KAWKAREIK, Myanmar: Father William’s 16-strong flock on Myanmar’s eastern border is one of the Catholic Church’s tiniest outposts, but next week they will join a tide of 200,000 faithful in Yangon for a historic mass led by Pope Francis.
The Pope, renowned for powerful entreaties for peace no matter how highly-charged the issue, arrives on Monday in a country on the defensive over its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Some 620,000 Rohingya have been driven from western Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August, prompting allegations of ethnic cleansing of the stateless minority.
While Pope Francis’ visit is inevitably framed by the crisis, Father William Hla Myint Oo says it will not overshadow the momentous event.
The compact congregation of Kawkareik, just three families and several church volunteers, will join the priest for the eight-hour drive to Yangon.
“We’re very excited,” says the priest, who moved to the remote outpost in Karen state, near Myanmar’s eastern border, just five months ago.
“(The pope’s) visit to see us — a minority — gives us a real lift and strengthens our spirit..”
It is the first ever papal visit to a Buddhist-majority nation, whose estimated 700,000 Catholics represent just over one percent of the population.
Kawkareik, a town in Karen state of 40,000 people, sits in the foothills of mountains tracing the border with Thailand.
Karen is famed for its tree-clad limestone hills topped by pagodas that attest to the dominance of Buddhism.
The church, discreetly tucked behind high walls, has yet to host a wedding or a christening, giving its pastoral leader little work.
But the Yangon-born priest says the occasional flutters of boredom or loneliness have been dispelled by the Pope’s looming visit.
Maria Maung Lone, a spry 73-year-old worshipper, is equally delighted at the guest from the Vatican.
“None of my ancestors have ever done this,” he says with a wide smile. “We’re so lucky that we have this chance.”
There have been Catholics in Myanmar for over 500 years, the religion brought by Portuguese traders from their Indian settlement in Goa.
But it was not until the 18th Century that the country became a mission territory, even if spreading the Catholic word was not always been easy.
The southeast Asian country’s ferocious heat and malarial jungles threw up a natural barrier to progress, while Buddhist locals harbored reservations about the new faith.
But Catholics generally enjoyed a good relationship with their Buddhist neighbors, says Father Soe Naing, spokesman for Myanmar’s Catholic church.
That changed, however, after the 1988 uprising against military rule when the junta pitched itself as the keeper of the Buddhist faith as a tactic to augment its legitimacy.
“Suddenly we were being discriminated against,” Father Soe Naing says.
“If you were a Christian working for the government, you wouldn’t be promoted and it was impossible to build new churches.”
Today, however, he says relations with the Buddhist majority are back on track.
“We’ve grown up together, we mix with one another. We’re very good friends,” he says.
In 2014 the Vatican canonized Myanmar’s first saint, a religious teacher killed in 1950 while traveling in the eastern borderlands.
The country’s first cardinal was named in 2015.
Then the establishment of full diplomatic ties with the Vatican in May this year paved the way for the pontiff’s visit.
Catholics from across the country, including remote, mountainous areas of Chin and Kachin states, are expected to descend on Yangon for the pope’s visit, which runs from November 27-30 and will include two landmark masses.
While Myanmar’s Catholics are delighted at the pontiff’s visit, the trip is also fraught with risk.
The country — and international community — is holding its breath to see if Pope Francis uses the word “Rohingya” on Myanmar soil when he addresses the Rakhine crisis.
The term is toxic in the country, where many follow the government line that the Rohingya are not an indigenous ethnic group but instead “Bengalis,” shorthand for illegal settlers from neighboring Bangladesh.
“He will not be able to avoid speaking of the Rohingya crisis,” says Myanmar-based political analyst Richard Horsey.
“But he will also be aware that... the intervention of a Christian leader is more likely to inflame the situation than promote interfaith understanding.”
In recent months, the pope has repeatedly used the term “Rohingya,” calling for peace, interfaith acceptance and denouncing the plight of refugee children stuck in Bangladeshi camps.
His discourse has made Myanmar’s Catholic community nervous of a potential angry backlash from hard-line Buddhist groups.
But briefings, including by Myanmar’s cardinal, about the sensitivities surrounding the crisis have gone some way to soothing the Catholic community.
“We can see the Holy Father is very well informed,” Father Soe Naing says. “I’m sure he understands the issues and so our fear is lessened.”
Back in his small parish, Father William is reluctant to be drawn on the politics of the papal visit.
“It’s complicated,” he says.
“Human affairs are more important than politics and religion.”
An outpost of Catholicism in Myanmar prepares for the Pope
An outpost of Catholicism in Myanmar prepares for the Pope
UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser
- Powell, who was chief of staff to former PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, was an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process
- He faced criticism for his part in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq
LONDON: The UK’s Labour government has appointed Jonathan Powell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, as its new national security adviser.
Powell, who served as chief of staff to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a decade between 1997 and 2007, was deeply involved in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2014, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him the UK’s special envoy to Libya, in an attempt to promote dialogue between rival factions embroiled in the nation’s civil war.
Many political figures in the UK welcomed Powell’s latest appointment at a time of escalating international conflicts. Some expressed hopes that he will be able to help British authorities forge a positive relationship with Donald Trump when he takes over as US president in January.
However, Powell faced criticism for his role in the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, and for later promoting the need to engage in dialogue with extremist groups. In 2014, at the height of Daesh’s bloody occupation of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, he argued that UK authorities should open channels of communication with them.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Powell’s experience of negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement and his other work related to some of the world’s most complex conflicts make him “uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead, and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.”
Powell said he was honored to be given the role at a time when “national security, international relations and domestic policies are so interconnected.”
Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says
- Trump's transition team have yet to sign agreements required by the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations
- The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees
WASHINGTON: A good-governance group is warning of severe consequences if President-elect Donald Trump continues to steer clear of formal transition planning with the Biden administration — inaction that it says is already limiting the federal government’s ability to provide security clearances and briefings to the incoming administration.
Without the planning, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, “it would not be possible” to “be ready to govern on day one.”
The president-elect’s transition is being led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. They said last month that they expected to sign agreements beginning the formal transition process with the Biden White House and the General Services Administration, which acts essentially as the federal government’s landlord.
But those agreements are still unsigned, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees. That could limit the staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It also means Trump appointees can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.
The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, which was enacted in 2022. They mandate that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations.
In that act, Congress set deadlines of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office. Both deadlines have long since come and gone.
Stier, whose organization works with candidates and incumbents on transitions, said on a call with reporters on Friday that a new administration “walks in with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet.”
“In order to do that effectively, they absolutely need to have done a lot of prework,” he said, adding that Trump’s team “has approached this in a, frankly, different way than any other prior transition has.”
“They have, up until now, walked past all of the tradition and, we believe, vital agreements with the federal government,” Stier said.
In a statement this week, Lutnick and McMahon said Trump was “selecting personnel to serve our nation under his leadership and enact policies that make the life of Americans affordable, safe, and secure.” They didn’t mention signing agreements to begin the transition.
A person familiar with the matter said that the congressionally mandated ethics disclosures and contribution limits were factors in the hesitance to sign the agreements.
Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said Friday that the team’s “lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”
“We will update you once a decision is made,” Hughes said.
The Trump team’s reluctance has persisted despite Biden’s White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reaching out to Lutnick and McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the Biden administration and GSA play in beginning a presidential transition.
“We’re here to assist. We want to have a peaceful transition of power,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We want to make sure they have what they need.”
The unorthodox approach to the presidential transition process recalls the period immediately after Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016. Days later, the president-elect fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out a transition playbook he’d been compiling.
But Stier said that, even then, Trump’s team had signed the initial agreements that allowed the transition to get started — something that hasn’t happened this time.
“The story’s not finished. But they’re late,” he said. “And even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done.”
50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals
- The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from
UN: The World Health Organization and some 50 countries issued a warning Friday at the United Nations about the rise of ransomware attacks against hospitals, with the United States specifically blaming Russia.
Ransomware is a type of digital blackmail in which hackers encrypt the data of victims — individuals, companies or institutions — and demand money as a “ransom” in order to restore it.
Such attacks on hospitals “can be issues of life and death,” according to WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who addressed the UN Security Council during a meeting Friday called by the United States.
“Surveys have shown that attacks on the health care sector have increased in both scale and frequency,” Ghebreyesus said, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation to combat them.
“Cybercrime, including ransomware, poses a serious threat to international security,” he added, calling on the Security Council to consider it as such.
A joint statement co-signed by over 50 countries — including South Korea, Ukraine, Japan, Argentina, France, Germany and the United Kingdom — offered a similar warning.
“These attacks pose direct threats to public safety and endanger human lives by delaying critical health care services, cause significant economic harm, and can pose a threat to international peace and security,” read the statement, shared by US Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger.
The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from.
At the meeting, Neuberger directly called out Moscow, saying: “Some states — most notably Russia — continue to allow ransomware actors to operate from their territory with impunity.”
France and South Korea also pointed the finger at North Korea.
Russia defended itself by claiming the Security Council was not the appropriate forum to address cybercrime.
“We believe that today’s meeting can hardly be deemed a reasonable use of the Council’s time and resources,” said Russian ambassador Vassili Nebenzia.
“If our Western colleagues wish to discuss the security of health care facilities,” he continued, “they should agree in the Security Council upon specific steps to stop the horrific... attacks by Israel on hospitals in the Gaza Strip.”
China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws
- Laws aimed at reinforcing Philippine rights to territory, resources
- China unlikely to recognize laws, senator says
BEIJING/MANILA: China summoned the Philippines’ ambassador on Friday to express its objection to two new laws in the Southeast Asian nation asserting maritime rights and sovereignty over disputed areas of the South China Sea, its foreign ministry said.
China made “solemn representations” to the ambassador shortly after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act into law to strengthen his country’s maritime claims and bolster its territorial integrity.
The Maritime Zones law “illegally includes most of China’s Huangyan Island and Nansha Islands and related maritime areas in the Philippines’ maritime zones,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, using the Chinese names for Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands respectively.
Beijing has rejected a 2016 ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration which said its expansive maritime claims over the South China Sea had no legal basis, in a case that was brought by Manila. The United States, a Philippine ally, backs the court’s ruling.
Marcos said the two laws he signed, which define maritime entitlements and set designated sea lanes and air routes, were a demonstration of commitment to uphold the international rules-based order, and protect Manila’s rights to exploit resources peacefully in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“Our people, especially our fisher folk, should be able to pursue their livelihood free from uncertainty and harassment,” Marcos said. “We must be able to harness mineral and energy resources in our sea bed.”
But Beijing said the laws were a “serious infringement” of its claims over the contested areas.
“China urges the Philippine side to effectively respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, to immediately stop taking any unilateral actions that may lead to the widening of the dispute and complicate the situation,” Mao said.
China, which also has sovereignty disputes with the other countries in the region, has enacted domestic laws covering the South China Sea, such as a coast guard law in 2021 that allows it to detain foreigners suspected of trespassing.
Beijing, which uses an armada of coast guard ships to assert its claims, routinely accuses vessels of trespassing in areas of the South China Sea that fall inside the EEZs of its neighbors, and has clashed repeatedly with the Philippines in the past year.
Philippine officials acknowledged the challenges they face in implementing the new laws, with one author, Senator Francis Tolentino, saying he did not expect a reduction in tensions.
“China will not recognize these, but the imprimatur that we’ll be getting from the international community would strengthen our position,” Tolentino told a press conference.
The United States on Friday backed the Philippines.
“The passage of the Maritime Zones Act by the Philippines is a routine matter and further clarifies Philippine maritime law,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Chad accuses Sudan of aiding rebel forces
LIBREVILLE: Chad on Friday accused Sudan of arming and financing rebel groups on Chadian territory with the aim of destabilising its neighbor.
Chad claims Sudan is aiding a rebellion by members of the Zaghawa ethnic group operating out of Sudan’s southwestern El Facher region.
“Sudan is financing and arming terrorist groups operating in the sub-region with the aim of destabilising Chad,” foreign affairs minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said in a press release.
The Zaghawa rebels based in Sudan are led by Ousman Dillo, the younger brother of Chadian opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djerou, who was killed by Chadian military forces earlier this year.
In February 2008, a Zaghawa rebel group based in Sudan launched a lightning offensive in Chad along with other groups, forcing former president Idriss Deby Itno to take refuge in his presidential palace, before he was able to repel them with help from France.
In 2021, Idriss Deby Itno died fighting other rebel forces near the border with Libya and the army named his son Mahamat Idriss Deby as president.
Sudan’s government has accused Chad of meddling in its own civil war by helping to deliver weapons from the United Arab Emirates to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary forces, which Chad and the UAE have denied.
The Sudanese war, which pits the army against the RSF, broke out in April 2023 and has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders, monitors say.
