Opinion

Across the world, violence against women and girls remains one of the most serious — and the most tolerated — human rights violations, both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality and discrimination.

Monday’s leaked top-secret Watchlist of 183 enemies of the Thai state is a reminder that the regime is more dictatorial and paranoid than one might think.

BANGKOK — One of the biggest dilemmas facing those opposed to the coup makers is to whether participate in tomorrow’s referendum on the controversial junta-sponsored charter.

While one junta-appointed senator after another takes turn to publicly announce they would not vote for Move Forward Party PM candidate Pita Limjaroenrat as the next PM due to the party’s pledge to reform the lese majeste law, two troubling issues related to the law itself surfaced over the past week.

The military coup in Myanmar on Monday sent a political ripple to Thailand, its next door neighbour, not because of any immediate influx of political asylum seekers (yet) but for the similar fate they share.

A recent controversy reminds us that in Thailand, certain topics cannot be publicly deliberate without severe risks.

In a quasi-dictator’s wet dream, the ‘democratic’ state gets to decide who can become a journalist, who not, and what journalists cannot write about – basically turning them into public relations servants.

Less than twenty minutes after he was let off the hook by the Constitutional Court, which ruled on Friday that he can still be PM for two and a half more years because the eight-year limit stipulated under the charter should only be counted when the junta-sponsored constitution came into effect in April 2017, Gen. Prayut Chan-o-cha made it clear he is planning to stay on to do more ‘great things’ for Thailand.

SEATTLE – A few years ago, Melinda and I visited with a group of rice farmers in Bihar, India, one of the most flood-prone...

At a recent farewell reception for Peter Prugel, the German ambassador to Thailand, a prominent international human rights activist who was in town from...