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 ...
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…)
Thailand floods: Some residents defy warnings and stay to help evacuees – Christian Science Monitor
October 27th, 2011
Don Mueang airport runway on Thursday afternoon (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
In a corner of the upstairs departure terminal at Bangkok’s now-closed Don Muang airport, Chutimas Suksai and six friends are taping empty water bottles together to attach as bouyancy support to a set of improvised bamboo rafts they were making.
Ms. Chutimas, an anthropology student from Thammasat Univerisity, has spent most of the past two weeks volunteering her time to help some of the hundreds of thousands of Thais affected by three months of rain and flooding, which has killed more than 360 people, with an estimated 1 million of Bangkok’s estimated 12 million residents already evacuated.
When Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced that the capital should brace for four to six weeks of flooding, citizens who stayed in Bangkok, such as Chutimas and her friends, started looking for ways to help people ride out what could be a long-lasting deluge. (more…)
Bangkok faces possible deluge – The Irrawaddy
October 27th, 2011
Thanadoldolwat Pornkhienthong, owner of the Supatra River House Restaurant, watches water rush in to his yard (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.irrawaddy./article.php?art_id=22334
BANGKOK – “I asked the BMA (Bangkok Metropolitan Authority) and the Army for help with sandbags, but no response”, said Thanadoldolwat Pornkhienthong, owner of the Supatra River HouseRestaurant on the west bank of the Chao Praya river.
The waterways winds it way through Bangkok, and from Mr Thanadoldolwat’s balcony, offers splendid views of the river – to the spectacular Khmer-style Temple of Dawn on the right and the Grand Palace across the way.
However, the upstairs promenade dining area is littered in drying clothes and furniture lifted up the 10 feet of stairs, after downstairs on Wednesday evening, water gushed in, covering the yard and sidestreet entrance to the restaurant in 2½ feet of water.
“I have to try protect myself”, said Thanadoldolwat, who despite living right on the often swollen river, says “I have never seen anything like this in the twenty years after I open this business”.
On Wednesday evening, after floods closed the Bangkok’s second airport and site of the country’s temporary flood management agency known as the Flood Relief Operations Centre (FROC), high waters on the Chao Praya ran down as far as the Grand Palace on the river’s east bank.
Asked on Wednesday whether all areas of Bangkok would be flooded, Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said that it would depend on how dykes and barriers in the east, north and west of the city hold up. If walls in all three areas fell, the city would flood, she said, with different areas experiencing water levels between 10 centimetres to more than a metre. (more…)
Thailand floods: Water seeps into heart of Bangkok, barriers may not hold – Christian Science Monitor
October 26th, 2011
BANGKOK – As the most severe flooding to hit Thailand in decades began to enter the heart of Bangkok’s temple-dotted tourist-magnet riverside districts today, Thailand’s authorities conceded that there is a high possibility that most of the city’s sprawling 12 million population could be inundated.
Overflow from the Chao Praya in front of Bangkok's Grand Palace on Wednesday evening (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Overflow from the Chao Praya river, which snakes through the city, washed into neighborhoods on both sides on Wednesday, threatening the hospital grounds on the west bank of the river where 84-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej is currently staying across, almost directly across from where the famous Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha are facing rising waters. (more…)
Exiles Want More Change Before Burma Given ASEAN Chair – The Irrawaddy
October 26th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22326
BANGKOK — Recent reforms by the Burmese government are not enough to warrant the country’s taking the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in 2014, say long-time opposition exiles.
The Burmese government is pressing to head the ten-state regional bloc, after being refused its turn to hold the rotating Asean chair in 2006. Incumbent Indonesia is sending Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to Burma to discuss the matter, prior to an upcoming Asean summit in Bali scheduled for Nov 17.
In the most recent of a series of high-profile moves aiming to demonstrate its reformist credentials, on October 13 the Burmese government permitted the release of 237 political prisoners—according to numbers given by the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP). (more…)
Amid mixed messages, floods threaten Thailand’s economy – Christian Science Monitor
October 24th, 2011
Putting a flood barrier up at an entrance to Bangkok's Chatuchak market on Monday afternoon (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1024/Bangkok-floodwaters-threaten-Thailand-s-economy
BANGKOK - Standing over the clanging hammers and ripping saws, Tinnakorn Rujinarong watched workmen bang together a yard-high barrier meant to keep looming floodwaters – which have killed over 350 people and swamped an area the size of Northern Ireland – out of one of the world’s biggest flea-markets and one of Thailand’s best-known attractions.
Most weekends, around 200,000 people sweat and haggle their way through the sauna-like narrow alleys running between Chatuchak Market’s 10,000 shops. “Around 100 million baht is spent here every weekend”, says Mr Tinnakorn, who is the market’s Deputy Director.
Across the city – which satellite images show to be a virtual island surrounded by floods to the north and the Gulf of Thailand to the south – shops are running out of drinking water and non-perishable food, with various chains saying that they are having difficulty in replenishing barren shelves as 10 million residents stock-up amid fears of a citywide deluge.
Barclays Capital estimates that the floods will shave almost 1% off Thailand’s economic growth for 2011, and whether Chatuchak opens next weekend is anyone’s guess. Walls were stood up at the market perimeter on Monday afternoon, after Bangkok city governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra told TV viewers last night that six additional city districts, including Chatuchak, should get ready to evacuate. (more…)
Finding Cannibals: filling the North Korea news gap – PBS Mediashift
October 22nd, 2011
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/10/filling-the-news-gap-in-north-korea294.html
Byoung-Keun (middle) at work at the DailyNK office in Seoul. Photo by Simon Roughneen.
SEOUL, South Korea — “I am always worried about security for those who report information to us from inside,” said Byoung-Keun, a North Korean working in Seoul as a journalist for The DailyNK, a news website focused on telling the world what is happening in possibly the world’s most closed-off society.
Byoung-Keun is a pseudonym, because the former North Korean state official cannot divulge his real name to PBS MediaShift. Doing so could lead to reprisals for family and former colleagues living in North Korea, or even an assassination attempt on him in Seoul, if other recent reports about defectors being targeted by Pyongyang are true.
In North Korea, Internet and cell phone use are restricted to senior government officials and foreigners — and then closely monitored. (more…)
Logs on the railroad – Asia Times
October 21st, 2011
North Korean soldiers keeps watch at checkpoint inside the demilitarised zone along the border with South Korea (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/MJ26Dg02.html
After China detains activists helping would-be North Korean defectors, concerns grow that escape routes for those fleeing from North Korea might be shut down, with estimates suggesting the country’s gulag’s holds some 200,000 political prisoners.
SEOUL – “I was smuggled over the Yalu River into China”, recalls *So Yeon, a woman from Chongjin, a city in the now-decrepit industrial zone of northern North Korea,
A night-time crossing, over the Yalu or Tumen rivers that mark the North Korea-China frontier, is the usual means by which North Koreans flee their country, to what they hope will be a better life elsewhere.
Most hope to make it South Korea, by a roundabout, dangerous odyssey that usually involves a trek through China to either Mongolia or to Southeast Asia, without official papers and under constant fear of arrest and possible deportation back to North Korea (more…)
Myanmar to free more than 6,300 prisoners – Los Angeles Times
October 12th, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-myanmar-prisoners-20111012,0,7704676.story
By Mark Magnier and Simon Roughneen,
Reporting from Imphal, India, and Bangkok, Thailand— Myanmar announced plans Tuesday to release more than 6,300 prisoners in the latest of several modest reform steps taken by the long-isolated nation, although it wasn’t immediately clear how many of those to be freed are political detainees.
Human rights groups, dissident organizations and analysts welcomed the move, but said they remained skeptical that a fundamental change was underway. The military regime in Myanmar, also known as Burma, has ruled the country with an iron fist for decades.
“We’re basically dealing with the same creature, with slightly more enlightened posturing,” said Zarni, founder of the London-based Free Burma Coalition, an activist group, who uses one name. “We shouldn’t fool ourselves that the regime is driven by reformers.” (more…)
