HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A human rights advocacy group says it found allegations of dozens of labor and environmental abuses by Chinese-invested companies involved in mining or processing minerals used in renewable energy.
The report released Thursday by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center in London says it found 102 cases of alleged abuses in all phases of using such minerals: from initial explorations and licensing to mining and processing.
The report studied supply chains for nine minerals — cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel, zinc, aluminum, chromium and the so-called rare earth elements. All are vital for high-tech products such as solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles.
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Indonesia, with 27 cases, had the highest, followed by Peru with 16 and the Democratic Republic of Congo with 12, Myanmar with 11, and Zimbabwe with 7.
Over two-thirds involved human rights violations, with Indigenous communities the most affected.
Many projects invested in or operated by Chinese companies were located in countries that had mineral wealth but “limited options for victims to seek remedy.”
To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the global guardrail set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the world needs to triple its clean energy capacity by 2030 from where it was last year, according to the International Energy Agency. That has triggered a scramble for so-called “transition minerals” like cobalt, copper, lithium and zinc that are needed in clean energy technologies.
China isn’t the only one — a separate tracker from the advocacy group notes similar alleged abuses by companies based out of the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Canada — but it plays a vital role in mining, processing, and refining these minerals, as well as making solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicle batteries. So its companies are central to ensuring equity and fairness in the world’s transition away from fossil fuels.
“The bottom line is if the energy transition is not fair, it will not be as fast as it needs to be and we will fail to meet our climate deadlines,” said Betty Yolanda, the organization’s Director of Regional Programs.
Climate change has an inordinate impact on the world’s poor, who have done the least to contribute to warming and now are bearing the brunt of the negative impacts of mining the minerals needed for the transition to renewables, she said, speaking on behalf of the authors of the report.
The report’s authors did not want to be identified publicly because of fears of retaliation.
Rich countries like Australia that have abundant mineral wealth don’t need foreign investments for extraction, though projects often do involve foreign investors. But copper-rich developing nations like Peru and nickel-exporting countries like Indonesia and the Philippines increasingly rely on Chinese investment and know-how to mine and process those minerals, generally with fewer regulatory safeguards.
“This is the time to not do the same mistakes of the past. The renewable energy transition must be done in a just and equitable way,” said Eric Ngang, global policy adviser for the Natural Resources and Governance Department of Global Witness, a UK-based non-profit not involved in the report.
Weak legal safeguards against such abuses facilitate corrupt practices that benefit companies and dishonest politicians at the expense of the environment and human rights.
About 42% of the human rights allegations detailed in the report were concentrated in Asia & the Pacific, 27% were in Latin America and 24% in Africa. More than half were cases of environmental damage, often loss of access to safe water supplies. More than a third involved allegations workers’ rights were violated, with the majority linked to health and safety risks at work.
Those are likely the “tip of the iceberg,” Yolanda said, since the report relies on publicly available information about alleged abuses committed by companies, cases where civil society has taken action, or where attacks against activists have been reported. “It is most difficult to receive information from countries with very little civic freedom and from conflict zones,” she added.
The report noted that improved safeguards are crucial as countries increasingly try to keep some of the value from their mineral wealth at home by requiring miners and companies downstream in the supply chain to build smelters and other infrastructure. For instance, Indonesia, which has the world’s largest nickel supply, is trying to set itself up as a hub for making electric vehicles and also make nickel-based batteries to create a complete nickel supply chain that involves Chinese investments.
Without safeguards, these ambitions “may be frightfully compromised” by the harm done to people and the environment, the report said.
Only 7 of the 39 Chinese mining companies mentioned in the report had published human rights policies and despite transparency commitments, the Business and Human Rights Resource Center received only 4 responses from 22 companies in the sector that has been approached with the allegations.
China’s Huayou Cobalt “partially” admitted allegations of environmental damage in Indonesia by acknowledging social and enviromental challenges, the report said. But the company denied alleged exploitation of Chinese workers in a separate project. Ruashi Mining said that human rights abuse allegations in the Democratic Republic of Congo were false and the state-run conglomerate Norinco denied having corrupt ties with Myanmar’s army elite.
China lacks laws to regulate the impacts of Chinese overseas businesses and supply chains and policies on such issues are mostly voluntary. Such problems are being addressed in the U.S. and Europe and the report said Japan and South Korea increasingly are making human rights and environmental due diligence a part of their regulatory frameworks.
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Myanmar’s military junta is holding up humanitarian access to some cyclone-hit communities in western Rakhine state after Cyclone Mocha devastated the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the poorest parts of the country.
United Nations agencies said Thursday they were still negotiating access to parts of the state four days after Mocha slammed into Myanmar’s coast on Sunday as one of the strongest storms ever to hit the country.
Hundreds of people are feared to have died and thousands more are in urgent need of shelter, clean water, food and health care as a clearer picture of the devastation is beginning to emerge.
While rescue groups have warned of “a large scale loss of life,” the exact number of casualties is hard to know due to flooding, blocked roads, and downed communications.
Widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure has been reported throughout Rakhine, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Storm damage has hampered efforts to access rural and hard-to-reach areas while pre-existing travel restrictions imposed by the junta have delayed the delivery of vital aid to communities in urgent need.
“Humanitarian actors have made clear that the need to secure travel authorization is impeding their response to the cyclone,” said Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar.
“It seems that many agencies haven’t even been able to conduct needs assessments, let alone deliver aid, because SAC (junta) officials have not granted travel authorization. This is extremely worrying.”
The UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) said it was still waiting for access to be granted by the junta to reach communities in Rakhine state in order to “start coordinated field missions to gauge the full scope of the humanitarian situation.”
“The bureaucratic access constraints are affecting all partners, including the UN and NGOs,” said Pierre Peron, UN OCHA’s regional public information officer. “To deliver, we will need access to affected people, relaxation of travel authorization requirements and expedited customs clearances for commodities.”
About 5.4 million people in Rakhine and the northeast are estimated to have been in the path of the cyclone, which crashed into the state as an equivalent category 5 hurricane, with winds of over 200 kilometers per hour (195 mph). Of those, more than 3 million people are most vulnerable, according to UN OCHA in its latest update.
The priority is to assess the damage in Kyauktaw, Maungdaw, Pauktaw, Ponnagyun, Rathedaung and Sittwe townships, it said.
“The road between Yangon and Sittwe has now reopened, potentially providing a transport route for much-needed supplies, if approved. It is also hoped the Sittwe airport will reopen on Thursday,” UN OCHA said.
Another roadblock to relief efforts is a severe lack of funding, with a $764 million humanitarian response plan less than 10% funded.
“Colleagues simply will not be able to respond to these additional needs from the cyclone and continue our existing response across the country without more financial support from donors,” said UN OCHA’s Peron.
Medecins Sans Frontieres told CNN it had a number of travel authorizations already in place for staff for the month of May, “which has allowed us to be fully operational so far and focus on life-saving activities in areas most affected.”
“Travel within Rakhine state is restricted with the exception of Sittwe, the state capital. Permission is always necessary. All aid agencies are required to apply for travel authorizations to implement activities one month prior to travel,” said Paul Brockmann, MSF’s operations manager for Myanmar.
Brockmann said the scale of the medical humanitarian needs created by the cyclone are “enormous” and fast approvals of import permits and travel authorizations is “of life-saving importance, considering that 17 townships have been declared disaster zones by the authorities.”
“The needs are widespread and beyond the capacity of any one organization to respond to,” he said.
Concerns are high because Rakhine is a largely impoverished and isolated state, which in recent years has been the site of widespread political violence.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in the state due to the protracted conflict, many of them members of the stateless Rohingya minority group, long persecuted in Myanmar.
Rohingya in Rakhine are mostly confined to camps akin to open air prisons, where authorities place strict controls on their movement, as well as access to schooling and health care.
Aung Saw Hein, a resident of a displacement camp in the Rakhine capital Sittwe, told CNN the storm has “made us refugees again.”
“We have been refugees for almost 11 years now… We are not able to access health care, not able to take a rest… we are not able to support our family members with basic needs like food,” he said. “And now this storm completely destroyed our life and brought us on the road again.”
Myanmar authorities have a long history of impeding access to aid for vulnerable communities.
In the wake of a brutal and bloody military campaign that forced 740,000 people to flee to neighboring Bangladesh from 2017, aid activities in the north of the state were suspended and authorities denied humanitarian actors access to communities in need, mostly the Rohingya population, according to aid groups.
Following the 2021 military coup, the junta and its security forces imposed new travel restrictions on humanitarian workers, blocked access roads and aid convoys, and destroyed non-military supplies, Human Rights Watch reported at the time.
Rohingya adviser to Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government Aung Kyaw Moe tweeted the junta is “blocking aid agencies in Rakhine” and “must not play the same game” as a previous junta administration did in 2008, when after Cyclone Nargis it prevented international disaster relief teams and supplies from reaching those in need. An estimated 140,000 people died.
“This is their basic MO,” said UN Special Rapporteur Andrews.
“In Rakhine state, in addition to access challenges, the restrictions on freedom of movement imposed on the Rohingya have further impaired their ability to access aid and services, including medical treatment.”
In a statement, the IFRC said “access in Rakhine and the northwest remains heavily restricted” but the Myanmar Red Cross has a “presence in every affected township through its branches and volunteers.”
A spokesperson for Partners Relief & Development, which has been working in the camps since the initial violence in mid 2012, said they have had few restrictions on their activity during that time and have a “strong local network carrying out our relief efforts.”
However, “access has been much more difficult in the past three years and the current government restrictions are now making it more complicated to reach the affected areas,” the spokesperson said.
“Our hope is that unimpeded access is provided and that the local authorities will not only facilitate access for aid but also contribute assistance and treat the Rohingya with care and dignity.”
CNN has reached out to Myanmar’s military junta for comment on the restrictions to access and aid in Rakhine following the cyclone.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has been quoted by state media Global New Light of Myanmar as saying “relief teams must be sent to the storm-affected areas to carry out rescue and relief tasks as well as rehabilitation.”
State media showed Min Aung Hlaing visiting cyclone-affected areas in Bagan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famed for its ancient temples. It also carried reports of the junta’s deputy prime minister Adm. Tin Aung San visiting towns and villages around Sittwe to oversee the delivery of water tanks, food supplies, and cash assistance.
Aid agencies in Bangladesh and Myanmar say they are bracing for disaster and have launched a massive emergency plan as a powerful cyclone barrels toward millions of vulnerable people.
Since forming in the Bay of Bengal early Thursday, tropical Cyclone Mocha has intensified to a the equivalent of a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane, with sustained winds of 259 kilometers per hour (161 mph) and gusts of up to 315 kph (195 mph).
The storm is moving north at 20 kph (12 mph), according to the latest update from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center on Sunday.
Mocha is expected to make landfall Sunday afternoon local time (early Sunday morning ET), likely across Rakhine State in Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, host to the world’s largest refugee camp.
Outer bands are already impacting Myanmar and Bangladesh bringing rain and strong winds to the region. Conditions are expected to deteriorate further leading up to landfall, which brings the threats of flooding and landslides.
Disaster response teams and more than 3,000 local volunteers who have been trained in disaster preparedness and first aid have been put on standby in the camps, and a national cyclone early warning system is in place, according to Sanjeev Kafley, Head of Delegation of the IFRC Bangladesh Delegation.
Kafley said there are 7,500 emergency shelter kits, 4,000 hygiene kits and 2,000 water containers ready to be distributed.
In addition, mobile health teams and dozens of ambulances are ready to respond to refugees and Bangladeshis in need, with specially trained teams on stand by to help the elderly, children and the disabled, Arjun Jain, UN Principal Coordinator for the Rohingya Refugee Response in Bangladesh, told CNN.
“We expect this cyclone to have a more severe impact than any other natural disaster they have faced in the past five years,” said Jain. “At this stage, we just don’t know where the cyclone will make landfall and with what intensity. So we are hoping for the best but are preparing for the worst.”
Evacuations of people in low-lying areas or those with serious medical conditions had begun, he said.
In Myanmar, residents in coastal areas of Rakhine state and Ayeyarwady region have started to evacuate and seek shelter at schools and monasteries.
Hundreds of Red Cross volunteers are on standby and the agency is relocating vulnerable people and raising awareness of the storm in villages and townships, the IFRC’s Kafley said.
The last storm to make landfall with a similar strength was Tropical Cyclone Giri back in October 2010. It made landfall as a high-end Category 4 equivalent storm with maximum winds of 250 kph (155 mph).
Giri caused over 150 fatalities and roughly 70% of the city of Kyaukphyu was destroyed. According to the United Nations, roughly 15,000 homes were destroyed in Rakhine state during the storm.
About 1 million members of the stateless Rohingya community, who fled persecution in nearby Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017, are living in the sprawling and overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Most live in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters perched on hilly slopes that are vulnerable to strong winds, rain, and landslides.
Jain said the shelters can only withstand wind speeds of 40 kph (24 mph) and he expects winds from Cyclone Mocha to exceed that.
“Low lying areas of the camps are likely to flood rapidly, destroying shelters, facilities such as learning centers, as well as infrastructure such as bridges that have been constructed with bamboo,” he said.
The cyclone adds to an already disastrous year for the Rohingya, and without more funds from the international community, Jain said they won’t have enough to rebuild.
“They faced a 17% cut in their food rations earlier this year due to funding cuts and we expect a further cut in their rations in the coming months. 16,000 refugees lost their home in a devastating fire in March. And now they must deal with the cyclone. Unfortunately, we don’t even have the funds to help refugees rebuild their homes and facilities if the devastation is severe,” he said.
There are also concerns for 30,000 Rohingya refugees housed on an isolated and flood-prone island facility in the Bay of Bengal, called Bhasan Char. The UN refugee agency said volunteers and medical teams are on standby and cyclone shelters and food provisions are available for those living on the island.
In Myanmar, about 6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Rakhine state and across the northwest, with 1.2 million displaced, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
While scientists are still trying to understand ways climate change is affecting cyclones, a slew of research has linked human-caused global warming to more potent and destructive cyclones.
Tropical cyclones (also known as hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms depending on ocean basin and intensity), feed off ocean heat. They need temperatures of at least around 27 degrees Celsius (80 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit) to form, and the warmer the ocean, the more moisture they can take up.
The waters in the Bay of Bengal are currently around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit), about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than average for May.
As the climate crisis pushes up the temperatures of oceans – which absorb around 90% of the world’s excess heat – it provides ideal conditions for cyclones to gain strength.
Warmer oceans also increase the chances of cyclones rapidly intensifying, according to recent research.
Climate-change fueled sea-level rise adds to the risks, worsening storm surges from tropical cyclones and allowing them to travel further inland.
Bangladesh and Myanmar are particularly threatened because they are low-lying, as well as being home to some of the world’s poorest people.
Volunteers in Bangladesh’s coastal districts were using loudspeakers to urge people to seek shelter on Saturday as the delta nation braced for an extremely severe cyclone, which is expected to slam ashore in Bangladesh and Myanmar in the next 24 hours.
U.N. agencies and aid workers prepositioned tons of dry food and dozens of ambulances with mobile medical teams in sprawling refugee camps with more than 1 million Rohingya who fled persecution in Myanmar.
The camps at Cox’s Bazar are in the path of Cyclone Mocha, which was closing in on the coast of southeastern Bangladesh and Myanmar with wind speeds of up to 135 miles per hour and gusts of up to 150 mph, the Indian Meteorological Department said. It’s projected to make landfall on Sunday between Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and Kyaukpyu in Myanmar.
Bangladeshi volunteers warn people to leave their homes and take shelter due to ahead of Cyclone Mocha’s landfall in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on May 13, 2023.
Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Bangladesh, with more than 160 million people, has prepared more than 1,500 cyclone shelters. The navy said it’s keeping ready 21 ships, maritime patrol aircraft and helicopters for rescue and relief operations.
In Myanmar, rains and winds were picking up since Friday and prompted more than 10,000 people in villages around Sittwe in Rakhine state to seek shelter in sturdy buildings including monasteries, temples and schools, said Lin Lin, the chairman of the Myittar Yaung Chi charity foundation.
“Currently, about 20 places have been arranged for people to stay in Sittwe. But because there were more people than we expected, there was not enough food for the next day. We are still trying to get it,” he said.
Speaking from Cox’s Bazar across the border in Bangladesh, the International Organization of Migration’s deputy chief of mission, Nihan Erdogan, said Bangladesh put in place a massive preparedness plan.
He said his agency had trained 100 volunteers in each of the 17 refugee camps on how to alert rescuers using flag warning signals when heavy rains, floods and strong winds lash the region. “Emergency shelter materials and hygiene kits are readily available, and personal protective gear has been provided to all volunteers.”
The World Health Organization put 40 ambulances and 33 mobile medical teams on standby at Cox’s Bazar, the agency’s spokesperson Margaret Harris said.
Authorities in Bangladesh said heavy rains from the cyclone could trigger landslides in Chattogram and Cox’s Bazar and three other hilly districts — Rangamati, Bandarban and Khagrachhari.
Bangladesh, which is prone to natural disasters such as floods and cyclones, issued the highest danger signal for Cox’s Bazar. The Bangladesh Meteorological Department warned the cyclone could cause severe damage to the lives and properties in eight coastal districts.
Mizanur Rahman, director general of the Department of the Disaster Management, said they asked the local authorities in 20 districts and sub-districts to make swift preparations. He said they were particularly concerned about a small coral island called Saint Martins in the Bay of Bengal, where efforts were underway to protect thousands of inhabitants.
Myanmar said in its weather bulletin that the cyclone was moving toward the coast of Rakhine state near Sittwe, which was put under the highest weather alert.
The World Food Program said it prepositioned enough food to cover the needs of more than 400,000 people in Rakhine and neighboring areas for one month.
“We are preparing for the worst, while hoping for the best. Cyclone Mocha is heading to areas burdened by conflict, poverty, and weak community resilience,” said WFP’s Myanmar deputy director, Sheela Matthew. “Many of the people most likely to be affected are already reliant on regular humanitarian assistance from WFP. They simply cannot afford another disaster.”
In February and March, at least 190 people were killed when Cyclone Freddy made landfall twice in southern Africa, according to numbers from the United Nations.
In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar with a storm surge that devastated populated areas around the Irrawaddy River Delta. At least 138,000 people died and tens of thousands of homes and other buildings were washed away.
Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune city, said cyclones in the Bay of Bengal are becoming more intense more quickly, in part because of climate change.
The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported on Friday that thousands of people living along the western coast of Rakhine state were evacuated.
Both Indian and Bangladesh authorities said they were expecting heavy to very heavy rainfall in Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Andaman Sea, parts of India’s remote northeast, and across Bangladesh from Saturday night.
Climate scientists say cyclones can now retain their energy for many days, such as Cyclone Amphan in eastern India in 2020, which continued to travel over land as a strong cyclone and caused extensive devastation. “As long as oceans are warm and winds are favorable, cyclones will retain their intensity for a longer period,” Koll said.
Cyclones are among the most devastating natural disasters in the world, especially if they affect densely populated coastal regions in South Asia.
LABUAN BAJO, Indonesia (AP) — A picturesque tourist destination will host crisis-weary Southeast Asian leaders with sun-splashed tropical islands, turquoise waters brimming with corals and manta rays, seafood feasts, and a hillside savannah crawling with Komodo dragons.
The sunshiny setting is a stark contrast to the seriousness of their agenda.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo picked the far-flung, rustic harbor town of Labuan Bajo as a laidback venue to discuss an agenda rife with contentious issues. These include the continuing bloody civil strife in Myanmar and the escalating territorial conflicts in the South China Sea between fellow leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Widodo, who’s in his final year on the world stage as he reaches the end of his two-term limit, said ASEAN aims to collaborate with any country to solve problems through dialogue.
That includes Myanmar where, two years after the military power grab that forced out Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration and sparked a bloody civil strife, ASEAN has failed to rein in the violence in its member state. A five-point peace plan by ASEAN leaders and the top Myanmar general, which calls for an immediate stop to killings and other violence and the start of a national dialogue, has been disregarded by Myanmar’s ruling military.
ASEAN stopped inviting Myanmar’s military leaders to its semiannual summits and would only allow non-political representatives to attend. Myanmar has protested the move.
In an additional concern involving Myanmar, Indonesian officials said Sunday that 20 of their nationals, who were trafficked into Myanmar and forced to perform cyber scams, had been freed from Myanmar’s Myawaddy township and brought to the Thai border over the weekend. During the summit, ASEAN leaders planned to express their concern over such human trafficking schemes in a joint statement, a draft copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said her country, as ASEAN chair, has tackled the Myanmar crisis in a non-adversarial way.
“Colleagues certainly know that in the early stages of its leadership, Indonesia decided to take a non-megaphone diplomacy approach,” Marsudi said. “The aim is to provide space for the parties to build trust and for the parties to be more open in communicating.”
Widodo’s choice of a seaside venue with stunning sunrises and sunsets and the sound of birds chirping all day complements that approach.
The Indonesian leader also hoped the high-profile ASEAN summit would put Labuan Bajo and outlying islands, dotted with white-sand beaches and even a rare pink-sand beach, under the global tourism spotlight.
“This is a very good moment for us to host the ASEAN summit and showcase Labuan Bajo to the world,” said Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who flew in Sunday with his wife to a red-carpet welcome flanked by military honor guards and dancing villagers with flower-filled headwear.
But there are a few hitches.
The far-flung fishing town with only three traffic lights and about 6,000 residents is acutely short of hotels for ASEAN’s swarm of diplomats, delegates and journalists. Many had to arrange to share rooms.
Unlike the more popular Bali resort island or the bustling concrete jungle of a capital Jakarta, which has hosted international conclaves in upscale hotels and convention centers, Labuan Bajo is a far smaller town that a visitor could cross from end to end with a brisk two-hour walk. There are no public buses, and villagers mostly move around by walking, riding scooters or driving private cars.
A small team of local technicians with hard hats were flown in to lay cables and expand internet connections at the venues on short notice.
On Sunday, Labuan Bajo’s small airport was jampacked with visitors. Teams of diplomats and journalists arrived to welcome streamers announcing the upbeat summit motto, “ASEAN Matters: Epicentrum of Growth.”
Outside the airport named after the Komodo dragons, traffic quickly built up under the brutal noontime sun.
When the sun rose Monday morning, workers were still cementing some roadsides around the venues — a day before the summit opening.
Andre Kurniawan, who works at a dive center in Labuan Bajo, said the infrastructure developments would be a boon for Labuan Bajo villagers. “We were isolated from some areas before and now they are open and the areas are getting better. I hope that Labuan Bajo can be a better tourist town in the future,” he said.
Azril Azahari, chair of an association of Indonesian academic experts on tourism, told the AP that Labuan Bajo was not ready and apparently was chosen to host the summit on short notice. “The hotel facilities and the lodging have become a problem. There is a ship being used for accommodation and it’s not a lodging ship,” he said.
Welcoming visitors to her coffee shop ahead of the summit, Suti Ana said even though it wasn’t the best time for Labuan Bajo to host, ASEAN would boost local businesses. “But we cannot wait, so this is the time,” she said.
Choosing the small port town was not a bad idea, Azril said, if it came with adequate planning and government investments in infrastructure.
Located on the western tip of Flores island in southern Indonesia, Labuan Bajo, aside from its beaches and diving and snorkeling spots, has been better known as the gateway to the Komodo National Park — a UNESCO World Heritage site and the only place in the world where Komodo dragons, the world’s largest lizards, are found in the wild.
Environmentalists and tourism analysts fear that a wider public interest could put further stress on the already endangered Komodo dragons. Only about 3,300 were known to exist as of 2022.
“If more people come, sooner or later the Komodo dragons cannot breed in peace, this can be a problem,” Azahari said, citing longstanding fears that the Komodos could face extinction without full protection.
Despite the odds, Indonesian officials said they would do everything to successfully and safely host the ASEAN summit in Labuan Bajo.
“If there’s any commotion along the way, that will be a big stain on the nation’s dignity,” Edistasius Endi, the regent of Labuan Najo’s West Manggarai district, said in a statement.
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Associated Press journalists Jim Gomez and Achmad Ibrahim contributed to this report.
A tropical cyclone is strengthening in the Bay of Bengal and is on course to hit western Myanmar and Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, where around 1 million people live in flimsy shelters in what many consider to be the world’s largest refugee camp.
Cyclone Mocha is the first to form in the Bay this year and is expected to strengthen further before making landfall on Sunday, likely in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, near the border with Bangladesh.
According to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Mocha strengthened Friday into the equivalent of a category 1 Atlantic hurricane and is moving north at 11 kilometers per hour (7 miles per hour).
The storm’s winds could peak at 220 kph (137 mph) – equivalent to a category 4 Atlantic hurricane – just before making landfall on Sunday morning, the agency said.
India’s Meteorological Department said Friday Mocha had intensified into a very severe cyclonic storm and warned fishermen and trawlers against sailing far into the Bay over the coming days.
The agency forecast a storm surge of up to 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) was likely to inundate low-lying coastal areas in the path of the cyclone at the time of landfall.
In Bangladesh, that includes Cox’s Bazar, home to members of the stateless Rohingya community who fled persecution in nearby Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017. Many live in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters perched on hilly slopes that are vulnerable to strong winds, rain, and landslides.
There are also concerns for hundreds of Rohingya refugees housed on an isolated and flood-prone island facility in the Bay of Bengal, called Bhasan Char.
Ahead of Mocha’s expected landfall, aid agencies are ramping up their emergency preparedness and response with local and refugee communities.
The UN refugee agency in Bangladesh said in a tweet that “emergency preparations in the camps and on Bhasan Char are underway” in coordination with the government and local aid agencies.
“In preparation of cyclones, hundreds of Rohingya refugee volunteers have been trained on identifying risks, informing their communities, evacuating people when needed and responding after disaster strikes,” the UNHCR said in a tweet.
In neighboring Myanmar, residents in coastal areas of Rakhine state and Ayeyarwady region have started to evacuate their homes and seek shelter ahead of the cyclone’s expected landfall, according to local independent media Myanmar Now.
The ruling Myanmar junta has issued cyclone warnings and claimed to be taking precautionary measures such as readying disaster management committees to respond to a potential disaster, according to state media Global New Light of Myanmar.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center said widespread flooding, landslides and high wind gusts are expected around the area of landfall and across Myanmar’s interior.
The last named tropical cyclone to make landfall in Myanmar was Maarutha in April, 2017. Though Maarutha was the equivalent of a tropical storm at landfall, with maximum winds of 92 kph (58 mph), it brought heavy rains and damaged nearly 100 homes.
In October 2010, Tropical Cyclone Giri was the last storm to make landfall with hurricane-force winds. It made landfall as a high-end Category 4 equivalent storm with maximum winds of 250 kph (155 mph).
Giri caused over 150 fatalities and roughly 70% of the city of Kyaukphyu, in Rakhine state, was destroyed. According to the United Nations, roughly 15,000 homes were destroyed in the state during the storm.
The worst natural disaster to hit Myanmar was Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, killing 140,000 people, severely affecting 2.4 million and leaving 800,000 displaced, aid agencies said.
Bangkok, Thailand – The Golden Triangle – a region where the jungle borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet – has long been notorious as the centre of an illegal drug trade operated, controlled and protected by warlord-like military leaders allied with regional organised crime figures.
Synthetic drugs produced in the Golden Triangle have flooded regional markets. In 2021 alone, more than a billion methamphetamine pills were seized by authorities in Southeast and East Asia, according to the United Nations.
Organised crime syndicates and armed groups had joined forces in the Golden Triangle, with their expanded drug production exploiting the twin vulnerabilities of the recent pandemic and political instability in Myanmar, the UN said last year, leading to a drugs trade described as “staggering” in scale.
New data released last month by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) also showed that opium poppy cultivation has surged by 33 percent in the Golden Triangle and opium yields have the potential to burgeon by 88 percent.
Last year, 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of opium poppies were cultivated in Myanmar, with an estimated potential opium yield of almost 800 metric tonnes.
Myanmar’s overall illicit opiate economy is now estimated to be worth $2bn while the regional market for heroin is valued at a staggering $10bn, according to the UN.
The resurgence of opium production in the highlands of the Golden Triangle will reverberate all the way down to the “wider drug economy centred around the lower Mekong region” and far beyond, the UN warned.
To understand the forces at play in the Golden Triangle drug trade, Al Jazeera spoke with Jeremy Douglas, UNODC’s regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Al Jazeera: At the recent launch of the UNODC report on opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar, a key theme was that the Golden Triangle is back. Can you please expand on that?
Douglas: The Golden Triangle has always been there but what we’ve seen over recent years is a really stark shift from opium and heroin towards methamphetamine and recently some ketamine.
That change was extremely profound and it started as we saw a migration of major organised crime into the Golden Triangle to produce synthetic drugs in late 2013.
The situation that has taken hold after February ’21 [when the military seized power in Myanmar] is that the dynamic in the Triangle has changed yet again. We’ve seen a further scale-up of synthetic drugs but we’ve also seen a severe economic contraction in the country and a return of the other side of the Golden Triangle – the traditional opium, [and] the heroin that follows – in a profound way.
So we’re seeing the Golden Triangle return to its roots to some extent, and at the same time, the synthetic drug economy remains outsized.
Al Jazeera: Why had opium production dropped off in the Golden Triangle?
Douglas: A variety of factors. There was the massive supply that was coming out of Afghanistan … which was feeding global markets. And then around 2014, 2015, we started seeing a massive surge of synthetic drugs following the migration of major crime groups’ operations into the Triangle and the supply starting to drive demand, drive the regional market, and a significant increase in synthetic drug use across the region.
At the same time, there was another phenomenon that took place in 2014 when Myanmar opened and foreign investment flooded in. The economy inside the country profoundly changed. A lot of people who would have had no other choice but to engage in opium farming … had other [opportunities]. There were other forms of income being generated in the country which they could benefit from.
And we were running some programmes which are really good to help farmers transition out of opium towards crops like high-value coffee and tea.
UNODC staff collect data on opium cultivation in Myanmar in 2022 [Courtesy of UNODC]
Al Jazeera: The UN notes the regional impact that the increase in opium production in the Golden Triangle will have. Can you speak to that?
Douglas: The increase in opium that has taken place over the past year will result in an increase in heroin supply. An increase which will feed into the regional market – a suddenly more diverse drug market. And this additional challenge has a profound health impact.
Heroin is an injectable drug which brings with it health and societal impacts. It will also generate further wealth for traffickers, which is going to … involve a range of other illicit activities like money laundering and precursor trafficking, that are already a challenge for the region to deal with.
So when we say regional impact, we mean there’s the immediate health issues that I’ve touched on and the fact is that the countries of this region are going to experience the brunt of this, like they are experiencing the brunt of the methamphetamine, the ketamine.
Al Jazeera: Are we going to see opium poppy cultivation continue to increase in the Golden Triangle?
Douglas: Right now, we’re collecting and verifying in the field, but initial reports from the teams are that we’re looking at further increase. The question is the magnitude of it, we simply don’t know.
Al Jazeera: The situation with the drug trade in Myanmar appears to be inextricably linked to the political situation in Myanmar. That one has to be solved to resolve the other.
Douglas: You cannot separate economics from politics, security and stability in any country. And when you have a political crisis of this nature and a pre-existing illicit economy that was sizeable – and you have a contraction in the real economy to the extent that it has happened – of course, the illicit economy will step in and fill the void.
Fundamentally, there has to be a candid, honest discussion about the convergence of politics, economics, security and the drug trade in the country – illicit economies – and it is, in fact, a regionalised illicit economy. The borderlands of Thailand and Laos are profoundly impacted and they will be increasingly impacted in the years ahead.
But the impact cascades across East and Southeast Asia and addressing it will require political engagement by neighbouring countries, but also by the ASEAN group and China together with Myanmar.
Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia and the Pacific regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [File: Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP]
Al Jazeera: You have said that corruption greases the wheels of the drug trade. How systematic and organised is the corruption around the drug trade in the Golden Triangle?
Douglas: Corruption is inbuilt in the drug trade. For the heroin to move from the labs of northern Shan [state] to Thailand, there would have to be pre-arranged payment agreed. Payments would also be made when it gets to the Thai border where the price per kg escalates. If authorities tasked with interdiction on the Thai border are not successful, drugs get through. But, at the same time, there’s always the potential for corruption at the border.
In essence, what I’m describing is the chain: from source right through to export and end market involves corruption.
Al Jazeera: You have also mentioned the role of money laundering. Profits are so massive in the drug trade that those profits have to go somewhere.
Douglas: Increasingly large drug profits have had to move somewhere and casinos have played a special role in recent years. As have other cash-based businesses that built up around them, some of the hotels, some of the entertainment businesses. They can take in cash which is then pushed through their books and which can end up in banks.
So, it is important for the casino industry to be carefully monitored and possibly worked with to help address the laundering. As well, banks that are banking on behalf of casinos in the Mekong [region] have to be aware that much or some of the money going through them is associated with the drug trade and it ends up in the regional banking system.
Al Jazeera: Could you speak to your description of opium farming as an employer of last resort?
Douglas: I would say our understanding from the farmers – and we’ve talked to them for years and years – is that they’re ready to give up opium. They turn to opium when they don’t have other options. And as they lose options or they don’t have other opportunities, they go back to it. So in a sense, when I say last resort, I mean it’s like an employer of last resort. It’s the old standby in a way … And especially now as they’re being incentivised and helped to go back into it by brokers that are representatives of heroin producers, and without other options, they go back to it.
Al Jazeera: Heroin producers encourage farmers to produce opium. Is there also a degree of intimidation there as well?
Douglas: So what we have been informed of by people from across the opium-producing areas is that representatives that buy opium have come into the territories, encouraged farmers to go back to it, provided seeds, fertilisers, and in some parts irrigation and sprinkler equipment.
They finance certain costs and then come back and buy their crop back from them and collect money for what they helped them get started with – the starting materials. It’s almost like a contract farming type arrangement like you see with other crops or agricultural products in the region. But I should say as well that they’re not pleasant to deal with, is what we are told by the farmers. They’re being advised to go into this. But, the techniques that are used can be “We want you to go back and do opium farming”, if you know what I mean.
And it’s a difficult proposition to say no to when you have someone come to you who is representing powerful interests. How does a poor farmer or village say no to those powerful interests?
Al Jazeera: What of the role of ethnic armed organisations in this? Do they rationalise what they do behind a philosophy of earning income from opium that allows them to buy weapons to fight for their freedom?
Douglas: I think there used to be that element of it and I think maybe that is still there. But I think we should not romanticise the involvement in drug trafficking and the partnerships with organised crime. Traffickers are business people. Heroin and methamphetamine traffickers are fundamentally ruthless business people.
They’re in the drug trade to make a lot of money. So while there is money from the business that finances groups and armed resistance, there are others including some major traffickers that disingenuously wear a uniform because it gives them a certain level of legitimacy. But at the end of the day, they’re traffickers, they’re organised crime figures.
An opium poppy field in flower in Myanmar’s Shan state, December 2022 [Courtesy of UNODC]
Al Jazeera: What is the relationship between the Myanmar government and some of the ethnic armed groups that are cultivating opium?
Douglas: There are groups that are under the umbrella of the security services of Myanmar and there are others which are not under that umbrella, which are independent and advocating for their autonomy. The ones under the umbrella have a formalised relationship, and they have their territory and they’re more or less left alone.
It’s hard to believe that they don’t know what’s going on in territory of the border guard or people’s militia forces, which we know, and the Thais know, and everyone seems to know, are involved. But then there’s the others, which are not under that umbrella, and many are producing and trafficking as well. And so it’s an extremely complex landscape of who’s producing and who’s not.
Al Jazeera: With a civil war in Myanmar, armed groups and drugs, how can you be hopeful in a situation like that?
Douglas: I think there are some, from time to time, signs of hope. Given what we’ve described, though, in terms of the synthetic drug economy and now opium and heroin, the related criminality, these are really difficult times for the country and the region. But again, that’s why we have to redouble efforts, quite frankly, and why we are saying to the region it’s time to have a political and strategic discussion about this.
The region cannot police its way out of this. It’s not going to work. So while it isn’t an optimistic situation, it’s a situation that has to be dealt with and we’ve got to get to that point, of candidly getting leadership to say it’s time now to do something different here.
A police officer from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board guards bags of methamphetamine pills during a destruction ceremony in Ayutthaya province, north of Bangkok, Thailand, 2015 [File: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters]
Al Jazeera: Drug interdiction and policing alone are not a solution?
Douglas: The drug policy of this region is heavily tilted in a certain direction, which clearly hasn’t really worked well.
It’s been decades of trying to seize more drugs, and it’s more drugs every year. Let’s be honest, it’s not working. And we’ve been saying it for years. Address demand. Prevent the growth in demand, and address the health and societal impacts. But also adjust law enforcement strategy. You cannot seize your way out of this, particularly with synthetic drugs, which are infinite.
You have to radically change your approach. You have to dismantle the business model of organised crime. Disrupt their banking, disrupt their chemical trade, disrupt the facilitators of their business, their lawyers, their money launderers. They have to be dealt with.
The problem is the region continues to chase the drug supply and make seizures and measure their success by seizures. Clearly, that’s not working.
We hope that regional leaders will start prioritising this beyond policing because right now it’s still a police discussion. So we have to get beyond that and it has to be changed at a policy level.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Southeast Asian foreign ministers urged Myanmar’s military rulers on Friday to reduce violence and allow unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to pave the way for a national dialogue aimed at ending the country’s worsening crisis.
Meeting in Indonesia’s capital, the ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also granted observer status to East Timor, Asia’s newest nation, ahead of it becoming the regional bloc’s 11th member.
Myanmar is an ASEAN member, but its foreign minister was excluded from Friday’s annual ministers’ retreat because of his country’s failure to implement a five-step consensus on restoring peace forged in 2021 between ASEAN and Myanmar’s military leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, who hosted Friday’s meetings, said the ministers agreed that an inclusive national dialogue “is key to finding a peaceful resolution to the situation in Myanmar,” and that reducing violence and providing humanitarian assistance are “paramount for building trust and confidence.”
She said the lack of progress in Myanmar “tests our credibility” as a group, and that ASEAN’s efforts toward peace would be coordinated with those of other countries and the United Nations.
Myanmar’s military leader promised in the five-point agreement to allow a special ASEAN envoy to meet with jailed ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and others to foster a dialogue aimed at easing the crisis, set off by the military’s seizure of power two years ago. But Myanmar refused to let an ASEAN envoy meet with Suu Kyi last year, resulting in Min Aung Hlaing’s exclusion from an ASEAN summit last November.
The increasing violence in Myanmar since the military takeover loomed large over the foreign ministers’ meetings, even as Indonesia, this year’s ASEAN chair, sought to dampen concerns that the crisis will overshadow other issues and hold the bloc “hostage.”
In her opening remarks, Marsudi said the ministers were meeting in the midst of immense global challenges in which the Indo-Pacific region is not immune, including geopolitical, food, energy, financial and ecological crises, as well as major power rivalries that could spill over and potentially destabilize the region.
The ministers warmly applauded the East Timor delegation as it participated in an ASEAN ministerial meeting for the first time.
“It is a crucial steppingstone in our long journey to join the big family of the ASEAN community,” East Timor Foreign Minister Adaljiza Magno said,
ASEAN agreed in principle to admit East Timor as the group’s 11th member at last November’s ASEAN summit.
East Timor applied for full membership in ASEAN in 2011, but some members feared its poverty would be a burden and slow efforts to achieve an ASEAN Economic Community.
The U.N. estimates that nearly half of East Timor’s population lives below the extreme poverty line of $1.90 a day, and that 42 of every 1,000 babies die before their fifth birthday because of malnutrition.
The former Portuguese colony was occupied by Indonesia for a quarter-century and gained independence after a U.N.-sponsored referendum in 1999. Indonesia’s military responded with scorched-earth attacks that devastated East Timor.
February 1 marks two years since the military, led by army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, seized control of Myanmar.
In the past year, the generals have stepped up their efforts to wipe out all opposition to their rule.
The country’s elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been convicted of a litany of charges in proceedings that took place behind closed doors and faces the rest of her life behind bars.
In a decision that shocked the world, the military also hanged four anti-coup activists — the first use of the death penalty in more than 30 years.
It has also turned increasingly to air power in its crackdown on the anti-coup movement, and has deepened its ties with Russia, a key weapons supplier.
Despite the continued crackdown, diplomatic efforts to end the violence and restore the civilian government have largely failed to make progress.
“It’s critical we reflect on the international community’s myriad failures in response to a crisis that remains as urgent today as it was two years ago,” Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, said in a statement.
“It is never too late for the international community to learn from its mistakes. The UN Security Council could follow its recent and first-ever resolution on Myanmar with a comprehensive and ongoing plan of action that includes measures like a global arms embargo and a referral to the International Criminal Court.”
People took to the streets soon after the generals seized power, but two years on, thousands have been killed and many more forced from their homes in a dire humanitarian crisis File: AP Photo]
Here is a timeline of events since the military seized power in 2021:
February 1
The military detains Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of the National League for Democracy, which had been re-elected in a landslide in November 2020.
Mass civil disobedience is declared, with government workers, including teachers and doctors, walking off the job.
The police announce the first charges against Aung San Suu Kyi — the illegal use of walkie-talkies.
February 9
Police are accused of using excessive and lethal force against protesters in Naypyidaw, the capital. Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, 20, is shot in the head and dies 10 days later. The military bans gatherings in townships across 10 regions.
February 12
Tens of thousands of people in Yangon and elsewhere in Myanmar join the anti-coup protests, the biggest crowd since the generals’ power grab. The United States imposes its first sanctions on coup leader Min Aung Hlaing and several other senior generals for their roles in the coup. The European Union, Canada and others follow.
February 26
United Nations Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun calls for the “strongest possible action” against the military regime and ends his UN speech with the three-fingered salute adopted by the protesters.
A few days later, the coup leaders announce he has been fired for “betraying” the country. The UN has continued to maintain Kyaw Moe Tun’s credentials despite pressure from the military regime.
March 10
The UN Security Council unanimously calls for a reversal of the military coup in Myanmar and condemns the military’s violence against peaceful protesters.
Troops kill at least 160 people as the military holds its traditional parade to mark Armed Forces Day.
April 16
Politicians forced out of office by the military announce they have formed a National Unity Government (NUG).
April 24
Min Aung Hlaing travels to Jakarta for a summit with Southeast Asian leaders. The armed forces chief signs a five-point plan to end the violence and seek a solution to the political crisis.
May 24
Aung San Suu Kyi appears in court for the first time since her government was overthrown.
She faces a variety of charges, including the illegal import of walkie-talkies and breaking COVID-19 rules during the 2020 election.
Healthcare workers joined the civil disobedience movement declared days after the coup [File: Stringer/Reuters]
July 26
The military cancels the result of the 2020 election, claiming millions of cases of fraud.
International and domestic observers who watched the polls said there were no major irregularities.
August 1
Min Aung Hlaing appoints himself prime minister in the military’s State Administration Council. He says the military will hold elections by 2023.
August 6
The US charges two Myanmar citizens over a plot to injure or kill UN Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun.
September 6
The military releases Ashin Wirathu, a nationalist Buddhist monk notorious for his anti-Muslim tirades, after dropping sedition charges brought by Aung San Suu Kyi’s deposed government.
September 7
The NUG calls for a nationwide uprising against the generals.
“With the responsibility to protect the life and properties of the people, the National Unity Government … [has] launched a people’s defensive war against the military junta,” Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the NUG, said in a video statement posted on Facebook.
“As this is a public revolution, all the citizens within entire Myanmar, revolt against the rule of the military terrorists led by Min Aung Hlaing in every corner of the country.”
October 16
In an unprecedented move, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) excludes Min Aung Hlaing from their summit, saying the military has failed to make progress on its five-point plan to end the crisis.
Aung San Suu Kyi has rarely been seen since she was arrested by the military when they seized power in February 2021. She was shown by state television appearing in court on May 24, 2021, and has since been sentenced to jail for a total of 33 years on charges seen as politically motivated [File: MRTV via Reuters]
Aung San Suu Kyi is found guilty and jailed for four years on charges of “incitement” against the military, as well as breaching COVID-19 protocols. The sentence is later cut to two years.
The military rolls out the red carpet for Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen who becomes the first — and so far only — foreign leader to visit Myanmar since the coup.
July 25
The military executes four anti-coup activists in the first use of the death penalty in Myanmar in more than 30 years.
Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former legislator from the NLD, and prominent democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu, better known as Ko Jimmy, were hanged for their involvement in organising “brutal and inhumane terror acts”, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.
Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw were also executed.
Dozens more are on death row.
August 3
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visits Myanmar amid deepening ties between Moscow and the military regime.
The Russian foreign minister meeting the military’s foreign minister Wunna Maung Lwin in Naypyidaw. The two countries have grown increasingly close since the coup [File: Russian Foreign Ministry via AFP]
September 7
Min Aung Hlaing meets Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Moscow-organised Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia.
At least 11 children are killed and more than a dozen injured after the military bombs a school in the restive Sagaing region where it is facing sustained resistance.
The then-Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah says ASEAN needs to decide whether the five-point consensus is “still relevant” or “needs to be replaced”.
November 17
Australian economist Sean Turnell, Japanese filmmaker Toru Kubota, prominent business adviser and former United Kingdom Ambassador Vicky Bowman, and American Kyaw Htay Oo are among 5,774 prisoners released in an Amnesty to mark Victory Day.
“It is one bright spot in what is otherwise an incredibly dark time, where we see things going from bad to worse in Burma,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said of the amnesty, using Myanmar’s former name.
Of the council’s 15 members, 12 vote in favour. China and Russia, who have supported Myanmar’s military leaders since the coup, abstain as does India.
The Security Council passed its first ever resolution on Myanmar at the end of December demanding an end to violence, the release of all “arbitrarily detained” prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and the restoration of democracy [File: Seth Wenig/AP Photo]
December 30
Aung San Suu Kyi’s trials conclude as she is handed a seven-year term for corruption. The 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate faces a total of 33 years in prison. The military provides no details on where she will be held.
2023
January 5
The military frees more than 7,000 prisoners as part of an amnesty to mark 75 years of independence. Only a few are known to be political prisoners.
January 24
More than a dozen survivors of military abuses in Myanmar lodge a criminal complaint in Germany, asking prosecutors to investigate and bring to trial those responsible for committing atrocities during crackdowns on opponents of the coup and against the Rohingya minority.
“This complaint provides new evidence proving that the Myanmar military systematically killed, raped, tortured, imprisoned, disappeared, persecuted and committed other acts that amount to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in violation of German law,” said Matthew Smith, CEO and co-founder of advocacy group Fortify Rights, which filed the suit.
Among the measures, parties and individuals deemed to have links to “terrorism” — the military refers to its opponents in the People’s Defence Forces and NUG as “terrorists” — will be barred from standing.
February 1
Two years since the military seized power.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) estimates nearly 3,000 anti-coup activists and civilians have been killed since the coup — double the number from a year ago.
AAPP records show 17,572 people have been arrested, with 13,763 still in detention.
The UN estimates some 1.5 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting.
The United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada announce new sanctions targeting the military regime, and, for the first time, officials from Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), which the US says is the miltary’s biggest source of revenue.
“We reiterate our call for the return of Myanmar to a democratic path,” they said in a joint statement with the foreign ministers of Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federated States of Micronesia, Georgia, Ghana, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, South Korea, Marshall Islands, Palau, Serbia, Switzerland and Ukraine.
“The military regime must end violence and create space for meaningful and inclusive dialogue to allow for any democratic process to resume.
Search and rescue efforts under way after a cargo ship carrying lumber capsizes between Japan and South Korea.
Japan and South Korea are searching for 17 crew members of a cargo ship that capsized in rough weather.
Japanese and South Korean media said five members of the crew were rescued on Wednesday after the 6,551-tonne “Jintian” sank off the coast of Japan’s Nagasaki. All of them were picked up by nearby vessels.
The ‘Jintian’ went under nearly four hours after its crew sent a distress call late on Tuesday, according to Japan’s Kyodo news agency.
The crew said their ship had “tilted and is flooding”, the agency reported.
Japanese officials said 14 crew members on the Hong Kong-registered ship are Chinese and eight are from Myanmar.
According to South Korean officials, the ship’s captain last communicated with the coast guard of South Korea’s Jeju Island through a satellite phone at about 2:41am local time on Wednesday (17:41 GMT Tuesday), saying that crew members would abandon the ship.
The ship was completely submerged when the South Korean Coast Guard arrived at the scene, reported the Yonhap news agency.
The crews did not find anyone on the three life rafts and two lifeboats they searched.
There was no immediate word on what caused the vessel, which was carrying lumber, to capsize.
The incident happened as a cold snap hit much of Japan and South Korea, with heavy snow falling in some areas and daytime temperatures in some of the islands nearest the rescue site reaching just 3C (37F).
Japan’s coast guard said winds were strong at the time the distress signal was received.
It said it had dispatched patrol boats and aircraft to the area, but their arrivals were delayed by rough weather.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Thursday that the rule of law is at grave risk of becoming “the Rule of Lawlessness,” pointing to a host of unlawful actions across the globe from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and coups in Africa’s Sahel region to North Korea’s illegal nuclear weapons program and Afghanistan’s unprecedented attacks on women’s and girls’ rights.
The U.N. chief also cited as examples the breakdown of the rule of law in Myanmar since the military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 leading to “a cycle of violence, repression and severe human rights violations,” and the weak rule of law in Haiti which is beset by widespread rights abuses, soaring crime rates, corruption and transnational crime.
“From the smallest village to the global stage, the rule of law is all that stands between peace and stability and a brutal struggle for power and resources,” Guterres told the U.N. Security Council.
The secretary-general lamented, however, that in every region of the world civilians are suffering the effects of conflicts, killings, rising poverty and hunger while countries continue “to flout international law with impunity” including by illegally using force and developing nuclear weapons.
As an example of the rule of law being violated, Guterres pointed first to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukraine conflict has created “a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, traumatized a generation of children, and accelerated the global food and energy crisis,” the secretary-general said. And referring to Russia’s annexation of four regions in Ukraine in late September as well as its 2014 annexation of Crimea, he said any annexation resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the U.N. Charter and international law.
The U.N. chief then condemned unlawful killings and extremist acts against Palestinians and Israelis in 2022, and said Israel’s expansion of settlements — which the U.N. has repeatedly denounced as a violation of international law — “are driving anger and despair.”
Guterres said he is “very concerned” by unilateral initiatives in recent days by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new conservative government, which is implementing an ultra-nationalist agenda that could threaten a two-state solution.
“The rule of law is at the heart of achieving a just and comprehensive peace, based on a two-state solution, in line with U.N. resolutions, international law and previous agreements,” he stressed.
More broadly, the secretary-general said the rule of law is the foundation of the United Nations, and key to its efforts to find peaceful solutions to these conflicts and other crises.
He urged all 193 U.N. member states to uphold “the vision and the values” of the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to abide by international law, and to settle disputes peacefully.
The council meeting on strengthening the rule of law, presided over by Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi whose country decided on the topic, sparked clashes, especially over the war in Ukraine, between Russia and Western supporters of the Kyiv government. Nearly 80 countries spoke.
“Today, we are beset by the war of aggression in Europe and conflicts, violence, terrorism and geopolitical tensions, ranging from Africa to the Middle East to Latin America to Asia Pacific,” Hayashi said.
“We, the member states, should unite for the rule of law and cooperate with each other to stand up against violations of the Charter such as aggression” and “the acquisition of territory by force from a member state,” he said in a clear reference to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council “an ironclad commitment” for the U.S. and a fundamental principle of the United Nations is that “no person, no prime minister or president, no state or country is above the law.”
Despite “unparalleled” advancements toward peace and prosperity since the U.N. was founded on the ashes of World War II, she said some countries are failing in their commitment to the U.N. Charter’s principles — “the most glaring example” Russia — or are “enabling rule breakers to carry on without accountability.”
Thomas-Greenfield called for those who don’t respect sovereignty, territorial integrity, human rights and fundamental freedoms to be held accountable, naming Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Myanmar, Belarus, Cuba, Sudan and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the West of using the council meeting “to sell the narrative about the apparent responsibility of Russia for causing threats to international peace and security, ignoring, however, their own egregious violations.”
He said that before last Feb. 24, “international law was repeatedly flouted,” claiming the roots of the current situation “lie in the astonishing desire of Washington to play a role of global policeman.”
Nebenzia pointed to numerous instances including NATO bombings in former Yugoslavia and Libya, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq “using a false pretext” of the presence of weapons of mass destruction, of the “war on terror” in Afghanistan — and he blamed the West for what Moscow calls the current “special military operation.”
Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova said “it’s very black and white” that Russia is responsible for the crimes in Ukraine and should be held accountable.”
She also warned the Security Council: “The law of force that Russia has been barbarically practicing today over Ukraine gives a very clear signal to everyone in this room: No one is secure any more.”
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Widespread opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates the strength of a unified response against human rights abuses, and there are signs that power is shifting as people take to the streets to demonstrate their dissatisfaction in Iran, China and elsewhere, a leading rights group said Thursday.
A “litany of human rights crises” emerged in 2022, but the year also presented new opportunities to strengthen protections against violations, Human Rights Watch said in its annual world report on human rights conditions in more than 100 countries and territories.
“After years of piecemeal and often half-hearted efforts on behalf of civilians under threat in places including Yemen, Afghanistan, and South Sudan, the world’s mobilization around Ukraine reminds us of the extraordinary potential when governments realize their human rights responsibilities on a global scale,” the group’s acting executive director, Tirana Hassan, said in the preface to the 712-page report.
“All governments should bring the same spirit of solidarity to the multitude of human rights crises around the globe, and not just when it suits their interests,” she said.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a broad group of nations imposed wide-ranging sanctions while rallying to Kyiv’s support, while the United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court both opened investigations into abuses, HRW said.
Countries now need to ask themselves what might have happened if they had taken such measures after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, or applied the lessons elsewhere like Ethiopia, where two years of armed conflict has contributed to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, Hassan said.
“Governments and the U.N. have condemned the summary killings, widespread sexual violence and pillage, but have done little else,” she said of the situation in Ethiopia, where Tigray forces signed an agreement with the government late last year in hope of ending the conflict.
“Courageous people time and again still take extraordinary risks to take to the streets, even in places like Afghanistan and China, to stand up for their rights,” HRW’s Asia director Elaine Pearson told reporters at the report’s launch in Jakarta.
In China, Human Rights Watch said the U.N. and others’ increased focus on the treatment of Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region has “put Beijing on the defensive” internationally, while domestic protests against the government’s “zero-COVID” strategy also included broader criticism of President Xi Jinping’s rule.
As many Western governments turn away from China on trade toward India, however, Pearson admonished them not to ignore Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own human rights record.
“India, under Prime Minister Modi, has also seen very similar abuses, the systematic discrimination against religious minorities, especially Muslims, the stifling of political dissent, the use of technology to suppress free expression and tighten its grip on power.”
At a later press conference in Beirut, HRW highlighted economic crises in the Middle East and North Africa that have impacted people’s ability to meet their basic needs and have, in turn, triggered social unrest and violence, sometimes followed by government repression.
“Outside of the Gulf, nearly every country in the region is suffering from some kind of major economic challenge,” said Adam Coogle, citing a growing currency crisis in Egypt and fuel and electricity crises in Lebanon and Syria. In Jordan, fuel price hikes have led to protests that turned violent.
One of the greatest humanitarian crises continues to be in Myanmar, where the military seized power in February 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and since then has brutally cracked down on any dissent. The military leadership has taken more than 17,000 political prisoners since then and killed more than 2,700 people, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
Human Rights Watch said peace attempts by Myanmar’s neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have failed, and that aside from barring the country’s military leaders from its high-level meetings, the bloc has “imposed minimal pressure on Myanmar.”
It urged ASEAN to engage with opposition groups in exile and “intensify pressure on Myanmar by aligning with international efforts to cut off the junta’s foreign currency revenue and weapons purchases.”
In Jakarta, Pearson noted that the only lasting solution to the Rohingya refugee situation would be holding Myanmar’s government accountable for their persecution, and giving the Rohingya the ability to safely return.
“Most Rohingya want to go home, but they want safety, they want equal treatment, they want their land back, and they want the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide held to account.”
HRW chose Indonesia, the current chair of ASEAN, as the site to launch its report in the hopes that Jakarta would use the opportunity to push the group to hold Myanmar to account for implementing its five-point peace process, Pearson said.
“We urge Indonesia to use the ASEAN chairmanship effectively to resolve the crisis in Myanmar,” she said. “The world’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows what is possible when governments work together.”
Domestically, Pearson said Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s admission on Wednesday to serious human rights violations at home in recent decades and vow to compensate victims was “significant,” but only as a first step.
“What we need now, going forward, is proper accountability for the victims of those abuses and the genuine commitment, going forward, to safeguarding human rights.”
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Rising reported from Bangkok. Abby Sewell contributed to this report from Beirut.
Bangkok/Yangon – Beijing’s apparent failure to pick up on an invitation for China’s Premier Li Keqiang to attend a regional meeting in Myanmar has been interpreted as a subtle snub to Naypyidaw’s military rulers by one of their most powerful patrons.
China’s non-response to an invitation for a planned Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) summit comes amid increasing international isolation of the military regime in Myanmar and its inability to reduce armed opposition to its rule domestically and secure legitimacy internationally.
Established and led by China to promote “regional peace, stability and prosperity”, the LMC is made up of the five Southeast Asian countries through which the Mekong River flows: Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The Mekong is also known as the Lancang in the parts of China through which it passes from its source on the Tibetan Plateau.
Holding the LMC’s rotating chair in 2022, Myanmar was expected to host a summit of the organisation towards the end of last year, two sources familiar with planning for the event told Al Jazeera. Myanmar’s military leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, China’s Li, and leaders from the five Southeast Asian countries were expected to attend.
But the summit never happened when China failed to respond to an invitation.
“Beijing didn’t respond to the junta’s invitation and no date or attendance was set,” said Michael Ng, a former official in the Hong Kong government who has close diplomatic connections in Southeast Asia.
Ng, who was until recently deputy chief of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Bangkok, notes that no senior Chinese official has yet met in person with Min Aung Hlaing since the coup in February 2021.
Not responding to the LMC summit invitation may not have been a simple oversight, he said.
“China’s cold-shouldering is likely driven by the consideration that having Premier Li meeting Min Aung Hlaing implies full, official support for the military regime,” Ng said.
When China’s then-Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended an LMC ministers’ meeting in Myanmar’s Bagan in July 2022, he met his military-appointed Myanmar counterpart Wunna Maung Lwin.
The LMC’s China Secretariat in Beijing and the Chinese embassy in Yangon did not respond to Al Jazeera’s emailed requests for comment as to why the summit meeting was not held.
Beijing’s no-show at the proposed summit also comes as Myanmar’s ministers have been barred from meetings of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) after it failed to make progress in implementing the five-point peace plan drawn up by ASEAN in April 2021 to end the violence triggered by the military’s power grab.
Jason Tower, Myanmar country director at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), also said Beijing had not responded to the military’s invitation.
“China did not follow up with a proposal to convene the Leader’s meeting in Myanmar before the end of 2022,” Tower told Al Jazeera.
“Min Aung Hlaing’s push to leverage the LMC to build regional legitimacy has failed, and China has recognised that a favourable response to his request to convene the LMC Leaders meeting would undermine ASEAN centrality, and draw sharp criticism from a significant number of ASEAN states,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Beijing’s concerns certainly included provoking strong blowback from ASEAN states, which view such a high-level convening involving the illegitimate military junta as undermining ASEAN’s consensus not to invite the junta’s participation in such meetings,” he said.
China “is not willing to undermine relationships with ASEAN in exchange for propping up a military regime that has thus far proven incapable of delivering with respect to China’s strategic economic plans”, he added.
According to an analysis paper by the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP-Myanmar) – a Myanmar think tank, Chinese investments are facing growing risks as the anti-coup conflicts escalate across the country.
Of more than 7,800 clashes recorded nationwide since the coup in February 2021, at least 300 have taken place in areas where major Chinese projects are located or near potential project sites for Chinese investments, according to data from ISP-Myanmar.
More than 100 clashes took place in 19 townships where China’s oil and natural gas pipeline projects are located, and at least a dozen near the Chinese-operated Letpadaung copper mine in the north of the country.
There were also confrontations in northern Shan State in 2021 and 2022. Shan State is the site of key projects along what is known as the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor – an infrastructure initiative that involves industrial and infrastructure projects, including railways, highways and a deep-sea port, that will connect China’s Yunnan to the Indian Ocean via Myanmar.
The military’s offensives against ethnic armed groups in the north of the country have also generated instability on the China-Myanmar border not seen since 2015, the USIP’s Tower said.
Tower referred to the military’s recent failed attack against the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a Chinese-speaking ethnic Kokang rebel group based on the border with southwestern China.
The MNDAA controlled Kokang’s self-administered zone and capital Laukkai until 2009, when it was taken during an offensive led by Min Aung Hlaing. The fighting drove more than 30,000 civilians to flee to China. Taking advantage of the military’s current security troubles, the MNDAA appears intent on retaking Laukkai.
A researcher based in Myanmar until recently told Al Jazeera the situation in the country was neither good for Chinese investment nor for everyday people.
Due to the escalating security risks, China would find it challenging to implement their planned investments, said the researcher who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
Local communities and civil society organisations also fear that China’s projects will not be implemented in a responsible way under a military government, and could cause harm to the environment and local people. China’s investment project should be paused and resume “only after the legitimate government is restored”, the researcher said.
Refusal to condemn Myanmar’s military
China, India, Russia and Thailand are among the few countries that have maintained formal relations with Myanmar’s military since it seized power nearly two years ago.
They have refused to condemn or sanction the generals since the coup which removed Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically-elected government and unleashed a bloodbath on the civilian population. An estimated 2,600 people have been killed and more than 16,500 imprisoned on political charges, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – a civil society group monitoring the situation in Myanmar.
When the UNSC last month adopted its first resolution on Myanmar in 74 years – which called for an end to violence and the release of all political prisoners – China, Russia, and India abstained from the vote. The remaining 12 members of the powerful council voted in favour.
In a report published in November, a group of international legislators said “steadfast and uncritical” support, particularly from Beijing and Moscow, had enabled Myanmar’s military to sustain itself and carry out human rights abuses.
Beijing’s lukewarm position on the generals means Myanmar’s anti-coup forces do not consider China their enemy.
The National Unity Government (NUG), a parallel government set up by elected and toppled legislators following the military coup, opposes any attacks on Chinese investments. The NUG has also called on the country’s resistance forces, collectively termed the People’s Defence Force, to stay away from Chinese projects.
The pro-China stance of Myanmar’s pro-democracy politicians should come as no surprise.
The NLD and the NUG sent separate congratulatory letters to President Xi Jinping at the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress in Beijing last year, two sources told Al Jazeera. The International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPCID) only acknowledged the NLD letter, however. This is because the NLD is a legitimate political party in Myanmar, but the “NUG’s legal and political status is at best undetermined for China”, Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Myanmar’s generals have also sought to publicly align with China.
The general’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), was vocal in its criticism of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year, which caused a diplomatic storm between Washington and Beijing. Myanmar’s foreign minister also paid an official visit to China in March and April, opening the Myanmar Consulate-General in Chongqing and meeting then-Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Though understated in terms of a diplomatic rebuke, China’s apparent passing over of the LMC summit is likely to unsettle Myanmar’s generals who might be wondering if there is yet more to come from their powerful patrons and friends in Beijing.
As Human Rights Watch’s Louis Charbonneau said last month after Beijing and Moscow chose to abstain rather than vote against the UNSC resolution critical of Myanmar’s military: “China and Russia’s abstentions signal that even the junta’s few friends have lost interest in sticking out their necks to defend its atrocities.”
The Shan State Progress Party, United Wa State Party and National Democratic Alliance Army have attended elections talks.
Myanmar’s military government has held talks with three ethnic armed groups on staging elections in areas under rebel control, a spokesman for one of the groups has said.
Leaders from the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP), United Wa State Party (UWSP) and National Democratic Alliance Army – which have largely stayed out of a growing conflict that has gripped the country since the military staged a coup in February 2021 – are holding three days of talks in the capital, Naypyidaw, state media reported on Friday.
A spokesman for the SSPP, which controls territory in northern Shan state, said that the military had “asked us to let them hold free and fair elections in our area”.
“For us, we will not oppose their election,” the spokesman told Agence France-Presse.
The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar also reported on the meeting between the ethnic leaders and the military leadership.
A spokesman for the UWSP did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on the meeting.
With a standing force of about 25,000, the UWSP’s military arm, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), is one of the world’s largest non-state militaries. The UWSA conscripts its military force by taking a family member from each household in its autonomous enclave on Myanmar’s northern border with China.
Myanmar’s military met with five smaller ethnic rebel groups last month, who later released a joint statement supporting the regime’s plans to hold polls.
Myanmar has some 20 ethnic rebel armies that have fought each other as well as the country’s military for decades over their demands for autonomy, as well as for control of the lucrative drugs trade and natural resources in the country’s borderlands that fund the armed movements.
During a speech to mark Myanmar’s Independence Day on Wednesday, the country’s military leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing doubled down on his plans to hold elections, though he gave no details about when they would be held.
The holding of a general election is widely seen as an attempt to normalise the military’s seizure of power through the ballot box and to deliver a result that ensures the generals retain control. The military will control the entire voting process and has spent the past two years enfeebling any credible opposition.
The army’s takeover in 2021 reversed nearly a decade of progress towards democracy after 50 years of military rule. Thousands have been arrested, including the democratically elected former lead of the country Aung San Suu Kyi. She has been held virtually incommunicado by the military, and rolling court appearances have resulted in her being sentenced to 33 years in prison on corruption charges.
Her supporters and independent analysts say the cases against Aung San Suu Kyi are an attempt to discredit her reputation and keep her from taking part in the election that the military has previously said would take place by August this year.
The military justified its takeover by claiming widespread fraud in the last democratic, multi-party vote in 2020, though independent election observers did not find any significant irregularities.
Myanmar’s then-State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi reviews an honor guard at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on April 30, 2019.
Heng Sinith / AP
Bangkok — A court in military-ruled Myanmar on Friday convicted the country’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi of corruption, sentencing her to seven years in prison in the last of a string of criminal cases against her, a legal official said.
The court’s action leaves her with a total of 33 years to serve in prison following a series of politically tinged prosecutions since the army toppled her elected government in February 2021.
The case that ended Friday involved five offenses under the anti-corruption law and followed earlier convictions on seven other corruption counts, each of which was punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a fine.
The 77-year-old Suu Kyi has also been convicted of several other offenses, including illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, violating coronavirus restrictions, breaching the country’s official secrets act, sedition and election fraud.
All her previous convictions had landed her with a total of 26 years’ imprisonment.
Suu Kyi’s supporters and independent analysts say the numerous charges against her and her allies are an attempt to legitimize the military’s seizure of power while eliminating her from politics before an election it has promised for next year.
In the five counts of corruption decided Friday, Suu Kyi was alleged to have abused her position and caused a loss of state funds by neglecting to follow financial regulations in granting permission to Win Myat Aye, a Cabinet member in her former government, to hire, buy and maintain a helicopter.
Suu Kyi was the de facto head of government, holding the title of state counsellor. Win Myint, who was president in her government, was a co-defendant in the same case.
Friday’s verdict in the purpose-built courtroom in the main prison on the outskirts of the capital, Naypyitaw, was made known by a legal official who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities. The trial was closed to the media, diplomats and spectators, and her lawyers were barred by a gag order from talking about it.
The legal official said Suu Kyi received sentences of three years for each of four charges, to be served concurrently, and four years for the charge related to the helicopter purchase, for a total of seven years. Win Myint received the same sentences.
The defendants denied all the charges, and her lawyers are expected to appeal in coming days.
The end of the court cases against Suu Kyi, at least for now, raises the possibility that she would be allowed outside visitors, which she has been denied since she was detained.
The military government has repeatedly denied all requests to meet with her, including from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which seeks to help mediate an end to the crisis in Myanmar that some U.N. experts have characterized as a civil war because of the armed opposition to military rule.
The U.N. announced after its special envoy, Noeleen Heyzer, met in August with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military-installed government, that he “expressed openness to arranging a meeting at the right time” between her and Suu Kyi.
A statement from the military government said, “Depending on the circumstances after the completion of the judiciary process, we will consider how to proceed.”
Suu Kyi is currently being held in a newly constructed separate building in the prison in Naypyitaw, near the courthouse where her trial was held, with three policewomen whose duty is to assist her.
Allowing access to Suu Kyi has been a major demand of the many international critics of Myanmar’s military rulers, who have faced diplomatic and political sanctions for their human rights abuses and suppression of democracy.
State-controlled media reported last year that Win Myat Aye, the figure at the center of the corruption case that ended Friday, used the rented helicopter for only 84.95 hours between 2019 and 2021, but paid for a total of 720 flight hours, which resulted in a loss of more than $3.5 million in funds.
The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said he also allegedly failed to follow official procedures in buying the state-owned helicopter, resulting in a further loss of 23 billion Myanmar Kyat ($11 million).
Win Myat Aye is now Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in the National Unity Government established as a parallel administration by elected legislators who were barred from taking their seats when the military seized power last year. The military has declared NUG to be an outlawed “terrorist organization.”
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s martyred independence hero Gen. Aung San, spent almost 15 years as a political prisoner under house arrest between 1989 and 2010.
Her tough stand against the military rule in Myanmar turned her into a symbol of nonviolent struggle for democracy, and won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Her National League for Democracy party initially came to power after easily winning the 2015 general election, ushering in a true civilian government for the first time since a 1962 military coup.
But after coming to power, Suu Kyi was criticized for showing deference to the military while ignoring atrocities it is credibly accused of committing in a 2017 crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya minority.
Her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory again in the 2020 election, but less than three months afterwards, elected lawmakers were kept from taking their seats in Parliament and top members of her government and party were detained.
The army said it acted because there had been massive voting fraud in the 2020 election, but independent election observers did not find any major irregularities.
The army’s takeover in 2021 triggered widespread peaceful protests that security forces tried to crush with deadly forces and that soon erupted into armed resistance.
Protesters gather and display the three-fingered pro-democracy salute at Sule Square, February 22, 2021, in downtown Yangon, Myanmar.
Hkun Lat / Getty
According to a detailed list compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-governmental organization that tracks killings and arrests, Myanmar security forces have killed at least 2,685 civilians and arrested 16,651.
On Wednesday last week, the U.N. Security Council called on Myanmar’s military rulers to release all “arbitrarily detained” prisoners including Suu Kyi in its first resolution on the situation in Myanmar since the army’s seizure of power.
The U.N. resolution also calls for an immediate end to violence in Myanmar and urges all parties in the country to work on starting a dialogue and reconciliation aimed at peacefully resolving the crisis.
Myanmar’s foreign ministry retorted that the situation in the Southeast Asian country solely concerns internal affairs that pose no risk to international peace and security.
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council approved its first-ever resolution on Myanmar on Wednesday, demanding an immediate end to violence in the Southeast Asian nation and urging its military rulers to release all “arbitrarily detained” prisoners including ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and to restore democratic institutions.
The resolution reiterated the call by the 15-member council for the country’s opposing parties to pursue dialogue and reconciliation and urged all sides “to respect human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.”
The council vote was 12-0 with three abstentions, China, Russia and India.
Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward, whose country sponsored the resolution, said it is the first adopted by the U.N.’s most powerful body since the country, formerly known as Burma, joined the United Nations in 1948.
It is the result of the military overturning the results of a democratic election and seizing power on Feb. 1, 2021, plunging the country into a series of cascading crises with “negative consequences for the region and its stability,” she said.
“Today we’ve sent a firm message to the military, that there should be a no doubt we expect this resolution to be implemented in full,” Woodward said. “We stand with the people of Myanmar. It is time for the junta to return the country to them.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken applauded the adoption of the resolution as an important step but said the Council had more work to do “to advance a just solution” to the crisis.
“The Security Council should leverage this opportunity to seek additional ways to promote a return to the path of democracy, advance accountability for the regime’s actions, and support ASEAN’s efforts to achieve meaningful implementation of the Five Point Consensus,” he said in a statement, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ plan to restore peace and stability.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres remains “extremely concerned” about the deteriorating humanitarian situation and human rights in Myanmar. “We welcome this strong message from the Security Council,” he told AP.
For five decades Myanmar had languished under strict military rule that led to international isolation and sanctions. As the generals loosened their grip, culminating in Suu Kyi’s rise to leadership in 2015 elections and moves toward democracy, the international community responded by lifting most sanctions and pouring investment into the country.
That ended with the military takeover on the day Parliament was to reconvene following November 2020 elections which Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won overwhelmingly — an outcome the military claims without evidence was based on fraud.
The takeover was met with massive public opposition, which has since turned into armed resistance that some U.N. experts have characterized as civil war.
Last month, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights monitoring organization, said over 16,000 people had been detained on political charges in Myanmar since the army takeover. Of those arrested, more than 13,000 were still in detention. The association said at least 2,465 civilians had been killed since the 2021 takeover, although the number is thought to be far higher.
Much of the international community, including Myanmar’s fellow ASEAN members, have expressed frustration at the generals’ hard line in resisting reform. Myanmar’s rulers agreed to ASEAN’s plan in April 2021 but have made little effort to implement it.
The plan calls for the immediate cessation of violence, a dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation of the dialogue process by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels and a visit to Myanmar by the association’s special envoy to meet all concerned parties. Current U.N. special envoy Noeleen Heyzer and ASEAN special envoy Prak Sokhonn, a Cambodian minister, have both visited Myanmar but neither was allowed to meet Suu Kyi.
The resolution “acknowledges ASEAN’s central role in helping to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Myanmar” and encourages the international community to support ASEAN’s efforts, including in implementing the five-point consensus.
Noting that Myanmar’s military committed to supporting the five-point consensus, the U.N. resolution calls for immediate action to implement it and urges all parties in Myanmar to work on starting a dialogue aimed at peacefully resolving the crisis. It also underlines the need “for a peaceful, genuine and inclusive process to de-escalate violence and reach a sustainable political resolution.”
The resolution also expresses “deep concern” at the ongoing state of emergency imposed by the military, the arrest of Suu Kyi and former president Win Myint who should be released immediately, and at “the increasingly large numbers of internally displaced persons and dramatic increase in humanitarian need.” It reiterates the council’s condemnation of the execution of activists in July.
Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “The Security Council resolution is a momentous step on behalf of the people of Myanmar, opening the door toward holding Myanmar’s brutal generals to account.”
But Tom Andrews, the independent U.N. special investigator on Myanmar, tweeted that as well-meaning as the resolution is, “without consequences” in the resolution “these important sentiments will not stop the junta from attacking and destroying the lives of the 54 million in Myanmar.”
Since the Security Council won’t authorize action against the military, he said, “those nations who support the people of Myanmar must immediately step forward with coordinated action to end the carnage.”
Britain’s Woodward said the resolution was the result of many weeks of consultations with members of the council and ASEAN and key regional partners. Diplomats said the final negotiations were between Britain and China, Myanmar’s neighbor and ally.
Louis Charbonneau, Human Rights Watch’s U.N. director, said: “China and Russia’s abstentions signal that even the junta’s few friends have lost interest in sticking out their necks to defend its atrocities.”
China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said he abstained because the resolution’s “tone still lacks balance.”
Stressing that China’s “policy of friendship towards Myanmar is for all its people,” he said “there is no quick fix” to the current crisis which requires all parties and factions to pursue dialogue and achieve political reconciliation.
“Neither democratic transition nor national reconciliation can be achieved overnight, and both require time, patience, and pragmatism,” Zhang said. He urged the international community to listen to ASEAN’s views and allow time for ASEAN to build consensus.
On another Myanmar issue, the resolution underscored the need to address the crisis in Rakhine state and to create conditions for the return of Rohingya Muslims who were chased out of the Buddhist-majority country and now live as refugees in neighboring Bangladesh and elsewhere.
UNITED NATIONS — A key U.N. committee has again blocked Myanmar’s military junta from taking the country’s seat at the United Nations, two well-informed U.N. diplomats said Wednesday.
The General Assembly’s credentials committee met Monday and deferred action on the junta’s request, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity before a formal announcement likely later this week.
The decision means that Kyaw Moe Tun, who was Myanmar’s ambassador at the United Nations when the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, 2021, will remain on the job.
Last December, Myanmar’s military rulers also failed in their effort to replace Tun, who remains a supporter of the previous government and the opposition National Unity Government, which opposes the junta.
Chris Gunness, director of the London-based Myanmar Accountability Project, welcomed the credentials committee’s move, saying it has “great diplomatic and symbolic significance, at a time when the illegal coup leaders are attempting to gain international recognition.”
“General Min Aung Hlaing has inflicted on the people of Myanmar violence of a scale not seen in southeast Asia since Pol Pot unleashed the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror on Cambodia,” Gunness said in a statement.
Damian Lilly, an Accountability Project official, urged the United Nations to ensure that Tun is afforded all U.N. rights and privileges and that the National Unity Government “is allowed to represent Myanmar in all UN bodies.”
“At present, there are glaring inconsistencies,” he said, with Tun sitting in the 193-member General Assembly while Myanmar’s seat at the U.N. Human Rights Council is empty.
Lilly said the credentials committee’s action “must pave the way to resolving these anomalies which are depriving 55 million people in Myanmar of the opportunity to be represented at the U.N. by the government which they elected by a landslide in 2020.”
Suu Kyi, who was arrested when the military seized power from her elected government, has been sentenced to 26 years’ imprisonment and faces additional charges.
Rights groups and supporters of Suu Kyi say the charges against her are politically motivated and an attempt to discredit her and legitimize the military’s seizure of power while preventing her from returning to politics.
SEOUL, South Korea — The recent release of thousands of prisoners in Myanmar is likely an attempt by its military-controlled government to “create a veneer of progress” in the country to sway international opinion, a U.N. expert said Monday.
Myanmar freed about 5,700 prisoners on the occasion of the National Victory Day last Thursday. Among them were foreign nationals — an Australian academic, a Japanese filmmaker, an ex-British diplomat and an American. Australia, the United States and rights groups welcomed the releases while calling for Myanmar to free others unjustly detained.
“I of course welcome this release, but I caution that this is part of the junta’s efforts to create a veneer of progress in Myanmar to sway international opinion,” Thomas Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told a news conference in Seoul. “The international community must not applaud the junta for this release or take it as evidence that the junta is softening.”
He said he received reports that some were immediately arrested again and that within 24 hours of last week’s release the military rained down heavy artillery on a village in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, killing at least 10 people.
According to a rights monitoring organization, about 16,230 people have been detained on political charges in Myanmar since the military took over after overthrowing Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government in February 2021.
Andrews spoke at the end of his six-day trip to Seoul, where he said he discussed with South Korean officials their steps against the Myanmar government to ensure South Korean business activities don’t benefit the military. Andrews also met with Myanmar nationals living in South Korea.
He said that the world needs to rethink and recalibrate its response to a crisis in Myanmar, which he said “hit a dangerous inflection point.” He urged South Korea to build on the positive steps it has taken including publicly denouncing the military takeover, imposing an arms embargo and a moratorium on forced returns of Myanmar nationals back to their country.
“Korea should forcefully discredit any claims that the junta’s planned elections are legitimate, impose economic sanctions on targets associated with the junta, and expand its humane treatment of those Myanmar nations residing in Korea while encouraging Myanmar’s neighbors to do the same,” he told reporters.
“Strong, strategic and coordinated action in support of the people of Myanmar, including through cutting off the junta’s access to revenues and weapons, can make a critical difference,” he said.
Military frees four foreigners as part of a prisoner amnesty to mark Myanmar’s National Victory Day, reports say.
Myanmar’s military has released an Australian academic, a Japanese filmmaker and an ex-British diplomat as part of a prisoner amnesty, according to media reports.
Major General Zaw Min Tun told the Voice of Myanmar and Yangon Media Group on Thursday that Sean Turnell, Toru Kubota and Vicky Bowman, as well as an unidentified American, had been released and deported.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of the moves.
Turnell, 58, an associate professor in economics at Sydney’s Macquarie University who worked as an economic adviser to elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested by security forces at a hotel in Yangon shortly after the military seized power in a coup in February 2021.
Kubota, a 26-year-old Tokyo-based documentary filmmaker, was arrested on July 30 by plainclothes police in Yangon after taking images and videos last year of a small flash protest against the military takeover.
He was convicted last month by the prison court of incitement for participating in the protest and other charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Bowman, 56, a former United Kingdom ambassador to Myanmar, was arrested with her husband, a Myanmar national, in Yangon in August.
Myanmar has been in political turmoil since last year’s coup, after generals arrested civilian leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi in early morning raids on February 1, 2021.
The power grab led to mass protests, which have evolved into an armed resistance to the military’s rule. Myanmar’s generals have responded with force, killing at least 2,465 people, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a civil society group.
A further 13,000 people have been detained, the group said.
Myanmar Now, an independent news outlet, cited the military council as saying the pardons were granted because it was Myanmar’s National Day.
“On National day, the military council announced that almost 6,000 prisoners were released. Among those were four foreigners and 11 celebrities,” the news report said.
Analysts say Myanmar’s military may be responding to pressure from Southeast Asian heads of government, who condemned last week the generals’s lack of progress on a peace plan agreed last year.
At a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), leaders called for measurable progress on the Five Point Consensus or risk being barred from the bloc’s meetings. They also agreed on a need for “concrete, practical and measurable indicators with a specific timeline”.
Zachary Abuza, an expert on Southeast Asian politics, said Myanmar’s “junta fears a harder line” from ASEAN, including concerns that members of the bloc may support Malaysia’s calls to reject an election the generals plan to hold next year.
The release of the four foreigners “is a preemptive move to encourage engagement,” tweeted the professor at the National War College in Washington, DC.
Bowman, Turnell & Kubota to be released by #Myanmar authorities this hour. Junta fears a harder line from #Indonesia & #Malaysian FM Saifuddin’s call to reject the 8/23 elections from gaining strength amongst other ASEAN members. This is a preemptive move to encourage engagement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has oozed a casual resentment when describing the “irreversible and even tectonic changes” that he says have led the West to become a spent force in the world.
“Western countries are striving to maintain a former world order that is beneficial only to them,” he told attendees at the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok in September.
Those days were numbered, he insisted.
The future was in the “dynamic, promising countries and regions of the world, primarily the Asia Pacific region”, he said. Putin was followed on the podium by Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing – the symbolism was not lost on close observers of regional politics.
This week Putin was invited to attend the Group of 20 meeting, which opens on Tuesday on the Indonesian island of Bali. It appeared to be the perfect venue for him to double down on his overtures to the Asia Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia — one of the world’s most economically dynamic regions.
But it was not to be.
Putin skipped his moment in the Balinese sun due to undefined “scheduling” reasons.
With Putin a no-show, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a captive audience when he addressed the summit virtually on Tuesday after his invitation to attend by the summit’s host, Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Putin’s absence from the G20 also undercuts “talk of a Russian pivot to Asia”, wrote Susannah Patton of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank.
Now with the Russian army retreating in parts of Ukraine and international sanctions biting deeply into Russia’s economy, some old friends in Southeast Asia appear to be avoiding direct eye contact as Putin looks east. Others are actively looking the other way, and Myanmar seems to be Moscow’s last true friend in the region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Myanmar’s Senior General Min Aung Hlaing meet at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, in September 2022 [File: Valery Sharifulin/Sputnik/Kremlin pool via AP]
Hanoi, in particular, remembers Russian support during the war against the US-backed regime in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s — a war from which it emerged victorious in 1975.
Vietnam and Laos abstained from UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the annexation of Ukrainian territory, and voted against suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
In Monday’s vote on a resolution requiring Russia to pay reparations for the damage caused to Ukraine, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were among the 73 members of the assembly that abstained. Among countries in the region, only Singapore and the Philippines backed the resolution.
Vietnamese communist soldiers moving forward under covering fire from a heavy machine gun during the Vietnam War, circa 1968 [File: Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Vietnam’s decision to abstain at the UN is perfectly legal, argued Huynh Tam Sang, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities. But it is also “morally questionable” as Vietnam had failed to defend the “principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”, he writes. That is no small oversight for a country whose successful liberation struggles against foreign occupiers — China, France, and the United States — is a defining national motif.
“Vietnam’s move is aimed at avoiding criticism and potential retaliation from Moscow,” said Huynh Tam Sang, pointing out the material behind the fraternal: trade links between Hanoi and Moscow amounted to almost $2.5bn in the first eight months of this year, and Russia is a primary investor in Vietnam’s oil and gas sectors.
Russia is also Vietnam’s largest arms supplier.
“It is not in Vietnam’s interests for Russia to be weakened,” Carlyle A Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.
Historical threads
Vietnam’s support for Russia needs to be understood in terms of Hanoi’s traditionally fraught relationship with neighbouring China. Vietnam fought its own border war with China in 1979 and has often relied on its relations with Moscow as a counterweight to pressure from its historic rival.
Neighbouring Cambodia, however, with its Putin-esque authoritarian leader Hun Sen who has held power for 37 years, has shown surprising insubordination to its former Soviet-era aid donor and political supporter.
The then Soviet Union was one of the earliest countries to help rebuild Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime when the government in Phnom Penh — installed by Vietnam — faced near-total Western sanctions. One of Phnom Penh’s most popular markets is still known as the “Russian Market” owing to the large population of Russian diplomats and technical assistants from Soviet states who frequented its stalls during the 1980s.
Just last year, Hun Sen received Russia’s Order of Friendship medal.
Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen during their meeting at the ASEAN-Russia summit, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, in 2016 [File: Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool/AP Photo]
But that has not prevented the Cambodian leader from taking a “surprisingly hard-line stand” against Moscow over the war in Ukraine, according to Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
Hun Sen has not just called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine an “act of aggression”, but he has also questioned Russia’s ability to emerge victorious, and expressed a willingness to take in Ukrainian refugees, Storey notes.
Hun Sen’s pro-Ukraine stance appeared to prompt the Russian ambassador to remind him in a tweet that it was Moscow who came to Cambodia’s assistance “in the most difficult period in its history” following the Khmer Rouge.
📌 Discussed both history and prospects of 🇷🇺🇰🇭 relations at the online conference within the project “#Russia in the South Seas”. Our two nations have always maintained friendly relations. It was Moscow that assisted Phnom Penh in the most difficult period in its history. pic.twitter.com/GMpm9HUOBD
Phnom Penh has been a cosponsor of condemnatory UN resolutions on Russia’s invasion — although it has abstained on some Ukraine-related votes — and more recently, Hun Sen invited Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to address by video link last weekend’s summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Phnom Penh. The invitation was apparently torpedoed by the need for consensus among the ASEAN leaders.
Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have been more cautious in their public pronouncements on the war, with G20 host Indonesia careful to preserve its traditional non-aligned stance.
But, Indonesia’s Widodo did visit Kyiv first and Moscow the next day in late June when he went to discuss the global food crisis with Zelenskyy and Putin, and presumably extend personal invitations to the Bali summit.
Russian market for arms
Russia’s arms industry is the “single largest supplier of major weaponry to Southeast Asia”, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Russia accounted for more than a quarter of all major weapons deliveries to the region over the past 20 years, according to SIPRI, and when Moscow cannot sell its weapons for hard cash, it has been willing to do barter deals or provide loans instead.
The Indonesian government planned to buy 11 Russian-made Sukhoi Su-35 fighter aircraft from Russia in a deal that involved payment of half the cost with the equivalent in agricultural and other produce, according to reports.
In the Philippines, Russia said in 2018 that it was “more than willing” to provide a soft loan so that Manila could buy its first-ever — but Russian-built — submarine, the country’s Philippine News Agency reported.
As SIPRI points out, sales of Russian weaponry to Southeast Asia are “an important element of Russia’s total export income and essential to maintaining the economic viability of the Russian arms industry”.
But with US sanctions imposed on Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election, some regional governments have already begun to move away from Russia.
Manila did not buy the Russian submarine, and Jakarta announced in December that the Sukhoi fighter deal was dead.
Now, with a plethora of Ukraine war-related sanctions awaiting those dealing with Moscow, Russia’s export arms industry looks set to feel the collateral damage of Putin’s Ukraine invasion.
The government of Marcos Jr’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, had signed the deal with Russia in November 2021. But even Duterte wanted to put distance between himself and Putin, whom he had once described as his idol, after the Ukraine invasion.
“I’ve long told you Filipinos that I really kill. But I kill criminals, I don’t kill children and the elderly,” he said, comparing his brutality to that of Putin in Ukraine.
“We’re in two different worlds,” he added.
’21st-century imperialism’
The Southeast Asia outlier is military-ruled Myanmar, which has thrown its full support behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Already warm relations between Russia and Myanmar have deepened further since the invasion of Ukraine and last year’s coup by the military that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
As the International Crisis Group notes, the Myanmar military has positioned itself as “Russia’s most uncritical post-invasion partner in Asia”, and Russia has backed the military regime in terms of providing international diplomatic cover and advanced weaponry.
Ian Storey of the ISEAS sees three factors at work: “Diplomatic validation, arms sales and energy cooperation.”
Military leader Min Aung Hlaing has declared Russia to be Myanmar’s “forever friend”, in comparison with China being described merely as a “close friend”, as Storey notes.
Similar to Vietnam, Myanmar’s military also needs Russia as an alternate supplier of weapons and a counterweight to China. Myanmar announced in September it would buy Russian oil and pay in roubles.
But the Russia-Myanmar relationship is more than an odious alliance, it is also a timebomb for ASEAN.
Storey notes that Moscow’s arms shipments are driving the Myanmar regime’s ability to wage a sustained war against its population and armed ethnic groups, which undermines the potential for peace talks and a negotiated settlement, which ASEAN wants to see achieved.
In this image taken from drone video provided by Free Burma Rangers, black smoke rises from burning buildings in Waraisuplia village in Kayah State, Myanmar, in February 2022, where the military targeted civilians in air and ground attacks [Free Burma Rangers via AP]
Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, said Southeast Asia’s relationship with Russia is complex.
Russia does, traditionally, hold appeal for those with anti-Western sentiment in the region, and Putin’s hyper-masculine image chimes in a region with a history of personalist, strongman politics.
Countries in the region “look and see a resurgent Russian empire, and that this is imperialism in the 21st Century,” Poling said.
That sentiment was articulated in a speech by Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, condemning Russia’s invasion and announcing sanctions on Moscow in February, Poling said.
“Ukraine is much smaller than Russia, but it is much bigger than Singapore,” Bakakrishnan said at the time.
“A world order based on ‘might is right’, or where ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’, such a world order would be profoundly inimical to the security and survival of small states,” he said.
![An opium poppy field in flower in Myanmar's Shan State in December 2022 [Courtesy of UNODC]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Opium-fields-flowering-central-Shan_December-2022.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578)
