Reporting Myanmar, jailed in Singapore

When Htin Lynn arrived at the address he’d been given, he was relieved to see a pickup truck parked on the street corner with a dozen soldiers inside. A tangerine-coloured rubbish bin was a few feet away. He stopped at a food stall opposite, ordered a fish-and-rice salad and sent a message to his comrades: the target was there, as expected. Job done, he settled into his chair. The bombs wouldn’t be detonated for another couple of hours. He had more than enough time to enjoy his breakfast.

Whereas Bhumibol earned internal and external legitimacy in spades, King Maha Vajiralongkorn has struggled in that pursuit since taking the crown in December 2016. Rama X has yet to learn the valuable lesson that popular legitimacy and the Buddhist virtue of barami cannot be inherited, they must be earned. 

“There were a lot of people who read the article. At first, we thought that they were curious about our report. But, then we realized the next morning that it was an organized cyber attack,” Fahri said. 

By that point, it appeared that Project Multatuli’s website fell victim to a torrent of DDoS attacks. Fahri said that by around 7am on Oct. 7, over 1.7 million users swamped their page and overloaded the system. 

It also has worked hard to ensure that women play a major role in elections and governing. And its constitution and norms have strong protections for civil society and an independent media, a far cry from the recent crackdown on reporters in neighboring states like Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines, and Cambodia, among other countries in the region. Shoestring but aggressive local media outlets put tough questions to politicians in Timor.

Questions surrounding the need to send conscientious objectors to prison have been raised in Singapore's Parliament on a number of occasions.

But ministers have insisted on the need for such strict conscription policies, saying that "national service is vital to the security of a small country like Singapore".

"No Singaporean should be allowed to cite any reason to exempt himself from having to contribute to the national defence effort as every Singaporean benefits from the peace and security which National Service has helped to ensure," Matthias Yao Chih told Parliament in 1998 when he was Minister of State for Defence.

Dr Nyoman Sukma Arida, a lecturer at the tourism faculty of Udayana University, believes Bali needs alternative sources of income. “Relying solely on a fragile tourism economy is of course very risky,” he said. “Bali can go back to agriculture while looking for other alternatives to support its economy, such as the digital economy, so as not to depend on tourism alone.”

Undercover policemen would linger at well-known cruising spots late at night. There, they would pretend to be queer and make other men think that they’re looking for sexual intimacy. The undercover cops would engage with queer men according to the social protocol of cruising, until their target did something that the cops were baiting for — either a proposition of sexual intimacy, or physical touch. 

Once that happens, the cop’s colleagues (who have actually been hiding in the shadows nearby) would swiftly move in to arrest the target. The cycle would repeat for many more hours into the night, often across many days, and the arrests would then be heavily publicised by the press. 

I’m a catastrophizer by nature so, in my mind’s eye, our unique topography has disappeared—there are no more strata malls and peculiar hexagonal towers. Instead, the island is littered with imposing, cold reproductions of the glass edifices that tourists love to photograph. It’s impressive but, as a CGI model of new development, unfit for human habitation. 

“For the active working journalists who remain inside Burma, they have to stay completely anonymous and must not let the neighborhood know about the works,” Aung Htut said. “Illegal or underground media are in the primary target list of the junta.

“For those who fled to the border area, which we call it ‘liberated area’ – in short, ‘LA’ – can work with the ease of mind in their daily lives,” the journalist said.

Facebook’s products are more than just a social network for hundreds of millions of people globally. Beyond being communication tools, the company’s platforms are e-commerce resources, storefronts, and health and emergency aids. In some regions, Facebook is the internet. Seven users from around the world described the impact of the seven-hour shortage to Rest of World, and a user from Nigeria said, “It’s painful.”