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 ...
Vietnam’s Problems, Promises - Asia Sentinel/RTÉ World Report
“We tend to lose around 20% of our staff every year after Tet” (the Vietnamese New Year), said Kim Jung Hee, manager of a factory in Binh Duong province, an hour's drive from Saigon's centre. Her Korean company NB Blue employs a thousand workers, in a clean and well-lit factory ...
Thailand sentences American to prison for insulting king - Los Angeles Times
"In Thailand they put people in jail without proof," Lerpong said Thursday, his arms and legs shackled, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. "I was born in Thailand, but this does not mean I am Thai. I am proud to be an American citizen."
DMZ: Road trip to the world's most heavily armed border - CNNGo
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 ...
Potent mix for Timor-Leste - Asia Times
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.
If Samuel Beckett met Pol Pot - Asia Sentinel/Irish Examiner
TIK PANHAO, CAMBODIA - In some of Cambodia’s thousands of killing fields, the bones of the dead can sometimes be seen, rising to the surface after storms or rain, like grisly emblems of an unburied past. Perhaps 16,000 died at the s-21 Detention Camp in Phnom Penh, or at Choeung ...
Voting ends in southern Sudan referendum - Sunday Tribune
Kyeli, Blue Nile State, Sudan - “Soon after we married, my husband was killed during the war”, says Hawa Abdul-Gadr. Her eyes show a suppressed grief, but her demeanour is purposeful. That said, there is a perceptible sadness - long-kept under wraps but perhaps closer to the surface than she ...
An unbreakable bond? – Asia Times
JERUSALEM – In 'The Great Divorce' C.S. Lewis attempted to allegorise about a reality which he admitted he could not know, but tentatively hoped to suggest. The US-Israeli relationship, to most, seems like an unbreakable bond, and any potential divorce might be regarded as unimaginable. But when Israeli Prime Minister ...
Narcotic use, drought rob babies of food – The Washington Times
DIRE DAWA, Ethiopia | When drought and food shortages hit, it is the very young who suffer first, and most. Weighing only 10 pounds, Ayaan is among nearly 100,000 Ethiopian children whose lives are at risk. Just four days before her first birthday, she is lighter than an average 3-month-old ...
Corruption trumps tribalism – New York Times (IHT)
Kenyans were cynical about their political establishment long before the latest election violence. One wisecrack doing the rounds since last year says "there is more chance of a Luo becoming president of the United States than president of this country" - referring to Barack Obama, whose father hails from the ...
Thai court sentences American citizen to 2.5 years in prison for insulting monarchy – Christian Science Monitor
December 8th, 2011
Gordon's lawyer Anon Nampa, speaks to press outside the court after today's sentencing (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK - US citizen Joe Gordon was sentenced to 2-1/2 years jail today for translating a banned biography of the Thai king and posting it online while living in Colorado, drawing condemnation from free speech advocates and US officials.
Mr. Gordon is the latest to be charged on Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, some of the strictest in the world, which include prohibitions on posting anti-monarchy slurs online and can mean a prison sentence of 3 to 15 years.
Exact figures are not available, but lèse-majesté cases and convictions have spiked in recent years amid political uncertainty since a 2006 military coup and concerns over what will happen when King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s long reign ends. (more…)
Thailand sentences American to prison for insulting king – Los Angeles Times
December 8th, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-thailand-american-20111209,0,607185.story
Thailand's PM Yingluck Shinawatra leads Bangkok candle-lighting celebration to mark King's birthday on Monday evening (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
By Simon Roughneen and Mark Magnier. Reporting from Bangkok, Thailand, and New Delhi, India
A U.S. citizen Thursday received a 30-month prison sentence in Thailand for insulting the king, the latest punishment handed down under a law critics see as archaic, prompting the U.S. government to denounce the ruling as excessive and a violation of free speech. (more…)
Thailand’s lèse-majesté taboo leading to witch-hunt – Asia Sentinel
December 7th, 2011
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4020&Itemid=392
Caption - Rossamarin Tangnoppakul holds photo of husband Ampon with grandchildren (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
BANGKOK - Thailand’s growing curbs on freedom of speech have seen a grandfather sentenced to twenty years in jail for insulting the country’s monarchy, while a U.S citizen awaits a possible similar fate in a ruling due tomorrow.
Last month Ampon Tangnoppakul, 61 was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of insulting Queen Sirikit in four sms texts sent to an official working for Thailand’s former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva.
Ampon’s crestfallen wife Rossamarin spoke to Asia Sentinel on Monday in a coffee shop near her home in Samut Prakarn in eastern Bangkok. Her jailed husband, she said, “is still very stressed by everything and gets sick often.”
In court last month, Ampon claimed innocence and his family insist that he does not even know how to send mobile phone text messages. (more…)
EU judge recommends removal of sanctions on Tay Za’s son – The Irrawaddy
December 4th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22594
HO CHI MINH CITY – Pye Phyo Tay Za, the 25-year-old son of Burmese businessman Tay Za, could be set to win an appeal against the EU sanctions imposed on him at the European Court of Justice.
A Nov. 29 opinion by a Court Advocate-General said that the previous May 2010 judgment upholding sanctions on Pye Phyo should be reversed, and that the European Commission as well as the United Kingdom should bear legal costs, as the losing parties in the case. The assessment stated that the Court’s original ruling “gave an excessively broad interpretation of those articles (that allowed sanctions on Pye Phyo) and erred in law.”
Vietnam’s Problems, Promises – Asia Sentinel/RTÉ World Report
December 2nd, 2011
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4003&Itemid=214
radio report here - http://www.rte.ie/news/player.html?worldreport#programme=World%20Report
Lu Van Thinh at his bamboo farm in Thanh Hoa province (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Continuing growth is exceeded by stubborn inflation
HO CHI MINH CITY- With average per capital annual incomes of just over US$1,000, Vietnam is officially a lower-middle income country, and in Hanoi, the seat of government, and commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City – still popularly known as Saigon – property prices are on an upward curve and new building and property developments appear shoot up faster than new growth in Vietnam’s lush tropical rainforests.
The appearance is somewhat illusory. The country faces crushing inflation, forecast by Standard Chartered Bank at 19.7 percent in December, with an11.3 percent rise forecast for 2012. The dong is expected to continue to depreciate throughout the year given Vietnam’s US$8 billion current account deficit and low foreign currency reserves. (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…)
Burma’s Vietnam moment? – Christian Science Monitor
December 1st, 2011
At work inside a clothing factory in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM – A pivotal moment may have arrived for Burma (Myanmar), with the arrival on Wednesday of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the first time in over a half-century that such a senior American official has visited the country.
After her meeting on Thursday afternoon with Burma’s President Thein Sein, Secretary Clinton announced that the US is ready to improve relations and even indicated it could ease sanctions with Burma’s quasi-civilian government if the country continues with recent reforms. “These are beginning steps, and we are prepared to go further if reforms maintain momentum,” she said. (more…)
Ireland pushes education ties with Vietnam in bid to court student market – Irish Independent
November 28th, 2011
Ireland's Minister of State for Trade and Development Jan O'Sullivan and Vietnam's Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan sign education MOU in Hanoi on Monday (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Simon Roughneen in Hanoi – Ireland and Vietnam today launched a deal aimed at increasing the number of Vietnamese students taking third-level courses in Ireland.
Speaking in the Vietnamese capital on Monday morning, Minister of State for Trade And Development Jan O’Sullivan said that “Ireland sees our education linkages as central to the future of bilateral economic relations with Vietnam.”
Currently 40 Vietnamese are enrolled in Ireland’s universities, mostly funded by Irish Government scholarships. To compare, 6000 Vietnamese are studying in the UK, and elsewhere, tapping the Asian student market has created a multi-billion dollar industry within Australia’s third-level education system. Last year 25,000 Vietnamese were part of a total of 240,000 Asian students who enrolled in Australia, up from 180,000 in 2008. (more…)
Keeping up with the neighbours: Thailand jails grandfather for 20 years – The Huffington Post
November 24th, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/simon-roughneen/thailand-hails-grandfather_b_1111483.html
In a sentence exceeding some those handed down for murder and rape in the country, Thailand yesterday jailed a man for 20 years, for no more than sending 4 text messages allegedly insulting the country’s Queen.
The evidence against Ampon Tangnoppakul seemed inconclusive, and the sentence handed down has been slammed by freedom-of-speech advocates as vastly-disproportionate to an offence which – at most – might result in a defamation suit in other jurisdictions.
However even that might be in doubt, given that it cannot be assessed whether or not the messages insult anyone, as the the content of the messages has not been revealed. To do so – even in court -could in itself be deemed an act of lèse majesté , an additional absurdity to Thailand’s laws on this matter and related computer crimes legislation, which allow any person to lodge a complaint about another who they regard as insulting the country’s monarchy. (more…)
Deported migrants await January plan to return to Thailand – The Irrawaddy
November 24th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22531
Migrants face dangerous journey as Napyidaw contemplates longer-term ‘Filipino-style’ overseas worker strategy
BANGKOK – Tens of thousands of Burmese migrants who fled Thailand’s floods are in danger of trafficking and extortion unless both Thailand and Burma’s Governments come up with a plan to facilitate a safe return, say activists.
From September-November 2011, almost 100,000 Burmese migrant workers returned to their homeland via Mae Sot, a town on the Thailand-Burma border that serves as the main land connection between the two countries. However tens of thousands of these migrants were deported from Thailand after homes and workplaces were flooded in the recent disaster, which left over 600 people dead in Thailand.
According to data from the Mae Sot immigration office, 39,841 of the returnees held temporary passports – meaning that they could legally cross back to Burma and can subsequently return to Thailand to resume work at their flooded employment locations. (more…)
