Jul
6
2023
Following a brief working visit to Australia, Indonesian president Joko Widodo will return to Jakarta with a substantial farewell gift in hand: easier visa rules for Indonesian business travellers. Indonesia has long chafed at the current visa inequality. Australians travelling to Indonesia enjoy $50 visas on arrival but Indonesians coming to Australia usually have to fork …read more
Feb
17
2023
The New Zealand pilot kidnapped by independence fighters in Indonesia’s restive eastern-most province of Papua is now living in the jungle with the separatist fighters and eating what they eat, a separatist spokesman has told Crikey. Independence fighters from the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) seized Susi Air’s small propeller plane when it landed at …read more
Feb
9
2023
Separatists in Indonesia’s eastern-most area of West Papua have taken guerrilla warfare to another level by kidnapping a New Zealander pilot in the rugged mountainous terrain of Nduga. History suggests this desperate bid to win some autonomy from Jakarta will not end well.
Jan
17
2023
It took Indonesian president Joko Widodo nearly a decade to make good on his 2014 election promise to address the nation’s historic gross human abuses – most of them the bloody work of the police and the military. Last week he listed 12 of the historic atrocities that have blighted the nation’s human rights record. …read more
Aug
17
2022
Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, affectionately known as Bongbong, is treading carefully. Elected president of the Philippines in a landslide victory in May, the son of the late dictator and notorious kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos is facing the nation’s Sandiganbayan graft court in a case concerning the giant stash of assets stolen by his father. Earlier this month, Marcos Jnr’s …read more
Aug
8
2022
Cambodia’s prime minister almost sounded like a measured and reasonable national leader when he censured Myanmar for the recent execution of four opposition activists, noting the killings “deeply disappointed and disturbed” members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The executions by the Myanmar junta went ahead, Hun Sen said last week, “despite the appeals …read more
Jul
29
2022
Dramatically called the Lord of War and the Merchant of Death, the convicted Russian arms smuggler Viktor Bout, now sitting out a 25-year prison sentence in a US federal prison in Illinois, has been reduced to the status of a “substantial” bargaining chip. The US government has offered to swap Bout, who was scooped up in …read more
Jul
28
2022
The complicated dance of Taiwan diplomacy is becoming increasingly fraught, with a mooted August visit to the beleaguered territory by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi creating any number of potholes to trip up unwary politicians and unsettle the delicate balance of US-China relations. US President Joe Biden is expected to discuss these Taiwan tensions with …read more
May
16
2013
Australia’s Chinese-language Sing Tao newspaper may routinely steal articles from the internet and from Australian newspapers and magazines, yet it has been congratulated by the NSW Parliament and this year it won an industry award. Sing Tao Editor Vincent Ho recently admitted to the theft of a 2,500 word feature article I wrote for the …read more