Pardon politics in Thailand as Clinton announces $10m flood aid – Christian Science Monitor
November 17th, 2011
At today's Clinton-Yingluck press conference in Bangkok (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK – Areas of capital Bangkok are still under water since the worst flooding in decades hit Thailand almost four months ago, prompting visits by both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban ki Moon today promising aid to the country, as a divisive debate grows about an official pardon list.
The official death toll in Thailand from the floods is now at 564, and several neighborhoods of Bangkok were today ordered to evacuate as water slowly drains from the under water areas in the north and west of the capital through Bangkok toward the sea. (more…)
Bittersweet festival for flooded Thailand – The Huffington Post
November 11th, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/simon-roughneen/bittersweet-festival-for-_b_1087789.html
Sasikarn Kornair (back, right) at work on Thursday in Ayutthaya (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
AYUTTHAYA, Thailand – On dark, humid and gloomy Sunday one month ago, Sasikarn Kornair served up just about the best fried chicken I have ever tasted, standing knee-deep in rising floodwaters in her Arthika restaurant, which on a sunny day would sit in the shade of the nearby city hospital.
That day came yesterday, when the local Governor and tourism agency organised a feel-good photo-op style cleaning day for the venerable old citadel. The former Siamese capital, now site of ample gray and red-brick old temple ruins that are but the surviving fraction of one of the world’s major cities prior to its sacking by invading Burmese in 1767, were surrounded by 3-4 feet of water on October 9 last. (more…)
Not much festival feeling on Bangkok’s flooded streets – The Irrawaddy
November 10th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22434
Amorm Kenkadthong, a neighbour of Kanita and Riaam, shows me around her flooded home in Minburi (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK – Shrugging her shoulders at the leech-marks on her shin, Kanita Somsaard emptied her wellington boots, for what she said was the fourth or fifth time that day so far. “By now we are used to the water”, she said, “I haven’t had time to go looking for bigger ones”, she added, pointing at her 10 inch high black rubber boots, which she nonetheless wears while wading through the 3 feet of water surrounding her home in Minburi, a northern suburb of Bangkok.
“The water came a week ago”, said her friend Riaam Faklek, lounging on a wicker-table a mere 6 inches above the water surface. (more…)
Bangkok floods force evacuation of migrant flood shelter – The Irrawaddy
November 4th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22391
Burmese migrants help load up trucks at Rai Khing temple in Nakhon Pathom outside Bangkok this afternoon (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
NAKHOM PATHOM, THAILAND – On Friday afternoon Thailand’s Government announced that almost 500 mostly Burmese migrant workers will be evacuated to Ratchaburi, west of capital Bangkok tomorrow morning.
“The floods are less than 2 kilometers away”, announced the Thailand’s Labour and Social Welfare Ministry, at the Rai Khing temple in Nakhon Pathom, close to the flooded western side of Bangkok.
An official, giving his name only as Kobchai, said “so we have to move the group tomorrow, starting at 9am”, he added. ‘they will go to the Skilled Labour Institute in Ratchaburi”, he added.
Around 60 of the migrants, who have fled rising floodwaters in central plains areas of Thailand and northern Bangkok suburbs, will return to Burma via Mae Sot, also tomorrow. (more…)
Thailand floods: can-do ethos at the water’s edge – Christian Science Monitor
November 3rd, 2011
Suchida and friends selling boots beside the flood (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK - As floodwaters edge closer to some of Bangkok’s hitherto-dry central areas some enterprising people – including those affected by the waters – are doing a steady business selling flood-related provisions.
For more than two weeks, the floods that have killed 437 people and submerged northern suburbs and towns to the north, have been slowly making their way to the center of Bangkok. The west bank Chao Praya river, the central part of the city, is heavily-flooded, but the main shopping and business districts have been spared – so far.
Squatting on a sidewalk on the Phahonyothin Road, Suchida Kumjit looks over her shoulder at the newly-rising waters less than a foot away. “It was dry here this morning,” she says, “the water only came here at around noon today.” (more…)
Hell and high water in Thailand – Asia Times
November 3rd, 2011
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MK04Ae01.html
Floodwaters make their first appearance near Thanon Phahonyothin, close to Ladphrao today (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK – With floodwaters now edging closer towards the Thai capital’s heavily-sandbagged city center, the economic, political and human costs of the country’s worst floods in over five decades are fast rising.
While northern suburbs are now sitting under two-week-old stinking floodwaters, and historic towns such as Ayutthaya and its famous temple ruins flooded for more than month, the recent news focus has been on whether Bangkok’s central areas, including the business district, will likewise be inundated. (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
Flooding ensued after this breach in wall along Phra Khanong canal in inner Bangkok (Photo; Simon Roughneen)
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…)
Thailand flood defenses divide Bangkok – Christian Science Monitor
November 1st, 2011
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/1101/Thailand-flood-defenses-divide-Bangkok
View from newly-flooded homes across to Saw Wa sluice gate (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK – An uneasy calm prevailed today along the Sam Wa canal in northern Bangkok after Thailand’s government acquiesced to angry locals who wanted to hack a 1-yard-wide opening in a sluice gate along the canal. The hole will allow their flooded suburbs to drain – but threaten flooding in the heart of the city.
For more than two months Thailand has been inundated with the worst flooding the country has seen in decades, in some places deeper than five feet. Almost 400 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of others displaced. (more…)
Thailand floods: Central Bangkok spared for now – The Diplomat/RTÉ World Report
October 30th, 2011
http://the-diplomat.com/2011/10/30/central-bangkok-spared-for-now/
radio report here - http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/1030/worldreport.html#&autoplay=true
Election poster for Chuwit Kamolvisit still up on Lum Lak Wa road on Friday (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK – “We sat on a wall outside, and the army truck picked us up”, recounted Sinyodsai, discussing the day she and her family were rescued from floodwaters at their Rangsit home, in a suburb north of Bangkok.
I met her on Friday in an upstairs hall of a sports complex in the Ramkhamheng university district of Bangkok, which serves as a temporary shelter for almost 2000 Thais made homeless by the floods. The family home was submerged “more than a week ago” according to husband Bancha. Neither 75 year old Bancha nor his 60 year old wife can remember the exact day the flood entered their neighbourhood, which is in the north of Bangkok, but still a 50 kilometer drive from the city centre, an indication of the sheer size of the Thai capital.
In the business and hotel heart of the city, sandbag walls have been going up around buildings, in anticipation of a possible overflow from the network of canals running the city and a high tide backing up on the Chao Praya river, well-known to tourists as site of the city’s best-known temple landmarks.
Some shops have run low on goods, such as drinking water, however, as locals stocked-up, panic-buying should the entire city come under water. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra conceded last week that there was a 50-50 chance that this could happen,but by Saturday afternoon, the inner city had escaped, but with some areas such as Chinatown coming under water as the river burst its banks in places, repeating a cycle from earlier in the week when high tides forced the swollen river into adjoining streets, before water receded again as tides went down. (more…)
Northern suburbs suffer while Bangkok awaits flood – Christian Science Monitor/Al-Jazeera
October 28th, 2011
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1028/Bangkok-awaits-flood-as-northern-suburbs-suffer
Flooding in Pathum Thani, Friday afternoon (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Al-Jazeera clip here -
BANGKOK – After her house in the northern Bangkok suburb of Nonthaburi was flooded to waist height a week ago, Kanokkorn Nomruen evacuated to Bangkok’s Don Muang airport before being moved again to Rajamangala soccer stadium closer to the center of Bangkok.
“I think it might take 4 weeks for the water to go down at my home”, she said, sitting on a plastic mattress in a sports building close to the stadium, where she and almost 2,000 other homeless Thais are sheltering. (more…)
