20/03/2025

THURSDAY | MAR 20, 2025

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Indonesia rights groups oppose military law revision

Vietnam to slash provinces HANOI: Vietnam is planning to reduce the number of provinces by half and slash commune-level authorities by up to 70%, further expanding a streamlining drive that aims to cut billions of dollars from state budgets. The cost-cutting measures have already seen the number of government ministries and agencies chopped from 30 to 22, and one in five public sector jobs will be cut over the next five years. On Tuesday, a statement on the government’s website cited Interior Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra as saying the merging and reduction of provinces is scheduled before August. The plan “would reduce the number of provincial-level administrative units by about 50% and reduce the number of grassroots level administrative units by about 60-70%”, the statement said. Vietnam is divided into 63 major cities and provinces, under which there are around 700 administrative units at the district level and more than 10,000 at the communal level. The government announced earlier that district-level authorities would be eliminated. Almost two million people worked in the public sector as of 2022, according to the government, which announced this year that 100,000 people would be made redundant or offered early retirement as part of the bureaucratic reforms. Tra said so far more than 22,000 jobs had been cut, according to state-controlled news site VNExpress. This is a “real revolution in the entire political system”, she was quoted as saying. It is unclear if there will be further job cuts as part of the provincial mergers, or which provinces will be affected. Vietnam’s top leader To Lam, who last year became Communist Party general secretary following the death of his predecessor, has said that state agencies should not be “safe havens for weak officials”. “If we want to have a healthy body, sometimes we must take bitter medicine and endure pain to remove tumours,” Lam said in December. However, there are fears the bureaucratic reforms could cause short-term chaos. – AFP Singapore military gets Oracle boost SINGAPORE: Oracle said yesterday it would provide Singapore’s defence technology arm with “isolated” cloud computing and AI services, in the company’s first such deal in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian governments are frequent targets of cyber espionage campaigns and are facing escalating supply chain attacks, according to security researchers. Under the deal, the US firm will provide Singapore’s armed forces and Defence Ministry with an “air-gapped” isolated cloud computing infrastructure – meaning that it will be cut off from the internet and connected instead to classified networks via encrypted devices. “We’re bringing our generative AI tools across the air gaps and into those isolated environments,” said Oracle Global Defence Chief Technology Officer Rand Waldron. He highlighted the technology includes AI data and imagery capabilities, including the ability for the AI to analyse video streams for faces, licences or details of cars. Oracle declined to comment on the size of the deal. Oracle has ramped up activities in Southeast Asia. It announced it planned to invest more than US$6.5 billion (RM28.8 billion) to set up a cloud region in Malaysia in October. – Reuters

o Amendments address concerns, says govt

role since taking office in October. The government defends the Bill saying it incorporated concerns and watered it down by stipulating that military officers must first resign before being placed in most civilian roles. A lawmaker from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, Nico Siahaan, said the government added more agencies where active soldiers could be appointed, including the state secretariat, Attorney General’s Office, as well as the counter terrorism and narcotics agencies. Active soldiers in the Attorney General Office would affect transparency of legal processes involving military personnel, Arif said, adding that there was a risk of armed forces using violence in civilian roles. Allowing the military to be more involved in civilian affairs could also lead to abuse of power, human rights violations, and impunity, said Usman Hamid of Amnesty International Indonesia. Budi Djiwandono, the deputy chief of committee overseeing the Military Law Bill, said the government would ensure that it upholds civil supremacy. Djiwandono, who is also Prabowo’s nephew, said that no active military personnel would be placed in state-owned companies, dismissing concerns they would be involved in business.

The opposition party urged all parties to monitor the implementation of the law to ensure no further expansion of military roles, Siahaan said. Military officers can already serve in 10 government agencies including the Defence Ministry. The Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, or Kontras, rejected the latest amendment to the Military Bill. “The discussion of the revision has been rushed, with minimal public participation and a lack of transparency in the drafting process,” it said in a joint statement with Amnesty and the Indonesia Legal Aid Foundation. It also claimed activists have faced intimidation for opposing the amendment. Prabowo has rehabilitated his image despite allegations of rights abuses under Suharto’s rule including ordering the abductions of activists. Remodelling himself as a grandfatherly figure, Prabowo won over voters last year and took office as president of the world’s third biggest democracy. According to Kontras, 23 democracy activists were kidnapped between 1997 and 1998, some who were never found. Prabowo was discharged from the military over the abductions but denied the allegations and was never charged. – Reuters/AFP

JAKARTA: Rights groups in Indonesia yesterday urged parliament to reject contentious revisions of military laws, saying they would take the archipelago back to an era of military domination and create legal uncertainty. Indonesia’s parliament is set to pass the law today in a plenary council after the house committee overseeing military affairs approved the changes, which will allow armed forces personnel to hold more civilian posts. Rights groups and student organisations called for protests outside the parliament. Rights group Legal Aid Institute said the revision would pull Indonesia back 30 years to an era where the late strongman Suharto used the military to dominate civilian affairs and crush dissent. “The revision is a legislative crime that threatens Indonesians and the future of democracy,” said Arif Maulana, deputy chair of the institute. President Prabowo Subianto, a former special forces commander and Suharto’s former son-in-law, has expanded the armed forces’ DHAKA: A Rohingya leader who directed attacks against Myanmar security forces which precipitated a humanitarian catastrophe was arrested on Tuesday in Bangladesh. Ata Ullah, 48, first surfaced nearly a decade ago as the charismatic leader of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an outfit formed to wage an insurgency against the minority’s persecution in Myanmar. Their attacks on police posts in 2017 sparked brutal reprisals that eventually sent around 750,000 Rohingya fleeing for their lives into squalid relief camps in Bangladesh. The leader was arrested alongside five associates by Rapid Action Battalion personnel on the outskirts of Dhaka, while another four of his associates were arrested in the central district of Mymensingh, police said. Ata Ullah was believed to have ordered the 2017 attacks and first came to public attention soon after in videos posted online, where he was seen flanked by masked gunmen and vowing to liberate the Rohingya from “dehumanised oppression”. ARSA has been accused of killings, abductions and torture in the refugee camps and the group’s leader has been accused of ordering the murder of civic leaders who dared to speak out against the group. He has also been accused of involvement in the murder of a Bangladeshi military intelligence officer. Tuesday’s arrest came hours after a regional rights group said at least 65 Rohingya had been killed last year in clashes between rival groups competing for influence in refugee camps. Ata Ullah’s outfit, its chief rival the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation and other groups have for years waged a deadly battle for control of the camps. Fortify Rights documented 65 deaths last year along with dozens of assaults, abductions and acts of extortion blamed on “militant and criminal groups” in the camps. – AFP Dhaka arrests Rohingya leader

Myanmar relief camps receive last WFP aid MYITKYINA: Distraught Myanmar relief camp dwellers received final handouts from the World Food Programme yesterday as the UN agency begins halting aid to a million people in the country because funding has dried up. government in 2021, Myanmar has been in the grip of a conflict that has killed thousands, displaced millions and pushed the poverty rate up to 50%. COUNTING THE COST ... Protesters wearing paper cut-outs shaped like jelly fish hold a rally in front of the Chinese consulate in Manila yesterday, calling on the government to file a case against China at the Court of Justice as environmental reparations for its alleged illegal activities in the South China Sea. – AFPPIC

Because of cuts, WFP says it will only serve around 35,000 people in April – a fraction of the 15 million people unable to meet their daily food needs. One person in need, Zi Yay Tar, has been displaced from his home by landmines and fighting for more than a year. His family of seven have scraped by alongside Byar Mee’s in the relief camp run by the Waingmaw Lisu Baptist Association in Kachin state, 40km from the border with China. “We are struggling because we don’t have any other income. The World Food Programme was our biggest hope,”Yay Tar said. – AFP

President Donald Trump’s slashing of the US aid budget has contributed to “critical funding shortfalls” for WFP, forcing it to make sweeping cuts in Myanmar. “I pray every night that this news is not true,” said Byar Mee, who on Tuesday received the last of her monthly payouts worth US$50 (RM221), which she uses to feed her family of five. “I pray to God that the donors are blessed and are able to help us again,” she told AFP in a camp outside the northeastern city of Myitkyina. “Please help us and pity us.” Since the military toppled a civilian