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Thailand’s ranking as a place where the public and press can freely express information and opinion has nosedived in recent years, as the conflict between the country’s constitutionally-enshrined freedom of expression and other apparently contradictory laws has come to a head.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn outside Bangkok’s Criminal Court last Friday, after receiving flowers from a well-wisher (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

By Simon Roughneen in Bangkok for ISN Insights

A number of high-profile cases alleging insults against the Thai monarchy and breaches of the country’s 2007 Computer Crimes Act have put the spotlight on freedom of expression in Thailand, and the role of the courts in assessing these matters. Since the military coup in September 2006, Thailand’s ranking in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index has dropped from 107 in 2005, the year before the country’s last military coup, to 153 in 2010.

From web-boards to courtrooms

In mid-February, the case of Chiranuch Premchaiporn, head of the news site Prachatai – a sort-of Thai version of the Huffington Post – was postponed until September, as the slower-than-expected hearings process meant the case would delay other trials on the judge’s schedule.

Chiranuch has not been accused of personally saying anything negative about the monarchy. Ten anonymous comments, long-since removed from the Prachatai web-board, have been singled out by state prosecutors as insulting the monarchy. If found guilty of the charges, Chiranuch faces a possible five decade sentence.

The suspension of the Prachatai case came after the trial of Daranee Chanchoengsilpakul, a prominent red-shirt supporter better-known as “Da Torpedo”, was ruled a mistrial. Daranee’s lawyer Prawais Prapanuyool, speaking after the appeal verdict was read out, said that his client was seeking release on bail as soon as possible, but that “we need one million Thai Baht to cover this, we are appealing for financial assistance”. She has already spent a year and half in jail.

When Daranee was originally convicted, the trial was held in camera, allegedly on national security grounds, prompting the new ruling that the outcome resulted in a mistrial. Now the legal can has been kicked over to the country’s Constitutional Court. “We will request that the Constitutional Court rule on whether the original trial was against the Constitution or not”, said the court official, reading aloud the appeal verdict to a small gathering of reporters, observers and the accused. Daranee still stands accused of insulting Thailand’s monarchy, known euphemistically as “the institution” in many legal and political commentaries, and she might have to face a retrial even if the Constitutional Court rules in her favor.

Though separate, the Prachatai case and the Da Torpedo case are linked in more than one sense of the word. One of the charges against Chiranuch is based on a “hotlink” appearing on the Prachatai web-board, where members of the public posted comments, to an audio file of a speech made by Daranee in which she criticized the monarchy. Although the link was to another website, the file was transcribed and added to the police charges against Chiranuch. However, there is no case against the file’s uploader, who remains unidentified.

During cross-examination by Prachatai’s lawyers, Thanit Prapathanan, a legal advisor to Thailand’s Ministry for Information and Communications Technology, said that even if a webmaster took down messages that were deemed as insulting the monarchy, a lawsuit could still ensue. Moreover, during the court proceedings in the Prachatai case, the judge permitted the statements that were deemed lèse majesté to be read aloud – though this was undermined somewhat by poorly functioning microphones in the room.

Ultimately, the fact that the court agreed with Daranee’s appeal, confirming that her original on-camera, publicized trial was unconstitutional, has given some hope to freedom of speech advocates in Thailand. It shows that the judiciary in Thailand can work on an impartial level, according to Chiranuch, and that this judicial competence “can support freedom of expression here”. Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International representative in Thailand, however noted that “the lèse majesté law itself runs counter to Thailand’s freedom of expression obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

In a third high-profile case, Tantawut Taweewarodomkul, webmaster of the red-shirt website in the US known as NorPhorChorUSA, told the court that he gave his original statement under pressure from police, and that he was concerned for the welfare of his ten-year-old son, whom he is raising as a single father. On 22 February, just hours before seven redshirt leaders, detained since 19 May 2010 were freed on bail, Surachai Danwattananusorn, a leader of a redshirt splinter group called “Red Siam”, was arrested for remarks made in December that were deemed offensive to the monarchy.

An uneasy present, an uncertain future

The legal prohibitions on what can and cannot be said in Thailand remain in place. Nicholas Farrelly of the Australian National University, who co-runs the widely-read New Mandala blog on Southeast Asia, argues that “anxiety about what kind of speech will draw the attention of the authorities is completely understandable, and I doubt that this will change much in the wake of Da Torpedo’s recent success or the suspension of Chiranuch’s trial.”

All told, these various laws have had “a chilling effect” on free speech and online debate in a country where web use is growing, according to Danny O’Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Indeed more than 26 percent of Thailand’s 66 million people are online, according to Supinya Klangnarong of the Thai Netizens Network.

Thai authorities, however, continue to block websites containing what they deem offensive content or material that may undermine national security. According to Niw Wong of the iLaw Project, blocking websites increases during times of political unrest, for example during the anti-government red-shirt protests last year. She said that “during the protests of March-May 2010, the level of blocking increases very significantly. In March 2010 alone, 9,672 URLs [were]suspended – the highest number of all time.”

While lèse majesté is an offense in Thailand, the country’s constitution simultaneously upholds freedom of expression. Chiranuch’s case in particular will likely be seen as a marker for how well freedom of speech and internet freedoms are protected in a politically unsteady country. With national elections on the horizon this year and the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej in hospital, the politically charged context that led to restrictions on freedom of speech last year could once again appear.

Ireland’s economy has shrunk by over 20 percent since the Celtic Tiger’s heyday, and a February 25 election could see the country’s political map redrawn.

For the birds? Ireland's politicians have come under relentless attack in recent months. (Photo, Dublin city centre Jan 2001, taken by Simon Roughneen)

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The echo-chamber that is Irish political punditry has seen an over-used acronym get another airing in the past few weeks: “GUBU”, coined by the late Conor Cruise O’Brien, former UN diplomat, Irish Government Minister and editor of The Observer, stands for “Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented”. Whenever something controversial or unusual takes place in Irish politics, GUBU is the shorthand of choice, irrespective of hyperbole or appropriateness.

Yet, the often bizarre deaththroes of the government led by Brian Cowen and his party, Fianna Fáil, are as close to GUBU as Ireland has seen since the term first entered the political lexicon back in 1982 when Ireland’s economy faced a crisis akin to this one.

A half-resignation

Since a hastily arranged press conference two weeks ago in Dublin’s Merrion Hotel, when Prime Minister Brian Cowen said that he wanted to remain in his job despite ceding leadership of his party, events have taken a new turn. This move came after a week in which he had staved off a leadership challenge from Foreign Minister Michéal Martin and attempted a ministerial reshuffle. That in turn followed revelations that Cowen had undeclared meetings with one of the executives at the center of Ireland’s banking collapse, adding to the perception that his party was in cahoots with those most responsible for Ireland’s economic woes.

Since then, Cowen has been succeeded by Martin as party leader, and as of 1 February, was finally seeking the dissolution of the current government. A parliamentary election will take place on 25 February, and could see the traditional party lines of Ireland’s politics redrawn. Cowen will not even contest his parliamentary seat in the midlands constituency he has long-dominated, as his party faces obliteration at the polls. Although Fianna Fáil has dominated Irish politics for most of the post-independence era, the severity and nature of Ireland’s economic crash has been pinned on the party, perceived to be too close to a cabal of bankers and property developers. The triumvirate is blamed for overheating Ireland’s economy with a Ponzi-esque property bubble, resulting in the former “Celtic Tiger’s” economy contracting by perhaps as much as 20 percent in the past two years.

After Cowen’s resignation from the party leadership, Ireland’s Green Party announced on 23 January that it was withdrawing from government, but with the caveat that it would support an allegedly crucial finance bill from opposition. The bill runs to almost 300 pages and has been described as “unintelligible” to anybody bar taxation experts. However, all of Ireland’s main parties, except Sinn Féin, formed an alliance of convenience in parliament last week to ensure the measure passed into law. The bill is needed to facilitate Ireland’s acceptance of the €85 billion bailout from the IMF and the EU.

The “bailout”, however, remains highly controversial, with a 5.8 percent interest rate on repayments seen by many as onerous, if not simply beyond the means of the country. Critics say that the money is intended to shore up the banks and investors, in Ireland and elsewhere, who gambled – and lost – on Ireland’s property bubble, and unfairly penalizes the taxpayer for mistakes made by others.

‘Mesmerizing’

As the crisis gathered momentum, Sinn Féin’s Aengus O Snodaigh said that “our international reputation is going downhill” – a belated understatement given that Ireland was, for a few days, again one of the top stories on international news networks, reprising the dubious profile attained during the “bailout” saga, while the IMF and EU delegations were in-country prior to Christmas.

That said, Ireland’s economic reversal has not been met with the same sort of ferocity on the streets as seen in Greece last year. “Mesmerized” was how one backbench Fianna Fáil parliamentarian said he felt after Cowen’s attempted cabinet reshuffling, and the same seems to apply to the Irish in general given the tame response to two years of economic disaster. Impunity prevails, and not only has there been no equivalent to the jailing of Bernie Madoff, the disgraced US financier, but on 21 January another senior bank executive, who was belatedly discarded after 2008, was handed a plum job as Secretary General of the Irish Red Cross.

Further, Ireland’s almost 14 percent unemployment rate sets a new record measured in absolute numbers. Ireland is also expected to cut €15 billion in public spending over the next three years after billions in cuts already in order to meet EU budget deficit requirements. The Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin predicts that 2011 will see a record number of Irish emigrate, and research by Kavanagh-Fennell suggests that over 1500 firms went into liquidation in 2010. Indicative of the wider impact of the property collapse, the ESRI estimates that around 300,000 Irish homeowners are in negative equity.

Historic realignment?

Fianna Fáil dipped to eight percent in an opinion poll published recently, and though Martin’s succession gave the party a bounce back to double figures, the new leader faces a massive challenge in the election campaign now underway. With the dire economic and socioeconomic situation in mind, the party faces a historic and unprecedented wipeout in the forthcoming elections. It currently holds 71 seats out of 160 available, but could conceivably be reduced to less than 25, and coalition partner Green Party could be left with no representation at all in Ireland’s parliament.

While the two main opposition parties Fine Gael and Labour look like they will be the main beneficiaries, the political shifts looming could be more far-reaching than just a Fianna Fáil collapse. Some well-known economists have stated their intention to run in the election as well, amid speculation that a new technocratic center-right party, featuring well-known economists and journalists, could emerge to fill the Fianna Fáil void, in part at least.

The left, however, might well be a more immediate beneficiary, and Sinn Féin and Labour could possibly garner enough support to govern with the backing of left-leaning independents. That outcome would give Ireland its first-ever left-wing administration.

The largest opposition party, however, is Fine Gael, which has typically been Fianna Fáil’s main rival. The two are seen as similar in terms of policy, which could limit Fine Gael’s appeal come voting day. There are significant policy divisions between Fine Gael and Labour on a number of issues, and the former could win enough seats to form a minority government, perhaps supported in opposition by a rump Fianna Fáil.

Populist nonsense

Sinn Féin took a strongly Marxist turn during the 1969-1998 “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, when it acted as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Spouting leftist economics seemingly stalled Sinn Féin’s rise in the Irish Republic after the 1998 peace agreement in Northern Ireland, but now the party and others in the Irish left will have their best shot at overturning Ireland’s usually non-ideological voting patterns, with poster-boy Pearse Doherty likely to lead their campaign, despite the presence of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, who will be making his first-ever attempt to win a seat in the Irish parliament in a constituency close to the border with Northern Ireland. (Adams is a MP for West Belfast in the British parliament, though he has refused to take his seat there.)

All told, the banking and property crises are potent weapons for ideologues seeking to discredit anything linked to free market thinking in the eyes of disillusioned Irish voters, no doubt angered by a study by the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (ISME) that says that Ireland’s economy has shrunk by 22 percent since early 2007. Even as exports increase six percent year-on-year, there are few sources of optimism left.

Yesterday credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s downgraded Ireland’s credit rating once more, after Fine Gael and Labour said they would renegotiate the bailout terms, following Sinn Féin’s pledge to refuse the bailout outright. Fine Gael has mentioned a cap on income taxes, despite Ireland’s fiscal imbalances. Although the Irish people deserve some respite from the tax –hike spending-cut pincer, a degeneration into electioneering-as-infantile-populism will hardly see a solution. Fianna Fáil might well scent an opportunity to brand rival parties as naive and opportunistic, despite the infantile populism of the party’s own record in Government, with former PM Bertie Ahern famously chastising the few voices who predicted a crash as doom-mongers, and advising them to commit suicide.

Simon Roughneen is an Irish journalist usually based in Southeast Asia. He was in Ireland during December and January.

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In the run-up to the Communist Party plenum which ended 18 October, there was much anticipation that the authoritarian-ruled economic giant would announce some new political departure – especially after Prime Minister Wen Jiabao intimated in the weeks leading up to the conference that some reform might be necessary to maintain the ruling party’s legitimacy. Wen told CNN in a 7 October interview that China “should not only let people have freedom of speech” but “must create conditions to let them criticize the work of the government.”

Hong Kong's skyline at night (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

These astonishing comments perhaps generated more enthusiasm than was appropriate, and for China watchers the eventual conference outcome was a disappointment – though perhaps no surprise given the government’s shrill reaction to the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Lia Xiaobo, whom Beijing regards as a criminal. News of Liu’s award and Wen’s comments were both either censored or omitted by China’s state-run media. Meanwhile, the official agenda for the plenary session – the most important gathering on China’s political calendar – was the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) for the country’s economic and social development. Vice President Xi Jinping was named deputy chairman of the country’s military, possibly presaging his eventual succession to the presidency.

Xi is best known overseas for remarks made on a foreign trip in early 2010 that – like Wen’s – were ignored by China’s state media, but may have implications for Wen’s reformist inclinations: “There are some well-fed foreigners who have nothing better to do than point fingers at our affairs. China does not, first, export revolution; second, export poverty and hunger; third, cause troubles for you. What else is there to say?”

Watching closely

The semi-autonomous Chinese region of Hong Kong is watching closely these political developments (or lack thereof) on the mainland, amid concerns that the “one country, two systems” formula for governing the region was degenerating into something more akin to “one country, one system”. In the 13 years since Hong Kong came under Beijing’s rule, there has been scant progress toward the implementation of full democracy as expected under the Hong Kong Basic Law, in effect since 1997.

Hong Kong’s once-vociferous pro-democracy politicians have been relegated to the electoral fringe, as a consensus on how to manage the region’s relationship with Beijing coalesces around business leaders and pro-Beijing politicians that are backing a deal made earlier this summer that retains the same limited voting franchise used to elect the Hong Kong chief executive, currently Donald Tsang. A larger panel of 1200 will choose Tsang’s successor – but this number pales in comparison to Hong Kong’s population of seven million. The Legislative Council, or Legco, is partly chosen by popular vote, but half the seats are under the control of special interest groups in business and politics.

However, some Hong Kong lawmakers do not want to merely toe Beijing’s line, or so it seems, with four Legco members planning to travel to the Nobel award ceremony on December 10, in defiance of China’s warnings. Moreover, a petition calling for the release of Liu has been signed by tourists from the mainland, and some public celebrations of the peace award are planned.

Listed by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal as the world’s freest economy, Hong Kong markets itself as the logical place for foreign corporations to start looking at opportunities in China, which recently overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy, and last year passed Germany to become the world’s biggest exporter.

Gateway politics

“We are a strategically-located gateway to China,” said Rita Lau, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, while addressing a gathering of Irish businesspeople and officials in the city on 24 September.

As China’s booming economy means an ever-growing need for raw materials and energy imports, Hong Kong is becoming a hub for mining investment on top of its long-time standing as Asia’s main financial center, alongside Singapore. The Hong Kong exchange appears set to top the world’s rankings for initial public offerings (IPOs), thanks largely to mainland Chinese companies looking to float there. To illustrate, so far this year 53 companies have raised a combined $23.9 bn from IPOs in Hong Kong, according to data from Dealogic. By comparison, the figures for IPOs in New York and London for the same time-period are $10.7bn and $7bn respectively. Hong Kong’s overall size as a stock market, however, remains about half of New York, though it has bypassed London after more than tripling in size since 2000.

Indeed, Hong Kong has its own business interests to look after. Tsang visited a trade show in central China recently, saying he thinks that Hong Kong know-how and investment could blend well with the low land and labor costs on the mainland – perhaps presaging a move away from exports and toward tapping the Chinese market. Directly inland is China’s Greater Pearl River Delta region. Home to 55 million people, it would be the world’s 12th largest trading entity if it were a country, according to a report by Invest Hong Kong.

A challenge to Hong Kong’s role as gateway to China might come from the mainland itself. Shanghai is being built up as a rival financial hub. Though it has a long way to go to match the legal transparency and business structures in place in Hong Kong, it is located on the mainland and has a rapidly growing stock exchange. It serves as a reminder to Hong Kong that the Chinese government wants options. Perhaps the buzz surrounding Shanghai is a reminder from Beijing that it does not want to be dependent on a partly self-governing region with close links to the West, even if Hong Kong’s pro-democracy factions are losing traction.

However, all indications suggest that Hong Kong’s economic future and likely political alignment going forward will be tied to what happens on the mainland.

- Roughneen was in Hong Kong in late September

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Junta leader comes back happy from China after getting backing for his November election and a pledge from Beijing to snub ethnic militias inside Burma

“May I propose a toast for the long-lasting Sino-Myanmar Pauk-phaw friendship”. So said Li Jinjun, China’s Ambassador to Myanmar, or Burma, speaking at an official reception in Rangoon five years ago.

Meaning ‘brother’ in Burmese, the wording is a hat-tip to the growing commercial and strategic ties between the two countries – links which Burmese opposition leaders and exiles have slammed for helping maintain an oppressive status quo in Burma, which is scheduled to hold elections on November 7. The real meaning of Pauk-phaw was underlined last week with the visit of Burma’s junta leader Sen. Gen. Than Shwe to China, marking the 60th anniversary of bilateral relations between the two countries, where once again both sides saluted their pauk-phaw relationship

More than oil and gas

China is Burma’s third-biggest trade partner after Thailand and Singapore. Going by official Chinese statistics, the two countries did business worth US$2.9 billion in 2009. However illicit or unreported commerce likely means that the given numbers underestimate the real scale of business across the 2,200 kilometer land border.

Chinese investment in Burma, focusing on the country’s lush natural resources, vastly outweighs bilateral trade. This year alone Chinese companies have sunk over US$8 billion in Burma, mainly in gas, oil and hydropower ventures. Beijing sees Burma as vital to securing energy supplies, as its economy overtakes Japan’s to become the second largest in the world.

However resource extraction is just part of the picture.China is developing several ports along the Burmese coast on the Bay of Bengal, which will give Beijing access to the Indian Ocean and enhance its naval reach. China says it seeks no more than alternative shipping routes for oil and other commodities, with pipelines linking the ports to Yunnan province in southern China and bordering Burma. This will enable China send some of its African and Middle Eastern oil imports across land, cutting a journey time that otherwise involves passing through congested southeast Asian waters.

With the US undertaking naval drills with South Korea, and enhancing links with Vietnam, China’s Burma port projects are likely to be based a broader strategic vision. According to K Yhome of the Observer Research Foundation in India, “China sees Myanmar as an integral part in its larger geostrategic framework in the context of accessing the sea through Myanmar for both economic and strategic reasons.” Chinese warships docked at Rangoon over the weekend of August 29, K Yhome told ISN Security Watch that “from a strategic perspective, Myanmar provides China to achieve its “two ocean strategy” which it views as a way to enhance strategic interests in both Indian and Pacific Oceans.” China has built or is building port facilities at Gwadar, on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, at Chittagong in Bangladesh, and at Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka. The Pakistan port links to central China via roads that wre damaged during the recent monsoon floods, after which China rapidly deployed reconstruction teams to repair the route in northern Pakistan.

India appears to be losing out to China in Burma, where, as retired Brigadier S.K. Chatterji put it, “in military-strategic sense, a port facility for the Chinese navy in Myanmar provides it with a direct access to Bay of Bengal without having to voyage through South China Sea, and the Straits of Malacca. It shortens the journey to Bay of Bengal by 3,000 km or six to seven days. Ports in Myanmar undoubtedly provide China one of the biggest advantages in the region.”

Election legitimacy

Than Shwe’s visit to China took place after his four-day visit to India in July, where he received support for his much-criticised election. China backed the polls and reiterated its now-threadbare mantra professing ‘non-interference’ in the affairs of other countries – oblivious to the contradiction that Chinese investment and diplomatic support gives the junta the guns and cash needed to perpetuate its control. Than Shwe was likely playing for such backing, according to Adrian Vickers, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney. “The main issue seems to be shoring up of support for the elections”, he told ISN Security Watch.

Less than two months away, the elections have been described as an opportunity for some form of democratic progress in some quarters, despite the restrictive electoral laws and circumscribed campaign rules. The polls look set to be dominated by two junta-linked parties, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and the National Unity Party (NUP), which are running for most of the total 1,163 seats available in the Upper, Lower and regional houses. It seems that the main opposition party is the National Democratic Front (NDF), a splinter from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. The NLD is boycotting the election, citing unfair rules.

As things stand, the NDF will field only 276 candidates in total, leaving a clear run for the USDP and NUP for the 75% seats being contested in the November 7 poll – the remaining quarter are reserved for the military. The combined lists of 20 smaller political parties, including the NDF and ethnic political parties runs to less than 700 candidates.

Seeking ‘stability’

China wants what it perceives as stability in Burma, to enable transport of oil and gas overland and to give China access to the Bay of Bengal via the transport infrastructure it is building in Burma.

Border stability has long been a common concern, and potential problem in the the bilateral relationship – which despite the growing ties in recent years has not always been pauk-phaw. In the 1970s China supported insurgent groups inside Burma, and even as late as August 2009, Beijing reprimanded the Burmese junta for an unannounced attack on an ethnic Chinese militia, sending an estimated 37000 refugees into China.

If public statements are to be believed, the two sides seem to have reached a modus viviendi on the border and ethnic insurgency issue in Burma, where the writ of the military government has never extended to all areas within Burma, with groups such as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) keeping 30000 men under arms

According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, President Hu Jintao raised peace and stability in Burma’s ethnic areas along the Sino-Burmese border when he met with Than Shwe last Wednesday. Amid tensions in Burma, where the most powerful ethnic militias are refusing to be subsumed into the junta’s border guard forces ahead of the November 7 elections, a front-page headline in the state-run New Light of Myanmar said on Sunday that “China vows not to accept and support any groups who would carry out anti-Myanmar government movements in border areas to damage bilateral relations.”

It has been a busy few weeks of visits for both sides. Notably, two weeks ago North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il visited China, weeks after renewed allegations that Pyongyang and the Burmese junta are collaborating on a nuclear weapons programme. On the morning of September 8 last week, just hours before his meeting with Than Shwe, Hu Jintao met with Thomas Donilon, Deputy Assistant to the U.S. President for National Security Affairs, and Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House National Economic Council, at the same Great Hall of People where the Burmese leader was feted later that afternoon. The US recently backed a move to establish a Commission of Inquiry into possible war crimes committed by the Burmese junta. However there was no indication that the visiting American delegation commented on likely target of that probe, Sen-Gen Than Shwe, who followed them into the Great Hall later that same day, with the US and China apparently eager to gloss over some of their recent spats.

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One-time enemies, the US and Vietnam are developing new-found links as both countries take stock of China’s rise.

Just over fifteen years after the US and Vietnam normalised relations marred by war, the naval destroyer USS John S. McCain docked in Da Nang last week to mark the anniversary. The ship is named after the grandfather of 2008 US presidential candidate John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam. Commanding officer Jeffrey Kim said that “over the last 15 years, we’ve established trust, a mutual respect, and I know that, in the coming years, our friendship and relationship will continue to become better.”

According to a Vietnamese scholar who requested anonymity, the tighter relations are seen as a good thing inside the country. “Vietnamese view the US rather positive as the war is becoming history in the memory of a new generation”, he said in an email.

Trading off civil liberties?

From a low base, US-Vietnam relations have grown during the decade-and-a-half since normalisation, with both Presidents Clinton and Bush II visiting Vietnam while in office. However, human rights activists have criticised what seems to be a bipartisan drive in Washington to develop ties with the one-party state. In 2006, on the eve of President Bush’s visit to Vietnam for an economic summit, the US State Department removed Vietnam from its short list of the world’s worst religious persecutors.

After Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in January 2007, the government arrested nearly 40 dissidents, sentencing more than 20 to lengthy prison terms. National Assembly elections were held in May of that year, but only 50 of the 500 deputies chosen did not belong to the Communist Party. Internet and media censorship remains tight, with a 2008 decree specifying the information that private bloggers may legally post on their blogs. Several political bloggers were harassed, temporarily detained, or jailed during 2009. A 2003 law bans the receipt and distribution of antigovernment e-mail messages, and, reminiscent of Thailand nowadays, websites considered “reactionary” are blocked.

Nonetheless, as Walter Lohman, Asia Studies Director at the Heritage Foundation put it “Since 2001 conclusion of the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Act really, economic relations with the U.S. have taken off.” The U.S. is Vietnam’s top export market and Americans are Vietnam’s top foreign investor, with bilateral trade reaching US$15.4 billion in 2009.

The McCain visit came after another by the USS George Washington – a massive Pacific-based aircraft carrier also utilised in recent US-South Korea naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, which irked both North Korea and China, which responded with highly-publicised military exercises of its own.

Countering China

The US is developing new links with southeast Asian countries as a counter to China’s growing influence – with statistics published on Monday August 16 suggesting that China may have overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy, albeit an assessment based only on quarterly data.

China is claiming ownership of the South China Sea, where it has territorial disputes with some southeast Asian countries, Vietnam included. At the July meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton American angered China by offering US support for “a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi acknowledged that “there are territorial and maritime rights disputes” between China and some of its neighbors but, he said, “those disputes should not be viewed as ones between China and ASEAN as a whole just because the countries involved are ASEAN members.”

According to Dr Jian Junbo, Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Studies, Fudan University “the tactic of internationalizing South China Sea issue will be a bad thing for this region. China will never agree to internationalize this issue.”

Nuclear deal

The US and Vietnam are discussing a nuclear energy deal, which will build on a March agreement between the countries to expand cooperation on peaceful nuclear energy. Vietnam said in June it plans to build as many as 13 nuclear power plants with a capacity of 16000MW over the next twenty years.

Critics say the deal is contrary to the US counter-proliferation agenda – with China alleging double-standards. Other say that the the deal could lower the bar for nuclear technology transfer compared with US agreements with other countries, such as recent demand that the United Arab Emirates agree not to make nuclear fuel – a step on the road to developing nuclear weapons. Some say it is highly-unlikely that Vietnam would go rogue on nuclear technology, and that it lacks the technology to enrich uranium, for example. Carlyle Thayer is a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. He said that “Vietnam is a signatory to all the relevant conventions and would be open for intensive inspections to ensure that it was not diverting weapons grade material.”

Despite the growing US-Vietnam ties, Hanoi is not about to jettison China, the apparent model for its own doi moi governance system – economic liberalisation shackled down with continued one-party rule. has also moved to develop defence contacts with China. Vietnamese naval ships made their first port visit to China in 2010, after the two countries and China and Vietnam conducted their first joint search and rescue exercise. There is extensive cooperation over a swathe of areas – political, economic, social, cultural, defence – and through a variety of bilateral party to party, state-to-state, province to province and military to military channels, with hundreds of bilateral meetings each year.

However contentious issues such as the disputes over islands in the South China Sea, the massive bilateral trade balance and hundreds of thousands of illegal Chinese workers in Vietnam all perhaps stoke a feeling that China’s assertiveness needs countering. The two countries are thought be discussing a more formalised military relationship. According to Thayer , “Vietnam is signaling it want the US to remain engaged in the region as a hedge against Chinese military dominance.”

It is unlikely, however, that Vietnam will go too far to offend China in the process. To illustrate, in April 2009 the Vietnamese government temporarily suspended news magazine Du Lich for running articles about the country’s territorial dispute with China on the 30th anniversary of the Vietnamese-Chinese war. Dr Jian said that “Vietnam should keep friendly relations with China, although they have territorial disputes. Relying on US is not a good way to keep regional stability in South East Asia in a long run.”

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While Indonesia has made notable strides in the twelve years since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship, radical ideology and elitist cronyism could stall further progress

It is sometimes said that Indonesia is the most important country that the world knows least about. It might be clichéd to remind that the country is “the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy”, but in truth the world’s fourth-biggest country remains little-known relative to its size.

Earlier this week came two reminders why this knowledge deficit probably needs addressing. Former Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) leader Abu Bakr Basyir was arrested on Monday for allegedly backing an al-Qaeda linked training camp in the country, with this coming after a series of terrorist-related shoot-outs and arrests in recent months. Almost simultaneously, Jim O’Neill, the economist who coined the term BRICs to categorise the large emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, said that Indonesia, along with Turkey, would likely emerge next as a major global economic player.

Faring well

Southeast Asia’s largest country has, like many other Asian countries, fared relatively-well in the global downturn, posting growth of 4.5% in 2009 before year on year expansion at 6.5% so far this year. G-20 member Indonesia and fellow Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member-states have established a separate free-trade areas with India and China over the past year, while hedging on a closer relationship with the US, whose President Barack Obama was raised on the 17,000 island archipelago. Washington recently led a multilateral military training exercise in Cambodia, before mooting nuclear cooperation with Vietnam. In another signal that it wants to draw closer to southeast Asian countries perhaps wary of a rising China, the US re-established links with Indonesia’s special forces, Kopassus, long the target of human rights groups due to a violent, shadowy history in Aceh, East Timor and West Papua.

Basyir served jail time due to links to the 2002 Bali bombing and two of southeast Asia’s most-feared terrorists – Noordin Top and Dulmatin – were killed by Indonesian special forces during the past twelve months. Mr Basyir was caught in the dragnet after police claimed to have evidence that Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), which he formed in 2008, is involved in a jihadist training camp in Aceh, an autonomous region in the northern end of the archipelago, which though having fought a partly-shariah based independence war against Jakarta, has not been known for links to transnational terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda or JI.

Covert Islamisation?

Basyir says JAT is a legitimate group, but some see it as part of a drive to Islamize Indonesia, a country known for its syncretic blending of Islam with pre-existing religions and cults. C Holland Taylor is Chairman and CEO of LibForAll which works to support moderate Muslims in Indonesia . He told ISN Security Watch that “what is most alarming is the infiltration of Indonesia’s government by extremist Muslims who share the terrorists’ ideology, if not their use of violence to overthrow the Indonesian state.” Mr Taylor says that Indonesia’s security forces are aware of the link between radical ideology and terrorism, but that covert operators within Government and civil service work to stymie some reform efforts.

This type of latent or sleeper Islamisation in Indonesia is linked to the country’s reform challenges. Indonesia’s breakthroughs are notable given that some predicted a Balkans-style disintegration ten years ago, and include not only a lively democracy and free press, but a concerted effort to thwart terrorism in the years after the Bali bombing in 2002. With over a thousand different ethnic groups, communal violence has declined, and electoral needs mean that cross-ethnic coalitions are needed for parties and candidates to succeed, right down to the local level. The formerly dominant military has proved “willing to give democracy and the civilian leadership a chance”, according to Sunny Tanuwidjaja of the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, though it is far from clear whether civilian control of the military is set for the long term.

Stalled reform

However challenges remain, and Indonesia’s future orientation may depend on how far domestic reforms go. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati quit earlier this year after facing relentless opposition from former opposition leader turned governing coalition partner Abu Bakrie. Her ministry had been investigating Mr Bakrie’s family businesses because they were suspected of evading hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Bakrie says he has not been involved in business since 2003, but worked to oust Sri Mulyani in any case.

Apparently angry that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – aka SBY – failed to support her against Bakrie, she acidly described her departure as down to a “same sex” political marriage between SBY and Bakrie. In a country that was ranked as simultaneously the most corrupt and the most democratic in southeast Asia in 2009, Sri Mulyani’s tenure at the Finance Minstry saw more than 150 of its personnel dishonorably removed, with 2000 more punished in some lesser form. She went after tax evaders, including some of Indonesia’s elites.

This zeal made her unpopular, and not just with Bakrie. A holdover from the Suharto era, Indonesia’s untouchable super-rich comprise an oligarchy that transcend the rule of law, and threaten to stall the country’s progress – which has caught the eye of investors. According to Jeffrey Winters, an academic at Northwestern University, and advisor to a recent Harvard University study – From Reformasi to Institutional Transformation: A Strategic Assessment of Indonesia’s Prospects for Growth, Equity and Democratic Governance – “unless oligarchs in Indonesia are forced to submit to impersonal laws that are stronger than they are, the country will remain corrupt, dominated by money politics, and unable to advance beyond resource extraction”, as outlined in an email to ISN Security Watch. India and China both need Indonesia’s thermal coal and palm oil, two of the country’s major exports amid a dearth of indigenous industry and top-class companies, and perhaps more important, the failure so far to set Indonesia up as a center for low-cost manufacturing. Arguably none of these sectors will emerge unless the country’s regulations are amended and graft curbed.

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The first conviction against one of the lead perpetrators of mass murder under the Khmer Rouge was issued Monday, but questions remain about the tribunal process.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) , a hybrid UN-Cambodian war crimes tribunal sentenced ‘Comrade Duch’, a former Khmer Rouge chief jailer and executioner to 35 years in prison Monday for overseeing the deaths of thousands of people in the gristly ‘S-21′ detention and torture center during the height of the Pol Pot regime. An estimated 1.7 million people, a quarter of the country’s population, were killed during the Communist Khmer Rouge era, as Pol Pot and his lieutenants sought to return the country to ‘Year Zero’, abolishing money and property and herding people out of cities and into massive labour camps. Across the country, an estimated 5 million survivors of the Khmer Rouge era remain, alongside thousands of Khmer Rouge officers and footsoldiers.

Relatives of victims wept as the verdict was handed out, but for some, the catharsis turned to anger and disappointment as it became apparent that Kaing Guek Eav, to give his real name, may serve no more than 18-19 years, by which time he will be 85-86 years old. He has already spent eleven years in jail, since Irish journalist Nic Dunlop discovered the executioner living quietly and under a pseudonym in rural Cambodia. The sentence took into account time already served, meaning that Comrade Duch could one day leave jail as a free albeit elderly man.

Dr. Sophal Ear is a Cambodian-American political economist and a survivor of the genocide. He is now a TED Fellow based in Monterey, California, and, stressing that these were his views alone, said to ISN Security Watch that ”No sentence can be sufficient in this lifetime or the next. How do you sentence someone responsible for a place that killed up to 16,000 people?”

Speaking to media after the sentence was announced, prosecutor Chea Leang said that the prosecution team could “reserve out right to review”, after they had sought a 45 year term for Comrade Duch, but added that “This sentence is a clear message to those who commit crimes – those who took many lives cannot avoid justice”.  One judge, Jean-Marc Lavergne, issued a dissenting statement after the sentence, which concluded that “I am therefore of the opinion that in this case, the law does not allow the Chamber to sentence Kiang Guek Eav to more than 30 years imprisonment”.

During his 77-day proceedings, Duch admitted to heading s-21 – now a genocide museum – where the so-called worst “enemies” of the paranoid and murderous Khmer Rouge state were held and brutualised. More than 16,000 people passing through its gates before they were killed. Torture used to extract confessions included pulling out prisoners’ toenails and electrocution. Duch personally signed off on the executions, which he usually documented beforehand by photographing the accused, mugshot-style, before having them taken to a nearby orchard, one of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, to be murdered. According to the indictment against Duch, executioners threw victims to their deaths, bludgeoned them and then slit their bellies, or slowly bled inmates to death. Duch himself allegedly oversaw the atrocities, which included dropping children from the third floor of the building.

Unlike the other four defendants whose trials are due to take place next year, Duch was not part of the Khmer Rouge leadership and is the only major figure of the regime to have expressed remorse, even offering at one point to face a public stoning and to allow victims to visit him in jail. But he made a surprising request on the final day of his trial in November 2009, asking to be acquitted and freed, which left many wondering if his contrition was sincere.

The sentencing will likely bolster the view that the tribunal has been a slow, politicised process. Andrew Cayley, who was appointed international prosecutor late in 2009, has said that the court will move to bring the other four other defendants to trial by 2011. The accused are some of the most notorious figures from the Khmer Rouge leadership – Khieu Samphan, former head of state; Nuon Chea, known as ‘Brother Number Two’ and the regime’s chief ideologist; Ieng Sary, the regime’s foreign minister; and Khieu Thirith, Ieng Sary’s wife and minister for social affairs under Pol Pot, who died in 1998 without ever facing trial. All are aged between 78 and 86, and are reportedly in poor health.

The possibility that the four will not see a day in court is real, and underscores some of the problems inherent to the tribunal throughout its existence, with allegations of political interference and kickbacks compounding the sheer slowness of the proceedings and the limited number of indictees in a country where tens of thousands of former Khmer Rouge members are at large over thirty years after the regime was felled by the invading Vietnamese Army. Attempts to have the caseload doubled to ten were dismissed by Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge member, who said “If the court wants to charge more senior Khmer Rouge cadres, the

court must show the reasons to Prime Minister Hun Sen”. The tribunal has been criticised in some quarters for failing to account for the role of US bombing runs in Cambodia during the years leading up to the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975, which some historians allege facilitated the rise of Pol Pot, who was supported at various times by the North Vietnamese and by China.

Sophal Eal summed up the court so far as “the Teflon tribunal”, saying that “nothing sticks to it” . He described the verdict as “the first down-payment for the international community’s failure to deal with the Khmer Rouge in the first place”, with the tribunal likely to limp on, dependent on the financial backing of donor states.

In the hours after the first verdict was handed down, one of the three known survivors of Comrade Duch’s murder-camp stood on the steps outside the court and let his feelings be known. Chum Mey was tortured in S-21, while his wife and children were killed by the Khmer Rouge. “I ask if Cambodians are happy and the world is happy that millions of people died, a lot of money has been spent on the court – and the perpetrator is free in 19 years? I am not happy with that,”  he lamented.

Chum Mey’s  dismay may be deepened by an announcement on Tuesday by Duch’s lawyer, Kar Savuth, who told the AFP news agency: “We will appeal against the decision.”

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Two months after Thailand’s army routed the anti-Government redshirt protest movement from central Bangkok, sixteen provinces including Bangkok remain under emergency law. Thai media carried Government claims that sabotage and political assassinations remained possible, as the now-dormant redshirt movement goes underground.

The retention of emergency law will be reviewed by the Government on a week-by-week, district-by-district basis. Nonetheless, keeping emergency powers has come under fire. William Burns, the third most senior official in the US State Dept. spoke at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University on July 16, saying that the retention of emergency powers “not healthy for a democratic system”

Thailand’s already-shaky press freedom is coming under renewed pressure. According to the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), 26 more radio stations were recently closed by authorities using the emergency powers. Many of these are linked to the redshirts and stand accused of fomenting protestors to come to Bangkok to take part in the March 12-May 19 rallies, which turned violent on April 10 when black-clad ‘ronin’ seemingly-allied to the protestors fought with Thai troops near one Bangkok’s best-known backpacker haunts.

One black-shirt has been arrested, but otherwise there is little clarity on the ninety deaths and around 2000 injuries sustained during the protests, amid numerous acts of violence apparently perpetrated by protestors and by the Army. Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International representative in Thailand, told ISN that “the decree is exacerbating the problem the Government wants to eliminate. As the decree is the prime driver making the red shirt movement go underground, it is counterproductive to retain this. The Government is suppressing legal and lawful dissent.” Under the terms of the emergency law, detainees are being held at military camps, but precise numbers and whereabouts are unknown.

While some argue that a protest movement would not be permitted to successively occupy two important districts of a major capital city anywhere in the world, others believe that the deployment of the army to disperse the protestors was wrong, perhaps illegal. The Government bases its case on its view that the protest was not peaceful, while redshirts try to disown any connection with the armed black-clad faction, which refused to stand down when the redshirt leaders called an end to the rally as the Army advanced on their stronghold back on May 19.

While the Government says it seeks reconciliation via a series of reform measures, there seems to be an inherent contradiction between the stated goal and the methods used – some of which seem likely to foster division and recrimination. Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) recently got the green light to investigate an anti-monarchy plot – which the Government earlier alleged by way of a much-derided network mapped-out on a diagram given to media before the redshirt protest was disbanded. The Government says that it will seek to prevent politicisation of the country’s revered royal institutions, which officially transcend politics. In a country where lese-majeste convictions can lead to double-digit prison sentences, such allegations may hinder any attempt to reconcile Thailand’s divides.

In a letter sent to media, including ISN, on July 20, redshirt leader Jaran Dittapichai said that the Government is “deceiving the world by creating five committees of political-media-reconciliation and reforms which are composing by the persons who are PM Thaksin’s enemies and enemies of red shirts people (sic).”

The Thai Government is homing-in on the role of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in financing and fomenting the protests. He is deemed a terrorist by the country’s courts and faces a two year jail sentence for corruption while in office. While he made history by winning successive elections in a country noted for fickle electorates, his administrations were marked by a combination of economic populism and draconian media curbs.

Thaksin’s ouster by a military coup, following yellowshirt protests in 2006, still rankles with redshirts, as does the circumstances – or machinations – behind how the current Democrat Party Government led by Abhisit Vejajjiva came to power in late 2008. Although Abhisit’s accession was legal and constitutional, redshirt leaders see a double standard. Yellowshirt protestors occupied the capital’s two international airports in late 2008, days before Abhisit became Prime Minister. While redshirt leaders are currently incarcerated or on the run, yellowshirt leaders are at large, and one, Kasit Piromya, is Thailand’s foreign minister.

Thailand’s export-oriented economy seems to have come through the unrest relatively-unscathed. Outgoing Bank of Thailand Governor Tarisa Watanagase told ISN on July 20 that the unrest “was localised” and that “tourism, the most vulnerable sector, was not as badly hit as we feared”. Redshirts sought early elections as a condition to ending their protest, and while a Government offer of November 14 this year was rejected – an outcome the Government blamed on Thaksin rather than the protest leaders in Thailand – there is still talk that voting could take place before the end of 2011. The current administration may understandably prefer to hold the election when Thailand’s economic recovery is having the greatest impact among ordinary Thais, and the Government is making ‘pro-poor’ social spending a key aspect of its reconciliation plans. Meanwhile a by-election takes place this coming weekend in Bangkok, with the Democrat party candidate Panit Vikitsreth expected to defeat opposition ticket Korkaew Pikulthong , who is being on charges relating to the redshirt protest but is competing for the Thaksin-backed Peua Thai party.

However the incumbent Democrat Party faces two other legal challenges that might undermine future election and reconciliation plans. Charges that the party misused campaign donations could lead to its dissolution, while a gambit undertaken by PM Abhisit and Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij in early 2009 is being reviewed – slowly – by the National Anti-Corruption Commission. They are accused of violating the Anti-Corruption Law by asking mobile phone operators to send text messages to 17 million mobile numbers free of charge, in contravention of Article 103 of the Anti-Corruption Law which prohibits office holders from accepting any gifts worth 3000 Thai Baht ($90) or more.

On Monday the NACC said it could not decide on the case, which could automatically suspend Abhist and Korn from office. To redshirts it sounds like a reprise of the slow judicial processing of yellowshirt cases, given that the same NACC quickly ruled that Thaksin-proxy PM Samak Sunderavej was in breach of his terms of office by taking part in a TV cookery show, removing him from office in the tumultuous months leading up to the Democrat-led coalition’s accession to power.

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Simon Roughneen in Ramallah – It might be unwitting irony, but the coffee-shop overlooking central Ramallah tips its hat to an American consumer icon, in what might otherwise be deemed an outpost of anti-Americanism.

Inside Stars and Bucks, Ramallah. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Stars and Bucks cafe in downtown Ramallah is branded with almost the same colour scheme as the global chain, a hue pretty-close to Islamic green. Hummus and labaneh are on the menu should the customer want a more “authentic” experience than just downing a Middle East macchiato. Inside a mixture of western and Arabic-dressed women kept to their own tables, appearing inscrutable behind outsized sunglasses. Some men lounged on sofas, puffing on shishas while watching the Portugal-North Korea World Cup mismatch.

Outside traffic crawled through the streets and pedestrians meandered in the 34 degree heat. Downhill from Ramallah’s centre-point at al-Manara square and the iconic coffee shop, a lush fruit and vegetable market is packed high with greens and reds, browns and yellows, while shoppers browsed melons, tomatoes, onions. “You need to ask if you want to take photos here”, said Ashraf, leaning out over his stall to make himself heard over the din of hagglers, before happily posing behind his produce.

Since 2008, the Palestinian Authority has implemented some institutional reforms and economic development, supported by more than US$3 billion in foreign donor assistance.

Growing if still limited Israeli-Palestinian economic cooperation has contributed, with an estimated US$4billion annual turnover, and the U.N. says Israel has dismantled 20 percent of its West Bank checkpoints in the past year.

Fruit and vegetable market near al-Manara Sq, Ramallah. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

However the overall standard-of-living is officially below that seen prior the second intifada, and 505 checkpoints still hinder travel. Ameen, a 22 year old from a village near Jericho, believes that life has not gotten any better for Palestinians in the West Bank. “I have not been to Jerusalem in six years, not since I took a Palestinian ID”, he says. The contested city, site of landmark holy sites for Christianity, Islam and Judaism, is just 15 kilometers away.

Even closer to Jerusalem, residents of Bethlehem can look right across into the iconic and contested city, which both Palestinians and Israelis want as their capital.. Depending on the location, that view is marred by Israel’s unfinished security fence, or segregation wall, depending on who you are talking to. “I cannot go to Jerusalem, unless God forbid, I get sick”, said Mr Sadeh, who earns a living as a tour guide at the city’s Church of the Nativity, within which lies the birthplace of Jesus Christ. His plight mirrors that of millions of Palestinians whose day-to-day life is hampered severely by Israeli security requirements, of which the wall is the most potent and visible restriction.

Getting back to Jerusalem from this tourist draw was hassle-free, with Israeli soldiers waving our taxi through the checkpoint. “See, there are no security problems here”, scoffed *David, the driver, “so they have no need for the wall.” In contrast, coming back from Ramallah meant a customary walk through the checkpoint, after alighting from the bus bound for Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. “Visa, visa! Show me your visa”, demanded the young female soldier behind the glass.

Earlier back in Ramallah, just a ten minute walk away from al-Manara Square, the mausoleum of Yasser Arafat is open to visitors, apparently without any interrogation or security checks. “Just leave your bag here”, said one of the soldiers manning the entry gate. Within the Mukata – HQ of the Palestinian Authority – a 120 square foot structure holds remains of the former Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader. The tomb is surrounded on three sides by water and on one side by a piece of railtrack, symbolising what Palestinians hope to be the temporary nature of the grave, and by implication, of the current political situation in the West Bank. The stated hope is to rebury Arafat in Jerusalem sometime in the future.

Arafat's Grave. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Across the other side, residents of Israeli neighbourhoods overlooking the same barrier see it differently. Uri Goldflam is an academic at the IDC Herzliya, and often takes visiting groups on tours of Jerusalem to give an Israeli perspective on current events relating to the city. He acknowledges that the “security fence” has contributed to making life harsh for ordinary Palestinians, but says that with memories of suicide bombers crossing the narrow pass from the nearby West bank still fresh in Israeli minds, the barrier remains necessary.

Removal, if it ever materialises, will almost-certainly require a full endgame political solution to the Israel-Palestine issue. Polls suggest that Israelis support a two-state solution, however this does not translate politically in a proportional representation vote system that facilitates a proliferation of small parties often devoted to sectarian or narrow agendas, who then have a disproportionate influence on policy in coalition governments that struggle to last full term. No direct talks have taken place in over a year and a half, and now Israelis and Palestinians are reduced talking indirectly – a regression to a two decade-old old status quo ante.

View of the separation barrier from Jewish neighbourhood in Jerusalem. During the 2nd intifada, Palestinian suicide bombers crossed the narrow divide here into Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Dr Kobi Michael lives in Ashkelon and within range of Hamas rockets coming from Gaza. He says that the primary obstacle to peace is that “Palestinians, not just Hamas, do not recognise the right to a Jewish nation-state”. He adds that Israelis need to hear this said – in Arabic – by the Palestinian leaders. Meanwhile many Palestinians think that Israel is bent on undermining a possible two-state solution by expanding settlements in what would presumably be Palestinian territory in that new state.

Within the Palestinian side, Fatah is nervously looking over its shoulder at an emboldened Hamas in Gaza. Described as a reformist, former Word Bank economist and current Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad has pushed many of the measures contributing to improved living conditions in the West Bank. But this has not apparently bolstered Fatah, which cancelled a West Bank municipal election last week, despite the absence of Hamas from the West Bank. Word is that Fatah fears losing to independents, a further blow not only to its diminishing prestige among Palestinians, but to hopes of a solution to the conflict.

*asked that a pseudonym be used

Traffic at Israeli checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Self-described peace activists join hands at Damascus Gate, old city Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Praising God. Religious Jews dance in downtown Jerusalem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Separation wall pictured close to Bethlehem. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

View of the old city, including the Dome of the rock and al-aqsa mosque, from Jewish cemetary in East Jerusalem. Jews buried here believed that when the Messiah comes, it will be in this place, close to where King David founded the city of Jerusalem in around 1000 BC. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Banner close to the Mukata in Ramallah. The "right of return" is one of the most awkward issues in Israeli-Palestine negotiations. Palestinian refugees in the Middle East want the right to return to their pre-1948 family homes in what is now Israel. Israel says that this would mean the end of the Jewish state. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

More photos here -

http://www.simonroughneen.com/culture-religion/israel-in-the-dock-%e2%80%94-but-what-do-israelis-think/#more-2886

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A government peace plan is viewed with skepticism by opposition leaders as the fallout from recent political violence continues.

By Simon Roughneen in Bangkok for ISN Security Watch

Redshirt leaders give press statement at 6pm on May 17, 3 hours after Government deadline for redshirts to vacate rally area. Speaker Nattawut Saikua is one of the leaders now facing terrorism charges(Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Three weeks after a violent conclusion to a two-month political protest in downtown Bangkok, the Thai government says it wants to implement a five-point reconciliation plan, which Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva believes will address some of the grievances anti-Government redshirts say motivated their mass rally in the capital.

The plan was first proposed on 3 May, and while leaders initially welcomed it as “quite constructive,” they turned it down in the end.The deal pledges constitutional amendments, an independent investigation into the recent political violence, increased social spending and the establishment of a media monitoring body.

Prime Minister Abhisit rescinded an offer to hold early elections after the negative response, but then appeared to revive the prospect of early polls while speaking in Vietnam last weekend. The redshirts regard his administration as illegitimate, as it came to power after courts dissolved the redshirt-aligned party, which was in power up to the end of 2008. Smaller parties then backed Abhisit’s Democrat Party, enabling it form a coalition government.

While this was technically within the rules, redshirts are angry that despite their parties winning successive elections, they were ousted twice by non-electoral means. Firstly a 2006 army coup removed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power while he attended a UN meeting in New York. Redshirt-aligned parties won the next election held after the putsch, but anti-Thaksin yellowshirt protesters occupied the Government House and then the country’s international airports before the current government came to power.

Rule of law

“I have always talked about reconciliation as based on the rule of law,” Abhisit said during a 29 May press conference with foreign journalists attended by ISN Security Watch.

However, redshirt leaders are under arrest, after calling a halt to their protest as the Thai Army encircled their main rally area on 19 May. Court cases against the 2008 yellowshirt protest leaders are pending the conclusion of a police investigation. This apparent disparity may hinder the prime minister’s attempts to heal Thailand’s divisions based on the rule of law.

The redshirt-aligned Peua Thai party is the largest party in the Thai Parliament and is demanding that the prime minister “be held accountable” for his role in the recent army and police crackdown on the protest, before any reconciliation plan can be discussed, according to party spokesman Dr Pithaya Pookaman. He told ISN Security Watch that “the plan is irresponsible given that lives were lost during the protests and that the truth of that has to be clarified first.”

His party has been criticized for its silence about the presence of armed ‘blackshirts’ among the redshirts and its failure to condemn the arson attacks attributed to some protesters in the aftermath. Similarly, Abhisit was criticized for his silence during the yellowshirt airport occupation, which was not disbanded by the military, and for appointing and retaining yellowhsirt protest leader Kasit Piromya as his foreign minister.

Abhisit has promised an impartial and independent investigation into the protest and crackdown, and has pledged to adhere to its findings. However, the opposition says that “the team appointed by the government is not neutral,” according to Pithaya.

Last week, a parliamentary debate about the protest and army clampdown degenerated into a shouting match, highlighting the distrust between the government and Peau Thai, and the disparity between their views not only on what happened during the protest but on what needs to happen next.

The government has reiterated its view that the majority of the protesters are peaceful, but says that former prime minister Thaksin has pushed an uncompromising stance and derailed the early reconciliation plan. Mere days after the 19 May meltdown, the Thai courts approved an arrest warrant for Thaksin on terrorism charges, which redshirts may view as a provocation. Thaksin now lives abroad after fleeing a corruption suit in 2008.

Security reform

Thailand’s array of security forces will need reform if reconciliation is to be achieved, according to Des Ball of the Australian National University. Two high-profile army figures were shot during the protests, hits that Ball believes to at least partly be because of intra-security force rivalries.

Firstly, Colonel Romkhlao, a former royal bodyguard, was assassinated on 10 April when the 2nd Infantry Division tried to clear the protesters from their initial main rally site in downtown Bangkok. Twenty-five people, mostly protesters, died that night. On 13 May, renegade Major-General Seh Daeng, a prominent redshirt backer, was hit by what is thought to be an army sniper’s bullet and later died. Ball believes the hit on Seh Daeng could have been a revenge attack for the 10 April killing of Romkhlao, and an attempt to erase the military leader on the redshirt side.

Professor Ball speculates that a disbanded special forces unit provided the disgruntled manpower for the blackshirts, deemed “terrorists” by the government, and noted that the troops deployed to Bangkok during the protests were not the same north-eastern based units sent to the capital by the previous government, during the 2008 yellowshirt protest.

Analysts speaking at a forum on civil-military relations in Southeast Asia late in 2009 noted that the Thai Army maintained a behind-the-scenes powerbroker role, after its messy attempt at direct rule following the 2006 coup. Redshirts feel aggrieved that the army ousted Thaksin in 2006, and believe that factions within the army conspired to bring the current government to power in 2008.

However, fissures in the security forces illustrate that the relationship between their various elements “is shifting and complex and there is no single policy view within or across these organisations,” as Ball put it, speaking on a podcast on the New Mandala website.

Redshirts mainly come from Thailand’s north and north-east, historically one of the less well-off regions in the country. While in power, Thaksin introduced a number of social and economic measures designed to improve living standards in the vote-rich region, measures dismissed as populism by Thaksin opponents.

The government says it will increase social spending in the next budget as part of the reconciliation plan, even as many on the government side do not see socio-economic issues as a key driver of the redshirt protest.

Speaking at Thailand’s Foreign Correspondent Club last week, Deputy Chair of the Democrat Party Deputy Chair Kraisak Choonhavan said that most of the rally speeches were about political issues, such as the need for early elections, and noted that the protests began a mere two weeks after courts seized $1.4billion of Thaksin’s money on conflict of interest charges while he was prime minister.