The release from detention of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and the Red Shirt protests in Thailand were probably the top political stories of 2010 as far as Southeast Asia is concerned. But there are other notable issues in the region which were featured by Global Voices. Here is our year-end report: Social media 2010 was an election year in the Philippines and Myanmar and social media was effectively used to monitor the election results in the Philippines, and to popularize the ‘boycott elections’ campaign in Myanmar. Through twitter, Filipinos sent ‘Merry Christmas’ greetings in September. A suicide atempt in Brunei was documented in the twitterspehere. #slashing and #369 hashtags refer to the series of slashing attacks in Singapore. Blogs were used to promote national unity in Malaysia. Borneo Colours aggregates blogs in Borneo, the third largest island in the world. BruneiTweet is the ‘national twitter account’ of Brunei. Launched in Singapore and now operating in Indonesia, Philippines and India, sexxie.tv is an interactive sex education website. GV author Keta Haluha features some prominent Timorese on Facebook. A video showing police brutality in East Timor was uploaded in the internet. A domestic helper from the Philippines was able to record how a Filipino labor attaché in Hong Kong treats distressed workers. A blogger named Sony from Indonesia was sued by Sony Corporation for domain name infringement. Facebookers from Thailand created a page criticizing the country’s Ministry of Culture. A father from Vietnam asked netizens to help his missing daughter. Global Voices reported these citizen media events: Singapore Twestival, Barcamp Phnom Penh, Myanmar’s first Barcamp in Yangon, Barcamp and Educamp Saigon. Screenshot of Global Voices website being banned in Myanmar Censorship Web and media censorship have intensified in the region. Press freedom and freedom of expression were topics which were actively written by blogger advocates in Malaysia, Singapore, and Cambodia. Internet freedom is restricted by using various legal measures like Cambodia’s internet firewall and Thailand’s cyber scout program. Netizens are complaining that a higher number of websites and blogs, including Global Voices, continue to be inaccessible in Myanmar. Governments across the region are using the excuse of protecting the morals of the young to block the web’s ‘harmful’ content. To improve media freedom, civil society groups pushed for the immediate passage of the Freedom of Information bill in the Philippines. Meanwhile, netizens in Indonesia rejected the “repressive” internet regulations drafted by the government. Photo of eruption impact in Indonesia from the FB page of Jogjaku Disaster 2010 was also a year of disasters. The most deadly was the stampede tragedy during the Water Festival in Cambodia. Indonesia was hit by an earthquake, tsunami, and volcanic eruption in less than 48 hours. Flooding disasters struck West Papua in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the northern states of Malaysia. Imagine the shopping district of Singapore under floodwaters. Bangkok was also flooded for many weeks. A water shortage crisis was felt by Filipinos last July. Singaporeans suffered the most when haze enveloped the skies of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. An oil spill also destroyed a coastal area in Singapore. Netizens reported the impact of the earthquake last April in Sumatra, Indonesia. Citizen journalists also documented the conditions of refugees in Albay, Philippines after a volcanic eruption forced the residents to leave their homes. Bangkok burning. Photo by BKKApologist Politics As mentioned earlier, the Red Shirt protests in Thailand, which crippled the country’s capital for two months, could be the top political event in the region in 2010. Thousands of anti-government protesters stormed the capital and formed a blockade in government buildings to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister. It was a ‘bloody’ protest as protesters splattered blood in buildings and houses of government officials. The Bangkok clashes between protesters and government troops were documented by bloggers, despite the censorship imposed by authorities. The other politically significant event in Southeast Asia was the release from detention of Suu Kyi. This proved to be successful, at least for now, in distracting the attention of the world that it is still the junta-backed party which dominated the polls in Myanmar. By the way, Myanmar has a new flag and new name. More than 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia, the first guilty verdict was handed out by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal The conviction of Kaing Guek Eav aka Duch for committing crimes against humanity was a globally significant news event.