Today marks the start of the East Asia Summit, an annual forum where the leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their counterparts from eight other nations, including China and the U.S., meet to discuss security and economic concerns. One issue which may take center stage concerns conflicting claims over the […]
As Malaysia celebrated its 55th anniversary of independence on Friday, Muslim separatists in southern Thailand marked the occasion with a string of coordinated bomb attacks across the country’s three restive, Islamic-majority provinces. On Hari Merdeka, the day which Malaysia commemorates its freedom from British colonial rule, ethnic Malays hung Malaysian flags from light poles and […]
Benjamin Domenech at Real Clear World’s ‘The Compass‘ blog produced this interesting piece on Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak’s efforts to bring a moderate form of Islam to Afghanistan. Here’s an excerpt: It was on this day in 2001 that the United States and Britain launched Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, which seems as proper […]
Southeast Asia has officially joined the ranks of Europe, the Americas, and Africa in launching their own regional human rights commission. Speculation on the proposed human rights body for The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has dominated political commentary in the region for the past year. Yet, now that the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights […]
I wrote before that – Future political integration is dependent on ASEAN resolving its many territorial disputes. There is still a high level of nationalism in the region; member-countries are suspicious of each other due to centuries of conflict, followed by colonial isolation. These disputes were recently surveyed on Capital Hill, by Richard P. Cronin, […]