TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may have surprised many within his own Liberal Democratic Party with his decision to resign, but the party showed it was capable of pulling off a surprise of its own by choosing veteran lawmaker Yasuo Fukuda as its new leader. Most observers had expected former Foreign Minister Taro Aso to succeed Abe, including the financial markets, which actually saw a jump in the stock prices of manga-related firms in expectation that manga fan Aso was set to take over. But Aso’s closeness to Abe, and his determination to stand by the embattled prime [...]
When I heard the news that protesting Buddhist monks in Burma had managed to reach the home of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi last week, a wave of cold dread washed over me. My mind traveled back to the time a few years ago when I tried to reach Suu Kyi’s home on University Avenue in Rangoon (now named Yangon by the brutal military rulers of Burma, itself renamed Myanmar by the same illegitimate government). My thoughts then moved further back in time, to 1988, when street protests led by the astonishing Suu Kyi ended in tragedy. By some [...]
CAMBODIA CHARGES SENIOR KHMER ROUGE OFFICIAL — Cambodian authorities have arrested the Khmer Rouge’s ideological chief, Nuon Chea, to answer charges at a United Nations-backed tribunal that he planned and helped execute the murders of up to 1.7 million people. Chea, the most senior surviving member of Pol Pot’s murderous regime, was arrested Sept. 19 and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The move comes less than two months after the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) issued formal charges on July 31 against Kaing Guek Eav (better known by his alias, Duch) who ran S-21, [...]
