Recent international media attention related to Thailand has been (quite reasonably) focused on the tragic story of Ampon Tangnoppakul, also known as “Ar Kong,” an elderly grandfather who had been sentenced to twenty years in prison for allegedly sending four text messages defaming the monarchy. This despite the fact that he had no previous political experience, and the state could not even prove he had actually sent the messages, but instead simply applied the standard that he could not disprove he sent them — obviously not a reasonable standard of proof in a democracy. Sick with cancer and other ailments, and separated from his entire family, Ampon died in jail earlier this week. Read more »

Over at New Mandala, there is a detailed report by longtime correspondent Nick Nostitz of Thaksin Shinawatra’s visit to Cambodia during the Thai New Year. For followers of Thailand and Indochinese politics, it is well worth a read.

As with Nostitz’s prior reports and books, this one is full of on-the-ground details, but what struck me the most was the intense feeling poured out by some of the Thais who traveled to meet Thaksin, the kind of emotion I previously associated in Thailand with Thais’ meetings with, er, a man whose title ends with “Nine.” Read more »

A spate of articles over the past week has highlighted the growing possibility that former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra will soon return to Thailand from exile. During a recent visit to Laos, just across the border from the Thai Northeast, Thaksin told supporters that he is going to return to Thailand within the next three or four months, in time for his birthday. As The Economist noted last week, his recent visit to Laos had all the trappings of a state visit, with high security, crowds of supporters, and the highest-level audiences with the Lao government. Thaksin has also increasingly dropped the façade that he is “retired” from politics, though he continues to insist that he is not interested in returning to the premiership. Read more »

Over on Bangkok Pundit, BP has an excellent overview of trends in the insurgency in southern Thailand. Using statistics from Deep South Watch, which chronicles the violence in the Thai south, he shows that March 2012 had the most number of injuries — 547 —from the violence in the south of any month in years. In fact, that figure for injuries is around five times the average monthly figure for injuries from the insurgency and violence. This month may be an aberration — as BP notes, the violence, including injuries and deaths, can go up and down quite substantially — but it does potentially portend a worsening of the already disastrous conflict. Read more »

Actually, the lack of economic integration in South Asia is endemic. It’s not just a challenge for India and Pakistan but for many other countries in South Asia as well.

So it’s interesting that Indian foreign policymakers seem, in various ways, to be reemphasizing the economic dimensions of their country’s strategy. At a conference in New Delhi last week, for example, Shivshankar Menon, India’s savvy national security advisor, urged India and its neighbors to refocus on economic integration. Ironically, Menon argued, economic success has raised the costs of not doing business.

Read more »

This week Reporters Without Borders issued its annual list of “Enemies of the Internet” – i.e., countries that impose the most restrictions, blocks, and filtering on free access to the Internet. The absolute worst offenders are hardly surprising – highly authoritarian states like China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan. But a more interesting component of the report is that a number of relatively free democracies are moving up the list as dedicated enemies of the Internet. These include India, Turkey, France, Australia, South Korea, and others that have laws designed to filter content and prohibit some content, often on shaky national security grounds, or because of alleged local cultural sensitivities. This trend seems to be picking up, as more and more democracies are imposing such blocks and filtering. Read more »

The Nation (the Thailand version) has an article today noting that Suranand Vejjajiva, who was the Prime Minister’s Office Minister in previous Thaksin Shinawatra governments, has now begun playing a major role in the administration of the current prime minister, Thaksin’s sister Yingluck. Suranand was banned from engaging in politics for five years following the coup that deposed Thaksin; but, like many other prominent pro-Thaksin politicians, his ban is almost up, and he and others are expected to return to the political scene in full force soon. Read more »

In a brief but informative piece in the Wall Street Journal recently, veteran correspondent James Hookaway notes that “a delicate détente between Thailand’s powerful armed forces and a populist government led by [Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra] … is looking increasingly fragile.”

Saying that the truce is “increasingly fragile” is like saying Homer Simpson enjoys donuts or Barney Frank is a difficult interview: Thailand could easily blow up again, soon. Read more »

On Tuesday (Thailand time), several explosions were detonated in one of the most heavily crowded areas of Bangkok. According to current news reports, there were at least three explosions, and following the explosions police found an Iranian man trying to flee; when he tossed a grenade at them, it exploded on him, severely wounding his legs. Israel has already blamed Iran for the explosions, linking them to apparent attempted attacks on Israelis in Georgia and India, and it has claimed Iran was going to target Israeli interests in the Thai capital.

The explosions seemed to surprise the Thai police and government. But they should not have.  Read more »

As the Guardian reports, the Thai government has become the first nation in the world to publicly endorse Twitter’s choice to censor certain types of messages in certain countries. In this case, that would mean censoring messages that fell afoul of the kingdom’s draconian lèse-majesté laws, which have been used increasingly harshly in recent years – most recently, against an underage college student and an elderly man with cancer. He allegedly sent four text messages insulting the king, and was given twenty years in jail, even though the government could not prove he had actually sent the messages. Read more »