A total of 37 people were injured, including a man thrown out the window of a bus, in a five-vehicle pileup in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon (June 19).

A dashboard camera caught the moment when the man was flung out of the bus.

The accident happened on the Tsing Ma Bridge at about 5pm, Hong Kong’s Apple Daily reported. The vehicles, which include at least two buses and a van, were heading in the direction of Kowloon.

It is believed that the van slowed down near roadworks. Buses carrying airport workers behind the van could not stop in time and crashed into it, causing the pileup.

The man thrown from the bus was in the last vehicle in the pileup. He crashed through the window after the panel fell out.

Victims sat by the road while waiting for ambulances to arrive, Apple Daily said.

It said 34 men and 3 women, aged 20 to 59, were injured, adding that nine were hospitalised, including two in critical conditions.

One of the injured men said that the bus he was on was not speeding when the accident occurred. He added that he saw the man flung from the bus bleeding on the road.

sinsh@sph.com.sg

PHNOM PENH – Cambodian Premier Hun Sen lashed out Monday at claims his government had bowed to Chinese pressure to help scupper a joint statement by Southeast Asian nations on the South China Sea.

In an angry speech Hun Sen also accused an international court of political bias as it prepares to rule on a sea dispute between the Philippines and China.

The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration is widely expected to rule against Beijing when it delivers its verdict in the coming weeks.

Last week a meeting of foreign ministers from China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kunming ended in chaos and renewed allegations of regional bullying by Beijing.

The diplomatic fracas erupted when Malaysia released a joint statement from ASEAN members voicing “serious concerns” at land reclamation and other activities.

The strongly-worded statement did not name China but clearly referred to its extensive island-building.

But the statement was suddenly retracted for reasons that have yet to be fully explained.

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen (C) leaves a polling station with his wife Bun Rany after casting his ballot in the general elections

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Reuters

The incident was seen as another example of ASEAN’s inability to present a united front to China as it ramps up its presence in the waterway.

Several news outlets have quoted ASEAN diplomatic sources as saying that Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar – historically China’s strongest regional allies – were instrumental in scuppering the consensus statement.

Hun Sen described those claims as “unacceptable”.

“It is very unjust for Cambodia,” he said, accusing unnamed countries of “using Cambodia to counter China”.

“They use us and curse us,” he added.

Hun Sen also hit out at the Hague-based arbitration court.

“This is not about laws, it is totally about politics. I will not support any judgement by the court,” he said, adding that the case was a “political conspiracy between some countries and the court”.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea despite competing partial claims by ASEAN members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan.

In 2012 ASEAN foreign ministers failed to release a joint statement for the first time at the end of their annual gathering, with the Philippines blaming event host Cambodia for blocking criticism of China.

BANGKOK – Thai junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha and opposition supporters of ousted populist premier Thaksin Shinawatra both reached out to the United Nations on Monday as tension rises ahead of an August referendum on a new constitution.

Prayuth said he telephoned U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to express concern about an upsurge in political pressure, just a day after police shut down an electoral monitoring centre at the Bangkok headquarters of the “red shirt”anti-government movement, formally known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship.

“This morning I telephoned (Ban) to let him know about a movement of people who wish ill on Thailand,” Prayuth told reporters. “The junta will deal with people who are acting illegally.” Twenty-nine other electoral monitoring centres have been shut in recent weeks as Thailand prepares to vote on the constitution that critics fear will entrench the military’s influence.

The red shirts say the centres are needed to prevent fraud.

Thai activists plan to defy junta ban with more marches

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AFP, Reuters

Red shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan said his group went to the regional U.N. headquarters in Bangkok on Monday. “We would like the United Nations to come in and monitor,”Jatuporn told reporters.

Thailand came under fire last month at a U.N. review of its rights record with some member states expressing concern over the deteriorating rights situation since the military took power.

Under the proposed charter, a junta-appointed Senate with seats reserved for military commanders would check the powers of elected lawmakers for a five-year transitional period.

The referendum will be the first real rest of the junta’s popularity since it took power in a May 2014 coup.

The army toppled the populist government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in another chapter in a decade of confrontation between the establishment and Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin, and his red-shirted supporters.

JAKARTA – Indonesia is determined to assert its exclusive right to a corner of the South China Sea where there has been a run of skirmishes between Indonesian navy ships and Chinese vessels, the vice-president said on Monday.

Jusuf Kalla told Reuters that Indonesia would send a message to Beijing demanding that it respect the Southeast Asian nation’s sovereignty over waters around the Natuna Islands.

China’s foreign ministry said over the weekend that an Indonesian naval vessel fired on a Chinese fishing boat near the chain of islands on Friday, injuring one person.

Indonesia’s navy responded that it had fired warning shots at several boats with Chinese flags it accused of fishing illegally but there were no injuries.

It was the third reported confrontation near the Natuna Islands this year and comes amid rising regional tensions over China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. “This is not a clash, but we are protecting the area,” Kalla said in an interview with Reuters at the presidential palace.

Asked if the Indonesian government had made a decision to be more assertive, he said: “Yes, we will continue.” Separately, Indonesia’s chief security minister, Luhut Pandjaitan, told reporters the government would seek the advice of legal experts on the matter.

Illegal fishing vessels destroyed by Indonesian navy

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AFP

“On the South China Sea we want to talk to experts in international maritime laws on what is the most appropriate way to resolve it,” Pandjaitan said, without elaborating.

Indonesia is not part of a broader regional dispute over China’s reclamation activities in the South China Sea and Beijing’s claims on swathes of key waterways.

But Jakarta has objected to China’s inclusion of parts of the Indonesian-ruled Natuna Islands within a “nine-dash line” Beijing marks on maps to show its claim on the body of water.

China has said it does not dispute Indonesia’s sovereignty over the Natuna Islands, but Kalla said its ships sometimes claim that they have the right to operate in waters around the islands because they are “traditional Chinese fishing grounds”. “

But we are focused on the legal basis,” Kalla said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). “We will send a message to the other side to honour the area in accordance with the law.” China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.