From editor at burmanet.org Thu Oct 22 15:03:32 2009 From: editor at burmanet.org (Editor) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:03:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: BurmaNet News, October 22, 2009 Message-ID: <38362.63.173.78.131.1256238212.squirrel@webmail4.pair.com> October 22, 2009 Issue #3824 INSIDE BURMA Irrawaddy: Burma ranks next to last on most corrupt country list AP: Myanmar says senior US official to visit next week AFP: Myanmar allows first mobile phones in remote capital Mizzima News: Restrictions on NLD obstacle to General Assembly BUSINESS/TRADE Xinhua: Myanmar booth highlights Muse border town in China-ASEAN trade fair ASEAN Reuters: Southeast Asia presses Myanmar over election Xinhua: Myanmar PM leaves for 15th ASEAN summit in Thailand REGIONAL VOV News (Vietnam): State President receives Myanmar military general INTERNATIONAL AFP: US lawmaker to rights groups: 'Don't drink the Kool-Aid' AFP: US warns of 'slow, painful' talks with Myanmar OPINION / OTHER DVB: Money for rights at the ASEAN summit ? Joseph Allchin ____________________________________ INSIDE BURMA October 22, Irrawaddy Burma ranks next to last on most corrupt country list ? Lawi Weng Burma?s military government is still one of the most corrupt countries in the world, according to the Global Corruption Report 2009 released by Transparency International (TI) on Thursday. The Berlin-based group said Burma ranks just ahead of Somalia and tied with Iraq for the second-lowest score. The report ranked countries on a scale of 1 to 10. The highest 9.3 ranking went to Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden as the world?s least corrupt and most transparent countries, followed by Singapore, at 9.2. Somalia ranked lowest at 1.0. Burma ranked 1.3, the same position as in 2008. The TI report said Burma routinely violated human rights and had rampant corruption among government officials. The country?s score placed it just behind Haiti at 1.4 and Afghanistan at 1.5. ?These governments should embrace thorough and transparent reviews, which are the only way to ensure that each country?s anti-corruption efforts are judged equally and fairly,? said Huguette Labelle, the chair of TI?s board of directors, in a press release. Abuse of power and corruption among Burmese officials is common, according to civil servants and businessmen in the country. A recent example was the detention of three police officials by military authorities in Myawaddy Township on the Thai-Burmese border. Sources said the three officials accepted bribes of about 70,000 (US $2,100) baht from amphetamine trafficking gangs in Myawaddy. Police are one of the most corrupt institutions in Burma, and they receive little respect from the people. In early October, the Burmese?s junta dismissed the Rangoon Division police chief following misuse of power and corruption allegations, according to sources in Rangoon. Sources said he accepted bribes from massage parlors and karaoke shops, and that he also ran illegal businesses. His dismissal has not been reported in the state-run media. ?Corruption has become a custom here. They say it is paying respect instead of paying a bribe,? said a businessman familiar with Burmese culture. A civil servant in Naypyidaw said, ?If I want to get a higher position, or I want to move somewhere that I like in my job, I have no choice but to bribe them in order to get that chance.? ____________________________________ October 22, Associated Press Myanmar says senior US official to visit next week Yangon ? A senior U.S. official will visit Myanmar next week in line with Washington's new policy of engaging the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation, a Foreign Ministry official said Thursday. The Obama administration said Wednesday that U.S. officials plan to travel to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in the next few weeks to talk with government representatives, ethnic minority groups and the democratic opposition. The Myanmar Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified by name because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said a high-ranking U.S. official would visit next week as part of the new approach by Washington, which has shunned Myanmar in the past. He declined to give the name of the U.S. official. Myanmar's opposition National League for Democracy party of detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said the U.S. Embassy had informed it of an upcoming visit by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt M. Campbell and that he would meet with party officials. "We welcome the visit by a senior-level official from the U.S. and hope that he would be allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi," party spokesman Nyan Win said. The Obama administration is turning away from the Bush administration's policy of shunning Myanmar in favor of direct, high-level talks. It has said isolating the military government has failed to move it toward democratic reforms. During testimony Wednesday to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Campbell said the government would maintain existing political and economic sanctions toward the junta. "The conclusions of our policy review, announced last month, reaffirmed our fundamental interests in Burma: We support a unified, peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Burma," he said. "Our dialogue with Burma will supplement rather than replace the sanctions regime that has been at the center of our Burma policy for many years." Campbell said he would travel to Myanmar to continue talks he began in September in New York with senior Myanmar officials, the first such high-level contact in nearly a decade. He cautioned that "it will take more than a single conversation to resolve our differences." He said tough U.S. sanctions will remain until talks with Myanmar's generals result in change, explaining that if Myanmar doesn't address U.S. worries, "we will reserve the option of tightening sanctions on the regime and its supporters as appropriate." ____________________________________ October 22, Agence France-Presse Myanmar allows first mobile phones in remote capital Yangon ? Myanmar's authorities have allowed the first mobile phones to be used in its remote capital Naypyidaw after previously banning them for security reasons, residents there said Thursday. "Mobile phones have been allowed since October 9 around Naypyidaw. We have better communication now," a hotel staff member in Naypyidaw told AFP on condition of anonymity. "It's the first time the authorities have allowed a mobile service in Naypyidaw," she said, adding that many hotels had already applied for permission to use the network. But few people are likely to be able to afford the new service in this impoverished country as she said it cost 1.55 million kyats (nearly 1,500 dollars) to obtain permission from the government's telecommunications department. Myanmar's ruling generals moved their entire government from the economic hub Yangon to Naypyidaw four years ago, after building the new administrative capital in secret over the previous three years. Since then military officials have used only walkie-talkies to communicate. When they moved up in November 2005, the city had few phone lines and no grocery stores, schools or clinics. "We want these basic facilities in the capital. That's why CDMA mobile phones have been allowed, to improve communication," a senior official in Naypyidaw told AFP. Another official said authorities were planning to open up to a second mobile phone network in the next few months. The military regime's official explanation for its move to Naypyidaw was to place the capital in a more central location but analysts said the real reason lies in the generals' paranoia about their own security. The junta's main headquarters is completely hidden inside a hilly compound, open only to military officials. Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962. ____________________________________ October 22, Mizzima News Restrictions on NLD obstacle to General Assembly New Delhi ? Leaders of Burma?s National League for Democracy responding to requests on Thursday by party members to call a General Assembly said they are not in a position to call a nation-wide meeting due to the current political restrictions imposed on the party. The NLD, in a statement, said while it understands the need for a General Assembly in order to reform and strengthen the Central Committee and Central Executive Committee of the party, since party General Secretary Aung San Suu Kyi and Vice-Chairman Tin Oo are detained and no other branch offices across the country are allowed to function, it is not possible now to convene the assembly. In September, several members of branch NLD offices in various states and divisions made renewed demands to the Central Executive Committee to convene a General Assembly and urged it to reform the party leadership by reconstituting the Central Committee, most of whose members are under detention or had died. NLD members of at least 25 townships in Mandalay, Pegu, Magwe and Rangoon division have demanded that the CEC convene the Assembly and implement party reformation by filling in places in the CC and CEC, whose members are unable to perform their functions due to various reasons including incarceration and deaths. But the party?s statement on Thursday said, ?The Central Executive Committee will discuss the issue when the CEC meets Aung San Suu Kyi or will decide when necessary, when the government announces the party registration laws.? Khin Maung Swe, a CEC member of the NLD told Mizzima that technically it is not viable for the NLD to convene a General Assembly as the party?s branch offices have been closed down, members restricted from organizing party activities and several key leaders being in detention. Over the last two decades, the 1990 election winning party is the only political party remaining in Burma, as the ruling junta banned all other parties. But the NLD also suffered several set-backs including the closure of branch offices across the country and the arrest and detention of key leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi. However, some members in various states and divisions have time and again demanded that the party leaders reform and strengthen the CEC and CC. Some have even demanded a few aging leaders including party chairman Aung Shwe step down and make way for the younger generation, to help find a way out of the political impasse. In April, the NLD held the second nation-wide party meeting, attended by representatives of all branches across the country. The first nation-wide meeting was held in 1997, when party leader Aung San Suu Kyi was briefly released from house arrest. But Khin Maung Swe said the party had never convened a General Assembly, since its formation in September 1988, as it requires step by step Assemblies to be conducted from the grass root level. ____________________________________ BUSINESS / TRADE October 22, Xinhua Myanmar booth highlights Muse border town in China-ASEAN trade fair Yangon ? Myanmar booth on display at the 6th China-ASEAN trade fair being held in Nanning, capital of Southwest China' Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, highlights the Muse border town as a town of facilitating trade and cooperation in levying tariff, companies attending the trade fair said on Thursday. There are 242 entrepreneurs of 83 companies taking part in the five-day trade fair which began on Tuesday and will last until Saturday. These entrepreneurs are from such sectors as agriculture, fishery, industry, manufacturing, gems, traditional handicrafts, forestry and hotel and tourism, the sources said. Since joining the China-ASEAN trade fair in 2004, Myanmar booth featured the commercial hub of Mandalay in the second trade fair, tourism site of ancient city of Bagan in the third fair, port city of the former capital Yangon in 4th fair and cyber city of Yadanarpon in the 5th fair, the sources said, adding the country won the the best booth, best design and best creativity awards in the 4th China-ASEAN trade fair in 2007. In the 5th China-ASEAN trade fair, Myanmar won the best booth award again. In December last year, a three-day Myanmar-China border trade fair was held in the Muse 105th Mile Border Trade Zone on the Myanmar side. The 8th Myanmar-China border trade fair, participated by companies and enterprises from both countries, displayed products from respective countries at over 200 booths. Muse border trade point stands the biggest out of 11 with neighboring countries, where 70 percent of Myanmar's border trade are carried out. According to Chinese official statistics, China-Myanmar bilateral trade amounted to 2.626 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, up 26.4 percent. Up to the end of 2008, China's contracted investments in Myanmar reached 1.331 billion dollars, of which mining, electric power and oil and gas respectively took 866 million dollars, 281 million dollars and 124 million dollars. China now stands the 4th in Myanmar's foreign investment line- up. China's Nanning and Myanmar's Yangon established friendship city relationship in July this year. ____________________________________ ASEAN October 22, Reuters Southeast Asia presses Myanmar over election ? Jason Szep Hua Hin, Thailand ? Southeast Asian governments raised pressure on military-ruled Myanmar on Thursday to hold "free and fair" elections next year, and urged the junta to free pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. The sentencing of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner detained for 14 of the last 20 years, to a further 18 months of detention this year has led the West to question whether the election next year in the former Burma will be a sham. "They have said many times the elections next year will be inclusive, free and fair. That remains to be seen," Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said after a meeting of foreign ministers from the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations. Speaking at a news conference in the seaside resort town of Hua Hin, he said Myanmar had a commitment to promote human rights under an agreement ratified by its rulers last year to create a so-called ASEAN integrated community by 2015. "That's Myanmar's obligation as a member of ASEAN," he said, describing talks with Myanmar's foreign minister, Nyan Win, as "very cordial". He said ASEAN's request for the release of Suu Kyi still stood. Earlier in the year, some Southeast Asian countries had urged ASEAN to take a tougher stand on Myanmar with a public appeal calling on the junta to grant an amnesty to Suu Kyi. That went nowhere. Several ASEAN nations rebuffed it, saying it contravened the grouping's long-standing non-interference policy in each others' internal politics. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHDOG Suu Kyi was found guilty in August of breaking a law protecting the state from "subversive elements" when, while under house arrest, she allowed an American intruder to stay at her lakeside home for two nights. The ruling sparked international outrage and was widely dismissed as a ploy to keep Suu Kyi out of next year's election, the first since 1990, when her National League for Democracy party scored a landslide victory the junta refused to recognise. Kasit made his comments a day before the launch by ASEAN leaders of a human rights watchdog critics say is already discredited by having Myanmar, seen as a serial rights abuser, as part of the mechanism. The new body, called the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, has no power to punish members and aims to promote rather than protect human rights. It is unlikely to have much influence, for instance, in efforts to free Suu Kyi or the estimated 2,000 political prisoners in the reclusive country. Myanmar's generals allowed Suu Kyi recently to meet with Western diplomats after Washington said late last month it was embarking on a new policy of engagement with the junta. Yangon is touting the election next year as a final destination on its "roadmap to democracy". ASEAN's members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. (Editing by Jeremy Laurence and Ron Popeski) ____________________________________ October 22, Xinhua Myanmar PM leaves for 15th ASEAN summit in Thailand Yangon ? Myanmar Prime Minister General Thein Sein left Nay Pyi Taw Thursday to attend the 15th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and related meetings in Hua Hin, Thailand, official sources from the new capital said. At the invitation of his Thai counterpart Abhisit Veijajiva, Thein Sein will be attending the summits scheduled for Friday to Sunday in the southern Thai beach resort town. Thailand stands the 2009 ASEAN chairmanship. The last 14th ASEAN Summit in Hua Hin in February-March this year touched on the implementation of ASEAN Charter and regional and international issues, global financial crisis, disaster management, food and energy security, and regional and international situation. At the summit, the ASEAN heads of government signed the Declaration on Roadmap for ASEAN Community. Other agreements were also inked which are -- ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement, ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement, Protocol to Implement the 7th Package of Commitments under ASEAN Framework Agreement on Service, and three programs for mutual recognition of ASEAN Quality. A follow-up ASEAN summits with China, Japan, South Korea, India, East Asia and the United Nations in Pattaya in April were forced to cancel after thousands of red-shirt demonstrators of the anti- government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) stormed in the summit venues. Myanmar, which joined the ASEAN along with Laos in July 1997, ratified the ASEAN Charter in July last year. Myanmar has urged its people to strive together in building the ASEAN community, anticipating that the future emergence of the ASEAN community by 2015 will benefit Myanmar citizens along with other regional members in sharing the fruits of peace and stability, prosperity and socio-cultural development. ASEAN's three pillars are known as political security community, economic community and socio-culture community. ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ____________________________________ REGIONAL October 22, VOV News (Vietnam) State President receives Myanmar military general State President Nguyen Minh Triet has voiced support for the defence ministries of Vietnam and Myanmar to sign a military agreement as a step toward gearing up military cooperation. The State leader assured the Chief of the General Staff of Myanmar Armed Forces, Gen. Thura Shwe Mann, of Vietnam?s willingness to share experiences to help Myanmar overcome current difficulties, as well as for mutual development, during their meeting in Hanoi on October 21. Mr Triet expressed his belief that the current visit by Myanmar general would usher in a new stage of development in the military relationship between the two countries. ?The visit will contribute to strengthening relations between the two peoples as well,? emphasised the State President. He said he hoped that Myanmar would successfully hold next year?s elections and succeed in overcoming difficulties and challenges to turn the country into one of peace and prosperity. His view was shared by Gen. Shwe Mann, who said his visit was aimed at strengthening relations between the two armies and the two peoples. He also said that with the development experiences shared by Vietnam, Myanmar is expected to become more stable and prosperous. He conveyed an invitation to visit Myanmar from Senior General Than Shwe, Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council of Myanmar to President Triet, who accepted the invitation with pleasure. ____________________________________ INTERNATIONAL October 22, Agence France Presse US lawmaker to rights groups: 'Don't drink the Kool-Aid' Washington, D.C. ? A Republican lawmaker on Wednesday lashed out at US human rights activists, accusing them of going soft on President Barack Obama to curry favor with his social circle. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, made the stinging criticism at a hearing on Myanmar where a leader of Human Rights Watch backed administration efforts to engage the junta. "It's gotten to the point where human rights organizations are mouthing the same platitudes" as government officials, said Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American and outspoken critic of undemocratic regimes. "I believe many human rights organizations have lost their voice -- they are no longer standing up for the people who are oppressed, who are murdered, who are raped," she said. "It's so easy to be cooperative in this town. Everybody wants to be invited to White House parties," she said. "I hope you continue to get invited to every briefing and party and when you go to those parties, don't drink the Kool-Aid," she said, a reference to cult leader Jim Jones who led more than 900 followers to drink poison in a group suicide in 1978. Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, defended himself and said he has "severely criticized" the Obama administration over China and Sudan. On China, Malinowski said human rights "has fallen by the wayside" as the Obama administration seeks broader relations with the emerging economy. "I don't think I've shied away or my colleagues in the human rights community have shied away. I also think they're doing some things right," he said. But Malinowski said Obama's new policy of opening dialogue with Myanmar while maintaining economic sanctions on the military regime was "appropriately balanced." "I'm quite capable of changing my mind if the evidence leads me in that direction, even if I don't get invited somewhere," he said. It was the latest public drubbing of New York-based Human Rights Watch, founded in 1978 as Helsinki Watch with a mission to name and shame abusive governments. The group's former chairman, Robert Bernstein, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times on Tuesday accusing Human Rights Watch of relentlessly attacking Israel while playing down violations by Arab states. ____________________________________ October 22, Agence France Presse US warns of 'slow, painful' talks with Myanmar ? Shaun Tandon Washington, D.C. ? The United States has warned that its bid to engage Myanmar will be "slow and painful" as it prepares to send a rare mission to a country a top official said was more mysterious than North Korea. Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said a team would head to Myanmar to follow on his talks last month in New York, which marked the highest-level US contact with the military regime in nearly a decade. "We intend to go to Burma in the next few weeks for a fact-finding mission," Campbell testified Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, using Myanmar's earlier name. Campbell did not specify who would take part in the trip. Another senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Campbell hoped to go himself but it would depend on whether the junta gives him access to the opposition. Campbell told the committee that the US mission hoped to meet with the junta as well as detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and representatives of ethnic groups that have battled the military regime. The junta has kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the past two decades after her National League for Democracy swept elections in 1990 but was barred from taking power. President Barack Obama's administration has sought to engage US adversaries including Iran, Cuba and Sudan. The administration, in a policy review, last month concluded that the longstanding US approach of isolating Myanmar had failed to bear fruit but said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights. Campbell, who has sought to reassure democracy activists, told the House committee the dialogue would "supplement rather than replace the sanction regimes that has been at the center of our Burma policy for many years." "We expect engagement with Burma to be a long, slow, painful and step-by-step process," Campbell said. "We will not judge the success of our effort at pragmatic engagement by the results of a handful of meetings. Engagement for its own sake is obviously not a goal for US policy," he said. Campbell said that one goal was simply to gain a better understanding of the junta, which he described as "a group of men that have self-isolated themselves. "In my particular area, the country that we know the least about at a fundamental level, even less than North Korea, is Burma," said the top US diplomat for Asia. Representative Joseph Crowley, one of Aung San Suu Kyi's top champions in Congress, said he backed the new strategy in part because the detained Nobel laureate has indicated her support. But Crowley, a member of Obama's Democratic Party, appealed to Campbell not to let the talks drag on without benchmarks or time-lines. "It is a real possibility that the military regime will try and use ongoing talks to buy time, in order to proceed with a sham election they have scheduled for next year," he said. The National League for Democracy plans to shun the elections, the first since 1990. The United States has voiced skepticism about the upcoming polls but said it is willing to discuss them with the junta. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican, was one of the few to reject the US outreach to Myanmar altogether, questioning assertions that the United States needed to learn more about the junta. "With all due respect, we know all about Burma. It's not an unknown quantity. It has a vicious gangster regime, one of the most despicable regimes in this planet," he said. "We are saying that they are a legitimate government to sit down with. They are not," he said. A State Department official, Stephen Blake, quietly visited Myanmar in March to hold talks with both the junta and the opposition. It was the first trip by a senior US envoy to the country in more than seven years. In August, Myanmar's military leader Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with a visiting US senator, Jim Webb, a leading advocate of engaging the junta. ____________________________________ OPINION / OTHER October 22, Democratic Voice of Burma Money for rights at the ASEAN summit ? Joseph Allchin In recent days civil society groups have convened in Thailand to thrash out their own version of the official regional summit, starting tomorrow, and plain to see was the frustration at the gulf between the two. Yesterday, the exiled Burmese activist Khin Ohmar was chosen by civil society groups to attend the 15th ASEAN summit as representative of Burmese Civil Society Organisations (CSO). Yet, according to Khin Ohmar, domestic Burmese organisations riled against her exiled status as being not representative of Burma. ?There were a number of [Burmese] junta-backed agencies who were present at the ASEAN Peoples? Forum, and they wanted to have somebody that they can influence,? she told DVB. This ?somebody? would be from a local group inside Burma ?who is not able to have an independent voice to speak on the key problems that the Burmese people are facing.? Whilst several of the more ?modern? ASEAN leaders play lip-service to Western discourse on human rights, it seems to have about as much currency as oil companies who talk about the environment: it?s a co-option of a ?nice idea?. This ?nice idea? was recently honoured with a fresh ASEAN human rights monitor who would be answerable too, amongst other notable human rights abusers, the Burmese junta. It will have no punitive powers but would instead ?promote? human rights. ?It?s a human rights commission for the government; it?s already so weak in so many ways,? Ohmar said. What will no doubt be more on the minds of every well-funded leader, the military ones included, will be the future of trade both within ASEAN and between other international blocs and nations. In the pipeline is the intriguing potential of a free trade agreement (FTA) with China, India and the European Union, whilst human rights will likely form a pretty part of the packaging. The diversity of ASEAN will mean that trade agreements will mean different things to different nations; Burma will be affected in a very different manner to somewhere like Malaysia or Thailand, for instance. Many in India are concerned that the industrial might of nations like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia will have a negative impact on India?s own industrial development, with those economies being able to out-do their Indian rivals. This alone could have an effect on Burma, whose cheap labour and absence of industry regulations on the surface provide a tantalizing prospect for multinationals. It?s an issue that Burma economics expert Sean Turnell has termed a ?race to the bottom? with standards. In a turbulent future economy, without the debt-led spending of Western nations, Asian nations may have to compete for bargain basement industry. Labour and environmental standards could be the first casualty in such a race. Indian economist Asseem Srinavastava had suggested that a venture into Burma earlier this year by Tata motors of India provided an example of this, with the probability that it was done to bypass strict laws in India. In similar fashion it could induce other ASEAN nations to cut standards. Burma is already believed to have some of the cheapest extraction costs for gas and oil, and is a Mecca for other controversial extractive industries like rare animal parts, traded openly in Burmese markets and logging. As Jon Buckrell from Global Witness told DVB yesterday, illegal logging has drastically eaten away at Burma?s forests, with a ton of Burmese teak now being sold for as little as $US300. However, according to Turnell, ?political instability tends to trump these sorts of concerns [over industry competition]?, with companies now ?desperate not to locate in Burma?; the lack of infrastructure, rule of law, a credible banking system and trustworthy exchange rate are destroying Burma?s chances. Burma has been a sort of bit part on the side of the more dynamic economies of ASEAN. Whilst its resources are eagerly tapped by companies in Singapore and elsewhere, its governance and development has remained more in league with tiger despots than tiger economies. A way round Burma?s domestic quagmire has been to bring its cheap labour to Thailand or Malaysia, which has now created special economic zones to accommodate the influx of industry. Yet Ohmar speaks of ?major concern? over agreements which ?have not consulted the people or civil society and do not have people integrated into the processes [of formulating trade regulations]?. At the ASEAN people?s forum this week, Joy Chavez, an economics and agricultural expert from the Philippines, warned that the current crop of FTA agreements are ?exclusionary they do not link with the people of ASEAN [and] without people?s input there is a big danger?. Turnell further expressed angst about binding trade agreements with powerful blocs like the EU: ?For me the worry would be the extent that the EU and other countries could lever away to express their unhappiness about human rights issues? if they signed an FTA. The ASEAN policy of ?non-interference? is also key: like most bilateral agreements and bodies, all parties will seek to get the most out of it, whilst giving the least. So whilst ASEAN intends to become an EU-style free trade zone by 2020, the member states ?will be desperate to protect their own industry?, according to Turnell, with ?non-interference? used to prevent other nations from upholding regulations. It?s the great legal expression of conservatism at the heart of the region, and will keep the economic powerhouses from spreading the potential wealth that exists in the region. The cohesion of the group, whether horizontally, between national governments, or vertically, between its leaders and their subjects, is a major cause for concern. Essentially ASEAN will never achieve its targets of being a free trade bloc or of having progressive human dignity for all if leaders are not prepared to have the humility to submit to principles, rules and standards that that require interference or accountability. Its efficacy will be at the mercy of ?big men? who, for Khin Ohmar, have failed to show commitment. ?Now we always make a joke; with ASEAN its one step forward, two steps backward. It?s like the same old story again?.