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Beijing sizzles with hot weather alert at highest level
BEIJING: Beijing on Friday (Jun 23) upgraded its warning for hot weather to “red” – the highest in a colour-coded alert system – with many parts of the Chinese capital roasting in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius. The official temperature for the capital, which is measured from its southernContinue Reading
Kim Aris: Aung San Suu Kyi’s son urges army to free her
The youngest son of Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called on the military to free her from jail.
“I can’t let my mother languish in prison,” Kim Aris told BBC Burmese in an exclusive interview in London, and urged the world to do more to help her.
Ms Suu Kyi was handed a 33-year sentence in a series of trials after a coup toppled her government in 2021.
Myanmar has since spiralled into a civil war, which has killed tens of thousands of people.
Mr Aris, a British national, says the army has not given him any information about his mother or the condition of her health. He says he has tried contacting the Burmese embassy, the British Foreign Office and the International Red Cross but none of them have been able to help.
“Before this, I didn’t want to speak to the media or get involved too much,” Mr Aris said in his first-ever interview with international media. He hadn’t spoken out when his mother was detained in for nearly 15 years between 1989 and 2010.
“It was better that I stayed out of politics. My mother never wanted me to be involved. But now that she has been sentenced, and the military are clearly not being reasonable, I think I can say what I want.”
Awarded the Nobel peace prize, Ms Suu Kyi was one of the world’s leading democracy icons. Her release from nearly 15 years of detention in 2010 was celebrated in Myanmar and around the world. But she was later criticised for defending her country against allegations of genocide at the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) after widespread claims that Myanmar had committed atrocities against Muslim Rohingya while her government was in power. Nearly a million of them have fled Myanmar in recent years, and now live as refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh.
Mr Aris did not respond to BBC’s questions about the criticisms of his mother before the coup, preferring instead to focus on her current plight.
Ms Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest following the coup, was moved to solitary confinement last year in a prison in the capital Nay Pyi Taw. Almost no news of her has emerged in the last two years. She was also rumoured to have been ill, but the the military denied the reports.
Mr Aris has also urged the international community to resolve the crisis in Myanmar, where the war’s toll continues to rise as the army uses deadly weaponry and air strikes to crush resistance.
He says the international community must start “doing something, including putting a proper arms embargo on the military, and even supporting those who are trying to fight the military”.
Despite sanctions and international isolation, Myanmar continues to import weapons, and the raw materials to make them.
He adds that they must also “start lobbying more strongly” for the release of his mother. He also urged the world to provide “proper aid for the people of Burma who are going through such hard times… and have nobody supporting them, other than the people of Burma”.
Mr Aris and his brother have been mostly separated from their mother since 1988, when Ms Suu Kyi, or “the Lady” as she is known, returned to Myanmar from the UK to care for her ailing mother.
The daughter of independence hero General Aung San, she emerged as a leader of the pro-democracy movement against the military dictatorship. She co-founded the National League for Democracy (NLD), but was put under house arrest in 1989.
In 1991, when she couldn’t leave Myanmar for fear of not being able to return, Mr Aris, 14 years old then, received the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. She did not go back to see her husband before he died of cancer in 1999.
Mr Aris finally visited her in 2010 when she was released from detention. Before he left, he gave her a puppy he bought from a market in Yangon as a gift.
“He was the only puppy among all the other puppies in the cage that was actually awake… So he was the one that came home with me,” he recalls. “And since then, he’s proved a very faithful companion to my mother.”
In 2015, Ms Suu Kyi became the de facto leader after leading the NLD to a landslide victory following the first free elections to be held in the country in 25 years. Despite her fall from grace, she continues to be a hugely popular figure among the Burmese.
Taichito is still alive and Mr Aris is confident that he will soon be reunited with Ms Suu Kyi.
“The military will never win this war. It’s just a matter of how much longer it goes on,” he says. “The sooner they hand back power to my mother, and the democratically elected government, the sooner things can start to progress in their country.”
Sandar Win and Moe Myint are journalists with the BBC Burmese and based in London.
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Suspect cops petition OAG over probe
The Office of the Attorney General will examine a petition from three Chon Buri police officers who allegedly tried to extort 140 million baht from an online gambling network.
The petition was submitted on Thursday by Pol Lt Col Sathian Ratchapongthai, deputy superintendent at Nong Kham station in Chon Buri; Pol Maj Nakhonrat Nonseelad, an investigator of Nong Kham station; and Pol Capt Somboon Butdalert, a deputy commander of Phlu Ta Luang station.
The police officers were concerned after a report said they violated new regulations, which require police officers to record video and audio during an arrest from beginning to end.
The three accepted they didn’t follow the new regulations and asked the OAG to look into how other police were investigating their case, fearing they might be treated unfairly.
The three officers arrested Thaninwat Udomchaowaset, a prime suspect behind an illegal gambling website, Foxbet168, in Bangkok on May 23, but no video or audio of the arrest was recorded. During the arrest process, the three took Mr Thaninwat to meet Chon Buri police chief Pol Maj Gen Kamphon Leelaprapapor, where the alleged extortion attempt occurred.
So far, 10 officers and three civilians have been charged after six suspects under investigation for involvement in Foxbet168 accused the Chon Buri police chief and his subordinates of extortion.
Germany donates bivalent Covid-19 jabs
The Ministry of Public Health has received almost one million doses of the bivalent Covid-19 vaccine from Germany, which it plans to distribute to hospitals across the country in the next few weeks.
The donation was received by Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul at a ceremonial handover at the German embassy on Thursday, which was led by Germany’s ambassador to Thailand, Georg Schmidt. In total, 999,360 doses of bivalent Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer were handed over to the Thai government.
Mr Anutin thanked the German government, saying the donation reflects the friendly relations between the two countries, which have gone on for over 160 years.
Throughout the pandemic, Germany has extended its assistance to Thailand in an effort to bring Covid-19 cases under control across the wider Asean region. This assistance includes a donation of 2,000 courses of casirivimab/imdevimab, 346,100 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, four freezing containers and 51,000 injection needles.
“It is very generous and helps us strengthen our vaccine security. Next, the government will inspect the vaccines’ quality as required by our law before distributing them to hospitals within this month,” he said.
He noted that while Covid-19 is no longer considered a public health emergency, the disease still exists so the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to recommend repeated vaccinations to maintain a high level of immunity, especially those aged over 60 and living with chronic disease.
The ministry is also recommending the public receive a Covid-19 booster shot annually, along with the seasonal flu vaccine. The booster will stimulate the immune system and reduce the chance of developing severe symptoms, he said.
Medical personnel to be boosted over three years
The Public Health Ministry has outlined measures to ease the shortage of medical personnel in the state sector by expanding the pool as much as possible according to the law within three years, according to the government.
The measures could see the number of doctors climb by 40% and nurses by more than 50% by 2026, said spokesman Anucha Buraphachaisri.
He said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was concerned about the persistent shortage, which has caused doctors, particularly new graduates, to face heavy workloads, prompting many to leave state-run hospitals for less-stressful and higher-paid jobs in private hospitals.
Mr Anucha said Gen Prayut was fully aware of what is driving the shortage of medical personnel, and the government has initiated measures to address the problem in both the immediate and long term.
More medical personnel must be diverted to rehabilitating the estimated one million drug addicts nationwide, which has been one of the ministry’s priority tasks.
Tambon health promotion hospitals designed for delivering medical care to people in rural areas are also not functioning at full capacity, Mr Anucha said.
The hospitals are intended to keep people from taking trips to seek treatments at larger city hospitals and ease over- crowding.
Mr Anucha said the ministry and Civil Service Commission, which is in charge of allocating state-sector manpower, have formulated measures to alleviate the crippling medical personnel shortage.
He said it had been agreed that more doctors and nurses will be cultivated within the next three years until the legal cap is reached.
By 2026, it is expected there will be an additional 10,929 doctors, up 44% from now, and an extra 59,885 or 51% more nurses will be trained. Currently, there are 24,649 doctors and 116,038 nurses nationwide.
The spokesman said a committee would study whether regulations could be relaxed so nurses can be promoted to nurse specialists. Brighter career prospects will hopefully encourage them to remain in the state sector, he added. Doctors also need to be redistributed more effectively with more training offered to residency doctors at regional and other state-run hospitals so they can treat more patients and handle complicated procedures, he said.
The extra training will be counted as part of their duties, so it can be used as a criterion when they are considered for promotions.
Mr Anucha said more young doctors would undergo training to tackle the shortage of personnel in specialised fields.
Also, the government will expand the Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctors (CPIRD), which was launched in 1994, to allocate more doctors to work in far-flung areas where people have limited access to healthcare.
Commentary: What to make of Bidenâs bewildering remark equating Xi to âdictatorsâ?
Mr Biden’s words may rankle, but so did the Wall Street Journal report immediately following Mr Blinken’s visit that China plans to open a military training facility in Cuba, about 145km from the Florida coast. Nothing about Blinken-Xi meeting should suggest that US and China will neglect to pursue their own interests.
WHEN IS A GAFFE NOT A GAFFE?
Mr Biden’s “dictator” remark is against protocol, and to the extent that it makes some of his goals vis-a-vis relations with China more difficult to achieve, a mistake. However, it is very much in keeping with his more general view about China and US interests.
For Mr Biden, a central tenet of his foreign policy is that the competition between democracies and autocracies is a primary global struggle that will define the future, and that both America and the world are better off and more secure with a strong US capable of rallying democratic allies to meet contemporary challenges.
Thus, while Mr Biden’s choice of language is ill-advised, it highlights the divide he sees between the US and China.
There is no question that words can stoke tensions. Mr Biden’s statement that the US would come to Taiwan’s aid if China were to launch an unprovoked attack annoys Beijing and sends US diplomats and aides into a frenzy of clarification that US policy on “One China” has not changed.
Yet, having repeated the same “misstatement” on several occasions, Mr Biden is sending a message of a more assertive US foreign policy.
BIDEN’S REMARKS PLAY WELL DOMESTICALLY
While such messages are potentially destabilising for foreign policy, it is important to remember that they usually play well to a domestic audience. Mr Biden’s remark are unlikely to give him problems at home.
Commentary: India has no idea how many people its heatwaves are killing
The figure is an estimate based on media reporting cited in one of the first studies to measure the influence of climate change on the disaster. That study admits the two-digit number is likely an underestimate: In the city of Ahmedabad alone, a 2010 heatwave resulted in 1,344 heat-related deaths. So far, however, it’s the closest we’ve got to a figure.
The COVID-19 pandemic gives an insight into why better numbers are lacking. Most deaths have multiple causes. When one is a novel and politicised event such as an epidemic or heatwave, people may tend to either overplay or downplay this factor.
When a 65-year-old with angina has a heart attack on a day when the temperature touched 45 degree Celsius, did they die of heat or heart disease?
That can lead to distorted figures. China changed its standard for attributing coronavirus infection and pressured doctors to name other issues during its outbreak last year, in each case serving to suppress reported mortality.
A common solution to that problem is looking at excess deaths – comparing recorded fatalities with the number you’d expect in a typical year to iron out the effects of reporting bias. One excess-deaths study last year found that as many as 4.9 million people in India had died during the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the 412,000 officially recorded COVID-19 deaths.
TOO MANY UNRECORDED DEATHS
Even that approach may be inadequate in India, however, because the most basic data on mortality is too patchy. Nationwide, roughly 8 per cent of estimated deaths in 2019 went unrecorded, according to an annual government survey, and only 19 per cent of the total were certified by a medical professional, a step considered routine in most countries.
In Bihar, a province neighbouring Uttar Pradesh on the lower Ganges with a population bigger than Japan’s, just 52 per cent of deaths were recorded and 5.1 per cent were medically certified.
UTN leader ‘won’t ditch’ Gen Prayut
Pirapan denies talk he’s about to quit
United Thai Nation (UTN) Party leader, Pirapan Salirathavibhaga, has dismissed news reports that he was ditching Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha by quitting the party and his cabinet secretary post.
He said the reports were baseless, and working under Gen Prayut has been a blessing.
“I’ll absolutely never abandon a person as respectable as Gen Prayut,” he said.
Mr Pirapan said he reports to work as usual and will continue serving as prime minister secretary-general until the new government takes over.
A joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate is expected to convene on July 13 to select a new prime minister, followed by the appointment of a new cabinet on July 21. A swearing-in ceremony for the ministers is tipped for late next month.
“I’m more than delighted to be serving Gen Prayut, and this feeling will never change,” Mr Pirapan said. “It’s a choice I’ve made to stand by Gen Prayut until the very last second of his time in office as prime minister.”
Meanwhile, UTN secretary-general, Akanat Promphan, said the party’s MPs are receiving Election Commission (EC) certification and are registering themselves with the House.
Mr Pirapan may obtain his certification from the EC at his own convenience. MP registration is open until parliament convenes its first meeting.
Also, Thanakorn Wangboonkong- chana, PM’s Office Minister and a UTN list MP, denied an earlier media report that Gen Prayut had packed up and was ready to leave his Government House office.
Gen Prayut has come to work every day, but he is well aware of when he will move out, he said. The government is prepared to hand over power to the incoming administration, Mr Thanakorn said.