Asia

Yangon – As millions of Burmese go to the polls on 1 April, expectations are high for real change. Across this Southeast Asian nation and abroad there is an unprecedented sense of hope not seen in decades following a wave of political reforms now described by Myanmar’s own government as “irreversible”.

Twenty years ago, Rik Idema, a Dutch cyclist, first passed through Mongolia on a round-the-world biking trip, the country struck him as the most pristine place he’d ever seen, so later returned to explore it with a Mongolian friend. They started Tseren Tours together in 1994. Yet while business is thriving, the couple worries about Mongolia’s future as a tourist destination.

The violent political arguments that took place around the district of Kannur, in India’s Kerala State, often had their roots in silly disputes over pasting posters or wall graffiti by the various political parties, so writes Subin Mananthavady in the Deccan Chronicle. “People in Chalad have a different perspective about posers or writing slogans for scoring political points.”

Hong Kong chooses a new representative today – a Chief Executive as different from the British titled: Governor of Hong Kong – and the city’s elites will pick from two pro-Beijing candidates for the top job after weeks of campaigning infected by poor taste jibs. The ‘other’, a people’s man, democrat Albert Ho, is reckoned as a ‘no choicer’ and is in it for asemblance of choice.

While at least fifteen people fasted against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant and thousands protested, the work at the plant returned to normal Tuesday, 20 March. This was a day after the Tamil Nadu government gave the go-ahead to restart work on the stalled Indo-Russian project, with officials saying the first unit would be commissioned, ‘as soon as possible.’

Al-Akhbar blog published a report Friday, March 16, 2012 informing that Afghanistan’s president had suggested that more than one US soldier was involved in the massacring of the 16 Afghan civilians killed in two villages last week. Update to Terror, Trauma, and the Endless Afghan War, by Amy Goodman, featured on Pressenza.

We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history.

Last week, money was raised to send three US Veterans for Peace to Jeju Island, they were not allowed to land; meanwhile, the South Korean authorities detained and began the process of deporting two international nonviolent peace activists, Angie Zelter UK Benjamin Monnet France. Reports from Veterans for Peace US and Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Bangkok – Japan is widely regarded as well-prepared for disasters, being used to frequent tsunamis, cyclones, earthquakes and volcanic activity, but a year after the calamitous events of 11 March 2011, the lessons from the multi-disaster still resonate.

On this the first anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster questions remain to be adequately and correctly answered on: is life in Japan back to normal? What lessons were learnt about the hugely funded nuclear industry? What do we really know about radiation and nuclear energy, what impacts do these have on our lives?