said.

Her reflections are backed by data. For nine consecutive years, Freedom House has ranked China the worst in the world in terms of internet freedom.

The rise of censorship in China has left its mark on What’s on Weibo, which has been blocked in China since 2018. Still, What’s on Weibo averages around 250,000 visitors per month — many of whom are viewers in China who use VPNs to access the site, according to Koetse.

Being blocked has given Koetse a sense of freedom. “I do feel more free in continuing just reporting whatever I feel is right to report,” she said, since she no longer has to worry about authorities blocking the site.

In a statement to VOA, Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson of China’s Washington embassy, said, “The Chinese government protects press freedom in accordance with law and gives full play to the role of media and citizens in supervising public opinion.”

Nearly 1.1 billion people — or about 76% of the population — use the internet in China, the government agency China Internet Network Information Center reported in August.

Most of their discourse doesn’t cross any red lines, What’s on Weibo’s assignment editor Miranda Barnes told VOA. “We can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the society,” said Barnes, who was born in China and now lives in London.

The site also provides a different perspective from other media coverage.

“We present what the ordinary people think, from the bottom. It is very easy to fall into the ideological narrative, just to bash China. And I find that helps nobody,” Barnes said.

Western media mainly focuses on political, economic and security issues, according to Yaqiu Wang, Freedom House’s China research director. While those are important, she said, “they are not all of China.”

“What’s On Weibo brings to the international audience another important aspect of China,” Wang said. “The China [that most] people are living and experiencing. It’s important for the international audience to see this aspect of China, so to understand the country in a holistic way, not just through the lens of geopolitics and human rights.”

In recent years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, covering China has become an increasingly difficult story for foreign media to cover with fewer overseas reporters able to be based inside China.

The combination of fewer correspondents in the country and more people who are scared to talk to foreign media ultimately risks dehumanizing the country and its people, reporters have said.

Koetse, however, eschews the “journalist” label. “I see myself as a Sinologist who’s writing about China,” she said.

In a country whose population is increasingly afraid to talk to foreign news outlets, social media is one of the last remaining barometers to move past state propaganda and figure out what ordinary Chinese people are thinking, Koetse said.

“Foreign policy is one part of China. China can be very dangerous, and China can be powerful,” Koetse said. “But China can also be friendly, and China can also be fragile.”

The study defines the practice, known as “transnational repression,” or TNR, as “when governments, either directly or through others, reach across borders to silence dissent from diasporas and exiles, including journalists, human rights defenders, civil society activists and political opponents.”

The GAO report presents data collected by the Department of Homeland Security in 2022 that found that multiple countries — China, Iran, Russia, Rwanda, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — are “routine perpetrators” of transnational repression on U.S. soil or against U.S.-based persons.

Examples run the gamut from physical threats — including targeted assassination and abduction, to digital threats and harassment — to indirect threats of harm or imprisonment targeting friends and relatives who remain under these governments’ direct control.

While many of the activities constituting TNR are illegal, others exist in a legal gray area, making it difficult for authorities to document the full range and prevalence of the activity being directed at U.S. persons.

Multiple examples

The report cites a number of well-publicized incidents, including the assassination of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi Arabian government in Istanbul in 2018, and a violent attack by agents of the Turkish government on protesters in Washington in 2017.

The report also notes multiple examples that have received less media attention, including China’s jailing of dozens of family members of six U.S.-based Uyghur journalists and the Russian abduction of a U.S. citizen in Moscow and his rendition to Belarus.

The report also highlights the case of VOA journalist Masih Alinejad, who was targeted for abduction by agents of Iran in a plot broken up by the Department of Justice in 2021.

Experts said that while they were well aware of the existence of TNR activities in the U.S., some were nevertheless surprised by the report’s findings.

“I study foreign influence for a living, but I was still surprised by the extent of transnational repression in the U.S. that they documented,” said Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “It was a lot more broad-based than I thought.”

Freeman told VOA, “I think a lot of us are operating under what is apparently a flawed assumption that our government has all the tools it needs to push back on transnational repression, but the report very much makes clear that that’s not the case at all.”

Improvement needed

The GAO found that U.S. law enforcement agencies need to improve their ability to recognize when foreign governments are acting within the United States to suppress the activities of dissidents and other critics, and to develop a common understanding of what constitutes TNR and what legal remedies exist to combat it.

One difficulty is that when state and local law enforcement authorities are made aware of illegal activity related to TNR, they don’t always recognize the international dimensions of the case, and fail to report it to federal authorities. In other cases, the report said, many victims are so used to government repression in their home countries that they don’t bother to report it when it happens in the U.S.

The report recommends that major federal law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security work together to establish a common definition of TNR.

In addition, it recommends that the attorney general assess gaps in the ability of law enforcement to respond to TNR, and recommend legislation that might fill those gaps, if necessary.

The report asks the Department of State to spearhead an effort to collect information on incidents of TNR from multiple law enforcement agencies, and to take steps to enforce existing rules that forbid certain shipments of arms to countries known to engage in a pattern of TNR.

It notes that some of the nations recognized as frequent perpetrators of TNR, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are also among the largest beneficiaries of U.S. arms shipments.

Providing a ‘clear deterrent’

Experts told VOA that if Congress were to take steps to make transnational repression itself illegal in the U.S., it might change the calculus of some of the state actors that engage in it.

“I think it would be beneficial to make TNR illegal, because that provides a clear deterrent to the countries engaged in it,” said Colin P. Clarke, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank.

“The more extreme aspects of TNR are illegal, e.g. targeted killings, but for things like intimidation and harassment, it’s often allowed to fly below the radar, especially if there is no physical violence involved,” he said. “But I firmly believe that when countries like China, Iran and others believe they can get away with even minor transgressions, it will encourage them to go further. Give an inch, they take a mile.”

While law enforcement can do part of the job, Clarke said, the State Department also has a role to play.

“There is absolutely a diplomatic piece to this and it boils down to how countries want to spend their political capital,” he said. “In the past, TNR was something… left to DoJ as a criminal justice issue. But conveying concerns over TNR to other countries, and indeed working with both carrot and stick, should be something that countries strongly consider.” 

The runoff election pits an heir to a banana empire, Daniel Noboa, and an attorney, Luisa González.

In a different year or in another country, their business and lawyering experience might help them deliver on campaign promises. But all that Ecuadorians want is safety, and they are demanding to get it in a tiny fraction of the time that has taken other countries to address the issue.

“There’s nothing that fails like success,” said Lowell Gustafson, a Latin American politics professor at Villanova University. “Whoever wins this election is going to have to deal with this … but I don’t know what can be expected from the president in that kind of short time with what sure look to be virtually intractable problems.”

Ecuador, flanked by the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, is spiraling downward. Virtually no one feels safe amid unprecedented violence that erupted roughly three years ago with a rise in criminal activity.

It has reached an unthinkable level since August, starting with the assassination in broad daylight of a presidential candidate. Fernando Villavicencio, who had a famously tough stance on organized crime and corruption, was fatally shot Aug. 9, only days before the presidential election’s first round, despite having a security detail that included police and bodyguards.

Since then, other politicians and political leaders have been killed or kidnapped, car bombs have exploded in multiple cities, including the capital, Quito, and inmates have rioted in prisons. The government’s lack of control even allowed the killings earlier this month of seven men being held in prisons as suspects in Villavicencio’s slaying.

The National Police tallied 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the 2,042 reported during the same period in 2022. That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the country’s highest in history and double the total in 2021.

“Maybe the new president will do something, I hope so, whatever it takes because we are doing really bad with this issue of insecurity,” said Edson Guerra, a painter who was robbed of his cellphone over the weekend. “Before, those who had money were threatened, now it’s all of us, even those who don’t have much.”

Voting is mandatory in Ecuador.

The election was triggered by President Guillermo Lasso dissolving the National Assembly in May to avoid being impeached over alleged improprieties in a contract by the state-owned oil transport company. Lasso, a conservative former banker, clashed constantly with lawmakers after his election in 2021. He decided not to run in the special election, and the winner of Sunday’s vote will finish out his four-year term.

Noboa and González, both of whom have served short stints as lawmakers, advanced to the runoff by finishing ahead of six other candidates in the election’s first round Aug. 22.

Noboa, 35, is an heir to a fortune built on Ecuador’s main crop, bananas. His political career began in 2021, when he won a seat in the National Assembly and chaired its Economic Development Commission. He opened an event organizing company when he was 18 and then joined his father’s Noboa Corp., where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas.

González, 45, held various government jobs during the decade-long presidency of Rafael Correa, her mentor, and was a lawmaker until May. She was unknown to most voters until Correa’s party picked her as its presidential candidate. At the start of the campaign, she said Correa would be her adviser, but she has recently tried to distance herself a bit in an effort to court voters who oppose the former president.

The causes for the spike in violence are complex. All, though, revolve around cocaine trafficking. Mexican, Colombian and Balkan cartels have set roots in Ecuador.

Authorities attribute the rising violence to a power vacuum following the killing in 2020 of Jorge Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL,” the leader of the local Los Choneros gang. Its members carry out contract killings, run extortion operations, move and sell drugs, and rule prisons.

Los Choneros and similar groups linked to cartels are fighting over drug-trafficking routes and control of territory, including within prisons, where at least 400 inmates have died since 2021.

González has promised to purge police ranks of bad actors; invest in intelligence, technology and other gear for police; and increase law enforcement’s presence on the country’s borders.

Noboa has proposed changes to the country’s intelligence efforts; more ammunition and other gear for police officers, who are now outgunned by criminals; and a large presence of the military in prisons, ports and roads. He has also pitched using barges to house inmates.

Gustafson said the candidates face one more obstacle. Neither Noboa’s nor González’s parties have enough seats in the National Assembly to be able to govern on their own.

“I’m pessimistic,” he said. “I think the Ecuadorian president is doomed. How is he going to gain control over these cartels?”

France raised its threat alert to its highest level, and the attack was being investigated by anti-terrorism prosecutors amid soaring global tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas. It also happened almost three years after another teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a radicalized Chechen near a Paris area school.

The suspected attacker had been under surveillance since the summer on suspicion of Islamic radicalization, French intelligence services told The Associated Press. He was detained Thursday for questioning based on the monitoring of his phone calls in recent days, but investigators found no sign that he was preparing an attack, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

“There was a race against the clock. But there was no threat, no weapon, no indication. We did our our job seriously,” Darmanin said on TF1 television. French intelligence suggested a link between the war in the Middle East and the suspect’s decision to attack, the minister said.

The suspect, identified by prosecutors as Mohamed M., was reportedly refusing to speak to investigators. Several others also were in custody Friday, national counterterrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said. Police said the suspect’s younger brother was among those held for questioning.

President Emmanuel Macron said France had been “hit once again by the barbarity of Islamist terrorism.”

“Nearly three years to the day after the assassination of Samuel Paty, terrorism has hit a school again and in a context that we’re all aware of,” Macron said at the site of the attack in Arras, a city 185 kilometers north of Paris.

A colleague and a fellow teacher identified the dead educator as Dominique Bernard, a French language teacher at the Gambetta-Carnot school, which enrolls students ages 11-18. The victim “stepped in and probably saved many lives” but two of the wounded — another teacher and a security guard — were fighting for theirs, according to Macron.

Authorities said the third person wounded worked as a cleaner at the school. The prosecutor said the alleged assailant was a former student there and repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic during the attack.

Police officer Sliman Hamzi was one of the first on the scene. Hamzi said he was alerted by another officer, rushed to the school and saw a male victim lying on the ground outside the school and the attacker being taken away. He said the victim had his throat slit.

“I’m extremely shocked by what I saw,” the officer said. “It was a horrible thing to see this poor man who was killed on the job by a lunatic.”

The National Police force identified the suspect in the attack as a Russian national of Chechen origin who was born in 2003. The French intelligence services told the AP he had been closely watched since the summer with tails and telephone surveillance and was stopped as recently as Thursday for a police check that found no wrongdoing.

Friday’s attack had echoes of Paty’s slaying on Oct 16, 2020 — also a Friday — by an 18-year-old who had become radicalized. Like the suspect in Friday’s stabbings, the earlier attacker had a Chechen background; police shot and killed him.

Martin Doussau, a philosophy teacher at Gambetta-Carnot, said the assailant was armed with two knives and appeared to be hunting specifically for a history teacher. Paty taught history and geography.

“I was chased by the attacker, who … asked me if I teach history,’” said Doussau, who recounted how he barricaded himself behind a door until police used a stun gun to subdue the attacker. “When he turned around and asked me if I am a history teacher, I immediately thought of Samuel Paty.”

The school went into lockdown, and some children were held inside classrooms for hours while distraught parents gathered outside.

“My husband was in tears. There were a lot of people crying, a lot in a state of panic,” said Céline Bourgeois, whose 15-year-old son, Louis, was inside.

Prosecutors said they were considering charges of terror-related murder and attempted murder against the suspect.

Macron visited the school, stopping for a moment before the blanket-covered body of the teacher, which was in the parking lot in front of the school, then met with students.

He said police thwarted an “attempted attack” in another region of France after the teacher’s fatal stabbing. He did not provide details, but the Interior Ministry said he was referring to a man armed with a knife arrested coming out of a prayer hall in the Yvelines region west of Paris. The man’s motives weren’t immediately clear, police said.

School attacks are rare in France, and the government asked authorities to heighten vigilance at all schools across the country.

The government also increased its threat alert to its highest level Friday, allowing for larger police and military deployments to protect the country. Darmanin said there was no specific threat that prompted the move, but cited calls by extremists to attack amid the Mideast war.

He said authorities have detained 12 people near schools or places of worship since the Hamas attack on Israel last Saturday, some of whom were armed and were preparing to attack. France has heightened security at hundreds of Jewish sites around the country this week.

The suspect’s telephone conversations in recent days gave no indication of an impending attack, leading intelligence officers to conclude that the assailant decided suddenly on Friday to act, intelligence services told the AP.

The suspect’s father was expelled from France in 2018 for radicalism, the interior minister said.

An older brother is serving a 5-year prison term for terror offences. He was convicted this year of involvement in a plot for an armed attack around the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris that was thwarted by the intelligence services. Other members of the radical Islamist group were also jailed for up to 15 years. He was the group’s only Chechen.

The older brother also was a former pupil at the high school targeted Friday, according to legal records from his trial earlier this year on terror-related charges. Investigation records show that during a school class in 2016 about freedom of expression, the older brother defended a terror attack in 2015 that killed 12 cartoonists at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Friday’s attack came amid heightened tensions around the world over Hamas’ attack on southern Israel and Israel’s blistering military response, which have killed hundreds of civilians on both sides.

Darmanin on Thursday ordered local authorities to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid a rise in antisemitic acts.

France is estimated to have the world’s third-largest Jewish population after Israel and the U.S., as well as the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.

A moment of silence was held at the opening of a France-Netherlands soccer match Friday night to honor victims of the Israel-Hamas fighting and the slain teacher.

Macron said the school in Arras would reopen as soon as Saturday morning, and he urged the people of France to “stay united.”

“The choice has been made not to give in to terror,” he said. “We must not let anything divide us, and we must remember that schools and the transmission of knowledge are at the heart of this fight against ignorance.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered 7,000 soldiers to be mobilised for increased security patrols, his office said on Saturday, a day after a teacher was stabbed to death in an Islamist attack.

France was put on its highest security alert on Friday after a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and gravely wounded two other people in an attack at a school in the city of Arras in northern France.

Macron’s office said that the soldiers would be mobilised by Monday evening until further notice as part of an ongoing operation that regularly conducts patrols in major city centres and tourist sites.

The security alert comes as France hosts the Rugby World Cup and prepares to face South Africa on Saturday evening in their quarter-final.

France has been targeted by a series of Islamist attacks over the years, the worst being a simultaneous assault by gunmen and suicide bombers on entertainment venues and cafes in Paris in November 2015.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday the Arras attack bore a link to events in the Middle East, where Israel is conducting a military offensive to root out Hamas fighters after their deadly rampage into Israel last Saturday.

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