ASEAN International Relations Lead Story News
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she will raise human rights concerns with Burmese and Cambodian leaders during a three-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that begins in Sydney on Friday.
Cambodia’s parliament amended a law on Monday to stop anyone convicted of an offence from running for office, effectively barring long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen’s main rival.
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“It pained me to think that while being torturing by the Khmer Rouge, my mother chose not to come out and protect or at least beg forgiveness for me.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Burmese President Thein Sein are set to hold landmark talks on Friday as Washington moves to ease sanctions on the once pariah state
Jul 14, 2008 (AFP)
Dec 12, 2007 (AP), The UN should leave Burma alone and stop disrupting the junta’s progress toward democracy by issuing critical reports on human rights abuses, Cambodia’s leader said Wednesday.[…]
Nov 27, 2007 (AP), The prime minister of Burma and the UN’s special envoy to the military-ruled country will take turns visiting Cambodia this week to discuss Burma’s political crisis,[…]
The rise of robots in manufacturing in Southeast Asia is likely to fuel modern slavery as workers who end up unemployed due to automation face abuses competing for a shrinking pool of low-paid jobs in a “race to the bottom,” analysts said on Thursday.
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Thousands of Muslim migrant workers from Burma risk being fined and deported from Thailand after June 30, under a new law that campaigners say may increase abuse and trafficking.
Drugs worth approximately 1.6 billion kyat ($1.15 million USD) were seized in Shan State over the weekend.
Companies acquired concessions amounting to the size of a small European country, while rural residents of Southeast Asia’s Mekong region saw their landholdings shrink or disappear over the past two decades, according to researchers.
Burma has promised to speed up peace efforts with ethnic minority groups in order to better tackle drug trafficking across its borders.
ASEAN member states met at the United Nations to set up a framework for border control cooperation as latest statistics showed that illicit trade and organised crime amounts to $100 billion in the region.
ASEAN International Relations Lead Story News
Southeast Asian leaders will focus on trade wars, the crisis in Burma and security tensions in the disputed South China Sea at a summit this weekend, but it’s highly unlikely there will be any headline-grabbing progress on the issues.
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A surge of suspicious Twitter accounts has descended on users in Southeast Asia, leaving many to wonder what the platform is doing to ensure their privacy.
Thailand’s businesses and its government must do more to protect the rights of vulnerable people abroad, analysts and activists said, after a landmark case filed by Cambodian farmers in a Bangkok court against a Thai sugar firm.
Human Rights Lead Story Migrants Issues News
Thailand’s fishing industry has long been dogged by allegations of abuses. The country is under further international scrutiny this week as a team of UN experts undertake their first visit to examine human rights in a wide range of businesses in Thailand, including the fishing and seafood sectors.
Many refugees across Southeast Asia have no access to citizenship and few rights in the country where they live.
The price of carbon credits must rise drastically if they are to help protect Southeast Asia’s tropical forests against rubber plantation expansion, according to researchers.
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Fishermen in Thailand remain at risk of forced labour, and the identity documents and wages of some continue to be withheld, despite pressure from major retailers to clean up the industry, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday.
Should tourists still visit Mrauk U? After the deadly protests last month, DVB takes a look at how the community is reacting and how tourism is being affected.
The terrorist threat facing Southeast Asia is growing as foreign fighters return to the region, Southeast Asian defence ministers said in a joint statement on Tuesday in which they pledged to improve cooperation to tackle militancy.
Lead Story Migrants Issues News
Trafficked into work and routinely abused, migrant fishermen in Thailand are still subject to forced labour despite efforts by the government to clean up the industry, advocacy groups say.
Governments across Southeast Asia have a history of using laws and the judiciary to curb press freedoms, and now, they have found a handy crutch to lean on as they intensify clampdowns: US President Donald Trump’s “fake news” mantra.
Once a smuggling stop for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge guerrillas, a Thai border town finds itself on the frontline of a new battle against drug-resistant strains of malaria that could frustrate global attempts to stamp out the disease.
Women land rights defenders in Asia are at greater risk of violence and harassment, according to rights groups who are calling on authorities to do more to protect them as conflicts over land and resources get increasingly bloody.
ASEAN Lead Story Migrants Issues News
The World Bank is urging ASEAN member countries to ease labour restrictions so migrant workers can earn money overseas to boost welfare and deepen economic integration.
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More than a third of migrant fishermen in Thailand clearly were victims of trafficking over the past five years and even more workers in the industry were possibly trafficked as well, according to a report published on Thursday.
Economy International Relations Lead Story News
China is ploughing money into Southeast Asia, but as welcome as all this economic activity is to the region, it could also present political problems, as countries confront China over issues such as its claims in the South China Sea.
Demand for sex with children is an emerging cause of human trafficking in the Mekong region, the United Nations said on Thursday, as it pointed to a shift in child sex webcam centres from the Philippines to Thailand.
