Southeast Asia

On April 28-29 this year, ASEAN, a regional association comprising 10 countries of Southeast Asia, held its 30th summit in Manila, capital city of the Philippines.

Russia carries on expanding its trade contacts with the countries of Southeast Asia in all possible directions. An important step towards this goal was the beginning of Russia’s livestock products sales on the market of the Republic of Singapore. Singapore is an extremely important partner for Moscow among the ASEAN states. The trade turnover between the two states last year has reached 2 billion dollars.

In the just over 2 years of its existence, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has gained considerable influence on the world economic stage. The combined potential of Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as the idea of ​​creating a common economic space for Eurasia and the surrounding territories, continue attracting more and more partners to the EAEU. Southeast Asian countries are currently actively establishing contacts with the EAEU.

Mounting evidence suggests media outlets across the United States and Europe are selectively labelling leaders from around the world as “autocrats,” “despots” and “dictators” based not on their actual human rights records, policies or actions, but rather on where they fall along the spectrum of obedience to and complicity with the ambitions of Wall Street, Washington, London and Brussels.

Myanmar appears poised to escape international scrutiny of its vast and expanding human rights abuses targeting its Rohingya minority.
US State Department-funded media platform, The Irrawaddy, would report in an article titled, “Burma set to Dodge Full UN Probe on Arakan State,” that:

Street vendors of all kinds are facing a complete ban of their livelihood across Bangkok, the capital of Southeast Asia’s Thailand. While it may appear to be a minor move falling in line with many other nations within the “developed world,” the significance of it both to Bangkok, Thailand, and the rest of Asia in socioeconomic terms is indeed, major.

Today, Russia’s foreign policy in Southeast Asia is getting increasingly centered on both the development of both bilateral ties with all the countries of the region along with establishing good relations with the ASEAN as a whole.

Recently, Thailand-based media platform, Voice TV, faced a seven day ban after violating licencing agreements and multiple counts of misconduct. Various articles, including those published by local English-language newspaper, The Nation, would portray the incident as a crackdown on “free of expression” and “media freedom.”
In its article, “Voice TV ban ‘an attack on media freedom’,” The Nation would claim:

Singaporean Amos Yee fits the description of virtually every foreign-backed agitator used to target and undermine political orders worldwide as part of Washington’s “soft power” toolkit.

About 250 billion Muslims (15% of the global Muslim population) reside in Southeast Asia, mainly in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world (190 million residents). In contrast to the situation in the southern regions of the Philippines and Thailand, where separatist Islamist groups are wedging a war against the governments under the banner of Islam, Indonesian and Malaysian Islam coexists with democracy.