Myanmar

Over the past week, several violent incidents have erupted again in Rakhine (or Arakan) State in western Myanmar, including riots last Friday in which police shot at crowds of Rohingya men and women, killing at least one person, although the death toll remains unclear. This is the at least the third time in the past two months that police have used live fire on crowds of Rohingya in Rakhine State. Although conflict in the Rakhine State never totally ebbed after the eruption of clashes between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya last year, which led to over 140,000 people—mostly Muslim Rohingya—fleeing to become refugees or IDPs, it seemed to have calmed down somewhat earlier this summer. However, that peace was illusory, for several reasons, and more serious conflict is likely to erupt in Rakhine State. For one, despite winning global praise as a reformer—and despite his own moderate and reasonable comments on how to address citizenship and ethnicity claims in Rakhine State—the government of President Thein Sein created a resettlement plan for internally displaced people from Rakhine State that perpetuates discrimination against Muslim Rohingya by refusing to allow them Myanmar citizenship and forcing them to identify as migrants from another country. The resettlement plan, perhaps more than any other action by the government in the past year, has infuriated Rohingya, who have lashed out with violence. Last year, it was primarily Buddhists in Rakhine State initiating the violence; now both Buddhists and Muslims are launching episodes of violence, leading to the possibility of more pitched clashes this year. The Myanmar government also has not disciplined police officers who have repeatedly used excessive force, including live ammunition, on Rohingya, and who also repeatedly have looked the other way when Buddhists have attacked Muslims in the Rakhine State. In addition, swirling rumors and reports of enormous possible mineral resources in Rakhine State are adding to land grabs and refusals to allow Rohingya to remain in the state and return to their homes. The exact extent of resources in Rakhine State remains unclear, but it has vast virgin forests, a major oil and gas pipeline, significant offshore and onshore petroleum resources, and many other resources. The whirlwind of mineral resources rumors in Myanmar, including in Rakhine State, is captured well in a new Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation report, Creating a Future: Using Natural Resources for New Federalism and Unity. Longtime Myanmar expert David Dapice, in the report, notes that natural resources do, and will continue to, play an outsized role in the Myanmar economy, as compared to many of its neighbors. Without any federal structure to apportion the monies made from resources, there will continue to be enormous local anger at the federal government, which currently is making major decisions about resources development, as well as increasingly intense land grabs in places like Rakhine State where there is no locally-accepted solution to resources that cuts locals into the money being made off their resources. And so the situation only gets more dangerous as summer drags on in Western Myanmar.

As Myanmar opens up, at least 100,000 Muslims have been made homeless in the past two years by violent attacks, and hundreds if not thousands have been killed, along with a much smaller number of Buddhists. Left unchecked, rising ethnic hatred and increasing attacks could push the country into a terrible period of ethnic cleansing, similar to what happened in the Balkans in the early 1990s. Myanmarhas had a long history of xenophobia and inter-ethnic tensions, exacerbated by the army’s oppressive five-decade rule over the country. Outside North Korea, Myanmar was until 2010 probably the most closed nation in the world. In that year, the army began a transition to a civilian government, holding elections that helped create a civilian parliament and formally renouncing its control of the presidency. Still, Myanmar has witnessed enormous change in the past three years and, whatever his past, President Thein Sein has been genuinely interested in promoting reform. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) swept last year’s by-elections, the first truly fair elections in two decades. Parliament has become more than just a rubber stamp for the army and in the 2015 elections the NLD may well win a majority, which could theoretically put them in a position to run the country. But this rapid shift has, as in other former autocratic and diverse states, also unleashed severe tensions. The inter-religious violence began last year in Rakhine State, near the border with Bangladesh. The exact cause of the fighting remains unclear, but after rumors spread that several Muslim men had attacked Buddhist women, crowds of Buddhists began attacking areas of the state populated by Muslim Rohingya. Now the Myanmar government faces far broader unrest, killings that threaten to tear the country apart and completely undermine the recent economic and political reforms. Emboldened by the lack of action taken against marauders last year, Buddhist extremists have launched a national anti-Muslim campaign, led by nationalist monks. The campaign, called the 969 Movement (the name comes from Buddhist numerology), calls on Buddhists to avoid Muslim shops and properties and tacitly encourages evictions and even attacks. The movement’s followers encourage Buddhist shop-owners to put 969 stickers on their stores, identifying them as Buddhist-run, and have at times reportedly attacked Buddhist merchants for doing business with Muslims. One 969 leader, nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu, has given numerous interviews calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the country or worse. When he gives sermons, Wirathu now draws thousands of followers, like a nationalist rock star. In a much-covered speech in February, Wirathu told followers: "Once these evil Muslims have control, they will not let us practice our religion … If you buy from Muslim shops, your money doesn’t just stop there. It will eventually go towards destroying your race and religion." Some liberal commentators have compared the movement to neo-Nazis, and in March militant monks in the town of Meiktila carried swords and knives, watching over Muslims being force-marched out of the area. Violence has exploded across the country. Mobs of Buddhists, some with ties to the 969 Movement, have struck in the towns of Meiktila, Nay Pyi Taw, Bago and now outside Yangon, the largest city. Earlier this year in Meiktila, groups of men burnt Muslims’ homes and then attacked survivors, killing at least 40 people, including schoolchildren. Wirathu publicly praised these actions. Many of the mobs also appear to have ties to several long-standing paramilitary organizations that previously worked with the army to enforce military rule, according to several Myanmar rights activists. Police provide protection for U Wirathu as he travels, as if he were a state leader. Read more here.  

Over the past six months, the Buddhist-Muslim violence in Myanmar, which last year seemed confined to the western Rakhine (or Arakan) State, has exploded all over the country. The violence has spread to places in central Myanmar, like Okkan and Mktila, to the outskirts of Yangon, and even to towns in the northeast, like Lashio, with little history of inter-religious tension. The nationalist, xenophobic, fascistesque 969 Movement of the monk Ashin Wirathu appears to be gaining followers. The New York Times  recently reported that Wirathu’s sermons now are attracting thousands of followers, and that it is planning to set up school for Buddhist children across the country. In a further unsettling sign, the Myanmar government appears unwilling to back up its tough talk about the violence with any action that would honestly apportion blame to the people causing the unrest. This week, the security forces announced that they were arresting two Muslim women for supposedly creating the unrest in Okkan earlier this year, in which mobs of Buddhists attacked Muslim shops and homes. The Muslim women allegedly argued with a Buddhist monks in Okkan, setting of violence. Yet observers on the scene in Okkan and other sites of violence like Mktila noted that many of the Buddhist gangs appeared to be prepared in advance for any altercation, with plenty of arms, earth-moving machinery to dislodge Muslim homes, and petrol bombs for burning. In addition, human rights groups and Burmese activists have noted that many of the Buddhist mobs appear to have links to longstanding paramilitary groups in Myanmar, which in past worked with the army to maintain order and military rule. In Okkan, Lashio, and other towns, the authorities still have many Buddhist suspects in custody for their alleged roles in the violence. Yet as of now, almost no Buddhists have been charged, a situation similar to what happened last year, when only a tiny handful of Buddhists were charged for the massive violence against Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine State. The government needs to demonstrate even-handed behavior in its prosecutions in Okkan, Lashio, and Mktila, to avoid appearing that it is actually condoning the violence – and thus encouraging more attacks.

For decades, during the rule of the military junta, Myanmar’s numerous internal problems spilled over its borders, sewing chaos along the frontiers with India,Thailand,China, and Bangladesh. Myanmar’s narcotics producers flooded Thailand and other countries with methamphetamines and heroin, Myanmar’s numerous civil wars sent hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling into Thailand and Bangladesh and created a profitable cross-border illegal arms trade in India, and Myanmar’s combination of rape as a weapon of war and massive migration created some of the most virulent strains of HIV/AIDS in Asia, which then spread into China and Thailand. With the reforms in Myanmar since 2010, there has been considerable hope among the country’s neighbors that political change also would reduce the burdens Myanmar’s serious domestic problems placed on them. Thailand hopes to send back thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Myanmar migrants, and to be able to better cooperate with the Myanmar government in shutting down drug production in Myanmar’s wild northeast.  China hopes that the cease-fire between the Kachin Independence Army and the Myanmar government – seemingly the most stable cease-fire with the KIA in decades – will decrease migration into China and keep China from having to play a larger role in the KIA-Myanmar dispute. Overall, the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has hoped that, with Myanmar no longer a pariah, it will be easier for the group to reach consensus on regional issues, and ASEAN will be able to punch at a higher weight internationally. Yet in some ways, the reverse of these aspirations is happening. The cease-fire in Kachin State is a clear step forward. But Myanmar’s inter-religious violence, which seemed confined to Rakhine State last year, now is spreading across the country, even to places, such as Lashio in Shan State, in which there have been few Muslim-Buddhist clashes in modern history and where there are few Muslims living anyway. And now the violence is spreading to other countries in the region, sucking them into Myanmar’s battles; they already are being sucked in by the outflow of Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State. In the past two weeks, at least eight people have been killed in Malaysia. Buddhist and Muslims from Myanmar have begun attacking each other in Kuala Lumpur. (There are hundreds of thousands of people from Myanmar living in Malaysia, mostly doing low-paying labor.) This comes just after violence between Myanmar Buddhist and Muslim refugees in Indonesia resulted in several deaths. Yet, just as on the issue of how to handle Rohingya refugees, on the broader problem ofMyanmar’s spiraling inter-religious conflict, ASEAN is almost nowhere to be seen. Other than Indonesia, most ASEAN members have not been proactive in trying to help Myanmar tamp down tensions, and the region has no coherent plan for addressing the Rohingya “boat people” turning up in Thailand, Malaysia, and elsewhere.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Chinese buy into America’s pork market. Chinese meat giant Shuanghui Group announced that it plans to acquire Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, for $4.7 billion. Both companies would benefit from the deal: Shuanghui would gain a steady and safe supply of pork while Smithfield would gain entry into the expansive Chinese market. If approved—the deal still needs to face the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) process, which assesses national security risks—it would be the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date. The deal is driven by higher demand for pork in China, where a burgeoning middle-class is spending more on meat products. Some American critics are concerned about Shuanghui’s poor food safety record; in 2011, the company was found to have sold pork laced with clenbuterol, a banned veterinary drug. The deal is expected to pass the CFIUS review, though it may face additional scrutiny from Congress and the American public—recall that public pressure forced Chinese oil giant CNOOC to withdraw an $18 billion bid for Unocal in 2005. 2. Donilon visits China. White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon visited China two weeks ahead of a summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama in California. Donilon met with several senior Chinese leaders, including President Xi and Vice Premier Wang Yang. He also met with Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Fan Changlong to discuss closer military-to-military ties between the two countries, especially in international peacekeeping, fighting piracy, and disaster relief. The informal two-day summit between the two presidents will begin on June 7; this ChinaFile discussion, which includes CFR’s Elizabeth Economy, gives a good indication of what to expect (hint: trust, not treaties). 3. Hagel makes his first trip to Asia as Pentagon chief. U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel traveled to Singapore on Friday to attend the Shangri-la Dialogue, an annual Asia-Pacific security conference. In his first trip to the region, Secretary Hagel reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to the pivot to Asia despite severe budget cuts and is expected to address cybersecurity in his speech on Saturday. The secretary will meet informally with Chinese officials over the weekend as well, though Beijing only sent mid-level military officials to the conference to express its displeasure at Washington’s robust security presence in the region. 4. Violence continues in Myanmar. The northern city of Lashio was the site of more religious clashes between Muslims and Buddhists this week. The latest violence began when a Buddhist woman was set on fire by a Muslim man at a gas station, sparking riots. One Muslim man was killed, a mosque and other buildings were burned down, and five Buddhists were wounded. Authorities quickly deployed security forces to stem the violence. Myanmar’s government has been ridiculed in the recent past for its inability or unwillingness to confront Buddhist mobs. 5. China expresses interest in TPP. A Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman stated that China “will analyze the pros and cons as well as the possibility of joining” the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In the past, the United States has welcomed interest from other countries, including China. The other eleven nations of the TPP approved Japan’s entry into negotiations in April, hoping to conclude talks by the end of 2013. ASEAN, with support from China, recently began a separate trade agreement with fifteen other Asian countries, called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Negotiations for RCEP are slated to conclude by the end of 2015. Bonus: Graffiti outrage leads to soul-searching for Chinese tourists. Chinese netizens were outraged after seeing a photo of graffiti scrawled on the 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple in Egypt. The graffiti read “Ding Jinhao was here” in Chinese; the perpetrator was a fifteen-year-old Chinese tourist.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Li wraps up first foreign trip to India and Pakistan. Li Keqiang finished his first foreign trip as Chinese premier, where he visited India and Pakistan. The trip came only weeks after tensions had mounted between China and India over a Chinese military incursion into an Indian-controlled disputed border region in the Himalayas. Li was eager to focus on economic talks, but the governments continue to be wary of each other. Li then spent several days in Pakistan, where he offered assistance to end an energy crisis that has led to major power cuts throughout the country. Chinese state media highlighted China and Pakistan’s enduring “all-weather friendship and strategic partnership.” China has always been a staunch ally of Pakistan and suspicious of India, but choosing India as the site of Li’s first visit was a small step towards easing tensions between the two giants. 2. Obama welcomes Myanmar’s Thein Sein to the White House. President U Thein Sein’s visit to the Oval Office was the first by a Myanmar’s head of state in nearly fifty years, and President Obama praised Sein for “moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform.” However, some experts, including CFR’s Josh Kurlantzick, fear that the United States has been too quick to embrace the new Myanmar, particularly in light of recent violence by Buddhist monks and others against Myanmar’s Muslim minority. The Obama administration must be careful not jump the gun; Kurlantzick argues that though Myanmar has taken important steps toward democratization, the United States should use its newfound influence to push for an end to the ethnic and religious attacks. 3. North Korean envoy visits Beijing. Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, a top military official and confidante of Kim Jong-un, met with a number of senior Chinese officials this week in Beijing in hopes of mending fraying relations between the two historic allies. His visit included a meeting with President Xi Jinping, to whom Vice Marshal Choe handed a letter written by Kim. According to state media, Xi was blunt in his response: “The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and lasting peace on the peninsula is what the people want and also the trend of the times.” The envoy reportedly stated that North Korea “is willing to accept the suggestion of the Chinese side and launch dialogue with all relevant parties.” 4. Abenomics to the rescue. After decades of stagnated growth, Japan might finally be in the midst of an economic revival, thanks to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies. “Abenomics” calls for “three arrows”—monetary easing, government spending, and economic reforms—that have all been tried in the past but never with the current level of coordination and breadth. Consumers are splurging at expensive restaurants and shopping malls across Japan. Not everyone is optimistic, though—many caution that Japan’s bureaucracy and rigid labor market cannot be easily reformed, and Abe has yet to make the most difficult changes. Ending deflation could also spur investors to demand a higher risk premium for holding government bonds, making the market more volatile. Certain sectors of the economy have become more volatile already—Japan’s stock market dropped 7.3 percent on Thursday from an all-time high, before regaining somewhat on Friday. Some analysts blame the drop on weak Chinese manufacturing data and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony before Congress that the Fed might slow its monetary policy. 5. Malaysia arrests opposition activists. The Malaysian government arrested three major opposition leaders and one student amidst disputes over the results of last month’s election. Activists have been staging large protests since the May 5 election, in which the ruling National Front party took 60 percent of parliamentary seats despite only winning 47 percent of the popular vote, thanks to gerrymandered districts. The four men will be charged under Malaysia’s Sedition Act, a colonial-era law that allows the detention of people trying to overthrow the government, which Prime Minister Najib Razak has promised to abolish. Bonus: Global Times claims American Indians descended from Hunanese: Du Gangjian, dean of Hunan University Law School, made a startling “discovery” recently following a trip to study Indian tribes in the United States—some people of China’s Hunan Province might have been ancestors of American Indians. “The history textbooks should be rewritten,” he stated.

On Monday, May 20, Thein Sein visited the White House, the first president of Myanmar to receive the honor in nearly fifty years. In his historic meeting, President Obama lavishly praised Thein Sein’s leadership “in moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform,” before discussing joint projects that U.S. assistance will focus on in Myanmar, such as improving agriculture. Pleased, Thein Sein replied, “ I will take this opportunity to reiterate that Myanmar and I will continue to … move forward so that we will have—we can build a new democratic state—a new Myanmar...” While the country has taken important steps toward democratization, its opening has also unleashed dangerous forces that have led to scores of violent attacks against Myanmar’s Muslim minority, which make up about 4 percent of the country’s sixty million people. The attacks are destabilizing the country and creating the possibility of nationwide violence, upsetting Myanmar’s fragile transition and creating instability in the middle of the most important region in the world for the United States. (Already, militants in Indonesia, angry at the attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, allegedly tried to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, a plot foiled by Indonesian security forces.) As Reuters has reported: “In an echo of what happened in the Balkans after the fall of communist Yugoslavia, the loosening of authoritarian control in Myanmar is giving freer rein to ethnic hatred.” In a new piece on Foreign Policy, I analyze why the U.S. rapprochement with Myanmar has moved too quickly, and discuss Myanmar’s serious problems of interethnic violence. Read it here.

Next week, Myanmar President Thein Sein will arrive in Washington, DC, for a historic visit and meeting with President Obama. It will be the first visit by a Myanmar president to the United States in nearly fifty years. Only three years earlier, nearly every top Myanmar leader had been barred from entering the United States (and most other leading democracies) due to sanctions on the country’s military-ruled government and on nearly all exports to and imports from the country. U.S. congresspeople regularly castigated Myanmar as one of the most tyrannical societies on earth, and when former president George W. Bush found himself in a room in the mid-2000s, at an Asian summit, with Myanmar’s then-leader, he essentially refused to even acknowledge the other man’s presence. Now, the situation had reversed itself so rapidly that many longtime Myanmar-watchers in Washington cannot even keep track of the changes. In these days before the visit, Myanmar is being portrayed positively by nearly every American official. While once American policymakers had blasted Myanmar and its government as a tyranny, now they paint it as a model of emerging democratization, a potential bright spot in a world where democracy has regressed for the past seven years, according to global monitoring group Freedom House. Yet as this incredibly well-researched new Reuters piece shows, Myanmar actually is poised on the abyss of implosion. A new kind of apartheid against Muslims is being instituted across the country, Reuters reports, leading to growing interreligious and interethnic violence. In some cases, this violence may be encouraged, or at least tolerated, by the state security forces, as Human Rights Watch showed in its own report last month. Will any of these serious, dangerous challenges be brought up during what is expected to be a triumphant visit by Thein Sein? Will President Obama even mention the exploding violence in Myanmar while the president is here? Don’t count on it.

On April 22, at a packed, black-tie ceremony in New York City, the Myanmar president, represented by minister Aung Min, accepted an award from the respected global NGO International Crisis Group for the "pursuit of peace." The award, given annually by the group, is meant to honor someone who promotes change and reform, and helps end violent conflicts, like the ones that have ranged along Myanmar’s borderlands for decades. Over the past three years, since Myanmar began its transition from one of the most repressive military regimes in the world to a civilian government, such honorifics—both for civilian President U Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, freed from house arrest and able to travel the world—have become common. While only three years ago, nearly every leading democracy maintained strict sanctions on Myanmar, and portrayed the country as an isolated land run by a thuggish regime, now foreign donors, investors, and officials are rushing into the country and portraying Myanmar as the next giant emerging market and example of democratic change. In its annual report on human rights, released last week, the U.S. State Department noted, "Burma [the old name for Myanmar] continued to take significant steps in a historic transition toward democracy … its democratic transition, if successful and fully implemented, could serve as an example for other closed societies." Yet neither the cartoonish portrayals of Myanmar in the past nor today’s idyllic pictures of Myanmar’s future are correct. While the country has taken important steps towards democracy, its opening also has unleashed dangerous forces that, in recent months, have led to scores of violent attacks against Myanmar’s Muslim minority. Overall, at least 100,000 Muslims have been made homeless in the past two years by violent attacks on them and their homes, and hundreds if not thousands have been killed. Left unchecked, with Myanmar attempting to make the transition to democracy from one of the most repressive regimes on Earth, this rising ethnic hatred and attacks could turn the country into at twenty-first century version of post-Cold War Yugoslavia. Read more of my new piece on Myanmar’s challenges here.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Earthquake kills scores, injures thousands in China. A massive earthquake in Ya’an, Sichuan, on Saturday left at least 193 dead, 25 missing, and 12,300 injured. Beijing poured one billion RMB into earthquake relief, but hundreds of victims still protested, claiming they had no shelter or food. Though devastating, the earthquake pales in comparison to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed 70,000. Activists in Hong Kong struck down a proposal to donate $13 million to aid victims, saying that most aid during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was misused. A 2009 Tsinghua University study claims that 80 percent of earthquake relief funds in 2008 went to government officials as “extra revenue.” The state-backed Red Cross Society of China, which has been singled out for corruption by netizens in the past, has received fewer donations thus far, as the public is increasingly turning to private organizations. 2. Japan reignites passions over World War II shrine. Taro Aso, Japan’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, and another 168 parliamentary members visited the Yasukuni Shrine to honor Japanese war dead, who include fourteen of the country’s Class A war criminals. Soon after, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe implied that Japanese actions during World War II couldn’t necessarily be labeled an ‘invasion,’ saying, “things that happened between nations will look different depending on which side you view them from." In response, South Korea’s Foreign Minister canceled a planned trip to Japan, and South Korean officials summoned the Japanese ambassador to lodge a formal complaint. On the mainland, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that "we feel it is in essence a denial of Japan’s history of militarist invasion." The visit furthers already fraught tensions between China and Japan over disputed islands in the South China Sea; it could also make it more difficult for Japan and South Korea to cooperate on a unified response to North Korea’s recent actions. 3. Twenty-one killed in Xinjiang violence. Fifteen police officers and civilian officials and six suspected gangsters were killed in a clash the western province of Xinjiang on Tuesday. The incident is the deadliest in the remote Muslim-dominated province since ethnic clashes in 2009. Chinese officials claim that the incident was the result of a “premeditated, violent act of terror,” and the Global Times says the group "was working on an elaborate attack plan and was involved in extreme religious activities." Uighur activist groups in exile dispute that accusation, asserting that violence broke out when Chinese forces shot and killed a young Uighur during a raid. 4. Human rights groups issue report on Myanmar. New York-based Human Rights Watch released a 153-page report describing attacks against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar as "crimes against humanity" and "ethnic cleansing." The violence has left tens of thousands of Rohingya homeless and over 200 dead in 2012, with government officials and Buddhist religious leaders sometimes supporting the attackers, according to the report. Despite the report, the European Union voted to lift all economic sanctions on Myanmar save the arms embargo, which will last at least another year; the following day, President Thein Sein’s government released ninety-three political prisoners. Myanmar is set to become chair of ASEAN in 2014. 5. Border incident strains China-India relations. Indian media reports that a Chinese People’s Liberation Army platoon of fifty soldiers crossed into Ladakh, a region next to Kashmir, and pitched tents ten kilometers into the Indian-claimed territory. Indian troops have been dispatched to the area in response. Beijing disputed the reports and played down the event, saying "India and China are in close in communication to resolve the differences over the issue." The two countries are holding talks to resolve the dispute, which some speculate was instigated by India’s construction of a road along the disputed Line of Actual Control. Bird flu update: the H7N9 strain of avian influenza has infected 108 people and led to twenty-three deaths in China in the last two months. A fifty-three year old Taiwanese man was diagnosed with first case of bird flu outside of the mainland this week and was likely infected while in Suzhou for work. Bonus: Miss Twilight Zone. It is already a well-known fact that South Korea has one of the highest rates of plastic surgery per capita. But things may have finally gone too far: blogs across Asia have pointed out that this year’s Miss Daegu contestants all look eerily similar.

This week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a detailed, and devastating, report on abuses against Muslim Rohingyas in western Myanmar’s Rakhine (also known as Arakan) State. The report claims that the most heinous of all crimes—crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing—were committed against Rohingya last year. It conclusively shows that, contrary to the Myanmar government’s claims that the violence against Rohingya last year erupted spontaneously, monks and local political parties had been agitating for ethnic cleansing against Rohingya well in advance of last year’s violence, in some cases with local government complicity. It also reveals that once the violence started, local security forces in Rakhine State did little to stop the burning of mosques, evictions of Muslims, and killings of Muslims. In some cases, HRW shows, the security forces actively participated in the orgy of violence and then rounded up almost only Rohingya, while leaving Buddhist perpetrators untouched. Even now, it finds, in villages in Rakhine State where Rohingya have not been forced to flee, they are still being subjected to draconian restrictions by local officials and security forces. HRW probably released the report this week because they wanted to time it to a decision being made by the European Union on whether or not to lift nearly all remaining sanctions on Myanmar. The decision was supposed to be released this week, and indeed it was. Unfortunately, HRW’s report seems to have little impact on the EU—or on any other Western democracies, which have shifted 180 degrees, going from viewing Myanmar’s government as nothing but thugs to viewing it as unwaveringly set on reform. The EU still went ahead and lifted most sanctions. Still, HRW shows that, contrary to this new view, Myanmar still faces enormous hurdles, and the government is hardly comprised of simply technocrats and reformers.

Over the past three years, the Arab uprisings have created the idea that the climate, internationally, for democracy and human rights has been improving. As I write in my new book Democracy in Retreat, the Arab uprisings have been essentially canceled out by regression, over the past ten years, in parts of South and Southeast Asia, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Africa. Many other reports have come to similar conclusions, including Freedom House’s annual report and the new Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) study of global democracy, released earlier this month. Now the U.S. Department of State weighs in. Its annual country reports on human rights are necessarily more politicized than Freedom House or the EIU—there is lobbying inside the State Department about the reports that never would happen at a nongovernmental reporter, and it is loath to condemn some of the United States’ closest allies. Still, its report notes similar trends as Freedom House and my book. Globally, civil society, the lifeblood of democracy, is being challenged more than ever, the report states. “Increased headwinds buffeted civil society in 2012, as governments continued to repress or attack the means by which individuals can organize, assemble, or demand better performance from their rulers,” it notes in the overview of the report. “From Iran to Venezuela, crackdowns on civil society included new laws impeding or preventing freedoms of expression, assembly, association and religion; heightened restrictions on organizations receiving funding from abroad; and the killing, harassment, and arrest of political, human rights, and labor activists.” Meanwhile, although reforms in Myanmar and some Arab countries appear promising, other once-promising young democracies like Sri Lanka, Kenya, Hungary, and many others continue to stagnate or backslide toward repression. Even in the Arab world, retrenchment by autocrats and cynicism by populaces about democratic governance already threatens hard-fought gains. And while I think it is highly doubtful that the change is Myanmar is due much to the “sustained U.S. and international pressure to reform [there]” that the report offers credit to, it is true that the country has witnessed dramatic shifts since 2010. Still, the possibility of Myanmar disintegrating into a failing state remains just as high as it prospering into a stable democracy.

On the CFR site, I have an expert brief up on the surge in ethnic and religious unrest in Myanmar. You can read the expert brief here. The anger seems to be building, despite some efforts by the government, Muslim leaders, and Buddhist leaders to cool tensions. (Aung San Suu Kyi, who had said virtually nothing about the violence for two weeks, did finally step forward and say that Myanmar needs to promote a stronger rule of law to prevent future violent outbreaks, a somewhat mealy-mouthed response.) One of the leading militant monks—a phrase that just sounds bizarre—this week gave an interview to the Irrawaddy in which he was essentially unrepentant about the attacks on Muslims. Other militant Buddhist leaders have been similarly unrepentant, and I would not be surprised to see a new wave of attacks after the quiet of Burmese New Year. It seems that the security thus far are primarily going to blame Muslims for the violence, having now arrested and charged the Muslim owners of a gold shop in Meiktila without doing much to investigate Buddhists involved in the violence there. In thinking about the role of foreign donors and investors in Myanmar, and how they could help reduce the violence, I had several other prescriptions beyond the expert brief. For one, donors should more thoroughly scrutinize the backgrounds of people who come to the numerous new mediation and peace-building efforts in the country that are designed to facilitate better interethnic and interreligious relations. Not a few times, religious leaders involved in these efforts have now turned out to be some of the same ones promoting violence, which delegitimizes the entire mediation/peace-building efforts. Second, as donors did with some success in Indonesia, major donors to Myanmar should shift away from military-military cooperation to focusing on rebuilding the Myanmar police force, including creating entirely new, effective units trained in the latest methods of nonviolent crowd control. Far too much time has been spent by U.S. diplomats and officials from other Western countries now engaging with Myanmar on military-military cooperation; the military is critical to the transition, but at this point close cooperation is not practical and risks supporting the most recalcitrant members of the armed forces. Instead, creating a better police force will reduce the power of the military and avoid the need for military-dominated martial law in conflict areas. This new police force should necessarily include recruits drawn from all of Myanmar’s main religions and ethnic groups. Finally, donors and investors are going to have to be more vigilant about where their funds go, to avoid perceptions that money is being directed primarily to Burman-dominated areas.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. China’s economy seems a little shakier. A surge in bad-credit loans within the country has China trying to clean up liquidity without slowing growth. China’s plethora of bad loans and unsustainable levels of debt has led Fitch to downgrade China’s yuan-dominated debt from AA- to A+. It is the first time since 1999 that China’s sovereign credit rating was cut. Part of the reasoning for the downgrade was low average incomes, poor standards of governance, and a rapid expansion of credit. Progress on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands… sort of. Japan and Taiwan agreed to allow Taiwanese fisherman access to Japanese-administered water near the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. After seventeen years of negotiations, the accord allows Taiwan to fish within twelve miles of the islands. China is "extremely concerned" about the fishery agreement, fearing that the deal grants Taiwan nation-like status and that Japan and Taiwan will cooperate further in the East China Sea. In unrelated maritime news, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the navy’s South Sea fleet in Sanya in the largest display of military strength since he took office in March. The visit came after Xi met with fishermen who work in disputed areas of the South China Sea. Kerry visits South Korea. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry began his first official visit to Asia as Washington’s top diplomat; his first stop was Seoul, where he asserted that “North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power.” His visit comes as a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded, with "moderate confidence," that North Korea now has the capability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to be delivered by a ballistic missile. Meanwhile, Pyongyang continued its bellicose rhetoric and is likely to test-fire a missile in the near future as the country prepares to celebrate founder Kim Il-sung’s birthday on Monday. Bird flu scare continues. Another person has died from the H7N9 bird flu virus, bringing the total number of deaths to eleven. A total of 40 people have been infected by the virus thus far. And a study by Chinese researchers on the first three patients to contract H7N9 is doing little to allay fears; it paints a grim portrait of the virus’ effects on the human body. Though many have praised China’s transparency and response to the virus, Caijing has reported that officials have detained at least thirteen people for spreading rumors about H7N9. Myanmar begins auctioning oil and gas exploration rights. For the first time since the junta took power, Myanmar opened bidding for thirty offshore oil and gas blocks for exploration for foreign companies. Oil and gas make up 34 percent of Myanmar’s exports and is expected to be a major contributor to growth as the country opens its economy to foreign investment. Gas will begin flowing to China through a new pipeline beginning next month, and an oil pipeline will begin operating next year. Bonus: ’Django’ rechained in China. The Hollywood hit Django Unchained was mysteriously pulled from theaters in China on opening day. Officials in Beijing claimed the film was pulled for unspecified technical reasons; some speculate that censors were offended by nudity and excessive violence in the film.

In recent weeks, the Buddhist-Muslim violence that last year seemed mostly confined to Rakhine State has been spreading across Myanmar, even entering Yangon and other large cities. Muslim leaders in some parts of the country are warning Myanmar’s Muslims not to leave their homes, while many mosques and shops owned by Muslims have shut their doors for now. The danger is that, in the vacuum created by the end of Myanmar’s highly repressive state three years ago—and abetted by a climate of hateful speech and xenophobia on Myanmar’s mushrooming Internet—these episodes of interreligious and interethnic violence are going to expand, consuming the country in chaotic violence before it has time to build democratic institutions and a capable police force. In a new CFR Expert Brief, I analyze Myanmar’s rising ethnic violence and offer prescriptions for cooling today’s violence. Read it here.