Phnom Penh (Cambodia). 27/05/2009: A few dozen human rights activists and Burmese demonstrators demanded the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, in front of the Embassy of Myanmar©John Vink/ MagnumKa-set
http://cambodia.ka-set.info
By Ka-set
03-06-2009
Economic crisis, pandemic threat, climate change… A long list of issues was scheduled for discussion between the representatives of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU), during the 17th inter-ministerial meeting of the two regional organisations. But in the end, the summit, organised on Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th May in Phnom Penh, was mostly taken by the new trial brought by the Burmese junta against Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader under house arrest for the last six years. A short time before, Thailand, as rotating chair of the ASEAN, had issued a statement calling for the immediate release of the opponent, and been followed by the organisation’s representatives. The stance is a break from one of the founding principles of the association, that of non-intervention. For their part, the EU representatives recalled that the release of the leader of the pro-democratic movement represented for Myanmar (Burma) the first step in the process of national reconciliation and integration within ASEAN.
A matching agenda
By chance, the international meeting between the EU and ASEAN coincided with the end of the Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest, but also with the start of her trial, which opened officially ten days before, on May 18th, and is currently ongoing. The Burmese authorities accused the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient of breaking the terms of her house arrest by communicating with an American citizen who had arrived at her residence by swimming. Since her party won the national elections in 1990, the opponent has been deprived of freedom for a total duration of more than 13 years. Many observers believe the new trial is aimed to prevent her from participating to the upcoming national elections, scheduled for next year.
A peaceful demonstration was organised in the morning of Wednesday 27th May in front of the Burmese Embassy in Phnom Penh. About a hundred people, mostly representatives of human rights organisations, but also a dozen Burmese nationals and Cambodian students, had gathered to demand freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi and some 2,000 other political prisoners. The demonstrators called the representatives participating to the summit to put pressure in that direction during the international meeting.
“We support the ASEAN statement and we hope that today, during the ASEAN-EU meeting, the ASEAN countries will discuss Aung San Suu Kyi’s release to push the Burmese representative to raise the issue with the country’s leaders and ask for her release,” explained Kek Galabru, the president of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Licadho).
Pervasive debate on “Myanmar-Burma”
As a matter of fact, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate was not forgotten during the two days. It had already been the case two days earlier in Hanoi, during the conference of ASEM, the Europe-Asia meeting which was also attended by other Asian countries like China, Myanmar’s largest trade partner. “I have participated to all the ASEAN-EU summits for the last two years, and we did not talk about Burma. Here, everyone talked about it. Even the Asians and the Chinese,” rejoiced Rama Yade, the French Secretary of State in charge of Foreign Affairs and Human Rights, talking on the sides of the summit in Phnom Penh.
During the first session of the meeting, the Myanmar representative, Maung Myint, gave a long speech that held no surprise. He reaffirmed the right of his country to sue Aung San Suu Kyi, as she was considered as a “subversive element”, and rejected any outside intervention on this topic. “It is a domestic legal issue… It is not a human rights matter and that is why we do not accept pressure or interference from other countries,” he objected. He also strongly condemned the EU’s refusal to call its country “Myanmar”, the official name given to the country by the junta from 1989. While the EU uses the term “Myanmar-Burma”, France refers to it as “Burma”, considering that the ruling power is illegal since the results of the last elections, in 1990, were not respected.
The Burmese representative’s arguments were all systematically rejected by the EU representatives, who specified that member States of organisations such as ASEAN or EU had to accept to be judged. “The European delegation had very harsh words,” Rama Yade recounted. “Usually, I am the one with the strongest demands, but this time, it was the British, the Finnish, the Spanish… And finally, the Burmese ended up somewhat isolated.”
According to the French Secretary of State, the joint statements issued during the two summits dealt with the case of Burma in a “very satisfying” manner, by calling for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and for the establishment of a process of national reconciliation as well as free and democratic elections – while also reaffirming that they recognised the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Myanmar. “The message was also this: there will not be any ASEAN with a Burma like today’s. Because integration presupposes that there are democratic institutions and there can be some peaceful balance between the countries,” Rama Yade further argued.
During the press conference, the Cambodian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Hor Namhong, mentioned the many discussions on Myanmar, but specified that the EU representatives were the ones who insisted on them. But he confirmed he kept to the statement of Thailand, who called, in the name of ASEAN, for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi. For his part, the head of the Thai diplomacy returned to more diplomatic words and stated that he respected the reference by the Burmese representative of the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs.
Trying to take stock of the State of Myanmar
For the first time, the Burmese junta was unanimously condemned by the “international community”, including some of its most important economic allies. However, the country did not intend to modify its stance and seemed determined to maintain the charges against the historical opponent. Yet, it was not a failure, Rama Yade argued, as she considered that a major step had been achieved. “I am certain something happened at the level of Burma. When you compare with the two previous years, it was not the same tone, the same style, the same strength in the words.”
The French Secretary of State was keen to point out the diplomatic efforts made during the summit: “At the start, Vietnam did not want a text that mentioned Burma. We fought and we won. Then, they did not want the case of Aung San Suu Kyi to be mentioned. We fought and we won. All these battles, it is not a case of ‘you want, you can’. You have to fight for every word. Afterwards, we are told ‘you have not obtained the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.’ But that is not the way things go. […] These meetings offer the opportunity to measure the current power relationship in connection to Burma. And on this matter, I think we have achieved real progress. We have acquired something, which will stay in the memory of our diplomatic activities. And I do not think we can go back.” In her view, what was now needed was another diplomatic action that would allow to go further, which could translate into the visit to Burma of Ban Ki Moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations. The EU representative with the “Myanmar-Burma” was never able to obtain a visa.
From the principle of non-intervention to a human rights commission
Most of all, the discussions on Myanmar revealed a change in the attitudes of ASEAN countries towards the “principle of non-intervention”. Until now, the governments of the member States of ASEAN had always refrained from reacting on the situation within Myanmar in the name of that principle. Meaningfully, the break intervened a few months after the ratification of the ASEAN Charter, which includes articles committing member states to respect human rights and providing for the establishment of an institution in charge of human rights. It was therefore not a coincidence if the Cambodian representative made several references to it during the Phnom Penh summit. Until now, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia held tight ranks to defend the principle of non-intervention. “From Hanoi to here, i have not heard a single intervention, even from the Asian representatives, that did not include the words ‘human rights’. Even if it was to criticise, […] everyone pronounced those words,” Rama Yade observed with satisfaction.
Now, what is left is to translate into facts the principles set in the ASEAN Charter. The task remains difficult: the principle of non-intervention, even slightly blunt, remains the official rule, as does that of compromise, which demands that all the member States agree before any decision is taken. Moreover, the new fundamental text of ASEAN does not provide for any sanction, other than the public disclosure of a case against one of its members that would be guilty of human rights violations.
Condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear test
Another news that crashed the debate: the new nuclear test carried out by North Korea on May 25th. The ASEAN representatives unanimously condemned it and declared their support to the United Nations Security Council’s position. “We are trying to find the appropriate measures and pressing [the North Koreans] to return to the negotiation table,” said the Cambodian Minister for Foreign Affairs in a press conference. During his keynote speech, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen condemned the North Korean test, between the lines. “I do not think that the world is more safe or peaceful when more countries have access to nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction,” he stated.
Economic crisis and global warming in the background
While the economic crisis and global warming were the top issues for discussion during the inter-ministerial meeting, the two themes were somewhat eclipsed by the current news. The major issue was to ascertain the impact of the economic crisis on trade between the two regions, which currently amounts to 134 billion euros (about 191 billion dollars). ASEAN is the fifth largest trade partner for the EU, which is also the largest source of foreign investments in the ASEAN area. The EU also represents on of the markets for Asian agriculture products.
In the light of the interdependence of the two economies, a protectionist move would be damaging for the two regions, the representatives of the two organisations deemed. It was the same fear of a European protectionism that had given rise to the first privileged relationships between ASEAN and the EU ancestor, the European Economic Community (or Common Market) in 1978. In 2007, the economic relations of the two regions had taken a new turn with the decision to start discussions on a future free trade agreement between them.
ASEAN-EU: two similar organisations?
During the 17th meeting, similarities between the EU and ASEAN were also discussed a lot. The two organisations were founded with the same objectives of peace, stability and prosperity at the end of periods troubled by many regional conflicts. On the sides of the meeting, during a seminar, representatives of the two regions exchanged good practices on ways to reduce the differences of development between member countries through a process of regional integration. “We want to listen and compare the best practices… We may not want to take everything, but the aim is to learn and then build our own best practices,” explained Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary general of ASEAN in his keynote speech. “If ASEAN succeeds, there will be one less region in the world to worry about,” he added.
However, ASEAN members reminded a fundamental difference with their organisation: the great cultural and religious diversity, unlike the EU which is, for now, essentially marked by Christian culture. They believe the difference prevents ASEAN from ever reaching a level of integration as high as the EU’s. “The difference between […] the EU and […] ASEAN is that we accept our diversity,” noted the Singapore representative during the first session of the meeting. To enter ASEAN, the only criteria which the countries must satisfy is belonging to a geographical area, whereas the countries applying to become a member of the EU must also satisfy strict economic and political criteria.
ASEAN difficulties to find common funds, in the absence of customs and tax revenues as significant as in the EU, were also discussed. To help the organisation in its regional integration efforts, the European Commission granted 1.3 billion euros (1.8 billion dollars) to the member States of ASEAN and 70 million euros (100.1 million dollars) to the ASEAN Secretariat for the 2007-2013 period.
Progressive intensification of relations for thirty years
The relations between the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU) go back more than thirty years. In 1977, ASEAN and the European Economic Community (EEC, ancestor of the EU) established their first official relations and in 1978, their representatives met in Brussels, Belgium, during the first ASEAN-EEC summit. The goal for the ASEAN countries was, among others, to prevent the adoption of protectionist measures by the European Common Market member countries. In 1980, a first cooperation agreement between the EEC and ASEAN was signed. It provided for the establishment of technical and inter-ministerial meetings twice a year. In 2007, the Nuremberg declaration marked the political go-ahead for stronger cooperation between the EU and ASEAN, which now applied to new areas: policy and security, trade and investment, as well as energy security and climate change. The decision to start negotiations on a future free trade agreement represented a new step. The ASEAN-EU cooperation offers a strategic dimension, to the extent that it would represent a counterweight to the axis China-United States and thereby avoid that the two powers define international rules by themselves.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASEAN (10 members)
The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) was established in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. It was then joined by Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1985), Laos and Myanmar (1997), and finally, Cambodia (1999).
The European Union (27 members)
In 1957, the Rome Treaty was signed by the six founding members: Benelux (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands), France, Italy and Germany. It created the European Economic Community (EEC), which became in 1993 the [European Union http://europa.eu/ Portal of the European Union]. It was enlarged to new members: Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland (1973), Greece (1981), Spain and Portugal (1986), Austria, Finland and Sweden (1995), the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus, Malta and Hungary (2004), Romania and Bulgaria (2007).
http://cambodia.ka-set.info
By Ka-set
03-06-2009
Economic crisis, pandemic threat, climate change… A long list of issues was scheduled for discussion between the representatives of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU), during the 17th inter-ministerial meeting of the two regional organisations. But in the end, the summit, organised on Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th May in Phnom Penh, was mostly taken by the new trial brought by the Burmese junta against Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader under house arrest for the last six years. A short time before, Thailand, as rotating chair of the ASEAN, had issued a statement calling for the immediate release of the opponent, and been followed by the organisation’s representatives. The stance is a break from one of the founding principles of the association, that of non-intervention. For their part, the EU representatives recalled that the release of the leader of the pro-democratic movement represented for Myanmar (Burma) the first step in the process of national reconciliation and integration within ASEAN.
A matching agenda
By chance, the international meeting between the EU and ASEAN coincided with the end of the Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest, but also with the start of her trial, which opened officially ten days before, on May 18th, and is currently ongoing. The Burmese authorities accused the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient of breaking the terms of her house arrest by communicating with an American citizen who had arrived at her residence by swimming. Since her party won the national elections in 1990, the opponent has been deprived of freedom for a total duration of more than 13 years. Many observers believe the new trial is aimed to prevent her from participating to the upcoming national elections, scheduled for next year.
A peaceful demonstration was organised in the morning of Wednesday 27th May in front of the Burmese Embassy in Phnom Penh. About a hundred people, mostly representatives of human rights organisations, but also a dozen Burmese nationals and Cambodian students, had gathered to demand freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi and some 2,000 other political prisoners. The demonstrators called the representatives participating to the summit to put pressure in that direction during the international meeting.
“We support the ASEAN statement and we hope that today, during the ASEAN-EU meeting, the ASEAN countries will discuss Aung San Suu Kyi’s release to push the Burmese representative to raise the issue with the country’s leaders and ask for her release,” explained Kek Galabru, the president of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Licadho).
Pervasive debate on “Myanmar-Burma”
As a matter of fact, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate was not forgotten during the two days. It had already been the case two days earlier in Hanoi, during the conference of ASEM, the Europe-Asia meeting which was also attended by other Asian countries like China, Myanmar’s largest trade partner. “I have participated to all the ASEAN-EU summits for the last two years, and we did not talk about Burma. Here, everyone talked about it. Even the Asians and the Chinese,” rejoiced Rama Yade, the French Secretary of State in charge of Foreign Affairs and Human Rights, talking on the sides of the summit in Phnom Penh.
During the first session of the meeting, the Myanmar representative, Maung Myint, gave a long speech that held no surprise. He reaffirmed the right of his country to sue Aung San Suu Kyi, as she was considered as a “subversive element”, and rejected any outside intervention on this topic. “It is a domestic legal issue… It is not a human rights matter and that is why we do not accept pressure or interference from other countries,” he objected. He also strongly condemned the EU’s refusal to call its country “Myanmar”, the official name given to the country by the junta from 1989. While the EU uses the term “Myanmar-Burma”, France refers to it as “Burma”, considering that the ruling power is illegal since the results of the last elections, in 1990, were not respected.
The Burmese representative’s arguments were all systematically rejected by the EU representatives, who specified that member States of organisations such as ASEAN or EU had to accept to be judged. “The European delegation had very harsh words,” Rama Yade recounted. “Usually, I am the one with the strongest demands, but this time, it was the British, the Finnish, the Spanish… And finally, the Burmese ended up somewhat isolated.”
According to the French Secretary of State, the joint statements issued during the two summits dealt with the case of Burma in a “very satisfying” manner, by calling for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and for the establishment of a process of national reconciliation as well as free and democratic elections – while also reaffirming that they recognised the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Myanmar. “The message was also this: there will not be any ASEAN with a Burma like today’s. Because integration presupposes that there are democratic institutions and there can be some peaceful balance between the countries,” Rama Yade further argued.
During the press conference, the Cambodian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Hor Namhong, mentioned the many discussions on Myanmar, but specified that the EU representatives were the ones who insisted on them. But he confirmed he kept to the statement of Thailand, who called, in the name of ASEAN, for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi. For his part, the head of the Thai diplomacy returned to more diplomatic words and stated that he respected the reference by the Burmese representative of the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs.
Trying to take stock of the State of Myanmar
For the first time, the Burmese junta was unanimously condemned by the “international community”, including some of its most important economic allies. However, the country did not intend to modify its stance and seemed determined to maintain the charges against the historical opponent. Yet, it was not a failure, Rama Yade argued, as she considered that a major step had been achieved. “I am certain something happened at the level of Burma. When you compare with the two previous years, it was not the same tone, the same style, the same strength in the words.”
The French Secretary of State was keen to point out the diplomatic efforts made during the summit: “At the start, Vietnam did not want a text that mentioned Burma. We fought and we won. Then, they did not want the case of Aung San Suu Kyi to be mentioned. We fought and we won. All these battles, it is not a case of ‘you want, you can’. You have to fight for every word. Afterwards, we are told ‘you have not obtained the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.’ But that is not the way things go. […] These meetings offer the opportunity to measure the current power relationship in connection to Burma. And on this matter, I think we have achieved real progress. We have acquired something, which will stay in the memory of our diplomatic activities. And I do not think we can go back.” In her view, what was now needed was another diplomatic action that would allow to go further, which could translate into the visit to Burma of Ban Ki Moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations. The EU representative with the “Myanmar-Burma” was never able to obtain a visa.
From the principle of non-intervention to a human rights commission
Most of all, the discussions on Myanmar revealed a change in the attitudes of ASEAN countries towards the “principle of non-intervention”. Until now, the governments of the member States of ASEAN had always refrained from reacting on the situation within Myanmar in the name of that principle. Meaningfully, the break intervened a few months after the ratification of the ASEAN Charter, which includes articles committing member states to respect human rights and providing for the establishment of an institution in charge of human rights. It was therefore not a coincidence if the Cambodian representative made several references to it during the Phnom Penh summit. Until now, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia held tight ranks to defend the principle of non-intervention. “From Hanoi to here, i have not heard a single intervention, even from the Asian representatives, that did not include the words ‘human rights’. Even if it was to criticise, […] everyone pronounced those words,” Rama Yade observed with satisfaction.
Now, what is left is to translate into facts the principles set in the ASEAN Charter. The task remains difficult: the principle of non-intervention, even slightly blunt, remains the official rule, as does that of compromise, which demands that all the member States agree before any decision is taken. Moreover, the new fundamental text of ASEAN does not provide for any sanction, other than the public disclosure of a case against one of its members that would be guilty of human rights violations.
Condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear test
Another news that crashed the debate: the new nuclear test carried out by North Korea on May 25th. The ASEAN representatives unanimously condemned it and declared their support to the United Nations Security Council’s position. “We are trying to find the appropriate measures and pressing [the North Koreans] to return to the negotiation table,” said the Cambodian Minister for Foreign Affairs in a press conference. During his keynote speech, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen condemned the North Korean test, between the lines. “I do not think that the world is more safe or peaceful when more countries have access to nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction,” he stated.
Economic crisis and global warming in the background
While the economic crisis and global warming were the top issues for discussion during the inter-ministerial meeting, the two themes were somewhat eclipsed by the current news. The major issue was to ascertain the impact of the economic crisis on trade between the two regions, which currently amounts to 134 billion euros (about 191 billion dollars). ASEAN is the fifth largest trade partner for the EU, which is also the largest source of foreign investments in the ASEAN area. The EU also represents on of the markets for Asian agriculture products.
In the light of the interdependence of the two economies, a protectionist move would be damaging for the two regions, the representatives of the two organisations deemed. It was the same fear of a European protectionism that had given rise to the first privileged relationships between ASEAN and the EU ancestor, the European Economic Community (or Common Market) in 1978. In 2007, the economic relations of the two regions had taken a new turn with the decision to start discussions on a future free trade agreement between them.
ASEAN-EU: two similar organisations?
During the 17th meeting, similarities between the EU and ASEAN were also discussed a lot. The two organisations were founded with the same objectives of peace, stability and prosperity at the end of periods troubled by many regional conflicts. On the sides of the meeting, during a seminar, representatives of the two regions exchanged good practices on ways to reduce the differences of development between member countries through a process of regional integration. “We want to listen and compare the best practices… We may not want to take everything, but the aim is to learn and then build our own best practices,” explained Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary general of ASEAN in his keynote speech. “If ASEAN succeeds, there will be one less region in the world to worry about,” he added.
However, ASEAN members reminded a fundamental difference with their organisation: the great cultural and religious diversity, unlike the EU which is, for now, essentially marked by Christian culture. They believe the difference prevents ASEAN from ever reaching a level of integration as high as the EU’s. “The difference between […] the EU and […] ASEAN is that we accept our diversity,” noted the Singapore representative during the first session of the meeting. To enter ASEAN, the only criteria which the countries must satisfy is belonging to a geographical area, whereas the countries applying to become a member of the EU must also satisfy strict economic and political criteria.
ASEAN difficulties to find common funds, in the absence of customs and tax revenues as significant as in the EU, were also discussed. To help the organisation in its regional integration efforts, the European Commission granted 1.3 billion euros (1.8 billion dollars) to the member States of ASEAN and 70 million euros (100.1 million dollars) to the ASEAN Secretariat for the 2007-2013 period.
Progressive intensification of relations for thirty years
The relations between the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU) go back more than thirty years. In 1977, ASEAN and the European Economic Community (EEC, ancestor of the EU) established their first official relations and in 1978, their representatives met in Brussels, Belgium, during the first ASEAN-EEC summit. The goal for the ASEAN countries was, among others, to prevent the adoption of protectionist measures by the European Common Market member countries. In 1980, a first cooperation agreement between the EEC and ASEAN was signed. It provided for the establishment of technical and inter-ministerial meetings twice a year. In 2007, the Nuremberg declaration marked the political go-ahead for stronger cooperation between the EU and ASEAN, which now applied to new areas: policy and security, trade and investment, as well as energy security and climate change. The decision to start negotiations on a future free trade agreement represented a new step. The ASEAN-EU cooperation offers a strategic dimension, to the extent that it would represent a counterweight to the axis China-United States and thereby avoid that the two powers define international rules by themselves.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASEAN (10 members)
The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) was established in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. It was then joined by Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1985), Laos and Myanmar (1997), and finally, Cambodia (1999).
The European Union (27 members)
In 1957, the Rome Treaty was signed by the six founding members: Benelux (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands), France, Italy and Germany. It created the European Economic Community (EEC), which became in 1993 the [European Union http://europa.eu/ Portal of the European Union]. It was enlarged to new members: Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland (1973), Greece (1981), Spain and Portugal (1986), Austria, Finland and Sweden (1995), the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus, Malta and Hungary (2004), Romania and Bulgaria (2007).
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