#Thailand

The big news coming in is about the arrest of six Pakistanis and a Nigerian by the Spanish police in Barcelona late on Tuesday. The arrested men have been accused of having links to radical Islamic cells in Pakistan. They are suspected of providing forged passports to groups linked to al-Qaeda, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in […]

New Year’s is seen as a time of renewal, but it does not always bring desired changes. This week the Thai government forced over 4,000 Hmong over the border into Laos, despite the possibility that they will be persecuted upon their return. This action runs counter to international human rights law, as some of the […]

Southeast Asia has officially joined the ranks of Europe, the Americas, and Africa in launching their own regional human rights commission.  Speculation on the proposed human rights body for The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has dominated political commentary in the region for the past year.  Yet, now that the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights […]

At the recent ASEAN Regional Forum in Thailand, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, before the the 25 nations present, officially confirmed a substantial shift in U.S. foreign policy when she stated: ‘On behalf of our country and the Obama administration, I want to send a very clear message that the United States is back, that we […]

I wrote before that – Future political integration is dependent on ASEAN resolving its many territorial disputes. There is still a high level of nationalism in the region; member-countries are suspicious of each other due to centuries of conflict, followed by colonial isolation. These disputes were recently surveyed on Capital Hill, by Richard P. Cronin, […]