Mar 10, 2010
By Peter J Brown
Asia Times (Hong Kong)
The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) last month held a lengthy hearing on China's activities in Southeast Asia and the implications for US interests in the strategic region. The USCC was addressed by five members of the US Congress, a pair of senior US government officials and 10 experts and came at a time the US has promised to re-focus its diplomacy towards Southeast Asia.
USCC commissioner Larry Wortzel emphasized China's rising economic influence in the region, noting that numerous China-funded resource extraction projects were underway "with the goal of fueling China's continued economic development". He noted that Beijing also provides low-interest loans to fund infrastructure projects, especially in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.
While China's economic overtures in the region are well documented, Wortzel noted that China has recently expanded its security interactions with Southeast Asia, including through arms sales and joint military exercises. "High-level military visits between China and Southeast Asia have been on the rise, as have port calls from Chinese naval vessels," said Wortzel.
The hearing followed a trip in December by USCC members to Taiwan and Vietnam, where discussions were held regarding China's growing presence in the region. While security ties are expanding, the USCC was frequently reminded in Vietnam that there was increasing anxiety in Hanoi about China's growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, where several regional countries have overlapping claims.
"As the Chinese navy improves its strength to include a possible aircraft carrier fleet in the near future, the balance of power in the region will swing strongly in China's favor,” said Wortzel. "Already some nations are beginning to react, as demonstrated with Vietnam's recently announced plans to purchase from Russia six advanced submarines and 12 fighter aircraft. The confirmed presence of oil and natural gas in the region only exacerbates this trend," said Wortzel.
US congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a ranking member of the House's Foreign Affairs Committee, was more outspoken in his criticism of Beijing's rising regional influence, referring to China as "a totalitarian country seeking to become a totalitarian empire [and] spreading its influence and domination throughout the region, particularly in Southeast Asia".
Of all the countries in Asia, "perhaps the most friendly relationship [China] has is with the gangster regime that now controls Burma [Myanmar]. China has armed the Burmese junta to the teeth and in exchange it has ripped off the Burmese people, taking their great natural resources," said Rohrabacher.
Ellen Frost, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said Southeast Asian governments are keeping a watchful eye on China's growing military might. While they have been greatly reassured by China's recent behavior, some are still unsure of China's ultimate goals, she said.
"Older leaders remember the time when China was actively supporting insurgencies in their countries. Rather than seeking to build a coalition against China, Southeast Asian statesmen have opted to 'embed' China in organizations whose location and agenda are in their control," said Frost.
"They calculate that enmeshing China in a plethora of agreements and committees encourages peaceful and cooperative behavior and bolsters regional stability. But just to be safe, many ASEAN governments are reaffirming or strengthening their military ties with the United States." The Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) countries are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Frost emphasized that ASEAN leaders are seeking to maximize their collective voice in the region and in the wider world. "They calculate that giving China a leading role in regional organizations makes it more likely that other powers will pay more attention to the region and engage with ASEAN countries on even more attractive terms," said Frost.
Double-edged economics
According to David Shear, US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, "It is clear that both [China] and the ASEAN countries see mutual benefits to be had from expanded trade," and, "China's economic ties to the region will likely grow further under the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement [CAFTA] that became effective [on] the first of this year."
Shear also contended that in the process "China has produced local economic dislocation and tensions for some Southeast Asian economies" and there is growing concern "that competition from low-cost goods from China could adversely affect their domestic industries". Shear noted that Indonesia has already called for a revision to the agreement due to those concerns.
While Southeast Asians "recognize big opportunities in China, they continue to see economic ties with the US and others as vital", said Shear.
China's total trade with the region reached US$193 billion in 2008, up from $45.5 billion in 2001. While Beijing's direct investment in the region still pales compared with the US and Japan, its direct aid has been considerably larger.
Beijing has put forward a $10 billion infrastructure investment fund to improve roads, railways, airlines and information-telecommunication links between China and ASEAN countries, according to ASEAN secretary general Surin Pitsuwan. Beijing has also provided a $15 billion credit facility to promote regional integration and connectivity, he said.
Chinese diplomacy, often referred to as "soft power”, has also emphasized cultural connections. For example, more Thai students - some 10,000 - now study in China than in the US. Shear noted that China opened its first Confucius Institute in Asia in 2004 and that today there are 70 across Asia and 282 globally. "There are 12 institutes in Thailand alone, and China recently opened the first institute in Cambodia," said Shear.
The competition for hearts and minds has also taken to the airwaves. While the US has long promoted Radio Free Asia and Voice of America radio programs in the region, China launched China-Cambodia Friendship Radio in December 2008. "The actual effects of China's efforts on local views of and sensitivities to Chinese interests remain an area of US interest," said Shear.
"It has been said that in order to pursue successful diplomacy in Southeast Asia, all you have to do is show up. This is too low a standard and this administration will do more," said Shear. He acknowledged that previous US presidents had missed Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summits, secretaries of state had bypassed ASEAN Regional Forum meetings and senior US officials had not spent enough time tending to regional bilateral relationships.
"The [Barack] Obama administration's message to resolve this problem has been simple: we're back and ready to be actively involved," said Shear, noting that Washington intends soon to name a Jakarta-based ambassador to ASEAN and begin consultations on how the US can play a role in the East Asia Summit, a grouping of 16 countries in the East Asian region that meets annually.
Ernest Bower, senior adviser and director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies emphasized that "Southeast Asia wants and needs the US [to] step up its game and articulate a strategy to advance its interests in the region. Only then will Southeast Asia's atavistic hunger for balance be fed."
Bower said China is not perceived in Southeast Asia as "a very large, awkwardly ideological, self-focused, security concern to the north", but rather "an engaged and interested neighbor providing significant benefits in trade, aid, tourism and the promise of increased investment and prosperity".
"China has made it easier for Southeast Asian students to travel and study in China and is providing scholarships at several levels, including master's and doctorate degrees. Chinese policies toward Southeast Asia over the last 15 years have transformed from ideological to opportunistic and pragmatic," said Bower.
He said on occasion China has overplayed its hand to its disadvantage, including in the South China Sea or when it pressured the government in Cambodia to send Uyghur refugees back to China late last year.
"The region's leaders recognize these examples as the iron fist that flexes under the velvet glove of China's new diplomacy," said Bower. "Southeast Asia's primary concern, as it was 15 years ago, remains maintaining balance among the major powers ... Perhaps the most significant difference between China and the US in Southeast Asia is that China has a clear strategy for the region, and the US does not," he said.
Divergent diplomacies
Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, noted key differences in how the US and China conduct diplomacy towards the region.
"You simply cannot understand ASEAN's decision-making process the way we learned it in school, with countries strategically seeking to maximize advantages without consideration for the domestic, sometimes personal, demands on leaders. The Chinese approach to economic diplomacy accounts for this dynamic in a way that ours does not," said Lohman.
"The US cannot replicate the Chinese effort in Southeast Asia. Obviously, American officials are accountable to the American people in a way that the Chinese are not to their own. We cannot structure trade agreements in ways that choose winners and losers by diplomatic or industrial policy imperative.
"The Chinese are also closer and have more diplomats to throw at ASEAN. We can do better than we are in covering ASEAN, but we cannot match the Chinese diplomat for diplomat, forum for forum," Lohman added, saying that the US should not "buck the current economic order", but instead "leverage" into it.
"If the Chinese want to invest in ASEAN's infrastructure, fine. The US should have relationships in the region that help ASEAN determine its priorities and voice its concerns. If Chinese multinationals want to invest in ASEAN, great. Work to bring them into compliance with US-friendly standards and integrate them into American supply chains," said Lohman.
"If there is to be more ASEAN-China trade, American companies ought to be invested in it on both sides of the border and integrated into markets back home. Fighting current economic trends undermines the credibility of our leadership."
Catharin Dalpino, visiting associate professor at Georgetown University, addressed Beijing's sub-regional strategies and how China's role in mainland Southeast Asia "is increasingly distinct from its relationship to maritime Southeast Asia".
"This is primarily a matter of degree rather than dramatic differences in Chinese policy toward the two sub-regions; however, China's greater focus on and penetration of the mainland has created a de facto separation," said Dalpino. "This growing edge in mainland Southeast Asia has not developed in a vacuum; it was facilitated by the unevenness of US policy toward these two sub-regions for several years and Washington's relative neglect of mainland Southeast Asia."
She noted, for instance, that "the alliance with Thailand has been on auto-pilot for several years".
"On a more fundamental level, younger-generation Thais do not grasp a rationale for the alliance relationship and point to the reluctance of the United States to offer bilateral aid to Thailand in the 1997 financial crisis and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are remote to many Thais, as examples of the dissonance between the two countries," said Dalpino.
Bronson Percival, senior advisor at CNA's Center for Strategic Studies in Virginia, contended that "the US is well-balanced in Southeast Asia" and that it had consistently insisted that the "theme is not the US versus China in Southeast Asia".
"Moreover, the Obama administration has now reversed popular anti-Americanism during the [George W] Bush administration and the widespread perception of US neglect through several symbolic gestures, including signing ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. The US Pacific Command has built a dense network of military-to-military ties, particularly in maritime Southeast Asia," said Percival, who called for the US to "shift its focus in Southeast Asia from humanitarian issues such as Burma to critical security issues such as the South China Sea.
"We don't know if Beijing is launched on a process of 'nibbling imperialism' in the South China Sea, but preventing Chinese domination of this sea and maintaining free passage for US armed forces and for energy supplies is critical for US alliances in Northeast Asia and, indeed, for the maintenance of the entire US position in East Asia." he said.
Peter J Brown is a freelance writer from Maine USA.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Detainees allege abuse at Kansai holding center
Welcome to Japan: Ugandan visa overstayer Moses Ssentamu says he was beaten up by a group of guards at the West Japan Immigration Center in Ibaraki City, Osaka Pref., in January. DAVID McNEILL PHOTOTHE ZEIT GIST
Guards meting out harsh treatment behind the walls of Ibaraki immigration facility, say inmates
By DAVID McNEILL
Special to The Japan Times
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The only way to see or speak to Moses Ssentamu is through a Plexiglas window at the West Japan Immigration Center in Ibaraki City, so there is no independent way to verify his claims of physical and psychological abuse. But if true, they raise serious concerns about Japan's treatment of visa overstayers and asylum seekers.
Did a group of security guards at the center punch and kick Ssentamu in a coordinated assault in January? Are the authorities at the complex in Osaka Prefecture refusing medical treatment to another inmate, Mujahid Aziz Iqbal, a wheelchair-bound Pakistani? And, most serious of all, do detention centers here deliberately dole out harsh treatment in the hope that detainees will leave the country?
Ssentamu, 35, has been locked up here for over a year since being arrested for overstaying in 2008. Back in his homeland, he says he was active with the opposition Forum for Democratic Change Uganda, and claims to have been arrested and tortured by the authorities. Facing a trial for sedition he knew he couldn't win, he decided to flee the country, leaving behind his wife and four kids.
"It was not my decision to come here," he explains. "I didn't know anything about this country, but a sympathizer got me a visa — he said it was the easiest place to get one at that time."
Arriving on a three-month visa in May 2006, Ssentamu says that he found his way via a local Ugandan contact to Nagoya, where he slept rough and sold imported jeans around the city for a living. Friends told him the only way to stay in Japan "was to marry a Japanese woman," he recalls, and then apply for political refugee status. But on Nov. 29, 2008, before he could do either, he was picked up by the police.
Fifteen months later, he has no idea when he will get out, or if the Ministry of Justice will buy his argument that going back to Uganda could be dangerous, even fatal.
"I'm not a criminal. I want to be released and given a chance to produce evidence of my political treatment and persecution."
While the authorities process that claim, however, they have another one to ponder. On Jan. 15, Ssentamu says that he was assaulted after he mildly protested during his transportation to a hospital outside the center.
"I was being taken for a doctor's appointment and I was handcuffed by two guards," he recalls. "When I complained that my handcuffs were too tight and (asked) that the guards loosen them a little, one insisted that he could do nothing about them. Given that the entire journey to the hospital takes an hour or so, I said I couldn't endure the discomfort, so I told them I was not willing to go."
Ssentamu's guards responded angrily to the challenge, he says, shoving and pushing him back into his room, where he admits he "tried to protest" — verbally, he insists. After the guards had subdued him, they returned sometime later, he says, with "20 or more" officers, all clad in black gloves, who told him they were there to help him change rooms. As he began to prepare, the guards grabbed him and "manhandled" him out of the room.
"In no second or minute, I was in the air with showers of kicking under my back, blows on my stomach," Ssentamu later wrote in a letter sent to The Japan Times, Amnesty International and several other organizations that deal with refugee and asylum issues. "(As) all this was happening, one of the first two officers was blocking my face with the palm of his hand to prevent me from recognizing the faces of the officers who were assaulting me."
Ssentamu says he was then dumped in a "punishment room" where the officers pushed his head down a toilet bowl as they struggled to handcuff and subdue him. A guard later told him, as he lay on the floor with his "pants around his ankles," that he was being punished for refusing to go to hospital. He would spend five days in solitary confinement.
The detention center denies any such assault took place.
"That's a lie," says spokesman Norifumi Kishida. "Guards may handcuff or subdue an inmate if he is doing harm to himself or others, but there is no way that so many guards would deliberately harm an inmate."
Nearly two months after this alleged assault, Ssentamu is unable to show any visible scars, except for marks on his wrists he says were left by the tight handcuffs.
"I was not badly hurt; I was humiliated," he says.
Without proof, there remains the possibility that it is a fabrication, albeit an elaborate, detailed one that risks further worsening his relationship with the authorities or even prejudicing his asylum application.
In 2005, Japan deported two members of a seven-member Kurdish family who had been "recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees under its own rules," according to a recent report by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA). Many believe the family's decision to publicly protest and speak to the media about their treatment was a factor in the deportation decision (Zeit Gist, April 29, 2003; March 29, 2005; July 3, 2007).
The JFBA says Japan gave refugee status to just 6.5 percent of 3,292 asylum applicants from 1985 to 2005. The federation notes that while hundreds of applications from Kurds, Chinese and Africans were rejected, applicants from Myanmar were given preferred status, concluding: "It is inferred that the government have paid diplomatic consideration in the background." In other words, Japan's refugee selection process is nakedly political.
Ssentamu's lawyer, Shiro Sadakane, refused to back his client's claims of abuse, except to say that he has heard of "similar cases." Amnesty International and the Japan Association for Refugees acknowledge that they have received the Ugandan's letter. Makoto Teranaka, Amnesty Japan's secretary general, declined to comment on its specific claims, but said the secrecy surrounding Japan's detention system is a problem.
"It means we can't see what's going on inside. The detention system is much less organized than the prisons, and we've noted quite arbitrary treatment of people inside."
He says his office receives a steady stream of letters and calls from refugees alleging mistreatment in detention centers.
"The number of complaints has been growing since about 2000. It's quite common now."
Another inmate at the west Japan center, 37-year-old Mujahid Aziz Iqbal, says he has lost over 14 kg in weight and the use of his legs since last October, probably because of a psychosomatic disorder. He was convicted of selling stolen cars and faces deportation back to Pakistan. In addition to specific claims of mistreatment by some of the guards, he says the center has refused his demand for treatment and responded to his condition by offering "useless" painkillers.
"They keep saying that I have to wait my turn to go to hospital, but I need help now."
Both men admit that their ordeal would end if they simply told the Ministry of Justice that they want to return home. But for the Pakistani, who has been in Japan for 15 years and has two children to his ex-wife, leaving is not an option.
"I want to see my children. Relations with my wife are bad, but my kids love me."
Ssentamu, meanwhile, believes that the conditions inside the center, including rooms with single toilets shared by eight to 10 inmates, serve a purpose: deterrence.
"These are deliberate acts aimed at breaking down the will to seek refuge in this country." He says some inmates have been inside the center for over two years.
According to the Japan Association for Refugees, detention center inmates can apply for provisional release, but the bar is set very high. They need a Japanese guarantor and bail of ¥500,000 to ¥1 million.
"Most do not have that kind of money and they cannot find a guarantor," explains Soojin Hyung, the association's program officer. On average, therefore, Hyung says, it takes about a year to be released.
"Many people suspect that because the Japanese government is afraid to deport people in case of international criticism, they would rather detain them. It's a means of deterrence — foreigners know that if they come here without a visa, they're going to suffer. It's sending out a message: Don't come here."
Ssentamu is still in a cell by himself — punishment, he claims, for protesting and urging others to speak out. Confinement is worsened by a myriad of petty official humiliations including cold food and a lack of water to flush toilets. Is he just making life hard for himself by breaking the rules and refusing to accept his punishment?
"Civil activists the world over who fight for their rights are called troublemakers," he says from behind his Plexiglas wall. "I'm fighting for my rights."
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