Asia

The Government of Bangladesh may have reached its tipping point hosting the Rohingya refugees in the southeastern part of the country.  In a recent report in Reuters, the Governments of Bangladesh and Thailand are reaching out to the Government of Burma to discuss the flow of the Muslim minority Rohingya into neighboring countries.  While...
Read more »

That a young man or woman might not choose whom they marry is contrary to modern, western thinking.  We typically marry whom we would, rarely with restriction.  Ours is a fiercely personal concept of marriage that way.  It might surprise some, then, that in many countries matrimony is not experienced...
Read more »

Given the Obama regime’s focus on diplomatic relations in South-Central Asia, a recent piece by Parag Khanna that appeared in Foreign Policy is timely and relevant. His analysis of the ‘Af-pak’ issue displays a detailed understanding not only of U.S. strategy toward the region, but also the strategies of the not so obvious...
Read more »

Related to my last post, La Nacion, an Argentinean newspaper, has just published a piece on Abu Bakker Qassim, one of the five Uyghur men sent to Albania in 2006. You can read the translated version here. It’s an interesting, brief article on conditions in Guantanamo and the Uyghurs’ views on Obama.
Read more »

Seven years after the Uyghurs, an oppressed Muslim minority group in the west of China, were detained, they are still in Guantánamo prison. They should have never been there in the first place. Although it was apparent in 2001 that the Uyghurs only enemy was the Chinese government, they were considered suspected...
Read more »

During the 15 Years War, known in Japan as the period from 1931-1945, nearly 200,000 women from throughout the Japanese Empire fell victim to Japan’s state-sponsored brothel system. Mostly Asian virgins, with the exception of the Dutch women in Indonesia, these women were often forced or tricked into becoming the...
Read more »

Often international pressure is placed on countries to move toward a more democratic state and possess the associated qualities like freedom and liberty. Two weeks ago, Bangladesh celebrated a new milestone, the return to democratic rule. After election preparations in 2006 were shut down and emergency rule imposed, many on-lookers cast doubt...
Read more »

Note: This entry is about PGI Editor Dan Logue’s experience interviewing Rabin Subedi for the Fall issue of Perspectives in Global Issues. Click here to read the interview. Since interviewing Rabin, I’ve had some time to really think about the actual events in Nepal last spring.  It’s really a remarkable event that was...
Read more »

The name Shi Tao might not ring a bell anymore today, but simply mention the vague phrase “the Yahoo-China incident” and ears will perk up in recognition. The 2004 debacle over Internet giant Yahoo disclosing personal information about Tao, a dissident blogger in China, which resulted in his arrest and 10-year prison sentence by...
Read more »

Imagine that you are the parent of a 1 year old and you live in China. In the last few months you had to take the train into Hong Kong to stock up on (or hoard) huge cans of baby formula because you don’t trust the ones that are produced in your city. The Tainted...
Read more »