Yangon: Former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Aung San Suu Kyi’s sons and two dead US congressmen were among 2,082 names removed on Thursday from a Myanmar government blacklist that gives an insight into the paranoia of its former military junta.
Late Philippine President Corazon Aquino, US singer-turned-politician Sonny Bono and Kim and Alexander Aris, the sons of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, were some of the prominent names taken off a list stacked with journalists, academics, human rights campaigners and exiled Myanmarmese activists.
Its publication on the website of the Office of the President (www.president-office.gov.mm/) is the latest sign of surprise openness by a quasi-civilian government that has legalised protests, abolished media censorship, freed hundreds of political prisoners and embarked on economic reforms since coming to power in the former Burma in March 2011.
No reasons were given for why they had been blacklisted, but many were critics of the reclusive and thin-skinned generals who ruled Myanmar with an iron fist for 49 years and persecuted politicians, reporters and dissidents.
The list included plenty of discrepancies, including individuals mentioned several times under different name spellings. British historian Timothy Garton Ash appears as “Gartonash, Timothy John”, while some unknown individuals had only one name, like “Mr. Nick”, “Li Li” and “Mohammad”.
The announcement said exiled Myanmarmese removed from the blacklist of 6,165 companies, organisations and individuals would be allowed to return. It did not say which remained.
Others removed include retired diplomats once based in Myanmar, the director of Human Rights Watch Brad Adams, late US congressman Tom Lantos, Suu Kyi’s former physician Khin Saw Win and Yuenyong Opaku, the lead singer of popular Thai rock band, Ad Carabao.
One notable name is John Yettaw, a Vietnam War veteran jailed in 2009 after swimming across Yangon’s Inya Lake in home-made fins to warn Suu Kyi of an assassination plot, resulting in the extension of her house arrest.
Among journalists taken off were British author and documentary maker John Pilger, CNN’s Dan Rivers, the BBC’s Sue Lloyd-Roberts and Reuters photographer Adrees Latif, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his photo of a Japanese photographer shot dead in Yangon during a crackdown on 2007 pro-democracy protests.
Authors were also mentioned, like Bertil Lintner, whose books on Myanmar include Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy, which detailed the military’s savage crackdown on the 1988 protests that first brought Suu Kyi to prominence.
“I feel good, of course, to be able to visit the country I have written about for so many years,” said Lintner.
source: Gulfnews.com August 30,2012
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Former US State Secretary, Suu Kyi sons among 2,000 removed from Myanmar(Burma) blacklist
US, Southeast Asian navies begin annual joint exercises
Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand also joined SEACAT 2012, which will be held until Sept. 2.
Navy spokesman Col. Omar Tonsay said the exercises are being conducted in Malacca Strait, Sulu Sea and Subic Bay.
The exercises are being held two months after the nuclear-powered US submarine USS Louisville made a port call at Subic.
Louisville is the second US attack submarine that visited the Philippines since Washington bared plans to enhance its presence in the Asia Pacific. The first was USS North Carolina which docked in Subic Bay last May.
Another US vessel, the hospital ship USNS Mercy, also docked in Subic last month to replenish its supplies.
About 200 Filipino sailors from the Naval Forces West and Naval Forces Northern Luzon, four ships and an islander aircraft are involved in the event. The US Navy ship USS Safeguard is also participating in the activity.
“They will participate together with the US Navy in a scenario-driven fleet training exercise against terrorism, transnational crimes and other maritime threats,” Tonsay said in a statement.
The exercises focus on real-time information exchange, coordinated surveillance operations, tracking, and visit, board, search and seizure of target vessels.
“This activity will involve surface, air, and special operations units in the conduct of surveillance, tracking, and boarding of the COI (contact of interest) from the different participating navies within their respective maritime territories.” Navy chief Vice Adm. Alexander Pama said.
A maritime interdiction operations scenario will be conducted at the Subic Bay and at the Sulu Sea.
Coast Watch stations of the participating countries will also be used to exercise their capabilities in surveillance, tracking, communications, and operations.
“With this training, the Philippine Navy will be able to enhance regional coordination, information sharing, and combined inter-operability capability with participating navies in the region,” Tonsay said.
He claimed the activity would also improve the maritime security capability of the military.
SEACAT is an annual exercise conducted at vital sea lanes in Southeast Asia to secure the area from terrorists, poachers, and transnational lawless elements.
It aims to promote regional coordination, information sharing and interoperability in a multilateral environment. -
Source: August 28,2012 Alexis Romero - The PhilStar
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The U.S. shouldn’t sell out human rights in Vietnam
By Allen S. Weiner, Published: August 26
Allen S. Weiner is a senior lecturer in law at Stanford Law School, where he serves as director of the Program in International and Comparative Law. He has filed a petition with the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention challenging the legality of the arrest and detention of 17 Vietnamese activists last year.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Hanoi last month that the United States would sign a new regional trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with Vietnam by year’s end. Vietnam’s desire to promote economic development through expanded trade is understandable, and U.S. interest in supporting Vietnam’s economic advancement is commendable. But even as Vietnam seeks to move forward economically, its political system remains mired in a repressive and authoritarian past. Indeed, Clinton’s announcement came shortly before the one-year anniversary of the first stage of the Vietnamese government’s detention of activists whose “crime” has been to advocate governmental action on a broad range of human rights and social justice issues, including environmental, health, legal, political, land and corruption-based concerns. More than a year later, almost all remain in detention; one is under house arrest. Real progress in Vietnam will come only when political reform and respect for the rule of law accompany economic progress.
Over the past year, the Vietnamese government has arrested members of an informal network of social and political activists. The detainees are affiliated with the Roman Catholic Redemptorist Church in Vietnam — a reflection of the pattern of discrimination against religious minorities in that country. Eleven of the petitioners are accused of being members of Viet Tan, a Vietnamese pro-democracy party. The detainees have endured a range of human rights abuses, including violations of their fundamental rights of expression, assembly and association. In addition, the arrests and detentions of these activists violate their rights to due process and fair trials guaranteed under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other international legal agreements; violations of international standards include warrantless arrests and lengthy pretrial detentions without the filing of charges. After their arrest, the detainees were held incommunicado for months. Some were even convicted through “trials” at which they were not allowed a lawyer. Today, most of these petitioners are languishing in jail without outside contact or basic knowledge as to why they were arrested and are being held. They have had limited access to family members, or in some cases, no contact with relatives at all.
In keeping with a growing pattern of such human rights abuses by the Vietnamese government, these activists were arrested for violating criminal laws that ban “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration,” the “undermining of national unity” and participating in “propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
The detainees are all online journalists, bloggers or others who have participated in training activities related to citizen journalism. They have written blog posts, signed petitions and joined nonviolent protests related to a range of issues, including calls for multiparty democracy and opposition to large-scale bauxite mining projects that would cause irreparable environmental damage and displace local residents. In short, they are engaged in legitimate forms of political expression.
Such political expression is protected under international human rights law and under Vietnam’s Constitution, which provides in Article 53 that citizens “have the right to take part in managing the State and society, in debating on general issues of the whole country or of the locality.” Article 69 of the Vietnamese Constitution holds that citizens “are entitled to freedom of speech and freedom of the press” and have “the right of assembly, association and demonstration in accordance with the law.” Instead of protecting these rights, however, the Vietnamese government has been using the law to prohibit basic freedom of speech, assembly and association.
To her credit, Clinton raised concerns about Vietnam’s human rights record during her recent trip, including the detention of activists, lawyers and bloggers whose only crime is the peaceful expression of ideas. “I know there are some who argue that developing economies need to put economic growth first and worry about political reform and democracy later, but that is a short-sided bargain,” she said.
The United States must go beyond a rhetorical defense of human rights in Vietnam. Our country should not contribute to the “short-sided bargain” Clinton warned of by promoting deeper commercial ties without simultaneously insisting that Vietnam honor its international human rights obligations. U.S. officials should demand that Vietnam can start by releasing the activists arrested last year and others who have been detained solely for seeking a voice in their country’s future. The United States should not reward Vietnam by including it in the Trans-Pacific Partnership while the government in Hanoi uses its legal systems to stifle dissent and perpetrate human rights abuses
Source: The Washington Post
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Canadian journalist: China asked me to spy on Dalai Lama
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| Canadian author and journalist Mark Bourrie says he quit his job as an Ottawa correspondent for China's state news agency when his editor asked him to spy on the Dalai Lama. |
Mark Bourrie quit his job at Xinhua in April after two years working for the agency.
In his time with the news organization, there were several occasions when Bourrie said he suspected his credentials as a member of the Ottawa press gallery were being used to access information that was meant purely for intelligence purposes in Beijing.
But it wasn't until this spring that "it all came crashing down."
Bourrie said he had been assigned to cover the Dalai Lama's visit to Ottawa, and to find out what was said in a private meeting between the Tibetan spiritual leader and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
When he realized his reports weren't being published, Bourrie asked his boss, Xinhua's Ottawa bureau chief Dacheng Zhang, why he was being assigned to cover the event in the first place.
"I confronted the bureau chief and said 'look, are we here as journalists or are we using our press gallery credentials to get in here to gather information for the Chinese government? Because if it's the latter I don't want anything to do with it,'" Bourrie told CTV News Channel on Thursday.
He said he was told that the agency didn't publish news that would embarrass the Chinese government, or comments from the Dalai Lama, and that all his reports were going straight to Beijing for intelligence purposes.
Bourrie said he quit on the spot -- a decision he has not regretted.
Zhang, who is currently travelling with other journalists on Harper's annual tour of the Arctic, said on Wednesday that Bourrie’s claim was false, and was the product of “Cold War” ideology.”
He told The Canadian Press that Xinhua's policy is to "cover public events by public means." His job, as Ottawa bureau chief, is to cover news events and file the stories to his Xinhua supervisors. Those editors decide what makes it into print, Zhang said.
Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior intelligence officer at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said it's not unusual for Beijing to use its state journalists as de facto spies.
There have been reports of Xinhua news teams covering Falun Gong protests in Ottawa, taking close-up photographs of attendees and recording transcripts of speeches – though stories are rarely or ever published on the events.
The problem, Juneau-Katsuya said, is that journalists such as Bourrie have no control over how their reports are used once they are sent to Beijing.
Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-journalist-china-asked-me-to-spy-on-dalai-lama-1.926863#ixzz24OrIRsdz
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UN worried over shrinking space for freedom of expression in Vietnam
“We are concerned by what appears to be increasingly limited space for freedom of expression in Vietnam,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told reporters in Geneva.
The office voiced particular concern that the upcoming trial of Nguyen Van Hai (also known as Dieu Cay), Pan Thanh Hai and Ta Phong Tan for “conducting propaganda” against the State is directly linked to their legitimate exercise of freedom of expression, including their online publications about social and human rights issues.
Nguyen Van Hai and Pan Thanh Hai have been in detention since 2010 while Ta Phong Tan has been detained since September 2011. The three face charges under Article 88 of the Criminal Code and could face penalties ranging from seven to 16 years’ imprisonment.
“The trial, which was scheduled for August 7 and was just postponed indefinitely, will reportedly be closed and witnesses will not be called, raising concerns that the process will not comply with fair trial guarantees,” said Shamdasani.
“A number of arrests and harsh convictions in recent years suggest a disturbing trend of curbing freedom of expression, opinion and association of bloggers, journalists and human rights activists who question Government policies in a peaceful manner,” she added.
OHCHR urged the Government to fulfill its commitments with respect to ensuring fair trial guarantees and to consider promptly releasing the accused for the exercise of their right to freedom of expression, opinion and association.
Source: BikyaMasr August 4,2012
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Vietnam invents a U.N. procedure to silence critics KKF
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| Vietnam's ambassador to the UN, Le Hoai Trung |
Vietnam's Communist Party-led government recently blackballed a nongovernmental organization's attempt to secure accreditation to the U.N. The Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation, or KKF, is a small group based in New Jersey that tracks the plight of the Khmer ethnic minority in Vietnam. Mainly that involves compiling and disseminating well-respected reports of rights abuses such as Hanoi's harassment of Khmer Buddhists who refuse to join state-sanctioned religious organizations.
That's probably why Hanoi pitched a fit when in May the KKF received an accreditation from the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council, or EcoSoc. This would have allowed the group to participate in a range of U.N. conferences, and would have allowed KKF speaking time in relevant meetings to raise its concerns about Hanoi's rights record. More than 3,000 other nongovernmental organizations have been accredited over the years, so KKF would hardly have stood out.
Vietnam's government launched an aggressive campaign against the group. Rather than pushing to refer KKF's status back to the accreditation committee for additional review, which is the usual course in the rare instances when a decision proves controversial, Hanoi proposed a resolution at a recent meeting to strip KKF's accreditation directly.
In this way, Hanoi was able to put the decision on KKF's accreditation in the hands of a body—EcoSoc's general membership—where Vietnam could trade political horses with its neighbors and harness support from other authoritarians such as Russia and Venezuela. The resolution passed last week with support from 27 states, including democratic members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines that should know better. Another 14 EcoSoc members, including the U.S., voted in KKF's favor, and 10 countries abstained.
Rights activists note that with this stroke Vietnam has created a new procedural tool that other rights abusers can use to silence their own critics at the U.N. They also suggest that this dust-up raises additional questions about Hanoi's fitness to sit on the Human Rights Council in 2014, a position for which Vietnam—no joke—is currently said to be campaigning despite its long tradition of jailing dissidents.
The mistake these activists make is looking at the U.N. as they'd like it to be, not as it really is. Having thwarted critics of its rights record, Hanoi will fit right in with the likes of China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia on the Council.
Source: The Wall Street Journal July 31,2012
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