Anti-TPPA placards appear at Obama's do

A group of students staged a protest at the Young South East Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Town Hall today, while US President Barrack Obama was speaking to some 600 youth leaders from across the region.

 

The group of about ten students held up anti-Egyptian coup posters as well as placards that read "No TPPA" in reference to the US-initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

 

However, Obama, who was speaking about respecting differences in opinion at the time, merely responded "For example there is a 'no' over there. I don't know what those young people are saying 'no' about.

 

"But I think that the basic idea is that somebody is not like you - if they look differently from you, if they believe differently than you - that you are treating them as you want to be treated," he said.

 

At the end of the town hall session, spokesperson for the group Adam Fistival Wilfrid says he hoped to use YSEALI’s question and answer session to ask Obama to step in on Egypt's death sentence against 529 Muslim supporters for allegedly participating in violent protests where a police officer was killed.

 

The group also hoped to voice opposition against the TPPA, especially its provisions on medical patents, which their fear would make medical care less affordable to the low and middle income groups.

 

"We disagree with the TPPA because we think it is a biased agreement, and we don't even know the content of the agreement," said Adam, who is also the public relations chief for Universiti Malaya's student representative council.

Not much of a discourse
 

While Obama did speak on the agreement, which is still being negotiated behind closed doors between 12 countries, the students complained that he did not dwell deeply on the subject or any policy issues at all.

 

"We actually expected a higher level of conversation," one of the students interjected just after Adam (left) finished speaking, and another said, "We don’t want anything that we can find from his biography. We want something like the truth about TPPA."

 

Earlier during his speech, Obama said that through the TPPA, he hopes that Southeast Asian nations would have fair access to markets and ensuring economic growth, while ensuring a high level of protection for workers and the environment.

 

Besides the US and Malaysia, countries that are a part of the TPPA negotiations include Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Canada, and Japan.