Woman beheaded, others tortured in PNG witch hunt-Amnesty

By Alisa Tang

BANGKOK (TrustLaw) - The latest witch hunt in Papua New Guinea’s South Bougainville district was triggered by the death of a former teacher, a man. As often happens in this southwest Pacific nation, villagers looking for the cause of a respected man’s death last week grabbed their firearms, knives and axes and tracked down the ‘witches’ they held responsible — all women.

One woman - a retired school teacher and prominent women’s advocate - was beheaded, said Kate Schuetze, Brisbane-based Pacific researcher for Amnesty International.

Another woman - who suffered a severe laceration to her neck and is coughing up blood - and her two daughters remain captive in the village, Schuetze said. Three others have been taken to a medical centre in Bana district, where Lopele is located.

“We’ve today issued an urgent call on the Papua New Guinea government and regional police to allocate all necessary resources to ensure the safety of those six women,” she said on Wednesday in a telephone interview from Brisbane.

The Lopele witch hunt is not an isolated incident: When misfortune or death befall the tribal communities of Papua New Guinea, accusations of witchcraft, sorcery and black magic are commonly made, often ending with a witch hunt, torture and killing. The accused are usually women - sometimes the oldest or weakest, maybe a widow, and at other times, the strongest who has fought for women’s rights.

To help the captives in Lopele, the government sent one policeman.

“The response of the police to this and other appalling similar incidents in Bougainville and Papua New Guinea has so far been seriously inadequate,” Schuetze said.

DEEP-ROOTED BELIEF

Papua New Guinea’s 6.5 million people are among the world’s most heterogeneous populations, many of them subsistence farmers living in small communities that speak one of the country’s 800-plus languages.

Disputes over land, women and even pigs have sparked tribal conflict and even civil war in parts of the country, while domestic violence and violence against women are widespread.

Sorcery, black magic and witchcraft are ingrained in the culture, as are the punishments meted out.

“It’s a very big problem. It’s a very sensitive issue… (Christian) churches are trying to address the problem, but it’s very deeply rooted in the belief system of the people,” said Jack Urame, director of the Melanesian Institute in Papua New Guinea’s Eastern Highlands province.

The institute has extensively researched sorcery, and Urame says he reads about a murder in the newspapers at least once a month. While there are male victims, the majority are women.

“Normally when people die of sickness or disease, people blame sorcery or witchcraft. Even medical reasons, people don’t believe,” Urame told TrustLaw by telephone.

“The traditional belief is very, very strong… This is the way people see the world. It’s the way they explain sickness and death in their own cultural belief system.”

It is so strong that it is enshrined in law in the 1971 Sorcery Act, which punishes those practising sorcery with up to two years in prison and allows murderers to appeal against their sentences by alleging black magic was involved.

“The government is trying to repeal the old Sorcery Act and come up with something completely new to criminalise sorcery killings,” Urame said.

“It will take a long time. It’s a matter of awareness and education… The entire community is behind these sorts of things, and the police feel powerless. According to the people, to remove a sorcerer or witch is protecting the community. That is their belief.”

JUSTICE AND RIGHT TO LIFE

In February, 20-year-old Kepari Leniata was burned alive in front of a crowd in the central city of Mount Hagen by relatives of a 6-year-old boy she was accused of using sorcery to kill. Law enforcement officials tried to intervene, but failed, according to a statement from the UN human rights office.

After Leniata’s death, “local people started to say, maybe we should be speaking out about this,” and that might mark a turning point, said Schuetze, who recently returned from a month-long research trip in Papua New Guinea for Amnesty.

PNG’s Constitutional and Law Reform Commission called on the government in March to repeal the Sorcery Act, while the Cabinet last week approved the Family Protection Bill.

Amnesty urged the government to follow through on both measures, by repealing the sorcery law and implementing the Family Protection Bill as a measure to prevent violence against women. The government also must ensure that police do their job, it said.

Burmese refugee camps built with materials that fuel fire

Children walk through ruins of the burnt Ban Mae Surin refugee camp in Thailand’s northern Mae Hong Son province, March 23, 2013. The blaze killed 37 refugees and left 2,300 homeless. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

By Alisa Tang

BANGKOK (AlertNet) - No one knows yet what sparked the fire two weeks ago in the remote Burmese refugee camp in northern Thailand, but what is clear is that the refugees’ makeshift bamboo-and-leaf thatch homes stood no chance against the flames.

As the midsummer wind swept through the area, the leaf thatch roofing fuelled the inferno, leaving 37 dead and two-thirds of the residents homeless in the worst tragedy ever to hit the camps. Their clinics, hospital, pharmacy and food storage buildings were also lost.

“We’ve never had such a death toll in the entire 29 years of the camps. We’ve been through fires, attacks, shelling,  mortars. We’ve had 12 camps burnt down in attacks” by the Burmese army across the border, said Sally Thompson, executive director of The Border Consortium (TBC), the NGO that manages shelters in Ban Mae Surin in Mae Hong Son province.

“It really is a tragedy when it is such a small community as well. The whole camp is 3,500 people, and 2,300 have lost everything.”

There are currently 140,000 Burmese ethnic minority people living in the nine official refugee camps in Thailand’s border areas. They have fled their homes in Myanmar since the mid-1980s whenever conflict between the Burmese army and ethnic minorities flares.

Although the refugees have been here for decades, the Thai government, which has granted them temporary asylum, forbids them from building shelters with materials that might suggest putting down roots for a permanent stay - ruling out widely available durable, non-flammable construction materials, and leaving bamboo and leaves from the forest.

“THE CAMP IS A TINDERBOX”

So each year, several months into the December-to-April dry season, the nine Burmese refugee camps along the border suffer as stray sparks from cooking accidents or nearby brush fires set a leaf thatch roof on fire.

Sometimes a few homes are lost, sometimes more. In February 2012, a massive fire in a camp in northwestern Thailand destroyed 1,000 homes, but the refugees were able to escape to safety, and there were no major casualties.

“It does happen because at this time of the year the camps are overcrowded, and the houses are made of temporary material  - bamboo and roof thatch,” Thompson told AlertNet in a telephone interview.

“It’s very hot, you get very high wind, and the camp is a tinderbox at this time of year. All you can do is pull it down as quickly as possible. Because (Ban Mae Surin) camp is so far, it’s not realistic to think that the fire trucks can get here in time. The community knows that the first course of action is to tear down the building that’s burning.”

Each house is equipped with a long bamboo stick with a metal hook on the end, so when the thatch roof catches fire, they quickly tear it down. The refugees practice evacuation drills and keep the camp clean to prevent rubbish fires, but there is a limit to prevention in these conditions, with these materials.

“A major issue is the type of material used for construction of the refugees’ homes, i.e. bamboo walls and leaf thatch roofing,” Vivian Tan, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), told AlertNet by email. “This was a major factor in the rapid spread of the fire in Ban Mae Surin.”

In the fire that late afternoon on March 22, as refugees rushed to put out the flames engulfing Ban Mae Surin’s healthcare and food storage buildings, a strong wind swept through the valley, wafting burning debris east across a river that runs through the camp to a densely packed residential area and trapping dozens of refugees.

In front of them, flames blocked them from the river. Behind them rose a steep hill - too steep to climb to safety.

The dead included 10 children, four disabled adults and an 80-year-old woman. With 400 houses burnt down, another 2,300 people were homeless.

FIRE-RETARDANT ROOFING

To use any “permanent” materials - even cement, to build stronger foundations in this termite-infested region - the camps need permission from the Thai government.

After the most recent fire in Ban Mae Surin, TBC again asked the Interior Ministry to allow the use of non-flammable metal roofing.

“If we can replace new housing with tin roofs,  that will reduce the fire risk. We tried to do that last year in Umpiem Mai, but it was turned down. We’re trying again now, and we’re hoping we’ll be able to replace with tin,” Thompson said. “The government in Mae Hong Son (province) is considering it favourably… It would be a practical solution, and it will reduce fire risk.”

An Interior Ministry official based in Bangkok acknowledged that the leaf roof was a main problem. “The wind was strong, and the houses have leaf roofs which burn easily,” she said on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

As for using flame-retardant building materials, she said “The ministry is in charge of this matter, and we have to wait for their policy.”

Meanwhile, the UNHCR has delivered more than 800 plastic sheets, 60 family-sized tents, 1,200 blankets and 1,200 sleeping mats as emergency assistance.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which manages the camp healthcare, lost its maternity clinic, hospital and store of medicines. IRC country director Christine Petrie said the organisation will need at least $500,000 to rebuild health facilities, and water and sanitation infrastructure in the camp.

TBC has launched an emergency appeal to raise $433,000 to replace food, homes and community buildings destroyed by the fire.

Climate Conversations - Look to the skies for clean water

When the monsoon season downpours come, my neighbours pull out a large pipe to connect the rain gutter on their roof to several large waist-high cement urns in their yard. On drier days, they have water to wash and water their plants, and though we live on a small island surrounded by the pollution of Bangkok, they even drink the water they collect.

“It’s cleaner because it has been filtered by the sky. Piped water has to be cleaned at the plant - how can that beat being cleaned by the sky? This is pure,” 60-year-old Preecha Lokim, the grandfather next door tells me, pointing to their nearly two-decade-old urns.

As climate change triggers more severe droughts, floods and storms across Asia, traditional rainwater collection could be one solution to the shortages of drinking, washing and irrigation water disasters often bring.

To naysayers who argue the rainwater must be polluted with all the industry and pollution around Bangkok, Preecha grumbles about the dead dogs floating in the canals of the metropolitan waterworks and the numerous steps it takes to get that water to a potable state - the chlorine, the filtration. The stench from Bangkok’s canals is sometimes unbearable.

“How can that be clean?” he asks. Yet he and his family say they are among the few in this neighbourhood who still collect rainwater. While the Lokim family adheres to the centuries-old tradition, others have shifted to piped water.

Yet rainwater appears to be making a comeback in some parts of the country affected by drought this year. In southern Trang province, the Thai-language newspaper Daily News reported that one urn-maker saw orders more than double this dry season, from 300 a month in November to 700 a month since February.

WATER MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

In the aftermath of disasters, aid agencies haul bottled water and enormous tanker trucks full of water to distribute to affected people. But rainwater collection could be a more sustainable response, especially in countries with good rainfall.

“In places that have rainfall, it should be a solution. At least you would have a reserve. Rain is clean, as long as you are trained to not use the first and second flush, but then it’s good,” said Wilas Techo, vice president of thePopulation and Community Development Association (PDA), a Thai NGO that has installed about 20,000 rainwater collection systems in poor communities across the country since the mid-1980s.

“Thailand is not a dry country. When it rains here, every region gets high rainfall. The problem with Thailand is only water management and having water reservoirs so we have water in the dry season.”

Collecting rainwater helps people “survive during the dry season independently” without relying on the government, Wilas told AlertNet.

“Not having water for one day is worse than missing food for a day. If people can become self sufficient, then they can help themselves, at least to drink, instead of saving money to buy water. When there is free water from nature, why not use that?”

In the 1980s, PDA led a campaign to install rainwater-harvesting systems for homes and schools in poor communities, particularly in the northeast, which suffers months of drought each year. They also trained some villagers to make water-collection urns.

For an eight-person household with a decent cement roof catchment area, PDA built an 11.3 cubic-metre cement tank, 3.6 metres tall and 2 metres in diameter. This, they calculated, would be enough during the five-month dry season for drinking, washing, cooking, bathing and watering a few plants.

Most villages across Thailand have piped water systems, either from a groundwater system, which is still in use in parts of the island where I live, or from the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority, which installed piping to reach my house two years ago.

With piped water, as well as the availability of bottled water and potable-water filling machines, rainwater is falling by the wayside in communities like mine.

Since 2010, PDA has been sharing its rainwater harvesting knowledge in rural parts of Laos, though they’re starting with giant urns first, because the communities where they are work have mostly thatch-roofed homes.

They now want to share their 30 years of rainwater collection expertise with communities in Cambodia and Myanmar - places with a climate much like Thailand’s.

COVET THY NEIGHBOUR’S WATER

The water from my neighbours’ urns tastes pure.

They hold off collecting for the first few rains, to let the water wash from the roof the bird and rodent droppings, dead leaves and dust that collected over the dry season. Then when a big rain comes, Preecha waits a few minutes - to let the gutters and pipes get a brief clean - before connecting the pipe to their urn. A big rain across a decent-sized rooftop can easily fill an urn in an hour.

They wait a year for the debris in the water to settle, and then use a rubber tube to vacuum the gunk from the bottom of the urn.

Somnuk fills a pitcher from the urn and pours the water through a cloth to put it into bottles that go into their refrigerator.

For several days during the 2011 floods that inundated more than a third of Thailand’s provinces, my water was turned off because the waterworks plant that services my community was hit. I eyed my neighbours’ urns with envy. The rains were plenty, obviously, and their urns were full.

My husband and I left the faucet on, so that we could hear when the water came back on, and as soon as the tap sputtered, we filled every container we could with water to drink, brush our teeth, cook, wash dishes and bathe. Fortunately we have a dry composting toilet, so no flush water was needed.

When the floods ended, I vowed I would figure out a rainwater-harvesting system. I missed the 2012 monsoon, and the next round of rains is coming soon.

Photo by Alisa Tang

Anti-Corruption Views - Tweeting toward a corruption-free Thailand?

By Alisa Tang

When an official in this Bangkok suburb of Samut Prakan asked British blogger Richard Barrow for 1,000 baht ($33) to finalise some tax documents, the longtime Thailand resident requested a receipt.

The official refused to give one, and conceded that the money was to buy lunch for him and his staff. Barrow then pulled out his iPhone and outed the bribe-demanding official, complete with photo, to his 22,000-plus Twitter followers.

“Unbelievable. This revenue officer wants me to pay him 1,000B before he will release my tax documents. I’ve refused,” Barrow tweeted as he left the man’s office on Monday morning.

Twenty-six minutes later, Barrow tweeted that the official, anxious to have his picture deleted from the Internet, had backed down: “Success against corruption. Price for my tax documents has gone down from 1,000 Baht to 260 Baht with receipt.”

Bribery and corruption pervade all levels of Thai society - from the cash paid for traffic offences and government permits - to the grand-scale leakage that plagues infrastructure projects. Barrow’s blow-by-blow account on Twitter illustrates one way people can fight back.

“FOREIGNER = MONEY”

Barrow’s visit to the Department of Revenue office was part of his annual task of collecting paperwork to renew his Thai visa.

Barrow moved to Thailand 19 years ago to teach at a local private school and has been here since, heading the school’s computer department for some time, and now managing its online social media and training teachers. He also runs a company that produces dozens of travel- and news-related web sites.

His Twitter followers and social media friends multiplied when he began to report on-the-ground news snippets from the so-called “Red Shirt” political protests in 2010 and the massive floods that inundated the country a year later.

Yet in his nearly two decades here, he says he “never faced any corruption” until he came up against the official this week.

“He must have seen I was a foreigner and tried to get some money out of me,” Barrow told TrustLaw on Thursday, when he felt more at ease to talk about his case because he had successfully submitted the paperwork to get his visa earlier in the day.

After Barrow took a picture of the official, he changed his tune in the hope that Barrow would take the image down. Seven minutes after the photo tweet, Barrow tweeted a second time: “I’m sorry, but I have zero tolerance for corruption in government offices. We’re now at a stand-off. He wants me to delete the pic I took.”

But after one hour, his Twitter post had already been re-tweeted 62 times, reaching 621,634 people.

Then Thai media picked up the story, and the British ambassador to Thailand, Mark Kent, chimed in on his own Twitter feed: “@RichardBarrow UK Bribery Act applies to UK citizens overseas. We encourage any UK citizen who is asked for a bribe to report it.”

Kent later commented on Barrow’s Twitter feed with a link to the law.

RECEIPT TRUMPS CORRUPTION

As of Thursday night, Barrow’s post had been re-tweeted 277 times.

He admits he was nervous he might be refused a visa and kicked out of Thailand. On Monday, after learning that Thai media had reported on the incident, he expressed his fears on Twitter.

“What’s the chance that I will be the one to get into trouble for this? Thai officials don’t like losing face & could cause trouble for me,” he wrote, followed five minutes later with: “I have this sinking feeling that Immigration will refuse to renew my visa now & they will kick me out of the country :-( ”

Barrow told me he feels he took a “calculated risk” when he snapped the photo and posted it, and that he was saved, in a way, by his high profile in Thailand.

Yet when I asked him for the moral of the story, he made no mention of social media or Twitter, and instead sang the praises of the good old paper receipt.

“Always insist on having a proper receipt, and stand your ground. Insist on knowing where the money’s going, and what it’s for, and we can cut down on corruption. Don’t pay the bribe.”

The British ambassador has contacted Barrow to talk to him about the incident. Meanwhile, Barrow is waiting for his visa to come through.

(Source: trust.org)

INTERVIEW – New watchdog group takes aim at corruption in Thailand

By Alisa Tang

BANGKOK (TrustLaw) - As corruption and bribery in Thailand reach new heights, a business-led watchdog group has set out to combat the problem with an ambitious strategy targeting the government, companies and even schoolchildren.

The ‘integrity pact’ - drafted by the Anti-Corruption Organisation of Thailand (ACT) and the finance ministry and based on a tool promoted by Transparency International - would forbid bribes and would open up the government’s bidding process. Government and companies bidding for government business would have to adhere to the rules.

Transport Minister Chadchart Sittipunt has said he supports the proposal and his ministry, which handles the bulk of the government budget, may approve the project in the coming weeks. If it does, any company working on projects under the ministry’s remit would have to sign up to the pact.

Pramon Sutivong, chairman of ACT, which comprises 47 organisations from the private, public and academic sectors, believes transport ministry approval would be a significant first step in the fight to curb corruption.

“More and more people are involved (in corruption), not only the politicians, but now even government officials are part of the process … It is demanded by politicians that in order for contractors to get a project, they have to pay,” he told TrustLaw in an interview last week.

The government has set aside 4 trillion baht ($134 billion) for transportation and infrastructure projects over the next seven years and 300 billion baht ($10 billion) for flood prevention and management. Pramon said 10 to 25 percent of those funds could be lost to currupt practices and so achieving an integrity pact was crucial.

“It’s a huge amount that could leak because of corruption,” he said.

A recent survey of businesses conducted by the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce found that as much as 329 billion baht was likely to be lost to corruption this year. Most survey respondents reported paying bribes to the tune of 25 percent of the total value of projects, up from 6 to 15 per cent a few years ago.

According to Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, Thailand ranked 88th out of 176 countries in 2012, down from 80th a year earlier.

NO MORE SELECT FEW

The integrity pact proposal has also gone before the finance ministry and, subject to full cabinet approval, every government agency could be forced to sign up.

“(Corruption) may not completely stop because I’m sure there are still ways and means for people to try to go under this kind of thing somehow, but I think it will make life difficult for those who want to cheat,” said Pramon, who has held executive and board positions at numerous companies including Siam Cement Group and Toyota Motors Thailand.

As part of the pact, government agencies would have to declare that they would not accept bribes or give special privileges to any party involved in bidding. They would also have to make bidding information - such as the terms of reference and the cost of the project - publicly and easily available.

“This seems simple, but [currently] it’s only available to the select few. You can go and ask for it, but it’s a lot of headache,” Pramon said.

The bidders would be required to sign the pact or otherwise not qualify to bid. Under the pact, they would agree to disclose income and expenses for the particular project, and to not collude for an unfair advantage. The pact would allow for a third party to investigate and to give final approval on the completed project.

Pramon said he had yet to hear any grumbling about ACT’s efforts, but he believed a lot of people were against the integrity pact.

“Among the contractors, among the major construction companies, I’m sure many do not want this because they enjoy the privilege. They can buy their way in and they have enough money to take advantage of the system,” he said. “If they collude with government officials and politicians, then they get the project.”

A NEW MIND-SET

ACT has created short awareness videos that air on public television. It has trained volunteers across the country to spot and report corruption.

While it has no authority to prosecute, it screens cases and then passes them on to the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

ACT has also started a school programme called, “Go straight, don’t cheat,” to shape children’s attitudes and end public acceptance of corruption.

According to Pramon, ACT hopes Thailand will one day be more like Singapore or Hong Kong - which rank 5th and 14th, respectively, on the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index.

“In our vision statement, we said that we are working so that we can change the thinking of the people - not to accept corruption, not to accept that corruption is permissible. That is our final hope.”

(Source: trust.org)

Thai deputy PM condones cops asking shops for new year cash

By Alisa Tang

BANGKOK (TrustLaw) - A Thai deputy prime minister condoned cops demanding cash for the Chinese New Year - a practice he says he could not possibly ban because it is traditional.

Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung - a former policeman whose son emerged unscathed from a murder trial - told reporters that he could never stop ethnic Chinese Thais giving police the traditional red “ang pao” envelopes of money.

“If they want to give ang pao, it is not wrong… If police pass by, they call them in to pick it up,” Chalerm told reporters outside Government House on Tuesday.

“Even if I were born again as deputy prime minister another hundred times, I would not be able to fix it because most Chinese offer it themselves,” he said, noting that the money gifts had been the norm even when he was a trainee policeman 40 years ago. “Asking for ang pao is not a serious crime. This would be called inappropriate, but not wrong.”

The issue arose after policemen in central Bangkok were caught on a security camera demanding a bribe. This, Chalerm said, was indeed wrong.

“Why would they ask them?” he said. “Chinese New Year is for Chinese people. They went to ask Indians - not smart. They went to the wrong place.”

Thailand is rife with corruption, and bribery is common, with police, politicians and family members who are charged with crimes usually getting off lightly, benefiting from a culture of impunity that infuriates ordinary Thais.

In one such case Chalerm’s son, Duang Yubamrung, was acquitted in 2004 of shooting dead a policeman in a packed nightclub because of  insufficient evidence.

Sitting in the cabinet alongside Chalerm is Culture Minister Sonthaya Khumploem, whose father was rearrested last month after fleeing following his murder conviction in 2004. Somchai Khunploem, a politician and businessman in eastern Chonburi province, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for masterminding the murder of a rival politician.

Left Behind: New study shows impact of parental migration on kids and their carers

Each morning, the elderly women of the sleepy farming village Ban Tabaek hop on their motorcycles or plod along rural roads to drop off their grandchildren at the local preschool or at the elementary school. The women tuck a few coins into the children’s pockets for snacks and head home, then return in the afternoon to pick up their charges.

In this village _ as in many parts of Isan _ a majority of the children’s parents have left them behind for jobs in Thailand’s urban centres, leaving the grandparents _ usually the maternal grandmother _ to take care of their offspring.

“About 80% of the children here live with their grandparents. The grandparents come to pick the children up from school, and the parents only come home to plant and harvest the rice,” said 32-year-old Runee Srihan, a teacher at Ban Tabaek Day Care Centre and one of the few younger adults in the village. “If you go into the neighbourhoods, there are only elderly people and children.”

A 2006 study by the Thai government and Unicef found that 17.5% of Thai children _ whose parents are still alive _ are not living with their parents.

In Isan, where many parents migrate for work, almost a quarter (24%) of children are not living with their parents.

This compares with 18% in northern Thailand, 13% in the central region and 8% in the south.

“The sheer scale of the phenomenon of children left behind by internal migration in Thailand is remarkable compared with other countries that are at the same level of development,” said Andrew Claypole, chief of the social policy section for Unicef Thailand.

“Migration in search of better opportunities is a global and historical fact, but parents usually hope it will be short-lived and that the family can eventually be reunited, either by returning to the home village or by bringing their children to live with them,” Claypole noted.

“But in Thailand, it has somehow become normal for the separation to become long-term, if not a permanent situation.”

Unicef supported Mahidol University’s Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) to study the phenomenon, focusing on separated children and their caretakers.

The survey _ which covered 1,456 children aged eight to 15 and their care-takers in Khon Kaen province in Isan and in Phitsanulok province in the North _ found that migrant parents live apart from their children for an average of eight years. However, the impact of this long absence, according to the study, was not immediately clear.

Less than a third of the children reported missing their parents, and there were few differences between children of non-migrant parents and of migrant parents with respect to indicators such as school performance, psychological problems and physical health.

Aree Jampaklay, research team leader and associate professor at Mahidol, noted the inconclusive findings were not entirely surprising.

”The well-being of children as the result of parental absence is potentially a long-term process that cannot be captured by our study, which is a snapshot,” Aree said. ”This may be particularly true with respect to emotional well-being, which is too sensitive to discover using a quantitative survey. One can look at many aspects of a child’s life to examine whether the absence of parents matters. And our study only captures a part of it.”

Unicef’s Claypole emphasised that there is a definite cause for concern.

”If millions of children in Thailand were separated from their parents for years on end due to a natural disaster or an armed conflict, it would rightly be considered a national emergency, even if their basic needs were being met,” he said. ”And yet, this separation is the daily reality for more than two million poor children in rural Thailand.”

In villages like Ban Tabaek, the youngest of these separated children clearly suffer from poor nutrition and emotional problems.

”Children who live with grandparents are often more scared and fussy, but children who live with their parents are more confident,” said Runee. ”These children are so scared that the grandmothers have to stay with them at school during their first week, otherwise they cry until they are red in the face and they throw up.”

Across the village, several grandmothers said their daughters and daughters-in-law breastfeed their newborns for only a month or a week, then leave to work in the city.

Earning income for the family is often given as the main reason for internal migration, and indeed most parents do send money _ 66% of households received money from migrant parents monthly, while 10% received money more often than 12 times a year, although 2.5% of households received none.

However, the amounts sent are not large. The average remittance was approximately 45,000 baht for the past year. One quarter of migrants sent less than 24,000 baht for the entire year, and a further half sent between 24,000 and 59,000 baht home. While welcome, these remittances have only a limited impact on alleviating household poverty.

The financial struggle is apparent at the day-care centre, where Runee sees grandparents feeding the children water mixed with sweetened condensed milk or sweet artificial syrups, or water from boiled rice that is enhanced with sugar and salt _ all lacking in nutritional value.

These children often weigh less, have pale, yellow skin and black teeth, she said.

In elementary school, teachers said children raised by their grandparents quickly adapt to rules and regulations to fit in with their peers, but by high school, delinquency and truancy surface.

”Children who are left behind by their parents have psychological problems,” said Ruangrawit Phayuhathamrongrat, principal at the secondary school of Phlapphla Chai district, where the village of Ban Tabaek is located.

”They have problems making friends or become friends with the wrong people. Sometimes they befriend people who aren’t from this area, they become addicted to drugs or become pregnant. Some of these children drop out of school, or they don’t attend.”

Yet it is in the homes and lives of the children and their caretakers where the parents are most sorely missed.

Boon Homhuan raised her own five children and then went on to take care of 10 grandchildren who have been left behind by parents that migrated for work. The amount of money the parents send home is insufficient.

”Each day, I make two pots of rice, and then I watch them eat it all up, clean,” the 65-year-old grandmother said through betel-nut blackened teeth. ”Some of the parents send money, some don’t. When I have to make food for them, sometimes there’s not enough _ I can only mix in a little bit of chillies and some fish. Sometimes I have to split one egg among five children.”

Dressed in a traditional sarong, she sat in the space under her stilted wooden house, with several other grandmothers voicing similar woes. Raising the grandchildren has been such a challenge that two of Boon’s boys have been shipped off to a state-supported boarding school, and a step-grandson has been sent to a temple to live with Buddhist monks, while a 14-year-old granddaughter has run away from home and found work in Bangkok.

Many young children in Ban Tabaek cannot express their feelings about their absent parents, but with older children, the sadness is clear.

Eleven-year-old Pu, who lives with her paternal grandparents, has not seen her mother since she was a child and cannot even recall her face.

”I miss my father. I see him about once a year. I never see my mother,” she said one morning at the Ban Tabaek elementary school. She lives with a cousin who has also been left in the grandparents’ care.

Asked if her parents call her on occasion or if she visits them, Pu responded simply and quietly: ”No.”

To read the report, Children Living Apart From Parents Due To Internal Migration, visitwww.ipsr.mahidol.ac.th/ipsr/Research/CLAIM/CLAIM-Report.htm

Photo by Athit Perawongmetha

(Source: bangkokpost.com)

Thailand: Children trafficked to sell flowers and beg

PAK KRED, 4 June 2012 (IRIN) - In an impoverished town in Thailand near the border with Myanmar, a trafficker offered a desperate Burmese widow 5,000 baht (US$160) on the spot, followed by an additional 4,000 baht ($120) per month for two of her 10 children to sell flowers in the Thai capital, Bangkok. The rent-a-child deal was to last three months, after which the boys would return home.  

But the deadline passed and the monthly payments stopped. After another three months the older brother, 10-year-old Ongsi, ran away and managed to make his way home to tell his mother they had to return to the capital to rescue 8-year-old Siyathon from a life of late-night flower selling and beatings. 

Their case is not unusual. Across the city of more than 10 million, little Burmese vendors sell flowers and Cambodian children beg money from motorists, tourists and bar crawlers. 

“Most of these children are not Thai,” said Witanapat Rutanavaleepong, who manages the Stop Child Begging project for the Mirror Foundation, a leading Thai NGO that has become a focal point for child trafficking. 

He estimates there are at least 1,000 child beggars and flower sellers working in cities and tourist spots around the country. Since he began working with the Mirror Foundation two years ago, Witanapat has come across only one case involving three Thai children, although he handles up to 30 cases a month. The problem remains intractable in the capital. 

“Thailand has a problem with child begging that is hard to solve because the authorities do not see it as a problem that affects their [the children’s] future or society,” Witanapat said. “They see them as only child beggars, but the girls and some boys often go on to become sex workers, and the boys often become traffickers themselves.” 

Rescue and arrest 

The initial journey from their village to Bangkok was harrowing, said Siyathon, who speaks Thai fluently although he is Burmese. “I spent the night in the forest, walked for a day, and then a truck took me to a gas station where a taxi brought me to the house [where I stayed],” he told IRIN at a boys’ shelter in Pak Kred in Nonthaburi Province, a northern suburb of Bangkok. His brother joined him soon afterwards. “If we sold well, we were not beaten, but even if we sold 2,000 or 3,000 baht ($60 or $95) worth, it still wasn’t enough.” 

One day, Ongsi, his older brother, managed to escape with some friends, and eventually made his way home to Mae Sot Province, several hundred kilometres away. 

Ongsi returned to Bangkok with his mother, but they were unable to find Siyathon on their own and sought help from the Mirror Foundation and the police, who sent plainclothes officers to an area known for trafficking children. In late April they spotted a child who fitted the description. 

“One female officer called out his name, ‘Siyathon!’ and he turned to face her. We found him,” said Lt. Col. Choosak Apaipakdi, of the police anti-human trafficking division. “When the owner of the home followed the boy out, we assumed she was the trafficker. Police confronted and arrested her.” 

Child exploitation 

The United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP), said the number of children begging and selling flowers remains unclear, but the problem is significant. Lisa Rende Taylor, chief technical advisor for UNIAP for Southeast Asia, said children are being rented or sold by their families or guardians, and then controlled in order to make money for someone, and whether or not permission was granted, these children are victims of trafficking. 

“The definition of child trafficking is essentially the act of recruiting, harbouring, or receiving a child for the purpose of exploitation. The child could go along with it, the parents at home could go along with it - it doesn’t matter - there does not need to be deception or force. If it is a child, if someone receives and controls them, it is trafficking,” Rende Taylor said. “You just have to walk the streets of Bangkok or Pattaya [a resort town] to know that this is still an issue.” 

The typical payment for a rented child is reportedly around $25 a month, she said. However, it is hard to crack down on the trade when there is a “revolving door at the border”, and a focus on the children rather than on the criminal perpetrators. 

According to the US State Department, Thailand remains a source, destination, and transit country for trafficking men, women and children. Most of the trafficked victims identified in Thailand are from neighbouring countries like Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, and have been forced, coerced, or defrauded into labour or commercial sexual exploitation. 

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(Source: irinnews.org)

Vietnam’s mangroves trees threatened by rising tide of deforestation

Clearances could contribute to coastal erosion and prove a missed opportunity to prevent climate change 

Alisa Tang | Guardian Weekly

Standing at the entrance to Lang Co town hall, 69-year-old Mai Truc Lam gestured to the two-story building, the sun-drenched parking lot and two-lane road in front, and described the small coastal community as it once was. 

“We are standing in an area that used to be mangroves,” the weathered fisherman said, and then described the negative impact deforestation has wrought on the area’s sea life. “Now, we do not see some species of fish here anymore.”

A few minutes’ drive away, on a sliver of sand that forms the Lap An Lagoon on the central coast of Vietnam, lies a modest grove of trees – some evergreens that shed a path of soft needles, and where the land meets the sea, Lang Co’s few remaining hectares of mangroves, perched above the water upon their stilted, flying buttress-like roots.

Some of the mangrove trees have torpedo-shaped seeds, which have poked into the ground and given birth to a new generation of delicate seedlings, all too easily trampled upon by oblivious passersby. Yet these remaining mangroves face the threat of being razed entirely to make way for a golf course as part of local economic development plans – part of a global development trend that has seen the clearance of as much as 50% of the world’s mangroves over the past half a century.

Mangroves grow along the ocean coasts of 118 countries – with a quarter of the world’s 40m hectares being in south-east Asia – but with widespread deforestation due to population pressure, expansion of shrimp farms and development, scientists fear mangroves may disappear altogether in as little as 100 years. At their best, mangroves form a vast coastal barrier of trunks and roots against the sea, controlling erosion, protecting communities from storms, and providing an environment for greater fish diversity.

Furthermore, scientists last year unveiled research pointing to mangrove forests as ideal repositories for carbon storage – containing an average of 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare, compared with 300 tonnes per hectare of tropical forest – which could help to fight climate change by keeping carbon locked away on land and out of the atmosphere. The scientists found that most of the carbon in mangrove forests – 49% to 98% – is stored below ground in thick, tidally submerged soil in which decomposition is anaerobic in the absence of oxygen. Yet with mangrove conservation up against economic development, the more obvious path to money wins.

“My sense in Lang Co, and in provinces across Vietnam, is that economic development has become a driving force so dominant that environmental precautions have fallen by the wayside,” said Evan Fox, a coastal planning consultant. “In villages where local governments are searching for ways to bolster their economic output, it is difficult to justify preservation of an area if managers and local people cannot discern its tangible benefit.”

There are laws that protect the forests and mangroves in Vietnam, but enforcement can be lax, rendering such regulations impotent. “My interpretation is that it’s illegal but everything is negotiable in Vietnam and since there is no consequence for breaking the law (at least in the environmental domain), mangroves get cut. Anyway, since there are so many conflicting laws, you can probably legalise what you’ve done by reference to a previous law,” said Jake Brunner, programme co-ordinator for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Vietnam.

Shrimp farms have been one of the big drivers behind mangrove loss. A 2011 analysis of images of Vietnam’s southern Mekong delta – an area that is typically mangroves – found that from 1973 to 2008, more than half of the mangroves were converted into shrimp farms, causing serious erosion. Nonetheless, communities and governments have taken little notice of the protective services that mangroves provide until a disaster of epic proportions strikes – such as the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed some 180,000 people in western Indonesia’s Aceh province.

“In Aceh, after the tsunami, the result wouldn’t have been like this, if we still had mangroves,” said Daniel Murdiyarso, a scientist with the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research and one of the researchers behind the mangrove carbon-storage findings.

Disaster management and risk reduction are now squarely on the Indonesian government’s radar, but in most countries – and most of the time – the impact of climate change is incremental and therefore unlikely to spur governments and communities to action. When typhoons have hit Vietnam, mangroves have helped to save lives.

“That’s when people noticed that where there were mangroves, people survived,” Brunner said. “Thailand and Indonesia suffered a very high magnitude event, the tsunami, and that sent a very clear message. In Vietnam, there have been higher frequency, but lower magnitude events, so it hasn’t quite had the same impact, and you still see mangroves being lost.”

Initiatives like the Mangroves for the Future (MFF), established after the 2004 tsunami and co-chaired by IUCN and the UN Development Programme, offer grants to communities like Lang Co to protect their mangroves. Since 2008, MFF has implemented about 90 projects in its eight member countries across south and south-east Asia. The $29,000 project in Lang Co – $23,000 from MFF and $6,000 from the grantee organisation, the Centre for Community Research and Development (CCRD), and the local community – is to focus on supporting natural regeneration of existing mangroves, which is less expensive and more effective than planting. According to CCRD, Lang Co had about 100 hectares of mangroves two decades ago, but today only five hectares of poor-quality mangroves remain.

Under the MFF grant, the Lang Co fishing association has been tasked with looking after these mangroves. Local fishermen will be trained in mangrove and aquatic resource management and protection.

Alisa Tang is a Bangkok-based freelance journalist who reports and edits for organisations including the Centre for International Forestry Research, which supported her reporting trip to Vietnam.

(Source: Guardian)

Floating buildings could help Thais tackle the flooding crisis

Residents in central Thailand face an annual battle with flooding caused by rains. Homes that float offer a solution.

Alisa Tang | Guardian Weekly

In monsoon seasons past, villagers in Pa Mok would quietly embark on their annual vertical migration as the Chao Phraya river swelled and spilled over its banks, inundating rice paddies and neighbourhoods of this low-lying community in central Thailand. They moved to the upper level of their homes, which were built on three-metre high stilts.

Then change rolled into town, around 45 years ago in the forms of cars, roads and a bridge across the Chao Phraya that connected the eastern and western halves of Pa Mok. With industrialisation, villagers took on factory jobs, moving further from the intrinsic nature of their riverine community. “Now they park their cars under the house, and they add an extra floor [of living space] under their homes,” said Klanarong Chuaboonmee, 69, the deputy mayor of Pa Mok district in Ang Thong province, 100 km north of Bangkok. “As someone working for the city, I get people asking me, ‘Why don’t you make it so we don’t flood?’”

Pa Mok has suffered floods nearly every year since 1942, as Klanarong recalls. Floodwaters peaked at a record 8.24 metres above sea level last year when Thailand faced its worst flooding in more than half a century. With climate change spurring increasingly erratic rainfall, the floods are set to continue. So village officials are teaming up with an innovative architecture firm to build amphibious homes and structures that will help the community live with floods, rather than build up defences against them.

Chutayaves “Chuta” Sinthuphan – who returned to Thailand in 2006 after 14 years in New York, where he studied at Columbia University and spent years honing his trade – and his architecture firm, Site-Specific, had been on the hunt for a client such as Pa Mok village. In a prescient blog entry from 11 May 2011 – months before the flood crisis – Chuta posed these questions: if the floods get worse every year, will relocation solve the problem? Traditional Thai homes were on stilts, or even on rafts when Bangkok’s network of canals was not yet paved over and the city was still known as the “Venice of the east”, but Thailand today depends on cars, so how can architects design a house that sits on the ground and survives floods?

Site-Specific presented plans for the buoyant Amphibious House, with a prefabricated flotation device underneath. It looks like a normal modern home, but floats in the event of floods. One of the house’s hidden support columns will be anchored to the ground, acting as a rail-like pillar as the house floats up or down.

“We wanted to work on a home that would work with the rising sea levels,” the 36-year-old architect said during a field trip in January to Pa Mok and another site in western Kanchanaburi province that has served as part of the floating-house experiment. He and his colleagues were inspired by an amphibious community in southern Thailand, where homes are on stilts, with bamboo floats lashed to the underside of the living space. “We took that idea and tried to create it for a modern lifestyle and using modern technologies,” Chuta said. “We didn’t want it to look too foreign – with these [anchoring] posts. We want it to look like a normal house.”

A few hours drive west of Pa Mok, in the middle of the lake formed by Srinakarin Dam in Kanchanaburi province, the architect team took on their first floating venture. A wealthy advertising executive hired them to build a two-bedroom, one-bathroom floating house, made with reclaimed wood and metal, complete with a two-boat garage.

Completed last November, the 400 sq metre floating house – which primarily consists of outdoor living spaces with prefabricated enclosed spaces for the bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom – has weights anchoring it to the lake floor, but it drifts and turns slightly with the water’s movement. Four solar cells, a wind turbine and back-up generators provide electricity, while water to bathe and wash is pumped up from the lower depths of the lake.

The house weighs 35 tonnes and is held afloat by eight hollow steel cylindrical pontoons that can support up to 300 tonnes. The fundamental lesson from the house on the lake was weight distribution and symmetry.

“On a normal home, you just build it, you don’t have to worry about weight distribution,” Chuta said, noting that floating homes are different. “You can’t just take a plan of a home and then just build it. You have to design it so that the weight distribution works very well, and you have to calculate what the owners will put inside, so you can’t turn a bedroom into a library because books weigh so much. So that’s why the bedrooms are on the two ends – even though people don’t weigh that much, if they move together, it will rock this thing quite a bit.”

Now, Chuta and his team have been given a chance to see if an amphibious house will work, with a $90,000 grant from the National Housing Agency. The money will be used to build a prototype for a possible amphibious community in Ayutthaya, for factory workers of the Rojana Industrial Park, which also flooded last year.

The work on the other projects will help form plans for Pa Mok, where Site-Specific has met with villagers to discuss their needs and has begun to look for grants to bring amphibious structures to their community. There might be some amphibious homes, and, most important, grocery stores to guarantee food and necessities, as well as a village pavilion to serve as a space for aid distribution or for health workers.

Photo courtesy of Site-Specific.

(Source: Guardian)

VIETNAM: From rice to shrimp and ginger, adapting to saltwater intrusion

HANOI, 28 December 2011 (IRIN) - Rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion in Vietnam’s fertile Mekong Delta are forcing farmers and development agencies to rethink how livelihoods can be maintained, using methods such as genetic modification, new crop varieties and simple farming fixes. 

With support from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in March 2011 launched a four-year project to introduce the flood-tolerant SUB1 gene and Saltol, a salt-tolerant gene, to Vietnamese rice varieties. 

Transferring the genetic information - a process known as introgression - is expected to take three years. Because the genes are being introduced to rice currently grown in Vietnam, farmers will not need to learn new farming practices. 

“We are on track. It’s three years, and in the fourth year, we’ll try to disseminate this new variety,” said Reiner Wassmann, a climate change specialist with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). 

The Mekong Delta is the country’s rice basket, and Vietnam is the world’s second largest rice exporter. With soil and crops already being damaged by saltwater intrusion, farmers and development agencies are troubleshooting ways to cope. 

Some rice paddies in Thanh Hoa Province have been converted to shrimp ponds, according to Nguyen Viet Nghi, CARE’s project manager of a community-based mangrove reforestation programme in Thanh Hoa. 

“It was done by farmers themselves, and CARE is planning to support them combine mangroves and shrimp development in their ponds,” said Nghi. 

It is a trend seen across Vietnam: aquaculture has skyrocketed from 641,900 hectares in 2000 to more than 1 million hectares in 2010, and shrimp farming accounts for the bulk of the growth, nearly doubling over the past decade to 645,000 hectares. 

While most aquaculture is in the Mekong Delta, even in Thanh Hoa on the central coast, farming in water grew from 10,600 hectares in 2000 to 13,900 a decade later. 

Vietnam is one of the countries expected to suffer most from the impact of climate change, and unpredictable rain, higher temperatures and more saltwater could mean less water for irrigation of crops such as watermelons. 

Oxfam piloted a small project to help 10 farmers with hardier varieties of watermelons, and taught them simple methods to save water: Draping plastic sheets on the ground around the plants prevents evaporation, so farmers need less freshwater for the crops. To prevent saltwater contamination, farmers built raised beds half a metre above the salinated drainage ditches. 

“We found that out of 10 [farms], nine have huge profits because production is very good,” said Provash Chandra Mondal, humanitarian programme coordinator for Oxfam in Vietnam. Oxfam is now replicating the watermelon project on other small farms, and experimenting with ginger cultivation. 

The only solution… 

Longer droughts and rising sea levels have begun to salinate farmland, and the only solution is to adapt, according to Oxfam. 

“It’s like a slow poisoning, and now it’s increasing, moving up the rivers,” Mondal said. “It has a long-term impact, and there’s no solution. Nobody can stop the saline water, but we just have to adapt.” 

During the 2010 drought, saltwater from the South China Sea contaminated communities 60km inland compared with 30km in years past. 

If sea levels rise by one metre - the low end of climate scientists’ projections of a one- to two-metre rise by 2100 - an estimated 1.7 million hectares would be inundated, or 5.3 percent of Vietnam’s land area. Most of this threatened land (82 percent) is in the Mekong Delta, where millions of people would be displaced. 

By 2030, rising sea levels could cause rice productivity to drop by 9 percent, according to the UN Development Programme.  

“We expect a lot of changes in the hydrology in all parts of the Mekong Delta,” said Wassmann, adding that the highly productive delta is vulnerable to tiny changes in the weather. 

“If you come to the Mekong Delta, you’ll see every square metre of land is used… It is very intensively used, and it is very much dependent on a relatively stable set of parameters. If we change this system there, all of this success from the fine-tuning becomes useless… If this kind of source of rice for the world market is going down, then it will have major repercussions for the rice market as a whole.” 

Photo by David Longstreath.

(Source: irinnews.org)

VIETNAM: Boosting education for ethnic minority children

LAO CHAI, 20 December 2011 (IRIN) - For more than a decade, Nguyen Thi Quyen’s ethnic minority students in Lao Chai village primary school would stare at her blankly, unable to respond to her questions. As the school year wore on, they dropped out to tend farm animals or hawk knick-knacks to the tourists. 

Quyen was teaching in Vietnamese, the language of the majority Kinh, but ethnic minorities in the country’s northern hills speak Mong. 

“Before, when I was teaching all subjects in Vietnamese, the children could understand only about 60 percent of what I was saying,” Quyen told IRIN. “The children did not enjoy school. They did not like to come.” 

With Vietnamese the official language for education, school remains inaccessible for many ethnic minorities, who comprise 13 percent of the population and are among the country’s most impoverished. 

Lagging behind 

The Mong are one of Vietnam’s 53 ethnic minority groups that have fallen behind although the country boasts one of the world’s fastest growing economies, with GDP up by 7.3 percent annually from 1995 to 2005, and per capita income increasing from US$260 in 1995 to $835 in 2007. 

Yet more than half the ethnic minorities live in poverty, versus only 10 percent of Kinh. Ethnic minorities account for 11 million of Vietnam’s 87 million people, but constitute 44.4 percent of the poor. 

“Looking at all the development and positive change that has taken place in Vietnam, minority children are one or several steps behind all the time,” Lotta Sylwander, country representative for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN. 

“Many of them live in hard-to-reach areas. Some of them speak languages that no one else speaks… Ethnic minority children are more likely to live in a poor household than the Kinh majority because their parents are uneducated.” 

According to UNICEF, three out of five ethnic minority children complete primary school, against more than four out of five Kinh. 

Mother tongue-based education 

In 2008, Quyen’s primary school began teaching its youngest students in Mong, as part of a UNICEF-supported government initiative to boost academic performance. 

The programme has been implemented for Jrai ethnic minorities in central Gia Lai province, Khmer in southern Tra Vinh, and Mong in northern Lao Cai, where Lao Chai village is located. 

Children begin school in their native language and in grade three, start learning in Vietnamese as well. By grade five, they are bilingual, according to research by UNICEF and the government. 

“Now that I teach in the local language, the students can understand 100 percent. Now they’ll stand up and answer any question,” said Quyen, who has spent 16 years teaching in Lao Chai, located in a valley below the popular tourist town of Sapa.

The UNICEF and government study shows that mother tongue-educated ethnic minority students scored higher than those who learned in Vietnamese when tested for listening comprehension (17 out of a possible 20 points for mother tongue, versus 12 for non-mother tongue), following instructions (16 versus 12), and arranging pictures based on stories (13 compared with eight). 

“Since I started teaching in the Mong language, the children are much happier, and they really enjoy school. A lot of children come to school now, and some children from different communities even come here to learn,” Quyen said. 

Teaching challenge 

One challenge, however, is finding qualified teachers. 

“It was difficult to start the bilingual education programme because of the need to have good bilingual teachers,” said Truong Kim Minh, director of the Lao Cai Department of Education and Training. 

“At that time, we had only a limited number of teachers coming from those ethnic minority groups. In the beginning, we chose good people in the community to become teachers’ assistants.” 

Teachers who do not come from ethnic communities are increasingly required to learn the local language of the region where they will teach. 

The province now trains 100 ethnic minority teachers each year for pre-school and primary school, which will help expand the bilingual education programme, Minh said. 

Meanwhile, as children played on the Lao Chai school grounds one Saturday afternoon, Quyen interrupted a student, eight-year-old Mang, during a game of marbles to ask him to read a sign written in Mong on a pillar at the school entrance. 

Looking up at the colourful sign, Mang slowly pronounced one word at a time: “Dear friends, let’s come to school.” 

(Source: irinnews.org)

American sentenced to prison for Thai royal insult

By ALISA TANG and VEE INTARAKRATUG | AP

BANGKOK (AP) — A court in Thailand sentenced a U.S. citizen to two and a half years in prison Thursday for defaming the country’s royal family by translating excerpts of a locally banned biography of the king and posting them online.

The verdict is the latest so-called lese majeste punishment handed down in the Southeast Asian kingdom, which has come under increasing pressure at home and abroad to reform harsh legislation that critics say is an affront to freedom of expression.

The 55-year-old Thai-born American, Joe Gordon, stood calmly with his ankles shackled in an orange prison uniform as the sentence was read out at a Bangkok criminal court.

Judge Tawan Rodcharoen said the punishment, initially set at five years, was reduced because Gordon pleaded guilty in October.

The sentence was relatively light compared to other recent cases. In November, 61-year-old Amphon Tangnoppakul was sentenced to 20 years in jail for sending four text messages deemed offensive to the crown.

Gordon posted links the to banned biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej several years ago while living in the U.S. state of Colorado, and his case has raised questions about the applicability of Thai law to acts committed by foreigners outside Thailand.

Speaking after the verdict, Gordon said, “I am an American citizen, and what happened was in America.”

He also said he had no expectation of being let off easy. “This is just the system in Thailand,” he said. Speaking later in Thai, he added: “In Thailand, they put people in prison even if they don’t have proof.”

Gordon had lived in the U.S. for about 30 years. He was detained in late May during a visit to his native country to seek treatment for arthritis and high blood pressure. After being repeatedly denied bail, he pleaded guilty in October in hopes of obtaining a lenient sentence.

Thailand’s lese majeste laws are the harshest in the world. They mandate that people found guilty of defaming the monarchy — including the king, the queen and the heir to the throne — face three to 15 years behind bars. The nation’s 2007 Computer Crimes Act also contains provisions that have enabled prosecutors to increase lese majeste sentences.

The U.S. Embassy’s consul general, Elizabeth Pratt, told reporters in Bangkok after the ruling that Washington considered Gordon’s punishment “severe because he has been sentenced for his right to freedom of expression.”

Opponents of the laws say that while the royal family should be protected from defamation, lese majeste laws have often been abused to punish political rivals. That is especially true since the nation suffered a 2006 military coup.

Asked if he would stay in Thailand after serving his time, Gordon said: “I would like to stay and see some positive Thailand. I want to see the real, amazing Thailand, not the messy Thailand.”

Many had hoped that the administration of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, which has some prominent supporters who have been accused of lese majeste, would reform the laws. The issue remains highly sensitive, however, and Yingluck’s government has been as aggressive in pursuing the cases as its predecessors.

Last weekend, New York-based Human Rights Watch urged authorities to amend the laws, saying the penalties being meted out were “shocking.”

The rise of the Internet in recent years has given Thai authorities many more targets to pursue. Last month, Information Minister Anudith Nakornthap said Facebook users who “share” or “like” content that insults the Thai monarchy are committing a crime. Anudith said Thai authorities asked Facebook to remove 86,000 pages between August and November because of alleged lese majeste content.

Gordon, a former car salesman, is accused of having translated excerpts from the unauthorized biography “The King Never Smiles,” published by Yale University Press, into the Thai language and publishing them in a blog. He also provided links to the translation to other two Web forums, prosecutors say.

In the banned book, author Paul M. Handley retraces the king’s life, alleging that he has been a major stumbling block to the progress of democracy in Thailand as he consolidated royal power over his long reign.

Bhumibol, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, is profoundly revered in Thailand and is widely seen as a stabilizing force. He was feted Monday on his 84th birthday, during which he called on his countrymen to unite in response to the worst floods in more than half a century.

The king is frail and has stayed at a Bangkok hospital for more than two years.

___

Associated Press writer Todd Pitman contributed to this report.

Photo by Apichart Weerawong | Associated Press

(Source: Yahoo!)

THAILAND-MYANMAR: Slow pace of registering migrants

MAE SOT, 5 December 2011 (IRIN) - For decades, children of Burmese refugees and migrants in Thailand could not obtain an official birth certificate, vital to access healthcare and education. Even though legislation entitling them to a formal identity has been in place since 2008, registering and coaxing forth the undocumented has been “painstaking”, according to community groups. 

“Birth registration is the basic fundamental right of any human being. If you don’t have birth registration, you lose all your rights,” said Naing Min, project director for the community-based organization, Committee for Protection and Promotion of Child Rights (CPPCR), at Thailand’s border with Myanmar in Mae Sot. 

With no proof of identity or age, those without birth certificates are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and trafficking. When they grew older, their troubles are compounded: unable to get any form of identification, they cannot open a bank account or apply for a formal job. 

Following the amendment in 2008 to Thailand’s Civil Registration Act of 1991, all children born in the country are entitled to birth registration and government-issued birth certificates, regardless of their parents’ legal status. 

In Burmese refugee camps, more systematic birth registration - coordinated by camp and government authorities with assistance from NGOs and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) - began in September 2010, but only a fraction has been documented. 

The law has taken time to be implemented, in part because of the slow pace of assigning and training government staff. It has also been a challenge to register Burmese who cannot provide any proof of identity whatsoever - not registered at birth, they have been unable to get any identity papers later in life. 

Backlog 

“The law in the Civil Registration Act, as amended in 2008, is retroactive. It went back for all children born in Thailand, so with Myanmar refugees in the camps, you could be dealing with 25 years of birth registrations,”,” said James Lynch, Thailand’s representative for UNHCR. 

About 1,600 people - mostly newborns - have been registered in nine refugee camps along the border housing an estimated 150,000 people, including some 60,000 unregistered refugees, according to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an umbrella group of organizations providing services for migrants and refugees. 

The next group to register is children born to Burmese refugees between 2008 and September 2010, and then further back to 1984 when the first major waves of refugees, fleeing violence in Myanmar, poured into Thailand. 

“I’m not sure of exact numbers [left to be registered], but if you go back 25 years, it’s a painstaking task, but an important one,” Lynch said. 

Each year, about 5 percent of children born in Thailand - about 40,000 babies primarily from poor families, ethnic minorities or migrants - are not registered at birth, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). 

Catch-22 

“The issue with the unregistered camp population is that they could report to the district office, but they fear if they’re not registered and they go to report, they might be deported, so they may be reluctant,” Lynch said. 

Unregistered Burmese refugees cannot get birth certificates for their children through camp authorities and face the same problem as migrants. 

“They have to go to the district office, but practically, this is difficult because they have no permission to leave the camp, and if they do leave the camp, then they can be arrested and deported, so it is a Catch-22 classic ,” said Joel Harding, senior protection officer for the NGO International Rescue Committee. 

It is a problem UNHCR and other agencies are working with the government to fix, but providing birth registration for even registered Burmese refugees - there are about 100,000 - is taking time. 

A better future 

When Ma Lay, 27, gave birth in August 2011 to her third son at Mae Tao Clinic, a health centre for Burmese refugees and migrants in Thailand, she immediately registered him. Her two older sons, six and four, were born in Myanmar, and like her and her husband, have no papers. 

“For the two boys, there have been no problems yet, but for me and especially my husband, sometimes on our way to work, we run into the police and get arrested,” said Ma Lay. “It makes me feel better if my baby is delivered and registered here, for my baby’s future.” 

Some 200 babies born each month at Mae Tao Clinic are registered on site. 

CPPCR now encourages people to get Thai civil birth registration, yet still continues unofficial registrations for those who do not in the hopes such documentation will help them access education and health services as well as claim land and inheritance if they return to Myanmar. 

“Some are afraid to go to the office or to ask for a recommendation letter from the village chief, because they are here illegally. They don’t know their rights,” Naing Min said. 

Over the past eight years, CPPCR has unofficially registered 180,000 children. 

“When there was no system to recognize the children born in Thailand, we collected the information, so that when there is true democracy [in Myanmar], we can make claims for their [Burmese] citizenship,” Naing Min said. 

Photo by David Longstreath

Thailand cleans up, but some areas remain flooded

 By ALISA TANG | Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — As Thailand’s floodwaters continue their slow journey to the sea, large swaths of the country have drained and dried, leaving behind a stinky, thick grime on everything touched by the nation’s worst deluge in more than a half century.

In many areas, people are returning to their houses armed with cleaning brushes, rubber gloves and masks to endure the sewer-like stench. But others whose homes are still inundated complain they’ve been forgotten, especially by residents of the capital who escaped the flooding.

Nicha Rakpanichmanee, a 28-year-old graduate student, invited a group of friends to help clean her town house on Bangkok’s northern edge.

“I didn’t expect it to be like this … the smell!” she said.

Room by room, the cleaning team sprinkled disinfectant powder on everything covered by the thick filthy film, which spread 30 inches (80 centimeters) high during the three weeks Nicha’s neighborhood was inundated. Other parts of Thailand were covered by more than 6 feet (2 meters) of water for two months.

Just down the street, her neighbors were not as lucky.

“We haven’t even started cleaning yet. We’re just throwing things out. We’ve been throwing stuff out for three days now,” said Yai Kupatanorrat, 50, who sells women’s clothes at the popular Chatuchak weekend market.

He threw out several bags and boxes of new clothes that he had stored at his home, as well as cabinets and other furniture.

More than a fifth of the country’s 64 million people have been affected by the flooding, which began in late July, and more than 600 have died. Fifteen provinces remain flooded.

The World Bank estimates the damage at $45 billion and recovery and reconstruction needs at $25 billion. The National Social and Economic Development Board has slashed Thailand’s economic growth forecast to 1.5 percent from 3.5 to 4 percent.

Several industrial estates in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani provinces were severely flooded, bringing the country’s key automotive and computer parts industries close to a halt. Authorities in Ayutthaya say four industrial parks there have been cleaned up, while another is still under 20 inches (50 centimeters) of water. In Pathum Thani, two industrial estates remain flooded.

Much of the government’s effort to fight the floods has focused on protecting the capital, which has remained largely dry thanks to hundreds of pumps and dikes built of sandbags. Across the dikes, residents outside the metropolitan area complain they were sacrificed and now are forgotten.

“When I talk to people who aren’t affected, they say, ‘Oh, no one’s talking about the floods anymore,’ but my house has been flooded for nearly two months,” said Chalanthorn Reaud, 32, a cultural officer for the Alliance Francaise of Bangkok.

The 300 homes in her housing estate in Nonthaburi province, next to Bangkok, are still flooded with more than 30 inches (80 centimeters) of water.

Sirinuch Jungtamdeerungkajorn, a 35-year-old pastry chef who also lives in the capital’s still-flooded outskirts, is staying with her parents in a rented condominium in Bangkok’s central business district.

The main road that leads to her neighborhood is dry, but on her street the water is still 20 inches (50 centimeters) deep.

“People who don’t live here think it’s not flooded anymore,” she said. “But it’s going to be some time before my life will return to normal.”

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Associated Press writer Vee Intarakratug contributed to this report.

(Source: chron.com)