Southeast Asia faces “very real” threats from the Islamic State (IS) group, despite its defeat in the Middle East, as well as cyberattacks, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) said yesterday as he opened a regional summit.
Parts of the 10-country region, encompassing about 650 million people, have long struggled with Muslim militancy and the emergence of IS has served as a new rallying point for radicals and re-energized extremist groups.
A deadly suicide-bombing and gun attack in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, in 2016 was the first IS-claimed assault in the region, while the Philippine city of Marawi was last year overrun by fighters loyal to the extremists, triggering a months-long battle that killed hundreds.
Fears are also growing that Southeast Asia, which is home to booming economies where a growing number of people are adopting digital technology in their everyday lives, could be increasingly targeted by cyberattackers.
Opening the ASEAN summit in Singapore, Lee said that the IS continues to threaten the region, despite their military defeat in Iraq and Syria, while the move toward digitalization has made countries more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
“Southeast Asia is at peace, but these threats are very real,” he said. “We need to be resilient to both conventional threats, and also non-conventional threats such as terrorism and cyberattacks.”
The leaders at a working dinner on Friday ahead of the summit agreed to increase coordination in cybersecurity.
Lee also said that the open global trading system, which has allowed many of the region’s export-driven economies to flourish, has come under increasing threat due to protectionist policies in major economies.
“The political mood in many countries has shifted against free trade,” he said. “In particular, the trade tensions between the US and China are worrying concerns.”
Washington and Beijing have imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of US dollars worth of goods, which analysts said could escalate into a global trade war and scupper global growth.
Lee said the answer to such rising protectionism is for ASEAN to further push for the deeper integration of their economies and bolster cooperation in other fields.
“Individually, the ASEAN member states will find it hard to make much impact on their own ... but when we speak in one collective ASEAN voice, we can be effective.”
ASEAN is comprised of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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
MOB REACTION: A woman in the group said that its actions were ‘the result of the bad government we have’ and that the town’s residents were ‘fed up’ A mob in the Mexican city of Taxco on Thursday beat a woman to death because she was suspected of kidnapping and killing a young girl, rampaging just hours before the city’s Holy Week procession. The mob formed after an eight-year-old girl disappeared on Wednesday. Her body was found on a road on the outskirts of the city early on Thursday. Security camera footage appeared to show a woman and a man loading a bundle, which might have been the girl’s body, into a taxi. The mob surrounded the woman’s house, threatening to drag her out. Police took the woman into the
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