Free Republic

In July, 2024, a group of Chinese technologists and researchers met at an office in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, to discuss efforts to stop internet users bypassing the Great Firewall, China’s vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus. Even by Chinese standards, internet controls in Xinjiang are intense, a legacy of a years-long crackdown by the authorities targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Preventing people from dodging these controls – to access banned websites or download secure messaging apps – was a key government priority, part of a “long-term struggle and technical confrontation” vital to nationwide “anti-terrorism” efforts, according...

Ancient Chinese written documents record that by the second century a.d., a vast trade network had already been established connecting peoples and goods from the Mediterranean, the Near East, India, and Asia. This has been confirmed by archaeological excavations throughout Southeast Asia, which have uncovered various items such as Indian jewelry, Roman glass, and Persian pottery. According to a Science News Today report, however, a comprehensive new study has revealed that silver coinage may be the key to truly understanding just how interconnected these distant regions actually were. Found at many archaeological sites across this region, the coins feature a...

Myanmar’s rebranded State Security and Peace Commission (SSPC) has announced elections for December 28, in a flurry of domestic dictatorial reformation. But they also want to deceive world opinion too, with the early-August announcement of a US$3 million contract with Washington DC-based public relations firm DCI Group. The filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) claims the contract is to “provide public affairs services to Client (SSPC) with respect to rebuilding relations between the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and the United States, with a focus on trade, natural resources, and humanitarian relief.” The contract will run through...

As families chased from their homes by the Burma Army return to their villages, hidden mines still threaten homes, churches, and fields. The Free Burma Rangers (FBR) are working with local volunteer deminers under civilian authority to train communities, improve detection, and get the gear needed to make the land safe again. Since the 2021 military coup, landmines have become one of the deadliest threats facing civilians in Burma. In Karenni and southern Shan state alone, there have been 205 recorded landmine incidents since that time, with actual numbers likely far greater due to underreporting. Burma now has one of...

A federal judge in Maine on Friday barred the Trump administration from enforcing sanctions on two U.S. citizens and human rights advocates who work with the International Criminal Court (ICC).On April 11, Matthew Smith and Akila Radhakrishnan, a human rights nonprofit leader and lawyer, respectively, filed a 39-page lawsuit against President Donald Trump and several other members of his administration over an executive order that imposes sanctions on the ICC, prohibits certain interactions with designated ICC officials, and threatens both civil and criminal penalties for any such violations.The lawsuit was premised on the idea that the sanctions "violate their First...

On March 28, 2025, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the Southeast Asia country of Myanmar along the Sagaing Fault, killing thousands and causing widespread damage. A new study from Caltech uses satellite imaging of the Sagaing Fault's motion to improve models of how such faults may behave in the future. The study indicates that strike–slip faults, like the Sagaing and the San Andreas, may be capable of earthquakes that are significantly different from past known earthquakes and potentially much larger. The research was conducted primarily in the laboratory of Jean-Philippe Avouac, the Earle C. Anthony Professor of Geology and Mechanical...

Investigators said they had found evidence of “systematic torture” at detention centers where the military government is holding children as proxies for their parents.U.N.-backed investigators say they have found significant evidence of “systematic torture” at Myanmar detention centers, where the military government is holding children as young as 2 years old as proxies for their parents. The Southeast Asian nation of about 54 million people has been mired in turmoil since 2021, when democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown by the military. The coup set off mass protests across the country that were violently suppressed, followed by...

The Trump administration is reportedly weighing two proposals to remove China from critical U.S. supply chains. One option involves negotiating a rare earth mineral trade deal directly with the Myanmar junta. The other, and potentially more strategic, approach is to bypass the junta entirely and engage with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), a powerful ethnic armed group that controls resource-rich territory and has been fighting the junta since it nullified Myanmar’s democratic election and seized power in 2021. Engaging with the junta risks legitimizing a brutal regime responsible for widespread atrocities, including airstrikes and ground assaults on civilians, hospitals, schools,...

WASHINGTON — Eight migrants with violent criminal convictions detained by the feds will be sent to South Sudan following a legal skirmish in two separate federal jurisdictions trying to halt their deportation. Lawyers for the migrants filed another lawsuit on July 4 in Washington, DC, to pause their flight to the African nation after the Supreme Court ruled against them Thursday as part of an earlier suit that determined the Trump administration could proceed with the removals. DC District Court Judge Randolph Moss, in response to the most recent suit, temporarily blocked the flight Friday — but shifted it back...

1 July 2025 Karenni State, Burma “Help us, Lord Jesus,“ was our constant prayer throughout the Moebye battle. Mortars and 105mm howitzer were fired repeatedly at our casualty collection point (CCP). The speed between the crack of the cannon being fired and the boom of impact allowed us no warning. Unlike with a mortar, when you can sometimes hear it being fired and then have a few seconds before impact, the firing and impact of a howitzer is almost simultaneous, and it’s devastating in its power. We could do nothing but pray and get as low as we could. We...

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WASHINGTON—President Trump has signed a sweeping travel ban on 12 countries and introduced more-limited travel restrictions on seven others, the White House announced, reintroducing a controversial immigration policy that came to define the early days of his first term.

Migrants deported to South Sudan by Donald Trump include murderers and sexual abusers, the Daily Mail can reveal. The latest deportations come as a federal judge ruled U.S. officials must retain custody and control of the migrants in case he orders in the future that their removals were unlawful. U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts issued the ruling late Tuesday after an emergency hearing. Attorneys for the immigrants said the Trump administration appeared to start deporting people from Burma and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to third-party countries. The Daily Mail can now...

Four years into Myanmar’s civil war, the conflict remains far from a resolution. The military regime, reeling from devastating losses, is in deep trouble. It has lost effective control of roughly three-quarters of the country’s territory; surrendered key strategic bases, including two regional military commands, to advancing resistance forces; and now faces a hollowing out of its ranks as defections and demoralization spread. But even though opposition forces have made significant gains nationwide, they have yet to penetrate the military’s stronghold in the center of the country. Opposition forces share the amorphous goal of making the country a federal democratic...

Myanmar's military opened fire at a Chinese Red Cross convoy carrying earthquake relief supplies on Tuesday night. The Ta'ang National Liberation Army, an armed rebel group, said that military troops shot at the convoy of nine vehicles with machine guns in eastern Shan State. Myanmar's junta, which said it was investigating the incident, denied shooting directly at the vehicles and said troops fired shots into the air after the convoy did not stop, despite it being signalled to do so. Myanmar has been gripped by violence amid a civil war between the junta, which seized power in a 2021 coup...

BANGKOK — Chinese rescuers have freed six people from the rubble of an earthquake in Myanmar, including a child and a pregnant woman, Chinese state media reported Monday, placing Beijing at the forefront of an international rescue effort from which the United States has been largely absent. Rescue teams from India, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand and other countries have already arrived in Myanmar. But a U.S. team has yet to appear at the scene of the quake in the Southeast Asian nation, which occurred the same day the State Department informed thousands of employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development,...

The Telegraph via Yahoo News Chinese company investigated after Bangkok skyscraper collapses in earthquake Sarah Newey Sat, 29 March 2025 at 1:03 pm GMT-4 A Chinese-backed contractor is facing an investigation over the collapse of a 33-floor skyscraper in Bangkok in Friday’s earthquake. The unfinished building’s glass facade tumbled to the ground in a heap of smoke and dust, trapping dozens of people in the rubble, when a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit central Myanmar, some 800 miles from the Thai capital. But despite the skyline of the megacity being dotted with cranes, no other construction site reported similar collapses. Eight...

Myanmar's military junta has continued to bomb parts of the war-torn country following the major earthquake there, which has killed more than 1,600 people. The UN has described the attacks as "completely outrageous and unacceptable". Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews told the BBC that it was "nothing short of incredible" that the military was continuing to "drop bombs when you are trying to rescue people" after the earthquake. He called on the military regime, which seized power in a coup nearly four years ago to stop all military operations. "Anyone who has influence on the military needs to step up the...

Bangkok experienced an earthquake, slow and rocking, back and forth, long time. No damage.

Karen State, Burma Dear friends, It is with deep sorrow and heavy hearts that we remember and honor Naw Say Moo Paw, a beloved Free Burma Ranger (FBR) medic, who tragically lost her life in Karen State on March 10, 2025, after being severely burned in an airstrike carried out by the Burma military. She was just 25 years old with a future full of promise. She was taken from us too soon. On March 8, 2025, in Htaw Ta Htoo Township, Taw Oo District, Karen State, the Burma military targeted a Casualty Collection Point (CCP) with incendiary bombs where...