 The 16th Summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization saw key discussions on Central Asia. What was on the agenda? And finally, a vital ruling by Australian High Court has reversed its 20-year-old precedent when it comes to indefinite detention. What did the court decide? This is the Daily Debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before you go any further, please hit the subscribe button. One of the areas where the effects of the Ukraine war is most visible is Central Asia. The United States is sought to use the war to push its own agenda in the region. But the U.S. and Russia are not the only players. China, Turkey and Iran all have major stakes. In this context, the 16th Summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization, a forum of countries of the region, was keenly watched. We go back to Abdul for details of the summit that was held in Kazakhstan. Abdul, the 16th Economic Cooperation Organization summit taking place in Tashkent, actually very important region for multiple reasons. Of course, which you talked often about on this show, there is definitely an angle of geopolitical rivalry that is taking place over there, especially in the context of the Ukraine war. There is, of course, the Afghan crisis as well, in which all the countries concerned are definitely involved in various ways. So, could you maybe first take us through a bit about the organization itself and its mandate and also what really was covered during the summit? ECO is a very interesting organization, particularly given the fact that the reason, Central Asian region is one of those reasons in the world. Politics basically is not much talked about. And so it was basically formed, of course, as a successor of an earlier organization, but it was basically formed in 1985. It is headquartered in Tehran and it has 10 members, including Afghanistan and Azerbaijan. As you rightly pointed out while asking the question that Afghanistan has been constantly in war, ever since, you can say, the establishment of the organization. And there has been a long-lasting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which has also impacted its functioning. Apart from that, of course, the Iranian situation, which basically has been under sanction ever since the Revolution in 1979, has also kind of complicated its objectives. The basic mandate of the organization was to kind of remember that this organization was created at the time when the kind of neoliberal globalization was on its peak and there was an attempt to create as many free trade areas as possible at the time. So basic mandate of the organization was to create a free trade area among all the countries in the region. Of course, that has not materialized apart from the fact that there has been greater economic cooperation among all the countries, despite the sanctions, despite the war and despite the instabilities in countries, other member countries like in Pakistan, for example, which is also a very important country. So given all these complexities and given the fact that this is one of the reasons which basically is often neglected, ECO has been quite, you can say, kind of meaningful in terms of the overall economic cooperation in the region. So what was really happening at this summit in terms of what were the kind of major aspects of discussion? Well, apart from the issue of Palestine, which was raised by Iran and other member countries, despite it was not being officially included as something to discuss on the agenda, this was one thing, of course, which was discussed and it seems the majority of the countries in the grouping expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian issue. But when it comes to the larger economic mandate, of course, they talked about all the countries have basically started talking about strengthening the economic corridors, which have been basically strengthened due to the BRT involvement of China into it, which basically has strengthened the infrastructure in all the Central Asian countries in particular and countries like Pakistan. So there is a talk of kind of linking the Central Asia, which is a loin-lock region, through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea so that there can be greater trade of all these countries. So that was one discussion there. There is another attempt to kind of create another link through Turkey basically to the Mediterranean and beyond. So that was the primary discussion. Apart from the fact that it also basically talked about strengthening whatever bilateral and the multilateral agreements which are part of the ECO already. For example, there is an Asgabar agreement among all the five Central Asian countries to create more connectivity through infrastructure. Then there is, of course, there is BRT which has connected all the countries including Pakistan. Now it is increasingly building infrastructure in Iran as well. So that Iran can also be used as a link between the Central Asian countries and the countries in West Asia and other parts of the world. It was basically the primary agenda during this summit. Apart from the fact that Turkey also has basically proposed another corridor passing through Iran, again Iran and Turkey. And so these three corridors, corridor between Central Asia through Iran, corridor between Central Asia through Pakistan and corridor through Central Asia, Iran and Turkey where the primary was the primary agenda. Abdull also finally for the benefit of our viewers you could sort of tell us the kind of geopolitical games that are really taking place in that area because recently with the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict we saw the United States also making a very sustained intervention in what is long considered Russia's backyard as well and Turkey is also involved, Iran is also involved. Yeah, so Central Asia is now gaining much more attention primarily because earlier attempts by the U.S. to intervene in the region post-1990s did not bring that great result because Russia asserted its authority in the region then China also basically pitched in through economic cooperation because and through the SCO-Sangai Cooperation Organization which most of the Central Asian countries are part of. It has expanded and Iran and other countries are also becoming members of it. So because of the strong Chinese and Russian presence in the region given their larger geographical proximity and given their historical close links with all these countries it was difficult for the U.S. to kind of go make inroads and create the kind of grounds there for launching its larger you can say approaches a larger strategy towards the region to control particularly the Iranian and the Chinese involvement in the region which has basically has not materialized for a very long time but as you rightly pointed out because of the Armenia-Azerbaijan recent developments in which Turkey has taken a certain stand Turkey took a certain stand which basically has created a possibility for the U.S. and Israel to kind of create greater kind of links with these two countries and kind of move in. This is also related to what is happening in Ukraine. So since it is considered that Russia is more involved in Ukraine Russia has less energy and resources time to basically devote to the region and this is seen as a perfect time to kind of intervene there but I think despite the these openings created for the U.S. due to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict or due to the Ukraine war it seems it will be very difficult for the U.S. to kind of have any presence which will replace Russians or the Chinese for various reasons as I said before because of the historical reasons and because of the larger economic integration which SEO, BRT and aggressive Russian involvement in the region has created so it will be not easy for the U.S. to kind of play its geopolitical games in the region as it looks from the surface. Abil, thank you so much for that analysis and finally a few days ago the Australian High Court declared that indefinite detention of asylum seekers is illegal the verdict is likely to impact scores and marks at reversal of a 20-year-old precedent we go to Anish for the details. Anish can you tell us a bit about this verdict activists calling it a landmark decision as far as a lot of people who are in Australia as far as the settlement is concerned, refugees are concerned what is really this verdict about? The verdict primarily talks about whether or not the government can hold people indefinitely in detention because they are asylum seekers or irregular or undocumented asylum seekers that have come into the country. Now the thing is that in 1992 when the Australian government then a labor government actually created a new set of laws that actually allowed for indefinite detention it was challenged in the Supreme Court previously in 2004 they gave out a verdict saying that the law was constitutional because as long as the government had the eventual intention that they will somehow deport these people they can hold them under indefinite detention. Now the thing is that the same High Court is now finding it that if the government has not been able to find any clear place for these people to actually find another place, a safe deportation so to say it cannot really hold them under indefinite detention and that's the most important part of it. The case of the person's character background is irrelevant in this matter and it's the fact that they have been held under indefinite detention with no charges, with no cases against them or anything that actually prevents them under common laws or common human rights legal structure and so this is going to be a landmark decision because this actually essentially reverses the last 20-30 years of a system that actually allowed governments of the government to actually indefinitely detain hundreds, thousands of people whether or not they came by force, whether they had their visas expired so it is going to have a significant impact especially on people who are stateless. In this specific case, we can actually look at the fact that there was problematic history with this person. He was convicted of a very serious crime and obviously the countries that Australia tried to send him to as part of its deportation program did not work and the fact that he's a Rohingya Muslim meant that he cannot be deported back to Myanmar where he will be completely unsafe where he's not even recognized as a citizen. So the question for the court was simply whether or not this person had or was safe to be deported or would be deported to begin with and if he is not to be deported under any foreseeable future then this person is not liable to be kept under detention indefinitely and this is something that is going to affect, as I said, multiple people, around 92 people at the very least according to activists and different estimates are going to be impacted because they are people who are stateless who have come to Australia seeking asylum because they are a consecutive minority back home and they cannot be returned back under any circumstances because it would be completely unsafe for them and so this is what the ruling pretty much boils down to really just ask the question of whether the government can detain any kind of person indefinitely and but this might also have repercussions on other kinds of asylum seekers who cannot be detained under different circumstances. Right Anish, of course like you said while in this case the specific instances of a man convicted of very serious crimes the judgment itself has a much larger implication and I think we've talked about some of these issues during COVID-19 also when Australia had a very problematic approach towards refugees. Definitely, definitely because at the time this actually came was highlighted primarily because the offshore asylum detention centres came into light about dozens of people at the time I think more than 130 or 140 people were held under different offshore detention facilities including in Nauru and Papua de Guinea and that was pretty much at the highlight and many of them had to be evacuated because of COVID-19 outbreaks and so the question came up and most of them none of them were convicted of any other crimes most of them were very genuine asylum seekers who did not have the means to go through the regular channels as the government insists many of them came by boat and so these people had to be evacuated immediately and some of them who were evacuated but kept under other kind of indefinite detention within Australia so it was a very inhuman kind of system and Australia is one of the few so to say higher income economies or you know part of all sorts of human rights charter who still has this set of immigration laws that actually allows for an indefinite detention and it is something that none of the governments or the successive or even the current one have shown any intention to change and this actually puts into risk a lot of people including children many of the detainees came to Australia by boat as teenagers like this person in question but also others and they were kept under different sort of indefinite detention right now Australia detains about as a detained population of about a thousand or more across the country and also some in the offshore detention at least a hundred or so children among them and so these people are also to be considered when the implications of this ruling is going to be unraveled in the coming phase Thank you so much Anish for that and that's all we have in today's episode of Daily Deep Brief we'll be back tomorrow meanwhile do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and if you're watching this on YouTube do hit that subscribe button