Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s temperamental prime minister, is so annoyed by criticism of the violence in southern Thailand that he threatened last week to walk out of today’s south-east Asian summit if the subject was
even raised.
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November 23: The initial euphoria that greeted the freedom granted to nearly 4,000 prisoners, recently released from jails in military-ruled Burma seems to be dissipating fast. For all it may be, this amnesty might not necessarily translate into possible political reform.
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Myanmar appears to have stopped releasing prisoners, less than a week after it pledged to free nearly 4,000 inmates, a Burmese exile who monitors political prisoner issues said Tuesday.
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Myanmar’s junta said Wednesday a national convention labelled the first of the seven steps in its democracy roadmap would restart later than billed in February.
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Women in East Asia are contracting HIV at a faster rate than in the rest of the world, and there’s a worrying new trend in Thailand: men who have visited prostitutes are increasingly passing on the infection to their wives, the United Nations says.
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Border troops in southeastern Bangladesh have discovered an arms and ammunition cache, possibly smuggled from Myanmar, officials said Wednesday.
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Military-ruled Myanmar will resume its convention to draft guidelines for a new constitution in February next year, a top member of its junta said.
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New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark expressed concern Wednesday over stalled democratic reform in Burma. Her comments came just days before she attends a summit of the 10-nation grouping of Southeast Asian states.
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November 23: For the first time ever, an American company will be put on trial for human rights abuses committed by a government with which it did business. Unocal, the $11 billion California oil giant, is accused of being “vicariously liable” for the rape, torture, murder and enslavement of
villagers by the company’s hired security forces along the site of an oil pipeline built with Unocal’s help in southern Burma in the 1990s.
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November 23: Events are fast overtaking the political front in Burma, so it appears that.3,937 have been set free and at least two dozen members of NLD in addition. The stunning news was the release of Min Ko Naing, who spear-headed the pro-democracy movement of 8.8.88 (August 8, 1988) and became the legendary figure. Many political analysts have been proved wrong and some are dumb-founded.
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Yangon: Five trucks arrived at Myanmar’s largest jail on Tuesday believed to be carrying some of the nearly 4,000 prisoners expected to be released by the military regime.
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The evening of October 17 was typically quiet and uneventful evening at the Hongsawatoi Restoration Party (HRP) headquarters situated inside Burma, about 2 km away from Prachuap Khiri Khan province of Thailand.
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A humanitarian group defending workers’ rights in the Thai border town of Mae Sot has won a major South Korean “justice and peace” award, it was announced Monday.
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Bangkok: The booming sex trade has contributed to an HIV/AIDS crisis in Asia with more than eight million people now living with the virus and numbers rising sharply among women, the United Nations reported on Tuesday.
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Democracy’s apparent dead end in Myanmar, the terrorist threat from a Muslim insurgency in Thailand, and the flight of foreign investment to colossus China are on the diplomatic plate for Southeast Asia’s annual summit next week.
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Bangkok: Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Tuesday he would meet his new counterpart from Myanmar for the first time at the ASEAN summit in Laos later this month.
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When the Committee to Protect Journalists holds its annual awards ceremony tonight in Manhattan, three of the winners will not be present. (more…)

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association called on the prime minister Soe Win to keep his promise and quickly release renowned journalist Win Tin and 12 other journalist prisoners.
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Yangon: Myanmar’s planned release of nearly 4,000 prisoners appeared to have halted Monday with no sign of any easing of restriction around the nation’s most famous detainee, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
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Min Ko Naing is a free man. But his freedom is still restricted – he’s locked now not in a prison cell but in the embrace of a host of friends, admirers and diplomats who have converged on his home to congratulate him on his release last Friday.
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