More than a millennium before Ferdinand Magellan landed in the archipelago that he called Filipinas, the islands were filled with thriving communities, ruled by their respective datu (rulers). They have sophisticated pottery and artifacts developed from trading with the surrounding civilizations in this part of the world. There was no extensive documentation on these cultures because of the lack of a permanent source of writing material, but one thing is certain—they are exceptional goldsmiths. 

One day in April 1981, a local named Edilberto Morales working with heavy machinery for an irrigation project in the province of Surigao del Sur found what turned out to be 22 pounds of gold artifacts. Morales quietly took home his stash on a rice sack and covered them with bananas. He wasn't sure what to do with the artifacts, so he entrusted them to the local priest. As words of the discovery got out, buyers and looters flocked to the village. Before long, the treasure was gone.

Fortunately, most of them made their way to the few buyers who could afford to buy them—the Central Bank and prominent people in the capital.

The items dated back to the 10th through the 13th centuries. The most prominent artifact is a sash made of  3,860 grams of gold. This piece was likely worn by an important datu during key rituals. The sash is made of tightly braided gold wires and beads woven to assemble a four-cornered halter with a slit on one end, perhaps to hold a ceremonial weapon.

It was likely made for ceremonial purposes, but no one can be sure. Similar golden regalia have been used by the Brahmin caste in India.

“I am ready for my next assignment,” a beaming Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong had declared at a People’s Action Party (PAP) convention last November.

“I am all in, heart and soul,” he said, adding that he has been working hard to get ready for what would be the “biggest responsibility” of his career – to take over the baton from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as Singapore’s next leader.

Now, the assignment has come as Mr Lee announced his retirement on Monday (Apr 15).

Mr Wong will officially take over the leadership reins on May 15, when he becomes Singapore's fourth Prime Minister.

RISE THROUGH THE RANKS

The 51-year-old entered politics in 2011 after being elected as a Member of Parliament in West Coast GRC. He was given his first political office two weeks after the election – as Minister of State for education and defence.

In the 2015 General Election, Mr Wong moved to contest in the new Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC, where he has been anchor minister ever since.

By then, he had risen steadily through the ranks with positions in various ministries, including the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth where he was appointed acting minister in 2012 and made full minister two years later.

After the elections in 2015, he moved to head the Ministry of National Development where he stayed on until July 2020.

In 2020, Mr Wong was tasked to co-chair Singapore’s multi-ministry COVID-19 task force with then-Health Minister Gan Kim Yong.   Together with Mr Gan, and later, new Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, he helmed the country’s pandemic response and fronted key announcements at frequently held press conferences.

Political observers later said that it was Mr Wong’s steady leadership style during COVID-19, clear explanation of policies and grasp of details that put him in pole position to take over as the country’s next leader when Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat took himself out of the running for the top job in April 2021.

Mr Heng, then 60, had cited his age as the reason and that he would have “too short a runway” should he become Prime Minister after the pandemic.

Mr Wong, who was then Education Minister, took over the Finance Ministry from Mr Heng in the ensuing Cabinet reshuffle, providing the first hint of his frontrunner position given how the high-profile finance portfolio has traditionally been helmed by PAP heavyweights.

Questions about political succession were finally laid to rest in April 2022 when Mr Wong was named as the leader of the PAP’s fourth-generation, or 4G, team.   Two months later, he was promoted to Deputy Prime Minister in another Cabinet reshuffle, while holding on to his finance portfolio.

Since cementing his standing as Singapore’s next Prime Minister, Mr Wong has fronted major speeches, such as delivering the keynote speech at the May Day Rally last year in place of Mr Lee.

He has also launched the Forward Singapore exercise, which provided a glimpse of how he and the 4G team intends to take the country forward.

A CIVIL SERVANT AND GUITAR LOVER

Located in the heart of Chinatown, the Majestic blends Western and Chinese architectural styles, and remembers the love story that founded it. 

Built in 1927 by Eu Tong Sen, the Majestic Theatre was formerly known as the Tien Yien Moh Toi Theatre. In addition to being a wealthy tin mining and rubber businessman, Sen was a dedicated husband. He used his wealth to open the theater after his wife was denied entrance to a Cantonese opera. Not only that, but he bought the whole street the Majestic sits on, and an entire opera troupe, just for his wife. 

By 1938, the theater had evolved into a cinema screening Cantonese blockbusters. During the Japanese occupation of Singapore during World War II, the theatre was commandeered and renamed Tai Hwa Opera House and screened Japanese propaganda films. When the war ended, the Majestic Film Company acquired and aptly renamed the building. The theater was not only popular among Singaporean locals, but attracted Hong Kong film stars like Grace Chang, Lin Dai, and Ge Lan. 

Since then, the ownership of the Majestic has changed multiple times. In 1983, Cathay Organisation became the sole owner, screening Chinese films until the late 90s. In the early 2000s, the theatre was renovated into a three-story shopping mall that opened its doors on January 17, 2003. After going up for sale again in 2007, the building was turned into a betting center in 2009, to the dismay of many heritage conservationists and Chinese cultural arts enthusiasts.

The façade of the building is still adorned with tiles, depicting scenes of Cantonese opera and flying dragons. Its architecture reflects its connections to Singapore’s Cantonese community and the labor of love that founded it. 

A set of tunnels puzzling Singapore, sparking numerous conspiracy theories about its origins since the late 20th century, has its mystery finally cracked. Located on Admiralty Road West and Marsiling Crescent, the World War II-era tunnels have remained hidden from sight since the British left Singapore. 

Since the tunnels' discovery in the 2000s, multiple theories have been proposed about their origins. Some thought the tunnels led to Johor, or housed an underground facility for a nearby mental hospital. The most compelling theory was that the tunnel had been an underground oil storage facility built by the Asiatic Petroleum Company (APC) for a British Royal Navy base. A 1945 map showed the location of Woodlands North Depot, once operated by APC, on the exact location of the tunnels. 

At an impressive 54 square kilometers, Her Majesty’s Naval Base occupied almost 10 percent of Singapore’s land size in the 1940s and was formerly the largest British military base in Asia. The former base is now home to Sembawang Park and Woodlands Waterfront Park. 

While the evidence was compelling, the theory was slightly off. By obtaining information from disclosed documents, British Wartime Intelligence Reports, and the U.K.’s National Archives, Singapore’s National Heritage Board solved the mystery of the Marsiling Tunnels' true origin and purpose. They have been verified as a pre-WWII fuel reserve depot utilized by the Royal Air Force, not the British Royal Navy. 

During their occupation of Singapore, the Imperial Japanese Army utilized the tunnels as an oil storage facility. According to a 1944 British intelligence report, the tunnels were renovated to have five large tanks, increasing their capacity by over 5,250 tons. 

In 2014, on the 72nd anniversary of the Battle of Singapore, the tunnels opened to the public for the first time. The National Heritage Board offered guided tours to show how the British surrendered to Singapore to the Japanese. These tours also included important historical locations like Opium Hill and Tiong Bahru Air Raid Shelter. Today, most entrances have been sealed and are closed to the public, but a small entrance found by local explorers remains open. 

In Boat Quay, bronze statues fashioned by Aw Tee Hong in 2003 encapsulate an antiquated routine for merchants and laborers of early Singapore. These statues depict a Chinese trader, a Malay chief, a famous merchant Alexander Laurie Johnston, and men loading sacks onto a cart. The sculptures are located along the river and the former site of Johnston’s warehouse. Johnston, a prominent Scottish businessman and merchant, is seen mediating with the Chinese trader and Malay chief. Hong captures and highlights the multiculturalism integral to Singapore’s identity, showing how diverse the trading community is. Adjacent to these men, a homage is paid to the low-wage laborers of the time. These men, often of Chinese or Indian origin, were vital in traversing the trade routes along the river. As Johnston was one of the earliest British settlers in Singapore, he was among the first magistrates appointed by Sir Stamford Raffles. Serving as one of the Trustees of the Singapore Institution, Johnston established A. L. Johnston & Co. in 1820, making his mark as an active member of the mercantile community. The Scotsman became a founding member of Singapore’s Chamber of Commerce in 1837, helping the nation become one of the most important trading hubs in the world. The artist behind these statues, Aw Tee Hong, was a prominent Singaporean artist known for his paintings and sculptures. He immortalizes Singapore’s heritage, focusing on the country’s humble beginnings as a fishing village and its evolution into a modern metropolis.

In Dili, Indonesia’s future means trying to forget about Timor-Leste’s past

Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto, a former military officer, has been linked to alleged atrocities in Timor-Leste.

At Timor-Leste’s museum of memory, Hugo Fernandes supervises exhibits chronicling resistance and oppression during the Indonesian occupation – an era when Prabowo Subianto, now Indonesia’s president-elect, is alleged to have overseen atrocities.

Fernandes runs the Centro Nacional Chega! museum, a former prison in the capital Dili that dates to when Timor-Leste was a Portuguese colony. Faded photographs of Timorese resistance fighters and messages scrawled on the walls by prisoners who languished here during Indonesia’s brutal 24-year rule line its galleries. 

Despite the shadows cast by history, the impending ascent to power of Prabowo, a former army special forces commander who was declared the winner of the Feb. 14 Indonesian general election, has been greeted with diplomatic decorum in this tiny young nation of 1.3 million people also known as East Timor.

“Prabowo’s specific actions remain unclear due to limited information,” Fernandes, the museum’s director, told BenarNews. “Accusations of human rights violations have persisted, but concrete evidence and verification are difficult to obtain.”

“Chega!,” which means “enough! in Portuguese, stands as a testament to Timor-Leste’s efforts to navigate the delicate path between preserving the memories of its dark past and promoting reconciliation with its giant neighbor next-door.

“There are differing voices within the nation,” Fernandes says. “Some activists advocate for answers regarding past atrocities, while others emphasize the importance of moving forward with Indonesia.”

In 1999, East Timor voted overwhelmingly to break away from Indonesian rule, through a United Nations-sponsored referendum. Before and after the vote, pro-Jakarta militias engaged in widespread violence and destruction. East Timor gained formal independence in 2002 after a period of U.N. administration.

The occupation, which followed after Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 1975, was marked by famine and conflict. The number of deaths attributed to that era ranges from from 90,000 to 200,000, the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor reported.

This figure includes nearly 20,000 cases of violent deaths or disappearances. The commission’s findings indicate that Indonesian forces were responsible for about 70% of these violent incidents, set against the backdrop of East Timor’s population of around 900,000 in 1999.

Off the southern shores of Singapore where waves whisper ancient tales, you can find Kusu Island. In the Hokkien dialect, kusu means "tortoise" or "turtle." True to its name, this island is adorned with many tortoise statues and home to a legendary tortoise tale.

The most prominent mythology revolves around a giant turtle and his generosity. During the ninth lunar month, two sailors found themselves shipwrecked and in distress on the rough seas. Thankfully, a benevolent turtle spotted the men and turned itself into an island where they could take refuge. Honored and grateful for the creature’s help, the sailors returned the following year to make offerings. Since then, Kusu Island has transformed into a place of worship.

The ancient pilgrimage continues today as thousands of devotees pilgrimage to Kusu Island to worship at the Da Bo Gong (Tua Pek King) Temple on the ninth lunar month. The island hosts a Chinese temple, three Malay shrines (Keramats), and a tortoise sanctuary. One of Singapore’s famous cultural heritages, the hawker center, is also on the island and only open during festivities and pilgrimages.

Originally 1.2 hectares, the island grew to 8.5 hectares through landfill and reclamation in 1975. During British colonization, the island once served as a burial site for newly arrived immigrants who died in quarantine on St John’s and Lazarus islands.

Nearly seven years after the Myanmar military killed thousands of Muslim Rohingyas, in what the UN called "textbook ethnic cleansing", it wants their help.

From interviews with Rohingyas living in Rakhine State the BBC has learned of at least 100 of them being conscripted in recent weeks to fight for the embattled junta. All their names have been changed to protect them.

"I was frightened, but I had to go," says Mohammed, a 31-year-old Rohingya man with three young children. He lives near the capital of Rakhine, Sittwe, in the Baw Du Pha camp. At least 150,000 internally displaced Rohingyas have been forced to live in IDP camps for the past decade.

In the middle of February the camp leader came to him late at night, Mohammed said, and told him he would have to do military training. "These are army orders," he remembers him saying. "If you refuse they have threatened to harm your family."

The BBC has spoken to several Rohingyas who have confirmed that army officers have been going around the camps and ordering the younger men to report for military training.

The terrible irony for men like Mohammed is that Rohingyas in Myanmar are still denied citizenship, and subjected to a range of discriminatory restrictions - like a ban on travel outside their communities.

In 2012 tens of thousands of Rohingyas were driven out of mixed communities in Rakhine State, and forced to live in squalid camps. Five years later, in August 2017, 700,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, after the army launched a brutal clearance operation against them, killing and raping thousands and burning their villages. Some 600,000 of them still remain there.

Myanmar is now facing a genocide trial at the International Court of Justice in the Hague over its treatment of the Rohingyas.

That the same army is now forcibly recruiting them is a telling sign of its desperation, after losing huge swathes of territory in Rakhine recently to an ethnic insurgent group called the Arakan Army. Dozens of Rohingyas in Rakhine have been killed by military artillery and aerial bombardments.

In February 2023, a few months after I departed from my field site in Singapore, the Deputy Prime Minister announced significant changes to Singapore’s housing policies. In his eagerly anticipated budget speech for 2023, Lawrence Wong reaffirmed Singapore’s commitment to nurturing familial aspirations among Singaporeans and proceeded to outline measures aimed at reducing the uncertainties faced by (heterosexual) couples in their housing journeys. Chief among these measures was the granting of extra balloting chances to families with children and young married couples aged 40 and below (Ong, 2023). 1 Previously, both engaged and married couples received two ballot chances each, whereas now legally married couples and married couples with children would receive three balloting chances.

This announcement and its implications must be understood within context. Approximately 80% of Singaporeans reside in public housing flats (Lin, 2022), 2 representing some of the highest flat ownership rates in Asia and underscoring the success of Singapore’s public housing model—a model that Singaporeans and its leaders rightly take pride in. However, this success comes with a caveat. In Singapore, flat ownership is contingent upon adhering to and staying on a particular life path.

In brief, there are several pathways to acquiring a public flat. Among them, the Build-to-Order (BTO) housing program, known locally as “BTO,” is the most affordable and accessible route for Singaporean citizens to own a public flat. Eligibility to apply for a BTO before the age of 35 hinges on the formation of—or in the case of engaged couples, the intention to form—a conventional family nucleus. 3 (Singles may participate after 35.) 4 Eligible couples or families submit an online application, which is then entered into a computer-generated ballot. This ballot, occurring four times a year, can induce significant anxiety, as couples may succeed on their first attempt or as late as their 13th try. 5

It is this anxiety and uncertainty that the Deputy Prime Minister sought to alleviate by offering married couples more balloting chances. Returning to the formalities of the BTO process, couples must then wait 3 to 6 years for the flat to be built, and they risk losing their down payment (an amount that can be as high as 20,000 Singapore dollars) 6 if they separate or divorce during this period. Subsequently, after moving into the flat, they must fulfil what is termed a Minimum Occupation Period. For those who balloted as a married or engaged couples this typically entails remaining married and residing in the flat for a period of five to ten years, depending on the location of the flat. In other words, access to a subsidized flat in Singapore before the age of 35 is heavily contingent upon coupling and maintaining that union.

During my PhD fieldwork, I began to realize that what I was studying was not merely housing policy, but rather people’s endeavours to live together, and the various modes of romantic labour they engage in to synchronize their relational lives with grant, balloting, and flat building cycles. Particularly, I observed my interlocutors, many of whom were still in university, attempting to pre-empt uncertainties in balloting and long wait times by committing to serious relationships early. The idea was that finding a partner early would enable them to wait out multiple balloting attempts and access optimal grant opportunities. Often, they disclosed to me that their BTO partner was also their first romantic partner.

Tan Ming Li is a certified death doula. Just as there are those who facilitate bringing new life into the world, there should be people facilitating more and better ways to talk about death and dying, she reasons.

In 2023, she started The Life Review, a social venture with the mission to normalise conversations about death, dying and bereavement. Events open to the public include Life Stories, a series of chat sessions with topics such as “Motherless daughters”, “Real men don’t cry” and “Pet loss and our enduring bonds”; as well as Death Over Dinner, in which people come together to have conversations guided by Tan about their personal experiences with loss while sharing a meal.

The last Death Over Dinner took place at South Indian restaurant Podi & Poriyal, where participants were served dishes containing ingredients with special life and death significance in South Indian culture such as black sesame seeds, which signify purification; and jackfruit, the wood of which is often used as funeral pyre logs during cremation.

“What better way for Asians to connect than through food?” said Tan, explaining that Death Over Dinner is actually a global movement that originated in the US, “but we tweaked it so that food was a much bigger component, building the conversations around the ingredients and dishes. In other countries, the concept is just for people to talk about death over the dinner table.”

Tan, who is in her 40s, believes that getting comfortable with talking openly and honestly about such topics is vitally important.

“A nationwide survey conducted last year (by the Singapore Management University) revealed that ‘only 53 per cent of Singaporeans are comfortable discussing their own death while barely a third (33.4 per cent) would do so with someone who is dying’,” she shared.

She feels there is also a tendency to over-medicalise conversations about death, focusing on treatments and doctors.

“As a society, death is not something that is commonly discussed and we tend to be ‘death-denying’. Healthcare and wellness are all about ‘preventing’ death. In fighting against death, we are unaccepting of this natural part of life. This makes it hard to be vulnerable about our emotions around it,” she said.

Even if you haven’t lost a loved one yourself, “When someone else experiences a loss, many of us don’t know how to address the topic and end up using platitudes like ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ or worse, ‘Everything happens for a reason’,” she pointed out.

Ironically, avoiding the subject of death inadvertently gives it more power. “This power can then suppress our thoughts, beliefs and behaviour,” she opined.

NO STRANGER TO DEATH AND DENIAL

Often described as the world’s largest Buddhist monument, Borobudur rises from the jungles of central Java: a nine-leveled step pyramid decorated with hundreds of Buddha statues and more than 2,000 carved stone relief panels. Completed in 835 AD by Buddhist monarchs who were repurposing an earlier Hindu structure, Borobudur was erected as “a testament to the greatness of Buddhism and the king who built it,” says religion scholar and Borobudur expert Uday Dokras.

Though Buddhists make up less than one percent of Indonesia’s population today, Borobudur still functions as a holy site of pilgrimage, as well as a popular tourist destination. But for the Indonesian Gastronomy Community (IGC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating Indonesian food culture, Borobudur is “not just a temple that people can visit,” says IGC chair Ria Musiawan. The structure’s meticulous relief carvings, which depict scenes of daily life for all levels of ninth-century Javanese society, provide a vital source of information about the people who created it. Borobudur can tell us how the inhabitants of Java’s ancient Mataram kingdom lived, worked, worshiped, and—as the IGC demonstrated in an event series that ended in 2023—ate.

The IGC sees food as a way to unite Indonesians, but the organization also considers international gastrodiplomacy as a part of their mission. Globally, Indonesian food is less well-known than other Southeast Asian cuisines, but the country’s government has recently made efforts to boost its reputation, declaring not one, but five official national dishes in 2018. To promote Indonesian cuisine, the IGC organizes online and in-person events based around both modern and historical Indonesian food. In 2022, they launched an educational series entitled Gastronosia: From Borobudur to the World. The first event in the series was a virtual talk, but subsequent dates included in-person dinners, with a menu inspired by the reliefs of Borobudur and written inscriptions from contemporary Javanese sites.

Wat Intharawihan is not among the most famous Bangkok temples. However, inside the Wat Intharawihan temple, visitors can see a giant and shining golden Buddha with more than 100 years of history. 

The 104-foot Buddha that took 60 years to build. The construction started in 1867 during the reign of King Rama IV and was completed in 1927 under the reign of King Rama VII. The standing Buddha is using a Ushnisha (relic crown/hat), which was given as a gift by the Government of Sri Lanka. 

In 2023, a significant demographic milestone emerged with broad social and economic impacts: the global population of adults aged 50 surpassed the number of children under 15 for the first time. Brunei Darussalam, a small, oil-rich Islamic country on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia, faces challenges associated with this shift. Ranked as one of the world’s wealthiest nations due to its vast oil and gas reserves, Brunei’s population of 455,858 sees a contrast with a poverty rate of 5%, positioning it 11th out of 78 countries.

Hajah Nor Ashikin binti Haji Johari, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS), highlighted the profound economic impact of the aging global population, noting the substantial expenditures on health care, research and support services. Furthermore, Hajah pointed out the rapid growth of the aging population and its broad implications. During Brunei’s chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2021, Johari emphasized Brunei’s leadership in endorsing the ASEAN Comprehensive Framework on Care Economy.

Additionally, in 2017, an action plan spanning five years was adopted to enhance elderly development, welfare and protection, aiming to create a senior-friendly support system and reduce elderly poverty in Brunei. Unfortunately, an aging demographic compounded by an ominous surge in noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes challenges Brunei’s socio-economic development.

Addressing Poverty and Social Protection in Brunei

Bruneians who live in poverty prefer to use the phrasings “living in need” and “difficult life” over “poverty” and “poor.” This exchange of phrasings intends to protect an individual’s self-confidence and self-esteem. Yet this preference challenges officials’ attempts to accurately assess the severity of poverty and implement targeted interventions.

However, Brunei’s social protection schemes encounter challenges. These challenges include limited coverage, differential treatment between public and private sectors, exclusion of unemployed individuals and inadequate support for vulnerable groups such as divorcees, widows/widowers, single parents, orphans, the abused and disabled people.

The Dual Impact of an Ageing Society

Imelda Marcos envisioned Manila as the cultural center of Asia. Fresh from a successful staging of the 1974 Miss Universe Pageant, where a specially built theater was completed in just 77 days, she wanted a film center that would rival the famed Cannes Film Festival of France.

Employing a celebrated architect of that time Froilan Hong, a building inspired by the Parthenon in Athens was to be constructed in the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex in Pasay City. UNESCO was even consulted for the structural designs of the auditoria and the archives. With three months to spare before the scheduled film festival, the deadline was tight. To make it work, some 4,000 workers were employed to work in three shifts across 24 hours. The lobby was finished in 72 hours by 1,000 workers—a job that was supposed to entail six weeks.

The frenetic pace of construction didn't allow for proper precautions. On November 17, 1981, at around 3 a.m., scaffolding collapsed and workers were trapped in the quick-drying cement. Immediately, a blanket security and a media blackout were imposed for fear of creating a scandal. No rescuers and ambulances were allowed until an official statement was prepared. Rescuers were only allowed after nine hours. Of course, by then it was too late. At that point, 168 workers had died or were buried in the cement. 

Two months later, the first Manila International Film Festival took place from January 18 to 29, 1982.

After an earthquake in 1990, the building was abandoned because of structural damage. It was rehabilitated and leased out to the private sector, but after it caught fire in 2013 it was abandoned once again.

Also known as the Blue Soil Hills, Kaman-utek is a riveting expanse of bluish-green mounds in Balili, Bontoc. This area has also been called the Blue Soil of Sagada, but the area has been communally accepted to be politically located within the municipality of Bontoc.

In the Bontoc dialect, kaman-utek means "like a brain." This area got this name because its systems of folds and ridges were likened to brain gyri.

The unique bluish color of Kaman-utek comes from an abundance of copper sulfate in the soil. Specifically, the copper develops a patina when it is exposed to oxygen and weathering. (The same process is responsible for the Statue of Liberty's distinctive color.) The copper also reacts to rain and humidity, which changes the soil’s bluish shade almost every day. The soil is more of a bluish-green color in the dry seasons and an intense blue during the rainy season. White soil can also be seen in some areas, especially on the lower slopes of ridges. Results from multiple researchers and tests have confirmed that the soil is safe for visitors.

Kaman-utek is surrounded by footrails, towering trees, and a local variety of flora making it like a small peculiar blue desert in the middle of a lush pine forest.

Located in Pindongan, Ifugao, a six-and-a-half-hour drive north of Manila, the Kiangan National Shrine marks the end of World War II in the Philippines. The shrine is also called the Bantayog ng Kiangan in Tagalog or the Yamashita Shrine.

The memorial specifically commemorates top Japanese army commander Tomoyuki Yamashita's (known as the “Tiger of Malaya”) surrender to Allied Filipino-American forces on September 3, 1945, at a local school. Yamashita's surrender came just one day after the formal surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri, an Iowa-class battleship, in Tokyo Bay, marking the official end of World War II in Asia. Yamashita's submission also ended Japanese occupation in the Philippines. 

The shrine was erected on July 9, 1975, and is made of concrete and steel. It was modeled after an Indigenous Ifugao house featuring a ceremonial stage and a viewing deck. A highlight of the memorial is the wooden wall sculpture made from narra, the country’s national tree, secured with plaster within the shrine's main chamber.

The wooden sculpture dominates the larger wall, depicting three scenes from top to bottom. At the top of the carving, a sun rises behind a woman standing with her arms outstretched and broken handcuffs dangling from her wrists symbolizing the dawning of peace. The middle of the carving shows American General Douglas MacArthur and Allied forces watching as General Yamashita signs Japan's official surrender. The bottom of the sculpture depicts the atrocities the Japanese Imperial Army committed against the Filipino people throughout the war.

Today, the shrine serves as a war memorial and a testament to the historic event that ended almost 4 years of Japanese occupation in the Philippines and the end of World War II.

Around 360,000 people in Timor-Leste, a country with a population of 1.3 million, face critical levels of food insecurity, according to a report assessing the food situation in the country, released by the World Food Programme (WFP).

It is estimated that 360,000 people, about one in four of the population, face critical levels of food insecurity, of which 18,500 people face emergency conditions, states the report, released on Thursday, which is based on an assessment of the situation between November 2023 and April 2024.

The document also predicts that between May and September, during the post-harvest season -traditionally seen as a period of improved access to food – the situation will worsen.

The predicted climate shocks will reduce crop yields, the report says, with 19,000 people in six municipalities expected to face a further decline in their food security and increase the total number of people in emergency food conditions to more than 22,000.

The WFP’s second round of analysis of Timor-Leste’s Integrated Phase Classification of Acute Food Insecurity reveals fragile and deteriorating levels of food insecurity in 12 of Timor-Leste’s 14 municipalities, amid successive climate shocks and rising food prices, the report adds.

According to the WFP representative in Timor-Leste, Alba Cecilia Garzon Olivares, climate shocks and the inflation rate show that action is urgently needed to prevent a further deterioration of food insecurity in the country.

The document was drawn up jointly by the government, the United Nations and non-governmental organisations.