Day: March 24, 2022

ASEAN envoy Prak Sokhonn’s one-sided engagement with the junta will never lead to a resolution of Myanmar’s political crisis, analysts and politicians said Thursday after his first official visit to the country concluded without meeting key opposition leaders.

Prak Sokhonn, who is also the foreign minister of rotating ASEAN chair Cambodia, traveled to Myanmar from March 21-23 with the expressed goal of facilitating an end to the unrest that has engulfed the country since the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup. However, after meeting with junta chief Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and other military leaders on Monday, the regime denied the envoy access to Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained head of the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD). Prak Sokhonn also did not meet with members of the shadow National Unity Government (NUG).

Political analyst Sai Kyi Zin Soe called the trip a “failed visit” that was unlikely to move the needle on the crisis.

“It shows [Cambodia] will not be able to resolve the issue even if they want to during their ASEAN leadership role,” he said. “They won’t be able to find an acceptable solution for all of us because they didn’t meet all the people they should have. So, I don’t see any positive outcome from this trip.”

Prak Sokhonn’s visit was highly anticipated by observers who say that leaders of the NLD, which won Myanmar’s November 2020 election by a landslide, must be given a seat at the table for any negotiations on the country’s political future.

Allowing the ASEAN envoy to meet with all stakeholders is a key stipulation of the Five-Point Consensus (5PC) agreed to by Min Aung Hlaing during an emergency gathering of the bloc in April last year. However, ASEAN operates under a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of its member nations and such agreements are non-binding.

On Tuesday, Prak Sokhonn met with the chairman of the lesser-known opposition People’s Party, Ko Ko Gyi, who urged him to pressure the junta on releasing the country’s political prisoners and ending acts of violence against civilians.

Ko Ko Gyi characterized the meeting as a kind of progress and called for further dialogue. However, the People’s Party does not enjoy nearly the same level of support as the NLD and is not expected to mount any real challenge in elections.

The envoy told reporters on Wednesday that he had personally asked Min Aung Hlaing for a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, who was arrested after the coup and faces several charges brought by the military. The junta chief refused the request, citing her ongoing trial.

Prak Sokhonn also acknowledged that the junta had failed to make any real progress on implementing the other points it agreed to in the 5PC, including ending the use of violence against civilians. He said ASEAN would refrain from inviting its representatives to bloc gatherings until it had done so — a policy that has been in place for months.

Criticism of ASEAN

Bo Hla Tint, NUG ambassador to ASEAN, criticized the bloc’s resolutions as toothless and called for stronger measures.

“The junta does not respect nor implement the ASEAN consensus,” said Bo Hla Tint, whose party reached out to Prak Sokhonn about a meeting ahead of his visit but received no answer. “It shows the junta that it is totally impossible for ASEAN to end the violence using such a weak approach to enforcing the current five-point agreement.”

The NUG, which many people in Myanmar see as their only representative body, has held informal talks with ASEAN member states Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines, but has had no contact with Cambodia, the bloc’s chair. The junta says the NUG has no authority and characterizes it as a terrorist organization.

ASEAN expert Daw Moe Thuzar said meeting with Myanmar’s many political stakeholders is crucial to understanding the crisis from all angles.

“Cambodia will only be able to understand the various aspects of the current political crisis and help solve the issue if it holds dialogue with organizations such as the CRPH [Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Committee of Representatives] and NUG, which represent the people of Myanmar and our democracy,” she said.

Repeated attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment went unanswered on Thursday.

Status of armed groups

In the lead up to and during Prak Sokhonn’s visit, sources reported a relative lull in clashes in Myanmar’s remote border regions, where the junta has faced tough resistance since launching offensives against ethnic insurgents and branches of the prodemocracy People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary group loyal to the NUG.

But the lull followed what was described as overall intensified fighting throughout the month of March in the areas, which include Sagaing and Magway regions, as well as Chin, Kayin and Kayah states, with rising civilian casualties and the mass displacement of residents fleeing the violence.

Many ethnic armies have been fighting against Myanmar’s military since the country’s 1948 independence. After the coup, several groups threw their support behind local PDF branches to battle junta troops.

Only 10 groups have signed a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government since 2015, when the document was inked in the presence of international observers and Myanmar’s highest legislature.

The 10 groups suggested in June that the deal remains in place, despite an already flailing peace process that was all but destroyed by the unpopular junta’s coup. However, they say they will not pursue talks with the military, which they view as having stolen power from the country’s democratically elected government.

Dialogue ‘unlikely’

Min Zaw Oo, the director of the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security, said that given the current situation, it will only be possible for the NUG to enter negotiations after discussions between the junta and the ethnic groups that have signed the ceasefire agreement have taken place.

“At the moment, it is far from possible to talk to the [junta] for some forces, especially groups like NUG and the PDF,” he said.

“Another question is whether the NUG holds enough influence over all the PDF groups in the country. Some of them are not even coordinating with the NUG and operate on their own, without a proper chain of command.”

Political analyst Than Soe Naing agreed that a dialogue between all stakeholders is unlikely.

“In the past 70 years of fighting against the military, [the ethnic armies] were fighting separately from one another, in their own way,” he said. “Now, most of the ethnic armed groups and PDF militias have joined hands and are fighting a civil war, so there is no room for negotiations.”

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Thailand-based rights group, junta security forces have killed more than 1,700 civilians and arrested more than 9,900 since the military coup.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said earlier this week that more than 500,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the country since February 2021.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Officials in southern Laos have ordered a Christian family to remove social media posts and videos of villagers attacking a man’s coffin during his funeral in December because they opposed the family’s faith, people with knowledge of the situation said.

When the family from Savannakhet province’s Dong Savanh village took the body of their family patriarch to the cemetery for burial on Dec. 6, local authorities and residents angered by the group’s practice of a “foreign religion” beat the coffin with sticks and struck mourners and pallbearers with clubs.

The family buried the man in their own rice field, but authorities and residents continued to harass them. Authorities expropriated their land in February, and other villagers torched their home, family members and other sources told RFA in an earlier report.

The widow, Seng Aloun, who now must raise her children alone, posted videos on social media showing what had happened at the cemetery and asking for help. Police who investigated the February incidents asked her to remove them.

On March 15, authorities in Phalanxay district where the village is located invited her and some other members of the local Christian church to their office to discuss the conflict between the family and Dong Savanh village officials, said a local Christian leader who has been helping the woman and her children.

“At the meeting, the district authorities again demanded the family take down the posts and the videos of the burned home and the attack on the coffin, or to make changes to the posts,” he said.

One of the proposed changes was that the social media post should imply that someone else burned down their home, and not the village chief, said the Christian leader, who declined to give his name for safety reasons.

The family refused to make any changes to the posts or to delete the video recording, and said they would file a complaint with the provincial and central governments, he said.

The Christian leader said he questioned district officials about why the authorities have not interrogated and investigated the village chief about the fire and the seizure of the family’s farmland.

A district official who is a member of the Phalanxay City Problem Resolution Committee said that authorities at the meeting there discussed the conflict and tried to find a solution to the problem, while being fair to the Christian family.

Seng Aloun said district officials at the meeting promised her family that they would help find the arsonist.

“Right now, we still live in the forest outside the village. Nothing has been resolved,” she told RFA.

‘Both homeless and landless’

Christians in Laos have faced a string of similar assaults and legal moves against them in the one-party communist state with a predominantly Buddhist population despite a national law protecting the free exercise of their faith.

A member of the Evangelical Church of Savannakhet province said he was worried about Seng Aloun’s family because authorities do not honor the Lao government’s legal protection for Christians.

“In Savannakhet province, authorities at all levels from villages to the province have attended seminars and been informed about the Law on the Evangelical Church which spells out all the rights, rules and regulations concerning Christians,” he said. “But the problem is that many village authorities won’t comply. It’s like they know the rules, but they don’t follow them.”

The law, which came into effect in December 2019, gives Lao Christians the right to conduct services, to preach throughout the country, and to maintain contacts with believers in other nations. Christian churches must fund their own operations and must obey other Lao laws, rules and regulations, however.

Another Lao Christian said that local authorities have refused to take responsibility for their actions.

“They wouldn’t admit that they abused the family which is now both homeless and landless,” he said.

An overseas Lao rights group has called on the U.N.’s human rights office (OHCHR) to pressure the Lao government to respect religious freedom.

“We’re urging the U.N. to pressure the Lao P.D.R. to practically respect the religious freedom and particularly to address the burning down of the Christian family’s home and the seizure of their farmland in Savannakhet province,” Bounthone Chanthalavong-Wiese, president of the Alliance for Democracy in Laos, told RFA.

Bounthone sent a statement on the suppression of the rights of Christians in Dong Savanh village to the Southeast Asia office of the U.N.’s human rights agency on March 17, strongly condemning the violence

He noted that at the March 15 meeting held by the Phalanxay City Problem Resolution Committee, the Christian family was denounced instead of those who instigated the violence.

Bounthone called on the Lao government to punish the real culprits who set fire to the house and were responsible for the violence against the family, compensate Seng Aloun for her losses, stop preventing people from telling the truth about the grievances in the country, and implement religious freedom according to the U.N. Human Rights Convention and the Convention on Religious Freedom.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told RFA that the Lao government should tell the local authorities to stop harassing and oppressing people of different faiths.

“It’s their right to believe in any religion,” he said. “If they believe in Christianity, let them be Christians.”

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The United Nations human rights chief must include Tibet on the itinerary of her planned trip to China in May, human rights groups told RFA.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet announced earlier this month that she had come to an agreement with the Chinese government for a visit “foreseen to take place in May.”

Though Xinjiang is expected to be a major focus of her trip, as the U.N. seeks to complete an overdue report on serious rights violations by Chinese authorities targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic communities there, rights groups told RFA that Bachelet, a former Chilean president, should not overlook Tibet.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago. Chinese policies that violate Tibetans’ rights to religious freedom and assembly and have made a push to ban Tibetan language learning to promote Mandarin Chinese dominance there, rights groups say.

“We welcome the U.N. high commissioner’s visit to China, including Xinjiang. However, no assessment of human rights violations by China can be completed without a visit to the Tibetan regions,” Kalden Tsomo, the UN Advocacy Officer in the Tibet Bureau in Geneva, told RFA’s Tibetan Service Wednesday.

“In order to understand the reality of what’s happening inside Tibet, we urge the UN Human Rights Council to press China to give unfettered access to Tibetan regions for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights during the visit to China and regions under its control,” she said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the high commissioner has been “worryingly quiet” regarding Tibet. 

“I think the same problem will apply to Tibetan areas as to the Uyghur regions, meaning that she is incredibly unlikely to be able to travel freely or to be able to talk to people freely without fear of reprisal,” said Sophie Richardson, the group’s China director.

Access to Tibet is a sore point with not only the U.N., but also the U.S. and other Western countries.

China in 2021 “systematically impeded” travel to Tibet and other areas within China for U.S. diplomats and officials, journalists, and tourists in 2021, the U.S. State Department said in a report submitted to congress last week.

“The United States remains concerned that PRC authorities systematically impeded travel to Tibetan areas of the PRC for American citizens, including Tibetan Americans who seek to visit their families,” a State Department spokesperson told RFA.   

Under the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act, signed into law in 2018 by former President Donald Trump, Washington has applied visa restrictions on Chinese officials who have restricted access of foreigners to Tibet.

Washington has long complained that Chinese diplomats, scholars, and journalists enjoy unrestricted travel in the United States, while China tightly restricts the access of U.S. counterparts to Tibet and other areas.

Translated by Tenzin Dyicki. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

“Ukraine Uncle” is the nickname used by a Chinese national living in Kyiv whose short video clips and tweets from the front line of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have garnered him more than 35,000 followers on Twitter. He has posted close-up clips of his local coffee-shop, poignant glimpses of Ukrainians carrying on with their lives, and before-and-after shots of shelled buildings. He spoke to RFA’s Mandarin Service recently about the war, and why he stays on in Kyiv:

RFA: So whereabouts in Kyiv are you?

Ukraine Uncle: Right in the downtown area.

RFA: Is that in the center of the city, or near the edge?

Ukraine Uncle: If the center is the Dnieper, I am farther from the river bank, farther from the city center.

RFA: What’s the situation in Kyiv now? We see that the Russian convoys are all on the edge of the city, but they don’t seem to have moved into it, is that right?

Ukraine Uncle: The only thing the Russians can really do is shell us. But in the northwest corner of Kyiv, more than 200 people were reported dead today, so I guess the shelling over there is more serious. I don’t think it is very likely that Russia will move into Kyiv [with ground forces] because they are too few in number. They only have about 70,000 or 80,000 Russian troops to take a city as big as Kyiv. They would need at least 500,000 or 600,000 or even a million troops for a ground attack.

RFA: We have seen heroic resistance from the Ukrainians throughout this war. What’s your understanding of their behavior?

Ukraine Uncle: Actually, I liked it here in Ukraine very much, as soon as I got here. I felt as if they had gotten rid of the overdependence on the government that they had during the communist era. The people here are like wild animals in their natural habitat, as opposed to caged bunnies and kittens like they are back home. They yearn for freedom, and have a strong ability to self-govern. After I got here, I saw that the subway here is not managed at all, there are no safety measures, nor any security checks, and you can go in casually. My roommate said that in thirty years, there has never been a major criminal or terrorist incident. This shows that these people can live freely and peacefully without any supervision, with very good public order. Putin has claimed that there are some pro-Russian forces in Ukraine who want to return to the era of the Soviet Union, but there are none.

RFA: Besides you, are there any other Chinese people around?

Ukraine Uncle: I haven’t met any other Chinese people, and I haven’t contacted any. I guess most of them are leaving.

RFA: Is there anyone at the Chinese embassy?

Ukraine Uncle: To be honest, I don’t even know where the embassy is. They can’t offer much in the way of help, anyway. I called them, and they told me to leave under my own steam by train. I thought, what’s the point in that? I can leave if I want to. A lot of friends of mine have managed to find transportation out to the western part of the country. If I wanted to leave, I could just ask them about it.

RFA: Have you got normal supplies of water and power, and an internet connection?

Ukraine Uncle: Everything is normal, including heating and so on. It’s fine. There are bread, milk, eggs, etc. in the supermarket, all of which are normal. In the mailbox, it seems that our bills for property fees are still being produced, which shows that enterprises are still operating normally.

RFA: How are the prices over there now. How much do you pay for a cup of coffee?

Ukraine Uncle: Exactly the same as before the war.

RFA: How much is a cup?

Ukraine Uncle: In general, an Americano coffee costs 25 or 6 hryvnia [around U.S.$0.88].

RFA: How do regular people there see the war?

Ukraine Uncle: Most Ukrainians are pretty well-educated, and they must be very angry with Russia’s attack. Especially in places like Mariupol, those cities in the east, where the shelling and bombing has been was really bad, just terrible. They think Putin is unreasonable and crazy, and there is no benefit in attacking them. We think he may be trying to consolidate his own grip on power. His military operations in Georgia and Syria may have gone a bit more smoothly than here, which probably contributed to his delusions. I think he never imagined he’d meet with this kind of resistance from Ukraine.

RFA: The Polish Prime Minister said a few days ago that if Ukraine falls, Europe will no longer be Europe. What’s your view of this remark?

Ukraine Uncle: So far, Ukraine has gone all out to show its determination to defend its freedoms. So if [Western nations] don’t help them and let them fall, it will strike a massive blow at the heart of European values. Personally, I am still grateful for the help of Europe and the U.S. They have done the right thing so far. They decided not to get involved in the war, and I think they must have good intelligence that Ukraine can handle it.

RFA: But Putin seems to be taking a hard line, saying that Russia will never back down.

Ukraine Uncle: Putin has no choice. Personally, I think it’s well-nigh impossible for him to retreat, because retreat is equal to failure, and that would the end of him. However, I am also disappointed by those people in Russia who still swallow government propaganda, despite having open internet access. This is so strange to me. China is locked in behind the Great Firewall, but the Russian internet works normally.

RFA: What about the future?

Ukraine Uncle: I want it to end as soon as possible.

RFA: Do you think it will?

Ukraine Uncle: I may be forced to retreat if the shelling gets really bad, as soon as a humanitarian corridor opens up.

RFA: Have you ever been shelled?

Ukraine Uncle: I’ve heard the shelling, but I don’t think it’s happened in my neighborhood. I reckon it happened about one kilometer away.

RFA: Why haven’t you left yet? Aren’t you afraid?

Ukraine Uncle: Right now my assessment, my personal judgment, is that the probability of death isn’t very high. Then there’s the fact that the people around me, including the Ukrainians who live alongside me, are still here.

RFA: How many civilians are there in Kyiv right now?

Ukraine Uncle: According to media reports, there are about two million people still in Kyiv, that is, about half the population. But probably less than half in the area where I live. I estimate maybe a quarter.

RFA: You said about a quarter of them are still there. Why don’t they leave?

Ukraine Uncle: Probably not even that many. I have interviewed a lot of people.

RFA: What did they say?

Ukraine Uncle: So, when I needed to get my watch fixed, I asked the repairer [why they didn’t leave yet], and when I needed a haircut, I asked the barber. Everyone started out by saying it was not an option. But what if the Russians attack, I said? And they said, I’m not leaving even if they do. I mostly asked people aged between 30 and 50, and they all said they didn’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave either.

RFA: They feel that their fate is tied up with the city, right?

Ukraine Uncle: Oh, it’s not quite as noble as that. But … they’re not panicking. Sometimes there are a lot of people buying stuff in the supermarkets, and there are controls on how many can go in, which means there are long lines, with everyone queuing up outside.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Police in Hong Kong have charged a martial arts teacher and his assistant with “sedition,” claiming they were training a clandestine force to overthrow the government and set up an independent state — armed with crossbows, airguns and their bare hands.

The 59-year-old coach and 62-year-old assistant stand accused of setting up a martial arts training center to “incite hatred” against the government, and to train an “armed force for Hong Kong independence,” police said.

Martial arts instructor Wong Tak-keung, 59, is being charged with “sedition” under a colonial-era sedition law that has been dusted off by  police and used in national security cases after the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a draconian national security law on the city from July 1, 2020.

Wong has been charged with five counts of “acting with seditious intent,” “possession of an offensive weapon” and “possession of a firearm without a license,” while his assistant Cheung Man-chi, 61, faced only the weapons charges.

Both appeared in West Kowloon Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, but no pleas were taken. The case will be heard by a national security judge, and has been adjourned until May 19 pending further investigation by police. Both were denied bail.

The center had allegedly trained students in “combat tai chi,” and police said they had seized an airgun, eight crossbows, 30 steel-tipped arrows and a collection of blades from the premises.

“The arrested persons were deeply affected by misinformation and became self-radicalized… Now they are spreading the misinformation to others,” senior police superintendent Steve Li told journalists.

The national security law has ushered in a citywide crackdown on public dissent and criticism of the authorities that has seen several senior journalists, pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai and 47 former lawmakers and democracy activists charged with offenses from “collusion with a foreign power” to “subversion.”

The CCP-backed Ta Kung Pao newspaper said the martial arts school had, “without any concealment,” introduced itself as intending to “kill,” to engage in “armed revolution,” and to “establish a shadow government.”

‘Black riots’

It said showed that the 2019 protest movement — which it referred to as ‘black riots’ in a reference to the black clothing worn by protesters — hadn’t died out, but rather gone underground.

It accused instigators of “subliminally indoctrinating followers with various anti-government, violence-inciting messages.”

The pro-CCP Wen Wei Po said the center had set up “death squad” class to teach like-minded students how to use weapons until the time was right, and they would “urge the people of Hong Kong to … overthrow the CCP by force.”

It said the center had also held ceremonies to pay tribute to people killed during the 2019 protests.

Li said police are focusing on identifying people who may go on to commit violent acts.

“With this vicious cycle, we are very worried those radicalized will go one step further and commit terrorist attacks,” he said, but declined to disclose how many students Wong had managed to attract so far.

Police also accused the pair of calling on the public to resist the government’s attempts to contain the current outbreak of COVID-19, including the LeaveHomeSafe tracking app and the vaccination drive.

The arrests come after Hong Kong singer Tommy Yuen and two other people were arrested after allegedly calling on people to resist the current COVID-19 restrictions on social media.

Martial arts societies in southeastern China once acted as the seedbed of an attempt to overthrow the Qing Dynasty during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, which aimed to purge China of foreign colonial incursion and influence.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

The Solomon Islands and China are considering a security pact allowing Beijing to set up military bases and deploy troops in the Pacific island nation. The reported move drew immediate concern Thursday from close U.S. ally Australia.

Honiara has signed a policing deal with China and “will send a proposal for a broader security agreement covering the military to its cabinet for consideration,” a Solomon Islands government official was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying Thursday.

A leaked draft security cooperation agreement circulated on social media and later confirmed by Australian media as authentic says “China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of Solomon Islands, make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands.”

This suggests there would be Chinese logistical hubs or bases in the island nation, which occupies a remote but strategic location in the western Pacific, about 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) from the northeastern coast of Australia.

The draft also says “relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands,” referring to the deployment of Chinese troops.

This security agreement, if approved, would be eyed with concern by the United States, which has been making efforts to reconnect with the Pacific and to counter China’s rising influence in the region.

Analysts say a presence of Chinese troops in the Solomon Islands could raise the risk of confrontation between China and the U.S. and its allies, as well as challenge the U.S.-led vision of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.”

Australia, which is a U.S. treaty ally and has its own concerns about China’s rising military clout, was quick to express its misgivings about the planned agreement.

“That is our backyard, this is our neighbourhood and we are very concerned of any activity that is taking place in the Pacific Islands,” Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews was quoted as saying by ABC.

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think tank, said: “This is a very serious development in Australia’s defense and national security – the very real prospect of a Chinese military presence close to Australia.”

If approved by the Solomon Islands cabinet it would also be the first time the Chinese military has an operational presence in the Pacific region.

‘Grim prospect’

“This is pretty grim,” said John Blaxland, professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies at the Australian National University.

“I presume the Australian government is formulating a response,” he added.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in February made a week-long trip to the Indo-Pacific in an effort to elevate American engagement with the remote Pacific islands – described by one analyst as “ground zero” for U.S.-China strategic competition.

During the trip, the U.S. top diplomat said his country was looking to reopen an embassy in the Solomon Islands to reaffirm the U.S. strategic interest in the region.

Washington closed its embassy in Honiara in 1993.

President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said in January that the United States has “enormous moral, strategic, historical interests” in the Pacific but had not done enough to assist the region.

In recent years, China has been actively developing closer ties with the Pacific islands, wooing them with infrastructure loans and economic assistance, as well as military exchanges.

The Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019 – a move to please Beijing, which seeks to diminish the international diplomatic recognition of the government in Taiwan.

 “The Pacific Islands have of late become a ‘ground zero’ for the strategic competition between China on one side and the U.S., Australia, and to a lesser extent, Japan, on the other,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, a U.S. Department of Defense institute based in Hawaii.