🇵🇭 Philippines on 'Red Alert' as corruption case simmers

Scam trade unearthed in Timor-Leste, hitting the cinema in Vietnam and Indonesia

Hello friends!

This email comes to you today from Darwin, where you can get a kaya toast breakfast with Canberra’s best coffee roaster beans for your kopi o kosong. Is this heaven? It is extremely hot and full of loud 20-year-old backpackers, so maybe not.

I’m here digging into the endlessly fascinating history of trade between sea cucumber fishermen from Makassar, now South Sulawesi, and the various First Nations communities of northern Australia. One of the funniest threads throughout the scholarship is that neither the Makassarans nor the Indigenous Australians thought the sea cucumbers were any good to eat — that China trade was lucrative even back in the 1800s! — which means it’s near impossible to find on a menu. If anyone has any Darwin restaurant tips, please send them through.

See you later in the week!
Erin Cook

🇵🇭 Is the Philippines next? It’s complicated

Progressive party Akbayan leads demonstrations last week. (c/o Instagram)

Brace yourselves, Philippines. Chiz Escudero losing his head surely won’t be the peak in the simmering flood control project corruption scandal. Social media is awash with countries elsewhere in the region going after corrupt officials, especially in neighbouring Indonesia. And I thought, sure! It seems like everywhere in Asia has asked themselves, hmm, should we too?

And then the sign! When the Armed Forces of the Philippines comes out publicly to say it won’t be throwing its weight in with a protest movement and is fully behind the Bongbong Marcos administration, they don’t want to be caught out. A joint statement from Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. and military chief of staff Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. issued Friday made it clear “all attempts to patronise the Armed Forces of the Philippines by certain groups that insinuate or suggest unconstitutional, unilateral interventions” will be happily and wholeheartedly rejected, as per the Associated Press.

The military has, of course, played a crucial role in previous pro-democracy uprisings in the Philippines, most notably in 1986. And in Nepal and Indonesia, the militaries have been central — though for polar opposite reasons. Plus, the AFP are always prominent. So what does this mean for a potential protest movement?

Fundamentally, not much. Like in Indonesia, this particular spark is not enough to pull down the government, though it will likely become about wider economic and social injustices. What is important, though, is that the AFP saw it fit to do this in conjunction with the Defence Secretary. Protests are slowly emerging, but nothing on the scale of Indonesia or Nepal yet. AFP and the Marcos administration desperately want to get ahead of that.

But would they? The Philippines hasn’t had a revolt of that scale in generations. As veteran political journalist Isagani de Castro Jr. writes in this reflective piece for Rappler, the Philippines has had a few false starts since then, but nothing that has had a transformative impact. Even EDSA in 1986, which saw the Marcos clan flee to the US, ‘was tame compared to what happened in Nepal. None of the Marcos family members nor their cronies were lynched or got hurt,’ he writes.

I’ve seen quite a lot of conversation online tackling the central question de Castro circles — does the Philippines have the stomach for this sort of protest? One post stuck with me a week or so ago, and I regret not getting a screenshot. The Philippines has an existing, vibrant and hard-working progressive movement that does not get critical mass support, this poster said, though with a touch more vigour. Will a longer-running corruption scandal paired with these dang economic headwinds (which, de Castro notes, have so far fallen well short of the dire straits of ‘86) see mainstream punters head to the streets?

The AFP were put on red alert on Friday in anticipation of a growing protest. It’s a “standard security protocol” and no cause for alarm, AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla told radio yesterday, as reported by the Inquirer. But you do have to wonder, who is it that shouldn’t be alarmed?

The call has gone out for an EDSA demo on Sunday. Let’s see!

🇮🇩🇻🇳 Now Showing: propaganda efforts

Already bored with endless advertising for e-commerce sites and gated community developers, Indonesia’s cinemagoers now have a new ‘treat’ to look forward to before their beloved horror films. A short video is playing ahead of screenings that tout the good doings of President Prabowo Subianto and his government. This isn’t a new sensation, Tempo reports, noting that predecessor Joko Widodo had a similar program for a while there. That it’s been introduced right after some of the biggest protests since 1998 sure smarts. As if cinemagoers needed more excuses to be on their phones.

“Cinemas are meant to be spaces of public entertainment, but they’re being interrupted by government propaganda,” Asep Suryana, a sociology lecturer at the State University of Jakarta, told the outlet. Just ditch it, Asep reckons: “Prabowo should reconsider this strategy, as it could damage his public image. If necessary, the screenings should be stopped to ease public criticism.”

State Secretary Minister Prasetyo Hadi doesn’t see what the big deal is. “Using public media to deliver messages is normal, as long as it doesn’t violate rules or disturb aesthetics and public convenience,” he said, as reported by Antara.

The video focuses on key policies, including the free school lunch program, state-funded schools and the rural cooperatives launch.

Over in Vietnam’s film houses, Mua Do, or Red Rain, is raking in eyeballs. The war movie focuses on the extraordinarily bloody battle in Quang Tri province between the US and Vietnamese communist forces, in which a combined 10,000 were killed, Nikkei Asia reports. Its release was timed to the 80th anniversary of Vietnam’s independence.

It hit screens on August 22 and has already pulled in 613 billion dong ($23 million) making it Vietnam’s top-grossing film of all time. I appreciate Nikkei Asia giving us this context — that’s more than double what Marvel megahit Avengers: Endgame made in the country.

“I appreciate the way the movie boosts national pride. Besides, there were new songs released, parades on the streets, fireworks and inspiring stories from wartime. All of these have sparked the spirit in every single Vietnamese,” said viewer Pham Thuy Duong.

Maybe Prabowo needs to up his production values if he wants these sorts of responses.

🇹🇱 Scam centres branch out to Timor

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has warned in a new report that Timor-Leste is the region’s newest hotspot for scam centres. It’s a burgeoning disaster that begins with a brief lesson on maps. This is all happening, the UNODC reports, in the Special Administrative Region of Oecusse Ambeno, which is a fascinating little enclave further down the Timor island than Timor-Leste proper and entirely surrounded by Indonesia.

Al Jazeera reports a ‘digital free trade zone’ was established there last December. I have to be honest, I was deeply cynical of this and suspected we’d be seeing some sort of El Salvador-style crypto mess. This is far worse. The UNODC reports that a police raid in August gave up all the indicators of Mekong-style scam centres — a hell of a lot of SIM cards and Starlink devices.

“Analysis links these operations to entities associated with convicted cybercriminals, offshore gambling operators, and triad-linked networks,” the agency said in a statement. It notes these sort of economic zones are ripe for this exploitation and we have seen that time and time again in the Mekong states.

Slavery is an enormous factor in this trade, but there is not much news on that front just yet. Al Jazeera quotes AP reporting that 30 Indonesians, Malaysians and Chinese nationals were arrested during the raid.

Reading list:

• ‘They raped us one by one’: East Timor’s forgotten women of war — Allegra Mendelson, the Telegraph

Today, 50 years on from the invasion, survivors like Isa have managed to rebuild their lives, but most of those responsible for the violence have never been brought to justice – and as years go by, there’s a chance that many never will.

“The more time that passes the harder it’s going to be,” said Megan Hirst, an international criminal lawyer based in London who previously worked on justice in East Timor.

“The less money there is for this, the less political will from states about it. There’s a push in Timor just to wipe the slate clean.”

• How Cambodia, a staunch ally of China, became infatuated with Trump — Rebecca Tan, Washington Post

Despite being one of the world’s staunchest China supporters, Cambodia is embracing President Donald Trump with a level of enthusiasm virtually unmatched in Asia.

“The Trump way of operating is something that the Cambodian leadership understands,” said Virak Ou, head of Future Forum, a Phnom Penh-based think tank, citing Trump’s disregard for democratic processes. “This is the kind of leader they recognize.”

Cambodia relies on China as its largest donor, lender, investor and trading partner. It hosts, by one estimate, over a hundred projects that could be considered as falling under China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road investment initiative, and consistently votes with Beijing at the United Nations, even on its most controversial positions.

• How Vietnam’s military built one of the hottest tech companies in Southeast Asia — Lam Le, Rest of World

Viettel supplies military-grade communication devices, drones, and missile systems to the Vietnamese army. The company attributes its progress to the “Make in Vietnam” strategy, prioritizing high-tech research and partnerships with foreign companies that are “ready to transfer their technology,” Viettel High Tech, the company’s R&D subsidiary, told Rest of World in a statement.

“Viettel plays a pioneering role [in Vietnam’s tech sector] by building an internal research and development model, mastering core technology and connecting the business community to spread the spirit of innovation and technological autonomy in Vietnam,” the statement said.