Migrant workers must be treated with compassion. Thailand is going through a tough time at present, with millions hit hard by dramatic flooding.
This is a national crisis that will cost the country billions. Amid this drama, there have been some magnificent reactions from volunteers, companies, as well as troops, government and city officials who have worked tirelessly for the public good. There have also been less than laudable responses, with some people taking advantage of others caught in the confusion and traumatic events that have played out in recent days. When disasters of this magnitude occur it is often people at the lowest levels who are worst affected. Here, that usually means the vast "underclass" of migrant workers. But let's not forget, the miserable treatment Burmese workers usually endure in Thailand, stems largely from their own government, which, until the last year or so, virtually took no interest whatsoever in the well-being of their own people. Thailand flood reaches Bangkok. Cambodia Floods Affect More Than a Million.
Christopher Brown for the International Herald Tribune Flood victims sought refuge on patches of land in Cambodia's Battambang Province, hit by the worst flooding in living memory.
The floods that have affected three-quarters of the country’s land area, by the United Nations’ estimate, have been overshadowed by similar troubles in Cambodia’s larger and wealthier neighbor, , where the government is scrambling to protect central Bangkok from inundation. Here in Cambodia, though, aid workers describe a more Darwinian struggle and a generally higher degree of desperation among villagers. “This is the worst I’ve seen in my career,” said Soen Seueng, a 58-year-old doctor who tended to a long line of flood victims on Wednesday, most of them women and children, who were camped on a strip of raised land accessible only by boat.
Dr. Will the Middle Class Stick by Team Anna? Adnan Abidi/ReutersSupporters of Anna Hazare shouted slogans and waved flags during his fast at Ramlila grounds in Delhi, Aug. 2011.
There is no question that any deep political engagement among India’s rapidly growing middle class is a major threat to the status quo in Indian politics. As the Times’ South Asia bureau chief Jim Yardley wrote in an article published Sunday, “The Hazare movement rattled India’s political establishment because it offered a glimpse of what could happen if the middle class was mobilized across the country. Professionals and college students provided the organizational spine, and money, that brought hundreds of thousands of people of all backgrounds onto the streets in what many described as a political awakening.”
But will the supporters of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement remain engaged as it wades into the choppier waters of Indian politics? Rallying huge numbers of Indians to fight corruption is one thing. “I don’t deal with money,” she said. Ms. Ms. Columns / Sainath : In 16 years, farm suicides cross a quarter million. Click here to view/download table on Farm Suicides: All India Totals, 1995-2010 It's official.
The country has seen over a quarter of a million farmers’ suicides between 1995 and 2010. The National Crime Records Bureau’s latest report on ‘Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India’ places the number for 2010 at 15,964. That brings the cumulative 16-year total from 1995 — when the NCRB started recording farm suicide data — to 2,56,913, the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind in human history. Maharashtra posts a dismal picture with over 50,000 farmers killing themselves in the country's richest State in that period. The data show clearly that the last eight years were much worse than the preceding eight.
Deadly fog on the Mekong. Deadly fog on the Mekong By Michael Winchester The early October massacre of 13 Chinese barge crew on the Mekong River near the tri-border of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar has thrust the lawless region's problem of criminality and drug trafficking once again into brutal relief.
The killings underscored the failure of regional states to cooperate in safeguarding river traffic despite repeated warning signs over recent years in the shape of attacks on shipping, protection rackets and kidnap for ransom incidents. Embarrassingly for Thailand's government, already all but overwhelmed by a national flood disaster, the latest killings were finally tied to a rogue unit of the Royal Thai Army (RTA) apparently caught up in the web of corruption spawned by narcotic trafficking along the kingdom's northern border.
Exactly how Bangkok and Beijing settle a case which has received widespread publicity - and prompted considerable popular anger in China - remains to be seen. Nepal: Peace, in your own time.