By Thaweeporn Kummetha |
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<div>Two years after the abduction of the prominent, internationally acclaimed Lao development worker Sombath Somphone by Lao state agents, the Lao government has done very little to find the truth, experts say. Meanwhile, the disappearance and lack of justice has effectively created a climate of fear which has worsened the human rights situation in Laos. </div>
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<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Record on lese majeste cases since 2010 shows that the military court is likely to hold more trials in camera and sentence lese majeste convicts to more years in prison in comparison to the civilian court.</span></div>
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By Thaweeporn Kummetha and Kongpob Areerat |
<div>Prachatai looked into record of those who just campagined for the media freedom -- six months after the coup.</div>
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By Kongpob Areerat |
<div>Prayuth Chan-Ocha, the head of the junta and Prime Minister, has revealed the eleven policies of his administration, one of which is a plan to improve Thailand’s health system; however, the conservative junta might set Thailand’s health policies back by ten years.</div>
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<div>Prayuth stated that they would facilitate a health insurance system accessible to all, prioritize preventive medicine to reduce costs, and redistribute health personnel to rural areas in accordance to the fifth policy of his government.</div>
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<div>This, however, contradicted his words i
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By Kongpob Areerat |
<div>Two months after the coup d’état in May, the Thai junta vowed to reform the Thai education system, which is one of the worst in the region. But instead of paying attention to structural problems, the junta’s policy for the Ministry of Education aims to focus on indefinable ‘merit’ and more nationalistic history classes.
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<p>While Burma’s Constitution reserves 25 per cent of parliamentary seats for the military, Thailand now has 52.5% of seats in the newly appointed National Legislative Assembly (NLA) occupied by acting and retired military officers.</p>
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<div>Coup makers, since 1976 coup d’etat, have regularly cited a surge of lese majeste as a prerequisite for overthrowing an elected government. The 2006 coup, when lese majeste was cited as one of the major reasons, marked a surge of the lese majeste cases. The atrocity in April-May 2010, where almost 100 of people were killed during the military crackdown on anti-establishment red-shirt protesters, also contributed to a dramatic rise of lese majeste cases, especially the offences committed online.
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-6c340e8b-1f50-19fa-d321-e599c1a8d652"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"><img height="336px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/vSCLvEp2u44mb-ekwXtrBjHgpu9um6beD00gWSqT603bwrTggSzfeRoKgbh-bfxjABslisWteug7bGlJQyuNRSTdoi4Qp4eq4QGxmj21-wYaMt414Wz0qhhZgB0l2LMPLOhy7qXXWIw" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad); -webkit-transform: rotate</p />
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<div>Since the coup d’état on 22 May, Thais have lived with their freedoms and liberties limited. Eating sandwiches and reading George Orwell’s 1984 in public have become crimes. Imitating the Hunger Game’s three-finger salute can land you in jail for seven days. People live in fear that they may be summoned and detained in a military camp. All kinds of media are heavily monitored.
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<div>As of 19th June 2014, Human Rights Watch has <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hrw.org%2Fnews%2F2014%2F06%2F19%2Fthailand-fears-crackdown-trigger-exodus&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFXJJjbE89SQTHOwasPvlNN8Aoc4g">reported</a> several hundred thousand migrant workers from Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos fleeing Thailand. An estimated 220,000 Cambodian workers have returned to the safety of their own country in fear of the Junta’s action against illegal migrant workers.
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