Potent mix for Timor-Leste – Asia Times

August 30th, 2011

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MH31Ae01.html

DILI – Land, corruption and poverty are all on the table as Timor-Leste gets into political mode ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2012, with one controversial figure already throwing his hat into the ring.

Convicted of arming gunmen during Timor-Leste’s 2006 crisis, which threatened to destabilize the then four-year-old state, Rogerio Lobato told Asia Times Online that he will run for president, contesting a largely-ceremonial position now held by a fellow former Timorese exile activist, Jose Ramos-Horta. (more…)

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Timor-Leste weighs ASEAN membership – The Irrawaddy

August 30th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21983

DILI – Across the city, banners and posters signal the new country’s increasing integration with the world outside, heralding events such as Timor-Leste’s hosting of the EITI (Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative) regional conference over August 25-27.

Timor-Leste was designated the first Asian country to match up to EITI standards on accountability in and management of its energy resources. According to World Bank Managing Director and former Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, speaking at the EITI event, “Timor-Leste, as a nation, is building strength and economic resilience and has demonstrated how much can be won in a short space of time.”

The EITI is a voluntary mechanism, usually backed by member countries passing relevant laws. According to itself, the EITO “supports improved governance in resource-rich countries through the verification and full publication of company payments and government revenues from oil, gas and mining.” (more…)

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From Mon State to Timor-Leste – The Irrawaddy

August 25th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21958

The man who organised parallel protests in Dili during the Saffron Revolution says despite Timor-Leste’s poverty, life is easier there than in Burma

DILI – “It is not like Myanmar, we are free here, no police or security always checking us, no worries like that”, says Kyaw San Naing, who says he was the first Burmese to arrive in Timor-Leste after the 1999 referendum on independence from Indonesia, and ensuing violence as the Indonesians and their local Timorese militia allies retreated.

Despite rural poverty in what is possibly Asia’s least developed country and high cost of living in Dili, Kyaw San Naing is very happy with life in the country that, for a time after formal independence was attained in 2002, touted itself as “The World’s Newest Democracy”.

“I came in 2001”, he recalls, putting his experience as a hotel worker in Rangoon to good effect on the floating Central Maritime Hotel, which for a time functioned as luxury guesthouse for visiting VIPs and as accommodation provider for the United Nations missions in the country, after much of Dili was destroyed during the 1999 violence. (more…)

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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…)

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Opposition Voices Growing in Singapore’s ‘New Normal’ – The Irrawaddy

August 19th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21923

SINGAPORE—Three months after Singaporeans went to the polls in what have been described as landmark parliamentary elections, campaigning is heating up—by local standards—for the Aug. 27 presidential vote.

As announced on Wednesday, four candidates are running on non-party tickets, and the election appears to be more hotly contested than usual, partly due to the outcome of the parliamentary vote.

Singaporeans—in one electoral district at least, where the opposition took five out of its six seats—countered the stereotype that they are apolitical citizens mostly motivated by economic concerns. This is what local pundits are calling the “new normal” in Singaporean politics—an as-yet-untested opposition presence in parliament, and the flowering of critical voices in society.

In the May 7 contest the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) took 81 out of 87 available seats, a landslide by any standards. However Singapore’s first-past-the-post electoral system meant that this glut was garnered with just 60 percent of the popular vote. (more…)

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Burmese in Singapore decry embassy ‘passport tax’ – The Irrawaddy

August 16th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21902

SINGAPORE – Singapore has a Chinatown and a Little India, but the thousands of foreign workers living in the city-state have their own lesser-known havens. Filipinos cluster at Lucky Plaza along the Orchard Road shopping magnet, and every Sunday, the Peninsula Plaza near Singapore’s docklands heaves with Burmese immigrants enjoying what for many is their only day-off every week.

Dozens of shops – almost all Burmese-owned – sell food and newspapers from the home country, with an array of locally-made phone cards offering various deals on pricey phonecalls back to Burma. (more…)

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To be a slave in Thailand – Asia Times

August 11th, 2011

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MH12Ae01.html

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand – Rolling up his right shirt sleeve to show a scarred forearm, Than Zaw Oo recalls the beatings he endured onboard the Thai fishing boat where

he says he was held as indentured labor – in other words, a slave – for almost three years.

“They beat me many times, sometimes a few times a week,” he says. “In the end, I just ran away after the captain accused me of stealing mobile phones.” Like many others who have worked at the low end of Thailand’s fishing sector, Than Zaw Oo is an immigrant worker. An ethnic Burman from Myanmar’s southern Mon State, he was first lured to sea on a false promise and misguided hope of escaping the economic depression in his home country.

“The broker told me I could earn 20,000 baht (US$666) but only had to work onboard for four months,” he says, referring to the Myanmar agents who, often for an extortionate fee, offer to find jobs for their desperate compatriots who cross into Thailand seeking work. Anywhere between two to three million Myanmar migrants are currently working in Thailand, along with several hundred thousands of Cambodians and Laos. (more…)

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Wife of murdered Thai activist seeks justice – The Irrawaddy

August 11th, 2011

http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21875

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand – Soft-spoken and appearing resolute despite her bereavement, Jomkwan Sawekjinda nods her head in the direction of the table to her left.

“That’s where he was shot’, she says, pointing at a concrete bench a metre away. On July 28 last, husband Thongnak Sawekjinda, an outspoken environmental campaigner in Samut Sakhon province, was about to make a mobile phone-call when two men pulled up on a motorcycle, turning in from the street outside.

The pillion passenger pulled out a gun and shot 47 year old Thongnak nine times with 9mm bullets, from behind, before the pair sped off. Thongnak died shortly afterwards in hospital. Seeking protection which never came, he told police he had been threatened during the weeks before he was murdered. The shooting came after he fronted several high-profile public protests against coal-related operations in the area. (more…)

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Burmese baited into Thai fishing industry – The Irrawaddy

August 8th, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21850

As the United Nations human trafficking representative begins her mission in Thailand, The Irrawaddy hears from Burmese trafficked into Thailand’s notorious fishing industry.

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand – “The broker took 36,000 baht (US$1207) from us”, says Ma Than Nwe, a Tavoyan Burmese migrant worker in Thailand. “It was money that should have been paid to my husband”, she laments.

Her spouse Kyaw spent six months at sea on a Thai-run fishing vessel and the salary, which might seem a pittance to some, is a small fortune for people who earned the equivalent of US$1-2 per day in Burma. Or it would be, if it was paid at all. The promised 6000 baht per month was paid to a broker, a Burmese woman who cannot be named at this time for legal reasons. She kept the all money as payment for what Ma Than new – with understandable anger – sarcastically-describes as the broker’s “services” in helping her husband “find work” on the boat.

The broker and alleged trafficker and extortionist has since fled back to Burma. “We were afraid to do anything, as the police and the brokers work together to get money from us”, Ma Than Nwe says.  (more…)

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Still on the Run: Trafficked Burmese Recount Murder at Sea – The Irrawaddy

August 3rd, 2011

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21824

PATHUMTHANI, Thailand – As the wind-whipped rain made its staccato finger-drum rattle on the shack’s tin roof, *Saw and four Burmese co-workers sat cross-legged on the roughly-bonded plywood that had been pieced together to make an elevated floor.

Last year Saw spent seven months onboard a Thai fishing vessel, where he claims he witnessed the murder of two Burmese colleagues.

“I saw them throw two men to the sea”, recalls the 32 year old, almost-blurting out the revelation in his eagerness for catharsis. Frozen with fear at the time, he said that he was “too scared to move, to do anything”.

The two men, who Saw said were both in their early twenties, put up a final, futile, agonising struggle. “They fought, but with the noise from the engine and the sea, I could not hear, though I could see,” Saw continues.

“There were too many, the men who threw them in were Mon, they were like the right-hand men of the captain, a Thai.”

Pausing, as if having to tell himself that he really witnessed such horror that day, he repeated – “they just grabbed them and threw them into the waves. That was it.” (more…)

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