Indonesia's toxic haze is giving its neighbours a political headache

The haze billowing out from wildfires in the Indonesian regions of Kalimantan, Papua and Sumatra knows no borders.

Carried by winds to nearby Singapore and Malaysia, the toxic smog has in recent weeks impacted populations across maritime South East Asia, triggering respiratory illnesses and headaches.

It's also giving the region's governments a different kind of headache - split between the mounting frustrations of their citizens and the risk of souring diplomatic ties with Indonesia.

"People are fed up, angry and anxious," Eugene Tan, associate professor of law at the Singapore Management University, tells the BBC. "The governments have to respond to them, or else what is more an external issue has become an internal one with ample headroom for politicisation."

Indonesia's wildfires are a yearly occurrence, widely associated with industrial-scale land clearing to make way for crops like oil palm.

But the blazes this year have been particularly difficult to tame due to a strong El Niño, which has exacerbated drought conditions in the country's forests and peatlands.

Whereas previous haze episodes in Singapore and Malaysia have typically lasted for a few days, this time it stretched into weeks.

In Malaysia, locals started a boycott of Indonesian products in protest against the haze, after lawmaker Syed Saddiq called for sanctions on companies linked to the wildfires and said Malaysians should "treat them as an outcast in the region".

Kaynak: BBC News World RSS (Açık Basın / Haber Servisi)