Law and judiciary

Road deaths need to be cut by 2000 a year or they will exceed regional targets, a new traffic-safety NGO says. ASEAN has called on member countries to reduce road deaths by half over the next five years, and the Myanmar Organisation for Road Safety, which ...

People duped into buying government-owned land beside the Yangon-Mandalay Highway on 17 December urged police to take action against those responsible, shortly after the authorities moved in and evicted thousands from the Hlegu site. More than 1600 acres had been subdivided and sold in 2400-square-foot plots since ...

An air shipment of illegal ivory and pangolin scales, worth an estimated $1.3 million, was intercepted and seized by the authorities on 13 December at the Changi Airfreight Centre.  In a joint release on 17 December, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and Singapore Customs ...

A DNA test has confirmed that a corpse unearthed on Indonesia’s Benjina Island is that of a Thai crew member of a fishing trawler, Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya said on 16 December.   Indonesia earlier believed the body was a Cambodian national, based on the seaman’s book found ...

A deputy Metropolitan Police Bureau (MPB) chief in charge of handling human trafficking has been transferred to an inactive post after he complained about a heavy workload in handling human trafficking cases. National police chief Chakthip Chaijinda said on 15 December he had ordered the transfer of ...

The amended Law on Government, which was passed by the National Assembly (NA) on 15 December, aims to improve the government’s performance through more transparent and frugal practices. Amendments to Article 4 on the performance principles to be followed by government stipulate that its performance or ...

Cambodia’s badly overcrowded prison population leapt by nearly 20 per cent in the first 10 months of this year, government data show, raising serious health concerns. The figures, released by the Interior Ministry’s general department of prisons on 15 December, show that there were 17,522 prisoners ...

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on 15 December dropped a controversial bill regulating genetically modified organisms (GMOs), saying the bill currently was unnecessary.  The legislation was initiated long ago and its consideration should stop as there was no pressing need for it, the prime minister said after the ...

The Supreme Court on 14 December handed a life sentence to the man who led red-shirt protestors to torch Ubon Ratchathani’s provincial hall in 2010, overruling a lower court’s sentence of only one year.  The high court initially gave the death penalty to 60-year-old Pichet Thabutda, a ...

Opium production in Myanmar has “stabilised” at stubbornly high levels, the United Nations said on 14 December, adding the government must address poverty and end the conflicts which drive farmers to grow illicit poppies. Myanmar, the world’s second largest opium producer after Afghanistan, has struggled to ...