Human rights

A court in Thailand on Tuesday sentenced a reporter to two years in prison for criminal libel for a comment she tweeted about a labor abuse grievance at a poultry farm. The case against Suchanee Cloitre, then working for Voice TV, is one of 20 lawsuits ...

Rohingya activists have accused the Myanmar Press Council, a quasi-government media adjudication and ethics body,  of defending the practice of using the word “Bengali” to refer to the Rohingya. Rights groups and Rohingya advocates argue that the term amounts to “hate speech” and that it is ...

Vietnamese courts on Thursday sentenced six dissident bloggers and activists to long terms in prison amid a continuing crackdown on online expressions of dissent in the one-party communist state that has seen dozens of people jailed this year, sources said. In southeastern Vietnam’s Dong Nai province, ...

Damage to property in Hongsa and Xaysathan districts of Xayaboury province has been estimated at over 2 billion kip after at least 300 families were affected by an earthquake last week. Director of the province’s Labour and Social Welfare Department, Mr Nouphone Xaypanyachith, said two earthquakes ...

Huy Vannak, president of the Union of Journalists Federations of Cambodia, on Tuesday during the Asia-Pacific Summit in Phnom Penh called on all journalists across the world to take part in curbing fake news and learn about the value of peace. Mr Vannak, who is also ...

A group of Myanmar satirists on Monday (Nov 18) racked up a second prison sentence for a performance that criticised the military, a decision the artists said showed the judges were “puppets” of the military. The group of seven, known as the Peacock Generation, were arrested ...

Much of the recent ASEAN summit was focused on political snubbing between Donald Trump and the region, an Asian trade agreement, and the South China Sea dispute, but one topic was not a priority: human rights. So says the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights organization, (APHR) ...

Asean civil society groups on Saturday criticised the deterioration of human rights in Asean as well as the bloc’s principle of non-interference, especially over the Rohingya crisis, which will reportedly receive no mention in the East Asia Summit statement. Phil Robertson, the Asia Deputy Director of ...

The plight of thousands of women from Kachin and Shan states trafficked into forced marriages in China has attracted global attention, with numerous major news outlets and human rights groups covering the crisis. But one Myanmar language publication recently gave a different take on the ...

A Cambodian judge on Thursday ordered a reinvestigation of the espionage case against two former Radio Free Asia journalists, saying he could not rule on their guilt or innocence without enough evidence. The case has added to concerns about a crackdown on criticism and dissent by ...