A rebel army and a local militia have killed 40 Myanmar junta soldiers in two days of fighting this week in regions near the country’s northern and western borders, witnesses reported, in what would be the largest number of casualties inflicted on security forces since the Feb. 1 military coup.

The killing of 30 regime troops by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in the northernmost state of Kachin, and of 10 junta soldiers in the neighboring Sagaing region by a newly formed township militia were reported by villagers Friday and have not been confirmed by the rebels or the military regime.

The rise in casualties inflicted on the far better armed junta comes as the fledgling National Unity Government (NUG) tries to unify the numerous local “People’s Defense Forces” that have sprung up across Myanmar under a nationwide army to fight the State Administration Council (SAC), as the regime calls itself.

The NUG, a shadow government made up of members of leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) government that was deposed by the military in February and ethic region leaders, was launched on April 16, and unveiled the “People’s Defense Force” (PDF) on May 5.

The shadow government intends to build the PDF into a Federal Union Army that combines militias formed by majority ethnic Bamars (Burmese) across central Myanmar with the country’s many ethnic armed organizations, such as the KIA, to fight the well-trained but widely loathed junta military forces.

The fighting in Kachin state, which borders China, Thursday and Friday flared up as junta forces staged major attacks to try to retake a military camp at Alawbwan that was captured by the KIA in April.

“They were using aircraft and heavy weapons. Their main target is to retake Alawbwan Camp, which the KIA occupied last month. They are now trying hard to get it back but the KIA is still holding onto it,” Colonel Naw Bu, the KIA’s information officer, told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

“There’s been fighting every day in the Myothit and Konglaw areas. The situation is very tense,” he added, referring to villages in Momauk township at the center of the fighting. “There were casualties but we cannot tell you the details yet.”

10 bombing runs by junta

A resident of Sihat village, where three military troops were killed when the KIA downed a helicopter on Monday, told RFA that KIA troops clashed with junta soldiers at nearby Towerdine Hill, killing about 30 soldiers.

“The fighting has intensified. Yesterday three or four aircraft came to bomb the Towerdine area nearly 10 times,” the villager said on Friday.

“My brother, who is a construction worker, was traveling along Myitkyina-Bhamo road and saw them carrying the dead. ‘There must be about 30 bodies,’ he told me,” said the villager, who declined to be named for security reasons.

“The military aircraft came almost every day, but not today,” he added.

Fighting in Kachin state, which flared up two weeks after the Feb. 1 coup, has entailed about 100 clashes, including at least 60 airstrikes by the junta military, Kachin sources told RFA, military analysts.

More than 12,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, and two Buddhist monks and 15 other civilians have been killed, they said.

“We farmers are facing great difficulties. We cannot go back to the fields to tend the crops and we are worried they will all be destroyed,” said a woman in Sihat village.

“We have invested so much in them and now we cannot harvest them. They shoot at us whenever we go to the fields,” she added.

RFA calls to junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun were not answered Friday. The junta has not released any reports of the Kachin fighting.

Battalion commander reported killed

To the southwest of Kachin in Sagaing region, three clashes in three villages between the junta forces and members of the Kani Township People’s Defense Force on Thursday killed at least 10 regime troops, while two local residents died, villagers told RFA.

Sagaing-based Khit Thit News reported that Major Thant Sin Myint, the acting commander of the 404th Artillery Battalion was among junta soldiers killed in the Kani clashes.

More than 100 junta soldiers came to the town after an informant tipped them about the local forces, a member of the Kani Township People’s Defense Force said.

“There was a shootout between our local forces and the military near the hills behind Thamingyan village. We haven’t suffered any casualties so far. We had retreated back a little because they were firing heavy weapons at us,” he said.

“We used home-made landmines seven times. They have informants who told them about our location. All we have are Tumee handmade weapons,” he said, referring to crude hunting rifles rural residents have wielded against junta troops in

Sagaing, a territory bordering India and populated mostly by majority Bamars. 

In Sagaing’s Tamu, a city of 44,000 people, local fighters using the black powder rifles killed 14 soldiers in late March and early April, local reports said, but the defense against violent crackdowns from soldiers invited more brutality from the junta.  

“We would be so happy if the ethnic armies could help us with some weapons. And we want to ask people in all parts of the country to fight back the junta in every way possible,” said the Kani fighter.

‘We can get rid of them’

The Sagaing militiaman’s plea for arms and help on Friday came as Khin Ma Ma Myo, the NUG deputy defense minister, said People’s Defense Force township-level units across the France-sized country of 54 million were working on linking up and sharing information.

“What is happening in the country right now is that the commander-in-chief has abused his power and abused the country. We urge the people and the ethnic armed groups to join forces and fight back,” he said, referring to junta leader Min Aung Hlaing.

“Gradually, if we all unite to resist we can get rid of them,” said Khin Ma Ma Myo.

“I would like to appeal to all ethnic armed groups and the people as well as members of the armed forces and police to work with us and build the future of our country,” he said.

A member of the local township militia in Kalay, another Sagaing town where local fighters have inflicted casualties on government troops, said his group is willing to join the NUG national force.

“We have not joined them yet, but it will be more convenient if we can join them and work under their command,” said the militiaman.

“Right now we joined forces among our villages when (junta soldiers) came, working as a guerrilla unit,” he said. “It’s not a large organization yet, but we want to cooperate as soon as possible.”

However, not all opponents of the military junta in ethnic areas appear willing to join the nationwide army in a country where the people of ethnic minority regions have been badly treated by Myanmar’s central government for decades.

“There has been no communication (with NUG). If they do not contact us, we don’t care,” said a member of the Hakha township unit of the Chinland Defense Force (CDF), which was formed on April 4 in Chin State, a rugged, underdeveloped area on Myanmar’s border with India and Bangladesh.

The Chinland Defense Force, which has units in nine townships of the a state organized on tribal lines, has reported that the CDF in Mindat township killed at least 20 junta soldiers in a battle from April, while the Hakha killed nine regime troops early this week.

“We will give support to the CDF, and if a separate armed group is to be set up here, it will have to be discussed again,” said the Hakha CDF fighter.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Paul Eckert.

National security police in Hong Kong have apparently blocked the website of a church on the democratic island of Taiwan and hacked into its database after it raised funds to aid people fleeing arrest in connection with the 2019 protest movement, organizers told RFA on Monday.

Church member Hwang Chun-sheng said the site has been blocked for a week, and its database hacked.

“It’s pretty pointless just shutting down our public website; it’s just tedious, and really it’s all about scoring a big propaganda point with the domestic audience [in mainland China],” Hwang said.

“But it is also an indicator of the mainlandization of Hong Kong … maybe Hong Kong will be next [to be put behind the Great Firewall],” he said.

According to the Wei Wei Po newspaper, which is controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Presbyterian Church had launched a fund-raising campaign to help people fleeing in the wake of the movement.

“The Taiwan Presbyterian Church expressed support for rioters during the turmoil in Hong Kong over the [extradition] law, and was also implicated in investigations by the national security division of the Hong Kong Police Force into radio talk show host Giggs,” the paper said.

Wan Siu-yin, who is known by his nickname Giggs, was arrested on suspicion of “seditious intent,” over comments he made during online radio shows he hosted from August to October 2020.

‘Seditious intent’

Wan, 52, has been charged with “acting with seditious intent” in online programs that he hosted between August and October last year, after he publicized the fund-raising campaign on  his show.

“In the event of a crime that endangers national security, the service provider may be required to remove [content or access to content] with the approval of the secretary for security,” the Wen Wei Po reported, citing the national security law imposed on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020, which outlaws public criticism of, or peaceful opposition to, the authorities.

The crowdfunding campaign raised more than H.K.$10 million (US$1.29 million), H.K.$4 million of which was transferred to the Taiwan church’s bank account.

The paper said the church was “an advocate of independence for Taiwan,” a phrase used by the CCP to describe anyone who opposes its claim on the country, which has never formed part of the People’s Republic of China, nor been controlled by the CCP.

Hwang said the church is now communicating with activists in Hong Kong using VPNs and encryption, with regular email and Facebook Messenger too compromised.

He said the church has been involved in ongoing fundraising for Hongkongers who fled to Taiwan to pursue college degrees as a way of avoiding repercussions for their role in the 2019 protests, but who have since run out of money and can’t go home.

“We try not to let them drop out after a year, and find ways to keep them in their study programs,” Hwang said. “We find jobs for some of the students.”

CCP sends fake protesters

Taiwan has meanwhile announced it will tighten the rules around applications from Hong Kong residents for its permanent residence card, requiring them to remain there for two years before applying.

Media reports said the move was an apparent bid to prevent ‘fake’ Hong Kong protesters working for the CCP from infiltrating the island.

In January, Hong Kong police blocked HKChronicles, a website dedicated to publishing first-hand accounts of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.

The block was the first indication that China may be exporting its Great Firewall to the city since the national security law took effect. Police have declined to confirm publicly that they took action, but responded by citing the relevant section of the law.

Attempts to connect to the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan’s website at www.pct.org.tw from the United Kingdom on Monday resulted in a browser warning that the connection was “not private.”

“Attackers might be trying to steal your information from www.pct.org.tw (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards),” it said. “This may be caused by a misconfiguration or an attacker intercepting your connection.”

Social media users said the website of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was also failing to load from around the world, suggesting it had been hacked.

The site failed to load, leaving a timed-out connection, when browsed from the U.K. on Monday.

Reported by Hwang Chun-mei for RFA’s Mandarin Service, and by Chung Kuang-cheng for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Images of falsified a Taiwan Presidential Office memo circulated widely online this month, angering the island’s democratic government by claiming that Taiwan had agreed to receive the nuclear wastewater from Fukushima, Japan.

In a world of increasingly sophisticated fakes and forgeries, the bogus Taiwan Presidential Office memo posted on Twitter announcing “the government will receive wastewater from Japan” was sloppy with fingerprints from the communist mainland, experts said.

Among the telltale signs, were the use of the mainland’s simplified Chinese characters, terms that betrayed unfamiliarity with the government system of Taiwan, and improper memorandum terminology.

Kolas Yotaka, Taiwan’s presidential spokesperson, wrote on Facebook that there were five obvious and ridiculous mistakes in the falsified memo, beginning with the fact that memo was dated April 16, but was already being circulated on Twitter on April 15.

“Whether it is the way the memo was dated or how the recipient agency is addressed, it is just not how we write our memos. Not to mention there are simplified Chinese characters used. Under no circumstances would this be an official document issued by our government,” she told RFA last week.

“This is a fake memo. We urge our citizens not to believe in that disinformation and stop sharing the fake memo. This is absolutely not a memo issued by the Office of the President,” Yotaka added.

On April 16, the Presidential Office of Taiwan filed a report with the police, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, and President Tsai Ing-wen posted respectively on Facebook that the widely circulated fake memo is a typical cognitive warfare tactic.

Tsai noted that the fake documented was tweeted the day after she had received an unofficial U.S. delegation.

‘Cognitive warfare’

She wrote that “cognitive warfare” is spreading information in an attempt to influence the opponent’s thinking and actions.

She wrote that she told the U.S. delegation that Taiwan is quite experienced in responding to disinformation from China, and that she looks forward to Taiwan-U.S. cooperation in countering it.

“The democracy and freedom in Taiwan are hard-earned, and we will not let cognitive warfare tear up Taiwan’s society,” wrote the president.

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Liu Kang-yan said the DPP condemns cognitive warfare that directly targets “Office of the President of the Republic of China” with online rumors and opinion-swaying disinformation to sabotage the internal unity of Taiwan and to burn out democratic resources with “grey-zone conflicts.”

The Office of the President further noted that any memo to the Department of Defense would simply address the recipient as “Department of Defense,” rather than “Department of Defense, Republic of China,” as in the fake memo. The office also said that while the memo referred to “cabinet meetings” in the Office of the President of Taiwan, there are no such things.

Information warfare experts found that the same Twitter account that spread the disinformation had also carried bogus media reports carrying the fake memo that purported to be from RFA and Radio France Internationale.

Puma (Pao Yang) Shen, assistant professor of Graduate School of Criminology at National Taipei University told RFA that mainland fake news purveyors regularly pose as credible media outlets as a typical example of Chinese Communist Party cognitive warfare tactics against Taiwan.

 “Of course they would pick Radio Free Asia as their enemy, because RFA often report unfavorable news about China. They see RFA as the enemy,” he said.

“In the past they would intentionally create fake Radio Free Asia accounts and lead readers to believe that RFA reported biased news. Most of these accounts shared fake RFA screenshots to other platforms, and then they came back to laugh at RFA,” added Shen.

Shen said a Twitter user surnamed “Sun” appears to be behind the fake Taiwan memo, its reproduction on RFA and RFI, and a series of accounts that tweet fake content. The Sun account has been actively targeting RFA for more than a year, he said.

Little Pinks at work

One of Sun’s accounts, with the handle “@us_ned_chinese” mimics the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S.-backed foundation China views as its enemy, said Shen.

Although tweets from Sun’s accounts are not sophisticated and are ridden with errors – Shen called them “low-level Little Pinks tricks” after young Chinese jingoists on the internet – they create chaos and confusion, serving Beijing’s purpose.

Sun’s accounts also post about repression in Xinjiang to trick readers who are sympathetic to the plight of Uyghurs into believing that the fake accounts share the same point of view. Later these accounts post disinformation to mislead readers, said Shen.

Shen says at least a dozen tweets that contain either disinformation or fake videos about Taiwan are posted daily, and some are so sophisticated that it is hard for the public to determine their authenticity. Sometimes those who spread fake news enlist local to produce misinformation, he said.

“Using the name of a foreign media outlet makes the disinformation more credible. The RFA is today’s unfortunate victim, and tomorrow it could be Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA),” said Hsiao-Huang Shu, assistant research fellow of the Chinese Politics, Military and Warfighting Concepts division at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

“The purpose may be to leverage the media’s credibility to propel the spread of the fake news, because once the disinformation goes viral, it will be shared quickly on the internet or social media groups,” said Shu.

Shu said the CCP finds it particularly easy to carry out influence warfare because it is quite simple to copy and paste disinformation and share on the internet, where messages containing disinformation can last for as long as five years, before they are discovered and deleted.

Meanwhile, those messages containing clarification or correct information may either not be shared as quickly as the original disinformation or not reach platforms where disinformation spreads far and wide, added Shu.

Yotaka said attacks on Taiwan’s government agencies vary greatly, from “disinformation, misinformation mixed with some truth, (to) incorrect information”

“We could only urge the media to be cautious,” she said.

Reported by RFA’s Mandarin Service. Translated by Min Eu. Edited by Paul Eckert.