Lawlessness in the Thailand-Myanmar border area, along with inconsistent immigration policy in Thailand, has led to a situation where illegal migrants who have no papers are left in limbo
The Thai military may think its May takeover has run smoothly but authoritarian dictates and an elite power monopoly will not keep the country together in the longer term.
It is only by being utopian that we'll be able to overcome the low-cost, high-volume retail business model that currently reigns supreme.
If madness is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome, the authors of Thailand’s twelfth coup since the absolute monarchy have yet to learn from Einstein’s aphorism.
If the production of refugees was an industry, Myanmar would be among the world’s market leaders. And of all its products the Rohingya would be one of the most lucrative. A niche but growing market of global proportions, the culmination of decades of tireless endeavour to hone a specialist craft.
A shift of global power to the east exposes the west's domestic as well as international weaknesses, say Ernesto Gallo & Giovanni Biava.
The Kingdom of Thailand, and the wider region in which it stands, resembles a global political laboratory. It is a 21st-century testing ground, a place where the future of democracy is being decided, slowly but surely. So watch what happens there, carefully.
Rightly or wrongly, finally the people of my generation are now all for public participation, talking about "Thailand's future," and debating the meaning of democracy. Politics has indeed become a part of our every day lives. Isn't this what democracy is meant to be like?
The key cleavage opens up between those who have benefited under this ‘almost’ democracy and those who have been failed by it. But, the dynamics of political conflict in Thailand do not fall within the same framework as other global protest mobilisations.
The contrasting treatment of those accused of verbal insults of the monarch and those responsible for violent repression casts a sorry verdict on the process of justice in Thailand, says Tyrell Haberkorn in Bangkok.
One of the criticisms made of the emerging economies is that they are using cooperation to gain markets, political influence and access to natural resources. But that is what the countries of the North are also seeking.
