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Author: Erin Cook

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Qunun warmed hearts, Araibi still in the cold

    • Erin Cook
    • 11 January 2019
    5 Comments

    The world sat gripped as Rahaf al-Qunun live-tweeted her mad dash to freedom, then cheered when photos of her being escorted from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport by UN workers emerged. Hakeem al-Araibi has not been so lucky. His current nightmare is emblematic of the bureaucratic mess forced on refugees worldwide.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Scott Morrison's cowboy foreign policy

    • Erin Cook
    • 18 December 2018
    4 Comments

    Right wing commentators say the recognition of West Jerusalem as capital is a triumph over bullying Muslim countries within the region. This line highlights how extraordinarily unprepared the Australian right wing is for the rapid realignment which is pushing Australia into the region and away from the traditional Western powers.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Will Facebook own up to Myanmar?

    • Erin Cook
    • 20 November 2018

    Social media drove the Arab Spring, the story goes. If it weren’t for viral posts in Tunisia setting off a cascade of dominoes across the region change would never have arrived. For a brief period, the arrival of social media giant Facebook in countries with low connectivity or strict freedom of the press and internet meant change was afoot.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    State of the death penalty in Southeast Asia

    • Erin Cook
    • 14 November 2018
    2 Comments

    With such a wide range of crimes under the death penalty banner, what will sentencing in the new Malaysia look like? And what timeline can be expected, given the government has a diverse suite of policy priorities for its first term.

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  • RELIGION

    Has Pope Francis sold out Chinese Catholics?

    • Erin Cook
    • 27 September 2018
    6 Comments

    On a pure numbers basis, China is one of the top 25 most Catholic countries on Earth. But like so much of China, large raw numbers don't equal power for minorities. A freshly inked and still secretive Provisional Agreement between the Chinese government and the Vatican promises to improve that. Believers aren't so sure.

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  • RELIGION

    Duterte vs God

    • Erin Cook
    • 13 July 2018
    3 Comments

    To mark two years as president of the Philippines, Duterte has taken on his biggest sparring partner yet. God now joins the likes of Barack Obama and the UN as targets in Duterte's ranting. It would be laughable if he hadn't spent his presidency turning the country into Revelations, where even priests are being gunned down in the streets.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump summit a PR coup for Kim

    • Erin Cook
    • 18 June 2018
    6 Comments

    There is no basis for this claim that, if the summit and its outcomes had occurred under Barack Obama, some have argued, those on the centre left would be cheering. The reality is, the summit would never have occurred, because no other president would have made the concession of a meeting at all for no apparent gain.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Lessons for Australia in Malaysia election shock

    • Erin Cook
    • 31 May 2018
    4 Comments

    The story has become the triumph of Mahathir Mohamad, himself part of the political elite as a former prime minister for two decades, and his opposition coalition. This is wrong. The real story is the mass-mobilisation of Malaysia's civil society in the face of anti-democratic moves at suppression.

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  • RELIGION

    Finding my religion in Indonesia

    • Erin Cook
    • 04 May 2018
    9 Comments

    The church has always been more about family than religion to me - my grandmother's grandmother did it all in Latin, but isn't it cool that we went through the same motions? - and I thought it always would. Then I got lucky: I moved to the world's most populous Muslim country.

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  • RELIGION

    Philippines needs pro-social justice church

    • Erin Cook
    • 17 January 2018
    4 Comments

    Though public health activists in the Philippines point to the church's influence in keeping sex education out of schools and contraceptive sales low as a major factor in the country's rising HIV rate, when it comes to taking on Duterte the church is the country's strongest progressive force. But that may be set to change.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia could be a SE Asia game-changer

    • Erin Cook
    • 29 November 2017
    5 Comments

    The bones of the foreign policy white paper, released last week by Julie Bishop, have been picked over by the country's leading international relations thinkers and the consensus is clear - the timing is right and we must act now. But we need a leader who is willing to put the work in.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia's tepid Rohingya response fails the region

    • Erin Cook
    • 19 October 2017
    8 Comments

    Australia's incoherent urge to 'lead' in the Asia Pacific while refusing to meaningfully reflect on the responsibilities this would require has left us floundering in the face of what the United Nations has called the 'ethnic cleansing' of Myanmar's minority Rohingya population.

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