AFP, 4 May 2012

Asia architectural treasures, from a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan to an ancient city in China, are in danger of vanishing under a tide of economic expansion, war and tourism, according to experts.

The Global Heritage Fund named 10 sites facing “irreparable loss and destruction.”

“These 10 sites represent merely a fragment of the endangered treasures across Asia and the rest of the developing world,” Jeff Morgan, executive director of the fund, said, presenting the report, “Asia’s Heritage in Peril: Saving Our Vanishing Heritage.”

The architectural gems from Asia’s ancient and sophisticated cultures are struggling in the face of economic expansion, sudden floods of tourists, poor technical resources, and areas blighted by looting and conflict — in other words, the pressures of rapidly modernizing Asia.

“We’re looking at these millennial civilizations leapfrogging into the 21st century at a kind of pace that is unheard of, unprecedented,” said Vishakha N. Desai, president of the Asia Society, which hosted a conference based on the report.

Kuanghan Li, head of Global Heritage Fund’s China program, underlined the urgency in a presentation on work to preserve Pingyao, one of China’s last surviving walled cities. The stunning fortifications are impressively maintained and floodlit.

But “up to 20 years ago, there were hundreds of similar walled cities left in China,” she said. “They have been demolished.”

Experts said that global architectural preservation efforts are poorly coordinated and targeted, with the UN cultural body UNESCO focusing almost entirely on sites in already wealthy European countries, rather than in places like Latin America or Asia.

More than 80 percent of UNESCO World Heritage sites are located in the 10 richest states, the Global Heritage Fund said.

Elsewhere, “heritage is being dramatically undervalued,” Morgan said, warning that the endangered sites were doomed without quick help. “We’re going to lose them on our watch in the next 10 years.”

Shirley Young, head of the US-China Cultural Institute, said the importance of such work goes beyond being “just about beautiful buildings, beautiful sites.”

“I think we’d agree,” she said, “that a world without history is a world without soul.”

Still, experts highlighted stories of inspiring success stories.

John Sanday, a specialist who has spent years trying to bring Angkor and other Cambodian sites back from the brink of collapse, showed dramatic before-and-after photographs of majestic temples that he first encountered two decades ago.

“The trees had literally just taken over and strangling the building, pulling it apart,” he said, pointing to ruins that had been made structurally sound once again — although now under threat from tourism.

“We really hope with a concerted effort we can save these places,” Morgan said.

The top 10 endangered sites in Asia, according to the Global Heritage Fund, are:

1. Ayutthaya in Thailand, a former Siamese capital known as the “Venice of the East.”

2. Fort Santiago in the Philippines.

3. Kashgar, one of the last preserved Silk Road cities in China.

4. Mahasthangarh, one of South Asia’s earliest archeological sites in Bangladesh.

5. Mes Aynak, an Afghan Buddhist monastery complex on the Silk Road.

6. Myauk-U, capital of the first Arakenese kingdom in Myanmar.

7. Plain of Jars, a mysterious megalithic site in Laos.

8. Preah Vihear, a Khmer architectural masterpiece in Cambodia.

9. Rakhigari, one of the biggest, ancient Indus sites in India.

10. Taxila, an ancient economic crossroads in Pakistan.

Myanmar’s repugnant and undemocratic constitution will haunt the process of reform

Economist, Apr 28th 2012   | from the print edition

   

Correction to this article

NOBODY ever expected Myanmar’s democratic dawn to come up quite like thunder. But after the euphoria of by-elections on April 1st, in which the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won 43 out of 45 seats, it did seem to be approaching fast. This week it was put back a little. On April 23rd the NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and its other successful candidates refused to take up their seats in parliament. There were echoes of the day in November 1995 when the NLD pulled out of the national convention drafting the constitution, and was left in the political wilderness. But the party played down its latest protest: not a “boycott”, it insisted, merely a “postponement”.

Indeed, the proximate cause of its withdrawal seems trivial and bureaucratic. Yet the underlying problem is fundamental to the country’s hopes of democracy. That is a constitution foisted on Myanmar’s people by the former junta in a farcical referendum in 2008 (a 92.48% “yes” vote on a turnout of 98.12% in a poll held just after the devastation and chaos of Cyclone Nargis).

The row was over the oath used to swear in members of parliament, requiring them to promise to “safeguard” this constitution. It seems odd that the NLD should be asked to swear this. One of the concessions made by the “civilian” government installed last year after a rigged parliamentary election in 2010 was to amend the electoral law. To persuade the NLD to join the political process, eligible parties no longer had to “safeguard” the constitution but to “respect” or “honour” it. So the inconsistency with the oath looks like an oversight. Thein Sein, the president, whose apparent commitment to reform was a chief factor in winning over Miss Suu Kyi, has been away in Japan. Perhaps, in his absence, nobody had the clout or the will to fix the matter.

It may not be quite so straightforward, however. The oath is actually incorporated as an annex to the constitution itself. And one of that charter’s most objectionable features is that it can only be amended with the consent of 75% of the members of parliament. (Another, not entirely coincidental, is that 25% of the seats are reserved for the army.) The upset has drawn attention to the big unanswered questions about Myanmar’s “democratisation”. Will the army ever accept amendment of the constitution? And, if not, what meaning will democracy have?

It is a document of the army, by the army, for the army. The president must have “military knowledge”. “All affairs” of the armed forces, including budgets and promotions, are beyond civilian control. A state of emergency can be declared by the president after consultation with a National Defence Security Council, dominated by the army high command and the ministry of defence. Thereafter, power is transferred to the armed forces commander-in-chief, who has the right to exercise the powers of legislature, executive and judiciary. It also provides immunity to the former junta for any misdeeds in office.

No wonder Miss Suu Kyi has campaigned on a platform of constitutional reform. Parties representing Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities want other big changes, too—to reduce central-government as well as military domination. The limited devolution of power that the charter envisages falls far short of the federal structure many hope for.

No wonder, either, that there is little sign on the part of the army that it has any intention of even discussing relinquishing its power and perks. In a speech to mark Armed Forces Day on March 27th, the commander-in-chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, said the army has an obligation to defend the constitution and will continue to take part in politics. Even the reforming Thein Sein, in a speech on March 1st marking the first anniversary of the transition to civilian rule, declared: “Our country is in transition to a system of democracy with the constitution as the core.”

This was hardly a surprise from the former general. Since 2003 Myanmar’s leaders have been following a seven-stage “road map to discipline-flourishing democracy”, the first four stages of which entailed drafting and embedding the constitution. But it does raise serious questions about the limits to Myanmar’s reforms, and of how foreign governments should react.

Nobody can deny that Myanmar has already been transformed, hugely for the better. Many—though far from all—political prisoners have been released. The press enjoys unheard-of freedom. Miss Suu Kyi and 42 of her party are elected legislators. Liberalising economic reforms, notably of the exchange rate, have attracted a gold rush of excited foreign businesses.

To the spoilers, the victory

To reward all these positive changes, Western governments now seem to be racing each other to ease the sanctions they imposed on the junta. America and Australia have lifted some restrictions. On April 21st Japan waived nearly $4 billion in debt arrears. And on April 23rd the European Union “suspended” for one year all sanctions other than an arms embargo. Its restrictions cover: dealings with the Burmese timber, mining and gems industries; visas for members of the army and of the junta; a freeze on the assets of hundreds of individuals and firms; and the suspension of all but humanitarian aid. To ensure the measures could easily be reimposed in the event of backsliding on reform, they are suspended, not lifted. In a statement on the sanctions decision, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, said the EU was looking for progress on releasing political prisoners and ending ethnic conflicts. She did not mention the constitution at all, let alone demand explicitly that it be amended to a document embodying something closer to democracy as understood elsewhere.

Some in Myanmar see a danger in the sudden opening up of their country. A bonanza in foreign trade and investment as foreign sanctions are relaxed could end up benefiting above all the very soldiers and cronies the sanctions were intended to punish. After all, these men retain their economic interests. From this perspective all the boasts of political reform look less like a blueprint for democracy, and more like the generals’ pension plan.

—————————————————————————————————————Correction: The above article was amended  on April 28th 2012 to correct errors in the original description of the 2008 constitution. Banyan quoted from an unofficial and inaccurate translation. The article asserted that the National Defence Security  Council (NDSC) could declare a state of emergency, when in fact that is the prerogative of the president after consulting the NDSC.

The list, now in its ninth year, recognises the activism, innovation and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals.

As Time managing editor Richard Stengel has said of the list in the past, “The Time 100 is not a list of the most powerful people in the world, it’s not a list of the smartest people in the world, it’s a list of the most influential people in the world.

“They’re scientists, they’re thinkers, they’re philosophers, they’re leaders, they’re icons, they’re artists, they’re visionaries.

“People who are using their ideas, their visions, their actions to transform the world and have an effect on a multitude of people.”

Check out which Asians make it into the list of the most influential.

The Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced People’s Alliance for Democracy co-leader Sondhi Limthongkul, to 20 years in jail without parole for violating the Securities and Exchange Act, reports said.

Sondhi, a 64-year-old media mogul and a leader of the yellow shirt movement, was found guilty of verifying false documents, allowing Manager Media Group, a company in which he was one of the board members and held some shares, to seek loans amounting to 1.07 billion baht from Krung Thai Bank during 1996 and 1997.
The court found him guilty on 17 counts. On each count he was sentenced to five years imprisonment.
His 85-year jail term was halved to 42 years and six months because he confessed to the charges.
His jail term was further reduced because the law carries a maximum penalty of 20 years.

After the verdict was delivered, Sondhi went to the court basement, waiting to apply for bail.

People’s Alliance for Democracy co-leader Sondhi Limthongkul (Photo by Surapol Promsaka Na Sakolnakorn)

8 April 2012 (AFP)—Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Sunday with Karen ethnic minority rebels in her first significant foray into politics since her election to public office a week earlier.

There are ways to reduce the threat to stability that an emerging superpower poses

7 Apr 2012 | from the print edition Economist

NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so (see article).

Much of its effort is aimed at deterring America from intervening in a future crisis over Taiwan. China is investing heavily in “asymmetric capabilities” designed to blunt America’s once-overwhelming capacity to project power in the region. This “anti-access/area denial” approach includes thousands of accurate land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, modern jets with anti-ship missiles, a fleet of submarines (both conventionally and nuclear-powered), long-range radars and surveillance satellites, and cyber and space weapons intended to “blind” American forces. Most talked about is a new ballistic missile said to be able to put a manoeuvrable warhead onto the deck of an aircraft-carrier 2,700km (1,700 miles) out at sea.

China says all this is defensive, but its tactical doctrines emphasise striking first if it must. Accordingly, China aims to be able to launch disabling attacks on American bases in the western Pacific and push America’s carrier groups beyond what it calls the “first island chain”, sealing off the Yellow Sea, South China Sea and East China Sea inside an arc running from the Aleutians in the north to Borneo in the south. Were Taiwan to attempt formal secession from the mainland, China could launch a series of pre-emptive strikes to delay American intervention and raise its cost prohibitively.

This has already had an effect on China’s neighbours, who fear that it will draw them into its sphere of influence. Japan, South Korea, India and even Australia are quietly spending more on defence, especially on their navies. Barack Obama’s new “pivot” towards Asia includes a clear signal that America will still guarantee its allies’ security. This week a contingent of 200 US marines arrived in Darwin, while India took formal charge of a nuclear submarine, leased from Russia.

En garde

The prospect of an Asian arms race is genuinely frightening, but prudent concern about China’s build-up must not lapse into hysteria. For the moment at least, China is far less formidable than hawks on both sides claim. Its armed forces have had no real combat experience for more than 30 years, whereas America’s have been fighting, and learning, constantly. The capacity of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for complex joint operations in a hostile environment is untested. China’s formidable missile and submarine forces would pose a threat to American carrier groups near its coast, but not farther out to sea for some time at least. Blue-water operations for China’s navy are limited to anti-piracy patrolling in the Indian Ocean and the rescue of Chinese workers from war-torn Libya. Two or three small aircraft-carriers may soon be deployed, but learning to use them will take many years. Nobody knows if the “carrier-killer” missile can be made to work.

As for China’s longer-term intentions, the West should acknowledge that it is hardly unnatural for a rising power to aspire to have armed forces that reflect its growing economic clout. China consistently devotes a bit over 2% of GDP to defence—about the same as Britain and France and half of what America spends. That share may fall if Chinese growth slows or the government faces demands for more social spending. China might well use force to stop Taiwan from formally seceding. Yet, apart from claims over the virtually uninhabited Spratly and Paracel Islands, China is not expansionist: it already has its empire. Its policy of non-interference in the affairs of other states constrains what it can do itself.

The trouble is that China’s intentions are so unpredictable. On the one hand China is increasingly willing to engage with global institutions. Unlike the old Soviet Union, it has a stake in the liberal world economic order, and no interest in exporting a competing ideology. The Communist Party’s legitimacy depends on being able to honour its promise of prosperity. A cold war with the West would undermine that. On the other hand, China engages with the rest of the world on its own terms, suspicious of institutions it believes are run to serve Western interests. And its assertiveness, particularly in maritime territorial disputes, has grown with its might. The dangers of military miscalculation are too high for comfort.

How to avoid accidents

It is in China’s interests to build confidence with its neighbours, reduce mutual strategic distrust with America and demonstrate its willingness to abide by global norms. A good start would be to submit territorial disputes over islands in the East and South China Seas to international arbitration. Another step would be to strengthen promising regional bodies such as the East Asian Summit and ASEAN Plus Three. Above all, Chinese generals should talk far more with American ones. At present, despite much Pentagon prompting, contacts between the two armed forces are limited, tightly controlled by the PLA and ritually frozen by politicians whenever they want to “punish” America—usually because of a tiff over Taiwan.

America’s response should mix military strength with diplomatic subtlety. It must retain the ability to project force in Asia: to do otherwise would feed Chinese hawks’ belief that America is a declining power which can be shouldered aside. But it can do more to counter China’s paranoia. To his credit, Mr Obama has sought to lower tensions over Taiwan and made it clear that he does not want to contain China (far less encircle it as Chinese nationalists fear). America must resist the temptation to make every security issue a test of China’s good faith. There are bound to be disagreements between the superpowers; and if China cannot pursue its own interests within the liberal world order, it will become more awkward and potentially belligerent. That is when things could get nasty.

CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE CONTROVERSY FILE 1.0
3/ Morris/Wrong Man

Wall Street Journal 17 April 1995

The Wrong Man to Investigate Cambodiaby Stephen J. MORRISToday is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of one of the great moral catastrophes of our brutal century — the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge and the subsequent extinction of more than a million souls in the killing fields of Cambodia. As this unhappy observance approached, Congress last year created an Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations under the State Department’s East Asia and Pacific Bureau. Its mission is to fully document Khmer Rouge crimes, and train Cambodians who will work for a tribunal to prosecute Khmer Rouges leaders.

It’s a worthy goal, but in a bizarre exercise of its mandate, The State Department has awarded $500,000 of US taxpayers money for a Yale University project headed by a man who spent most of the years of Khmer Rouge rule defending the regime and denouncing its critics. In considering applications, State had its choice of individuals with impeccable reputations and credentials for this important project. Yet for reasons that are unfathomable, research into Khmer Rouge crimes is to be carried out by Ben Kiernan, an Australian radical activist cum academic known as one of the Khmer Rouge’s most ardent defenders during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. Mr Kiernan eventually changed his line, denouncing the Pol Pot regime. But he still champions another Khmer Rouge faction that is now in the Phnom Penh government.

An Appalling Record

To understand why the choice of Mr. Kiernan as chief documenter of Cambodia’ nightmare is so appalling, let us recall the Khmer Rouge’s record, and Mr. Kiernan’s public statement during the time their crimes were being committed.

After the surrender of the Lon Nol government on April 17, 1975, the victorious Khmer Rouge leaders deported the two million residents of Phnom Penh and hundreds of thousands from other Cambodian towns in the countryside, where they became slave laborers. All former military officers and government officials who the Khmer Rouge could identify, and often their entire families, were slaughtered. Then the Khmer Rouge sought out and killed anyone they could find with an education. Between their victory in 1975 and defeat by invading Vietnamese in 1978, the Khmer Rouge executed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and condemned perhaps a million more to death by starvation and disease.

When all this began, Ben Kiernan was a graduate student in Australia specializing in Cambodia. And soon after the communist victory in April 1975, he published a flattering account of the nominal leader of the Khmer Rouge. In a June 1975 article in the Dyason House Papers titled “Khieu Samphan, Cambodia’s Revolutionary Leader,” Mr. Kiernan wrote that “Khieu Samphan’s personality — particularly his unassuming manner, ready smile and simpler habits — endeared him to Khmer peasants. Himself a peasant by birth, he is said to have been somewhat ascetic in his behavior, but never fanatical and always calm.”

When terrified Cambodians began escaping across the border into Thailand that summer and fall, however, a totally different picture of Khieu Samphan and Cambodia’s revolution emerged. Interviewed by Western reporters, the refugees provided horrifying accounts of barbarity.

But Ben Kiernan was angry with the Western press, not the Khmer Rouge. Writing in 1976 in the Melbourne Journal of Politics, Mr. Kiernan asserted that “there is ample evidence in Cambodia and other sources that the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have recently made it out to be.” M. Kiernan admitted that some terror had been created by what he called “untrained and vengeful” soldiers in Northwest Cambodia. But he explained this a strictly local breach of discipline. “These atrocities were committed against orders from the [central] government,” he wrote, “and there is no evidence that the situation in eastern, southern and central Cambodia resembles that of the north-west.”

Then, as today, Mr. Kiernan drew a distinction between good Khmers Rouge and bad Khmers Rouge. In another 1976 article, “Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia,” published in the foreign-policy journal Australian Outlook, he embellished his apologia for the revolution with a Marxist class analysis of how newly liberated poor peasants were taking revenge against the rich. At the same time as hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were dying of hunger, Mr. Kiernan was confidently predicting a wonderful future for Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. “As a result of the Khmer Rouge irrigation program,” he wrote, “Cambodian agriculture will be modernized and peasant living standards will be increased.”

Mr. Kiernan wrote and spoke tirelessly against most refugee accounts and Western reporting. In 1977, for instance, when harrowing photographs of Khmer Rouge forced labor were published in Western newspapers, Mr. Kiernan wrote to a Melbourne newspaper, the Age, falsely asserting that what he called “photographs of alleged atrocities in Cambodia” had been “exposed as fake”. His conclusion: “The Western press have more of an interest in a bloodbath in Cambodia than the communists do.”

Mr. Kiernan’s conclusion were at variance with those of other interviewers of Cambodian refugees. For example, François Ponchaud, who had interviewed hundreds of Cambodian peasants from all regions, wrote in 1977: “The liquidation of all towns and former authorities was not improvised, nor was it a reprisal or expression of wanton cruelty on the part of local cadres. The scenario for every town and village in the country was the same and followed exact instructions issued by the highest authorities.”

During 1977-78, Mr. Kiernan and his Cambodian-born wife, Chanthou Boua, were part of the editorial collective that produced “News from Kampuchea”, a newsletter extolling life in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. The Kiernans did not know then that the regime they were promoting had killed Ms. Boua’s family. But this subsequent discovery did not shake their faith in communism.

At the beginning of 1978, The Vietnamese communists and the Khmers Rouge, who since 1970 had been allies against “U.S. imperialism”, publicly split. Western leftists were force to choose sides. Mr. Kiernan’s decision was assisted by event in Cambodia.

During 1977-878, Pol Pot, fearing traitors, purged his own Khmer Rouge apparatus, especially in the eastern zone. As the purges spread, many who had willingly obeyed Pol Pot’s orders in 1975-78 fled for their lives to Vietnam. These cadres returned with Vietnam’s invading army in 1979, denouncing the “Pol Pot genocidal clique” but celebrating communism and the Khmer Rouge.

The creation of a Cambodian communist alternative under Vietnamese sponsorship gave Mr. Kiernan a new mission. Since 1979, he has worked tirelessly as the academic world’s de facto defence lawyer for what he considers the good Khmers Rouge of the eastern zone and their Vietnamese patrons. There may have been some differences in the degree of brutality between eastern Cambodia and other zones during the Pol Pot years. But the distinction Mr. Kiernan draws is morally equivalent to praising the relatively milder Nazi policy in France by contrasting it with the more brutal Nazi policy in Russia.

Interestingly, Mr. Kiernan has maintained a long professional with association with the French activist Serge Thion , who was not only France’s leading supporter of the Khmers Rouges from 1972 to 1978 but also a promoter of the view that the Nazis did not murder six million Jews. Equally revealing is Mr. Kiernan editorship of a 1985 book that celebrates the life of Wilfred Burchett, the Australian journalist who entered Chinese-run POW camps during the Korean war and threatened Allied prisoners. The Australian government withdrew Burchett’s passport, while North Korea’s Kim Il Sung personally awarded him a medal.

Many Australians were puzzled in 1991 when Mr. Kiernan was plucked from obscurity at the University of Wollongong for a post at Yale University. Members of Yale’s distinguished history department probably did not know his full record when they offered him a temporary position.

A Puzzling Choice

But how did the State Department, which is paid to know about the politics of foreigners it funds, choose Mr. Kiernan to carry out research into Cambodia’s history? There were eight other applications submitted, many by teams (including one from the founder of Amnesty International USA) more distinguished than Mr. Kiernan’s.

State Department officials may claim that the Kiernan’s team proposal was more comprehensive and simpler to administer. And they may point to his modified views on Cambodia namely, that he no longer supports Pol Pot. But given his record of scholarship tailored to extremist political views and his current allegiance to potentially guilty politicians in Phnom Penh, Mr. Kiernan cannot be expected to lead a credible investigation.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary Winston Lord can easily rectify this problem by withdrawing the award from Yale and re-opening the grant process. If they refuse to reverse a terrible decision that disgraces American honor and spits upon the graves of more than a million Cambodian, then Congress should take this matter into its own hands.

Mr. Morris, an Australian, is a research associate in Harvard’s department of government