Myanmar has ratified a proposed international charter that includes controversial human rights provisions, officials said yesterday, a day after regional powers slammed the nation’s ruling junta for extending opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention.
Myanmar’s ratification of the ASEAN charter was to be formalized at a ceremony later yesterday.
But question marks remained about whether Myanmar’s junta, which has jailed hundreds of political dissidents, including Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, was willing to adhere to the principles of human rights and respect for rule of law enshrined in the charter.
It was also unclear whether the proposed ASEAN human rights body, the details of which have yet to be hammered out, would have any substantive enforcement or monitoring power.
The charter, expected to come into force by next year, would aim to strengthen the 10-member group of Asian nations, giving it power to sue and be sued, and establishing enforceable financial, trade and environmental rules.
The most controversial part of the charter was a proposed human rights body.
“It’s high time that we concretize the human rights of the people of ASEAN,” Philippine representative to the panel Rosario Manalo said.
Still, it was clear that the body would not have the power to sanction countries that have violated the rights of its citizens.
The Philippines and possibly Thailand would push for the body to have the power to at least monitor human rights violations, one Southeast Asian diplomat said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.
Myanmar was the seventh member of ASEAN to ratify the charter. The Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia have balked at endorsing it, demanding that Myanmar first give firmer commitments to democracy.
The human rights panel, which was to hold its first meeting yesterday to determine the scope of the human rights body, was expected to submit a draft of its recommendations to the ASEAN leaders’ summit in December.
Ignoring international criticism, Myanmar’s junta on May 27 extended Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention by another year, drawing an extraordinary rebuke on Sunday from ASEAN members who usually shy from criticizing each other.
Myanmar officials have issued no public response to that criticism, although its representative at the meeting, Foreign Minister Nyan Win, suggested on Sunday that Aung San Suu Kyi could be freed from house arrest in about six months.
Aung San Suu Kyi has now been detained for more than 12 of the last 18 years at her home in Myanmar.
In a address yesterday to ASEAN foreign ministers, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said ASEAN had only implemented 30 percent of its agreements.
The charter, he said, would help improve that ”somewhat patchy” record as a bulwark against crises, such as the 1997 Asian financial storm.
“If another test comes, ASEAN must not be found wanting again,” Lee said.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the