The Thai military government, in a test of political resolve, is in a standoff with monks from an influential Buddhist temple that has placed religious politics at the center of national debate.

The Wat Phra Dhammakaya temple complex, located 50 kilometers north of Bangkok, covers 336 hectares, has a series of buildings and meditation centers reportedly worth an estimated $10 billion.

Authorities are searching for the temple’s abbot, who has eluded arrest on charges related to millions of dollars in embezzled funds that were donated to the temple.

Influential and wealthy Buddhist temple

The Dhammakaya temple, one of the most influential in Thailand, attracts tens of thousands of devotees with mass meditations and ordinations of monks, as well as reaching devotees elsewhere in Thailand and overseas.

Analysts say the temple has become a battle for influence over Thai Buddhism, the religion of over 90 percent of Thailand’s 68 million people.

The temple’s considerable influence, including within the Buddhist hierarchy, is seen as challenging Thailand’s more orthodox Buddhist community, say analysts.

In the past, the temple’s monks have called for Buddhism to be recognized as a national religion within the constitution, a move resisted by past governments.

Strong Buddhist abbot leads temple

The charismatic abbot, Luang Por Dhammajayo, 72, and the temple’s considerable wealth have also drawn criticism. Devotees are reported to donate large sums to the temple to gain ‘merit’.

Controversy caught up with the temple after a devotee, a senior member of a credit union, embezzled $344 million, and donated $42 million to the temple. The credit union official is serving 16 years in jail over the theft. 

The temple says it has repaid the credit union cooperative a total of $30 million in cash and checks.

Charges link abbot to embezzlement

But Thai authorities say Dhammajayo must face charges linked to the payments as well as other charges. In 2016, the government issued arrest warrants for the abbot who has avoided arrest, refusing to surrender to authorities.

The abbot’s legal team has told local media he was unaware the donations came from the embezzled funds.

The government, applying powers under the interim constitution that grants Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha wide powers, has stepped up efforts to search the complex.

Search efforts have led to standoff

Hundreds of police and officials have been sent to the complex, where they have involved themselves in a stand-off with lines of  monks and supporters.

Gotham Areeya, an advisor to Mahidol University’s Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, said the stand-off is part of official efforts to “reform” Buddhism and reduce Wat Dhammakaya’s influence.

“[The Buddhist establishment] think the way Dhammakaya is expanding, creating more and more followers, not only in this country but outside as they are very skillful administrators – they can organize the ordination of 100,000 monks. So it’s a powerful organization behind it with a lot of money,” Gotham said.

A strategy of mass ordinations and ceremonies has attracted tens of thousands of supporters, including powerful politicians, bureaucrats and the business community.

But the temple’s influence has also generated divisions within the Buddhist religious community.

Controversy divides Thailand’s Buddhist leaders

The temple, observers say, has sought to extend its influence into the body of monks that oversees Buddhism in Thailand as well as the National Buddhist Office.

In 1999, the then head of the Buddhist clergy, Supreme Patriarch Somdet Phra Nyanasamvara Suvaddhang, who passed away in 2013, accused the temple of distorting Buddhist teachings, creating conflicts and moved to have Dhammajayo defrocked. It was also ruled he was required to return all the property and money earned during his time as a monk.

A criminal case against Dhammajayo was withdrawn in 2006 and investigations by the National Office of Buddhism also failed to make headway “due to lack of evidence.”

But the military government, in power since 2014, has moved to counter the influence of the temple, including within the Buddhist hierarchy.

The appointment of a new Supreme Patriarch, Ariavongsagatanana, came after legal changes that granted new Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn the right to select the head of the Buddhist clergy.

The appointment overruled the earlier selection of a senior monk reportedly with close ties to Wat Dhammakaya.

In a further move, Thai Prime Minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha removed the National Buddhism Office’s chief, who was replaced by a member of the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI).

Prayut also ordered the military and police to further search for the temple’s abbot. Buddhist groups have been calling on the government to revoke the order.

But Thai Deputy Prime Minister, Prawit Wongsuwan, said the government is determined to press ahead with the search.

Search continues for abbot

“The search [for the Abott] will continue no matter how many more weeks or even if a year passes … authorities are trying to avoid violent confrontations. But it is necessary to continue to enforce the law,” Prawit told local media.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political scientist and advisor to Prawit, said an offer had been made to Dhammajayo to present himself in court and “fight the case,” but this was rejected.

“So the government is not in a position to back away from implementing the law. There were attempts to make sure [of avoiding] consequences erupting from moving forward on this legal challenges,” Panitan told VOA.

He said the government aimed to avoid a violent confrontation. “[The officers] must engage peacefully and they must make sure that there is a solution that most people can accept,” he said.

Senior monk weighs in

Mano Laohavanich, a former senior monk at the temple, who fell out with Dhammajayo’s teachings afer 17 years, believes the abbot is still in the temple complex and has avoided capture so far.  

“I don’t think that the stand-off will be that long – maybe a week or two that is the longest time.  Security officers have to disperse the mob at the local market place in protest of the government.  And then they have to remove the power lines to the temple – so that’s how they are going to do it,” Mano told VOA.    He said the government still has the upper hand in the confrontation and there is no way for the abbot to escape.

Attayuth Bootsiripoom, an editorial writer with The Nation newspaper, questioned the  “legitimacy of sending thousands of police and military officers to hunt for a monk who has, after all, been accused of gross misdemeanors rather than serious crimes.”
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Hundreds of grieving family and friends tearfully mourned a 32-year-old engineer in his southern Indian hometown Tuesday after he was killed in an apparently racially motivated shooting in a crowded Kansas bar.

Tears rolled down the cheeks of Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s parents, Madhusudhan Rao and Parvatha Vardhini, as his body was cremated in Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana state.

Losing a young family member is an unbearable pain, said P. L. Narayana, his uncle.

“It is so cruel. He was such a kind soul, very friendly. He was so excited that he and his wife were going to start a family soon. Now this has happened,” Narayana said.

Kuchibhotla’s mother wailed as the body was taken for cremation. “I had asked him to return to India if he was feeling insecure there. But he used to say he was safe and secure,” she said.

“Now I want my younger son Sai Kiran and his family to come back for good. I will not allow them to go back,” she said. “My son had gone there in search of a better future. What crime did he commit?”

His father Madhusudhan Rao was more philosophical. “I believe in destiny. Whatever was destined has happened.”

He added, “Now I want the U.S. government to take care of the security of our Indians who are working there.”

An Indian External Affairs Ministry statement said on Tuesday that the U.S. government and senior authorities in Kansas “have pro-actively responded to the unfortunate death of Srinivas Kuchibhotla.'”

“It is important to note that the U.S. authorities are engaged with us on the larger concern regarding safety of Indians in the U.S., a matter which continues to receive the government’s top priority,” the statement said.

Kuchibhotla’s body reached Hyderabad from Newark, N.J., on Monday night. His widow, Sunaina Dumala, looking dazed, and his brother, Sai Kiran, who studies in the United States, came by the same flight.

Hours later, the flower-laden body was taken in an open carriage from his home to the crematorium in Jubilee Hills area where it was placed on a wooden pyre and lit as part of Hindu last rites.

According to witnesses, the gunman yelled “get out of my country” at Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani before he opened fire at Austin’s Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, on Wednesday evening. Both men had come to the U.S. from India to study and worked as engineers at GPS-maker Garmin.

Madasani and another bar patron were injured.

Adam Purinton of Olathe was arrested at a bar in Missouri and remains jailed on murder and attempted murder charges. The bartender there told an emergency dispatcher that the suspect admitted he shot two people but described them as Iranian.

India’s Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, who visited the bereaved family over the weekend, strongly condemned the attack.

“Such incidents should not happen in one of the oldest democracies of the world,” he said.
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LEDA, Bangladesh – Rohingya Muslim refugee Ali Hasan is desperately looking for a bride for his 14-year-old son, jailed last year in Bangladesh for carrying the popular drug ya ba. He hopes the girl’s family would pay the $620 needed for Mohammed Hasan’s bail as dowry.

Police arrested Mohammed with 5,000 pills of ya ba, as methamphetamine is widely known in Asia, last June. His elder brother, Izzat Ali, was arrested a few months later with 200 pills and sent to prison.

Bangladesh says the influx of Rohingya fleeing Buddhist-majority Myanmar is partly to blame for soaring methamphetamine use in its cities. But many Rohingya say their young people are being pushed into crime because they cannot legally work or, in many cases, access aid.

Ali Hasan fled Myanmar three decades ago and his sons grew up in an unofficial camp in Leda, a 15-minute drive from the Naf river separating Bangladesh from Myanmar.

It is not uncommon for Rohingya families to arrange marriages while the couple are still in their mid-teens, and the 60-year-old does not think the fact Mohammed is in jail awaiting trial will be an issue, so common have such brushes with the law become among the refugees.

“We’re looking for a bride for him so that they can pay the dowry in advance,” he said. “People know that he was lured into it and he had no wrong intentions, so I don’t think getting a bride would be difficult.”

Rohingya Muslims have been fleeing apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship, since the early 1990s, and there are now more than 200,000 in Bangladesh. More than 70,000 have flooded across the border since October, escaping an army crackdown.

Local resentment

Consumption of ya ba – Thai for “crazy medicine” — is booming in Bangladesh. Seizures alone jumped more than 2,500 percent to 29.4 million pills last year compared with 2011 — and the business is worth an estimated $3 billion annually.

Police and government officials say the stateless Rohingya refugees, who cannot easily be traced, are the traffickers’ preferred mules.

The authorities have cited a growing drug problem as one reason for pushing ahead with a controversial scheme to move thousands of refugees from their border camps to an undeveloped island in the Bay of Bengal.

“Local population, local leaders are extremely unhappy about this influx,” H.T. Imam, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s political adviser, said in Dhaka. “They displace laborers by undercutting locals. Ya ba trade is flourishing due to them.”

He did not provide any data about the refugees’ involvement in the drug trade.

Residents of Cox’s Bazar, the coastal district neighboring Myanmar where most of the refugees live, are now holding public meetings and rallies in support of the refugee relocation plan.

Sanmaraz, a 35-year-old Rohingya woman living in Leda, arrived from Myanmar two decades ago. Her husband, Amanullah, is now in jail awaiting trial on charges of carrying ya ba. She says he was “framed” by local villagers.

“Bangladesh has given us shelter, but the local people don’t want us here,” she said. “They want to harm us; they want to chase us away.”

Only the 34,000 refugees living in two official camps are eligible for international aid. In places such as the Leda Unregistered Rohingya Refugee Settlement, where Ali Hasan and Sanmaraz both live, there are few means of support.

As a result, many end up working as drug carriers, while some women are lured into the sex trade, said Afruzul Haque Tutul, a senior police officer in Cox’s Bazar.

Rukina Begum, 35, said she was persuaded to join another Rohingya woman carrying 1,000 ya ba pills on a bus by the promise of work for her 11-year-old son.

“If only I had money I would never have sent my young son to work anywhere, and this would not have happened,” said Begum, who was out on bail after spending eight months in jail.

Bangladesh insists the Rohingya, though undocumented, are Myanmar citizens and must ultimately return.

“We cannot allow citizens of Myanmar to work here,” said Imam, the prime minister’s adviser. “There are several local committees under the district administration to provide relief to them.”

Surging ya ba demand

This month Reuters was taken to a tin shed by a canal in the Leda camp, where a 19-year-old youth wearing a blue T-shirt and longyi took orders for ya ba from two customers seated on a mat.

The youth, who fled to Bangladesh three years ago, said he buys 20-50 ya ba pills from a local villager every day after tasting one or two himself for quality.

Bangladesh consumes an average of 2 million such pills a day, estimated two officials at the Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) in Dhaka.

Each pill retails for around 300 taka ($3.75). The same pill can be bought for around 60 taka in Cox’s Bazar. Rohingya “mules” can earn 10,000 taka for transporting 5,000 pills to Dhaka and other urban centers, the officials said.

“Our data shows that majority of the carriers are Rohingya,” said police officer Tutul, but declined to share specific numbers.

A DNC mobile court has convicted 15 refugees in the past six months.

But the Rohingya mules are only a small cog in the ya ba supply chain.

From negligible ya ba sales a few years ago, Bangladesh has become a big market for traffickers who source the drug from factories in lawless northeastern Myanmar, according to Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“Whatever has been coming is growing very, very fast,” he said. “But it’s much bigger in Myanmar. Internal demand there has been very carefully cultivated and developed by organized crime groups. They have been trafficking inside the country and they have been pushing the product fast, including towards Bangladesh.”
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Pakistan has put in place extremely tight security measures in and around its capital, Islamabad, ahead of Wednesday’s regional economic cooperation summit, where presidents of Iran and Turkey will also be in attendance.

The high-profile meeting of the 10-nation Economic Cooperation Organization, or ECO, has been convened at a time when Pakistan is experiencing a new wave of deadly suicide bombings and militant attacks.

The anti-state Pakistani Taliban and local affiliates of Islamic State have taken credit for the violence that has claimed scores of lives over the past two weeks.

Foreign ministers and senior representatives from ECO countries, including Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, are already in Islamabad and held preparatory talks Tuesday.

Facing challenges

Addressing the meeting, Pakistani foreign policy advisor, Sartaj Aziz, underscored the need for member states to collectively work for promoting effective regional economic cooperation to contribute to global peace, stability and prosperity.

“Our region is faced with a number of challenges including extremism, terrorism, drug-trafficking and trans-national organized crimes…Therefore, innovative approaches and concerted efforts would be required for the socio-economic and human development of our peoples,” Aziz explained.

United Nations and Chinese delegations have also arrived to attend the summit as observers.

Iran, Pakistan and Turkey are the founding members of ECO.

Tensions

Pakistan had to cancel several regional cooperation meetings in recent months because Afghanistan and India boycotted those events. Both the neighboring countries blame Islamabad for supporting terrorist attacks on their respective territories.

Pakistani authorities reject the charges as baseless and instead accuse Afghan and Indian intelligence agencies of jointly sponsoring recent militant attacks in the country.

Advisor Aziz while addressing Tuesday’s meeting recounted Pakistan’s successes against terrorism and extremism, saying they have helped improve national security and economy, and created conditions for international investment in the country.

“We are therefore confident of providing safe transit passage for smooth flow of trade activities without any barriers.”

Despite tensions in bilateral ties, the Afghan government agreed to attend the ECO meeting and is being represented by its ambassador to Islamabad, Hazrat Omer Zakhilwal, who also carries the title of special presidential envoy to Pakistan.

 
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Rahul Kolli, a 23-year-old engineering graduate from India’s southern Chennai city, was happy when he gained admission to Michigan Tech University in the United States to complete his masters degree in data analytics.

He was chasing the same dream pursued for decades by tens of thousands of Indians – studying in an American university, working in the United States for a few years and sometimes settling there.

But in November, Kolli ditched his plans to go to the U.S. and opted instead to go to a university in Ireland.

His main concern: after spending a huge amount of money on an education in the United States, will President Trump’s tough rhetoric on protecting jobs for Americans make it hard to land a job?

‘Trump effect’

Kolli says many of his Indian friends at American universities discouraged him, saying that recruiters at job fairs had told them that U.S. citizens would be preferred for new openings.  

“Before Trump yes, they were asking me to come. But after Trump being elected as President, they were like, ‘think over your decision. I don’t suggest you come to the U.S. Why don’t you try some other country?’ ” he explained.

Kolli is not the only one who changed his mind about pursuing higher education in the United States, which has long been the top choice for Indian students and has attracted its brightest and best.

The number of Indians at U.S. universities has grown in recent years. India accounts for the second highest number of foreign students at American universities – more than 200,000 were studying there last year. The scarcity of quality universities at home forces many Indian students to look at foreign countries for both undergraduate and postgraduate studies.

For years, Chennai-based Preston Education Consultancy sent all but a handful of its student clients to American universities. But now, its head, Ilaya Bharathi, found a whopping 40 percent opted for countries such as Ireland, Canada, Germany and Australia, even after gaining admission to an American university.

“It’s basically what is called in the market the ‘Trump effect.’ They are reluctant to take the U.S. as an option now,” said Bharathi.

He points to growing nervousness among students and their parents, who often spend tens of thousands of dollars from their savings to fund their children’s education, about a possible change in policies by the Trump administration that would make it difficult to stay and work in the U.S.

Bharathi said that with a majority of those going overseas being software engineers, many are opting to study in Ireland, which has emerged as an information technology hub in Europe and which recently liberalized its policy to allow students to stay after the completion of their education and work for two years instead of one.

Safety concerns

Jobs are not the only concern. There is also growing apprehension among students and parents about whether the United States will continue to be a safe and hospitable place for foreign students and workers as more anti-immigrant rhetoric is now being heard.

Such worries have intensified after the shooting of two Indian engineers last week at a bar in the state of Kansas, in an incident that is being investigated as a possible hate crime. The death of one of the two men, allegedly by a Navy veteran who shouted “Get out of my country,” was widely covered in India.

These days, Kavita Singh, who runs the New Delhi-based college admissions counseling firm, FutureWorks Consulting, faces questions that were seldom posed about the United States. “What is the environment going to be like on campus?” she asks.  “Is it going to change and is it going to be different?”

This concern, said Singh, is greater among those planning to pursue undergraduate studies. Belonging to richer families, which can fund an expensive education, these students often do not want to stay back and work in the U.S., but they fear the environment may turn more hostile.

“Some even say we only want to look maybe now at colleges on the east and west coast which voted blue (Democrat) and we are not really sure we want to look at the middle of the country,” said Singh, who earned a Masters of Business Administration degree in the United States.   

Wait-and-see approach

Education consultants say many postgraduate students are waiting and watching to see how policies on students staying to work in the country and on work visas will unfold under the Trump administration.

But not everyone is discouraged. Among them is Shraddha Gulati, a science undergraduate student in a Delhi University college, who shrugged aside worries about job openings and said she would like to pursue studies in the United States if she gets the opportunity.  

For Gulati, the lure is a quality education. “There are so many good colleges there, the top 50 and 100, and not (here) in India,” she said.

Consultants agree that with the U.S. being home to many of the world’s top universities, it will continue to be a beacon for many Indians and the aspiration for a seat at Ivy League universities and other top-tier colleges will not dim. But that may not be the case for other educational institutions.
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Cambodia’s government has threatened to expel several media outlets, including the Voice of America, and is using U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticisms of the press as justification.

In a Facebook post Saturday, Phay Siphan, a spokesman for Cambodia’s cabinet, threatened to “take action” against the media outlets, which he said are threatening the country’s peace and stability.

It appears to be the first time a foreign government has used Trump’s treatment of the media as justification for its own censorship activities — something press watchdog groups have warned could happen.

Trump has called press coverage he dislikes “fake news,” referring to it as “the enemy of the people.” Last week, the White House banned several organizations, including the New York Times and CNN, from an informal press gaggle with Press Secretary Sean Spicer. The White House argued it was trying to include more reporters in the event, however the action drew strong criticism from media outlets, which called it an insult to democratic ideals.

In his Facebook post, the Cambodian spokesman appeared to reference the White House’s move to exclude certain media organizations from the gaggle, saying it sent a “clear message” that some journalists’ reporting “does not reflect reality.”

“President Donald Trump thinks that the news reported by these organizations did not reflect the truth, which is the responsibility of the professional reporters,” the spokesman said. “This means that freedom of expression must respect the law and the authority of the state.”

The spokesman specifically took aim at Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, both U.S.-government funded broadcasters, as well as the local Voice of Democracy, an independent, nonprofit radio station.

Though Cambodia’s constitution provides for a free press, most media are indirectly controlled by the state and closely monitored. The government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for three decades, has in the past criticized VOA and RFA, saying they were fomenting instability.

In his Facebook post, Phay Siphan accused the broadcasters of being “foreign agents,” and said they must “reconsider” their use of airtime before the government takes unspecified actions.

The story was first reported by the Phnom Penh Post, an independent paper based in the Cambodian capital. After the warning was issued, the paper reached out to Phay Siphan, who said any media outlet that doesn’t follow the government’s orders would be expelled.

“Shut it down. Very simple. Expel them,” he said. 

In a statement, Jing Zhang, the acting director of VOA’s East Asia Pacific division, rejected the characterization of VOA as a “foreign agent.”  

“VOA is a media organization that reports news in an objective, fair and balanced manner,” he said. “Millions of VOA listeners and Facebook fans in Cambodia can attest to our journalistic integrity.”

The U.S. State Department replied to VOA’s request for comment by saying, “The United States has long supported freedom of the press as fundamental to any democracy.”

But some human rights groups and ex-diplomats warn that it may not be the last time an authoritarian government cites the Trump administration’s behavior as justification for their own press crackdown.

“It’s hard enough to be a journalist in dictatorships like Cambodia when the United States is setting a good example,” Tom Malinowski, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Labor, told VOA.

“Now every dictator who wants to ban media he doesn’t like can say, ‘Trump does it so why can’t I?'” said Malinowski, who served under former U.S. President Barack Obama.

In October, the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonpartisan media rights watchdog, warned that Trump’s presidency would represent an “unprecedented” threat to press freedom.

“The consequences for the rights of journalists around the world be far more serious,” said the CPJ statement. “Any failure of the United States to uphold its own standards emboldens dictators and despots to restrict the media in their own countries.”

White House officials have insisted that Trump respects freedom of the press, saying he is only fighting against what they see as unfair media coverage. 

Spicer, Trump’s chief spokesman, on Friday defended his decision to bar several news organizations from the gaggle, saying he was only trying to include, not exclude, more reporters.

“We had a pool and then we expanded it, we added some folks to come cover it,” Spicer said. He later added: “We are going to aggressively push back. We’re just not going to sit back and let, you know, false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there.”

VOA’s Mony Say in Washington and Narin Sun in Phnom Penh contributed to this report.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has revived China’s fears by once again calling it a currency manipulator, weeks after many felt the issue had been shelved. Trump reemphasized his stand last week, hours after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin indicated China would not be singled out for adverse treatment on the currency issue.

“Well they, I think, they’re grand champions at manipulation of currency. So I haven’t held back,” Trump told Reuters, adding, “We’ll see what happens.”

The U.S. Treasury Department is expected to make a call on the issue on April 15. But Mnuchin may have to disclose the administration’s plans at the G20 finance ministers’ meeting March 17-18 in Bonn.

Many economists believe the Chinese Yuan is not being deliberately devalued as in the past. The International Monetary Fund said last year the Chinese currency’s value was broadly in line with its economic fundamentals.

“There is no evidence of currency manipulation in recent times, beyond the occasional buying and selling of foreign exchange to stabilize volatilities, which all countries, rich and poor, do,” said Kaushik Basu, Professor at Cornell University and a former Chief Economist of the World Bank. “I hope the U.S. would not declare China a currency manipulator, which would not be right and would also unleash destabilizing forces in foreign exchange markets the world over.”

In normal practice, the U.S. Treasury would apply three criteria to determine if China deserves the label of a currency manipulator when it meets on April 15.

“If the Treasury Department adheres to its three criteria, it won’t [declare China as a manipulator], since China currently only meets one of the three criteria. It could decide, though, to ignore those criteria,” said Scott Kennedy, director of the project on Chinese business and political economy at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The ultimate decision will turn on broader U.S. policy toward China, which is still being decided.”

This is bad timing for China where foreign direct investments (FDI) reversed, falling 9.2 percent in January. The slide came after FDI grew 3.9 percent in November and 4.1 percent in December. Figures for February, which will be available after 8-10 days, would explain more clearly if the slide is a trend or just a monthly variation.

“The drop in FDI seen in China recently may well be in response to Trump’s threats to build barriers. But there are other factors too. There has been a bunched up profit repatriation from China by China’s foreign investors in recent times, which contributed to the decline in net FDI,” said Basu.

Minister’s removal

Beijing suddenly replaced Minister for Commerce Gao Hucheng on Friday soon after the slippage in FDI numbers and Trump reiterating his threat of declaring China a currency manipulator.

Before his removal, Gao told a press conference, “We never use one month’s figure to summarize a long-term trend, and an early Spring Festival last month was another factor to affect the country’s monthly FDI volume,” said Gao, adding, “The FDI in any country will come and go with the development of the economy and changing industrial structure.”

China’s FDI fell 13 percent year on year in 2016.

“I don’t think such short-term volatility in FDI data can meaningfully be attributed to any Trump effect. It is most likely merely noise in the data caused by a lot of random business decisions,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, economist with the Peterson Institute of International Affairs.

Analysts are divided on whether President Xi Jinping decided to replace Gao as part of Beijing’s preparations to deal with economic challenges expected to come from the Trump administration, or merely because he was close to the retirement age stipulated by the Communist Party.

“It suggests the commerce minister has reached retirement age and Xi is starting to consider the composition of the Cabinet for his second term,” said Kennedy. “Zhong Shan [the new commerce minister] may or may not stay on.”

Investors pulling out

The American Chamber of Commerce in China said 25 percent of U.S. companies in China have moved their operations to other countries or are planning to do so.

Kennedy said this is a result of worsening investment conditions in China and the application of tighter capital controls.

“I think as Chinese growth slows and financial risks increase, combined with a more discriminatory treatment of foreign investors in China, many foreign investors will rightly ask if their investments in China continue to be justified by the ‘Ooh, it’s a billion people so we gotta be there’ factor,” said Kirkegaard. “… If foreign businesses don’t make much money in China they will stop coming.”
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President Donald Trump’s administration is ramping up pressure against North Korea’s nuclear ambition, while building ties with regional allies and partners to counter the rising danger of a nuclear-armed North Korea.

In a statement Monday, the State Department said North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs directly threaten the security of the South Korea, Japan and the United States.

The statement came after talks in which officials from Washington, Tokyo and Seoul examined ways to restrict Pyongyang’s weapons funding and “explored a joint way forward toward the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.”

State Department Special Representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Yun hosted the trilateral meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts to address Pyongyang’s nuclear threat, following a trilateral foreign ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Bonn, Germany.

“The officials considered other possible measures under national authorities, including means to restrict further the revenue sources for North Korea’s weapons programs, particularly illicit activities,” according to the statement.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Anthony Ruggiero told VOA that such “strong words need to be followed by robust actions.”

Ruggiero added that the three countries should implement increased sanctions aimed at North Korea’s provocative activities.

“China was not mentioned, but Beijing should at least be part of the focus of renewed North Korea sanctions,” he added.

At the White House, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi on Monday talked to Trump briefly after Yang’s meeting with Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster, as well as Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the conversation was an opportunity to speak on “shared interests and national security.”

Upcoming meetings

Yang is to meet Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of the State Rex Tillerson. The two spoke over the phone on February 21 during which U.S. officials said both “agreed on the need to address the threat that North Korea poses to regional stability.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s national security adviser, Shotaro Yachi, is also visiting Washington and is scheduled to meet with McMaster.

The meetings come after North Korea’s February 12 ballistic missile test.

The United States, China, Japan and South Korea are members of the so-called “six-party” talks, a series of multilateral negotiations held intermittently since 2003 for the purpose of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program.

Under a 2005 six-party joint agreement with South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, North Korea agreed to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing programs in exchange for economic aid, security guarantees and improved diplomatic ties.

But Pyongyang failed to live up to its commitment and has since conducted several nuclear and missile tests.

Plans to bridge talks between North Korean officials and former American officials were reportedly dropped after the State Department withdrew visa approvals for Pyongyang’s top envoy on U.S. relations, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A State Department spokesperson declined to confirm the report of visa withdrawals and told VOA “we do not discuss the details of individual visa cases.”

Some former U.S. officials say it is time for Washington to take a different approach in its dealings with Pyongyang, such as directly engaging with the reclusive and unpredictable regime. They argue such engagement could help to determine ways to avoid a possible confrontation that is in no one’s interest.

Others, including Brookings Institution’s senior fellow Richard Bush, say they do not see the need for such a dialogue.

He notes North Korea “knows how it needs to change its goals to satisfy the other parties and how to contact the U.S. government to talk about such changes,” but does not want to change policy.

“The problem is not the difficulties in communication,” Bush added. “It’s a conflict of goals between North Korea and the United States.”
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Afghanistan’s Taliban says an American drone strike in northern Afghanistan has killed one of its senior commanders, who led insurgents to briefly capture the capital of Kunduz province in 2015.

Mullah Abdul Salam and several of his key commanders were killed Sunday in the Dashti Archi district of Kunduz, Afghan and Taliban officials confirmed Monday.

A spokesman for the Islamist insurgency, Zabihullah Mujahid, maintained that missiles fired by an unmanned U.S. aircraft killed Salam.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, while thanking his national security forces and praising their bravery at a special ceremony in Kabul, revealed the news about the death of the insurgent commander.

“Our security and defense forces yesterday [Sunday], as an important demonstration for the security of Kunduz, destroyed Mullah Salam along with his aides,” Ghani said, without elaborating.

A U.S. military spokesman confirmed an air raid had been carried out Sunday in Kunduz, but said there was no confirmation about its outcome.

Mullah Salam was the most senior Taliban leader eliminated since the group’s chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in May 2016, while he was traveling through neighboring Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

Salam was arrested in Pakistan in 2010, before he was freed along with other Taliban prisoners two years later at the insistence of the then-Afghan government, which hoped the insurgents would quit violence and help in the official reconciliation efforts.

But Salam rejoined the Taliban upon his return to Afghanistan and retook command of insurgents in Kunduz.

The insurgent commander was from Dashti Archi, one of the Taliban’s strongholds in the province, and some Afghan observers say they believe he played a key role in promoting the group’s contacts with Russia.
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The American mining company Freeport-McMoRan has brought the world’s biggest gold mine, in the Indonesian province of West Papua, to a standstill.  The corporation is butting heads with the Indonesian government over protectionist mining regulations.  And now that Freeport has started to dismiss tens of thousands of workers, the local economy is poised to take a huge hit.  In Mimika Regency, the West Papua province containing the Grasberg gold mine, 91 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is attributed to Freeport.

Freeport Indonesia abruptly stopped production on February 10 and laid off 10 percent of its foreign workers. It employs 32,000 people in Indonesia, about 12,000 of whom are full-time employees. The freeze was a reaction to a shakeup in Freeport’s 30-year contract with the Indonesian government, signed in 1991. Indonesia has tried to levy additional obligations from Freeport in an attempt to increase domestic revenue from its natural resources. Freeport retaliated last week by threatening to pursue arbitration and sue the government for damages.

The Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources could not be reached for comment on the issue.

Observers on the ground in Papua and from afar in Jakarta worry the shakeup will decimate the local economy and lead to violence in the historically unstable region. West Papua has long been a troubled  territory in Indonesia and its independence movement has long been met with brutal military action.

Activist concerns

“I don’t think the government comprehended the social impact of the Freeport freeze in Mimika,” said Octovianus Danunan, editor of the Radar Timika, a local newspaper. “Freeport runs two hospitals here, gives hundreds of scholarships to local students, and of course, provides jobs to thousands of Papuans. With these layoffs, people are extremely worried; their lines of credit are vanishing as we speak.”

“These layoffs have eliminated the livelihoods of a lot of people,” said John Gobai, a member of the Papua parliament. “We have heard from indigenous people here in Timika [the site of Freeport facilities] that people are becoming sick from stress. They are falling into an abyss of stress.”

According to an internal Freeport report from 2015, about 36 percent of its full-time employees are native Papuans.

“I suspect that, because they may lose their jobs, many employees will want to stage demonstrations… but then, ironically, they will be laid off because that’s the state policy. I think this whole situation is a human rights violation,” said Gobai.

“Violence is a very big possibility,” said Andreas Harsono, a Human Rights Watch researcher. “Timika is the wild, wild east of West Papua. It’s the location of more than 3,500 security officers stationed along the 90-mile mining road, not to say Papuan guerrillas and hundreds of military deserters, all looking for a slice of the gold and copper mine. Shooting along the road is a regularity rather than an irregularity. I cannot imagine the situation if Freeport goes ahead with dismissing all 30,000 mining workers there.”

Gobai said there have already been some protests on Freeport headquarters and he expects there will be more going forward.

Freeport’s CEO Richard Adkerson told Reuters that the company was committed to staying in Indonesia, not least because about one-third of West Papua’s economy comes from the Grasberg mine.

Freeport’s history in Indonesia

On February 12, Adkerson issued a hard 120-day ultimatum to the Indonesian government to back down on its new demands or else face arbitration from the mining giant.

Freeport’s involvement in Indonesia dates back to the Suharto military dictatorship, which signed over 250,000 acres of West Papuan territory in 1967.

Freeport was the first foreign company to sign a contract with the new Indonesian government and, due in part to this history, it is now the single largest employer in all of Indonesia.

The company enjoyed a complicated special relationship as a “quasi-state organization for Jakarta,” as Inside Indonesia details, throughout the Suharto era, but the relationship has cooled under subsequent, democratically elected presidents.

The friction that led to this month’s impasse is a 2009 mining law that would require Freeport to build a $2.9 billion smelter (in order to move resource exports higher up in the value chain from just raw materials) and divest the majority of its shares to Indonesian ownership within 10 years.

Freeport maintains that, since its current contract runs through 2021, it doesn’t need to act on the regulations yet. But Indonesian officials, led by Mines and Energy Minister Ignasius Jonan, have ramped up pressure for Freeport to convert its contract per the 2009 law to a “Special Business License,” which precipitated today’s standoff.

Situation in flux

Both Indonesia and Freeport are likely to see monetary losses from the clash, but Indonesia seems committed to asserting its terms for collaboration. The global commodities market for ore and other natural resources has also dipped in the last year, with a particular slowdown from China.

The ground situation is likely to be in constant flux over the coming months as the Indonesian government gears up for a fight. On Monday, the government announced it is grooming a state-owned aluminum enterprise to take over the Grasberg mine if it wins arbitration with Freeport.

“What the government really needs to think about is what compensation they can give to layoff victims in the present,” said Gobai. “These people are employees, but they are also citizens.”
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