UNITED NATIONS — As the fighting in Darfur diminishes after years of conflict, senior United Nations officials say they are focused increasingly on the deteriorating situation in another part of Sudan: the south.
The shift in alarm has been building for months, but was reinforced late Wednesday when Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, the departing commander of the joint United Nations-African Unionpeacekeeping force in Darfur, told reporters that the war in Darfur was essentially over.
“As of today, I would not say there is a war going on in Darfur,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “Militarily, there is not much. What you have is security issues more now. Banditry, localized issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that.”
Senior United Nations officials said that while General Agwai was basically correct, they did not want to play down the dire consequences some three million displaced people face in Darfur. Still, they noted, the escalating skirmishes in the south could reignite the civil war there, which in years past proved far more deadly than the conflict in Darfur.
“Whether it is characterized as a war or not, the reality is that threats against civilians do remain” in Darfur, said Edmond Mulet, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping. Though the level of fighting has diminished there, he said, an additional 140,000 people have sought refuge in camps since January. “It is still far from peaceful,” he said.
Factors contributing to the diminished fighting include a splintering of opposition groups and reduced outside support, officials said. Most current deaths in Darfur come from criminal activity, United Nations officials said, while hundreds of people have been killed in recent months in clashes in the south.
The peace agreement between Khartoum and southern rebels signed in 2005 ended more than 20 years of fighting that killed some two million people. Since then, fighting has renewed along the possible border between north and south, an area rich in oil, as the 2011 deadline approaches for a referendum on southern independence.
The Obama administration has been publicly divided over how to characterize the Darfur conflict.
Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, has continued to call the conflict in Darfur genocide, and officials said she upbraided Rodolphe Adada, the departing civilian head of the peacekeeping forces, after he described Darfur as a “low-intensity conflict” this year.
Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said in a statement, “While the nature of the violence in Darfur may have changed, the crisis over all remains serious and unresolved.”
Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, a retired Air Force officer who is President Obama’s special envoy for Sudan, has described the situation in Darfur as the “remnants of genocide.” He issued a statement Thursday saying he was focused on “ensuring that any government-backed militias are disarmed, displaced persons can ultimately return to their homes, and the people of Darfur who have suffered so much can live in peace and security.”
Mr. Adada resigned after sustained criticism that he was too soft on the Khartoum government. General Agwai is rotating out, to be succeeded by another officer. Some United Nations officials and Darfur activists called it self-serving of the departing peacekeeping leaders to describe the conflict as settled.
“It undermines international urgency in resolving these problems if people are led to believe that the war in Darfur is over,” said John Prendergast, a founder of the Enough Project, an anti-genocide campaign.
The United Nations has long been criticized for failing to fulfill its mandate for some 26,000 peacekeepers in Darfur. It currently has 18,462 uniformed troops there, and predicts a 95 percent deployment by the end of the year, said Nick Birnback, the spokesman for peacekeeping operations.
PARIS — On the edges of a Salvation Army soup line in Paris, a soft-spoken Afghan boy told the story recently of how he ended up in Europe, alone.
The boy, who said he was 15 but looked younger, recounted how his family left Afghanistan after his mother lost her leg in an explosion in 2004. They spent three years in Iran, where he went to school for the first time, learning English and discovering the Internet. After his father suffered a back injury that made working difficult, the boy, who declined to give his name, headed west.
He spent two months working 11-hour days in a clothing sweatshop in Istanbul, he said. He was then smuggled into Greece, where he was forced to work on a potato and onion farm near Agros for nine months, finally escaping in the back of a truck. He reached Paris by train after nearly a year on the road.
“I want to go to school,” he said in English. “I would like it if I could be — it sounds like a lot to ask — an engineer of computing.”
Thousands of lone Afghan boys are making their way across Europe, a trend that has accelerated in the past two years as conditions for Afghan refugees become more difficult in countries like Iran and Pakistan. Although some are as young as 12, most are teenagers seeking an education and a future that is not possible in their own country, which is still struggling with poverty and violence eight years after the end of Taliban rule.
The boys pose a challenge for European countries, many of which have sent troops to fight in Afghanistan but whose publics question the rationale for the war. Though each country has an obligation under national and international law to provide for them, the cost of doing so is yet another problem for a continent already grappling with tens of thousands of migrants.
In Italy, 24 Afghan teenagers were discovered sleeping in a sewer in Rome this spring, and last year two adolescents died in Italian ports — one under a semitrailer in Venice and another inside a shipping container in Ancona. In Greece, which says it is overwhelmed by asylum seekers from many countries, there is no foster system for foreign minors; only 300 can be accommodated in the whole country, officials say.
And in Paris this year, Afghans for the first time outnumber sub-Saharan Africans as the biggest group of unaccompanied foreign minors to request admission to child protection services, said Charlotte Aveline, a senior adviser on child protection at City Hall.
“Some arrive very beaten, very tired, but if they stay put for just one week they very quickly become adolescents again,” said Jean-Michel Centres of Exilés10, a citizens’ organization that works with the mainly Afghan migrants who gather around Villemin Square, close to the Gare de l’Est.
“First they ask where they can go to have papers, then where they can go to school, and where after that they can get a job,” Mr. Centres said.
The European Union does not keep statistics on the number of foreign children who are wandering Europe without their families, and the records of aid groups and government agencies vary greatly. But requests for asylum by unaccompanied Afghan minors suggest that there are thousands across Europe. The requests provide a baseline, experts say, because many more youths do not seek refugee status.
Blanche Tax, a senior policy officer at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Brussels, said that last year 3,090 Afghan minors requested asylum in Austria, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany — the European Union countries where their numbers rose the most sharply — more than double the 1,489 requests in those countries in 2007.
“Afghanistan is hemorrhaging its youth into Europe,” said Pierre Henry, director of France Terre d’Asile, an organization that works with the European Union, the United Nations refugee agency and the French government on asylum affairs.
The five Afghan boys interviewed for this article told of being exploited as under-age labor in Greece and Turkey and dodging beatings by the police. None would give his name in order to speak more freely.
A 17-year-old from the Afghan city of Ghazni said the police repeatedly tried to remove him and another boy from trucks in the port of Patras, Greece, where the authorities destroyed an Afghan squatter camp on July 12.
Once in France, the boys face more hardship. The Paris police have started conducting nightly searches to prevent Afghan migrants from sleeping in Villemin Square. The 15-year-old was placed in a cheap hotel, while others were put in temporary shelter in an unused subway station. Others find their own shelter under bridges and beside a canal.
The housing, financed by the state, is administered by France Terre d’Asile. The group helps guide the boys through the process of requesting assistance from the French child protection agency, registers their names and gives them French lessons.
“We have had some very good success stories,” said Ms. Aveline, the adviser at City Hall.
The boys interviewed for this article said they were in limbo, dreaming of going to school and having a normal life.
One teenager who has been in Paris for two months was deeply worried about what lies ahead. “How should I make a future?” he asked. “I’m 15 already. I’m on my own. What can I do?”
Yet a few days later, he was full of excitement because France Terre d’Asile had taken him to a swimming pool, the first time he had ever been to one. He was also taking French classes. From his pocket he produced a pencil and paper with pictures of fruits. “I like bananas,” he said in French. “I like apples.”
By David Cho Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 28, 2009
When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.
Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger.
The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.
J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street's most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.
A year after the near-collapse of the financial system last September, the federal response has redefined how Americans get mortgages, student loans and other kinds of credit and has made a national spectacle of executive pay. But no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.
"It is at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed," said Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "It fed the crisis, and it has gotten worse because of the crisis."
Regulators' concerns are twofold: that consumers will wind up with fewer choices for services and that big banks will assume they always have the government's backing if things go wrong. That presumed guarantee means large companies could return to the risky behavior that led to the crisis if they figure federal officials will clean up their mess.
This problem, known as "moral hazard," is partly why government officials are keeping a tight rein on bailed-out banks -- monitoring executive pay, reviewing sales of major divisions -- and it is driving the Obama administration's efforts to create a new regulatory system to prevent another crisis. That plan would impose higher capital standards on large institutions and empower the government to take over a wide range of troubled financial firms to wind down their businesses in an orderly way.
"The dominant public policy imperative motivating reform is to address the moral hazard risk created by what we did, what we had to do in the crisis to save the economy," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an interview.
The worry for consumers is that the bailouts skewed the financial industry in favor of the big and powerful. Fresh data from the FDIC show that big banks have the ability to borrow more cheaply than their peers because creditors assume these large companies are not at risk of failing. That imbalance could eventually squeeze out smaller competitors. Already, consumers are seeing fewer choices and higher prices for financial services, some senior government officials warn.
Those mergers were largely the government's making. Regulators pushed failing mortgage lenders and Wall Street firms into the arms of even bigger banks and handed out billions of dollars to ensure that the deals would go through. They say they reluctantly arranged the marriages. Their aim was to dull the shock caused by collapses and prevent confidence in the U.S. financial system from crumbling.
Officials waived long-standing regulations to make the deals work. J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were each allowed to hold more than 10 percent of the nation's deposits despite a rule barring such a practice. In several metropolitan regions, these banks were permitted to take market share beyond what the Department of Justice's antitrust guidelines typically allow, Federal Reserve documents show.
"There's been a significant consolidation among the big banks, and it's kind of hollowing out the banking system," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com. "You'll be left with very large institutions and small ones that fill in the cracks. But it'll be difficult for the mid-tier institutions to thrive."
"The oligopoly has tightened," he added.
Consumer Choice
Federal officials and advocacy groups are just beginning to study the impact of the crisis on consumers, but there is some evidence that the mergers are creating new challenges for ordinary Americans.
In the last quarter, the top four banks raised fees related to deposits by an average of 8 percent, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Striving to stay competitive, smaller banks lowered their fees by an average of 12 percent.
"None of us are saying dismember these institutions. But you do want to create a system that allows for others to grow, where no one has an oligopolistic power at the expense of others who might be able to provide financial services to consumers," said Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Normally, when faced with price increases, consumers simply switch. But industry officials said that is not so easy when it comes to financial services.
In Santa Cruz, Calif., Wells Fargo, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase hold three-quarters of the deposit market. Each firm was given tens of billions of dollars in bailout funds to help it swallow other banks.
The rest of the market, which consists of a handful of tiny community banks, cannot match the marketing power of the bigger banks. Instead, presidents of the smaller companies said, they must offer more personalized service and adapt to technological changes more quickly to entice customers. Some acknowledged it can be a tough fight.
Wells Fargo is "really, really good at the way they cross-sell and get their tentacles around you," said Richard Hofstetter, president of Lighthouse Bank, whose only branch is in Santa Cruz. "Their customers have multiple areas of their financial life involved with Wells Fargo. If you have a checking account and an ATM and a credit card and a home-equity line and automatic bill payments . . . to change that is a major undertaking."
Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America declined to comment for this article.
Last October, when the Fed was arranging the merger between Wells Fargo and Wachovia, it identified six other metropolitan regions in which the combined company would either exceed the Justice Department's antitrust guidelines or hold more than a third of an area's deposits. But the central bank thought local competition in each of those places was sufficient to allow the merger to go through, documents show.
Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said those comments reveal the government's preferential treatment of big banks. He doubted whether the Fed would approve the merger of community banks if the combined company ended up controlling more a third of the market.
"To favor one class of financial institutions over another class skews the market. You don't have a free market; you have a government-favored market," he said. "We will never have free markets again if you have the government picking winners and losers."
Moral Hazard
Before the crisis, many creditors thought that the big institutions were a relatively safe investment because they were diversified and thus unlikely to fail. If one line of business struggled, each bank had other ventures to keep the franchise afloat. And even if the entire house caught fire, wouldn't the government step in to cover the losses?
With executives comforted by that thinking, risk came unhinged from investment decisions. Wall Street borrowed to make money without having enough in reserves to cover potential losses. The pursuit of profit was put ahead of the regard for safety and soundness.
The federal bailouts only reinforced the thought that government would save big banks, no matter how horrible their decisions.
Today, even with the memory of the crisis fresh in their minds, creditors are granting big institutions more favorable treatment because they know the government is backing them, FDIC officials said.
Large banks with more than $100 billion in assets are borrowing at interest rates 0.34 percentage points lower than the rest of the industry. Back in 2007, that advantage was only 0.08 percentage points, according to the FDIC. Such differences can cause huge variance in borrowing costs given the massive amount of money that flows through banks.
Many of the largest banks reported a surge in profit during the most recent quarter, including J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. They are prospering while many regional and community banks are struggling. Nearly three dozen of the smaller institutions have failed since July 1, including Community Bank of Nevada and Alabama-based Colonial Bank just last week.
If the government continues to back big firms over small, regulators worry that reckless behavior could return to Wall Street.
The administration's regulatory reform plan takes aim at this problem by penalizing banks for being big. It would require large institutions to hold more capital and pay higher regulatory fees, as well as allow the government to liquidate them in an orderly way if they begin to fail. The plan also seeks to bolster nontraditional channels of finance to create competition for large banks. If Congress approves the proposal, Geithner said, it would be clear at launch which financial companies would face these measures.
Economists and officials debate whether these steps would address the too-big-to-fail problem. Some say, for instance, that determining the precise amount of capital big financial companies should hold in their reserves will be difficult.
Geithner acknowledged that difficulty but said the administration would probably lean toward being more strict. Taken together, the combination of reforms would be a powerful counterbalance to big banks, he said.
"Our system is not going to be significantly more concentrated than it is today," Geithner said. "And it's important to remember that even now, our system remains much less concentrated and will continue to provide more choice for consumers and businesses than any other major economy in the world."
By Joshua Partlow and Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, August 28, 2009
MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan -- One week after Afghanistan's presidential election, with the winner still undeclared, increasing accusations of fraud and voter coercion threaten to undermine the validity of the results, deepen dangerous regional divisions and hamper the Obama administration's goals in this volatile country.
With U.S. popular support for the war in Afghanistan wavering, an election viewed as illegitimate by many Afghans would be a major setback for President Obama, who has increased U.S. military and economic efforts in a conflict central to his foreign policy. Officials worry that a Kabul government tainted by allegations of election-stealing or destabilized by a potentially violent backlash could derail U.S. efforts to beat back a resurgent Taliban and build Afghan security forces.
In interviews here in the capital of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan, the governor, election officials and residents described incidents of ballot-box stuffing and voter intimidation, particularly by election monitors. The many allegations of fraud add to the chorus of doubts from candidates and observers in other parts of the country about the fairness of the election process.
In a jailhouse interview, election monitor Abdul Hakim Ghafurzai, bruised and bloodied and slumped in his cell, said he knows how it feels to challenge election fraud in Afghanistan. "I am in pain," said Ghafurzai, who alleged he was beaten and arrested after complaining that police outside this northern city shut down polling places because people were voting for President Hamid Karzai.
"Fraud has taken place by the Independent Election Commission, and there were also many threats," said Atta Mohammad Noor, the governor of Balkh, who broke with Karzai before the election and backed his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who is very popular in the north. "If this government wins through fraud, I won't be with this government."
All five leading candidates have filed complaints of ballot-box stuffing or destruction, intimidation and pressure on voters at polling stations, and ballots cast by phantom voters. One candidate, former anti-drug official Mirwais Yasini, personally delivered boxes full of shredded ballots to the foreign-led Election Complaints Commission. Yasini and five other candidates issued a joint statement this week saying the election was marred by "widespread fraud and intimidation" that threatened to "increase tension and violence in the country."
Because the complaint process is slow and cumbersome, officials at the complaints commission office in Kabul said they do not expect to finish their investigations until mid-September, at least two weeks after the official election results are announced. That could create public tension and possible unrest, especially if Karzai is announced as the winner before the numerous complaints have been resolved.
Karzai and Abdullah have denied allegations that their followers committed systematic fraud.
In the past week, Abdullah has held two news conferences to allege "widespread rigging" by the Karzai administration, its campaign aides and employees of the Independent Election Commission. He has shown reporters thick blocks of ballots with identical check marks next to Karzai's name and photograph, and shown videos of people sitting on the floor in closed polling stations and systematically marking ballot after ballot.
Legislators and other leaders in a number of provinces, especially those threatened by insurgent violence such as Kandahar, Khost and Wardak, have complained that at polling stations where very few people were able to vote because of insecurity, sealed ballot boxes inexplicably full of hundreds of ballots were sent to Kabul.
Election observers have described northern Afghanistan as a place where the election proceeded relatively peacefully, with as many as half of registered voters going to the polls -- far more than in some Taliban strongholds in the south. But interviews with those monitoring the election here and looking into allegations of irregularities painted a bleaker portrait that implicated the followers of both Karzai and Abdullah.
"I was a witness to fraud, and I couldn't do anything to stop it," said a female election monitor at a voting site in Barga village, in this province, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. She said her fellow staff members voted at least 100 times for Abdullah and forced other residents to make the same choice. "I was really upset. The voting system was not good. People didn't have the right to choose," she said.
At least one polling center was set ablaze, destroying all records, and an election supervisor was gunned down while driving with boxes of ballots, said the top provincial election official, Dur Mohammad.
"Some candidates bought off the election officials. I think there were several cases," said Mahgul Yamam, the head of the Election Complaints Commission in Balkh. "The system is not great in Afghanistan."
In a jailhouse interview, Ghafurzai, 47, the top election monitor in the Chimtal district outside Mazar-e Sharif, said he received a phone call about 3:30 p.m. on election day that police were shutting down polling centers in his district because too many people were voting for Karzai.
"Police interfered with the counting. They didn't let people vote; they locked the boxes," he said.
Ghafurzai said that he alerted his provincial superiors about the problem, and that the next day, while counting votes at the Wali Asr High School, he was visited by the local police commander and three of his guards.
The guards "punched me and kicked me," he said, showing his bruised arms and back and blood-speckled scarf. "I said, 'Why are you arresting me? You have no documents.' They didn't say anything. They just handcuffed me and took me away."
Ghafurzai is accused of assaulting the police commander, a charge he denies. Noor, the governor, described the matter as unrelated to politics and as a personal dispute between the police commander and the official, but he said he had formed a team to investigate the incident. Noor said Abdullah won 3,988 votes in the Chimtal district, compared with 2,287 for Karzai.
One tribal elder from Chimtal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Abdullah supporters collected registration cards from poor villagers and cast votes themselves. He said these supporters offered food -- taken from Red Crescent aid supplies delivered to the area this year after a flood -- in exchange for the voting cards.
"I am the elder of the tribe. People share their problems with me. I know this was going on," he said.
Palwa Shah, a 20-year-old university student, said that the polling site she attended was decorated with posters of Abdullah and that the election staff members and police there told people to vote for him.
"That voting center was not free. People could not choose their own candidate. They were being forced; they were not happy," said Shah, who voted in the Dehdadi district of Balkh. "They said, 'If you don't vote for Abdullah, the security situation could get worse, and you won't be able to live here anymore.' "
At the Election Complaints Commission office in Kabul this week, teams of workers began sorting through thousands of brown envelopes filled with complaint forms. More than 80 percent were blank, officials said, suggesting that there were few problems with fraud or, more likely, that many people were reluctant to file complaints for fear of retaliation or because they were illiterate. Few forms have been received from the southern regions, where fraud is generally thought to have been the most widespread.
"One reason so few forms were filled in may be because people didn't trust them," said Nellika Little, a public information official at the commission. "They do have to be in writing. If someone is being intimidated at a polling station, are they really going to complain to the officials there?"
Little said the commission had received nearly 1,500 formal complaints, including 150 that it considers potentially serious enough to affect the result of the election. Those 150 cases are being investigated by teams of professionals, including some who are traveling to the districts where they originated to question witnesses and officials.
Commission officials said many complaints would be difficult to investigate because they are vague and contain little or no evidence.
"I'm really worried about the result of the election. All the candidates are complaining, and they are feeling there were many problems," said Farid Muttaqi, a human rights worker in Mazar-e Sharif. "For sure the people will not cooperate with the government or feel they are a part of this government. And this could give a chance for the Taliban to come and do their work here."
THE Permatang Pasir by-election was an unquestionable success for PAS and the Pakatan Rakyat (PR). PAS's share of the total votes cast, excluding spoilt votes, went from 66.39% in the March 2008 elections to 65.50% — a drop of barely 1%. The reduction in terms of PAS's majority was from 5,433 votes to 4,551 this time, and was due mainly to a reduced voter turnout.
The victory is sweet even after analysing communal voting trends. According to party sources, the preliminary analysis shows that PAS has increased its Chinese Malaysian support from about 70% in 2008 to 75%, although its Malay Malaysian support declined, from 65% to 60%.
The actual decline in Malay Malaysian support may be less than the data indicates, considering the lower turnout. The majority of the 2,000 voters who did not turn up to vote on 25 Aug 2009 were younger Malay Malaysian voters, who would probably be more likely to support PAS than Umno if the trends elsewhere are any indicator. Had polling fallen on a weekend or public holiday, PAS might have easily bagged a few hundred more Malay Malaysian votes and raised their winning margin.
Winds of change?
The result was definitely a big blow to the deputy prime minister and Umno deputy president, who claimed to see a "wind of change". A wind of change indeed swept through Permatang Pasir, just not in the direction that Tan SriMuhyiddin Yassin would have liked. Instead, it blew away much of the hope for Umno and the Barisan Nasional (BN)'s renewal, without even providing a near miss as it did in Manik Urai just a month ago.
Umno had, of course, picked the wrong candidate. Either Rohaizat Othman had successfully fooled the Umno leadership into picking him, or the other potential candidates were no better than him. Either way, this speaks volumes of the problems with Umno's talent pool and candidate selection.
The BN/Umno's problem, however, is much larger than candidacy. It is institutional. It is a question of relevance, of raison d'être.
Why should a voter cast his or her vote for Umno? The best answer Umno could offer in Permatang Pasir was pathetic: federal incumbency. The "anak emas" (literally "golden child") argument, that Permatang Pasir would get the best financial support from the federal government with a BN representative, is one of default by position, not by capacity or choice. Any party controlling the federal government and willing to abuse its power can do that. There is no "added value" by voting for the BN.
Clearly, such incentive works only when the federal ruling party is a given. After the March 2008 elections, the BN's federal incumbency has progressively looked less like a given with each passing day. So why would voters elect the BN/Umno to discriminate against those who do not?
MANILA, Philippines — China and other governments with lucrative business deals in Myanmar are ignoring massive corruption by its ruling military junta, a pro-democracy activist said Thursday.
Ka Hsaw Wa said corruption has become the second worst problem in Myanmar after widespread human rights violations and afflicts all levels of its government.
He spoke to The Associated Press in Manila, where he was named one of six recipients of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award, considered Asia's version of the Nobel Prize, for documenting human rights and environmental abuses in his country.
Corruption in Myanmar should be dealt with urgently, since most people struggle to afford three meals a day, Ka Hsaw Wa said. But obtaining evidence is almost impossible, he said.
"It's simply economic plunder," Ka Hsaw Wa said, adding that "99.9 percent of the ruling junta, from a normal soldier to the top generals, are completely corrupt."
He said corruption within the military should be apparent to friendly foreign governments like China, but they look the other way.
"We won't turn a blind eye to that (corruption), of course," said Ethan Sun, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Manila. He added, however, that trade and economic cooperation "benefit the peoples of both countries."
China has often supported the junta against international pressure in the past.
Most generals live in sprawling, heavily guarded compounds which are off-limits to the public, he said. When a secret video of the lavish 2006 wedding of senior Gen. Than Shwe's daughter surfaced on YouTube, it caused outrage in his country.
International watchdogs have consistently ranked Myanmar, also known as Burma, among the world's most corrupt nations. Transparency International's 2008 list put it next to last, ahead of only Somalia.
The junta does not publicly respond to accusations of corruption, but it has launched anti-corruption drives mostly targeting low-level offenses. A call to the embassy in Manila was not answered Thursday.
"A lot of countries want to swallow Burma alive, it's so rich in natural resources," Ka Hsaw Wa said. "But they try not to see (corruption) in a way that they can do business there."
While the Myanmar government officially restricts logging, middle-level military officers have cut down huge swaths of rain forests for personal profit, he said.
Ka Hsaw Wa, a member of Myanmar's ethnic Karen minority, was a 17-year-old student activist when the government violently suppressed 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations. After his arrest, he fled to the jungle where he witnessed atrocities committed against villagers, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said.
EarthRights, the nonprofit group he co-founded, filed a case in the United States in 1996 against the U.S.-based oil company Unocal for alleged complicity in human rights and environmental abuses committed by Myanmar's military in the building of the Yadana gas pipeline. After 10 years of litigation, Unocal agreed to compensate the 11 petitioners.
EarthRights also runs a school in Thailand that trains young people from Myanmar and other countries in nonviolent social change.
Malaysia’s government has barred Muslims from a concert by US hip-hop stars the Black Eyed Peas next month because the event is organized by Irish beer giant Guinness, an official said on Thursday.
The prohibition comes amid a clampdown on alcohol consumption among Malaysia’s Muslim majority. A Muslim woman who drank beer in public was sentenced to caning by an Islamic court last month, though authorities this week agreed to review the penalty. Officials also recently curbed retail sales of liquor in a central state.
In family and personal matters, Muslims in Malaysia are governed by Shariah, or Islamic law, which forbids the consumption of alcohol.
The Black Eyed Peas will perform at a theme park near Kuala Lumpur on Sept. 25 as part of worldwide celebrations to mark the 250th anniversary of Guinness’s flagship brewery in Dublin, Ireland. Malaysia’s largest city is one of five places hosting the concerts.
The Malaysian show’s official Web site said “the party is only open to non-Muslims aged 18 years and above.” Previous major pop concerts in Malaysia, including one by the Black Eyed Peas in 2007, have always been open to Muslims.
“Muslims cannot attend. Non-Muslims can go and have fun,” an official at the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture said.
She said the concert would not have been permitted at all under normal circumstances because government regulations forbid alcohol companies from organizing concerts. But authorities made an exception in the hopes the event would boost tourism, the official said on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to make a statement. Guinness, however, must not use its logo in concert publicity material, she said.
It was not immediately clear how the ban on Muslims would be enforced. Concert organizers did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Ethnic Malays comprise nearly 60 percent of Malaysia’s 28 million people and are all legally considered Muslim, while the rest of the country is mainly ethnic Chinese and Indians, most of whom are Buddhist, Christian or Hindu.
The performance next month is the latest to be hit by restrictions in Malaysia. Shows by Gwen Stefani and Avril Lavigne in recent years faced protests by conservatives over immodest clothing, forcing the artists to don attire that was less revealing.
Authorities in staunchly Islamic Aceh on Thursday launched an effort to disseminate awareness of the need to strengthen protection of children through the publication of 9,000 copies of a local religious regulation on the matter.
The distribution of the kanun , or regulation based on the canons on Islam, was aimed at ensuring local officials, academics, social workers and the public were aware of child protection issues.
The provincial legislature approved the kanun in December, creating a historic milestone by putting the rights of children at the forefront of legal and moral obligations. Aceh was granted the ability to issue its own laws as part of its special autonomy status.
The new publication will help to spread awareness of the kanun, Unicef said.
The organization has supported the drafting of the kanun and funded the development of the bilingual publication, which will be distributed to all related provincial and district departments, academics, nongovernmental organizations, social workers, orphanages, Islamic boarding schools and public schools.
The 2004 tsunami that devastated Aceh paved the way for the kanun. Some 2,853 children in the province were left without one or both parents and were in need of legal protection. Additionally, thousands of children were also left orphans from the 30-year separatist conflict in the region, which ended after a peace agreement was reached in 2006.
The four principles of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child are covered in the kanun: non-discrimination, best interests of the child, the right to live, grow and develop, and the right to participate. The kanun is also based on the national Child Protection Law and provides legal protection from exploitation, violence and abuse.
“This kanun is proof of turning a tragedy into an opportunity and building back better with not just brick and mortar, but with legal basis and laws to protect children,” said Angela Kearney, Unicef’s Indonesia representative.
“The challenge, now, is how to turn this legal framework into supporting bylaws and policies, so it can be implemented to create a sustainable environment to protect the children of Aceh.”
Unicef is also assisting the development of further technical regulations and advocacy to ensure the implementation of the kanun with the provincial government’s social affairs office and child protection bureau.
It is often said that politics and religion are subjects to avoid at all costs. And it seems that most believe the two should also be avoided in government, according to the results of a poll by the Indonesian Survey Institute released on Thursday.
Upon being asked which were the most important criteria for selecting ministers in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s new government, respondents overwhelmingly avoided politicians and religious figures.
In the poll of 1,270 people, 78.3 percent of respondents said professional qualifications were the most important factor for selecting ministers, rather than their political, religious, ethnic or regional affiliations.
Only 22.7 percent of respondents said they believed ministers should be selected based on their political leanings, according to Dodi Ambardi, the director of the institute, also known as the LSI. The survey was conducted from July 18 to 28 among respondents selected using multistage random sampling techniques. The margin of error was 2.8 percentage points.
Nearly 74 percent of respondents who live in provincial villages and 85.2 percent of residents in urban areas and cities wanted professionals to sit in the next cabinet. Only 11.5 percent of respondents said it was acceptable if ministers came from certain political parties or religious groups.
“This has proven that the people of Indonesia expect Yudhoyono to choose qualified professionals in forming his cabinet,” Dodi said.
He said that even respondents from Java, home to about half of the country’s population, viewed professional qualifications as more important than adhering to the traditional model, which has seen proportional numbers of Javanese and non-Javanese ministers appointed.
J Kristiadi, a political analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said candidates should have expertise in the government ministry they were nominated for, strong ethics and social responsibility.
He said that even if cabinet seats had to be divided among political parties that were part of Yudhoyono’s coalition, the candidates should still have professional skills in their nominated field.
“We demand Yudhoyono, who won more than 60 percent of the vote in the election, use his [mandate] to choose the right people,” Kristiadi said.
Ichsan Mojo, an economist from the Institute for the Development of Economics and Finance, said it would be virtually impossible for the president to choose a cabinet without having representatives from political parties.
However, he said he hoped that two key ministerial posts, industry and agriculture, would be given to qualified, apolitical professionals.
“Those posts are in the real sectors, so if it’s not a professional who holds the position, we can’t expect much from them in terms of handling problems like economic growth, poverty and unemployment,” he said.
A U.N. representative says Australia's intervention in dozens of troubled Aboriginal communities is discriminatory and breaches the country's international human-rights obligations. The U.N. special investigator on indigenous people, James Anaya, says that Aborigines in Australia face entrenched racism. He says the government's controversial intervention in dysfunctional communities in the Northern Territory continued to discriminate against Aborigines. Two years ago troops, medical staff and social workers were deployed in an attempt to combat violence and rampant abuse of children in some aboriginal communities. Racial discrimination laws were suspended to allow the controversial policy to be implemented. Alcohol and pornography were banned in the communities and indigenous residents were forced to spend a portion of their welfare payments on essentials such as food. Some activists say the measures violate human rights because they only target Aborigines.
James Anaya, special Rapporteur for the UN Human Rights commission (2008 File)
Anaya, an American professor of human rights law, says he agrees with that assessment. "These measures overtly discriminate against aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self-determination and stigmatize already stigmatized communities," he said. Anaya just completed a 12-day tour to learn more about Australia's most disadvantaged community. Indigenous groups, church leaders and social justice organizations requested his visit. Anaya is the first U.N. investigator on indigenous people to visit Australia's aboriginal communities. He congratulated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for the historic apology he made last year to the country's original inhabitants for past injustices. Anaya also welcomed calls for a new national body to represent Australia's Aborigines, which will need government approval. Tom Calma, from the Australian Human Rights Commission, proposed the body, saying it will give the disadvantaged a powerful voice. "It is a historic day. It is a day when as aboriginal and Torres Strait people we begin a new journey when we express our determination to put our futures in our hands," he said. A recent study has found the gap between non-indigenous Australians and their aboriginal neighbors was growing in areas such as child abuse and domestic violence. Aborigines also are more likely than other Australians to suffer from a variety of health problems, including chemical addiction, and their average life span is 17 years less. Prime Minister Rudd said it was "a devastating report" on an unacceptable situation.
New Delhi (Mizzima) – With the second anniversary of the ‘Saffron Revolution’ round the corner, 10 opposition activists launched a campaign in Rangoon last Tuesday to pay tribute to monks, who took part in chanting Metta sutra two years ago.
The activists donned yellow symbols during their weekly so-called 'Tuesday prayer campaign', conducted in Shwedagon pagoda for the release of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
"September is drawing close. So we wore yellow ribbons, yellow hairpins, yellow flowers and yellow dresses as symbols, while paying tribute to the ‘Saffron Revolution’ during our prayer campaign. We prayed for the release of our leader," Naw Ohn Hla, one of the campaigners, told Mizzima.
Officials of the Burmese military junta keep a hawk’s eye on the prayer campaign, suspicious and apprehensive that it would again become part of a growing mass movement against the regime. There have been several instances when campaigners have been arrested.
The activists plan to forge ahead with the yellow campaign with their prayer meetings and prayer services at pagodas every Tuesday until September 25.
"This campaign has started in Rangoon. Other towns and cities can join us. It (junta) cannot do anything to us for just wearing these yellow symbols. So we request all to join us. I'd like to say do not forget our religion and sasana," Naw Ohn Hla said.
Thousands of monks hit the streets in September 2007 and chanted Metta Sutra in Rangoon and other cities. But the security forces came down heavily in a brutal crackdown, killing, maiming and arresting at random, breaking up the demonstrations.
The junta, however, claimed 10 people, including some monks were killed during the movement, but the opposition forces felt that the actual death toll was much higher than the official statistics dished out.
According to the Thai based 'Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners-Burma' (AAPP-B), formed by former Burmese political prisoners, over 200 monks were arrested during the demonstration. More than 2,100 political prisoners are languishing in jails throughout Burma, AAPP said.
Prayer campaigns were also launched in other cities such as Mandalay, Meiktila, Yemethin, Yenanchaung and Pegu by activists yesterday, calling for the release of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.
Meanwhile, activists lodged a complaint with the junta supremo Senior Gen. Than Shwe by sending a letter, which says that the local authorities tried to threaten the monasteries where the Naw Ohn Hla led group were conducting prayers and offerings were being made to Buddhist monks.
Japan will likely seek greater independence from the U.S., and focus more on its ties with China and the rest of Asia, under new leadership expected to take power after elections on Sunday.
Early tests of how far Japan's foreign policy might shift will come as the incoming government considers the fate of U.S. military facilities on Okinawa -- which are unpopular locally -- and whether it will keep helping refuel U.S. ships in the Indian Ocean. Japan's response to China's interest in natural-gas resources located in waters claimed by both countries also will offer clues.
Polls show the center-left Democratic Party of Japan is expected to trounce the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in lower-house parliamentary elections.
During its 50-year history, the LDP has often followed Washington's lead in foreign policy. By contrast, the DPJ says it wants closer ties and more trade agreements with regional neighbors while it seeks a "more equal" relationship with the U.S.
"The era of U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end and we are moving away from a unipolar world toward an era of multipolarity," party leader Yukio Hatoyama, widely assumed to be Japan's next prime minister, wrote this month in a Japanese magazine, Voice. He pointed to the European Union as an example of a means for overcoming regional differences.
Not all of DPJ's policies are expected to run counter to U.S. interests. The U.S. could gain a stronger ally in initiatives to curb greenhouses gases. A DPJ-led government also is expected to maintain Japan's firm approach toward North Korea amid concerns about nuclear proliferation and political pressure to get back Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang.
Little can be said with certainty about the direction Mr. Hatoyama might take should his party prevail, given the lack of a track record. Observers note that most of the DPJ's campaign has focused on domestic issues. On foreign policy, the party in recent months has stepped back from some of its stronger language on U.S.-Japanese relations. The DPJ lacks foreign-policy experience in areas and may find itself more dependent than its predecessor on Japan's diplomatic bureaucracy, they say.
"They haven't had a chance to cut their teeth, so to speak, on real policy dialogue," said Sheila A. Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S.
Further, some observers say Japan hasn't led in areas such as global trade talks, and would need to develop more concrete steps than the DPJ has articulated so far before it can make its own path.
"It all comes down to, 'Do you really have ideas? Can you generate ideas?'" said Reinhard Drifte, a former professor of Japanese politics at the University of Newcastle in the U.K., who questions Japan's "will and ability to have a more autonomous foreign policy."
DPJ officials -- who have made cutting bureaucracy a cornerstone of their campaign -- dispute any perceived lack of experience, saying its members include a number of current lawmakers with extensive foreign-policy backgrounds.
Yukihisa Fujita, a lawmaker and party member, said in an email that relations with the U.S. remain Japan's most important. "However, relations with the United Nations, and with Asian and European nations, are also extremely important, and we are of the opinion that we need to strike more of a balance in this regard," he said.
The U.S. State Department said its officials weren't available to discuss the DPJ's policies until after the election. "We have a close alliance relationship with Japan which we expect to continue after the election, whichever party gains control of the government," it said in a statement.
Economically, Japan has grown closer with China and South Korea, and the former is now its No. 1 trading partner, with about $236 billion in combined imports and exports last year.
DPJ officials have taken steps to smooth relations with Asian neighbors. "We have some expectation that they will have a more sincere and sympathetic approach in solving some of the issues related with history," said Chung Byung-won, a director on the Japan desk at South Korea's foreign ministry in Seoul. A spokesman at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Beijing wishes to "enhance our bilateral cooperation, and to continuously deepen the reciprocal and strategic relationship between China and Japan, so as to promote peace and the development of Asia together."
Tensions linger between Japan and China over resources in the East China Sea. Ownership of the resources remains disputed, despite an agreement last year to jointly develop natural-gas fields. The LDP-led government began playing down its concerns as overall tensions between the two countries eased, but it remains to be seen whether DPJ leaders will follow that lead.
The DPJ has pledged not to continue naval refueling missions in the Indian Ocean that support U.S. efforts in Afghanistan when an agreement expires next year. But Japan may be reluctant to pull out entirely from operations related to Afghanistan, and the U.S. could use Japan's willingness to be more involved in world affairs to push for greater contributions to that or some other global effort, said Michael J. Green, senior adviser and Japan chair for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The DPJ's platform calls for re-examining the role of U.S. bases in Japan. But experts consider a quick decision unlikely. U.S. and Japanese officials already have agreed to move an unpopular facility in Okinawa, but the DPJ favors moving it farther away.
—Bai Lin and Kersten Zhang contributed to this article.
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