Civil and political rights
Freedom of expression
UN rights council comes down heavily on junta
Thailand came under severe criticism over the human rights situation in the country with international delegates of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) raising serious concerns in Geneva yesterday.At the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session, the Thai delegation led by Justice Ministry permanent secretary ...
Public figures ‘must tolerate criticism’
Academics and activists on 8 May called for the government and its leaders to tolerate criticism as its reaction to being mocked could violate people’s freedom of expression. Public figures must be able to take criticism otherwise they should stay at home and raise grandchildren, said ...
Myanmar’s media landscape through the years
Recent years have seen dramatic changes to Myanmar’s media landscape, with the previous quasi-civilian government taking steps to unshackle a press corps long muzzled by successive military regimes dating back to 1962. In the wake of World Press Freedom Day, which was celebrated on 3 May, ...
Media workers lament decline in freedom of expression in Thailand
“We are the worst, even when compared to Laos or Vietnam,” said Kulachada Chaipipat, campaign manager at the Southeast Asia Press Alliance. “Those two countries have seen stagnant, bad situations, but Thailand is going down.” Speaking on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on ...
ICT forum eyed as FDI springboard
The government is hopeful an upcoming global forum for the information and communication technology industry will provide an avenue for foreign direct investment from global tech companies. The ITU Telecom World Forum 2016, to be held in Bangkok from Nov 14-17, will also allow the Thai ...
State of press freedom remains dire across much of region
An annual assessment of press freedom in 180 countries released by campaign group Reporters Without Borders reveals a mixed bag of progress and decline in the region. According to the Reporters Without Borders report, bloggers and citizen journalists in Vietnam are “the permanent targets of extremely ...
Myanmar celebrates first Pulitzer prize-winning female journalist
Esther Htusan, 29, is one of four AP journalists who worked on an investigation into severe labor abuses within the Southeast Asian fishing industry, a sector which supplies seafood to supermarkets and restaurants abroad. The team’s reporting contributed to the freeing of approximately 2,000 slaves; ...
Ministry hits back at rebuke of contentious telecoms law
Cambodia’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications has defended the controversial new Telecommunications Law following a biting legal analysis by rights group Licadho, which says the legislation is a veiled tool to silence critics and potentially criminalize private expression. Keep reading ...
Telecommunications law allows gov’t to spy: Licadho
The government has granted itself pervasive snooping powers to effectively monitor all electronic communication and punish anything deemed to have caused “national insecurity”, a legal analysis of the recently passed telecommunications law has warned. In a briefing paper released on 31 March, rights group Licadho ...
Five Vietnamese punished for revealing police checkpoints on Facebook
Police in Hanoi have fined five people up to VND20 million (US$900) each for running Facebook pages that tell people how to avoid police officers. Keep reading ...
