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Keywords: Thailand

  • AUSTRALIA

    Hun Sen's Cambodia a mirage on the Mekong

    • Tony Kevin
    • 14 November 2014
    1 Comment

    Phnom Penh is a lively, bustling, often happy city of energetic and industrious people, with amazing growth statistics. In 2004 half of Cambodians lived in poverty, and by 2011 the figure had dropped to 20%. But this belies the terrible state of public health, the corruption in education, the abuse of human rights, and much more.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Slain El Salvador Jesuits paid price for their advocacy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 November 2014
    13 Comments

    Before the killing of five Jesuits and two of their employees in San Salvador exactly 25 years ago, the Jesuits had been advised to hide from the death squads. They decided it would be safe to stay at the University because it was surrounded by the army. But it was an elite army squadron that had been entrusted to kill them. The Salvadorean defence minister later described the decision to kill the Jesuits as the most stupid thing the Government had done. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cash for refugees shames both Australia and Cambodia

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 October 2014
    24 Comments

    Cambodia's agreement with Australia to receive refugees from Nauru is moving to implementation. The UN and other critics are saying it breaches Australia’s responsibility to provide protection for refugees. Clearly the Australian Government is doing it for the political benefit and Cambodia is in it for the money. It can be compared to surrogacy agreements in which poor Asian women are paid to bear children for wealthy Australian couples. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Wombs for rent

    • Ellena Savage
    • 05 September 2014
    5 Comments

    When Bill Heffernan said that Julia Gillard was unfit for leadership because she was 'deliberately barren', he didn't really err. He just named our preoccupation with motherhood. But is the drive to procreate so powerful and important that it should override the integrity of women in developing countries? Should it continue to be the defining quality of women?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    How to measure HIV stigma

    • Daniel Reeders
    • 02 September 2014
    6 Comments

    Global targets can be used to benchmark countries – but measuring a reduction in stigma is harder than it sounds. As one of my colleagues asked, 'what's the international standard unit for one stigma?'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    'Speak English or die'

    • Jake Dennis
    • 30 June 2014
    5 Comments

    I have to imagine what it would be like to be a refugee, to have fought the sea for safe loam, to starve while salt eats the ship, to thirst for fruit back home, to plea for life and water, to grow sores and wipe blood from our daughter's mouth. But no imagination is needed to witness ice and spit from an ignorant mouth ... I have known and have seen faces contorted like knuckles with hate; feet planted to fight for their version of country.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Cambodia's patchy refugee record

    • Denise Coghlan
    • 24 June 2014
    5 Comments

    In 2009 Cambodia enacted its own laws concerning refugees. If asylum seekers are found to be refugees they are given a prakas that allows them to stay legally in Cambodia but which is not accepted as a proof of identity by most employers, businesses and banks. The sense of insecurity of those seeking asylum is heightened by the memory of the 29 Uighur asylum seekers who in 1995 were deported from Cambodia to China at gun point.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Thai coup more of the same

    • Michael Kelly
    • 26 May 2014
    3 Comments

    The cycle of election, opposition protest, social and political instability that provokes a royal approved military intervention underlies how immature democracy is in Thailand. Unfortunately, in the medium term — the next five years — it will be 'same, same' unless there is a circuit breaker. That may come with the next trigger to instability which has to be set off sooner rather than later: the death of a very frail royal person.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia slips in generosity ranking

    • Paul O'Callaghan
    • 23 May 2014
    6 Comments

    Last week the Federal Government committed to a much smaller and 'just in our neighbourhood' aid program for the long term. This major shift sent a perplexing signal to the world, with Australia abandoning Africa's poorest at a time when Australian mining investment in Africa continues to boom.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    No Buddhist bullets in Thai turmoil

    • Paul Kay
    • 24 January 2014
    4 Comments

    It's often said in Thailand that the three pillars of Thai society are Buddhism, the monarchy and the nation, or political system. In recent months I've witnessed many noisy anti-government protests in Bangkok where political groups have been very visible. But amid the turmoil, Buddhism and the monarchy are notably absent. The low profile of the monarchy is easily explained. The absence of Buddhism is more puzzling.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Thailand tensions must rouse traumatised Coalition

    • Tony Kevin
    • 04 December 2013
    11 Comments

    We are witnessing a serious opposition-led threat to democratic process and respect for election results in Thailand. Possibly the Abbott Government is so traumatised as a result of its current tensions with Indonesia and China that it won't dare to open its mouth on Thailand. But this is a clear case where Australia should comment as a friend of Thailand and of its democratically elected government.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Coalition's car kill is crazy

    • Tony Kevin
    • 08 November 2013
    23 Comments

    The Coalition's impending destruction of the Australian car industry by calculated public stalling of decisions on government assistance is shaping up as its most disastrous high-visibility policy blunder. This industry — but none other — is to be wilfully abandoned as a victim of rigid free-market economic ideologies. It does not make sense, in economic, social or national security terms. This is Australia's version of US Tea Party budget brinkmanship.

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