Last month, Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring announced on Twitter his disappointment over the failure of Research In Motion (RIM), the company that owns BlackBerry, to filter pornographic content in Indonesia. He warned that Indonesia would block BlackBerry’s browser if RIM wouldn’t censor access to porn within two weeks.

It’s unfortunate that Tifatul’s unique Twitter ‘press conference’, which itself was a newsworthy event, was overshadowed by his threat to BlackBerry.

It’s hardly surprising that Indonesia is conducting a war against porn—the country has strict anti-porn laws and the government from time to time reportedly empowers the police to conduct surprise raids in schools to check if students are storing pornographic materials on their mobile phones. Tifatul’s crusade is also understandable on a personal level when you consider that he also blamed immorality for a major earthquake that killed more than 1000 people in Indonesia two years ago.

Still, netizens couldn’t understand why RIM, which is a handset maker and not a service provider, had to be dragged into the anti-porn campaign. More puzzling was the government demand for RIM to shape up in less than a month or else face being closed down in Indonesia altogether. This kind of provocative policy statement doesn’t help efforts to encourage investors to put their money in Indonesia.

Perhaps sensing lack of public support for his latest morality crusade, Tifatul clarified that porn filtering isn’t the only issue with RIM, and he went on to issue additional demands if RIM wants to continue operating in Indonesia: It should open a representative office in Indonesia; it should open a service centre in the country; it should hire more local workers; and it should use local content and software.

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They’re doing it tough in Indochina. Le Hoang Hung, a 50-year-old Vietnamese journalist who was set on fire while sleeping, has died from his injuries while across the border in Cambodia.

Hung had worked for The Worker newspaper mainly covering the southern Mekong Delta, and earned himself a reputation for investigating official corruption. According to reports, he was scheduled to cover a court case involving a local official being sued for misappropriation of land.

Vietnam is a tough place for journalists. The government treats those who stray from the official line as pariahs and the country’s bullies and gangsters are notorious thugs. Hung’s wife, describing the attack, says she was sleeping in another room when an intruder broke into their home and doused him with chemicals. Minutes later he was alight.

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In a perfect world the arrest of alleged people smuggler Haydar Khani, alias Ali Hamid, in Indonesia would send a powerful warning message to his peers working out of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. But the reality remains that they’re a brutal lot. To them, business is business.

Khani is probably responsible for at least seven boats making the risky trip from Indonesia to Australia. His most memorable crossing was made in December when at least 30 people died as the craft struck a rock off Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean 2,600 kilometers from Perth, and sank.

The exact number of victims will never be confirmed.

The route taken by the victims wasn’t uncommon: A flight from Tehran to Kuala Lumpur, a boat to Indonesia where they were assessed as cargo by smugglers, allotted a vessel and set off for Australia. Others arrive from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, often through Bangkok.

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Following is a guest entry from Diplomat contributor Bridget O'Flaherty.

So, what’s been the most noticeable change in Vietnam since the 11th Party Congress ended and the new appointments were announced earlier this month? Facebook has apparently become ‘un-blocked.’ That is, users can now go back to accessing the popular social networking site after the block on it was stepped up around the new year, apparently in another crackdown in the lead up to the five-yearly event that concluded last Wednesday.

The congress, a 1,400-strong event that decides key positions within government and outlines the direction of the nation for the next five years, came at a bleak time in the capital. Hanoi’s been undergoing a painful cold snap, which only adds to people’s frustrations about inflation (which is in double digits) and the general state of their economy.

The leading news item, in fact almost the only one to come out of the eight-day event, was the announcement of the new leadership troika. The prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, kept his job. His counterparts, General Secretary of the Communist Party Nong Duc Manh and President Nguyen Minh Triet, both retired, being past the official retirement age of 65.

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As Barack Obama took office a couple of years ago against the backdrop of the ongoing global financial crisis, it was a fair assumption that US spending abroad was heading for tough times—the long arm of the accountant was set to be felt from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Philippines and South America.

But the slash and burn attitude seems to have abated. In the Philippines, the United States has instead re-orientated its spending and geared it more towards results.

For example, Washington intends to strengthen its workforce there of 1,400 people and ensure proper implementation of developmental projects, particularly on Mindanao in the southern Philippines where civil conflict has taken a hefty toll on the civilian population.

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