Southeast Asia Archive

One of the more disturbing sights greeting travelers to the Middle East and other regions with Muslim populations in the days after September 11 was a t-shirt defiantly bearing a familiar face. I saw the new fashions hanging for sale in markets in Southeast Asia, shirts adorned with the gaunt, bearded likeness of Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden had captured the imagination of a large number of people. Clearly, defeating him would require more than military might. Years later, the long, painful, and error-filled campaign to defeat Islamic extremists brings news that seems to go from bad to worse. America, […]

BANGKOK, Thailand – Ethnic clashes that have led to 11 deaths in Moreh, an Indian town on the border with Burma, have barely raised a blip on the global news meter but have brought much trade between the two countries to a standstill. Moreh is a fly-blown place in a remote corner of India’s troubled and underdeveloped northeast region and remains largely under lock and key guard by units of the Assam Rifles regiment. And yet Moreh is regarded by the central government in faraway New Delhi as the gateway to Southeast Asia in its “Look East” economic growth policy. […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff and appears every Friday. ICRC BREAKS SILENCE OVER BURMA — In an extremely rare move, the International Committee of the Red Cross June 29 issued a harsh public censure of the Burmese government over systematic human right abuses of civilians and detainees, including forced relocations, arbitrary detentions and murder. “The ICRC has repeatedly drawn attention to these abuses but the authorities have failed to put a stop to them. . . . The continuing deadlock […]