News
Burma’s Minorities Fear USDP Election Victory
During nearly seven decades the villages of the Karen have been torched, their men summarily executed and their women raped as the ethnic minority battled Burma’s military regime in the world’s longest-running insurgency. Their homeland has been called the “hidden Darfur,” where some 350,000 people ...
ANP aims for two-thirds of Rakhine State’s seats
As the two major national parties, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party and the opposition National League for Democracy, square off in advance of the November 8 election, attention is also being directed to the prospects of the country’s many ethnic-based parties. The Arakan ...
Laos exports 50,000 workers last fiscal year
Laos exported as many as 50,712 workers in the fiscal year that ended in September, including 27,176 females, official statistics show. Most of the workers obtained jobs in Thailand, while just over 50 people found employment in Japan, according to statistics from the Ministry of Labour ...
Cambodia pins economic hopes on AEC
Cambodians are expecting a ‘seamless transition’ when the ASEAN Economic Community is launched in two months and hopefully heralds a second investment wave, capable of transforming this country’s pool of unskilled labor into a manufacturing hub. The first investment wave followed Cambodia’s ascension to the World ...
Released documents detail Rakhine State persecution
Broadcaster Al Jazeera on 29 October released a cache of documents detailing the persecution of Muslims in Rakhine State, including an internal UN memo and confidential military training manuals. Keep reading ...
Advance polling kicks off
Advance voting got under way on 29 October for those unable to cast a ballot in their constituencies on polling day next weekend, many of whom are soldiers and civil servants. The early ballot comes after overseas nationals cast advance votes earlier this month ahead of the ...
UN rights envoy raises election credibility fears
The special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar on 29 October told one of the United Nations highest-level bodies that she is not convinced the coming election will be free and fair. Yanghee Lee criticised the candidate scrutiny process for being non-transparent and for seemingly arbitrarily disqualifying ...
After 2010 fraud, advance vote concerns remain in Kayah State
In 2010, shortly before the 7 November election, U Tun Shwe, a local administrator and Union Solidarity and Development Party official from Chigwe village, Bawlakhe township, was given an unusual task: Place a tick on blank ballot forms next to the USDP logo. The votes were ...
Chinese leader to pay state visit to Vietnam
Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay a State visit to Vietnam from 5-6 November at the invitation of Vietnam’s General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Truong Tan Sang, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced. Keep reading ...
Vietnam training classes lacking students
As of August, only 15,000 of the 330,000 people eligible for unemployment allowances had enrolled in vocational training programmes, according to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. The unemployed will receive a maximum monthly vocational training allowance of VND1 million (nearly US$45) per person ...
