Southeast Asian governments are prone to gloating over their economic success and are rarely shy when it comes to cultural assertions. But for all the ranting and raving about Southeast Asia as a success story, public attitudes just don’t seem to be toeing the official line.

In fact resentment in many quarters appears to be on the rise despite attempts by people in high places to assert their superiority.

Islamic clerics have proved Malaysia still has one boot firmly planted in the Middle Ages after they issued a Fatwa against pro-democracy demonstrators and the Bersih movement, which Prime Minister Najib Razak claims is out to topple him. They really just want clean elections.

In Cambodia, the murder of environmentalist Chhut Vuthy continues to rankle after a government inquiry seemed to raise more questions than it answered, although the government has moved to quell discontent by announcing the suspension of land allocations in a bid to curb illegal logging.

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Observers following the planned construction of the Xayaburi dam in Laos didn’t have to wait long for a decision. The government has again said it won’t proceed on the dam before gaining approval from the international community, and in particular the downstream countries.

The Laos Vice Minister for Energy and Mines, Viraphonh Viravong, reassured Laos’s neighbors at a recent conference in Phuket that it was taking seriously an agreement reached in December to halt construction until a full independent environmental impact study could be made.

However, Viraphonh appeared to be hedging his bets. He also confirmed the worst secret in Southeast Asia: that some construction work had gone ahead, including roads, by the Thai company C.H. Karnchang. But this work is supposedly not directly related to the main dam, with Viraphonh adding that this type of work was only for primary and exploration purposes. It’s the type of explanation that’s designed to limit cross-border criticism, a heresy in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). But in reality it will raise the hackles down the corridors of power in Hanoi and Phnom Penh.

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On April 28, Bersih 3.0 – a movement in Malaysia that is supported by 64 NGOs as well as the opposition party components – organized what turned out to be the largest street demonstration in Malaysia in a decade. Bersih in Malay means clean, and tens of thousands of Malaysians thronged the streets near Independence Square in Kuala Lumpur, demanding that the government clean or reform the Malaysian Electoral system, which Bersih 3.0 claims to be manipulative and fraudulent.

Disappointed with the government’s lack of response to Bersih 3.0 demands for electoral reform, Bersih 3.0 chair Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan, former president of the Malaysian Bar Council, said that time for discussion on these issues is over and Malaysians must now peacefully take their demands to the streets to get their government’s attention.

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Thus far, Ban Ki-moon’s trip to Burma has proven surprisingly productive, and the U.N. chief has been far more vocal than on previous visits, when he deferred too readily to the then-military regime, and at times even seemed unprepared for the complexities of dealing with Burmese politics, including the tricky ethnic issues.

Of course, a lot is changing in Burma, opening up room for the United Nations to play a larger role, and the apparent retirement of former senior general Than Shwe, who appeared to have a visceral disdain for international institutions and outside interlocutors, also plays a role. But Ban seems better briefed, more comfortable and clearer in his view on Burma’s progress. For one, prior to his trip his staff clearly enunciated the enormous potential of Burma as a destination for investment, talking it up (over-talking it, in my opinion) in a way that surely pleased both the business community and allies of President Thein Sein, who need results from the reforms in order to stave off hard-liners.

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The director of a well-known Cambodian environmental organization seeking to highlight government negligence and corruption over illegal logging was gunned down by military police on April 26.

Chut Wutty, director of the Natural Resource Protection Group, was shot and killed in a car after he refused to hand over his camera’s memory card to the policeman. He had been escorting two journalists from a local newspaper in a protected forest in Koh Kong Province, site of an illegal logging operation said to involve military officials.

Illegal logging has been a hot topic in Cambodia in recent months. It’s a practice that has expanded as it has become more profitable – there’s significant international demand for the fine-grained lumber from rosewood trees, which is used in a wide variety of ways, from the production of furniture in China to musical instruments to be sold in the United States.

However, activists say the logging of these rare trees causes significant environmental degradation, and it has undoubtedly contributed to Cambodia’s rapid deforestation rate, the third highest in the world according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Officially, the trees are protected by law. Unofficially, the underground business of logging is thriving in Cambodia. Indeed, the trade can be so lucrative that Cambodian loggers have been traversing the border into Thailand to cut down their rosewood trees, a growing concern to both Phnom Penh and Bangkok; Thai border guards routinely shoot and kill Cambodian loggers.

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