San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
U.N. chief calls for drive to end Myanmar strife
United Nations SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres said Saturday that the world had failed Myanmar, and expressed hope the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would be able to pressure the member state to comply with its plan for peace over the next year.
ASEAN leaders at the group’s ongoing summit in Phnom Penh agreed on a plan Friday that largely puts the onus on Indonesia when it takes over the group’s rotating chair in 2023 to develop measurable indicators and a timeline for Myanmar to implement the so-called five-point consensus for peace.
Indonesia has been one of the ASEAN countries most outspoken about the need to do more to address the situation in Myanmar, and Guterres told reporters he felt “the Indonesian government will be able to push forward the agenda in a positive way.”
The ASEAN decision includes asking the U.N. and other “external partners” for assistance in supporting the group’s efforts. Guterres said he hoped the U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, Noeleen Heyzer, would cooperate closely with her ASEAN counterpart to bring about an end to the “dramatic violations of human rights” in the country.
“Everybody has failed in relation to Myanmar,” Guterres said. “The international community as a whole has failed, and the U.N. is part of the international community.”
ASEAN’s peace plan calls for the immediate cessation of violence, a dialogue among all parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all sides.
Myanmar’s government initially agreed to the plan but has made little effort to implement it.
CHINA Curbs tightened to slow virus cases
All residents of a district of 1.8 million people in China’s southern metropolis of Guangzhou were ordered to stay home for virus testing Saturday and a major city in the southwest closed schools as another rise in infections was reported.
Nationwide, a total of 11,773 infections were reported over the previous 24 hours. China’s numbers are low, but the past week’s increase is challenging a “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to isolate every infected person.
A total of 3,775 infections were found in Guangzhou, a city of 13 million, according to the National Health Commission. That was an increase from Friday’s total of 3,030.
People in the Guangzhou’s Haizhu district were told to visit the nearest testing station but otherwise stay home, the district government announced on its social media account. One member of each household was allowed out to buy food.
In the southwest, the industrial city of Chongqing closed schools in its Beibei district, which has 840,000 people. Residents were barred from leaving a series of apartment compounds in its Yubei district but the city gave no indication how many were affected.
Public frustration and complaints that some people are left without access to food or medicine have boiled over into protests and clashes with local officials in some areas.
Elsewhere, mass testing also was being carried out Saturday in eight districts with a total of 6.6 million people in the central city of Zhengzhou.
POLAND Lawmakers criticize police on detentions
Opposition politicians in Poland criticized police Saturday for detaining anti-fascist activists but not reacting to the appearance of a Nazi-era symbol during a nationalist march.
The detention of the activists occurred during Friday’s yearly far-right-led Independence March in Warsaw. Many liberal groups who oppose the march have accused the police for years of displaying favorable treatment toward the nationalists while treating protesters of the event unfairly.
The counter-protesters held white roses and a banner reading “Nationalism is not patriotism” before police removed them from a location near the march route.
An opposition lawmaker, Michal Szczerba of the centrist Civic Platform party, accused the ruling Law and Justice party Saturday of creating “an oppressive state” with its treatment of peaceful protesters.
A Polish senator who also is a member of the political opposition, Krzysztof Brejza, tweeted a photo from the march of participants carrying a banner with the “Black Sun” symbol of Nazi Germany’s SS guards. Brejza noted that police did not intervene.
The promotion of totalitarian ideologies is illegal in Poland.
A police spokesman, Sylwester Marczak, said the detained activists, some from the group Obywatele RP, which means Citizens of Poland, were held for several hours because they had restricted the work of the police, and refused to show their identification documents.
Hanna Machinska, the country’s deputy human rights commissioner, went to the scene Friday evening to intervene. She said the protesters did not provide their IDs because they were not given a legal reason for doing so.
Machinska told TVN24 the protesters were standing on a lawn and not disturbing the march or its participants.
FLORIDA NASA’S moon rocket set for test launch
NASA’s moon rocket needs only minor repairs after enduring a hurricane at the launchpad and is on track for its first test flight this week.
“Right now, there’s nothing preventing us” from attempting a launch on Wednesday, said NASA’s Jim Free, an associate administrator.
The wind never exceeded the rocket’s design limits as Hurricane Nicole swept through Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, according to Free. NASA had been aiming for an early Monday launch, but put it on hold for two days because of the storm.
The 322-foot rocket, known as SLS for Space Launch System, is the most powerful ever built by NASA. A crew capsule atop the rocket, with test dummies on board, will shoot for the moon — the first such flight in 50 years when Apollo astronauts last visited the moon.