Cybercrime unchained
Nick J. Freeman
Cybercrime is a big business, and some of its leading perpetrators are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities in Southeast Asia.
Category: Southeast Asia
The murder of Affan Kurniawan
Sylvie Tanaga
Indonesians were already furious at their government, seen as out-of-touch at a time of economic hardship. After an armoured police vehicle ran over a young delivery rider, they became unstoppable.
Pol Pot’s guests
Colin Meyn
Meeting with Pol Pot adds to Rithy Panh’s resume as the most prolific maker of films about the regime that took his family and terrorised his country.
Into the fray
Aie Balagtas See
Returning to politics, Leila de Lima says, is the only choice if she wants to keep fighting for justice, the rule of law, and truth.
The ink that never dries
Alfian Sa’at
By writing poetry from death row, Pannir Selvam Pranthaman sets out to prove that he’s more than just a condemned prisoner.
Thank You (Dedicated to Those Who Care)
Pannir Selvam Pranthaman
A poem by Pannir Selvam Pranthaman.
Those who left on those who stayed
Will Nguyen
Claudia Krich’s Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary is an invaluable primary source for those studying regime change, documenting firsthand the disintegration of the South Vietnamese government and the coalescence of a byzantine military administration in its wake.
Black chicken soup
Justina Lim
A short story by Justina Lim.
After the Malaysian ‘gay novel’
Alicia Izharuddin
The exploration of a character’s sexuality in Tash Aw’s latest novel has triggered backlash among conservatives in Malaysia, but pushing back in today’s fraught times is itself a complex undertaking.
Writing nearby, gathering hope
Lenette Lua
How does one love a world that is increasingly fractured? A reflection on curating at Objectifs and participating in the artistic projects by Chu Hao Pei and Arie Syarifuddin in Singapore.
The blue guitar
Ken Kwek
An encounter in Penang with a man named Kelvin D Loovi, who tells a story about his blue guitar.
Delicate matters
Peixuan Xie
Playing with nationalism is to take part in a risky game.
Reflections on a golden period
Kenneth Barrett
Stephen Simmons has produced an important record, with a wealth of historical information, that highlights the work of artists during the Sangkum era.
Mutual aid
Pablo Bayer
An exhibition in Pattani brings art collectives from three countries together to create dialogue on communal work and solidarity, encouraging people to look beyond stereotypes of Thailand’s deep south.
Between survival and betrayal
Ying
A look into the lives of Vietnamese workers in Myanmar’s scam centres.
Summoning Saigon’s musical past
Michael Howard
A conversation with Saigon Soul Revival, a band “on a mission to bring back the raw, live sound of 1960s and 1970s Vietnamese rock and soul music”.
Memories of a golden age
Sokummono Khan
In the face of funding cuts and growing oppression, Cambodian reporters cling on to hope through memories of a golden age of journalism.
A bankruptcy and a dream
Mali Wongwiwat
The Miss Universe franchise has been dismissed as a chauvinistic relic, but Thailand’s long-standing fixation with such pageants suggests that there are deeper implications.
This Lingga morning
Damina Khaira
Far from dismal or desolate, Lingga mornings reveal the everyday intimacies borne through connections near and far.
Resurrection
Tse Hao Guang
Waves Rising beautifully commemorates Ho Poh Fun’s life’s work, perhaps feeling like it needed to smoothen out some things bubbling just under the surface.
Flight Plan
Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray
A comic by Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray, reflecting on her shifting relationship with hope.
Malaysia’s reading riddle
Susan Loone
Banning books might bring the Malaysian government short-term political gain, but this restriction of access to different perspectives could have serious long-term repercussions.
In the company of ghosts
Leong Kar Yen
On not coming to terms with the past in Indonesia.
Malayness
Rowena Abdul Razak
Dina Zaman brings a lot from her past to Malayland, but she’s also firm in looking forward and seeking the humanness in Malaysia’s obsession for categories and othering.
A passage to Bohemia
Jonathan Victor Baldoza
A historian journeys to České Budějovice in Bohemia in search of the archive of Filipiniana left behind by Ferdinand and Friedrich Blumentritt.
Singapore’s utopia of rules
Naima Morelli
David Graeber’s notion of “total bureaucratisation” isn’t just a fitting analytical tool for global contemporary life; it also mirrors, with uncanny accuracy, the paradoxes of Singapore’s cultural policy.
Black cat
Domar Batucan Recopelacion
A poem from Domar Batucan Recopelacion
The curious case of the Cold War
Dương Mạnh Hùng
Two group shows staged in Bangkok question mainstream Cold War narratives through contemporary art.
Bringing back the dead
Leong Kar Yen
When families affected by extrajudicial killings in the Philippines speak and shed tears of sorrow and anger in front of legislators and flashing cameras, they’re finally able to transform shame into outrage.
In search of Khieu Ponnary, Pol Pot’s first wife
Kate Gauld
Khieu Ponnary, once called the “mother” of the Khmer Rouge, had seemingly vanished from history while the regime was at its height.
Far and away
Connla Stokes
Andrew Lam had never set out to be the preeminent chronicler of the global Vietnamese diaspora, but realised that “when I spoke up for those that couldn’t, I found my tongue”.
Star power
Mathieu Berbiguier
Dorothy Wai Sim Lau undertakes a nuanced interrogation of how fame, altruism and regional identity intersect in Asia’s transnational mediascape.
Searching and experimenting
Toh Ee Ming
Rebecca Toh, the founder of Casual Poet Library, on carefree wandering and taking one’s time.
Growing readers in Cambodia
Tom Marshall
Publishing in Cambodia is still a fledgling, fragile industry, but it’s growing fast.
Detoxification
Kirsten Han
A review of two books on finding—or perhaps ‘freeing’ is a better word—one’s voice through acts of creation, whether it’s prose, poetry, painting, drawing or cooking.
My brief career as a propagandist
Andreas Pohl
“Apart from illustrating how invested the authorities still are in shaping the official story of Vietnam’s wars of liberation, my experience at Thế Giới also revealed an almost religious faith in the power of the written word.”
Stranger than (Conradian) fiction
Oliver Raw
Did the man who inspired a character in Joseph Conrad’s novels leave behind a fortune in a Swiss bank?
Activist imagery
John Mateer
In a new banner by Taring Padi and Noongar artists, the Noongar figures and Australian fauna and flora integrate with images from an rebellious Indonesian proletarian class in a bold synthesis, creating a dream-like, political logic.
Persistence
Debra Carney
Luise Ahrens, a Maryknoll nun and education innovator from the US, worked with seismic stamina for twenty-six years to build up higher education in Cambodia.
Fleeing the draft
Jatuporn Susuadmo
Young people from Myanmar are being forced to choose between survival and service in a conflict they had no say in and strongly object to.