A new day breaks to the rhythmic shuffling of bare feet upon the ground.
Like an apparition from centuries past, a procession of several hundred shaven-headed monks emerges through the dawn mist, snaking its way through the sleepy narrow streets. Buddhist locals line the route to make their daily offerings of rice and fruit as the monks file by with their alms bowls. Then, as silently as they appeared, the monks disappear back inside their temple walls, their saffron robes billowing softly behind them.
A monk rushes to dawn prayers and meditation at one of the hundreds of Buddhist temples in Luang Prabang, Laos [Jack Picone/Al Jazeera]
This dawn ritual in Luang Prabang is just one aspect of life that lends the small city its ethereal, forgotten air. Located in the country of Laos, 370km (229 miles) northwest of the capital, Vientiane, Luang Prabang lies in a beautiful valley at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers.
That, during parts of the 20th century, the borders of Laos were sealed to foreigners, combined with its shimmering temples and ancient religious aura, has ensured the town has remained one of the most cloistered, unspoiled places on the planet.
Chiang Mai, Thailand – Thailand’s controversial humanitarian initiative with crisis-torn Myanmar is facing growing criticism even after its fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) appeared to collectively endorse the scheme.
The ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat wrapped up recently in Luang Prabang, the old capital of landlocked Laos, with an emphasis on the stalled five-point consensus agreed between the bloc and the Myanmar military shortly after it seized power in a 2021 coup.
An official from Myanmar attended the meeting for the first time since the military regime was shut out of the top summits for failing to take steps to end the crisis.
Democracy activists and politicians have repeatedly called on ASEAN to take a more robust approach against Min Aung Hlaing and his generals, officially known as the State Administration Council (SAC). But with Laos now chairing the organisation, scepticism is growing.
After taking over the ASEAN chairmanship, Laos appointed a special envoy to Myanmar separate from its foreign minister, in a break from precedent. Career diplomat Alounkeo Kittikhoun visited Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw in mid-January, meeting the generals and taking a page from Cambodia’s playbook of 2022 when it chaired the grouping.
A senior Myanmar official, Permanent Secretary Marlar Than Htike, right, attended the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ [AMM] retreat in Luang Prabang in January [Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP]
Like Cambodia, and perhaps even more so, Laos is seen as close to China.
“ASEAN’s foreign ministers endorsed the much-criticised Thai humanitarian initiative and, given the growing role of China and other Myanmar neighbours since Operation 1027, ASEAN appears to be fading into the background,” said Laetitia van den Assum, a former Dutch ambassador to Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, referring to the offensive launched by ethnic armed groups and anti-coup forces late last year that took swathes of territory from the military.
She says Vientiane’s year-long stint as chair is likely to be “a hard slog”.
“For a country with a national debt of 125 percent of GDP [gross domestic product], and most of that debt owed to China, it may find it hard to find a way to make progress with some of ASEAN’s most pressing problems,” she told Al Jazeera.
Blatant disregard
Sasa, a cabinet minister with Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG), notes the group had failed to act even after the SAC’s atrocities over the past three years “blatantly disregarded ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus”, which stipulates an end to the violence, undermining the bloc’s standing.
In addition, the generals have violated UN Security Council Resolution 2669, which also demanded an end to violence and the immediate release of President Win Myint and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Sasa told Al Jazeera.
The NUG is made up of politicians removed from office in the coup, as well as pro-democracy activists.
“ASEAN and its member states should engage with Myanmar’s legitimate democratic representatives, including the NUG and its allies. If so, ASEAN will help facilitate the restoration of peace, stability, and federal democratic governance in Myanmar,” the minister said.
There are concerns too about Thailand. It is one of the founding members of ASEAN, and its powerful military, which has itself carried out multiple coups, maintains close ties with the generals in Myanmar.
Thailand has indicated the humanitarian initiative was supposed to help pave the way for talks to end the crisis.
“Thailand wants to pull the SAC back into ASEAN and to make the junta presentable, and the humanitarian corridor proposed by Thailand is the first step of many,” van den Assum, the Dutch ambassador, said.
Thailand has sheltered about 90,000 refugees from Myanmar across nine refugee camps since the mid-1980s, Human Rights Watch said late last year. After the 2021 coup, at least 45,000 more Myanmar refugees fled to Thailand, the report estimated. Concerns are growing that Myanmar’s new conscription law, due to come into effect next month, could send even more people over the border.
Thailand and Cambodia “want to see Myanmar back fully in the ASEAN family”, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said last month, a position he said was shared by visiting Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet.
Even before Laos took over the chairmanship of ASEAN from Indonesia, there were questions over the organisation’s ability to address Myanmar’s deepening crisis. The controversies and inactions – not only over Myanmar but also issues such as the South China Sea – have raised further questions about ASEAN’s relevance and its relationship with China, which is vying for influence with the United States.
China, which claims almost the entire South China Sea, held military drills there last month as the US and the Philippines conducted their own joint exercises in the same waters. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam – all ASEAN members – are also claimants to parts of the sea, as is Taiwan.
Beijing has been involved in a number of confrontations with Manila at the disputed Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Reef over the past year but has refused to back down. ASEAN has also been unable to make progress on a binding code of conduct with China – first discussed in 2002 – in the waters, adding to the perception that China expects Southeast Asia to bow to its demands.
ASEAN’s inertia suggests members are likely to pursue their own foreign policy on the divisive issue, with the Philippines and Vietnam last month signing agreements to broaden cooperation between their coast guards in the South China Sea.
Protesters at this month’s ASEAN-Australia Special Summit criticised ASEAN and highlighted the generals’ continuing atrocities [Jaimi Joy/Reuters]
The new Thai government’s approach to Myanmar, especially its recognition of the SAC, has drawn public criticism, notably from Kasit Piromya, a well-respected veteran ambassador and Thailand’s former foreign minister.
“Refusing to acknowledge that the junta is the sole reason for this destruction of democracy, society, and millions of lives is damaging to the government’s credibility on its own,” Kasit warned in an opinion piece published in the Bangkok Post. “When taken in conjunction with empowering his counterpart and the junta in general, however, Khun Parnpree is inherently signing off on the junta’s actions,” the veteran diplomat said, referring to Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara.
Van den Assum says many civil society and humanitarian groups have formally rejected Thailand’s proposal and say it is unlikely to generate the funding needed.
“Under this arrangement, Myanmar’s Red Cross Society gets its instructions from the SAC. We have seen what the SAC has done with other humanitarian operations. For example, after Typhoon Mocha in May, the SAC blocked humanitarian relief to Arakan for months,” she warned, referring to western Rakhine state.
Deepening crisis
Even as Thailand was cosying up to the Myanmar generals, new evidence was emerging of the scale of the SAC’s’ continuing violence and atrocities.
Myanmar news outlet Myanmar Now reported that some of the resistance in the country’s central Sagaing region had been burned alive by the military. Based on the accounts of residents and resistance fighters who were there, Myanmar Now identified six out of the eight victims, whose ages ranged between 30 and 60.
In a particularly gruesome execution, two resistance fighters in their 20s were hanged and burned in public in Magway Region, according to local news reports. The incident happened last year, but the video surfaced only recently.
“It’s imperative for ASEAN leaders led by Laos to push back against the barbaric actions of the Burmese junta. The Five-Point Consensus has proven ineffective, and it is time to abandon it. The junta must be held accountable,” Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a Myanmar human rights activist, told Al Jazeera.
But despite the deepening crisis, experts say that is unlikely to happen, noting that ASEAN’s response has been hobbled by the split between those – such as Laos, Cambodia and Thailand – who are more accommodating of the generals, and those who would prefer the organisation to be tougher. Myanmar has been a member of ASEAN since 1997.
Scot Marciel, the former US ambassador to Indonesia, ASEAN and Myanmar and author of Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia, believes Western nations could perhaps “work more actively with a few individual ASEAN member states such as Indonesia and Singapore toward a better approach”.
Marking the coup’s third anniversary in February, Min Aung Hlaing extended the state of emergency that underpins military rule for a further six months.
A camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar as seen across the river from Mae Sot. Thailand is worried about an influx of refugees if the situation deteriorates further [File: Jintamas Saksornchai/AP Photo]
The SAC has faced severe losses since Operation 1027 began, and a China-brokered ceasefire in the northeast looks shaky.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a monitoring group, has documented the deaths of more than 3,000 civilians by the SAC and its allies, with more than 26,000 arrested since the 2021 coup, although the actual death toll is widely believed to be much higher.
“Thailand and Laos are actively endeavouring to re-engage the Myanmar junta, but their belief that addressing humanitarian crises will pave the way for political dialogue is misguided,” a senior pro-democracy politician from Myanmar, who declined to be named for fear of physical danger, told Al Jazeera.
“The crux of the Myanmar quagmire lies in the junta’s disregard for democracy and human rights, compounded by ASEAN’s inability to forge a cohesive response. Without concerted efforts to address these fundamental issues, any attempts to bring the junta back into the fold will ultimately prove futile.”
Southeast Asian foreign ministers have called for a “Myanmar-owned and led solution” to the crisis in Myanmar that began when the military seized power in a coup three years ago, and has left thousands dead.
The call from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) followed a meeting on Monday of the 10-member grouping’s foreign ministers in Laos, which was attended by an official from Myanmar for the first time in two years.
The ministers also gave their backing to efforts by Alounkeo Kittikhoun, Laos’s special envoy on the crisis, in “reaching out to parties concerned”.
Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the generals removed the elected government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021, and seized power, responding with brutal force to mass protests against its rule and sparking an armed uprising.
More than 4,400 civilians have been killed since and the military is holding nearly 20,000 people in detention, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.
ASEAN, which Myanmar joined in 1997, has been leading international diplomatic efforts on Myanmar but has made little progress since unveiling the so-called five-point consensus to end the crisis at a summit attended by coup leader Min Aung Hlaing shortly after the power grab.
The generals have ignored the plan and have been banned from attending ASEAN’s summits and ministerial meetings.
Laos, a one-party communist state on Myanmar’s northeastern border, is chairing ASEAN this year.
Kittikhoun travelled to Myanmar earlier this month where he met Min Aung Hlaing and the two discussed “efforts of the government to ensure peace and stability”, according to Myanmar’s state media. Neither ASEAN nor Laos have commented on the trip and it is unclear whether he met any anti-coup groups.
The conflict has deepened since an alliance of anti-coup forces and ethnic armed groups began a major offensive towards the end of last year in northern Shan State and western Rakhine.
The alliance claims to have overrun dozens of military outposts and taken control of key towns.
More than 2.6 million people have been forced from their homes over three years of fighting.
The military government has shown no willingness to open talks with its opponents and describes them as “terrorists”. It has also accused ASEAN of interfering in its internal affairs.
Laos stresses engagement
The ASEAN statement did not elaborate on whether the “Myanmar-owned and led solution” would involve discussions with the National Unity Government, the administration established by elected politicians who were removed in the coup as well as supporters of democracy in the wake of the power grab.
The military sent Marlar Than Htike, the ASEAN’s permanent secretary at the Foreign Ministry, to the meeting in Laos, accepting for the first time ASEAN’s invitation for it to send a “non-political” representative to meetings.
Laos’s Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith welcomed Myanmar’s attendance.
“This time we feel a little bit optimistic that the engagement may work, although we have to admit that the issues that are happening in Myanmar will not resolve overnight,” he said.
“We are sure that the more we engage Myanmar, the more understanding … about the real situation that is happening in Myanmar.”
The crisis has caused friction within ASEAN with some members pushing for a firmer line with the military and engagement with the NUG.
A spokesman from Indonesia, which chaired the grouping last year, insisted Monday’s attendance was not a sign that policy had changed.
“It is true that a Myanmar representative was present at the ASEAN FM meeting in Luang Prabang. The attendance was not by a minister-level or political representative. So, it is still in line with the 2022 agreement of the ASEAN leaders,” Lalu Muhamad Iqbal told the AFP news agency.
Laos’s Foreign Minister Kommasith told reporters that Thailand would provide more humanitarian assistance to Myanmar.
“We think humanitarian assistance is the priority for the immediate period of time when implementing the five-point consensus,” he said, referring to the April 2021 consensus.
The plan calls for the immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar, a dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all concerned parties.
Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos have a combined population of nearly 650 million people and a total gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $3 trillion.
Laos is the group’s poorest nation and one of its smallest.
It has close ties to China with which it also shares a border.
From the deepening conflict in Myanmar as a result of the 2021 coup to North Korea’s record years of weapons testing and confrontations in the South China Sea, it has been a busy year in the Asia Pacific.
Here are some of our most-read and must-reads from our original reporting in 2023.
Myanmar
More than two years since the generals seized power in a coup in February 2021, civilians found themselves caught in an escalating conflict, and targeted by a military notorious for its brutality.
Starting with satellite imagery of five villages burned to ashes in the country’s Sagaing region, Zaheena Rasheed and Nu Nu Lusan gathered evidence from villagers and witnesses to piece together what had happened.
“We have been working so hard for generations to build these houses and own this land, but they burned our homes and our grain in just one day,” one farmer told them. “They want us to become so poor that we do not resist them. I think they believe that if we are left with nothing, we would not resist. But they are wrong.”
At the end of October, three ethnic armed groups formed an alliance to begin a major offensive against the military in northern Shan state along the border with China.
Emily Fishbein, Jaw Tu Hkawng and Zau Myet Awng found Operation 1027, as the offensive was dubbed, sparking renewed optimism among anti-coup forces as the armed groups notched up early gains.
They have since made further advances from Shan state across to western Rakhine state despite a ferocious response from the military.
The fighting has worsened the humanitarian situation for many civilians, with local relief agencies providing assistance in the absence of an international response.
In Rakhine’s Minbya, a Rohingya woman told Al Jazeera she was living in fear amid relentless shelling and artillery fire.
“We can’t get out of Minbya right now. The fighting is all around,” she said in November. “I can hear bombing and gunfire every day, but I don’t know where they’re fighting. There’s no internet and the phone also often doesn’t work. I worry about everything.”
Rakhine has long been a troubled state. Home to the mostly Muslim Rohingya, it was where the military launched a brutal crackdown that sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017.
Cyclone Mocha caused devastation in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state [File: Sai Aung Main/AFP]
Many of those who remain are forced to live in camps where their movements are restricted.
These areas were hit in May by Cyclone Mocha, the most serious storm to hit Myanmar since Cyclone Nargis killed thousands of people in 2008.
Hpan Ja Brang, working with Emily Fishbein, were the first to report in international media of the devastation wreaked by the storm, especially in the Rohingya camps. You can read their report here.
Surge in trafficking
The Myanmar crisis has also had an increasing effect regionally – not just as a result of the generals’ refusal to carry through on promises to end the violence made to fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but because the instability is driving criminality.
Kevin Doyle travelled up to northern Thailand and the so-called Golden Triangle where seizures of drugs including methamphetamine and heroin have soared since the coup.
Chris Humphrey, meanwhile, who is based in Hanoi, found a surge in the number of Vietnamese being trafficked into Myanmar and forced to work as sex slaves or in scam call centres.
And Alastair McCready went to Laos where he discovered the supply of methamphetamine had grown so much that it had become cheaper than beer.
The crisis in Myanmar has increased the regional drugs trade [Alastair McCready/Al Jazeera]
Vietnam
Hanoi-based Chris Humphrey heard foreigners were being held in Vietnamese detention long after they had completed their prison sentences. The reason? Unpaid court fines and compensation to the victims of their crimes.
At the time the story was published, nationals from countries including Malaysia, Cambodia, South Africa and Nigeria were being held beyond their sentences in sometimes horrific conditions.
“It’s terrible. It is prison after prison,” Nigerian Ezeigwe Evaristus Chukwuebuka told Al Jazeera. “I was seriously humiliated, locked up in a dark, stinky, small room without a toilet, and my legs locked up in bars for two weeks.”
Indonesia
For 30 years until May 1998, Indonesia was ruled by strongman Soeharto.
His departure, amid mass protests, brought new freedoms for Indonesia’s more than 200 million people, particularly its ethnic Chinese minority who had long endured government-sponsored discrimination and were often targeted for their perceived wealth.
Randy Mulyanto and Charlenne Kayla Roeslie spoke to five Indonesians of Chinese descent to find out more about those times and how things had changed.
Iskandar Salim told them that he used to struggle with his identity – feeling like he was not Indonesian enough but not fully Chinese either. Now, he is proud to define himself.
“I can simply say, ‘I am Indonesian, more specifically Chinese Indonesian’,” Iskander told Al Jazeera. “In the end, our identity is ours to decide and define.” Find out more here.
Staying in Indonesia, after Aisyah Llewellyn heard that school children had been caught up in tear gas fired by police at protesters on the island of Rempang – not too far from Singapore – she went there to find out what was going on.
She discovered a controversial plan for a Chinese factory to make glass for solar panels and develop a massive eco-city. The problem? Thousands of residents would have to move to make way for it.
“This is my home and this is where I want to die,” 80-year-old Halimah told Al Jazeera. “I love this place more than anything.”
You can learn more about the villagers and their determination to stop the project here.
A year after the tragedy at the Kanjuruhan football stadium in Malang, Llewellyn flew to the city to speak to the families of some of the 135 people who died.
The stadium has been demolished and will be redeveloped but the struggle to reform Indonesian football will not be so simple. You can read that piece here.
Phillip Mehrtens was taken captive by Papuan independence fighters in February [The West Papua National Liberation Army via Reuters]
And finally, the kidnapping of New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens by an armed group fighting for independence in Papua drew renewed international attention to the long-running conflict in the resource-rich region.
Here’s the story from Kate Mayberry. Mehrtens is still being held captive.
Military developments
Military developments were a key focus of the year, with North Korea testing a record number of weapons as it stepped up efforts to modernise its armed forces.
In September, leader Kim Jong Un made a rare trip out of his country, boarding his armoured train on a mission to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome.
Putin agreed to help Kim build satellites and officials showed off Russia’s military technology, In November, North Korea put its first spy satellite into the air – after three failed launches – and is promising more for 2024.
Experts say it continues to fund such activities by illicit means – from hacking to money laundering (you can read more on the ghostly North Korean restaurants that continue to trade in Laos here). The big question is what North Korea is giving Russia in return for its help. Weapons, probably.
Kim argues he needs to develop his country’s arsenal because the United States is deepening its military and political relationship with South Korea. The US, meanwhile, says it has to work more closely with Seoul and its allies because of the increasing threat from Pyongyang.
It is a similar story in the South China Sea, where Beijing has come into multiple confrontations with Manila in the Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Shoal.
To much concern in Beijing, the situation has pushed the Philippines closer to the US. Zaheena Rasheed travelled to the country to find out why. You can read that story here.
China
2023 was the year China emerged from years of isolation as a result of its zero-COVID strategy.
That policy meant relentless testing, isolation or quarantine camp. Erin Hale discovered months after the policy was lifted that many of the vast camps remained.
Meanwhile, in this story, Frederik Kelter reported many Chinese had struggled to recover from the trauma of zero-COVID and the abrupt decision to drop it following unprecedented protests.
“So many people suffered under the zero-COVID policy and so many people died when it ended,” Evelyn Ma told Al Jazeera.
The famous Kampung Baru Mosque’s bubur [Lai Seng Sin/AP Photo]
We also took a closer look at China’s growing influence in the Solomon Islands and the curious case of a shipment of what were said to be “replica” weapons from China.
The Asia Pacific is home to a wide variety of religions, from Buddhism to Christianity and Islam.
Raphael Rashid looked at how plans for a tiny mosque in the South Korean city of Daegu triggered a wave of virulent Islamophobia, which saw pig heads left rotting outside the building and protesters holding pork barbecues. You can read more on that story here.
We also reported on how Beijing is asserting control over religions, from Catholicism to Islam.
As Theresa Liu, a Chinese Catholic who follows the church in Rome, told Al Jazeera: “The government is trying to control everything about our religion – how our churches look, who our priests are, the way we pray. I think different religious groups all over China are having trouble with the government.”
People wave Chinese and Hong Kong flags, as Pope Francis arrives to attend the Holy Mass in Ulaanbaatar, in Mongolia in September [Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters]
On a lighter – or should it be heavier – note, Marco Ferrarese profiled the Taiwanese death metal band Dharma. Their unique selling point – their lyrics are actually Buddhist verses and nuns join them on stage.
In Malaysia, meanwhile, Ramadan is known for unique dishes that can only be found during the Muslim fasting month. One of them is bubur lambuk from the Masjid Jamek Kampung Baru Mosque.
Ushar Daniele and Bhavya Vemulapalli joined the mosque’s volunteer chefs to find out the secret to the creamy porridge’s popularity.
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