US President Barack Obama’s new engagement strategy with Myanmar risks allowing the country’s military leaders to use direct talks to justify already flawed elections expected this year, a bipartisan report warned yesterday.
The report by the Asia Society, a leading think tank, supports US efforts to press the generals who have ruled Myanmar for decades to hold credible elections and to give more rights to minorities and activists.
However, the US must be wary of appearing to legitimize elections, Myanmar’s first in two decades, that opponents say are meant to strengthen the military’s power, the report said.
“The United States must tread carefully through this minefield,” it said.
“It is quite possible that the leadership’s primary objective in engaging with the United States is to demonstrate to its own population that the United States endorses” the junta’s “road map to democracy” and a constitution that enshrines the military’s leading role in politics, it said.
The report was co-chaired by retired Army General Wesley Clark, a 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and by Henrietta Fore, former head of the US Agency for International Development under then US president George W. Bush. Its release comes about half a year into Obama’s efforts to reverse the long-standing US policy of isolation and instead engage Myanmar’s top generals.
So far, the new direction has done little to spur democracy. Just this week, detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, which swept the 1990 vote but was barred from taking power, announced it would boycott the elections. Her party now faces dissolution under the junta’s new, much-criticized election laws.
Myanmar’s government has not yet set a date for this year’s polls.
The Obama administration has called for patience as it pursues talks. In the meantime, US officials say they will not remove sanctions against Myanmar until political prisoners are released, democracy begins to take hold and the government treats its people better.
The report warned that the US could devote only limited time and money to Myanmar because of other global problems. Those include wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, an often-rocky relationship with emerging economic and military powerhouse China and nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea.
The report also urged the Obama administration to appoint a special envoy to coordinate US policy on Myanmar, which Congress recommended in a 2008 law. Nine senior US senators have sent a letter to Obama calling for the envoy’s appointment and for the administration to slap the junta with additional banking sanctions.
The US should not directly monitor the elections, the report said, “as this could be seen as conferring legitimacy on a seriously flawed election process.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was