Calling Out China

SCOOP

Keith Rankin

Tuesday, 4 May 2021,

We humans seem to have a need to coalesce into tribes, and we do this by identifying – and sometimes demonising, or holding in condescension – others who are not us. We also like to anthropomorphise, treating both animals and nations as if they were humans. Thus, 'Peter Rabbit does this'; and 'India does that'.

Of late one of our favourite activities has become 'calling out' others; we like to 'tell off' – even 'cancel' – individual people (or people stereotypes), and we like to tell off countries (or country stereotypes). In doing this we are usually 'letting off steam', and our actions tell us more about ourselves than the targets of our volleys.

UN fails to agree on Myanmar statement, diplomats blame China, Russia

FRANCE 24
01/05/2021

UN Special Envoy to Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener had a long meeting with Myanmar junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting STR AFP/File

United Nations (United States) (AFP)

The UN Security Council failed to agree Friday on a joint statement on the crisis in Myanmar after a closed-door meeting, with diplomats blaming Beijing -- the junta's main backer -- and Russia for raising objections and putting forward their own competing text.

The session was convened by Vietnam to present the conclusions of a recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Indonesia. ASEAN is to appoint an envoy to help resolve the crisis sparked by the February 1 coup by the Myanmar military.

During the meeting, the UN Special Envoy to Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, who is currently touring the region, gave a report on her long meeting with Myanmar junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing, held on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting.

Understanding the relations between Myanmar and China

ORF

OBSERVER REACHER FOUNDATION

SUMANTH SAMSANI

APR 26 2021

The relations between Myanmar and China have been a roller coaster ever since Myanmar became one of the first non-communist countries to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1949. But things began to change in the late 1980s when Myanmar faced increased western-led economic sanctions after a coup in 1988 and shortly after it, Myanmar introduced a number of economic reforms. It was under these conditions that the China–Myanmar relations started gaining momentum.

In terms of bilateral trade, China is the largest trading partner of Myanmar. China occupies the largest share in both imports and exports of Myanmar. According to data from 2019, the bilateral trade stands at about USD 12 billion out of the approximately USD 36 billion trade it conducts in total that roughly amounts to 1/3rd of the total. In 2019, China occupied a 31.7 % share in its exports and a 34.7 % share in its imports far ahead of any other country including India which doesn’t even break into the top 5 in either category despite sharing a lengthy land border. Since 2001, Myanmar imports its largest share of goods from China. Imports from China mainly consist of machinery, metal products, vehicles, and telecommunication equipment.

China, Myanmar and others criticized in report on rising religious persecution

the japan times
Apr 21, 2021

Rohingya refugees on a boat on their way to Bhasan Char island in Bangladesh in December. | REUTERS

ROME– Violations of religious freedom are increasing and persecution takes place in more than 25 countries, with China and Myanmar among those that have the worst records, according to a report by a Vatican-backed charity.

The Religious Freedom in the World Report, covering 2019-2020 and issued on Tuesday, said that in some countries, such as Niger, Turkey and Pakistan, prejudices against religious minorities led local residents to blame them for the COVID-19 pandemic and denial of access to medical aid.

China, Myanmar among countries criticised for 'rising religious persecution'

Financial Express

Reuters 

April 21, 2021

Violations of religious freedom are increasing and persecution takes place in more than 25 countries, with China and Myanmar among those that have the worst records, according to a report by a Vatican-backed charity.

The Religious Freedom in the World Report, covering 2019-2020 and issued on Tuesday, said that in some countries, such as Niger, Turkey and Pakistan, prejudices against religious minorities led local residents to blame them for the Covid-19 pandemic and denial of access to medical aid.

US, China clash at UN meeting on combatting racism

NATIONAL HERALD

PTI
Published: 20 Mar 2021

The United States accused China on Friday of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uighur Muslims and other minorities.

The United States accused China on Friday of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uighur Muslims and other minorities, and China accused the US of discrimination, hatred and even savage murder of people of African and Asian descent.

The clash came at the UN General Assembly's commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and was sparked by one line in the speech by US Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, who talked about being a descendent of slaves, growing up in the segregated South, and surviving racism including being called an N-word.

Russia and China Thwarting International Response to Myanmar Crisis: EU

KMJ NOW

AFP
11 April 2021

Russia and China are frustrating the international response to the Myanmar crisis, a top European Union diplomat said Sunday, as the death toll from a military crackdown climbed past 700.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military removed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power on February 1.

International efforts to stem the violence have so far failed to yield results, with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell saying Sunday it was “no surprise” that Russia and China were blocking efforts at the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo.

China, Russia undermine international Myanmar response, EU's top diplomat says

REUTERS

By Kate Abnett
APRIL 11, 2021

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union’s top diplomat said on Sunday Russia and China were hampering a united international response to Myanmar’s military coup and that the EU could offer more economic incentives if democracy returns to the country.

“It comes as no surprise that Russia and China are blocking the attempts of the U.N. Security Council, for example to impose an arms embargo,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a blog post.

“Geopolitical competition in Myanmar will make it very difficult to find common ground,” said Borrell, who speaks on behalf of the 27 EU member states. “But we have a duty to try.”

Security forces have killed more than 700 unarmed protesters, including 46 children, since the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a Feb. 1 coup, according to a tally by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) activist group.

၁၉၆၇ တရုတ္ ဗမာ အေရးအခင္း အေၾကာင္း တေ ေစ့တ ေစာင္း

တင္ေမာင္

၁၉၆၇ တရုတ္ ဗမာ အေရးအခင္း အေၾကာင္း တေ ေစ့တ ေစာင္း
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ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ လူမ်ိဳးမတူမႈ ဘာသာမတူမႈ ခံယူခ်က္မတူမႈ အစရွိတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းရင္းမ်ား ကို အေျချပဳျပီး ပဋိ ပကၡမ်ား အစဥ္အဆက္ ေပါက္ဖြားခဲ့တဲ့ အနက္ ၁၉၆၇ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ တရုတ္ ဗမာ အေရးအခင္း ဟာ လည္း တစ္ခုအပါအဝင္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဒီလုိ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ပဋိပကၡေတြကို သင္ခန္းစာယူျပီး ေနာင္မျဖစ္ေစဖို႔ ၾကိဳးပမ္းအားထုတ္ဖို႔ အတြက္လည္း အဲ့ဒီလုိ အျဖစ္အပ်က္ေတြကို ျမန္မာသမိုင္းတေလ်ာက္ မွန္မွန္ကန္ကန္ တရားဝင္မွတ္တမ္းတင္မႈ ျပည္သူလူထုကို မွန္ကန္တဲ့ နည္းလမ္းနဲ႔ ပညာေပးမႈ ေတြဟာလည္း အားနည္းလြန္းတဲ့အတြက္ ပဋိပကၡေတြဟာ တမ်ိဳးျပီးတမ်ိဳး ဆက္တိုက္ ေပါက္ဖြားခဲ့ရတာပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ယခုတင္ျပမဲ့ တရုတ္ဗမာ အေရးအခင္းလုိ႔ လူသိမ်ားတဲ့ အေရးအခင္းဟာ တကယ္ေတာ့ ဗုိလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေနဝင္း အာ ဏာသိမ္းျပီးေနာက္ ၅ ႏွစ္အၾကာမွာ ေပၚေပါက္ခဲ့တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္းက တရုတ္ အမ်ိဳး သား မ်ား နဲ႕ ဗမာ မ်ားအၾကား ရက္အတန္ၾကာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ အေရးအခင္း တစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

တ႐ုတ္-ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္ေဒသ၏ သမိုင္းေၾကာင္း အက်ဥ္း

75 AD
လြန္ခဲ့သည့္ ႏွစ္ေထာင္ေသာင္းမ်ားစြာကတည္းက ယေန႔ခတ္ တ႐ုတ္-ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္ေဒသ၌ ယဥ္ေက်းမႈ၊ ဘာ သာစကား မတူညီ ကြဲျပားသည့္ လူမ်ိဳးေပါင္းစုံ ယွဥ္တြဲေနထိုင္ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ႏွစ္ ၂၀၀၀ ခန္႔ ဧရာဝ တီျမစ္ဝွမ္းေဒသတြင္ ၿမိဳ႕ျပယဥ္ေက်းမႈ ဉီးဆုံး ေပၚေပါက္လာခ်ိန္က ယေန႔ေခတ္ ယူနန္ျပည္ အေရွ႕ပိုင္းေဒ သ ကို ဒီယန္ဘုရင္မ်ား ေခတ္အဆက္ဆက္ အုပ္စိုးခဲ့သည္။ ဒီယန္ဘုရင္မ်ားသည္ ျမန္မာဘာသာႏွင့္ ဆက္စပ္ေန သည့္ ဘာသာစ ကား တစ္မ်ိဳးကို အသုံးျပဳခဲ့ဟန္ တူေသာ္လည္း အတိအက် မဆိုနိုင္ပါ။ ယူနန္နယ္သားမ်ား သည္ အျခားေသာ တိဘက္-ျမန္မာႏြယ္ ဘာသာစကားမ်ား၊ တိုင္ဘာသာႏွင့္ ၾသစထရိုအာရွ ဘာသာစကား မ်ား (ေခတ္သစ္မြန္ဘာသာကဲ့သို႔) ကိုလည္း အသုံးျပဳခဲ့ၾကသည္။

Myanmar’s Brutal Military Was Once a Force for Freedom – but it’s been Waging Civil War for Decades

INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIGEST

Tharaphi Than

APRIL 5, 2021

With great fanfare – but few guests – Myanmar’s armed forces recently celebrated their 76th anniversary in the nation’s capital of Naypyitaw.

Only Russia, China, Thailand, and a handful of other Asian countries sent representatives to attend the March 27th parade showing off Myanmar’s modern war machines – mostly imported from Russia and China over the past decade, to the tune of $2.4 billion.

The Myanmar military has been terrorizing civilians since a coup two months earlier. On the day of the parade, soldiers killed over 90 people for protesting military rule, including a 5-year-old boy and three teenagers. An estimated 564 people have been killed in Myanmar since the Feb. 1 coup.

Myanmar crisis: Asean's next moves

Bangkok Post

PUBLISHED : 6 APR 2021

Myanmar's Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin takes part in a virtual meeting of Asean foreign ministers in Nay Pyi Taw last Friday. AFP

The recent call by Indonesian President Joko Widodo for a meeting with his colleagues on the Myanmar crisis is gaining traction. It is now possible to say that the proposed leaders' meeting could take place at the end of this month, after the Songkran break and the Muslim Ramadan festival.

Senior Asean officials will have to decide tomorrow whether to have the physical meeting either in Bandar Seri Begawan or the Asean Secretariat and the preferred date. Both places have their own merits in discussing the Myanmar crisis. Therefore, the right timing is imperative for a face-to-face rendezvous. Asean has learned to its cost that a teleconference on the Myanmar crisis could cause harm and bitterness due to the lack of clarifications and personal rapport in virtual meetings. This time, the Asean chair wants to ensure that all Asean leaders, including Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing, join the meeting.

China to support ASEAN mediation on Myanmar crisis

AA

Riyaz Ul Khaliq 

ANKARA

01.04.2021

China on Thursday said it supports the idea that leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hold a “special meeting as soon as possible to mediate” in Myanmar, which is witnessing mass demonstrations against the military coup launched last on Feb. 1

“Myanmar is a member of the ASEAN family, and a close neighbor to China. We all hope different forces in Myanmar can start a dialogue as soon … to solve divergence under the framework of the law and the constitution and promote hard-won democratization,” Wang told a news conference alongside visiting Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein in China’s eastern Nanping city.

Myanmar's Armed Groups Shifting Loyalty To China?

THE ASEAN POST

Maria Siow

29 March 2021

This file photo shows Rakhine ethnic people attending an ANP (Arakan National Party) event in Yangon for the Myanmar general election. (AFP Photo)

After weeks of silence as Myanmar ’s military cracked down on civilians protesting against the 1 February coup, the Arakan Army (AA), a major player among the country’s more than two dozen ethnic armed groups, this week announced it was on the side of the people.

“The current actions by the Burmese army and police are very cruel and unacceptable,” AA spokesman Khine Thu Khahe said on Tuesday (23 March), adding that “the oppressed ethnic people as a whole will continue to fight for their freedom from oppression”.

The AA’s statement was significant, as it comes just weeks after Myanmar’s junta removed the militia from its list of terrorist groups as a means of establishing peace across the nation of 55 million.

China's Relationship With Myanmar's Military: It's Complicated

KGOU

MICHAEL SULLIVAN

MAR 29, 2021

Originally published on March 29, 2021 11:37 pm

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

It was a bloody weekend in Myanmar. Security forces, again, used live ammunition against protesters all over the country, killing at least 114 people. It was the bloodiest single day since the coup began and drew condemnation from around the world but not from neighboring China, a country with a complicated relationship with Myanmar's military. Michael Sullivan reports from neighboring Thailand.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: In mid-January, China's foreign minister Wang Yi made a high-profile visit to Myanmar and met with the leader of the democratically elected government, Aung San Suu Kyi - yet another sign of China's deepening economic ties with an approval of Suu Kyi's civilian-led government. Just two weeks later, she was in jail. Myanmar's military was back in charge, and the country was in turmoil.

We’re part of China’s BRI but India our ‘most important partner’: Bangladesh foreign advisor

THE PRINT

PIA KRISHNANKUTTY 

24 March, 2021 

'We are very willing to be a part of Indo-Pacific relationship,' Gowher Rizvi, international affairs advisor to Bangladesh PM, said at a virtual event hosted by London-based IISS.

Gowher Rizvi | Commons

New Delhi: Bangladesh has said it is “not going to choose” between India and China as it expressed desire to join the “Indo-Pacific relationship”, though it is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

“We are part of China’s BRI but we are very willing to be a part of the Indo-Pacific relationship… we are not going to choose [between India and China],” Gowher Rizvi, international affairs advisor to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said during a virtual seminar hosted by London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies Tuesday.

US, EU, Britain Impose Sanctions on Chinese Officials Over Uyghurs

VOA News
Updated March 22, 2021

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell speaks to media before a EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, on March 22, 2021.

The United States, the European Union and Britain have imposed sanctions on several Chinese officials for human rights abuses against the Muslim Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang province.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. sanctions were taken in solidary with U.S. allies.

“As part of their actions today, our partners also sanctioned human rights abusers in connection with the atrocities occurring in Xinjiang and other countries,” Blinken said in a statement Monday.

Myanmar’s Ethnic Chinese Deny Allegiance to Beijing as They Risk Lives Against Junta

THE IRRAWADDY 

18 March 2021

Kyal Sin (left), Khant Nyar Hein (middle), and Kyaw Win Ko (right)

“Please don’t hate Chinese in Myanmar. We were born here,” a mournful mother of an ethnic Chinese teenager appealed to the people of Myanmar shortly after her son was shot dead by police in Yangon.

An ethnic Chinese, Khant Nyar Hein or Lin Yaozong, 18, was shot down on the street by the military regime’s security forces on Sunday in Tamwe Township while he was taking part in a protest. He became one of more than 200 civilians killed by police and soldiers in a flurry of lethal force unleashed on peaceful protesters following the Feb. 1 coup.

Those who learned of the fate of the first-year medical student were saddened and sympathetic to his mother, who has lost her only son.

Fears of 'digital dictatorship' as Myanmar deploys AI

REUTERS
Rina Chandran,
Thomson Reuters Foundation
MARCH 18, 2021

BANGKOK, March 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Protesters in Myanmar fear they are being tracked with Chinese facial recognition technology, as spiralling violence and street surveillance spark fears of a “digital dictatorship” to replace ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Human rights groups say the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to check on citizens’ movements poses a “serious threat” to their liberty.

More than 200 people have been killed since Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi was overthrown in a Feb. 1 coup, triggering mass protests that security forces have struggled to suppress with increasingly violent tactics.

Security forces have focused on stamping out dissent in cities including the capital Naypyitaw, Yangon and Mandalay, where hundreds of CCTV cameras had been installed as part of a drive to improve governance and curb crime.

Human Rights Watch has expressed its “heightened concern” over cameras armed with AI technology that can scan faces and vehicle licence plates in public places, and alert authorities to those on a wanted list.

Crisis in Myanmar: Willing to engage with all parties

The Daily Star
Reuters
March 08, 2021

Says China as anti-coup protesters defy ongoing crackdown; official from Suu Kyi’s party beaten to death.

China is willing to engage with "all parties" to ease the crisis in neighbouring Myanmar and is not taking sides, the Chinese government's top diplomat State Councillor Wang Yi said, as thousands of anti-coup demonstrators defied an ongoing military crackdown yesterday.

Beijing has said the situation in Myanmar, where the military seized power last month, was "absolutely not what China wants to see" and has dismissed social media rumours of Chinese involvement in the coup as nonsense.