Word: bangkok
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Thai government's claim that it has insufficient funds and manpower to stop the piracy against the Vietnamese boat people [Nov. 9] is fallacious. Bangkok simply lacks the will to do anything about it. Perhaps it considers piracy an effective means to deter the flow of Vietnamese refugees into Thailand...
...plight of the boat people began after the fall of Saigon in 1975, when increasing numbers of South Vietnamese began fleeing the oppressive Hanoi regime in rickety fishing craft. By 1980, Thailand was overwhelmed by nearly 300,000 refugees from Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. Government policy in Bangkok shifted, and Thai fishermen, who once came to the aid of the refugees, were given three-day jail sentences if they towed a leaking refugee boat to shore...
...atrocities unpublicized. Nor have the Thais taken much action to stop the assaults at sea. One promising venture was an antipiracy unit, supported by a $2 million U.S. grant, that included two spotter planes and funds to repair an aging coast guard cutter. After some success against the pirates, Bangkok asked the U.S. for another $1.3 million in June. The Reagan Administration countered with an offer of $600,000. Thai officials said the funds were insufficient and the program died. This week Bangkok will study a proposal by UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross that concerned nations...
TIME'S Bangkok correspondent David DeVoss found an equally thriving market in Dara Adam Khail, a mud-splattered tribal settlement in Pakistan's North-West Frontier. Visiting in the early days of January 1980, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, DeVoss asked the most venerable gunsmith in Dara for a "beginner's weapon." From beneath a pile of Sten guns, the man unearthed what DeVoss thought was a ballpoint pen. But the pen could accommodate a .25-cal. slug that would kill at close range...
...Bangkok has been far less successful in containing Communist insurgents in the deep south. In recent weeks, guerrillas there have blown up a railroad bridge, disrupted rail traffic to Malaysia and ambushed a police station. Unlike the northeast, where poor farmers were drawn to the Communists by promises of a better life, the south spawned guerrillas who concentrated their propaganda on government corruption. "The people in the south become Communists for revenge, not ideology," explains Uthai Hiruntoa, the Interior Ministry's director for rural development in the five southernmost provinces. "Fighting is intense today because the hatred is very...