September was Asia month at the United Nations. It began with the Security Council negotiating a set of severe sanctions on North Korea in response to Pyongyang’s late-August nuclear test. It ended with the permanent members of the council trading barbs over the humanitarian crisis exploding in Myanmar. On Thursday, the council held its first public meeting on Myanmar in eight years to address the military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority in the northwest of the country. The discussion was the diplomatic definition of doing too little, too late. The military operation, reportedly involving the systematic destruction [...]
On July 20, more than 1,000 Mexican Marines and federal and local police descended on a southeastern suburb of Mexico City to try and capture a notorious, alleged drug cartel boss. In the clash that ensued, the Marines killed eight suspected drug traffickers from the Cartel de Tlahuac, including its reputed leader, Felipe de Jesus Perez Luna. In response, the cartel’s members hijacked and burned buses in the streets. The operation put to rest a longstanding Mexican government narrative that the country’s drug cartels, present in the majority of Mexican states, do not operate in the capital. It has also [...]
YANGON, Myanmar—The crowd waiting for Aung San Suu Kyi’s highly anticipated address on the ongoing crisis in Rakhine, in western Myanmar, looked prepared for a pep rally, rather than a requiem on a conflict labeled “textbook ethnic cleansing.” On Tuesday morning, hundreds of people gathered in front of Yangon’s City Hall to watch a live broadcast of the first speech that Myanmar’s de facto leader has given since the military’s bloody counterinsurgency began in response to attacks from Rohingya militants last month. Yet the crowd’s euphoria all but eclipsed the somber topic at hand. Observers in shirts emblazoned with Aung [...]
