Social development
Cambodia: Access to Independent Media Blocked
(Bangkok) – The Cambodian government has issued an order to internet service providers to block access to online websites and social media accounts of three major independent media outlets, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should lift its orders to block access to the three outlets ...
Human Rights Watch
Rights group: Bangladesh failing to protect Rohingya against rising violence in camps
Bangladesh is not doing enough to protect Rohingya from increasing violence by armed groups and criminal gangs operating in the refugee camps near the country’s border with Myanmar, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. Some of these stateless refugees who fled from persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine ...
Ahammad Foyez and Abdur Rahman for BenarNews
Myanmar Military Court Sentences Ex-Publisher to Five Years for Sedition
The former publisher of independent news outlet The Irrawaddy has been sentenced to five years in prison for sedition, marking the latest in a barrage of attacks on the press in Myanmar following the 2021 military coup. Thaung Win was sentenced by the military-controlled Western Yangon District Court ...
Liam Scott
Cambodia PM threatens Facebook ban after posts ruled violent
Cambodia’s leader Hun Sen has quit Facebook and threatened to block it in his country after the platform’s oversight board recommended he be suspended for six months. Hun Sen had called for violence against his political opponents in a video in January which was viewed 600,000 ...
Joel Guinto
Indigenous and local communities see big gains in land rights, study shows
Land legally designated or owned by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities increased by 102.9 million hectares (254 million acres), larger than the size of Egypt, between 2015 and 2020, according to a new report released by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). These groups now own more ...
Dimitri Selibas
Vanished, shot, murdered: Laos activists spooked by spate of incidents
BANGKOK – An isolated murder, a brutal attempted killing and a murky disappearance: Laotian activists have been caught up in a series of alarming incidents recently that have spooked the reclusive communist state’s embattled dissident community. Landlocked, poor and deeply tied to China, Laos is one of ...
ROSE TROUP BUCHANAN/AFP-JIJI
Dengue fever outbreak hits 3-year high, nearly 20,000 affected, 15 deaths
A recent warning from Thailand’s government deputy spokesperson, Trisuree Trisaranakul, has alerted the public to the rapidly growing dengue fever outbreak. With nearly 20,000 reported cases and 15 deaths in the past five months, the epidemic reached its highest level in three years. Citizens are urged to take precautions to protect ...
Nattapong Westwood
US, UN slam arrest of prominent Vietnamese environmental activist
The United States and United Nations has criticised Vietnam’s detention of a prominent climate activist, saying such actions were part of a broader trend towards curbing free speech. Hoang Thi Minh Hong, the founder of now-defunct NGO CHANGE, which aimed to tackle some of the country’s most ...
NEWS AGENCIES
Vietnam climate campaigner Nguy Thi Khanh released from prison
Human rights groups have welcomed the early release from prison of Nguy Thi Khanh, a prominent Vietnamese climate campaigner. Khanh was incarcerated for allegedly not paying tax on her winnings from the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize in the summer of 2022, a charge human rights and climate groups have condemned. She ...
Robin Hicks
Cambodian activists charged with insulting king on Facebook
Two Cambodian opposition figures have been charged under the country’s rarely used lese majeste law with insulting King Norodom Sihamoni for posts made on Facebook about a photograph of the king and Prime Minister Hun Sen. A judge at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday ...
NEWS AGENCIES