Violence has erupted in almost every part of Asia, overthrowing the old order and squashing out the opposition. Countries ranging from Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and North Korea are all up in arms, fighting for justice and equality, at a time when inflation in the region has reached astronomical heights.
In Thailand, thousands of demonstrators besieged government offices on Tuesday and briefly shut down a television station in some of the most aggressive actions in months of street protests. While rebel fighting in the southern Philippines between government troops and Islamic separatists intensified with the number of the displaced now reaching 300,000, officials and aid workers the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Further, asserting their stance in world politics, North Korea said Tuesday that it had stopped disabling its main nuclear complex and threatened to restore facilities there that the North had used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons unless the United States removed it from a terrorist list.
Further west, adding fuel to the violence thats already broken out in Kashmir killing hundreds in the valley of peace, fresh protests broke out between Hindus and Muslims in India’s northern state of Orissa. The violence erupted in a retaliatory killing on Monday after the murder of a Hindu leader led a mob to burn small Christian churches, prayer halls and an orphanage that had housed 21 children. At the same time, just two days after Pakistan’s President Musharraf resigned before facing state prosecution, Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif pulled his party out of the ruling coalition on Monday, deepening a political crisis that has diverted government attention from pressing security and economic problems.
The solitary good news came from Malaysia where Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of Malaysia’s opposition, easily defeated his opponent from the country’s ruling coalition in a closely watched by-election on Tuesday, making a return to Parliament after a decade-long absence.
