Media reports say the boat with about 200 Rohingya has been floating on the sea since November and dozens have died. The UN Refugee Agency UNHCR reported that the survivors have been struggling with no access to food, water, and medication.
Rohingya migrants are escorted ashore after their boat transporting 119 people arrived, after surviving a five-week journey at sea, on the coast of Bluka Teubai, North Aceh, Indonesia on Nov. 16. (Photo: AFP)
Rights groups said that another two boats with Rohingya refugees have been adrift in ASEAN waters for weeks now. Rohingya Muslims have been fleeing Myanmar where they are denied citizenship and other basic rights and face persecution.
About one million have fled to Bangladesh to escape military atrocities. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled Rakhine and camps in Bangladesh to board overcrowded and unsafe boats for Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
A Cambodian appeals court has upheld criminal defamation convictions against Son Chhay, a leading opposition politician and vice-president of the Candlelight Party. The court has also ordered him to pay additional damages of 1 million US dollars to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) of Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Son Chhay was convicted of defamation in October after criticizing the results of local commune elections held in June. The CPP and the National Election Commission (NEC) then sued him.
Son Chhay, vice-president of the Candlelight Party, speaks to the media in front of Phnom Penh Municipal court on Oct. 7. (Photo: AFP)
The court said that he had “excessively exaggerated and accused the CPP and NEC of controlling the election process” but “did not provide any evidence that these statements were true.”
Son Chhay said his case was political and was part of an effort to weaken the Candlelight Party ahead of next year’s general election after it emerged as the strongest opposition performer at the commune elections, winning more than 22 percent of the popular vote.
Deadly landslide at a campsite in Malaysia left 21 killed including five children last Friday. A dozen people were still missing after a predawn landslide hit a campsite at an organic farm near the town of Batang Kali just outside the capital Kuala Lumpur.
The authorities said more than 90 people were at the campsite with most of them asleep a mountain casino resort when the landslide struck. Some 61 people had been found safe and rescued.
People inspect the damage after a landslide in Batang Kali, Selangor on Dec. 16. (Photo: AFP)
Officials said the farm did not have a license to run the campsite and its operators would be punished if they were found to have broken the law. Landslides are common in Malaysia after heavy rains and can occur after bouts of bad weather.
However, no heavy rains were recorded in the area on the night of the disaster. A deadly mudslide in 1993 brought on by heavy rain caused a 12-story residential building outside the capital to collapse, killing 48 people.
Hundreds of members of seven major religions in South Korea joined an inter-faith memorial service to honor the victims of the tragic Itaewon Halloween stampede in October that left 154 killed. The gathering was held at a plaza near Yongsan-gu Office and Noksapyeong Station in the capital Seoul last Friday.
The participants of the memorial stood in silence at 06:34 pm, the time when the first distress call was made to the official emergency police helpline. People laid down flowers at the venue holding papers with the words “please remember us” written on them.
Leaders of various religious groups join a prayer for the victims of the Halloween stampede tragedy in the South Korean capital Seoul on Dec. 16. (Photo: CPBC)
As many as 100,000 people – mostly in their teens and 20s – had poured into Itaewon’s small, winding streets, with eyewitnesses describing scant security and no crowd control.
Witnesses described being trapped in a narrow, sloping alleyway, and scrambling to get out of the suffocating crowd as people piled on top of one another.
China’s communist regime has instructed all Protestant Christians belonging to the state-controlled body, Three-Self Church, to pay tributes to Jiang Zemin, ex-president and former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
The instructions to remember Jiang was passed to national leaders of the Three-Self Church who gathered for a Memorial Conference in Shanghai in the first week of December. They were told all members of the Three-Self Church across China should do the same.
Jiang Zemin (1926-2022), former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of China. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Jiang was general secretary of the CCP from 1989-2002 and President of China from 1993-2003. He died on November 30 this year due to leukemia and multiple organ failures. He was 96.
Jiang’s tenure saw the Communist nation experience remarkable economic growth, the return of Hong Kong from Britain and Macau from Portugal, brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement, tight control on the state, and widespread human rights abuses including the persecution of religious cults and movements such as Falun Gong.
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