Zuidoost-Azië moet en wil iets met China en de Verenigde Staten

Afgelopen vrijdag 13 mei werd alsnog de lang verwachte top gehouden tussen de Verenigde Staten en ASEAN, de regionale organisatie van de tien landen in Zuidoost-Azië: Brunei, Cambodja, de Filipijnen, Indonesië, Laos, Maleisië, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, en Vietnam. Niet de hele regio was er. Timor-Leste mag niet lid worden, Myanmar staat in het verdomdenhoekje vanwege …

The Need for Reparations

To this day, the evil of colonialism has not sunken in. The exhibition on Thomas Stamford Raffles in the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) in Singapore on the occasion of the bicentennial of the 1819 founding of the British colony has provided an opportunity for reflection. I was inspired by posts and remarks from Faris Joraimi …

Carving up the Girdle of Emerald: colonialism’s violent cleavages

The evil of colonialism is not expressed in a sum of its benefits and downsides. These debates over British railways in India and economic development miss the point of colonialism entirely. Colonialism is violence. It is not just that it entails violence as an inevitable product of its system, colonialism itself is an act of epistemic …

Is China trying use the COC to beef up its Article 281 defence?

Besides ‘we do not accept,’ another legal argument China used to argue that the Philippines case before An Arbitral Tribunal under Annex VII of UNCLOS was inadmissible was that the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the South China Sea prevented arbitration as per UNCLOS Article 281. This article states that if states …