Washington yesterday voiced alarm over Myanmar’s “backsliding” on democratic reforms, as US President Barack Obama attended a regional summit meant to showcase the country’s transition from a military junta-led state.
Obama was set to raise powderkeg rights issues in a meeting with Burmese President Thein Sein — a former general turned reformer — later yesterday on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw.
Obama set the tone for the meeting with hard-hitting comments on the pace of reforms in an interview with Burmese news site “The Irrawaddy” published just before he arrived on Wednesday night for a three-day trip.
“One of the main messages that I’ll deliver on this visit is that the government of Myanmar has a responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of all people in the country, and that the fundamental human rights and freedoms of all people should be respected,” Obama said.
“Even as there has been some progress on the political and economic fronts, in other areas there has been a slowdown and backsliding in reforms,” he added. “In addition to restrictions on freedom of the press, we continue to see violations of basic human rights and abuses in the country’s ethnic areas, including reports of extrajudicial killings, rape and forced labor.”
Obama planned to speak out on behalf of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority at “all of his engagements” in the country, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said yesterday.
About 140,000 Rohingya languish in fetid displacement camps in Rakhine State after religious violence flared two years ago, leaving scores of the minority dead and casting a dark cloud over the nation’s pathway toward democracy.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday also raised the “serious humanitarian” condition of the Rohingya.
Obama met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday afternoon at discussions with a group of lawmakers in the capital.
The pair are to hold a joint press conference in Yangon today, in a show of support by Obama for his fellow Nobel laureate, who he visited on his first trip to Myanmar in 2012.
Aung San Suu Kyi preceded Obama’s trip with her own warning against “over-optimism” about Burmese democracy, ahead of crucial general elections next year.
She is campaigning to change the junta-era constitution, which bars her from the presidency even if her party is successful in the polls and earmarks one-quarter of the legislature for unelected soldiers.
A debate on the constitutional change began in parliament yesterday.
Thein Sein hosted the heads of the other nine members of ASEAN for an annual summit on Wednesday. They were then joined by Obama and leaders from Japan, China, India, Australia, China, Russia, South Korea and New Zealand for the East Asia Summit yesterday.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not