Vietnam’s Problems, Promises – Asia Sentinel/RTÉ World Report

December 2nd, 2011

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4003&Itemid=214

radio report here - http://www.rte.ie/news/player.html?worldreport#programme=World%20Report

Continuing growth is exceeded by stubborn inflation

HO CHI MINH CITY- With average per capital annual incomes of just over US$1,000, Vietnam is officially a lower-middle income country, and in Hanoi, the seat of government, and commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City – still popularly known as Saigon – property prices are on an upward curve and new building and property developments appear shoot up faster than new growth in Vietnam’s lush tropical rainforests.

The appearance is somewhat illusory. The country faces crushing inflation, forecast by Standard Chartered Bank at 19.7 percent in December, with an11.3 percent rise forecast for 2012. The dong is expected to continue to depreciate throughout the year given Vietnam’s US$8 billion current account deficit and low foreign currency reserves. (more…)

---

Thailand floods: The straw that broke the broker’s back – The Irrawaddy

November 2nd, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22371

Former Burmese migrant ‘broker’ unloads on shakedown of poor migrants fleeing Thailand floods

BANGKOK – “They are using the opportunity (provided by the floods) to exploit the workers”, says *Aung, slamming Thai immigration officials and Burmese brokers for extorting Burmese migrants who have been fleeing flooding Thailand. “I have never seen anything so bad as this”, said the man.

Aung used to work as a broker in Thailand, part of a sometimes-reviled network who, for an often substantial fee, help migrants find work and living quarters in Thailand, but often collude with traffickers in Burma and Thailand, and with brutally-exploitative employers in Thailand.

Leaked information from inside the immigration detention centre near Mae Sot, the main land border crossing between Thailand and Burma, suggests that 30,000 Burmese trying to head home have been detained at the centre during recent weeks, as floods close factories and inundate their often ramshackle homes. (more…)

---

Amid mixed messages, floods threaten Thailand’s economy – Christian Science Monitor

October 24th, 2011

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1024/Bangkok-floodwaters-threaten-Thailand-s-economy

BANGKOK - Standing over the clanging hammers and ripping saws, Tinnakorn Rujinarong watched workmen bang together a yard-high barrier meant to keep looming floodwaters – which have killed over 350 people and swamped an area the size of Northern Ireland – out of one of the world’s biggest flea-markets and one of Thailand’s best-known attractions.

Most weekends, around 200,000 people sweat and haggle their way through the sauna-like narrow alleys running between Chatuchak Market’s 10,000 shops. “Around 100 million baht is spent here every weekend”, says Mr Tinnakorn, who is the market’s Deputy Director.

Across the city – which satellite images show to be a virtual island surrounded by floods to the north and the Gulf of Thailand to the south – shops are running out of drinking water and non-perishable food, with various chains saying that they are having difficulty in replenishing barren shelves as 10 million residents stock-up amid fears of a citywide deluge.

Barclays Capital estimates that the floods will shave almost 1% off Thailand’s economic growth for 2011, and whether Chatuchak opens next weekend is anyone’s guess. Walls were stood up at the market perimeter on Monday afternoon, after Bangkok city governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra told TV viewers last night that six additional city districts, including Chatuchak, should get ready to evacuate. (more…)

---

MSF Thailand pullout affects healthcare inside Burma – The Irrawaddy

October 7th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22221

BANGKOK – Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) decision to end its Thailand operation will hamper medics who cross from Thailand into war-torn areas of Burma where people have little or no access to medical treatment.

Denis Penoy, the organisation’s head in Thailand, told The Irrawaddy that MSF has a long history of working with mobile medical teams along the border, notably the Mon National Health Council based in Sangkhlaburi, across the border from Three Pagodas Pass inside Burma.

The Mon medics were supported by MSF in carrying out anti-malarial work inside Mon State, which Nai Hong Sar, head of the New Mon State Party (NSMP), described to The Irrawaddy as “very important for our people, as malaria was so much reduced, and otherwise it was hard to get medical treatment”. (more…)

---

Timor-Leste: Goodbye conflict, welcome development? – The Diplomat

September 29th, 2011



http://the-diplomat.com/2011/09/29/aid-and-independence/

‘Goodbye conflict, welcome development’ runs the panglossian banner on the Timor-Leste Finance Ministry website, and after centuries of sleepy Portuguese colonialism followed by a quarter-century of scorched-earth Indonesian occupation that killed an estimated 1/4 – 1/3 of the population, the Timorese are due an option on optimism as much as anyone else.

Making the slogan a reality is a different story, however, and independent Timor-Leste started from a low base, with most of the country’s infrastructure obliterated by the departing occupiers and their local militia proxies, after Timor-Leste voted for secession in 1999.

After a receiving an estimated US$6-8 billion in foreign assistance since 1999 and around the same in petroleum revenues since the mid-2000s, the numbers by themselves suggest Timor-Leste should be well-placed to make that leap the Finance Ministry aspires to. (more…)

---

Sudan wars seem far from over – The Huffington Post

September 8th, 2011

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/simon-roughneen/sudan-wars-seem-far-from-_b_953395.html

After a murderous almost-six decade forced-marriage with what is now the (relative to before) the rump state of ‘northern’ Sudan, the Republic of South Sudan (RoSS) was founded on July 9 2011, six months after the Texas-sized region voted to secede from what was Africa’s largest state.

The death-toll (over 2 million) and destruction (total) wrought on what is now RoSS during the fighting has been well-documented – if obscured somewhat in the years since 2003 when the Darfur war began. With RoSS taking 3/4′s of what was the old Sudan’s oil with it, independence and its aftermath was always likely to be a fraught affair, even if secession was mandated by a 2005 peace agreement.

There was fighting along the border in January – in the still-disputed Abyei region – as the referendum took place. Both the Khartoum Government and the Juba (then-regional) administration distanced themselves from those skirmishes, putting them down to long-standing local disputes between farmers and herders over grazing and passage rights. (more…)

---

Time for risky ventures in Timor-Leste – RTÉ World Report/Huffington Post

August 21st, 2011

audio – http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0821/worldreport.html#&autoplay=true

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-roughneen/time-for-risky-ventures-i_b_940371.html

Railaco, Timor-Leste – Up a winding, rock-strewn road through stunning mountain scenery an hour from the Timorese capital Dili, coffee farmer Bartolomeo de Deus shakes a basket of his arabica beans, ready for resale to Timor Global, one of three main coffee exporters in Timor Leste, also known as East Timor.

“I have 200 hectares under cultivation”, he says, making him one of the bigger farmers in a country where coffee grows naturally and could be a lucrative export. “ (more…)

---

Australia-Malaysia refugee swap: offshoring the problem? – The Irrawaddy

July 28th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21788

A refugee swap deal between Australia and Malaysia continues to attract criticism, even as both countries’ governments offer assurances that refugees’ rights will be respected.

BANGKOK — While a new refugee swap deal between Australia and Malaysia will offer hope to some of the tens of thousands of Burmese refugees in Malaysia, there are different views on whether the arrangement lives up to international standards.

The “Arrangement on Transfer and Resettlement” was signed in Kuala Lumpur on July 25 by Malaysia’s Home Affairs Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and Australia’s Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Bowen. It will transfer 4,000 refugees in Malaysia to Australia over the next four years, in return for Malaysia taking in 800 asylum-seekers arriving in Australia or interdicted at sea en route to Australia after July 25. (more…)

---

4 decades later, Laos bombing takes toll – The Irrawaddy

June 23rd, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21550

VIENTIANE – It should have been one of those rite-of-passage days for any teenager. On their way to school to collect exam results, Phongsavath and two friends noticed an unusual-looking round steel object in the grass nearby. “We picked it up and passed it among us, wondering what it was and looking close”, Phongsavath recalls, a wry half-smile belying the horror story to come.

“I tried to open it”, he says, half-laughing at what in retrospect he says was childish curiosity on the part of him and his school-pals. “We looked at it, we passed it around”, Phongsavath says. “ I tried to open it, but then It blew up”, he says again, losing his hold on his white cane as he speaks. “Now as you see, I have no hands”.

Laos is said to be the world’s most-bombed country on a per-capita basis, with unknown numbers of unexploded material littering the countryside, a legacy of the Indochina wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Laos, officially knows as the Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic, experienced the heaviest aerial military bombardment in history when the US airforce flew 580,000 bombing runs over the country between 1964 and 1973, targeting the North Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh trail, which looped through Laos, as part of the perhaps-misnamed Vietnam War.

While NGOs and Government agencies are working to educate people about the devices and how to avoid the dangers presented, it seems that not everyone can be covered, so some do not recognise the deadly litter when they find it.

What Phongsavath and his friends found that morning was part of a cluster bomb. Cluster bombs can contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller bombs – known locally as bombies – around the size and shape of tennis balls or beer cans. (more…)

---

Burma’s refugee numbers means census just scratches surface – The Irrawaddy/RTÉ World Report

June 20th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21524

audio - http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0619/worldreport.html#

MAE SOT/MAE LA – Oblivious to the late afternoon downpour, six children chase around near the roadside fence at Mae La camp, the biggest of nine refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma frontier.

“Please, no photos of the people”, implores a man standing nearby, sheltering against the wall of one the thousands of timber huts running along the roadside. Three of the children are his, though he refuses to give his name, saying only that he crossed to Thailand from Burma’s Karen State “more than one year ago” and has been confined to the camp since.

Acting on the orders of Tak Provincial Governor Samart Loifah, Thai officials started a headcount in Mae La and in Umpiem Mai and Nu Pu, the two other camps in Tak province. The census is ongoing, with roughly 40% of the estimated total 140,000+ Burmese refugee population in Thailand unregistered.

The Thai government stopped screening and registering new arrivals in 2005, meaning that there are around 60,000 unregistered refugees from Burma currently inside Thailand, according to Sally Thompson of the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), a grouping of 12 NGOs that assists the Burmese refugees in the border camps

In total Thailand hosts just over 96,000 registered refugees, according to figures released by the United Nations refugee commission (UNHCR) in its 2010 Global Trends Report, which was published today to mark World Refugee Day. Worldwide, Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million, and 1 million respectively, numbers swollen due to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (more…)

---