News stories by Marwaan Macan-Markar, page 17

It may have not won an Oscar, but its having been a final contender for the prestigious statue at the U.S. Academy Awards on Mar. 7 has taken ‘Burma VJ’ to heights never achieved by previous films depicting the oppression and courage in military-ruled Burma.

Cambodia’s new penal code, which comes into force later this year, should be accompanied by stronger law enforcement measures if the country’s women and girls are to be better protected from rape, says the global rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).

Thailand’s labour ministry is on the hunt for half a million migrant workers from neighbouring Burma who have gone underground rather than join a new foreign workers’ programme, one that some critics have described as a 'confusing' initiative.

While Aung San Suu Kyi remains the most widely-known woman suppressed for her political views in Burma, the jails in that military-ruled country continue to be filled by lesser-known women dissidents being held on a range of questionable charges.

As a former bureaucrat, Sakda Orphong cuts an unlikely figure as someone who is busy fomenting a grassroots protest movement to confront Thailand’s current government.

In military-ruled Burma’s Karen state, tradition and a male-dominated social order have long guaranteed men the role of village chiefs. But this order is crumbling in the country’s eastern region, giving rise to the new phenomenon of women village chiefs.

Even as they were prepared for the worst, supporters of ousted former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra conducted an eleventh-hour ritual in his home province this week, hoping for a miracle in Friday’s court verdict on the fate of his seized assets.

In an age when television continues to dominate national media, including Thailand’s, and gives birth to new celebrities, Kwanchai Praipana is a bit of an anomaly. His rise as a local star in this north-eastern city has been through community radio, the poor cousin of the local media.

When the conversation here shifts to domestic violence, even the way a woman got pregnant becomes an issue of concern, particularly if the price for bearing a child means getting infected with HIV.

As the World Bank embarks on its latest foray to protect Asian forests that are home to wild tigers, one of the continent’s iconic predators, a visible trap looms in military-ruled Burma.