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.”
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS