Summit Season Gets Ugly

The ASEAN summit scheduled to happen today didn't, due to a relatively large protest and an extremely lethargic security response. The protesters belong to the "red-shirts", who oppose incumbent Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva (who has now become officially "embattled"), who they claim took power undemocratically at the tail-end of Thailand's political crisis earlier this year. 

The ASEAN summit would have brought together the leaders of the 10 ASEAN nations, as well as leaders from Japan, China, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia and India. The summit was aimed at discussing how the current financial shitstorm will affect the region, as well as formulating a coherent policy response to North Korea's brazen missile-launching. 

ASEAN as an organisation was formed as a weak economic community with only six members, two of which were city-states (Brunei and Singapore), but has since taken on most of South-East Asia and has begun to talk the talk of European Union-style integration, producing a charter in 2008 promising closer co-operation, as well as an erosion of principles of non-interference which have historically held back advances in human rights.

A lot of people are claiming that this was a humiliation for the recently inaugurated PM, and it will no doubt embarrass Mr. Vejjajiva. It's incredibly important that summits including foreign dignitaries go smoothly, and although protests definitely have their place, especially at the front gates of summits, it's a major security breach when protesters break through the glass, enter the compound, and start helping themselves to the buffet lunch. The security forces are well within their rights to require protests to take place outside the summit's venues, and they should have ensured that this was the case. Protesting is healthy for a democracy; rioting is not.

The summit will have to be rescheduled, with optimistic estimates placing it at two months from now.