ASEAN Eyes Closer Military Ties in 2015

The grouping is mulling new defense initiatives under Malaysia’s chairmanship.

By Prashanth Parameswaran

As I have written before, Malaysia’s chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year will be a busy one. In particular, 2015 is a critical year for regional-community building and economic integration because of the formation of the ASEAN Community as well as the expected completion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

That doesn’t mean we won’t see progress on the defense side of things in 2015. We are still in the early stages of things in this realm as a flurry of meetings take place in the first quarter that culminate with the ninth ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM) in Langkawi in March, followed by other critical engagements in the rest of the year. But there are already signs of what we might expect.

A good preview came earlier this week at the 12th ASEAN Chiefs of Defense Forces Informal Meeting (ACDFIM) in Kuala Lumpur. Jane’s Defense Weekly, along with other regional news outlets, reported that Malaysian CDF general Zulkifeli Mohammed Zin, speaking as host of the meeting, said that he and his counterparts were mulling several proposals to deepen defense collaboration. These included formalizing the ACDFIM, integrating CDFs from the broader ASEAN Defense Ministers Plus (ADMM-Plus) umbrella into dialogues, and expanding current bilateral exercises into multilateral ASEAN ones.

While these measures are not entirely new and will require formal approval, they are promising for those who follow ASEAN closely. Formalizing ACDFIM after over a decade is not just a formality if it means equipping it with a secretariat and facilitating an expansion of its role to include information sharing as well as perhaps even building a database of sorts, as preliminary reports are suggesting.

Expanding dialogues to include CDFs from ADMM-Plus – which includes all ten Southeast Asian countries as well as Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States – is a move that has been contemplated for a while, as I have pointed out before, and it makes sense. That forum is where a lot of the action has been happening of late, and it would be the next logical step in the broader ASEAN plan to integrate major powers into an ASEAN-centric regional architecture and give the grouping a greater voice.

Similarly, few would disagree with the idea of more multilateral exercises. Indeed, in spite of various lingering concerns, the trend in ASEAN as well as Asia more generally is already firmly in this direction, both in terms of greater regional coordination as well as connecting previously separate issue areas. Last year, Singapore set up an Information Fusion Center and Regional Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Center in Changi. More broadly, the ASEAN Regional Forum will hold the first iteration of a major disaster relief exercise (DiREx 2015) in May this year and planning has already begun for a ADMM-Plus combined field training exercise on maritime security and counterterrorism in 2016. ADMM-Plus includes six areas for collaboration – humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, military medicine, maritime security, peacekeeping operations and humanitarian mine action – but measures are being taken across them as well to promote synergies.

There could be more far-reaching measures forthcoming in 2015, some of which have been discussed privately among senior defense officials. For example, Malaysia wants greater cooperation between ASEAN militaries for humanitarian and disaster relief efforts. In that vein, a Joint Declaration on the ASEAN Ready Group may be signed this year. Malaysia is also keen to discuss setting up a joint peacekeeping team, along with greater defense industry collaboration. Seasoned observers know that both those ideas have been floated in the past and have met some resistance, so it will be interesting to see what ends up happening. Other countries have also have broached several interesting ideas, with Thailand’s proposal for setting up a regional center for military medicine being just one of them.

It is still not clear how much of this will translate into reality or when this will take place. But as Malaysia continues its work as ASEAN chair for the rest of 2015, it is important to recognize that the community-building agenda includes not only the much-discussed ASEAN Economic Community, but a Political Security Community as well which could see new initiatives broached. And even if the headlines are dominated by U.S.-China dynamics or the South China Sea yet again, it is worth paying attention to the incremental efforts being taken or mulled both privately and publicly to build habits of cooperation that are the very foundation of defense collaboration.


Sumber - The Diplomat

Dialog kupas sejarah Brunei

Oleh Mohamad Asyramisyanie

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, 10 Feb – Pusat Sejarah Brunei dengan kolaborasi Maktab Sains Paduka Seri Begawan Sultan (MSPSBS), hari ini, telah mengadakan dialog bagi mengupas dan membincangkan beberapa topik sejarah dalam kesultanan Brunei yang menjurus kepada unsur politik, kepemimpinan dan semangat nasionalisme.

Dialog yang berlangsung di Dewan Auditorium MSPSBS di Berakas itu dihadiri oleh Pegawai Sejarah Kanan, Ketua Bahagian Penyelidikan dan Dokumentasi Pusat Sejarah Brunei, Hajah Fatimah binti Asgar, para pegawai Pusat Sejarah dan penuntut-penuntut.

Pemangku Pengetua MSPSBS, Dayang Zabaidah binti Tuah ketika menyampaikan ucapan berkata agenda utama projek di antara Pusat Sejarah dan maktab berkenaan adalah untuk mengenalkan, mendedahkan dan menerapkan sejarah negara kepada masyarakat sebagai saranan di masa hadapan.

Menurutnya, projek seperti ini akan dapat melatih dan mendidik pelajar untuk membuat penyelidikan secara bersendirian mahupun berkumpulan dan sekali gus meningkatkan kemahiran bertutur, membuahkan idea dan keyakinan diri para peserta apabila berhadapan dengan orang ramai.

“Dengan adanya inisiatif sebegini, ia akan memberikan kesan positif kepada pelajar dan belia untuk menambahkan ilmu pengetahuan khususnya sejarah negara kita dan secara tidak langsung menanamkan semangat patriotisme dan perasaan kecintaan kepada negara di hati mereka,” ujarnya lagi.

Dialog bertajuk “Pendudukan Tentera Jepun di Brunei Darussalam 1942-1945” itu menampilkan tiga ahli panel yang terdiri daripada para pelajar maktab iaitu Dayang Aimi Iffah Radhiah binti Abdullah Zulhilmi, Dayang Nur Nadhirah Noor binti Hanizam dan Awang Arif Azhan bin Besar, serta dipengerusikan oleh Dayang Nor Amirah Aziyah binti Hasdy.

Sejurus selepas sesi dialog, majlis turut menyaksikan tayangan video Pendudukan Tentera Jepun di Brunei 1942-1945 diikuti dengan sesi soal jawab dan rumusan yang disampaikan oleh Haji Muahimin bin Haji Mohamed.

Tetamu kehormat seterusnya menyampaikan sijil kepada barisan pelajar Tingkatan 6 yang terlibat dalam projek dialog sejarah itu.

Projek dialog ini diadakan dalam tiga fasa secara berperingkat bermula fasa pertama hari ini diikuti dengan fasa kedua pada 10 Mac 2015 dengan tajuk “Perang Kastila” dan fasa ketiga pada 26 Mei 2015 dengan tajuk “Kenali sejarah kitani”.


Sumber - Media Permata

What Is The ASEAN Community 2015? – Analysis

The ASEAN Community is to be established this year. ASEAN should convey, very early in the new year, a coordinated message on what exactly the ASEAN Community 2015 is and what the people can expect come 31 December 2015.

By Raman Letchumanan

Many people have a vague idea of what the ASEAN Community 2015 (AC15) is all about and how it benefits or impacts them. The lack of clear coherent messaging by the authorities leads some to benchmark the AC15 with the European Union (EU), while others have the impression the AC15 is all about the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) which invariably gets the most attention in public discourses.

ASEAN must make a concerted effort to convey in specific quantitative, if not qualitative, terms what it had planned to achieve and how well it is doing, regularly throughout the year. Otherwise the public who are being primed to expect “delivery” of the AC15 on 31 December 2015 will be greatly disappointed if they are anticipating a Cinderella-like transformation on that day. ASEAN, under Malaysia’s Chairmanship, has a heavy transformative agenda this year, namely (i) delivering on the AC15 (ii) designing the post-2015 agenda which spans a decade to 2025 and (iii) hopefully reviewing the ASEAN Charter which was due in 2014. This commentary deals with the first task.

Framing ASEAN Community 2015 (AC15)

The ASEAN Leaders have declared that the 2009-2015 Road Map consisting of the three Community Blueprints – Economic (AEC), Political-Security (APSC), Socio-Cultural (ASCC) -shall form the basis of the overall ASEAN Community (AC15). Of course, the ASEAN Charter and other subsequent key initiatives would also define the AC15. By focusing on the broader goals, objectives, strategies, and targets set in these instruments, the contours and key markers of the AC15 can be easily framed, both in quantitative and qualitative terms as appropriate.

However, assessing the establishment of AC15 based on the implementation of the 1000-odd mostly operational actions – which at recent count by authorities averages 90% – is just not right nor valid. The achievement of regional and national development goals is a combined effort from all sources particularly national efforts; it is certainly not only from the Blueprint’s regional actions which is just a drop in the ocean.

Describing AC15 as “work-in-progress” so early in the year seems apologetic and back-tracking. Indeed the successes so far should lay the foundation for future work on ASEAN community building, while learning from failures and what works and what doesn’t.

Building the foundation: Prosperity, peace and people

The AEC is on track to eliminate tariffs on almost all goods by the end of the year. However, the share of the intra-ASEAN trade in total GDP (2009-2013) has been stuck at about 24%, even lower than the previous corresponding period. While intra-ASEAN investment (2009-2013) has increased, the rate of increase is less than for extra-ASEAN. AEC is not fully utilising its own single market and production base.

More work needs to be done on trade facilitation, expedited uniform customs clearance, removal of non-tariff measures, and facilitated movement of skilled persons. The Open Sky policy has clearly benefitted the people resulting in a dramatic increase in air travel, physically bringing ASEAN people closer for meaningful interaction and regional integration.

The fact that ASEAN has been a relatively peaceful region compared to the rest of the world should score high for APSC. The Preah Vihear Temple, Sipadan and Ligitan Islands, Pedra Branca, and even development issues such as the Malayan Railway Land deal between Malaysia and Singapore have shown the States’ maturity in using bilateral, regional and international mechanisms to resolve disputes amicably while accepting the verdicts gracefully.

Such multiple channels of dispute settlement should be pursued concurrently for the South China Sea disputes.

ASEAN has also been affected by terrorism and transnational crimes. Ensuring a drug-free ASEAN by 2015, on hindsight, is way off the mark, but with recent record-breaking seizure of illegal drugs, coordinated enforcement, and severe penalties we should be moving steadily towards that goal. The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights is already operational, and more needs to be done on human rights protection.

Surprisingly, ASCC gets the least attention though the issues are all about the people and their daily lives. It is making its mark on disaster response, becoming more resourced, capable, and confident and being recognised as the essential first responders in the region. The ASCC is already operating on the basis of higher targets than that of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG Plus).

The region has well-coordinated response mechanisms for pandemics based on the experiences of SARS and Avian Influenza. The haze situation is still hazy, dictated by the vagaries of weather, but countries are responding through well-coordinated regional and national mechanisms through legislation, enforcement, and preventive activities on the ground.

AC15: Measuring and communicating progress

Contrary to its name, the AEC Scorecard is just a monitoring and compliance tool of agreements and actions which, though necessary, does not articulate the impacts and benefits of the AEC. However, to its credit, communications such as the AEC’s 2014 publication; AEC 2015: Thinking Globally, Prospering Regionally setting out key messages and explaining clearly the impact of the AEC, quoting real examples of how businesses and people have benefitted, should be ratcheted up this year.

The ASCC has developed its own comprehensive Scorecard based on key impact indicators related to the ASCC Blueprint goals, strategies and targets. It should now work on those agreed indicators and quickly publish the 2015 ASCC Scorecard Report which should give a clearer perception of what the ASCC, and consequently the AC15, is and how it has impacted the people.

Diverse voices speaking as one

Malaysia and the ASEAN Secretariat should lead and coordinate the framing, scoping, delivery of targeted information, and assessment of the AC15. Only recently the ASEAN Secretariat has opened a tiny window on AC15 on their website; the Malaysian website could be more than an event management site.

The wide-ranging multifaceted efforts of community building should be properly classified into clusters, subjects, or thematic areas targeting the main interest groups – businesses, intellectual community, and the general public – for a year- long constructive discourse on the AC15. Greater use of social media should make these platforms fully interactive to generate interest, engagement, discussion, feedback and effective participation.

Malaysia could emulate the well-structured communication strategy of its National Transformation Policy for AC15. All other member states should equally do so, for example, pitching AC15 on their national commemorative events such as Singapore’s SG50.

ASEAN may well engage relevant stakeholders for working level interactions during its over 1000 official meetings this year; and all these meetings should singularly focus on generating key outputs and messages for AC15, and planning for the post-2015 agenda.

In other words, ASEAN should seriously start implementing the ASEAN Communication Master Plan which has elaborated in detail what should be done for communicating AC15 – beginning right now.


Sumber - Eurasia Review
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Arms Race Coming in Asia?

Disputes in the South China and East China Seas could trigger vast military spending

The East and South China Seas face the possibility of a growing arms race between Japan, China and other countries, according to a new policy research paper released by the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

The paper, A Tale of Two Conflicts, written by Ian Forsyth, an analyst at the US Pacific Command in Hawaii and a visiting fellow at the school, states that “if Japan’s relative military capability is what makes China more cautious in regards to Japan than with Vietnam or the Philippines, then in theory, the only solution to prevent a major conflict is a high quality military, which could doom the region to an ongoing arms race of quality to balance China’s quantity.”

Indeed, Japan has already embarked on a major enlargement of its coast guard – its de facto navy – to meet the Chinese challenge.

China’s modern economic and military rise has been meteoric in historical terms, in reality not beginning before Deng Xiaoping opened the country to the west in the 1970s.  Its expansionist policies in the East and South China Seas date even later than that. As Forsyth points out, “As if in tandem with one another, the rise of tensions in the East and South China Seas has been capturing headlines [only] since 2009.”

Despite its post-WWII pacifist constitution, Japan, as he writes, is a much more formidable military opponent than either Vietnam or the Philippines, both of which have collided with China over resources in the South China Sea.

“The commonalities and differences between these two regional disputes reveal much about which dispute is more likely to erupt into conflict and if conflict were to erupt, which dispute would prove more catastrophic,” the policy paper notes. “The presence of an intense anti-Japan nationalism in China points to the East China Sea being more likely to erupt into conflict than the South China Sea disputes.”

Despite that, Japan’s comparative military prowess plus a seemingly unshakable military alliance with the US that goes back decades, “imposes a sobriety on China’s decision-makers, making that region less likely to erupt into conflict than the South China Sea dispute.”

The fact is that the countries of Southeast Asia, particularly as their economic status has improved, have been arming themselves to the teeth for decades, although size along keeps them from matching either Japan or China,

Vietnam, as Forsyth notes, “has only a respectable military force,” with just 20 ships, 10 amphibious craft and three submarines. Its air force consists of 418 attack aircraft; 160 support craft; and 30 helicopters. In an effort to bolster Vietnam’s defense capability, in October 2014, the US relaxed its arms embargo on Vietnam, which has been place since 1984.

The Philippines armed forces are perhaps even less impressive than Vietnam’s, with 20 ships and 10 amphibious craft as well as just 10 trainer aircraft but no combat planes, 32 support craft and 88 helicopters, most of them Vietnam War-era Huey helicopters. However, Manila expects to increase its defense budget by 81 percent from 2011 by 2017.

In contrast, Japan’s military is an order of magnitude greater than either Vietnam’s or the Philippines’ with three helicopter carriers, 42 destroyers, six frigates; and 16 submarines.Its air force includes 510 combat aircraft, 260 of them fighter jets.

The Japan Coast Guard, the country’s de facto navy, has been building up its capability for the long-term defense of the contested Senkaku islets, which the Chinee call the Diaoyus. The Coast Guard’s budget was increased by 5.5 percent in 2014 in a bid to meet the Chinese challenge. That budget augmentation will pay for10 large patrol vessels plus two vessels capable of carrying helicopters which will be renovated by the end of fiscal 2015. Four of the new vessels are scheduled to enter service in 2014.

To respond to what could be “more urgent situations,” the coast guard also plans to build an additional six large and four medium-sized patrol boats, and to upgrade two existing vessels capable of carrying helicopters to back up the special unit.

“In sum, Japan’s military and coast guard forces pose a much greater threat to the Chinese military than Vietnam or the Philippines. “

In the middle of this is the United States military, which has forcefully said it would help to defend the islets.

“Beijing is on notice that an attempt to acquire the Diaoyus/Senkakus by force could mean a fight not only with Japan and its modern navy, air force and coast guard, but with the U.S. military as well,” Forsyth writes. “Compounding this is the fact the US has forces stationed throughout Japan that can be rapidly mobilized in the event of a Sino-Japan conflict.”

The US commitment to the Philippines is somewhat more equivocal. The country is in the middle of renegotiating a status of forces agreement now that would provide a clearer arrangement between the two.  Nonetheless, as Forsyth points out,  the Philippines alliance with the US is less foreboding to Beijing.

What is clear is that the disputes in both areas will be resolved via formal adjudication of maritime and sovereignty rights although “given the political realities of the region, particularly in China, this is virtually impossible. As such, the most that can be expected at this point is baby steps of conflict prevention and conflict de-escalation. The commonalities between the disputes provide certain limited opportunities to cultivate a foundation for conflict prevention in both regions.”

The local parties themselves need to drive the effort to cool the situation “Among the steps both South and East China Sea claimants could take are Incidents at Sea Agreements, particularly between China and Japan. Another is the establishment of hotlines. Malaysia and Indonesia have one, and Japan has one with Russia and South Korea.”

In 2006 Tokyo and Beijing reached consensus in principle on establishing such a communications line, but it wasn’t until November last year that State Councillor Yang Jiechi held talks with visiting National Security Advisor of Japan Shotaro Yachi in Beijing and drafted a four-point communiqué, which among other things, revitalized the prospects of an active hotline between the two governments in the case of an emergency.

“Japan has responsibilities as well. Tokyo should refrain from taking unilateral steps to solidify its sovereignty claims, such as deploying JSDF personnel on the islands, constructing a port of refuge for fishing boats, upgrading the islands’ lighthouse, or deploying civil servants to manage and preserve the islands’ forestry endowment or survey its marine resources,” Forsyth writes., “Furthermore, Tokyo should integrate the ‘differing positions’ point of the communiqué into its official vernacular regarding the Diaoyus/Senkakus.”

That could act as a de facto dispute acknowledgement without losing face, paving the way for bilateral negotiations and even commencing legal actions. Both could also stipulate that regardless of sovereign title, the Diaoyus/Senkakus do not generate an exclusive economic zone for either.

“This issue must be handled distinctly from demarcation of the sea and from the issue of sovereignty of the islets. While it is not likely that neither the East China Sea nor the South China Sea will witness the best of times in the near future the nature of the conflicts does not preclude preventing the worst of times. However, all parties involved must labour to prevent the worst of times from coming about.”


Sumber - Asia Sentinel

The Vilification of Muslims

Alliance of Christian, Jewish and Hindu Fundamentalists

by DEEPAK TRIPATHI

The recent attacks at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine’s office and a Jewish store near Paris have sparked another round of explosive debate about Islam and Muslims. The actions of Cherif and Said Kouachi were condemned. How the two brothers born and raised in France became radicalised was discussed in newspapers and on airwaves. Their existence on the fringes of French society and previous encounters with the law, already on record, were highlighted. Belgian police subsequently carried out operations in Verviers and other parts of the country.

Competition among Western leaders to rush to Paris to mark the tragic events was intense. The British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu appeared particularly exercised. Stakes are high for Cameron and Netanyahu in coming elections in Britain and Israel respectively. The French presidency was not keen on Netanyahu visiting the country, but he turned up anyway.

Reminding the world of his Christian faith, David Cameron condemned the “fanatical death cult of Islamist extremism” and insisted: “You cannot appease them; they hate our democracy, our freedom, our freedom of expression, our way of life.” Netanyahu was not going to be left behind. Describing the attacks as brutal acts of savagery, he insisted that radical Islam knew “no boundaries” and the response had to be international.

Reminding his audience yet again that Israel had experienced similar attacks and that he knew the pain, Netanyahu said: “The terrorists want to destroy our freedoms and our civilization … we can defeat this tyranny that seeks to extinguish all our freedoms.”

Some commentators have pointed out the inherent bigotry and duplicity of this rhetoric. Chris Hedges, in a piece on Truthdig.com, said that the Charlie Hebdo shootings were neither about free speech nor radical Islam. Rather, the killings represented the fury of those hopeless, brutally controlled and mocked by the privileged.

The latest vilification of Muslims and their faith is the result of an old alliance of fundamentalist Christians and Jews for at least a century, certainly since the beginning of the Anglo-French project to create what became Israel in 1948. In the post-9/11 era, the trend to caricature Muslims has become more sweeping and venomous. Muslims all over the world are facing a sustained attack.

Had the Palestinian scholar Edward Said, author of the acclaimed book Orientalism been alive, he would have described it as a new form of Orientalism which imagines, emphasises, exaggerates and distorts, and is solely directed against Muslims everywhere. The rise of the Hindu nationalist BJP to power in India, a secular country of more than a billion people and nearly 150 million Muslims, represents the entry of a new player in this alarming reality. Not even a year in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has already started to fiddle with the Indian constitution.

The terms “secular” and “socialist” are being removed from the preamble in government publications, without the required legislative approval for which the BJP government does not have sufficient strength. Leading government ministers and party allies have begun to openly suggest that the plan is to do away with the term “secular” from the constitution altogether, some claiming that India was never a secular country. Paranoia and religious zealotry are on the ascendancy.

The leader of the self-styled World Hindu Organisation, Pravin Togadia, absurdly laments that the population of Hindus in India is only 82 per cent. Togadia says he would not let this number decline to 42 in a few years, because “then their property and women will not remain safe”. He is determined to push the Hindu population up to 100 per cent.

Hindu women married to Prominent Muslims are accused of committing “love jihad” and demands are being made that their husbands convert to Hinduism. Walking in the corridors of power, if not occupying seats, are people who would make India a monolithic Hindu theocracy, a distorted mirror image of Saudi Arabia.

India’s vice president Hamid Ansari, a career diplomat before taking up his current post in 2007, was recently hounded by right-wing supporters and sympathisers of Modi’s government. As President Pranab Mukherjee took the salute during India’s Republic Day parade on 26 January, Ansari and several ministers in Modi’s government stood at attention, as the protocol requires.

Only the vice president was singled out for “insulting the national flag” and attacked by chauvinist Hindus in vehemently abusive terms. This against someone who had served as India’s ambassador in countries including Australia, Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and at the United Nations and, from 1980 to 1985, was Chief of Protocol in the Indian foreign ministry.

As part of the concerted drive against Muslims, a number of myths are being perpetuated by chauvinists and should be critically examined. Two myths stand out in particular. One that only Muslims (the world over) are violent – all others are doves of peace. Second that India’s 82 per cent Hindus face a demographic threat from Muslims.

Now, let us look at some of the facts. Traders from what is Damascus today started visiting India in the eight century. Sufi pacifism came to India much before. Muslim invasions began in the early eleventh century. Muslims and Christians of modern India have descended from those who adopted other religions for a variety of reasons – love, allurements, coercion or oppression, no less under the brutal Hindu caste system for centuries.

First Christians were believed to have landed on the coast of southern India in the year 52 AD when St Thomas is said to arrived in Kerala. It has taken almost fifteen centuries for the Muslim population of India to reach 14 per cent. Any talk of Hindus declining by 20 per cent, and Muslims rising, is therefore disingenuous and anti-intellectual.

Let us also examine the claim that only Islam and its followers are violent; others are fountains of peace. The history of wars between Christians and Muslims from the late eleventh to the thirteenth century took numerous lives. Legend has it that Pope Urban II told his followers it was right to kill non-Christians in defence of Christianity and those who die for their faith would occupy a chosen place in heaven.

Christian crusades were extraordinarily brutal and led to Muslim wars. In his war against the United States, Osama bin Laden’s rhetoric was strikingly similar, as is the rhetoric on the extremes of other religions in modern times. Conflicts in the Balkans and the Greater Middle East are as much local as led by Western military powers. One only has to look at those extremes with sincerity.

Let us see examples of some more fallacies, perpetuated by the appeal to popular opinion, ignorance or blind religious chauvinism. One is that Hinduism is a religion of peace. Not always. Those who killed thousands of Sikhs in India after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by two Sikh bodyguards in 1984 were not Muslims, but Hindus. And at the time of partition of British India in 1947, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs committed unspeakable atrocities on each other, killing more than a million and displacing many more.

Wars in Indo-China and elsewhere in southeast Asia involved Buddhists and Christian colonial powers – French, British and Dutch. Let us ask ourselves who continues to persecute Rohingya Muslims in Burma (Myanmar) which is 80 per cent Buddhist? And where does the responsibility lie for the civil war in Sri Lanka following decades of discrimination of Hindu and Muslim Tamils by the Buddhist Sinhala majority that led to the Tamil rebellion and the rise of Tamil militant groups after the 1983 anti-Tamil riots?

When the fog of hatred is thick and the lust to have it all becomes uncontrollable, it is difficult to recognize that humans throughout history have shown extraordinary capacity to harm fellow humans. No one comes out better in this.


Sumber - CounterPunch

Profiling of welfare assistance recipients to eradicate poverty

James Kon

AS THE Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports is making sure that the distribution of assistance and social security services are done based on requirements that follow established guidelines, it is also ensuring that the target groups receive appropriate assistance according to each of their respective needs.

In line with this, the Department of Community Development is currently in the process of carrying out profiling analysis on each and every recipient of the monthly welfare assistance.

Pehin Orang Kaya Pekerma Laila Diraja Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Hazair bin Haji Abdullah, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, said this in his welcoming remark at the dialogue session with members of the Legislative Council yesterday at the conference room of Hassanal Bolkiah National Stadium.

“The process is aimed at identifying a more detailed demographic of the recipients of assistance so that a suitable assistance programme could be found to address their needs according to their respective situations.

“According to the monthly welfare assistance assessment committee, most of the applicants for the monthly welfare assistance are heads of families who have low income or could not afford to support their families. The burden of debt that leaves them unable to make their repayments has also contributed to the financial woes faced by these families. Therefore with the profiling analysis, the Department of Community Development will be able to provide a specific programme to help recipients of welfare assistance to get out of poverty,” he added.

Towards long-term sustainability in providing welfare assistance, the minister said, “Efforts are on to empower monthly welfare assistance recipients who are categorised as physically and mentally capable to undergo skill training programmes and self-development in order to attain employment or venture into businesses.

“The programme,” he said, “will be implemented together with the Department of Community Development and Youth Development Centre. It will be further expanded to include an element of work incentive relating to increase in skills. This effort will not only stop them from their dependence of continuous assistance but also help towards maintaining sustainability in the government social security programme.”

The minister said in 2014, a total of 5,144 orphans received assistance, 158 received counselling services, 6,105 received monthly welfare assistance, 36 received other assistance. Fourteen blind and deaf also received assistance. Meanwhile, 83 complaints on abuse and domestic violence were also handled.

The minister announced that Brunei Darussalam is placed ninth in the world for least misery. The ranking came from findings on happiest countries in the world and countries facing least misery conducted by Adrian G Shite, a psychologist at University of Leicester.

YB Awang Haji Ahmad Morshidi bin Pehin Orang Kaya Digadong Seri Diraja Dato Laila Utama Haji Awang Abdul Rahman, representing members of the Legislative Council, in his speech said, “During last year’s Legislative Council session, Yang Berhormat Pehin had voiced his readiness to hold a meeting or dialogue on matters that need further in-depth explanations. I welcome the invite and appreciate what the Pehin has stated in the session.” The meeting, he said, was not only to voice out issues relating to the ministry but was a platform to assist the ministry enhance its efforts towards implementing policies in accordance with his observations as a Legislative Council member.

Also present at the dialogue session were Datin Paduka Hajah Adina binti Othman, Deputy Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Permanent Secretaries as well as officials of the ministry.


Sumber - Borneo Bulletin Online

YAM gets 8-weekjail, $6,400 in fines

YAM Pengiran Muda Abdul Mu’min was sentenced yesterday to eight weeks in jail and fined $6,400 for multiple traffic offences and giving a false statement to the police.

The court document submitted by deputy public prosecutors Hjh Anifa Rafiza Hj Abd Ghani and Dk Siti Nurul Fairuz Pg Rosli, stated that the defendant drove and bumped into another car on September 11, 2014.

He was banned from driving after he was convicted of dangerous driving in a previous case.

YAM was facing a total of 12 charges, which included driving without third party insurance at the time of the accident.

Furthermore, the defendant had also failed to report the accident and drove off using a different vehicle. He was also charged with giving a false statement to the police on how the incident unfolded six days later.

Delivering the sentence yesterday, Senior Magistrate Hj Nabil Daraina PUKDPSSU Hj Badaruddin said the defendant was again caught driving while under disqualification and without insurance on November 19, 2014, nine days after his first appearance before the Magistrates’ Court.

The senior magistrate said actual remorseful behaviour carried more weight than mere words of remorse, and he found it difficult to reconcile the defendant’s actions as put forward by Defence Counsel Balendran Balasingam of Ho & Siong.

The defence counsel had urged the court to consider the “suppressed emotions of the defendant” when his client knew that he was facing a possible custodial sentence.

The court said the defendant had chosen to drive in a non-emergency situation, only because he wanted to go to the gym.

Hj Nabil Daraina said YAM’s subsequent refusal to accept service of a police summons showed the defendant’s blatant disregard of the court and the law itself.

The senior magistrate said the court will “pass its sentence non-discriminately”, adding that the defendant came from a privileged background and should be setting an exemplary role to the society.

The defendant’s actions, said the senior magistrate, led to the unnecessary interrogation of another person and the reason for the defendant doing so was to evade the repercussions of driving while under disqualification.

The court must send a clear message to the public that such offences are not to be taken lightly, said the senior magistrate.

In response to the defence counsel seeking a probation order for his client, the senior magistrate said he was not persuaded that a probation order was appropriate to deal with the defendant based on the circumstances before the court.

In sentencing the defendant, the senior magistrate spelled out the fines for various offences, including careless driving while under disqualification, failure to report an accident within 24 hours, and driving without insurance.

On the charge of lodging a false report to the police, the senior magistrate said this was not a trivial matter as the defendant had lied and hid the truth. The defendant had six days to think before he gave his statement to the police, said the senior magistrate.

However, as there was no information as to how much time had been wasted on the investigation as a result of the defendant’s actions, the senior magistrate took a starting point of six weeks imprisonment and reduced it to four weeks.

For the charge of driving on November 19, 2014 while under disqualification, Hj Nabil Daraina sentenced the defendant to four weeks in prison.

On the charge of driving without insurance on November 19, the senior magistrate took a starting point of three weeks imprisonment and reduced it to two weeks.

In total, the defendant is sentenced to a fine of $6,400 in default of 24 weeks imprisonment and a custodial sentence of eight weeks. The defendant was also disqualified from driving for 12 months.

Following the sentencing, the defence counsel applied for a stay of execution on the custodial sentences pending an appeal. The application was granted by the court.


Sumber - The Brunei Times

How China Exploits a Loophole in International Law in Pursuit of Hegemony in East Asia

How is China pursuing its territorial claims in the South and East China Seas while also avoiding overt confrontations with the US and other regional powers? According to James Kraska, Beijing’s coercive actions fall short – quite intentionally – of what constitutes an ‘armed attack’ in international law.

By James Kraska for Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)

Who “minds the gap” in the South China Sea? The gap, that is, created in international law concerning the use of coercion or aggressive force and the right of self-defense of victim states. China exploits this gap in the international law on the use of force to compel its neighbors to accept Chinese hegemony in East Asia. By using asymmetric maritime forces – principally fishing vessels and coast guard ships – China is slowly but surely absorbing the South China Sea and East China Sea into its domain. And it does so by exploiting a loophole in international law created by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that makes it impossible for regional states to respond effectively. This legal dimension of the international politics of the maritime disputes in East Asia is not widely understood, but it is at the core of Chinese strategy in the region.

China’s Strategy

In pursuing its grand design, China must overcome resistance from three groups of antagonists. First, China has to overwhelm Japan and South Korea in the East China Sea and Yellow Sea. The plan: divide and conquer. Make sure Japan and Korea dislike each other more than they dislike China. So long as Japan and South Korea nurse historical grievances, China reaps the gain.

Second, Beijing must “Finlandize” the states surrounding the South China Sea by bringing the semi-enclosed body of water into its orbit. The plan: use a suite of carrots and sticks to bring its much weaker “frenemies” -- Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei -- into line. Likewise, the split in ASEAN plays to China’s advantage. This strategy is by itself a powerful approach, and the first 150 years of U.S. domination and division sowed in South America provides an excellent roadmap for a gangly imperialist.

Finally, Beijing has to position itself to prevent interference by the two major maritime powers from outside the region that could stop it. Only the United States and India are positioned to check China’s ambition. The plan: bring pressure to bear within the region without risking great power naval war. In particular, avoid a clear-cut incident that might trigger the U.S. security agreements with Japan, Korea, or the Philippines.[1] In pursuit of these three plans, China applies pressure across the spectrum of low-level coercion, but is careful not to cross the threshold of what is considered an “armed attack” in international law, and therefore trigger the right of individual and collective self-defense.

For example, beginning in 1999, China declared a seasonal “fishing ban” throughout the South China Sea, even though it has no legal competence to regulate fishing outside of its own 200 nautical mile excusive economic zone (EEZ). The farthest reaches of the Chinese ban stretch more than 1000 miles from the southern tip of Hainan Island. The fishing ban purports to manage fish stocks in the EEZs of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. Imagine if the United States began to control fishing vessels and oil platforms in Mexico’s EEZ.  

China also has been relentless in promoting an historic right to the islands and features, and virtually all of the ocean area, of the entire South China Sea. The world is uniformly dismayed at China’s unflappable and indignant claim to “historic waters” in the South China Sea. Maritime claims are based on the rules set forth in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC), which China joined in 1996. Beijing’s expansive claims, however, are based on the 9- (now 10-) dashed line that was published by the Republic of China in 1947. Although a fundamental precept of the sources of international law is that the “later in time prevails,” China unabashedly touts the dash-line claim as trumping its legal obligations in the Law of the Sea Convention.[2]  China has also renewed historic claims in the East China Sea over the Senkaku Islands, and in the Yellow Sea. Maritime claims constitute China’s greatest “unforced error” in its nom de guerre as a “peacefully rising” great power.

China’s Tactics

Beijing deploys a staggering variety and number of civil law enforcement and civilian commercial vessels and aircraft to press its claims and intimidate other nations. Fishing trawlers and fishery enforcement vessels are the vanguard of this policy, resulting in routine clashes with maritime security patrols in neighboring EEZs.[3] Defense News referred to China’s swarms of fishing vessels as “proxy enforcers” that work in concert with the Chinese Coast Guard  and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to “circle a disputed area of contention or create a barrier to prevent access” by the naval forces of its competitors. China Marine Surveillance ships, for example, have completely closed the entrance to the vast lagoon of Scarborough Shoal, located 125 nm West of the Philippines and inside the Philippine EEZ. Sometimes, these incidents turn deadly. In December 2011, for example, a Chinese fisherman killed a South Korean Coast Guardsman that attempted to impound the Chinese boat for illegal fishing .

Fishing vessel swarms are “rent-a-mobs” at sea, yet they pose a sensitive dilemma for other countries in the region. If the fishing vessels are challenged by neighboring states’ maritime law enforcement, it appears that the fishermen are subjected to heavy-handed action. This political element also stokes righteous nationalism in China. On the other hand, if coastal states acquiesce in the actions of the fishing vessels, they cede jurisdiction and sovereign rights in their EEZs.

China first began using fishing vessels as irregular forces in the 1990s against the islands of Matsu and Jinmen to put pressure on Taiwan during periods of political tension.[4] Today China uses these tactics against Japan in the East China Sea and in the South China Sea against the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. China also has used fishing vessel swarms against Korea in the Yellow Sea. In 2009, when China confronted the USNS Impeccable special mission ship as it conducted military surveys 75 nm from Hainan Island, it used a flotilla composed of a naval intelligence vessel, a fisheries patrol boat, an oceanographic ship and two small cargo ships or fishing trawlers. Some of the vessels appeared to be manned by Chinese Special Forces.[5]

In order to forge stronger unity of effort within the government, Beijing combined five separate agencies into a single Coast Guard in March 2013. The “Five Dragons” were the China Coast Guard of the Public Security Border Troops, the China Maritime Safety Administration of the Ministry of Transport, the China Marine Surveillance Agency of the State Oceanic Administration, the China Fisheries Law Enforcement Command of the Ministry of Agriculture, and the maritime force of the General Administration of Customs.

Last year, China added oil rigs to its stable of paramilitary maritime forces when the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) rig HD 981 was positioned near the Paracel Islands in Vietnam’s EEZ. The rig was guarded by a bevy of some 30 Chinese fishing vessels, paramilitary craft, and PLAN warships, until it withdrew months later. The oil rig incident was the lowest point in Sino-Vietnamese relations since 1979. Vietnamese forces were ejected from the Paracels by Chinese marines in a bloody 1974 invasion.

As the region awaits a ruling on the Philippine’s arbitration challenge to preserve its sovereign rights in its EEZ, China’s maritime misadventures in the region leverage a gaping hole in international humanitarian law created by the some of the world’s top jurists in the 1986 ICJ Case Concerning the Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America).

China “Minds the Gap” in International Law

In order for China’s strategy to work, it has to slowly coerce its neighbors into accepting Beijing’s hegemony, but avoid a military confrontation. China uses force through its coast guard, fishing vessels, and now oil rigs, to change the political and legal seascape in East Asia, but it studiously keeps PLAN ships over the horizon to sidestep the chance of war.

The Charter of the United Nations governs the law on the use of force in international affairs. The goal of the United Nations is to suppress “acts of aggression and other breaches of the peace.”[6] While the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact famously outlawed the conduct of “war,” and the agreement is now regarded as the height of interwar naiveté, the proscription in the U.N. Charter is even broader. Under article 2(4) of the Charter, “armed attack” (or more accurately, armed aggression  or aggression armee in the equally authentic French translation) is unlawful. Article 2(4) also states that the threat of the use of force is as much a violation as the use of force itself.

What may states do if they suffer armed attack or armed aggression? Article 51 of the Charter recognizes the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense of all states to respond to an attack. So far so good – any illegal use of force qualifies as an armed attack, and an armed attack triggers the right of self-defense of the injured state, right? Wrong, at least according to the International Court of Justice. The decision in the 1985 ICJ Nicaragua Case opened a “gap” between an armed attack by one state and the right of self-defense by the victim state.

The case arose from the wars in Central America in the 1980s. The Sandinista regime seized power in Nicaragua in 1979, and embarked on a Marxist campaign to “liberate” Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica. Nicaragua supported a splinter resistance movement in El Salvador with weapons, ammunition, money, training, intelligence, command and control, and provision of border sanctuaries. With this aid, guerrilla forces wrecked El Salvador’s economy and turned minority disaffection into a full-blown insurgency. The civilian population in the region suffered, and atrocities were committed on both sides.

To stabilize El Salvador, President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 17 on November 23, 1981. NSSD 17 authorized the CIA to build a force of Contra rebels to conduct covert action to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Military assistance flowed to Honduras and El Salvador to help inoculate them against communist insurgents. The decision reflected one of the earliest programs of the Reagan Doctrine to oppose the spread of Soviet influence.

In 1984 the Government of Nicaragua brought suit against the United States before the ICJ, arguing that U.S. clandestine activities against it, including arming the Contra rebels and mining the ports of Nicaragua, were a violation of Nicaragua’s sovereignty. The United States countered that U.S. operations were a lawful exercise of the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense under article 51 of the U.N. Charter. President Duarte of El Salvador said to the media on July 27, 1984:

What I have said, from the Salvadoran standpoint, is that we have a problem of aggression by a nation called Nicaragua inside El Salvador, that these gentlemen are sending in weapons, training, people, transporting bullets and what not, and bringing all of that to El Salvador. I said that at this very minute they are using fishing boats as a disguise and are introducing weapons into El Salvador in boats at night.

In view of this situation, El Salvador must stop this somehow. The contras … are creating a sort of barrier that prevents the Nicaraguans from continuing to send them to El Salvador by land. What they have done instead is to send them by sea, and they are not getting them in through Monte Cristo, El Coco, and El Bepino.[7]

The Court rejected the U.S. and El Salvadoran claims of self-defense against an armed attack by Nicaragua. In an interim decision on the Case, the ICJ ruled by a vote of 15 to 0 that the United States should “immediately cease and refrain from any action restricting, blockading, or endangering access to Nicaraguan ports….” In its final ruling on the Merits, the ICJ held by a vote of 14 to 1 that Nicaragua’s right to sovereignty may not be jeopardized by U.S. paramilitary activities. Training, arming, equipping, and supplying the Contras was a violation of international law, and not a lawful measure of collective self-defense taken by the United States and its regional allies in response to Nicaraguan aggression.

The ICJ ruled lower-level coercion or intervention, such as “the sending by or on behalf of a state of armed bands, groups, irregulars, or mercenaries” into another country constitutes an “armed attack,” but the right of self-defense is triggered only if such intervention reaches the “scale and effects” or is of sufficient “gravity” tantamount to a regular invasion. There was no right to use self-defense against coercion or lower-level armed attack by irregulars or insurgents that does not rise to the threshold of gravity or scale and effects.

While both Nicaragua and the United States had funded guerrillas and engaged in acts that destabilized the region, the ICJ distinction turned on the concept of “effective control.” Nicaragua was found not to have “effective control” over the insurgents trying to overthrow governments in El Salvador and Honduras, whereas the United States was deemed to exercise “effective control” over the mining of Nicaraguan harbors and the Contras.

The Court denied El Salvador the opportunity to intervene in the Case, assuring a David vs. Goliath narrative. The ICJ also accepted the Sandinista’s version of the facts and ignored the armed aggression committed by Nicaragua against its neighbors.[8] Judge Schwebel, an American on the Court, issued the only dissent: “In short the Court appears to offer – quite gratuitously – a prescription for overthrow of weaker governments by predatory governments while denying potential victims … their only hope for survival.” The Case represents one of the greatest pieces of international judicial malpractice in history and it should not be surprising that the decision now supports Chinese maritime encroachment (as well as Russian shenanigans in its neighbors from Georgia to Ukraine to the Baltics – but that is a story for another day).

Whether the Nicaragua Case was driven by outcome-based decision making that required a U.S. loss, or a high-minded, but misguided effort at international social justice (as I have suggested here), the result is that a gap opened between armed aggression and the right of self-defense. By using lower-levels of coercion spread over numerous small acts, none of which are sufficient to trigger the right of self-defense, aggressors are rewarded. Being politically and legally cognizant of the Nicaragua Case, China is making strategic maritime gains at the expense of its neighbors without the risk of starting a war.

Furthermore, China’s strategic use of its fishing fleet as a component of “legal warfare” goes beyond exploiting the gap between the use of force and self-defense in jus ad bellum; it affects jus in bello as well. Fishing vessels likely would be used as belligerent platforms during any regional war. Some suspect China is outfitting thousands of its fishing vessels with sonar in order to integrate them into the PLAN’s anti-submarine warfare operations that would have to find and sink U.S. and allied submarines.

Ever since the landmark 1900 case Paquette Habana, which arose from U.S. seizure of Cuban fishing boats in the Spanish-American war, coastal fishing vessels and fishermen are exempt from target or capture during armed conflict. By placing sonar on its fishing vessels as a force multiplier for anti-submarine operations, Beijing instantly risks these ships being regarded as lawful targets in the event of conflict. But the optics of the U.S. Navy sinking Chinese fishing vessels is made-to-order propaganda. In any event, Sam Tangredi, a prominent defense strategist wonders how many of the limited number of torpedoes is the U.S. Navy willing to expend, given the enormous number of fishing vessels.

The reaction to all this might be – so what? Countries have long used asymmetric attacks that fly under the radar. What is different now is that irregular warfare is being used as a tool of the strong to change the regional security system, rather than the weak. Furthermore, the international legal aspects of the present situation inures to China’s advantage. Consequently, the systemic risks are that much greater and can only be compared with the campaign by the USSR to destabilize countries during the Cold War. Who says international law doesn’t matter?

_______________________________________

[1] The United States has defense agreements with five Asian states: Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Some of these defense agreements and the Taiwan Relations Act were the subject of an FPRI podcast last year, which can be accessed here: http://www.fpri.org/multimedia/2014/06/us-security-commitments-asias-cha...

[2] States that have historic fishing claims may seek access from the coastal state that manages those areas under article 62 of the Law of the Sea Convention.

[3] Lyle J. Goldstein, “Chinese fisheries enforcement: Environmental and strategic implications,” 40 Marine Policy 187 (2013).

[4] Wendell Minnick, Fishing Vessels in China Serve as Proxy Enforcers, Defense News, August 18, 2014, p. 15.

[5] Some of the “fishermen” appear to be entirely unconvincing subsistence fishermen – young, crew cut, athletic, continually at sea in Southeast Asia without tanned skin, and (!) unable to operate fishing equipment. This observation has been made to me by a former 2-star admiral in East Asia and a retired Chief of Navy from one of the states bordering the South China Sea.

[6] Article 1(1), Charter of the United Nations.

[7] Press Conference of President Duarte, Sam Salvador Radio Cadena YSKL (in Spanish) 1735 GMT 27 July 1984 in San Salvador (July 27, 1984) reprinted in FBIS Daily Reports Latin America, 1, 4 (July 30, 1984).

[8] See, e.g. John Norton Moore, The Secret War in Central America – Sandinista Assault on World Order (1987). John Norton Moore served as a Deputy Agent of the United States at the jurisdictional phase of the case. The United States did not participate in the Merits phase of the case. Full disclosure: I earned my research doctorate under John Norton Moore at University of Virginia School of Law, where I also serve as Senior Fellow. Professor Moore has written more extensively about the legal shortcomings in the case in John Norton Moore, Jus ad Bellum before the International Court of Justice, 52 Virginia Journal of International Law 903, 919-935 (Summer 2012).


Sumber - ISN

Brunei’s oil-fuelled economy running on empty

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

Rozman Junaidi has a devil’s grin on his face as he glances over. “You know Top Gun?” he says, holding the control stick that is the closest thing to flying a real Sikorsky S-92 helicopter in all of Asia. “It’s time to buzz the tower.”

He leans the virtual chopper forward, and a razor-sharp digital rendition of the Brunei International Airport tilts up to fill the simulator screen, built by Canada’s CAE Inc., and recently installed in the tiny Asian nation on the northern shore of the island of Borneo. The helicopter charges inches past the control tower, before plunging to the ground. A veil of red suddenly looms over the screen.

“That was fun,” says Mr. Junaidi, CAE’s deputy general manager in Brunei.

There is a metaphor of sorts in the simulated crash: Brunei is fast heading back to earth after a joyride fuelled by fountains of oil. Brunei has no income tax, no sales tax and loopholes big enough that many companies pay no corporate tax. It subsidizes basic foodstuffs and sells gasoline for 47 cents a litre. It is the world’s fourth-richest nation in GDP per capita. Oil brought outrageous riches to the royal family, which has accused one of its own of personally squandering $16-billion (U.S.).

But the bounty in the “abode of peace,” as Brunei Darussalam translates to, is starting to run thin. Oil production is down 40 per cent since 2006, while plummeting prices have robbed a good deal of the value from what remains.

“In some ways it’s one of the luckiest countries on earth, because they’re a small population with lots of oil,” said Todd Wilcox, the chief executive of HSBC Brunei. “But in some ways it’s a bit unlucky, because they have nothing else.”

Now Brunei finds itself struggling to find that something else.

Nearly 96 per cent of Brunei’s exports are oil, gas and related products, more than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. At its current pace of extraction, Brunei has enough oil left for just 22 years, according to the BP World Energy Outlook. Saudi Arabia, by comparison, has 63 years left, while Kuwait has 89 (Canada has more than 100). For the past decade, Brunei has found only a half-barrel of new oil for every one it removes from the ground.

A dawning awareness that the good times are at risk has prompted a renewed effort in Brunei to build parts of its economy on something other than oil. It has sought to woo companies from across the world, going so far as to prepare a handful of industrial parks that, for now, stand largely fallow.

But a few companies have come, including Hengyi Industries, a Chinese firm with plans for a new refinery.

And for CAE, Brunei Economic Development paid to construct an entire building custom-designed to house flight simulators. Brunei government agencies also provided long-term contracts to use CAE services and awarded the Saint-Laurent, Que.-headquartered company “pioneer” status, which includes duty-free equipment imports and an exemption from all corporate tax for up to 11 years.

It’s “an enticement for a foreign direct investor. Without that deal, we wouldn’t be here,” Mr. Junaidi says.

Brunei, population 420,000, provoked global consternation in 2014 when it introduced the first phase of sharia law that will, if fully brought into force, include execution for homosexual acts, even for foreigners.

But the country has its virtues. On a map of southeast Asia, it is the bulls-eye, making it geographically central to an increasingly important region. It has an educated population conversant in English and Mandarin. It has been spared the earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis that have plagued other parts of Asia, and is politically stable.

Its largely Muslim population also provides business opportunities, in the creation of halal products, one of the reasons Richmond, B.C.-based Viva Pharmaceutical Inc. set up the country’s first pharmaceutical manufacturing operation. Called Simpor Pharma, it is a joint venture with Viva holding 51 per cent and the remainder split between the Brunei government and a local company.

Viva initially looked to set up a factory in China and Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, said Edward Ko, Simpor’s managing director. But corruption is rampant in both of those places. So they came to Brunei instead, happy to accept the state assistance — which has extended to the government chartering a vessel to ensure regular marine cargo service. The Simpor factory is a warren of spotless rooms, each devoted to a different step in making halal herbal products, cosmetics, multi-vitamins and over-the-counter drugs.

“Asia is a booming market right now, especially for supplements,” Mr. Ko said.

But for all the government largesse, Simpor’s experience also underscores the legion pitfalls that confront a nation so accustomed to oil’s good times, Brunei officials are stumped when asked what their country did before the oil was found in 1910 (it was a rubber exporter). Brunei without petroleum seems an unimaginable concept, a reality that colours just about everything.

The virtual complete lack of other industry means Simpor must import the entirety of its raw ingredients. The pharmaceutical maker is unable to hire university graduates, who overwhelmingly take plush government jobs that are nearly impossible to lose. A culture that hasn’t had to do much competing for business – heavily-subsidized Royal Brunei Airlines is one of the region’s least profitable air carriers – can be a frustrating place to work.

In the latest World Bank rankings, Brunei tumbled to 179th spot – out of 189, barely beating out Haiti and Zimbabwe – for ease of starting a business.

“Here everything is slow and very traditional,” said Edward Ko, Simpor’s managing director.

In fact, Brunei’s efforts to diversify aren’t doing much to move it away from oil. In 2001, 89 per cent of Brunei’s exports were oil, gas and related products. In 2013, it was 95.7 per cent.

And the future doesn’t look much different. A 2014 energy white paper sketches out coming decades strikingly devoid of anything but more oil and gas. Though it’s not quite clear how it will get there, the paper calls for the country to pump 650,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2035, a massive increase from 372,000 today. That, it says, will grow local employment from 10,000 today to 40,000.

Simpor, by comparison, employs about 30 Bruneians.

Faced with an impending oil crisis, in other words, Brunei has decided its best strategy is to find more oil.

“I don’t think any economist would be very bullish about the future of Brunei’s non-oil and gas sectors, to put it mildly,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

Still, Brunei hasn’t proven a terrible place to be for the Canadians. CAE expects to expand its simulator operations, and hopes to launch a flight school. Simpor is drafting plans for a multivitamin gummy bear factory, and hopes it can one day use the country’s virgin rainforest to find new ingredients.

“It’s not a perfect place to make money, but it’s a good place to make money,” Mr. Ko says. “It’s not really a business-oriented country, but we get a lot of advantages in doing business with government.”


Sumber - The Globe and Mail

A Food Secure Asia By 2025: Addressing Vulnerable Groups – Analysis

Despite numerous international and regional conversations on food security of late, the problem of hunger and malnourishment still persists in Asia. There is a need to relook existing strategies to secure food for affected groups in the region if the vision of a food secure Asia is to be realised by 2025.

By Tamara Nair

In retrospect, of the many grand-scale food security conversations that have taken place in 2014, few have been all-inclusive. While there are successes in terms of food security in Asia in general, these do not address the needs of the large numbers of hungry and undernourished in the region.

There are growing challenges posed by hunger and undernourishment in Asia as reflected in the inability to meet the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) target of halving the number of undernourished people by 2015. Perhaps the time has come to broaden the thinking as to who we should be having conversations with and what else we should do to establish secure and equal access to food for everyone.

Beyond availability and access to food

The persistent existence of great numbers of hungry, undernourished people in Asia should prompt a relook at existing approaches of access to and availability of food. Food security is often intertwined with other human insecurities such as lack of economic growth, unemployment, and even unfair economic competition and gender bias. For example women and girls often suffer food insecurities given cultural bias in resource distribution in parts of Asia.

Recent events in the South China Sea involving illegal fishing can be a result of insecurities due to unfair competition, pushing fishermen further beyond their fishing territories. For these groups, food security may well extend beyond issues of increasing food production. Their insecurities can also be steeped in cultural politics played out at the local level.

If the intention is to achieve a food secure region, where hunger and undernourishment is considerably lowered, our ideas on food security must expand and evolve – from access and availability to include addressing drivers of hunger and undernourishment.

Appreciating local complexities

For most Asian nations equal access to food opens up Pandora’s Box in terms of problems that can only be collectively addressed. Some of the ways to address them are the deliberate inclusion of local governments, local communities, welfare organisations, women’s groups and cooperatives, clan or caste associations and human rights advocates. But first, we need to acknowledge that existing food policies might not be effective.

Large numbers of rural and urban poor still go to bed hungry despite impressive economic growth in the region. In addition to looking at increasing food production and trade, we also need to look at the reasons why people are still hungry and undernourished. Hunger and undernourishment are complex issues interwoven with several other insecurities, not just joblessness or the lack of money to buy food. Localised strategies to identify specific conditions triggering these insecurities, including that of food, are essential.

Expanding income-earning opportunities would be a positive step in this direction. Local development strategies should aim towards creating employment opportunities for the poor in both rural and urban settings. This should include job opportunities for women. Numerous local projects around Asia show that as female (or combined household) income earning potential increases, household food insecurity falls.

This is an effective strategy and more resources should be channelled at local levels for this to happen. Unfair competition should be tempered through the creation of local cooperatives that can give vulnerable small-scale food producers greater collective bargaining power in food production and food market activities. Local government or other relevant institutions should also exercise effective targeting strategies to identify deserving beneficiaries for various food safety nets, such as public distribution systems, cash hand-outs or meal distribution.

Political participation

We also need to consider increasing capacities of these groups through effective political participation. There should be opportunities for vulnerable groups to participate in development planning and to some extent, be able to influence decisions made. Local level participation in development strategies can create greater trust between various stakeholders in projects that address poverty or income generation and make agencies more accountable to the beneficiaries of various policies put in place.

These strategies are in place in several Asian countries. However, relentless hunger among the poor and vulnerable indicates that the effectiveness of existing policies should be examined and more should be done to fine tune its reach.

Empowering vulnerable groups with income earning potential, removing unfair competition and giving them opportunities to exercise their rights as citizens will go a long way towards removing barriers that result in creating food insecure groups despite well-meaning policies. These are just some of the complexities that need attention in addition to macro-scale solutions like increased food production and trade.

Towards a food secure ASEAN

ASEAN’s post 2015 agenda will be looking into a 10-year timeframe for food security. The International Food Policy Research Institute has also chosen 2025 as the year the world should aim to eradicate hunger.

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2015 has strategies to enhance the long-term competitiveness of regional food commodities. In its grand plans however, it is easy for the vulnerable to slip through the cracks. While AEC presents opportunities for greater integration and growth we need to exercise caution that broad regional agendas do not see some groups become ‘outliers’ in regional development.

Governments should undertake poverty alleviation strategies and support efforts to promote community participation. Such strategies should aim to promote greater trust between stakeholders, provide jobs to generate incomes and help to effectively target food vulnerable groups.

By identifying the food insecure and addressing the complexities of their daily lives, issues of hunger and undernourishment can be better determined. Enhancing the welfare and rights of the citizens can lead to domestic policies that are more pro poor and are able to address their insecurities.

Similarly, regional trade arrangements should include measures to safeguard those who will be most vulnerable to market instabilities. Fairer market conditions will allow ASEAN to achieve greater equitable regional development, which will in turn contribute towards a food secure Asia.


Sumber - Eurasia Review