Southeast Asia | Council on Foreign Relations

Southeast Asia

The Trump Administration Can Make the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Idea Work in Southeast Asia—With Vietnam as a Model

For many Southeast Asian states, the Trump White House’s new strategy for the region, the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept, is a hard idea to sell—at least right now. The strategy vows to promote a rules-based security and economic order in Asia, while also encouraging closer cooperation among regional U.S. partners. But the concept has been questioned by even close U.S. partners like Singapore, which has not yet expressed clear support for the idea. Many Southeast Asian states fear looking like they are building a coalition against China. But others simply appear unready to sign up for an idea at a time when the White House has sent multiple worrying signals to Southeast Asia. The White House’s trade strategy, for instance, has at times targeted Southeast Asian states. In democracies like Indonesia and Malaysia, U.S. indifference to human rights alienates some local leaders. Overall, the administration’s erratic approach to policymaking has undermined Southeast Asians’ confidence in the United States’ president. Due to the White House’s nationalist tone and inconsistent approach to Southeast Asia, some Southeast Asian states have begun to accept China’s growing regional power. Still, some Southeast Asian states fear aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), worry about Beijing’s approach to the South China Sea, and resent Chinese influence in their domestic politics. Many Southeast Asian states remain uneasy with the idea of China becoming the region’s preeminent power. For the Trump administration to restore Southeast Asian states’ trust in the United States as an indispensable external actor, and to convince them to sign onto the Free and Open Indo-Pacific idea, it needs to show that tough policies are not just designed to favor the United States but also can benefit Southeast Asia. It can do so in Vietnam. For more on how it can do so, see my new Diplomat article, from which this blog is adapted.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick November 14, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

NLD Fares Poorly in By-Elections, Showing Its Diminishing Popularity Among Ethnic Minorities

In by-elections held in Myanmar over last weekend, Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) (at least, ruling the civilian portion of the government), won seven of the thirteen seats up for grabs, losing several seats that had been held by NLD politicians. The NLD did take most of the seats contested in central Myanmar, an area dominated by ethnic Burmans. Taking just more than half the seats open in the by-election was a significant drop from the 2015 national elections, when the NLD won about 85 percent of the seats in the lower house of the Myanmar parliament. The shift signifies several potential trends, which will be watched closely in the run-up to the 2020 Myanmar national elections. For one, popular sentiment may be moving against the NLD overall. The government has done little to improve the Myanmar economy, offering relatively incoherent economic plans and presiding over continuing severe inequality. Suu Kyi's popular image has been dented international by the massive rights abuses in Rakhine State, and her willingness to stand up for the Myanmar army, although it is unclear whether those actions would have hurt her with ethnic Burman voters. Still, these actions make her seem indecisive and ineffective, damaging her political brand. Voter turnout was low in several of the by-elections, possibly suggesting overall dissatisfaction with the government and the NLD for failing to right the economy, improve the rule of law, and make good on promised peace deals, among other challenges. Worse for the NLD, the seats lost were mostly in ethnic minority areas, where popular sentiment appears to be swinging hard against Suu Kyi and her party. That many ethnic minority voters would be souring on the NLD is not surprising. Under the Suu Kyi government, the military has actually expanded its battles against many ethnic minority insurgent groups, and peace deals that would affect ethnic minority areas in the north and northeast have gained little traction. Ethnic parties are combining forces, and may continue to do so in the 2020 elections, making the NLD's road to a lower house majority harder. The NLD has time to revive its declining fortunes, and Suu Kyi remains the central figure in Myanmar civilian politics. But these trends are potentially ominous for the NLD for the 2020 election. According to AFP, “political analyst Maung Maung Soe told AFP that the low voter turnout in most of these constituencies hurt the NLD's showing, and voter apathy could really impact them in the next election in 2020—adding that in comparison, the military-aligned USDP has unwavering support.” This is an astute observation. A significant increase in voter apathy could pave the way for the military's favored party, itself bolstered by the popularity, among Burmans, of the military's brutal actions in Rakhine, to make major gains in 2020.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick November 5, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s Populism: On the Rise, But Different From Populism in Other Regions

While populism is sweeping through Europe and parts of the Americas it is also making gains in Southeast Asia. The region’s autocrat-leaning populists—those who have already ruled and those who are attempting to win power—use similar strategies: positioning themselves as outsiders who can solve problems where elites have failed, offering brutal approaches to crime, targeting vulnerable groups within societies, and ultimately undermining democracy. Two of the region’s six biggest economies—the Philippines and Thailand—already have had autocratic-leaning populist leaders, and a third, Indonesia, could be run by a populist after presidential elections next year. The emergence of autocratic-leaning populism could further erode democracy and stability in a region that had, until the past decade, been growing freer. For more on how populism is expanding in Southeast Asia, and how Southeast Asian populism differs from its better-known peers in Europe and North America, see my new CFR Explainer.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick November 1, 2018 Asia Unbound

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s Populism Is Different but Also Dangerous

The region’s fast-growing but fragile democracies have been susceptible to strongmen and autocratic-leaning populists in recent years, propelled by concerns over inequality, crime, and dysfunctional governments.

In Brief by Joshua Kurlantzick November 1, 2018
Southeast Asia

Thailand’s Elections: Will the Military Stay in Charge?

On a visit to Japan earlier in October, Thai Prime Minister and junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha reportedly confirmed that Thailand would indeed hold elections early next year, between February and May 2019. According to a readout of a meeting between Prayuth and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Prayuth reportedly said that elections could be held as early as February—he had previously vowed to allow elections in February. The junta has now ruled for over four years, since seizing power in a coup in May 2014. But now, having laid the groundwork to diminish the power of elected politicians even after the vote, the military has stepped up plans to further dominate the kingdom even after the election, by running a pro-military party in the election, wooing other political parties in the race for the lower house of parliament, and even possibly by having former junta members run for top jobs. For more on how the election might play out, see my new World Politics Review article, from which this snippet is drawn.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick October 30, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Bolsonaro Ascendant II: More Lessons From Rodrigo Duterte’s Rise

Last week, following Jair Bolsonaro’s performance in the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, when bolson exceeded predictions and won 46 percent of the first round vote, this column examined how Bolsonaro actually had more in common with Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte than with many other populists who have run for office in Europe and North America in recent years. Bolsonaro now appears likely to win the presidency in the second round of the election; polls have him leading the other final round candidate, Fernando Haddad, by sixteen points. It seems almost impossible that Haddad would win, given that the second round is in less than two weeks, and Haddad trails by such a wide margin. Bolsonaro and Duterte come from different ideological backgrounds. Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has been on the far right for decades. The Philippine president has in the past called himself a socialist, and has in office promoted some left-leaning programs on issues like family planning. But both have an authoritarian populist style that promises tough action, simple solutions to problems, and a strongman who will fight crime and right the economy, ignoring democratic norms if needed. Both Duterte and Bolsonaro, like many autocratic-leaning populists who have gained power in the past decade, have emerged in relatively abnormal circumstances in their countries’ modern histories. (To be sure, when looked at over centuries, authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian rule is not an abnormal occurrence in either Brazil or the Philippines; the two states were autocracies in the mid-1980s.) In Brazil, a massive spike in violent crime and an economic downturn led to a curdling of popular support for mainstream parties and candidates, for instance, and paved the way for Bolsonaro’s breakthrough. And, like in many other instances of populists’ triumphs, Duterte built on his election and quickly gained enormous power over state institutions, even though he won the presidency with less than 50 percent of the total popular vote. Duterte has nonetheless gained dominant control over the lower house of parliament, and wields massive influence over the Supreme Court and Senate as well. He also has proven mostly invulnerable to public outrage over his abuses of norms and abusive language, policy missteps like his administration’s lack of preparation for the conflict in the Philippine south in 2017, questions over Duterte’s health, or other issues that might have been politically fatal scandals for other politicians. With Duterte’s reputation as a wild strongman baked into his political persona, scandal leaves little mark on him—just as scandal did not significantly harm the political fortunes of other autocratic-leaning populists like Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi or former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. So, like Duterte, Bolsonaro probably will be able to command vast power from day one, and expand his power base quickly—and his opponents will have more trouble combating him than they would another politician. Scandal, insulting public remarks—for which Bolsonaro is already known—these are unlikely to dent the public image of an autocratic-leaning populist. Indeed, as several authors have noted, autocratic-leaning populists often prove so politically enduring that they can make multiple comebacks from seeming political death. Autocratic populists become vulnerable only after years of public fatigue with their antics and endless crises, and/or when “normal” and major political challenges emerge, and their opponents can fight them on core issues, as Matthew Yglesias has noted, rather than battling about scandals. For Duterte, that could be the increasingly high price of rice, as well as rising inflation, although Duterte has amassed so much support in the legislature, and among the public, that he still looks likely to come out of the midterm elections next year relatively unscathed. For Berlusconi, the 2011 euro crisis was a leading factor that led to his ouster. But before normal politics could bring down an autocratic-leaning populist, they can rule for a very long time.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick October 15, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Bolsonaro Ascendant: The Similarities to Rodrigo Duterte

On Sunday, far-right Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro outperformed polls and won roughly 46 percent of the vote in the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, coming close to the 50 percent threshold that would have given him the victory outright. He will now face the second place finisher, Workers Party candidate Fernando Haddad, in a run-off in three weeks, one in which Bolsonaro will be heavily favored to win. Without a doubt, autocratic-leaning populism has made enormous strides globally in the past decade, in Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among other places, and right-leaning populists also have gained power in North America and Western Europe as well. But in many respects Bolsonaro most closely resembles a Southeast Asian populist, Rodrigo Duterte, even though the two men theoretically have different political ideologies. Duterte has always said that he came from a leftist political background—and indeed Duterte has passed some progressive policies in office, albeit while simultaneously undermining democratic institutions and norms—while Bolsonaro is an unabashed political conservative. For one, both men have appealed to citizens with promises of extreme responses to crime and corruption—Duterte’s war on drugs, for instance, which has involved condoning widespread extrajudicial killings of drug traffickers, drug users, and many people additionally who had no links to drugs at all. In Brazil, where the murder rate has reached a new high, Bolsonaro has promised to give the Brazilian police, already some of the most militarized in South America, wider rein to shoot at suspects, and has at least hinted at approving Duterte-style extrajudicial killings. He also has waxed nostalgic about Brazil’s years of dictatorship, and has suggested he would pack his cabinet with military men. Both also have taken advantage of the weaknesses, in-fighting, and graft of existing political parties, positioning themselves as outsiders who can bring radical change in a country where elites have lost the public trust, and where publics have soured on democracy itself, feeling that it has led to a lack of public security, has not addressed inequality, and has offered up politicians largely disconnected from many voters. In the Philippines, despite strong growth during the presidency of Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, and rising investment in the Philippines, inequality remained high, and Aquino was perceived by many voters as aloof. State institutions remained fragile or nonexistent, infuriating working class and middle class Filipinos. Meanwhile, in the months before Duterte was elected in 2016, other presidential candidates continued to fight each other rather than build an alliance against Duterte, who was elected in a multicandidate race where no one received 50 percent of the popular vote. Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has risen in the wake of massive corruption scandals involving prominent figures from both the Workers Party and other parties, including former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was the front-runner in this presidential campaign until he was jailed. Bolsonaro has positioned himself as a scourge of corruption, as a strongman who can solve deep and entrenched problems—though it is unclear whether he himself was totally clean in the past. He also has benefitted from Brazil’s severe economic decline in recent years, which has led to a spike in unemployment and fed a popular desire for any political alternative that can right the Brazilian economy. Like Duterte, Bolsonaro has benefitted from the adept use of social media, which allowed both men, as candidates, to amplify their messages and also sidestep the mainstream media. More than leaders in places like Poland and Hungary, too, Bolsonaro and Duterte thrive on brutal and misogynistic rhetoric, such as jokes about rape. They further utilize outlandish, insulting, crude remarks to shock the political system and political norms—a typical tactic of autocratic-leaning populists—test what actions they can get away with, and, not coincidentally, draw a continuous stream of media attention. A final lesson, too, to take from the Duterte era in the Philippines is that autocratic-leaning populists, such as Duterte, may make seemingly outlandish statements and promises on the campaign trail—but that voters should believe that these populists intend to at least attempt to carry out their plans. As mayor of Davao, Duterte allegedly oversaw widespread extrajudicial killings as a supposed means to combat crime, and on the campaign trail he essentially promised the war on drugs that he has overseen. Yet some analysts—and perhaps some voters too—played down Duterte’s seemingly extreme promises; but, in office, he has followed through on the drug war, and also on other campaign pledges.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick October 8, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Next Steps in Addressing the Rohingya Crisis?

Last month, the State Department released a report investigating violence against Rohingya in Rakhine State in western Myanmar. Although the report concluded that the violence was “extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents,” as CNN noted, the report did not contain a finding that the violence rose to the level of genocide. The report also notably was released with little fanfare, despite the fact that administration officials had widely publicized that the State Department was conducting this investigation, and that a United Nations report had already found that senior Myanmar military leaders should face justice for genocide. In addition, administration officials, especially UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and her office, had been vocal about Myanmar’s brutal treatment and the need for justice for Myanmar leaders involved in the Rakhine State massacres. The report, as Politico noted, had been anticipated by the rights community and many on Capitol Hill as possibly a pivotal moment in how Washington approaches the Rakhine crisis. If the report had contained a finding of genocide or crimes against humanity, it would have provided the intellectual framework for tougher action, both in Congress and in the executive branch, against senior Myanmar military leaders, including possibly armed forces commander Min Aung Hlaing. Without that finding, the next steps for addressing the Rohingya crisis, from a U.S. policy perspective, remain unclear. The State Department has noted that “the U.S. government has previously characterized the events described in the report as ‘ethnic cleansing,’” according to Politico, and vowed to address the sources and results of the conflict in Rakhine State. Still, the finding seemed a departure from the actual evidence presented in the report. Perhaps the White House does not want to issue a finding of genocide or crimes against humanity because it does not want to empower the International Criminal Court on any issues, including those related to Myanmar. Perhaps the report’s ultimate message, despite the evidence that pointed to genocide and/or crimes against humanity, reflected a realist view of what could actually be accomplished in pressuring Myanmar. Or it might have reflected concerns about triggering a process in which targeted sanctions would be applied to Min Aung Hlaing, and he eventually ran for president in the next Myanmar election and he wound up being the elected leader of a country. The United States then would have sanctions on Myanmar’s leader. Still, advocacy from Congress—and from Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, who has focused on the Rohingya issue—could possibly prod the White House to take tougher steps. In a hearing last week, Congressman Ed Royce and other leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee pressed the White House to reverse course and label the killing in Rakhine State a genocide. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime advocate for human rights in Myanmar, and ally of Aung San Suu Kyi, has so far deferred to the Myanmar civilian leader, claiming that she has no power to stop the military’s abuses. Yet he and other old allies of Myanmar’s civilian leader face mountains of evidence—mountains that are still growing—that Suu Kyi now has little interest in rights advocacy at all, and has not taken even most steps to constrain the armed forces—rather, she increasingly seems like their advocate. Besides ignoring or essentially defending the military’s actions in Myanmar, Suu Kyi has overseen a clampdown on press freedom, and appears publicly nonplussed at how her government treats reporters. At a certain point, it becomes impossible to deny that Suu Kyi has not used even the (somewhat) limited powers of her office to advocate for progress on rights and freedoms, and to no longer let old deference to her constrain policy toward Myanmar. On Myanmar, there is more the White House could do. In addition to a formal genocide finding, which would be a bright line echoing the UN finding, the White House could impose targeted sanctions against a wider array of senior military leaders, including the Myanmar commander in chief, who has not been named in the targeted U.S. sanctions that have been imposed so far.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick October 3, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Hello, Shadowlands: A Review

By Hunter Marston Over the last year, concerns about Southeast Asia’s increasingly powerful autocrats have dominated headlines and commentary about the region. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, though democratically elected, has imprisoned his critics, including even senators. Myanmar’s military has expelled hundreds of thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims through targeted violence, while the Thai junta has clung to power despite promises of elections to come. Meanwhile, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen this year won an unfree and unfair election in which the main opposition party was banned. Yet behind these headlines of creeping authoritarianism, Southeast Asian states often exhibit weak, centralized state power in many respects. Indeed, illegal economies in Southeast Asia, including narcotics, prostitution, and human trafficking, among other industries, thrive in the borderlands and frontier towns of Southeast Asia. Rather than imposing law and order, states are often either complicit in these crimes networks or lack the power to stop them. In his new book Hello, Shadowlands: Inside the Meth Fiefdoms, Rebel Hideouts and Bomb-Scarred Party Towns of Southeast Asia, Patrick Winn, Asia correspondent with Public Radio International and a veteran Southeast Asia journalist, analyzes the flourishing crime world on the periphery of state power in Southeast Asia (i.e., the “shadowlands”) and examines the “rational, complex actors” who engage in the sex and drug industries, among other illicit activities. Winn argues that these illegal economies flourish, in some place in Southeast Asia, due to the absence of powerful state institutions—but also that, where necessary, criminal networks cooperate with state authorities and security forces. Further facilitating these powerful networks, according to Winn, is the rising influence of Chinese authoritarianism and the declining power of the United States, the combination of which he sees as “a blessing for organized crime.” China’s enormous middle class, he argues, guarantees a steady stream of consumers with a rising demand for illicit exports, while the Chinese government’s preference for noninterference in neighbors’ internal affairs and disinterest in human rights dictate that Beijing will not restrict illegal trade flows. China’s expanding influence occurs as U.S. power recedes, and Southeast Asia is exhibiting a tilt toward authoritarian governance, although he notes that the United States’ approach to many of these illegal economies in Southeast Asia has often been ineffective in the past too. From the start, Winn offers vivid characters and a human dimension, making the book a compelling read. Winn’s first chapter, for instance, situates the reader in a den of methamphetamine addicts in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State, illustrating their addiction while also examining the broader reasons why the methamphetamine trade has flourished in northern and northeastern Myanmar. He moves on to focus on the lawlessness of Myanmar’s frontier towns, which facilitate a wide range of illegal trade. Winn illustrates how the flow of drugs and weapons persists outside the authority of Myanmar’s central authority, in areas controlled by ethnic Kachin militia for instance. Where the central government is present, it is unable or uninterested to enforce antidrug policies, while army officers who control key checkpoints often benefit from the drug trade by accepting bribes, and the military face allegations of a larger role in the drug trade. Winn next shifts his focus to the Philippines. Rather than just explore the drug war under President Rodrigo Duterte, Winn opts for a different angle. He tells the story of albularyo, herbal practitioners who take great risks to offer both actual drugs—albeit ones that are illegal in the Philippines and are brought in clandestinely, due to the government’s inability to police these shipments—that produce medical abortions, as well as folk remedies that supposedly induce abortions. Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, and the Catholic Church wields significant moral and political power in the country. The Duterte administration, which has pushed for broader access to birth control, has often clashed with the church, although Duterte has not pushed to legalize abortion. Facing desperate circumstances, albularyo remain popular among women with no legal access to abortion. Winn’s portrait of Karen, a woman barely making ends meet who seeks an herbal practitioner to prevent her fourth pregnancy, touches on both drug wars: the first on the modern meth trade; the other against the traditional healers who offer illicit medical abortions, many of which can be incredibly damaging to the health of the mother and child. During times where her income ran low, Karen started selling meth to make enough money to feed her children. When she heard of Duterte’s proposed amnesty for drug users and sellers who turned themselves in to authorities, she submitted her information to the government. But rather than a blanket pardon, those who took Duterte at his word learned that they were now on a list of targets for police and vigilantes enforcing the president’s drug war. Karen has narrowly dodged visitors to her home and is living on the run for fear of her life, unable to see her children. After examining how the North Korean regime uses restaurants across Southeast Asia to bring in hard currency for the totalitarian state, Winn’s tour of the growing “shadowlands” of Southeast Asia takes him to southern Thailand. In the deep south, near the Malaysian border, there is a significant sex industry—despite an ongoing separatist insurgency that often has directly targeted commercial sex workers, as well as soldiers, teachers, and anyone the insurgents see as somehow linked to or complicit in the Thai state. The insurgency, which dates back more than fifteen years in its current iteration, has killed more than 6,500 people in its current period. Insurgents often target bars and other sites in the southern border towns where sex workers operate. While prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand, many police are aware of and tolerate sex work taking place within certain bars because they are able to extract bribes. Police corruption and the heavy security presence of Thai armed forces in the south further inflame local resentment. In his afterword, Winn offers several policy recommendations designed to combat the growing illegal economy in various Southeast Asian states. These include: increase police officers’ salaries; decriminalize sex work; legalize narcotics (including meth); and create powerful anticorruption commissions to hold authorities to account and strengthen rule of law. Such commissions have demonstrated some notable results in Indonesia, for instance, whose corruption eradication commission has led to the arrest of high-profile politicians. Winn astutely points to inherent contradictions in US foreign policy that potentially facilitate illegal economies in Southeast Asia: spending billions on a global war on drugs while slashing overseas development assistance, for instance. Winn’s argument that Southeast Asian crime syndicates make rational choices and operate by certain codes of conduct holds up under scrutiny. But his broader geopolitical conclusions—that China’s rise is as preordained as the United States’ decline—come off as less supported by evidence. Winn is on firmer footing in his quest to understand the people he interviews in the shadowlands. His intimate portrait of the everyday criminals who skirt the law and live in the shadows adds an important human dimension to a still widely misunderstood domain of the global economy and Southeast Asia’s rapidly changing societies. Hunter Marston (@hmarston4) is a Washington, DC–based Southeast Asia analyst and coauthor of a chapter in the forthcoming volume Asia’s Quest for Balance: China's Rise and Balancing in the Indo-Pacific (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound October 2, 2018 Asia Unbound
Women and Women's Rights

Pushing for Political Parity: A Conversation With Mu Sochua

As one of the most prominent women in Cambodian politics, Mu Sochua has championed democratic values and human rights. Yet, in 2017 Sochua was forced to flee Cambodia amidst a government crackdown on opposition leaders and civil society. Though she is unable to return to Cambodia, Sochua has continued to fight for her country. Sochua discusses her experiences in government and how women’s political participation can advance reforms and gender equality. STONE: Good morning. Welcome. We’re so honored and thankful that all of you were able to join us today. Thank you so much. I want to introduce myself. My name is Meighan Stone. I’m a senior fellow here in the Women and Foreign Policy program at CFR, and previous to joining the team here was the president at the Malala Fund. So I worked with Malala Yousafzai the last three years. So I’m all the more honored to be accompanied by someone that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize today. Our mission here at the Women and Foreign Policy program is to analyze how elevating the status of women and girls around the world advances our U.S. foreign policy objectives. So to that end, this conversation is actually on the record today. I know many of our conversations at CFR have Chatham House rules. Today is not that day. We actually want you to engage fully. If you have one of these with you, I’m going to ask you to tweet. Don’t be afraid of Twitter. You can use the—I’m looking at you, Anne—thank you. She’s got her phone out, ready to go. You can take—you can take photos, you know, if there’s something that’s meaningful that you hear today. If you use the hashtag #CFRWomen—so #CFRWomen—our team can better find your comments and thoughts and retweet them and share them more widely. So please engage with us on social platforms. So for our program today, we’re going to be having a conversation with our speaker for the first thirty minutes, and then around 11:00 a.m. we’re excited to open it up to all of your questions, your thoughts, and your feedback. I want to start by just expressing some special gratitude to our friends who are joining us today from the Oslo Freedom Forum and from the Human Rights Foundation because they helped make today possible. If you want to raise your hands, I just want to say thank you to you for your partnership and for making today possible. (Applause.) They have an event here on Monday—the Oslo Freedom Forum does—with human rights activists from around the world. So if you want to join in, you can talk to them after today’s session. I know they would love to share information with you and warmly welcome you. So let’s get started. Today, we are so honored to welcome Mu Sochua for a conversation about her experiences in government and how women’s political participation can help advance both reforms and gender equality. We know that women are, woefully, underrepresented in politics around the world. Globally, we’re looking at just about twenty-three percent of parliamentarians and six percent of heads of state—hopefully, the U.S. can increase that percentage someday soon—and this is despite research that greater female political representation has been shown to positively affect not only policymaking but even budget measurements and impact in ways that benefit not only women but entire communities and countries. So we’re really humbled today to be joined by a trailblazer in women’s political leadership. One of the most prominent women in Cambodian politics, Sochua serves as the deputy leader of the Cambodian National Rescue Party and she has long championed democratic values and human rights. Yet, in 2017, she was forced to flee Cambodia amidst a government crackdown on opposition leaders and civil society who were resisting Prime Minister and strongman Hun Sen’s thirty-three-year rule. Though she is unable to return to Cambodia, Sochua has continued to fight for her country. She has dedicated her life to women’s rights and advancing democracy in Southeast Asia. As a daughter of disappeared Sino Khmer parents, Sochua spent most of her young adult life in exile here in the United States. When she returned to Cambodia in 1991, she founded Khemara, a nongovernmental organization focused on women’s empowerment. She went on to win a seat in parliament and she became the first minister for women’s affairs and for veterans’ affairs, and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. In 2014, she stepped down to become vice president of the National Rescue Party, Cambodia’s main opposition party. She’s currently traveling the world and she’s meeting with international leaders to call for action against government corruption. And so, bringing us to today, our discussion could not be more timely or important with all the evolving news out of Cambodia even this week. So on Monday we saw the release of National Rescue Party opposition leader Kem Sokha on bail a year after he was jailed on treason charges in September 2017 that were widely seen as politically motivated and to prevent him from challenging Hun Sen in elections. And as we know, a few months after his arrest, they completely dissolved the party and all of its senior members, including Sochua, are banned from political engagement for five years. Kem Sokha was released from jail at 3:00 a.m. on Monday near the border of Vietnam, officially citing his poor health. But lawyers and family members say that he will now be confined to a one-block—one-block—radius from his home and under constant court supervision. Under the terms of his release, he’s barred from political activities as well as contact with any colleagues including Sochua and any foreign nationals who are allegedly linked to his treason charges. So you said, Sochua, in some media engagement earlier today and yesterday that he is virtually under house arrest at this time. And then where is Prime Minister Hun Sen this week? Well, he spoke yesterday at the World Economic Forum regional meeting in Vietnam where he not only defended the fraudulent election but also went so far as to say that the violence against Rohingya Muslims in neighboring Burma was unfair criticism and that the government were political victims. So some sharp contrasts in approach to governance and human rights. So with all that background, we’re really thrilled to welcome today Ms. Sochua to share with us about her work and her role as a woman and political leader. So, Sochua, I want to just start with asking you about recent events. It’s been a really powerful and challenging few days. What does this release from jail mean for your party, for your movement, for your work here, and for your campaigning in exile? SOCHUA: Do I have to push here? STONE: No, it’s on. SOCHUA: It’s on. First of all, I wish to thank you all for allowing me to be with you at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is a very prestigious institution. It is a privilege, really, and an honor. It is at the moment in the life of democracy in Cambodia and it’s a moment as well for me to be in New York speaking on behalf of half of the country—of my people. Why do I say half? Because over three million voters in Cambodia voted for change in 2013, the parliamentary election where I won for the third time a seat in parliament, and in 2017, again, our party, the only opposition party, won forty-four percent of the vote. So the Cambodian people, especially the young people, who represent over—about seventy percent of the population—seventy percent of the population—under the age of thirty-five want change. Yes. What all of this means to us at this moment being in exile, democracy in Cambodia is dead after how many billions of money from the international community. STONE: Thank you. SOCHUA: This—and it has been an incredible journey for the democrats in Cambodia. When I say democrats, I don’t mean that Cambodia have—has Democrats and Republicans. No, I mean—I mean democrats in the sense of people who will, like here as well, anywhere in the world, who believe in the basic principle of the fundamental human rights and fundamental principle of democracy. What it means to us right now, and I put it in the context of women, the hardcore politics—I put it in the context of women and that’s why—and that’s how I entered politics in 1995 as a women’s rights activist, inspired by Hillary Clinton at the time, the First Lady of the United States, who spoke at the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women—that you have to have power and power to make changes for the lives of women. It has been a very difficult moment in my personal life, being in exile again. I’m no longer eighteen, as you can see, and then in my head I work and I live in four, five different time zones, depending on where politics call me to be. At this moment, all we want is to get Cambodia democracy back on track so that our women’s—our women’s lives are secured—the children of Cambodia, the women of Cambodia, the families in Cambodia. It is a nation that has been broken and we have been living in the legacy of the Khmer Rouge—the Khmer Rouge that killed over two million Cambodians, including my parents. That legacy continues to haunt us, and because it is haunting us that it makes the opposition party a very strong party because we represent the base—people at the base—the farmers, the workers, the local women, victims of many atrocities. So we are fine looking for solutions and we hope that the actions that have been taken inside Cambodia, outside with the—with the support of the international community, especially the United States, will lead to us going home soon. STONE: Thank you for sharing that. I know that the U.S. and the EU, even this morning, have been engaged in a variety of tactics—put pressure on Hun Sen’s regime. Let’s talk about your own entry into politics. You just talked about being exiled at the age of 18. So, you know, for much of your childhood and your young adulthood you lived here in the United States and then, you know, pursued education. You got degrees in psychology, in social work. You worked as a community organizer, and then you decide to return to Cambodia and then you decided to enter politics. What was that moment of decision? What made you decide to go home? What made you decide to pursue that work and how did that work as a social worker, as a community organizer, inform your political agenda for what you would fight for when you became a leader? SOCHUA: It has never been a decision. It was always—from the beginning when I left Cambodia, it was always the circumstances, politics—political circumstances that pushed me into making decisions for myself and for my people. And when I left Cambodia in ’72, it was either you stayed behind and lived with the communists or you are sent out for a better education, and, luckily, my mother, who had only three years of education, wanted her daughters to be educated. I remember very well growing up, when I was eight, probably, sitting next to my mother, who was trying how to read and write, learning the ABCs, and I was learning also, doing my homework. I was—I remember her very well taking us to the airport, but we didn’t know it was the last time. That was in ’72. And going back home was never a question in my mind. It was an obligation, and it’s, again, for me to be working and speaking on behalf of my people is an obligation. STONE: Thank you for sharing. That’s so powerful. I know that you’ve been committed a long time to this work. For six years, you worked with the U.N. to assist about a quarter million displaced Cambodians, you know, and to this day you’re working with international organizations and partners to try to bring pressure in this situation. How did that experience shape you, working with the U.N. with displaced Cambodians globally and what did you learn in that experience that you take into your work today? SOCHUA: I think each moment of my life has been a moment of—you add the chips and then you add more cement in the foundation, however painful it is. But you grow to be more open to the reality of the lives of the people. That’s why I went into social work at the UC Berkeley and psychology at San Francisco State, because I was working as a(n) interpreter for the first waves of Cambodian and refugees to the San Francisco Bay area. I was—I was not a refugee yet at the time. I was a student, and there were very few Cambodian students at the time. So I interpreted for them and I realized very, very quickly—it hit me that I am really one of them, and you have to—it’s a twenty-four-hour job because it stays in your heart and in your mind. But what is important is that they should not be treated as victims. They are not just refugees. They are human beings and they are survivors, and they need just a moment of peace so that they can put their lives back together, and that has taught me the fundamental issues of human rights, dignity, and value and the respect for that—those fundamental values and human rights. And the reason—and this is why, as a vice president of the only opposition in Cambodia, I speak for the women of Cambodia. I speak about the everyday lives of the women in Cambodia as well as I’m connected with the global issues of women. When I was minister, I focused very clearly on changing the Cambodian proverb that says men are gold, women are just a white piece of cloth. If it is men are gold, gold, you know, when it is dropped in mud, you can pick it up and you brush off the mud—it shines again. But a white piece of cloth, if it is stained, it’s stained forever. So as a minister, I was the first woman to be representing that ministry. It was headed by a man before. They couldn’t find a woman to head—to head the women’s ministry. We changed the proverb to men are gold but women are precious gems. So in that context of precious gems, I—we focused on a very—a key issue, which is the fundamental human rights of women. And then when we chose issues and we looked at the actual challenges for women—why are they losing their human rights and respect—and that is all because of the exposure to gender-based violence. That includes domestic violence, of course, human trafficking, HIV and AIDS, and that’s why we pushed again for a law, which is the domestic violence law, and which I pushed for the draft and it got passed. And then I always look at the reality—not just theory, not just policy, but mixing it all. So I would go to brothels. I would go to factories. I would go to demonstrations so that—to give the people whose life we’re talking about—to build trust with them and also to say, you know, what you are going through we need to know and we need to defend it, no matter who you are, because as a member of parliament or as a minister it is—I believe that I got more credibility by taking dossiers and dossiers to the parliament and say, listen, when we talk about gender-based violence, when we argue for this article, this law, we know what we are talking about. So it is that type of attitude that I have. So now when democracy in Cambodia is dead, we take the same attitude. Release the prisoners of conscience. I have been in jail and I don't want to go back to jail. That’s why I’m in exile. We had to be practical. As I get older, I get more practical. (Laughter.) I’ve become more practical and this time I refuse to be in jail. I am here speaking with you and I will continue on speaking again. And it may take years, but we have to tell the untold stories of the women back in Cambodia. STONE: Yes. Well, I’d love to talk about some of the concrete legal and legislative victories that you achieved in your time in government that you were just referencing. It’s a pretty impressive list. So you authored the domestic violence laws, you shared. You negotiated an agreement with Thailand to curtail sex trafficking. You launched a campaign to engage NGOs, law enforcement, and rural women in a national dialogue on women’s development, so an incredible agenda that had really significant legal and economic impacts. What were the barriers, you know, when you were trying to do that work in government? What were you facing in a daily way in terms of push back against, trying to put some of these really groundbreaking laws on the books? There must have been tremendous resistance. How did you go about the political work of bringing people together to support these laws and pass these laws for the first time? SOCHUA: I think being an activist, going into politics as an activist, has some plusses and some minuses. The plusses is that you speak with the reality. We have stories to tell, yeah, and you’re flexible. When there is a strike, when there is a protest and you are there, the people embrace you. They are—you’re part of them. However, it also—I remember very, very, very well before I went into exile the situation was very, very bad. One of the French official at the French embassy in Cambodia pulled me aside and say, madam, you have to stop being an activist—you represent a political party. It hit me. However, what does the party mean? And then I have to define what does the party mean if it is not the life of the people? But it teaches me that you have to find a balance. You have to find a balance. It also teaches us to—the word credibility, accountability, and transparency. All these words, I didn’t get it when I was an activist in the streets. I got it through politics and I—and our party demands that and that’s why we got forty-four percent and we represent half of the country because we put politics in a new—it’s not the old-style politics in Cambodia. We say to the dictator, Mr. Hun Sen, you can’t drag Cambodia back to the Khmer Rouge because, you know, today we have this social media and you can’t hide from it. The—what is—the challenges that I get personally because I’m a woman, because I’m educated, and they hold that against me—I’m educated in the West, especially in the United States—now because the opposition party—my leader—is in jail today and they dissolved my party—our party today is because Mr. Hun Sen accused us of creating a color revolution led by the United States. So being—and I have a U.S. citizen—I am a U.S. citizen. Therefore, it is always against us for bringing in, for brainwashing our people with the what’s human rights, what’s democracy; we were fine until the U.S. came in. Now, this type of language you know that it is the language of a dictator that is desperate to hang on to his power. So we have to continue to speak on—with the language of the people and put the word—what is transparency. They took—now Cambodia is signing billions of dollars of contract worth of billions of dollars with China, taking away millions of hectares of land from our fishermen, from our farmers. What does it mean—the word transparency mean to a farmer, to a fisherman, to a woman who has no education whatsoever? She—but what you have to explain to her the government is signing this contract, taking your land, your crops, your boat, your river, giving it to China. You want to know what is in that contract. That’s called transparency. So what—but the challenge is that you have to be on the ground, and Mr. Hun Sen knows very well that transparency is a—actually, he does not want transparency or accountability. That’s why he had to dissolve us. He had to kick us out. He had to kick civil society out. He had to close down the major—in a week, all the radio stations—twenty radio stations were closed down, just like that. The death of democracy in Cambodia was delivered by a bullet train. It was done within a few months. All the work that we put on the ground for the past twenty years after the war was finished in—from February to—from a—for less than six months. STONE: Well, I’d love to go back to July of 2014. So this is when you and several other members of the Cambodian National Rescue Party were arrested. You were leading a series of nonviolent protests. So my favorite footage of you is in the park, giving speeches and rallying people. But after your arrest, we saw how important global support can be—networks of support—whether that’s governmental action, advocacy, political figures calling for your release. I know our colleagues at Human Rights Watch have done incredible work supporting your campaign as well and want to salute them for their efforts. So we saw this outpouring of support. Can you talk about what’s really helping now? Like, what can governments like the U.S. continue to do? What can other governments that are sympathetic do? What can activists and organizations do to support your work in country even as you’re in exile? SOCHUA: It’s a combination of the work inside Cambodia, the hope that we must—we continue to give to our people by using social media. I go live for ten minutes every day, giving a message to the people. About half of the country have access to a smart phone these days and, as I said, seventy percent of our populations are between the age of—under the age of thirty-five. Yeah. So keeping the hope alive, keeping the issues on the ground alive and reporting those issues, and the youth—although the people inside Cambodia cannot speak, but we follow the news and we speak on their behalf. Like, you know, what China is doing right now—they can’t say what China is doing right now, but we know what China is doing right now. And so keeping them alive and then saying to them—this morning I saw them, the farmers, on the—marching to the city and I saw, again, yesterday a group of young people who went to the ministry of education and protested and say, how come you drop us out from—there’s an exam for baccalaureate and it turned out that there was a technical error in the computer and the students went and protested. So my message to the young people, I say, see, protest—go talk to the minister, and they got—now they can pass the test. So it’s this type of very concrete action that we—people inside and people outside—us outside pull resources together. We have to be united—unity, solidarity, meaning, what do we want for Cambodia? Democracy. We want to—for a Cambodia that respects human rights, rule of law. We want to stop the issue of corruption. We want real, free, and fair elections, not sham elections. Just last July, a few months ago—July, August, September, so months ago—Mr. Hun Sen, through his sham election, his party collected all the 125 parliamentary seats. All. It’s now a one-party state and he is coming to the United States, to the U.N., on the 28th to introduce himself as the representative of the people of Cambodia. No. We have communities in the United States—Cambodian-Americans diaspora—in Australia as well, in Europe as well. We are protesting every single day, and thanks to the media, fighting—Mr. Hun Sen has his own media called Fresh News, or fake news—his Fresh News—fresh and fake news. So we, luckily, through—like today, through an independent international media—the global media—reporting on Cambodia is really, really key. Every single moment we can be on—Cambodia is on the global media, we rush to get there. Otherwise, the world will forget. It’s just another story. And Mr. Hun Sen is very clever. There is no blood in the streets of Cambodia. But there is not one single person who can be on the street in Cambodia without being arrested and being accused of being part of “color revolution” and we know the international community, the media, does not react until there’s blood in the streets. We don’t want blood in the streets. That’s why we are protesting, and then we have to be very, very focused in what we want. We want free and fair elections. We want a—the release of our leader, release of the prisoners of conscience, and we want Cambodia back on track. And the world community is—especially the United States is taking the lead at the world community to impose targeted sanctions on the officials of Cambodia—the government of Cambodia. For example, there is a ban and we are talking about—the United States is also—at the Senate is—it should be passed, hopefully, soon—the Magnitsky law—the Global Magnitsky law on Cambodia, and the EU this morning at their parliament just passed a resolution that called pretty much for whatever the world community is calling for, which is free and fair elections, back to—democracy in Cambodia must be put back. STONE: Well, I want to move to my final question for you. So if—everyone else in the room get ready with your question. We’re going to open it up in just a moment. So I want to fast forward to a hopeful moment to come in the future, which would be your return, so your return, going to Cambodia one day. What would be your agenda for—particularly for women if you were to return? What would you see or what would you envision helping to create that would ensure women’s political leadership, representation, that their rights would be protected, their contributions to furthering democracy in a new vision for Cambodia? What would be the agenda that you would think would be most important upon return home if you are so lucky to have that moment? SOCHUA: First, I have to go collect my suitcases. I don’t know where they are. (Laughter.) It would be an incredible victory for us and I believe it will happen, and I ask you to, please, write to your senators and say, pass the Magnitsky law on Cambodia. I ask you to, please, if you are—not just the United States but you—any government you are involved with, call those governments who will be speaking at the U.N. to raise the issue of Cambodia—why is Mr. Hun Sen representing Cambodia at the U.N.—he stole—he destroyed democracy. That’s at the global level. To the people, when we walk in—I say walk in—whether we fly in or we walk in across the border, I think it has to be a moment where the people come together en masse and show to Mr. Hun Sen it is not a few of these returnees coming back from exile. It is to prepare for the election. And for the women of Cambodia, who are always, always, on the front line at every single protest, is there’s the tribute to their courage, to the sacrifices they have made, and we need to say to our women, choose among them, especially the young ones, to take my place. Get into politics. Politics have to be defined by the action on the street. I watch also the movements in America—the #MeToo movement—and I always say, wow, how could we do #MeToo in Cambodia, too. Now, and every—when I was—when I’m really down, I look at the social rights movement in America. I read speeches of Nelson Mandela. But it’s really actually very few women—very few women in the world. We have Aung San Suu Kyi, but she is now tied to a really, really controversial issue, which is the Rohingya. Yeah. Women in the social movement today, you look at them and they are young people. Of my generation, of our generation, there’s very few, and the issues are different. Their fight is different because they have this access that we didn’t have. They have social media. I look at my—the young activist from Bolivia. Raise your hand. (Laughter.) You are next. Yes. So I think what is important is the support that these movements need, whether that is financial—they need financial support, like me. I’m trying to raise funds so that my colleagues who were put in jail, who are in jail, whose lives were destroyed, to put their lives back together. Those who were put in jail with me, they were not privileged to be protected with parliamentary immunity. They stayed back in jail, and they are—they have just been released last week, and every single family is destroyed. Every single family. There’s a case so painful of the wife who was gang raped more than once when her husband was inside and then forced to pay over $20,000 and the—her husband is back and called me and said, this is our life now. They have a child who is mentally disabled. They have to get out of Cambodia because those gangsters are after them. So this is reality, you know, and this reality they can’t talk about until we in—so we are not just a party. It’s a movement. So a political party needs to have this movement—connected with the movement and the movement needs support, whether it is your word, your letter, your tweets, whatever. But don’t leave us isolated. It’s not just our fight. The global democracy is in trouble—in real trouble anywhere in the world. This is what we need to say and that’s why I thank—again, I thank you for picking this topic today at the Council on Foreign Relations, giving Cambodia a chance to speak. But it’s not just about Cambodia. It’s about global democracy and women in global democracy. STONE: Powerful words. Thank you so much, Sochua. I know we are keen to open up the discussion to all of you. So, as you know, you can raise your placard and that’s how I know to call upon you. Please identify yourself. We welcome your brief questions and, again, we invite you to engage on Twitter. Again, the hashtag is #CFRWomen if you want to share any of our discussions today. So I see Lucy right in front of me, if you want to start us off. Q: Yeah. Lucy Komisar. I’m a journalist. Can you tell us how you got to the point where you got forty-four percent in an election. and is that the reason for the crackdown—the threat that was going up and up and up? The question is you seem to have done very well and then you got knocked down. So could you explain a little bit about that? SOCHUA: Yes. Forty-four percent didn’t come in a day nor a year. It took us twenty years—over twenty years. The leader of the opposition—the leaders of the opposition were a minister or human rights activist and we walked—we campaigned—we walked the campaign trail every single day for over twenty years, just listening to people, and then from that movement came the party and workers’ rights, human rights, women’s rights. We put it all together into a platform and at every single election we get more support because we speak so much about the issues. That’s how we got forty-four percent, and actually, we won the last election in 2013 but it was not given to us, and when we went back to the streets for six months. Then we got—then there was another election and again the people—again, we kept on walking the streets. We don’t have financial means, but we have the trust of the people. I think this is when a party is healthy. It’s not about the money, and when we run—well, we need the money but we run by walking the campaign trail and keeping the issues alive. Q: And that’s why he went after you? SOCHUA: We went—yes, and in the July election—the July election—we would have won for sure and take Cambodia to democracy. But it was clear Mr. Hun Sen knew that he would lose—he would have lost his power. And instead of just not letting us compete, if we—if we even had one day to compete we would have won. That’s why he had to go to the ruling through the Supreme Court to dissolve the party entirely, and we cannot go in and we are forbidden to conduct any political activity for five years. STONE: Thank you. I want to go to Khadija. It should be on. Q: Thank you so much. I actually—as you probably know, we have a primary today in New York and I was thinking that you should be on that ballot. (Laughter.) My question is about China and the role of China in strengthening the actual regime right now. Do you see any potential of influencing—from the outside influencing the Chinese government to at least allow a dialogue with the current regime instead of strengthening it for its own economic and, obviously, geopolitical benefits? Or do you think that China has gone too far into its own self-interest—that there is really no broker in the region to play that role? SOCHUA: China—wherever I go, I meet foreign ministers. They’ll say, China. I say, so China—so what—what about democracy—have you talked about democracy—you left democracy—you’ve let democracy down—because grassroots movements are not given the chance, and now grassroots movements are back. So it’s—this is about grassroots movements in my country as well. Every single community has to be empowered. Every single activist have to be trained in leadership and speaking on the—addressing, making that—taking that message very strongly, like the high school students in America after the traumatic event—the shooting. It is no longer—it is no longer the politics of the old party. Even within the old party, there has to be a renewal—a change within the party. Otherwise, China will be. You can’t kick out China. However, you can. Ask—you should ask yourself why you cannot kick out China. It’s because you hang on to the old power. It is the new power. It is—China cannot deal with the grassroots movement. China will work with any leader that is put into a position in leadership. Therefore, you need to have free and fair elections. Every single time there is free and fair election, no matter what level of elections, give the power to the people. And you look at the disasters. You look at the civil unrest. It’s all about old leaders not listening to what the youth are saying. But I am inspired by especially the female candidates in the primaries—that’s the way to go—coming out of nowhere but strongly holding on that fight, no matter what the fight is. Is there an issue? Take that issue all the way. And I think the world needs to be rejuvenated—rejuvenation. Yes. It has to come back to what’s the core issue—what are we fighting for—and it’s the same with the financial world. You take our money but you don’t—you cannot take our lives. We demand respect. We demand solutions with you. Otherwise, the world is in big trouble. Look at the EU. Look at the West. Europe—the anti-immigration—the right-wing European party is winning in Europe. That is scary—very scary. But we have to come down to the roots of the problem. STONE: All right. I’m going to try to get as many questions in as we can. I see a lot of placards. I’m going to go to Eason Jordan next. Q: First, thank you so much for your heroic, critically important work. You really inspire us. So you spoke of Hillary Clinton being an inspiration to you. Well, I’m sure you had not just her moral support but support from many other powerful people in the U.S. government in a previous era. So my question is, for the government in the United States that’s in place today, do you draw any inspiration or support from anyone within the U.S. government? SOCHUA: You know, the—again, it’s not the politics of America. But when we come in to America, the diaspora in America—the Cambodian diaspora in America—we go into—we go into the Congress, to the White House, and say, this is what we need. Help us. And we have been able to find some good friends of Cambodia, and, hopefully, I hear that President Trump will raise Cambodia issue at the U.N. How do we—how do we sell Cambodia to the U.S. administration? It’s more a challenge that we say to the administration—the U.S. administration as well as Congress—you talk about values. You talk about respect for human rights. Show it to us. We will fight, but stand with us. Somehow, so far, the United States is taking the lead in this international campaign to save Cambodia. How do we do it? Also, I think because of our determination we don’t have—we don’t put the United States politics into our politics because the United States is actually—if we put it in—bring the United States into our platform we’ll be in big trouble because Hun Sen is—wants exactly that. So we put human rights and democracy into our own context. STONE: Thank you. I want to go to Nina, right next to— Q: Thank you. Hi. My name is Nina Schwalbe. I’m a member of the Council and I worked in the camps on the border in the ’80s. And my question actually follows up on Khadija, relating to the role of Thailand, in fact, and how they have—kind of your perspective on their current relationship with Hun Sen as well as with your party and the extent to which they let you do organizing and work within, given the changes also over the past decade in Thailand. SOCHUA: Thailand is not our friend, although we are neighbors. But Thailand needs over—we have about 1.5 million Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand. Thailand needs cheap labor from Cambodia—very, very cheap labor. Thailand—the government of Thailand—the military government—has told us many times if you contact any political party in Thailand, you will be deported. We have very close—my colleagues are there. They can be deported every day, any day. If I—when I go to Thailand, I go under radar. I use my U.S. passport and I don’t connect with my colleagues because they are followed. Their apartments are raided every other day and the—Thailand has deported Cambodian refugees back to Cambodia—a few months ago, deported. So Thailand is not a safe place for us, politically speaking, because of the military regime. STONE: Thank you. I want to go to Michael. Q: Yeah. Hi. Michael Paller. I’m with the Open Society Foundations and I manage scholarship programs for Cambodian graduate students as well as fellowship programs for faculty members teaching in universities in Cambodia. And over the past three years, we’ve seen a pretty steady decline of applicants, especially women, from Cambodia and I was wondering if you had any insight or to think about how we can increase our pool of applicants there. SOCHUA: You do— Q: Yes. SOCHUA: —have candidates, yes? Q: We have—yeah, we have— SOCHUA: Yes. STONE: You could do some business here, I feel like. SOCHUA: We can do—(laughter)—exactly. I’m desperate. I’m desperate for—in fact, I have—I have connected with your colleague and said give scholarships to the students who were in jail and that just got released. They lost years. They want to come back—go back to school and they want to be safe, and they need to be safe, and especially for women we need to encourage them and say it is safe, because Hun Sen has made it so unsafe to be in politics, to be with any social movement, to be with America and open society. Yeah. So we have to say, again, it’s about human rights and democracy, and we need to pool—make that pool of students, of scholars, and scholarships very strong and build it up for the years to come. STONE: That’s great. Hopefully, you can speak after as well. We have about seven minutes left so I’m going to actually take a couple questions in a bunch and then have Sochua answer those together as a group. Why don’t we start, quickly, with Jonathan? Q: Hi. My name is Jonathan. I work for an organization that supports human rights activists in Cambodia so I’m not going to reveal the organization. But I wonder if you could speak to the future of the CNRP both inside and outside the country, and whether the CNRP is seeking any official recognition as an exiled government from democratic governments. Thank you very much and thanks for your comments. STONE: Thank you so much. I’m going to go over here to, I believe, John. If you want to share your question, briefly, and then we’ll get one last one. Q: Yes. I was in the Navy. We thought we might actually have a war with Cambodia and the—our warship was peopled by the U.K.’s forces. Thank God we didn’t have to do what we were prepared to do. But my question—you mentioned—what—can you tell us something about what our working-level people in the U.N. and elsewhere in the U.S. government—are they—how well informed are they and what, if anything, are they doing about the U.S. impact— STONE: Great. Q: —on your two groups? STONE: Thank you. And then, David, if you want to share your question. Q: Sure. Thanks. I was very struck by your comment that you’re continuing to deal with the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, and just for full disclosure, I spent a year as a secretary general’s special representative on the ECCC on the Khmer Rouge, trying to sort this problem out, back in—a decade ago. So my question is, really, if you might give a few words about the work of the ECCC and dealing with the legacy of the past—how effective that’s been. I have my own views, but I’d be very interested to hear yours. And Cambodia has, still, a strong civil society, which I think you represent very well. How do we engage or how does the civil society engage to address these legacies of the past? Because, as we know, without transitional justice and a number of other steps being taken, even if you move to the next step you’ve got a huge legacy to deal with. So I’d be very interested in your views on that. STONE: OK. Great. Thank you so much. I also want to recognize my colleagues from the Oslo Freedom Forum but I’m going to defer to the member questions, if that’s good. I asked them to ask questions if we were a silent room. But we’ve been very engaged today. So thank you for that. Why don’t we answer these three really wonderful questions? Jonathan had a very specific one talking about the knowledge, as well—from John—about the U.S. government officials, how informed are they. And then this very specific question at the end about the legacy of the Khmer Rouge. SOCHUA: There’s one thing you—we will not do—government in exile. No. We are the official representatives of the—of the people. We didn’t lose an election. We won an election. Show us that we do not represent the people. So if we go in, we now transform ourselves into a government in exile, that means the international community will get very, very confused—which government in exile? Our strength is that we represent the people of Cambodia—the forty-four percent. There are three million voters and more—that, strategically, if we go in as a government in exile, we’ll lose even the support of the people inside. We—the word—our party is called Rescue. It didn’t—we did not choose that word just like that. Cambodia needs to be rescued inside out from the legacy of the Khmer Rouge. How do we deal with the legacy of the Khmer Rouge? We have not—we never did. We didn’t deal with the legacy of the Khmer Rouge for the past thirty years, even though we had the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. You don't just put three people of the Khmer—top leadership of Khmer Rouge on trial while two—close to two million people were killed. It was genocide. So to undo that, there’s nothing but to rework this society, and the more you lose the time, you lose every single moment, every single day, you lose the inspiration, the aspiration, the hope of the people, and China will take over. That’s why civil society movements—that’s why your institutions, showing that in the—that outside of Cambodia people care about Cambodia and not just—we don’t just work with governments. It is important to work with civil society, with institutions—independent institutions, think tanks. We had to deal with ASEAN. It’s easy, actually, with the Western countries but with ASEAN, that has a tradition of noninterference, it is extremely difficult—extremely difficult, even with Japan or Malaysia that just got elected, after 61 years of fighting for democracy. John, you talk about the U.S. Now, earlier I spoke about Cambodia and the U.S. Now I’m going to talk about the U.S. in the world. I think it is really, really unfortunate for the U.S. to pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council. STONE: Mmm hmm. SOCHUA: You can’t do that. You devalue yourself. How can you go into the world, the global community, and be proud and speak about human rights and democracy? You can’t do that. I think I hear something about the International Criminal Court. They want to pull out as well. You can’t do that. You leave this huge space for China. China loves it. It’s not about the U.S. It’s about global democracy. It’s about the whole world, and I am really torn when I come to the U.S. to speak, whether I speak—this is being very honest, OK. (Laughter.) This is free will, right—free speech. I always—I always get—I turn my tongue around many, many times before I can speak, even though I’m not in Cambodia; I’m in the U.S. But you really—at the end of the day, it’s about five years, ten years, twenty years from now. Do you want the Nazis to come back? This is what’s happening, and what are we doing? If it is not about courage from every single world leader, and every single world leader who does not stand up for democracy and human rights, shame on them, and they should be shamed no matter who they are. As much as we need the United States to help Cambodia, but the quality of leadership, the courage of each world leader, has an impact on the world community, on global democracy, and then when we talk about it, all democracy, whatever politics, whatever, it comes down to what a woman has to face every single day—that she had to sell her body, her land—every single day. When does it stop? That’s the point. Sorry. I got carried away. (Laughter.) STONE: Powerful words. Please join me in thanking Sochua for her time today—for a powerful hour together. (Applause.) Sochua, are you willing to stay after for just a couple minutes if other people have questions? Great. Thank you for being so gracious about that. Thank you so much for voting with your feet and coming to Women and Foreign Policy programming here at CFR so we can keep bringing incredible speakers to you. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much. (END) This is an uncorrected transcript.

Event with Meighan Stone and Mu Sochua September 13, 2018 Women and Foreign Policy Program
Southeast Asia

Cambodian Politics Enters Its Post-Election Phase

Following July’s massive victory in unfree and unfair elections, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose ruling party took every seat in the lower house, appears to be adopting a time-tested strategy he has used repeatedly in the past. Before the election, Hun Sen’s government did virtually everything possible to ensure that the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) dominated the vote. A court banned the main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the two CNRP leaders, Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, were forced into exile and jailed, and the government cracked down on a broad swathe of civil society and independent media outlets. Before the vote, the government further forced a few remaining media outlets to limit their online coverage of the election, and, according to Human Rights Watch, the Cambodian security forces illegally took actions to essentially campaign for the ruling party. The July election appears to have ended Cambodia’s flirtation with some kind of hybrid regime, and the country now is fully a one-party state. The few small opposition parties that contested the election won no seats, and had little following. But, in the wake of the election, Hun Sen appears ready to try to co-opt some leading opposition members, while also offering gestures of goodwill that are probably designed to prevent leading democracies, which are considering imposing new sanctions on Cambodia, from going forward. Shortly after the election, Cambodia’s king, at the behest of Hun Sen, issued a royal pardon for fourteen CNRP members who had been under arrest for “insurrection” after trying to open a site in Phnom Penh for a protest. Two journalists who had worked for Radio Free Asia, and who had been held on espionage charges, also were released after the election, although they still could potentially be arrested again. Now, this week a Cambodian court released Kem Sokha from the remote prison where he had been held for a year, despite suffering from diabetes and reportedly being in worsening health. He has been moved to house arrest. As I have noted, this is a strategy Hun Sen has utilized before. Following 2013 elections, which the CNRP almost won, the CPP appeared conciliatory at first, and Hun Sen supposedly embraced a period of dialogue with the opposition. Such a strategy bought the CPP time, cooled some of the popular anger that led to the CNRP’s rise, and probably looked good to the world. Soon, however, Cambodian courts slapped Sam Rainsy with defamation charges, CNRP members were being arrested or otherwise harassed, and Kem Sokha was arrested for treason. But, in the period between 2013 and 2016, when the harassment of the opposition increased notably, Hun Sen was able to avoid international sanction, remain in power, and work to neutralize the CNRP. Hun Sen appears to be working from the same playbook these days, although his grip on Cambodia now is even firmer than it was after the 2013 elections. Still, he probably hopes to exploit gaps between democracies that might take harsher measures against Cambodia. (David Hutt has noted in Asia Times that the CPP also may not have wanted Kem Sokha to die in jail, which could have made him into a political martyr and rallied popular anger.) While the United States and European Union, among others, criticized the unfree July elections and are considering tougher steps, Japan, Australia, and many Southeast Asian states have been more reticent to criticize Hun Sen. Japan in particular, which sees Cambodia of great strategic importance, given Tokyo’s rivalry with Beijing over mainland Southeast Asia, has been willing to work closely with the CPP despite Hun Sen’s growing authoritarianism. Given this cracks in the international community, Hun Sen’s gambit might well pay off this time too.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick September 10, 2018 Asia Unbound
Human Rights

Human Rights Safeguards Take a Backseat in New Global Economics Institutions

As states struggle to balance commercial interests with the promotion of human rights, social safeguards in trade and loan agreements—often included at the insistence of Western countries—are increasingly under threat.

Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick and Guest Blogger for the Internationalist September 6, 2018 The Internationalist
Southeast Asia

Khaki Capital: The Political Economy of the Military in Southeast Asia—A Review

After taking power in a coup in 2014, Thailand’s military junta made multiple promises of how they would change the kingdom. They vowed to clean up corruption, which supposedly had spiked under the Yingluck and Thaksin Shinawatra governments, to reduce political tensions in a country that had seen nearly two decades of partisan fighting and literal street fighting, and to transform the Thai economy, which had been floundering due to political turmoil as well as deep problems in Thailand’s education system, infrastructure, and how state funding is allotted to various regions of the country. Yet over the past four years, Thailand’s military has badly undermined the idea that, after the coup, it would somehow be a neutral and wise economic manager, and would not mix business and politics. Instead, even in Thailand’s highly restricted current media environment, local press outlets have discovered that top army brass seem to be unusually wealthy—a problem highlighted by the fact that junta number two Prawit Wongsuwan was caught, in public, wearing vastly expensive luxury watches. Meanwhile, the junta has been accused of stacking certain Thai companies with junta cronies, of boosting defense budgets since the coup, and of making little progress on economic reform. But the fact that the Thai military is intricately involved in the kingdom’s economy should not come as a surprise to anyone following Thai politics. In reality, as the contributors to the important new volume Khaki Capital show, armed forces throughout Southeast Asia, including in Thailand, have been deeply involved in countries’ economies for decades, extracting massive amounts of funds from state budgets for the militaries and for individual military leaders, and using their political and military power to profit in a range of ways. For more of my review of Khaki Capital, see the new issue of the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick August 30, 2018 Asia Unbound
Asia

China’s BRI Projects in Southeast and South Asia: A Review of “High-Speed Empire”

Over the past year, Chinese officials reportedly have been surprised by how quickly the Trump administration has undermined U.S. influence in East Asia, creating a leadership void that could potentially be filled—by China. But even before Trump alienated many Asian partners with a mix of harsh trade rhetoric and a general disinterest in South and Southeast Asia, Beijing had launched a strategy to establish itself as the dominant power in its neighborhood. This strategy coincides with the rise of Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, and a man with a desire to make China, shall we say, great again. While the Xi administration appears to have global ambitions, China has made South and Southeast Asia its current top priorities. Its efforts there could become a template for how Beijing will expand its influence worldwide. For more on how China is utilizing BRI to expand its influence in South and Southeast Asia—and possibly failing as well—see my new review, from which this first paragraph is excerpted, in the Washington Monthly of Will Doig’s book High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia.

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick August 28, 2018 Asia Unbound
Southeast Asia

Duterte the Peacemaker?

By Richard Heydarian Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte recently signed the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), previously known as the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL). The signing marked a major milestone towards bringing about a measure of peace and prosperity to the Philippines’ troubled south, which has been racked by decades-long insurgencies fueled by separatist and Islamist grievances. Under the new law, the national government will facilitate the creation of a Bangsamoro (nation of Moros) autonomous area, in the south, without having the south secede from the country. The BOL is part of the historic 2014 peace agreement between the Benigno Aquino III administration, Duterte’s predecessor, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country’s largest insurgency group and the most powerful armed insurgents in the south. Ironically, it took Duterte, who has been portrayed by Aquino and many others as a reckless authoritarian-in-waiting, to finalize the key provisions of the peace agreement. Aquino failed to the pass the law due to widespread public and legislative opposition to it, after a massacre in early 2015, when several members of the MILF killed dozens of Philippine police special forces during a botched counterterror operation. Duterte, however, was the only major national leader to have openly backed the passage of the BBL in the post-Aquino era. Despite continued public skepticism that the Duterte administration would push the legislation through, the president finally certified the proposed law earlier this year, expending significant political capital to secure sufficient legislative support for the law, which is controversial among many Christian Filipinos, who are skeptical of granting autonomous to the south, with its large Muslim population. Depending on the result of a plebiscite scheduled later this year, the new autonomous region will cover most, if not all, of the Muslim-majority areas in Mindanao. By giving much of the country’s Muslim minority (there are Muslims in other parts of the Philippines, but most live in Mindanao and other parts of the south) greater socio-economic autonomy, the Philippine government hopes to stem religious and political grievances that have divided the country for centuries. For much of Philippine history, huge swaths of Mindanao, home to Muslim Moros, were largely controlled by local sultanates, which resisted Western colonial incursions, though Western powers progressively pushed into the sultanates’ traditional spheres of control. While much of the modern day Philippines adopted Christianity under Spain’s three centuries of colonial rule, the Moros largely held on to their traditions and religious beliefs. After the end of the nineteenth century, however, the Moros were reduced to a minority on their own home island, a process that began in the early era of U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines. This was achieved through a combination of systematic dispossession of their lands (with the enforcement of stricter private property laws at the expense of ancestral lands held by Muslim communities), military campaigns, and massive migration of impoverished Christian residents from the north to the fertile lands of Mindanao. In response to marginalization, which continued after the end of U.S. colonial rule and the onset of Philippine independence, and to perceived threats to Moros’ very existence, tens of thousands of Moros joined nationalist insurgent groups. Eventually, some also joined radical Islamist groups. Both types of insurgents challenged the legitimacy of the Christian-dominated Philippine state to rule the south. In recognition of what he has called a “historical justice” against Filipino Muslims, Duterte, the first president from Mindanao, promised to advocate for greater autonomy for Muslim-majority regions of the south. The BOL Duterte has launched now paves the way for demobilization of tens of thousands of armed rebels, namely from the MILF, who are expected to be reintegrated into new state institutions in the proposed autonomous southern region. The national government will retain control over, among other areas, law enforcement in the autonomous south. The local authorities, however, will enjoy significant latitude to determine their own local institutions. And under a new revenue sharing deal in the agreement, the Bangsamoro authorities are obliged to only remit a quarter of revenues generated in the south via taxes and other means of raising revenues to the national government. In other areas, provinces give 40 percent of revenues raised locally through taxes and other means to the national government. The path ahead, however, remains uncertain, largely due to deep divides among Moros, the depth of poverty and underdevelopment across Muslim-majority regions, and doubts over the ability of former rebels to lay down their arms and integrate with local politics and local institutions. For one, Duterte will have to secure the buy-in of the Tausug-dominated Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the former parent organization of the MILF, which controls the southern regions of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, smaller islands than Mindanao. The Tausug people, a maritime-oriented people in southern Mindanao, have been historical rivals of the land-based Maguindanao people in mainland Mindanao. The Tausug domination of the MNLF, which led the post-independence struggle for liberation of Moros in the 1960s onwards, alienated the Maguindanao members, who eventually broke away and created a more Islamist-oriented splinter faction, the MILF, in the 1980s. The split became final when the MNLF struck a peace agreement with the Philippine government in the 1990s. The MILF continued the fight separately, emerging as the main rebel group in the country over the past two decades. It remains to be seen if the Tausug leaders, particularly former MNLF leader Nur Misuari, will support the new Bangsamoro entity, which will be likely dominated by the rival Maguindanao tribal group, which formed the MILF. There is also the challenge of convincing more prosperous and diverse regions in Mindanao, like those in Cotabato, to join the new proposed political entity. Some regional leaders and warlords in these areas may prefer to stay under the jurisdiction of Manila rather than face the possible dominance of the MILF leadership in an autonomous southern region. According to surveys, in fact a majority of Filipinos nationally are still undecided about the autonomy deal, while many Mindanao residents remain skeptical about it as well. There is also a high chance that some of the critics of the BOL will question its constitutionality at the Supreme Court, raising concerns over its implications for the Philippines’ territorial integrity. Add to this the resilience of various radical groups, including several affiliated with the so-called Islamic State, which view the MILF leaders as apostates for compromising with the Christian government and have called for complete separation from Manila in favor of a Sharia-based society. Despite the magnitude of challenges ahead, the MILF leadership and the Duterte administration, however, are seemingly in firm agreement that the only way forward is to stay the course and push forward the peace deal. Returning to the decades-long armed conflict is, to them, apparently not an option. Richard Javad Heydarian is an academic, columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and author of Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy (Palgrave, 2018).

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound August 27, 2018 Asia Unbound