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HUA HIN, Thailand: Southeast Asian leaders have barred five out of 10 rights activists from attending rare face-to-face talks with them at a summit in Thailand, a rights group said on Friday.
Leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were set to meet the so-called civil society representatives on Friday at the summit in the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin.
But the representatives from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines and Singapore were rejected at the last minute, said Debbie Stothard of the ASEAN People's Forum, which nominated the representatives.
"Five of the 10 civil society representatives selected by the ASEAN People's Forum have been rejected. The remaining five have been told that they will not be allowed to speak at the interface," Stothard told AFP.
"This is an outrageous development. It is a rejection of civil society and of the democratic process by which they were selected," she said.
"This really does not bode well. The irony is that ASEAN governments have committed themselves under their new charter to a 'people-centred' organisation, but this is a radical undermining of that."
The snub came just hours before ASEAN leaders were set to launch the bloc's first ever human rights body, in an attempt to address criticisms that it is too soft on abusers such as military-ruled Myanmar.
In February, Myanmar and Cambodia both blocked civil society representatives from their countries from attending a similar meeting at an earlier summit in Hua Hin.
- AFP/so
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