Walking on eggshells at Hanoi meet
Walking on eggshells at Hanoi meet
Pravit Rojanaphruk, The Nation, Asia News Network, Bangkok
True to one of the slogans in the competition for readers of
Vietnam's Economic Times newspaper to describe the country, last
week's Fifth Asia-Europe People's Forum (ASEM V) held in Hanoi,
was "beyond expectations".
It began with the timing of the three-day meeting of more than
500 participants, including at least 150 from various NGOs and
people's organizations throughout Asia and Europe.
Unlike previous ASEMs in Copenhagen and Seoul, or the first
one in Bangkok in 1996, the one that concluded last week in Hanoi
was held a month earlier than the ASEM Leader's Summit itself.
One member of the International Organizing Committee (IOC)
admitted that Vietnam's National Organizing Committee had
insisted that the forum not be held parallel to the Leader's
Summit. Demonstrations and possible political embarrassment were
reasons cited, while the hosts claimed it was too much of a
logistical challenge to handle too many large forums
simultaneously in Vietnam.
No special workshop on Myanmar or Tibet and no putting any
ASEM country, such as Myanmar or China, on trial, please.
To make matters worse, on the first day of a workshop called
"Dialogue of Civilizations, Cultures and Religions in Europe and
Asia", participants were treated to a utopian version of the
current situation in Tibet, where human-rights violations and the
forced assimilation of Tibetans by the Han Chinese are non-
existent.
"The situation is totally different from that reported by the
foreign media, thank you," was the reply by a Chinese-backed
young Tibetan monk when asked by this writer about the reality of
today's Tibet.
While any Chinese-backed Tibetan has the right to have their
version of reality presented, the other side, the free-Tibet
movement, was nowhere to be found, because it had not been
invited to Hanoi.
The same with Myanmar. Arguably the region's most brutal and
repressive regime, one that uses bullets and rape as weapons
against all who oppose it, Myanmar was also a participant at the
ASEM Leader's Summit.
On the third and final day, when the final statement of the
ASEM V was being formulated and revised, one participant
suggested that the three-page statement should include a
condemnation of Myanmar's participation in the ASEM process.
To which the loud and immediate response from a Vietnamese
representative was: "No! We're not going to permit any
inconvenience for our government," followed by loud applause from
what must have been every one of the Vietnamese participants, who
referred to themselves as belonging to the "civil sector". Later,
Sameer Dossani, the poor chap who had raised the Burmese issue
only to be shot down in mid-air, lamented that he wasn't even a
"Free Myanmar" activist himself, but instead felt someone had to
speak out.
Ironically, the ongoing lawsuit against the U.S. government
over Agent Orange use during the Vietnam War was included in the
statement, which was just and right, but would it have been
included if America were a partner in ASEM?
In the end, the issue of Myanmar was left out of the official
statement of the People's Forum, while some hard-core
sympathizers to the Burmese cause vowed to release an alternative
statement -- making a mockery of the fact that the forum itself
was supposed to already be an "alternative meeting" in which a
social dimension was infused into the Leader's Summit.
Be that as it may, on a few occasions the Vietnamese hosts
found themselves on the receiving end, as well. Most foreign
journalists (except those from ASEAN nations who were hastily
converted into participants) were barred from covering the forum
until key foreign participants finally, on the last day, said
that "something big" would happen if the Vietnamese didn't allow
them in.
While overly burdensome logistical reasons were cited, one
suspects that the hosts simply didn't want foreign journalists to
know too much about the real Vietnam. Who knows? The reality
might truly be "beyond expectations".