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Semper Ad Meliora | Always Towards Better Things

East Asia Maps

Imprisonment of Journalists in the Asia-Pacific

May 31, 2020June 14, 20201 min read Yusoof Monawvil

With a grand total of 113 journalists currently in prison for press-related activities, the Chinese Communist Party has imprisoned over three times the combined total of all other nations on the map—that’s including neighboring communist Vietnam and Laos. Bringing population into light, China’s journalist imprisonment rate is 7.853⁻⁸ with East and Southeast Asia having a combined journalist imprisonment rate of 4.124⁻⁸.

Liberty: An Uncounted Fatality of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia

May 21, 2020June 6, 20204 min read Yusoof Monawvil

Thai artist and gallery-operator, Danai Ussama, was arrested on the afternoon of March 23 while under self-quarantine in his home in Phuket
His crime?
Posting on Facebook that he and fellow passengers were not ushered through medical checks upon arriving at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok.

Activists from a number of Asian countries are calling for the boycott of the film “Mulan,” released by Disney on September 4, on the grounds that production’s lead actor, Liu Yi Fei, has publicly expressed support for the police crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong.

Maximum Sentences for Bribery in Latin America

Kicking off commentary on Latin America, Lucas Tisani marks his foray into corruption in the region and the embattled system that seeks to dismantle.

“Taiwan,” “W.H.O?”

Our resident cartoonist, Iggy Kim’s latest piece on WHO Assistant-Director General Bruce Aylward pretending not to hear RTHK journalist Yvonne Tong’s question on Taiwan’s membership.

The Long Reach of Chinese Censorship

I spent the last ten years living in China’s Xinjiang province, one of the country’s so-called “autonomous regions.” In my experience, labeling these regions as such had little to do with autonomy and everything to do with the local governments being able to pull in more money from tourism. This exploitive tourism featured costumed dancers in tightly controlled environments with thematic scenery and had little to do with anything that might be culturally controversial; it was all cultural appropriation on a horrifying scale.