Asia

By Stephanie Scawen in Asia on February 9th, 2012



Want to see vultures in the wild? You'd better be prepared to get up early. Like 4:30am early!

And if you want to get in real close, you'd also better be prepared to stand silently in a thatch-covered pit for four or five hours to get that 'special photo'.

At least that's what my cameraman Mark Giddens had to do to shoot the video for our story on Cambodia's last surviving vulture population.

Vultures can be spooked easily, hence the need for silence. But once they have decided to eat, there's no holding them back.

Tags: Cambodia
By Steve Chao in Asia on February 9th, 2012
A police station in Addu city burns as protesters maintain pressure on Thursday [AFP photo]

To the tourist, who has booked a vacation paradise, it is easy for him or her to never see the political turmoil that has gripped the tropical nation of the Maldives.

Upon arriving at the capital’s airport, sun seekers are often whisked away on private boats or charter jets to distant resorts on some of the country's 1200 remote islands.

Even as the unrest has spread beyond the capital of Male, it has mostly taken place on the larger islands, like Addu city, home to some 30,000 permanent residents.

There, police stations, courthouses and other government buildings were burned, as the island’s first democratically elected president, Mohammad Nasheed, announced that he was forced to resign, essentially at gunpoint, by the military in a "coup".

By Robin Forestier... in Asia on January 28th, 2012
A rare non-permitted opposition rally was held in Kazakhstan's capital on Saturday [Robin Forestier-Walker/Al Jazeera]

"We demand change!" cried Kazakhstan's All National Social Democratic Party (OSDP) leader Bolat Abilov at Saturday's unsanctioned opposition rally in Almaty. His party is protesting the results of parliamentary elections on January 15 which OSCE monitors declared flawed. The OSDP failed to win a seat.

I was reminded of Kino's Peremen (Changes), an iconic Soviet hit from 1986 that presaged the end of the USSR. "We demand change," went the song.

Slow progress since then was the view among the several hundred who had gathered in the minus-12 degree temperature snowy Almaty. Some even drew comparisons with 1937 - the start of Stalinist repression - and Kazakhstan in 2012.

Such views are not widely held, but fear is commonplace when it comes to political dissent.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on January 24th, 2012

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By Melissa Chan in Asia on January 23rd, 2012

It's the first day of the lunar new year in China. And what better way to celebrate than to kick off a four-part series on China's Communist Party?

This is the Year of the Dragon. The dragon is a great symbol of China, but its arrival actually portends bad luck and a challenging year ahead. 

By Marga Ortigas in Asia on January 22nd, 2012
File 58501
Al Jazeera/Marga Ortigas

The nightmare hadn’t changed much in a month. 

The main roads had been cleared as much as they could be, but everything else was still drenched in mud, dusted in debris, and dotted by mangled logs.

Everywhere you looked people were shovelling dislocated earth and salvaging what they could from the wreckage around them.

The above photo is of Iligan city after flash floods triggered by a tropical storm in December cascaded down denuded mountains and swelled silted rivers.

Thousands of homes were swept away in the middle of the night - and countless lives were destroyed.

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Al Jazeera/Marga Ortigas 
By Florence Looi in Asia on January 9th, 2012
Malaysia's opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim talks to his supporters [Reuters]

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been acquitted of sodomy, a charge he has always maintained was trumped up to discredit him and ruin him politically.

Anwar was accused of sodomising a male, former aide in 2008. The verdict was delivered in just under five minutes, a sharp contrast to the trial, which has been going on for two years.

The high court judge, Zabidin Diah, said he could not be 100 per cent certain that the DNA evidence had not been compromised, and that he was reluctant to convict on uncorroborated evidence.

As soon as the verdict was delivered, shouts of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great" rang out in the court room.

Outside the building, thousands of Anwar supporters who had gathered in the car park since early morning, erupted into cheers and whoops of joy.

Taken by surprise

The acquittal has taken most people by surprise.

By Prerna Suri in Asia on December 23rd, 2011
Photo: AP
It's Anna Hazare versus the Indian government yet again. 

The 74-year-old Gandhian activist is going on his third fast this year, demanding the government pass his version of a strong anti-corruption law. This, by the current session of parliament, which officially ends today. 

But the government is under pressure and that session has now been extended for three days from December 27-29.

Still, many say that it is not enough time to deliberate a historic legislation that could change the contours of corruption in this country. 

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Photo: AFP

I've been covering Hazare's fast since April this year. And while I've seen scores of ordinary Indians coming out on the streets in his support, the numbers increasingly swelling in his favour and rattling the government - the debate has also shifted against him.
By Marga Ortigas in Asia on December 22nd, 2011


I wanted to write something for the blogs from the devastation in the southern Philippines this week ... But I can't seem to find the words... 
 
Looking through old journals though, I found an entry written in China while on assignment there right after the earthquake in 2008.  

I find it's exactly what I'd like to share now - something I first learned in Gaza ... and Baghdad ... and it was reiterated years later in China, and more recently in Japan.
 
It echoes again here in the flood-ravaged areas of northern Mindanao.
 
23, May 2008
Chengdu, China 
By Robin Forestier... in Asia on December 19th, 2011
Kazakh Interior Ministry troops patrol past partially burnt buildings damaged in Friday's riots [Reuters]

The violence that took the lives of at least 14 people in Kazakhstan these past few days is nothing short of disastrous - for the families of the victims and for those who run this country.

The rioting may not have been entirely predictable or preventable. But it was surely possible to have avoided so many deaths.

Friday's rioting in the isolated western oil town of Zhanaozen was an explosion after months and months of peaceful protest by men and women on the main square that had gotten them nowhere. 

They had lost their jobs with state oil company KazMunaiGas for a strike action found illegal by the courts, but they wanted to keep their dignity. Protest, as far as they were concerned, was the only means possible.

It seems neither the workers nor KazMunaiGas was able to hold meaningful talks. NGOs like Human Rights Watch expressed concern that there was no fair legal mechanism to resolve the dispute.

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