Distrust and displacement on Kachin frontline - The Irrawaddy
Laja Yang, Kachin State, Burma - Seng Tawng and her husband are two new names added to Kachin State’s growing number of internal refugees. “There was more fighting last Sunday,” said Maran Naw Bawk. “It was the closest yet to our village, so we think it is not safe any ...
Aung San Suu Kyi hits the campaign trail in Myanmar - Christian Science Monitor
PATHEIN, MYANMAR - “We have not seen The Lady [a popular local nickname for Aung San Suu Kyi] here in more than 20 years,” said Kyaw Win, as he linked arms with other local volunteers in Pathein to prevent the eager, surging crowd from swarming Aung San Suu Kyi's vehicle.
After sodomy acquittal, Malaysia's Anwar pressing for power - Christian Science Monitor
KUALA LUMPUR - According to Pui Yee Choong, a political researcher at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, today's verdict will allow the incumbent government to say “that it has never been the case that anyone from the ruling party wanted to end Anwar’s political career,” she says.
China's new European trade hub: An Irish town of 18,000 - Christian Science Monitor
The Athlone Institute of Technology hosts more than 200 Chinese students – one of the links that helped bring the trade hub to the town, says Prof. Ciaran Ó Catháin, the president of the school and one of the players in the project negotiations. Professor Ó Catháin would not disclose ...
Finding Cannibals: filling the North Korea news gap - PBS Mediashift
SEOUL - Amid the news vacuum, the gossip mill prompts prurience, however, and an often vain search for non-existent horror stories. The DailyNK laments that it gets repeatedly asked - by one reporter in particular - "if we have any stories of cannibalism in North Korea.”
Meditations of a detained monk in Vietnam - Asia Times
HO CHI MINH CITY - Emerging from the anterooms of the Thanh Minh Zen monastery, Thich Quang Do nodded and smiled, extending a handshake firm enough to belie his 83 years.
Floods hit hard in southern Pakistan – The Sunday Tribune/Today’s Zaman/Evening Herald
On the road in northern Sindh, Pakistan - Dirty, tired and bedraggled, Imran beckons us over to the womenwho fled their village. They came thirty miles on foot only to spend almost three weeks here in the dead heat at this makeshift camp outside Sukkur in southern Pakistan. “Take some ...
Bad cops, mean streets – Sunday Tribune/VoA/RTÉ World Report
FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE - The police stop us all the time. Sometimes they try to take money from us, sometimes they threaten to arrest us. But the usual trick is to check our handbags. They plant some drugs, then tell us to come with them to the station. The only ...
Sectarian tensions heat up in Lebanon – The Washington Times
BEIRUT - "A lot of Saudi money has been put into the north to cultivate Wahhabi/Salafist ideology, to counter Hezbollah," reflecting wider Sunni-Shi'ite regional rivalries, said Ahmad Moussali, a professor of political science and Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut. "These radicals see the Lebanese army as weak, ...
‘They come at night, sometimes they kill’ – The Irish Times
El-Fasher, Darfur, Sudan - Kultum explained: "Nobody is guarding the camp. If you have one donkey, one goat, they will take it. If you complain, they will kill you." She added cautiously: "You cannot see who does it, it is at night. It is too dark."
Thailand readies for elections – The Diplomat
July 1st, 2011
http://the-diplomat.com/2011/07/01/thailand-readies-for-election/
Crowd gathers at National Stadium in Bangkok for Peua Thai's final campaign rally this evening July 1 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK – “I am not sure who to vote for”, said Nawa Lee, a bus station clerk in Bang Na district of Bangkok. Between 20% and 30% of the voters remain undecided, according to some opinion polls, and with forty parties contesting 500 seats, there are plenty of options for voters, based on raw numbers at least. (more…)
After ordeal, Burma’s political prisoners tread softly – The Irrawaddy
June 30th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21601
The Irrawaddy hears from three of Burma’s recently-released political prisoners, all of whom are still in Burma and therefore request that their identity be withheld.
MAE SOT – Z was one of fifty-five Burmese political prisoners freed as part of a controversial May 2011 amnesty that saw almost 17,000 people released from jail.
“I was released on May 17 under the so-called amnesty”, he says, after spending almost four years in Myingyan prison, far from his family in Arakan State. In a country that holds almost 2,000 political prisoners, some sentenced to almost a century of jail time, human rights groups and Burmese opposition figures criticised the recent releases, as most of those freed were nearing the end of their sentences in any case. (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)
Thailand: Another controversial rally stirs emotions, points fingers – The Irrawaddy
June 24th, 2011
http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21562
BANGKOK/UDON THANI – Thailand’s Democrat Party last night used a controversial Bangkok election rally to focus on the perceived threat posed by former
Adulation for Democrat Party leader and outgoing PM Abhisit (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, while divesting the Government and security forces of responsibility for the deaths and destruction wrought during the March-May 2010 anti-Government redshirt protests.
“If you want to get rid of the poison that is Thaksin, then you should vote for us to get more than 250 seats”, said outgoing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva, closing-off a five hour rally held at the same Rajaprasong intersection where the redshirts blockaded for much of their 2 month rally last year.
Thaksin Shinawatra won successive elections as head of the Thai Rak Thai party in the early 2000s, but some Thais viewed his governing style as mercurial and overly-authoritarian, with whispers that his popularity, particularly in rural areas in the country’s north and northeast, posed an implicit challenge to the country’s monarchy. He was ousted in a September 2006 coup, and though the party backed by him from abroad formed a Government after a 2007 election, this entity was in turn removed from office after a combination of yellowshirt street protests and court decisions paved the way for coalition partners to defect to the Democrat side. (more…)
4 decades later, Laos bombing takes toll – The Irrawaddy
June 23rd, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21550
Phongsavath at the COPE Centre (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
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…)
New Refugee Arrests Undermine Recent Progress – The Irrawaddy
June 21st, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21536
Thai authorities arrest more refugees despite a recent high-profile release, as US cable examines Thailand’s earlier pushback of Rohingya refugees
Ahmadiyah freed on bail from Suan Plu on June 6 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK – On June 7, the day after 96 Pakistani Ahmadiyah refugees and asylum seekers were freed on bail in what was hailed as a landmark new departure in Thailand’s dealings with refugees, six other Pakistani asylum-seekers and one refugee were arrested in Pathum Thani, north of Bangkok.
The seven were sent to Bangkok’s Suan Phlu Immigration Detention Centre (IDC), site of the high-profile June 6 release, says the UN refugee agency (UNCHR). “We are deeply concerned about these arrests that just increase the sense of insecurity that refugees and asylum seekers already feel”, said Jean-Noël Wetterwald, UNHCR Regional representative and Coordinator fo Southeast Asia.
The June 7 arrests were followed up on June 9 with the arrest of nine more Ahmadiyah asylum-seekers in Ayutthuya, with still more Ahmadiyah detained on June 15. (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#
Landmine victim Than Tin recuperating at Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
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…)
“There is no protection for people, how can they go back?” – CNN Go
June 17th, 2011
http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/life/life-burmese-landmine-refugee-536453
Mae Sot, Thailand – With his crutches resting against the clinic bed, Than Tin rolls up his trouser leg, gingerly pointing to a heavily bandaged leg stump. “All I remember was being blasted up in the air”, recalls the 48 year old father of 5, hoisting both arms to suggest the impact of the landmine. “First was no pain, but half my leg was gone, but then it was like so bad burning.”
Mae La refugee camp, north of Mae Sot (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
He was logging in the forests around Myawaddy, a trading town on Burmese side of the border with Thailand and close to one of the world’s longest-running civil wars. Unknown numbers of landmines litter the hilly jungle terrain, on and off the beaten tracks close to where Government soldiers fight ethnic minority rebel militias and beleaguered civilians hide out in their tens of thousands, or make the hard trek to a precarious refuge in Thailand. (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…)
