Photo: US Embassy in Hanoi
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Vietnam on Wednesday for talks scheduled on regional security issues, including the South China Sea, where China has encroached on waters and maritime resources claimed both by Vietnam, the Philippines and others.
Austin will meet on Thursday with his counterpart, Minister of Defense Gen. Phan Van Giang, and with Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, in the first visit to Vietnam by a high-ranking U.S. official since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January.
Talks on Thursday will likely focus on efforts by the U.S. and its allies and partners “to meet the region’s security challenges, and cooperation ins maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” said Carl Thayer emeritus professor at Australia’s University of South Wales Canberra in remarks sent by email to RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
JOSEPH ANDREW WARD herald-dispatch.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from herald-dispatch.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Photo: RFA
Authorities in Vietnam have yet to set a trial date for two land rights activists detained more than a year ago for their criticism of the government in a high-profile land dispute, members of their family told RFA.
Trinh Ba Phuong and Nguyen Thi Tam, of the capital Hanoi’s Duong Noi district, were arrested June 24, 2020 on charges of propagandizing against the state for posting online articles and livestreaming videos critical of the government’s brutal response to a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of the city.
Phuong’s mother Can Thi Theu and brother Trinh Ba Tu were also arrested that day on the same charges and sentenced on May 5 to eight years in prison and three years on probation each on the charge of “creating, storing, disseminating anti-State materials.”
Reuters
Cemeteries in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon are overflowing with corpses as hundreds of people each day are dying of COVID-19 related causes, aid groups in the city told RFA Wednesday, as many observers blamed the ruling military junta for a callous pandemic response.
Myanmar is dealing with a third wave of outbreaks of the disease, and Yangon’s four cemeteries are ill-equipped to handle daily death tolls of about 500 people amid an oxygen shortage that has gripped the entire country.
Almost all of Yangon’s coronavirus deaths are due to hypoxia, when oxygen fails to reach bodily tissues, a common symptom in serious COVID-19 cases, but Myanmar’s military junta two days ago denied that the oxygen shortage exists.
AFP
Inmates angered by the spread of COVID-19 at a detention center in Vietnam’s largest city started a disturbance during a medical examination this week, drawing attention to the healthcare situation in the country’s prisons, state media reported.
During the examination at Ho Chi Minh City’s Chi Hoa Detention Center, 81 people tested positive for the coronavirus, including 45 staff members and 36 detainees.
An account of the incident appeared on Wednesday morning in
Tuoi Tre, but the country’s largest newspaper took down the report by mid-day.
Video obtained by RFA showed gunshots fired at the detention center as staff attempted to gain control over the uprising. There were no reports of casualties resulting from the incident.