Via deathpower: The latest issue of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies is devoted to matters related to the present situation in Burma. You can read abstracts and purchase whole articles here.
Via the Washington Post:
The Chinese leader, in a meeting with visiting Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, used frank language in calling on the Khartoum government to make more strenuous efforts to settle the conflict along Sudan’s western border and “allow people there to reconstruct their homeland,” according to the account on the front page of
People’s Daily.“It is necessary to push forward the relevant parties to carry out a comprehensive cease-fire and constantly improve the humanitarian and security situation,” Hu told Taha in their meeting Wednesday.
Hu added that the Sudanese government should do whatever possible for early deployment of a mixed United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force, UNAMID. The force, which was mandated by the U.N. Security Council and accepted by Sudan a year ago after long hesitation, was supposed to field 26,000 soldiers and police in 2008 but so far has far fewer than half that number on the ground.
Hu’s comments and their prominent publication in the official daily fit into an increasingly open Chinese diplomatic campaign to persuade Sudanese leaders to be more cooperative in international efforts to bring an end to the fighting in Darfur, where President Bush has charged a genocide is taking place.
Foreign aid specialists say the conflict has contributed to the deaths of up to 450,000 people from violence and disease since Darfur’s black African population rebelled against the Arab-run government in Khartoum in 2003. Some 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes.
Human rights activists have criticized China for failing to convince Khartoum to accept the peacekeeping force and organize negotiations to find a political solution to the conflict. As a major buyer of Sudanese oil and a partner in large-scale infrastructure projects, China has been cited as one of the few countries with influence enough to affect the situation in the desolate war zone.
Some U.S. and European activists have suggested China’s lack of forcefulness should lead to consideration of a boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. In that vein, film director Steven Spielberg recently pulled out as artistic adviser to the opening ceremony, saying Beijing has not done enough.
As the volume of complaints rose last year, Hu’s government named a special Darfur envoy and began making increasingly public statements urging more cooperation from the Sudanese. At the same time, Chinese officials denounced attempts by the activists to link Darfur to China’s role as Olympic host.
Hu visited Sudan in February 2007, and was said by Chinese officials to have intervened strongly then with Sudan’s government so it would agree to deployment of the peacekeepers. But neither the tone nor the content of those conversations in Khartoum was made known publicly. The official Chinese media reported only standard evocations of friendly relations and economic cooperation.
The official portrayal of Wednesday’s meeting, therefore, was seen as a departure from China’s usual style of quiet diplomacy and ritual proclamations of friendship. In Taha’s meeting Tuesday with Vice President Xi Jinping, for instance, Xi offered thanks for “the unremitting effort made by Sudan” to settle the Darfur conflict and steered clear of the contentious peacekeepers issue.
Via Phil Ryan at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog: Robert Barnett, Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, has reviewed Pico Iyer’s The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama for the New York Review of Books. Worth a look, as it represents a great Tibet scholar’s take on Iyer’s popular book.
This from the Associated Press:
Pregnancy and childbirth were already relatively risky before Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar, one of Asia’s poorest countries, said William A. Ryan, a spokesman for the U.N. Population Fund.
More than 100 women give birth every day in the area affected by the cyclone, he told reporters in Bangkok, Thailand.
“The destruction of health centers and loss of midwives have greatly increased the risks,” he said. “It is clear that many pregnant women do not have anywhere to go to deliver with skilled assistance.”
Ryan said that wrecked health facilities should be rebuilt and there is also a need for trained midwives.
The maternal mortality rate in Myanmar before the May 2-3 storm was 380 per 100,000 births — almost four times the rate in Thailand and 60 times the rate in Japan, Ryan said.
He said the U.N. Population Fund has provided supplies to Myanmar’s Health Ministry for distribution to health clinics in 10 affected townships, including hospital equipment and rubber gloves.
Read the full story here.
Via the U.S. Campaign for Burma Blog: Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, has an editorial in today’s New York Times about intervention in light of the situation in Burma. It’s a lot to mull over. She writes:
The first and most obvious reality is the survival of totalitarian government in an age of global communications and democratic progress. Myanmar’s military junta employs the same set of tools used by the likes of Stalin to crush dissent and monitor the lives of citizens. The needs of the victims of Cyclone Nargis mean nothing to a regime focused solely on preserving its own authority.
Second is the unwillingness of Myanmar’s neighbors to use their collective leverage on behalf of change. A decade ago, when Myanmar was allowed to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, I was assured by leaders in the region that they would push the junta to open its economy and move in the direction of democracy. With a few honorable exceptions, this hasn’t happened.
A third reality is that the concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground. Many diplomats and foreign policy experts had hoped that the fall of the Berlin Wall would lead to the creation of an integrated world system free from spheres of influence, in which the wounds created by colonial and cold war empires would heal.
In such a world, the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situations — to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so.
During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The administration of George H. W. Bush intervened to prevent famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.
These actions were not steps toward a world government. They did reflect the view that the international system exists to advance certain core values, including development, justice and respect for human rights. In this view, sovereignty is still a central consideration, but cases may arise in which there is a responsibility to intervene — through sanctions or, in extreme cases, by force — to save lives.
The Bush administration’s decision to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11 did nothing to weaken this view because it was clearly motivated by self-defense. The invasion of Iraq, with the administration’s grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments, especially in the developing world, are now determined to preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human costs of doing so are high.
Thus, Myanmar’s leaders have been shielded from the repercussions of their outrageous actions. Sudan has been able to dictate the terms of multinational operations inside Darfur. The government of Zimbabwe may yet succeed in stealing a presidential election.
Political leaders in Pakistan have told the Bush administration to back off, despite the growth of Al Qaeda and Taliban cells in the country’s wild northwest. African leaders (understandably perhaps) have said no to the creation of a regional American military command. And despite recent efforts to enshrine the doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” in international law, the concept of humanitarian intervention has lost momentum.
The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to the principle of sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty unless and until they again have confidence in the judgment of those proposing exceptions.
At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?
We know how the government of Myanmar would answer that question, but what we need to listen to is the voice — and cry — of the Burmese people.
