Human Rights Watch

Thailand’s effort to put an end to slave labour in the fishing industry is little more then a ‘theatrical exercise for international consumption’, states a report out today. While the Thai government scrambled to create a new ordinance for the fishing industry after severe criticism both of fishing methods and trafficked slave labour by the […]

BUT THIS CASE CANNOT BE SETTLED ‘FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL’  The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand have issued a statement in support of BBC correspondent Jonathan Head, a former President, who faces jail together with a Briton Ian Rance, one of many people defrauded out of properties on the Thai island of Phuket. The […]

The Thai military government in its continued strategy to cover up matters it does not want the public to know about, not least of which are its hands in the till style government while supposedly clamping down on corruption, continues to clamp down on freedom of expression. Its rather humourless leader General Prayuth Chan-Ocha, who […]

A FEW GOOD WOMEN Naritsarawan Kaewnopparat Thailand’s military is not traditionally good at handling the truth but then it does not need to be.  The military were never punished for the Tak Bai massacre* or for the massacre at Krue Se Mosque*. The army of course is used more against the people rather than an […]

Thailand’s military dictator General Prayuth Chan-Ocha who has jailed many dissenters and is now making undisguised and widespread threats to jail more – has firmly targeted journalists in a bid to push through a new constitution which will drag the country back 100 years. The latest arrest of the Prachatai journalist is a case in […]

The more things change – the more they stay the same. Will the United Nations see through Thailand, or at least its government? While the Thai military may have profited from human rights abuses, particularly in regard to human trafficking, it’s not as if this is something new. Thailand has been active and profiteering for […]

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH CALLS FOR ANOTHER INVESTIGATION IN THAILAND With slumping trade and foreign investment figures, multiple political arrests and detentions, a decline in the tourist market while Burma’s increases by 50 perc cent, multiple fraud cases with foreign victims, and last but not least, the realization that the most innocent and attractive tourists in […]

Human Rights Wast has condemned Thailand’s Anti-Corruption Commission for dismissing a malfeasance case against former government officials for their role in the orders to shoot at demonstrators during the 2010 crackdown on the ‘Red Shirts’. And HRW has accused the current government of ‘airbrushing’ Thai history. As pretty much all of Thai history is airbrushed […]

NOT A LOT IT SEEMS Three programmes have crashed over the last month at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – or rather they have been cancelled at the orders of the current Thai military government. The latest a few hours ago was to have been a presentation by Human Rights Watch on the ill-treatment […]

Chea Sim Human Rights Watch says that the death this week of Chea Sim former President of the Cambodian People’s Party, and like Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, a former battalion commander in the Khmer Rouge, should spur people on to make renewed efforts to bring the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. Hun Sen satirised […]