Word: asia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...plaque has done little to resolve the Hmong's plight in Southeast Asia. Thousands live in poverty in Thailand, and a few armed bands still live in the Laotian highlands, refusing to surrender to the government of Laos. Earlier this month, there were signs that the conflict might be easing: Vang Pao, now 80 and living in California, said he wanted to return home and help reconcile the Hmong and the Communist government in Vientiane. But officials reportedly replied that they'd welcome him back by executing him. It's no wonder Thailand's Hmong refugees are worried that...
Robert Knox, who was Keeper of the Department of Asia at the British Museum until 2006, gave up on coming to Pakistan in 2001 after 9/11. He was working in Bannu agency on the border of Waziristan. Today's it's an active war zone. "We were in Bannu for a very, very long time," says Knox, who excavated there from the mid-1970s to 2001. "We scratched the surface. There's still an enormous amount to do and sites are lost more or less daily. It's almost a free-for-all, particularly in difficult war-like areas...
...authoritarianism, albeit gussied up with legalisms. "The Chinese government's decision to sentence Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison on subversion charges is a travesty of justice and reflects yet again the government's willingness to use the law as a weapon to silence dissent," Phelim Kine, an Asia researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote after the verdict. "The severity of Liu's sentence puts the lie to the government's lofty rhetoric on commitment to rule-of-law and human rights...
...With his latest novel, A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta(available internationally with American release slated for early next year), the New England-bred author builds on his distinction as the contemporary writer most responsible for the West's vision of Asia. By staying low to the ground (mostly by rail) and true to his raw, first impressions - masterfully bending the dullest of travel encounters into revelations - he has etched indelible snapshots of much of the globe. His 1973 Saint Jack evoked Singapore in the swinging days before its turn toward a more staid Yuppiedom; Kowloon Tong captured...
...taxis, all like a dream of failure, reflected just how I felt about myself," he writes, in a vintage Theroux description that doesn't quite seem plausible when applied to protagonist Jerry Delfont, who suffers from the metaphoric "dead hand" of writer's block. (See the best of Asia...