Thailand and Burma wrangle over migrant worker laws – The Irrawaddy
April 20th, 2012
Deputy Labour Minister U Myint Thein (centre) speaks to media in Bangkok on April 19 2012 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/2801
BANGKOK―More than 200,000 workers from Burma could be flown into Bangkok to be employed in Thai factories under a direct state-to-state agreement, according to a Thai Labor Ministry spokesman.
The plan is designed to address a labor shortage in Thailand and would involved available workers being flown directly to the capital. Burma has an estimated three million unemployed and many millions more on extremely low incomes.
The announcement was made at a joint Bangkok press conference on Thursday featuring representatives of both the Thai and Burmese labor ministries. The move would have to be ratified at a bilateral meeting in Burma next month.
Proposals to safeguard workers rights include having contracts that could be revoked or ended after six months on mutual consent if Thai bosses abuse their Burmese workers physically, the employer dies or the business finishes, or the employer violates the Thai Labour Law.
Meanwhile, five new centers enabling Burmese migrant workers to better-formalize their status in Thailand open on Friday.
Brandishing a new sample purple-covered machine-readable passport, which he says will be issued at the five additional nationality verification centers, Burmese Deputy Minister for Labor Myint Thein told assembled media that the Thai government finally agreed to allow the centers to open after a four-month delay. (more…)
Burmese Gov. said that NLD could take part in election – The Irrawaddy
July 21st, 2011
Burma’s Foreign Minister told the Cambodian Ambassador that Aung San Suu Kyi’s party would be allowed run in the 2010 election. Leaked US cables highlight divergences between Western and ASEAN views on Burma, with Hun Sen sounded-out as a possible interlocutor with the Burmese junta.
Boeung Kak lake in Phnom Penh, where thousands of residents have been driven out to make way for a Chinese-backed development, adding to concerns about the Cambodian Gov's human rights record (Photo: Simon Roughneen
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21732
BANGKOK — In a meeting with Scott Marciel, the then-US ambassador for ASEAN Affairs and current ambassador to Indonesia, Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said “that the Burmese FM told the Cambodian ambassador recently that elections will be held in May 2010 and that 10 political parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s, would be allowed participate.”
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), the party that won Burma’s previous election in 1990, only for the military to ignore the result, boycotted the 2010 election, partly due to the ban imposed on Suu Kyi from participating.
In any case, according to Burma’s state-run media, the NLD was officially proscribed on Sept 14, 2010, almost 2 months before the Nov 7, 2010 vote, which produced a landslide win for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in an election widely dismissed as rigged. (more…)
To keep you is no gain, to lose you is no loss – New Mandala/RTÉ World Report
June 30th, 2011
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2011/06/30/a-cathartic-moment-for-all-cambodians/
radio report here - http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0703/worldreport.html#page=3
“I don’t feel vengeful, but I am glad they are finally facing trial”, said Sao Yoeun, speaking to me at the Documentation Centre for Cambodia, an invaluable
Monks and nuns line up to enter the ECCC building on Monday morning (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
resource for anyone looking back at the Khmer Rouge era. She travelled 200 miles from Kampong Thom province to see the four surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge finally have their day in court, more than thirty years after the regime’s almost 4 year reign of terror caused the deaths of around a quarter of Cambodia’s people,
Now 55, Sao Yoeun survived being press-ganged into the Khmer Rouge labour force before 1975, when the rebels took control of the country and embarked on a destructive quest to turn Cambodia into an agrarian communist dystopia, emptying the country’s towns and cities in the process.
After 1975, she and others were forced to create medication from scratch and test it on themselves.
Those who refused were taken away to one of the country’s detention centres, where prisoners were interrogated, tortured and then killed in one of the 200 or so Killing Fields that have been discovered across the country. (more…)
Khmer Rouge leaders on trial in Cambodia – RTÉ (Morning Ireland)
June 27th, 2011
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0627/morningireland.html - Simon Roughneen, reporter in Cambodia, discusses the long-awaited trial of the four main surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge (last item)
Lining up to enter the public gallery at the ECCC in Phnom Penh earlier today (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Haunting memorial or gratuitous commercialism? – CNN Go
May 18th, 2011
http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/life/camdodia-killing-field-tourism-905731
From 1975 to 1979 an estimated 1.4 million Cambodians were killed under the despotic rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
The executions took place on what have become known as Cambodia’s Killing Fields. The best known of these is Choeung Ek, 17 kilometers from the center of Phnom Penh. Here, an estimated 17,000 men, women and children were butchered by the Khmer Rouge.
'Killing Tree' where babies and children were murdered at Cheoung Ek. To the bottom right are some human bone remains (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Thailand-Cambodia border fighting continues – RTÉ World Report
May 1st, 2011
http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0501/worldreport.html#&autoplay=true
At the latest yellowshirt demonstration in Bangkok (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Artillery fire across remote jungles and ancient temples continued on Friday, along the Thailand-Cambodia border, breaking a tentative ceasefire put in place the day before.
One Thai soldier was killed, bringing the death toll to sixteen since the crossfire started. As has been the case throughout, both sides blame each other for shooting first. (more…)
Thailand-Cambodia clash deflecting from domestic woes – The Irrawaddy
April 26th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21175
Claims that both governments are cynically stoking up border dispute to boost popularity by appealing to nationalist sentiment.
Since Friday morning, fighting along the Thai-Cambodia border has left 12 soldiers dead and forced the evacuation of thousands of civilians on both sides of the frontier. This comes two months after four days of fighting left 11 people dead at a separate location along the border.
The latest bout of shelling began at around 6 am on Friday along the border where Thailand’s Surin Province faces Oddar Meanchey in Cambodia. Both sides blame each other for shooting first. Thailand says that Cambodia plans a ground offensive to take control of two temples, while Cambodia claims that its adversary has used chemical weapons and sent fighter aircraft into Cambodia’s airspace. Both sides deny the respective allegations. (more…)
6 soldiers killed in Thailand-Cambodia border clash – Los Angeles Times
April 22nd, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-thailand-cambodia-20110423,0,2582448.story
Thailand and Cambodia blame each other for the latest in a series of conflicts involving a contested temple. Officers of the two militaries meet to calm the situation after the deaths of three soldiers from each side.
By Simon Roughneen, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Bangkok, Thailand— Six soldiers were killed Friday, three from each side, in a dawn shootout between Thai and Cambodian troops along their nations’ tense border, officials from both sides said.The clash was the latest in a series of conflicts involving a contested temple and centuries of distrust. (more…)
Trying times in Cambodia – Asia Sentinel
April 21st, 2011
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3140&Itemid=170
Hints of a diplomatic tussle behind Cambodia’s troubled tribunal find their way to the country’s best-known Killing Field, which with better management would be a must-see for any visitor.
Skulls of the dead inside the stupa at Cheoung Ek (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
CHEOUNG EK, Cambodia. It has been over three decades since the night-time convoys of trucks bringing the emaciated, the half-dead and the terrified from S-21 jail in Phnom Penh rolled into Choeung Ek, 17 kilometers from the centre of what was then a deserted city, after the Khmer Rouge forced all residents out to rural labour camps. (more…)
Borders around reporters – The Irrawaddy
April 18th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21124
PHNOM PENH—Ross Dunkley, the sole foreign owner invested in Burma’s state-controlled media, faces charges of assaulting a woman and
Journalism students editing video at the Dept of Media and Communications, Royal University of Phnom Penh (Photo: Simon Roughneen
breaches of the country’s immigration laws, in what many observers, including some of Dunkley’s own business partners, view as a power play aimed at ousting the Australian from his stake in the Myanmar Times.
Dunkley has since been released on bail, part of which was paid by his Burmese business partner, Tin Tun Oo, who was named CEO of the Myanmar Times in the days after Dunkley’s initial arrest. Dunkley has subsequently downplayed the conspiracy angle, and hopes to be acquitted soon.
He is well known in media circles in Cambodia after buying into the Phnom Penh Post, one of the country’s two English language dailies, back in 2007.
Cambodia is a challenging media market with freedom of expression under threat from a combination of formal and informal codes that inhibit the country’s press, according to several observers. (more…)
