27/06/2025

FRIDAY | JUNE 27, 2025

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Thai and Cambodian leaders visit disputed border

S’PORE REMOVES ILLEGAL HEALTH PRODUCT LISTINGS

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority has removed 1,288 listings of illegal health products from local e-commerce and social media platforms between December 2024 and May 2025, the agency said yesterday, Xinhua reported. Warnings were issued to 732 sellers. The three most common categories of illegal products were medicines for skin and hair conditions, at 37%, antibiotic, antifungal and antiviral creams, tablets and capsules, at 15%, and unregistered contact lenses, at 13%. Of the listings removed, 644 were prescription medicines. Such products are often purchased by consumers who self-medicate, the authority said. – Bernama-Xinhua INDONESIA TO BUILD ‘SUPER-MAXIMUM’ SECURITY PRISON JAKARTA: Indonesian Immigration and Corrections Minister Agus Andrianto said the government is preparing to build a super-maximum security prison on a remote island as part of broader reforms to the country’s correctional system, Xinhua reported. “The president aspires to build a modern correctional institution with super-maximum security, located on a remote island. It is being prepared,“ he said on Wednesday during a visit to a prison in Medan, North Sumatra province. As part of efforts to improve the correctional system, Andrianto said the government plans to build 13 prisons across the country, which are expected to be operational by the end of this year. He noted that the move aims to address the issue of prison overcrowding in Indonesia. – Bernama-Xinhua Court slashes jail term of tycoon HANOI: A Vietnamese Court of Appeal yesterday slashed a former property and aviation tycoon’s jail sentence in a US$146 million (RM617 million) fraud and stock market manipulation case from 21 years to seven. Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was sentenced in August 2024. Quyet and 49 others, including his two sisters, were punished for fraud, stock market manipulation, abuse of power and publishing incorrect stock market information. The court dropped his three-year term for market manipulation and cut his 18-year sentence for fraud to seven. The court also gave several other defendants reduced jail terms. Its ruling comes after Quyet’s family paid nearly US$96 million in compensation for the losses. According to the indictment, he set up several stock market brokerages and registered dozens of family members, ostensibly to trade shares. Police said while orders to buy shares were placed in hundreds of trading sessions, pushing up the value of the stock, they were cancelled before being matched. It also said it had received 5,000 letters asking for a reduction of punishment for Quyet “from the victims, FLC staff, some associations and local authorities”. – AFP

BR I E F S

New proposal to restrict cannabis sales in Bangkok BANGKOK: Thailand’s government has announced a plan to tighten the rules on selling cannabis, the kingdom’s latest attempt to restrict the drug, three years after it was decriminalised. The kingdom was the first country in Southeast Asia to decriminalise the drug when it removed cannabis from the list of banned narcotics in June 2022. The intention was to allow sales for medical rather than recreational use but the move led to hundreds of cannabis dispensaries springing up around the country, particularly in Bangkok. While the relaxation has proved popular with some tourists, there are concerns that the trade is under-regulated. On Tuesday, Health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin signed an order banning sales for recreational purposes. The rule would only come into force once it is published in the official Royal Gazette. It is not clear when this would happen. The government has made several announcements of plans to restrict cannabis, including legislation moved in February last year, but none have come to fruition. The cannabis move comes as the government, led by Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai party, is hanging by a thread after losing its main coalition partner Bhumjaithai. Although conservative, the Bhumjaithai party has long supported more liberal laws on cannabis. The party quit the coalition this month in a row over a leaked phone call between Paetongtarn and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen. – AFP ARANYAPRATHET: The leaders of Thailand and Cambodia visited different parts of their disputed land border yesterday as tensions between the two neighbours simmer over a territorial dispute and the Thai government teeters on the brink of collapse. The deterioration of relations was sparked by brief armed clashes in a border area last month that left one Cambodian soldier dead. What followed was a series of tit-for-tat measures by both transnational crime and gauge impact of border restrictions: Paetongtarn o Trip aims to survey crackdown on

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countries, troops mobilisations, suspension of fuel and gas imports from Thailand, and the partial closure of checkpoints by Thailand along the land border. The conflict has added fuel to a crisis facing Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who is battling to revive a faltering economy and scrambling to keep a fragile coalition together in the face of protests and a parliamentary no confidence vote. As she arrived yesterday at the Thai bordertown of Aranyaprathet in Sa Kaeo province, opposite Cambodia’s Poipet, she was greeted by a crowd of supporters, with several of them holding a large sign saying “Love You Prime Minister Paetongtarn”. She said the purpose of her visit was to survey the ongoing crackdown on transnational crime and gauge the impact of border restrictions, which saw Thailand halting vehicles, tourists and traders including

conversation Sen, Paetongtarn was heard denigrating a Thai military commander, a red line in a country in which the military holds significant clout. She has since apologised over the leaked call but the incident was used as justification by the Bhumjaithai party to leave the government coalition last week. Bhumjaithai said earlier this week it would seek a parliamentary no confidence vote against Paetongtarn and her Cabinet over the leaked call. Paetongtarn is also facing judicial scrutiny after a group of senators gave the Constitutional Court and a national anti-graft body a wide remit to investigate her conduct. Decisions from either bodies could lead to her removal. Anti-government groups are also planning a street protest starting tomorrow, demanding her resignation. – Reuters with Hun

into Cambodia. “We want to see the impact from this policy and what the government can do to help. This is our main goal for the visit today.” Paetongtarn earlier this week linked the proliferation of illegal online scam centres to Cambodia but Cambodian authorities have denied involvement. At another part of the border, former Cambodian premier Hun Sen yesterday visited troops and officials in Oddar Meanchey province, opposite the Thai province of Surin. Local media footage showed Hun Sen, in military fatigues, arriving by helicopter and meeting with officials in the area. The two leaders have until recently enjoyed warm personal ties, helped by the close relationship between Hun Sen and Paetongtarn’s influential father, Thailand’s former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

WOUNDED WILDLIFE ... Ten-month-old injured baby elephant Kyaw Pearl with her sister and mother at Wingabaw Elephant Camp in Phayargyi in Myanmar’s Bago region. – AFPPIC

Myanmar junta confirms election plan YANGON: Myanmar’s junta chief said the country plans to hold elections in December and January, state media reported yesterday, pressing ahead with polls that have been denounced as a sham by international monitors. conference in the capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday, “pledged that the election would be held in December this year and January next year”. On Wednesday, United in recent months. Military backing from China and Russia is letting it stave off defeat, analysts say, but huge areas of the country are set to be beyond the reach of any junta-organised democratic exercise.

Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in Myanmar Tom Andrews said the junta is “trying to create this mirage of an election exercise that will create a legitimate civilian government”. “You cannot have an election when you imprison and torture and execute your opponents, when it is illegal to report the truth as a journalist, when it is illegal to speak out and criticise the junta,“ he told reporters in Geneva. Junta forces have suffered stinging territorial losses to pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic armed organisations

A junta census held last year to prepare for the poll admitted that it could not collect data from an estimated 19 million of the country’s 51 million people, in part because of “significant security constraints”. “We are making the necessary preparations to hold the elections as widely and extensively as possible,“ said Min Aung Hlaing, according to a transcript of his conference speech in The Global New Light of Myanmar. “Most importantly, the elections must be free and fair.“ –AFP

The military deposed Myanmar’s civilian government in a 2021 coup that sparked a many-sided civil war, but has promoted its election plans as a pathway to peace. With members of the former government locked away, opposition groups set to boycott the vote and huge tracts of the country controlled by anti-junta rebels, observers say a fair poll is impossible. State newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar said junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, speaking at a