Day: April 17, 2022

President Joe Biden will meet with Southeast Asian leaders in Washington for a special U.S.-ASEAN summit next month, the White House announced Saturday.

The meeting in mid-May will take place amid tensions in the South China Sea, divisions among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations over its response to the crisis in post-coup Myanmar, and the lack of a collective condemnation by the bloc of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a stark contrast to the West’s condemnation of it.

“President Biden will host the Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Washington, DC on May 12 and 13 for a U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

Cambodia, the 2022 holder of the ASEAN chairmanship, confirmed the new dates for the summit.

“During this historic meeting, the Leaders of ASEAN and the United States will chart the future direction of ASEAN-U.S. relations and seek to further enhance strategic partnership for the mutual benefits of the peoples of ASEAN and the United States,” Phnom Penh said in a statement issued Sunday.

The U.S.-ASEAN summit was originally scheduled for the end of March but was postponed because scheduling for the meeting ran into trouble when the facilitating country, Indonesia, could not get all ASEAN members to agree on a date.

Next month’s meeting will be the second special summit between Washington and the Southeast Asian bloc since 2016 and the first in-person one since 2017, Cambodia said.  

“The Special Summit will demonstrate the United States’ enduring commitment to ASEAN, recognizing its central role in delivering sustainable solutions to the region’s most pressing challenges, and commemorate 45 years of U.S.-ASEAN relations,” Psaki said.

The summit is also set to happen a few days after a general election in the Philippines to determine who will succeed Rodrigo Duterte as president of the longtime U.S. defense ally at the frontline of territorial disputes with Beijing over the South China Sea.

During his nearly six years in office, however, Duterte has fostered closer relations with China despite diplomatic protests lodged by Manila over intrusions by Chinese coast guard ships and other vessels in waters within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.    

Balancing power

The U.S. sees Southeast Asia as crucial to its efforts to push back against China’s rising power in the South China Sea and across the Indo-Pacific region.

“It is a top priority for the Biden-Harris Administration to serve as a strong, reliable partner in Southeast Asia. Our shared aspirations for the region will continue to underpin our common commitment to advance an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, secure, connected, and resilient,” Psaki said.

The Biden administration announced the new dates for the summit more than two weeks after the American president met with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the White House, where they discussed the South China Sea, among other issues.

“From our point of view, freedom of navigation is important, international law is important, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS] is also important, and peaceful resolution of disputes so you avoid some accidental conflicts,” Lee said during an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on March 30, a day after his meeting with Biden.

Myanmar crisis

ASEAN, meanwhile, has been grappling with a 14-month-old crisis in bloc member Myanmar, where the Burmese junta’s forces have bombed and burned swathes of the country to quell resistance to the military’s overthrow of an elected government in February 2021.

In late March, the junta blocked ASEAN envoy Prak Sokhonn from meeting with deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his three-day visit to Myanmar, despite its pledge to grant him access to all political stakeholders, Prak, the Cambodian foreign minister, told reporters upon returning to Phnom Penh.

At the end of an emergency meeting of ASEAN leaders in April last year, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief who led the coup, agreed to allow an envoy from the Southeast Asian bloc access to all stakeholders in Myanmar as part of a Five-Point Consensus to end the political crisis in his country.

Apart from the Myanmar crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has tested ASEAN unity. In early March, the bloc as a whole issued a statement calling for a ceasefire but without naming Russia or using the word “invasion.” Meanwhile on March 2, most ASEAN member-states – except for Vietnam and Laos, which abstained – supported a much tougher U.N. General Assembly resolution against Moscow.

Nearly 100 religious buildings have been destroyed in two regions and two states in Myanmar more than a year after the military seized control from the elected government and plunged the Southeast Asian country into chaos and violence, according to data compiled by RFA.

The 97 religious buildings that have been demolished since the Feb. 1 coup include 15 Buddhist monasteries in Sagaing region, five Buddhist monasteries and one Christian church in Magway region, 62 Christian churches in Chin state, and 13 Christian churches and a mosque in Kayah state.

In some cases, soldiers raided the religious buildings and beat locals who had taken shelter there.

Residents of Sagaing region in northwestern Myanmar said several Buddhist monasteries and Christian churches in Ye-U, Mingin, Yinmarbin and Khin-U had been burned down, while other monasteries had been destroyed in Ye-U, Tanze, Kalay, Myaung, Pale and Ayadaw townships.

Zaw Zaw, a resident of Pale township, said Buddhist monks there are being fed by locals offering alms after military troops raided villages and robbed and torched their monasteries.

“They were swearing at the Buddhist monasteries [and] fired several shots into the air,” he said. “They seized cell phones from the monks at the gunpoint. They also robbed civilians who took shelter in the monasteries of their money, gold and jewelry.”

Whenever a military detachment entered Zaw Zaw’s village, residents remained behind closed doors and did not go to the monastery to offer alms to the monks, he said.

“Even Buddhist monks are on the run,” Zaw Zaw added.

Other civilians told RFA that they have been appalled to see bullet holes and other damage from bomb blasts on Buddhist pagodas that serve as landmarks in many small communities.

Locals used to take shelter in monasteries when military units arrived in their villages, but now these places are no longer safe, they said.

Soldiers no longer honor religious buildings in the Buddhist-majority nation because they only want to ensure they maintain power, said a member of the People’s Defense Force (PDF) in Yesagyo township in Magway region who wanted to remain anonymous for safety reasons.

“They are a fascist, terrorist army,” he said. “They no longer venerate the religion. They don’t care about the well-being of the people. They don’t care anything else. All they care about is upholding their power and increasing their wealth.”

“They also prosecute and assault the people,” said the PDF member. “They will do the same thing to the sacred buildings of any religion. They won’t be reluctant to destroy anytime.”

‘Horrible acts’

Largely Christian Chin state in western Myanmar has had 62 religious structures destroyed — the largest number of such of any single state or region since the military takeover — including 22 that were burned to ashes, and 20 more destroyed by artillery blasts, according to the Institute of Chin Affairs, a human rights organization.

“We feel that this is result of lacking respects on the people with different religious beliefs,” the organization said in a March 22 statement. “Many of us have perceptions that they treated us this way because they disrespect to people with different religious beliefs. Losing the mutual respect to other religions is not acceptable, and assaulting the believers of different religions is violation of international laws.”

The Rev. Dennis Ngun Thang Mang said some of the churches destroyed were on fire though there were no armed conflicts in their vicinity, and when he and other asked the military about the blazes, they claimed they didn’t know anything about it.

Additionally, military forces arrested 20 Christian ministers. While a dozen of the captives were later released, four remain in detention and four were killed, the Institute of Chin Affairs said.

In Loikaw, Demoso and Hpruso townships of Kayah state, three Baptist churches, 10 Catholic churches and a mosque have been destroyed.

Military commanders are supposed to avoid hitting religious buildings during armed conflicts, said a Christian religious leader in Loikaw, who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

“During the armed conflicts in Kayah state, most of the bombs from air raids and artillery blasts fell inside the compound of the churches,” he told RFA. “That’s why many churches were destroyed.

“We don’t know why they did it,” he said. “We strongly condemn their actions. We want to appeal them to avoid targeting religious buildings.”

The military regime’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, denied that army forces targeted religious buildings during armed conflicts.

“The Tatmadaw never targeted any religious buildings,” he said, using the Burmese name for the Myanmar military. “There were incidents of raiding them when we received credible information that terrorists were hiding in the buildings.”

In cases where monasteries and churches were accidentally hit by military fire, soldiers took the lead in helping to repair them, Zaw Min Tun said.

Aung Myo Min, human rights minister of the shadow National Unity Government, said the U.N.’s Geneva Convention lays out guidelines to protect religious building amid armed conflict.

“Religious buildings and sacred places are icons of religious freedom,” he told RFA. “They should not be assaulted or destroyed, even by society’s norms. But targeting religious buildings in armed conflicts and firing weapons at them are horrible acts.”

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.