Stories from Thailand and beyond. If it’s both terrifying and amazing then you should definitely pursue it.
A British journalist with the BBC faces up to five years in a Thai jail after a lawyer brought a criminal defamation case against him over an investigation into fraud on a popular tourist island.
He’s no Rodrigo Duterte, but like the more outspoken Philippines president, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha now has a personal invitation to the White House from President Trump and a clear path to come in from the cold with Washington three years after seizing power in a military coup.
Three years after military leaders overthrew a democratically elected government in Thailand, the country is sputtering economically, watched closely for its crackdown on political freedom and still the site of sporadic but unnerving unrest.
The culture of fear in Thailand today has cemented the nation’s status as an ailing democracy.
Thailand has moved one step closer towards entrenched military rule in recent days, after the governing junta granted sweeping powers of arrest and detention to military personnel, drawing harsh criticism from civil society groups and the US government in the process.
A sideshow that went unnoticed during the recent United States-Asean summit in southern California was Thailand’s standing in the pecking order of leaders on both sides of the Pacific.