Dec
7
2011
It was test of patience and perseverance that would derail most filmmakers. It began late last year when Burma’s xenophobic military authorities deported the Australian filmmakers Hugh Piper and Helen Barrow. They were in Rangoon, working on a documentary about the nation’s first elections in 20 years, tied in with an Australian newspaperman and his …read more
Jul
5
2011
Yingluck Shinawatra is the smiling new face of Thai politics. Friendly, extremely attractive, conciliatory: the one-time business executive might be the circuit-breaker the deeply polarised nation so desperately needs. The youngest sister of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 44-year-old Yingluck will almost certainly become Thailand’s first woman prime minister. She seems to have politics in …read more
Jun
27
2011
THE long-anticipated trial of the four most senior living Khmer Rouge leaders begins today, more than 30 years after Cambodia was racked by their ultra-communist rule of mass torture and murder.
Jun
15
2011
THE film is jinxed. Due to screen at the Sydney Film Festival today, Dancing with Dictators has been pulled at the 11th hour after a series of calamities.The problems began when the Australian filmmakers, Hugh Piper and Helen Barrow, were arrested and chucked out of Burma last November. Then the subject of their documentary, journalist …read more
Jun
9
2011
The magic list of refugees who might make the cut to come to Australia has taken on mythical proportions in the ghettos of Kuala Lumpur. To make the list means an end to a life of uncertainty and insecurity, an end to dodging police and the paramilitary corps. It means being able to work legally, …read more
May
11
2011
ALAM Shamsul Alam ran for his life. He ran barefoot across paddy fields for kilometres, then leaped into the sea and swam for two hours in a bid for freedom. He was eventually picked up by fishermen and handed to the police.
Dec
11
2010
She’s just 26 years old, but, barring a miracle, she is destined to spend the next 26 years of her life in one of Burma’s notorious jails.
May
24
2010
Fabio Polenghi was killed by a burst of gunfire in Bangkok. Wounded in the lower abdomen, he was rushed to hospital on the back of a motor-scooter. The Italian freelance photographer had been in Thailand for three months on assignment for a European magazine and, like so many others, he was on the spot to …read more
May
22
2010
After nearly ten tumultuous weeks of protest, Thailand’s anti-government activists have been thoroughly routed, their sprawling encampment in Bangkok’s retail heart seized, their tents and stages dismantled, and their strident demands officially set aside.
May
17
2010
URBAN warfare raged through Bangkok last night as antigovernment protesters skirmished with the military and a protest leader warned of a coming civil war. Streets outside the protesters’ fortified encampments in Bangkok’s commercial heart — designated ‘‘live-fire zones’’ by the military on Saturday — echoed with the rattle of gunfire and small bombs as the …read more