Walking on eggshells at Hanoi meet<\/p>\n
Pravit Rojanaphruk, The Nation, Asia News Network, Bangkok<\/p>\n
True to one of the slogans in the competition for readers of
\nVietnam's Economic Times newspaper to describe the country, last
\nweek's Fifth Asia-Europe People's Forum (ASEM V) held in Hanoi,
\nwas \"beyond expectations\".<\/p>\n
It began with the timing of the three-day meeting of more than
\n500 participants, including at least 150 from various NGOs and
\npeople's organizations throughout Asia and Europe.<\/p>\n
Unlike previous ASEMs in Copenhagen and Seoul, or the first
\none in Bangkok in 1996, the one that concluded last week in Hanoi
\nwas held a month earlier than the ASEM Leader's Summit itself.
\nOne member of the International Organizing Committee (IOC)
\nadmitted that Vietnam's National Organizing Committee had
\ninsisted that the forum not be held parallel to the Leader's
\nSummit. Demonstrations and possible political embarrassment were
\nreasons cited, while the hosts claimed it was too much of a
\nlogistical challenge to handle too many large forums
\nsimultaneously in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
No special workshop on Myanmar or Tibet and no putting any
\nASEM country, such as Myanmar or China, on trial, please.<\/p>\n
To make matters worse, on the first day of a workshop called
\n\"Dialogue of Civilizations, Cultures and Religions in Europe and
\nAsia\", participants were treated to a utopian version of the
\ncurrent situation in Tibet, where human-rights violations and the
\nforced assimilation of Tibetans by the Han Chinese are non-
\nexistent.<\/p>\n
\"The situation is totally different from that reported by the
\nforeign media, thank you,\" was the reply by a Chinese-backed
\nyoung Tibetan monk when asked by this writer about the reality of
\ntoday's Tibet.<\/p>\n
While any Chinese-backed Tibetan has the right to have their
\nversion of reality presented, the other side, the free-Tibet
\nmovement, was nowhere to be found, because it had not been
\ninvited to Hanoi.<\/p>\n
The same with Myanmar. Arguably the region's most brutal and
\nrepressive regime, one that uses bullets and rape as weapons
\nagainst all who oppose it, Myanmar was also a participant at the
\nASEM Leader's Summit.<\/p>\n
On the third and final day, when the final statement of the
\nASEM V was being formulated and revised, one participant
\nsuggested that the three-page statement should include a
\ncondemnation of Myanmar's participation in the ASEM process.<\/p>\n
To which the loud and immediate response from a Vietnamese
\nrepresentative was: \"No! We're not going to permit any
\ninconvenience for our government,\" followed by loud applause from
\nwhat must have been every one of the Vietnamese participants, who
\nreferred to themselves as belonging to the \"civil sector\". Later,
\nSameer Dossani, the poor chap who had raised the Burmese issue
\nonly to be shot down in mid-air, lamented that he wasn't even a
\n\"Free Myanmar\" activist himself, but instead felt someone had to
\nspeak out.<\/p>\n
Ironically, the ongoing lawsuit against the U.S. government
\nover Agent Orange use during the Vietnam War was included in the
\nstatement, which was just and right, but would it have been
\nincluded if America were a partner in ASEM?<\/p>\n
In the end, the issue of Myanmar was left out of the official
\nstatement of the People's Forum, while some hard-core
\nsympathizers to the Burmese cause vowed to release an alternative
\nstatement -- making a mockery of the fact that the forum itself
\nwas supposed to already be an \"alternative meeting\" in which a
\nsocial dimension was infused into the Leader's Summit.<\/p>\n
Be that as it may, on a few occasions the Vietnamese hosts
\nfound themselves on the receiving end, as well. Most foreign
\njournalists (except those from ASEAN nations who were hastily
\nconverted into participants) were barred from covering the forum
\nuntil key foreign participants finally, on the last day, said
\nthat \"something big\" would happen if the Vietnamese didn't allow
\nthem in.<\/p>\n
While overly burdensome logistical reasons were cited, one
\nsuspects that the hosts simply didn't want foreign journalists to
\nknow too much about the real Vietnam. Who knows? The reality
\nmight truly be \"beyond expectations\".<\/p>",
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