For decades the village of Cirompang in West Java has been self-sufficient when it comes to food. Residents rely on ancestral wisdom to grow and harvest rice.
Source: KBR
A pan-Asian news operation with correspondents across the region, KBR Asia Calling publishes TV, radio, and digital content in multiple languages.
JEJU ISLAND — Kang Ok-ja, 75, looks out toward the ocean from the roadside. It’s not a good day for diving, she tells me. Waves crash against black volcanic rocks that line a stretch of Jeju Island’s north coast. Wind and rain are common on this South Korean island. “The waves don’t look so high now but the wind is picking up and they’ll get bigger,” says Kang. “It won’t be safe for us to dive today.” She would know. Kang is a haenyeo, or “sea woman,” and has been diving in these waters since she was a teenager. For […]
MARINDUQUE — Elisa Hernandez dips her yellow blouse into the Boac River’s rushing water and then slaps it up against the shoreline’s gray stones. The 73-year-old used to earn a living washing her whole community’s laundry this way. “We felt at home in this river … It was so clean, we played in it and we used to catch a lot of fish here too,” she says. But that all changed in March 1996, when a drainage pipe inside a copper mine burst about 20 kilometers upstream. Millions of tons of toxic mine waste, including lead and arsenic, flooded into […]
JAKARTA — Teuku Akbar Maulana, 17, is from the westernmost Indonesian province of Aceh. He was a brilliant student and was offered a scholarship to study in Turkey. Akbar left for the Turkish city of Kayseri in 2013 to attend the International Imam Khatip High School but grew tired of it after a few months. “We were studying something that I had learned before so I wasn’t getting what I wanted,” he says. Bored, Akbar, who was 15 at the time, started to spend more time on social media, including Facebook. His feed was flooded with brutal videos of what […]
The current deadly war on drugs in the Philippines echoes what happened in Thailand in the early 2000s — massive arrests and a wave of extrajudicial killings. Officials in Bangkok now admit the crackdown didn’t work, th
Since Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated two months ago, some 2,000 people have been killed across the country in the past two months in what experts say are extra-judicial vigilante murders. Fear and silence make it all possible.
Thousands of Afghans are making their way home after years and years living as refugees in neighboring Pakistan. For many of the migrants, their native country is now a foreign place.
India’s northern state of Bihar recently imposed a complete ban on alcohol in the state, driven largely by women’s rights groups. The prohibition is now blamed for a dozen recent deaths from bad booze.
A truth and reconciliation commission is investigating crimes committed during Nepal’s decade-long internal conflict (1996-2006) between state security forces and Maoist rebels.
Most Indians are vegetarians. But omelets, a colonial legacy, remain popular in India.
After the Indonesian defense minister compared LGBT people to a nuclear threat, Islamists targeted a gay community that used to be widely tolerated.
Small-scale miners on the island of Lombok and elsewhere in Indonesia are playing a dangerous game by using mercury, a toxic heavy metal, to extract gold.
Categories
Racing To Save Bali’s Endangered Starling
Trappers and traffickers are threatening many endangered species in Indonesia, perhaps none more so than the Bali starling, an exquisitely-feathered songbird that can fetch as much as $400.
Moviegoers are turning out in droves to see Kabali, a new Indian film featuring superstar Rajinikanth. What’s all the excitement about? KBR journalist Jasvinder Sehgal attends a pre-dawn premiere to find out.
LAHORE — Over the past few months, the prestigious Al-Hamra Theater in this Pakistani city has been staging a first-of-its-kind play, one that very much pushes cultural boundaries in the conservative Muslim society. The play, called Teesri Dhun, focuses on the discrimination transgender people endure in Pakistan, where they are often shunned by families, schools and employers. Not only that, but the actors themselves are members of the transgender community. “The play highlights the problems transgender people face here,” says Neeli Rana, 40, who plays the lead role in Lahore. It’s a story line that resonates with Rana. “In 2006 […]
Qawwali is Sufi devotional and mystic poetry that promotes a tolerant form of Islam. It dates back centuries, but is losing ground to popular rock and Bollywood music.
BALI — In the Indonesian resort island of Bali, music hasn’t always been political. But news of a Dubai-style development has galvanized local musicians and artists. The development involves reclaiming 700 hectares of Benoa Bay in southern Bali to make way for a string of artificial islands complete with resorts, shopping centers, theme parks and high-end apartments. A consequent tolak reklamasi or “reject reclamation” movement has inspired protest songs like one by the folk band Nosstress. Copok, a singer and guitarist for the local band The Bullhead, explains why residents are against the development. “They will put culture on the […]
Categories
China’s Grand Soccer Ambitions
The last time China made a World Cup appearance in 2002, the team lost all three group matches and went out without a single goal. While Chinese fans are mad about soccer, their own national team rarely gives them reason to rejoice. But there are grand pl
Geraldine Roman, a 49-year-old former journalist, survived a brutal campaign to win a seat in the national legislature — and a place in Filipino history.
For Syrians able to escape the horrors of war, Europe is the preferred destination. But some have ventured farther afield. One 22-year-old refugee landed on Jeju island, a popular honeymoon spot off the coast of South Korea.
Abusive husbands are now criminally liable in China, and their victims can seek restraining orders. Rights advocates applaud the new rules, but say that many women are still reluctant to speak out.
A brutal gang rape in Sumatra has sparked street demonstrations, candlelight vigils and calls for stricter punishment for sexual predators. Grassroots groups, in the meantime, are focusing on survivors, helping them live with the trauma, not just ingore i
A campaign to see Buddhism become the country’s official religion has exposed an ugly rift that could have serious consequences for the Muslim minority.
Kim Gee-yang is taking on the beauty industry in a country leading the world in cosmetic surgery. “When I was in LA, I was too skinny to do plus size modeling, but in Korea, I am just a fat woman, yeah,” she said.
In the western state of Rajasthan, a group of about 70 village girls, some of them already married, are receiving a full education, a break from their families, and a chance at independence.
NEW DELHI — The journalists gathered for an editorial meeting at their newspaper in the Indian capital. Their work includes hard-hitting reportage and investigative scoops that other publications in the country followed up on. The group of journalists are unlike most others. They live on the streets. And they are all under the age of 18. Their paper, a New Dehlhi monthly called Balaknama or ‘Voice of Children,’ publishes stories of children living and working on the streets. Exploring topics such as child sexual abuse, child labor and police brutality, the newspaper has doubled in size from its original four […]
JALALABAD — It’s early morning in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan. Haroon Sarwari, 17, and Manzoor Ali, 18, are wearing their backpacks and walking quickly to get a taxi to reach Kabul on time. These close friends have laid out plans to travel to Europe illegally with the help of a smuggling agent. Haroon’s cousins managed to get to Germany three months before, so his father, Sarwar Khan, supports the plan. “My father sold a few of his cows and borrowed some money from his friends to send me to Europe,” the teenager explains. “He has already agreed with the agent on […]
MUMBAI — In the western state of Maharashtra, dozens of men, women and children surround a water tanker on the main road. They hold pitchers, buckets and other containers, and are trying to fill as many as they can. Renuka, 35, pushes her way to the top of the tanker and is able to fill her five pitchers. “I waited 15 days to get this much water. But how long will it last?” she says. “We haven’t had tap water for the last two years. Our ponds and wells have dried up. There’s no water at all.” Manohar was less […]
ISIS has launched a radio program on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, airing programs that target jobless youths and encourage them to adopt extremist views and join the fight in Syria.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has pledged to crack down on terrorism after the Easter Sunday attack that killed 72 people. But the tragedy has raised serious questions about the country’s strategy and the political factors at play.
JALALABAD — Shah Zaman, 11, spends his days carting people’s luggage to earn a few cents. His mother died during his birth and soon after, his father remarried. “I wish my mother had been taken to the hospital,” he says. Shah lives in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, where war and internal conflicts have weakened the local economy and health system. Like in so many parts of the country, health facilities lack trained staff. In more remote areas, health facilities can also be hours away, making it difficult for pregnant women to reach them in time. This, in a country where […]
With half of the world’s food tossed out, how can we be less wasteful? For starters, looking for smart new ways to earn money by decreasing waste.
KABUL — Inside the Afghan capital’s soccer federation stadium, dozens of Afghan women, some of them recently returned from a training camp in Japan, are practicing their skills. “From 2006 up to now, the Afghan women’s national soccer team has conducted several different trips abroad, for training and matches,” says Zohra Mihree, chief of the Afghan women’s soccer committee. “The team participated in SAFF (South Asian Football Federation) tournaments in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Our team came in third place in 2014.” Currently, more than 100 women soccer players are training in different clubs around Afghanistan, up from just a handful […]
Few island nations have had better pre-conditions for economic and social development than Sri Lanka, which investors recognize is ripe for growth and tourism. The country has a high literacy rate and free healthcare. But none has suffered as long as Sri
A woman’s movement challenging a centuries-old practice of denying women entry into the most sacred areas of worship in Hindu temples and Muslim shrines is generating a heated debate across India.
PALAWAN — It’s the middle of a grueling practice for young women competing in a local beauty pageant. They sashay back and forth in high heels to perfect their walk without tripping. Their trainer, Thom Avila, explains the rigors of his beauty boot camp. “When the girls wake up, we start the day with jogging,” he says. “After jogging, we have breakfast, followed by walking exercises. After that, we teach them how to put on makeup and that is followed by question and answer exercises.” Most of his students come from impoverished backgrounds. One of them is Janicel Lubina, 20, […]
KABUL — Here at Pol-e Sokhta, in a spot in western Kabul where hundreds of drug addicts gather each day, Afghan government workers have become a regular presence. The government workers have been given the mission to round up the city’s drug users and move them to a former NATO base, less than 10 kilometers away. The Afghan ministries of counter-narcotics, public health and economy have joined together in the initiative to provide treatment for drug addicts at the camp. Salamat Azimi, Minister of Counter Narcotics, says the state has the means to treat thousands of drug addicts, and will […]
While most people around the world consume news and information from TV, radio and the Internet, a centuries-old tradition that has mostly died out is still being practiced in one Afghan province where literacy rates are poor. Meet Bamyan’s town c
In October, India issued a ban on foreign couples seeking surrogacy there. Now, a proposed law wants to make the entire industry illegal, even for Indian couples. Surrogates and their advocates say it would be a dangerous mistake.
Vietnam has come a long way since the real estate bubble burst a few years back.
Buyers are scooping up properties since a new law opened the market to foreigners.