Fightin' Words
The gloves are off, as Southeast Asia's leaders abandon their time-honored "non-interference" policy and get down to some serious name-calling
By TIM LARIMER Bangkok
Indonesian diplomat J.B. Widodo hasn't seen Chiang Jing Ying's controversial painting Victim in May. But he knows what he won't like. To the Hanoi-based embassy official, the title of the piece suggests a topic too hot to handle: this year's Jakarta rioting that targeted primarily ethnic Chinese. So Widodo asked Vietnam's Ministry of Culture and Information to keep the painting out of an art competition in Hanoi in November for members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "We're afraid the image of the painting is not true, not real, and will give a false impression," says Widodo. "To show it in Hanoi would not be in line with the ASEAN spirit."
Ah, the ASEAN spirit. Invoking that sacred cow usually means: thou shalt not offend thy neighbor. And for most of the group's 31 years, such restraint has been the core of a strict doctrine of non-interference. It deterred officials from commenting on matters in each other's countries, and it even moved them to censor words and works of art by their own countrymen that neighboring governments might find offensive. But the economic crisis that began sweeping the region 15 months ago has changed all that. These days there is more name-calling than hand-shaking.
Until now, ASEAN's leaders would gather at their regular meetings, pose for pictures and congratulate themselves for creating the Asian economic miracle. They would defer to Indonesia's Suharto, who had been in power as long as ASEAN had been around. But the booming economies went bust, Suharto was dumped and old conflicts emerged like family secrets let out of the closet. The current longest-serving ASEAN leader, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, has become a magnet for criticism from once-reticent neighbors. And he is obligingly dishing it back. "Precisely because of the crisis we are in, we are prone to conflict," Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan told TIME last week. "All of us are turning inward, becoming a bit suspicious of outsiders."
It is nothing short of remarkable that such a diverse coalition, whose only shared characteristic is geography, has survived at all. That's especially so since the perceived threats from common enemies of the past--China, the Soviet bloc, even the U.S. at times --have faded. One longtime ASEAN worry, socialist Vietnam, became a member of the group in 1995. Without a shared mission, the differences among the countries, the old, festering resentments and rivalries are emerging. Several recent flare-ups are sure to make seating arrangements a challenge at December's ASEAN summit in Hanoi as well as at next month's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Kuala Lumpur. Among them:
The Philippines-Malaysia. Philippine President Joseph Estrada has criticized Malaysia for the arrest and incarceration of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Estrada, who took office in June, initially threatened to boycott the APEC summit. While his attendance now seems likely, he has hinted that he may request a meeting at the time with Anwar. Estrada also met in Manila two weeks ago with Anwar's teenage daughter, Nurul Izzah. Filipino politicians, meanwhile, have announced plans to fly to Kuala Lumpur to unofficially monitor Anwar's trial, which begins next week.
Malaysia has fought back. Pro-Mahathir protesters demonstrated outside the Philippine embassy in Kuala Lumpur last week. They carried signs that read estrada has gone crazy and we are feeding 800,000 filipinos, a reference to the large contingent of imported domestic workers in Malaysia. "The Philippines and Indonesia have a lot of unemployed, that's why we keep their workers," says Ibrahim Ali, a member of the supreme council of Malaysia's ruling party, the United Malays National Organization. "If they think ASEAN isn't important, we can throw those workers out." Estrada, he adds, "is not fit to be a leader, morally." Amid the row, routine military talks between the two countries have been canceled.
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