Human rights low on agenda
MANILA — As his first official trip to Asia neared its end Monday, President Donald Trump had yet to utter a word about the vicious military campaign against the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar, which the United Nations’ top human rights official has called a “textbook example” of genocide.
Earlier in Vietnam, Trump embraced the communist nation’s leaders during a state visit to Hanoi without publicly raising the ongoing crackdown on political speech and independent journalists. He lavished praise in Beijing on Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who
oversees an authoritarian system that sharply limits press freedoms.
And in Manila, human rights issues were barely discussed — if at all — in Trump’s first meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has garnered worldwide condemnation for waging a bloody, extrajudicial drug war that has killed thousands, including children, who have either been shot in police raids or targeted by hit men, often after being named by police.
Throughout his 12-day, five-nation trip in Asia, Trump focused primarily on tough talk about trade, terrorism and North Korea’s nuclear program, while saying little about chronic human-rights abuses in a region that is home to some of world’s most brutal authoritarian regimes. The theme is a familiar one for Trump, who declared during a May speech in front of leaders in the Middle East, including many despots, that “we are not here to lecture” but to “offer partnership.”
Unlike former President Barack Obama, who canceled a bilateral meeting with Duterte just last year, Trump joined the Philippine strongman in raising their glasses in a toast at the start of the Southeast Asian Nations summit in Manila over the weekend. The two men appeared at ease as they posed for photographs with other leaders wearing traditional barong Tagalog shirts.
“We’ve had a great relationship,” Trump told reporters as he sat with Duterte. “This has been very successful.”
Duterte cut off American reporters who tried to press Trump on human rights.
“Whoa, whoa,” Duterte protested. “This is not a press statement. This is the bilateral meeting.”
Duterte at one point called reporters “spies,” with Philippine security personnel jostling some of the journalists roughly. The remarks elicited a hearty laugh from Trump before the journalists were led out of the room.
A spokesman for Duterte said after the two leaders met that human rights did not come up, although the Philippine leader did talk about his efforts against the “drug menace.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said human rights came up briefly in the context of the Philippines’ drug war.
Later, in a joint statement, the U.S. and Philippine governments said Trump and Duterte agreed to “continue mainstreaming the human rights agenda” in their respective countries. The statement said the two leaders “underscored that human rights and the dignity of human life are essential.”
White House aides said Trump routinely brings up human rights in his private conversations with world leaders, and in a couple of notable instances he has addressed the matter in public on his Asia trip.
In a speech to the South Korean parliament, Trump called North Korea “a hell no person deserves,” and he laid out in sometimes gruesome detail the abuses Pyongyang has perpetrated — including purportedly killing babies and carting the bodies away in buckets.
In Tokyo, Trump met with the families of Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents four decades earlier.
On Thursday, as Trump flew from China to Vietnam, a White House official told reporters that Trump has been “quite concerned” about Myanmar, where Muslims have been systematically slaughtered by the Buddhist majority.
“It’s come up in a number of his conversations with Southeast Asian leaders, and certainly he’ll be discussing it, and publicly as well,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak.
As of Monday, however, Trump had yet to do so.
The meeting in Manila also highlighted the potential conflicts of interest inherent in Trump’s position as both a president and a global real estate developer. Among those at the private session was Jose E.B. Antonio, a developer who is Trump’s partner on a $150 million, 57-story luxury tower in Manila’s financial district and also serves as Duterte’s trade envoy to the United States.
On the streets of Manila, meanwhile, a phalanx of about 100 riot police officers with shields and truncheons clashed Monday with about 300 protesters carrying anti-American placards as they marched near the U.S. Embassy. They were later pushed back with water cannons.
On the sidelines of the summit, Trump looked to strengthen ties with Pacific Rim allies, aiming to strike bilateral rather than multinational trade agreements and increase pressure on North Korea. He met Monday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Trump raved about his accomplishments on his five-nation journey, particularly on trade and on North Korea. Trump said he would wait until his return to Washington on Wednesday to elaborate with a “major statement” on those two topics.
“We’ve made some very big steps with regard to trade — far bigger than anything you know,” Trump told reporters. “We have deficits with almost everybody. Those deficits are going to be cut very quickly and very substantially.”