Indian tourist found dead in Pattaya room
CHON BURI: A 30-year-old Indian man was found dead in a rented Pattaya room wearing a mask connected to a gas cylinder, his hands tied to the arms of his chair and his ankles bound together.
The renting agent told police she earlier received an email saying the man was hearing voices in his head and intended to commiit suicide.
The man’s body was found in Room 129 of Building A at Laguna Beach Resort 3 about 9.30pm on Tuesday. He was identified as Vibin Vijayakumar, 30, an Indian national, police said.
He had a tight fitting yellow mask over his face connected via a tube to a cylinder of nitrogen gas. He was sitting in a chair placed beside the bed, his hands fastened to the arm rests of the chair and his ankles tied together.
The airconditioner was still running when police arrived after receiving a call from the estate agent. They estimated he had been dead about 12 hours and said there were no indications of violence or that the room had been searched.
Renting agent Jureerat Suthakham, 45, said she called police after receiving an email saying that the man in the room intended to commit suicide because he kept hearing a voice telling him to do it.
She said the man moved into the room on May 15 but the rental agreement had yet to be concluded.
Police said it appeared that he committeed suicide. The Police General Hospital would perform an autopsy to determine the actual cause of death.
South Korea environmental impact review clears way for US missile defence system
SEOUL: A South Korean environmental impact assessment of a United States missile defence system found “insignificant” electromagnetic radiation relative to safety standards, the defence ministry said on Wednesday (Jun 21), clearing the way for its permanent deployment. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system installed in South Korea inContinue Reading
Ongoing attacks on activists bring Laos into the spotlight
When the ambulance arrived at full speed at a Vientiane coffee shop on 29 April, first responders found what looked like a dead body.
It was 25-year-old democracy activist Anousa “Jack” Luangsuphom. Jack was shot twice, including once in the face, by a gunman just minutes before the medical staff arrived. Though the young activist’s friends said the shooter was known to them, an official investigation of the attack has, so far, produced no updates in nearly two months.
“I survived the attempted murder, and that day changed my life forever,” Jack wrote to Emilie Palamy Pradichit, founder and executive director of the Bangkok-based rights group Manushya Foundation. “I will never give up my activism. We, Lao people, want democracy and freedom!”
A few weeks after this attack, on 17 May, Lao political activist Bounsuan Kitiyano, 56, took his last breaths near a forest in Ubon Ratchathani, northeastern Thailand.
Bounsuan was apparently shot three times while riding a motorbike. Villagers found his lifeless body and contacted the authorities, who have yet to establish firm leads as to who killed the activist and why.
Since the 1975 end of the Vietnam War – known in Laos as the American War – communist Laos has remained among the most repressive countries in the world, with strictly limited freedom of speech, press and religion.
While political and freedom repression against Lao activists is not new, these two recent cases of murder and attempted murder of political activists made the world gasp.
Some believe the Lao government is escalating a crackdown to silence dissidents ahead of its upcoming turn as the rotational ASEAN chair. Others simply weren’t surprised to see the continuation of a decades-long campaign of persecution of political criticism.
Lao activists such as Bounsuan have fled to Thailand for decades. But as the kingdom lacks a formal protection system for refugees – and its own people are often themselves fleeing as political dissidents – Lao exiles seeking haven on Thai soil often find an insecure, marginalised status.
“The political activism and the protection of Lao political activists in both Laos and Thailand is a sensitive issue,” said Thanachate Wisaijorn, head of the government department at the Faculty of Political Science at Ubon Ratchathani University. “It’s never brought up to the table in bilateral meetings.”
Today’s activism
While the countries’ authorities keep their grip on political narratives, Lao youths are starting to move the waters.
As the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Laos saw rapidly increasing inflation and a dramatic decrease in employment rates, all of which prompted citizens to share their concerns on the internet. Groups of youths created social media pages to allow their peers to openly share criticism of the Lao government, such as Jack’s popular Facebook page Empowered by a Keyboard.
These youth-led corners of the internet are a new generation of democracy supporters who are finding new ways to raise their voices. Through social media and the internet, these activists gather online under anonymous profiles to speak about economic, political and social issues.
Jack is part of this scene. But in his case, even speaking from behind a screen appears to have not been enough to spare him. The shooting has left others to fear not only for themselves but also for their families’ safety.
Pradichit from Manushya Foundation helped Jack’s evacuation of Laos in May after hospital staff left a bullet in his chest, allegedly hesitant to provide treatment once they realised who their patient was.
The foundation is now working with other human rights organisations and a team of lawyers to file a lawsuit against Vientiane’s Mittaphab Hospital for negligence in Jack’s case. According to their allegations, the Lao hospital failed to provide Jack with food since the police visit on 3 May. Pradichit says the chest tube installed the night of the shooting was never changed, causing severe infections and blood clots in Jack’s body.
“His medical conditions were really bad. The hospital in Laos would have let him die,” she said.
Jack is now fully conscious but unable to speak due to the permanent damage to his tongue caused by one of the bullets. He now communicates via text messages or written notes.
Although he wants to continue living in Laos and advocate for democracy, after his near-brush with death, rights groups helped extract him from the country to receive medical treatment. His current location is concealed for security reasons.
“Jack doesn’t want to be relocated,” said Pradichit, who is currently supporting Jack with legal and protection processes to ensure his safety. “He doesn’t understand why he had to start his life from scratch when he had done nothing wrong.”
Unlike Jack, most other outspoken Lao activists, including Bounsuan spent decades in exile. Many of them are recognised UN political refugees in the U.S., Germany, Australia and Canada, but Bounsuan decided to stay in neighbouring Thailand so he could join the former Free Laos group, a dissident organisation active among the 1980s diaspora that advocated for a return to monarchy over communism.
An unsafe past
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is one of only five remaining communist countries in the world along with China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. The government is ruled by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) in a closed, single-party system.
The modern state is the legacy of the Pathet Lao communist insurgency, which had fought through independence from the French protectorate, two decades of civil war and U.S. bombings during the Vietnam War – or American War.
This communist victory was followed by a period of great poverty, along with an exodus of thousands of people escaping retribution for siding with the U.S. and royalists during the war. They were the first generation of state dissidents. That was especially true for the Hmong ethnic group, which fought alongside the U.S. against communism and has since been regularly persecuted by the state and excluded from public employment.
Thai national archives recorded 120,000 registered Hmong people crossing from Laos in the early 1980s, but according to Thanachate, there were many more. The Thai government would support them for five years as political refugees, he explained, but their protection didn’t last long.
“We must be aware that the state relationship between Thailand and Laos was not good at that time,” Thanachate said. “That was until 2009, when Thailand facilitated the Hmong repatriation in Laos.”
For years, the Lao government mostly focused on persecuting Hmong as the state enemies, though that pressure eased with their safe repatriation. Meanwhile, a new generation of Lao political activists had been born – and were beginning a small pro-democracy movement.
Laos was about to see a new wave of political activism, with Jack being one of many young human rights defenders in the country. Attacks against political activists, however, continued incessantly throughout the decades.
Human rights violations continued
This year, Bounsuan’s death could be the latest of these brutal attacks. Human rights organisations have condemned the murder and called for the Lao government to run an independent and impartial investigation.
The most prominent case of politically motivated assault was the enforced disappearance of human rights defender Sombath Somphone, who was abducted from a police checkpoint in Vientiane in 2012.
More than a decade later, no one knows his whereabouts.
In the meantime, environmental activist Houayheuang “Muay” Xayabouly remains in prison after pleading guilty to state defamation for criticising the government on Facebook for corruption and its poor response to the 2019 flooding in Champasak and Salavan provinces. The whereabouts of Lao pro-democracy activist Od Sayavong, who disappeared in 2019 after returning to Laos from Thailand on a visa run, also remains unknown.
Chue Youa Vang was murdered in 2021 allegedly by the Lao authorities for his work on finding one of the four Hmong people who mysteriously disappeared in March 2020.
As of last year, the Lao government has reported only three political prisoners, who remain in detention for treason, anti-state propaganda and unauthorised protests.
Many more cases have gone unreported both in Laos and Thailand. Human rights groups within Laos are only allowed to operate under government oversight, which normally restricts their investigative power and has never welcomed international oversight in cases involving Lao activists.
In the shadow of silence, Lao democracy and human rights advocates continue to walk lightly.
Jack is now undergoing a series of life-saving surgeries. He is not yet out of danger, but as human rights groups are increasing pressure on the Lao government, his call for democracy continues to be clear.
Espadon: France arrives on hypersonic fighter scene
In what may mark a great surge forward in fighter jet technology, France has unveiled its Espadon hypersonic fighter concept, signalling a possible redirection of its sixth-generation fighter ambitions.
Breaking Defense reported that French state-backed research company Onera showed its Espadon hypersonic fighter concept this month at the Paris Air Show.
The report mentions that the Espadon model has already undergone wind testing, with the intent of developing an aircraft that can fly at Mach 5 or faster.
It also notes that the concept will be handed over to French industry to prepare for the future, with 2050 as the envisioned date for the hypersonic aircraft’s first flight.
Breaking Defense says that while the French Ministry of Defense (MOD) has not yet funded Espadon at the procurement level, it has been internally funded to improve hypersonic aircraft knowledge and competency, and decide the building blocks to create a prototype.
It also mentions that expertise from Espadon continues to be shared with parties involved in developing France’s Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program built around a Next Generation Fighter, Remote Carriers and an Air Combat Cloud.
At its core, Espadon may be one of multiple sixth-generation fighter concepts under development. Those include the US’ Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), Japan’s Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) and the UK’s Tempest projects.
While there is no universally agreed definition of what constitutes a sixth-generation fighter, the type will most likely include new and emerging technologies such as modular design, machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, drone swarms and optionally-manned capability.
Although the Espadon’s design details are scant, the idea is strikingly similar to the US Mayhem project, touted to be the successor to the SR-71 spy plane of Cold War fame.
Asia Times reported in December 2022 that the US Air Force awarded Leidos, a Virginia-based private defense company, a contract to deliver “a larger class air-breathing hypersonic system capable of executing multiple missions with a standardized payload interface, providing a significant technological advancement and future capability.”
Project Mayhem is envisioned to perform multiple missions such as delivering area effect or unitary payloads or conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The aircraft is to be powered by a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) powerplant scheme.
TBCC propulsion uses both jet engines and scramjets to offset the limitations of either engine type. Jet engines would boost the aircraft during takeoff and reach the required speed for the scramjets to kick in for hypersonic flight.
However, many details are still unknown about Project Mayhem. In particular, it is unknown whether it is designed to be a reusable or expendable aircraft, as it has been described as somewhere between a hypersonic missile and a full-on hypersonic aircraft.
Espadon may be part of France’s efforts to push on with FCAS development, which may be stalled due to its contentious partnership with Germany, one of the program’s major stakeholders.
Asia Times noted in November 2022 that Germany’s purchase of 35 F-35 jets from the US last March sparked concerns in France that Germany was cooling on FCAS development. However, Germany argues that the F-35s are necessary to ensure its continued role in NATO nuclear-sharing, which is now even more urgent due to the ongoing Ukraine war.
Differing strategic perspectives have also played a role in stalling the FCAS project. France requires power projection capabilities due to its interests in North and Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, alongside maintaining a nuclear deterrent.
On the other hand, Germany has a pacifist political orientation, and its air defense posture emphasizes counter-air capabilities over long-range strikes, alongside its controversial nuclear-sharing agreement with NATO.
Division of labor issues have hounded the FCAS project, with French aerospace firms Dassault and Airbus at odds over the FCAS’ flight control software.
Dassault insists that FCAS software be shared among all project stakeholders, while Airbus insists that its software should be used in the project.
FCAS partners Germany and Spain are likely to insist on full technology access. Still, Airbus provides flight software for the Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon and is unlikely to cede any advantage in that area.
Such disagreements have led France and Germany to postpone replacing their Dassault Rafales and Eurofighters with the FCAS as originally planned from 2040 to 2050. Conflicting national interests between France and Germany may also have dictated the former’s apparent move from the troubled FCAS to the Espadon hypersonic fighter concept.
Dominic Vogel notes in a January 2021 Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) report that France’s capability requirement of unilateral military action contrasts with Germany’s preference for multilateral structures and has hobbled the direction of the FCAS program.
Vogel also notes that France and Germany withhold certain key technologies from each other, with France emphasizing industrial strategic autonomy while Germany stresses maintaining control of its critical military technologies.
He also says that France views the FCAS as the successor to the Rafale for the air-based part of its nuclear arsenal, as it views nuclear deterrence as a critical component of its sovereignty.
That requirement, Vogel says, requires the FCAS to be capable of carrying the ASMP nuclear-tipped cruise missile and the capability to operate from carriers.
In contrast, Vogel notes the more indirect relationship between the FCAS and Germany’s intended nuclear role, as the latter already participates in NATO’s nuclear-sharing program.
He says that, from Germany’s perspective, the FCAS needs to be capable of using US and French nuclear weapons, with France being unlikely to approve given the aircraft’s critical role in maintaining its strategic autonomy.
Hence, France may consider the Espadon program as a new start in its sixth-generation fighter development.
Millions of meth pills found on truck trapped in deadend street
Bags containing 10 million methamphetamine pills were found on a truck abandoned in a deadend street by the fleeing driver during a police pursuit in Pathum Thani’s Lam Luk Ka district.
Narcotics suppression police gave chase to the six-wheel truck around 4pm on Tuesday. It fled into a housing estate in Lam Luk Ka district and became trapped in a deadend.
The driver abandoned the truck and made good his escape into a forest behind the housing estate.
A search of the vehicle found 27 big sacks and two smaller ones on the back, covered with a tarpaulin. The sacks contained more than 10 million speed pills, police said.
The pursuit followed the earlier seizure in Saraburi’s Kaeng Khoi district of 4,000 packages containing about 8 million meth pills on May 6, as police moved against the Jae Cake Sanam Chai drug trafficking network.
Authorities kept a close watch on this network and received information a large quantity of drugs would be delivered to Pathum Thani on Tuesday.
A witness said he saw the speeding truck turn into the blind street at housing estate on Tuesday afternoon. Shortly after, another vehicle followed it in, and he heard 2 or 3 gunshots he believed were fired by police in the second vehicle.
The investigation was continuing. Police were checking on the truck’s registration to see if the owner was involved in drug smuggling or not.
Police seize bags containing 10 million speed pills from a six-wheel truck abandoned by the fleeing driver following a police pursuit in Lam Luk Ka district, Pathum Thani on Tuesday afternoon. (Photos: Pathum Thani News Facebook)
Terrorist groups increasingly targeting youths, Singapore a ‘prized target’: DPM Wong
SINGAPORE: Terrorist groups have been increasingly targeting youths, with Singapore considered a “prized target”, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Wednesday (Jun 21). Speaking at the Religious Rehabilitation Group’s (RRG) 18th annual retreat, Mr Wong said that while terrorism may not be at the top of many Singaporeans’ minds, theContinue Reading
Driver thought lights had turned green and drove into motorcyclist, causing fractures
SINGAPORE: Mistaking green pedestrian lights as a signal for him to proceed, a driver drove through a red light and collided with a motorcyclist, fracturing his jaw and wrist. Tan Puay Chey, 51, was sentenced to two months’ jail and a two-year driving ban. As he is appealing against hisContinue Reading
Poor peopleâs lifeline, Indian railway network, is collapsing
Indian Railways carries more than 23 million passengers daily, many of whom are poor migrant workers. Because of the present government’s underinvestment on safety components, common people are losing trust in this mode of transportation.
A rail safety fund was introduced in 2017-18, but money allocated for track renewal was reportedly not effectively utilized. Spending on programs dedicated to safety improvements for India’s fleet of more than 13,000 older trains has been shrinking.
Railway tracks have suffered from years of lack of maintenance and are not built to accommodate the stress of fast-moving trains that now ply the country. Moreover, political hype has overtaken fact and reality.
The seriousness of the safety issue in Indian Railways came to the fore after the recent deadly train accident in Odisha, where 292 passengers died and 1,100 were badly injured.
The government of India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) finds that roughly 260,000 people have lost their lives in train accidents in the past 10 years, and a vast majority of these deaths were caused by people either falling off trains or getting run over by them.
As well, in the last four years, more than 120,000 cattle have fallen prey to train accidents. These cattle are the key sources of income for poor people.
India’s top audit body, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in its 2022 annual report on “Derailments in Indian Railways” held the engineering department of Indian Railways responsible for the majority of derailments.
The CAG report from last year revealed three issues pertinent to track maintenance:
- Reduction of funding for track maintenance over the past few years.
- Funds allocated for track maintenance were reappropriated to other projects.
- In some cases, funds were underutilized – as much as 25% of allocated funds were returned (a sign of bureaucratic hurdles).
The CAG report also flagged severe shortfalls in inspections, failure to submit or accept inquiry reports after accidents, not utilizing a dedicated railway fund on priority tasks, declining trend in funding track renewal, and inadequate staffing in safety operations as serious concerns.
The official data reveal staggering understaffing, which is putting stress on the system and its current employees. Indian Railways is reeling under a crushing staff shortage, with 312,000 non-gazetted posts lying vacant across the country, as reported by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in Parliament last year.
In the Central Railway, of the 28,650 vacant posts, almost 50% (14,203) are in the safety category that primarily includes operating and maintenance staff, such as inspectors of various kinds, drivers, train examiners and shunters, among several others.
The report further said fire extinguishers had not been provided in 27,763 coaches (62%) in violation of extant norms. This is evidence of terrible management, which is costing many valuable lives and livelihoods.
Despite knowing that 99% of rail travelers hail from poor and middle-income backgrounds, tens of millions have been generated by the railway from the cancellations of tickets. This cancellation fee is an additional burden on common people, particularly poor migrant workers, for whom the train is the lifeline for their daily commute to earn bread for their families.
The government must re-examine its current policy of neglect of the railway network, and must prioritize its investment in railway infrastructure and ensure that the safety of passengers is the topmost priority.
As the railway network is the lifeline of the vast majority of poor people in the country, the government must come forward with a plan to provide free travel to the poor. Moreover, the government must consider a full-time dedicated railway minister to manage the world’s second-largest railway network efficiently.
Modi in US: Elon Musk says Tesla to come to India ‘as soon as possible’
ANITesla CEO Elon Musk has said the electric carmaker will be in India “as soon as humanly possible”.
His comments followed a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a state visit to the US.
The Indian government said it had invited Mr Musk to explore investment opportunities in electric mobility and the commercial space sector.
Mr Musk said he was “trying to figure out the right timing” to make that happen.
Mr Modi’s meeting with Mr Musk, who also owns Twitter, came days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey accused India of threatening to shut down the platform for not complying with its orders to take down content from the website.
Mr Dorsey’s allegations, made in an interview with an independent news show, were strongly denied by the Indian government, which called it “an outright lie”.
Mr Musk commented on the episode on Wednesday and said that Twitter didn’t have a choice but to obey local governments or “we will get shut down”.
“We will do our best to provide the freest speech that is possible under the law,” he said.
Mr Musk also called himself a “fan of Mr Modi” and said that India had “more promise than any large country in the world”.
“He [Mr Modi] really cares about India because he’s pushing us to make significant investments in India, which is something we intend to do. We are just trying to figure out the right timing,” he told reporters. “I am confident that Tesla will be in India and will do so as soon as humanly possible.”
Tesla has been in talks with Indian bureaucrats and ministers as it looks to enter the domestic market.
Reuters reported last month that Tesla had proposed setting up a factory to build electric vehicles and was also looking at manufacturing EV batteries in the country. “They are very seriously looking at India as a production and innovation base,” federal minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar had told the agency in May.
The company’s original plans to open base in India were shelved last year after the Indian government insisted Tesla to make cars locally, while the carmaker said it wanted to export to India first so that it could test demand.
Mr Musk said that he also hoped also bring Starlink satellite internet service, operated by his company SpaceX, to India.
“We do not want to jump the gun on an announcement but I think it is quite likely that it will be a significant investment in our relationship with India,” he told reporters.
Mr Modi arrived in New York on Tuesday for a three-day state visit which is being seen has a turning point for bilateral relations between India and the US.
He will be given a ceremonial welcome at the White House on Thursday before he holds direct talks with President Joe Biden.
On Tuesday, over 70 US lawmakers wrote to Mr Biden, urging him to raise human rights issues with Mr Modi during his trip. They said they were concerned about growing religious intolerance, press freedoms, and the targeting of civil society groups in India.
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Read more India stories from the BBC:
- Why the US is rolling out the red carpet for Modi
- Why some Indian scholars are disowning books they wrote
- What’s drawing so many Indians to Australia?
- India film dialogue sparks Bollywood ban in Nepal
- The first Indian woman to win a match at Wimbledon
- The Indians taking on giant Saudi-backed refinery
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Longest day of the year
Wednesday is the longest day of the year, the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.
Suparerk Karuehanont, communication director of the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, said that on Wednesday, June 21, the Sun would be at its northernmost point in the sky.
There would be 12 hours and 56 minutes between sunrise and sunset in Thailand.
Consequently, it would also be the shortest night of the year.
The day marks the start of summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere, he said.
On Wednesday the sun rose at 5.51am and would set at 6.47pm, Mr Suparerk said.