The Agonist - Asia: South-East

Obama tells Myanmar PM: Release Suu Kyi

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:39:31 -0800

Singapore | Nov 15

AFP - US President Barack Obama pressed Sunday for Myanmar's military junta to release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, during a landmark encounter with the regime's prime minister, the White House said.
"He brought up the release of Aung San Suu Kyi with that government (Myanmar)," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, as Obama met Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein and nine other Southeast Asian leaders.

Scant details on reaction to U.S. envoys' Burma visit

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:07:20 -0800

Tim Johnston | Bangkok | November 6

WaPo - After a rare trip by high-level U.S. diplomats to Burma, there was little indication from either nation Thursday about how the Obama administration's overture of engagment had been received.

Burmese state media merely noted that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Kurt Campbell and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel met with Prime Minister Thein Sein during the visit on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The pair are the highest-level U.S. officials to visit Burma, also known as Myanmar, in 14 years. Marciel declined to say how the government, the opposition or Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader they also met with, received their visit.

"The main purpose of the visit was to explain to the key parties there -- the government, political parties, the opposition, ethnic minorities -- the context of our recently completed policy review, but also to hear from them their views and their ideas," Marciel told a seminar on his return to Thailand.

The policy review left U.S. sanctions in place while promoting engagement with the prospect that progress toward democratic principles would be rewarded.

Cambodia appoints Thailand's Thaksin as economic adviser

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:24:01 -0800

Phnom Penh | Nov 4

AFP - Cambodia said on Wednesday it had appointed fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra economic adviser to premier Hun Sen in a move that adds to tensions between the countries.

The appointment was announced on state television almost two weeks after Hun Sen first riled Thailand by offering safe haven to Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and is living abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption.

"Thaksin has already been appointed by royal decree... as personal adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the adviser to the Cambodian government in charge of economy," said a government statement read on television.

"Allowing Thaksin to stay in Cambodia is virtuous behaviour...good friends need to help each other in difficult circumstances," it added.

The statement went on to call charges against Thaksin "politically motivated" and vowed not to extradite him if he "decides to stay in Cambodia or travels in and out of Cambodia in order to fulfill his duties".

WOW

Two senior US officials have begun a fact-finding visit to Burma.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:46:58 -0800

Nov 3

BBC - Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and deputy Scot Marciel hope to hold talks with the ruling junta and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mr Campbell, the top US diplomat for East Asia, is the highest ranking US official to visit Burma since 1995.

The visit is being seen as the latest move by President Barack Obama's administration to find ways to engage with the military regime.

The US diplomats are unlikely to see the reclusive chief of the junta, Than Shwe, but will instead meet Prime Minister Thein Sein in the remote jungle capital of Naypyidaw on Tuesday, according to Burmese officials.

They will then travel to Rangoon on Wednesday to meet Nobel Peace laureate Ms Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was extended by 18 months this year, provoking international outrage.

Khmer Rouge trial judges accused of bias

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:28:14 -0800

David Boyle | October 31

ABC News (AU)/Radio Australia - The beleaguered Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia have hit another obstacle.

Two pre-trial judges, including Australian Rowan Downing QC, have been accused of taking instruction from their respective governments in a motion filed last week.

The Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia were created to try the leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, which is accused of killing more than 2 million people in the 1970s.

The Khmer Rouge tribunal has endured considerable controversy in its four years of existence and now many people believe it has become entrenched in its own politics.

The lawyers of accused war criminal, Ieng Sary, have filed a motion requesting that two pre trial judges, including Mr Downing, be removed from the court due to a public perception of bias.

M&S makes palm oil pledge to save forests

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:53:09 -0700

Martin Hickman | Oct 24

The Observer - Commitment aimed at halting ecological damage done in South-east Asia

Marks & Spencer will commit to paying more for sustainable palm oil across its entire range of products today in an attempt to limit environmental damage in south-east Asia.

In a rolling programme over the next six years, M&S will buy GreenPalm certificates for sustainably produced palm oil equivalent to the amount it uses in almost 1,000 food, beauty and home products. Like other food manufacturers, M&S pours palm oil, the world's cheapest vegetable fat, into a wide variety of food and household products such as biscuits and convenience foods.

By early next year, the retailer said nine products, including 200g packs of oatcakes, a 500g cookie selection and seven types of cooked potatoes, would be covered by the GreenPalm scheme. By 2015, it promised to buy certificates for all relevant products. M&S, which would not disclose the cost of the commitment, is also funding a 120-acre wildlife corridor between plantations in Borneo.

Suu Kyi in Burma government talks

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:31:35 -0700

Oct 3

BBC -

Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has met a member of the country's ruling military government for the first time since early 2008.

Ms Suu Kyi, who is under renewed house arrest in Rangoon, met labour minister Aung Kyi, her lawyer said.

The meeting came one day after a court rejected her appeal against her 18 month sentence.

There was no official word on what they discussed, but Ms Suu Kyi has offered to help negotiate an end to sanctions.

Aung Kyi has met Ms Suu Kyi on six previous occasions, the last time in January 2008.

"The meeting lasted about 50 minutes, but I don't know what was discussed," a home ministry official told Reuters news agency.

** Burmese court rejects appeal against Aung San Suu Kyi house arrest
** US Diplomat Outlines Obama Approach on Burma
** Burma’s 2010 elections to test new US policy

US storms troops into the Philippines

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:08:18 -0700

Al Labita | Manila | Oct 2

Asia Times - The arrival of about 3,000 US Marines in the Philippines next week for training and humanitarian missions in the wake of recent floods has some Filipino officials wary that the soldiers could be diverted to war-torn Sulu island, where Islamic extremists recently killed two US soldiers. The scheduled deployment represents five times the number of US troops currently stationed in the Philippines.

The US deaths have sparked fears that Washington aims to ramp up its presence and retaliate against suspected Abu Sayyaf rebels, whom the US and European Union have identified as an international terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda. Those concerns have renewed calls among legislators to either scrap or renegotiate the terms of the Philippines-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

The VFA, which took effect in 1999 after Manila shut down the US military bases of Subic and Clark in 1991, allows US troops to hold joint military exercises with their Filipino counterparts. The deal, however, bars US troops from engaging in combat and any support is limited to providing logistical assistance, technical advice and intelligence to Manila's counter-terrorism operations.

Despite the VFA's legal restrictions, reports persist that US troops are "embedded" in Philippine military units in far-flung combat zones and that they had joined the fight against Muslim insurgents in Sulu and Basilan provinces. Some 600 US soldiers are currently stationed in the Philippines, the bulk of them on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

Two US soldiers were killed on September 29 when their Humvee vehicle hit a roadside bomb, believed to be an improvised explosive device, in Sulu's Indanan town, scene of previous bloody encounters and a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf. A Filipino marine was also killed and three Filipino soldiers were wounded.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:20:09 -0700

One can detect something of a siege mentality in Sri Lanka. There is a strong feeling that, after winning a long and brutal war, the country’s independence is threatened by unfair criticism from abroad. An important element in this is in the complex relationship with INGOs (International Non-governmental Organizations).

Susantha Goonatilake called his book on foreign-funded NGOs in Sri Lanka Recolonization.

In his conclusion he wrote: “Sri Lankan NGOs emerged in the late 1970s when the then government cracked down on democracy, transparency and accountability and killed locally-grown civil society… Sri Lanka thus became a partial NGO franchise state, with the NGOs attempting to erode the country’s sovereignty …The NGOs are now being squeezed and widely criticised, not only by the media, but also through massive street protests and countrywide posters. The coming years will see an outcome of the struggle between real civil society and foreign-funded NGOs. This struggle, which is partly between a reconciliation agenda and local voices, echoes Sri Lanka’s 500-year-old struggle with western colonial powers.”

There is a common resentment among Sri Lankans about the perceived arrogance of NGOs and the foreign correspondents that rely on them for access and information.

Gomin Dayasiri has written about this: “It’s a stopover in paradise for a Foreign Correspondent to live majestically on his overseas allowance. Such comfortable digs are not in the market in the recession-stung home country. There is exotic food and groovy watering holes at affordable prices. NGOs provide the freebies and roll out the red carpet…With the LTTE gone where they will go? After few more horror stories to demean the Security Forces and back to the west to face the shock treatment of recession. War is an investment relief to the Foreign Correspondent. The order will soon come to pack the flak jackets and return to a not so sweet home and to wait patiently for a call to another exotic destination?”

I used to wonder why the Sri Lanka government was so paranoid about NGOs and foreign criticism. It seemed a bit crass to seek international help and get all huffy about foreign interference.

During the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), to the outside world it would have seemed that the Norwegian facilitators were doing a difficult job in trying to bring peace to the war-torn island and getting very little thanks for it.

The leader of the Norwegian team was Erik Solheim, currently Norway’s International Development Minister. He recently called on the UN to investigate charges of war crimes in Sri Lanka, following the screening of a video on Channel 4 purporting to show Sri Lankan soldiers shooting unarmed Tamils. The Sri Lanka government claims that the video has been proved the video to be a fake.

The interrogation of Kumaran Padmanathan aka ‘KP’, the LTTE’s arms procurer caught over two months ago, is helping to expose an international network that kept the Tigers in fighting trim. It has been revealed that the Norwegian government helped the LTTE to establish relations with Eritrea, which allowed the group to purchase arms, ammunition and equipment from China on Eritrean end-user certificates and other documents. Erik Solheim had been directly involved in forming the Eritrean-LTTE relationship. The LTTE had used Eritrean and also North Korean end-user-certificates to procure arms from China which were smuggled in several consignments before the Sri Lanka Navy destroyed eight floating arsenals September 2006 and October 2007.

Sri Lanka recently established diplomatic relations with Eritrea with a view to pursuing LTTE assets in that country. KP has revealed that an LTTE-owned business venture was entrusted with operating the International Airport in Asmara and that during the last leg of the war, it had been planned to smuggle the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran to Eritrea.

Over 90 per cent of the entire Tigers’ heavy equipment, including a range of artillery pieces and 14.5 mm anti-aircraft guns captured by the Sri Lankan army were of Chinese origin.

Many Sri Lankans have long been suspicious about Norwegian influence in their country. Eyebrows were raised when Norwegian People’s Aid, a Norwegian Government-funded NGO said its heavy earth-moving vehicles, trucks & tractors had been “stolen” by the LTTE. NPA had been implicated in smuggling arms to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. When the Sri Lanka Army captured the LTTE’s Stanley Base and other camps they found electricity generators, water pumps, tents, water dowsers belonging to INGOs. The massive bunkers could have been built with the stolen vehicles.

Norwegians were suspected of training LTTE sea tigers in Thailand. There was also speculation that Norway provided sophisticated satellite & communication equipment to the LTTE during the 2002 CFA truce.

CARE is a leading international organization based in Atlanta, Georgia which operates in more than 65 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. On its website it acknowledges that, although there is a great deal of poverty to be addressed in the USA itself, it prefers to work in foreign countries. It has more than 14,500 employees worldwide. More than 90 percent of CARE International staff are nationals of the countries where it operates.

According to the Kotahena Police, investigations have revealed that the bomb that was exploded at the Pittala Junction in Kollupitiya targeting Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was taken to Colombo from Kilinochchi in a vehicle belonging to CARE International. Police arrested Sivalingam Arunan, Patmanathan Iiyer Sriskandaraja Sharma and Arunasalam Arumugam Perumal in connection with the assassination attempt. The bomb material had been buried at a safe house in Wellawatte after being carried in a CARE International van. Later, it was transported to Modera and fixed to the three-wheeler of the suicide cadre Lateef Mohamed Faris.

Two Sri Lankan UN workers were arrested in June on suspicion of using NGO activity as a cover for aiding the LTTE. The two men in detention are a 45 year old employee of the UNHCR and a 31 year-old man employed by the UN Office for Project Services.

Recent reports indicate that five Russians were ‘smuggled’ into the country in the guise of NGO personnel, to provide special training to personal bodyguards of Prabhakaran in the Wanni. A local bodyguard, who was arrested at a welfare camp in the Wanni, revealed that 35 bodyguards had been trained by the Russians. The training included firing, driving and dismantling a vehicle and reassembling it in a very short time. Prabakharan’s son Charles Anthony had received training from the Russians. An extensive investigation is under way to identify these Russians and the NGO that supported them. Defence officials suspect these Russians could be retired members of a Russian defence unit.

Police believe that some NGO employees in the IDP camps are Black Tigers whose mission is to assassinate VIPs visiting the camps. A report in The Island newspaper of 30 September claims that 20,000, believed to be LTTE cadres, have escaped from the IDP camps. Senior Superintendent Kasturiratne said special police teams from Kandy had been dispatched to the IDP camps in the north to conduct investigations. The SSP said that followers of the terrorist organisation were still moving around though the leadership of the movement had been destroyed. He said explosives and arms had been recovered from Pudikudiiruppu and other locations in the north and east on information provided by the LTTE suspects in custody.

Sri Lanka is waiting trepidatiously for the EU to report on GSP Plus, which, simply put, is a preferential tariff advantageous to the exports of the Sri Lanka garment industry. The EU created the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) from the early 1970s onwards, pursuant to a series of decisions made by the signatories of GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs).

Following a challenge from the WTO the EU had to redesign the GSP scheme. Countries lose the standard GSP scheme concessions when they are no longer classified as developing nations. The least-developed countries also lose their duty- free preferences once they become middle-income countries. They then fall into the standard GSP category and pay the 10% duty.

In order to qualify for GSP+ applicant nations had to ratify and implement 27 international conventions, account for less than one per cent of total imports into the EU, and its five main exports should account for more than 75 per cent of its total exports. If recipient countries fall short of the three GSP+ criteria, they will automatically be out of the scheme.

The EU seems to be implementing the GSP+ scheme in such a way as to spite the WTO for ruling against them. The EU is trying to disqualify Sri Lanka on the grounds that she is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. What the WTO seemed to have had in mind were de-selection criteria in keeping with the ‘development, financial and trade needs’ of the recipient country and stability and predictability in tariff regimes.
The EU paid local NGOs to make representations to itself to the effect that Sri Lanka was not in compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Then they paid another committee of experts to examine the documents they had paid for earlier. Nobody knows who made submissions to this three member committee of experts appointed by the European Commission.

The irony of the situation is that Sri Lanka is trying to recover from a horrendous thirty-year civil war and the garment industry has an important role to play in rebuilding the north and east by providing employment and helping rebuild the infrastructure.

The association of companies called Sri Lanka Apparel is contributing to post-war reconstruction by establishing a new garment factory, specialising in baby clothes, in the war-affected district of Trincomalee. The factory benefited from a special incentive scheme to attract investments into the Eastern Province and has generated 1,000 jobs. The factory opened in September, 2009 and will initially export all of its output to the UK. It has the capacity to produce 100 pieces per month and in six months will increase capacity to 1.2m - 2m pieces per month.

Another Sri Lanka Apparel member company has made water and sanitation the central theme of its corporate social responsibility programme. It has been building hygienic bathing facilities for displaced people in the camps at Menik Farm in northern Sri Lanka. The project employed people living in the camps and provided them with income.

That particular company has also supported the Government’s efforts to rebuild the economy of the Eastern Province by investing 250 million rupees in a factory at Punani in the Batticaloa District, which currently employs 220 people, most of whom are from families that were displaced as a result of the conflict.

A key feature of the Sri Lankan garment industry is that it seems to do more than pay lip-service to the concept of corporate social responsibility. Sri Lanka, as a nation, has fostered enlightened, socially-responsible legislation and has committed itself to 27 of the ILO Core Conventions. The mission of the industry is to employ ethical practices, thereby contributing to the economic development of the country while improving the quality of life of the apparel industry's workforce and their communities.

An initiative called Garments without Guilt enabled Sri Lanka Apparel to forge a niche for itself in western markets where companies and consumers were uncomfortable after revelations about Asian sweatshops. This success has been threatened by the financial crisis and will be further threatened if GSP + is withdrawn. Was ethical marketing merely a luxury of a booming world economy which will have to be jettisoned in grimmer times? Kumar Mirchandani of Sri Lanka Apparel is adamant that the association will not abandon its principles. Whatever the competition might try, Sri Lanka Apparel is committed to ethical business. “There is no excuse for unethical behaviour, no matter what the economic conditions are. This is the message Sri Lanka Apparel is sending”.

It is ironical that because of the perceptions of the EU about human rights violations by the Sri Lankan government, thousands of innocent Sri Lankan workers in an industry that achieved success because of its ethical business practices will be thrown out of work and factories in the war-torn north and east may have to close.

Much of what is called loosely “aid” is in fact investment for a return or loans on which Sri Lanka pays interest. GSP + is not charity. Sri Lanka was one of the original 24 signatories to GATT in 1947, and what Article 1 of GATT envisaged was a level playing field for everybody whereby member states would refrain from discriminating between one another and grant similar treatment to all countries. The stability as well as predictability of tariffs is essential for traders to make investment decisions. At the time they load their ships, they should know that the applicable tariff won’t be higher when the goods reach the destination.

The EU may push Sri Lanka to the position where she has no alternative but to mount a challenge in the WTO.

US soldiers killed in Philippines

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:08:55 -0700

Sept 29

BBC - Two US soldiers and a Filipino marine have been killed in a landmine blast on the southern Philippine island of Jolo, a Philippine army spokesman has said.

Two other Filipino soldiers were also wounded in the explosion, which hit their vehicle near the town of Indanan.

The Philippines' military said last week that it had captured Indanan, a stronghold of Abu Sayyaf rebels.

The US has about 300 soldiers in the southern Philippines, advising the local army in fighting insurgents.

The American soldiers are the first to be killed in the Philippines since 2002, when one serviceman died in an bombing in the port city of Zamboanga, also in the south of the country.

Under a US agreement with the Philippines its troops are not allowed to take part in combat unless attacked. Otherwise, they are there to train and advise the Philippine army in counter-insurgency operations.

Philippine storm leaves 73 dead, 330,000 homeless

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:47:17 -0700

Manila | Sept 27

AFP - At least 73 people were killed and more than 330,000 others displaced after the heaviest rain in more than four decades plunged the Philippine capital into chaos, officials said on Sunday.

The nine-hour deluge across Manila on Saturday submerged houses, washed away shanties and turned roads into raging rivers, forcing terrified residents to seek refuge on top of homes or cars where they waited for more than 24 hours.

"I am calling on our countrymen... to please stay calm," President Gloria Arroyo said, as she set a deadline of nightfall on Sunday for the military and other rescuers to save those who remained stranded.

The downpour from tropical storm Ketsana left some areas of Manila under six metres of water, and the storm's ferocity shocked a country that is accustomed to typhoons.

"This is the worst that I have seen," Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said of the extensive flooding that also severely damaged other parts of the northern Philippines.

Arroyo said more rain had fallen on Manila and surrounding areas than on New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina devastated the American city in 2005.

163 new species found in Asia

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:20:57 -0700

Andrew Buncombe | Sept 25

The Independent - A Cat Ba leopard gecko - AFP/Getty Images

A gecko with spots like a leopard and a fanged frog that preys on birds are among more than 160 new species that have been discovered along the Mekong River but which face the threat of extinction as a result of climate change.

Scientists in south-east Asia said that in 2008 they discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region that spreads over Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand Laos and southern China.

Yet almost before they are fully documented, the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) believes these new species could disappear because of the increased incidence of extreme weather linked to climate change. Floods, droughts and rising sea levels are all threats.

Philippines to review visiting forces pact with US

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:25:26 -0700

Manila | Sept 24

DPA - The Philippines plans to review an agreement with the United States that defines the conduct of visiting American troops in the country, a government spokesman said Thursday.

Edilberto Adan, spokesman for a Philippine commission overseeing the implementation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), said the review could lead to the renegotiation of the pact which is being criticized by some senators as unconstitutional.

'We will undertake a review to determine and address some of the issues raised by some senators,' he told a press briefing. 'We will start as soon as possible.'

The VFA was signed in 1998 under the administration of former president Joseph Estrada and came into force a year later.

On Wednesday, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago urged the Philippine government to renegotiate the agreement, or terminate it if the US refuses to revise the pact.

China in Laos: Counting the cost of progress

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:50:58 -0700

Daniel Allen | Bangkok | Sept 20

Asia Times - China's role in the development of northern Laos has grown significantly in recent years, but with several unfortunate side effects. Rare wildlife is being poached for Chinese consumption, while land grabs for rubber plantations are destroying not only the environment, but also the livelihoods of the local people.

New Muslim rebel leaders ready to take over struggle

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:06:05 -0700

John Grafilo | Camp Darapanan, Philippines | Sept 20

DPA - With its senior commanders in their 60s and 70s, the largest Muslim rebel group in the Philippines may seem headed for a serious leadership crisis that could set back its struggle for a Muslim homeland.

But the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) says a new generation of leaders is ready to take over in case their dream of a Muslim homeland in the southern region of Mindanao would not be attained within the life time of the current leadership.

Murad Ebrahim, chairman of the 12,000-strong MILF, said junior commanders were being trained for war and peace as well as national development.

'We are training them both for peace and war,' he said in an interview inside Camp Darapanan, an MILF camp in the outskirts of Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao province, 960 kilometres south of Manila.

'Our training is geared towards nation-building, towards preserving the peace. But it is also geared towards a situation where they have to defend themselves.'

Murad, however, warned that the next generation of MILF leaders who are in their 30s and 40s may not be as patient as the current leadership in negotiating with the Philippine government since they grew up facing hardships caused by war.