BANGKOK: Death, detention and dissolution have decimated Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, easing the way for groups backed by Myanmar’s ruling military to claim victory at elections expected next year, analysts say.
The death this week of National League for Democracy (NLD) vice president Zaw Myint Maung — a close confidante of Suu Kyi — was the latest blow to a party crippled by the junta’s crackdown.
It came after party co-founder Tin Oo — a military general turned democracy activist — died of old age in June.
Nobel laureate Suu Kyi remains enduringly popular in Myanmar and the NLD would undoubtedly win a third landslide victory if she was to lead it into a free election, analysts say.
But the junta dissolved the party last year for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law, and it is barred from any new vote.
State media said on Wednesday that junta chief Min Aung Hlaing “clearly reaffirmed” the military’s plans to hold elections next year.
Many in Myanmar would see the polls as a “cunning” attempt by the junta to “earn some veneer of legitimacy,” said Htwe Htwe Thein of Curtin University in Australia.
NLD members still inside the country are struggling to “reorganize” the party due to the junta’s continuing crackdown, one senior member recently released from prison told AFP, requesting anonymity.
The NLD was forged in the bloody aftermath of a failed democracy uprising in 1988 that catapulted Suu Kyi to global fame.
For decades it was the main democratic opposition to the military’s iron grip over Myanmar, with its members enduring harsh repression.
After the generals enacted democratic reforms, it won crushing election victories in 2015 and 2020, using the logo of a fighting peacock.
But in February 2021, hours before the new parliament was to be sworn in, the military mounted a coup and detained the NLD’s top leadership.
Weeks after the coup, former NLD spokesman Nyan Win died in custody of Covid-19.
Zaw Myint Maung died of leukaemia aged 72 on Monday, days after being released from military custody.
Suu Kyi is serving a lengthy jail sentence, as is former president Win Myint, following a trial in a junta court that critics say was a sham designed to remove them from politics.
She remains widely popular in Myanmar, although her international standing has waned over her failure to stop a brutal military crackdown on the Rohingya minority now the subject of a genocide case at the UN’s top court.
Around a dozen parties have been permitted to re-register so far for next year’s vote, including the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
Main ally Beijing has backed the junta’s plans for the polls and this year invited the USDP and three other parties for talks in China.
Some younger members of the NLD have turned to armed struggle since the coup, joining “People’s Defense Forces” and ethnic rebels fighting the military — and breaching a key NLD tenet of non-violence.
A shadow “National Unity Government” set up to overturn the coup has also drawn NLD members away, while splits have emerged between those underground in Myanmar and those in exile, according to party sources.
Party members who have stayed inside the country have faced severe consequences in the junta’s crackdown.
Phyo Zeya Thaw, a hip-hop artist turned NLD lawmaker was executed by the junta in 2022, in Myanmar’s first use of capital punishment in decades.
Following the coup, he was accused by the junta of orchestrating several attacks on regime forces, including a shooting on a commuter train in Yangon that killed five policemen.
He was sentenced to death at a closed-door trial and executed, drawing huge criticism from rights groups.
“We will keep fighting for democracy against the regime,” a second senior NLD member said, also requesting anonymity to speak from inside Myanmar.
“We will be back.”
The NLD “has faced crushing repression for three decades and still holds together,” said independent Myanmar analyst David Mathieson.
Much hinges on its talisman Suu Kyi, 79, who languishes in a prison in the military-built capital, has not been seen in public for years and who has designated no successor, he added.
“What happens to the party after Suu Kyi’s eventual passing is the major question, and whether it could ever regroup and be a viable national force.”
Deaths and repression sideline Aung San Suu Kyi’s party ahead of Myanmar vote
https://arab.news/zcmgz
Deaths and repression sideline Aung San Suu Kyi’s party ahead of Myanmar vote
- Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi remains enduringly popular in Myanmar
- Many in Myanmar would see the polls as a ‘cunning’ attempt by the junta to ‘earn some veneer of legitimacy’
Russia missile suspected in Azerbaijani plane crash, Moscow warns against ‘hypotheses’
The Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau, an oil and gas hub, on Wednesday after going off course for undetermined reasons.
Thirty-eight of the 67 people on board died.
The Embraer 190 aircraft was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya, southern Russia, but instead diverted far off course across the Caspian Sea.
An investigation is underway, with pro-government Azerbaijani website Caliber citing unnamed officials as saying they believed a Russian missile fired from a Pantsir-S air defense system downed the plane.
The claim was also reported by The New York Times, broadcaster Euronews and the Turkish news agency Anadolu.
Some aviation and military experts said the plane might have been accidentally shot by Russian air defense systems because it was flying in an area where Ukrainian drone activity had been reported.
A former expert at France’s BEA air accident investigation agency said there appeared to be “a lot of shrapnel” damage on the wreckage.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the damage was “reminiscent” of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was downed with a surface-to-air missile by Russia-backed rebels over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It would be wrong to make any hypotheses before the investigation’s conclusions.”
Euronews cited Azerbaijani government sources as saying that “shrapnel hit the passengers and cabin crew as it exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight.”
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said early indications suggested a Russian anti-aircraft system struck the plane.
Kazakhstan news agency Kazinform cited a regional prosecutor as saying that two black-box flight recorders had been recovered.
Azerbaijan Airlines initially said the plane flew through a flock of birds, before withdrawing the statement.
Kazakh officials said 38 people had been killed and there were 29 survivors, including three children.
Jalil Aliyev, the father of flight attendant Hokume Aliyeva, told AFP that this was supposed to have been her last flight before starting a job as a lawyer for the airline.
“Why did her young life have to end so tragically?” the man said in a trembling voice before hanging up the phone.
Eleven of the injured are in intensive care, the Kazakh health ministry said.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared Thursday a day of mourning and canceled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet nations.
“I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the crash... and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” Aliyev said in a social media post Wednesday.
The Flight Radar website showed the plane deviating from its normal route, crossing the Caspian Sea and then circling over the area where it eventually crashed near Aktau, on the eastern shore of the sea.
Kazakhstan said the plane was carrying 37 Azerbaijani passengers, six Kazakhs, three Kyrgyz and 16 Russians.
A Kazakh woman told the local branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) she was near where the plane crashed and rushed to the site to help survivors.
“They were covered in blood. They were crying. They were calling for help,” said the woman, who gave her name as Elmira.
She said they saved some teenagers.
“I’ll never forget their look, full of pain and despair,” said Elmira. “A girl pleaded: ‘Save my mother, my mother is back there’.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with Aliyev and “expressed his condolences in connection with the crash,” Peskov told a news conference.
Manmohan Singh, India’s reluctant prime minister, dies aged 92
- The first Sikh in office, 92-year-old Singh was being treated for age-related medical conditions
- He is credited with steering India to unprecedented economic growth, lifting millions out of poverty
NEW DELHI: Described as a “reluctant king” in his first stint as prime minister, the quietly spoken Manmohan Singh was arguably one of India’s most successful leaders.
The first Sikh in office, Singh, 92, was being treated for age-related medical conditions and died after he was brought to hospital after a sudden loss of consciousness on Thursday.
He is credited with steering India to unprecedented economic growth and lifting hundreds of millions out of dire poverty. He went on to serve a rare second term.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders, Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji.”
He applauded the economist-turned-politician’s body of work.
Born into a poor family in a part of British-ruled India now in Pakistan, Singh studied by candlelight to win a place at Cambridge University before heading to Oxford, earning a doctorate with a thesis on the role of exports and free trade in India’s economy.
He became a respected economist, then India’s central bank governor and a government adviser but had no apparent plans for a political career when he was suddenly tapped to become finance minister in 1991.
During that tenure to 1996, Singh was the architect of reforms that saved India’s economy from a severe balance of payments crisis, promoted deregulation and other measures that opened an insular country to the world.
Famously quoting Victor Hugo in his maiden budget speech, he said: “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” before adding: “The emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea.”
Singh’s ascension to prime minister in 2004 was even more unexpected.
He was asked to take on the job by Sonia Gandhi, who led the center-left Congress party to a surprise victory. Italian by birth, she feared her ancestry would be used by Hindu-nationalist opponents to attack the government if she were to lead the country.
Riding an unprecedented period of economic growth, Singh’s government shared the spoils of the country’s new found wealth, introducing welfare schemes such as a jobs program for the rural poor.
In 2008, his government also clinched a landmark deal that permitted peaceful trade in nuclear energy with the United States for the first time in three decades, paving the way for strong relations between New Delhi and Washington.
But his efforts to further open up the Indian economy were frequently frustrated by political wrangling within his own party and demands made by coalition partners.
“HISTORY WILL BE KINDER TO ME”
And while he was widely respected by other world leaders, at home Singh always had to fend off the perception that Sonia Gandhi was the real power in the government.
The widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, whose family has dominated Indian politics since independence from Britain in 1947, she remained Congress party leader and often made key decisions.
Known for his simple lifestyle and with a reputation for honesty, Singh was not personally seen as corrupt. But he came under attack for failing to crack down on members of his government as a series of scandals erupted in his second term, triggering mass protests.
The latter years of his premiership saw India’s growth story, which he had helped engineer, wobble as global economic turbulence and slow government decision-making battered investment sentiment.
In 2012, his government was tipped into a minority after the Congress party’s biggest ally quit their coalition in protest at the entry of foreign supermarkets.
Two years later Congress was decisively swept aside by the Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi, a strongman who promised to end the economic standstill, clean up graft and bring inclusive growth to the hinterlands.
But at a press conference just months before he left office, Singh insisted he had done the best he could.
“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or, for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament,” he said.
Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.
UN calls for investigation into Pakistan’s alleged air strikes on Afghanistan border
- UN mission in Afghanistan says dozens of civilians killed in airstrikes this week by Pakistan in Paktika province
- Islamabad accuses Kabul of harboring militant fighters, allowing them to strike on Pakistani soil with impunity
KABUL: The UN mission to Afghanistan on Thursday called for an investigation into Pakistani air strikes in Afghanistan, in which the Taliban government said 46 people were killed, including civilians.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it had “received credible reports that dozens of civilians, including women and children, were killed in airstrikes by Pakistan’s military forces in Paktika province, Afghanistan, on 24 December.”
“International law obliges military forces to take necessary precautions to prevent civilian harm,” the agency said in a statement, adding an “investigation is needed to ensure accountability.”
The Taliban government said the 46 deceased were mainly women and children, with another six wounded, mostly children.
An AFP journalist saw several wounded children in a hospital in the provincial capital Sharan, including one receiving an IV and another with a bandaged head.
A Pakistan security official told AFP on Wednesday the bombardment had targeted “terrorist hideouts” and killed at least 20 militants, saying claims that “civilians are being harmed are baseless and misleading.”
On a press trip to the area organized by Taliban authorities, AFP journalists saw four mud brick buildings reduced to rubble in three sites around 20-30 kilometers (10-20 miles) from the Pakistan border.
AFP spoke to multiple residents who said the strikes hit in the late evening, breaking doors and windows in villages and destroying homes and an Islamic school.
Several residents reported pulling bodies from the rubble after strikes targeted houses, killing multiple members of the same families.
Afghanistan’s Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs Noorullah Noori called the attack “a brutal, arrogant invasion.”
“This is unacceptable and won’t be left unanswered,” he said during the site visit.
Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch did not confirm the strikes but told a media briefing on Thursday: “Our security personnel conduct operations in border areas to protect Pakistani from terror groups, including TTP.”
She was referring to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — Pakistan’s homegrown Taliban group which shares a common ideology with its Afghan counterpart.
The TTP last week claimed a raid on an army outpost near the border with Afghanistan in which Pakistan said 16 soldiers were killed.
Baloch said Pakistan prioritized dialogue with Afghanistan, and that Islamabad’s special envoy, Sadiq Khan, was in Kabul meeting with officials where “matters of security” and “terror groups including TTP” were discussed.
The strikes were the latest spike in hostilities on the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with border tensions between the two countries escalating since the Taliban government seized power in 2021.
Islamabad has accused Kabul’s authorities of harboring militant fighters, allowing them to strike on Pakistani soil with impunity — allegations Kabul denies.
Asian countries mark 20 years since the world’s deadliest tsunami
- Indonesia launched its early tsunami warning system in the aftermath of the 2004 disasters
- Its westernmost Aceh province was the hardest-hit, with some 170,000 people killed
JAKARTA: Herman Wiharta began that Sunday morning like many 11-year-olds would on a weekend: watching cartoon shows on TV.
But at around 8 a.m., he felt the powerful tremors from a 9.1-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, which then triggered the tsunami that inundated the coastline of more than a dozen countries and killed some 230,000 people.
Wiharta, now 31, recalled his brother calling out to him to leave their house in Banda Aceh minutes after the quake and how they had attempted to run to safety. He remembered hearing people scream about the rising sea water before he himself was swept away by a giant wave.
“I lost consciousness when the wave hit me and I woke up on a roof, confused. Thankfully, my brother and sister were also on that roof,” he told Arab News.
“We were able to see just how black the water was from that spot, how strong the currents were. The water was about 4 to 5 meters high; cars and motorbikes were floating, and I could see bodies being swept away by the currents, too. It was terrifying.”
The tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004 quickly escalated into a global disaster, with some 1.7 million displaced.
The brunt of the tsunami was felt in Indonesia, where almost 170,000 people perished. The country’s westernmost province of Aceh was the hardest-hit of all, while Sri Lanka, India and Thailand were among the worst-affected countries.
“It was impossible to sleep that night. We could still hear people screaming for help and the dogs were howling. Everything was just so eerie. The disasters happened so quickly, but they were deeply traumatizing,” Wiharta said.
“It was even worse the day after. We could see bloated human and animal corpses, and the smell was just terrible. I can still picture that scene in my mind to this day.”
Across Asia on Thursday, people attended ceremonies and memorials held to mark 20 years since the deadliest tsunami in recorded history.
Coastal communities were united in grief as they also commemorated how far they had come after two decades of rebuilding and regrouping.
In Sri Lanka, where more than 35,000 people were killed, survivors and relatives gathered in the coastal village of Peraliya to remember the 1,000 victims who died when waves derailed a passenger train.
In Thailand, where half of the death toll of 5,000 were foreign tourists, commemorations were held in Ban Nam Khem, the country’s worst-hit village. People laid flowers and wreaths at a wall curved in the shape of a tsunami, which also bears plaques with the names of the victims.
In India, where around 20,000 people perished, women led the rituals held at Pattinapakkam beach in Chennai, where they lit candles and offered flowers for the victims.
In Banda Aceh city, an official ceremony held at the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque began with a three-minute-long siren at the exact time the major earthquake caused giant waves. People also gathered for prayers at the city’s mass graves — Ulee Lheue and Siron — where thousands of unidentified and unclaimed tsunami victims are buried.
In the years since, infrastructure across Aceh has been rebuilt and is now stronger to withstand major disasters. Early warning systems have also been set up in areas closer to shores, to warn residents of a potential tsunami.
Indonesia’s early tsunami warning system was launched only in 2008 in the aftermath of the disasters, said Daryono, the head of the earthquake and tsunami center at Indonesia’s meteorology, climatology and geophysical agency.
“Before the 2004 Aceh earthquake and tsunami … there were too many people who did not understand the threat, or the danger and risks of a tsunami,” Daryono told Arab News.
“But what happened in 2004 became a starting point to raise awareness on earthquake and tsunami mitigation and also to develop high-tech monitoring for earthquakes and early tsunami warning systems.”
Yet Aceh resident Wiharta was concerned with the direction of development in the province, particularly on the beaches of Aceh Besar district where many new cafes have been popping up in recent years.
“It’s important not to cut down the trees for the sake of building these cafes. It’s better to plant more trees, especially mangroves, so that they can help defend against potential tsunamis,” he said.
“I think the early warning systems also need to be fixed or reset to make sure that they are properly working for early evacuations, since many are either broken or stolen.”
Record number of migrants lost at sea bound for Spain in 2024: NGO
- The vast majority of the fatalities — 9,757 — took place on the Atlantic migration route from Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands
MADRID: At least 10,457 migrants died or disappeared while trying to reach Spain by sea in 2024, an NGO said Thursday, more than 50 percent more than last year and the most since it began keeping a tally in 2007.
The 58-percent increase includes 1,538 children and 421 women, migrants rights group Caminando Fronteras or Walking Borders said in a report which covers the period from January 1 to December 5, 2024.
It amounts to an average of 30 deaths per day, up from around 18 in 2023.
The group compiles its data from hotlines set up for migrants on vessels in trouble to call for help, families of migrants who went missing and from official rescue statistics.
It blamed the use of flimsy boats and increasingly dangerous routes as well as the insufficient capacity of maritime rescue services for the surge in deaths.
“These figures are evidence of a profound failure of rescue and protection systems. More than 10,400 people dead or missing in a single year is an unacceptable tragedy,” the group’s founder, Helena Maleno, said in a statement.
The victims were from 28 nations, mostly in Africa, but also from Iraq and Pakistan.
The vast majority of the fatalities — 9,757 — took place on the Atlantic migration route from Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, which has received a record number of migrants for the second year in a row.
Seven migrant boats landed in the archipelago on Wednesday, Christmas Day, Spain’s maritime rescue service said on social media site X.
At their closest point, the Canaries lie 100 kilometers (62 miles) off the coast of North Africa. The shortest route is between the coastal town of Tarfaya in southern Morocco and the island of Fuerteventura in the Canaries.
But the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands is particularly dangerous because of strong currents.
Along with Italy and Greece, Spain is one of the three major European gateways for migrant arrivals.
According to the interior ministry, 60,216 migrants entered Spain irregularly between January 1 and December 15 — a 14.5 percent increase over the same time last year.
The majority, over 70 percent, landed in the Canaries.
