Category Archives: Malaysia

How are Australia’s neighbours faring in the Covid pandemic?

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Vaccination rates are rising in much of south-east Asia and the Pacific after recent outbreaks, but some of the largest countries are falling behind

While Australians have focused on the Covid waves in Sydney and Melbourne, many of Australia’s neighbours have recently experienced their largest outbreaks so far. This includes Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu and even Singapore.

Singapore surpassed Australia’s vaccination target weeks ago, but was now seeing more than a thousand cases a day. Fiji recently had one of the highest rates of Covid cases per capita – peaking at 1,850 cases in the middle of July. But the nation of 889,000 was now regularly administering more than 10,000 new vaccinations a day.

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The disappeared in Mexico, Afghan female footballers and a giant puppet: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas

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Labour says PPE contracts must not go to Xinjiang firms that use forced workers

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Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province

Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.

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Ismail Sabri Yaakob appointed as Malaysian prime minister

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Constitutional monarch names deputy PM in coalition to take over following resignation of Muhyiddin Yassin

Ismail Sabri Yaakob has been named Malaysia’s prime minister, as a scandal-mired party that previously governed for six decades reclaimed the leadership it lost in 2018’s landmark election.

Ismail Sabri, who will be sworn in on Saturday, was the deputy prime minister in the coalition led by Muhyiddin Yassin. Muhyiddin resigned on Monday following months of political turmoil that culminated in the collapse of his majority in parliament.

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The woman on a mission to expose torture in Thailand’s troubled south

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Despite the risks, Anchana Heemmina wants justice for victims of the Malay Muslims’ decades-old insurgency – and for herself

Much of Anchana Heemmina’s work involves listening to stories of immeasurable pain, all part of her campaign to stop the cycle of violence that has long haunted Thailand’s troubled southern provinces.

Her work striving for human rights and to prevent torture by state authorities has put Heemmina’s life in danger.

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Nora Quoirin: Malaysia court overturns inquest’s misadventure verdict

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High court ruling leaves open possibility of criminal involvement, in victory for family

A Malaysian court has overturned the findings of an inquest into the death of the French-Irish teenager Nora Anne Quoirin, stating that the coroner was wrong to conclude she died as a result of misadventure.

The high court judge Azizul Azmi Adnan instead issued an open verdict, which does not rule out the possibility of criminal involvement and could pave the way for further investigations into her disappearance.

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Factory workers making goods for the west bear brunt of virus surge in south-east Asia

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Migrant labourers tell of being forced to isolate in brutal conditions as Covid wave grips region

It was around mid-May when workers at the Cal-Comp factory in Phetchaburi, central Thailand, heard a small group of their colleagues had tested positive for Covid-19. It soon became clear the virus had ripped through the production lines. A cluster associated with the electronics factory has since been linked to thousands of infections.

Hwan Htet Paing*, a worker from the factory, said he was not told the results of his Covid test, carried out on 19 May. Despite this, he was instructed to quarantine inside a vast hall at his workplace. The floor was covered with tarpaulin sheets and lined with rows of mosquito nets for each worker. Everyone was given a bucket and a cup, and bedsheets to lay across the floor. Fans were handed out to help ease the heat – until the vast numbers of people testing positive meant there were none left.

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Police in Malaysia use drones to detect high temperatures amid Covid surge

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Police have also warned they will use drones to enforce travel restrictions, as Malaysia endures near total lockdown

Police in Malaysia are using drones to detect people with high temperatures in public spaces as part of Covid prevention measures, according to local media.

The drones, which can detect people’s temperatures as high as 20m above ground, emit a red light to alert the authorities if someone has a high reading, Bernama, Malaysia’s state news agency, reported.

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Oxygen shortages threaten ‘total collapse’ of dozens of health systems

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Data reveals Nepal, Iran and South Africa among 19 countries most at risk of running out as surging Covid cases push supplies to limit

Dozens of countries are facing severe oxygen shortages because of surging Covid-19 cases, threatening the “total collapse” of health systems.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism analysed data provided by the Every Breath Counts Coalition, the NGO Path and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to find the countries most at risk of running out of oxygen. It also studied data on global vaccination rates.

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South-east Asian countries battle Covid resurgence amid lack of vaccines

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Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore race to contain clusters as experts warn jabs must be distributed more evenly

South-east Asian countries, including nations that managed to control the coronavirus last year, are struggling to contain recent outbreaks as new variants and vaccine shortages leave populations exposed.

Thailand’s cumulative caseload has more than quadrupled since 1 April, rising to almost 130,000, after infections spread in its cramped prisons, densely populated areas of the capital and construction sites.

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Yemen, Myanmar and George Floyd: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru

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US bars rubber gloves from Malaysian firm due to ‘evidence of forced labour’

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Banned firm Top Glove also supplied NHS hospitals, prompting calls for guarantees on PPE sources

Top Glove, the world’s largest manufacturer of rubber gloves, has been banned from exporting its products from Malaysia to the United States after the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) made a finding that its products are made using forced and indentured labour.

Rubber medical gloves from a Malaysian manufacturer will be seized if they enter the US due to “conclusive evidence” they are being made by workers under conditions of modern slavery, the CBP said.

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‘This is historic’: Malaysian man wins appeal against Islamic gay sex charge

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Unanimous decision by highest court hailed a step towards acceptance of LGBT+ people

A Malaysian man has won a landmark court challenge against an Islamic ban on sex “against the order of nature”, raising hopes for greater acceptance of gay rights in the mostly Muslim country.

In a unanimous decision, Malaysia’s top court ruled on Thursday that the Islamic provision used against the man was unconstitutional and authorities had no power to enact the law.

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Migrant worker at Malaysian medical glove manufacturer dies of Covid-19

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Nepali man is first known fatality at biggest global producer Top Glove, accused of failing to protect workers

A worker at the biggest global producer of medical rubber gloves has died after contracting Covid-19, in the first known Covid-related death of an employee at the Malaysian company since the virus began to spread through its factories and dormitories.

Top Glove’s profits have surged during the pandemic, but the company has faced repeated criticism over its treatment of migrant workers, including claims that it has failed to protect them from the coronavirus.

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Australia’s delivery deaths: the riders who never made it and the families left behind

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Three food delivery riders recently died on the job, and their families are left with uncertain futures, and many questions

Chow Khai Shien died three days before the Melbourne lockdown lifted, holding someone else’s food.

He had been in Australia for five years, having arrived from Malaysia at the age of 31. First he was a student, then a chef, working part-time in a restaurant inside a casino. When the pandemic descended, like many other people around the world, he turned to food delivery – ferrying burgers and chips, burritos, and pizzas, across the city on a small motorised scooter. The car hit him on the corner of King and La Trobe streets at 7pm on a Saturday night.

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Mahathir Mohamad says his remarks after French attack were taken out of context

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Two-time Malaysian PM criticises Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts after the attack on Nice church

The former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has stood by his widely condemned comments on attacks by Muslim extremists in France, saying they were taken out of context. He also criticised Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts.

Mahathir, 95, sparked widespread anger when he wrote on his blog on Thursday that “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.

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Goldman Sachs reaches $2.9bn deal to settle US-led 1MDB inquiry

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Bank’s Malaysia division agrees to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $2.9bn (£2.2bn) to settle a US-led investigation into its role in the 1MDB corruption scandal.

The settlement is expected to draw a line under a years-long saga that has cast a shadow over one of the most recognisable names on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs’ Malaysia division also agreed to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws linked to the alleged looting of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.

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Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim to meet king in decades-long push to become PM

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Opposition leader, who has been on the brink of power several times, claims to have enough support to lead, but doubts persist

Malaysia’s opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, will at last be granted an audience with the king on Tuesday, a meeting his supporters hope could lead to the culmination of his decades-long quest to lead the country.

Anwar stated last month that he had majority support from lawmakers required to form a new government, but an earlier meeting was postponed because the king was in poor health.

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1MDB scandal: former Trump fundraiser charged with allegedly lobbying US to drop inquiry

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Elliott Broidy allegedly asked the US president to play golf with now disgraced Malaysian PM Najib Razak as part of effort to end investigation

A former leading fundraiser for president Donald Trump has been indicted on a charge that he illegally lobbied the US government to drop its probe into the Malaysia 1MDB corruption scandal and to deport an exiled Chinese billionaire.

Elliott Broidy was charged in Washington federal court with one count of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent after allegedly agreeing to take millions of dollars to lobby the Trump administration.

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Malaysia’s PM faces crunch popularity test as polls open in state election

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Voting starts in the eastern state of Sabah, seen as a referendum on Muhyiddin Yassin’s unelected government

Malaysia’s embattled prime minister faces a crucial test on Saturday as polls opened in elections in the eastern state of Sabah, seen as a referendum on his seven-month-old, unelected government.

The leader of the opposition-ruled state dissolved its assembly on 30 July to seek early elections and thwart attempts by Muhyiddin Yassin’s ruling alliance to take over Sabah through defections of lawmakers.

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