Brunei's all-powerful sultan will mark 50 years on the throne Thursday with lavish celebrations including a glittering procession, a 21-gun salute and a ceremony at his vast, golden-domed palace.The festivities for Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah – which will include the monarch being carried past huge crowds of well-wishers in a chariot – are the centrepiece of events to mark his golden jubilee.The 71-year-old, the world's second-longest reigning monarch, ascended to the throne of the tiny

PARIS – As is so often the case, it was an artist who sounded the warning. His name is Barbet Schroeder, and the alert that he issued came in the form of his fine, sober film The Venerable W., a portrait of Myanmar’s Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu. Known as “W,” Wirathu is the other face of a religion that is widely perceived as the archetype of peace, love, and harmony.

A senior Myanmar minister proposed Monday to take back the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have fled across the border after a military crackdown, Bangladesh said, but gave no details of how the huge task could be achieved.More than half a million Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh over the last five weeks after militant attacks on police checkposts there sparked violent reprisals, with entire villages burned to the ground.Most are now living in desperate conditions in overcrowded camp

UN chief Antonio Guterres exhorted Myanmar's leaders to end the "nightmare" faced by Rohingya refugees fleeing an army campaign, after at least 19 people drowned with scores more feared dead when a boat carrying Rohingya families capsized off Bangladesh.

The United States accused Myanmar Thursday of the ethnic cleansing of minority Rohingya Muslims, saying the bloodshed in Rakhine state had shamed Aung Sang Suu Kyi's government.Speaking at a United Nations Security Council meeting, US Ambassador Nikki Haley pressed for members of Myanmar's military to face action from the global body in response to the violence and expressed sharp criticism of the civilian government.

Over the past week, the Philippines and Myanmar had been thrown into the limelight due to on-going conflicts that ripple through the nations. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war had once again captured media attention. On September 20, The ASEAN Post discussed the controversies that are surrounding Duterte's highly disputed drug war which has murdered over 7,000 people in the country so far.

The Muslim minority Rohingya people continue to flee their homes in the northern Rakhine State of Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh for fear of continued persecution by their Buddhist majority government and military.According to the latest numbers released by AFP, 422,000 stateless refugees have fled the conflict zone since the recent spate of violence started on the August 25 to overcrowded camps along the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Once touted as an icon of democracy, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi – who is now the State Counsellor for Myanmar – has had her name dragged through the mud due to criticisms of her poor response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the northern Rakhine State in Myanmar.After keeping mum over the recent spate of attacks on stateless minority Muslims in her country, she finally broke her silence in a televised broadcast and invited the international community to aid her in fin

Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has issued a new call for Myanmar to take back the some 420,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in the Buddhist-dominated country.Hasina, speaking to Bangladeshi activists in New York where she is attending the UN General Assembly, also called for greater international pressure on Myanmar over the new crisis which has unfolded in the past three weeks, media reports said."We have told Myanmar, they are your citizens, you must take the

UN human rights investigators on Tuesday said they needed "full and unfettered" access to Myanmar to investigate a grave and ongoing crisis, but the government renewed its rejection of the probe."It is important for us to see with our own eyes the sites of these alleged violations", the head of UN-backed fact-finding mission, Marzuki Darusman, told the Human Rights Council, asking for "full and unfettered access to the country.""There is a grave humanitarian