China Remains Key Despite Burma’s Western Focus – The Irrawaddy
January 17th, 2012
BANGKOK – Leadership changes and economic challenges facing China and the US this year will impact how far and fast Burma goes with its nascent political reforms.
A total of 302 political prisoners were freed on Friday with another 128 still in jail, according to Burmese government figures. Some have criticized the amnesty as incomplete, but it made international headlines and resulted in elated crowds greeting freed prisoners outside jails across Burma, as some of the country’s iconic dissidents emerged from detention.
In response, the US said it will appoint an ambassador to Burma for the first time since the bloody crackdown on student demonstrations in 1988. Leaders of these protests were among those freed last week, after spending many of the intervening years in jail.
However, it remains to be seen how far Burma’s reforms go and what the impact of geopolitical rivalries will be on Burma. Simon Tay, author of Asia Alone, a study US-Asian relations, said that Burma’s reforms are perhaps “an attempt to woo America and wean itself off China, rather than genuine attempt to reform domestic politics.” (more…)
DMZ: Road trip to the world’s most heavily armed border – CNNGo
December 2nd, 2011
http://www.cnngo.com/seoul/visit/dmz-seoul-road-trip-357435
Tourists get an earful from South Korean soldier after pointing cameras the wrong way in the DMZ (Photo: Simon Roughneen
A spin north to the DMZ is almost a rite-of-passage for any visitor to Seoul, but it’s best to go there with an insight into life across the line.
SEOUL – As the tour bus moves from central Seoul to the city outskirts, the seamless transition from one of the world’s biggest and most vibrant cities to the world’s most heavily armed border is as surreal as it is functional, with roadside bus-stops giving way to military watchtowers even as the city’s sun-glazed heights shimmer and recede into the background.
“Many South Koreans don’t think so much about the North”, opined *So Yeon, a North Korean defector now working for the Seoul-based Panmunjom Travel Centre. Every morning she addresses a busload of tourists about her escape from North Korea , telling her story while en route to the demilitarized zone (DMZ), a 2.5 mile wide bufferzone running the length of the 160-mile North-South border. (more…)
Finding Cannibals: filling the North Korea news gap – PBS Mediashift
October 22nd, 2011
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/10/filling-the-news-gap-in-north-korea294.html
Byoung-Keun (middle) at work at the DailyNK office in Seoul. Photo by Simon Roughneen.
SEOUL, South Korea — “I am always worried about security for those who report information to us from inside,” said Byoung-Keun, a North Korean working in Seoul as a journalist for The DailyNK, a news website focused on telling the world what is happening in possibly the world’s most closed-off society.
Byoung-Keun is a pseudonym, because the former North Korean state official cannot divulge his real name to PBS MediaShift. Doing so could lead to reprisals for family and former colleagues living in North Korea, or even an assassination attempt on him in Seoul, if other recent reports about defectors being targeted by Pyongyang are true.
In North Korea, Internet and cell phone use are restricted to senior government officials and foreigners — and then closely monitored. (more…)
Logs on the railroad – Asia Times
October 21st, 2011
North Korean soldiers keeps watch at checkpoint inside the demilitarised zone along the border with South Korea (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/MJ26Dg02.html
After China detains activists helping would-be North Korean defectors, concerns grow that escape routes for those fleeing from North Korea might be shut down, with estimates suggesting the country’s gulag’s holds some 200,000 political prisoners.
SEOUL – “I was smuggled over the Yalu River into China”, recalls *So Yeon, a woman from Chongjin, a city in the now-decrepit industrial zone of northern North Korea,
A night-time crossing, over the Yalu or Tumen rivers that mark the North Korea-China frontier, is the usual means by which North Koreans flee their country, to what they hope will be a better life elsewhere.
Most hope to make it South Korea, by a roundabout, dangerous odyssey that usually involves a trek through China to either Mongolia or to Southeast Asia, without official papers and under constant fear of arrest and possible deportation back to North Korea (more…)
Myanmar buys time with dam block – Asia Times
October 3rd, 2011
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MJ04Ae01.html
BANGKOK – China has reacted coolly to Myanmar’s surprise suspension of a controversial US$3.6 billion hydropower dam project it backed in the country’s war-torn Kachin State. Hitherto cautious observers have greeted the stoppage as the first tangible reform move undertaken by the Myanmar’s six-month-old, nominally civilian government led by former general Thein Sein.
According to the government, work on the controversial Myitsone dam will be suspended “according to the desire of the people. The announcement followed an upsurge in popular opposition to the project, where certain members of the old military elite and Aung San Suu Kyi-led political opposition found rare common cause. The project threatened the headwaters of the Irrawaddy River, the cradle of Burmese civilization. (more…)
New turns in South China Sea debate – The Irrawaddy
September 28th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22155
BANGKOK – The ongoing wrangle between China and a number of smaller neighbours over jurisdiction on the disputed South China Sea took a new turn yesterday with Philippine President Benigno Aquino III meeting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in Tokyo.
Without mentioning China, PM Noda told reporters after the summit that both countries would increase “cooperation between coastguards and defense-related authorities”. According to a joint statement issued after the meeting, both countries “confirmed that freedom of navigation, unimpeded commerce, and compliance with established international law including the UNCLOS (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) and the peaceful settlement of disputes serve the interests of the two countries and the whole region”. (more…)
A Grim Trade: Burma’s ethnic women trafficked to China – The Irrawaddy
June 14th, 2011
http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21486
BANGKOK – A mix of unscrupulous traffickers, Burma’s economic decline and militarisation, and a shortage of males caused by China’s one-child policy contribute to the trafficking of women from the Palaung region of Burma into China, says a locally-based activist group.
“Since 2007 we documented 72 cases of actual and suspected trafficking involving 110 people” said Lway Moe Kam of the Palaung Women’s Organisation (PWO), adding that her research showed that 11 children under ten years of age were among the victims.
25% of the women trafficked were forced to marry Chinese men and 10% of the caseload were coerced into the sex trade, according to the PWO, which grimly concluded that 90% of trafficking victims do not escape. (more…)
Territorial Hissings – The Irrawaddy
June 6th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21433
BANGKOK—A rare public protest held on Sunday in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi illustrates how seriously the country’s government takes what it describes as Chinese violations of its sovereignty.
On Sunday morning in Hanoi, hundreds of protesters gathered for half an hour outside the Chinese Embassy, not far from a landmark statue of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, in the center of the capital. Some apparently came after rallying calls made on social networking sites such as Facebook, despite the latter being officially blocked in Vietnam. After being turned back by police, some of the gathering paraded through city’s streets as far as Hoan Kiem Lake near the old town, chanting anti-Chinese slogans and carrying placards in Vietnamese and English with slogans such as “Protesting Against China Causing Trouble.” In Ho Chi Minh City, the sprawling commercial capital in the south, demonstrators converged on the Chinese consulate on Sunday. (more…)
Any Openings Between the BRICS on Burma? – The Irrawaddy
April 22nd, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21148
Last week’s gathering of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) heads of government in China looks like another landmark in the Asia-tilted re-balancing of global economic power that has gathered pace since the 2008 banking and financial crisis spread from the United States.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that by 2016 the total GDP of the five countries will exceed that of the US. China last year passed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy, while overtaking Germany to become the world’s biggest exporting country. Predictions vary, but depending on how growth numbers in both countries pan out over the coming years, China could overtake the US to become the world’s biggest economy within two decades or less. (more…)
Japan disaster not thwarting nuclear plans – Sunday Business Post
March 20th, 2011
http://www.sbpost.ie/news/world/disaster-not-thwarting-international-nuclear-plans-55172.html
Simon Roughneen in Bangkok and Niall Stanage in New York – While Asian countries say they might revise nuclear energy plans in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and Fukushima crisis last week, planned projects seem likely to go ahead in the longer-term.
China and India both plan to increase their current nuclear energy capacity, and Beijing’s expansion plan, adding 28 reactors to its current 13, is around 40% of the new nuclear facilities being planned globally. China plans an additional fifty reactors further down the line, taking its overall number of plants close to 100. (more…)
