Dengue cases have been rising dramatically in several Southeast Asian countries recently. Dengue (aka dengue fever) is a tropical virus with no known cure that is carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. It attacks most often in densely populated urban areas.

Singapore registered only 4,632 dengue cases in 2012 but this year the number has already hit 10,257 and continues to rise daily. This is unusually high for Singapore, which last experienced a dengue outbreak in 2005. 

Last week, Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health confirmed that dengue cases are three times higher this year than last year. In the past six months, the kingdom has recorded 43,609 cases of dengue fever, with 50 resulting in death. There were only five dengue-related deaths in 2012. Thailand experienced dengue epidemics most recently in 1987 and 1998.

Meanwhile, dengue cases in the Philippines and Malaysia are slightly lower this year compared to the same period in 2012, but the situation nonetheless remains critical. The Philippines’ Department of Health reported 42,207 dengue cases, which is actually one of the highest figures in the region. Malaysia recorded 10,352 dengue cases in the past six months. 

According to a recent survey, there are 123,206 dengue patients in six Southeast Asian countries. Alarmed by this creeping pandemic, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) marked June 15 as ASEAN Dengue Day to promote awareness and prevent the spread of the dreaded virus in the region.

Alongside raising awareness, Southeast Asian governments have implemented various programs to fight dengue. Singapore’s National Environment Agency has launched a “Do the Mozzie Wipeout” campaign, a community effort meant to remind citizens of easy and practical steps to disrupt the breeding cycle of the Aedes mosquito. The government also plans to distribute 1.2 million bottles of insecticide to all households next month.  

For its part, the Thai government is in the process of establishing a dengue fever “war room” in every province to monitor dengue outbreak on the community level. To date, however, only 26 of Thailand’s 77 provinces have set one up. 

The Philippines is promoting a similar community-driven program called Aksyon Barangay Kontra Dengue, which encourages Filipinos to join in the daily “4 o'clock habit” of dropping everything at 4 pm to look for dengue hotspots in homes.

Meanwhile, Malaysia has developed a GIS-based web portal called I-Dengue, which provides updated data on dengue clusters and other useful information such as how to avoid getting the virus. 

Because of changing climate patterns and the inevitable rise of mega cities, the dengue virus will continue to terrorize many tropical nations. If left unchecked, it could lead to bigger outbreaks that governments may not be able to adequately handle.

Perhaps the intensified public information drive will wake everyone up to the seriousness of the dengue problem, The virus is one of many deadly communicable diseases in the Asia-Pacific.  

Meanwhile, the ongoing dengue outbreak should remind governments to review their development programs. In particular, they should address the challenges posed by rapid urbanization. The epidemic should also prompt officials to improve the region’s health care delivery and the treatment of dengue patients.

In Singapore, netizens were outraged to learn that a dengue victim who died was made to wait five hours in a hospital. It led to the scrutiny of Singapore’s health care system, which some have criticized for being more responsive to the needs of the medical tourism sector than to its own citizens.

Across East Asia lie dozens of haunts favored by spooks, spivs and journalists – drinking holes known for their discreet bartenders and shady customers who like to trade information. At the height of the Cold War the Continental Hotel in Saigon was perhaps the best known.

Others, like the Crown Royal in Bangkok are still a venue for the shadowy world of secrets and intrigue while in Hong Kong the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) has long been associated with Chinese–Western brinkmanship.

It was in the club’s backyard, as the FCC marked its 70th anniversary, that the man many say is responsible for the greatest intelligence leak in U.S. history arrived with as much fanfare as the newspapers in London and Hong Kong could muster.

Edward Snowden, former CIA staffer, came with a bundle of documents from a secret location in the Chinese enclave. He was seeking sanctuary from a government he allegedly spied on. Richard Hughes, Ian Fleming and John La Carre – authors with strong ties to the FCC – would have been proud.

The Guardian scooped the world with its revelations about the 29-year-old ex-CIA technical assistant and former employee of National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked for less than three months. The report released global shockwaves as it detailed how he chose to leak a number of highly classified documents.

The leaked documents focus on the NSA’s collection of phone records and PRISM, a highly sophisticated computer network used to access the personal archives of millions who use social networking sites and email services offered by the likes of Google, Facebook and Apple.

But at the FCC’s main bar in Hong Kong opinions were far from united. Some saw his arrival as a great news story, with an explosive punch ready to rock the world. Others saw Snowden as a tragic figure with little to offer except a Julian Assange complex worthy of puns involving The Falcon and the Snowman.

The truth is probably closer to the latter.

Civil society groups marched through Hong Kong over the weekend demanding the local government to grant Snowden asylum, while an international press corps flew into the city and established a beachhead at the FCC. But the actual fresh information Snowden made available is thin at best.

Perhaps more importantly, he has caused a universal rethink on access to information and a readiness by the public to simply allow governments’ blind access to personal data which might be of little use to the intelligence community but in the wrong – or even just misguided – hands can devastate peoples’ lives.

This was well documented by Graeme Maxton, a former employer of Booz Allen Hamilton, who wrote in the South China Morning Post: “The tragedy comes from the witch-hunt that is being used to cover up the news that US security agencies have been gathering data about us from the big technology firms for years.”

Maxton continues: “The farce is that this is not news. The desires of US spooks to know too much about us and the dubious morality of Google, Microsoft, Apple and others were already well documented.”

The great stories surrounding Snowden are still evolving. What will China do? Should he be extradited? Charged by the US with treason? What else is he hiding? Should the United Nations grant him refugee status? The potential list is endless, in particular the ramifications for Hong Kong.

Like a good Bond movie or a La Carre novel the thrill lies not in the plot but in the journey and the romp along the way and this much Snowden has delivered – much to the pleasure of the patrons at the FCC and bars of similar ilk across the region. However, this is probably not what he had in mind when he began touting U.S. government secrets around the international press corps.

Luke Hunt can be followed on Twitter at @lukeanthonyhunt.

The first surprise came when the U.S.-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation (ACF) decided to give Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (aka SBY) the World Statesman Award for promoting religious freedom in his country. The second surprise was when SBY accepted it two weeks ago.

For a group guided by the belief that "a crime committed in the name of religion is the greatest crime against religion,” it is quite a surprise that ACF chose to honor the leader of a country where cases of religious intolerance have risen dramatically over the years. SBY even acknowledged the issue in his acceptance speech.

“Pockets of intolerance persist,” he said. “Communal conflicts occasionally flare up. Religious sensitivities sometimes give rise to disputes, with groups taking matters into their own hands.”

Critics of the award can be classified into two groups. The first are those who think that it’s premature to recognize the efforts of SBY and his government to promote religious harmony in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. The second are those who accuse SBY of deliberately doing nothing to stop the attacks against religious minorities. 

Last month, an Ahmadi mosque was attacked in East Java. Further, some Shiites are still living in refugee camps nine months after being driven from their homes in Sampang, also in East Java. Shiite’s and Ahmadiyah are minority Islamic communities in predominantly Sunni Muslim Indonesia.

Meanwhile, in West Java, Protestant congregations of GKI Taman Yasmin and HKBP Filadelfia have been prevented by authorities from holding services in their own churches.

Critics of SBY highlighted a 2006 regulation that made it difficult for minority church groups to build places of worship. SBY also signed a law that recognized only six major religions in the country, thereby discriminating against more than 350 religions with small numbers of followers. In 2008, SBY issued the controversial anti-Ahmadiyah decree, which imposed a jail term of up to five years on anyone who spreads the group’s teachings. In West Java, Governor Ahmad Heryawan passed an order in 2011 that banned Ahmadiyah activities altogether.

In addition, Indonesia continues to implement the 1965 Blasphemy Law to suppress minority religions.

One of the most outspoken critics of the award is Jesuit priest Franz Magnis-Suseno, an Indonesian of German descent, who reminded ACF in an open letter that SBY has reneged on his pledge to protect minority religions in Indonesia. In the letter, he asks: “Do you not know about the growing difficulties of Christians to get permits for opening places of prayer, about the growing number of forced closures of churches, about the growth of regulations that make worshipping for minorities more difficult?”

Perhaps anticipating the protests, in his acceptance speech SBY spoke about the freedom of minority religions to build their worship centers. He reported that Indonesia has 255,000 mosques, 13,000 Hindu temples, 2,000 Buddhist temples, 1,300 Confucian temples, and 61,000 Christian churches – all of which he cited as proof that his government respects religious freedom. 

In the speech, he also vowed that his government “will not tolerate any act of senseless violence committed by any group in the name of religion.”  

He added: “We will not allow any desecration of places of worship of any religion for whatever reason. We will always protect our minorities and ensure that no one suffers from discrimination. We will make sure that those who violate the rights of others will face the arms of justice.”

But SBY has to do more if he wants to prove the sincerity of his pledges. Even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has voiced her concern about the growing religious intolerance in Indonesia.

Ultimately, the protest is not exactly about SBY receiving a global award. Nobody complained when he received an honorary doctorate from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Bath award from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. These awards, however, were not based on his policies on religion.

By contrast, the ACF statesman award has become a lightning rod for criticism. While Indonesia’s economy may be doing quite nicely under SBY, the promotion of religious freedom is not exactly one of his major achievements.

SBY could prove his critics wrong by decisively ending religious persecution in Indonesia in the last remaining months of his term. 

The relief within the Vietnamese Politburo must have been palpable. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, along with another 46 officials escaped censure in the country’s first-ever confidence vote. But the results were hardly a ringing endorsement of their leadership.

Under the three-tier vote, announced last year after a scathing review of Dung’s government by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), Dung scrapped in after 160 members in the 498-seat National Assembly cast a “low confidence” vote on his performance.

A further 122 votes of “confidence” and 210 votes of “high confidence” were also cast. The remaining members of the National Assembly did not vote. If an official receives two-thirds or more than half of the potential “low confidence” votes for two consecutive years, then he or she could be asked to resign.

Introduction of the annual vote was announced last year after an extended meeting of the all-powerful Central Committee was called amid widespread dissatisfaction with Dung’s performance. The Politburo later accepted collective guilt, but Dung escaped censure.

The confidence vote was widely seen as an attempt to placate public anger over the parlous state of the Vietnamese economy and widespread corruption by making officials more accountable. Last year, Transparency International ranked Vietnam a lowly 123 out of 176, on its corruption index.

The vote of confidence was praised in the official media but slammed by bloggers and pro-democracy advocates who noted that a “no confidence” vote was not an option. Critics asserted that the new measures are a cynical attempt by the CPV to tighten its grip on power in Hanoi, where it has held court since 1954.

Dung was elected as prime minister in 2006 and four years later faced calls for a confidence vote as the economy went into a nose dive. His connections with senior figures from the Asia Commercial Bank, the country’s biggest private-owned bank, and the Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry (Vinashin), which piled up debts of US$4.5 billion, were prominent concerns.

Nevertheless, he was re-elected by the CPV to a second five-year term last July. In in October, Dung was hauled before the Central Committee, where he escaped censure. But the confidence vote was announced soon after.

All 47 officials who faced the vote secured the 50 percent support needed to avoid possible future disciplinary action. National Assembly Vice Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan fared well, picking up 372 "high confidence” votes, while President Truong Tan Sang also did well, outperforming Dung with 330 "high confidence" votes.

These results will likely fuel further speculation of a widening factional split within the CPV.

However, the mood over at the State Bank was probably a bit more somber after Governor Nguyen Van Binh notched-up the worst performance, registering 209 “low confidence” votes. His position will no doubt come under more intense scrutiny.

Shortly after the International Coalition to stop crimes in North Korea (ICNK) confirmed that Laos had handed back nine defectors, South Korean diplomatic sources made it known it was holding another 20 North Koreans seeking asylum in its embassy in Vientiane.

The 20 include children, people with physical disabilities, and cancer patients who have met lawmaker Kim Jae-won of the Saenuiri Party, who arrived in Laos last week. Most are in relatively good health. 

While they remain within the reasonably safe confines of the embassy their future is far from certain, particularly given the treatment of the nine deported about two weeks ago.

Despite being within embassy walls, all will be interviewed by Lao immigration authorities and need to obtain travel permits and pay fines for illegally entering the country. The Laos government under Prime Minister Thongsing Thamavong has ignored mounting pressure over its human rights record and shown even less concern for people in distressing situations seeking help.

Of the nine already deported, all were barely adults, and were returned via China which has emerged as a principal investor in Laos and its ambitious infrastructure program, with billions of dollars earmarked for dams, bridges, airports and roads.

Objections to their forced repatriation were loud. It is thought to be the first time that Laos had bowed to Chinese demands and deported North Koreans back to the Hermit Kingdom.

The UN said it was extremely concerned for the nine, aged between 15 and 23, saying they were “at risk of severe punishment and ill-treatment” and had demanded independent access and guarantees for their safety. About 25,000 North Koreans have fled the Stalinist state since the end of the Korean War; 1,500 last year alone.

Travelling through China is the preferred route – overland by bus, through the mountains and into the jungles of northern Laos and often to Thailand where they usually hope to contact the South Korean embassy in Bangkok.

Tiny, landlocked Laos remains a highly secretive communist country which has maintained fluctuating relations with China since the Pathet Laos seized power in 1975. The nation has largely remained within the Vietnamese political realm, but differences over the construction of dams on the main stream of the Mekong River and Chinese investment pledges have sorely tested that relationship.

Its recent admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was overshadowed by last December’s disappearance of Sombath Somphone, an NGO worker who had championed local farmers and sustainable development.

CCTV footage obtained by relatives shows Sombath being pulled over along a busy road and later bundled into a police car, but authorities insist they know nothing of his whereabouts. Instead they have been boasting about winning “the World’s Best Tourist Destination 2013” by the European Council on Tourism and Trade, which is designed to encourage local entrepreneurs to improve their services.

The award left many long-term watchers bemused – a heartfelt congratulations seemed inappropriate.

Luke Hunt can be followed on Twitter at @lukeanthonyhunt.