Thailand

After a decade, in the 2000s, in which China aggressively pursued warmer relations with many Southeast Asian nations, using a combination of diplomacy, aid, and soft power to woo its neighbors, the past five years have seen a significant chill in China-Southeast Asia relations. First, Beijing’s more aggressive pursuit of its claims in the South China Sea led to heightened tensions between China and other claimants---most notably Vietnam and the Philippines, but also increasingly Indonesia, where the armed forces are trying to rapidly modernize Jakarta’s naval capacity in part out of fear of China’s actions in the South China Sea. However, even as China alienated countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, it had until recently maintained relatively warm relations with several of the other leading Southeast Asian states, including Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia. These countries were either not involved in the South China Sea dispute or, like Malaysia, they had less at stake in the dispute than the Philippines or Vietnam. Thailand and Malaysia also historically have maintained close links to China for decades. In Myanmar, China’s investment and aid had become so important that, even as Naypyidaw attempted to boost relations with leading democracies, Myanmar leaders rarely offered public criticism of Beijing. After the May 2014 coup, Thailand’s military leaders apparently came to see the kingdom’s relationship with Beijing as even more important than in the past. Unlike democracies that withheld aid or publicly criticized the Thai junta, Chinese officials offered rhetorical support for the junta government and continued several high-profile joint infrastructure projects. But even in these countries, leaders and officials have become more willing to openly criticize Chinese foreign policy, as shown by events in Malaysia and Myanmar over the past week. In Myanmar, where talks over a permanent peace deal between the government and numerous ethnic insurgencies only resulted in a deal involving about half the insurgent armies, government officials this week openly blamed Beijing for meddling in the peace process. According to Reuters, one of the Myanmar government’s top peace negotiators announced that Chinese officials had tried to persuade several of the most powerful insurgent armies, including the Kachin Independence Organization and United Wa State Army (UWSA), not to sign the peace deal. Why exactly Beijing would try to get the groups not to sign remains unclear, but Beijing’s relationships with the UWSA and other groups give China a degree of influence over its border region, and perhaps Chinese leaders fear that a peace deal might undermine that influence. (A permanent peace agreement might stabilize the border and reduce the possibility of refugees fleeing into China, to be sure.) Meanwhile, in Malaysia some senior government officials have lashed out at what they perceive as an inappropriate intervention into domestic politics by China’s ambassador to Kuala Lumpur. As weeks of protests and counterprotests in Kuala Lumpur have taken on a racial tinge, China’s ambassador, Huang Huiking, visited the heart of Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown and warned that China would oppose any efforts by protestors to target any racial or ethnic groups. ‘We will not sit by idly” if demonstrators target ethnic Chinese, the ambassador said in a statement.“We sincerely hope that Malaysia will maintain its social stability.” Although the ambassador’s sentiments were certainly understandable---protests at times had involved ugly anti-Chinese incidents---some nationalist Malay politicians reacted to Huang’s statement with anger. Malaysia’s deputy prime minister, a fierce nationalist, called on Huang to offer an official explanation, or apology, for his statement. The ambassador must “lay to rest claims that the Chinese envoy had intended to interfere in local affairs,” said deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. Will Chinese leaders now respond in ways that ameliorate concerns about Beijing’s forceful regional diplomacy? China can ill afford to alienate Southeast Asian nations like Malaysia, who have served as effective mediators in the past and often sided with China’s interests within ASEAN.

More than a month after the deadly bombing at central Bangkok’s Erawan shrine, the Thai authorities have made two arrests in the case, and issued at least seventeen arrest warrants overall. On Monday, the Thai police announced that one of the men in custody was the person caught on closed circuit television on the day of the bombing in August---the man who appeared to be leaving a bomb at the shrine. But some Thai commentators remain doubtful that the government has gotten closer to actually solving the case. The lack of trust that the Thai authorities have arrested the actual perpetrators stems from several factors. First, in recent years the Thai police and security forces have demonstrated a pattern of problematic investigations of major crimes, whether the 2006 New Year’s Eve bombings in Bangkok, or the 2014 Koh Tao murder case, in which two foreign tourists were killed on the resort island. In the Koh Tao case, the police initially announced that two indigent Burmese migrants, who are now on trial, confessed to the crime, but the two later recanted their confession and claimed that they only confessed after being tortured. They are now standing trial, but there are significant amounts of evidence that call their guilt into question. Most recently, Thailand’s most prominent forensics investigator announced that DNA on the Koh Tao murder weapon does not match the DNA of the accused migrants. According to Time, “The [Koh Tao] prosecution’s case rests on DNA samples found on [one tourist’s] body that investigators say match the defendants. Defense lawyers had asked for the samples to be retested but police said the evidence had been ‘used up.’” As commentator Saksith Saiyasombut notes, the Thai police also continue to use methods that seem, at the least, outdated. They continue to have people arrested for crimes appear in public to “re-enact” the alleged criminal acts. In early September, Thai police led one of the Erawan suspects, Yusufu Mierili, around central Bangkok, where he went through the steps he supposedly took on the bombing day, with reporters there to cover the re-enactment. Such re-enactments, one would think, would make it more difficult for the alleged criminals to have a fair trial, though what they say at the re-enactment is theoretically not usable in court. In addition, Saksith notes, re-enactments do not further the investigation, and at times they have led to mobs of people attacking the suspect right after the re-enactment. The Thai police also sometimes receive large, publicly announced, rewards when they apparently make breakthroughs in cases, an unusual practice in law enforcement. In the bombing case, the Thai police already have twice announced that they will be keeping two rewards. The first reward, as the Associated Press reported, was originally “offered to the public for tips leading to the arrest of suspects” but police gave it to themselves. Then, earlier this week Thailand’s police chiefs announced the police were awarding themselves a second reward, essentially for making substantial progress in the investigation. The police chiefs brandished thick stacks of cash for the media earlier this week to demonstrate how much money they were getting. Third, there have been a range of inconsistencies in the statements of the people arrested, and in the statements of Thai authorities about those arrested and about the reasons for the attack. The Thai government has at times suggested the bombers acted to avenge a crackdown on their human trafficking network, to take revenge for Thailand’s deportation of a group of Uighurs back to China in July, to strike a blow for the insurgents fighting the Thai government in the deep south, or even for reasons related to Thailand’s domestic politics. At various times in the investigation, government officials have said that one of the men in custody, Adem Karadag, was not the man who planted the bomb; now, government officials say he is. The government also has tried to implicate a range of other suspects in the bombing, mostly local opponents of the military regime. Finally, more than a year in the Thai junta’s rule, the level of popular distrust in the government generally has risen; this distrust carries over to the government’s handling of the bombing case. Opaque policymaking and crackdowns on dissent remain the norm. Earlier this month, prominent journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk, an outspoken critic of military rule, was taken to a Thai army base for an “attitude adjustment” in a tiny cell. After his stay at the army base, he quit his job at The Nation, a prominent Thai paper, apparently under pressure from some of his colleagues.

On Friday, Thailand’s central bank slashed its growth forecast for the Thai economy for 2015, to 2.7 percent. As noted in a summary of the bank’s report in The Diplomat, this was the third time this year that the Bank of Thailand (BoT) has cut its growth forecast, and the BoT’s projected growth for 2015 is about half what it had expected for the Thai economy before the year started. A growth rate of 2.7 percent for the year would almost surely make Thailand the worst performing economy for 2015 in Southeast Asia. Even neighboring Malaysia, buffeted by swirling investigations into the 1MDB state fund, rising political uncertainty, and capital flight, will almost surely grow faster than Thailand. More worrying than even the overall growth figure, Thailand’s export growth has dropped month after month, and the country’s manufacturing index has continued to plummet as well. External factors play a role, as the BoT noted. With all emerging markets, including China, weakening, many of Thailand’s most important export markets are impacted; equity investors are fleeing emerging markets, which hurts Thailand’s stock exchange too. But though all countries dependent on exports are hurt, Thailand is hurting more than many others, as years of political turmoil, uncertainty about the coup government, and a lack of investment in education have finally begun to bite. The failure to upgrade Thai educational institutions to focus on higher-value skills and reduce rote learning was highlighted by the recent release of QS World University rankings, one of the most popular university assessment sites. The top five Thai universities all fell places from their 2014 rankings or stayed in the same place as they were in 2014, while competitors in Singapore leapt up the charts. Thai media reported the rankings drop, but the story of Thailand’s top universities reflects a broader education problem. Throughout primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions, Thai schools continue to fail to produce a workforce suited for an economy that can no longer rely on labor-intensive manufacturing when other countries in the region have cheaper workforces. After more than a decade of political turmoil, Thailand’s big investors and everyday consumers also have become too scared to do much with their money. Consumer spending among lower-income Thais has stagnated, one reason why the government is aggressively pursuing economic stimulus, after previously halting government spending on agricultural subsidies and other projects that primarily help poorer Thais. The lack of a clear roadmap toward the end of junta rule, and the uncertainty over royal succession, also is deterring investment in the kingdom. The deadline for a return to civilian rule remains murky, and Prime Minister Prayuth is now the longest-serving junta leader in Thailand in decades. When Samsung Electronics announced in May that it was closing television production facilities in the kingdom, moving them mostly to Vietnam, company officials did not openly cite political uncertainty as a reason for leaving. But the combination of lower labor costs and greater stability in Vietnam must have been attractive. Prime Minister Prayuth surely recognizes that the Thai economy needs more reliable stewardship, with ministers trusted by domestic and foreign investors---he recently appointed a new economic team headed by Somkid Jatusripitak, a former Thaksin-era finance minister who has since broken with Thaksin and supported the junta. Somkid and the other new appointees have been moving quickly, meeting with major Thai and foreign investors and announcing a new $4 billion stimulus package. But without more clarity on Thailand’s political future, clarity that might unleash new investment in the kingdom, Somkid faces an enormous challenge in his new position.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Singapore’s historic elections. Singaporeans took to the polls today in the first general parliamentary election in the country’s history in which every constituency is contested. The People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled the country since it was expelled from Malaysia in 1965 and held more than 90 percent of the seats in parliament prior to the election, won a majority of seats again. However, the elections were a test for the PAP, which fared worse in the 2011 elections than it ever had before and has been criticized recently over its policies on immigration and social welfare. This was also the first election since the death of legendary PAP founder (and father of current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong) Lee Kuan Yew, who ruled Singapore as prime minister for more than forty years. 2. Thailand’s junta rejects draft constitution. Thailand’s junta-appointed reform council rejected a proposed constitution last Sunday—a constitution that had been written by its own drafting committee. As a result, Thailand’s next election will not take place until April 2017 at the earliest. The rejection of this draft will ensure that the junta stays in power at least until that time. The sticking point of this current draft was a provision that allowed for a panel of majority military members to take control of the government during “crisis” situations. If this version had passed, it would have been the twentieth constitution in eighty-three years. The military junta will now appoint another drafting body to start from scratch on yet another constitution. 3. Abe Reelected. On Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was reelected without a vote as the president of Japan’s ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Despite the attempted challenge to Abe by Seiko Noda, who has served as a minister in various cabinets and taken key leadership roles within LDP, not one individual in the party was able to garner enough support to enter the race—precisely twenty signatures from party lawmakers—while Abe received support from all seven factions of the party and four groups of members who do not belong to the factions. Reportedly, Abe himself was insistent on having no vote in this election to show party unity, and instead focused on passing controversial security bills later this month. This reelection extends his tenure as the head of LDP to the end of September 2018. He plans to reshuffle his cabinet in early October and shift focus away from security issues to emphasize economics. 4. Twelve convicted for 2006 train bombing in Mumbai. Nine years after simultaneous bombs detonated on seven commuter trains and at a train station during an evening rush hour, leaving close to two hundred dead and eight hundred injured, a Mumbai court handed guilty sentences to twelve individuals for the attack. The men involved in the blasts were members of the Student Islamic Movement of India and thought to have plotted with the help of the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to the prosecution. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that carried out other attacks in Mumbai in 2008, denies any involvement in the 2006 train blasts. Although charges against the men were filed four months after the incident, evidence was scant and police had to rely on call records to connect the conspirators. While one of the thirteen men charged was acquitted, the twelve convicted face life in prison or death. 5. Yakuza split in Japan. Yamaguchi-gumi, a prominent yakuza or Japanese organized crime syndicate, divided in early September with the establishment of a new group called Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi. The new group will include approximately three thousand members under the leadership of Kunio Inoue, who formerly directed an affiliate of Yamaguchi-gumi. The split was attributed to resentment of the current leadership and a regional power struggle between gang leaders in Kobe and Nagoya regarding the location of the group’s headquarters. News of the divide ignited fears that deadly violence could break out as occurred in the aftermath of another yakuza split in 1984. However, given the increased severity of anti-gang laws in Japan and the weakening financial positions of the yakuza, some believe the violence may be limited to just a few skirmishes. Yamaguchi-gumi is Japan’s largest yakuza and is estimated to be the world’s wealthiest organized crime group, with revenues of approximately eighty billion dollars in 2014. Bonus: Onomishi’s cat cam. In a country where it’s easy to get a feline fix on one of eleven cat islands or at a cat café, the city of Onomishi in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, has developed its own Google Street View–like map aimed at giving tourists a cat’s-eye view of its local streets. The interactive map, which was developed by Hiroshima’s tourism department using a 360-degree camera, allows users to peer through the eyes of Lala, Hiroshima’s “Manager of Backstreet Tourism,” while learning about the city’s tourist attractions, shops, and even other neighborhood cats. The effort may be part of a broader push to attract overseas visitors, who are a boon to Japan’s flagging economy. In 2014, a record 13.4 million tourists visited the country, which hopes to have twenty million visitors a year by the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Lauren Dickey, Ariella Rotenberg, and Ayumi Teraoka look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Malaysian protestors call for prime minister to step down. Tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated in Kuala Lumpur last weekend, saying that Prime Minister Najib Razak is unfit to govern following allegations that he took $700 million from a government development fund. They were joined by former prime minister and one-time Najib ally Mahathir Mohamad. The demonstrations were organized by Bersih, a coalition of NGOs that has demonstrated for years against the Najib government, calling for greater transparency and less corruption in elections. Previous Bersih rallies, which drew crowds much larger than this week’s demonstrations, have been shut down by police wielding tear gas and water cannons; this weekend’s protest, though declared illegal, was allowed to continue. 2. Millions of workers signal opposition to Modi’s labor reforms. Spurred by government proposals for labor reform, 150 million workers in India turned out for a nationwide strike. Workers from banks, mines, factories, construction, and transportation joined the cause, which led to an estimated $3.7 billion in economic losses—mostly due to stranded exports at ports. The strike was called by ten trade unions, and marks the sixteenth nationwide strike since the first round of economic liberalization measures in 1991. The labor reform proposal sought to simplify India’s labor laws while offering to raise the minimum wage to appease the unions. Although the trade unions have called the largely peaceful strike a “grand success,” government and industry constituents shrugged off the “partial” losses. 3. Japan’s darkest day. Over the past forty years, more Japanese youth have taken their own lives on September 1 than on any other day of the year. Data provided by the Cabinet Office of Japan came to light when a librarian in Kawasaki tweeted a call to use public libraries as spaces of “refuge” for those who were “thinking of choosing death over school in September.” This news illustrated how social media can be a double-edged sword—while there have been many cases in which social media was used for bullying, this case highlights social media’s ability to reach those in need of help. The large number of youth suicides has been a serious issue for Japan, which ranks fifth in the number of suicides among OECD countries and the second among Asian countries after South Korea. Last year, for the first time, the most common cause of death of those aged ten to nineteen in Japan was suicide, and the fastest growing suicide demographic was young men aged twenty-two to forty-four. 4. World War II victory parade in China. Yesterday, China held a lavish parade in Beijing to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of its victory over Japan in World War II and to display its military might. In total, forty thousand people were present in Tiananmen Square, among them twenty-three heads of state and government leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Republic of Korea President Park Geun-hye. The most noteworthy announcement of the event came from President Xi Jinping, who declared that the People’s Liberation Army would be cut by three hundred thousand personnel by 2017. The reduction allows China to redirect spending to weapons systems and focus on expanding the navy and air force, analysts said today. The parade served as a platform for China to showcase its increasingly potent ballistic missile arsenal, including one such weapon that could potentially destroy a U.S. aircraft carrier. Chinese citizens themselves had mixed reactions to the parade, although thanks to censors hard at work over social and conventional media, the public image of the day remained intact. 5. Bangkok bombing suspects arrested. Thai authorities arrested three suspects this week in connection to the bombing of Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine on August 17, which killed 20 people.  One of the suspects, Kamarudeng Saho, is a Thai Muslim, while the other two are foreigners identified as Yusufu Meerailee and Adem Karadak. Eight arrest warrants have been issued, including one for a Turkish man. One of the foreign men was arrested while trying to cross the Thai-Cambodian border and is believed to be an ethnic Uighur from China’s Xinjiang region, although his passport has not yet been authenticated. In the Bangkok apartment where the other foreign man was arrested, police found fake Turkish passports and bomb-making supplies.  Members of the Thai junta had long been adamant that the attack was not a case of international terrorism, but officials admitted for the first time this week that there may be a connection between the Bangkok bombing and the issue of Uighur migrants in Thailand. In early July, Thailand returned to China 109 Uighurs who had travelled to Thailand en route to Turkey. The Chinese government has often linked Uighur migrants to terrorism, and if a connection is found with the Bangkok attack this may strengthen their claims. Bonus: War criminal popsicles. As China celebrates the seventieth anniversary of its victory in World War II, one ice cream chain in Shanghai has taken the festivities to a new extreme by offering an ice cream popsicle shaped in the likeness of Japanese war criminal Hideki Tojo. The store, Iceason, has pushed its product on the Chinese market through a “10,000 people together eat the Japanese war criminal” advertising campaign. If the nationalist sentiment isn’t enough, the 3D-printed ice cream also comes in five flavors—vanilla, blueberry, mocha, mango, and tiramisu—for 30 yuan (around $4.70).

Over the past five days, Thai police have both made arrests in Erawan Shrine bombing case and publicly identified other suspects still at large for whom the police are hunting. Although after the bombing there were many theories about the culprits, both the two men arrested and the suspects identified could have some link to Turkey or to the Uighurs. One man arrested in a Bangkok suburb reportedly possessed hundreds of passports, including one identifying him as Turkish, though it remains unclear whether he is actually Turkish; another man arrested near Thailand’s eastern border also appears to be either Uighur or have links to the Uighurs and potentially to Turkey. Thai media have identified the man arrested in eastern Thailand as Yusufu Mieraili, 25, from Xinjiang province. One of the identified suspects at large, a woman from southern Thailand, reportedly is now living in Turkey. Thai police also reportedly are looking for other suspects of Turkish nationality. What is the connection between the suspects, Turkey, the Uighurs, and violence in Thailand? Longtime Southeast Asia security analyst Anthony Davis, who writes for the Jane’s group of publications, was probably the first to speculate, last week, that Turkish nationalists could have committed the shrine attack as retribution for Thailand’s deportation of over one hundred Uighurs to China in July; the shrine was popular with Chinese tourists. Shortly following the deportation, protestors attacked the Thai consulate in Istanbul, forcing it to close for a time. Turkey long has close cultural ties with the Uighurs, who are a Turkic people and speak a Turkic language; the cause of the Uighurs has been adopted, in the past, by some Turkish military leaders, as well as some of Turkey’s more nationalist groups. Did one of the most infamous ultra-nationalist groups, Turkey’s so-called Grey Wolves, plan the Bangkok bombing as retribution for the deportation? Did another group of Turkish nationalists plan the attack, working with Thais and/or possibly Uighurs? Have Uighur militants taken their battle globally, and should countries be prepared for Uighurs attacking Chinese citizens throughout Asia? Earlier in the investigation, Thai leaders pointedly dismissed any possibility that Uighurs or Uighur sympathizers were behind the shrine bombing, as part of an overall campaign by the ruling Thai junta to play down the international angle of the attacks and generally to reassure the public. (The junta also initially seemed to suggest that antigovernment protestors could be behind the bombing.) Thailand’s tourism industry is a critical foundation of the economy, which is probably a major reason why the junta hopes to play down any threat of international terrorism in Thailand. The junta also clearly desires to show that it is managing the hunt effectively and is capable of restoring law and order in the capital. According to the New York Times, Thai leaders have ordered government officials to officials call the attack a “disturbance,” and ordered all government agencies “to avoid using the terms terrorism or sabotage.” The Thai Interior Ministry, according to the Times, also instructed officials to avoid “mentioning any connection to Uighurs in this incident as it could create problems and have an international impact.” Many Thai leaders also continue to stress that, despite the potential links to Turkey or to the Uighurs, the bombers committed the act out of what the Thai government has called personal motives or “personal revenge” according to Thailand’s police chief, who has suggested that the bombers were attacking the target in response to a crackdown on their people-smuggling operation. However, Thai leaders have kept the wording of their statements vague enough that they might mean the bombers were personally motivated by their rage at the treatment of Uighurs, rather than that the bombers attacked because of anger against one or two other people. If the bombers attacked because they, personally, were infuriated by the treatment of Uighurs, it is hard to understand what the difference is between this kind of “personal” anger and the use of a terrorist attack to express political grievances. The list of suspects now strongly suggests some links to Turkey and to the Uighurs. At some point soon, the Thai government will have to be more forthright about the investigation, if it wants Thais, and the international community, to trust the information it does release.

A week after the bombing at central Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine that killed twenty people, wounded at least 125 more, and set off a massive manhunt for a suspect identified in CCTV video, a man who apparently left a backpack at the shrine shortly before the explosion, no one has been arrested. In fact, amidst a constant swirl of rumors about possible leads, the Thai authorities appear no closer to solving the case. No one has taken credit for the attack, and the police have neither identified the suspect definitively nor released any more information about him or any apparent accomplices. Many Thais fear that the culprits will never be found; previous, smaller bombings in Bangkok and other sites in southern Thailand often have come and gone with no arrests and muddled forensic investigations. Already, the Thai authorities have released multiple conflicting statements about the bombing, and the potential suspects. And so far, none of the major theories behind the bombing have been ruled out---that it was done by insurgents fighting for a separate homeland in the Thai deep south, that it was done by an international terrorist group, that it was committed by military splinter groups, that it was done by groups opposed to the junta’s rule, or that it was done by Uighur militants infuriated by Thailand’s repatriation of Uighurs to China. To read more about the investigation into the bombings and my analysis of how the investigation is being conducted, read my new piece for The National.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Bombing in Bangkok. On Monday evening a bomb exploded within the popular Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, killing at least twenty people and injuring over 120 more. Thai authorities are investigating a suspect identified as a foreigner, who was caught on CCTV footage leaving a large backpack near the shrine, in connection with the blast. A motive for the attack is still unclear, but Thai officials have suggested that it may have targeted foreign tourists in order to hurt the economy. Although the bombing was likely planned by a team of at least ten people, officials declared it was probably not connected to international terrorism. This week’s bombing was the worst in a number of attacks in Bangkok since the Thai military seized power in a 2014 coup. 2. Cyanide and censorship in Tianjin. Since a massive chemical explosion killed at least 114 people and damaged over 17,000 homes in Tianjin last week, environmental and political fallout has shaken the city even more. According to China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, levels of deadly sodium cyanide are hundreds of times higher than safe limits in some areas near the blast site. And although city authorities confirmed that air and water in the rest of the city are safe, thousands of dead fish washed up on a riverbank six kilometers from the explosion, and recent rainfall produced a mysterious bubbling foam throughout the city. Other reports have indicated that political misconduct and safety violations played roles in the accident—most notably that over seventy times the permitted quantity of sodium cyanide was in storage at the warehouse that exploded. Although some public criticism of the disaster has been permitted, at least one whistle-blower has been arrested for "fabricating facts and disturbing public order," over 360 social media accounts have been suspended, and online censorship has spiked since the blast. 3. The two Koreas exchange fire across the DMZ. On Thursday, North and South Korea exchanged fire across their fortified border. The North fired single aircraft guns as well as artillery shells, which fell on the southern side of the border. The South Korean military retaliated with dozens of 155-millimeter artillery rounds. Tensions continue to rise as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered front line units to enter “a wartime state,” while South Korea issued an evacuation order to some residents. The result of the scuffle remains to be seen, but some experts are reassured by the lack of response from the North after South Korea’s shelling. Issues came to the fore last Saturday, when Pyongyang demanded South Korea stop its anti-North propaganda, which Seoul restarted after it found two of its soldiers had been injured by a landmine secretly planted by the North. The United States and South Korea are currently conducting the annual military exercise "Ulchi Freedom" from August 17 to August 28, yet the direct causality, if any, between the exercise and the exchange of fire is unclear. 4. Double losses for Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka.  In high-turnout parliamentary elections, the incumbent premier Ranil Wickremesinghe emerged victorious over former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s party winning 106 out of 225 seats. Wickremesinghe was chosen to lead the opposition in parliament in January after the surprising snap presidential election in which Maithripala Sirisena defeated Rajapaksa, his former colleague. Although Wichremesinghe and Sirisena hail from rival parties, the two are committed to reforming many of the policies implemented during Rajapaksa’s tenure. The new government is also considering options to resolve ethnic tension between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority. Rajapaksa faces not only double losses this year, but also a possible investigation into corruption scandals. 5. Obama administration demands China withdraw covert operatives from United States. The U.S. government has recently warned Beijing about Chinese government agents working secretly in the United States to pressure Chinese expats to return home, as part of a government initiative known as “Operation Fox Hunt.” Many of those targeted by Chinese law enforcement are wanted in relation to China’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign; this includes both those targeted for economic corruption and what the Chinese government calls political crimes. The PRC’s state news agency called the order a “regrettable move” and claimed that the U.S. government had agreed to cooperate with the operation when Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson met with PRC Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun earlier this year, although U.S. officials dispute any such agreement was made. Because the campaign is a high priority for Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese agents in the United States are reportedly resorting to coercive measures to convince the wanted individuals to return to China, such as threatening the family members of their targets. The United States and China do not have an extradition treaty, so Chinese efforts to have fugitives repatriated through legal channels are unlikely to be successful given concerns about the lack of transparency in China’s legal system. Chinese government agents aren’t just operating in the United States to track down corruption fugitives, however; in recent years, counterintelligence officials have been catching increasing numbers of economic spies trying to steal industrial secrets—even from corn fields. Bonus: Kim Jong-un turns back time. North Korea, a nation already perceived as behind the times, literally turned back the clock on August 15. The government established a new time zone, “Pyongyang Time,” which differs by thirty minutes from that used in Japan and South Korea and returns the nation to the time zone used prior to Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910. The date of the change coincided with the seventieth anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency proclaimed that the action was necessary because “the wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time.” Given North Korea’s relative isolation the change is unlikely have major global effects, but it may cause disruptions at the Kaesong industrial plant, a joint economic project with South Korea. North Korea also operates on its own calendar, which begins in 1912, the year Kim Il-sung was born.    

News this week that Thailand’s ruling junta apparently has pushed back the date for a return to free elections should not have come as a great surprise. Since taking power in a coup in May 2014, the junta has repeatedly delayed planned elections, claiming that the country needs greater stability before a poll will be held or that the new constitution is not yet finished. After vowing elections in 2016, the deputy chairman of the junta-created legislature now reportedly has declared that elections will not be possible until 2017, since it will take so long to print the new charter and deliver written copies of it across Thailand. According to Khao Sod: “[Deputy Chairman] Peerasak Porchit told reporters in Lopburi province on 18 July that he believes the ‘road map’ promised by the ruling junta, which seized power from an elected government in May 2014, may be extended yet again in order to prepare for the referendum on the new constitution … He added, ‘I insist that this is not a time extension for the Prime Minister to stay on or perpetuate his power.’” At the same time, the government appears to be intensifying efforts to eliminate members of the Shinawatra family and their closest allies from politics forever, by pursuing criminal cases against them and pushing legislation that would ban many of the leaders of Peua Thai from politics. Given these repeated delays, some analysts such as Murray Hiebert and Ernie Bower of the Center for Strategic and International Studies have suggested the United States should consider “beginning to move some of these regional services and offices [at the embassy in Bangkok] to neighboring countries.” The regional services and offices they suggest moving would include the offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Agency for International Development, and others. Hiebert and Bower make an excellent point---the United States needs to be less dependent on an unstable Thailand. But why wait? There is no certainty that an election will be held in 2017, since Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, despite his professed weariness at leading Thailand, has settled into his role as head of government. Prayuth has kept up a whirlwind of travel that hardly suggests he dislikes the job as prime minister, and has begun the process of a Cabinet reshuffle to potentially prepare for a longer term in government. Prayuth and his allies also reportedly have packed state enterprises with their allies. Most important, Thailand’s royal succession has not yet occurred; most analysts believe that the Thai military wants to be in control of government when Thailand’s king passes away. Instead of waiting to see how long the Thai junta rules, the United States should begin the process of reducing its dependence on Bangkok now, while holding out the possibility of renewed closer relations with Thailand after elections finally occur. Beginning this process now could include making long-term plans to reduce the size of Cobra Gold exercises in Thailand---the exercises already have been downsized for the short term---or to shift much of Cobra Gold to the Philippines. It could also include making plans to increase the size of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, and other law enforcement offices in Myanmar, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines to compensate for reducing these offices’ presence in Bangkok. Finally, reducing dependence on Bangkok could include launching plans to gradually move portions of the regional International Law Enforcement Academy from Bangkok to other parts of Southeast Asia.

This past week marks one year since Thailand’s most recent military coup, either the 19th or the 18th in the kingdom’s modern history, depending on how one counts putsch attempts. The year since the coup has revealed a range of lessons, most of which bode poorly for Thailand’s future. The Coup Was Not Good for Any Politicians Although the coup was preceded by months of street protests in Bangkok led by former Democrat Party politicians, and attended primarily by Democrat Party supporters, the leaders of the Democrat Party have been surprised to find that the junta wants to reduce the role of all elected politicians in Thailand, even if the military has focused its energies on eliminating the power of the Shinawatra family. True, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra remains in exile, hundreds of former Peua Thai politicians may be banned from politics for life, and former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra now faces trial on charges of negligence related to her government’s ill-fated plan to pay Thai farmers for their rice crops. But though the junta has not prosecuted Democrat Party politicians aggressively, Democrat leaders who presumed that the junta would quickly hand power to a civilian, pro-Democrat government, and publicly embrace Democrat leaders, have been disappointed. Prayuth and other army leaders have displayed disdain for the entire spectrum of Thai politicians, which is why Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, who in the months after the coup expressed hope that the intervention would produce positive change, now is telling Thai reporters that the charter drafted under the coup is undemocratic and should be amended, and that the junta leaders must “open a forum and open their minds.” The Story Behind the Coup Remains Murky According to the Thai military’s telling of the May 2014 coup, army intervention was necessitated by the constant squabbling of elected politicians, the venality of the Peua Thai government, and the gridlock created by the long-running standoff between Peua Thai leaders and the anti-Shinawatra protestors who had paralyzed Bangkok for months. A year later, some evidence suggests that, contrary to the army’s story that it only considered intervention at the last moments in May, the generals had planned a coup for many months. Thaksin, who was quiet for months, now contends that senior advisors to the palace helped foment the street protests and then mastermind the coup, although this story seems difficult to believe, given the well-known tension between senior palace advisor Prem Tinsulanonda and junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha. Thailand’s Major Problems Remain the Same Regardless of the genesis of the coup, a year later few of the challenges cited by the coup-makers as reasons for their intervention have been addressed. Although the military is assiduously trying to remove the Shinawatras and their allies from politics forever, there is no evidence that the unelected government has made inroads against graft. The first six months after the coup, during which the junta faced numerous scandals over alleged graft in government purchases, deflated any hopes that the army was going to seriously fight corruption. More important, Thailand’s politics remain as paralyzed as ever. Although Prayuth appears to be hanging onto power, delaying elections repeatedly, eventually---probably in late 2016---he will hand back power to an elected government. The new constitution, if it is approved in a referendum, will make that elected government weaker than its predecessors in the 2000s and 2010s, strengthening the power of unelected parts of the bureaucracy. Still, the pool of elected MPs will still almost surely be dominated by Peua Thai supporters, even under the constitution’s system of proportional representation. This elected government will probably clash with the elite-dominated unelected bodies set up by the new constitution, and possibly with the military and the palace as well. Meanwhile, no institutions have been created to mediate political conflicts---only ones to investigate and possibly punish elected leaders. There’s nothing wrong with investigation and punishment, but Thailand also needs mediators, conflict resolvers, and compromisers outside of the military and the palace, the institutions that have been charged with resolving conflicts for all of Thailand’s modern history. The coup has not brought the country closer to compromise or created alternatives to solving any future political gridlock other than another coup.

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Plight of migrants in Andaman Sea continues. As many as three thousand refugees, mostly Rohingya minority Muslims fleeing state-sanctioned persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshi economic migrants, remain stranded in the waters in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Myanmar and Thailand. An estimated seven thousand refugees were abandoned by human traffickers during the past week without food or water in overcrowded boats; as many as fifty thousand attempt the trip each year. A Thai crackdown on smuggling routes led to the disruption. Southeast Asian countries have been hesitant to offer refuge to the “boat people,” but international pressure has forced several countries to accept migrants at least on a temporary basis. Indonesia, Malaysia, Gambia, and the Philippines have stepped forward, and the U.S. State Department has said the United States is willing to lead a multinational effort to rescue stranded refugees. 2. The United States charges six Chinese citizens for theft of trade secrets; one arrested. Six Chinese citizens were indicted for economic espionage after U.S. authorities claimed that the group infiltrated U.S. universities and tech firms with the intent to deliver trade secrets to the Chinese government and Tianjin University. One man was arrested upon arriving in Los Angeles to speak at a conference. The ordeal underscores growing concerns in the United States over espionage threats from embedded insiders with access to confidential information, as well as the ongoing conflict between the United States and China over innovation and intellectual property rights. In China, the indictments are considered evidence of “Washington’s growing paranoia,” and Tianjin University officials denied the charges. 3. Japan takes South Korea to the World Trade Organization. Japan brought a complaint against South Korea to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over Fukushima-related food import restrictions. The trade complaint challenges Seoul’s import bans and additional testing requirements for Japanese food after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japan says existing measures violate the WTO’s sanitary foods agreement, and that South Korea has failed to justify its trade restrictions. Under WTO rules, South Korea has sixty days to deal with Japan’s concerns before the WTO adjudicates the matter. The trade dispute is the latest source of tension in the already fraught relationship between the two countries. 4. Former Thai prime minister declares her innocence; current military-led government delays democratic elections. Yingluck Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand, declared her innocence as her trial began on Tuesday that could result in a ten-year prison sentence. Yingluck is accused of negligence for her role in a multibillion dollar rice subsidy that authorities allege was plagued with corruption. The court agreed to grant her bail on the condition that she remain in the country. On the same day that Yingluck’s trial began, the Thai cabinet agreed that a referendum should be held on a new constitution—a move seen by many as a mechanism to delay the return to democracy from the current military junta that overthrew Yingluck’s government nearly a year ago. Current Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha remarked that if such a referendum is held, it would inevitably push back elections until next calendar year. 5. North Korea claims it has technology to miniaturize nuclear weapons. On Wednesday, the North Korean military announced it has developed the ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons, reports DPRK state media. This would be the first step needed to demonstrate North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is a credible threat; also necessary are long-range missiles capable of delivering a payload to enemy targets. North Korea claims it has long-range missile technology, but has yet to demonstrate its viability via tests. (North Korea has tested mid-range missiles capable of hitting Japan.) While acknowledging the DPRK has advanced its nuclear technology and the likelihood that Pyongyang possesses up to twenty nuclear weapons, U.S. officials remain skeptical of Pyongyang’s claim. National Security Council Spokesperson Patrick Ventrell said the Obama administration emphasizes the need to return to Six-Party Talks for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Chief nuclear envoys from the United States, South Korea, and Japan are set to meet next week in Seoul to discuss these and other concerns related to North Korea’s growing nuclear capability. Bonus: Raining spiders in Australia. Arachnophobes, beware. Millions of tiny spiders fell from the sky in the Southern Tablelands region of Australia this week, a phenomenon known as “spider rain” or “angel hair.” The small town of Goulburn was shrouded in silken webs as the spiders used their webs as parachutes to move in large colonies through the sky, covering both buildings and people.

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today.1. Mass graves of human trafficking camp unearthed in Thailand. Police exhumed twenty-six bodies at a mass grave located in the jungles of Songkhla province this week. Most of the migrants once held at the now abandoned site were Rohingya Muslim refugees from western Myanmar and Bangladesh. According to reports, this camp was made up of “bamboo cages, watchtowers and what Thai police described as a torture room.” Even as the grave was discovered, more than fifty Thai police officers were punished over suspected links to human trafficking networks. The mass grave was hardly the first indicator that Thailand has a booming human trafficking business and it remains to be seen if the Thai government can successfully undertake steps necessary to combat human trafficking.2. China gets serious about environmental protection. China’s cabinet released a thirty-five clause guideline document on Tuesday vowing to achieve “major progress” in improving its environment by 2020. The document defined a “red line” stating that there was to be no further deterioration of air quality, soil quality, or water quality. The document stated that by 2020 China would aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 45 percent from the 2005 level, and increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15 percent. China has promised to impose stricter consequences on officials whose decisions are found to cause serious environmental damage. The State Council announced that those officials found guilty, would be held accountable for their lifetime. Officials who fail to improve water, air, and soil pollution levels will no longer be eligible for promotion. This adds an important dimension to evaluating the performance of cadres who were previously only graded on their ability to stimulate economic growth.3. Thirteen years later, Bollywood superstar faces consequences for his reckless actions. In 2002, Bollywood actor Salman Khan drunkenly drove his car over five sleeping homeless people, killing one man. Khan fled the scene, and has escaped charges for thirteen years due to the bottle-necked court system in India. He was sentenced to five years in prison this week; however Mumbai’s high court suspended the sentence—a rare move—pending his appeal. The Bollywood community and loyal fans were quick to defend the famed actor who has starred in more than eighty films. Police complaints were filed after a Bollywood singer and jewelry designer made remarks on Twitter that placed the blame on the homeless people for sleeping in the roads in the first place.4. Joint Philippine-Japanese anti-piracy drill shakes up Asian waters and draws China’s criticism. Philippine and Japanese coast guard teams staged an anti-piracy drill on Wednesday in the Manila Bay. The exercise, which featured the storming of a cargo vessel after a mock hijacking, showed growing cooperation between these two nations as tensions rise in Asian seas. The two countries share a joint concern for increasing Chinese assertiveness in the East and South China Seas due to its continued dispatch of coast guard and fishing vessels into disputed waters. Witnessed by the heads of seventeen Asian coast guards, including China, this is the first time that Japan and the Philippines have conducted a joint exercise since signing a 2012 agreement to strengthen bilateral ties. In response, China called for peace and stability in the region.5. Noise from North Korea on its capabilities and intentions. After claiming that the South Korean Navy entered North Korean waters in the Yellow Sea, Pyongyang warned that it will “strike without any prior warning at any warship of the South Korean Navy intruding” into its waters.  A South Korean official called the warning “insane,” asserting that its naval ships did not cross the maritime line of demarcation. Also this week, in a rare interview with CNN, a senior North Korean official spoke about its nuclear capabilities and Pyongyang’s intention to use them if the United States “forced their hand,” as well as human rights allegations in North Korea. Separately, a New York University student currently in North Korean custody spoke to CNN saying that he wanted to be arrested in order to bring peace between North and South Korea.Bonus: Jackie Chan named Singapore’s first celebrity anti-drug ambassador. Months after his son finished serving a short prison stint for drug offenses in China, Jackie Chan has been named Singapore’s first celebrity anti-drug ambassador. Jackie told journalists that drugs hurt young people and offenders should be punished with the death penalty.

On a hot spring afternoon in 1999 at the investigative reporting section of the Bangkok Post, one of Thailand’s two English-language dailies, the section’s editor marked off a long list of stories on a white board. The section had plenty of targets in its sights---police corruption, Thailand’s drug trade and many other subjects. The Post’s lively reporting was but one sign of Thailand’s freedom at the time. The country held regular free elections, and had just passed a reformist constitution. The charter guaranteed many new rights and freedoms. And Thailand was not alone; overall, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Southeast Asia was considered one of the most promising areas of the world for democracy. By the middle of the 2000s, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, authoritarian states during the Cold War, all were ranked as “free” or “partly free” by the US-based, independent monitoring organization Freedom House. Today, Southeast Asia---and Thailand particularly---looks far different. Overall, only Indonesia and the Philippines are still ranked as “partly free” by Freedom House, in its latest annual analysis of freedom in the world. Thailand has regressed into a decade of political turmoil that has resulted in elected governments abusing their power and two military coups, the latest in May 2014. A year on from that coup, Thailand’s regression---and dismal hope for the future---exemplifies many of the challenges that democracy faces throughout the world. To read more about why Thai democracy is failing and what this failure means for other developing nations, go to my new article in The National.

Last Friday, Thai police discovered a mass grave near the country’s southern border with Malaysia. Twenty-six bodies have been exhumed from the grave thus far. According to a report in the New York Times, the mass grave was located in an abandoned detention camp that was likely used by human smugglers. These camps, primarily for Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, are common in southern Thailand. This one, the Times reported, was “made up of bamboo cages, watchtowers and what the Thai police described as a ‘torture room,’ without giving more details.” Both Thai officials and many Thai media outlets said that the discovery of the mass grave would mark a dramatic shift in how Thailand addresses trafficking. The Bangkok Post wrote that the mass grave would mark a “turning point” and that the Thai government now must investigate and arrest those responsible for the camp and mass grave. General Udomdej Sitabutr, Thailand’s army chief, told Thai reporters that the grave showed that “it’s time to fix it”---rampant human trafficking networks in the kingdom. Thai media on Monday reported that the police had transferred thirteen police officers who are supposedly going to be investigated for being involved in human trafficking. But the mass grave was hardly the first indicator that Thailand has a booming human trafficking business, or that some Thai policemen, soldiers, and local officials might be involved in the human trade, which includes the trade in Rohingya refugees. Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for its extraordinary coverage of how the Rohingya, fleeing persecution in western Myanmar, are trafficked through Thailand, with the cooperation of Thai immigration authorities, Thai police, and other Thai authorities. As the news agency reported in its 2013 article on Rohingya trafficking: Reuters has uncovered a clandestine policy [by Thai immigration authorities and police] to remove Rohingya refugees from Thailand’s immigration detention centers and deliver them to human traffickers waiting at sea. The Rohingya are then transported across southern Thailand and held hostage in a series of camps hidden near the border with Malaysia until relatives pay thousands of dollars to release them. Reporters located three such camps---two based on the testimony of Rohingya held there, and a third by trekking to the site, heavily guarded, near a village called Baan Klong Tor. Thousands of Rohingya have passed through this tropical gulag. An untold number have died there. Some have been murdered by camp guards or have perished from dehydration or disease, survivors said in interviews. Reuters’ stories were buttressed by many other credible reports of Thai officials’ involvement in human trafficking, and of generally weak efforts by the national government in Bangkok to address trafficking. The BBC’s Jonathan Head noted, “The Thai authorities have known about these camps for years. Local communities are paid off to keep quiet … Police and other officials get their cut of a business where traffickers pay $20,000 or more for a boatload of migrants, then try to recoup the cost by demanding big ransoms from their families.” The accumulation of evidence led to Thailand being dropped, in 2014, to the lowest ranking in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons global report. Five years before the Reuters investigation, the acclaimed Thailand blog Bangkok Pundit had commented on reports of trafficking of Rohingya and other types of mistreatment of Rohingya refugees in Thailand. It noted: Some of the Rohingya boat people who had been towed out to sea by Thai military survived and made it to Indonesia and India after drifting for a number of days without food and water. The number who died we will never know---the internal Thai investigation unsurprisingly found nothing---but from statements given to the Indonesian and Indian governments and to the media by survivors, it appears to be in the hundreds. Thailand’s version of the FBI responded to Reuters’ reports by saying, “We have heard about these camps in southern Thailand but we are not investigating this issue." When two journalists from Phuket Wan, a blog based on the resort island of Phuket, wrote a story that contained some excerpts from the Reuters report on trafficking, the Thai navy, which was mentioned in the story, responded by filing defamation charges against the Phuket Wan reporters. However, since the May 2014 coup, the junta-run government has attempted to burnish its image on trafficking. These efforts appear to have been mostly cosmetic. Will the mass grave really prove a turning point? More Rohingya are taking to the sea every day, as the security environment for them in Myanmar has not improved; the Arakan Project, a human rights group focusing on the Rohingya, says that nearly 60,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar by sea just since October 2014. Out on the water in makeshift boats, the Rohingya are easy prey; in the run-up to Myanmar’s autumn 2015 national elections, the country may become even more unstable, with various political parties competing for the Burman nationalist vote. And Thailand has a long history of announcing investigations into alleged crimes by army officers and police, only to drag the investigation on endlessly, or to transfer suspect officers to what the Thai army and police call “inactive posts” without taking any further action against them.

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Xi Jinping visits Indonesia and Pakistan. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan and Indonesia this week. In Pakistan, he signed agreements worth more than $28 billion as part of the new “Silk Road,” an ambitious land and maritime economic corridor connecting China to Europe and the Middle East. Pakistan will invest part of the money in infrastructure proejcts, including a deepwater port at Gwadar and railroads from Baluchistan into western China. In Indonesia, Xi attended the Asian-African Conference. Xi Jinping and  Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo held bilateral talks on the sidelines of the conference to discuss investments in Indonesian development. This pledge came on the heels of Jokowi’s announcement that Indonesia plans to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Bank. At the conference, Xi spoke about the importance of developed countries investing in the developing world “with no political strings attached,” while Jokowi, in his keynote address, called for a new world order not dominated by Western-controlled financial institutions. Xi also met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, despite a speech by Abe in which he warned against powerful nations imposing on the weak. 2. Farmer suicide sparks debate and tension in India. During a rally organized by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi to protest a proposed land acquisition bill, farmer Gajendra Singh Rajput hanged himself in plain sight sending shockwaves throughout the capital. The farmer spent his final days unsuccessfully trying to convine government officials to compensate him for his crop losses due to erratic weather. The incident is not an anomaly though; in Gajendra’s home state of Rajasthan, forty-one farmer suicides occurred in the past two months alone. Accusations have been levied at the government for not doing enough to help struggling farmers, the police for not intervening, and at AAP for continuing the rally and allegedly supporting the suicide. Farmers face the whims of the weather, but also harassment, corruption, and crippling debt. The Modi government is keen to pass a bill to make it easier for the government and business to acquire land, but farmers claim that it comes at the expense of their livelihoods. 3. South Korean prime minister offers to resign amid political scandals. On Monday, Prime Minister Lee Wan-koo offered to resign, adding fuel to the domestic political scandal in South Korea. Lee was named, along with seven other politicians, by South Korean tycoon Sung Won-jong (who committed suicide after the scandal broke) as one recipient of bribes. Lee denies accepting bribes, but the veneer of political scandal has stained his legitimacy for the largely symbolic position of prime minister. The resignation is not final until accepted by the President Park Geun-hye, who is expected to return from her state trip to Latin America on April 29. Last year, amid the Sewol ferry incident, then Prime Minister Chung Hong-won resigned; two nominated replacements successively resigned due to allegations of corruption, and Lee finally took the post earlier this year. 4. Hong Kong presents plans for new election law. Hong Kong has entered the latest stage of determining its political future in releasing proposed changes to the electoral system this week. As expected, the draft election law follows closely an outline drawn up in Beijing last summer. The law allows for over five million eligible voters to cast a ballot for the chief executive of Hong Kong in 2017, a measure the pro-Beijing government in Hong Kong argues offers universal suffrage. However, all potential political contenders must first receive approval from a 1,200-member panel closely tied to Beijing. Minor adjustments raised in this week’s law–such as candidates receiving approval from at least 120 members of the panel–are seen as “totally useless” by leaders from last year’s Occupy Central demonstrations. The proposal must receive two-thirds support from Hong Kong’s seventy legislators, a chamber currently occupied by more than one-third pro-democracy legislators. 5. EU threatens Thailand with possible trade ban over illegal fishing. Thailand, the world’s third-largest seafood exporter, will have to implement “a corrective tailor-made action plan” in six months; otherwise the European Union will block seafood imports. About 15 percent of Thailand’s seafood exports end up in the EU, a total worth nearly $700 million. Karmenu Vella, the EU environment and fisheries commissioner, stated that in Thailand, “there are no controls whatsoever and no efforts being made whatsoever and illegal fishing is almost totally allowed.” In response, the Thai agriculture minister asserted that “we are confident that we will be able to implement the various policies of the ministry and can create understanding with our fisheries brothers and sisters.” The EU has levied such sanctions on Belize (which has since been removed from the blacklist), Guinea, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka; the Philippines and South Korea have been issued ‘yellow card’ warnings from the EU, but those were lifted this past week. Bonus: Chinese construction workers unearth dinosaur eggs. Construction workers in Heyuan city in the southern province of Guangdong unearthed forty-three fossilized dinosaur eggs during road repair work. The city, which calls itself the “home of dinosaurs,” won a Guinness world record for the world’s largest collection of dinosaur eggs in 2004. Road repairs have stopped until all the eggs are safely extracted.