The former head of BenarNews’ Pacific bureau says a United States court ruling this week ordering the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to release congressionally approved funding to Radio Free Asia and its subsidiaries “makes us very happy”.

However, Stefan Armbruster, who has played a key role in expanding the news agency’s presence in the region, acknowledged, “there’s also more to do”.

On March 14, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to defund USAGM outlets Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, including placing more than 1300 Voice of America employees on leave.

• READ MORE: Victory for US press freedom and workers — court grants injunction in VOA media case
• Victory for US press freedom and workers – court grants injunction in VOA media case

“This order continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary,” the executive order states.

Armbruster told RNZ Pacific Waves that the ruling found the Trump administration failed to provide evidence to support their actions.

“[Judge Royce Lamberth] is basically saying that the actions of the Trump administration [are] likely to have been illegal and unconstitutional in taking away the money from these organisations,” he said.

Order to restore funding
“The judgments are saying that the US administration should return funding to its overseas broadcasters, which include Voice of America [and] Radio Free Asia.”

He said that in America, they can lay people off without a loss, and they can still remain employees. But these conditions did not apply for overseas employees.

“Basically, all the overseas staff have been staff let go, except a very small number in the US who are on visas, dependent on their employment, and they have spoken out about this publicly.

“They have got 60 days to find a job, a new sponsor for them, or they could face deportation to places like China, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

“So for the former employees, at the moment, we are just waiting to see how this all plays out.”

Armbruster said there were hints that a Trump administration could take such action during the election campaign, when the Trump team had flagged issues about the media.

Speed ‘totally unexpected’
However, he added the speed at which this has happened “was totally unexpected”.

“And the judge ruled on that. He said that it is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary, capricious action, basically, random and unexplained.

“In short, the defendants had no method or approach towards shutting down USAGM that this Court could discern.”

Armbruster said the US Congress funds the USAGM, and the agency has a responsibility to disburse that funding to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia.

The judge ruled that the President does not have the authority to withhold that funding, he said.

“We were funded through till September to the end of the financial year in the US.

“In terms of how quickly [the executive order] came, it was a big surprise to all of us. Not totally unexpected that this would be happening, but not this way, not this hard.”

BenarNews ‘gave a voice’
The BenarNews Pacific bureau was initially set up two-and-a-half years ago but evolved into a fully-fledged bureau only 12 months ago. It had three fulltime staff based in Australia and about 15 stringers and commentators across the region.

“We built up this fantastic network of people, and the response has been fantastic, just like Radio New Zealand [Pacific],” Armbruster said.

“We were doing a really good thing and having some really amazing stories on our pages, and big successes. It gave a voice to a whole lot of Pacific journalists and commentators to tell stories from perspectives that were not being presented in other forums.

“It is hard to say if we will come back because there has been a lot of court orders issued recently under this current US administration, and they sometimes are not complied with, or are very slowly complied with, which is why we are still in the process.”

However, Armbruster remains hopeful there will be “some interesting news” next week.

“The judgment also has a little bit of a kicker in the tail, because it is not just an order to do [restore funding].

“It is an order to turn up on the first day of each month, and to appraise the court of what action is [the USAGM] taking to disburse the funds.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The former head of BenarNews’ Pacific bureau says a United States court ruling this week ordering the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to release congressionally approved funding to Radio Free Asia and its subsidiaries “makes us very happy”.

However, Stefan Armbruster, who has played a key role in expanding the news agency’s presence in the region, acknowledged, “there’s also more to do”.

On March 14, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to defund USAGM outlets Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, including placing more than 1300 Voice of America employees on leave.

• READ MORE: Victory for US press freedom and workers — court grants injunction in VOA media case
• Victory for US press freedom and workers – court grants injunction in VOA media case

“This order continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary,” the executive order states.

Armbruster told RNZ Pacific Waves that the ruling found the Trump administration failed to provide evidence to support their actions.

“[Judge Royce Lamberth] is basically saying that the actions of the Trump administration [are] likely to have been illegal and unconstitutional in taking away the money from these organisations,” he said.

Order to restore funding
“The judgments are saying that the US administration should return funding to its overseas broadcasters, which include Voice of America [and] Radio Free Asia.”

He said that in America, they can lay people off without a loss, and they can still remain employees. But these conditions did not apply for overseas employees.

“Basically, all the overseas staff have been staff let go, except a very small number in the US who are on visas, dependent on their employment, and they have spoken out about this publicly.

“They have got 60 days to find a job, a new sponsor for them, or they could face deportation to places like China, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

“So for the former employees, at the moment, we are just waiting to see how this all plays out.”

Armbruster said there were hints that a Trump administration could take such action during the election campaign, when the Trump team had flagged issues about the media.

Speed ‘totally unexpected’
However, he added the speed at which this has happened “was totally unexpected”.

“And the judge ruled on that. He said that it is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary, capricious action, basically, random and unexplained.

“In short, the defendants had no method or approach towards shutting down USAGM that this Court could discern.”

Armbruster said the US Congress funds the USAGM, and the agency has a responsibility to disburse that funding to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia.

The judge ruled that the President does not have the authority to withhold that funding, he said.

“We were funded through till September to the end of the financial year in the US.

“In terms of how quickly [the executive order] came, it was a big surprise to all of us. Not totally unexpected that this would be happening, but not this way, not this hard.”

BenarNews ‘gave a voice’
The BenarNews Pacific bureau was initially set up two-and-a-half years ago but evolved into a fully-fledged bureau only 12 months ago. It had three fulltime staff based in Australia and about 15 stringers and commentators across the region.

“We built up this fantastic network of people, and the response has been fantastic, just like Radio New Zealand [Pacific],” Armbruster said.

“We were doing a really good thing and having some really amazing stories on our pages, and big successes. It gave a voice to a whole lot of Pacific journalists and commentators to tell stories from perspectives that were not being presented in other forums.

“It is hard to say if we will come back because there has been a lot of court orders issued recently under this current US administration, and they sometimes are not complied with, or are very slowly complied with, which is why we are still in the process.”

However, Armbruster remains hopeful there will be “some interesting news” next week.

“The judgment also has a little bit of a kicker in the tail, because it is not just an order to do [restore funding].

“It is an order to turn up on the first day of each month, and to appraise the court of what action is [the USAGM] taking to disburse the funds.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

BANGKOK - A Vietnamese Buddhist monk on a barefoot pilgrimage from his homeland to India has given up on his attempt to walk across Myanmar and is heading to Malaysia for the next leg of his journey, a fellow monk said.

Thich Minh Tue and a group of companions are on a 2,700-kilometer (1,600 mile) trip to the place where Buddhism began 2,500 years ago but they have run into some very modern problems including visa regulations and civil war in Myanmar.

Minh Tue -- “Thich” signifies that he’s a monk – became an internet celebrity in Vietnam last year as he walked across the country, carrying a rice cooker pot to collect alms.

Late last year, he left Vietnam to embark on a journey by foot to India, the birthplace of Buddhism. After crossing Laos, he entered Thailand about two months ago and has been walking about 20 kilometers (12 miles) a day, often on scorching asphalt, through the countryside.

But with Thai visas running out and worries about the safety of trying to cross war-torn Myanmar, Minh Tue and his entourage debated what to do while in northern Thailand this week, said one of the monks in his party, Phuc Giac, who has emerged as a spokesman for the pilgrims.

With crossing into Myanmar not possible, the party had then considered crossing northern Thailand’s border with Laos, with the idea of then returning to Thailand with new Thai visas. But they soon ruled that out too.

“We were afraid that if we went to Laos, we would not be able to re-enter Thailand. Therefore everyone agreed,” Phuc Giac said, referring to a new plan, to head all the way south through Thailand to Malaysia.

The party set off in a bus on Wednesday bound for Thailand’s southern border.

RELATED STORIES

EXPLAINED: Why is an internet-famous Vietnamese monk on a trek to India?

Bodyguard for Vietnamese monk controls his every move

Unofficial monk who became internet sensation in Vietnam ends pilgrimage

State media report

From Malaysia they can try and find a boat to India or Sri Lanka, although there are no ferry services from Malaysia or Singapore across the Bay of Bengal. Or they can fly.

Minh Tue’s party includes five monks practicing the 13 ascetic Buddhist disciplines who have been accompanying him since the beginning of the pilgrimage, and various supporters, some of them chronicling the journey on social media.

Minh Tue and his simple lifestyle struck a chord in Vietnam last year where social media posts of his barefoot walks went viral and well-wishers came out in droves.

Vietnam’s state-sanctioned Buddhist sangha has not officially recognized him as a monk, but he has nonetheless garnered widespread admiration and support.

At one point, Vietnamese authorities, leery of his popularity, announced he had “voluntarily retired.”

Vietnamese state media had not broadcast any news about Minh Tue’s pilgrimage -- until Feb. 22, when Hanoi Television posted a report on its YouTube channel titled “YouTubers Cause Chaos to Monk Thich Minh Tue’s on-foot Pilgrimage.”

The report focused on the YouTubers following the monk group, accusing them of spreading “sensational” and “divisive” information for “personal gain.”

It also highlighted what it described as “internal conflicts” within the group, calling it a “clash of group interests.”

Minh Tue’s group “disturbed the security and public order” in areas they passed through and the local police had to “take them to their headquarters for resolution,” according to the report.

When RFA contacted YouTubers accompanying the monk in Thailand about Hanoi Television’s claims, one YouTuber named Tran Nguyen said that he and others are adhering to Thai law, and not disturbing public order.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese and Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA.

“Corruption and human trafficking are crimes in Malaysia; reporting on these offences is not,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Malaysian authorities must ensure B. Nantha Kumar can continue to report safely and that the law is not misused to curtail investigative reporting or to intimidate the media. Journalists must be free to uncover wrongdoing.”

Nantha who has worked for the leading independent news site Malaysiakini since 2018, was detained by anti-corruption authorities on February 28 on allegations that he took a bribe from an agent who dealt with migrant workers.

Nantha reports regularly on migrant trafficking in Malaysia, where the mistreatment of migrant workers has been widely criticized. His latest investigation, which alleged that a retired senior official and a foreign national run a criminal operation out of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, was published on February 22.

Malaysiakini managing editor Ng Ling Fong told CPJ that the outlet stood by Nantha’s reporting, and that he was due to be released on bail on March 4 after a four-day remand. Malaysiakini said in a statement that it would not condone any staff wrongdoing, if proven.

Nantha was among three Malaysiakini journalists questioned by police last year over their source for a report about a police leadership reshuffle.

Malaysiakini has faced intimidation and lawsuits since it was founded in 1999. In November, authorities ordered the outlet to remove its reports about an alleged corruption scandal. In January, police seized its executive editor’s laptop after reporting an ex-minister’s remarks.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment via email.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Even more impressive, however, is the infrastructure China has built, including 26,000 miles of high speed rail, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, 100,000 miles of expressway, the world’s first commercial magnetic levitation train, the world’s largest urban metro network, seven of the world’s 10 busiest ports, and solar and wind power generation accounting for over 35% of global renewable energy capacity. Topping the list is the Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure development program involving 140 countries, through which China has invested in ports, railways, highways and energy projects worldwide.

All that takes money. Where did it come from? Numerous funding sources are named in mainstream references, but the one explored here is a rarely mentioned form of quantitative easing — the central bank just “prints the money.” (That’s the term often used, though printing presses aren’t necessarily involved.)

From 1996 to 2024, the Chinese national money supply increased by a factor of more than 53 or 5300% — from 5.84 billion to 314 billion Chinese yuan (CNY) [see charts below]. How did that happen? Exporters brought the foreign currencies (largely U.S. dollars) they received for their goods to their local banks and traded them for the CNY needed to pay their workers and suppliers. The central bank —the Public Bank of China or PBOC — printed CNY and traded them for the foreign currencies, then kept the foreign currencies as reserves, effectively doubling the national export revenue.

Investopedia confirms that policy, stating:

One major task of the Chinese central bank, the PBOC, is to absorb the large inflows of foreign capital from China’s trade surplus. The PBOC purchases foreign currency from exporters and issues that currency in local yuan. The PBOC is free to publish any amount of local currency and have it exchanged for forex. … The PBOC can print yuan as needed …. [Emphasis added.]

Interestingly, that huge 5300% explosion in local CNY did not trigger runaway inflation. In fact China’s consumer inflation rate, which was as high as 24% in 1994, leveled out after that and averaged 2.5% per year from 1996 to 2023.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/inflation-rate-cpi?form=MG0AV3

How was that achieved? As in the U.S., the central bank engages in “open market operations” (selling federal securities into the open market, withdrawing excess cash). It also imposes price controls on certain essential commodities. According to a report by Nasdaq, China has implemented price controls on iron ore, copper, corn, grain, meat, eggs and vegetables as part of its 14th five-year plan (2021-2025), to ensure food security for the population. Particularly important in maintaining price stability, however, is that the money has gone into manufacturing, production and infrastructure. GDP (supply) has gone up with demand (money), keeping prices stable. [See charts below.]

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2Gross Domestic Product for China (MKTGDPCNA646NWDB) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

Gross Domestic Product for China (MKTGDPCNA646NWDB) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

The U.S., too, has serious funding problems today, and we have engaged in quantitative easing (QE) before. Could our central bank also issue the dollars we need without triggering the dreaded scourge of hyperinflation? This article will argue that we can. But first some Chinese economic history.

From Rags to Riches in Four Decades

China’s rise from poverty began in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping introduced market-oriented reforms. Farmers were allowed to sell their surplus produce in the market, doors were opened to foreign investors and private businesses and foreign companies were encouraged to grow. By the 1990s, China had become a major exporter of low-cost manufactured goods. Key factors included cheap labor, infrastructure development and World Trade Organization membership in 2001.

Chinese labor is cheaper than in the U.S. largely because the government funds or subsidizes social needs, reducing the operational costs of Chinese companies and improving workforce productivity. The government invests heavily in public transportation infrastructure, including metros, buses and high-speed rail, making them affordable for workers and reducing the costs of getting manufacturers’ products to market.

The government funds education and vocational training programs, ensuring a steady supply of skilled workers, with government-funded technical schools and universities producing millions of graduates annually. Affordable housing programs are provided for workers, particularly in urban areas.

China’s public health care system, while not free, is heavily subsidized by the government. And a public pension system reduces the need for companies to offer private retirement plans. The Chinese government also provides direct subsidies and incentives to key industries, such as technology, renewable energy and manufacturing.

After it joined the WTO, China’s exports grew rapidly, generating large trade surpluses and an influx of foreign currency, allowing the country to accumulate massive foreign exchange reserves. In 2010, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest exporter. In the following decade, it shifted its focus to high-tech industries, and in 2013 the Belt and Road Initiative was launched. The government directed funds through state-owned banks and enterprises, with an emphasis on infrastructure and industrial development.

Funding Exponential Growth

In the early stages of reform, foreign investment was a key source of capital. Export earnings then generated significant foreign exchange reserves. China’s high savings rate provided a pool of liquidity for investment, and domestic consumption grew. Decentralizing the banking system was also key. According to a lecture by U.K. Prof. Richard Werner:

Deng Xiaoping started with one mono bank. He realized quickly, scrap that; we’re going to have a lot of banks. He created small banks, community banks, savings banks, credit unions, regional banks, provincial banks. Now China has 4,500 banks. That’s the secret to success. That’s what we have to aim for. Then we can have prosperity for the whole world. Developing countries don’t need foreign money. They just need community banks supporting [local business] to have the money to get the latest technology.

China managed to avoid the worst impacts of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It did not devalue its currency; it maintained strict control over capital flows and the PBOC acted as a lender of last resort, providing liquidity to state-controlled banks when needed.

In the 1990s, however, its four major state banks did suffer massive losses, with non-performing loans totaling more than 20% of their assets. Technically, the banks were bankrupt, but the government did not let them go bust. The non-performing loans were moved on to the balance sheets of four major asset management companies (“bad banks”), and the PBOC injected new capital into the “good banks.”

In a January 2024 article titled “The Chinese Economy Is Due a Round of Quantitative Easing,” Prof. Li Wei, Director of the China Economy and Sustainable Development Center, wrote of this policy, “The central bank directly intervened in the economy by creating money. Seen this way, unconventional financing is nothing less than Chinese-style quantitative easing.”

In an August 2024 article titled “China’s 100-billion-yuan Question: Does Rare Government Bond Purchase Alter Policy Course?,” Sylvia Ma wrote of China’s forays into QE:

Purchasing government bonds in the secondary market is allowed under Chinese law, but the central bank is forbidden to subscribe to bonds directly issued by the finance ministry. [Note that this is also true of the U.S. Fed.] Such purchases from traders were tried on a small scale 20 years ago.

However, the monetary authority resorted more to printing money equivalent to soaring foreign exchange reserves from 2001, as the country saw a robust increase in trade surplus following its accession to the World Trade Organization. [Emphasis added.]

This is the covert policy of printing CNY and trading this national currency for the foreign currencies (mostly U.S. dollars) received from exporters.

What does the PBOC do with the dollars? It holds a significant portion as foreign exchange reserves, to stabilize the CNY and manage currency fluctuations; it invests in U.S. Treasury bonds and other dollar-denominated assets to earn a return; and it uses U.S. dollars to facilitate international trade deals, many of which are conducted in dollars.

The PBOC also periodically injects capital into the three “policy banks” through which the federal government implements its five-year plans. These are China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Agricultural Development Bank of China, which provide loans and financing for domestic infrastructure and services as well as for the Belt and Road Initiative. A January 2024 Bloomberg article titled “China Injects $50 Billion Into Policy Banks in Financing Push” notes that the policy banks “are driven by government priorities more than profits,” and that some economists have called the PBOC funding injections “helicopter money” or “Chinese-style quantitative easing.”

Prof. Li argues that with the current insolvency of major real estate developers and the rise in local government debt, China should engage in this overt form of QE today. Other commentators agree, and the government appears to be moving in that direction. Prof. Li writes:

As long as it does not trigger inflation, quantitative easing can quickly and without limit generate sufficient liquidity to resolve debt issues and pump confidence into the market.…

Quantitative easing should be the core of China’s macroeconomic policy, with more than 80% of funds coming from QE…

As the central bank is the only institution in China with the power to create money, it has the ability to create a stable environment for economic growth. [Emphasis added.]

Eighty-percent funding just from money-printing sounds pretty radical, but China’s macroeconomic policy is determined by five-year plans designed to serve the public and the economy, and the policy banks funding the plans are publicly-owned. That means profits are returned to the public purse, avoiding the sort of private financialization and speculative exploitation resulting when the U.S. Fed engaged in QE to bail out the banks after the 2007-08 banking crisis.

The U.S. Too Could Use Another Round of QE — and Some Public Policy Banks

There is no law against governments or their central banks just printing the national currency without borrowing it first. The U.S. Federal Reserve has done it, Abraham Lincoln’s Treasury did it, and it is probably the only way out of our current federal debt crisis. As Prof. Li observes, we can do it “without limit” so long as it does not trigger inflation.

Financial commentator Alex Krainer observes that the total U.S. debt, public and private, comes to more than $101 trillion (citing the St. Louis Fed’s graph titled “All Sectors; Debt Securities and Loans”). But the monetary base — the reserves available to pay that debt — is only $5.6 trillion. That means the debt is 18 times the monetary base. The U.S. economy holds far fewer dollars than we need for economic stability.

The dollar shortfall can be filled debt- and interest-free by the U.S. Treasury, just by printing dollars as Lincoln’s Treasury did (or by issuing them digitally). It can also be done by the Fed, which “monetizes” federal securities by buying them with reserves it issues on its books, then returns the interest to the Treasury and after deducting its costs. If the newly-issued dollars are used for productive purposes, supply will go up with demand, and prices should remain stable.

Note that even social services, which don’t directly produce revenue, can be considered “productive” in that they support the “human capital” necessary for production. Workers need to be healthy and well educated in order to build competitively and well, and the government needs to supplement the social costs borne by companies if they are to compete with China’s subsidized businesses.

Parameters would obviously need to be imposed to circumscribe Congress’s ability to spend “without limit,” backed by a compliant Treasury or Fed. An immediate need is for full transparency in budgeted expenditures. The Pentagon, for example, spends nearly $1 trillion of our taxpayer money annually and has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.

We Sorely Need an Infrastructure Bank

The U.S. is one of the few developed countries without an infrastructure bank. Ironically, it was Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury secretary, who developed the model. Winning freedom from Great Britain left the young country with what appeared to be an unpayable debt. Hamilton traded the debt and a percentage of gold for non-voting shares in the First U.S. Bank, paying a 6% dividend. This capital was then leveraged many times over into credit to be used specifically for infrastructure and development. Based on the same model, the Second U.S. Bank funded the vibrant economic activity of the first decades of the United States.

In the 1930s, Roosevelt’s government pulled the country out of the Great Depression by repurposing a federal agency called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) into a lending machine for development on the Hamiltonian model. Formed under the Hoover administration, the RFC was not actually an infrastructure bank but it acted like one. Like China Development Bank, it obtained its liquidity by issuing bonds.

The primary purchaser of RFC bonds was the federal government, driving up the federal debt; but the debt to GDP ratio evened out over the next four decades, due to the dramatic increase in productivity generated by the RFC’s funding of the New Deal and World War II. That was also true of the federal debt after the American Revolution and the Civil War.

One chart that tells the story of US debt from 1790 to 2011

A pending bill for an infrastructure bank on the Hamiltonian model is HR 4052, The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2023, which ended 2024 with 48 sponsors and was endorsed by dozens of legislatures, local councils, and organizations. Like the First and Second U.S. Banks, it is intended to be a depository bank capitalized with existing federal securities held by the private sector, for which the bank will pay an additional 2% over the interest paid by the government. The bank will then leverage this capital into roughly 10 times its value in loans, as all depository banks are entitled to do. The bill proposes to fund $5 trillion in infrastructure capitalized over a 10-year period with $500 billion in federal securities exchanged for preferred (non-voting) stock in the bank. Like the RFC, the bank will be a source of off-budget financing, adding no new costs to the federal budget. (For more information, see https://www.nibcoalition.com/.)

Growing Our Way Out of Debt

Rather than trying to kneecap our competitors with sanctions and tariffs, we can grow our way to prosperity by turning on the engines of production. Far more can be achieved through cooperation than through economic warfare. DeepSeek set the tone with its free, open source model. Rather than a heavily guarded secret, its source code is freely available to be shared and built upon by entrepreneurs around the world.

We can pull off our own economic miracle, funded with newly issued dollars backed by the full faith and credit of the government and the people. Contrary to popular belief, “full faith and credit” is valuable collateral, something even Bitcoin and gold do not have. It means the currency will be accepted everywhere – not just at the bank or the coin dealer’s but at the grocer’s and the gas station. If the government directs newly created dollars into new goods and services, supply will grow along with demand and the currency should retain its value. The government can print, pay for workers and materials, and produce its way into an economic renaissance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ellen Brown.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Kuala Lumpur may well succeed but for one sticking point – questions about its neutrality amid big-power rivalry.

“Inclusivity and Sustainability,” Malaysia’s theme for its year-long chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, points to a focus on the region’s priorities, said Elina Noor, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“There are certainly expectations for Malaysia’s ASEAN chairmanship, but it will be up to Malaysia to live up to those expectations in pushing through with its agenda together with all the other [nine] member-states,” she told BenarNews.

Additionally, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has indicated he “intends for ASEAN to reclaim its independent agency, to diversify its strategic engagement, and to not be pulled in any one direction among major powers,” she said.

Anwar’s perceived tilt towards China and Russia versus the United States notwithstanding, he has stressed ASEAN collaboration in a polarized world.

“As global tensions intensify – from strategic competition to climate disruption – ASEAN’s collaborative spirit has never been more crucial,” the PM wrote in a column published Dec. 16 on Project Syndicate, a website that publishes global commentary.

“The choice is stark: ASEAN must move forward in unity or face the divisive forces gathering momentum across Asia and beyond,” he said.

(Leah Millis/Reuters)

As ASEAN chair, Anwar will also define Malaysia’s own role as a middle power, analysts said.

Explanations vary on what constitutes a middle power, but it broadly refers to states that are not superpowers yet have considerable influence on international relations.

Anwar’s diplomatic engagements, including visits to South America for the Asia Pacific economic forum APEC and the G20 summit reflect Malaysia’s efforts to elevate its own global standing and its plans for ASEAN in 2025, said Yanitha Meena Louis, an analyst at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

He has been consistently focussing “on ASEAN and ASEAN mechanisms and the aim to make it more fit for mobilizing efforts within the Global South,” Yanitha told BenarNews.

“It will be a defining year for ASEAN in the sense that we will be able to see where ASEAN stands and hopes to see itself in the Global South, a strategic configuration of growing consequence,” Yanitha said.

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Anwar has reiterated that Malaysia has not shifted alliances eastward and remains non-aligned, but some have questioned his several trips to Beijing since becoming PM and his invitation to Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the 2025 ASEAN Summit.

Hazree Mohd Turee, managing director of advisory firm Bower Group Asia, also noted that Malaysia and two other ASEAN member-states, Indonesia and Thailand, partnering with the China- and Russia-led BRICS grouping may give the impression the Southeast Asian bloc is taking sides.

BRICS is an economic grouping that includes Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa.

“Even though Anwar talks about neutrality, the perception is otherwise,” Hazree told RFA affiliate BenarNews.

“Singapore and the Philippines [ASEAN members], for example, have strong ties with the U.S. … and may find it uncomfortable,” Hazee added.

(Rick Wilking/Reuters)

It is imperative for Anwar to ensure that ASEAN is not only neutral, but seen as being so, said Southeast Asia expert Matthijs van den Broek.

For example, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose massive tariffs on nations he believes are trying to weaken the U.S. dollar. His comments came after speculation that BRICS planned its own currency.

“Both China and the U.S. are among ASEAN’s top foreign trading and investment partners [respectively. … Malaysia as chair will have to step up its diplomatic efforts to not alienate either.”

South China Sea and Myanmar

Meanwhile, Malaysia’s approach to the South China Sea dispute, where several ASEAN countries have overlapping claims, will test its diplomatic finesse, analysts noted.

Unlike the Philippines, Malaysia has not adopted a hardline stance against China, and this could help or hinder its South China Sea work, they added.

“Malaysia could provide the opportunities and platforms for more engagement between ASEAN members and China to resolve the Code of Conduct negotiations,” Abdul Rahman Yaacob of the Australian think-tank, the Lowy Institute, told BenarNews.

“[But] China may not be willing to accept Malaysia as a mediator as Beijing prefers to engage Manila directly,” he said, adding that similarly, Philippines and Vietnam may look towards the United States for help in disputes over the contested waterway.

(Adrian Portugal/Reuters)

In relation to another regional conflict, the civil war in ASEAN member-state Myanmar, some observers have questioned Anwar’s recently appointing Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is perceived as being pro-military, an ASEAN informal adviser.

RELATED STORIES

Ineffectual Laos shows ASEAN’s limits on Myanmar conflict

Malaysia’s Anwar calls for a united ASEAN amid rising ‘global tensions’

ASEAN faces tests in tackling Myanmar war, South China Sea tensions

Anwar has also suggested creating an advisory group of former ASEAN leaders to address the Myanmar situation.

Since the February 2021 military coup, nearly 6,000 people have been killed, and over 21,000 remain in detention, many held incommunicado, according to U.N. experts.

For Alice Ba, University of Delaware political science professor, Thaksin’s appointment is a possible signal that Malaysia is looking to break the deadlock on Myanmar.

“There remain significant divisions within ASEAN on how to engage with the Tatmadaw [Myanmar’s junta], but these moves suggest that the desire to move beyond the current impasse might outweigh those concerns,” she told BenarNews.

However, Kamarulnizam Abdullah, a Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia professor, said the Thaksin appointment was not a good move.

“His comments on Thaksin’s appointment have been met with cynicism both regionally and domestically,” Kamarulnizam told BenarNews.

“⁠⁠Anwar needs to play his cards right.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Iman Muttaqin Yusof for BenarNews.

The two Southeast Asian countries are among six parties that have overlapping territorial claims in the sea, alongside China, Brunei, the Philippines as well as Taiwan.

Malaysia and Vietnam pledged to “continue working closely together to maintain peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and to promote peaceful settlement of disputes,” To Lam, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, said during a joint press briefing with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, on Thursday.

The ties between the two countries will be elevated to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that will help the two sides boost their cooperation in various areas, such as defense and security, according to Lam.

Malaysia is the first, and only, ASEAN country to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with Vietnam. The eight other comprehensive strategic partners of Vietnam are China, Russia, India, South Korea, the United States, Japan, Australia and France. Singapore and Vietnam are also expected to upgrade their partnership to the highest level early next year, when Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong makes a planned visit to Hanoi.

Last month, Malaysia filed a protest over Vietnam’s island-building program in the disputed waters, the Reuters news agency reported. The report said Malaysia had complained about Vietnam’s development of an airstrip on Barque Canada reef, a feature in the Spratly Islands chain that Kuala Lumpur also claims.

The “comprehensive strategic partnership” is the highest level in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy of official engagements with other nations. Other countries that have similar partnerships with Vietnam include the United States, China, Russia, and Japan.

“We will continue to work closely to expand and deepen our friendship and political trust between the two countries based on respect for each other’s national law and respect for its political system, sovereignty and territorial integrity in line with law and regulation based on the principle of non-interference,” Lam said.

Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi also “agreed to explore the possibility of having joint efforts in the fishing industry so that we can really work on the basis of trust and friendship,” Anwar said in his speech.

Over the years, there have been frictions between the two countries tied to fishing. For example, Malaysian fishermen have accused their Vietnamese counterparts of encroaching on catches of squid through illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Malaysian waters.

RELATED STORIES

Malaysia objects to Vietnam’s South China Sea island building: media

Malaysia protests new Philippine maritime zones laws for South China Sea

Vietnam files new claim on boundary in South China Sea

Both Malaysia and Vietnam are member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Malaysia is Vietnam’s second-biggest trade partner and the third-largest foreign investor in ASEAN, according to Hanoi.

“Vietnam will support Malaysia in its ASEAN chairmanship next year and will continue working closely with Malaysia and other ASEAN member states to realize the ASEAN Blueprint of 2025,” Lam said.

The two leaders also witnessed the signing of memorandums to enhance cooperation in various areas such as trade promotion and renewable energy.

“Vietnam has been very supportive of our business ventures in their country, which now exceed U.S. $13 billion with 700 projects,” Anwar said.

It was Lam’s first official visit to Malaysia since becoming Vietnam’s general secretary in August.

Lam’s three-day trip was also the first time a Communist Party of Vietnam chief had visited Kuala Lumpur since 1994, a year before Hanoi formally joined ASEAN.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by BenarNews staff.

In October, Malaysia lodged a complaint against Vietnam, Reuters news agency reported last week.

One security analyst said that despite regional tension, there is little risk of confrontation between Malaysia and the Philippines, or Vietnam, while a regional observer said Manila and Hanoi were the transgressors in both cases.

Malaysian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohamad Alamin told his country’s parliament on Thursday that the new Philippine laws encroach on Malaysia’s oil-rich state of Sabah, which borders the South China Sea.

“We’ve finalized and reviewed key issues in our protest note, which we’ll send today [Thursday] to affirm our commitment to protecting Sabah’s sovereignty and rights,” Alamin said, referring to the state that is claimed by both Malaysia and the Philippines.

Manila on Nov. 8 enacted the Philippine Maritime Zones Act and Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act, which Alamin said extend into Malaysia’s boundaries mapped out in 1979, which Kuala Lumpur regards as internationally recognized.

The Philippines had said the laws were intended to declare Manila’s maritime claims in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and restrict foreign ships and aircraft to designated lanes.

Philippine officials did not immediately respond to Alamin’s comments.

Located off the southwestern region of the Philippines, Sabah has long been a thorny issue between the neighboring countries.

In September 2020, the two countries took their dispute over who owns Sabah to the United Nations. The dispute remains unresolved.

Separately, in June 2023, a Paris court upheld Malaysia’s challenge to a U.S. $15 billion arbitration award to purported heirs of an erstwhile ruler of the Sultanate of Sulu. Part of the former sultanate is in Sabah.

An arbitration court in Paris had in February 2022 ordered Malaysia to pay that amount to settle a colonial-era land deal.

The former Sultanate of Sulu was situated in a small archipelago in the far southern Philippines.

RELATED STORIES

Vietnam expands strategic capabilities in South China Sea

Vietnam builds airstrip on reclaimed island in South China Sea

East Asia fails to adopt South China Sea statement amid finger pointing

Philippines enacts laws asserting maritime claims; annoyed Beijing summons Manila’s envoy

An analyst at the non-profit Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies said Malaysia has had to deal with the Philippines’ expansion efforts in the South China Sea.

“From the point of view of Malaysia, the Philippines is the troublemaker-in-chief,” Benjamin Blandin, a network coordinator at the council, told BenarNews.

He said the Philippines destroyed Malaysian sovereignty markers in the Spratlys, a South China Sea island chain, in the 1970s and 1980s and later occupied Commodore Reef within the Malaysian exclusive economic zone.

A country’s EEZs extends up to 200 nautical miles from its coastline.

“So based on this bilateral ‘history,’ Malaysia can only interpret negatively any further move of the Philippines, at least as long as the Sabah case is not solved,” Blandin said.

He added that Vietnam had also destroyed markers at two maritime features in Malaysia’s EEZ before occupying them.

Another analyst, Shahriman Lockman at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia, told BenarNews he blamed Vietnam’s actions.

“Recent reports of Malaysia’s protest note to Vietnam, if accurate, reflect a growing impatience with Vietnam’s recalcitrance in the South China Sea and reluctance to engage in constructive discussions – behavior that deserves as much attention as China’s,” Lockman, a senior analyst at the institute told RFA affiliate BenarNews.

“Even so, I don’t anticipate any major escalation as long as Vietnam tries to restrain its fishermen who have a tendency to intrude into foreign EEZs, not only in Southeast Asia but across the Asia Pacific.”

Similarly, “unless Manila actively pursues its legal claims, I don’t see a high risk of confrontation with Malaysia,” Lockman said.

“This [complaint] is just a routine aspect of diplomatic relations – a typical day at the office for our diplomats. ...As countries build the legal foundations for their territorial and jurisdictional claims, it’s inevitable that overlaps are going to be reiterated.”

Overlapping claims

Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Brunei and Indonesia, as well as Taiwan, hold overlapping claims in the South China Sea and its islands and reefs.

Beijing claims nearly all of the sea as its own based on so-called historic rights, which were invalidated in a 2016 arbitration ruling by the international court in The Hague,

Since the Philippines enacted its two new laws, Beijing and Manila have launched protests against each other over contested South China Sea claims.

Following Beijing’s protest, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Thursday said his government would maintain its stance on its South China Sea territories, the state-run Philippine News Agency reported.

“[T]hey will continue to protect what they define as their sovereign territory,” he told journalists.

“Of course, we do not agree with their definition of sovereign territory.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Iman Muttaqin Yusof for BenarNews.

Late last month, Radio Free Asia reported on Vietnam’s development of an airstrip on Barque Canada reef, an artificial island within the Spratly archipelago that Malaysia also claims. The reef’s landfill area is estimated to have expanded to nearly 2.5 square kilometers (617.7 acres) as of October 2024, more than doubling in a year.

Two unidentified officials told Reuters that the Malaysian government sent a letter of complaint to Vietnam’s foreign ministry in early October, before RFA’s report, “but has so far received no reply.”

Malaysia and Vietnam are among the six parties that hold overlapping claims in the South China Sea and to its numerous islands and reefs, alongside China, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan.

The Philippines has said it was “monitoring” Vietnam’s island-building activities but has not officially protested.

The recently leaked letter of complaint, if true, could be a rare point of tension as until now Malaysia has only complained about Vietnamese fishermen’s “illegal activities” in Malaysian waters.

Kuala Lumpur claims at least 12 features in the Spratlys, including Vietnam-controlled Amboyna Cay and Barque Canada reef, and Philippines-controlled Commodore and Rizal reefs. Malaysia has a physical presence on five features - Swallow, Ardasier, Erica, Mariveles and Investigator reefs – which are also claimed by some other parties.

Due to the complexity of those overlapping claims, regional countries generally stay quiet about their neighbors’ island building and instead focus their attention on China, which has reclaimed the most land in the South China Sea and completed the militarization of three large artificial islands.

Anwar visits China

Malaysia has repeatedly rejected China’s claims in the South China Sea, most recently in 2023 over the latest edition of the Beijing-issued standard map of China, which encompasses areas lying off the coast of Malaysian Borneo.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has reiterated on many occasions that Malaysia would continue to conduct oil and gas exploration in Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, despite objections from China.

Anwar is in China on an official visit from Nov. 4-7, his third in two years, and observers say the trip signals a closer relationship between Malaysia and its big neighbor.

“That may explain if there is any recent friction between Malaysia and Vietnam, which has had big issues with China in the South China Sea,” said Viet Hoang, a Vietnamese maritime expert.

The Chinese government has not said anything publicly about the reclamation works done by Vietnam but Chinese analysts have warned about the risk of a new flashpoint.

RELATED STORIES

Vietnam expands strategic capabilities in South China Sea

Increased risk of conflict in South China Sea, forum warns

East Asia fails to adopt South China Sea statement amid finger pointing

Malaysia is the rotating chair of the Southeast Asian grouping ASEAN in 2025 and its support would bolster China’s confidence in disputed waters, Viet said.

For its part, “Anwar’s government seems to view China as a significant economic opportunity and is willing to set aside other issues to pursue this opportunity,” said Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

However, if Kuala Lumpur managed to carry on with some oil projects it is mainly thanks to the fact that “they’ve had a longer history of conducting such projects and are physically further away from China,” Chong said.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

“It gives me nightmares, that I can’t stay any longer in Malaysia,” said an ethnic Kachin human rights activist from Myanmar who asked to be identified as just Brang, speaking of the prospect of deportation from Malaysia where he has been staying since last year.

Like other countries in the region, Malaysia has seen a surge of people arriving from Myanmar fleeing war, conscription and a crumbling economy, especially since an early 2021 coup ended a decade of tentative reform and ushered in the return of repressive military rule.

Many, but by no means all, of the people from Myanmar arriving in Malaysia are members of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority, hoping for refuge in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

But Malaysia has not been so welcoming for some.

Two years ago, Malaysia came under severe criticism from human rights groups who said authorities deported about 2,000 people back to Myanmar, including several defectors from the military who were detained upon arrival back home.

A government minister at the time said human rights groups should not interfere.

According to the Coalition of Burma Ethnics Malaysia, an aid group helping Myanmar nationals, deportations have continued with dire consequences. In July, at least one deported community leader was detained upon arrival in Yangon and later killed, the group said. In September, about 118 people were deported, the majority of whom were arrested on arrival, it said.

Malaysia’s Immigration Department did not answer telephone calls or respond to emails seeking comment on its policy but Myanmar migrants say they live under the fear of being rounded up and sent home.

“I’m afraid of deportation because of my status and because my work before was related to politics,” said Brang, who came to Malaysia in the hope of finding resettlement in a third country faster than in Thailand, where he had been staying.

“If I were deported, I don’t know what would happen.”

‘A lot of worries’

The Malaysian office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, did not respond to telephone calls and emails seeking comment on the plight of Myanmar citizens in Malaysia.

As of September, UNHCR Malaysia said in a release it had registered more than 190,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, all but 20,000 of them from Myanmar.

Malaysia, however, is not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which outlines the legal protection, rights and assistance a refugee is entitled to receive, and does not recognize the status of refugee.

Despite that, the UNHCR office does confer refugee status, which can bring benefits such as cheaper medical assistance and at least some protection from arrest and deportation while migrants await resettlement, aid groups say.

But refugee status can take years to come through.

Than Win ran out of luck six months ago when, after living in Malaysia for eight years, he broke his leg in a motorbike accident coming home from his job picking jackfruit.

The 45-year-old and his wife applied to the UNHCR for refugee status in 2019 but they have not heard back.

Without refugee status, the public hospital he was taken to refused to operate on his broken leg because he couldn’t afford to pay, he said. Instead, staff wrapped his leg in bandages and sent him home without medication.

“It still hurts. I can’t walk, I can’t stand up,” Than Win said, pointing to crutches he uses to get around.

Than Win fled from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state after his brother was arrested in 2016 by the military for fighting in the insurgent Arakan Army. Fearing he too would also be arrested, he traveled first to Thailand and then on to Malaysia.

“Because I’m injured, I can’t work, I can’t do anything. I have a lot of worries and I’m really depressed,” he said, adding his family depends on an older brother who is also in Malaysia for support.

Trying to help

A welfare group set up in Malaysia by migrants from Rakhine state, the Center for Arakan Refugees, which is trying to help Than Win, said it had documented 200,000 people who arrived from Myanmar since the early 2021 coup.

Of those, the center said it had helped 30,000 apply for refugee status but only about 200 had received it.

The center said that in the last two months, it received about 120 requests for emergency help from Myanmar citizens waiting for refugee status, the majority involving medical assistance after accidents.

“Many of them have broken legs and hands,” said Abdul Rahman, a committee member of the Center for Arakan Refugees.

“Tuberculosis and HIV patients, other accidents and emergency patients request help from our office … but especially for treatment, to be admitted to the hospital, we don’t have much money.”

Not having refugee status can also leave people vulnerable to pressure from authorities who impose on-the-spot fines, said the leader of another refugee group, who declined to be identified.

“Burmese people are mainly targeted by local authorities … especially the Rohingya,” he said.

“Police stop refugees and asylum-seekers daily, especially non-registered ones.”

Than Win dreams of taking his wife and 10-month-old son to a Western country for resettlement but says progress towards that will be impossible without first securing refugee status.

“I want to be recognized as a refugee by the UNHCR, if possible. If I am, I can serve my family,” Than Win said.

RELATED STORIES

Myanmar’s displaced people tell their stories on World Refugee Day

Indian authorities in Manipur state force Myanmar refugees out of border villagers

Real estate prices skyrocket as Yangon swells with Myanmar’s displaced

Editing by RFA Staff

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kiana Duncan for RFA.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer, in a story published last week, cited what it said was a Chinese diplomatic note of Feb. 18, in which China accused Malaysia of infringing upon its sovereignty at the Luconia Shoals – an oil-rich area in the South China Sea that both countries claim.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, while not confirming the veracity of the note, said an inquiry had been launched into its publication, and he defended Malaysian exploration in the waters.

“We have made it clear that what we are doing with oil exploration is within our own waters,” Anwar said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia. “We've informed Beijing, and they've sent a few protests, claiming those areas as theirs.”  

“We’ve explained that we must proceed as it concerns our economic survival,” he said.

The shoals are 100 kilometers (52 nautical miles) off the coast of Malaysia’s Sarawak state, on Borneo island, well within its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, where Kuala Lumpur has jurisdiction over natural resources and the state company Petronas has been operating for years.

But they also lie within the so-called nine-dash line that Beijing draws on its maps to claim “historical rights” over most of the South China Sea.

The reported Chinese diplomatic note, apparently obtained by the Philippine news outlet from an unidentified Malaysian journalist, expressed “serious concern” and “strong dissatisfaction” over Malaysia’s oil and gas exploration projects in the area and asked that Malaysia immediately stop those activities.

The newspaper said the note was a taste of the bullying that China’s neighbors including the Philippines are facing.

‘Open for discussion’

Six parties – Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – hold overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

China has not commented on the reported diplomatic note but its foreign ministry and representatives overseas often send diplomatic notes to protest against other countries’ activities in maritime areas it claims.

While the Philippines is pursuing a more assertive approach in dealing with China by publicizing what it says are Chinese acts of aggression against its vessels, Vietnam and Malaysia have adopted a more measured approach, rarely criticizing in public but preferring to use diplomatic channels and closed-door negotiation.

Anwar insisted that “operations continue at one or two major wells within our territory.” 

“We will respond to China and explain our position, that we never intended to be in any way provocative or unnecessarily hostile,” he said, adding that his government was “open to continuing discussions, whether bilaterally, multilaterally, or within the context of ASEAN” about the South China Sea.

 “China is a great friend,” he said. “This should not harm the bilateral relationship between the countries.”

Malaysia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it had “consistently underscored the importance of maintaining the confidentiality of diplomatic communication” with other countries and considers the unauthorized dissemination of such documents “an irresponsible act.”

This is the second time this year that the Malaysian foreign ministry has requested investigations into leaked diplomatic notes. 

In February, a confidential diplomatic note on a consular issue dated Sept. 20, 2023, and reportedly from the Moroccan government to the Malaysian Embassy in Rabat, was leaked on social media.

The ministry said it had expressed regret over that incident but the leak had not originated from internal sources.

RELATED STORIES

Quiet Diplomacy or Inaction: Lessons from a Survey Ship Standoff

China ‘can claim the South China Sea’: former Malaysian PM

Malaysian FM sees shift in China’s justification of sweeping South China Sea claims

Iman Muttaqin Yusof and Muzliza Mustafa in Kuala Lumpur contributed to the story

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

His whole fall from grace as deputy-prime minister was all the more revealing for being instigated by his politically insatiable mentor, Mahathir bin Mohammed, Southeast Asia’s wiliest, and most ruthless politician.  Eventually, that old, vengeful fox had to relent: his former protégé would have his day.

Anwar is in no mood to take sides on spats between the grumbly titans who seek their place in posterity’s sun.  And why should a country like Malaysia do so?  During last year’s visit to Beijing and the Boao Forum in Hainan, he secured a commitment from Chinese President Xi Jinping on foreign investment amounting to RM170.1 billion ($US35.6 billion) spanning 19 memoranda of understanding (MOU).  Greater participation in Malaysia’s 5G network plan by Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei was assured some weeks later.

In the Financial Times, the Malaysian PM levelled the charge against the United States that Sinophobia had become a problem, a fogging fixation.  Why should Malaysia, he asked, “pick a quarrel” with China, a country that had become its foremost trading partner?  “Why must I be tied to one interest?  I don’t buy into this strong prejudice against China, this China-phobia.”

Much of this middle-of-the-road daring was prompted by comments made by US Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been saddled with the task of padding out ties between Washington and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).  Rather than being diplomatic, the Veep has been irritatingly teacherly.

Last September, during her visit to the US-ASEAN summit in Jakarta, Harris beat the drum on the issue of promoting “a region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.”  Such openness was always going to be subordinate to Washington’s own interests.  “We have a shared commitment to international rules and norms and our partnership on pressing national and regional issues”.  An international campaign against “irresponsible behaviour in the disputed waters” would be commenced.

During her trip to the Philippines last November, Harris made the focus of concern clear to countries in the region.  “We must stand up for principles such as respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, unimpeded lawful commerce, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, and throughout the Indo-Pacific.”

The subtext for those listening was so obvious as to be scripted in bold font: Our values first; China’s a necessarily distant second.  This coarse directness did not fall on deaf ears, and Anwar was particularly attentive.  He had already found the views voiced by Harris at Jakarta about Malaysia’s leanings towards Beijing as “not right and grossly unfair”.

In remarks made during a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held at the current ASEAN summit, being hosted in Melbourne, Anwar expressed much irritation in being badgered by the United States and its allies on the subject of taking sides.  The virus of Sinophobia had been doing the rounds, causing sniffles and rumbles.  “[M]y reference to China-phobia is because the criticism levied against us for giving additional focus on China; my response is, trade investments is open and right now, China seems to be the leading investor and trade into Malaysia,” Anwar observed.  Malaysians, for the most part, “do not have a problem with China.”

Labouring, even flogging the “fiercely independent” standing of Malaysia, Anwar went on to state that his country remained “an important friend of the United States and Europe and here in Australia, they should not preclude us from being friendly to one of our important neighbours, precisely China.”

Nothing typifies this better than Malaysia’s policy towards the supply and manufacturing of semiconductors.  The emergence of a China Plus One Strategy, notably in the electronic supply chain, has seen companies diversify their risk through investing in alternative markets to mitigate risks.  Keep China on side but do so securely.  Anwar has established a task force dedicated to the subject, while also courting such entities as US chipmaker Micron Technology.  Last October, the company promised an investment of US$1 billion to expand its Penang operations, in addition to the previous allocation of $US1 billion to construct and fully equip its new facility.  In business, such promiscuity should be lauded.

Anwar’s concerns were solid statements of calculated principle, and inconceivable coming out of the mouth of an Australian politician.  Albanese, for his part, has tried to walk the middle road when it comes to security in the Indo-Pacific, even as China remains Australia’s largest trading partner.  He does so in wolf’s clothing supplied by Washington, with various garish labels such as “AUKUS” and “nuclear-powered submarines”.  For decades, Australia’s association with ASEAN has been ventriloquised, the voice emanating from the White House, Pentagon or US State Department.

Canberra’s middle road remains cluttered by one big power, replete with US road signs and tolls, accompanied by hearty welcomes from the US military industrial complex and its determination to turn Australia into a forward defensive position, a garrison playing war’s waiting game.  To his credit, Anwar has avoided the trap, exposing the inauthentic position of his Australian hosts with skill and undeniable charm.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In January, the 35-year-old was struggling with pain so bad from gallstones that he could barely breathe. 

“I was scolded by the doctor because he said I came too late and my organs had been damaged,” said Rashid Ahmad, who arrived in Malaysia from Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 2012.

The cash-strapped father of two only got through the ordeal after his friends raised 3,800 Malaysian ringgit (U.S. $800) for his operation at a public hospital.

“I could not afford the amount for surgery on my own,” he told BenarNews.

Malaysia’s nearly 200,000 refugees already have it tough because they are not legally allowed to work, many live in appalling conditions, and their children are often denied education. But a little talked about concern is their access to affordable healthcare, which could make the difference between life and death.

Because Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees are viewed as illegal migrants and must pay much higher foreigners’ rates at government hospitals and clinics.

That puts an enormous financial strain on people like Rashid Ahmad, who earns a meager living working odd jobs such as washing dishes or cutting grass, with no rights or social security benefits. 

After being discharged from hospital in February, Rashid Ahmad had to skip the daily dressing of his wounds at a nonprofit medical clinic because, even at a subsidized price, he could not afford it.

“I cannot move on my own. Trips to the clinic also need money,” said Rashid Ahmad, who lives in Ampang near Kuala Lumpur.

Debbie Stothard, founder of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, an advocacy group, described Malaysia’s policy of denying refugees access to affordable public healthcare as “illogical and irresponsible.”

“We are preventing Rohingya and other refugees from contributing to Malaysian society,” she told BenarNews. “To ensure they can contribute, they must be healthy enough. It is just that basic.”

Some 186,490 refugees, most of whom are ethnically Rohingya from Myanmar, are registered in Malaysia with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. 

Healthcare is the No. 1 concern for most of them, said U.S.-based Rohingya activist Norhayati Ali during a recent visit to Malaysia.

Refugees and asylum seekers with UNHCR cards are charged 50% of the foreigners’ rate at public healthcare facilities. But for those who are undocumented, the fees can be 40 times the cost charged to Malaysians, according to advocacy groups.

Otherwise, refugees have access to subsidized care at 15 nonprofit health clinics across the country. However, these offer only basic healthcare that does not require hospitalization or specialist treatment.

Ahmad Ikram, general manager of a nonprofit clinic in Kuala Lumpur, said it was not uncommon to hear of cases where refugees could not pay for treatment.

“Some refugees have had to stay in the hospital even though they should have been discharged because they could not pay the medical costs. In one case, a patient ran away because he could not afford to pay before being discharged,” he told BenarNews.

At his clinic, Ikram said he most commonly saw refugees for conditions like diabetes, hypertension and skin diseases. He offers only general treatment, vaccinations and family planning consultations. 

Typically, his referrals to hospital were cases involving preterm births, respiratory diseases, infections, gastrointestinal issues and surgical procedures.

“The number of refugees seeking help at the clinic is normally between 70-80 per day, but when authorities conduct raids around here, those numbers could halve,” he said.

“When we ask why, they say they are afraid of getting caught while seeking treatment and being sent back home.”

Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told Parliament in June last year that Malaysia was establishing a comprehensive database on the number of refugees and asylum seekers in the country. 

This would help the government tailor policies towards them, including for healthcare, he said.

In the meantime, Rohingya community leaders like Rafik Shah Mohd Ismail are calling on Malaysians to show compassion.

“Everyone gets sick. For refugees, whether registered with UNHCR or not, hospital bills are expensive,” he told BenarNews.

“A deposit is required before surgery is performed; these can range from around 1,500 ($317) ringgit to 5,500 ringgit ($1,160).”

While the community tries to help out with hospital fees when possible, it is often too expensive, said Ismail, who is based in Selayang, Selangor state.

“We’ve encountered situations where babies remained hospitalized because their parents couldn't afford the bills,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ahmad Mustakim Zulkifli for BenarNews.

“Malaysia should scrap the outrageous prison sentence given to Clare Rewcastle Brown and stop harassing the journalist over her crucial reporting on the country’s 1MDB scandal, recognized as one of the world’s biggest-ever corruption cases,” Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative, said on Friday. “The harsh ruling will deter all reporters from investigating official corruption in Malaysia and represents a clear and present danger to press freedom in the country.”    

The Kuala Terengganu Magistrates’ Court ruled in a one-day hearing on Wednesday that Rewcastle Brown criminally defamed Terengganu Sultanah Nur Zahirah, a Malaysian royal, in her book “The Sarawak Report—The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose.” The ruling was made under Section 500 of the Penal Code, the reports said.

Malaysian and U.S. investigators estimate that US$4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB, a sovereign fund founded by former Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was jailed in 2022 for his role in the corruption scandal. The Pardons Board reduced Razak’s 12-year sentence by half earlier this month.

Rewcastle Brown’s reporting in Sarawak Report, an online news outlet she founded and edits, is widely credited with first exposing the scandal.

Rewcastle Brown, who is currently resident in the United Kingdom but was born in Sarawak, Malaysia, told CPJ by email that she was not notified in advance of the hearing and was not given the opportunity to defend herself in court.

She said her lawyers had applied for the legal order to be set aside and were inquiring whether Malaysian authorities would use the ruling to request law enforcement worldwide to provisionally arrest her pending extradition under an Interpol Red Notice.

Rewcastle Brown told CPJ that Malaysian law enforcement officials have twice previously applied for an Interpol Red Notice in order to imprison and try her in Malaysia on charges related to her 1MDB reporting. Interpol denied the previous two applications, she said.

The Kuala Terengganu Magistrates’ Court did not immediately reply to CPJ’s emailed request for comment on the ruling and whether it would pursue an Interpol Red Notice for Rewcastle Brown’s arrest.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Israel, however, has been spared any toothy sanctions regime over its conduct in Gaza.  If anything, the Biden administration in Washington has been brightly enthusiastic in sending more shells to the Israeli Defence Forces, despite Congressional reservations and some grumbling within the Democratic Party.  This has made such figures as Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who has a long-standing association with the health system in Gaza, wonder why the wealthy states of the West exempt Israel from financial chastisement while economically punishing other powers, such as Russia, without reservation.  “Where are the sanctions against the war crimes of Israel?” he asks.  “Where are the sanctions against the occupation of Palestine?  Where are the sanctions against these abhorrent attacks on civilian healthcare in Gaza?”

The retaliatory initiative has tended to be left to protests at the community level, typified by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement created in 2005.  The war in Gaza, however, has resulted in a broader efflorescence of interest.  Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems have become specific targets of international protest. On December 21, a global coalition of groups under the umbrella of Progressive International took a day of action against the country’s largest arms company, drawing attention to the tentacular nature of the enterprise in the US, UK, Europe, Brazil and Australia.

Restricting the docking of Israeli shipping at ports, notably from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, has also presented an opportunity to the protest movement.  Actions have been organised as far afield as Australia where “Block the Boat” measures have taken place.  During the early evening of November 8, several hundred protesters flocked to the entrance of Melbourne’s international container terminal.  On catching sight of a ZIM-branded shipping container, the protestors staged a blockade lasting till the morning of the next day.  A similar action was repeated in Sydney on November 11, involving several hundred protestors holding the line on the shores of Port Botany and delaying the arrival of a ZIM vessel.

The assessments that followed the protest were mixed.  Zacharias Szumer, writing in Jacobin, admits that such blockades, on their own, “are unlikely to cause a major dint in ZIM’s bottom line.”  That said, he is confident enough to see it as part of a globalised effort which “can cumulatively make a difference.”

Then came the sceptical voices who felt that these actions fell dramatically short of substance and effect, a product of righteous, ineffectual tokenism.  An anonymous contribution to the New Socialist, purporting to be from one of the protestors, went so far as to call the “Block the Boat” strategy misguided, since it never actually entailed blocking vessels.  The promotional materials for the events “indicated that the purpose was actually to say somebody should ‘Block the Boats’, and to ‘call for’ a boycott – a message addressed to ZIM and Albanese.”  The writer, clearly agitated, also took issue with the choice of locations (they “weren’t conducive to disruption”) and the “suspiciously rigid, and convenient” timing of the rallies.

Short of these efforts, it is precisely the absence of responses at the highest levels that has precipitated a more global reaction that is upending the order of things.  Beyond the protests of activists, community groups, and the more generally outraged come the more direct, state-sponsored measures that have rattled financiers, the carriers and the operators.  The crisis in the Red Sea, for instance, where Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels (Ansar Allah), are putting the brakes on international shipping, is the stellar example.  While the measure initially began on November 14 to target Israeli-affiliated merchant shipping, largescale operators have not been spared.  “Unlike previous piracy related events in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden this is a sophisticated military threat and requires a very sophisticated response,” states a briefing note from Inchcape Shipping Services.

The disruptions are significant, given that 30 percent of all container ship traffic passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, the point where both the Red Sea and Indian Ocean meet.  The actions and threats by the Houthis have seen various oil and gas companies reroute their tankers. Decisions are even being made to suspend shipping through that route in favour of the safer, though costlier and longer route via the Cape of Good Hope.  Insurance premiums are also on the rise.

The Egyptians are also raising fees for those using the Suez Canal for the new year.  In an October announcement, the SCA promised an increase of between 5-15%, effective from January 15, 2024.  The measure is applicable to a fairly comprehensive list of vessel categories, including crude oil tankers, petroleum product tankers, liquefied petroleum gas carriers, containerships and cruise ships.

On December 20, Malaysia, as if heeding the “Block the Boat” protests, announced that it would be preventing Israeli-flagged cargo ships from docking at the country’s ports.  Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the decision in a statement, with a specific reference to ZIM.  “The Malaysian government decided to block and disallow the Israeli-based shipping company ZIM from docking at any Malaysian port.”  Such sanctions were “a response to Israel’s actions that ignore basic humanitarian principles and violate international law through the ongoing massacre and brutality against Palestinians.”

Malaysia also announced, in addition to barring ships using the Israeli flag from docking in the country, the banning of “any ship on its way to Israel from loading cargo in Malaysian ports.”

Blockade, barring, embargo, constriction – all these measures are familiar to the Israeli security establishment as it seeks to strangle and pulverize the Gaza Strip.  While closing ports to Israeli shipping is modest in comparison to starving and strafing an entire population, it is fittingly reciprocal and warranted.  The Israel campaign against Gaza, and Palestinians more generally, is no longer a local, contained affair.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, China, lags among the “low” performing countries despite growth in renewables, while Indonesia and Malaysia dropped in ranking tackling climate change, according to a new report released Friday at COP28 in Dubai.

Despite the boom in renewables, climate policies have stagnated in many countries since last year, experts said in the 2024 Climate Change Performance Index, or the CCPI, which evaluates climate mitigation efforts in 63 nations and the European Union.

The report coverage accounts for over 90% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It uses standardized criteria across four categories: greenhouse gas emissions (40% of the score), renewable energy (20%), energy consumption (20%), and climate policy (20%).

“For the first time, not a single country ranks “high” in the category climate policy… This threatens the national emission reduction targets for 2025 and 2030,” report’s co-author Niklas Hohne from NewClimate Institute said at a press conference in Dubai.

China received a “very low” rating in the greenhouse gas emissions and energy use categories and a medium in renewable energy and climate policy.

“Although China has a strong growing renewable energy sector and improves energy efficiency measures, it is among the nine countries responsible for 90% of global coal production,” according to CCPI.

Beijing also plans to increase its gas production by 2030 (compared with 2019 levels), which is incompatible with the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, the report said, adding China’s slowing economic growth has led to less ambitious climate targets in recent years.

Some 450 experts contributed to the index, prepared by two German NGOs, Germanwatch and NewClimate Institute, and CAN International, a network of climate activist organizations.

Fossil fuel phase-out

The top three positions remain empty this year, as no country assessed performed “very high” in all four categories. Denmark led the index with third position, followed by Estonia and the Philippines, while oil-dependent countries like the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Saudi Arabia occupied the bottom three.

“The CCPI shows once again that the biggest fossil fuel producers and exporters fair the worst in the index,” Janet Milongo, a senior CAN International officer, told journalists.

“This adequately finds out demands for the phase-out of all Fossil Fuels, full fast forever and funded… with all efforts and finance towards scaling up to 100% renewable energy systems in a just, equitable and rapid manner.”

Fossil fuel phase-out is one of the top agendas currently at COP28 in UAE, ranked worst in greenhouse gas emissions category with its high per capita emissions of 25.9 metric tons and a meager share of renewable energy, less than 1%.

As negotiations entered their crucial second week on Friday, the fight over what to say about fossil fuels in the final text is heating, experts told Radio Free Asia.

During the last COP, India and China pushed for “phase out” over “phase down” for fossil fuels in the final text, and in the current COP, they are advocating for the complete omission of any reference to fossil fuels in the final text, according to sources.

Philippines excels while Malaysia drops

In this year’s CCPI, the Philippines has improved its ranking, moving up six places to 6th, with highest ratings among the 63 countries in GHG emissions and energy use, and medium in renewable energy and low in climate policy. 

The country excels in per capita emissions, with 2.27 metric tons per capita, outperforming many other countries. However, CCPI experts criticized the country for lacking a long-term emissions reduction strategy and no government policies for solid fiscal measures, such as the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies. 

Southeast Asia’s biggest emitter Indonesia dropped 10 places to the 36th position, with a low rating in GHG emissions and climate policy categories.

The report criticized the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution, a specific and voluntary commitment to reduce GHG emissions, saying it is still not aligned with the Paris goals and is only based on inflated ‘business-as-usual’ calculations. 

Despite committing to phasing out coal with the help of donors and introducing a cap-and-trade system for coal power plants, CCPI experts expressed concerns that there were no policies to stop or limit fossil fuel use and carbon pricing was too low.

According to the report, 36 units of biomass-coal co-firing power plants were active in 2022 in Indonesia, while there was also an increase in biodiesel production from crude palm oil. 

Among Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia dropped three places to rank the lowest at 59th, performing abysmally in the GHG emissions and energy use categories, low in climate policy, and medium in renewable energy.

CCPI said Malaysia’s National Energy Transition Roadmap highlights the role of biomass, particularly palm oil, in Malaysia’s energy transition, with efforts to enforce national environmental standards for plantations, which has concerned CCPI experts.

They said Malaysia remains reliant on oil and gas industries with substantial subsidies, suggesting the need for broader strategies to prevent both high emissions and economic repercussions associated with carbon-intensive development.

Thailand and Vietnam

Meanwhile, Vietnam and Thailand upped their games, ranking among countries with medium performance levels. 

Thailand ranked 25th, up 17 spots, with low ratings in the climate policy and renewable energy categories but high GHG emissions and energy use.

In August, the newly elected democratic government set up the Department of Climate Change and Environment to tackle climate change’s harmful impacts and fulfill the country’s climate pledges. 

Thailand is focused on reducing CO2 emissions in the energy sector, aiming for at least 50% renewable energy in new power generation capacity by 2050, and promoting electric vehicle adoption, with experts suggesting a coal phase-out commitment and suspending power purchase agreements until electricity demand and development plans are revised.

Vietnam jumped 13 spots to 27th, with a low in the GHG emissions and energy use categories but medium in renewable energy and climate policy.

Vietnam is committed to net zero goals and renewable energy in its latest power development plan, surpassing its own NDC targets. Still, the implementation of policies faces delays and lacks cross-sectoral coordination.

The progress is overshadowed by the imprisonment of climate activists and experts, with the latest known detainment to be in September 2023.

Edited by Malcolm Foster

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Subel Rai Bhandari.

In the aftermath of Palestinian group Hamas’ terror attack inside Israel on October 7 and the Israeli state’s even more terrifying attacks on Palestinian urban neighbourhoods in Gaza, the media across many parts of Asia tend to take a more neutral stand in comparison with their Western counterparts.

A lot of sympathy is expressed for the plight of the Palestinians who have been under frequent attacks by Israeli forces for decades and have faced ever trauma since the Nakba in 1948 when Zionist militia forced some 750,000 refugees to leave their homeland.

Even India, which has been getting closer to Israel in recent years, and one of Israel’s closest Asian allies, Singapore, have taken a cautious attitude to the latest flare-up in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

• READ MORE:  Israel-Gaza crisis: NZ must condemn atrocities but keep pushing for a two-state solution
• 7 journalists killed since beginning of Israeli aggression on Gaza
• Jakarta workers protest outside US Embassy, call for end to Hamas-Israeli war
• Other Hamas-Israel conflict reports
• Al Jazeera live news blog on the Hamas-Israel conflict

Soon after the Hamas attacks in Israel, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks”.

He added: “We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.” But, soon after, his Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sought to strike a balance.

Addressing a media briefing on October 12, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi reiterated New Delhi’s “long-standing and consistent” position on the issue, telling reporters that “India has always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine” living in peace with Israel.

Singapore has also reiterated its support for a two-state solution, with Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam telling Today Daily that it was possible to deplore how Palestinians had been treated over the years while still unequivocally condemning the terrorist attacks carried out in Israel by Hamas.

“These atrocities cannot be justified by any rationale whatsoever, whether of fundamental problems or historical grievances,” he said.

“I think it’s fair to say that any response has to be consistent with international law and international rules of war”.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has blamed the rapidly worsening conflict in the Middle East on a lack of justice for the Palestinian people.

Lack of justice for Palestinians
“The crux of the issue lies in the fact that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people,” Beijing’s top diplomat said in a phone call with Brazil’s Celso Amorim, a special adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to Japan’s Nikkei Asia.

The call came just ahead of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on October 13 to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Brazil, a non-permanent member, is chairing the council this month.

Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo called for an end to the region’s bloodletting cycle and pro-Palestinian protests have been held in Jakarta.

“Indonesia calls for the war and violence to be stopped immediately to avoid further human casualties and destruction of property because the escalation of the conflict can cause greater humanitarian impact,” he said.

“The root cause of the conflict, which is the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, must be resolved immediately in accordance with the parameters that have been agreed upon by the UN.”

Indonesia, which is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has supported Palestinian self-determination for a long time and does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

But, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said 275 Indonesians were working in Israel and were making plans to evacuate them.

Sympathy for the Palestinians
Meanwhile, Thailand said that 18 of their citizens have been killed by the terror attacks and 11 abducted.

In the Philippines, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo said on October 10 that the safety of thousands of Filipinos living and working in Israel remained a priority for the government.

There are approximately 40,000 Filipinos in Israel, but only 25,000 are legally documented, according to labour and migrant groups, says Benar News, a US-funded Asian news portal.

According to India’s MEA spokesperson Bagchi, there are 18,000 Indians in Israel and about a dozen in the Palestinian territories. India is trying to bring them home, and a first flight evacuating 230 Indians was expected to take place at the weekend, according to the Hindu newspaper.

It is unclear what such large numbers of Asians are doing in Israel. Yet, from media reports in the region, there is deep concern about the plight of civilians caught up in the clashes.

Benar News reported that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict according to UN-agreed parameters.

Also this week, the Malaysian government announced it would allocate 1 million ringgit (US$211,423) in humanitarian aid for Palestinians.

Western view questioned
Sympathy for the Palestinian cause is reflected widely in the Asian media, both in Muslim-majority and non-Muslim countries. The Western unequivocal support for Israel, particularly by Anglo-American media, has been questioned across Asia.

Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post’s regular columnist Alex Lo challenged Hamas’ “unprovoked” terror attack in Israel, a narrative commonly used in Western media reporting of the latest flare-up.

“It must be pointed out that what Hamas has done is terrorism pure and simple,” notes Lo.

“But such horrors and atrocities are not being committed by Palestinian militants without a background and a context. They did not come out of nowhere as unadulterated and uncaused evil”.

Thus Lo argues, that to claim that the latest terror attacks were “unprovoked” is to whitewash the background and context that constitute the very history of this unending conflict in Palestine.

US media’s ‘morally reprehensible propaganda’
“It’s morally reprehensible propaganda of the worst kind that the mainstream Anglo-American media culture has been guilty of for decades,” he says.

“But the real problem with that is not only with morality but also with the very practical politics of searching for a viable peace settlement”.

He is concerned that “with their unconditional and uncritical support of Israel, the West and the United States in particular have essentially made such a peace impossible”.

Writing in India’s Hindu newspaper, Denmark-based Indian professor of literature Dr Tabish Khair points out that historically, Palestinians have had to indulge in drastic and violent acts to draw attention to their plight and the oppressive policies of Israel.

“The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), under Yasser Arafat’s leadership, used such ‘terrorist’ acts to focus world attention on the Palestinian problem, and without such actions, the West would have looked the other way while the Palestinians were slowly airbrushed out of history,” he argues.

While the PLO fought a secular Palestinian battle for nationhood, which was largely ignored by Western powers, this lead to political Islam’s development in the later part of the 1970s, and Hamas is a product of that.

“Today, we live in a world where political Islam is associated almost entirely with Islam — and almost all Muslims,” he notes.

Palestinian cause still resonates
But, the Palestinian cause still resonates beyond the Muslim communities, as the reactions in Asia reflect.

Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, writing in Bangladesh’s Daily Star, notes the savagery of the impending war against the Palestinian people will be noted by the global community.

He points out that Hamas was never allowed to function as a voice for the Palestinian people, even after they won a landslide democratic election in Gaza in January 2006.

“The victory of Hamas was condemned by the Israelis and the West, who decided to use armed force to overthrow the election result,” he points out.

“Gaza was never allowed a political process, in fact never allowed to shape any kind of political authority to speak for the people”.

Prashad points out that when the Palestinians conducted a non-violent march in 2019 for their rights to nationhood, they were met with Israeli bombs that killed 200 people.

“When non-violent protest is met with force, it becomes difficult to convince people to remain on that path and not take up arms,” he argues.

Prashad disputes the Western media’s argument that Israel has a “right to defend itself” because the Palestinians are people under occupation. Under the Geneva Convention, Israel has an obligation to protect them.

Under the Geneva Convention, Prashad argues that the Israeli government’s “collective punishment” strategy is a war crime.

“The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into Israeli war crimes in 2021 but it was not able to move forward even to collect information”.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a correspondent for IDN-InDepthNews, the flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate (IPS). Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In the aftermath of Palestinian group Hamas’ terror attack inside Israel on October 7 and the Israeli state’s even more terrifying attacks on Palestinian urban neighbourhoods in Gaza, the media across many parts of Asia tend to take a more neutral stand in comparison with their Western counterparts.

A lot of sympathy is expressed for the plight of the Palestinians who have been under frequent attacks by Israeli forces for decades and have faced ever trauma since the Nakba in 1948 when Zionist militia forced some 750,000 refugees to leave their homeland.

Even India, which has been getting closer to Israel in recent years, and one of Israel’s closest Asian allies, Singapore, have taken a cautious attitude to the latest flare-up in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

• READ MORE:  Israel-Gaza crisis: NZ must condemn atrocities but keep pushing for a two-state solution
• 7 journalists killed since beginning of Israeli aggression on Gaza
• Jakarta workers protest outside US Embassy, call for end to Hamas-Israeli war
• Other Hamas-Israel conflict reports
• Al Jazeera live news blog on the Hamas-Israel conflict

Soon after the Hamas attacks in Israel, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks”.

He added: “We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.” But, soon after, his Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sought to strike a balance.

Addressing a media briefing on October 12, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi reiterated New Delhi’s “long-standing and consistent” position on the issue, telling reporters that “India has always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine” living in peace with Israel.

Singapore has also reiterated its support for a two-state solution, with Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam telling Today Daily that it was possible to deplore how Palestinians had been treated over the years while still unequivocally condemning the terrorist attacks carried out in Israel by Hamas.

“These atrocities cannot be justified by any rationale whatsoever, whether of fundamental problems or historical grievances,” he said.

“I think it’s fair to say that any response has to be consistent with international law and international rules of war”.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has blamed the rapidly worsening conflict in the Middle East on a lack of justice for the Palestinian people.

Lack of justice for Palestinians
“The crux of the issue lies in the fact that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people,” Beijing’s top diplomat said in a phone call with Brazil’s Celso Amorim, a special adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to Japan’s Nikkei Asia.

The call came just ahead of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on October 13 to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Brazil, a non-permanent member, is chairing the council this month.

Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo called for an end to the region’s bloodletting cycle and pro-Palestinian protests have been held in Jakarta.

“Indonesia calls for the war and violence to be stopped immediately to avoid further human casualties and destruction of property because the escalation of the conflict can cause greater humanitarian impact,” he said.

“The root cause of the conflict, which is the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, must be resolved immediately in accordance with the parameters that have been agreed upon by the UN.”

Indonesia, which is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has supported Palestinian self-determination for a long time and does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

But, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said 275 Indonesians were working in Israel and were making plans to evacuate them.

Sympathy for the Palestinians
Meanwhile, Thailand said that 18 of their citizens have been killed by the terror attacks and 11 abducted.

In the Philippines, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo said on October 10 that the safety of thousands of Filipinos living and working in Israel remained a priority for the government.

There are approximately 40,000 Filipinos in Israel, but only 25,000 are legally documented, according to labour and migrant groups, says Benar News, a US-funded Asian news portal.

According to India’s MEA spokesperson Bagchi, there are 18,000 Indians in Israel and about a dozen in the Palestinian territories. India is trying to bring them home, and a first flight evacuating 230 Indians was expected to take place at the weekend, according to the Hindu newspaper.

It is unclear what such large numbers of Asians are doing in Israel. Yet, from media reports in the region, there is deep concern about the plight of civilians caught up in the clashes.

Benar News reported that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict according to UN-agreed parameters.

Also this week, the Malaysian government announced it would allocate 1 million ringgit (US$211,423) in humanitarian aid for Palestinians.

Western view questioned
Sympathy for the Palestinian cause is reflected widely in the Asian media, both in Muslim-majority and non-Muslim countries. The Western unequivocal support for Israel, particularly by Anglo-American media, has been questioned across Asia.

Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post’s regular columnist Alex Lo challenged Hamas’ “unprovoked” terror attack in Israel, a narrative commonly used in Western media reporting of the latest flare-up.

“It must be pointed out that what Hamas has done is terrorism pure and simple,” notes Lo.

“But such horrors and atrocities are not being committed by Palestinian militants without a background and a context. They did not come out of nowhere as unadulterated and uncaused evil”.

Thus Lo argues, that to claim that the latest terror attacks were “unprovoked” is to whitewash the background and context that constitute the very history of this unending conflict in Palestine.

US media’s ‘morally reprehensible propaganda’
“It’s morally reprehensible propaganda of the worst kind that the mainstream Anglo-American media culture has been guilty of for decades,” he says.

“But the real problem with that is not only with morality but also with the very practical politics of searching for a viable peace settlement”.

He is concerned that “with their unconditional and uncritical support of Israel, the West and the United States in particular have essentially made such a peace impossible”.

Writing in India’s Hindu newspaper, Denmark-based Indian professor of literature Dr Tabish Khair points out that historically, Palestinians have had to indulge in drastic and violent acts to draw attention to their plight and the oppressive policies of Israel.

“The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), under Yasser Arafat’s leadership, used such ‘terrorist’ acts to focus world attention on the Palestinian problem, and without such actions, the West would have looked the other way while the Palestinians were slowly airbrushed out of history,” he argues.

While the PLO fought a secular Palestinian battle for nationhood, which was largely ignored by Western powers, this lead to political Islam’s development in the later part of the 1970s, and Hamas is a product of that.

“Today, we live in a world where political Islam is associated almost entirely with Islam — and almost all Muslims,” he notes.

Palestinian cause still resonates
But, the Palestinian cause still resonates beyond the Muslim communities, as the reactions in Asia reflect.

Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, writing in Bangladesh’s Daily Star, notes the savagery of the impending war against the Palestinian people will be noted by the global community.

He points out that Hamas was never allowed to function as a voice for the Palestinian people, even after they won a landslide democratic election in Gaza in January 2006.

“The victory of Hamas was condemned by the Israelis and the West, who decided to use armed force to overthrow the election result,” he points out.

“Gaza was never allowed a political process, in fact never allowed to shape any kind of political authority to speak for the people”.

Prashad points out that when the Palestinians conducted a non-violent march in 2019 for their rights to nationhood, they were met with Israeli bombs that killed 200 people.

“When non-violent protest is met with force, it becomes difficult to convince people to remain on that path and not take up arms,” he argues.

Prashad disputes the Western media’s argument that Israel has a “right to defend itself” because the Palestinians are people under occupation. Under the Geneva Convention, Israel has an obligation to protect them.

Under the Geneva Convention, Prashad argues that the Israeli government’s “collective punishment” strategy is a war crime.

“The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into Israeli war crimes in 2021 but it was not able to move forward even to collect information”.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a correspondent for IDN-InDepthNews, the flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate (IPS). Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The 2.5 billion ringgits (U.S. $533 million) deal announced Sunday between Malaysia’s largest palm oil company, Sime Darby Oils International Ltd., and China’s GuangXi Beibu Gulf International Port Group was part of nearly 20 billion ringgits in investment agreements signed during Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s one-day visit to Nanning, China.

“What makes it interesting is the 500,000 tons of palm oil exports, which will undoubtedly secure the interests of smallholders and small-scale palm oil producers,” Anwar told reporters at the Nanning Marriott Hotel on Sunday after meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, referring to the total amount Malaysia will export annually under the deal.

“This is the first time that China has asked for a big increase. Usually, it depends on price rates and considerations, but this time it’s a fixed import agreement from China.”

A trading and distribution hub for refined palm oil is to be established in Qinzhou, China, under the memorandum of understanding, Malaysian state news agency Bernama said.

To address climate change, European Union regulations prohibit the sale or export of commodities such as palm oil, soy, coffee, cacao and rubber within the EU if they were cultivated on land deforested after 2020.

Palm oil is a commodity used in a variety of products from soap to peanut butter. But clearing large tracts of forests for palm oil plantations causes an increase in carbon emissions, which could lead to global warming.

Analysts noted that with Malaysia’s exports to Europe expected to fall, increasing exports to China would help small farmers.

 “For Malaysia, it is a way to address the economic needs of its palm oil industry and smallholders as demand from Europe and elsewhere in the developed world is projected to decline,” analyst Chong Ja Ian of the National University of Singapore told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

“China mainly secures a commodity to meet its domestic market demands.”

An increase in Malaysian palm oil exports to China would be a win-win for both countries, analyst Collins Chong Yew Keat, from the University of Malaya, told BenarNews.

“China remains pragmatic in securing its own energy needs and interests,” he said.

“The timing is also critical not only for the agenda of Beijing in securing its food security now amidst the start of its economic decline, it is also suited to ensure that the region and Malaysia remain dependent on the Chinese economy and [its] buying power.”

China made “a wise move” to diversify its supply and import more from Malaysia to meet domestic demand, said Lee Pei May of the International Islamic University Malaysia.

 “Palm oil is primarily used for food in China, and as economic activities begin to pick up, especially in tourism, it will lead to higher consumption of palm oil,” Lee Pei told BenarNews.

China did not specifically comment on the palm oil deal in a statement on the State Council website about Li hosting Anwar.

In June, the EU, Malaysia and Indonesia agreed to form a task force to implement Europe’s rule banning commodities linked to deforestation. The announcement came after EU environment chief Florika Fink-Hooijer visited the two Southeast Asian countries to discuss the issue. Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of palm oil.

The task force was expected to focus on commodities such as palm oil, wood, rubber, coffee and cocoa, which are important for both countries’ economies, said a joint statement from the EU, Indonesia’s economic ministry, Malaysia’s trade ministry and a regional palm oil council.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Iman Muttaqin Yusof for BenarNews.

Aloun Phommalath, 24, worked on plantations in Malaysia for four years before he was arrested on drug charges in August 2021. 

He was released in late 2022, but relatives in Attapeu’s Sanamxay district didn’t know how to contact him. Phommalath lost his phone in jail and didn’t remember his family’s phone number.

Family members told Radio Free Asia that they worried that the lack of contact meant he had died.

But Phommalath eventually sent a letter to them through a co-worker who was on his way back to Laos. His family then sent a text message to RFA asking for assistance in bringing him home.

An RFA reporter then emailed the Lao Embassy in Malaysia alerting them to Phommalath’s situation. Phommalath returned to Laos on Wednesday.

“We are so happy. Nothing compares. It’s like he’s born again,” his brother said. “I never dreamed that he would return home after we lost contact with him for so long.”

One of Phommalath’s sisters said she ran toward the airplane after it landed and wheeled to the terminal. 

“All relatives came to visit when he returned home,” another sister said. “All of them asked why he was so fat and dark. They have been waiting for him to come home for a long time.”

An official from the Lao Embassy told RFA that Phommalath’s criminal case was related to the drug “Kratom,” an herbal substance that can produce opioid- and stimulant-like effects. He was jailed for one year, the official said.

Exploitation risk

The Lao Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare estimated last year that about 2,000 Laotians had traveled illegally to Malaysia for jobs in the fishing industry. 

During the pandemic, 700 Lao migrants returned home from Malaysia, but most eventually went back once economic conditions in Laos worsened due in part to high inflation, the ministry said.

Though the pay is sometimes better there than what they could earn in Laos, illegal migrants are often exploited by their employers, a Lao fisherman who has been working in Malaysia’s Pahang state told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

To ensure their rights are protected, the Lao government is working on finding ways for more migrants to go to Malaysia legally.

Despite the risks, Malaysia is attractive to migrants because it is a relatively easy country to work in, the fisherman said.

“The main reason so many choose to come here is because we don’t have money. Most of us don’t even have enough to make a passport,” he said.

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

A new media monitoring watchdog, Muslim Media Watch, published its first edition today featuring a cover story alleging that a Malaysian cult leader who was reportedly now in New Zealand could “create social unrest”.

Named as Suhaini bin Mohammad, he was allegedly posing as a Muslim religious leader and was said to be wanted by the authorities in Malaysia for “false teachings” that contradict Islam.

His cult ideology was identified by MMW as SiHulk, which was banned by the Johor State Religious Department (JAINJ) in 2021.

• READ MORE: Media, the courts, and terrorism: Lessons from the Christchurch mosque attacks – Gavin Ellis, Pacific Journalism Review
• Islam in the media: By the numbers

In an editorial, the 16-page publlcation said a need for “such a news outlet” as MMW had been shown after the mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques on 15 March 2019 and the Royal Commission inquiry that followed.

Fifty one people killed in the twin attacks were all Muslims attending the Islamic Friday prayer — “they were targeted solely because they were Muslims”.

The editorial noted “the shooter was motivated largely by online material. His last words before carrying out the shootings were: ‘Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie.'”

“It is therefore disappointing that, while acknowledging the role of the media in the shootings, none of the 44 recommendations in the government’s response to the [Royal Commission] relate to holding media to account for irresponsible reporting, or even mention media; the word does not appear in any recommendation,” writes editor Adam Brown.

Often not neutral
“Indeed, the word Muslim appears only once, in ‘Muslim Community Reference Group’.
It has long been acknowledged that media reporting of Muslims and Islam is often not neutral.”

The editorial cited an Australian example, a survey by OnePath Network Australia which tallied the number, percentage and tone of articles about Islam in Australian media in 2017, in particular newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp: The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, The Herald Sun, The Courier Mail and The Advertiser.

“Over the year, the report found that 2891 negative articles ran in those five newspapers, where Islam and Muslims were mentioned alongside words like violence, extremism, terrorism and radical. This equates to over eight articles per day for the whole year; 152 of those articles ran on the front page,” said the MMW editorial.

“The percentage of their opinion pieces that were Islamophobic ranged from 19 percent
to 64 percent.

“The average was 31 percent, nearly a third, with one writer reaching almost two thirds. Also, as OnePath comment, ‘Even though they are stated to be “opinion” pieces, they are often written as fact.'”

Editor Brown said the situation in New Zealand had not improved since the shootings.

“Biased and unfair reporting on Muslim matters continues, and retractions are not always forthcoming,” he wrote.

Examples highlighted
The editorial said that the purpose of MMW was to highlight examples of media reporting — in New Zealand and overseas — that contained information about Islam that was not
accurate, or that was not neutrally reported.

It would also model ethical journalism and responsible reporting following Islamic practices and tradition.

MMW offered to conduct training sessions and to act as a resource for other media outlets.

On other pages, MMW reported about misrepresentation of Islam “being nothing new”, a challenge over a Listener article misrepresentation about girls’ education in Afghanistan, an emerging global culture of mass Iftar events, an offensive reference in a Ministry of Education textbook, and the ministry “acknowledges bias in teacher recruiting”, an article headlined “when are religious extremists not religious extremists”, and other issues.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Research on climate crisis as the new target for disinformation peddlers, governance and the media, China’s growing communication influence, and journalism training strategies feature strongly in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

Byron C. Clark, author of the recent controversial book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Canterbury University postgraduate researcher Emanuel Stokes, have produced a case study about climate crisis as the new pandemic disinformation arena with the warning that “climate change or public health emergencies can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers” to “elicit outrage and protest”.

The authors argue that journalists need a “high degree of journalistic ethics and professionalism to avoid amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.

• READ MORE: Other PJR editions

PJR editor Dr Philip Cass adds an article unpacking the role of Pacific churches, both positive and negative, in public information activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several articles deal with media freedom in the Pacific in the wake of the pandemic, including a four-country examination by some of the region’s leading journalists and facilitated by Dr Amanda Watson of Australian National University and associate professor Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific.

They conclude that the pandemic “has been a stark reminder about the link between media freedom and the financial viability of media of organisations, especially in the Pacific”.

Dr Ann Auman, a specialist in crosscultural and global media ethics from the University of Hawai’i, analyses challenges facing the region through a workshop at the newly established Pacific Media Institute in Majuro, Marshall Islands.

Repeal of draconian Fiji law
The ousting of the Voreqe Bainimarama establishment that had been in power in Fiji in both military and “democratic” forms since the 2006 coup opened the door to greater media freedom and the repeal of the draconian Fiji Media Law. Two articles examine the implications of this change for the region.

An Indonesian researcher, Justito Adiprasetio of Universitas Padjadjaran, dissects the impact of Jakarta’s 2021 “terrorist” branding of the Free West Papua movement on six national online news media groups.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, media analyst Dr Gavin Ellis discusses “denying oxygen” to those who create propaganda for terrorists in the light of his recent research with Dr Denis Muller of Melbourne University and how Australia might benefit from New Zealand media initiatives, while RNZ executive editor Jeremy Rees reflects on a historical media industry view of training, drawing from Commonwealth Press Union reviews of the period 1979-2002.

Across the Tasman, Griffith University communication and journalism programme director Dr Kasun Ubayasiri presents a powerful human rights Photoessay documenting how the Meanjin (Brisbane) local community rallied around to secure the release of 120 medevaced refugee men locked up in an urban motel.

Monash University associate professor Johan Lidberg led a team partnering in International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) studies about “the world according to China”, the global media influence strategies of a superpower.

The Frontline section features founding editor Dr David Robie’s case study about the Pacific Media Centre which was originally published by Japan’s Okinawan Journal of Island Studies.

A strong Obituary section featuring two personalities involved in investigating the 1975 Balibo Five journalist assassination by Indonesian special forces in East Timor and a founder of the Pacific Media Centre plus nine Reviews round off the edition.

Pacific Journalism Review, founded at the University of Papua New Guinea, is now in its 29th year and is New Zealand’s oldest journalism research publication and the highest ranked communication journal in the country.

It is published by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) Incorporated educational nonprofit.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Research on climate crisis as the new target for disinformation peddlers, governance and the media, China’s growing communication influence, and journalism training strategies feature strongly in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

Byron C. Clark, author of the recent controversial book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Canterbury University postgraduate researcher Emanuel Stokes, have produced a case study about climate crisis as the new pandemic disinformation arena with the warning that “climate change or public health emergencies can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers” to “elicit outrage and protest”.

The authors argue that journalists need a “high degree of journalistic ethics and professionalism to avoid amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.

• READ MORE: Other PJR editions

PJR editor Dr Philip Cass adds an article unpacking the role of Pacific churches, both positive and negative, in public information activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several articles deal with media freedom in the Pacific in the wake of the pandemic, including a four-country examination by some of the region’s leading journalists and facilitated by Dr Amanda Watson of Australian National University and associate professor Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific.

They conclude that the pandemic “has been a stark reminder about the link between media freedom and the financial viability of media of organisations, especially in the Pacific”.

Dr Ann Auman, a specialist in crosscultural and global media ethics from the University of Hawai’i, analyses challenges facing the region through a workshop at the newly established Pacific Media Institute in Majuro, Marshall Islands.

Repeal of draconian Fiji law
The ousting of the Voreqe Bainimarama establishment that had been in power in Fiji in both military and “democratic” forms since the 2006 coup opened the door to greater media freedom and the repeal of the draconian Fiji Media Law. Two articles examine the implications of this change for the region.

An Indonesian researcher, Justito Adiprasetio of Universitas Padjadjaran, dissects the impact of Jakarta’s 2021 “terrorist” branding of the Free West Papua movement on six national online news media groups.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, media analyst Dr Gavin Ellis discusses “denying oxygen” to those who create propaganda for terrorists in the light of his recent research with Dr Denis Muller of Melbourne University and how Australia might benefit from New Zealand media initiatives, while RNZ executive editor Jeremy Rees reflects on a historical media industry view of training, drawing from Commonwealth Press Union reviews of the period 1979-2002.

Across the Tasman, Griffith University communication and journalism programme director Dr Kasun Ubayasiri presents a powerful human rights Photoessay documenting how the Meanjin (Brisbane) local community rallied around to secure the release of 120 medevaced refugee men locked up in an urban motel.

Monash University associate professor Johan Lidberg led a team partnering in International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) studies about “the world according to China”, the global media influence strategies of a superpower.

The Frontline section features founding editor Dr David Robie’s case study about the Pacific Media Centre which was originally published by Japan’s Okinawan Journal of Island Studies.

A strong Obituary section featuring two personalities involved in investigating the 1975 Balibo Five journalist assassination by Indonesian special forces in East Timor and a founder of the Pacific Media Centre plus nine Reviews round off the edition.

Pacific Journalism Review, founded at the University of Papua New Guinea, is now in its 29th year and is New Zealand’s oldest journalism research publication and the highest ranked communication journal in the country.

It is published by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) Incorporated educational nonprofit.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The question of how to handle the repressive and recalcitrant Burmese junta has divided the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) after member-state Thailand engaged with Myanmar’s military at least four times lately.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told reporters that he and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. discussed ASEAN and Myanmar at a bilateral meeting in Kuala Lumpur. 

“We did touch on Myanmar to strengthen the five-point consensus of ASEAN, but also give some flexibility, room and space for neighboring countries to engage on an informal basis,” Anwar said during a joint press conference with Marcos afterwards.

Anwar added that if this were to take place it must be done “without sacrificing the issues of human rights and the treatment of minorities, particularly Rohingya and other Burmese minorities in Myanmar.”

The Philippine president, who arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday afternoon for a two-day visit, did not mention Myanmar but, according to the Associated Press news agency, he said that in general ASEAN countries should be able to use bilateral means to solve problems.

“I think that this will be an important aspect to all the issues that ASEAN is presently facing and to all the issues that the member states are presently worrying about,” AP quoted him as saying.

ASEAN’s five-point consensus, a roadmap to restoring peace in Myanmar, has been ignored by the junta, which agreed to the plan two months after it toppled an elected government in February 2021. 

All along, the junta has cracked down on mass protests, killed nearly 4,000 people and arrested thousands more, according to human rights groups.

Aside from barring junta representatives from its meetings, ASEAN has been widely criticized for failing to make much headway in moving Myanmar towards peace. Malaysia’s former foreign minister, too, panned the consensus last year, saying it needed to be thrown out and that a new, time-bound plan with enforcement mechanisms should be formulated.

The Thai government, meanwhile, broke ranks with ASEAN and has engaged in talks with Myanmar’s military.

Earlier this month, in a shock announcement, Thailand’s foreign minister said he met secretly in prison with Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi who was jailed after the Feb. 1, 2021, military coup. The meeting, Thailand said, was approved by the Myanmar junta and the imprisoned leader.

Last month, Thailand also held another meeting with Myanmar’s junta-appointed foreign minister, representatives of India and China, as well as from ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The Burmese and Thai militaries are said to be close, and the outgoing Thai PM is a former army chief.

Malaysia, Singapore and ASEAN 2023 chair Indonesia skipped that meeting.

The Malaysian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its minister’s prior commitments were the reason he couldn’t attend. But it added that ASEAN’s five-point consensus remained the gold standard and bloc unity along with support for the ASEAN chair must be demonstrated.

Legitimacy for junta?

Anwar’s comments Wednesday about exploring individual member-states approaches to the Myanmar crisis, therefore, mark a change in Malaysia’s position.

His comments also followed a joint statement from ASEAN foreign ministers this month that reflected the divide within the bloc by noting that “a number of ASEAN member states” viewed the Thai meeting in June “as a positive development.”

Anwar’s rethink probably resulted from a realization that the situation seems to have become deadlocked, said Lee Pei May, a political expert at the International Islamic University Malaysia. 

“When the agreed-upon solution doesn’t yield the expected results, it’s essential to be open to exploring alternative approaches to find a resolution that benefits everyone involved,” she told BenarNews.

“This is one of the reasons why I believe Anwar has suggested that informal engagement with the Myanmar regime could be the way forward.”

An informal approach gives neighboring countries and the junta more flexibility to discuss and find common ground, May said.

“Thus, it is up to the wisdom of each country’s leader how they want to engage with Myanmar’s junta,” she added.

But another analyst, Chong Ja Ian, of the National University of Singapore, warned of the perils of informal approaches.

“[T]he issue is how much legitimacy do ASEAN or its members wish to extend to the junta. Will the junta use any contact or assistance to boost their legitimacy and the legitimacy of their actions, including on human rights abuses?” he told BenarNews.

“If there is engagement, what tangible outcomes do such engagement bring for the people of Myanmar or ASEAN? Or are they really photo opportunities for politicians?”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Iman Muttaqin Yusof for BenarNews.

“Have you been to Xinjiang? No? Then go and see Xinjiang first,” said the second-generation Chinese immigrant to the Southeast Asian country.

Meanwhile in a report published last August, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said China had committed “serious human rights violations” against Muslim Uyghurs in re-education or internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

So where did 65-year-old Xiaoling get her information from?

Malaysian Chinese over the age of 61, with lower education levels who speak mainly Chinese (Mandarin), have a relatively favorable view of China, a survey done by the Taiwan Democratic Laboratory found. They tend to rely on traditional media such as newspapers and television to receive news.

Chinese language newspapers and television in Malaysia have a role to play in creating positive perceptions of China among the country’s ethnic Chinese population, as interviews by Asia Fact Check Lab with journalists from and consumers of Malaysian Chinese media revealed. 

At the same time, the Malaysian Chinese media are not entirely responsible for these perceptions. Chinese television channels broadcast in Malaysia also beguiled the diaspora, AFCL found as well.

In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country like Malaysia, communal tensions can arise when a section of the population has no access to all the facts on an issue. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim, but the ethnic Chinese minority makes up about a fifth of the nation’s population.  

On the issue of the Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang, the mainstream English language press in Malaysia had carried reports from Western news agencies about the U.N. findings and so did the Malay-language press. Agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press included a sentence or two of denial from the Chinese government.

The Chinese-language press covered it slightly differently.

According to Li Wen Yue, a senior executive at a Chinese-language newspaper in Malaysia, in a situation where the East and West hold polarized views, such as on Xinjiang, the best way is to “let both sides speak.”

She said she would compile the official Chinese statements and also quote foreign media reports on the situation in the re-education camps, leaving it for readers to judge. 

“So the newspaper would say, ‘I give you the space, you talk about your views, he talks about his views.’ When he accuses you of only reporting one side, you can say, ‘I also reported on your views,’” she told AFCL.

“If the Chinese embassy has any objections to the reporting, or calls to enquire, the newspaper can also explain that it is quoting foreign media, not reporting out of thin air.”

And yet, Xiaoling, and many other Malaysian Chinese view China in a positive light compared with other ethnicities in the Southeast Asian country, research has shown. 

In fact, compared to 2016, the percentage of Malaysian Chinese who had a favorable view of China increased to 67% in 2022 from 41%, a survey A survey conducted by the Merdeka Center and the China Studies Institute at the University of Malaya found.

Malays make up close to 70% of Malaysia’s population, and all of them are Muslim. Ethnic Chinese comprise almost 23% of the population, and ethnic Indians 6.6%.

Malaysian Chinese families, like most Malaysian homes, have cable television, which has become especially ubiquitous since the pandemic. 

That gives them access to mainland Chinese state-run media such as CCTV and Phoenix. These networks broadcast content that is not directly political, such as programs about technology, cuisine and agriculture, as well as variety shows and dramas.

These programs show high-rise buildings in Shanghai and average Chinese using cutting-edge technology. Such content dazzles people like Xiaoling and her friend, 62-year-old housewife Qiuping, who marvel at what they see as China’s development, according to Malaysian media scholar Chen Ming-hui.

Xiaoling and Qiuping told AFCL that they envied the lives that the Chinese lead – or the lives they thought they led – and that they wished Malaysia could be led by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Malaysia’s democracy, they believed, had brought “chaos,” and China’s one-party rule and Xi’s leadership were necessary, they told AFCL.

Chinese Embassy’s ‘concerns’

Playing an adjunct role in influencing Malaysian Chinese perceptions of China is the Chinese press in Malaysia.

Well known Chinese-language mainstream newspapers in Malaysia include Sin Chew Daily, China Press, Nanyang Siang Pau and Oriental Daily News. 

Sin Chew Daily is the largest, with a circulation of about 350,000 copies in print and electronic form, and about 1.5 million readers a day.

All but the Oriental Daily News, are run by Media Chinese International (MCIL), which is owned by Malaysian businessman Tiong Hiew King, who has investments and business relations in China. 

Chinese-language media under MCIL tended to report positively on Malaysia’s and China’s business dealings, and was relatively pro-China, said a 2022 report by Freedom House, an American NGO. 

Much of this pro-China reporting, though, does not result from direct Chinese embassy coercion, AFCL found. 

What the Chinese Embassy does is express “concern” over a news item, said Chen Zhi De, a Malaysian Chinese journalist.

“China does not interfere with every event, as it would create resentment,” he told AFCL

He added that the embassy couches its concerns in very polite language, which nevertheless delivers the message. 

One too many “concerns” and the publication will find that Chinese businesses are suddenly withdrawing advertisements and the Chinese embassy is boycotting it, said a 2016 thesis paper by Taiwanese student Fang Cuiying, of National Taiwan University. 

Sometimes, there is pressure from the readership as well.

Lin Wei Hong, a reporter who covered the 2019 protests in Hong Kong against an extradition bill, recalled that readers felt he had given the pro-democracy camp too much press.

“Many times, you just put the phone down and let them complain,” he told AFCL.

But that is not always feasible, most Malaysian Chinese media personnel said.

The survival of Malaysian Chinese newspapers depends on the Chinese community. 

Malaysian media scholar Chen said that readers, who include local Chinese leaders and businessmen, exert pressure on the media if they see too much negative news about China, due to their close business ties with China.

Malaysian Chinese journalist Chen Zhi De and some others, however, defend themselves, saying they adhere to professional ethics, and while their reporting may not be perfect, they don’t intentionally take a pro-China stance.

“One kind of rice feeds hundreds of different people,” Chen told AFCL, as he proceeded to talk about MCIL, which owns three of the four top Chinese newspapers in Malaysia.

“If they believe that MCIL is ‘red media,’ everything they read will be red.”

This report was produced by Asia Fact Check Lab, a unit of Radio Free Asia, a news service affiliated with BenarNews. Shailaja Neelankantan of BenarNews contributed to it from Washington. 

Due to safety concerns, Xiaoling, Qiuping, Li Wen Yue, Chen Ming Hui, Chen Zhi De, Lin Wei Hong are pseudonyms preferred by the interviewees.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Asia Fact Check Lab.

A Myanmar democracy activist and her family, who are U.N. refugee card holders, were kidnapped from their home in Malaysia’s capital earlier this month, Human Rights Watch said Monday, adding that people linked to the Malaysian government may have been involved.

Activist Thuzar Maung was targeted because she supported the Myanmar pro-democracy movement against the Burmese junta, but it was a first for holders of United Nations refugee cards, said a source who works with migrant groups in Malaysia.

The July 4 abduction in Kuala Lumpur was carried out meticulously, raising suspicion that people connected to the Malaysian government may have participated, Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, told BenarNews.

“What is clear is this action was professionally planned and carried out with a great deal of efficiency, leaving very few clues – raising suspicion that persons connected to the Malaysian government could be involved,” Robertson said.

Police in Selangor, the state encompassing Kuala Lumpur, said they were investigating the report.

Malaysia has been among the most vocal Southeast Asian nations calling for strong action against the Myanmar military, which toppled an elected government in February 2021. Yet it has deported thousands, including military defectors, to Myanmar, human rights groups have complained.

Unidentified men abducted Thuzar Maung, 46; her husband, Saw Than Tin Win, 43; her daughter, Poeh Khing Maung, 16; and sons Aung Myint Maung, 21; and Thukha Maung, 17; on July 4 from their residence in Ampang Jaya, Kuala Lumpur, HRW alleged, citing witness accounts and CCTV footage.

“We fear that Thuzar Maung and her family were abducted in a planned operation and are at grave risk,” Elaine Pearson, Asia director at HRW, said in a statement. She demanded the Malaysian government urgently locate the family and ensure their safety.

While there was so far no evidence to conclusively determine who was responsible, the only party with a true motive was the Burmese junta, said HRW’s Robertson.

“[T]hose with a real motive to carry out this heinous abduction are the Myanmar military junta and its Embassy in Malaysia, and that possibility must be immediately and thoroughly investigated as well,” he said.

The Malaysian migrant group source, who asked that their name not be disclosed for safety reasons, concurred with Robertson, saying Burmese refugees live in constant fear of deportation because their embassy in Kuala Lumpur represents the Burmese military.

Thuzar’s public support of the shadow and civilian National Unity Government – made up of former elected legislators and other junta opponents – and her help for the NUG on Myanmar migrant welfare issues would be reasons that the junta would target her, the source said.

“And the reason the abduction was made public late is because Thuzar’s colleagues requested confidentiality until late last week due to concerns that media exposure could potentially endanger her,” the source told BenarNews.

Selangor state police said they were trying to find Thuzar and her family.

“The police have received a police report regarding this matter,” Selangor Police chief Hussein Omar Khan told BenarNews.

“Following that, an investigation has been initiated under the Missing Person Inquiry Paper,” he said without providing details.

RFA-affiliated news organization BenarNews contacted the Myanmar Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, as well as Malaysia’s Foreign and Home Affairs ministers for comment but did not immediately hear back from them.

‘No signs of robbery’

In Malaysia, Thuzar, whose name is also spelled Thu Zar Moung, works as chairwoman of the Myanmar Muslim Refugee Community and the Myanmar Migrant Workers Committee. According to HRW, she arrived in Malaysia in 2015.

Her Facebook page, where she posts criticism of alleged abuses by Myanmar’s junta, has more than 93,000 followers, HRW said.

CCTV footage showed a car entering the gated community where Thuzar lived with her family, at around 4:30 pm July 4, HRW said.

“The driver told the security guards they were police. Two hours later, Thuzar Maung was on the phone with a friend, who heard her yell to her husband that unknown men were entering the house, before being disconnected,” the HRW statement said.

“At about 7:10 p.m., the same car and the two cars owned by Thuzar Maung’s family were seen leaving the compound. Thuzar Maung’s phone and the phones of her husband and children appear to have been immediately turned off, as no calls have gone through since.”

The activist’s colleagues who entered the house on July 5 said there were no signs of robbery, HRW said.

The last post on Thuzar’s Facebook account was at 5:07 a.m. July 4.

BenarNews had met with Thuzar in September 2022 when she said she fled from Mandalay in Myanmar after facing discrimination because of her Muslim identity and being falsely accused of associating with terrorism.

“The Muslim community in that area were heavily accused. I was frightened and decided to flee the country. Because I had a passport at that time, I was able to book a flight and get to Thailand. Thailand granted a visa on arrival, and then I went to Malaysia,” she told BenarNews back then.

“I went to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 and pleaded my case. I showed them proof that I was accused and discriminated against due to my religion. Then we received our U.N. cards.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Iman Muttaqin Yusof and Nisha David for BenarNews.

Fifteen artists have been selected as the inaugural beneficiaries of NZ On Air’s New Music Pan-Asian funding.

The initiative, the first of its kind, aims to support the Asian music community in New Zealand.

The fund was established due to a lack of equitable representation of Asian musicians in the country’s music sector, says Teresa Patterson, head of music at NZ On Air.

• READ MORE: Other Blessen Tom articles

“Our Music Diversity Report clearly showed the under-representation of Pan-Asian New Zealand musicians in the Aotearoa music sector,” she said.

“This is reflected in the number of funding applications we received for this focus round.”

The funding provides musicians with up to $10,000 for recording, mixing and mastering a single, some of which can be set aside for the promotion and creation of visual content to accompany the song’s release.

“We received 107 applications for 15 grants, which is outstanding,” Patterson said.

‘Wonderful range’
“The range of genre, gender and ethnicity among the applicants was wonderful. We received applications from artists who identify as Chinese, Indian, Filipino, South Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Thai and Iraqi.

“The genres varied from alternative/indie and pop to hip-hop/RnB, dance/electro and folk/country.”

Six of the 15 songs that secured funding are bilingual, featuring Asian languages such as Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Malay and Punjabi.

Patterson believed this variety would “really help to reflect the many voices of Aotearoa New Zealand” and add to the vibrant cultural music mix experienced by local audiences.

Swap Gomez, a drummer, visual director and academic lecturer, was one of the panel members responsible for selecting the musicians for the funding. He emphasised the challenges faced by Asian musicians in New Zealand.

“What was awesome to see was so many Pan-Asian artists applying; artists we had never heard of coming out of the woodwork now that a space has been created to celebrate their work,” Gomez said.

“This is the time we can celebrate those Pan-Asian artists who have previously felt overlooked by the wider industry.

“Now there is an environment and sector where they can feel appreciated for their success in music. As a multicultural industry, developing initiatives such as this one is more crucial than ever.”

NZ On Air has announced that funding opportunities for Asian musicians will continue in the next financial year.

“The response we have had to this inaugural NZ On Air New Music Pan-Asian focus funding round has been phenomenal,” Patterson said.

“It tells us that there is a real need, so NZ On Air is excited to confirm that it will return in the new financial year.”

The full NZ On Air’s Pan-Asian New Music recipient list:

• Amol; cool asf
• Charlotte Avery; just before you go
• Crystal Chen; love letter
• hanbee; deeper
• Hans.; Porcelain
• Hugo Chan; bite
• Julius Black; After You
• LA FELIX; Waiting
• Lauren Gin; Don’t Stop
• Memory Foam; Moon Power
• Phoebe Rings; 아스라이
• RESHMA; Kuih Lapis (Layer Cake)
• tei.; sabre
• Terrible Sons; Thank You, Thank You
• Valere; Lily’s March

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A Malaysian court charged four Thai nationals on Friday with trafficking migrants from Myanmar, a day after Thailand extradited citizens for the first time in a bid to show it would crack down hard on human smuggling.

The Thais were charged in a case related to the 2015 discovery of more than 100 graves of Rohingya and Bangladeshi human smuggling victims found near Malaysia’s border with Thailand. If they are found guilty, the suspects face a maximum of 15 years in jail and a fine, or both.

The four, who were not represented by lawyers, were charged under Malaysia’s anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling of migrants’ laws, under which fall non-bailable offenses. 

The accused nodded in understanding when the charges were read out in Thai by a court interpreter before Judge Musyiri Peet at the Sessions Court in the northern state of Perlis.

The next court date is set for July 25, Musyiri said.

According to the chargesheet, the four Thai suspects are Kaeofainok, 30, Jepha Lapi-E, 51, Somphon A-dam, 51, and Amree Nesalaeh, 58.

Arun, Jepha and Somphon trafficked a Myanmar national, Mohd Belal, between August and March 2014 at Wang Kelian in Padang Besar, a district in Perlis.

The fourth accused, Amree, allegedly trafficked another Myanmar national, Zedul Islam, between February and April 2013 at the same location.

In Bangkok on Friday, Thai Police Gen. Surachate Hakparn said that sending the four suspects to Malaysia constituted a “historical extradition.”

“The cooperation will show the world that we take this trafficking in persons issue seriously and are ready to combat every kind of transnational crime from now on through the strong international link between national authorities like today,” he said.

Malaysia in 2017 had sought the extradition of 10 suspects from Thailand, but Thai authorities said one of them was from Bangladesh. 

“The nine suspects wanted by Malaysia were found involved in human trafficking,” said Surachate, the deputy national police chief.

“They [victims] were looking for a better chance in life but were cheated, coerced, detained in the jungle and finally killed.”

Of the remaining suspects, Surachate said only one or two were still serving jail terms in Thailand while the rest had died. He did not give details.

“When they finish [serving their sentence], we will send them over to Perlis [in Malaysia],” he said.

Meanwhile, in Perlis, Deputy Police Chief Baderulhisham Baharudin told the media after the court proceedings that another Thai suspect in the Wang Kelian case had been arrested in Johor state last year and was charged in April with human trafficking.

The suspect Suchat Tohdin, 34, a food stall trader, allegedly trafficked a Myanmar national between August 2014 and March 2015 at Bukit Wang Burma, Wang Kelian. His trial is still pending, Baderulhisham said.

In January 2015, Malaysian authorities found 139 mass graves and 28 abandoned camps scattered near the rocky hills along the Thai-Malaysia border at Bukit Wang Burma in Wang Kelian, but waited four months to exhume the bodies.

More than 100 skeletal remains, believed to be those of members of Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, were found in the graves while other remains apparently belonged to undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

No Malaysian has been charged in connection with the 2015 discovery. Only four foreign nationals have been convicted and imprisoned.

But in Thailand, prosecutors tried 102 people linked to 32 graves found on its side of the border in May 2015. Of the 62 people convicted, one was a three-star general, who died in prison while serving an 82-year sentence.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ili Shazwani and Wilawan Watcharasakwej for BenarNews.

A Malaysian court charged four Thai nationals on Friday with trafficking migrants from Myanmar, a day after Thailand extradited citizens for the first time in a bid to show it would crack down hard on human smuggling.

The Thais were charged in a case related to the 2015 discovery of more than 100 graves of Rohingya and Bangladeshi human smuggling victims found near Malaysia’s border with Thailand. If they are found guilty, the suspects face a maximum of 15 years in jail and a fine, or both.

The four, who were not represented by lawyers, were charged under Malaysia’s anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling of migrants’ laws, under which fall non-bailable offenses. 

The accused nodded in understanding when the charges were read out in Thai by a court interpreter before Judge Musyiri Peet at the Sessions Court in the northern state of Perlis.

The next court date is set for July 25, Musyiri said.

According to the chargesheet, the four Thai suspects are Kaeofainok, 30, Jepha Lapi-E, 51, Somphon A-dam, 51, and Amree Nesalaeh, 58.

Arun, Jepha and Somphon trafficked a Myanmar national, Mohd Belal, between August and March 2014 at Wang Kelian in Padang Besar, a district in Perlis.

The fourth accused, Amree, allegedly trafficked another Myanmar national, Zedul Islam, between February and April 2013 at the same location.

In Bangkok on Friday, Thai Police Gen. Surachate Hakparn said that sending the four suspects to Malaysia constituted a “historical extradition.”

“The cooperation will show the world that we take this trafficking in persons issue seriously and are ready to combat every kind of transnational crime from now on through the strong international link between national authorities like today,” he said.

Malaysia in 2017 had sought the extradition of 10 suspects from Thailand, but Thai authorities said one of them was from Bangladesh. 

“The nine suspects wanted by Malaysia were found involved in human trafficking,” said Surachate, the deputy national police chief.

“They [victims] were looking for a better chance in life but were cheated, coerced, detained in the jungle and finally killed.”

Of the remaining suspects, Surachate said only one or two were still serving jail terms in Thailand while the rest had died. He did not give details.

“When they finish [serving their sentence], we will send them over to Perlis [in Malaysia],” he said.

Meanwhile, in Perlis, Deputy Police Chief Baderulhisham Baharudin told the media after the court proceedings that another Thai suspect in the Wang Kelian case had been arrested in Johor state last year and was charged in April with human trafficking.

The suspect Suchat Tohdin, 34, a food stall trader, allegedly trafficked a Myanmar national between August 2014 and March 2015 at Bukit Wang Burma, Wang Kelian. His trial is still pending, Baderulhisham said.

In January 2015, Malaysian authorities found 139 mass graves and 28 abandoned camps scattered near the rocky hills along the Thai-Malaysia border at Bukit Wang Burma in Wang Kelian, but waited four months to exhume the bodies.

More than 100 skeletal remains, believed to be those of members of Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, were found in the graves while other remains apparently belonged to undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

No Malaysian has been charged in connection with the 2015 discovery. Only four foreign nationals have been convicted and imprisoned.

But in Thailand, prosecutors tried 102 people linked to 32 graves found on its side of the border in May 2015. Of the 62 people convicted, one was a three-star general, who died in prison while serving an 82-year sentence.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ili Shazwani and Wilawan Watcharasakwej for BenarNews.

The Thai suspects were handed over to Malaysia on Thursday as part of a 2017 extradition request by Kuala Lumpur and an investigation into the discovery of mass remains of Rohingya and Bangladeshi human smuggling victims in shallow graves in Wang Kelian, a village in Perlis state.

“They were handed to us on June 22 and will be brought to the Sessions Court in Perlis to be charged on Friday,” Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said in a statement but without disclosing details.

A senior Malaysian police official, who asked that his identity be kept anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said the Perlis police chief was scheduled to hold a press conference related to the Thai nationals on Friday.

“The four will be charged with human smuggling,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

In January 2015, Malaysian authorities found 139 mass graves and 28 abandoned camps scattered near the rocky hills along the Thai-Malaysia border at Bukit Wang Burma in Wang Kelian, but waited four months to exhume the bodies.

More than 100 skeletal remains, believed to be those of members of Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, were found in the graves while other remains apparently belonged to undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

After a cluster of similar mass graves were discovered at jungle camps abandoned by human smugglers on the Thai side of the frontier, Thailand in early May 2015 launched a crackdown on illicit immigration that triggered a humanitarian crisis in Southeast Asia.

Close to 3,000 ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh nationals, abandoned by their handlers on smugglers’ boats, suddenly came ashore in Malaysia and Indonesia. It was only after the news of the Thai graves made headlines that Malaysian authorities publicized the discovery of the graves in Wang Kelian and moved to recover the remains of the victims.

A Malaysian government-commissioned panel inquiry report made public last October found that officials could have prevented the torture and deaths of the smuggling victims if they had taken “a more proactive step in border control.”

“It did not require any extraordinary effort to detect what had happened in Bukit Wang Burma,” according to an excerpt from the Royal Commission of Inquiry report.

“The Commission regards the incident at Wang Kelian as a humanitarian tragedy that should never have happened in this day and age.”

No Malaysian has been charged in connection with the 2015 discovery. Only four foreign nationals have been convicted and imprisoned.

But in Thailand, prosecutors tried 102 people linked to 32 graves found on its side of the border. Of the 62 people convicted, one was a three-star general, who died in prison while serving an 82-year sentence.

‘No form of trial on our side’

Malaysia’s home minister said this latest development was the result of close cooperation between his country and Thailand. Malaysia had in 2017 sought the extradition of 10 Thai nationals.

“As a result of close collaboration between the two countries, four of the 10 individuals were tracked down and presented at a Thai court to face extradition,” Saifuddin said.

“The extradition proceeding took place at many courts in Thailand, and the Thai Court of Appeal on March 30 this year ordered the four individuals to be handed to Malaysia.”

However, Mohd. Mizan Mohammad Aslam, a professor at the National Defense University of Malaysia, would like to see a more active investigation on the Malaysian side.

“In Thailand, many people have been arrested for being involved in the crime and ended up in prison,” he told BenarNews.

“However, on our side, we have yet to take any action seriously; there has been no form of trial on our side.”

He urged the Malaysian authorities to find local suspects involved in the case and put them behind bars.

“I believe that if no serious action is taken, such crimes can flourish again and create another Wang Kelian,” he said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ray Sherman and Ili Shazwani for BenarNews.

Sam Rainsy, who lives in self-imposed exile in Paris, arrived in Kuala Lumpur with his wife on Monday for a two-day private visit, Malaysian Parliamentarian Wong Chen said. 

It included a one-hour meeting with three non-executive members of parliament who are interested in human rights and free and fair elections, but not a visit with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian officials said.

The visit angered Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Sam Rainsy is one of Hun Sen’s most prominent critics and rivals. He was head of the disbanded opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, but fled to France in 2015 to avoid a series of charges that his supporters say are politically motivated.

“Anwar Ibrahim told me clearly that he wouldn’t allow Sam Rainsy to visit, and I told him that if he allows Sam Rainsy, the two governments can’t work together,” Hun Sen said at a bridge inauguration ceremony in Phnom Penh on Wednesday

A pro-Cambodian government website said Sam Rainsy was kicked out of the country – but Malaysia-based CNRP activist Morn Phalla said that wasn’t true.

Wong said the stopover was made on Sam Rainsy’s way back to France from Indonesia and Australia.

“We have been close friends for almost six years,” he said. “Originally, I had no intention of posting the above as it was a private visit. However, since the matter has garnered some media attention, I hope the above clarifies what actually transpired.”

Malaysia’s foreign ministry said Anwar wasn’t wasn’t aware of Sam Rainsy’s recent trip, and that the two men did not meet.

‘I will shoot you’

Hun Sen also threatened to attack Sam Rainsy with a rocket launcher if he led workers from Thailand into Cambodia.

“Sam Rainsy boasted that he stepped on Malaysian soil, and now he’s boasting about going to Thailand,” Hun Sen said on Wednesday. 

Sam Rainsy last week told RFA that if a new pro-democracy Thai government is formed, he will look into traveling to Cambodia through Thailand.  

“The Thai government can’t allow you – the non-interference internal policy,” Hun Sen said, referring to ASEAN’s principle of non-interference between its member nations. “If you cross the border from Thailand … I will shoot you. You don’t want to create chaos.” 

Sok Ey San, spokesman for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, told RFA that he doesn't believe Sam Rainsy dares to return to the country. He also said he doesn’t believe many people will welcome Sam Rainsy.

“Why doesn’t he come if people are welcoming him?” he said. “He is conducting political propaganda for his political business.”

Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

The bulk carrier, registered in the southeastern Chinese city of Fuzhou, was seized on Sunday after it anchored illegally off the coast of Johor, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) said.

While inspecting the vessel, maritime authorities discovered rusty cannon shells, scrap metal, bullets and other relics believed to be from World War II. 

Discovery of the ammunition comes amid recent reports of scavengers looting two British shipwrecks, the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, which were sunk by Japanese torpedoes in 1941.

The 32-member crew – including 21 Chinese, 10 Bangladeshis and a Malaysian – are being questioned at the Tanjung Sedili Maritime Zone, said Nurul Hizam Zakaria, the MMEA director for Johor state.

“We are still investigating and our priority is to obtain statements from the crew members,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service.

The maritime agency said it was looking into a possible link with a separate seizure of relics and ammunition from a private scrap yard at Tanjung Belungkor in Johor. 

Malaysian newspaper the New Straits Times reported the Johor seizure was believed to be from the British World War II wrecks, which are located about 100 km east of Malaysia in the South China Sea.

“We at the MMEA cannot simply mention the British World War II wrecks because it is not confirmed yet and is still under investigation,” said Zakaria.

Following reports last week, a spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Defence told the BBC it condemned the “desecration” of maritime military graves and would take “appropriate action.”

The MMEA, the Royal Malaysian Police and the Department of Malaysian Heritage are investigating the recent seizures.

“Our officers are currently on-site to determine whether these relics are related to British World War II shipwrecks,” deputy head of the heritage department Mohd Muda told BenarNews.

BenarNews has contacted the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur for comment.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Iman Muttaqin Yusof for BenarNews.

A resident said a boat was seized when the arrests were made near the Gulf of Martaban in southeast Myanmar after brokers went to buy food in Chaungzon township. Authorities have sent 65 of the boat people to Mawlamyine Prison in Mon state to await trial, he said.

A lawyer representing the Rohingyas said the junta often regards such people as illegal immigrants, and that they would likely be charged with immigration law violations.

The four brokers, who were Buddhists from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, were also arrested. Several Rohingya Muslim children were also on board, and were being cared for by local people, the resident said. 

A member of a local charity group from Chaungzon township said there have been similar arrests of Rohingya in the area in the past. Those arrested are normally sent to prison, the worker said.

“But I don’t know what will happen to them next,” the charity worker said. “I think they will be interrogated and some of them might be bailed out and the rest will go to prison.”

Latest group to try to reach Malaysia

More than 740,000 Rohingya fled Rakhine following a military crackdown on the ethnic group that started more than five years ago, and now live in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Of the more than 600,000 that remained in Rakhine, around 125,000 are living in displaced people’s camps in the state.

Every year, hundreds abandon the camps and take to the sea in small, poorly-provisioned boats to try to reach other countries, including Muslim majority countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.

According to statistics collected by Radio Free Asia, nearly 2,000 Rohingyas have been arrested on their way to Malaysia from refugee camps in Rakhine and Bangladesh from December 2021 to March 2023. 

The junta has sentenced nearly 500 of them to two to five years in prison under Myanmar’s immigration law. 

A Rohingya aid worker in Yangon, who did not want to be named for security reasons, told RFA that the Rohingya fleeing Rakhine know they could be arrested or killed on the way, but they are risking their lives to live freely.

“They are not allowed to go anywhere in that state,” the aid worker said. “They left risking their lives, as they know they would be free in a new land, if they escape, or they will just go back to their original lives of failure if they get caught. They have already anticipated that they could end up like this.” 

Rohingyas usually pay almost 8 million kyat (about U.S.$2,800) per person before they begin their journey to Malaysia from Rakhine, and some end up being abandoned by brokers along the way, he said.

RFA contacted the military junta spokesman for Mon state, Toe Win, but he didn’t immediately return the call.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

France, Germany, and Italy are among EU members who don’t want to follow the US lead and impose trade sanctions on Russia. US sanctions are seen as a push to promote its own multibillion free-trade pact with Europe.

“France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, and EU President Italy see no reason in the current environment for the introduction of sectorial trade and economic sanctions against Russia and at the summit, will block the measure,” a diplomatic source told ITAR-TASS.

In order for a new wave of sanctions to pass, all 28 EU members must unanimously vote in favor. EU ministers plan to discuss new sanctions against Russia at their summit in Brussels on Wednesday, July 16. Even if only one country vetoed, sanctions would not be imposed. With heavyweights like France and Germany opposed to more sanctions the measure will likely again be stalled, the source said.

After the plane was shot down, America, UK, and Ukraine immediately said that Russia and Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine did it, and then, within just a few weeks, all 9 of the EU hold-outs switched to approve the added anti-Russian sanctions that Obama wanted.

On 5 March 2023, the independent investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg headlined “Meet the British intelligence-linked firm that warped MH17 news coverage,” and he reported how coordinated and pre-planned by British intelligence (which worked hand-in-glove with both Ukrainian and American Governments on this) the MH17 operation had been set up not just to shoot down the plane but to be backed up with faked ‘evidence’ that it had been done by Russia. (In his report, he uses undefined the acronym “JIT”: that refers to the official “Joint Investigative Team” on the downing of MH17.)

On 7 October 2019, I had already headlined “Update on the MH17 case” and documented that Netherland’s Government had signed an “8 August 2014 agreement [never made public] with Ukraine, to find Ukraine not to have perpetrated the downing. But the families [of the 196 Dutch who had been murdered by the shoot-down] don’t know this,” and the Dutch court that was hearing the MH17 case refused to consider any other evidence, especially not from Russia, and refused to consider those families’ urgings for that court to consider any evidence that was being offered on the case — including from Russia, which the Dutch Government pre-emptively was alleging had done the shoot-down. That secret agreement was among the four members of the “Joint Investigative Team,” all four of which were ‘allies’ (vassal-nations) of the U.S. Government: “Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, and Australia.” They all agreed that the case would be tried in the Netherlands, because 196 of the 298 corpses came from there. My article links down to the evidence that Russia was wanting to present but was barred from presenting, and it also links down to evidence from the Government of Malaysia and the black boxes it had, and the MH17 pilots’ corpses that Malaysia had, all of which was likewise clear that the MH17 was shot down not by any BUK missile from Russia, but instead by a Ukrainian air force warplane that fired straight at the pilot, whose corpse was riddled with bullets. The Ukrainian warplane pilot, from whose plane those bullets were being fired, was under the command of the Ukrainian government that Obama had installed. In other words: Obama was the Commander-in-Chief of the entire operation. And it obtained its objective: on 31 July 2014, the 9 recalcitrant EU members all switched to approve the new sanctions against Russia.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

A decade ago, distressed foreigners on foot used to knock on doors asking for food. And city dwellers arrived by car from hundreds of kilometers away to buy smuggled goods for cheap at outposts just inside Malaysia.

But all that changed in 2015, after Malaysian authorities discovered more than 100 bodies –thought to be Rohingya and Bangladeshis – in two jungle locations in northern Perlis state, near a camp equipped with cages to lock up migrants.

After that, the authorities launched a crackdown on human smuggling and closed a free-flow zone on the border.

People living in Felcra Lubuk Sireh, a settlement within the boundaries of Wang Kelian that is eight km (five miles) from the Thai border, saw the effects of human smuggling up close and personal.

“I heard that these people came out from the woods near our village. They walked into the country through the Thai border via the beaten path in the jungle and someone would pick them up in four-wheel drive vehicles at the exit of the trails on our side,” Villager Yan Hashim said, adding that many of those who entered the country illegally brought children with them.

“They were unkempt, wearing ragged clothes, some without shoes and the majority appeared to be starving and some almost fainted because of exhaustion,” he said.

“Few could speak broken Malay while most used sign language to ask for water, food, slippers or clothes. It really broke our hearts to see them in that state and after the discovery, it occurred to us that the ones we encountered might be the same as those enduring the cruelties at the ... camp found on Wang Burma hill.”

Yan Hashim said fewer immigrants pass through the village today.

“No one knocks on my door asking for food anymore,” he told BenarNews. “It is better this way and I hope the free-flow zone will remain closed.”

The zone allowed Thais to travel to Wang Kelian and Malaysians to travel to Wang Prachan across the border without passports, distances of about 1 kilometer. Many Thais living on the other side of the border took advantage of this access and traveled to a petrol station so they could take fuel back to their homes, locals recalled.

“Before the free-flow zone was closed in 2015, this town was bustling with tourists coming from across the country including Kuala Lumpur just to shop for a variety of goods such as mattresses, kitchen utensils and clothes at cheaper prices. Many of them were willing to travel such a distance to set foot into Thailand without a passport,” said a 46-year-old trader who asked to be identified only as Kamal because of safety concerns.

Today, residents said they feel safe as the cross-border smuggling activities and an influx of tourists, including those traveling 525 km (326 miles) from Kuala Lumpur, have slowed dramatically.

“It was lively then, but it came with a price,” Kamal said.

“Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Thais as many of us are like family since we are neighbors, but it was unnerving when smuggling activities were happening at your left and right and even worse when there were ‘tonto’ (spies for smugglers) all around us.”

Kamal said he witnessed a Thai man loading subsidized cooking oil, which he purchased at the free flow zone and hid under his car’s seat before crossing the border unchecked where he could sell the packets at a profit.

Kamal said he did not report the incident to authorities over fears for himself and his family, noting that smuggling syndicates could retaliate.

Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the free-flow zone, introduced in 1993 and disbanded after the mass graves were discovered, was no longer suitable because of potential threats.

“For the time being, the ministry is focusing on the development of infrastructure in the border area before moving on to discussing reopening the free-flow zone further,” Saifuddin said.

“I am not saying that Wang Kelian is under threat, but I am referring to the potential danger to the country in general,” he said.

‘Right under our noses’

A government-commissioned panel in 2022 reported that Malaysian officials could have prevented the torture and deaths of the Rohingya and Bangladeshi victims found in the shallow graves seven years earlier.

An English-version of the report by the Royal Commission of Inquiry appeared briefly on its website before being taken down after the commission’s chairman told reporters it was completed in 2019 but was confidential and subject to the country’s Official Secrets Act.

A since-retired police official had filed a report in January 2015 that a villager had tipped him off about a trafficking syndicate having approached him and others to help transport people from the region.

On the first day of hearings on the tragedy, RCI members were told that personnel followed human tracks and a soapy stream to find a campsite with wooden fixtures resembling guard towers and a shop. An officer testified about hearing a generator at the camp near where the graves were found.

Previous reporting said the camp contained pens which likely were used as cages to keep the trafficking victims.

Since the discovery caught the world’s attention, the government has increased security in the area, including cutting off many trails used by the smugglers.

A police source who asked BenarNews for anonymity because of safety concerns, blamed the 2015 tragedy on integrity issues among border personnel from government agencies, unfenced border areas and a lack of security enforcement.

“This cruelty happened right under our noses. How could the personnel manning the area near the campsite in the state forest reserve fail to notice the loud sound generator used at the campsite at nights,” he asked.

“How did the majority of traffickers know which route to take to illegally enter the country, and 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. was the best time to sneak in unnoticed?

“Who alerted the traffickers or smugglers when authorities conducting operations or raids,” he asked.

Meanwhile, Mohd Mizan Mohammad Aslam, a professor at the National Defense University of Malaysia, said smuggling and trafficking could return on a smaller scale. He pointed to weaknesses in border fences that could allow smugglers to cut or climb over them.

“As long as the system is not revised or enhanced, the potential of border security being manipulated and abused persists especially with the post-pandemic predicament and demand for foreign workers in certain sectors,” he told BenarNews

“There is lots at stake with the ongoing smuggling activities, not only from security aspects but also economically as billions of ringgit are spent on subsidizing petrol, cooking oil and sugar to ease Malaysians’ burden. Those items can be smuggled out of the country and sold on the other side of the border.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ili Shazwani for Benar News.

Shah had lived in Malaysia as a registered refugee since 2011, according to his wife Syeda, who spoke with CPJ.

Syeda, who asked to be identified by her first name, said that Shah fled Pakistan after he was abducted by agents of the country’s military intelligence agency, the ISI, who held him for three and a half months while beating and threatening him in retaliation for his reporting that unfavorably portrayed Pakistan’s security forces during the U.S. war on terror.

In January 2023, Malaysian Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said in a press conference that Shah had been deported in late August at the request of Pakistani authorities, who alleged that he was a police officer subject to disciplinary proceedings.

Syeda told CPJ that Shah never worked as a police officer, and she believed the ISI worked with Malaysian authorities to repatriate him in retaliation for his journalism. While in exile, Shah wrote about politics and alleged corruption in Pakistan, particularly within law enforcement agencies. He also wrote about refugee issues in Malaysia.

On February 8, 2023, Syeda learned that Shah was being held at the Adiala Jail in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, and visited him there the following day. Shah told her that authorities had held him for five months in an underground cell in Islamabad, where they abused him, she said.

In a petition filed at an Islamabad magistrate and dated February 7, 2023, which CPJ reviewed, the Cyber Crime Circle of the Islamabad division of the Federal Investigation Agency claimed that Shah was arrested on January 26, 2023, in relation to an investigation opened the previous January for alleged offenses under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016, and three sections of the penal code pertaining to defamation, criminal intimidation, and obstruction of a public servant. CPJ has repeatedly documented how the PECA has been used to detain, investigate, and harass journalists in retaliation for their work.

The first information report in that case, which opened the investigation, accuses Shah of disseminating “false, frivolous and fake” information about Pakistani civil servants, including Interior Ministry official Naqeeb Arshad, through a Malaysian WhatsApp account and unspecified posts on the Twitter account Bureaucracy, according to CPJ’s review of the report.

The Bureaucracy account, which has around 3,200 followers and covers politics and alleged corruption in Pakistan, posted allegations in January 2022 that Arshad had solicited bribes in exchange for visa extensions. CPJ called Arshad’s office and emailed the Interior Ministry for comment, but did not receive any replies.

Syeda denied that Shah operated that profile, which most recently posted on October 10, 2022, after his disappearance.

Syeda and Imaan Mazari-Hazir, Shah’s lawyer, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview, said that Shah’s legal team filed a bail application in that case in mid-February, and then on February 18 authorities transferred Shah from the Adiala Jail to the Peshawar Central Jail, in northwest Pakistan, without informing his family or lawyers.

Shah was transferred as part of a separate investigation opened in December 2020, which accused him of spreading “false, fallacious and malicious contents” about police officials using an anonymous profile on a WhatsApp group also named Bureaucracy, according to Mazari-Hazir and CPJ’s review of the first information report in that case. CPJ was unable to review the content of that WhatsApp group.

The journalist’s wife and lawyer told CPJ that police have not presented in court any specific examples of content by the Bureaucracy Twitter account or the anonymous WhatsApp account that they allege Shah wrote, or any evidence that would show he operated the Twitter account.

Syeda told CPJ that she deeply fears for the safety of herself, her family, and her husband. While traveling to Malaysia in December, she received numerous calls from unknown individuals she suspected were ISI officers, who warned her to stop searching for her husband, she said. Since returning to her home outside Peshawar in January, ISI officials have repeatedly visited her home, warning her to stay silent regarding her husband’s disappearance and not to get involved in the matter, she told CPJ.

CPJ emailed the Malaysian Home Ministry, the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency, and the High Commission of Pakistan in Malaysia for comment, but did not receive any replies.

CPJ also contacted Amma Baloch, Pakistan’s ambassador to Malaysia, and Marriyum Aurangzeb, Pakistan’s information minister, via messaging app, but did not receive any replies. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s media wing, did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment submitted through its website.

Shah was not included in CPJ’s most recent census of journalists imprisoned around the world as of December 1, 2022, because CPJ was not aware of his imprisonment at the time.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Amnesty International Malaysia said Kuala Lumpur returned the Myanmar nationals to their strife-torn country, despite condemning the Burmese junta’s violence against its own people.

Lim Wei Jet, a lawyer appointed for the Myanmar nationals by Amnesty, said the Burmese military, which ousted an elected government in February 2021, ostracizes Muslims.

“It’s against the non-refoulement principle and the right to live, whereby you shouldn’t deport someone back to a country where they will be imminently persecuted because of their race and religion,” he told BenarNews.

“In this case, it is because they are Muslim, and Muslims are discriminated against by the junta in Myanmar. And we are also saying that children were deported. The rights of children are also being breached, so we are saying it’s still unlawful.”

Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. But according to the principle of non-refoulement, people cannot be sent back to a country where they are likely to be persecuted, tortured, mistreated or have their human rights violated in other ways.

An Amnesty statement said the deportation took place “despite information from court proceedings that the group included children and other people in vulnerable situations.”

In February 2021, the Malaysian government sent back 1,086 Myanmar nationals despite a High Court’s interim stay on the deportation of a group of 1,200. The 114 Myanmar nationals remained in Malaysia because they had tested positive for COVID-19 only to be sent back last month.

The director-general of immigration and then-Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin previously applied to lift the stay, saying the 114 Myanmar nationals had agreed to be deported. Rights groups disputed the alleged consent, claiming that it was not received voluntarily.

Katrina Jorene Maliamauv, executive director of Amnesty International Malaysia, said in the statement Thursday that her organization was “deeply dismayed” that the Malaysian government not only “proactively” sought to get a stay on their deportation lifted, it also then sent back the individuals.

“The Malaysian government has criticized the Myanmar military and won international praise for its leadership, but by detaining and deporting at-risk individuals, it contradicts this position and exposes its hypocrisy in policy and practice,” Maliamauv said.

Earlier this month, Malaysia’s new Prime Minister Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim called on Southeast Asian nations to take urgent steps to resolve the crisis in post-coup Myanmar.

“[N]o country in these times should ever continue with discriminatory policies, marginalization of their people or intimidating, or worse, perpetrating violence against your own people,” he said while on a visit to Thailand.

BenarNews contacted the Malaysian Home Minister’s office and the Immigration Department for comment but did not immediately hear back.

In October 2022, Myanmar’s shadow government voiced alarm over reports that military defectors were among 150 Myanmar nationals deported that month from Malaysia. They were among more than 2,000 Myanmar nationals deported since April, Human Rights Watch said in a statement at the time.

Syed Hamid Albar, a former diplomat and chairman of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar, said the Malaysian government was wrong to continue deporting refugees who could face persecution and even death when they return.

“We should abide by international law and international standards. Strictly, you cannot deport refugees to a country where their life is in danger, and because their status is that of refugees, they should be given protection,” he told BenarNews on Thursday.

“They cannot be sent back to the country where they ran away from because of persecution or violence. For sure, when they go back, they will be harmed. In some cases, they will be killed. No country should send refugees back to the country they escape from.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Iman Muttaqin Yusof and Iskandar Zulkarnain for BenarNews.

By November the bloc will need to decide whether the consensus its leaders had agreed on with Myanmar in April 2021 should be junked, said Malaysia’s outspoken top diplomat, who has consistently taken the lead on post-coup Myanmar issues at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Saifuddin spoke to reporters as part of a panel after he met with Burmese opposition members in New York. Monday’s meeting took place amid reports that the junta forces had fired on a village school in Myanmar’s Sagaing region, killing at least seven children, in what appeared to be the deadliest incident involving children since last year’s military coup.

Saifuddin questioned the validity of the consensus.

“Between now and November ASEAN must seriously review if the 5-point consensus is still relevant and decide if it is still relevant. By the time we meet in November, we must ask hard questions and have an answer,” Saifuddin said as he addressed reporters afterwards at Malaysia’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations.

“If it is not working we have to decide what’s next. We cannot go in November and then start talking about it. We have to do the groundwork now.”

The Myanmar military meanwhile has blithely ignored the five-point consensus it agreed to with ASEAN last year, one of the main points of which was an end to violence. Its forces have also killed more nearly 2,300 people since the generals seized power by toppling an elected government on Feb. 1, 2021.

In July, Saifuddin had raised the prospect of scrapping the consensus to resolve Myanmar’s post-coup crisis, after the Burmese junta “made a mockery” of it by executing four political prisoners.

The consensus had called for an end to violence; constructive dialogue among all parties; the mediation of such talks by a special ASEAN envoy; the provision of ASEAN-coordinated humanitarian assistance and a visit to Myanmar by an ASEAN delegation to meet with all parties.

Activists and analysts have lambasted the Southeast Asian bloc for the failed five-point plan to restore democracy to Myanmar, because the junta and its leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, have ignored every point they agreed to 17 months ago at an emergency ASEAN summit in Jakarta.

On Monday, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights called the five-point consensus an “unmitigated failure.”

“We have to develop a new model, the way forward is the NUG should be a part of this,” said APHR Chairperson and Malaysian MP Charles Santiago, who attended the press briefing with Saifuddin.

“The NUG has no role to play in the existing model, but now the NUG should be part of the rebuilding of Myanmar,” Santiago added.

The NUG, or the National Unity Government, is the parallel civilian government of Myanmar.

On Monday, Saifuddin also expressed his disappointment with the extent of ASEAN’s dialogue with the Myanmar opposition, namely the NUG and the NUCC, a body of opposition stakeholders.

“Malaysia is not satisfied with the engagement [of ASEAN with the NUG and NUCC] because we have made this call months ago that ASEAN should engage with the NUG and NUCC,” he said.

“There must be consultation between ASEAN and stakeholders, with a clear endgame and the endgame is return to democracy in Myanmar.”

Malaysia was the first ASEAN member to officially contact Myanmar’s shadow, civilian government.

Saifuddin said the NUG in recent months had worked to bring together all the ethnic communities of Myanmar.

“In the past few months, the NUG has done a wonderful job of confidence building in all stakeholders. We have probably not seen such unity among all stakeholders ever,” he said.

“ASEAN must engage with the NUG, and this is something we will again bring up on the 22nd,” he said.

ASEAN foreign ministers are scheduled to meet informally Sept. 22 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shailaja Neelakantan for BenarNews.

The Lao Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare estimated that about 2,000 Laotians had recently traveled illegally to Malaysia for fishing jobs. During the pandemic, 700 Lao migrants had returned home from Malaysia, but most have since gone back as economic conditions in their home country worsen due in part to high inflation.

Though the pay is sometimes better there than what they could earn in Laos, illegal migrants are often exploited by their employers, a Lao fisherman who has been working in Malaysia’s Pahang state told RFA’s Lao Service, on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“There’s no fairness,” he said. “The main drawback is that we, as fishermen, don't know the total weight of the fish we catch and we don’t know how much money our employers make. We just get whatever they give us. The information about the total catch and revenue is not known to us.” 

To ensure their rights are protected, the Lao government is working on finding ways for more migrants to go to Malaysia legally.

“We recently sent about 70 Lao workers to Malaysia, legally, for a pilot project. We are requesting that the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs send more workers to Malaysia, as we know many Laotians are going there to work illegally,” an official of the ministry’s Department of Labor Skill Development and Employment Service told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

Despite the risks, Malaysia is attractive to migrants because it is a relatively easy country to work in, the fisherman said.

“The main reason so many choose to come here is because we don’t have money. Most of us don’t even have enough to make a passport,” he said.

“In my case, the employer sent some money to me in Laos to apply for a passport and pay for all my documents. If I had gone to, say, South Korea instead, I would have had to pay for everything myself. I’d have to borrow money to fly over there,” he said.

The fisherman said that he came to Malaysia via a land route through Thailand. The trip cost 100,000 baht (U.S. $2,800), which he repays through deductions from his paycheck. 

“More than one thousand Lao fishermen are working here …, about 60 percent more than there were last year. Most of these new fishermen, who have never even been on the sea, come from the Vientiane suburbs or from nearby Borikhamxay province,” he said.

Another Lao fisherman told RFA how he came to work in Malaysia.

“Nobody told me to come here, but I came because in Laos, there are no jobs and labor is cheap,” he told RFA. 

“I didn’t come here via the Lao Labor Department. At first, I came to Malaysia as a tourist. I took a bus to the town of Nong Khai in Thailand, then I traveled by bus to Pattani Province in southern Thailand where my employer’s bus was waiting to take me to Malaysia. Then, in Malaysia, my employer obtained all the necessary documents including a work permit for me, so I can work,” the second fisherman said.

A third fisherman told RFA that the pay was good.

“We make at least 3,700 ringit, or about 30,000 baht [$836] per month, but in some months when the catch is big, we can earn up to 7,000 ringit, or 50,000 baht [$1,581],” he said.

“There are about 100 Lao fishermen working here ... That’s not a lot. There are also Thais, Burmese and Cambodians too and we mingle together,” he said.

The Lao government is making efforts to protect the migrants by making it easier for them to go to Malaysia legally, thereby making them harder to exploit.

Authorities are collecting information in hopes of entering into an agreement with Malaysia to allow Laos to send more workers, Anousone Khamsingsavath, the director of the Department of Labor Skill Development and Employment Service, said at an August 2021 meeting that discussed workers’ rights in Southeast Asia.

He acknowledged widespread exploitation in Malaysia’s fishing and seafood processing industries.

Lao fishermen in Malaysia support the effort between the countries to reach an agreement, because it would increase the likelihood that their rights would be protected, a fourth Lao fisherman told RFA.

BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news source, sent inquiries on this issue to the Malaysian government but received no response.

BN reached out to MY govt officials for comment but didn't receive an answer.

Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah was responding Sunday to an open letter from a Southeast Asian parliamentarians’ group to the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. In it, they urged the bloc to “immediately and publicly meet with the NUG” – Myanmar’s parallel, civilian National Unity Government.

“I have informally met [through virtual conference] the NUG Myanmar foreign minister and the NUCC chairman before the last ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat. Let’s meet and discuss,” Saifuddin said via Twitter, referring to a ministerial retreat that took place in a hybrid format in mid-February after being postponed from an earlier scheduled date amid reports of differences among member-states.

Myanmar’s National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) includes representatives of the NUG, civil society groups, ethnic armed organizations, and civil disobedience groups.

In the tweet, Saifuddin tagged the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), the group that sent the open letter on Sunday, the anniversary of the day when Southeast Asian leaders and the Burmese junta chief, agreed during an emergency summit to a so-called Five-Point Consensus for action on post-coup Myanmar.

Last October, Malaysia’s outspoken foreign minister had said he would open talks with the NUG if the Burmese junta kept stonewalling in cooperating with ASEAN’s conflict resolution efforts.

RFA contacted the foreign ministry of Cambodia, this year’s ASEAN chair, for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Meanwhile, Bo Hla Tint, the NUG’s special representative to ASEAN, questioned the Southeast Asian bloc’s seriousness in solving the Myanmar crisis.

“They have failed to implement, during the past year, the basic point of the ASEAN Common Agreements – to end the violence. And then, they failed to comply with the second point – systematic distribution of humanitarian aid,” he told RFA.

“I’d say the ASEAN leadership does not take seriously the policy or framework set down by the ASEAN leadership itself, if the leaders do not take any effective action [against the junta].”

In Malaysia, two analysts praised Saifuddin for breaking from ASEAN and initiating separate action.

“Malaysia takes lead on call to review ASEAN’s approach to Myanmar (after a year of failed ASEAN five-point consensus), acknowledging informal meetings with NUG Myanmar,” Bridget Welsh, a political analyst with the University of Nottingham Malaysia, tweeted.

Another analyst, Aizat Khairi, a senior lecturer at Universiti Kuala Lumpur, agreed.

“Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah’s reaction to the APHR open letter is something refreshing,” he told BenarNews.

The five-point agreement reached between ASEAN’s leaders and Burmese military chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing on April 24 last year included an end to violence, the provision of humanitarian assistance, an ASEAN envoy’s appointment, all-party dialogue, and mediation by the envoy.

ASEAN has not succeeded in implementing any of these points, said Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think-tank.

“I think there is no doubt every part of [the consensus] has failed, and with Cambodia as the chair and the junta increasingly backed by China, there is no way the consensus will succeed, or that ASEAN will do anything at all serious about Myanmar,” Kurlantzick told BenarNews.

“Suspend Myanmar from ASEAN until a return to democratic rule. ... But ASEAN won’t do that.”

He was referring to Beijing’s support for Naypyidaw at international forums, including at the United Nations, since Min Aung Hlaing toppled the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government on Feb. 1, 2021.  

Under ASEAN’s long-standing policy that its 10 members take all decisions collectively through consensus, if one member-state opposes a proposed move, it is shelved. And not every ASEAN member is on board with stricter action against Myanmar other than barring junta representatives from attending top ASEAN meetings, analysts have noted.

A “five-point failure” is what the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), a group of independent international experts, calls ASEAN’s consensus.

“The junta has not held to a single point of the five-point consensus. The agreement has failed and a change of course from ASEAN is needed,” SAC-M member Marzuki Darusman said in a statement issued Friday.

In fact, since joining the consensus, Min Aung Hlaing has escalated the military’s attack on the people of Myanmar, and continued to target and detain political opponents, SAC-M said. Nearly 1,800 people, mostly pro-democracy protesters, have been killed by Burmese security forces, since the coup.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shailaja Neelakantan for BenarNews.

Journalists and journalism are waging a global struggle for survival and for “truth” against fake news and alternative facts, say two Asia-Pacific media commentators.

“Without journalists who will tell it like it is no matter the consequences, the future will continue to be one of alternate facts and manipulated opinions,” Rappler executive editor Glenda Gloria told about 135 media scholars, journalists and researchers at the opening of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) in Auckland today.

“As we’ve experienced at Rappler, the battle to save journalism cannot be fought by journalists alone, and cannot be fought from our laptops alone. The battle for truth is a battle we must share — and fight — with other groups and citizens.

• READ MORE: Rappler chief editor and Asia-Pacific media keynotes at ‘pandemic’ forum
• The ACMC 2021 conference

“Each time our freedoms are threatened, we should have no qualms engaging other democracy frontliners and participating in collective efforts to resist authoritarianism.”

However, she told the virtual conference hosted at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) she believed that journalists had the motivation and enough understanding now to “stop the tide of disinformation” that fuelled the spread of authoritarianism.

“In this environment, make no doubt: Journalism is activism,” added the award-winning investigative journalist and author who heads the digital website that has repeatedly angered Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte with its exposés.

Another keynote speaker, Dr David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and retired professor of Pacific journalism at AUT, condemned a “surge of global information pollution”.

Disinformation damaging democracy
He outlined how disinformation was damaging democracy and encouraging authoritarianism across the Pacific, singling out Fiji and Papua New Guinea for particular criticism.

Dr Robie cited how authorities in PNG had been forced to abandon mobile health clinics and teams of health workers carrying out covid-19 vaccination and awareness programmes because of the increasingly risky attacks against them.

He said much of the content used by anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists which framed the covid-19 response as a fight between the individual and the allegedly “treacherous” state had been repackaged from US and Australia vested interests.

Dr Robie said universities could do far more in the fight against disinformation and praised initiatives such as the RMIT fact-checking collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), The Conversation news and academia project, The Juncture journalism school website, and the new Monash University backed 360info wire news service.

“The challenge confronting many communication programmes and journalism schools located in universities or tertiary institutions is what to do about authoritarianism, how to tackle the strain of an ever-changing health and science agenda, the deluge of disinformation and the more rapid than predicted escalation of climate catastrophe,” he said.

“One of the answers is greater specialisation and advanced programmes rather than just relying on generalist strategies and expecting graduates to fit neatly into already configured newsroom boxes.

“The more that universities can do to equip graduates with advanced problem-solving skills, the more adept they will be at developing advanced ways of reporting on the pandemic – and other likely pandemics of the future – contesting the merchants of disinformation and reporting on the climate crisis.”

Dr Robie, who was awarded the 2015 AMIC Asian Communications prize, pioneered several student journalist projects in the region such as intensive coverage of the 2000 Fiji coup and the 2011 Pacific Islands Forum, and more recently the 2016-2018 Bearing Witness and 2020 Climate and Covid project in partnership with Internews.

Journalism Nobel Peace Prize
Glenda Gloria said her entire editorial team had been delighted when their chief executive Maria Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – along with Russian editor Dmitry Muratov. Ressa was the first Filipino Nobel laureate and “some of us started calling our office the Nobel newsroom”.

“This immense pride that we feel isn’t just because Maria is our CEO, it is that the prize went to two journalists who have faced the toughest challenges imposed by authoritarian states,” Gloria said.

“More than that, the Nobel prize puts a global spotlight on the extraordinary dangers that we journalists face today.

“To many of us in the Global South, journalism has always been considered a dangerous profession long before media watchdogs started ranking countries around the world according to the freedoms enjoyed by their press.

“And yet, despite all that we have seen and experienced, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most challenging period for journalism.

“At stake today is our very existence, our relevance, and our ability to speak truth to power.”

The conference was opened following a traditional mihi by AUT’s acting dean of the Faculty of Design and Communication Technologies, Professor Felix Tan, and ACMC president Professor Azman Azwan Azamati of Malaysia.

Master of ceremonies duties are being shared by AUT’s Khairiah A. Rahman, the chief conference organiser, and Dino Cantal of Trinity University of Asia.

More than 40 media and communication research papers are being presented over three days with the conference ending on Saturday afternoon.

• The ACMC conference programme

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Controversial Papua New Guinea citizen Joe Chan has been arrested in Malaysia – this time under the name Djoko Soegiarto Tjandra.

And also this time as an Indonesian, a wanted and convicted fugitive and graft convict, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

He has been on the run for 11 years. Last Thursday he was brought back to Indonesia.

READ MORE: Indonesia brings graft fugitive Djoko Tjandra back from Malaysia

Guarded by personnel from the police’s Criminal Investigation Unit (Bareskrim), Tjandra landed at Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport in East Jakarta last Thursday evening.

Tjandra was first arrested in September 1999 for his involvement in the high-profile Bank Bali corruption case. He was acquitted by the South Jakarta District Court in 2000.

After the Attorney-General’s Office filed a request for review, the Supreme Court sentenced Tjandra to two years jail in 2009 and ordered him to pay Rp 546 billion (US$54 million) in restitution.

However, Tjandra fled to Papua New Guinea a day before the court ruling and had remained at large ever since.

PNG citizenship sparked inquiry
Controversially, Tjandra was granted PNG citizenship, which sparked criticism and prompted the Ombudsman Commission to launch an inquiry into the matter.

Bareskrim head Listyo Sigit Prabowo said the arrest had been made possible through cooperation between Indonesian police and their Malaysian counterparts.

“The National Police chief sent a letter to the Malaysian police to help with searching the fugitive and, Alhamdulillah [thank God], we managed to locate him [on Thursday] afternoon,” he said in a televised statement after arriving at the airport.

“This is also the answer to public doubts as to whether the police could catch [the fugitive], and today we have [delivered on] our commitment to arrest Djoko Tjandra,” Listyo said as he thanked the Malaysian police for cooperating with the arrest.

Following his arrival, Tjandra was immediately taken to the Bareskrim headquarters for further questioning.

Returned to Indonesia undetected
Tjandra recently made headlines as he managed to return to the country undetected and request a case review over his conviction with the South Jakarta District Court in early June.

He reportedly filed his plea after obtaining a new electronic ID card and passport, in addition to having his Interpol red notice status lifted.

The court, however, dropped his case review plea on Tuesday after Tjandra, who was reported to be residing in Malaysia, failed to show up for the hearing four times.

Tjandra’s legal team said that the fugitive was not able to attend trial due to his poor health.

ANALYSIS: By Ross Tapsell, of the Australian National University

The recent police interrogations of six Al Jazeera journalists in Malaysia – five of whom are Australian – was not about shaping international reportage or a diplomatic rift.

Rather, it was part of a troubling pattern of crackdowns on the media and freedom of speech in the country, driven by the domestic concerns of an insecure government highly sensitive to criticism.

While the previous government led by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was by no means consistent or perfect, Malaysia was hailed just last year as an example of a country improving on press freedom.

READ MORE: Malaysia takes a turn to the right, and many of its people are worried

This started to change in March, however, as Muhyiddin Yassin’s new government came to power. Tolerance for criticism and dissent has since been in short supply.

Since Muhyiddin Yassin’s new government came to power. Tolerance for criticism and dissent has since been in short supply. Image: Ahmad Yusni/EPA

Pattern of repression
The Al Jazeera journalists have been accused of sedition and defamation over a documentary about the government’s treatment of migrant workers during the covid-19 pandemic. Malaysian officials and national television claim the documentary was inaccurate, misleading and unfair.

But these journalists are hardly the only ones to be targeted by the new government.

Steven Gan arriving at court this week. Image: Ahmad Yusni/EPA

Steven Gan, chief editor of the trusted online news portal Malaysiakini, is facing contempt of court charges and could be sent to jail over reader comments briefly published on the news site that were apparently critical of the judiciary. Gan’s lawyer warned the case could have a “chilling effect”.

South China Morning Post journalist Tashny Sukamaran has been investigated for reporting on police raids of migrant workers and refugees.

Another journalist, Boo Su-Lyn, is being investigated for publishing the findings of an inquiry into a fire at a hospital in 2016 that left six dead.

A book featuring articles by political analysts and journalists has been banned over the artwork on the cover that allegedly insulted the national coat of arms. Sukamaran and journalists from Malaysiakini have been questioned by police about their involvement.

Opposition politicians have also been questioned by police for tweets and comments they made in the media prior to the new government taking power.

Whistle-blowers are included in this, too. For example, the government this week cancelled the work permit of the migrant worker who was featured in the Al Jazeera documentary.

Why the recent crackdown?
Malaysia’s current coalition government – Perikatan Nasional – was controversially formed earlier this year. The alliance came to power via backdoor politicking and support from the Malaysian king as Mahathir’s dysfunctional coalition imploded.

The new government coalition includes the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the party voted out of power in 2018 following a massive corruption scandal. This was the first time Malaysia had changed government in its 60-year history.

With UMNO now back in government, it is perhaps no surprise there are again more crackdowns on the media, as their previous rule saw regular attacks on journalists, activists and opposition figures.

Malaysia has also become known for its “cybertroopers” – social media commentators similar to “trolls” – who drive heated nationalistic and race-related agendas, and target government critics.

After the Al Jazeera documentary, these cyber-troopers provided fervent support for the government’s actions, arguing it had every right to round up migrants and evict them if it sees fit. Al Jazeera said its journalists were also targeted by cyber-troopers, saying they

faced abuse online, including death threats and disclosure of their personal details over social media.

Shaky government looking to firm up support
There’s another reason for the return of media crackdowns and online-driven activity beyond just the government’s desire to control the media.

It is also tactical as it allows government ministers to respond with firm statements asking security forces to intervene – enabling them to look strong, coherent and nationalistic.

Muhyiddin’s coalition is on shaky ground. It holds a slim majority in parliament and internal party factions have come to dominate political debate, with “party-hopping” becoming increasingly common. Malaysiakini even has a rolling news page regularly updated to track politicians’ changing alliances.

Malaysia’s parliament also finally resumed this week after a long and unstable hiatus, and was described as a “circus”. Politicians shouted over one another, with some trading racist and sexist remarks.

The house speaker, who was part of Mahathir’s administration, was also
controversially replaced. There has been consistent talk of snap polls.

In this environment, politicians who don’t respond forcefully enough in the “culture wars” over documentaries and controversial artwork on book covers, or conform with the online mob on immigration, risk looking weak.

A ‘new normal’ settling in
A snap election won’t necessarily help Muyhiddin strengthen his position, as parties within the coalition can become rivals during a campaign for certain seats.

But no matter who rules Malaysia in the coming months, the result will likely be a government that is fragile, insecure and worried about its legitimacy. For Malaysians, this is their “new normal”.

The risk for journalists in this “new normal” is further repression and harassment of independent media. As we have seen elsewhere in Southeast Asia, as well as in Australia, the state seems increasingly willing to use legal and regulatory pressure to make sure journalists and whistle-blowers are afraid to speak up.

Dr Ross Tapsell is senior lecturer in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific., Australian National University.  This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The Committee to Protect Journalists senior Southeast Asia representative Shawn Crispin urges Malaysian prosecutors to “drop the bogus contempt of court charges pending against Steven Gan and stop using legal threats to intimidate the media.”  In Crispin’s pertinent view, “Pursuing an independent news outlet over comments from random internet users reeks of a witch hunt and sends a worrying signal about the state of press freedom under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s new government.”

Malaysia is facing a season of official pettiness and persecutions.  Boo Su-Lyn, editor of the health news portal CodeBlue, is being investigated under the Penal Code and Official Secrets Act for publishing the findings of an investigation into a fire at the Hospital Sultanah Aminah in 2016 that left six dead.  Her claim is that the report in question had been declassified.

Former ministers have also attracted official attention, including the former women, family and community development minister, Hannah Yeoh.  The MP attracted the interest of authorities after being targeted for supposedly disseminating a remark that the government’s deputy minister of women and family development had been less than keen to deal with child marriage.  The remark, she argues, was falsely attributed to her.

The judicial calendar may well have other additions if the investigation into the work of six journalists working for Al Jazeera sufficiently exercises state prosecutors.  The six journalists, of whom five are Australian, are being investigated on possible charges of sedition and defamation.  Breaches of the country’s Communications and Multimedia Act are also being considered in the possible charge sheet.

The journalists in question are part of Al Jazeera’s 101 East program, which took interest in Malaysia’s treatment of undocumented migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The crew had much to work on.  The “movement of control order”, implemented in response to the pandemic, has been particularly brutal towards the undocumented who clean and slop the underbelly of the state.

In May, Malaysian authorities executed four immigration crackdowns and arrested over 2,000 undocumented migrants.  Among them were asylum-seekers and 98 children.  This took place despite the promise by authorities on March 27 that they would not “focus on their documents… the most extreme case that could happen is a 14-day quarantine COVID19.  That is all.”  By May, the National Police Inspector-General Abdul Hamid Bador had removed the gloves and any sense of pretence, readying his forces to arrest and detain any undocumented residents supposedly in breach of the partial lockdown.  “We cannot allow them to move freely while the MCO is still in progress as it will be difficult for us to track them down if they leave the identified locations.”

The policy has been astonishingly self-defeating.  Concentrating such individuals in confined quarters has had the effect of encouraging the spread of COVID-19.  On May 26, Noor Hisham Abdullah, director-general of the Ministry of Health, was grave in warning.  “We have identified detention centres as a high-risk area.”  On May 22, 35 cases were identified at a detention centre.  Within four days, the number had bulked to 227 across three sites.  By May 31, the number had increased to 410 across four sites.

The work of Al Jazeera’s six journalists yielded up Locked Up in Malaysia’s Lockdown, featuring much of what we already know. Al Jazeera does not mince its words introducing it.  “Now, undocumented foreign workers are scared for their future.  Out of work and forced to live in cramped conditions, some are starving and dependent on charities to survive.”  The Malaysian government may have successfully checked the spread of the coronavirus but had “also put some of the poorest areas of Kuala Lumpur behind barbed wire – testing and fingerprinting migrants, and arresting anyone without valid documents.”

The short production raised the hackles of the political establishment, who insist that any tolerable standard of journalism must accord with government policy.  Malaysia’s Defence Minister Ismail Saabri insists that Al Jazeera “apologise to all Malaysians”.  “As international media, we expect Al Jazeera to have high ethics.  But, the report does not seem to contain clear facts and is full of baseless accusations.”  The immigration department’s director general has warned that foreigners making “inaccurate statements aimed at sullying the country” could have visas and work passes revoked.  The hunt for Md Rayhan Kabir, one of the migrants interviewed in the report, has also commenced pursuant to the country’s Immigration Act.

The six staff members were duly asked to present themselves at the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters on Friday.  Al Jazeera’s statement, released on Thursday, affirmed that it stood by “the professionalism, quality and impartiality of its journalism,” warning of “serious concerns about developments that have occurred in Malaysia since the broadcast of the documentary”.  The network also noted how its staff had been “targeted by sustained online abuse, including death threats and disclosure of their personal details over social media.”  Repeated attempts to obtain the government view on the topics covered in the report failed due the refusal to grant interviews.

The obvious is often the most infuriating for authoritarian states, even amateurish ones with airs.  While Malaysia’s abuse of journalists has some way to go before it keeps company with violence of the Philippines, it is making a spiteful effort to climb the charts.  An air of intimidation has set in.

The deep irony in all of this is that the five Australians of the Al Jazeera outfit can count on little genuine assistance from the land of their citizenship.  The Australian government has shown itself to be rather keen in targeting the fourth estate for publishing material it deems in breach of national security legislation.  Dan Oakes of the ABC awaits the deliberations of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions over a brief by the Australian Federal Police for his role in publishing the Afghan Files.

Any potential prosecution will need final approval of the Australian Attorney General, Christian Porter, who nurses a faux belief in the merits of the free press and his role as its defender.  In Australia, secret trials and investigating journalists for exposing state abuses is all the rage.  The fox, in the form of Porter, is guarding the hen house.  Malaysia’s heavy handed authorities, for that reason, have nothing to trouble themselves over.

This article was posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2020 at 6:10pm and is filed under Australia, COVID-19 (coronavirus), Journalists, Malaysia, Media, Migration/Migrants.

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Malaysian police summoned six Al Jazeera media workers today for questioning relating to an investigation for defamation and violation of Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA), reports IFJ Asia-Pacific.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Australian affiliate the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) have called on authorities to drop the case against Al Jazeera immediately.

The IFJ received reports that six media workers were called to Malaysia Central Police Headquarter in Bukit Aman about 8:50 am (GMT+8) on July 10.

They include senior producer and correspondent Drew Ambrose, producer Jenni Henderson, and the network’s bureau chief, executive producer, cameraman, and digital crew.

According to MEAA, five of the six media workers are Australian. The investigation relates to allegations against Al Jazeera for “sedition, defamation and violation of the country’s Communications and Multimedia Act” after airing Al Jazeera’s 101 East documentary Locked Up in Malaysia’s Lockdown that investigated why the covid-19 pandemic has forced migrant workers into hiding.

In its statement, Al Jazeera “strongly refutes” the charges, which criticised the documentary as being inaccurate, misleading and unfair.

The network “stands by the professionalism, quality and impartiality of its journalism”.

Al Jazeera emphasised the episode does not contain the personal opinions of any its staff, stating the network repeatedly requested and was denied interviews with several senior government ministers and officials.

Malaysia’s CMA is routinely abused targetting journalists despite the Communication and Multimedia minister’s commitment to review the act’s restrictions on press freedom.

Since March 2020, the IFJ has recovered 19 instances of authorities enforcing the CMA to intimidate media workers and freedom of expression advocates.

MEAA wrote to the High Commission of Malaysia in Australia noting: “Malaysia’s obligations under UN General Assembly resolution 74/157 The Safety of journalist and the issue of impunity adopted on December 18 2019 that states Malaysia, as a UN member state, should do its ‘utmost to prevent, violence, threats and attacks targeting journalists and media workers.’ MEAA calls on you to fulfil that obligation towards our colleagues.”

The IFJ said: “The IFJ deeply regrets Malaysian authorities abusing the Communications and Multimedia Act to silence and intimidate journalists. There has been a distinct pattern under the Covid-19 crisis of media workers targeted under Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Act and Penal Code for simply doing their job. It is urgent for Malaysia during the Covid-19 pandemic to prioritise the public’s right to know and for the media to be able to report freely and fairly without the threat of persecution.”

Al Jazeera journalists arrive at the Bukit Aman police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today. Image: Mohid Rasfan/AFP

One would be unwise to expect much more than a partisan view from the weekly political guest. It is, however, not unreasonable to think that the members of the panel might be expected to offer a factual analysis, albeit tempered by the political stance of their employee newspapers.

On the program broadcast on 7 June 2020 both the political guest, Labor deputy leader Richard Miles, and one of the panelists, the Sydney Morning Herald’s David Crowe offered an opinion that was stunning in its disregard for the body of information that is now available on the topic of the comment.

That topic was the shooting down of Malaysian airlines MH 17 in July 2015 with the loss of life of 298 passengers and crew. The Dutch lost the largest proportion of the passengers, followed by Australia with 38 citizens and residents, then Malaysia and a smattering of citizens from a number of other countries.

An inquiry team was immediately established led by the Dutch, with other representatives coming from Australia, Belgium and Ukraine. There were three surprises in this contingent. The Dutch and Australians were not unexpected as having lost a significant number of their citizens. The inclusion of Belgium was puzzling and perhaps, in the light of subsequent events, only explicable in their role as the host of the NATO military alliance.

The second surprise was the inclusion of Ukraine. Although the tragedy occurred over Ukrainian territory it was clearly not an accident but the result of unfriendly criminal activity by a party or parties then unknown. Ukraine was at the very least a possible culprit.

The third surprise was the exclusion of Malaysia which as the owner and operator of the flight would normally be an automatic inclusion in any inquiry. Their exclusion was unexplained at the time. It was only later that it emerged that the four investigating countries had reached an agreement between themselves, the details of which have never been fully disclosed.

What is known however, is that part of the agreement provided that no statement on the investigation would be released without the unanimous agreement of all four members. To describe this as astonishing would be an understatement. It was one of the early clues that the investigation would not be an impartial investigation, but would in effect follow a political agenda. This has indeed proven to be the case.

What was also unknown at the time, but revealed relatively recently by the Malaysians, was that they had sent a team to the Ukraine immediately. Thanks to the assistance of Ukrainian rebels then (and now) engaged in a bitter war with the Kiev government, the plane’s black boxes had been retrieved. The rebels handed those over to the Malaysians who returned to Malaysia where they were examined before being in turn given to the British for further analysis.

It was with this information that the Malaysians then negotiated their entry into the inquiry team in late 2015. It was one of the features of this case that the Malaysian viewpoint has been almost entirely absent from the Dutch and Australian reporting of the case.

It did not take long for the Dutch, Australians and Ukrainians to blame Russia for the tragedy despite the fact, then and now, of anyone being able to offer even a remotely plausible reason for Russia to have shot down the civilian airliner of a friendly country. The improbability was compounded by the fact that the tragedy occurred over Ukrainian territory.

The implausibility of this version of events was enhanced when a British organisation known as Bellingcat published what they claimed to be pictures of a Russian missile firing weapon system returning to Russia from the area where the alleged missile had been fired from.

It is one of the telling features of this case that later evidence was disclosed, but not reported in the Australian media, that there were no Russian weapons capable of firing a BUK missile (the alleged weapon used) in the vicinity of the area it would have to be in to have fired the allegedly fatal missile. Neither for that matter was there any Ukrainian BUK missile facility within range, although the Ukrainians certainly possessed such missiles, a left over from the days when it was a part of the old Soviet Union and used Russian supplied weapons.

The other relevant point about the shoot down was the claim by then United States secretary of state John Kerry that United States satellites overhead at the time (observing what was a war zone) had seen exactly what had happened. There is no reason to doubt Mr Kerry’s claim. It is also likely that the Russians had overhead satellites, for exactly the same reason.

The important point, however, is that the United States has never produced that evidence to the Dutch led inquiry or anybody else. Given that such photos would in all probability be conclusive of the argument, their nonproduction leads to an irresistible inference. They do not support the Dutch-Ukrainian version. It is a safe assumption that if they did, we would have been inundated with those pictures, ad nauseam, ever since.

What the Russians and the Ukrainian rebels have said all along was that the plane was brought down by the actions of two Ukrainian jet fighters observed by independent eye witnesses at the time. The presence of multiple bullet holes in the plane’s recovered fuselage further confirms this interpretation of how MH 17 came to its tragic end.

There is no obvious reason as to why the Ukrainians would shoot down a civilian airliner. The first of the three most likely possibilities are that it was a genuine accident, but if that was the case why not admit it, plead accident and pay appropriate compensation.

The second possibility is that it was a case of mistaken identity. It is known that a plane carrying Russia’s President Putin was in the general vicinity at that time, returning from an official trip to South America. Putin’s official plane carries very similar markings to Malaysian airlines.

The third possibility, which frankly is rather horrible to contemplate, is that it was a deliberate attempt to frame Russia, the major supporter of the Ukrainian rebel groups (overwhelmingly Russian speaking). It should not be forgotten also that the former Russian territory of Crimea (gifted to Ukraine by Khrushchev in Soviet days) had voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia.  This had outraged the Ukrainian government who had vowed to retake Crimea by force. The United States also had plans to take over the Russian naval base on Crimea, thereby depriving Russia of a vital warm water port.

All of these facts make the rather ludicrous threat by then Australian prime minister Abbott of military action in support of Ukraine’s attempt to force Crimea back within its fold all the more ridiculous. More importantly, it makes the allegations of Messrs Marles and Crowe completely unsupportable. Australian government policy towards Ukraine, then as now, completely ignores the fact that it is a neo-fascist regime that came to power by violently overthrowing the legitimate Ukrainian government.

Both men ought to have known better. Indeed, it is probable both do know better but because Australia is a loyal supporter of the West’s official anti-Russian line, have gone along with helping perpetrate a manifest fiction, unsupported by the five years of evidence that have been accumulated in the interim. The Moscow based Australian journalist Jphn Helmer is one of the very few to have consistently followed this Dutch led travesty and disclosed the evidence as it has emerged.

That the Australian mainstream media have chosen to ignore that evidence, to actively conceal the investigative role played by Australian forces in the early stages, and to perpetuate a gross falsehood does neither Mr Marles nor Mr Crowe or any organisation they represent any credit at all.

The families of the victims of this tragedy do not need the perpetuation of shoddy lies for geopolitical purposes. Messrs Marles and Crowe do neither themselves, their country, nor the organisations they represent any credit by helping to perpetuate a shameful lie.

This article was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2020 at 11:38pm and is filed under “The West”, Australia, Belgium, Lies, Malaysia, Media, Russia, Transparency/Secrecy, Transportation, Ukraine, United States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government to end the “absurd situation” in which Australian investigative journalist Mary Ann Jolley is banned from visiting New Zealand because she was deported from Malaysia in 2015 in connection with her reporting.

“I’m basically regarded by New Zealand as a criminal,” Mary Ann Jolley said after New Zealand Immigration last week prevented her from boarding a flight from Sydney to Auckland, where she wanted to go for personal reasons, reports RSF.

The ban is the result of a very literal interpretation of Section 15 of New Zealand’s Immigration Act, which prohibits the entry of a person “who has, at any time, been removed, excluded, or deported from another country”.

READ MORE: NZ bars Australian investigative journalist

Jolley’s deportation from Malaysia in 2015 was a result of her investigative reporting in Kuala Lumpur for Al Jazeera on a corruption scandal involving the sale of French submarines and a related political murder, in which then Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was allegedly implicated.

She has since returned many times to Malaysia.

– Partner –

When she contacted New Zealand’s consulate in Sydney, she was told that she would have to request a “special direction” every time she wanted to visit New Zealand.

Kafkaesque situation
“As Australian citizens can travel freely to New Zealand, it is unacceptable that Mary Ann Jolley is being penalised in this way for her reporting in a third country five years ago,” said Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard.

“We call on immigration minister Iain Lees-Galloway to intervene immediately on her behalf in order to end this utterly Kafkaesque situation.”

When travelling, Jolley always carries Malaysian government documents explaining the reason for her deportation in 2015 and certifying that she committed no crime.

It is the height of absurdity that she is now banned although she was allowed into New Zealand with no problem last year to cover the Christchurch mosque shootings.

New Zealand is ranked 7th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

An award-winning journalist whose reporting on a murder and corruption investigation got her deported from Malaysia has been prevented from boarding a flight to New Zealand, even though she has been back to Malaysia since, reports Newsroom.

Immigration authorities barred Australian journalist Mary Ann Jolley working for Al Jazeera from entering New Zealand because of her work uncovering a corruption scandal in Malaysia.

Jolley was deported from Malaysia in 2015 after she investigated a corruption scandal and murder linked to former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to Newsroom political reporter Dileepa Fonseka.

READ MORE: Altantuya’s Murder resurfaces–East Asia journalist, Mary Ann Jolley deported

Jolley’s deportation notice did not prevent her from visiting the United Kingdom, the United States or Malaysia itself, but it was a no-go for New Zealand Immigration who barred her from boarding a Qantas flight in Sydney last week, Newsroom reported.

Jolley had planned to attend a friend’s birthday party in Auckland.

– Partner –

“I was not allowed to board a flight to New Zealand and I tried every which way with the New Zealand Immigration to say, ‘what’s this about? Last time you let me in the country I showed you the documentation. Why am I being barred?” Jolley said, according to Newsroom.

The journalist’s 2015 deportation by the Malaysian government was televised in an Al Jazeera 101 East documentary on the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu.

‘On a “bad list”‘
“I’ve just been told I’m on a ‘bad list’,” Jolley said to-camera during the documentary. She reported that Malaysian authorities had told her she had not committed any crime, but would be deported.

“I’m basically regarded in New Zealand as a criminal,”  she told Newsroom.

Jolley followed up her case for entry into New Zealand with a frantic series of emails and phone calls to immigration and consular officials at Sydney airport as her plane readied for departure last week.

The final word came from the office of Associate Minister of Immigration Poto Williams who redirected Jolley’s query to INZ, reported Newsroom.

“I am advised that, in order to resolve your situation you would have to apply to Immigration New Zealand for a special direction for future travel to New Zealand, and attach all relevant documents for assessment by Immigration Officials,” a staffer for Williams wrote in an email to Jolley.

‘Special direction’
Nicola Hogg, general manager border and visa operations for INZ, said Jolley was granted a “special direction” at the border last year, but was told then that she would need to obtain one before she entered New Zealand next time.

Jolley had no memory of any such warning from INZ, Newsroom reported.

Under New Zealand law, the Malaysian government’s deportation of Jolley will have long-term consequences for how she enters the country.

Section 15 of the Immigration Act does not allow the entry of a person “who has, at any time, been removed, excluded, or deported from another country”.

[embedded content]
Mary Ann Jolley’s Malaysian report on 101 East on 10 September 2015. Video: Al Jazeera

Several years ago, things used to be totally different here. One would land at KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) – in the past one of the most modern and well-run mid-sized airports in the world, located some 70 kilometers from the city – and feel the omnipresent optimism and pride.

Malaysia was on the rise: a fast train was connecting the airport to the sprawling metropolis. It was passing near the famous Formula-1 circuit, the new capital city of Putrajaya, a modern city designed for science and technological research – Cyberjaya – and finally terminating at the modern KL Sentral train station and public transportation hub.

Futuristic Kuala Lumpur also counted with a super modern and elegant concert hall fully dedicated to classical music. It was right under the Petronas Towers, once the tallest building in the world. Modern monorail and driverless trains were transporting people in style to different corners of the city. Bookstores were well stocked (censorship was present, but everyone knew that Malaysian censors were too lazy to read). Extreme, Indonesian-style, misery hardly existed. Malaysia had ‘made it’ – it had landed itself on the list of the highest development index countries (Human Development Index, HDI, measured by UNDP) – together with countries such as Chile and Argentina, Russia and Qatar, as well as the nations of Europe and North America.

Malaysia was manufacturing its own car brand – Proton – and was teaming up with Japan, hoping to co-produce aircraft.

Nightclubs were packed, political humor thriving, and even religions were not immune to criticism, as long as the punches were being delivered in an ‘appropriate’ and secular environment, behind the curtains of bookstores and private events.

In those days, I loved visiting Malaysia. I loved living there, for weeks and months.

Next door, collapsed Indonesia felt like the de-composing carcass of a huge fish: covered by smog, intolerant, intellectually destroyed, racist and at war with itself and its colonies. I used to escape to Kuala Lumpur for weeks in order to gain perspective, in order to eat well, to visit theaters, concerts, parks, to interact with my Malaysian friends – writers, filmmakers, and academics.

Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur felt as if they were existing on two different planets. A 1 hour and 40 minutes’ flight, and everything would diametrically change. Suddenly it was possible to walk under the trees and on wide sidewalks, to attend great concerts, to read to excited audience from my books, and above all, to be understood.

And yet, yet even then, there was something rotten in the intellectual fabric of Kuala Lumpur. It was hard to detect, to explain, but it was constantly there, right under the surface.

Now I am looking back, and I am trying to comprehend. It is not easy, but not impossible.

I recall a Malaysian filmmaker who made a 2-minute long film, and attended dozens of international film festivals showing it – all expenses paid. It was just a tiny bark, nothing serious. But he was a Malaysian, and therefore worth being pampered and supported. Because Malaysia had very few filmmakers, and the West wanted to make sure that it owns them. It felt obnoxious, even perverse, as I knew several great, brilliant left-wing filmmakers in Chile, Brazil, France, U.K. who made ground-breaking films, but were not supported by anyone, living near-starvation existence.

I remember how, decisively, all Malaysian ‘intellectuals’ were refusing to criticize, or even to acknowledge, the horrors that were taking place in neighboring Indonesia. Why? Because Indonesia, after 1965, became a true Western neo-colony; plundered, brainwashed and looted by both local treasonous and corrupt ‘elites’ and by multi-national corporations and Western governments. Someone was, of course, paying for this silence.

I recall how Malaysian writers were falling over each other to attend a “Writers’ and Readers’ Festival” in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia – an anti “LEKRA” (pre-1965 coup left-wing writer’s organization to which belonged such great novelists as Pramoedya Ananta Toer) event organized by pro-Western institutions and pseudo-intellectual Goenawan Mohamad. All expenses paid, of course. (By whom, we could only guess).

Unlike in many Latin American countries, or in China or Russia, for Malaysian and Indonesian intellectuals, there is nothing like “dirty money”. Money is money – always halal.

Malaysian filmmakers, writers and other intellectuals never criticize the West, but diligently support Western propaganda, when it is targeting Russia, but even such far-away countries such as South Africa.

The United Kingdom has been omnipresent, through family ties, ‘education’, through the British Council which has been spreading funding and ideological dogmas, but also through its main propaganda outlets such as the BBC.

I met a writer who had her entire work sponsored by the Western outlets, and who was flown to places as diverse as the Caribbean Islands and Alaska, as a reward for her writing, which has been glorifying both transgender rights and big business construction of motorways. When I confronted her, she replied, simply and honestly: “I have two children to raise”.

Malaysian art festivals have been clearly propagating the Western line of thinking. By mistake, I was invited to one (in old city of Georgetown). But never again. There are certain unwritten rules, including: no open criticism of Western imperialism, and no direct support for countries like China, Russia, Cuba or Venezuela. Local artists and writers are paid to talk and write about sexual habits, such as homosexuality or trans-gender issues, instead of the horrors taking place next-door, like the genocide in West Papua, where Indonesia has managed to murder around 500,000 people on behalf of Western multi-national companies and governments.

Country destroyed by palm oil

Taboo is also touching what made Malaysia relatively wealthy – thorough plunder of its environment through palm oil plantations and mining, as well as mistreatment of indigenous people on the territory of two of its states located on Borneo Island.

Malaysia changed; became unrecognizable. And it happened unbelievably fast.

Smog in Kuala Lumpur from Indonesian burning islands

Kuala Lumpur (as well as Singapore) have been choking on smog from the burning Indonesian islands of Kalimantan (Indonesian part of Borneo, the third largest island in the world) and Sumatra, but no explosion of outrage has been detectable from the Malaysian “thinkers”.

No outrage over US and EU attacks against Afghanistan, Libya or Syria.

Even Malaysian leaders, at times, were more outspoken than the funding-hungry local intellectuals. Prime Minister of Malaysia, according to Reuters, reacted to assassination of Iranian General Soleimani:

Muslim countries should unite to protect themselves against external threats, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Tuesday after describing the U.S. killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani as immoral.

Malaysian ‘educated circles’ have been proving, again and again, that their country is a well-behaved colony. A cowardly, client state.

Suddenly, for people like me, those who were well known but at odds with Western imperialism, it has become near impossible to work (give speeches or to get interviewed) in Malaysia. All the doors have gotten shut. We cannot get any quotes from Malaysian academics, artists or politicians.

Cowardice and self-interest has become the main driving force. I have never forgotten how, during the conflict between the Philippines and Malaysia, I went to Borneo, and wrote an extremely sarcastic essay about the event. I got powerful quotes from the Filipino people, who even crossed the sea in order to talk to me on the record. I got a couple of quotes from Malaysians, too. But after my long essay was published, the Malaysians protested: “We did not know you will be so sarcastic in your work”. They were too careful, too disciplined, unwilling to risk anything.

There is no way to get quotes from the Malaysians about the terror which the West is spreading all over the world, or about the West’s best ally – Wahhabism. Or about the shameless collaboration of the Southeast Asian nations with the West. Not even about that “greatest Malaysian secret”: “Almost all that scientific research, and native production, totally failed: the country basically lives, like Indonesia, although on a much higher level, from the plundering of its natural resources; from irreversibly and brutally ruining of its land by cutting down the native forest and turning both peninsular Malaysia and Borneo into one huge and horrific oil palm plantation, dotted with mining pits. Malaysia also functions as an assembly like, a maquiladora for multi-national companies.”

Those who protest or speak out about what has been done to the native people of Borneo, die. And so nobody does anymore.

This is what broke the spine of Malaysia: its unwillingness to risk. Its lack of courage. Its dependence on former and present colonial masters. Its submissiveness. I described this kind of behavior in this part of the world in my political novel Aurora.

The great fiery socialist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist Indonesian leader, Ahmed Sukarno, knew all this very well. He saw Malaysia as basically a puppet state of the West. He had launched a campaign of Konfrontasi against his neighbor and its British handler. And the neighbor – Malaysia – fired back: it later quietly embraced the fascist regime of General Suharto, which overthrew Sukarno and the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), in the bloodiest coup in the history of mankind; a coup which was triggered by the West in 1965.

Since the coup, Malaysia has flatly refused to openly criticize anything about Indonesia: from murdering 2 million people in 1965, to the genocide in East Timor, as well as the on-going genocide in occupied West Papua. And, of course, no word about the monstrous destruction of Indonesian nature as something similar, although not as extreme, has been taking place in Malaysia itself.

Now, Malaysia feels depressed, and looks depressing.

Here, in this essay, on purpose, I do not talk much about the previous political era, and about the return of “Doctor M.” to power. Nor do I write about who used to sponsor Anwar Ibrahim, and who then decided that it is unwise, for now, to sponsor Anwar, shouting that it is time to give “another chance to Doctor M”. Let me just say that almost all these decisions came from abroad.

Let me recall, however, how most of the foreign-sponsored members of the so-called Malaysian opposition were determinedly supporting the totally discredited neo-liberal Anwar Ibrahim, when he was a ‘Washington’s favorite’. And they dropped him precisely when the marching order arrived from far away Europe and the US. Doctor M whom they “fought” so determinedly against, but, of course, for a fee, suddenly deserved a “second chance”, when they were told that he does, by their “handlers”. It all happened so openly, so shamelessly, and so predictably.

Yes, Malaysia is a sad country. Two of its wide-body passenger jets went down, killing hundreds of people and ruining one of the proudest airlines in Asia, but no one here truly investigates, how and why it occurred. It is not a fully taboo topic, but it is definitely semi-taboo.

Almost no one is investigating the past, either. Things are hushed up, hidden, not unlike in the neighboring Indonesia. Of course, the horrors that have been taking place in Indonesia are incomparably greater in comparison to the ‘mild devilishness’ which happened in Malaysia. But still… It took a Sri Lankan born author, Lloyd Fernando, to describe the religious ‘riots’ in Malaysia; the 1969 killings and wave of torture unleashed against non-Muslims in his powerful novel “Green is The Color”. Locals would never dare.

And who really questions in the open that bizarre, racist arrangement which has been governing Malaysia for so many decades? Here, the slight Muslim majority (bumiputera) has many more rights than the highly productive Chinese group, as well as deeply discriminated against Indians. Bumiputera (children of the land) somehow does not extend to original people living in Borneo.

In Malaysia, there are different laws for Muslims and non-Muslims. Here, a Malay person is “born Muslim”, by definition. He or she cannot change his or her fate. It is a simply grotesque reality.

And try to address it, try to criticize! You would be finished in no time if you live in Malaysia.

But back to the “sadness of Malaysia”. That’s where I wanted to begin and end this essay.

Things did not go well. Doctor M’s plans never really materialize.

Petronas Towers remained the tallest building only for a few years, and even the fountains in front of them went on an austerity regime and began working only in the evenings.

The concert hall below now feels increasingly small, for such a sprawling city. Now it is also compromising. There are more and more cheap pop shows performed behind its lavish doors; and there are less and less great performances.

Broken escalator in luxury KLCC Mall in Kuala Lumpur

The ‘flagship’ KLCC Mall suffers from constantly broken escalators, and its once prestigious art gallery is closed, almost half of the time.

The Formula-1 circuit in Sepang closed down in 2017.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) has become a traveler’s nightmare, with inefficient staff, terrible lines, unnecessary double or even triple security checks, fingerprinting, photographing and other excessive inconveniences to the passengers.

After reduced frequency of public transport in Kuala Lumpur

Public transportation has survived only in Kuala Lumpur and its greater area. Elsewhere, there were countless projects, and monstrously costly failed plans to build monorails, trams, and an urban rail: from Malacca, Georgetown, Johor Bahru, to Putrajaya.

Cyberjaya never managed to ‘fly’, or to compete with Singapore. Nothing great came from its research facilities. Only second-rate scientists settled there.

As in the much bigger Indonesia, Malaysia could not give birth to even one single great writer, scientist or thinker.

In smaller towns, the situation is even more pathetic. Kuching was celebrating the fact that the long postponed light rail project will soon start being constructed. But the 2nd era of Dr. M has begun. Countless public works have been stopped. What was already there, like the only existing public railroad in Borneo, which originates in Kota Kinabalu, has been castrated, its service reduced to two runs per day.

Why? So, just as in Indonesia and Thailand, private vehicles could be force-sold to the citizens, so gas could be burned, and corporations could make billions from building new roads, further ruining the natural environment as well as the urban areas.

And those well-funded Malaysian intellectuals? As mentioned earlier in this essay, they began glorifying the highway-builders in their books, even in novels. Coincidence? I will leave it up to you to decide!

Dr. M. torpedoed many grand projects previously signed with China. That was most likely the deal that was made behind the closed doors: the “new” government would enjoy peace with the West. London and Washington will stop trashing the old man and his coalition. Local NGOs and Malaysian artists and ‘intellectuals’ paid by the Western organizations, institutions and governments will scale down or even entirely stop their criticism. In exchange, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be almost entirely kicked out of Malaysia, or at least, thoroughly castrated.

This is, of course, an absolutely horrible deal for Malaysia, but it appears that for as long as this government is in place, the trend is here to stay. After all, ‘it is all about China, isn’t it?’ At least for the West and its dependencies.

Everything has somehow failed in Malaysia, but especially those dreams about the building of a great, proud and productive nation.

Homeless children from the Philippines in Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia

I filmed in Kota Kinabalu, recently. Two years ago, there was an attempt to build a boardwalk, a public area facing the sea. You know, a small replica of those grand waterfronts that one can see in Latin America, South Africa, Europe, and, of course, in China, and even in the Gulf. Now, with the new government, even that tiny public space was privatized; rented to some businesswoman from Kuala Lumpur. She fenced it off, put some kitsch figures and a tiny shack with a “horror show” performance, and began charging an entry fee of RM5 (US1.25) per person.

I asked the cashier how she felt about this corporate takeover of a stunning public space?

She did not understand. I asked about savage capitalism in Malaysia; she had no idea what I was talking about.

Later, I asked several of my Malaysian friends about the ruined land, which has been unbearably scarred by the oil palm plantations (almost half of the world’s production), or by mines and other terrible ventures. They refused to comment, at least on the record. Reason: “Too dangerous”. “They all have families”.

I talked to the indigenous people of Borneo, in Sabah and Sarawak. They did talk. About brutality, about being forced to convert, religiously. About people who were killed, who disappeared.

I talked to people in Papua New Guinea and from the Solomon Islands, where the Malaysian logging companies had been committing crimes against humanity, including rapes, torture and sexual abuse of children. I described my finding in my book – Oceania.

But this is just an essay, not an investigative report full of names and numbers, about a country which I used to love, but which has collapsed, sold itself, and reduced itself to a gloomy mediocrity.

Malaysia was set to take off, to fly, to show the way for so many other countries of the world.

But its people, its ‘elites’ and ‘intellectuals’, decided to put their personal interests first. They helped to re-introduce the mentality of a colonized nation.

“Go to hell with your aid!” The Indonesian President Sukarno screamed into the face of the US Ambassador in Jakarta. As a result, Sukarno was overthrown, and 2 million Indonesians were killed – the rest was frightened into insanity, and then brainwashed.

Malaysia never truly rebelled. It never went from one extreme to other, from pride to slavery. Its people never refused the aid (or payment for services provided) from the West. They survived as a result. But have they ever truly lived?

Malaysia has never really experienced real freedom and exaltation from moving forward on its own without looking over its shoulder, and without fear.

• All photos by Andre Vltchek

First published by 21 Century Wire

            <div class="author"><em>Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Five of his latest books are &ldquo;</em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Belt-Road-Initiative-Connecting/dp/6025095485/ref=sr_1_12?keywords=Andre+Vltchek&amp;qid=1574300995&amp;sr=8-12"><em>China Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries, Saving Millions of Lives</em></a><em>&rdquo;, </em>&ldquo;China<em> with John B. Cobb, Jr., </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Optimism-Western-Nihilism-Vltchek/dp/6025095418/"><em>Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism</em></a><em>, the revolutionary novel </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aurora-Andre-Vltchek/dp/6027354364/"><em>&ldquo;Aurora&rdquo;</em></a><em> and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: &ldquo;</em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Exposing-Lies-Empire-Andre-Vltchek/dp/6027005866"><em>Exposing Lies Of The Empire</em></a><em>&rdquo;. View his other books </em><a href="https://andrevltchek.weebly.com/books.html"><em>here</em></a><em>. Watch </em><a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/rwandagambit"><em>Rwanda Gambit</em></a><em>, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Western-Terrorism-Hiroshima-Drone-Warfare/dp/0745333877"><em>&ldquo;On Western Terrorism&rdquo;</em></a><em>. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his </em><a href="https://andrevltchek.weebly.com/"><em>website</em></a><em> and his </em><a href="https://twitter.com/AndreVltchek"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>. His </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/andrevltchek"><em>Patreon</em></a> <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/author/andrevltchek/">Read other articles by Andre</a>.</div>

            <p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Monday, January 27th, 2020 at 6:20pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/the-west/" rel="category tag">"The West"</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/indonesia/borneo/" rel="category tag">Borneo</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/indonesia/" rel="category tag">Indonesia</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/malaysia/" rel="category tag">Malaysia</a>. 

The bare truth of the matter is that various forms of fraud and cons are the rule for the vast majority of large corporations.  WeWork is basically a tiny fish in the ocean when we step back and consider the scale of cons from various transnational corporations. For more recent and humorous examples, check out Current Affairs 2019 “Griftie” Awards.

All the signs of brazen criminality are in front of us. We have to do no more than look at the public figurehead of the con economy, our own president. His personality is the distillation of the elite grifter, a hollow shell of a human, heir to a fortune which has created a uniquely toxic mix of entitlement, hubris, ignorance, and malignant narcissism; a truly pathetic man molded by late capitalism, celebrity and TV culture. His wealth bequeathed by inheritance, profits acquired through real estate scandals and “university” scams; his brain is addled by a diet of fast food; and his worldview warped by utterly deluded conservative media.

For instance, the spurious idea that 1.5 trillion in tax cuts will help grow our economy through job creation, or new business ventures, is a fraud on its face, but represents an exquisite example of capitalist propaganda. This is a lie that millions of US citizens either sincerely believe or acquiesce to due to generations of mainstream media indoctrination. As for the corporate scams cited below, there are similar factors involving coercion and propaganda, and they are similarly undemocratic: the ownership class and upper management dictate narratives in the media, how the labor is done, how the con will play out, and workers carry out immoral orders against their better judgment.

For instance, take Boeing and the two tragic crashes involving its 737 Max 8 jet. The market valuation of the company fluctuates today at around 200 billion dollars, even as it knowingly and deliberately sold its newest model without the needed software updates (MCAS), as well as without the needed sensor reading and indicator light to multiple foreign airlines, and in many cases without training pilots on the new system. Now, you might think that the software needed to keep a plane from nose-diving might come standard with the purchase of a multimillion dollar passenger jet, but you’d be wrong. In its infinite wisdom, Boeing decided to not to include the computer programmed safety features, selling them for extra and deeming them “optional.” Internal Boeing emails make clear there was systemic negligence and incompetence with the implementation of the MCAS program.

Let’s take another somewhat dated example, the behemoth Volkswagen, which had a huge emissions scandal in regard to its diesel vehicles produced from 2009-2015. Volkswagen installed “cheat software” to fool emissions tests in 11 million of its diesel cars, which, when driven for real world road tests, pumped out up to 40 times the permissible amount of nitrogen oxides. Further studies with other car manufacturers showed that many other brands were also well above the allowable limit for diesel emissions. One air pollution expert confided that the added pollution in European cities would result in “thousands of deaths.”  Volkswagen was forced to fork out 2.8 billion dollars to the US for their troubles. That might seem like a lot, but with 11 million cars sold in the process, and taking a guess and using a round number of $20,000 for each new car sold, it adds up to 220 billion in car sales just for these diesel automobiles.

Let’s shift to finance, a sector just filled with the most outlandish, craven, and fraudulent criminal activity. We could go on and on down the line from Bank of America to Wells Fargo to Deutsche Bank. By the way, media devoted to following the practices of these hallowed institutions have “scandal timelines” and lists of the “biggest scandals” just to help us make sense of the dizzying and insane levels of depravity these corporations have reached. One might think that encyclopedic chronologies and compendiums documenting these bank scams would shame and humble these corporations into adopting a semblance of corporate responsibility, but no.

Recently, Goldman Sachs has been in the news for their involvement in the 1MBD scandal. Haven’t heard of it? This was a massive scheme involving the Malaysian government and Goldman Sachs executives to sell billions of dollars worth of bonds to a giant Malaysian shell company functioning effectively as a Ponzi scheme, a “massive, international conspiracy to embezzle billions of dollars,” in the words of a wealth fund which was bilked in the process. Seventeen Goldman Sachs employees face charges in Malaysia, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein met with the disgraced Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and the mastermind of the scam, one Jho Low, who is now believed to be on the run in China (check the Chinese wine caves?).

In all likelihood, these scandals are just the tip of the iceberg. Even if someone like Blankfein did time for his involvement in 1MBD, it might be analogous to Al Capone doing time for tax evasion. The amount of immoral criminality is staggering when one attempts to tally how many countries have been ripped off and commons privatized, how much land and assets seized, how many poor and vulnerable people have had benefits cut and prices of necessities jacked up to benefit a tiny elite, how many desperate people have died to serve neoliberal business models. These untold atrocities are barely hidden, and all one has to do is scratch the surface of our system to reveal the sordid deeds which must stay hidden for the economy to stay afloat and for public morale not to wane and stir folks to revolution. No one is ever held responsible for financial crimes under capitalism, just like our war criminals, even though the culprits roam free in broad daylight, and even though these crimes have devastating real world consequences.

No corporate media will ever acknowledge that these are just the cases we know about. What else lies under the surface? Who among us has the means and the guts to find out if the mainstream media won’t? If these companies are willing to go to these lengths to defraud their customers, there is really nothing they won’t do. If we knew the full scope of the Mafioso-like corruption and barbaric behavior of these multinationals, people might actually revolt and overthrow our inhumane capitalist system. Mainstream media thus has a distinct role, and performs excellently for the transnational corporations (TNCs), by not investigating and not pushing for prosecution of guilty parties. This “balanced” approach to news is justified in the name of being “objective,” and trying to show “both sides of the issues.”

It’s not just corporate leaders, politicians, and the media who are shirking their duties. The judicial system is just as complicit. On January 17th, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a case (Juliana vs. United States) brought by twenty one young plaintiffs who argued that “the US government acts as a barrier to climate action” and quite rightly pointed out that “the US government [is] violating their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by enacting policies that contribute to the climate crisis.” The majority 2-1 ruling “reluctantly concluded that the plaintiff’s case must be made to the political branches or the electorate at large.” Isn’t it revealing that these judges view the judicial system as somehow above politics?

The dissenting judge called her fellow colleagues out for their cowardice:

It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses. Seeking to quash this suit, the government bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation…my colleagues throw up their hands, concluding that this case presents nothing fit for the Judiciary.

Here we can clearly see the Kafkaesque institutional evasion of responsibility. Everyone in these elite institutions is to blame, so no one can be blamed, for it risks exposing the system as the root cause. In the West, we are stuck in a time where no one accepts a public duty to do anything regarding climate change, corporate criminality, etc. As Mark Fisher succinctly explained in Capitalist Realism:

The supreme genius of Kafka was to have explored the negative atheology proper to Capital: the center is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it. It is not that there is nothing there – it is that what is there is not capable of exercising responsibility.

As Fisher and others have shown, the lack of responsibility taken and lack of corporate and governmental transparency, and lack of differentiation between the corporate, judicial, legislative, and media bodies is a defining feature of late capitalism. We can view the contours and delineate between the modern and postmodern periods, in terms of the sea change from a Foucauldian disciplinary society to a Deleuzian society of control. In the modern period, there were bounded, separate domains of work, home life, recreation, public and private, etc. In our late-stage dystopia, it becomes exceedingly obvious that “all that is holy is profaned,” for instance, judges (supposed impartial arbiters of fairness and democratic values) who are supposedly duty-bound to uphold basic issues of social, environmental, and economic justice, yet do not have the temerity to overturn the death-grip fossil fuel multinationals have over our country.

Whereas before disciplinary action – punishment and jail time – could act as a bit of leverage to limit outright corporate crimes, now we have interconnected, networked, embedded elite coteries who can no longer be distinguished as serving private or public functions: the “revolving door” phenomenon. Today, our elites also cannot distinguish or internalize their own actions and take responsibility for them. Internal checks could at least possibly prevent catastrophes, or lead to feelings of shame and regret for past actions in the old-fashioned, modern way. For this reason, we can view someone like Robert McNamara as perhaps the last modernist public servant in the old-school disciplinary age. His actions were unconscionable, but it is well known he at least regretted his part in the Vietnam War afterwards. The bizarre but true story of McNamara almost getting thrown off a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard in deep ocean in 1972 by an enraged anti-war citizen with family who had served in Vietnam confirms this. Afterwards, McNamara refused to press charges, making clear he knew on some level he deserved punishment.

On the contrary, take the figures of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld today. They are insulated by layers of ideology (and bodyguards), inebriated by luxurious lifestyles and sycophantic think tanks who parrot their every word, and interwoven within the framework and institutions of imperialist and conservative power who no longer have the capacity for self-reflection. Their perceptions and self-image, in other words, are managed by a network of power, control, and domination, in this example the interests of the national security state. Figures such as Bush, Obama, and Trump operate under the aegis of the capitalist/imperial postmodern society of control, which has continually formulated, modulated, subdued and attenuated any tension, any tendency to self-doubt, or any capacity to think critically and examine the atrocities committed by their orders.

It is a world where instantaneous feedback can assuage and soothe the troubled nerves of the elites, by providing media and/or classified reports that justify their grotesque barbarism in real time. We can observe this on a smaller scale when examining how social media algorithms create echo chambers and polarize those with opposing belief systems. The type of worldview our war-criminal presidents are subject to is a “higher immorality” as C. Wright Mills put it. It was best summed up by an unnamed senior Bush regime official, supposedly Karl Rove, speaking to journalist Ron Suskind:

People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

The commonality between all these absolutely absurd scams is that, unlike the relatively small size and bumbling ineptitude of a WeWork, the fetishization of and overvaluation of hare-brained tech with a company like Theranos, the pyramid scheme of a Bernie Madoff, or the cooking-the-books accounting of an Enron, companies such as Boeing, Volkswagen, and Goldman Sachs form the commanding heights of the world economy. These are supposedly the bona fide, respectable “blue-chip companies” which many middle class investors look to for stable, steady growth of their wealth. These companies and their corporate owners cannot clearly view “reality,” (who can? but still) and the public is simply “left to just study what they do.”

Another aspect is the proliferation of marketing and advertising, which hypnotizes the middle classes, which in the West are approaching comatose status in regards to the scale of these interlocking crises of corporate greed and climate disruption. Abject submission and conformity are the key features of the professional-managerial class, who hype new trends and fads, and even business models (such as WeWork). Pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than research and development, which lead the most sycophantic employees to top positions with deadly repercussions (for example, in the Vioxx scandal) and leads to modern pharmacological advances being in many cases guided by snake-oil peddling quack researchers and their corporate overlords.

Individuals, as well as our artistic preferences, and urban spaces, increasingly are modulated by these corporate structures, leading to a flattened consumerist aesthetic. In a brilliant essay, Andru Okun explains using quotes from author Oli Mould:

As Mould argues, ‘Neoliberalism is about the marketization of everything, the imprinting of economic rationalities into the deepest recesses of everyday life’ … [Mould] posits that 21st-century capitalism, ‘turbocharged by neoliberalism,’ has co-opted the conceptual framework of creativity in the interest of endless growth. Even movements interested in destabilizing capitalism can be ‘viewed as a potential market to exploit,’ subsumed by the very world they seek to transform. ‘Creativity under capitalism is not creative at all… it merely replicates existing capitalist registers into ever-deeper recesses of socioeconomic life,’ writes Mould.

This form of “imprinting” becomes clear when examining the professional-managerial classes and the petit-bourgeois class. Class locations, as Erik Olin Wright pointed out, invariably determine the psychological states of the middle classes, who exert exploitative pressure upon their subordinates as well as pressure from above. When advances and promotions are made within the confines of the professional class structure, one can view the accommodation to capital with near-empirical precision: “Individual consciousness is related to position within the class structure.  That is, the attitudes and behaviour of individuals has a connection to the location they occupy within the division of labour and the contradictory locations that exist in capitalism.” Thus, Mark Fisher explains how the individual actions of managers to change corporate culture are futile:

The delusion that many who enter into management with high hopes is precisely that they, the individual, can change things, that they will not repeat what their managers had done, that things will be different this time; but watch someone step up to management and it’s usually not long before the grey petrification of power starts to subsume them. It is here that the structure is palpable – you can practically see it taking people over, hear its deadened/deadening judgments speaking through them.

Again, the activities of these huge conglomerates which dictate the global economy, public discourse, and private and individual aesthetic preferences are not exceptions; they represent the rule when it comes to the behavior of TNCs and international finance. Scamming is what they do best, whether by illegal software or the TV commercial, and the scam-ees quite often turn out to be other elite venture capital and banking firms hoodwinked by the allure of profit no matter the unseemly source or the ridiculousness of the business model. Climate denialism is also a very profitable scam for its elite adherents in the fossil fuel industries and the media, one that plays a key role by influencing public opinion just enough to convince judges, politicians, and CEOs that nothing can be done within their hallowed institutions.

The assertion I’ll lay out here, and it’s admittedly not a particularly original or insightful one, is simply that the falling rate of profit as we approach what we might call terminal-stage capitalism has convinced these TNCs to slightly adjust their calculus. The adjustment is to supplement the neoliberal grip on power with the brazenness of the scam.

The neoliberal era, stretching from approximately the mid-1970s until now, can be defined quite rightly by David Harvey as being driven by a process of “accumulation by dispossession.” In his brilliant 2004 essay “The New Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession”, Harvey explains the four main policies which drive this process as privatization (selling out the commons to private interests), financialization (the penetration of all parts of the economy by banks, loans, institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, the WTO, excessive debt, etc), management and manipulation of crises (for instance, see Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine), and state redistributions (huge subsidies and contracts for the fossil fuel and military-industrial corporations, “socialism for the rich”, as it were).

Perhaps today we can add a fifth category: accumulation by the scam. If a Volkswagen or Boeing or Goldman Sachs stands to make hundreds of billions of dollars by swindling their customers, and can somewhat accurately guess that the level of future fines will be small or negligible; that lobbyists can protect future interests; that their teams of corporate lawyers can derail federal investigations; that federal regulators will be hamstrung due to lack of expertise, power, and/or resources; and that their customer base and supply chains will remain relatively stable, there is more of an incentive to cheat than ever before.

If the gravediggers of capital ultimately end up being a united working class, and/or the ecological crises combined with global warming-induced climactic Armageddon, perhaps it’d be helpful to think of these corporate grifters as the grave robbers, exhuming and reanimating whatever scam du jour they deem necessary to circulate capital. Not only does this reliance on fraud betray the moral failings of the people and institutions implicated, but it reinforces that Marx was right: the falling rate of profit over time and over-accumulation continues to force new methods of creative destruction to enter our midst to necessitate continuous expansion. Neoliberal economics officially saw its death-knell during the 2008 recession, but twelve years later this undead ideology maintains hegemony in a world teetering on the brink of disaster. Zombie Economics, if you will.

Profit and GDP growth at all costs to line elites’ pockets and increase national tax bases is killing the planet and working classes. Put another way, from a humorous statement by @Anarchopac on twitter: “The problem with capitalism is eventually you run out of planet to destroy to maximize short-term profit.” Put yet another way, John Maynard Keynes pointed out: “Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”

In our late capitalist reality, there are barely any new frontiers to shift capital and production to, and the possibility of opening new markets in underdeveloped nations is also limited. The colonialist frontiers have been tapped and the system begins to cannibalize itself. A rentier economy coalesces and the contours of a neo-feudal regime based on debt and precarity are readily apparent now. Speculation and passive income from the FIRE sectors (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) are near all-time highs, but their assets are so overvalued that sooner or later it will spur on an economic downturn that at this point is unavoidable. Consider, for instance, that the Dow Jones at its low point in March 2009 stood at around 6,600. Here in 2020, we find the average hovering over 29,000. No one can legitimately say that our markets or average families are four times as well off or any more resilient and economically secure than ten years ago. The next crash could very well make terms like “housing bubble” and “tech bubble” seem quaint. The entire US economy is a bubble, a rigged casino designed to implode.

Since financial, real estate, and stock speculation has in some sense reached a tipping point of limited returns on investment, our hypothesized 5th category, accumulation via fraud, is implemented. It fits into our upside-down world nicely: since what is productive for one class is often unproductive for another, one-percenters elide reality to maintain their own class interests at all costs, and block any real public discussion in the media of what constitutes productive versus unproductive labor. The masters know what is good for us. Capitalist elites see no moral qualms in the most debased forms of wealth acquisition. It’s all relative to them, and where previous Taylorist models focused on planned obsolescence of products, now we construct products that do not even work initially; i.e., jets that literally fall out of the sky without the necessary software updates.

In all likelihood these examples are just harbingers of things to come, as the structural instability of capital demands new avenues for expansion even as it teeters before the inevitable collapse. The brazen criminality and fraudulence of the system bubbles to the surface and can no longer be rationalized away as an “aberration.” As real material conditions deteriorate for the multitudes, resistance to capitalism must intensify as it enters its final death throes.

            <p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Tuesday, January 21st, 2020 at 12:05pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/capitalism/" rel="category tag">Capitalism</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/corporate-globalization/corporate-finance-criminality/" rel="category tag">Corporate/Finance Criminality</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/justice/courts-and-judges/" rel="category tag">Courts and Judges</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/donald-trump/" rel="category tag">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/economics/economic-inequality/" rel="category tag">Economic Inequality</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/malaysia/" rel="category tag">Malaysia</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/neoliberalism/" rel="category tag">Neoliberalism</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/opinion/" rel="category tag">Opinion</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/ruling-elite/" rel="category tag">Ruling Elite</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/environment/the-commons/" rel="category tag">The Commons</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/united-states/" rel="category tag">United States</a>.