Hundreds of gunmen flying black IS flags seized Marawi in May last year, triggering a five-month battle that claimed more than 1,100 lives, in a bid to establish a caliphate in the largely Catholic country.

Nasser Lomondot was arrested on Saturday in Manila, months after he fled the fighting in Marawi.

“He participated in the killing of innocent civilians and committed violence against female and child hostages,” regional military spokesman Major Ronald Suscano told reporters.

As government forces battled to wrest back control of Marawi, Lomondot directed a diversionary attack by pro-IS gunmen in the neighbouring town of Marantao, Suscano added.

“He was one of the key planners of the attack in Marantao town …while the firefight was still ongoing” in Marawi, Suscano said.

Lomondot was arrested with a second pro-IS suspect, Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde said in a statement.

The Philippine military warned last month that the remaining militants from Marawi have mustered a force of about 200 gunmen to launch a second attempt to put up a caliphate in the country’s south.

Duterte’s decision to snub the meeting comes after he said he would not cooperate with United Nations investigators looking into alleged extrajudicial killings during the narcotics crackdown, which has left thousands dead.

His spokesman Harry Roque confirmed that the outspoken leader would not join fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders for the March 17-18 summit in Sydney.

“Developments at home continue to require the president’s presence in the Philippines,” Roque told reporters.

Australia was among several countries to raise concern about the Philippine anti-drug war’s death toll at a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva last year.

Duterte was elected in 2016 on a promise to eradicate drugs and launched an unprecedented campaign in which police say they have killed more than 4,100 drug suspects who resisted arrest.

However rights groups estimate there have been more than 12,000 deaths in all, including people murdered by shadowy vigilante groups.

Duterte, who last week told police and soldiers not to cooperate with any probe, is also facing a preliminary examination by the International Criminal Court over alleged extrajudicial killings.

Roque said Duterte would send Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano as his representative to the summit, while the president attends the graduation ceremony of the Philippine Military Academy.

Duterte plans to use the event to speak to young officers about the fight against “modern-day terrorism” among other topics, Roque added.

Duterte is not the only ASEAN leader feeling the heat over his rights record.

Last month, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened to “shame” Australia and block the release of a joint statement at the March summit if he faces pressure over a political crackdown at home.

The strongman has been chastised by Western countries for taking a hammer to Cambodia’s democracy in recent months by dissolving the main opposition party, shuttering independent news outlets and pursuing critics in the courts.

Australia is a dialogue partner of ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The recovery effort has been slow as aid workers grapple with blocked roads and power outages to reach cut-off villages after the 7.5-magnitude quake struck on February 26 in the Pacific nation’s mountainous interior.

Terrified locals in the Southern Highlands, Western, Enga and Hela provinces have also had to deal with strong aftershocks, including two 6.0-magnitude tremors early Monday.

Compounding the fallout was an announcement Monday that the impoverished country’s biggest-ever development — the PNG LNG project operated by US energy giant ExxonMobil — will be offline for up to eight weeks as the quake-hit facilities undergo repairs.

“The death toll reported by the National Disaster Centre and disaster management teams on Friday is 67,” the PNG country head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Udaya Regmi told AFP from the capital Port Moresby.

“Around 143,000 people are affected and 17,000 people have been generally displaced because their homes are either fully or partially damaged and not in a condition to live in.”

No official government death toll has been released.

Regmi added that water and sanitation were major concerns for local communities, with relief workers unable to get bigger trucks carrying food through to some areas because of damage to roads by landslides.

Relief efforts are slowly being ramped up, with millions of dollars in aid pledged by the government, ExxonMobil and the Australian energy producers, Oil Search and Santos, involved in the gas project.

The Australian and New Zealand defence forces have began delivering aid, while the China Red Cross and Beijing have pledged financial assistance, according to the PNG Post-Courier.

Oil Search managing director Peter Botten, who travelled to the Highlands to survey the damage, said the impact “has been enormous, with many deaths in the region as well as the destruction of houses, schools, roads and bridges”.

“Many communities are without basic necessities, such as food, clean water, shelter and medical support.”

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said last week the shutdown of the gas plant would have a “huge impact” on the economy, which is heavily dependent on its natural resources.

ExxonMobil PNG managing director Andrew Barry said production at the US$19 billion project would be restored as quickly as possible, adding that it was an “unprecedented event for the country” and the firm.

During that period, the Asean bloc is likely to see national elections take place in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. Elsewhere in Asia, there will also be national elections in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and local elections in Taiwan and Bhutan.

These national elections are taking place amid the growth of populist politics, whether the UK’s Brexit, Spain’s Catalan independence movement or US President Donald Trump’s recent victory.

“Democracy is clearly under huge pressure. The political landscape is being redrawn everywhere, at least it seems,” said Pana Janviroj, executive director of Asia News Network.

The speakers will include Kingsley Abbott, senior international legal adviser, Southeast Asia, International Commission of Jurists; Assoc Professor Eugene Tan, Singapore Management University; Kobsak Chutikul, secretary-general, Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council; Nuttaputch Wonggreanthong, blogger, Thailand; Bhokin Bhalakula, politician, Thailand; and Gavin Bowring, analyst, Asia.

They will be joined by executive board members of Asia News Network (ANN), including Zaffar Abbas, editor-in-chief, Dawn, Pakistan; Mahfuz Anam, editor-in-chief, the Daily Star, Bangladesh; Ravindra Kumar, editor, The Statesman, India; and Endy Bayuni, senior editor, the Jakarta Post, Indonesia.

The symposium will comprise two sessions: The first on populist politics and democracy and the second on Asian politics in the age of social media.

The gathering’s audience will have an opportunity to assess the outcome of elections through the eyes of experts in the wake of ideological shifts, geopolitics, technology and business interests and, of course, the personalities and influences of political leaders in these respective countries, Pana said.

The activity is part of the ANN’s series of regional activities and celebrates the launching of ANN websites http://www.asianews.world and asianews.network.

The event will take place at the Renaissance Hotel, Rajdamri Road, Bangkok. Registration is free of charge at http://nregister.|nationgroup.com/ANN/registration.php or call 02-338- 3371.

ANN members comprise The Korea Herald, China Daily and China Post, Gogo Mongolia, Yomiuri Shimbun and The Japan News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Statesman (India), The Island (Sri Lanka), Kuensel (Bhutan), Kathmandu Post (Nepal), Daily Star (Bangladesh), Eleven Media (Myanmar), The Nation (Thailand), Jakarta Post, The Star and Sin Chew Daily (Malaysia), the Phnom Penh Post and Rasmei Kampuchea (Cambodia), The Borneo Bulletin (Brunei), The Straits Times (Singapore), Vietnam News, Philippine Daily Inquirer and Vientiane Times (Laos).

IMA MATUL late last year ended her two-year term on the US President’s Task Force Against Trafficking, where she stood with 10 international colleagues to provide advice to task forces under ex-president Barack Obama.

But it took almost 20 years for the Indonesian-born woman to get to that influential place, as she worked for two decades to help people from Southeast Asia, and around the world, who faced the same fate as she once did – a victim of human trafficking.

The then-17-year-old Ima travelled to the US on her labour recruiter’s promise that she would become a nanny earning US$150 a month.

“At that time, it was a lot for me. I was also told I would not have to pay for the airfare or anything,” Ima told a group of international journalists at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST) headquarters, where she now works as a survivor organiser.

The CAST was also a refuge, helping Ima with medical issues, legal assistance and job training after she ran away from conditions she realised amounted to slavery.

“I didn’t get anything as promised. I had no day off or salary,” she recounted. “I was physically and verbally abused almost every single day. I had to sleep in the corner and did not have my own room. My trafficker also made sure that I would not dare to say anything when outside.”

During three years of slavery conditions, Ima got to meet outsiders, from her neighbours in California’s Beverly Hills to a community church and doctors at an emergency room.

But the family, headed by an Indonesian wife and an American-born Chinese husband, made sure that everything would appear normal to outsiders and that Ima would not leak anything that would cause them trouble.

Her neighbours, who usually had informal relations with each other, once took bruises on her face as being caused by her simply falling off a ladder. “When I went to church with them, everything appeared to be normal. I also didn’t really know if anyone else there was abused as badly as I was,” Ima said. “When I had to go to hospital, the husband insisted that I went to the emergency room. I was told not to say anything and let him do the talking.”

Avelino T Reloj had similar experiences after fleeing the Philippines in 2007 with expectations of working as a janitor in a Missouri hotel.

“I was told that I would be deported if I talked to strangers,” Reloj said. “I ended up being so scared that I could not talk properly to strangers. There was always an invisible tape over my mouth and invisible cuffs on my ankles and my wrists.”

Avelino T Reloj

Reloj had his initial contract breached during his in-transit travel to the US. He was made to go to Florida, when he was forced to sign another contract with a different agency. He then became a caregiver and was made to work three days a week, making it barely possible for him to earn enough money to cover his loan of around 300,000 to 400,000 Philippine pesos let alone send money to his family.

His debts kept growing as he was relocated every few months and made to pay relocation fees every time. When sick, he avoided hospitals after being told they would be very pricey.

When his visa expired, Reloj’s trafficker planned to force him to go to Mexico and abandon him there. Learning of the plan, Reloj took it as the final straw and escaped in the early morning hours to go to LA to work. There he hid for three years before discovering CAST, where he found legal assistance.

Much like Ima, Reloj has become an advocate against human trafficking as a member of CAST’s Survivor Advisory Caucus and National Survivor Network.

Their work is to assist networks, as well as raise awareness back in their home countries about human trafficking threats in the US, a country often viewed as the prime working destination for better economic opportunity.

“People still want to go to the US despite hearing everything that has happened to me,” Ima said. “So my job is to create empowerment and education for people to migrate safely and prevent them from being trafficked and exploited.”

Over the past decade, three Southeast Asian countries have been in CAST’s top 10 list in terms of the number of international clients. Those from the Philippines topped the region at 139, while Thais came second at 36 and Indonesians at 26. There were also six clients from Cambodia, four from Malaysia, three from Vietnam and two from Laos.

While Reloj’s traffickers have been prosecuted, Ima’s were not – due to weak implementation of anti-trafficking laws in the early 2000s when her case was being built.

“But I’m not broken for the rest of my life,” she said. “We rise back up, become speakers and find solutions.”

A few thousand Rohingya entered Thailand years before the current crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. More than half of them were boat people who took the dangerous journey across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia beginning in 2015, while the rest travelled in smaller groups overland to Thailand at about the same time.

The current exodus of 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh has not yet directly affected the Kingdom given the tight control in refugee camps in Bangladesh and the recent crackdown on human traffickers in Thailand.

In the 2015 crisis, Southeast Asian nations blamed trafficking for bringing Rohingya onto their soil, where they were subjected to widely varying treatment. Thailand arrested, detained and deported Rohingya back to Myanmar.

About 300 Rohingya have been in detention since then, said Siyeed Alam, chairman of the Rohingya Association in Thailand, whose organisation provides assistance to the group.

Originally about 1,000 had been detained but many managed to break out of detention facilities and travel to Malaysia over recent years, he said.

While Thailand deems Rohingya to be illegal migrants who are seeking better lives in the Kingdom, without considering the circumstances at their point of origin, human rights expert Surapong Kongchantuk said most Rohingya were victims of trafficking and deserved better treatment by Thai authorities.

If authorities regarded them as the victims, they would have the right to work for their living, said lawyer Surapong, a minority rights advocate who has provided legal assistance to such groups for years.

Authorities have allowed millions of migrants from neighbouring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar to live and work in the Kingdom, but only after national verification and registration. At present, about 3.8 migrant million workers earn a living in Thailand, with about 1.8 million working legally, but Rohingya are not eligible even if they are not in detention.

“We cannot register and our nationality cannot be verified as we are citizens of no country,” Siyeed said, adding that the idea that there were thousands of Rohingya in the Kingdom was paranoid. The extended deadline for national verification and registration is about to end in June. If Rohingya had their choice, Siyeed said, they would settle in Muslim-majority countries such as Malaysia where they receive better treatment.

Unlike Thailand, Malaysia with the recognition of the United Nations offers better living and working conditions. There are about 150,000 Rohingya registered with the UN High Commission for Refugees in Malaysia currently, while about 6,000 in Indonesia also live in similar conditions.

Siyeed said he had urged Thai authorities to treat Rohingya better, but had been denied. “I don’t know how to legalise our status, but if they are left outlawed, how can authorities prevent them from doing illegal things and committing crime?” he asked.

Without legal status, Rohingya could not earn a living legally, he said.

“Without any papers to identify ourselves, we cannot rent places to live. Life here is not easy,” he said.

 Sultana Razia, a Rohingya teacher from Chittagong, exposed such atrocities perpetrated against her Muslim minority group during a conference on Myanmar genocide held in Berlin last Monday.

Systematic rape is a weapon of war used by Myanmar armed forces in its “clearance operation” to force Muslim Rohingya to vacate Rakhine state, according to experts attending the conference.

Arson, torture, rape, murder and massacres have been reported by international organisations, rights defenders and media. The United Nations used the term “ethnic cleansing”, but many Rohingya and experts have referred to the campaign in recent months not as ethnic cleansing, but as “genocide”.

Yanghee Lee, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, said recently the military operation against Rohingya bore “the hallmarks of genocide”.

Genocide, by definition under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Myanmar authority has systematically and intentionally denied the existence and identity of Rohingya, said Ro Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organisation in the United Kingdom, adding that the state of affairs had persisted since his childhood.

Born and growing up in Rakhine state, which was formerly known as Arakan, Ro Tun Khin said he moved to the UK 16 years ago when he was 17 years old, but kept in touch with Rohingya in his home country and in Bangladesh where nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have taken shelter. Violence against Rohingya has recurred over the past decades, which culminated in the exodus of about 700,000 Rohingya refugees after the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA) militant group attacked Myanmar security officials last August.

The attack prompted a so-called “clearance operation” by the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s military is known, which killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Many Rohingya told The Nation that the operation was a part of a comprehensive plan to evict the stigmatised ethnic minority from the country.

The clearance operation is still ongoing with hundreds of Rohingya continuing to flee from Rakhine on a daily basis, said both Ro Tun Khin and Siyeed Alam, chairman of Rohingya Association in Thailand.

“When I met victims in the last two weeks, they told me they had been threatened by Rakhine extremists who are forcing Rohingya into starvation because they cannot go to the market for food, they cannot go to the rice fields and they cannot go fishing,” Ro Tun Khin said.

“Perhaps only some 70,000 people remain in Buthidaung, which used to be crowded,” Siyeed said.

“They intentionally destroyed the whole Rohingya community. From my point of view as a legal expert, if they did this intentionally, it is genocide,” Ro Tun Khin said in a phone interview from Europe.

The allegation was serious but the international community is unlikely to take concrete action to stop the atrocities, Ro Tun Khin said.

Rohingya communities in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia have called for the international community, the United Nations and notably Asean, of which Myanmar is a member, to take urgent action to stop the genocide.

“This is the 21st century, and the population should not be treated in that way. Mass rape, mass killing and even taking a baby from a mother and throwing it into a fire are unspeakable and unimaginable,” he said.

Asean should call an immediate meeting to discuss how to stop the genocide and Myanmar should be excluded from Asean if the military continued to act in this way, Ro Tun Khin said.

While Western countries such as the US and members of the EU have denounced the atrocities and pressured Myanmar, Anusorn Chaiaksornwet, a Thai scholar at Walailak University, has called on Asean, its current chair Singapore and neighbouring Thailand to play constructive roles to end the crisis.

“Singapore could lead Asean to address the Rohingya issue this year and I hope Thailand will do a good job on that issue when it takes the chairmanship next year. We should have a clear policy to focus on human rights issues in the region, as the country previously did,” he said.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who has held office long enough to understand Asean very well, should lead the group to tackle problems in Myanmar, Anusorn said.

Thailand should play a role in bridging Myanmar and Asean and the international community, if the Kingdom wanted to resume its leadership role, he said. “But there is no sign to indicate the country will do the job, so far,” he added.

Rohingya including Ro Tun Khin have said an advisory board headed by former Thai foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai will not fix the problem but merely “whitewash” the image of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, Asean jointly has welcomed Surakiart’s role to help implement recommendations made by a panel on Rakhine led by former UN chief Kofi Annan.

An immediate concern for the Rohingya community around the world is the bilateral deal between Dhaka and Nay Pyi Taw to repatriate the refugees to what they consider to be “prison camps” in Rakhine state.

The two countries reached an agreement in November to send refugees back to Myanmar within two years, but the process has been delayed since late January because of a lack of readiness and safety concerns.

Violence is still going on with houses being burned, lands taken and at least 55 communities being bulldozed, reportedly to make way for new “economic zones”.

“From the Myanmar government side, the attitude toward Rohingya has not changed,” said Ro Tun Khin, “We belong to Myanmar. We are not asking for a separate state. We want our rights and we want a protected return to a protected homeland.”