INSIGHT: China gambles on Cambodia’s shrinking forests
By Andrew R.C. Marshall and Prak Chan Thul
BOTUM SAKOR, Cambodia (Reuters) – It was once the unspoiled jungle home for tigers, elephants, bears and gibbons. But today Botum Sakor National Park in southwest Cambodia is fast disappearing to accommodate a much less endangered species: the Chinese gambler.
“This was all forest once,” says Chut Wutty, director of the Natural Resource Protection Group, an environmental watchdog based in the capital, Phnom Penh, gesturing across a near-treeless landscape.
SPECIAL REPORT: MYANMAR DECLARES WAR ON OPIUM
By Andrew R.C. Marshall
TAR PU VILLAGE, Shan State, Myanmar (Reuters) – In Myanmar’s new war on drugs, meet the weapon of mass destruction: the weed-whacker.
Its two-stroke engine spins a metal blade, which is more commonly deployed to tame the suburban gardens of wealthy Westerners. But today, in a remote valley in impoverished Shan State, Myanmar police armed with weed-whackers are advancing through fields of thigh-high poppies, leaving a carpet of stems in their wake.
NO FLIES ON US
By Andrew R.C. Marshall
“When you open the windows for fresh air, flies sometimes get in.” So declared one of Myanmar’s ruling generals after his long-isolated country started welcoming foreign tourists in the late 1990s. The “flies” were undesirables like us, the journalists, who exploited this new openness to enter Myanmar as tourists and buzz around the place.
I recalled the general’s words (which he stole from Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping) while researching a Special Report on Myanmar’s new opium war with photographer Damir Sagolj. We were invited by the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC), Myanmar’s main anti-narcotics taskforce, to witness its opium-eradication efforts and hear an appeal for half a billion dollars to help wean impoverished farmers off poppy-growing.
Thai police seek fifth suspect in Iranian bombers case
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thai police said on Friday they were looking for a fifth person in connection with a series of blasts in Bangkok blamed on Iranians who may have been targeting Israeli diplomats, as in India and Georgia earlier in the week.
“There are more than four people involved in the blasts and we’re currently gathering evidence to get an arrest warrant approved,” Deputy Police Chief Pansiri Prapawat told a news conference, declining to name the suspect.
Iran “shadow war” intensifies, crosses borders
BANGKOK/LONDON (Reuters) – The loudest noise that Thongma Danoi had ever heard was followed 20 minutes later by the strangest sight: a dazed and bloodied Iranian carrying two wire-adorned devices through the usually sleepy Bangkok neighborhood.
“He was losing a lot of blood,” said Thongma, 68, who saw the Iranian man, later identified as Saeid Moradi, fleeing a rented house blown apart by a massive explosion on Tuesday. “People were shouting, ‘He’s got a bomb!’ I tried not to look at him.”
SPECIAL REPORT: In Mekong, Chinese murders and bloody diplomacy
By Andrew R.C. Marshall
ON THE MEKONG RIVER (Reuters) – A thin line divides tourism, trade and terror in the Golden Triangle, where the lawless borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet.
In Myanmar, where the jungly banks of the Mekong River vanish into the mist, lies an anarchic realm of drug smugglers, militiamen and pirates on speedboats. “I’m scared to go any further,” says Kan, a 46-year-old boatman, cutting his engine as he drifts just inside Myanmar waters from Thailand. “It’s too dangerous.”
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