HANOI, Vietnam: Forced apart by the coronavirus pandemic, Southeast Asian leaders linked up by video Tuesday to plot a strategy to overcome a crisis that has threatened their economies and kept millions of people in their homes under lockdowns.
The heads of state of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were to hold further talks later Tuesday, also through video conferencing, with their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea who are expected to express their support in helping ASEAN fight the coronavirus. Vietnam, ASEAN’s leader this year, has postponed an in-person gathering tentatively to June.
“It is in these grim hours that the solidarity of the ASEAN community shines like a beacon in the dark,” Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in an opening speech.
Containment efforts have placed the pandemic “actually under control,” he said, warning against complacency, with a number of member countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines, fearing spikes in infections after large-scale testing is conducted.
Founded in 1967 in the Cold War era, ASEAN – a diverse bloc representing more than 640 million people – has held annual summits of its leaders and top diplomats with ceremonies steeped in tradition, protocol and photo-ops. Derided as a talk shop by critics, the bloc is known largely for photographs of its leaders locking arms at annual meetings in a show of unity despite often-thorny differences.
Diplomats say that unity is now crucial as the region battles the COVID-19 disease. All of ASEAN’s member states have been hit by infections, with the total number of confirmed cases reaching more than 20,400, including over 840 deaths, despite massive lockdowns, travel restrictions and home quarantines.
“The COVID-19 crisis is a crisis like no other in the past, not just in its potential calamitous scale but in the hope to contain and stop it by unstinting cooperation and fullest trust between all countries,” said the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs. “If any of us fails, the rest will follow.”
The World Health Organization called on Southeast Asian countries last month to aggressively ramp up efforts to combat the viral outbreak as infections spread. Several visiting participants of a large religious gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in late February reportedly tested positive for the virus after attending the event.
But Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh said ASEAN had responded to the outbreak quickly, with his country, as the bloc’s current leader, calling for the need for region-wide action in mid-February, followed by a series of ministerial meetings and consultations with China, the United States and the WHO.
“Countries in our region have all suffered severe consequences from COVID-19,” he said. “We have made every effort to combat this pandemic.”
Tuesday’s summit was to include discussions on a regional stockpile of medical equipment for emergencies and establishing a regional fund for combating the pandemic.
With travel restrictions and lockdowns across the region, many industries have been hit hard, including the tourism and retail sectors, and growth targets have been revised downward. The overall economic impact of the pandemic on the region will “likely be broad and deep,” according to an ASEAN assessment.
Hard-hit China, where the virus was first detected in December, is one of the largest trading partners and sources of tourists for Southeast Asia.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was expected to join the video summit along with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
ASEAN holds about 1,500 meetings a year, but around 230 have been postponed to later this year due to the pandemic, including lower-level meetings with China on a proposed nonaggression pact in the disputed South China Sea.
The territorial disputes, which involve China and five other claimant states, including ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei, are not part of the formal summit agenda. But the disputes have cast a shadow on the summit after a Vietnamese fishing boat with eight men on board was hit by a Chinese coast guard ship and sank near the Paracel islands. All the fishermen were rescued.
The other ASEAN members are Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand.
Virtual summit: Southeast Asian leaders meet by video on coronavirus pandemic
https://arab.news/6gmz3
Virtual summit: Southeast Asian leaders meet by video on coronavirus pandemic
- Vietnam, ASEAN’s leader this year, has postponed an in-person gathering tentatively to June
- All of ASEAN’s member states have been hit by coronavirus infections
Tens of thousands protest in Minneapolis over fatal ICE shooting
- Federal-state tensions escalated further on Thursday when a US Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop
MINNEAPOLIS: Tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis on Saturday to decry the fatal shooting of a woman by a US immigration agent, part of more than 1,000 rallies planned nationwide this weekend against the federal government’s deportation drive. The massive turnout in Minneapolis despite a whipping, cold wind underscores how the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday has struck a chord, fueling protests in major cities and some towns. Minnesota’s Democratic leaders and the administration of President Donald Trump, a Republican, have offered starkly different accounts of the incident.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Minneapolis police estimate tens of thousands present at protests on Saturday
• Mayor urges protesters to remain peaceful and not ‘take the bait’ from Trump
• Over 1,000 ‘ICE Out’ rallies planned across US
• Minnesota Democrats denied access to ICE facility outside Minneapolis
Led by a team of Indigenous Mexican dancers, demonstrators in Minneapolis, which has a metropolitan population of 3.8 million, marched toward the residential street where Good was shot in her car.
’HEARTBROKEN AND DEVASTATED’
The boisterous crowd, which the Minneapolis Police Department estimated in the tens of thousands, chanted Good’s name and slogans such as “Abolish ICE” and “No justice, no peace — get ICE off our streets.”
“I’m insanely angry, completely heartbroken and devastated, and then just like longing and hoping that things get better,” Ellison Montgomery, a 30-year-old protester, told Reuters.
Minnesota officials have called the shooting unjustified, pointing to bystander video they say showed Good’s vehicle turning away from the agent as he fired. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has maintained that the agent acted in self-defense because Good, a volunteer in a community network that monitors and records ICE operations in Minneapolis, drove forward in the direction of the agent who then shot her, after another agent had approached the driver’s side and told her to get out of the car.
The shooting on Wednesday came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in what DHS has called its largest operation ever, deepening a rift between the administration and Democratic leaders in the state. Federal-state tensions escalated further on Thursday when a US Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. Using language similar to its description of the Minneapolis incident, DHS said the driver had tried to “weaponize” his vehicle and run over agents.
The two DHS-related shootings prompted a coalition of progressive and civil rights groups, including Indivisible and the American Civil Liberties Union, to plan more than 1,000 events under the banner “ICE Out For Good” on Saturday and Sunday. The rallies have been scheduled to end before nightfall to minimize the potential for violence.
In Philadelphia, protesters chanted “ICE has got to go” and “No fascist USA,” as they marched from City Hall to a rally outside a federal detention facility, according to the local ABC affiliate. In Manhattan, several hundred people carried anti-ICE signs as they walked past an immigration court where agents have arrested migrants following their hearings.
“We demand justice for Renee, ICE out of our communities, and action from our elected leaders. Enough is enough,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible.
DEMONSTRATIONS MOSTLY PEACEFUL
Minnesota became a major flashpoint in the administration’s efforts to deport millions of immigrants months before the Good shooting, with Trump criticizing its Democratic leaders amid a massive welfare fraud scandal involving some members of the large Somali-American community there.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat who has been critical of immigration agents and the shooting, told a press conference earlier on Saturday that the demonstrations have remained mostly peaceful and that anyone damaging property or engaging in unlawful activity would be arrested by police.
“We will not counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos,” Frey said. “He wants us to take the bait.”
More than 200 law enforcement officers were deployed Friday night to control protests that led to $6,000 in damage at the Depot Renaissance Hotel and failed attempts by some demonstrators to enter the Hilton Canopy Hotel, believed to house ICE agents, the City of Minneapolis said in a statement.
Police Chief Brian O’Hara said some in the crowd scrawled graffiti and damaged windows at the Depot Renaissance Hotel. He said the gathering at the Hilton Canopy Hotel began as a “noise protest” but escalated as more than 1,000 demonstrators converged on the site, leading to 29 arrests.
“We initiated a plan and took our time to de-escalate the situation, issued multiple warnings, declaring an unlawful assembly, and ultimately then began to move in and disperse the crowd,” O’Hara said.
HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES TURNED AWAY FROM ICE FACILITY
Three Minnesota congressional Democrats showed up at a regional ICE headquarters near Minneapolis on Saturday morning, where protesters have clashed with federal agents this week, but were denied access. Legislators called the denial illegal.
“We made it clear to ICE and DHS that they were violating federal law,” US Representative Angie Craig told reporters as she stood outside the Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul with Representatives Kelly Morrison and Ilhan Omar.
Federal law prohibits DHS from blocking members of Congress from entering ICE detention sites, but DHS has increasingly restricted such oversight visits, prompting confrontations with Democratic lawmakers.
“It is our job as members of Congress to make sure those detained are treated with humanity, because we are the damn United States of America,” Craig said.
Referencing the damage and protests at Minneapolis hotels overnight, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the congressional Democrats were denied entry to ensure “the safety of detainees and staff, and in compliance with the agency’s mandate.” She said DHS policies require members of Congress to notify ICE at least seven days in advance of facility visits.
