Asia

Imagine checking your phone and instead of finding a list of unread WhatsApp messages from families and colleagues, you find a harrowing notification saying, “You’ve registered your number on another phone”. After scrambling on social media to announce the hacking, you gain control of the text messaging application, but only to find that whoever hacked your account has broadcast a message inciting people to take part in nationwide riots a day before May Day. You realize there is something sinister about the whole incident and seek advice from human rights organizations who tell you to switch off your phone and find a safe house. But the police get to you first. They arrest you on incitement charges, along with a foreign national, just before you step into a vehicle owned by a local

Three Southeast Asian nations — Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar — are using fears over the coronavirus to double down on repressive measures aimed at silencing critics or opponents. In Thailand, general-turned-prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha declared a state of emergency on March 26, granting him broad powers to protect the "safety of the people." It allows him to confine people to their homes, prohibits public assembly and includes additional powers of arrest and search and seizure. The most public examples of its use so far are a limited lockdown in Bangkok and a nationwide curfew that begins today. The curfew will be in effect each night from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Thailand's restrictions extend to the news media. They are prohibited from sharing "any kind of news or information re

SITTWE, MYANMAR (AFP) - Myanmar shipped hundreds of recently released Rohingya inmates back to the country's restive western borderlands on Monday (April 20), after fears that its overcrowded prisons could become hotbeds for runaway coronavirus outbreaks. Men, women and children belonging to the stateless and long-persecuted Muslim minority were among nearly 25,000 prisoners freed last week by a presidential pardon to mark the country's April New Year celebrations. A Navy vessel transported the group from Yangon to Rakhine state, where most Rohingya live under tight movement restrictions and in conditions Amnesty International has condemned as "apartheid". More than 600 disembarked near state capital Sittwe, while another 200 were taken further north to townships on the border wi...

JAKARTA A magnitude 5.0 earthquake jolted Indonesia's North Sulawesi province Thursday, according to the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG). BMKG said the earthquake’s epicenter was 66 kilometers (41 miles) northeast of Melonguane district in the Talaud Islands. The quake occurred 21 kilometers (13 miles) below the surface, it added. There were no immediate reports of casualties, said officials.