Month: November 2013
Ample warning
The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (CIO/DPRK) held a public hearing at Johns Hopkins SAIS in Washington, DC October 30-31. Established in March, the CIO/DPRK has since convened in Seoul, Tokyo, and London to receive testimony from first-hand witnesses and experts. The Commission is mandated to present findings and recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2014.
Chairperson Michael Kirby, former Justice of the High Court of Australia, and Sonja Biserko, founder and president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, led this hearing.
Kirby recently told the BBC that despite his 35 years of experience as a judge listening to cases “which somewhat harden one’s heart,” testimonies heard by the CIO have brought him to tears.
There were tears in the room on last Wednesday as the Commission collected anecdotal evidence from two witnesses who have defected from the DPRK. Twenty-five-year-old Jin Hye Jo recounted the deaths by starvation of her grandmother and two younger brothers, the trafficking of her older sister, and the alleged extrajudicial execution of her father by security forces. Because her father was born in China, her family was suspect in the eyes of the state. This placed them firmly in the “wavering class,” the middle rungs of North Korea’s elaborately hierarchical caste system known as songbun. Her father therefore had no choice but to work for low pay in the mines, and her family went chronically hungry while government leaders were driving BMWs and drinking high-end whiskey. Jin crossed into China four times—and was repatriated four times, enduring imprisonment and torture “almost to death”—before finally obtaining the protection of the UNHCR in Beijing on her fifth attempt in 2006. She, her mother and her younger sister have settled in the US. Read more
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How do I get rid of my dictator?
Better to read Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s book, but this is an excellent intro to the effectiveness of civil resistance:
I know it’s hard to maintain nonviolent discipline, and all too often it proves beyond the capabilities of those who want to get rid of dictators. But the fact is that nonviolent civil resistance does work better and more often no matter how repressive the dictator, as Maria and Erica show with hard data.
Once you are convinced, these are some of the folks who teach how it’s done.
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Peace picks, November 4-8
Apologies for the late posting (DPS):
The upcoming week’s top events:
1. Responding to the Rebalance: ASEAN between China and the US
Monday, November 4 | 12:00pm – 1:30pm
East-West Center, Sixth Floor Conference Room, 1819 L Street NW
An Asia-Pacific Security Seminar featuring:
Mr. Julio Amador III
2013 Asia Studies Visiting Fellow, East-West Center in Washington
Foreign Affairs Research Specialist, Philippines’ Foreign Service Institute
Dr. Charmaine Misalucha (Discussant)
Assistant Professor, De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines
The rebalancing of the United States to Asia in an effort to stem China’s surge in regional leadership has placed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a difficult position. While ASEAN recognizes China as one of its most important Dialogue Partners, the regional association’s members have always recognized that the US plays a special role in the Asia Pacific as the guarantor of security. Meanwhile, China and the US are set on a rivalry that, while not officially acknowledged, is apparent to observers in Southeast Asia. Within this context, how is ASEAN as a regional organization dealing with Chinese-American rivalry?
Mr. Julio Amador III will describe regional perspectives about the direction of ASEAN in the context of the US Rebalance. He will discuss the tensions in the South China Sea as the backdrop for the rivalry between China and the US, and ASEAN’s subsequent attempts at autonomy in settling the issue. He will also assess ASEAN’s internal dynamics and describe how member-states attempt to form a regional consensus while maintaining their national strategic interests. While China and the US contend for primacy in the region, ASEAN still has a role to play, but only if it is willing to move beyond the narrow strategic limits set by its member states.
This program will be off-the-record; thank you for your cooperation.
A light luncheon will be served.
Julio Amador III is an Asia Studies Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington and a Fulbright Scholar at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He is on leave as a Foreign Affairs Research Specialist at the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies (CIRSS) of the Philippines’ Foreign Service Institute. He provides policy analysis and strategic advice on ASEAN issues, Southeast Asia security and international relations, and foreign policy to the Department of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Amador has held numerous fellowships in the United States, Europe, and Australia.
Dr. Charmaine Misalucha is currently a US-ASEAN Fulbright Fellow in the School of International Service of American University. She is also an Assistant Professor at De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines, specializing international relations, security studies, and the arms trade. She received her PhD in International Relations from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
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Belgrade and Pristina need to work together
Radio Free Europe tells me the Kosovo municipal election went badly today in the north: voting materials were destroyed at three polling stations, turnout was low and intimidation was high, with one Serb candidate attacked yesterday. The observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) withdrew and polls closed early.
This is too bad, even if unsurprising. Assignment of responsibility for what went wrong will have to await investigations of what happened, but it is clear enough that both Belgrade and Pristina have a problem. The organized criminal groups in northern Kosovo, supported by nationalist hardliners and elements in the Serbian security services, are able to defy both Belgrade’s desire to see smooth implementation of the EU-brokered April agreement as well as Pristina’s desire to see its institutions recognized as the only legitimate ones in the northern part of the country. Read more
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Opening the barn doors
Tucked away towards the end of today’s mammoth New York Times article on the National Security Agency’s foreign eavesdropping, Scott Shane turns to the main policy issues:
Joel F. Brenner, the agency’s former inspector general, says much of the criticism is unfair, reflecting a naïveté about the realpolitik of spying. “The agency is being browbeaten for doing too well the things it’s supposed to do,” he said.
But Mr. Brenner added that he believes “technology has outrun policy” at the N.S.A., and that in an era in which spying may well be exposed, “routine targeting of close allies is bad politics and is foolish.”
Another former insider worries less about foreign leaders’ sensitivities than the potential danger the sprawling agency poses at home. William E. Binney, a former senior N.S.A. official who has become an outspoken critic, says he has no problem with spying on foreign targets like Brazil’s president or the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. “That’s pretty much what every government does,” he said. “It’s the foundation of diplomacy.” But Mr. Binney said that without new leadership, new laws and top-to-bottom reform, the agency will represent a threat of “turnkey totalitarianism” — the capability to turn its awesome power, now directed mainly against other countries, on the American public.
“I think it’s already starting to happen,” he said. “That’s what we have to stop.”
Whatever reforms may come, Bobby R. Inman, who weathered his own turbulent period as N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981, offers his hyper-secret former agency a radical suggestion for right now. “My advice would be to take everything you think Snowden has and get it out yourself,” he said. “It would certainly be a shock to the agency. But bad news doesn’t get better with age. The sooner they get it out and put it behind them, the faster they can begin to rebuild.”
Is NSA simply doing its job? Isn’t that job vital to American diplomacy? Has it gone too far in monitoring foreign leaders? Does it represent a threat to civil liberties at home? Should the Administration simply make public what NSA does so that citizens (including members of Congress) can make up their own minds about it? Read more
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Maliki isn’t likely to take much advice
Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki completed his visit to Washington yesterday. He got a lot of free advice. He should govern more inclusively, he should be less sectarian, he should at last reach agreement on an oil revenue law, he should not use the election law to exclude electoral competition, he should address Sunni protest demands…. There was rare unanimity in Washington on what President Obama should say. I agree with a lot of these suggestions.
But I don’t really think Maliki will take much of the advice. After his last visit to Washington in 2011, he brought murder charges against (Sunni) Vice President Hashemi and chased him from the country. His visit before that sealed the deal for American withdrawal. And the one before that he signed on to the American military surge against Sunni insurgents.
Maliki is not about governing. He is about power. That means he worries about three things: garnering votes, political maneuvering and security. His now more than seven years as prime minister have seen a major increase in oil production and revenue, which are essential to everything else in Iraq. The government makes more than $100 billion in oil revenue per year. But other than that, there has been little progress on Iraq’s many social and economic challenges: education, healthcare, transportation, social welfare. Much increased electricity production still doesn’t keep up with subsidized demand. Read more
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