Thailand still grapples with a strict law against criticizing the monarchy

BANGKOK — The day Chonthicha Jangrew got up to give a public speech in 2021 about Thailand’s politically powerful monarchy, she was prepared to go to prison. “It’s something I already knew would happen,” the 31-year-old elected parliamentarian said in an interview with NPR in May. It was days after she was sentenced to two years in prison for violating Thailand’s draconian lèse-majesté law, which criminalizes criticism of the royal institution.

The mystery man behind the Shwe Kokko project

Although 1,000 kilometres apart, two massive development projects – one in Myanmar’s Kayin State, the other in Cambodia – bear striking similarities. They both cover thousands of hectares and include plans to build airports, hotels and casinos. Both are located in neglected, undeveloped corners of their respective countries. Both have been accused of having links to online gambling and other illegal activities, and both have been mistaken for state-owned enterprises.

Will the last of the Khmer Rouge ever face justice in Cambodian mass killings?

He looks out from the picture, a slight man in a loose shirt, a pen in his pocket, the jungle stretching behind him. The photograph was taken after murders he was accused of committing when the Khmer Rouge swept through this nation decades ago in a reign of fevered killing and mass graves. No one knows whether the man, Ao An, a former Buddhist monk now in his 80s, will ever face a reckoning on charges that he oversaw the genocide of the Cham ethnic minority during the 1970s.