A few days before Burma exploded into the world headlines, the annual US State Department report ranking nations on their narcotics control efforts listed the Rangoon regime as among those not making the cut. Twenty countries were listed as major… Read moreUS anti-drug report blasts Venezuela, Burma (conveniently)
The Democratic Voice of Burma website reports that army troops attempting to raid monasteries in Rangoon and Mandalay were forced to withdraw by local residents Sept. 27. Troops approaching the monasteries backed off after locals armed with sticks and slingshots… Read morePeople’s resistance in Burma
History is being made in Burma, as some 100,000 protesters led by Buddhist monks marched through Rangoon Sept. 24, the largest demonstration since a 1988 pro-democracy movement was brutally crushed by the military regime. Surreptitiously shot photographs and videos show… Read moreWill Burmese democracy movement become pawn in pipeline wars?
Twenty Burmese security officials taken captive for several hours by Buddhist monks were released unharmed Sept. 6. The officials had arrived at the monastery in the town of Pakokku to apologize for injuries caused during a protest on the previous… Read moreBurma: Buddhist monks challenge dictatorship
From East Timor & Indonesia Action Network, June 28: The presence in Papua of a senior Indonesian army officer indicted on crimes against humanity charges in East Timor (now Timor-Leste) endangers human rights defenders and political activists and is a… Read moreIndonesia: indicted war criminal dispatched to West Papua
The Philippine military is waging a "dirty war" against leftist activists and journalists, Human Rights Watch charged in a June 28 report, "Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines." Based on more than 100 interviews, the report details… Read moreHRW: Manila wages “dirty war” against leftists
Supposed Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Dujana was arrested June 9 by Indonesia’s elite anti-terrorist Detachment 88 in a raid in the southern Java town of Yogyakarta, authorities say. The reportedly Afghan-trained Dujana is accused of assisting and harboring Jemaah Islamiyah… Read moreJemaah Islamiyah funds Mindanao insurgents?
Buddhist monks and other Thais rallied over the weekend to have Buddhism enshrined in the constitution as the national religion of Thailand. [Some 5,000 blocked traffic outside the parliament building in Bangkok.] With ongoing violence in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim south,… Read moreThailand: clash of chauvinisms?
The Philippine military has deployed helicopters and spy drones with the help of US intelligence to search for Muslim rebels who kidnapped Italian Catholic priest Carlo Bossi of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in the Zamboanga peninsula. Bossi… Read moreMindanao: drones scan jungle for kidnapped priest
Vang Pao, a revered leader of the Hmong-American community and a former general in the Royal Army of Laos, is among 10 men charged with plotting to overthrow the Laotian regime. An undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,… Read moreHmong leader Vang Pao charged in Laotian plot
Thousands of protesters at a mosque in Pattani, Thailand, agreed to stand down June 4 after Fourth Army Region Lt. Gen. Wirote Buajaroon signed an order to establish an independent panel to investigate widespread reports of assaults and harassment of… Read moreProtest and rail sabotage in southern Thailand
A roadside bomb killed 10 government-hired paramilitary troops in southern Thailand’s Bannang Sata district, Yala province, as they returned from negotiations with Muslim protesters May 31. Almost immediately after the bombing, gunmen opened fire on a group of Muslim villagers… Read moreThailand: paramilitary troops, mosque attacked
