Search Results for: thailand constitution

Last month, Indonesia made headlines by passing a new criminal code known as the Rivisi Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana (RKUHP). The code includes a number of controversial provisions, including outlawing acts such as defaming the president and expressing views antithetical to state ideology. However, the provision that has received the most attention is the criminalization [...]

Nepal is a least developed, land-locked Himalayan country wedged between India and China. After a long period of instability, it adopted a new constitution in 2015, creating a multi-party federal republic. Previously Nepal had been a unitary state, albeit with a long period of political instability and insurgency. The first election under the Constitution was [...]

Recently, Thailand passed an important human rights law following significant pressure from many parties including NGOs, victims of torture, relatives of the dead and missing, and investigative journalists. On 24 October 2022, the King signed into law the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearances Act which Parliament enacted on 26 August 2022. This [...]

The situation in Myanmar continues to deteriorate, with news received on July 25 that four activists have been executed. The executions are the first carried out in Myanmar for several decades. The government mouthpiece, the Global New Light of Myanmar, claimed that the activists’ crimes were “giving directions, making arrangements, committing conspiracies for brutal and [...]

It’s been one full year since Myanmar has come once again under military rule. Since the February 1, 2021 coup, the poverty-stricken Southeast Asian nation has attracted international media attention, but for the wrong reasons. The country, with a 60 million population of varied ethnicities, continues to witness public protests against the junta, counter military [...]

The Constitutional Court of Thailand ruled Wednesday that three anti-government activists who had called for a reform in the country’s powerful monarchy had violated the constitution by attempting to overthrow the institution. The ruling came in a case brought by royalist lawyer Natthaporn Toprayoon, who petitioned the court to consider whether the actions of the [...]

Most people in our societies identify as male or female, a man or a woman; but there have been people around the globe in different eras that have claimed other identities regarding their gender identity and have put this binary under challenge. Alternative genders across the globe demonstrate examples of cross-cultural gender diversity. In a [...]

An American journalist was detained by Myanmar’s military junta on Monday as he attempted to leave the country. The journalist, Danny Fenster, is the fourth foreign media worker held by the government since the military seized power in a coup in February. Fenster is the managing editor of the news organization Frontier Myanmar, which is [...]

A mass trial against 22 Thai pro-democracy activists charged under the sedition act and other provisions, including the country’s lèse-majesté (royal insult) laws, began Monday. The demonstrators have been charged for their speeches and actions at one of the youth movement’s many mass pro-democracy protests against the country’s monarchy and military establishment. The kingdom’s lèse-majesté [...]

The Thai Senate on Monday voted to amend the criminal code by allowing early term abortions. The criminal code previously criminalized women who had abortions, either performed by others or by the women themselves, with penalties of up to three years in prison and a 6,000 Baht fine. However, last February the Constitutional Court ruled [...]