Word: thailand
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...teachers are late for school again. It happens almost every morning at Ban Bukoh village in Thailand's troubled Pattani province, but the kids are getting used to it. The girls busy themselves by sweeping the corridor outside the government school's single row of tiny classrooms. The boys crib last-minute homework from each other. Then the men with guns arrive-six of them in a pickup truck, two more on a motorbike, all toting M-16 assault rifles. It is the job of these government militiamen to protect two cars and five motorbikes carrying a dozen teachers. Their...
...aren't afraid to fight," the children sing as the Thai flag is raised between fire-scorched trees. The words can't mean much-some of the children are fresh out of kindergarten. But even the youngest among them must be dimly aware that a conflict is raging in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, and that its battle lines run right through their schoolyard...
...militants, razing classrooms and slaughtering teachers is a justified strategy. Besides their anger-and that of many ordinary Thai Muslims-at what they perceive to be the marginalization of the south (the region is among Thailand's poorest), the insurgents have long despised government schools, whether Buddhist or Muslim. The rebels see them as representative of a Thai state they believe suppresses the culture, language and religion of Malay Muslims, who make up the majority of people in the southern provinces of this otherwise overwhelmingly Buddhist nation. Resistance to Bangkok's assimilation policies-banning Muslim headscarves, closing schools not conforming...
...Asia doesn't need to worry? Hardly. With the notable exceptions of China and India, key countries in Asia are growing at about 2 percentage points a year more slowly than they were before the crisis, largely because of lower investment. Thailand's banking and corporate sector is in far better shape than a decade ago, but allegations of cronyism under ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and erratic policies by the current military government have unsettled investors. Nationalism is on the rise throughout the region, reflecting a belief that there is so much cash that countries can do without foreign...
...billion per month, with investors looking to take advantage both of its low-wage levels and its young and highly literate population. But only 10% of Vietnamese college-aged youths are enrolled in higher education, lagging behind India and China, and less than a quarter of the figure for Thailand. Those numbers don't bode well for Vietnam's ambitions to move into higher-end electronics and outsourcing...