15/12/2025

MONDAY | DEC 15, 2025

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Thai-Cambodia clashes enter second week

Hong Kong party votes to disband HONG KONG: The city’s oldest pro democracy party has formally decided to disband, its leader announced yesterday, following its annual meeting. “We have officially announced the disbandment and dismissal,” the Democratic Party’s leader Lo Kin-hei told a news conference. “This process has been completed.” The city’s last major opposition party held the final vote on whether to disband, as China ratchets up pressure on the city’s remaining liberal voices in a years-long national security crackdown. The Democratic Party, founded three years before Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule from Britain in 1997, had been the city’s flagship opposition. It used to sweep city wide legislative elections and push Beijing on democratic reforms and upholding freedoms. Senior party members say they had been approached by Chinese officials and warned to disband or face severe consequences. A committee had spent half a year making arrangements for the disbandment, including resolving legal and accounting matters, and preparing the sale of a property in the Kowloon district that now serves as its headquarters. – Reuters/AFP NEW DELHI: India tightened anti pollution measures in Delhi and nearby areas after the capital’s air quality deteriorated to the season’s worst. The Commission for Air Quality Management invoked stage four, the highest level, of the Graded Response Action Plan for Delhi and surrounding areas on Saturday evening, according to an advisory by the Environment Ministry. Delhi’s air quality was “severe” yesterday with official index readings over 450 across several monitoring stations, up from 430 on Saturday and the highest so far this winter season, Central Pollution Control Board data showed. Readings below 50 are “good”. The curbs ban the entry of older diesel trucks, suspend construction, including on public projects, and impose hybrid schooling. – Reuters SRI LANKA TO PUSH THROUGH AID COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s parliament will interrupt its recess to fast track financial aid needed for rebuilding after Cyclone Ditwah , which killed nearly 650 people. Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne issued a notice for an urgent meeting of the legislature, which had gone into recess and was not scheduled to meet again until Jan 6. “I have summoned the parliament to meet on Thursday,” the Speaker said in a gazette notification. Finance Ministry officials said the meeting was being held to approve next year’s expenditure for cyclone recovery. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had said last week the nation would need at least US$1.66 billion (RM6.8 billion) in 2026 in addition to the US$166 million he said the government would spend this year to rebuild and recover. – AFP INDIA TIGHTENS POLLUTION CURBS

BR I E F S

o No ceasefire deal made, says Bangkok

But the controversy that exploded across social media has only sparked renewed interest in Bao Ninh’s haunting classic and forced bookstores to scramble to keep pace with surging demand. “I only knew about this novel because of these online discussions,” said Le Hien, 25, who tried to buy the book at several bookstores in Hanoi but found they were all out of stock. “I was surprised the book was sold out,”he said. First published in 1987 as The Destiny of Love , the novel is narrated by a young North Vietnamese soldier who, like Ninh himself, served in a battalion that was almost entirely wiped out. He is stalked by memories of the “jungle of screaming souls” and tortured by thoughts of his girlfriend’s rape by fellow North Vietnamese men. The book was met with instant acclaim abroad and controversy at home, where most war literature emphasised valour and sacrifice over cruelty and suffering. The novel’s inclusion in the 50-best list in late November touched off another round of recrimination even as it flew off shelves. BANTEAY MEANCHEY: Renewed border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand entered a second week yesterday after Bangkok denied US President Donald Trump’s claim that a truce had been agreed to halt the fighting. The conflict, rooted in a colonial-era demarcation dispute along their 800km border, has displaced around 800,000 people, officials said. “I have been here for six days and I feel sad that the fighting continues,” 63-year-old Sean Leap said at an evacuation centre in Cambodia’s border province of Banteay Meanchey yesterday. “I want it to stop,” he said, adding he was worried about his home and livestock. At least 25 people have been killed, including 14 Thai soldiers and 11 Cambodian civilians, officials said. Each side blames the other for instigating the clashes, claiming self-defence and trading accusations of attacks on civilians. Trump, who earlier backed a truce and follow on agreement, said on Friday the Southeast Asian neighbours had agreed to halt fighting. But Thai leaders later said no ceasefire deal was made, and both governments said yesterday clashes were ongoing. Thai Defence Ministry spokesman Surasant Kongsiri said Cambodia shelled and bombed several border provinces on Saturday night and yesterday. Cambodia’s Defence Ministry spokeswoman Maly Socheata said Thailand continued to fire mortars and bombs into border areas since midnight. After Trump’s promised truce did not come to pass, Cambodia shut its border crossings with Thailand on Saturday, leaving migrant workers stranded. Under a makeshift tent at an evacuation site in Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey, Cheav Sokun said her husband in Thailand wanted to return home. She and her son left Thailand alongside tens of thousands of other Cambodian migrant workers

A Cambodian girl running between supplies at Wat Por Sovannaram refugee camp in Ou Chrov, Banteay Meanchey Province, Cambodia. – REUTERSPIC

and Trat provinces. The United States, China and Malaysia, as the Asean chair, brokered a ceasefire in July. In October, Trump backed a follow-on joint declaration between Thailand and Cambodia, touting new trade deals after they agreed to prolong their truce. But Thailand suspended the agreement the following month after Thai soldiers were wounded by landmines at the border. Trump last week pledged he would “make a couple of phone calls” to get the earlier brokered truce back on track. But Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told journalists on Saturday that Trump “didn’t mention whether we should make a ceasefire” during their Friday phone call. Anutin said there were “no signs” Trump would connect further US-Thailand trade talks with the border conflict, but also said the US president had guaranteed Thailand would get “better benefits than other countries”. – AFP Tuan’s post calling for the honour to be revoked received thousands of likes and ricocheted across social media, garnering support especially from war veterans. But many others defended the decision to honour the book. “If we demand that a novel function like a battle report, we are forcing literature to perform the work of another profession,” said literary critic Ha Thanh Van. The Sorrow of War continues to move readers nearly 40 years after its publication because it “delves into the dark corners of memory, where war continues to exist as haunting memories, traumas, lingering regrets”, she said. But while the debate has opened up old societal rifts, it has also propelled the book to new heights of visibility, especially among young readers. Nguyen Hai Dang, an editor at Tre Publishing House which has a lifetime agreement with Ninh, was quoted in state media as saying the controversy had prompted a flurry of orders, causing the central warehouse to fall behind. Dang said a planned reprinting was already underway, however, and that the publisher had run off 15,000 copies so far this year. It has printed about 80,000 copies since its agreement began in 2011. – AFP

during July’s deadly clashes, but her spouse stayed to work as a gardener. “He asked me to return first. After that, the border was closed so he cannot come back,” the 38-year-old said. “I worry about him, but I tell him not to go around ... We are afraid that if they know that we are Cambodians, they would attack us,” she said. Across the border in Thailand’s Surin province, music teacher Watthanachai Kamngam, 38, said he watched several rockets trail across the dark, early morning sky yesterday before hearing explosions in the distance. Watthanachai has been painting colourful scenes of tanks, Thai flags and soldiers carrying the wounded on the walls of concrete bunkers since the July clashes which killed dozens. “As I live through the fighting, I just want to record this moment – to show that this is really our reality,” he said last week. Amid the fighting, the Thai military has imposed an overnight curfew in parts of Sa Kaeo

Sorrow of Wa r sells out after viral controversy HANOI: When The Sorrow of War was honoured by Vietnam’s government as one of the 50 greatest works of literature and art since reunification, some conservative figures reacted with fury – suggesting the novel’s unvarnished depictions of the war diminished the victors’ heroism.

Copies on display at a Hanoi bookstore. – AFPPIC

“This book has been debated for ages,” said Nguyen, a bookseller on Hanoi’s Nguyen Xi book street, who gave only his first name for fear of inviting backlash against his store. “It has always sold steadily. It has never sold out like it did this time, though.” Nguyen Thanh Tuan, a former head of the military’s propaganda department, wrote on Facebook earlier this month that the novel “aimed to diminish the heroism of our army ... fabricating and distorting the truth of the heroic struggle and immense sacrifices of millions of people”.