In Burma and Middle East, N. Korea May See Few Buyers Despite Rocket Success

In Burma and Middle East, N. Korea May See Few Buyers Despite Rocket Success:

A video grab from KCNA shows the Unha-3 (Milky Way 3) rocket launching at North Korea’s West Sea Satellite launch site in Cholsan county, North Pyongan province, in this video released by KCNA in Pyongyang on Dec. 13, 2012.

SEOUL, South Korea—By successfully firing a rocket that put a satellite in space, North Korea let the far-flung buyers of its missiles know that it is still open for business. But Pyongyang will find that customers are hard to come, by as old friends such as Burma drift away and international sanctions lock down its sales.
North Korea’s satellite and nuclear programs were masterminded by the late leader Kim Jong Il, who ruled for 17 years under a “military first” policy and died a year ago Monday. An offshoot of the policy was a thriving arms business, including the sale of short and medium-range missiles. The buyers were mostly governments of developing countries — Burma, Iran, Syria, Gulf and African nations — looking for bargains.
But sustained Western diplomatic pressure and international sanctions imposed since North Korea first conducted a nuclear test in 2006 have cut into its traditional markets in the Middle East. North Korea is also losing business in Burma, which has committed to cutting military dealings with Pyongyang as a price for improved relations with the West. Also, there’s shrinking demand for the kind of poor quality, Soviet-type weaponry of 1960s and 1970s vintage that Pyongyang produces and that have limited applications on the modern battlefield.
Arms control expert Joshua Pollack said North Korea accounted for more than 40 percent of the approximately 1,200 ballistic missile systems supplied to the developing world between 1987 and 2009, mostly before the mid-1990s. But he said Pyongyang’s client base has shrunk since then because of a “sustained pressure campaign by the US to get buyers of North Korea war materiel and technology to stop.”
“The main effect of sanctions and interdiction has been to put the heat on buyers, whenever the US and its partners have some leverage over them,” said Pollack, but he added that “Iran and Syria don’t care about what we think.”
North Korea is still believed to have missile cooperation with the two countries. But with the Syrian leadership fighting to survive a civil war, that market might also dry up. And Iran has now surpassed North Korea in missile development. It has already conducted successful space launches and, in addition to having adapted North Korean designs, is creating its own more sophisticated and more militarily useful medium-range missile, said Greg Thielmann of the Arms Control Association, a nongovernment group based in Washington.
For years, North Korea was a leading provider of missile systems, particularly to nations in the Middle East. Its first major client was Iran, during its long war with Iraq. They signed a missile development deal in 1985, and North Korea began mass-producing short-range Scuds, aided by Chinese know-how and using Soviet designs. It then graduated to medium-range missiles with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, since the 1980s, North Korea has earned possibly hundreds of millions of dollars by selling at least several hundred short- and medium-range missiles to Egypt, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
The launch of the Unha-3 rocket was a handy showcase of North Korea’s technical capabilities — sending a satellite into space uses a similar technology as firing a long-range missile. The three-stage Unha-3 rocket, with a potential range of 8,000-10,000 kilometers (5,000-6,000 miles), succeeded after failures since 1998.
“The rocket launch dispels doubts about North Korea’s missile capabilities and redeems the country’s reputation among buyers,” said Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea specialist at the South Korean state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “The launch put an end to years of failure and embarrassment.”
However, few governments are likely to be in the market for such a long-range missile — which North Korea remains years away from perfecting.
Pyongyang is likely to continue to try selling shorter-range missiles and Soviet-vintage rockets and guns to customers in Africa, and likely Islamist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
But the screw has tightened since North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2009. Its weapons exports have been banned under UN Security Council resolutions. The sanctions call on member states to inspect and confiscate suspect cargoes, also including certain luxury goods, and report them to the world body.
The United States is also likely to seek tighter restrictions on the North after the latest launch, although it could face opposition from China, the North’s only major ally.
Former British ambassador to North Korea, John Everard, who until recently served as coordinator of a UN panel of experts that reports on the implementation of the sanctions, said that while the North’s arms exports haven’t stopped, seizures have already caused it considerable financial and reputational damage, particularly when information about their customers becomes public.
But implementation has been patchy. The North goes to great lengths to circumvent controls, typically using neighboring China and other countries en route as transshipment points.
Tracking secret weapons shipments is difficult, but some trends emerge. Recent seizures indicate that North Korea is still shipping missile technology to Syria.
Last month, UN diplomats reported that 445 graphite cylinders from North Korea that can be used to produce ballistic missiles were seized in May from a Chinese freighter ship at the South Korean port of Busan on their way to Syria. In October 2007, propellant blocks that could be used to power Scud missile were seized from a ship heading to Syria, according to a report by the UN expert panel, released this June.
Iran and North Korea have shared missile technology, but it’s less clear what the current state of their cooperation is, said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatically sensitive, counter-proliferation issues.
In December 2009, Thailand intercepted a charter jet from Pyongyang carrying 35 tons of conventional weapons including surface-to-air missiles that Thai authorities reported were headed for Iran — apparently for the use of a proxy militant group. The White House recently remarked on how Thailand had interdicted a North Korean weapons shipment bound for Hamas.
The US official said North Korea is seeking buyers for its cheap weapons in Africa. In recent years, there have been seizures of shipments heading to countries including Eritrea, Republic of Congo and Burundi.
Combined with North Korea’s shrinking markets in the Middle East, Burma’s promise to end its military trade could badly hit Pyongyang’s pocket book.
Burma’s former ruling junta entered into commercial contracts with North Korea, most notably after a high-level military delegation visited Pyongyang in late 2008. According to the United States, one agreement was for North Korea to assist Burma in building medium-range, liquid-fueled ballistic missiles.
In recent months, the United States has credited Burma with “positive steps” toward severing those military ties as the newly elected civilian government courts better relations and investment from the West.
But the US official said Burma was not yet in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, as North Korea still seeks to ship goods to Burma to fulfill the contracts.

Crew Blamed for Russian Jet Crash in Indonesia

Crew Blamed for Russian Jet Crash in Indonesia:

The Sukhoi Superjet-100 crashed after taking off from an airport in Jakarta in May. (Photo: Митя Алешковский)

JAKARTA, Indonesia—Pilot error caused a Russian-made passenger jet to crash into an Indonesia volcano seven months ago during a demonstration flight, killing all 45 people aboard, the National Commission on Safety Transportation announced on Tuesday.
Information recovered from the Sukhoi Superjet-100′s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder indicated the pilot in command was chatting with a potential buyer in the cockpit just before the plane slammed into dormant Mount Salak on May 9, Commission Chairman Tatang Kurniadi told reporters.
He said that 38 seconds before the crash, instruments inside the cockpit issued a warning saying “pull up, terrain ahead.” Later the warning “avoid terrain” was issued six times, but the instruments were turned off because the crew assumed there was a problem with the database, Kurniadi said. He added that a simulation showed that the crash could have been avoided if the crew had responded within 24 seconds of the first warning.
“The crew was not aware of the mountainous area surrounding the flight path,” Kurniadi said.
The Jakarta radar service was also not equipped with a system in the area where the crash occurred that was capable of informing flight crews of minimum safe altitudes, he said.
Russian pilot Alexander Yablontsev was in charge of the demonstration flight meant to woo potential buyers. He was an experienced test pilot, logging 10,000 hours in the Sukhoi Superjet and its prototypes.
Six minutes after it took off from a Jakarta airfield, the pilot and co-pilot asked air traffic control for permission to drop from 3,000 meters to 1,800 meters (10,000 feet to 6,000 feet) on the scheduled half hour flight.
“The purpose of decreasing the altitude was to make it not too high for the landing process at Halim airport,” Kurniadi said.
However, six minutes later, the plane hit the mountain, he said.
It took more than 17 additional minutes before anyone on the ground realized the plane had vanished from radar screens, and no alerts sounded on the system prior to the disappearance.
Indonesia is one of Asia’s most rapidly expanding airline markets, with growth rates of nearly 20 percent a year. It has a poor air safety record and is struggling to provide qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety.
On Sunday, a blackout at Jakarta’s international airport led to a 15-minute disruption of its radar system, causing 64 regional and domestic flights to be delayed, said Bambang Ervan, Transportation Ministry spokesman. The outage has raised questions about the safety of the airport’s 26-year-old system.
Last month, Indonesia certified the Russian Superjet-100 as safe to fly in the country after a thorough validation process unrelated to the crash investigation. This opened the lines for delivery of the aircraft to its first customer in Southeast Asia, the Indonesian airline Sky Aviation, which signed a deal for 12 planes.
The Superjet is Russia’s first new model of passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago and is intended to help resurrect its aerospace industry.

Take Me to the River: In Southeast Asia, Art Turns an Eye to the Water

Take Me to the River: In Southeast Asia, Art Turns an Eye to the Water:

An installation by Burmese artist Aung Ko that is part of a traveling exhibition focusing on the importance of waterways in Southeast Asia. (Photo: Goethe-Institut 2012)

They nurture the earth, shape wondrous landscapes, and give life to flora and fauna. In Southeast Asia, major rivers such as the Mekong are also essential lifelines in Burma and neighboring countries, serving as transport lanes, harvesting basins, commerce routes and unique ecosystems to secure food and energy supplies for communities. But this delicate balance is under threat, and local artists throughout the region are raising their voices in alarm.
In recent decades, the exploitation of Southeast Asian rivers for economic development has caused long-term damage. As countries develop dams and other construction projects along major rivers, water flows have shifted and frequent flooding, which has always been a problem for the region during the rainy season, has created a recurrent state of crisis for residents on the banks.
While construction of dam systems along most waterways in the region has forced thousands of people to abandon their villages, the exploitation of rivers for mining and industrial purposes has dramatically affected the quality of life for thousands more by polluting drinking water and fish farms. From spurs of the Tibetan Plateau to coasts of Southeast Asian seas, the ecosystems around mountain streams, canals, estuaries and deltas are being altered, which has in turn changed the surrounding climate, disfigured cultural heritages and even redrawn the geographical profile of some countries.
Social activists have long tried to raise awareness about the unfolding tragedy, often through programs that help local people safeguard their ways of life. And now, inspired by such initiatives, Goethe-Institut in Vietnam is using art as a tool to reflect on the ecological, socioeconomic and cultural changes around river basins in the region. At a new exhibition, called “RiverScapes in Flux,” the German cultural center is teaming up with 17 Southeast Asian artists, including from Burma, to plant a seed in the public consciousness.
Can art deal with problems of global import?
In the realm of social activism, the Goethe-Institut believes art can play an important role.
“To raise artists’ awareness of river problems will help raise people’s awareness,” said the cultural center’s director, Almuth Meyer-Zollitsch, adding that the transformation of a local waterway in Vietnam inspired her to organize the new exhibit.
“After watching the Red River from Long Bien Bridge, a symbol of the Vietnamese resistance, I realized how the change in the river landscape can influence the life of thousands,” she said. “From this view, the idea for the [exhibition] project was born.”
The undertaking, which opened in Hanoi last April, is a traveling exhibition that will stop in Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Jakarta and finally Manila, where it will close in March 2013.
“Although I tend to be critical of exhibitions that invite artists to comment on broad themes such as climate change, the terrible reality of flooding and the specific focus on river life made me reconsider the meaningful role that such exhibitions can have for artists and audiences alike,” says Erin Gleeson, who co-founded SA SA BASSAC, a gallery and resource center in Phnom Penh, and serves as the art director for three Cambodian artists participating in the exhibit.
The Cambodian artists chose not to reflect on the Mekong, their country’s main body of water, which also cuts through Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, China and Burma. Instead they each decided to focus on a waterway unique to Cambodia, the Tonle Sap, which is a combined river and lake system. The Tonle Sap is unusual because the flow of its river changes direction twice a year, as the Mekong pushes it backward during monsoon season, while its lake also expands and shrinks dramatically with the seasons. In depicting the waterway, one photography display shows ice chunks floating through a subtropical climate, striking a sense of alarm.
Other installations appeal to all five senses, such as Filipino artist Goldie Poblador’s perfume project, which is meant to express the condition of river dwellings along the Marikina River. The 23-year-old artist stuns her audience with pungent smells, rather than delicate scents, that waft from tiny glass bottles she made herself. “The fragility of the glass is intended to sensitize people to the fragility of the river,” said the show’s curator, Claro Ramirez Jr.
Other projects have drawn on the power of audio, including an opera featuring sounds of the river by artist Jon Romero. “From the sound, there is a dialogue,” said Ramirez, “and a call to attention to what is happening.”
Some displays highlight social changes in riverside communities, including in Indonesia.
“Because of bad water quality, the people here have changed their professions and are collecting metal and plastic waste,” Indonesian artist Mahardika Yudha writes on his blog. His installation presents a bounty of objects retrieved from the rivers, as a glimpse into the lives of local people.
Similarly, a group of Vietnamese artists focused on the story behind small objects. “A pair of lonely slippers carried away by the flood, a pair of tattered, torn and worn-out slippers … they bear the mark of time; inside of us they evoke memories and feelings of loss and pain, the feeling of drowning,” said one of the artists, Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai.
Burma Joins the Movement
The exhibition organizers were also pleased to include the work of a Burmese artist. Due to political realities in Burma, ruled for decades by an oppressive military regime, artists in Southeast Asia’s poorest country have long struggled to openly display their work.
“It’s very challenging working with them [Burmese artists] from outside the country” because poor Internet and phone lines in Burma pose problems for communication,” said Iola Renzi, a Singapore-based curator, lecturer and critic of Southeast Asian art. “And even within Burma, they have a lot of constraints,” like getting around the country, having free access to research material or just speaking their minds.
“It’s true that Burma is changing,” Renzi added, noting recent reforms in the country since President Thein Sein took over in March last year. “But it’s not so simple to get on with this kind of activity.”
Overcoming some of these challenges, the traveling art exhibition will include the work of Burmese artist, Aung Ko, who worked with children from his village on the Irrawaddy River to create an installation of three cloth boats and several wooden boats.
Like the reality the exhibition is meant to address, “RiverScapes in Flux” has been the result of a long process. The six art directors and 17 artists have tried to highlight the importance of waterways in a region that seems to pursue economic growth at any cost, regardless of the price paid by local communities.
Should you happen to see the show, pause and open your senses. Don’t just look– try to experience the stream of life ensuing from the works. From Indonesia’s Angke River to the Red River in north Vietnam, the exhibition opens a window to the region’s diverse geographic and human landscapes. If you take it all in, you may discover not only the importance of caring for the environment, but also the ways in which respect for nature can translate into a greater respect for people and communities.

China Top Dam Builder, Going Where Others Won’t

China Top Dam Builder, Going Where Others Won’t:

Artist’s impression of the finished Myitsone Dam in Burma’s Kachin State. (Photo: CPI)

TATAY RIVER, Cambodia—Up a sweeping jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia, Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter (330-foot) high dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong Province, one of Southeast Asia’s last great wilderness areas.
It’s a scenario that is hardly unique. China’s giant state enterprises and banks have completed, are working on or are proposing some 300 dams from Algeria to Burma.
Poor countries contend the dams are crucial to bringing electricity to tens of millions who live without it and boosting living standards. Environmental activists and other opponents counter that China, the world’s No. 1 dam builder, is willing and able to go where most Western companies, the World Bank and others won’t tread anymore because of environmental, social, political or financing concerns.
“China is the one financier able to provide money for projects that don’t meet international standards,” said Ian Baird, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin who has worked in Southeast Asia for decades. “You go to China if you want to have them financed.”
The consequence, critics say, is a rollback to an era of ill-conceived, destructive mega-dams that many thought had passed. The most recent trend is to dam entire rivers with a cascade of barriers, as China’s state-owned Sinohydro has proposed on Colombia’s Magdalene River and the Nam Ou in Laos, where contracts for seven dams have been signed.
Viewed by some in the developing world as essential icons of progress, dams in countries as far apart as Ecuador, Burma and Zambia have spearheaded or reinforced China’s rising economic might around the world. They are tied to or put up in tandem with other infrastructure projects and businesses, and power generation equipment ranks as China’s second-largest export earner after electrical machinery and equipment.
In energy-starved Cambodia, trade with China has risen to 19 percent of GDP from 10 percent five years ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of International Monetary Fund data.
The year-old US $280 million Kamchay Dam in Cambodia’s Kampot Province was the largest ever foreign investment when approved as well as a political flag-carrier for Beijing. It has been hailed by both governments as a “symbol of close Chinese-Cambodian ties.”
Cambodia’s electricity demand grew more than 16 percent a year from 2002 to 2011, with shortfalls largely met through costly oil imports, said Bun Narith, a deputy director general in the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy. Only 14 percent of rural homes have electricity, one of the lowest levels in Southeast Asia.
“We have no choice,” Bun Narith said. “Hydropower is the priority, and the Chinese have the initiative and capability, both financial and technical.”
The 20 hydro dams built, being constructed or under study in Cambodia, the bulk of them by the Chinese, would lift Cambodia out of literal darkness and make it energy self-sufficient, he said. “We should have a win-win policy, a balance between environment and energy. After all, electricity is also a basic human need.”
Electric rates have fallen in Kampot town since the opening of the nearby Kamchay Dam, but they remain high.
“Everybody believed that after the dam is completed, there will be extra power to use in Kampot and the price will be much cheaper, but in fact there is not much change,” taxi driver Prum Virak said.
He said his house is without power three to four hours every day. The price of electricity has dropped to 920 riel (23 cents) per kilowatt-hour from 1,100 riel six months earlier when power was being imported from Vietnam.
In Burma, where China may build as many as 50 dams, one re-ignited an ethnic insurgency in 2011 and fanned a wider, smoldering anti-Chinese backlash. Mega-dams in Africa and Latin America have also sparked sometimes violent protests.
The Myitsone Dam in Burma would have displaced thousands and flooded the spiritual heartland of the Kachin ethnic minority, which cited the project as one reason for again taking up arms.
The government abruptly cancelled it earlier this year, a warning shot that China must clean up its image, if not its act, to avoid both political and economic fallout, analysts say.
The rise of China as a dam-building power began in the early 2000s as its companies beat out then dominant Western competitors and just as anti-dam lobbyists were celebrating victories over the World Bank, until then the leading international dam financier. In the United States, where the golden era of dams peaked in the 1960s, scores are being decommissioned.
The industry, shepherded by the World Commission on Dams, was moving toward setting higher, mandatory standards to mitigate the negative impacts of large dams—environmental degradation, uprooting of communities, depletion of aquatic life—and maximize their positives: flood prevention, irrigation of farmlands, relatively clean energy for homes and industry.
“The Chinese are now definitely diluting the standards debate. We’re back to talking about basics,” said Grace Mang, who monitors China’s dam industry for the US-based environmental group International Rivers. “There is a pattern of projects that would have been delayed, maybe for decades, or dropped, coming back on line with the assistance of Chinese companies and banks.”
Among such projects:
— Nepal’s West Seti dam, which would force some 10,000 poor villagers from their homes in a biodiversity-rich area. It hung in limbo after Australia’s Snowy Mountain Engineering Corp. failed to attract international funders, and the Asian Development Bank pulled out because the dam didn’t meet its standards. Six months after the cancellation, the Chinese took over the project.
— A number of dams being built inside or adjacent to nature reserves, including Ghana’s Bui Dam and two proposed on the Patuca River in Honduras, where a U.S. developer earlier pulled out for environmental reasons.
— The 1,500-megawatt Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, Ecuador’s largest ever infrastructure project, which would encroach on a vast rainforest between the Andes and the Amazon and possibly dry up the country’s highest waterfall, located in a UNESCO reserve.
— Ethiopia’s Gibe III dam, Africa’s largest. Protesters gathered at the Chinese Embassy in neighboring Kenya last year to denounce Chinese companies involved in the project, which they said would endanger the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of downstream farmers. Ethiopian officials defend it, saying less than 2 percent of the rural population has access to electricity.
The Chinese are taking some steps to improve their image. Sinohydro Corp., which says it controls half the global market for hydropower projects, is expected to release an environmental policy soon and dispatch public relations teams to its offices worldwide. An expert from China’s Institute for International Economic Research recently toured Southeast Asia to investigate problems caused by Chinese dams.
The Export-Import Bank of China, the major dam financier, has made some efforts to improve implementation of projects it backs. In a pattern found in other African countries, the Belinga Dam planned within Gabon’s Ivindo National Park was to power other Chinese enterprises including a mine for iron ore to be shipped to China via a Chinese-built railway and seaport. However, the Exim Bank suspended funding for the dam, citing the national park as one reason.
“The Chinese are seeking a Chinese way of operating at international environmental standards rather than have international standards imposed on them,” Mang said.
The Chinese are virtually silent on even such seemingly positive developments, reflecting a persistent lack of transparency on the issue.
The Associated Press sought comment for more than six months from major dam contractors, including Sinohydro, Guodian, China Three Gorges and China Southern Power, calling and submitting written interview requests. The companies provided Internet links to background information or reports about projects in some cases. But most companies didn’t respond at all, and those that did rejected requests for answers to specific questions.
Requests for comment on allegations of corruption associated with dam projects were either rejected or failed to draw a response from the Commerce Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the National Development and Reform Commission.
China, the world’s largest producer of hydropower, has honed its dam building skills at home, but experts say that its companies build to varying levels of quality abroad depending on what the clients demand.
“My sense is that when the Chinese build a dam overseas, they give you the standards [the local officials] insist on,” said Kenneth Pomeranz, an expert on water issues at the University of Chicago. “When governments say, ‘We want it done right,’ they know how to do that too.”
Brian Richter, of the US-based Nature Conservancy, said the Chinese believe it is not their role to set environmental and social regulations, but many countries in which they operate don’t have the capacity to enforce proper ones “so you end up with nobody paying attention.” And there’s corruption.
Cambodia seems an apt example, and in particular Koh Kong Province, dubbed the “battery of Cambodia.” It is remote, populated mostly by poorly educated ethnic minorities and dominated by the government’s business cronies, who resort to brutal tactics with scant scrutiny by activist groups.
“They can basically do what they want down there. It’s just the Wild West,” said Marcus Hardtke, a German forestry expert with detailed knowledge of the area. He said even international environmental groups have remained largely quiet to avoid clashing with the autocratic government of Prime Minister Hun Sen.
One dam has been built in Koh Kong, three more are under construction and another—the Cheay Areng—was recently approved despite heavy opposition.
The Areng was rejected for funding in a 2007 Japanese government study as having a very low rate of economic return, and a Chinese company, China Southern Power Grid, pulled out of the project on technical and possibly environmental grounds. Company engineers reportedly cited the need to build a sloping, 24-km-long tunnel to the first turbine because the valley below the dam was too flat.
Additionally, the Areng Valley—regarded as a “biodiversity jewel” with great ecotourism potential—would be ravaged not only by the reservoir but by access roads and transmission lines. The area contains perhaps Cambodia’s most profuse wildlife including the world’s largest population of almost extinct Siamese crocodiles. Some 1,000 villagers are facing eviction.
Opponents believe the seemingly illogical trade-offs can be explained by kickbacks, profit-sharing from highly lucrative illegal logging in the area and a general Chinese push into Koh Kong that includes clearing an area seven times larger than Manhattan for a Chinese-leased seaside pleasure city, having displaced more than 1,000 families from their homes.
Son Chhay, one of the few opposition members in Parliament, said that Chinese-Cambodian dam contracts are simply geared to making profits for the parties involved rather than generating low-cost electricity for the country.
“The Chinese have a funny way of doing deals in Cambodia. Construction costs are inflated by some 300 percent, and the profits shared,” Son Chhay said. The Cambodian government declined to comment on his claims.
The government’s belief in the necessity of the projects is echoed by Lu Shi Long, the chief engineer at Tatay dam, set for completion in 2014 by the China National Heavy Machinery Corporation.
“The construction of this hydropower station is beneficial for the development of Cambodia’s economy and the improvement of Cambodian living standards. It’s also a great opportunity for Chinese companies,” he said. “As an engineer, I am proud of this project.”
As he speaks, some of the 2,000 workers, 800 of them Chinese, swarm over the vast dam wall, smoothing the rocky surface before a concrete facing will be applied. Relays of trucks ferry stones from a quarry gouged out of a hillside. The site is surrounded by a sea of tropical green.
Illegal loggers ring the site, having all but wiped out stands of rosewood, the highly prized hardwood smuggled to China’s furniture makers.
Improvements won’t come, said the Nature Conservancy’s Richter, until sustainable standards can be verified by an independent body.
“The industry as a whole recognizes that there’s a need, but the playing field has shifted and the Chinese companies are by far the dominant players,” he said. “The future depends on them, for better or worse.”

Outrage Grows in India over Gang-rape on Bus

Outrage Grows in India over Gang-rape on Bus:

A protester holds a placard during a rally outside the residence of Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dixit in New Delhi. (Photo: Reuters)

NEW DELHI—The hours-long gang-rape and near-fatal beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi triggered outrage and anger across the country on Wednesday as Indians demanded action from authorities who have long ignored persistent violence and harassment against women.
In the streets and in Parliament, calls rose for stringent and swift punishment against those attacking women, including a proposal to make rapists eligible for the death penalty. As the calls for action grew louder, two more gang-rapes were reported, including one in which the 10-year-old victim was killed.
“I feel it is sick what is happening across the country. It is totally sick, and it needs to stop,” said Smitha, a 32-year-old protester who goes by only one name.
Thousands of demonstrators clogged the streets in front of New Delhi’s police headquarters, protested near Parliament and rallied outside a major university. Angry university students set up roadblocks across the city, causing massive traffic jams.
Hundreds rallied outside the home of the city’s top elected official before police dispersed them with water cannons, a move that earned further condemnation from opposition leaders, who accused the government of being insensitive.
“We want to jolt people awake from the cozy comfort of their cars. We want people to feel the pain of what women go through every day,” said Aditi Roy, a Delhi University student.
As protests raged in cities across India, at least two girls were gang-raped, with one of them killed.
Police on Wednesday fished out the body of a 10-year-old girl from a canal in Bihar State’s Saharsa District. Police Superintendent Ajit Kumar Satyarthi said the girl had been gang-raped and killed and her body dumped in the canal. Police were investigating and a breakthrough was expected soon, Satyarthi said.
Elsewhere, a 14-year-old schoolgirl was in critical condition in Banka district of Bihar after she was raped by four men, said Jyoti Kumar, the district education officer.
The men have been identified, but police were yet to make any arrests, Kumar said.
Meanwhile, the 23-year-old victim of the first rape lay in critical condition in the hospital with severe internal injuries, doctors said.
Police said six men raped the woman and savagely beat her and her companion with iron rods on a bus driving around the city—passing through several police checkpoints—before stripping them and dumping them on the side of the road on Sunday night.
Delhi Police chief Neeraj Kumar said four men have been arrested and a search was underway for the other two.
Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress Party, visited the victim, promised swift action against the perpetrators and called for police to be trained to deal with crimes against women.
“It is a matter of shame that these incidents recur with painful regularity and that our daughters, sisters and mothers are unsafe in our capital city,” she wrote in a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.
In New Delhi and across India, the outpouring of anger is unusual in a country where attacks against women are rarely prosecuted. The Times of India newspaper dedicated four pages to the rape on Wednesday, demanding an example be made of the rapists, while television stations debated the nation’s treatment of its women.
Opposition lawmakers shouted slogans and protested outside Parliament and called for making rape a capital crime. Cutting across party affiliations, lawmakers demanded the government announce a plan to safeguard women in the city.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde told Parliament he had ordered increased police patrols on the streets, especially at night.
Shinde said the government has introduced bills to increase the punishment for rapes and other crimes against women, but they are bogged down in Parliament.
Analysts and protesters said the upsurge of anger was chiefly due to increasing incidents of crime against women and the seeming inability of authorities to protect them.
“We have been screaming ourselves hoarse demanding greater security for women and girls. But the government, the police, and others responsible for public security have ignored the daily violence that women face,” said Sehba Farooqui, a women’s rights activist.
Farooqui said women’s groups were demanding fast-track courts to deal with rape and other crimes against women.
In India’s painfully slow justice system, cases can languish for 10 to 15 years before reaching court.
“We have thousands of rape cases pending in different courts of the country. As a result, there is no fear of law,” says Ranjana Kumari, a sociologist and head of the New Delhi-based Center for Social Research.
“We want this case to be dealt with within 30 days and not the go the usual way when justice is denied to rape victims because of inordinate delays and the rapists go scot-free,” Farooqui said.
Analysts say crimes against women are on the rise as more young women leave their homes to join the work force in India’s booming economy, even as deep-rooted social attitudes that women are inferior remain unchanged. Many families look down on women, viewing the girl child as a burden that forces them to pay a huge dowry to marry her off.
Kumari says a change can come about only when women are seen as equal to men.
Rapes in India remain drastically underreported. In many cases, families do not report rapes due to the stigma that follows the victim and her family. In other instances, families may decide not to report a rape out of frustration with the long delays in court and harassment at the hands of the police.
Police, themselves are reluctant to register cases of rape and domestic violence in order to keep down crime figures or to elicit a bribe from the victim.
In a sign of the protesters’ fury, Khushi Pattanaik, a student, said death was too easy a punishment for the rapists, they should instead be castrated and forced to suffer as their victim did.
“It should be made public so that you see it, you feel it and you also live with it—the kind of shame and guilt,” she said.

Singapore Rides Wave of Asian Wealth - WSJ.com

Singapore Rides Wave of Asian Wealth - WSJ.com

Protesters Sent to Labor Camp

Protesters Sent to Labor Camp:
More than 10 villagers who opposed a coal-fired power plant in China's southern island province of Hainan have been sent to labor camp, residents said on Tuesday, as work goes ahead on the controversial project after the sentencing of a prominent environmentalist.
"Dozens of villagers were detained at the time of the clashes, and more than 10 villagers were sent for re-education through labor," a resident of Yinggehai township, near the location of the power plant in the southwest of the island.
"Some were sentenced for a year, and some went for a year and three months," said the resident, who gave only his surname Xing. "There are still more than 10 villagers still under detention."
"We don't know when they will be released."
He said local residents no longer dared to impede work on the estimated 1.9 billion yuan (U.S. $301 million) nationally commissioned power station, which has been vocally opposed by thousands of residents of Hainan's Ledong county since a consultation exercise at the beginning of the year.
Work began on the plant shortly after a Haikou court handed a three-year suspended jail term to former forestry official Liu Futang, who led a campaign against the plant.
Liu 64, was detained in July and released this month after he was handed a suspended jail term for "conducting illegal business" after he wrote and self-published a book about local opposition to the project. He is now nursing ill health at home, his friends said this month.
'Everyone is frightened'
Xing said opposition to the plant appeared to have petered out.
"None of the villagers dares to obstruct work on the plant," he said. "They feel as if there's nothing more to be done."
He said police were still monitoring the cell phones of large numbers of local residents, who have clashed with armed police firing tear-gas several times this year.
"If you so much as mention the coal-fired power plant, the authorities will send someone to pick you up and take you in for questioning," Xing said. "A lot of the villagers who got sent to labor camp were innocent, and hadn't even said anything; they had merely asked about the plant."
"But even they were sent to labor camp, so everyone is very frightened," he added.
Repeated calls to the cell phones of other Yinggehai residents went unanswered on Tuesday, or resulted in a message saying the phone had been switched off.
An official who answered the phone at the Yinggehai township government offices declined to comment, while calls to the township press office rang unanswered during office hours.
Environmentalist in poor health
Liu's son declined to speak to RFA on Tuesday, either.
"Sorry, but it's not convenient for me to give interviews," he said, using a phrase that often indicates government pressure or police surveillance.
A close friend of Liu's, who gave only his surname Zhang, said Liu and his wife were now planning to go back to his hometown in the northern province of Hebei, as the elderly couple were both suffering from ill health.
"He had a terrible time during his detention, and he is in very poor health, both physically and mentally," Zhang said.
"They want to leave Hainan as soon as they can," he said.
A veteran member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party and former director of Hainan's forest fire prevention office, Liu dared to challenge central government directives and angered local officials for investigating residents' opposition to the power plant.
Residents and officials confirmed earlier this month that work had begun on the plant.
Hainan authorities changed their minds several times about the location of the plant since January, when it met with fierce opposition from residents of Yinggehai, who clashed with police on a number of occasions.
The planned site then moved to Foluo and Huangliu townships in the same county, meeting with similar resistance there earlier this year.
When protests against the plant escalated in Foluo township in April, one website reported residents had stormed a government building and smashed up offices and dormitories.
Residents reported dozens of injuries from beatings and tear gas at the hands of riot police amid clashes sparked by a number of earlier arrests over opposition to the project.
The government said in October that the project, which was initially proposed in 2007 but only approved last November, would go ahead in Yinggehai as previously planned.
Reported by Fung Yat-yiu for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Cash-strapped Court Delays Pay

Cash-strapped Court Delays Pay:
A U.N.-backed war tribunal in Cambodia announced Tuesday that it will be unable to pay its national staff for at least two weeks this month, highlighting ongoing financial concerns for the court which has drawn criticism for inefficiency and allegations of corruption.

The war tribunal, known formally as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), is trying members of the notorious Khmer Rouge leadership for crimes committed during their bloody 1975-1979 rule.

ECCC spokesman Neth Pheaktra said Tuesday that national personnel would not receive any pay because the court is dealing with a lack of cash.

“For the national side of the court, we are facing a cash issue … We don’t have cash to pay judges, prosecutors, or staff,” he said, adding that employees would likely face at least a two-week delay until they received their pay.

“The ECCC is working with donors to ensure that we receive funding for December.”

Khmer Rouge Project Coordinator for Cambodian rights group ADHOC Latt Ky said he is concerned that financial issues will affect the court’s ability to continue its work.

“I am concerned about the court’s process going forward,” Latt Ky said, adding that the concerns could be addressed by donors. He called on donors to continue providing funding to the court.

He said maintaining the independence of the ECCC’s national component is a crucial factor that donor funding has helped to ensure.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge cadre, and other Cambodian officials have often expressed opposition to any further prosecutions in the tribunal beyond the ongoing second trial.

“Independence is a factor, but the donors should try to strengthen the court’s system of checks and balances [instead of dropping the funding],” he said.

“I think the donors don’t want to pressure the court by ceasing its funding. The donors should set conditions for the court [instead].”

UK pledge

The delay of staff payment follows a pledge by the United Kingdom of 600,000 pounds (about U.S. $1 million) to the ECCC’s international component last week, with UK Foreign Secretary William Hague saying the pledge would help deliver “long-awaited justice for millions of Cambodians.”

The UK has contributed U.S. $5.4 million to the court’s international component and U.S. $1.5 million to the national side since its inception in 2006. The new pledge brings to U.S. $7.9 million the UK contribution to the ECCC.

Neth Pheaktra on Tuesday expressed gratitude for the pledge, but called on donors to also consider the court’s national component when providing funding.

He said that the court had received no pledges for the 2013 national budget as of yet, adding that the national component only has around U.S. $2.5 million in reserve, but will require around U.S. $9.5 million to operate for the year.

Donors will convene later this year or early next year to discuss funding, he said.

Budget measures

The ECCC has been working for six years to deliver justice for the up to two million Cambodians who died of disease, exhaustion, starvation, and execution under the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge government.

The elderly defendants it has brought to trial face charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

But after spending more than U.S. $150 million, the tribunal has handed down only one sentence and has been mired in allegations of corruption and interference.

In November, the ECCC reduced its hearings to three days per week from four due to financial constraints, prompting former victims to question whether defendants will live to see a verdict.

The court acknowledged at the time that the reduction of hearing days would delay its ongoing second case involving four former leaders, including 80-year-old Ieng Thirith who was released in September because she was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.

But last week, the ECCC ordered a “regime of judicial supervision” against Ieng Thirith, setting aside the September decision and subjecting the former social affairs minister to measures including medical examinations every six months and a monthly check by judicial police to verify that she resides at the same address.

In its only conviction, the ECCC sentenced Kaing Guek Eav to life imprisonment in February for overseeing Tuol Sleng prison where as many as 16,000 men, women, and children are believed to have been brutalized before being sent to their deaths.

Reported by Samean Yun for RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

North Korea Steps Up Jamming

North Korea Steps Up Jamming:
North Korean authorities have intensified their jamming of foreign radio broadcasts since the beginning of December, blocking signals from South Korea and the United States almost every day during the last month of a year-long period of mourning for the country’s former leader Kim Jong Il, sources in China say.

North Korean jamming is usually sporadic due to electricity outages and the cost of special facilities, but has now been continuous since Dec. 1, said a source in the border city of Dandong, in China's Liaoning province.

“Listening to RFA [Radio Free Asia] and VOA [Voice of America] is almost impossible due to static, which has continued since the first of this month,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A source in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China’s Jilin province confirmed that static had disrupted reception of RFA broadcasts, adding that broadcasts of South Korea’s KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) were also “getting harder to hear.”

North Korean jamming signals have also interfered with Chinese broadcasts, leaving state-run CRI (China Radio International) programs hard to listen to, said another source, who recently moved to China from Sinuiju, in North Korea.

“[CRI] broadcasting used to have better sound quality than anything coming from South Korea, but they are now hard to hear because North Korea’s National Security Department is sending jamming signals,” he said.

Mourning period

Sources tied the unusual period of unbroken jamming to the first anniversary of the death of former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, and said that the jamming will likely continue until the end of December.

Hundreds of thousands of North Korean soldiers and civilians gathered in Pyongyang on Dec. 17 for a mass memorial to the late dictator presided over by his son and successor Kim Jong Un.

But North Korea’s mood of mourning was briefly broken last week by the launch of a long-range rocket that successfully placed a satellite in orbit.

North Korea’s authoritarian leaders typically fear that foreign broadcasts will undermine official narratives of important events, possibly leading to the current period of intensified jamming.

Speaking from Beijing, one observer of North Korean affairs said that if foreign radio is now difficult to listen to in the border regions, it may be “impossible” for a time to hear in North Korea itself.

North Korean authorities usually find it difficult to block all broadcasts, though, he said.

“More than 10 radio stations broadcast into the country from South Korea, and other broadcasts come from the United States and Japan,” the source said.

“They send signals on many different channels, so it is hard for the North Korean government to jam all radio broadcasting from outside the country.”

Reported by Joon Ho Kim for RFA’s Korean service. Translated by Ju Hyeon Park. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Cambodian Court Drops Shooting Charges

Court Drops Shooting Charges:
A provincial court in southeastern Cambodia has acquitted an ex-governor on a charge of unintentionally shooting three factory workers, drawing condemnation from victims and rights groups who said the case highlighted double standards of justice in the country.
The Svay Rieng court ruled on Tuesday that there was not enough evidence to prove that Bavet town ex-governor Chhouk Bandit had shot the three women in the Feb. 20 incident, dropping the charge that he had caused “unintentional injury” to them.
The decision was criticized by rights groups and victims who wanted Chhouk Bandit to be charged with premeditated murder.
Prime Minister Hun Sen had also issued a subdecree removing Chhouk Bandit as governor about a month after he allegedly fired into a crowd during a demonstration over labor conditions at a plant that supplies shoes to European sportswear giant Puma.
When Chhouk Bandit was first charged in March, Svay Rieng court prosecutor Hing Bunchea had said that investigations showed that the ex-governor had not intended to injure the three women, basing his decision on testimonies of victims and witnesses.
Hing Bunchea told RFA’s Khmer Service on Wednesday that he had submitted the charge to the investigating judge and the judge had decided there was “not enough evidence” of Chhouk Bandit’s involvement.
He said that just because charges had been brought against Chhouk Bandit, that did not mean the judge had to agree with them.
“There are many steps to an investigation,” he said.  “The prosecutor doesn’t wrap up the investigation; the investigating judge can make changes.”
He added that the shooting victims should appeal the ruling in court if they are unsatisfied.
The three women filed an appeal against the court’s ruling on Wednesday, their lawyer told the Agence-France Presse news agency.
In Chhouk Bandit’s place, court has charged a police officer with involuntary bodily harm over the incident, she said.
Justice system
On Wednesday, rights groups condemned the acquittal as unjust and said it highlighted how the country’s justice system allows impunity for Cambodia’s political elite.
“This shows that the justice system that is not equal,” local rights watchdog Licadho supervisor Am Sam Ath told RFA’s Khmer Service.
“It means that rich criminals can escape the law.”
He added that there was eyewitness evidence of the shootings.
The three factory workers—Bun Chinda, Keo Nei, and Nuth Sakhorn, aged between 18 and 23 at the time— had sought nearly U.S. $100,000 in compensation for medical bills and other damages.
The victims said that before they filed the charges against Chhouk Bandit, they had been approached by his representative who offered them each a settlement of U.S. $1,000 to $2,500 to drop the case.
The three belong to the Free Trade Union, which is planning a mass demonstration next week over the court’s ruling, according to the group’s president Chea Mony.
“We will seek justice for the victims,” he said.
Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the case should prompt Puma, which gets its supplies from the Taiwanese-owned Kaoway Sports factory in Bavet where the shooting occurred, to reconsider its investment in the country.
He urged Puma, which following the incident had criticized the violence, to pull out of the country entirely.
“Otherwise … their brand will be forever stained with the blood of these poor garment workers,” he said.
Reported by Mom Moniroth for RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

Uyghur Farmers Pressed Into Road Work

Farmers Pressed Into Road Work:
Uyghur farmers are being forced to work on road construction without pay as part of a new infrastructure policy in northwestern China, according to residents.

State media reported recently that the Chinese government had allocated 90 million yuan (U.S. $14.4 million) for rebuilding rural roads in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, home to the ethnic Uyghur minority.

The Kashgar Daily newspaper said that the policy, known as “Speed up the Roads and Enrich the People,” began earlier this year.

But a resident of Kashgar prefecture’s Kargilik county, where officials had recently boasted of making significant progress on the policy’s goals, told RFA’s Uyghur Service that Uyghur farmers had been pressed into providing free labor on the road building initiative.

The source from Toguchi village, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said farmers had been made to work on the roads as many as four days a week without pay, in what some sources say is a violation of national law.

“[Authorities] are forcing farmers to work on the roads as a form of ‘unfree labor’ … [They work] two days some weeks, other times three or four,” he said.

The source said that the site of the road work was “four or five kilometers (two to three miles) away,” which required the farmers to travel there using their own donkey carts, motorcycles and other forms of transportation.

“We buy our own food,” the source said, adding that the farmers received no form of pay at all.

The Toguchi villager, who is also a farmer, said that he had taken part in the work himself and said that the number of hours required to work varied each day.

“We work until we finish the daily workload,” he said.

The source said that farmers who did not participate in the road work were fined or required to pay another laborer to work in their place.

“[The fine is] sometimes 30 yuan (about U.S. $5), sometimes 40 yuan (U.S. $6.50) each time. It is different each time.”

‘Controlling the people’

A Kargilik official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the unfree labor policy had been in effect in the county during the winter.

“If there is [unskilled] construction required, like laying pebbles on dirt roads, the farmers are deployed to do the job for free,” the county official told RFA’s Uyghur Service.

“It is not possible to do it during the busy farming seasons. It must be done when the farmers are free,” the official said when asked why the farmers had been pressed into labor during the winter, when temperatures can reach extreme lows in Xinjiang.

“Another reason for [the policy] is that if the farmers are left free, the government would worry that they might make trouble,” he said, noting a number of what he called violent attacks carried out by Uyghurs in recent years against Han Chinese immigrants to Xinjiang.

The official also confirmed that farmers who refuse to work on the roads face fines, which he said could be “infinitely high.”

“There is no set amount. Their lives are very difficult.”

When asked about the funds allocated for the project by the Chinese government, the official said that he “[did] not know about that,” adding only that he frequently traveled to different villages on business and could see farmers working on roads all over the county.

“The government policy is very good, but whether there is money being sent to the towns, we do not know. [The orders] do not emphasize efficiency. What they are after is controlling the people, so what do you expect?”

The official said that most of the county’s roads that led from villages to regional towns were still of poor condition and that villages in mountainous areas often had no roads between them.

“[From certain villages] if you want to travel to the town center for medical treatment, you have to ride your donkey for three days,” he said.

“How can you talk about development in this kind of situation? It’s unimaginable. We are talking about this in 2012!”

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness in Xinjiang despite China's ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier.

Chinese authorities blame Uyghur separatists for a series of deadly attacks in recent years and accuse one group in particular of maintaining links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

But experts outside China have questioned the legitimacy of the claims, saying China has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur “separatists” and used its “war on terror” to take the heat off of domestic policies that cause unrest.

Reported by Gulchekre Keyum for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Police Link to Missing Activist

Police Link to Missing Activist:
A respected Lao social activist who went missing this weekend was last seen in police custody before being taken away by unidentified men in a truck, according to surveillance video provided to his family by police.
Based on the closed-circuit television footage, Sombath Somphone, the former head of a development agency in Vientiane, was taken to a roadside police station in the capital city on Saturday night after the car he was driving was stopped by traffic police, a relative who wished to remain anonymous told RFA’s Lao Service.
He was then seen leaving the police post and entering a pickup truck accompanied by a few men, she said.
“We know that he was taken,” she said.  “We are searching for him using the CCTV and looking for his car.”
She said police had shown the family the footage on Monday, but did not provide any explanation of who took him away or why he had been allowed to leave the station.
The footage, which relatives posted online on Wednesday, shows—according to the relative—a man arriving on a motorbike at the police station while Somphone is inside, then leaving and coming back with other men in a truck to pick him up.
“He was driving and was stopped by traffic police. They talked and he came out of the car. They went to a police station,” she said.
“They went in, and we don’t know what happened inside the police station. But later on there was a man who came on a motorbike, stopped it in front of Sombath’s car, and walked into the police station.”
“Then [the man] came back, this time driving a pickup truck with a few men. They went into the police station, and came out with Sombath,” she said.
“He was not handcuffed or coerced, he just walked on his own with those men and got into the car in a hurry, and the car took off even before the door was closed.”
Concern
The activist’s wife last saw Somphone, the former director of the Participatory Development Training Centre (PADETC) in Vientiane, when they both left group’s office around 5:00 pm on Saturday.
The case has drawn concern from the U.S., where State Department Spokesman Victoria Nuland asked the Lao government to work to find him.
"We have registered our concern with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Laos and encouraged them to make every effort to locate him and figure out what's happened here," she told reporters.
A group of 61 Thai NGOs have also issued a statement expressing concern about Somphone, who was the 2005 recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, a prestigious award for Asian civil society groups.
Family members were not aware of Somphone being embroiled in any disagreements with other people, the relative said.
"Family members including his wife discussed whether he had any problems with anybody, and we could not find any,” she said.
She said that according to his wife, Shui Meng, there was “no way” Somphone had been involved in problems over money because he had not lent or borrowed money.
She said the police told the relatives they will try their best to search and look for him, and that colleagues and relatives were following up with their own efforts.
The chief of the police investigation department in Vientiane confirmed with RFA’s Lao Service Tuesday that they had begun investigating the case after family members reported the case to them on Monday.
Somphone, 60, who had studied in the U.S. before returning to Laos to found PADETC’s precursor in 1980, recently retired as director of the organization after over a decade as its director.
Since then Somphone had been involved with the Asia-Europe People’s Forum, representing local civil society groups as a member of Laos’s national committee at the October forum in Vientiane on the sidelines of an international summit.
PADETC, which receives funding from the Dutch-based Novib/Oxfam and the EU, among other agencies, works on poverty prevention and sustainability projects such as fuel-efficient stoves, fish farming promotion, recycling, media, school volunteers, and teacher training.
Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Viengsay Luangkhot, Bounchanh Mouangkham, and Somnet Inthapannha. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

Park's Victory Offers Relief

Park's Victory Offers Relief:
Countries worried about North Korea's illicit nuclear weapons and missile development programs may be heaving a sigh of relief that Park Geun-hye has been elected South Korea's new president.

Not that Park, the 60-year-old daughter of a former dictator, is going to emulate her conservative party's outgoing President Lee Myung-bak's hard-line policy towards the North.

The sense of relief has more to do with the loss suffered by her liberal rival Moon Jae-In, who had pledged unconditional engagement and economic assistance to North Korea.

The United States particularly has been concerned that any such move could fuel the North's weapons building programs, especially after its launch of a long-range rocket carrying a satellite into orbit last week in defiance of U.N. sanctions.

As Park was acclaimed winner on Wednesday after one of the most divisive South Korean elections in years, "one could almost hear a sigh of relief from Washington," said Evans Revere, a former senior U.S. diplomat with extensive experience in negotiations with North Korea.

He said many U.S. Korea experts were concerned about a progressive victory and the possibility that Moon would pursue a foreign policy agenda at odds with the United States, which has about 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against aggression by the North.

"With U.S.-[South Korea] relations now at their strongest in decades, some experts believed a win by [Moon] would complicate bilateral coordination on a range of issues, not the least of which was North Korea," said Revere, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

"Differences may arise, but the solid level of trust that has been built up between Washington and Seoul in recent years should help smooth any rough patches that arise."

Revere predicted a "challenging" period ahead as North Korea flexes its military muscle amid bleak prospects of international talks aimed at dismantling the hard-line communist state's nuclear weapons arsenal.

"Thanks to its recent successful rocket test, the North has moved a step closer to the day when it will have a credible intercontinental ballistic missile capability and a deliverable nuclear weapon," he said.

"That prospect has been made all the more troubling by the failure of all previous diplomatic efforts to block Pyongyang's determined effort to become a de facto nuclear weapon state."

'Grave' threat

In her first policy address on Thursday, Park, who will be South Korea's first female president, underlined the "grave" security threat posed by the renegade northern neighbor and pledged to work for regional stability in Northeast Asia.

"The launch of North Korea's long-range missile symbolically showed how grave the security situation facing us is," Park said as she met with the ambassadors from the United States, China, Japan, and Russia—the four other countries which have held now-suspended talks with Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program.

China, North Korea's main ally and aid provider, and the United States are split on how to end Pyongyang's persistent flouting of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Beijing has resisted U.S.-led moves to impose new sanctions.

Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. said a Moon victory would have "bucked up the Chinese in the Security Council" and influenced the current negotiations on how to punish North Korea for its rocket launch.

Moon was an ex-chief of staff to Lee's predecessor, the late President Roh Moo-hyun, who championed the so-called "sunshine policy" of no-strings-attached aid for Pyongyang.

"In some sense," Noland said, the U.S. has "dodged a bullet." 

Victor Cha, a former White House top Asia hand, said North Korea's latest defiant rocket launch may have contributed to Moon's loss by a narrow margin of 48.0 percent to 51.6 percent.

The rocket launch was hailed by the North as a peaceful satellite mission but condemned by most of the world as a disguised missile test that violated U.N. Security Council resolutions stemming from Pyongyang's illegal nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

"One also has to imagine that North Korea's missile launch last week could have hurt the progressive camp's chances as they trumpeted a return to the proactive engagement policies of previous progressive presidencies," said Cha, now an expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He believes Park, a five-term lawmaker, will seek to consolidate relations and ensure policy coordination with Washington in the event of more North Korean provocations, which he said may be in the offing.

Hard-line policy

Both Park and Moon had distanced themselves from current President Lee's hard-line policy towards North Korea, including supension of major humanitarian aid, which drove Pyongyang to renew nuclear and missile tests and to launch two deadly attacks on its southern neighbor.

"The clearest foreign policy dividing line" by Park and Moon was over the degree of engagement they would pursue with North Korea, said Scott Snyder, director of the U.S.-Korea Policy program at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Moon, the son of North Korean refugees and a former human rights lawyer, had proposed unconditional engagement and restoration of economic aid to the North while pledging to hold an inter-Korean summit within his first year in office.

He had wanted to address North Korean denuclearization and hold discussions on a Korean peninsula peace regime, with the expectation that  Pyongyang would become nonthreatening to its neighbors.

On the other hand, Park, whose mother was killed in 1974 by a pro-North Korea gunman aiming for her father, had insisted that North Korea meet its prior commitments to denuclearization as a prerequisite to major infrastructure assistance.

While Park's approach offers front-end economic benefits to the North and promotes the need for greater inter-Korean dialogue, her conditional approach to denuclearization is conceptually similar to the current policy embraced by both Seoul and Washington, Snyder said.

Caution

Revere said U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is unlikely to oppose a renewed South Korean attempt to improve ties with Pyongyang.

But he cautioned that such an effort will have to be carefully coordinated so that it does not undermine current efforts to punish the North for its violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and the steps the United States and other nations are taking to raise the cost to Pyongyang for its continued pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons.

"Madame Park, like the U.S. administration, seems to harbor no illusions about the Pyongyang regime, and by all accounts she shares U.S. skepticism that North Korea will ever give up its nuclear weapons," he said.

North Korea also appears uninterested in mending fences with the South

"This is the fundamental issue. Both of the candidates were pledging more engagement with North Korea, but North Korea frankly has shown little evidence of being interested in a true engagement that will involve an increase in genuine mutual dependence," analyst Noland said.

Stephan Haggard, a Korea expert at the University of California, San Diego, agreed.

Even if Park comes up with a more open approach to North Korea, it is not clear how the reclusive nation will respond, he said.

"We see little evidence—now or in the past—-that the regime in Pyongyang is attentive to South Korean political dynamics, nor was it interested in delivering a win to an incoming Moon administration," he said.

Haggard said any attempts towards reconciliation with North Korea will hinge both on South Korea's parliament and on broader public opinion.

"The South Korean public remains quite divided on aid to the North, and interestingly young voters are not necessarily more forthcoming."

Uyghur Student Battles Travel Ban

Student Battles Travel Ban:
A Uyghur university student has begun an online campaign in a protest against Chinese authorities' repeated refusals to issue her a passport.

Atikem Rozi, 21, who studies at the Central Minorities University in Beijing, began tweeting on the popular Sina Weibo microblogging service this week under her username @Uyghuray, vowing to fight for her civil rights after having been denied a passport three times in the past two years.

Her struggle to gain a passport was also reported on the Uighurbiz.net website run by outspoken Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, who teaches at the same university.

“The Beijing Entry and Exit Bureau told Atikam Rozi, 'If Xinjiang doesn't approve your application, we can’t do anything,'" Tohti said, referring to the troubled northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), home to the ethnic Uyghur minority.

"They offered to refund her application fee, but Atikam Rozi rejected the refund and asked for a written explanation why her applications had been rejected."

He said the officials she dealt with had handled her enquiry sympathetically, but had said they were following directions they couldn't change.

Online support

Chinese netizens, particular Han Chinese, have rallied to her support online after she posted her story, Tohti said.

"One netizen even changed their online nickname to "Atikam, defending rights," he added. "Many Uyghurs and Han Chinese netizens alike have written in her support online."

Tohti called on the XUAR government to re-think its ban on issuing passports to Uyghurs, who often complain of policies favoring Han Chinese migration into the region and what they call the unfair allocation of resources.

"The extent of the online reaction shows that people won't allow this sort of leadership style to continue," Tohti said.

There are signs that the outcry has already prompted a shift in attitude, as police in Atikam's hometown in Onsu (in Chinese, Xinhe) county have revisited her parents.

Their initial visit had been to persuade her to change her mind about applying for a passport, but the second was to ask how she would support herself if she did go overseas, Tohti said.

'Unreasonable'

Atikam had been consistently told that her application was refused by officials "on political grounds" in her home region of Xinjiang, where Uyghurs and travel agencies have long reported a freeze on the issuing of passports to members of the Turkic-speaking, Muslim ethnic group, Tohti's website Uighurbiz reported.

"Atikam was taken back home [from Beijing] last year after police came to see her because of some things she wrote on Renren," a source close to the student activist said on Monday.

"She had no criminal record, nor had she failed a political studies class, but the relevant authorities used this as an excuse not to give her a passport," the source said.

"She thought this was unreasonable."

According to her online posts, Atikam's last attempt to apply for a passport was on Nov. 17. After waiting for 23 days, she was finally told by the Beijing Immigration and Emigration Bureau that they couldn't give her a passport.

Limited options

Tohti said a number of students at the same university had been refused permission for passports in recent years, and that this had a huge impact on the options open to them.

"A lot of students have been accepted by overseas universities as students, and some have even paid the fees, or won scholarships," he said.

"But then they were unable to get passports."

One Uyghur student who graduated recently from a university elsewhere in China, and who had managed to get a passport, said it had been taken away from him after he went back to his hometown in Hotan.

The return of the passport was a condition of their continued registration in the town, the student told RFA's Uyghur service.

Tohti said he is also aware of a number of Uyghurs currently overseas who would like to return to China but are afraid the authorities will confiscate or refuse to renew their passports once they are home.

Discrimination

Beijing-based legal scholar Teng Biao said that the rules on the issuing of Chinese passports are clear, as are the circumstances under which passports could be refused.

For example, a passport can be refused if the applicant is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, or can't prove their identity, or is considered by the authorities to be a threat to national security or interests.

"This is clearly discrimination against Uyghurs," Teng said. "It is harder for them to get passports than for other people."

He said similar restrictions are in place for Tibetans, too.

"There are some cases in which they have been given a passport, and then had it taken away from them again," Teng said.

"Also, even if they have a passport, it's a bit harder for them to actually leave the country than it is for Han Chinese."

An employee who answered the phone at the Beijing Entry and Exit Bureau said a new regulation that took effect on Sept. 1 now requires universities to take initial applications from Uyghur students in Beijing who wish to apply for passports.

"Once the application has been prepared, the students can apply online. And they can't get the passport in Beijing without their application being approved first," the employee said.

She said other applicants can go straight to the bureau's website and submit their application, which typically take about 30 days to process.

"This also includes an approval process, and we will get in touch with the person if there are any problems with their application," the employee said.

Deadly riots

Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have imposed travel restrictions on the region's ethnic minorities since the regional capital Urumqi was rocked by deadly ethnic rioting in 2009, local residents and travel industry sources have said.

Travel agencies told RFA in 2010 that while there had been no formal declaration of the restrictions, the regional government's nationalities and religious affairs committees had simply stopped processing permission slips for Uyghurs, which are not required from Han Chinese.

Ethnic Uyghurs in Urumqi took to the streets en masse in July 2009 in an initially peaceful demonstration to protest a violent attack weeks earlier against Uyghur migrant workers in far-off Guangdong province, which officials allegedly failed to quell promptly.

The clashes in Urumqi left some 200 people dead, according to official figures.

Xinjiang is home to mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Tartars, among other recognized ethnic groups.

Uyghurs, who number more than 16 million, constitute a distinct, Turkic-speaking, Muslim minority in northwestern China and Central Asia.

They declared a short-lived East Turkestan Republic in Xinjiang in the late 1930s and 40s but have remained under Beijing's control since 1949, with many calling for independence.

Reported by Hai Nan for RFA's Cantonese service, and by Mihray Abdilim for the Uyghur service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Richest, Brightest Leave China

Richest, Brightest Leave China:
The past year saw unprecedented numbers of Chinese emigrating to other countries, as China's richest and best-educated citizens increasingly look for a better life elsewhere, a government report said this week.

China already has the world's largest population of overseas migrants at 45 million, and many more look set to leave, driven by pollution and safety concerns, a fanatically competitive education system, and an unpredictable investment environment.

The Annual Report on Chinese International Migration 2012, issued by the Social Sciences Academic Press, said that the trend is a worrying one, as some of China's richest and best-educated people have already left, and will continue to leave.

"The trend is likely to bring losses to the country in terms of assets and talents ... and complicate the development of its substantial economy," the state-run Xinhua news agency commented in a report on Monday.

Concerns for assets

Last year, more than 150,000 Chinese nationals won permanent residency in major immigration destinations, a list headed by the United States, Canada, and Australia.

"Most of these immigrants from China are high net worth individuals, and their investments are mainly focused in real estate, foreign currency, and deposits and stocks, among other fields," Xinhua quoted the report as saying.

"Migration for investment has become a significant part of Chinese people's international migration," the report said.

Germany-based Chinese writer Liao Tianqi said that many rich Chinese prefer to live in democratic, Western societies, because their investments are protected by an independent judiciary and a strong rule of law.

"They are worried that their assets won't be safe in China," Liao said. "They want to find a safe haven for their money, which they worked so hard to make."

"Other factors include the education of their children, the environment, and high taxation, which isn't just taxes but a whole range of random fees," she said.

"On top of that, you have the pollution, the issue of food and medicine safety, all of which make China a place not fit for humans to live," Liao said.

Avoiding scrutiny

Xie Xuanjun, a scholar of Chinese studies in New York, said corruption is also a factor in creating the new class of wealthy Chinese emigrants.

"They got rich from illegal income, or grey money, so they don't want to come under too much legal scrutiny," Xie said.

"While the judicial system isn't used to tackling corruption, crackdowns can still happen."

"After they have made their money through illegal means, they start to feel insecure, and worry about whether they'll be found out," he said.

Political in-fighting and the current leadership transition could also affect the lives of many who have relied on their connections to high-ranking ruling Chinese Communist Party officials to get rich, Xie said.

"For example, those people who got rich because they had good relations with [outgoing president] Hu Jintao may not be very confident about how they'll fare under the administration of [president-in-waiting] Xi Jinping," he said.

"So they are starting to head overseas."

Reported by Xi Wang for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Say Cheese: Four Slideshow Tools, From Simple to Sophisticated | PCWorld

Say Cheese: Four Slideshow Tools, From Simple to Sophisticated | PCWorld

HRW Report - Iran: Activists Fleeing Assault on Civil Society | Human Rights Watch

Iran: Activists Fleeing Assault on Civil Society | Human Rights Watch

250000 East Timorese still in Indonesia 13 years since secession | East Timor Law and Justice Bulletin

250000 East Timorese still in Indonesia 13 years since secession | East Timor Law and Justice Bulletin

The Internet Archive is trying to raise enough funds to buy 3 petabytes of storage in 17 days

The Internet Archive is trying to raise enough funds to buy 3 petabytes of storage in 17 days:
Non-profit digital library and creator of the WayBack Machine, the Internet Archive, is attempting to raise enough funds to buy 4 petabytes of storage before the year’s end. So far, the archive has only brought in 25% of its total goal, or one petabyte of storage.
As of October 2012, the Internet Archive maintained approximately 10 petabytes of material, and if the service continues at its rate of storing ~190 terabytes per month, it will be able to continue storing data for a little under two more years (5.4 months = ~ 1 petabyte).
Whether or not you’re interested in donating to this cause, it’s important to remember that the Internet Archive has played an incredible role in chronicling the Web’s evolution over the past 16 years.
As we’ve detailed before, the Wayback Machine is still the absolute best resource for revealing the ghosts of the Internet’s past. Spend some time searching and you’ll find many lost and defunct websites that heavily influenced the modern web. A 1997 snapshot of Apple.com feels like a scamming knock-off, while Amazon’s earliest iterations aren’t much different from its latest design. Google.com’s first iterations aren’t pretty either, especially the horrific 3D logo from 1998, while Google was still hosted on Stanford’s servers.

Luckily, an anonymous donor has agreed to match all donations three-to-one through the end of the year. Head to the donation page via the link below to learn more.

➤ Internet Archive Donations
Image credit: Jupiterimages / Thinkstock

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