Asia-Pacific

Photo: The Bangladeshi migrants were part of a 75-strong group stuck onboard a tugboat for weeks before being taken to Tunisia. Photograph: Courtesy of Forum Tunisien pour les Droits Economiques et Sociaux. Source: The Guardian.

Tunisia Forces Bangladeshi Migrants to Return Home

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

New York (IDN) – A shipload of desperate Bangladeshi migrants was told to turn the boat around and go home by Tunisian officials or be deprived of food, water and medicines. The migrants, trapped on a merchant ship off Tunisia for three weeks, were sent back to their home country against their will, according to relatives.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental organization linked to the United Nations, said the Bangladeshis “wished to return home”.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 26 June 2019

Photo: Xi with the first lady during the Moscow Victory Day Parade on 9 May 2015. CC BY 4.0

President Xi of China Remains an Enigma

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Xi Jinping, president of China, remains an enigma. You watched him on television reviewing the dancing in Pyongyang in the company of Kim Jong-un and his face is near to expressionless when in repose. He doesn’t stand like an arrogant man and we recall that time when he went out to eat in a noodle cafe he joined the back of the queue. His face doesn’t look hard, as did Hitler’s or Stalin’s or Donald Trump’s and Boris Johnson’s do today.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 25 June 2019

Photos: A glimpse of the Borobodur festival. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne IDN | INPS

Borobodur in Indonesia has the Potential to Epitomise Religious Tolerance in Asia

By Kalinga Seneviratne

This article is the 33rd in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate. Click here for previous series.

SINGAPORE IDN) – Thousands of Indonesian Buddhists went on a 4 km procession from Mendut monastery to the historic Borobodur temple in Central Java to pay homage to the Buddha on Vesak day. The procession on May 18 passed a number of mosques with streets lined up with hundreds of local Muslims.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 13 June 2019

Photo: India's Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels, Gaitri Issar Kumar's keynote address on the 44th anniversary of the ACP Group of States. She presented a painting of the tree of life, painted in the traditional Indian way, which symbolizes the very essence and energy of life. Credit: ACP Press.

ACP States Are A Key Factor in India’s Extended 'Act East Policy

Viewpoint by Gaitri Issar Kumar

The following are extended excerpts from India's Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels, Gaitri Issar Kumar's keynote address on the 44th anniversary of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) Group of States. It was celebrated at the ACP House on June 7 in Brussels, which ACP Secretary-General Dr Patrick I Gomes described "the end of an era", with the ACP finding itself in the midst of reviewing many institutions that have shaped and marked it in the previous years.

: Ramesh Jaura; OPINION; 11 June 2019

Photo (l to r): President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping on November 30, 2018 at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks | cropped version)

China’s Meteoric Rise Revives ‘Yellow Peril’ in the U.S.

Viewpoint by Kishore Mahbubani

The writer is a Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the author of ‘Has the West Lost It?’ This analysis first appeared in EastAsiaForum on June 5, 2019 with the heading ‘A ‘yellow peril’ revival fuelling Western fears of China’s rise’.

SINGAPORE (IDN-INPS) – Do we arrive at geopolitical judgements from only cool, hard-headed, rational analysis? If emotions influence our judgements, are these conscious emotions or do they operate at the level of our subterranean subconscious? Any honest answer to these questions would admit that non-rational factors always play a role.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; OPINION; 10 June 2019

Photo: Screenshot of IISS Video of China’s defense chief Wei Fenghe addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue meeting in Singapore, June 2, 2019.

Beware the Early Warning Signs of Legitimising Repression of Minority Rights

Viewpoint by James M. Dorsey

James M. Dorsey – a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture – offered this viewpoint to IDN.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 03 June 2019

Asia-Pacific Failing on Achieving Global Development Goals

By Devinder Kumar

NEW DELHI | BANGKOK (IDN) – The leaders and senior government officials, attending the 75th Session of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) from May 27 to 31 in Bangkok, have called for efforts to advance equality and empowerment for over four billion people across the region and resolved to strengthen regional cooperation and partnerships towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The importance of this resolve is underlined by a new report published on May 28, which warns that if the region continues its current trajectory, it will not achieve any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The report reveals that for more than half the SDGs, progress has stagnated or is heading in the “wrong direction”.

: Devinder Kumar; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 31 May 2019

What Five Years of Modi Rule Mean for the Indian Democracy

Viewpoint by Ram Puniyani

This article is the seventh in a series of joint productions of South Asian Outlook and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate.

MUMBAI (IDN) – The result of 2019 Lok Sabha polls are out and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has come back to power, with BJP increasing its percentage of votes and the number of seats. This came as per the prediction of BJP leaders, particularly Amit Shah who stated before the results that BJP will cross the three hundred mark.

: Suresh Jaura; OPINION; 30 May 2019

Photo: Xi chairs leaders' roundtable of Belt and Road forum in in April 2019 in Beijing. Source: Xinhua News Agency

China's OBOR Promises a World Sans Hegemony

Viewpoint by Chandra Muzaffar

The writer, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

KUALA LUMPUR (IDN) – The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) also known as the One Belt One Road ( OBOR) project could well emerge as the obor ( the flame in Indonesian or Malay) that will blaze the trail in the evolution of a new epoch in history.

Chinese President Xi Jinping must have sensed its historical significance when he announced OBOR in 2013. Essentially an infrastructure development endeavor, it seeks to initiate and support the construction of roads, railways, ports and bridges in at least 65 other countries spanning four continents. With a commitment of over 900 billion U.S. dollars, OBOR is the biggest infrastructure development project ever undertaken in the history of our planet.

: Asia Editor; OPINION; 25 May 2019

Photo: Congress president Rahul Gandhi with his sister and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Credit: Outlook

Congress Should Dump Gandhi Family, Reinvent itself for Survival

Viewpoint by Shastri Ramachandaran

The Congress party has to reshape and sharpen itself for re-emerging as an instrument of public usefulness, writes in the Outlook Shastri Ramachandaran, a political and foreign affairs commentator, also for IDN-INPS. Views expressed are his own.

NEW DELHI (IDN-INPS) – Congress president Rahul Gandhi and, perhaps, his sister and party’s general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, have good reasons to step down from their official position in the party. It is irrelevant whether the Congress party failed Rahul, or the helmsman sunk the boat. In its present, vastly emaciated state what is relevant is creating conditions for the party’s revival.