Radio Free Asia

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) Wednesday defended its decision to wait nearly seven weeks before officially notifying the public that Laos began a preliminary procedure for the construction of a large dam that would be its fifth on the Mekong river. The Lao government informed the ...

A new dam planned for construction on the Mekong River in Laos is causing great concern for environmental NGOs from Thailand, who say Laos’ fifth big dam on the river will have adverse effects on fish and people in the region. The Luangprabang hydropower project would ...

More than 580,000 people have been impacted and at least 28 have died in floods caused by heavy rains over the past two weeks in Laos’ southern provinces, according to estimates revised during a cabinet meeting this week. The death toll figure was reported by ...

Ian G. Baird, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on dams in Southeast Asia, tells of meeting a farmer  and his five-year-old son from a village in rural Laos in 2009. The two were sitting in a canoe as the sun rose ...

Lao state media reported Tuesday that a woman who was arrested in Laos last week for criticizing the government on Facebook has confessed to her crime. In a Facebook Live video last week, Houayheuang Xayabouly, known by her nickname Mouay, had slammed the Lao government’s slow ...

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has awarded its 2019 Press Freedom Prize to three female journalists, including prominent Vietnamese blogger Pham Doan Trang, who authored a book on political engagement that angered authorities in Hanoi. Trang, who has vowed to remain in Vietnam until ...

Two leading experts on water issues in Asia warn that parts of Vietnam’s fertile southernmost areas bordering Southeast Asia’s longest river, the Mekong, are in danger of drying up. At the same time, they say, much of the Mekong is still flooded from seasonal monsoon rains. ...

The Myanmar government has invited the Northern Alliance group of ethnic armies to meet for talks in October to try to persuade their leaders to sign bilateral cease-fire agreements ending escalated armed conflict with the national military in the country’s far-flung ethnic regions, a government ...

At least 14 people have died and at least one is missing as floods ravage Laos’ six southern provinces, stretching government relief capacity, authorities and residents said Wednesday. Tropical storm Podul and tropical depression Kajiki slammed into the area one after the other last week, dumping ...

Laos, Malaysia and Thailand have agreed to expand a trilateral power deal, under which Lao electricity will be sold to the Malaysians via the Thai grid, Thailand’s minister of energy said Thursday. “Thailand, Laos and Malaysia achieved a new purchase deal, raising the capacity from 100 ...