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The South African government is hoping to strengthen protections for whistleblowers who report on corruption in business and government. Proponents say it's not only about making whistleblowers feel comfortable coming forward, but also about protecting them from retaliation. VOA’s Ihsaan Haffejee reports

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia — Cambodia and China begin their annual Golden Dragon military exercise this week to strengthen cooperation and exchange military experiences, a Cambodian official said Monday. A total of 1,315 military personnel from Cambodia and 760 from China will participate in the 15-day exercise, backed by three Chinese warships and 11 Cambodian ships, Cambodian army spokesperson Maj. Gen. Thong Solimo told journalists. He said the exercise, starting Thursday, is aimed at training to fight terrorism and provide humanitarian relief in both countries as well as in the region. The annual Golden Dragon exercises began in December 2016, shortly after Cambodia canceled similar exercises with the United States called Angkor Sentinel. China describes its friendship with Cambodia as "ironclad." Cambodia is China's closest ally in Southeast Asia, while China is Cambodia's most important ally and benefactor, with a strong influence on its economy. Cambodia has numerous Chinese-funded projects — particularly infrastructure, including airports and roads, but also private projects such as hotels, casinos and property development. More than 40% of Cambodia's $10 billion in foreign debt is owed to China. Beijing's support allows Cambodia to largely disregard Western concerns about its poor record on human and political rights, and in turn Cambodia generally supports Beijing's positions on foreign policy issues such as its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Cambodia recently reiterated its determination to go ahead with a Chinese-financed 180-kilometer (112-mile), $1.7 billion Funan Techo Canal project across four provinces in the southern part of the country to connect the capital, Phnom Penh, to the Gulf of Thailand. The plan has raised concern from neighboring Vietnam, where some analysts say the 100-meter (330-foot) -wide, 5.4 meter (18-foot) -deep canal could make it easier for China to send military forces southward, close to Vietnam's southern coast. Relations between Vietnam and its massive northern neighbor are often frosty because of Beijing's aggressive claims to maritime territories also claimed by Hanoi. China's involvement in Cambodia's Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand has also caused concern, with the United States and some international security analysts saying it is likely to become a strategic outpost for Beijing's navy. On Dec. 7, two Chinese naval vessels became the first ships to dock at a Chinese-financed new pier at the base, coinciding with a visit to Cambodia by China's top defense official. In April, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a three-day visit to Cambodia to affirm the countries' ties.

Bangkok — Refugees from Myanmar seeking shelter from their country’s grinding civil war in neighboring India tell VOA they fear a wave of arrests and forced returns following the Manipur state government’s recent moves to start deporting them. Earlier this month, on May 2, Manipur Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh announced the deportation of 77 “illegal immigrants from Myanmar” on his social media page, calling it the “first phase.” In comments on social media again last Wednesday, the chief minister said the process of deporting some 5,400 more “illegal immigrants” was “underway.” The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says nearly 60,000 refugees have fled to India since Myanmar’s military toppled the country’s democratically elected government and seized power in 2021, setting off a bloody civil war that has claimed thousands of lives. The refugees are spread across three provinces in India’s far east on the border with Myanmar, but authorities in Manipur have taken the most aggressive steps to send them back. Officials there blame the refugees for fueling the state’s own spate of deadly communal clashes over the past year. India does not officially recognize refugees and has not signed the U.N. refugee convention. Refugees in Manipur say the recent deportations have put them on edge. Some have begun to relocate to avoid the government’s anticipated dragnet. “That is the very thing we are afraid of. That’s why … we moved here to another border village, because we are afraid of the Manipur government,” said Seithang Haokip, speaking with VOA by phone from a hiding place a few kilometers from the border. “All of us are very afraid of both sides, from both sides, of being arrested by the Manipur government and by the Myanmar military regime,” he said. Seithang Haokip said he crossed into India illegally about two years ago from Myanmar’s Chin state, where he had joined a nationwide civil disobedience movement and was helping lead local strikes against the regime. He and others say they fear for their lives if they were to be arrested and returned to Myanmar. “They [the Myanmar military] already opened many files on me, so military junta already wanted me, so definitely they will arrest me and they will put [me] in jail for long time, or they can maybe kill me,” said Myo, another refugee from Myanmar who is in hiding near the border. Myo asked that his full name not be used for his safety. Myo told VOA that he also crossed into India illegally a few years ago after joining Myanmar’s civil disobedience movement. He and his wife and son now share a small hut with two other families. He said they all have been on constant alert since the news of the recent deportations. “When we hear [sounds] of truck or car or police or army coming around us, we are ready to run away or hide, so this kind of fear every day,” said Myo. “We all feel like that. This is a signal that we are no more safe in India,” he said. Right groups say their fears are well founded. United Nations investigators have accused Myanmar’s junta of widespread war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the rape, torture and murder of both civilians and rebel fighters in detention. They say indiscriminate air and artillery attacks against the resistance have razed whole villages. Some 2.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting inside Myanmar itself, according to the U.N. In April, the junta also began enforcing a years-old conscription law that requires all men between the ages of 18 and 35 serve at least two years and banned military-age men from leaving the country. At 31, Salai Dokhar, another refugee, said he could be forced to fight for a military he loathes and ordered to kill his fellow countrymen if sent back to Myanmar. Even in the relative safety of New Delhi, India’s sprawling capital, more than 2,000 kilometers from the border, he said he too has a growing fear of being arrested and deported. “I stay home. Except for emergency issues I never go out. We have to hide ourselves from the authorities to [not] be arrested,” Salai Dokhar said. “Most of the people who entered to India are not safe in the hands of the [Myanmar] military, including me,” he added. With the civil war in Myanmar still raging, Human Rights Watch says Indian authorities should allow the refugees to stay until they feel ready to return on their own. “Conditions are extremely dangerous for civilians in many parts of Myanmar, where there is an ongoing armed conflict. Many civilians have been forced to flee to seek safety in India,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the group’s deputy Asia director, told VOA. “The Indian authorities should protect their rights,” she added. “Although India has not signed the refugee convention, it is still obliged to not forcibly return refugees to Myanmar when there are such extreme risks to life and liberty.” In a statement last week, the International Commission of Jurists said India was bound by other conventions it has signed to not force people back to countries where they are likely to be in danger. The commission has also urged Indian authorities to stop the deportations. Refugees say they believe authorities in Manipur are currently holding well over 100 people from Myanmar in detention centers and fear that any day they may be the next to be deported. The state government and chief minister of Manipur did not reply to VOA’s requests for an interview or for comment. Refugees and rights groups say the state’s deportation drive is political, motivated by a bid for votes by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in a nationwide general election that started in April and runs until June. Biren Singh, a member of the Hindu nationalist BJP, has blamed the refugees for stoking the communal clashes that have torn through Manipur since May 2023, pitting the majority and predominantly Hindu Meitei against the minority Kuki, who are mostly Christian. The Kuki are also kin to the ethnic Chin of western Myanmar, who make up many of the refugees in Manipur. “Unfortunately, the refugees from Myanmar are being used by the ruling Biren Singh government in Manipur, and his BJP party, to stoke communal divisions. For petty political gains, the Biren Singh administration has created rifts between communities that will take a long time to heal, with hundreds killed and tens of thousands displaced,” said Ganguly. “They detain the Myanmar refugees to play their political games in general election,” echoed Salai Dokhar, an ethnic Chin himself. “We are in a political game, for sure.”

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Fifty-year-old Yevhen Savchenko has been serving as an official chaplain for Ukraine’s Armed Forces since late 2023, often performing his duties on the front line. Savchenko is also the father of eight children and pastor of an evangelical Baptist church in Ukraine’s Luhansk region. Anna Kosstutschenko spoke to him during a mission in the Donbas region. VOA footage and video editing by Pavel Suhodolskiy.

BANGKOK — The whereabouts of a Chinese citizen journalist who served four years in prison for reporting on the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan and was expected to be released Monday are unknown, raising concern from activists. Zhang Zhan, who had been sentenced to four years in prison on charges of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," a vaguely defined charge often used in political cases, has finished serving her sentence at Shanghai's Women Prison. Ren Quanniu, a former lawyer who previously represented Zhang, said he could not reach her father and expressed concern that Zhang would be released only to be put under another form of control by police. Monday was the last day of her four-year sentence, confirmed Ren and Jane Wang, another overseas activist who launched the Free Zhang Zhan campaign in the U.K. Zhang was among a handful of citizen journalists who traveled to the central Chinese city of Wuhan after the government put it under total lockdown in February 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. She walked around the city to document public life as fears grew about the then-mysterious coronavirus. Other citizen journalists have also spent time in jail for documenting the early days of the pandemic, including Fang Bin, who published videos of overcrowded hospitals and bodies during the outbreak. Fang was sentenced to three years in prison and released last April. Chen Qiushi, another citizen journalist, disappeared in February 2020 while filming in Wuhan. Chen in September 2021 resurfaced on a friend's live video feed on YouTube, saying he had suffered from depression but did not provide details about his disappearance. During her prison stay, Zhang staged a hunger strike and was hospitalized at one point in 2021. Zhang's family has faced police pressure during her stay in prison, and her parents have declined interview requests from media. Her family at times could only speak to their daughter by phone at the prison. Shen Yanqiu, who had planned to go with Zhang's family to receive her at the prison, declined to speak to The Associated Press, saying she had been "invited to drink tea," a euphemism for a police interrogation. Calls to Zhang's brother went unanswered. Calls to the Shanghai Prison Administration office also went unanswered. China' s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin declined to comment on the case when asked Monday, saying "I'm not aware of the situation." The coronavirus remains a sensitive topic in China. In the first week of May, a Chinese scientist who was the first to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus staged a protest after authorities barred him from his lab, after years of demotions and setbacks. An Associated Press investigation also found that the government froze domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Rescue teams in South Africa forged ahead Monday with efforts to find any survivors still trapped under rubble a week after an apartment building that was under construction collapsed. Their hopes were boosted over the weekend when one of the construction workers was found alive after six days without food and water. Authorities said 24 construction workers who were on the site when the unfinished five-story building came down have been confirmed dead, while another 28 are missing, raising the possibility that the death toll could ultimately be above 50. More than 600 emergency services and other personnel have been involved in the search for survivors in the wreckage of the building in the city of George on South Africa's south coast, which collapsed last Monday. There were 81 workers on the site when it collapsed, and 29 have been pulled out alive, the city said. It said 13 of them remained in a hospital without giving details of their condition. The city has previously said that many of the survivors were in critical condition when they were found. The disaster management team overseeing the emergency response maintained that the operation was still rescue rather than recovery, pointing to the survivor pulled out on Saturday. The man, who was identified as 32-year-old Gabriel Guambe, was in stable condition in the hospital and "remarkably sustained only minor injuries," the city said. Guambe was trapped in the rubble for 118 hours, it said. His survival underlined rescuers' hopes that there may be more people alive in what they called voids in the ruins of the building — areas where there are gaps between the concrete that might have allowed some workers to survive the collapse. Rescue teams have been using cranes and other heavy machinery to move some of the thousands of tons of concrete in an attempt to reach deeper into the wreckage. Sniffer dogs were also being used and one was responsible for locating Guambe. Many of the workers were foreign nationals from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi and authorities were calling for translators to help communicate with survivors. They also said it was making the identification of victims difficult. Multiple investigations into the cause of the building collapse were underway, including by police, who declared the site a crime scene. The construction company responsible is being investigated to see if it followed proper safety protocols. People began leaving flowers around the edge of the site as a mark of respect for the victims, while the city and the disaster response team issued a joint statement asking South Africans to observe a moment of silence at 2.09 p.m. on Monday, the exact time the building collapsed last week.

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London — British police have charged three men with assisting the Hong Kong intelligence service amid growing concern that hostile states are trying to interfere with democracy and economic activity in the U.K.  The three men were among 11 people arrested earlier this month in Yorkshire and London by counterterrorism police using provisions of a new law that allows suspects in national security and espionage cases to be detained without warrant. The eight other suspects were released without charge.  Chi Leung (Peter) Wai, 38, Matthew Trickett, 37, and Chung Biu Yuen, 63, are also charged with foreign interference, the Metropolitan Police Service said. They will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday.  "A number of arrests were made and searches carried out across England as part of this investigation," Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met's counterterrorism command, said in a statement. "While led from London, the Counter Terrorism Policing network has been crucial to disrupting this activity."  The announcement comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak prepares to deliver a speech on Monday in which he is expected to say that Britain is facing an increasingly dangerous future due to threats from an "axis of authoritarian states," including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Tensions with China flared last year after a parliamentary researcher was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing, charges that Chinese officials called a "malicious smear."  Hong Kong's security bureau, Hong Kong police and the office of China's foreign ministry in Hong Kong didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.  The British government last year passed a new national security act that gave police additional powers to tackle foreign espionage. The legislation was needed to combat the "ever-evolving" threat of foreign interference and in "response to the threat of hostile activity from states targeting the U.K.'s democracy, economy, and values," the government said.  The arrests in the current case were made on May 1 and 2. The investigation is continuing, police said. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

MANILA — The Philippine coast guard is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure China does not carry out reclamation activities at the Sabina Shoal, its spokesperson said Monday. The coast guard said on Saturday it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship's deployment in mid-April, the coast guard said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped on the sandbars of Sabina Shoal, altering their sizes and elevation. Philippine coast guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela told a press conference on Monday the coast guard had to make sure it was able to prevent  "China from carrying out a successful reclamation in Sabina Shoal." He said the coast guard was committed to maintaining a presence at the shoal, which Manila calls Escoda. Located within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone, the shoal is the rendezvous point for vessels carrying out resupply missions to Filipino troops stationed on a grounded warship at the Second Thomas Shoal, where Manila and China have had frequent maritime run-ins. China has carried out extensive land reclamation on some islands in the South China Sea, building air force and other military facilities, causing concern in Washington and around the region. Tarriela believed the coast guard had been effective in deterring China from doing small-scale reclamation. It had not documented any activity from the Chinese vessels present in Sabina Shoal since it deployed its multi-role response vessel there in mid-April. "China does not want to get caught," Tarriela said. There was no immediate comment from the Chinese Embassy in Manila on Tarriela's remarks. "China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters," it said in a statement on Sunday. China claims almost all of the vital waterway, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. The Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in 2016 that Beijing's claims had no basis under international law, a decision that China rejects.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

SYDNEY — An investigation by Australia's public broadcaster accuses China's secret police service of tracking down dissidents living overseas. A former Chinese spy now living in Australia told Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s Four Corners program that a unit of the Chinese secret service had been operational in Sydney as recently as last year. The spy - named only as "Eric" - has described a shadowy world of deception and abduction.  The former Chinese agent told ABC how he’d been ordered by the secret police in Beijing to target dissidents overseas, including in India, Thailand, Canada and Australia. ‘Eric’ said he would gain their confidence and lure them to countries where they could be kidnapped and sent back to China.   He told journalists from the investigative Four Corners program that he fled last year to Australia.   Australia’s domestic spy agency has not confirmed any of the details of the alleged Chinese spy ring. ‘Eric’ said he worked as an undercover agent for a unit within China's federal police and security agency, the Ministry of Public Security, between 2008 and early 2023. The specialist division is called the Political Security Protection Bureau, or the 1st Bureau, and targets so-called enemies of the Chinese state.  It is alleged to have been working in Sydney as recently as last year. ‘Eric’ told the ABC that he was speaking out to expose the truth. “I believe the public has a right to know the secret world.  I worked for the Chinese Political Security Department for 15 years," he said.  "Today, it is still the darkest department of the Chinese government.” The ABC said is the first time anyone from China’s secret police has ever spoken publicly. It is using a pseudonym to protect his identity. Peter Mattis is a China analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S-based conservative defense policy research organization.  He told the ABC’s Four Corners program that Beijing wants to curb dissent among the Chinese diaspora. “The Political Protection Bureau has also had a role in trying to silence dissidents as well as to map dissident networks.” The ABC has said that it has seen hundreds of secret documents and correspondence that back up ‘Eric’s’ allegations. The broadcaster has reported that Chinese authorities have used anti-corruption campaigns to return more than 12,000 alleged fugitives to China in the past decade. Chinese authorities have not yet commented on the allegations made in the Australian documentary. There has also been no response from ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization to the claims.