Philippines says ready to chair ASEAN in 2026 instead of Myanmar

Philippines says ready to chair ASEAN in 2026 instead of Myanmar
The Philippines is ready to chair ASEAN in 2026 instead of Myanmar, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said Tuesday, as the bloc wrestles with how to engage with the country’s junta rulers. (AFP)
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Updated 05 September 2023
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Philippines says ready to chair ASEAN in 2026 instead of Myanmar

Philippines says ready to chair ASEAN in 2026 instead of Myanmar
  • “It is my pleasure to announce that the Philippines is ready to take the helm and chair ASEAN in 2026,” Marcos told Association of Southeast Asian Nations leaders
  • Marcos did not say why Manila was taking over the chair from Myanmar

JAKARTA: The Philippines is ready to chair ASEAN in 2026 instead of Myanmar, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said Tuesday, as the bloc wrestles with how to engage with the country’s junta rulers.
Myanmar has been ravaged by deadly violence since a 2021 military coup deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and unleashed a bloody crackdown on dissent.
“It is my pleasure to announce that the Philippines is ready to take the helm and chair ASEAN in 2026,” Marcos told Association of Southeast Asian Nations leaders in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
“We will fortify the foundations of our community-building and navigate ASEAN as it embarks on a new chapter,” he said, according to a statement from the presidential palace.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun confirmed it would be replaced as chair.
“Myanmar will skip ASEAN chairmanship in 2026,” he told AFP, without giving further details.
Marcos did not say why Manila was taking over the chair from Myanmar.
However, two Southeast Asian diplomats attending the summit said the move was agreed by leaders so the crisis would not hijack the bloc’s agenda and prevent “external partners” coming to Myanmar for their gatherings.
“It’s been decided. It was announced at the leaders’ meeting and there was no objection,” said one diplomat on the condition of anonymity.
ASEAN wrote to the Philippines to ask if it was willing to accept the chair for that year and Manila accepted, the diplomat said.
A second diplomat, who also declined to be identified, said the switch had been agreed after “leaders’ assessment on the progress” of a five-point plan agreed two years ago that the junta in Myanmar has largely ignored.
Laos will host next year’s summit and Malaysia will chair the event in 2025.


UK’s Sunak faces key test over Rwanda migrant policy vote

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrives at the COVID Inquiry at Dorland House in London, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP)
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrives at the COVID Inquiry at Dorland House in London, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP)
Updated 58 min 39 sec ago
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UK’s Sunak faces key test over Rwanda migrant policy vote

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrives at the COVID Inquiry at Dorland House in London, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP)
  • Sunak has put the plan at the heart of his pledge to stop irregular migration, making the issue a key battleground in a general election expected next year

LONDON: UK leader Rishi Sunak faces the riskiest week of his premiership, with lawmakers gathering Monday to decide whether to back his flagship policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Factions of MPs from across Sunak’s divided Conservatives have convened meetings to consider how to vote when the controversial legislation goes before parliament on Tuesday.
Sunak has put the plan at the heart of his pledge to stop irregular migration, making the issue a key battleground in a general election expected next year.
But opposition to the scheme from both right-wingers and centrists is widening schisms in the ruling party, putting Sunak’s year-and-a-bit leadership in jeopardy.
The government announced a new bill last week after Supreme Court judges ruled in November that the deportation plan was illegal, as Rwanda was not a safe country.
The legislation would compel judges to treat Rwanda as safe and proposes giving UK ministers powers to disregard sections of human rights legislation.
The proposals have sparked fresh concerns from opposition parties, human rights groups and more moderate Tories who oppose any violations of international law by Britain.
However, right-wingers — including Robert Jenrick, who quit as immigration minister last week, and firebrand ex-home secretary Suella Braverman — say the legislation fails to go far enough.
Some on the right have called for Britain to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights and other international treaties, to stop courts blocking removals.
Up to 100 backbench MPs from five different groupings on the Conservatives’ right wing, including the powerful European Research Group (ERG), which advocated a hard-line Brexit.
The ERG called the bill was “the toughest piece of migration legislation ever put forward by a UK government.”
But it said it only provided a “partial and incomplete solution” to expected legal challenges and would require “very significant amendments.”
The centrist One Nation group, which also has about 100 members, is expected to release its own statement later on Monday.
Tuesday is the first opportunity that MPs will have to vote on the legislation, in what is called a second reading.
A government bill has not been defeated at this stage in the process for almost 40 years.
But several abstentions would also damage Sunak, who was elected unopposed by Tory MPs in October last year following Liz Truss’s calamitous 49-day reign.
If it scrapes through, right-wingers are also expected to try to rewrite the legislation at later stages while the House of Lords upper chamber would have an opportunity to block it.
Sunak has bet his pledge to “stop the boats” crossing the Channel on the Rwanda scheme — which has been stuck in the courts since the first deportees were pulled off a flight at the last minute in June 2022, after an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights.
Almost 30,000 irregular migrants have crossed the Channel from northern France in rudimentary vessels this year.
Tory divisions have worsened since Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, largely on a promise to “take back control” of its borders.
Sunak, who has told MPs the Conservatives must “unite or die,” has denied that Tuesday’s vote amounts to a confidence vote on his leadership.
Some Westminster watchers have speculated that he may be tempted to call an early election — which must be held by January 2025 — if he loses the vote.
The Conservatives, in power since 2010, have served up five prime ministers since the 2016 Brexit vote.
They currently lag well behind Labour, the main opposition party, in opinion polls.


200 Afghan ex-special forces who worked with British military denied relocation to UK: BBC

200 Afghan ex-special forces who worked with British military denied relocation to UK: BBC
Updated 11 December 2023
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200 Afghan ex-special forces who worked with British military denied relocation to UK: BBC

200 Afghan ex-special forces who worked with British military denied relocation to UK: BBC
  • Gen. Richard Barrons: ‘It reflects that either we’re duplicitous as a nation or incompetent’
  • Ex-commando: ‘We never thought that heroes would be abandoned. It is really disappointing’

LONDON: About 200 former Afghan special forces whose anti-Taliban operations with Britain’s military were “incredibly important” have been denied relocation to the UK, the BBC reported on Monday.

A further 32 former government officials, as well as a number of civilian leaders who aided Britain’s mission in the country, have also been denied by the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Programme.

The former soldiers’ “abandonment” by the UK government has been labeled a “betrayal” and “disgrace” by senior British military figures, including Gen. Richard Barrons, who served in Afghanistan for more than a decade.

He told the BBC that the UK’s failure to relocate the former soldiers “is a disgrace, because it reflects that either we’re duplicitous as a nation or incompetent.”

Barrons added: “It is a betrayal, and the cost of that betrayal will be people who served with us will die or spend their lives in prison.”

The UK’s then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021 described the work of the former Afghan special forces as “incredibly important.”

Britain set up two major units composed of elite Afghan soldiers in an effort to combat opium production and the Taliban presence in Afghanistan.

Commando Force 333, and its sister unit, Afghan Territorial Force 444, were known as “the Triples,” and “quickly gained a reputation for effectiveness, honesty and courage,” the BBC reported.

One of the former CF333 members, known as Ali, described being “abandoned and betrayed” by the UK after spending “day and night” together with British soldiers.

He added: “During training we slept under one tent, eating from the same dish. During operations we fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the British, as members of one family.”

During the evacuation from Kabul in August 2021, Ali oversaw the protection of British passport holders as they left the country on emergency flights.

But he was denied entry on the same flights, and eventually fled to Pakistan by land out of fear of reprisal attacks from Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers.

“We never thought that heroes would be abandoned. We took all those risks. We were ready to help the international community, we respected freedom of speech and human life, then everything turned upside down. It is really disappointing,” he said.

Figures compiled by a network of Afghan veterans, seen by the BBC, show that there are up to 200 other former soldiers in the same position as Ali. Their applications to Britain’s ARAP scheme have faced delays or rejection.

Civilian leaders who helped Britain’s mission in Afghanistan have also been denied by the scheme.

Among them is Mohammad Fahim, a former governor of Helmand province’s Garmsir district, a key Taliban stronghold before 2001.

Despite working “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Britain, he says he was “betrayed” and “never thought that I would be left alone like this.”

He added: “We arrested a number of Taliban leaders when I was governor. They knew that we were fighting together with the international forces, so the threat to me is real.

“We ran programmes shoulder-to-shoulder, with the shared aim of bringing security for the people who lived in Helmand, giving them a good life and making peace.”

His work to counter the Taliban presence in his district resulted in the murder of his brother and two cousins, and in 2018 Fahim was almost beaten to death.

Barrons said: “I’m personally ashamed because I feel very deeply that we made an obligation to them and we have not fulfilled it.

“It’s beyond absurd to say they don’t qualify and that they should be left behind to a fate at the hands of the Taliban.”

Lt. Gen. Abdul Hadi Khalid, former first commanding officer of CF333, said Britain’s treatment of the Triples will diminish the country’s standing in the region.

He added: “I’m 100 percent sure that when other nations, other progressive forces, see Afghanistan, when they look at Afghan people, Afghan miseries, how can they trust the West?”

In response to the BBC’s reporting, a UK Ministry of Defense spokesman said: “So far, we have brought around 24,600 people to safety, including thousands of people eligible for our Afghan schemes.

“Each ARAP application is assessed individually and in accordance with published policy, and we do not automatically make a decision on eligibility based on a job role.”


UN mission in Mali officially ends after 10 years

UN mission in Mali officially ends after 10 years
Updated 11 December 2023
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UN mission in Mali officially ends after 10 years

UN mission in Mali officially ends after 10 years
  • The mission, known as MINUSMA, lowers United Nations flag on its headquarters in the capital Bamako
BAMAKO: The UN mission in Mali officially ended a 10-year deployment in the country on Monday, its spokesperson said, in a pull-out ordered by Mali’s military leaders.
The mission, known as MINUSMA, lowered the United Nations flag on its headquarters in the capital Bamako, its spokesperson Fatoumata Kaba said.
The symbolic ceremony marks the official end of the mission, she said.
A “liquidation phase” will take place after January 1, involving activities such as handing over remaining equipment to the authorities.
The withdrawal of the UN stabilization mission, known as MINUSMA, has ignited fears that fighting will intensify between troops and armed factions for territorial control.
MINUSMA had for the past decade maintained around 15,000 soldiers and police in Mali. About 180 members have been killed in hostile acts.
As of Friday, more than 10,500 uniformed and civilian MINUSMA personnel had left Mali, out of a total of around 13,800 staff at the start of the withdrawal, the UN mission said on X, formerly Twitter.

India’s top court upholds end of special status for Kashmir, orders polls

India’s top court upholds end of special status for Kashmir, orders polls
Updated 11 December 2023
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India’s top court upholds end of special status for Kashmir, orders polls

India’s top court upholds end of special status for Kashmir, orders polls
  • Modi-led government in 2019 revoked Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status
  • The region has been the heart of over 75 years of animosity with neighboring Pakistan

NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court upheld on Monday a 2019 decision by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revoke special status for Indian-administered Kashmir and set a deadline of Sept 30 next year for state polls to be held.

Indian-administered Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority region, has been at the heart of more than 75 years of animosity with neighboring Pakistan since the birth of the two nations in 1947 at independence from colonial rule by Britain.

The unanimous order by a panel of five judges came in response to more than a dozen petitions challenging the revocation and a subsequent decision to split the region into two federally administered territories.

It sets the stage for elections in the region, which was more closely integrated with India after the government’s contentious move, taken in line with a key longstanding promise of Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Indian paramilitary troopers patrol along a road in Srinagar on December 11, 2023, ahead of Supreme Court's verdict on Article 370. (AFP)

The decision is a shot in the arm for the government ahead of general elections due by May.

The challengers maintained that only the constituent assembly of Indian-administered Kashmir could decide on the special status of the scenic mountain region, and contested whether parliament had the power to revoke it.

The court said special status was a temporary constitutional provision that could be revoked by parliament. It also ordered that the federal territory should return to being a state at the earliest opportunity.

The territory is divided among India, which rules the populous Kashmir Valley and the Hindu-dominated region of Jammu, Pakistan, which controls a wedge of territory in the west, and China, which holds a thinly populated high-altitude area in the north.


India’s top court upholds abrogation of Kashmir’s special status

India’s top court upholds abrogation of Kashmir’s special status
Updated 11 December 2023
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India’s top court upholds abrogation of Kashmir’s special status

India’s top court upholds abrogation of Kashmir’s special status
  • Five-judge bench also ordered statehood to be restored, polls to be held by next September
  • For many people in Kashmir, the Supreme Court ruling came as a disappointment

NEW DELHI: India’s top court upheld on Monday a 2019 government decision that stripped Kashmir of its special autonomous status in a unanimous ruling that sets the stage for local polls to be held by September next year.

The semi-autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir was granted by India’s constitution until Aug. 5, 2019, when the Indian government unilaterally revoked the relevant provisions under Article 370 and scrapped the region’s flag, legislature, protections on land ownership, and fundamental rights.  

The Indian Supreme Court began in August hearings of petitions that were filed over the past four years to challenge the government’s contentious move.  

“We don’t find that the president’s exercise to abrogate Article 370 was malafide,” Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said while reading out the judgment.  

“Article 370 is a temporary provision. J&K’s Constitution was subordinate to the Constitution of India. Article 370 was introduced to serve a transitional purpose, to serve as an interim process … and the president can abrogate Article 370.”  

Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir is part of the larger Kashmiri territory, which has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. 

Both countries claim Kashmir in full, and rule in part. 

Indian-controlled Kashmir has for decades witnessed outbreaks of separatist insurgency to resist control from the government in New Delhi. 

With the constitutional change, Jammu and Kashmir was split into two federally governed union territories in a move that was followed by a total communications blackout, severe restrictions on freedom of movement, and detention of local leaders — some of whom remain in jail. 

Administrative measures introduced after the abrogation of the special status and statehood have allowed non-locals to settle and vote in the region, raising fears of attempts to engineer demographic change. 

The five-judge bench of the Supreme Court also ordered the government to hold elections in the region by Sept. 30, 2024 and to restore its statehood “at the earliest.” 

The Supreme Court decision was welcomed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who described it as “historic.”  

“The verdict today is not just a legal judgment; it is a beacon of hope, a promise of a brighter future and a testament to our collective resolve to build a stronger, more united India,” Modi said.  

But for the people of Kashmir, Monday’s verdict came as a disappointment.  

“I am very much disappointed. Today’s verdict is totally against our emotions and gives pain to the majority of the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” Aijaz Ahmad, a business professional based in Srinagar, told Arab News.  

Yashwant Sinha group, comprising civil society members who have monitored the situation in Kashmir over the last six years, has reported anger, hatred, a sense of political betrayal and alienation among residents of the valley.  

“People of the valley with whom I have been talking for weeks are not at all surprised and as a petitioner, I am not surprised either,” said Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak, a retired officer of the Indian Air Force and one of the petitioners who appealed to India’s apex court.  

Kak, who is also a member of Yashwant Sinha group, told Arab News the Supreme Court ruling will “take it further away” from resolving the problem of Jammu and Kashmir and exacerbate the concerns and deep alienation felt by youths of the valley.  

Kashmiris were “dejected, humiliated, discredited and disenfranchised” by the Supreme Court ruling, said Nasir Khuehami, president of Kashmir Students Union.  

Subhash Chander Gupta, a senior advocate based in Jammu, believes the verdict was a “politically bad judgment” that will create a trust deficit in the region while also further deepening the “distrust between the Kashmiri people and the rest of India.”  

The apex court’s decision was “nothing less than a death sentence not only for Jammu and Kashmir but for the idea of India,” said Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. 

“This is the defeat of the imagination of India, the Gandhian India with which Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir, rejecting Pakistan, joined hands with the Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians … Today marks the defeat of that idea of India," she said.   

Kashmir “continues to be a bleeding humanitarian and political issue” that is “begging redressal,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a top cleric and pro-freedom leader.  

“Those people who at the time of the partition of the subcontinent, facilitated the accession of J&K and reposed their faith in the promises and assurances given to them by the Indian leadership must feel deeply betrayed.”