News
Myanmar’s Women Are on the Front Lines Against the Junta
In recent weeks, Nandar has taken to cycling. Armed with a hard hat, a face mask, and a paper sign stuck to her bike showing the words “No to dictatorship, no to patriarchy,” the 26-year-old feminist activist spends most days traversing Yangon, Myanmar, as part ...
JESSIE LAU
Thailand’s Indigenous Peoples fight for ‘land of our heart’ (commentary)
On Sept. 3, 2019, the remains of Porlajee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen, a Karen environmental and community rights defender who was disappeared in 2014, were found in an oil drum submerged under the Kaeng Krachan dam suspension bridge in Phetchaburi, Thailand. Billy was last seen by his community while ...
Pirawan Wongnithisathaporn, Thomas Worsdell
For some the nightmare has returned, but for ethnic people the nightmare never stopped
When the military seized power on February 1, arresting elected National League for Democracy (NLD) leaders including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, the current nightmare started. The people of Myanmar already know what life is like under a military regime: No ...
Esther Wah
EU suspends development funds for Myanmar
The European Union has suspended its support for development projects in Myanmar to avoid providing financial assistance to the military after it seized power last month, officials said on Thursday. The 27-nation EU informed a committee of the World Trade Organization that it had put on ...
REUTERS
Big cats dwindling from Cambodia’s forests
Indochinese leopards and tigers seem to have disappeared from their natural habitat in Cambodia, a conservationist told Khmer Times yesterday. “There is no scientific evidence since the 2010s to give us hope as conservationists to believe that Indochinese leopards and tigers still survive,” said the Cambodian conservationist who ...
Sar Socheath
Laos Increases Electricity Costs Despite Producing More Electricity
State-run power companies in Laos are raising electricity prices, putting a squeeze on businesses suffering from the coronavirus pandemic shutdown and angering customers who say they deserve cheaper power after a decades-long hydroelectric dam building boom, sources in the country told RFA. The government of Laos ...
RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Mekong Delta braces for drought, salt intrusion
Learning it the hard way from last year’s drought and salinity, Mekong Delta farmers have been preparing their crops for the worst. Early March, Huynh Huu Loc, 62, comes to check the water level in canals around his family’s durian farm, which stretches 1,000 hectares (2,470 ...
Hoang Nam
As the Mekong delta washes away, homes and highways are being lost
One night two years ago, Lam Thi Le and Nguyen Van Thuong heard loud cracks coming from their neighbours’ riverfront home. The neighbours left, and a day later half of their house collapsed into the broad Tien River as the land beneath it slid away. The ...
Michael Tatarski
Govt urged to tax Mekong development projects
Local communities along the Mekong River are asking the government to establish a fund, made up of collected tax revenues from development projects on the waterway, to compensate villagers affected by them. “This fund [should] not be a corporate social responsibility scheme,” said Ormbun Thipsuna, president ...
APINYA WIPATAYOTIN
World Bank okays $86 mln for energy efficiency in Vietnam
The World Bank will provide Vietnam with $86.3 million to support the development of a commercial financing market for investing in industrial energy efficiency. The provision includes a $8.3 million grant used to build private sector capacity to execute energy efficiency projects, the bank said in ...
Dat Nguyen