'Wake up' and stop Rohingya abuses: Nobel laureates to Suu Kyi

Yahoo – AFP, 26 February 2018

Aung San Suu Kyi has seen her reputation among the international community
crumble over her handling of the Rohingya crisis

Three Nobel Peace Prize winners Monday urged fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out about violence against the Rohingya minority, warning she otherwise risks prosecution for "genocide".

The trio -- Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi and Mairead Maguire -- implored the embattled Myanmar leader to "wake up" to the atrocities after visiting squalid camps in Bangladesh home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees.

"This is clearly, clearly, clearly genocide that is going on by the Burmese government and military against the Rohingya people," Maguire said Monday, using another name for Myanmar.

"We refuse this genocide policy of the Burmese government. They will be taken to the ICC (International Criminal Court) and those who are committing genocide will be held responsible."

The UN has described the systematic violence by Myanmar against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state as possible genocide and ethnic cleansing, but has stopped short of outright accusing the army of war crimes.

Suu Kyi, once a global rights icon, has witnessed her reputation among the international community crumble over her handling of the Rohingya crisis.

Critics have called for the Nobel prize she won under house arrest in 1991 to be revoked.

Her fellow three female laureates issued a personal appeal to the beleaguered leader as they toured the overcrowded camps in Cox's Bazar district on Sunday and Monday, hearing firsthand stories of rape and murder against the Muslim minority.

Nobel Peace Laureates Mairead Maguire (C) from Northern Ireland and Tawakkol 

Karman (L) from Yemen walk during their visit to Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia

Karman, a Yemeni rights activist, warned Suu Kyi that she risked being hauled to the ICC if she did not intervene.

"If she will continue her silence, she will be one of them," said Karman, fighting back tears, after meeting Rohingya refugees.

"It's an appeal to our sister Aung San Suu Kyi to wake up, otherwise she will be betrayed (as) one of the perpetrators of this crime."

Myanmar has staunchly denied the charges and blocked UN investigators from the conflict zone in Rakhine state, souring relations with a host of western allies.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have sought sanctuary in Cox's Bazar after fleeing a Myanmar army crackdown launched last August, sparking a humanitarian emergency in the Bangladesh border district.

Critics have accused Suu Kyi of adopting a siege mentality as global condemnation has mounted.

Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal "Bengali" immigrants but has signed an agreement with Bangladesh to repatriate some 750,000 refugees back across the border.

The process has stalled, as the UN warns any returns must be voluntary and rights groups warn Rohingya could be forced into ghettoes once in Myanmar.

Xi poised to extend power as China set to lift term limits

Yahoo – AFP, Patrick BAERT, 25 February 2018

Xi is seen as China's most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong

Xi Jinping, China's most powerful leader for decades, could stay in office indefinitely after the Communist Party called for the removal of presidential term limits.

Xi, who is also party chief and seen as the country's most formidable ruler since Mao Zedong, has been president since 2013 and the 64-year-old leader would have to step down in 2023 under the current system.

But the party's Central Committee proposed deleting from the constitution the stipulation that a president "shall serve no more than two consecutive terms" of five years, the official Xinhua news agency reported Sunday.

"I think he will become emperor for life and the Mao Zedong of the 21st century", Willy Lam, politics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.

"If his health permits, he wants to serve 20 years, which would mean until 2032 as secretary general of the party, and 2033 as state president," Lam said.

The proposed change, which would also apply to the vice-president, will be submitted to legislators at the annual full session of the rubber-stamp National People's Congress starting March 5. Xi is expected to be given a second term in office during the two-week-long session.

Xi has been chipping away at the collective model of leadership that was promoted by Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the country's economic reforms in the 1980s.

Xi's two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, both served two five-year terms, but he has signalled bigger ambitions.

Name in constitution

At the 19th five-yearly Communist Party congress last October, Xi unveiled a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee -- its top ruling body -- that lacked any clear heir apparent to him. He was also given the customary second term as party general secretary, a job which does not have a formal term limit.

Xi also saw his eponymous political philosophy -- Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era -- included in the party's charter, an honour only accorded to one previous leader, Mao, during his lifetime.

The Central Committee also proposed adding Xi's "thought" to the national constitution, joining Mao again.

Since taking over as party general secretary in late 2012, Xi has waged a remorseless battle against corruption, which has seen more than one million people punished. Some also see the campaign as a means for him to eradicate internal opposition.

A major outcome of the 19th Party Congress was the decision to establish a new anti-graft agency, the National Supervisory Commission, that will coordinate investigations at all levels of government and expand its remit to include non-party members.

The Central Committee proposed listing the commission as a new state organ in the constitution.

'Without opposition'

Xi told party officials on Saturday the constitution was key to building a moderately prosperous society, building a modern socialist country and realising the "Chinese dream of national rejuvenation" -- his slogan to restore the nation to its former glory.

"No organisation or individual has the privilege to overstep the constitution or the law," Xinhua quoted him as saying.

Xi is keeping a key ally by his side as he cements power.

The feared former head of the anti-graft agency, Wang Qishan, stepped down from the Standing Committee last October because at 69, he had reached the traditional retirement age.

But Wang was selected earlier this year as a deputy to the upcoming National People's Congress annual session, fuelling speculation that he could become Xi's vice-president or gain some other influential role.

Another ally and new Standing Committee member, Li Zhanshu, could become head of the National People's Congress.

"(Xi) would then ensure that his constitutional reform is adopted without opposition," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, China politics specialist at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Xi's presidency has been marked by the return of a personality cult and a major crackdown on democracy and human rights.

Earlier this year the party mouthpiece People's Daily further cemented his elevation by publishing an article that for the first time referred to him as "lingxiu" -- a Mao-era honorific with more reverential and spiritual connotations than the ordinary terms.

Myanmar bulldozed scores of Rohingya villages since November: HRW

Channel NewAsia - AFP, 23 February 2018

A satellite image taken by DigitalGlobe on Feb 19, 2018 and released by Human
Rights Watch on Feb 23, 2018 allegedly shows ongoing demolition of Rohingya
villages in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State. (Photo: AFP/Handout)

YANGON: Satellite imagery shows Myanmar authorities have bulldozed at least 55 Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine in recent months, Human Rights Watch said Friday (Feb 23), condemning the government for erasing evidence at sites where troops are accused of atrocities.

Northern Rakhine has been nearly emptied of its Rohingya population since last August, when a military crackdown drove some 700,000 of the persecuted group across the border to Bangladesh.

The UN has accused Myanmar of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslim minority, who face acute discrimination in the mainly Buddhist nation.

Myanmar denies the charge but has blocked UN investigators from investigating an area where thousands of Rohingya are believed to have been killed.

Hundreds of Rohingya villages were already damaged by fire during the initial months of violence last year, when soldiers and Buddhist vigilantes terrorised communities with arson, gunfire and rape, according to refugees.

Since November, Myanmar authorities have further demolished at least 55 villages with heavy machinery, clearing out all structures and vegetation, satellite images obtained by Human Rights Watch showed.

At least two of the flattened villages were previously undamaged by fires, the watchdog said.

"Many of these villages were scenes of atrocities against Rohingya and should be preserved so that the experts appointed by the UN to document these abuses can properly evaluate the evidence to identify those responsible," said HRW's Asia director Brad Adams.

"Bulldozing these areas threatens to erase both the memory and the legal claims of the Rohingya who lived there," he added.

Haunting images of levelled villages first circulated on social media earlier this month after they were posted by an EU diplomat.

At the time Myanmar's Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye told AFP the demolition was part of a plan to "build back" villages to a higher standard than before.

Myanmar has trumpeted a government effort to rebuild violence-gutted Rakhine and welcome back refugees under a repatriation agreement with Dhaka that was supposed to commence in January.

But many Rohingya refuse to return without the guarantee of basic rights and safety.

Analysts have also sounded the alarm over the government's rehabilitation projects, calling the sweeping destruction of villages, mosques and property only the latest move to erase the Rohingya's ties to their ancestral lands, and prevent them returning.

Members of the Muslim minority have been systematically stripped of their legal rights in Myanmar in recent decades.

They have also been targeted by bouts of violence and corralled into grim displacement camps in other parts of Rakhine state.

Myanmar's army says its August crackdown was a proportionate counterstrike against Rohingya rebels who attacked police posts in late August, killing around a dozen officials.

Many in the Buddhist majority revile the Rohingya and brand the group as foreign interlopers, despite their having lived in Rakhine for generations.

Myanmar authorities have bulldozed at least 55 Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine in recent months, according to satellite imagery seen by HRW https://t.co/wLl8sSrEBA pic.twitter.com/GWsUid8O3I

— AFP news agency (@AFP) February 23, 2018

S. Korea's Moon watches concert with Kim Jong Un's sister

Yahoo – AFP, Jung Hawon, February 11, 2018

South Korea's Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon (R) shakes hands with North Korean
leader Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong (L) as North Korea's ceremonial head of
state Kim Yong Nam (C) looks on during their meeting at a hotel in Seoul (AFP Photo)

South Korean President Moon Jae-in sat next to the powerful sister of the North's leader Kim Jong Un at a concert in Seoul by musicians from Pyongyang, as conservative protesters burned the North's national flag outside Sunday.

The show was the final set-piece element of the North Korean delegation's landmark visit, the diplomatic highlight of the Olympics-driven rapprochement between the two halves of the peninsula.

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They have shared kimchi and soju, sat in the same box at the Olympics opening ceremony and cheered a unified women's ice hockey team.

Kim on Saturday invited Moon to a summit in the North, an offer extended by his sister and special envoy Kim Yo Jong, who made history as the first member of the North's ruling dynasty to visit the South since the Korean War.

Pictures showed Yo Jong seated between Moon and the North's ceremonial head of state Kim Yong Nam, who is officially leading the North's delegation, and applauding at Sunday's concert.

The show was given by some 140 members of Pyongyang's Samjiyon Orchestra as part of a cross-border deal in which the isolated nuclear-armed North sent hundreds of athletes, cheerleaders and others to the Pyeongchang Winter Games in the South.

At a dinner beforehand with senior Seoul officials, Yo Jong said she found the two Koreas still had much in common despite decades of separation.

Before flying south, she said, she had expected "things would be very different and unfamiliar", according to a statement from Moon's office.

"But it turned out that there were many things similar and in common," she went on. "I hope that the day we become one will be brought forward."

But the rapprochement pushed by the dovish Moon has angered conservatives, who accuse him of being a North Korea sympathiser and undermining the security alliance with the US.

"Having these red communists in the heart of Seoul is an utter humilation!" one shouted near the venue as dozens of others waved banners condemning both Moon and Kim Jong Un.

"We are against the ugly political Olympics!" read one banner.

South Korean protesters hold pictures of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un 

during an anti-North Korea rally in Seoul (AFP Photo)

Some set a North Korean flag on fire before police intervened, and others chanted "Let's tear Kim Jong Un to death!" as they ripped up posters bearing his portrait.

The North's presence has dominated the headlines in the early days of the Olympics, with all eyes turning to Swiss-educated Kim Yo Jong, believed to be 30, who is among her brother's closest confidantes.

Political divide

Sunday's concert -- the orchestra's second and final show -- was expected to feature South Korean pop songs as well as North Korean music, with the diplomatic delegation due to fly home afterwards.

Public interest in the show was huge, with nearly 120,000 people applying for just 1,000 tickets.

Civilian contact is strictly banned between the two Koreas, which have been divided by the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

Tensions soared last year as the North staged a series of nuclear and missile tests in violation of UN resolutions, while leader Kim and US President Donald Trump traded colourful insults and threats of war.

Moon has long sought engagement with the North to bring it to the negotiating table, and for months has promoted Pyeongchang as a "peace Olympics".

But controversy over the North's participation -- particularly the formation of a unified women's ice hockey team, seen as unfairly denying Seoul's own citizens a chance to compete on the Olympic stage -- has hit his approval ratings.

Many older South Koreans on both sides of the political divide harbour a nostalgic longing for some form of reunification -- conservatives through the North's collapse, liberals through a more amicable arrangement.

But younger South Koreans -- many of whom voted for Moon in May -- have spent their adult lives in a culturally vibrant democracy regularly menaced and occasionally attacked by Pyongyang. They have far less interest in unification and fear its social and economic consequences.

A poll last year found almost 50 percent of over-60s believed the two Koreas can be reunified, while just 20.5 percent of those in their 20s agreed.

N. Korea's ceremonial head of state to visit South

Yahoo – AFP, Jung Ha-Won, 4 February 2018

The trip by Kim Yong-Nam will be the diplomatic high point of the rapprochement
between the two Koreas triggered by the Pyeongchang Games

North Korea's ceremonial head of state will visit the South this week in connection with the Winter Olympics, Seoul said late Sunday.

Kim Yong-Nam will be the highest-level official from the North for years to travel to the other side of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

His trip will be the diplomatic high point of the rapprochement between the two Koreas triggered by the Pyeongchang Olympics in the South, which have their opening ceremony on Friday -- although analysts warn that their newly warmed relations may not last long beyond the Games.

Tensions spiralled last year as the North carried out multiple weapons tests, including intercontinental ballistic missiles it says are capable of reaching the mainland United States, and its most powerful nuclear blast to date.

For months, it ignored Seoul's entreaties to take part in a "peace Olympics", until leader Kim Jong-Un indicated his willingness to do so in his New Year speech.

That set off a rapid series of meetings which saw the two agree to march together at the opening ceremony and form a unified women's ice hockey team, their first for 27 years.

The North's Olympic participation would include a visit by a high-level delegation, they agreed.

It will be led by Kim Yong-Nam, who is leader of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, the North's ruling-party-controlled parliament, Seoul's unification ministry said in a statement.

Kim -- who is not a close blood relative of leader Kim Jong-Un -- will arrive on Friday for a three-day visit, accompanied by three other officials and 18 support staff, the ministry said it had been told by Pyongyang.

The South Korean ministry did not explicitly say whether Kim would go to the Pyeongchang opening ceremony -- which will be attended by the US Vice President Mike Pence.

Head of state

Kim Yong-Nam will be the highest-level Northern official to visit the South since 2014.

But it may be seen as disappointing by some if he proves to be the most important member of the delegation, as he is largely considered a figurehead whose public diplomatic role leaves it unclear how much political power he really has.

He is regarded as the ceremonial head of state, but does not hold the title of national president -- and nor does Kim Jong-Un.

Instead it is retained by Kim Jong-Un's grandfather, the North's founder Kim Il-Sung, who remains Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- the country's official name -- despite dying in 1994.

Speculation about who could lead the delegation had been rife in the South for weeks, with some analysts pointing to Choe Ryong-Hae, who is the vice chairman of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party and seen as Kim Jong-Un's right-hand man.

Others had even suggested the leader's younger sister Kim Yo-Jong, who was recently promoted to a senior political position.

Choe was one of three senior Pyongyang officials who made a surprise visit to the South during the 2014 Asian Games along with former military chief Hwang Pyong-So and Kim Yang-Gon, a top official on inter-Korea affairs who died in a car crash in 2015.

They did not meet any senior officials of the government in Seoul, but it may be different on this occasion.

The South's new President Moon Jae-In has long argued for engagement to bring the North to the negotiating table over its nuclear ambitions, which have seen it subjected to multiple sets of United Nations Security Council sanctions.

Seoul and Washington have agreed to delay annual large-scale joint military exercises which always infuriate Pyongyang, but only until the end of the Paralympics in late March.