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Greens denounce 'Knight of the Chainsaw'

Environmental groups are demanding that the Queen withdraw the award of a knighthood to a Malaysian tycoon accused of making his fortune from the illegal destruction of huge areas of tropical rainforest.

The announcement of the honour for Tiong Hiew King, billionaire chairman of the Rimbunan Hijau conglomerate, comes just six weeks after Prince Charles launched an internet initiative to preserve the world’s dwindling rainforests and prevent “catastrophic climate change”.

To add to the embarrassment, Mr Tiong has been calling himself “Sir” Hiew King although, as the recipient of an honorary, rather than a full, knighthood, he is not entitled to use this style.

“Tiong Hiew King is commonly known to be one of the chief people responsible for widespread illegal logging in both Papua New Guinea and other countries,” said Lukas Straumann of the Bruno Manser Foundation, which campaigns for the indigenous inhabitants of the rainforests. “He is unfit for a knighthood and we call upon the Queen to deprive him of this honour.”

Mr Tiong, 71, was rated by Forbes magazine as the 20th  richest man in south-east Asia with a net worth of US dollars 1.1 billion in oil palm plantations, information technology, hotels and travel and newspapers in thirteen countries, including China, Indonesia and Russia,. But his biggest business is the one with which he founded his conglomerate in 1975 - logging tropical timber.

Hiatus . . .

Asia Exile will be in hibernation until the second week of May. But please post your comments, and I will put them up on my return.

Happy Golden Week to everyone.

Understanding the supervillain: Kim Jong Il's poignant evil

 

[My op-ed on yesterday's North Korean missile launch ran here in today's newspaper. I originally wrote it for Saturday, but it wa sheld over - so here below is the slightly variant version which would have run then.

There's an analysis piece in a different vein here. For a different view, see the piece in last Friday's International Herald Tribune by the brilliant Brian Myers of South Korea's Dongseo University (I can't find it Online - cananyone help?). The best things I read on the whole silly affair were the report by the International Crisis Group and this piece by Tim Brown on GlobalSecurity.org.]

Twenty years after the demise of the communist Evil Empire, the world has begun to struggle when it comes to credible international super villains. Robert Mugabe? Horrible, certainly, but also rather pathetic. Vladimir Putin – sinister, perhaps, but hardly foe to all humanity. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran lacks the edge somehow, and it’s been far too long since Osama bin-Laden put in an appearance. In the global obnoxiousness rankings there is only one serious contender, leagues ahead of anyone else: the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il.

He’s got the bizarre personality cult (“Dear Leader”, “Lodestar of the Twenty-First Century” etc). He’s got the crazed haircut and Dr Evil pantsuit. He’s got the devastating superweapons (about half a dozen nuclear warheads, by most estimates). And sometime in the next few days, puny mortals will quail in terror as his latest evil scheme streaks across the sky – the firing of an intercontinental rocket high in the atmosphere above Japan.

This, if the previews are anything to go by, is the most dastardly act of villainy since the days of Goldfinger and Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Britain, the US and South Korea have sternly warned the North Koreans to put down their rocket and step away from the launch pad. Sanctions have been threatened in the UN Security Council. The Japanese military, which has never fired a shot in anger since the Second World War, has ambitiously announced that it will shoot the rocket down if it strays near its own territory. But this near hysterical reaction, and the crude caricaturing of Kim Jong Il, serve only to distract from the reality of North Korea as it confronts the world, and to blind us to the very few feasible solutions.For Kim Jong Il is neither a madman nor a fool. Understood on his own terms, his actions have a logic and even a warped wisdom, and have seen him through a decade-long emergency which would have put paid to a lesser leader. No one could ever reasonably defend the North Korean regime, which competes with the worst in history for its cruelty and absurdity. But it is time for the rest of the world to try a bit harder to understand Mr Kim’s actions, as well as condemning them.

The Luckiest or Unluckiest Man in the World? Tsutomu Yamaguchi, double A-bomb victim

[A NOTE ON COMMENTS: I encourage vigorous debate, and this is a subject which provokes strong and divergent views. My policy has been to post every comment, regardless of content. But from now on I'm not going to put up any which contain obscenity, racist language, and personal invective about other commenters. They will be deleted.]

[Kyodo reported yesterday that Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the handful of people to survive the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has finally been recognised as such by the Nagasaki local government. Four years ago, shortly before the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, I interviewed Mr Yamaguchi, and two of his fellow double-hibakusha, over the course of several days. Here is the long piece which I wrote about them for the Times Magazine. See below a photograph of Mr Yamaguchi next to a replica of the "Fat Man", by an outsanding photographer, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, who has also blogged on our assigment here.]

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato are either the luckiest or the unluckiest men alive, and after three days in their company and long hours of conversation, I still had no idea which. It is sixty years since their monstrous ordeal and all three are well into their ninth decade. Mr Sato, who is 86, uses a wheelchair after injuring his back, and 89-year old Mr Yamaguchi is almost deaf in one ear. But all of them exude the dignified vigour of elderly Japanese, the world’s healthiest and longest living race. “I was a heavy smoker,” Mr Yamaguchi told me during our first meeting, “but I gave up smoking and drinking when I was 50. I didn’t expect to live to 80. And now I’m well over 80.” The miracle is not that he is alive now, but that he made it past the age of 29.

Mr Yamaguchi and his friends are freaks of history, victims of a fate so callous and improbable that it almost raises a smile. In 1945, they were working in Hiroshima where the world’s first atomic bomb exploded 60 years ago this morning, on 6 August 1945. 140,000 people died as a result of the explosion; by pure chance, Mr Yamaguchi, Mr Sato and Mr Iwanaga, were spared. Stunned and injured, reeling from the horrors around them, they left the city for the only place they could have gone – their home town, Nagasaki, 180 miles to the west. There, on 9th August, the second atomic bomb exploded over their heads.

In a century of mass killing, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of a new age. The end of the world was transformed from an imaginative notion, the fancy of poets and prophets, into a real and living possibility. Three men survived the beginning of the end of the world, not once, but twice. Sixty years later, all three of them are alive.

Particle Plague: Hay Fever in Japan

[It's the beginning of one of the two most beautiful times of the year in Japan. But out on the Musashi Plain, the cedar trees are vomiting forth clouds of pollen. Times readers will have seen my important story last week about how, as well 32 million humans, Japan's Snow Monkeys are being tormented by the pollen allergy. Here is a piece I wrote for the Independent a few years ago about life with kafunsho.]

It begins as it does every year in this season: on the first of the sunny days of March, I am woken from sleep when, with a brief tickle of warning, my nose explodes. Between bed and bathroom, I sneeze another half a dozen times; by the time I've got my hands on a piece of tissue paper, my nose is drooling and my eyes feel as if they are being gently buffed with sandpaper. I have had only one other experience like it - six years ago, when I caught a dose of the notoriously powerful tear gas used by the South Korean riot police. This is peaceful Tokyo, but for these few weeks - between the first of the spring sunshine and the passing of the cherry blossom - it is takes on the look of a place under chemical and biological attack.

Outside, people wear white surgical masks over their mouths and noses; even those with perfect eyesight have wide protective spectacles. Salarymen weep into their newspapers; office ladies fumble with nose sprays and eyedrops. For this is the season of hay fever, and across Tokyo millions of people are suffering like me.

British father in Japan "was not responsible for baby's death"

A British man charged with shaking to death his infant son told a Japanese court yesterday that he never intended to hurt the child and that he was suffering at the time from trauma caused by physical abuse in his childhood.

Anthony Buckley, 21, faces up to 20 years in jail for the alleged killing of his 12-day old son, Yoshimitsu, in his Tokyo home in June last year. According to prosecutors, he pinched the baby’s legs, hit him, violently shook him, and struck his head twice against a table in a fit of frustration with his crying.

Yoshimitsu suffered a broken rib and died the following day from bleeding in the brain. At first Mr Buckley claimed that he had accidentally dropped the child in the bath while bathing him, but under police questioning he admitted shaking him.

“The defendant was exhausted by stress and insomnia,” the prosecution told the panel of three judges at the Tokyo District Court. “He was isolated and unmotivated . . . [But] he was capable of taking responsibility for his actions.”

British Minister: Global Warming Could Bring War

[Here's a fuller version my piece from today's paper, which ran rather small . . .]

Global warming will increase the risk of war, conflict and terrorism and represents perhaps the greatest challenge to stability and security in the world, the British foreign office minister, Bill Rammell warned an international gathering yesterday.

Speaking at a conference on climate change and security in Tokyo, Mr Rammell said that climate change could ruin livelihoods, force entire populations out of their homes, and pitch poor nations against rich ones, increasing competition for land, food and resources. He predicted a ten-fold increase in piracy as suffering populations seized scarce resources form the high seas, and increased radicalisation of impoverished people leading to future terrorist attacks.

“Who, hand on heart, can say for sure that countries wouldn’t decide to use armed force to ensure that their citizens had access to life-giving resources taken away by their neighbours?’ he asked the audience of politicians, military officers and defence officials from Britain and Japan. “It’s not difficult to imagine how the ‘have-nots’ could be radicalised by someone saying, ‘Those rich western countries created global warming, and now they are buying up the world’s food stocks, leaving us to starve.’

He added: “We know all too well that it doesn’t take many radicals to disrupt our way of life – and that borders, or even oceans, are no barrier to those bent on killing innocent people and damaging our way of life.”

Abhisit at Oxford: the cow manure flies

The Thai prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, gave his speech on democracy at St John's College, Oxford on Saturday and, as I counselled in my op-ed the day before, no one threw a shoe - or even a sock - at him. But there was a contingent of protesters, including the character above, who made clear their scepticism about Mr Abhisit's version of democracy. The photograph above is from here (the text is all in Thai; scroll down past it for the pictures) which has more pictures of the demo.

I wasn't there, of course, but it sounds as if Abhisit gave a good account of himself. There's a very comprehensive report on the excellent New Mandala website here; and a few minutes of the Q&A session here on YouTube.

The highlight of the morning seems to have been the head-to-head between Abhisit and Giles Ji Ungpakorn, the left wing academic and professor of Chulalongkorn University, who went into exile in Britain after lèse-majesté charges were brought against him. In an email circular after the event, Prof Giles said that "the majority of Thais and anyone else in the international community with a simple knowledge about Thai politics would not have been taken in. Two exceptions were the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and the President of St John’s College who, like a couple of bumbling fools, praised Abhisit’s ‘commitment to Democracy’.”

Also struck by Abhisit in Oxford was Britain's ambassador to Thailand, Quinton Quayle, who responded to questions from The Nation. "He showed, both by his words and actions, that he wants to promote democratic debate about the future of Thailand," the ambassador told the paper.

"His willingness to engage in an open and frank discussion, including on sensitive issues, impressed his audience. He showed that he is ready to listen to the point of view both of those who agree and disagree with his government and to give answers to the key questions of most concern in Thailand. The discussion that took place at Oxford University on March 14 is a good model for future debate in Thailand."

Now, one wouldn't ever expect an ambassador to be completely frank about the leader of the government to which he is credentialled. But this is rather more carefully phrased than The Nation's headline - 'PM wins hearts in UK by engaging in "open and frank discussion"' - allows. I don't know whether Mr Quayle was present at St John's or not. If he wasn't, he is not really in a position to speak on behalf of its audience. Even from a distance it is obvious that, far from being unanimously "impressed", it was deeply divided over what Abhisit had to say - as Thailand is about Abhisit in general.

And such an open, unfettered and fearless debate could never take place in Thailand at the moment. Giles Ungpakorn wouldn't be there, for a start: he'd be locked up, for writing a book. And no Thai who wished to stay out of jail would dare to stand up and ask the frank questions about lèse-majesté which the Oxford audience put on Saturday. Abhisit may have said that he wants to promote democratic debate in Thailand, but whether he really intends to, or even has the power to do so, is another question yet to be settled. Perhaps his hands are tied by his PAD/military supporters; perhaps, having achieved power, he now finds that a certain amount of fear and hesitancy on the part of the population is an advantage. I sense that Ambassador Quayle is aware of these subtleties, hence his nuanced reference to the St John's speech as "a good model for future debate in Thailand" (my italics).

Finally, my piece on Friday drew a rather baffling rebuttal in the Bangkok Post. The only bit I can properly follow is where the columnist likens my writing to "cow manure". Now that's what I call democratic debate!

Abhisit Vejjajiva: The charmer making a mess of his country

[From today's newspaper.]

However indignant you felt about him, and the calamitous mess over which he presides, it would be impossible ever to throw a shoe at a man such as Abhisit Vejjajiva. Among his peers, the new prime minister of Thailand challenges even Barack Obama for the title of World’s Most Decent Leader. As a young politician, he was a heart-throb among middle-aged Bangkok matrons. At Eton, where he was known by the name “Mark Vejj”, he was best friends with Boris Johnson. He is handsome, youthful, brilliant, cosmopolitan, impeccably well mannered, and rather posh. So when he gives a speech at his old university, Oxford, tomorrow, it is safe to assume that the audience at St John’s College will be keeping its brogues securely laced.

But Abhisit’s charm should not be a distraction from ugly truths about what is happening in Thailand.  In the past four years, it has gone from being one of the freest and most stable countries of south-east Asia to one of its most chaotic and divided. Writers, academics and journalists have been imprisoned or hounded into exile for harmless comment on Thailand’s monarchy. Helpless boat people have been chased out to sea to their deaths. Democratically elected governments have been forced out, first by the army and then by the power of the mob.

All of this has been done with the approval – sometimes passive, sometimes explicit – of the nice Mr Abhisit. The title of his talk at St John’s tomorrow, ‘Taking on the Challenges of Democracy’, could not be more appropriate, for Thailand’s leader is indeed democratically challenged. Rarely since the days of Dr Faustus, has a gifted and promising man achieved power through such grubby and disreputable means.

Why shouldn't Kim Jong Il fire his missile?

There's an air of unreality about the imminent North Korean missile test. In theory, it's very, very bad indeed: crazed Oriental Despot to let off large bomb. But no one can quite bring themselves to get in a stew over it. Hence the bored and anti-climactic utterances by US government spokespersons. The most upset that Hillary Clinton managed to get was when she opined that the firing of an ICBM by the mad bad Kim Jong Il would be "very unhelpful". Unhelpful? Unhelpful? Unhelpful is when Bill sits reading Hustler while Hillary is in the kitchen unpacking a big box of groceries. Surely an act of warmongering by the world's last Stalinist dictatorship can at least be classified as "rude"?

Partly, of course, it's good sense not to get into a rhetorical shomben match with the Norks - when it comes to inventive vituperation, they cannot be bested, and there's nothing to be gained from trying. But I sense a lack of seriousness about the whole thing too. Everyone knows that they should be in a panic, that an appearance of panic would be seemly somehow. But they recognise in their hearts that it's not justified.

I may, I suppose, be proved spectacularly wrong, but I'm pretty sure that this missile launch is insignificant in itself - and I set out some of my reasoning here. And then, when you come to think of it, why shouldn't Kim Jong Il fire a rocket anyway, any time he wants?