Malaysian police said Tuesday they were hunting suspected contract killers after a bank founder was gunned down in broad daylight in Kuala Lumpur, fuelling fears of rampant violent crime in the Southeast Asian country. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Dynamic growth and an expanding middle class are making Southeast Asian consumers among the most confident in the world when it comes to their economic prospects, a survey showed Tuesday. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Australia plans to resettle asylum-seekers in developing countries as part of a radical overhaul of its border protection policy to help stem the flood of boatpeople arriving on its shores, reports said Friday.
Papua New Guinea is at the heart of the revamp, News Limited newspapers and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said, with the Pacific nation’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill expected to jet into Australia on Friday for an announcement.
Under a deal Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is said to have thrashed out, asylum-seekers would not only be processed in other countries, such as poverty-stricken Papua New Guinea, but also permanently resettled there.
The aim is to pose a strong disincentive for people considering the dangerous boat journey from Indonesia, particularly so-called economic migrants who make the trip not to flee persecution but for a better life in Australia.
Australia has struggled to stem an influx of asylum-seekers arriving by boat, with record numbers turning up in 2012 and more than 13,000 so far in 2013.
Hundreds have drowned making the journey and Canberra’s plans to send them to remote Pacific islands for processing has so far failed to stop the flood.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said asylum-seekers are increasingly “economic migrants”, many from Iran and Sri Lanka.
The ABC reported Friday that Indonesia had agreed to a request by Prime Minister Rudd to tighten visa restrictions for visitors from Iran, who currently enjoy visa-free entry to the sprawling Southeast Asian nation with many then taking a boat illegally to Australia.
It follows Rudd’s recent meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta, where they announced an agreement to promote greater regional co-operation on cross-border immigration.
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said further details would be forthcoming.
“We’re in discussions, announcements will be made when they’re made. I’m not in a position to make further detail here,” he said, but welcomed the Indonesian move on Iranians.
“What it will do is stop the transit traffic to go from Iran, Middle East, Indonesia, get your visa on arrival and then have already pre-organised a people smuggler to put you on the boat,” he said.
“That will be far more difficult if there’s not an automatic transit through Indonesia. It’s an example of good co-operation and I congratulate and thank the Indonesian government for doing what they’ve done.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The Chinese cyberspies behind the widely publicized espionage campaign against The New York Times have added Dropbox and WordPress to their bag of spear-phishing tricks.
The gang, known in security circles as the DNSCalc gang, has been using the Dropbox file-sharing service for roughly the last 12 months as a mechanism for spreading malware, said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer for Cyber Squared. While the tactic is not unique, it remains under the radar of most companies.
“I wouldn’t say it’s new,” Barger said on Thursday. “It’s just something that folks aren’t really looking at or paying attention to.”
The gang is among 20 Chinese groups identified this year by security firm Mandiant that launch cyberattacks against specific targets to steal information. In this case, the DNSCalc gang was going after intelligence on individuals or governments connected to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. ASEAN is a non-governmental group that represents the economic interests of ten Southeast Asian countries.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Wrapped in a saffron robe, Buddhist monk Wirathu insists he is a man of peace. Never mind his nine years in prison for inciting deadly violence against Muslims. Never mind the gruesome photos outside his office of Buddhists allegedly massacred by Muslims. Never mind that in the new Myanmar, the man dubbed the “Burmese bin Laden” has emerged as the spiritual leader of a pro-Buddhist fringe movement accused of fueling a bloody campaign of sectarian violence.
Wirathu insists the world has misunderstood him.
“If they knew my true ideas, they would call me savior,” he says.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is part of “Portraits of Change,” a yearlong series by The Associated Press examining how the opening of Myanmar after decades of military rule is — and is not — changing life in the long-isolated Southeast Asian country.
___
Wirathu has become the figurehead of a virulent strain of religious nationalism being spread by some of the most venerated members of Burmese society: Buddhist monks. Their core message is that Buddhists must unite against a growing Muslim threat.
While these monks are a minority, some argue they provide an ideological justification for the religious violence that has ripped through Myanmar over the last year, threatening to destabilize the country’s still-fragile democracy and raising the specter of a return to military rule. Their rhetoric also reinforces a vision of a divided society as Myanmar tries to integrate its many ethnic and religious minorities after decades of internal conflict.
The spread of this new radicalism has been helped by the very reforms it threatens to derail. A quasi-civilian government came to power in 2011 after five decades of brutal military rule. New freedoms of speech and assembly soon followed, which have made it easier to disseminate radical views. Wirathu himself was unleashed in early 2012 as part of a widely-praised amnesty for political and other prisoners.
A short man, with a quick smile and evident charisma, Wirathu is the public face of a fast-spreading but still small campaign called “969.” Each digit enumerates virtues of the Lord Buddha, his teachings and the community of monks. The campaign urges Buddhists to shop only at Buddhist stores and avoid marrying, hiring or selling their homes or land to Muslims.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Worried that long-seething rifts could escalate over the South China Sea, Southeast Asian leaders are expected this week to press China to agree to start negotiations on a new pact aimed at thwarting a major clash in one of the world’s busiest waterways.
Concern over North Korea‘s latest threats is also expected to gain attention over economic issues in the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, being held Wednesday and Thursday in Brunei‘s capital of Bandar Seri Begawan.
The 10-nation bloc is scrambling to beat a deadline to transform the strikingly diverse region of 600 million people into a European Union-like community by the end of 2015.
A draft statement to be issued after the summit, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press on Monday, would reaffirm the ASEAN leaders’ commitment to ensure the peaceful resolution of South China Sea conflicts in accordance with international law “without resorting to the threat or use of force.”
They would call for “the early adoption of a code of conduct in the South China Sea,” referring to a legally binding pact ASEAN would like to forge with China to replace a 2002 nonaggression accord that has failed to stop territorial skirmishes.
China, Taiwan and ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam have overlapping claims across the South China Sea, which Beijing claims in its entirety. The Philippines and Vietnam in particular have been at odds with China over the region in recent years, with diplomatic squabbles erupting over oil and gas exploration and fishing rights.
A tense standoff last year between Chinese and Filipino ships over the fishing-rich Scarborough Shoal is unresolved.
The Philippine vessels withdrew, but China has refused to pull out its three surveillance ships and remove a rope blocking Filipino fishermen from a Scarborough lagoon.
In January, the Philippines challenged China‘s massive territorial claims before an arbitration tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in a daring legal step that China has ignored. The tribunal has to appoint three more of five arbiters by Thursday, then start looking into the complaint if it decides it has jurisdiction.
A pre-summit meeting by ASEAN foreign ministers in Brunei two weeks ago was dominated by concerns over the territorial disputes and ended
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/fTrTRnu6Nzs/
By Karsten Strauss, Forbes Staff
In scanning the globe for interesting startups, we at Forbes reach out to international contacts to give us intel on up and comers. Recently, Singapore-based strategy consultant, Solidiance, shot us a list of what that firm feels are the most innovative cities and some of the companies that call them home. The group includes game developers, mobile app builders and one company that can turn a wheelchair into a veritable racecar. Here’s a taste… Singapore ShowNearby: This is a Singaporean location-based service provider, serving information-seeking users, business owners and public agencies with relevant points of interests across mobile and web platforms. Its app is available on Android, iOS and Blackberry platforms. The company’s main revenue stream is via deals, discounts, promotions and advertisements run by businesses on its platform. In 2010, Global Yellow Pages invested about $3 million in ShowNearby. To increase business interest, ShowNearby has recently launched its analytics services and plans to expand operations to neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. Sydney BlueChilli: This technology and software development company that creates online web applications and injects them into online start-ups – an investment strategy the company calls “Venture Technology.” It welcomes and screens new online business ideas and if selected they embed their software team with the start-up under the same roof to build business value. Companies within the BlueChilli network receive cloud computing and storage credit worth up to $2,000 per month for up to a year from the australia-based Ninefold cloud and storage company. ClickView: ClickView is a fully-managed video content distribution and viewing system that focuses on producing media suites for education, government and enterprise. The company has assembled a comprehensive curriculum-linked video and worksheet library – called ClickView Exchange – from Australian educational video production companies, including Discovery Channel Education and Channel 4. Ninja Blocks: This Eveleigh, australia company claims to be able to connect the real world to the web by enabling devices like electricity outlets, room temperature/humidity sensors, motion sensors, and window & door contact mechanisms to be monitored through apps. Melbourne Engineair: Engineair is a company focusing on the development of air motor technology based on a unique rotary piston concept. Different from conventional air motors, the Engineair motor has virtually eliminated vibration, internal wear, friction and offers superior performance for a wide variety of applications. Melbourne city government was the first to use and deploy this motor for a yearlong testing process. Hong Kong GreenTomato: This mobile enterprise solutions and mobile technology company providing end to end services from consulting and design to coding and testing and finally launching content through mobile. GreenTomato has launched over 150 WAP services serving more than 3 million subscribers and over 50 iPhone apps. It won the technology company of the year award in Hong Kong in 2011. Auckland Nexus6: Makes inhalers under the brand ‘Smartinhaler’. This product allows physicians and patients to monitor real life use of inhaled treatments for respiratory conditions. This means that physicians can remotely ensure that
From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2013/04/18/asian-pacific-tech-on-the-move/
A winding, bumpy route through the misty mountains of eastern Myanmar is being paved into a smooth two-lane highway, the type of road commonly found in other scenic stretches from the Alps to the Rockies.
But here, in a rugged land long cut off by ethnic insurgency, there is nothing ordinary about a paved road.
For farmers and villagers who have spent decades in isolation, it is a potential path out of their impoverished hinterland to a better future. It is an emblem of how much is changing in Myanmar — but also how much is not.
___
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is part of “Portraits of Change,” a yearlong series by The Associated Press examining how the opening of Myanmar after decades of military rule is — and is not — changing life in the long-isolated Southeast Asian country.
___
The 200-mile road swerves along a mostly jungle-covered plateau of Shan state, a war-torn region that is known for drug smuggling and has been off-limits to foreigners for years.
As Myanmar emerges from half a century of military rule, one of its toughest challenges is to reintegrate areas like this one, where decades of fighting have engendered deep feelings of fear, mistrust and hatred of the army and, by extension, the government. Paved roads might be called Myanmar’s first peace dividend, an effort by its new civilian rulers to connect some of Asia‘s poorest people to their own country and show them the benefits of joining the fold.
The Associated Press was granted rare permission to accompany a U.N. mission into the restricted area, past valleys of emerald rice paddies and highlands inhabited by indigenous hill tribes. The mission, to visit opium poppy fields, traveled under armed escort since it is still a conflict zone. Many along the way said they had never seen a foreigner before. The five-day journey offered a glimpse into the challenge ahead: Can the government overcome the ingrained animosity among its ethnic minorities and achieve its goal of national unity?
Signs of hope mingled with reminders of a troubled past. Police filmed and photographed the AP crew and villagers during many interviews. Some towns are barricaded by gates still locked at night to keep armed rebels out. The road
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/w6kL07RpgwY/
Myanmar’s president said Sunday his country needs to learn from the violence and instability that has wracked the Southeast Asian nation over the last two years if it is to overcome the challenge of democratization.
Thein Sein spoke in a radio address broadcast to mark the start a day earlier of a traditional New Year holiday that is celebrated by revelers across Southeast Asia with friendly water fights.
Thein Sein, a former general, took office two years ago after Myanmar’s long ruling junta stepped down. He has since led an unprecedented transition toward democratic rule, releasing political prisoners, easing censorship and signing cease-fire deals with all but one of the nation’s rebel groups.
But the country has also been plagued by a war with ethnic Kachin rebels in the north, sectarian violence in western Rakhine state, and anti-Muslim pogroms in central Myanmar last month that left 43 dead in the city of Meikhtila and turned whole Muslim neighborhoods to ashen ruins.
“We have achieved successes that we had not hoped for and also experienced shocking and saddening events we had not expected,” Thein Sein said. But “during this long road toward democracy, we have to sustain our successes and take lessons from the losses, and be prepared to face the challenges ahead.”
For many decades, Myanmar’s four-day New Year festival, known as Thingyan, has marked one of the few times people here could cut loose under the watchful eye of their repressive leaders — albeit with squirt guns and high-powered hoses used to soak civilian targets.
The water has symbolically been used to cleanse past ills, and Thein Sein said people this year should use it to “cleanse black spots like the clashes, conflicts and instabilities” which plagued the nation.
Thein Sein‘s government imposed a state of emergency in the wake of the violence in Meikhtila last month, deploying the army to restore order.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/5uCOZWoAeqM/
Japan‘s long-deferred aspirations for a larger role in Myanmar are getting a boost this coming week with a visit by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The visit by Suu Kyi, in Japan for the first time in 27 years, is highlighting Japan‘s interest in helping to craft a blueprint for Myanmar’s economy and tapping its growth potential.
Japan‘s investments and involvement in Myanmar lag far behind those of China and India. But that is fast changing, after Tokyo forgave about half of Myanmar’s more than $6 billion dollars in debt, clearing the way for renewed international lending to the impoverished Southeast Asian country.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/HPgExa9HiEw/
Philippine military officials say a Southeast Asian militant is suspected of leading an ambush that killed an army intelligence officer in the country’s south.
Army brigade commander Col. Carlito Galvez says suspected al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf fighters led by Amin Baco opened fire on three army intelligence officers who were traveling on motorcycles Tuesday to a remote area of Ungkaya Pukan town in Basilan province to check the reported presence of armed men.
Galvez said Wednesday that one of the soldiers was killed. He said the attackers escaped and then clashed again with another group of army troops before withdrawing into the jungle.
Philippine intelligence officials say Baco is a young militant from either Indonesia or Malaysia who is linked to the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
China says it is opening up a disputed island chain with just one hotel to tourism in another step in its battle to demonstrate that the potentially oil-rich territory is Chinese.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday that people will be allowed to go on cruise tours to the islands known as Xisha in China and Paracel elsewhere by next month.
Vietnam also claims the islets, sandbanks and reefs southeast of China‘s Hainan Island in the South China Sea.
Hainan’s executive vice governor Tan Li told a news conference Saturday that tourists will eat and sleep on cruise ships and land on the islands for sightseeing, according to Xinhua.
A Hainan provincial government official who gave only his surname, Zhong, confirmed Tan’s remarks at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference and that local authorities plan to open the islands to tourists before the May Day holiday on May 1. “Detailed information, such as the tourist capacity and travel itinerary, is still not available,” Zhong said.
There is one hotel with 56 rooms on Xisha’s largest island, Yongxing, which is 2.13 square kilometers (0.82 sq. miles) and has no fresh water, said Xinhua. It quoted ship owner Haihang Group Corp. Ltd. as saying a cruise ship that can accommodate 1,965 passengers is ready for sailing, while a second company is building another one.
China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and its island groups, while Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries claim some areas. The disputes occasionally erupt into open confrontation. The islands amid some of the world’s busiest commercial sea lanes, along with rich fishing grounds and potential oil and gas deposits.
Last year China created a city administration on Yongxing to oversee hundreds of thousands of square kilometers (miles) of water where it wants to strengthen its control. Vietnam said then that China‘s actions violated international law. The Philippines, which disputes another island chain further south over which China‘s Sansha city also claims jurisdiction, doesn’t recognize the city.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is expressing concern over a recent upsurge in sectarian violence in Myanmar.
Carter spoke Friday during a visit to the Southeast Asian country, where dozens of people were killed last month when unrest between Buddhists and minority Muslims shook the central city of Meikhtila.
Buddhist mobs ransacked and burned mosques and Muslim homes during the violence. It spread south from Meikhtila but has since subsided.
Carter said he told President Thein Sein during a meeting Wednesday that “mutual respect, compassion, tolerance, and empathy are the basis for a democratic society.”
Carter also said he was disturbed about “reports of hate speech by some prominent people, even religious leaders.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
When Myanmar’s post-junta government took power two years ago vowing to bring democracy to one of the world’s most repressed nations, Da Shi Naw was under no illusion his own life would improve any time soon. But the 61-year-old farmer never dreamed it would actually get worse — a lot worse.
First, a 17-year cease-fire between the army and ethnic Kachin guerrillas relapsed into fighting that tore through his family’s fertile rice fields, forcing him to flee into the mountains on foot. Then, after a year in a packed displaced camp far from home, war edged close once more.
Government troops began pounding rebel positions near the Kachin stronghold of Laiza with artillery and airstrikes that shook the ground here until late January. The battles triggered such a panic, authorities took the extraordinary step of urging people to dig their own bomb shelters.
And so, one cold day when camp administrators began handing out shovels, Da Shi Naw, humbled by fate, began plowing the ground a few steps from his tiny hut. He dug a rectangular cavity into the earth, a simple, makeshift hide covered with bamboo poles just big enough to climb into with his wife and their two-year-old grandson.
“We have nowhere left to run,” he told The Associated Press, “We have begun to lose hope.”
Two years into President Thein Sein‘s historic term as Myanmar’s first civilian president in half a century, this Southeast Asian nation has moved closer to democratic rule than any other time since a 1962 army coup. Although few initially believed that Thein Sein, a former general, was sincere about reform when he took office on March 30, 2011, his administration has since orchestrated a top-down revolution that has stunned the world and given hope to millions of people, allowing freedoms unheard of just a few years ago.
Yet even as Myanmar basks in world praise and foreign investors rush in, some parts of the country have taken phenomenally tragic turns for the worse — plagued by explosions of ethnic and sectarian violence so grave, the government has acknowledged they threaten the very process of reform itself.
Here in the north, where the army is still battling rebels of the Kachin Independence Army, residents do not speak of the country’s newfound freedoms. There is no talk of economic liberalization, of the end of censorship or the suspension of western sanctions. There is no discussion, either, of opposition leader Aung …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The day San Zaw Htwe was arrested he tried to chew through the leg of the wooden chair he was shackled to. He could hear a river outside. He figured he could swim away and escape the little room and the big men and the terrible certainty of years in prison.
The former student activist holds up a bony finger. “There was only this much left,” he says, breaking into a toothy smile at the memory of the chair leg. “They kicked me. My chair and I fell over.” Then his interrogators shackled him to a log. He would serve 12 years for distributing anti-government leaflets.
San Zaw Htwe will turn 39 on Saturday, the second anniversary of the day President Thein Sein took office and pledged to transform Myanmar from a military dictatorship into a free-market democracy. Thein Sein‘s administration has made remarkable progress toward that goal, but at a price that San Zaw Htwe knows only too well: forgetting the past.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is part of “Portraits of Change,” a yearlong series by The Associated Press examining how the opening of Myanmar after decades of military rule is — and is not — changing life in the long-isolated Southeast Asian country.
___
Two years into Thein Sein‘s four-year term, reform in Myanmar has taken on an enchanting momentum. Released from house arrest, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has a seat in parliament. The media censorship office is shut. Most Western sanctions have been lifted, and foreign investors are pouring into this once-shunned Southeast Asian nation, eager to build hotels and airports, drill for natural gas and sell cars, beer, soda, medical devices and mobile phone connections.
Lost in this great forward movement is a reckoning with the past. For half a century, Myanmar was ruled by one of the most repressive governments in history. Torture was common. Thousands of political prisoners were jailed without fair trial. And a handful of men, both military and their friends, amassed fortunes, sometimes brutally and often dishonestly.
Myanmar’s ongoing transformation has been largely managed from above, by some of the very men and institutions implicated in abuses. Many fear that dredging up the past could imperil reform. For now at least, silence seems the best way to shore up progress.
Hong Kong‘s top court ruled against two Filipino domestic helpers seeking permanent residency Monday, the final decision in a case that affects tens of thousands of other foreign maids in the southern Chinese financial hub.
The Court of Final Appeal was unanimous in its ruling, siding with the government‘s position that tight restrictions on domestic helpers mean they don’t have the same status as other foreign residents. Lawyers for the two had argued that an immigration provision barring domestic workers from permanent residency was unconstitutional.
The decision means Evangeline Banao Vallejos and Daniel Domingo are not allowed to apply to settle permanently after living at least seven years in Hong Kong. Vallejos has worked in Hong Kong since 1986 and Domingo since 1985. Neither appeared at court.
“We are very disappointed,” said Mark Daly, a lawyer for the pair.
He said Vallejos was speechless after learning about the decision.
“While we respect the judgment we disagree with it,” Daly said.
He added that the ruling is “not a good reflection of the values we should be teaching youngsters and people in our society.”
The case has split the city, home to nearly 300,000 maids from mainly Southeast Asian countries. Some argue that barring maids from applying for residency amounts to ethnic discrimination. But other groups have raised fears that the case would result in a massive influx of maids’ family members arriving in Hong Kong, straining the densely populated city’s social services, health and education systems. Supporters of the maids say those fears are overblown.
Members of an activist group chanted “We are workers, not slaves” and others slogans on the courthouse’s front steps after the ruling was released.
“Today is a very sad day for migrant workers in Hong Kong,” said Eman Villanueva, secretary-general of United Filipinos in Hong Kong. “The message from the Court of Final Appeal is very unfair and discriminatory.”
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China and permanent residency is the closest thing it has to citizenship.
Foreigners who work in other professions are eligible for permanent residency after living in Hong Kong for seven years. Those who have it …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Anti-Muslim mobs rampaged through three more towns in Myanmar’s predominantly Buddhist heartland over the weekend, destroying mosques and burning dozens of homes despite government efforts to stop the nation’s latest outbreak of sectarian violence from spreading.
President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in central Myanmar on Friday and deployed army troops to the worst hit city, Meikhtila, where 32 people were killed and 10,000 mostly Muslim residents were displaced. But even as soldiers imposed order there after several days of anarchy that saw armed Buddhists torch the city’s Muslim quarters, anti-Muslim unrest has spread south toward the capital, Naypyitaw.
A Muslim resident of Tatkone, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Meikhtila, said by telephone that a group of about 20 men ransacked a one-story brick mosque there late Sunday night, pelting it with stones and smashing windows before soldiers fired shots to drive them away. Speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, he said he believed the perpetrators were not from Tatkone.
A day earlier, another mob burned down a mosque and 50 homes in the nearby town of Yamethin, state television reported. Another mosque and several buildings were also destroyed the same day in Lewei, farther south. It was not immediately clear who was behind the violence, and no clashes or casualties were reported in the three towns.
The upsurge in sectarian unrest is casting a shadow over Thein Sein‘s administration as it struggles to bring democratic reform the Southeast Asian country after half a century of army rule officially ended two years ago this month.
Two similar episodes rocked western Rakhine state last year, pitting ethnic Rakhine Buddhists against Rohingya Muslims in bloodshed that killed hundreds and drove 100,000 from their homes.
The Rohingya are widely denigrated as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and most are denied passports as a result. The Muslim population of central Myanmar, by contrast, is mostly of Indian origin and does not face the same questions over nationality.
The emergence of sectarian conflict beyond Rakhine state is an ominous development, one that indicates anti-Muslim sentiment has intensified nationwide since last year and, if left unchecked, could spread.
Sectarian and ethnic tensions are not new in Myanmar.
Muslims account for about four percent of the nation’s roughly 60 million people, and during the long …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The top UN envoy to Myanmar on Sunday toured a central city destroyed in the country’s worst explosion of Buddhist-Muslim violence this year, calling on the government to punish those responsible for a tragedy that left dozens of corpses piled in the streets, some of them charred beyond recognition.
Vijay Nambiar, the U.N. secretary-general’s special adviser on Myanmar, also visited some of the nearly 10,000 people driven from their homes after sectarian unrest shook the city of Meikhtila for several days this week. Most of the displaced are minority Muslims, who appeared to have suffered the brunt of the violence as armed Buddhist mobs roamed city.
Nambiar said he was encouraged to learn that some individuals in both communities had bravely helped each other and that religious leaders were now advocating peace. He said the people he spoke to believe the violence “was the work of outsiders,” but he gave no details.
“There is a certain degree of fear and anxiety among the people, but there is no hatred,” Nambiar said after visiting both groups on Sunday and promising the United Nations would provide as much help as it can to get the city back on its feet. “They feel a sense of community and that it is a very good thing because they have worked together and lived together.”
But he added: “It is important to catch the perpetrators. It is important that they be caught and punished.”
Nambiar’s visit came one day after the army took control of the city to enforce a tense calm after President Thein Sein ordered a state of emergency here.
Late Saturday, the government put the death toll in the violence at 32, according to state television, which reported that bodies had been found as authorities began cleaning up the area.
The bloodshed marked the first sectarian unrest to spread into Myanmar’s heartland since two similar episodes rocked western Rakhine state last year. It is the latest challenge to efforts to reform the Southeast Asian country after the long-ruling military ceded power two years ago to a civilian government led by retired army officers.
There are concerns the violence could spread, and the bloodshed has raised questions about the government‘s failure to rein in anti-Muslim sentiment in a predominantly Buddhist country where even monks have armed themselves and taken advantage of newfound freedoms to stage anti-Muslim rallies.
Australia plans to restore limited military cooperation with Myanmar and increase business ties with the Southeast Asian nation.
President Thein Sein on Sunday became the first Myanmar leader to visit Australia since 1974. He held a rare news conference beside Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday at Australia‘s Parliament House.
Gillard said in recognition of Myanmar’s moves toward democracy, Australia will soon post a defense attache to the Australian Embassy in Myanmar. But Australia‘s arms embargo on Myanmar will remain.
She said: “Australia wants to encourage the development of a modern, professional defense force in Myanmar, which continues to support democratization and reform.”
Thein Sein asked for Australian understanding of the political challenges facing his resource rich but impoverished country.
Vietnam was on Tuesday urged to do more to fight the illegal trade in rhino horn, which is highly prized in the Southeast Asian nation for its supposed medicinal qualities. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
