Cambodian NGOs under the gun
PHNOM PENH – These are tough times for Cambodia’s embattled non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As the government gears up to pass controversial legislation regulating the country’s estimated 2,000 civil society groups, it has drawn strong criticism for a coordinated crackdown on land rights groups working on a foreign donor-funded railway renovation project.
Land rights acrimony in AusAID Asian project
By Rebecca Puddy & Sebastian Strangio A TAXPAYER-FUNDED development project is mired in controversy after the Cambodian government launched a crackdown against land rights organisations critical of the compulsory resettlement of families.
North Korea’s New Friend?
A rare visit by a North Korean official to Cambodia raises the faint prospect of more engagement with Southeast Asia. But ties with Phnom Penh are complicated.
Portrait of a North Korean propagandist turned protest artist
Before fleeing North Korea, Song Byeok was a propaganda artist, creating portraits of ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-il. Now he uses his art to criticize the regime from South Korea.
Split personalities revealed in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH – As part of its ongoing release of leaked United States diplomatic cables, the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks this month released its small cache of Cambodia-related dispatches. The 777 cables from the US Embassy in Phnom Penh – an eagerly awaited bounty for Cambodia-watchers and local analysts – span the period from 1992 to...
US cables chart China’s rise in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH – On December 18, 2009, Cambodian police rounded up 20 ethnic Uighurs from safe houses in the capital Phnom Penh, where they had arrived earlier in the year seeking political asylum. A day later, the group, which included two infants, was driven to the airport in a bus with shades drawn over the...
Myanmar Ethnic Clashes Put Spotlight on China
MAE SOT, Thailand — On June 9, deadly clashes broke out in northern Myanmar between the country’s army and the ethnic minority Kachin Independence Army (KIA). The fighting reportedly erupted after Myanmar’s military moved to secure the Tarpein Hydropower Project, a Chinese-built dam that came online in January. The plant, which sits on a tributary...
Family Matters
On Sunday, Thailand will elect a new prime minister who belongs to a very familiar, and deeply divisive, family.
Will Thais Say Yes To Thaksin’s Little Sister?
There’s plenty of pageantry and talk of reconciliation but this weekend’s election in Thailand may be one of the most divisive in decades, writes Sebastian Strangio
“You Are Followers of the Juche Philosophy, So I Can Put My Trust in You”
Reading North Korea’s comic book propaganda.
Cambodia: When genocide trials turn personal
Many former Khmer Rouge fighters say they are worried that the U.N.-backed tribunal will start to cast a wider net.
