Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha delivers his speech during the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit on the sidelines of the 33rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related meetings in Singapore, 13 November 2018. Singapore is hosting the 33rd ASEAN Summit and Related Meetings under the theme ‘Resilient and Innovative’ this year. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

THAILAND has proposed to host the first Asean Summit of the year in June instead of April when Bangkok chairs the group in 2019, as the country is worried about a delay in the next general election, sources said yesterday.

It is an obligation of the chair country to host two summit meetings of its leaders, one limited only to 10 members early in the year and another one with partners later in the year.

While the Thai Election Commission has denied the possibility of delaying the election tentatively scheduled for February 24, there is the possibility of the poll being held any time between February and May.

People take pictures with Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha (C-R) during the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit on the sidelines of the 33rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related meetings in Singapore, 13 November 2018. Singapore is hosting the 33rd ASEAN Summit and Related Meetings under the theme ‘Resilient and Innovative’ this year. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

Timing the first Asean Summit during the Thai chairmanship for June would be rational in case the election was delayed until May. That would leave sufficient time for the new government after taking office, an official said on condition of anonymity.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who has made a commitment to the international community to hold an election almost every time he has travelled abroad, avoided any mention of the election while delivering his speech at the Asean business forum in Singapore. “It is a great honour for Thailand to assume the chairmanship of Asean in 2019 after Singapore,” he said in his keynote speech in Thai on the second and final day of the Asean Business and Investment Summit.

“I give you my word that Thailand will continue to push for connectivity among Asean members in both the public and private sectors in order to strengthen businesses and investments in Asean, making Asean an outstanding destination for trade and investment for the global business community,” he added.

Leaders of 10 Asean members, together with counterparts from Asia and the Pacific, gathered in the city-state to discuss a wide range of regional and global issues, including the Rakhine crisis, the South China Sea conflict, the situation in the Korean Peninsula as well as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) regional integration scheme.

The leaders of the group yesterday explored the possibilities of their involvement in the repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to the strife-torn Rakhine state, but as of press time there remained no clear solution on the matter.

Under the agreement reached at the end of October between Bangladesh and Myanmar, 485 Rohingya families – a total of 2,260 people – are to be returned to Myanmar starting on November 15. Myanmar has said that it will process 150 returnees per day.

The Asean members stressed the need to have voluntary repatriation and wanted Myanmar – a bloc member – to address the root cause of the issue. The group wanted to have a mechanism to deal with the Rakhine crisis with participation of past, current and future chairs of the group, as well as other concerned countries.

Unless the group can reach a consensus on the solution, Thailand as the next chair must carry on the mission, an Asean official close to the matter said.

Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi delivers her keynote speech at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit on the sidelines of the 33rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related meetings at  in Singapore, 12 November 2018. Singapore is hosting the 33rd ASEAN Summit and Related Meetings under the theme ‘Resilient and Innovative’ this year. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was in Singapore for the summit, made no public statements on the Asean proposal, but a source said Myanmar badly needed an Asean hand to cope with the Rakhine crisis.

“We need to solve the problem within the regional framework, before it can be brought to the United Nations Security Council,” an Asean official said.

More than 700,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled from violence in Rakhine since August last year when militant groups attacked security outposts, prompting a disproportionate reaction framed as a “clearance operation” by the Myanmar military.

Investigations conducted by the United Nations and many others including NGOs and media found signs of ethnic cleansing and atrocities against Rohingya, and the UN human rights body called for referring the case of “genocide” to the Internal Criminal Court or other international tribunals.

As the next chair, Thailand will need to carry on negotiations on the RCEP as Asean and the six partners from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand are unlikely to reach substantial conclusions on various disputed issues, including chapters on competitive policy, during the summit this week.

Launched in 2012, the RCEP negotiations have faced slow progress due to the differences in the stages of economic development of the members.

“The vessel is now lying immobile in deeper water,” the head of the Navy’s rescue operation, Havard Mathiesen, told reporters.

A modern ship weighing around 5,000 tonnes, the KNM Helge Ingstad took on water after colliding with the Maltese oil tanker early Thursday in the Hjeltefjord near Bergen.

The Norwegian frigate “KNM Helge Ingstad” is seen partly under water in the sea near Bergen, western Norway, on November 13, 2018. – The frigate capsized after collision with a tank ship �Sola TS� on November 8, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

    The accident, the cause of which has yet to be determined, injured eight of the 137 people on board the frigate, which was returning from NATO’s Trident Juncture 18 exercises.

The tanker, the Sola TS, suffered only minor damage.

The KNM Helge Ingstad had until Tuesday been partially submerged as it rested on underwater rocks, which its crew had driven it up on in order to try to prevent the ship from sinking.

But the cables holding it in place broke overnight Monday to Tuesday, and the ship sank further under the water.

Only the top of its mast and a small part of its stern were visible above water on Tuesday, television footage showed.

The Norwegian Navy said it was now considering ways to raise the vessel, the military’s chief of staff, Admiral Nils Andreas Stensones, said.

“It’s very hard for a navy to lose a vessel,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian Coastal Administration said it had cleaned up some 13 cubic meters of diesel that spilled in the accident.

Speaking at a business forum on the sidelines of the Asean summit here, Suu Kyi referred to the late Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew who once said, when the city state was newly independent, that he would spend 20 years to catch up to Myanmar.

“So, I have to say now, we should not wait for 20 years to catch up with Singapore. I hope you will help us to catch up with Singapore,” said Suu Kyi who is State Counsellor.

The current government has taken multiple measures to reform the economy and create an investor friendly environment since taking office after the 2016 election, she said.

“The 12-point national economic policy which aims to sustain economic stability in our country, the development that is inclusive and people centred,” she said, “that’s of course in line with Asean values as well”.

The new investment law promulgated in October 2016 has created better conditions for investment and to bring the economy in line with international and regional agreements, she noted.

The law contains a number of provisions that encourage responsible investment and support investors to do business with transparency and simplified procedures, she said.

“We are very concerned with responsible business because Myanmar was under an authoritarian system for more than half a century, so responsibility is something that many people are unaware of,” she said.

“We want to encourage responsible business and business best- practices – not just for the stake of investing but also to educate our people, who do not have enough experience of business at the scale that we hope will take place in Myanmar today,” Suu Kyi said.

With the new company law that came into force in August, together with an electronic registration system, companies now find it is quicker and easier to do business in Myanmar, she said.

As of September, over 14,000 companies have registered via the on-line platform and over 4,000 are newly operating, she said.

Myanmar Investment Committee has established simple, clear and predictable standard operation procedures and boasts a single-window system to facilitate investment, she added.

In this new economic environment, the Thilawa Special Economic Zone is a model of successful cooperation between the public and private sectors, she said.

“I’m happy to be able to claim the Thilawa SEZ has become a success in a very short time, receiving total investments of $1.4 billion (Bt46.3 billion) from various countries, including the US, Germany, Japan, China, Thailand and Singapore,” she said.

Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said her government must develop economically for the sake of bridging domestic gaps between 14 states and regions in the country.

“We have to think about a political aspect as well as an economic one. For example, we cannot always invest where it just looks lucrative for us in the material sense. Sometimes we have to invest for the sake of bringing people closer together for the sake of political equality and harmony,” she said.

It was the latest in a string of awards the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner lost since Myanmar’s military drove 720,000 Rohingya out of the Buddhist majority country in what the United Nations has called an act of genocide.

The London-based global human rights organisation said it was revoking the Ambassador of Conscience Award it gave Suu Kyi in 2009 while she was still under house arrest.

“Today, we are profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights,” Amnesty International chief Kumi Naidoo said in a letter to Suu Kyi released by the group.

“Amnesty International cannot justify your continued status as a recipient of the Ambassador of Conscience award and so with great sadness we are hereby withdrawing it from you.”

Amnesty said it informed the 73-year-old of the decision on Sunday. She has so far issued no public response.

Fallen icon

Suu Kyi was globally hailed as a freedom fighter who stood up to her country’s feared military junta while spending 15 years under house arrest.

Her plight received added attention when she was visited by Hillary Clinton when the two-time US presidential candidate was still Secretary of State in 2011.

Suu Kyi then reaffirmed her committment to working with the United States to bring democracy to her country of around 50 million people.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party swept to power in a 2015 landslide that brought hope of Myanmar correcting injustices inflicted over 50 years of brutal military rule.

But her tenure has been marred by a failure to speak up for Rohingya Muslims. Her government is also fighting an uphill struggle against corruption and local conflicts.

Amnesty said it believes thousands of Rohingyas were killed in Myanmar’s western Rakhine province since the campaign began August 2017.

Many more are thought to have been either tortured and raped.

Myanmar has justified the military’s actions as necessary to combat terrorism.

Amnesty conceded that the civilian government Suu Kyi informally heads does not directly control the powerful security services.

But it accused her of standing up for the crimes and “obstructing international investigations into abuses”.

It added that human rights campaigners and journalists continued to be detained and intimidated by the government since her party’s victory.

Suu Kyi was stripped of her honourary Canadian citizenship over her failure to speak up for the Rohingyas last month.

She has also lost numerous smaller awards from individual universities and local and regional governments.

Authorities plan to begin returning Rohingya refugees, who have fled what the UN has called ethnic cleansing, to the Buddhist majority country from Thursday.

But the prospect has created panic in the camps, prompting some families who were due to be among the first to be repatriated to flee, according to community leaders.

“The authorities repeatedly tried to motivate the ones on the returning refugee list to go back. But instead, they were intimidated and fled to other camps,” said Nur Islam, from Jamtoli refugee camp.

More than 720,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar’s western Rakhine state in a military crackdown from August last year, bringing with them stories of murders, rapes and torture.

Some 2,260 Rohingya Muslims had been scheduled to leave the Bangladesh border post in the southeastern Cox’s Bazar district in the first repatriations from Thursday under the voluntary scheme.

But Nur Islam said the plan has created “massive confusion and fear” among the Rohingya and many were unwilling to return to Rakhine unless they were guaranteed citizenship and other rights.

An AFP correspondent was able to speak to three families who said they were due to leave this week.

“We are truly disturbed by the entire issue. As the day is coming closer, our tension is rising,” Mohammad Khaleque, a Rohingya refugee told AFP.

He said he his family were fleeing their camp for another makeshift Rohingya settlement in Cox’s Bazar, in an effort to avoid being forcibly repatriated.

“I don’t see a future for my family if we’re forcibly sent back home right now without confirming that we would get full Myanmar citizenship. That’s why I took my family out of the camp and to another one to live with my relatives. We don’t want to go back like this,” he said.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, who received a list from the Bangladesh government on Monday to assess whether the refugees wanted to go back to Myanmar voluntarily, said the start date of November 15 was an “ambitious plan”.

UNHCR senior spokesman Chris Melzer said “logistical problems” needed to be solved first.

“This is the matter of the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar. Although we still think that the conditions are not conducive now for the refugees to return in Myanmar,” he told AFP.

The UN assessment may take at least two more days, according to both UN and Bangladesh officials, which may delay repatriation.

Bangladesh refugee commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said the country was ready to start returning the refugees to two centres at the border.

An AFP team visited both the centres. One appeared complete while the construction of the second was “over 80 percent” finished, according to builders.

A Bangladeshi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted that the Rohingya refugees were not “mentally ready” for returning.

“They often say to us they would rather die here in the (Bangladeshi) camps than to go back and embrace the harrowing pain they have already experienced,” he said.