Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, will continue to serve as his country’s permanent representative to the international body in New York for another year, a position he has held since 2020. The United Nations General Assembly Credentials Committee decided to uphold his status at a meeting…
Vietnam is mounting an assertive campaign to win a seat on the United National Human Rights Council in an Oct. 11 vote, but critics say Hanoi’s poor record at home and diplomatic support for major rights violators abroad disqualify the one-party state. Fourteen seats on the 47-member Council will be…
A sharp increase in the number of coronavirus cases in Xinjiang led China’s government to send a delegation throughout the far-western region to implement controversial zero-COVID policies, further isolating residents there. As of Wednesday, Xinjiang recorded 2,779 confirmed COVID-19 cases throughout Xinjiang, with officials in the capital Urumqi (in Chinese,…
Minorities in China’s Xinjiang region are forced to work against their will and face physical and sexual violence and “other inhuman or degrading treatment” in what may constitute a modern form of slavery, a report released on Tuesday by a United Nations office said. In the 20-page report, Tomoya Obokata,…
More than four years after a dam collapse in southern Laos triggered the country’s worst flooding in decades much of the farmland that was underwater remains unusable, leaving some survivors still struggling to scratch out a living. Residents of four villages in Attapeu’s Sanamxay district told RFA they cannot plant…
Vietnamese authorities on Thursday said they arrested an air force major involved in a fatal accident in late June in southeastern Vietnam’s Ninh Thuan province after determining he had been using his cell phone when his car hit and killed a high school student on a scooter. Maj. Hoang Van…
Authorities in China’s far-western Xinjiang region used the Chinese government’s 100-day crackdown on criminals and fugitives to target Uyghurs deemed “religious extremists” and “two-faced,” a police officer in a major city said. The campaign was rolled out by Wang Xiaohong, a close ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping who was…
Upstream dams and sand mining have caused significant erosion along the Mekong River in western Laos, according to experts, devastating riparian communities in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation with high waters and powerful currents. But residents of those communities say they believe that other issues are to blame. Brian Eyler,…
Uyghur exile groups around the world on Tuesday demanded that China end its persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang in a series of protests marking the 13th anniversary of deadly ethnic violence in the region’s capital. Uyghurs demonstrated in the capital cities of European Union countries, Turkey,…