Burmese opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest Nov. 14, walking free for the first time in seven years. Euphoric crowds of supporters greeted her as spoke to them for the first time since 2003 from the front gate of her crumbling lakeside villa on University Avenue in Rangoon.

Some 20 thousand peasants marked the 50th commemoration of Indonesia's National Farmers Day and passage of the country's first agrarian law Sept. 24, with mobilizations to demand a new agrarian reform program. In actions promoted by over 40 organizations nationwide, protesters demanded the government to implement reforms promised by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2007. Indonesia, a country where 25.6 million family farmers only have an average of 0.4 hectares, has implemented market-based reforms mandated by the World Bank, without aiming to achieve food sovereignty, justice or land rights, the movement charges.

Indonesian authorities on Aug. 11 charged well-known radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir with aiding an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist cell. Bashir, who was arrested Aug. 9 is accused of operating a terrorist training camp in the mountains of the northwestern province of Aceh to prepare Islamic radicals to carry out attacks in the capital of Jakarta.

From Amnesty International, June 28:

Timor-Leste law allows amnesties for war criminals
Amnesty International is urging Timor-Leste to close a legal loophole that is allowing war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation to go unpunished.

The government of Thailand on May 19 imposed a curfew on Bangkok and other areas of the country even as leaders of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, also known as the Red Shirts, announced an end to the two-month long conflict in Bangkok and surrendered to police. Members of the Red Shirts, known for supporting ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, refused to accept the end of the demonstrations and began setting fire to parts of Bangkok.

For the first time, Malaysian authorities have caned three Muslim women under Islamic law for acts of adultery, the country's national news agency Bernama reported Feb. 17. Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said the punishment was carried out Feb. 9 at a women's prison near Kuala Lumpur, "to educate and make the offenders realize their mistakes and to return to the right path."

Claims by Indonesia authorities that the killing of West Papuan rebel leader Kelly Kwalik last month would improve security in the province's restive Timika region were dashed Jan. 24 when nine people traveling in a convoy of US mining company Freeport-McMoran were injured in an ambush. Papua police said gunmen fired at two buses and four other vehicles carrying Freeport employees and family members on the highway between the mine and Kuala Kencana town. The injured included one US and one South African national working at the Grasberg gold and copper mine, the teenage daughter of a mine employee, and four Mobile Brigade police officers. (Jakarta Globe, Jan. 25)

Four Christian churches in Malaysia were attacked Jan. 8 amid tensions over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims in the country. Attackers threw a molotov cocktail at a church in Selangor state, although it failed to ignite. Hours earlier, a petrol bomb was thrown at a church in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, as attackers attempted to set another two ablaze in a nearby suburb. The attacks come amid protests over last week's court ruling that overturned a ban on non-Muslims using the word "Allah" in their literature—allowing a Catholic newsletter to use the term to refer to God in the Malay language.