News stories by Marwaan Macan-Markar, page 3

When Thai police raided the headquarters of the popular alternative news portal ‘Prachatai’ and arrested its executive director, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, back in 2009, the 46-year-old media worker was completely in the dark about her crime.

After years of working out of a small, dimly-lit office in a crowded bazaar here, Yug Tamrakar has just moved up a gravel road to occupy five floors of a new building, where sunlight pours through large glass windows.

From its imposing 14-storey building, Thailand’s criminal court hands down verdicts that rarely trigger a backlash. Those condemned to long imprisonment include Thais who supposedly violated the draconian lese majeste censorship law that protects this Southeast Asian country's monarchy.

Political reforms unfolding in Myanmar (or Burma) are giving health workers a chance to address a resurgence of drug-resistant falciparum malaria in the war-torn ethnic minority enclaves along the country’s eastern borders.

A pioneer of citizens’ journalism in Vietnam is risking 20 years in jail for defending Internet freedom and exposing the draconian censorship laws in this communist party-ruled country.

With Vietnam’s fertile Mekong delta threatened by rising sea levels and salt water ingress, the country’s future as a major rice exporter depends critically on research underway in the Philippines.

Long Southeast Asia’s black sheep, Myanmar is enjoying an image change following its landmark Apr. 1 by-elections. Tongues are now wagging about the region’s new beacon of hope for democratic change.

For thousands of ethnic Kachins who fled fighting between government troops and rebels and survived a bitter winter in the refugee camps that dot northern Myanmar (or Burma), another test of survival looms — gale force winds.

In a move expected to deepen political reform, the quasi-civilian government in Myanmar (also known as Burma) is permitting the distribution of leaflets that will help thousands of people in the country’s ethnic enclaves learn to resist forced labour.

As fingers of morning light slip through the mango and banana orchards of his village, Suchin Utanarat heads out in a boat to net a fresh catch from the nearby canals teeming with shrimp.