Violence against Muslims threatening Myanmar reforms: UN
UNITED NATIONS - Violence against a Muslim minority in Myanmar is feeding a wider anti-Muslim feeling that poses a serious threat to the country’s dramatic economic and political reforms as it emerges from half a century of military rule, a UN envoy has said.
The government says at least 192...
Thailand: 500,000 People ‘Enslaved’ in Thailand
Thailand has the highest prevalence of modern slavery in Southeast Asia with up to half a million people living in forced servitude, according to a new index by international charity the Walk Free Foundation.
The index, which will be published annually, attempts to measure of the extent of modern slavery...
The Philippines: Groups condemn dismissal of case vs soldiers linked in Tampakan killings
Support groups of anti-mining communities affected by the Tampakan Copper Gold Project condemn the dropping of the criminal charges against some members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines' 27th Infantry Battalion.
On October 18, 2012, Juvy Capion and her sons John and Jordan were killed in what the 27th...
CAMBODIA: Time to get to work
The more Hun Sen attempts to ignore grievances of the increasingly vocal cohort of Cambodian voters who allege election irregularities and fraud, the more the emboldened and determined opposition party demands an independent impartial joint CNRP-CPP investigation committee to seek more accurate accounting of ballots cast in the July...
Malaysia: NGOs disappointed with vague Govt statement at UPR
KUALA LUMPUR: The Government’s statement regarding Malaysia's current state of human rights at the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva was criticised as being too vague by a grouping of local non-governmental organisations (NGO).
Members of the Coalition of Malaysian NGOs in the UPR Process (Comango) expressed their shock...
Over 200,000 Indonesians enslaved: Study
The Global Slavery Index 2013, published by the Walk Free Foundation, an Australian-based organization dedicated to eradicating modern-day slavery, reveals that there are more than 200,000 slaves in Indonesia.
The Walk Free Foundation’s inaugural Global Slavery Index, which was released at Chatham House in London on Thursday, estimates that there...
Brunei a throwback to an age of absolute monarchy
With a swing of his powerful arm, a prison guard landed a wicked-looking cane on the back of a dummy dressed in the white uniform of convicts in Brunei.
“It doesn’t hurt as much as you think,” he said.
Earlier this month, the International Convention Centre in Brunei’s capital, Bandar Seri...
Clothes on your back: Inside Cambodia’s garment industry
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—Neang Seap and his wife, Em Mom, arrived in Phnom Penh bearing the lacerating wounds that mark Cambodia’s rural migrants. Evicted by the Khmer Rouge in the late ’70s from his village in the country’s eastern zone, Neang was part of the long forced march west, ending...
Thailand: Proposal to DNA-test migrant workers panned
Prompted by concerns over the ease with which foreigners will be able to travel in and out of the country once the Asean Economic Community (AEC) commences in 2015, the Institute for Forensic Medicine is calling on the government to collect the DNA of all migrant workers entering the...
Thailand: Abhisit, Suthep charged in 2010 red shirt rally crackdown
Bangkok — Thai prosecutors indicted former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban on Monday for ordering crackdowns on the 2010 red shirt protests that left at least 92 people dead.
The indictments are based on a report compiled by the Department of Special Investigation covering the...
