News
Vietnam’s fishermen battle a lack of fish and China
In a cell at Tanjung Pinang in Riau, Indonesia, 64-year-old Vietnamese fisherman Nguyen Van Tu struggles alone with aching legs. He has not been found guilty of any crime, but has been detained for more than 20 months. In the summer of 2020, the pair of ...
Vo Kieu Bao Uyen
Price fluctuations in goods in Mekong Delta
Specifically, the farm-gate price of hogs bred for slaughtering in many localities in the Mekong Delta has decreased by about VND2,000-VND3,000 per kg, to the lowest level in many months. In Can Tho City and many provinces such as Soc Trang, Vinh Long, An Giang, ...
Anh Duong - Translated by Anh Quan
Cambodia’s modern slavery nightmare: the human trafficking crisis overlooked by authorities
t 3.28am on 29 June 2021, Xu Mingjian crept out of a dorm room inside a gated compound in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and made his way to the second floor, where his friend, another victim of trafficking, was waiting. The two had hatched a desperate plan to ...
Lindsey Kennedy, Nathan Paul Southern and Huang Yan
Vietnam digital economy growth expected to be highest in Southeast Asia
Vietnam will achieve the highest growth in the digital economy in Southeast Asia between 2022 and 2025, a report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company has forecast. It will grow at 31% followed by the Philippines with 20% and Indonesia with 19%, according to e-Conomy ...
Dat Nguyen
Myanmar junta bans Irrawaddy news agency after months of harassment
Myanmar’s junta has officially banned online news outlet The Irrawaddy and charged the outlet’s registered publisher for violating national security laws, state media reported over the weekend, following months of legal harassment. The ban is the latest on at least 20 media groups – news agencies, ...
RFA Burmese
Southeast Asia remains world rice bowl as pockets of region suffer crop disasters
Rice crops in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have taken a hit from flooding and conflict this year, casting a shadow on a mostly sunny outlook for Southeast Asia’s output of the key grain as the region deals with other potential longer term supply troubles, farm ...
RFA Burmese, RFA Khmer and RFA Lao
The cost of Laos’ quest to be Southeast Asia’s ‘battery’, and the World Heritage town at risk
With electricity exports to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia and even Singapore, Laos has arguably realised its ambition to be the battery of Southeast Asia. The bulk of these exports are from hydropower. Nearly 80 dams dot the landlocked country, and more along the Mekong River are in ...
Lee Li Wan
Climate change and dams force older residents to leave Vietnam’s Mekong Delta
At 63, Nguyen Thi Ngoc got her first full-time ‘company’ job as a security guard in Ho Chi Minh City. She’d never been to a city before taking the job in early 2021, but the former farmer, originally from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, ...
Nhung Nguyen
ASEAN Foreign Ministers Urge More Progress in Myanmar Crisis
Southeast Asian foreign ministers acknowledged Thursday that their efforts to bring peace to Myanmar haven’t succeeded and agreed to increase their determination to end violence in the country, where a military takeover last year set off a crisis that threatens to destabilize the region. Recent events ...
Niniek Karmini and Grant Peck
Southeast Asia’s Data Localization Push is a Double-Edged Sword
With the publication of the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025 (ADM 2025), member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have endeavored to promote the digitalization of the region. In this digital transformation process, data is essential because every interaction in the digital world produces and relies on ...
Xirui Li
