Hong Kong, China — An Oxford economics professor said in a recent article that the best hope for Burma or Zimbabwe is that military officers might overthrow their dictators. Coups are often premised on the fraud that if things can’t get worse, they can only get better. The Burmese are already repeat victims of this fraud.

Hong Kong, China — Thailand’s human rights agency has been in limbo since September 2006 when the army took power for the umpteenth time. The National Human Rights Commission has not fared well since then. Its confused and contradictory response to the military takeover in some ways typified its deeper problems.

Hong Kong, China — The Asian Human Rights Commission has issued an appeal on behalf of U Ohn Than, who is imprisoned in Kanti in upper Burma. The 60-year-old protested last August against the government’s dramatic increase in fuel prices, precipitating the historic monk-led revolt in September. He is now jailed for sedition.

Hong Kong, China — Kamol, a 49-year-old delivery contractor and activist is missing since February. No government of Thailand any time soon will bring a stop to the forces that made it possible: because like torture, forced disappearance is not an ailment but a symptom and a nationwide feature of what can be labeled as orderly lawlessness.

Hong Kong, China — On the night of June 4, police officers came to a house in suburban Rangoon, searched it and took away one of the occupants. He is not a wanted robber, murderer or escapee. He is a comedian. Zarganar, famous for his antics on stage and screen, was arrested for his efforts to get relief to cyclone victims.

Hong Kong, China — Among the many responses to the unconscionable blockading of humanitarian assistance to victims of the cyclone that swept through Burma on May 10, perhaps the strangest, if not the most offensive, have been claims that journalists, diplomats and aid workers have exaggerated the death toll.

Hong Kong, China — Burma’s military government has by now dramatically compounded the death and misery brought to its country with Cyclone Nargis. Carrying on with the same sort of games it has played against the global community for years, it has caused untold needless loss of life and greatly magnified people’s suffering.

Hong Kong, China — As predicted, survivors of Cyclone Nargis, which ravaged lower Burma on May 2 and 3, are no longer surviving. People are suffering from illnesses brought on by dirty water, lack of food and exposure to the elements.

Hong Kong, China — In the days since Cyclone Nargis passed through Burma on May 2 and 3, bringing a tidal surge with it to the delta region that has literally swept away hundreds of villages, it has become painfully obvious that the country's government is completely unable to deal with what has happened.

Hong Kong, China — There are, despite the odds, human rights lawyers in Burma. In fact the efforts of some to defend a working legal culture from official vandalism and neglect surpass those of their counterparts in more open societies of Asia. These persons are acting as a kind of life-support for Burma's judicial system.

Hong Kong, China — A lot of talk in Thailand these days is about the prospects for a new "war on drugs," following on from the state-sponsored murders of people supposedly buying and selling amphetamines in 2003. Official enthusiasm for the methods of that war does not seem to have been dampened by its manifest lack of success.

Hong Kong, China — Many of Burma's democracy advocates place Thailand's army in a favorable light when compared to their own. But as their familiarity with the abuse of military power at home vastly outweighs their knowledge of that abroad, their appraisals too are imbalanced and detrimental.

Hong Kong, China — A court in Sri Lanka has given a shocking verdict in a case of police torture. Both the judgment and chain of events that led to it contain many important lessons for people in Thailand, where torture is also a routine part of criminal investigating.

Hong Kong, China — Around the suburbs of Rangoon small scraggly bushes now occupy plots of land that once were used for growing vegetables or beans. They look miserable. Unattended among weeds and debris, they show no signs of growth and bear few leaves. Some are used for hanging laundry. Others catch plastic bags in the breeze.

Hong Kong, China — According to the United Nations, the Royal Thai Police are organized criminals. The Convention against Transnational Organized Crime defines an organized crime group as at least three people acting in concert "with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences (for) a financial or other material benefit."

Hong Kong, China — The latest report of a United Nations independent expert has rightly inferred that the deepening poverty of millions is the most endemic human rights abuse in Burma today.The report notes that even government figures reveal that citizens spend around 73 percent of their disposable incomes on food alone, while international agencies estimate that one child in three aged under five is malnourished.

Hong Kong, China — In most countries teachers with talent and commitment are valued; in Burma some are jailed. U Aung Pe is one. His crime was to have taught underprivileged children without a license, which brought him three years in prison.

Hong Kong, China — It has been four years since Somchai Neelaphaijit disappeared; four long years of heartbreak for his family, four years of unanswered questions. Somchai was a lawyer who took on cases others wouldn't touch, cases that didn't earn him friends in high places. He did not disappear by accident, but by force.

Hong Kong, China — The new prime minister of Thailand has outraged many by refusing to admit that an infamous massacre ever occurred, dismissing it as "dirty history." Thailand's history is dirty not because stuff happened, but because even now nobody is able to tell the truth about what really went on, or name names.

Hong Kong, China — In recent weeks Thailand's media has attentively reported on the arrest of some paramilitary police who are alleged to have abducted and framed tens, perhaps hundreds, of people. One of these, a middle-aged woman, in January set off the alarm after she, her son and two others had been freed.

Hong Kong, China — For anyone grappling with the thorny problem of assigning a financial value to human life, help is at hand. Insurance companies of the world, rejoice: Burma's Defense Ministry has definitively established that one life is worth a bit less than six US dollars.

Hong Kong , China — An article in the Asia Times this week linked a secret U.S. facility in eastern Thailand with the torture of people in the country's south. That soldiers, paramilitaries and police in the south routinely torture their detainees is beyond doubt, but their practices long preceded the war on terror.

Hong Kong, China — Within the last decade, the cost of a bus trip across Rangoon, a cup of tea, or a bottle of peanut oil has risen tenfold. Spreading poverty has been documented, but the contrasting displays of extravagant riches by the small elite have attracted less attention abroad. In the country, they are increasingly hard to ignore.

Hong Kong, China — Officers of the Kalasin District Police Station in northeastern Thailand are alleged to have abducted and murdered dozens of people in the last few years. The actual number could exceed 100; many more bodies have been found, but were not properly examined and documented before being cremated.

Hong Kong, China — Some months ago, Le Monde reported that a man in Russia had been jailed for an "excessive sense of justice" after protesting the brutal treatment of demonstrators. A new study has hit upon this, and applied the notion of mental illness not to persons but to legal and political life in Burma.

Hong Kong, China — Hundreds of people blockaded the National Assembly in Bangkok on Dec. 12, where the unelected legislature, consisting largely of serving and former military officers and bureaucrats, was set to pass a flurry of highly regressive bills before stepping down next year.

Hong Kong, China — Tourist brochures portray Burma as a mystical land full of unseen wonders and tall tales about amazing imaginary creatures, from giant serpents to magical birds. But it was a different sort of fantasy the government spun stories about in Geneva this week: a far more modern, albeit no less implausible entity.

Hong Kong, China — A high-level committee in Thailand is gearing up to recommend that people who enabled the killing of thousands in 2004 and thereafter be held criminally liable. It has in its sights former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and other parties to his "war on

Hong Kong, China — Thailand's coup leader has uncovered a new and serious threat to national security. No, it's not imminent bloodshed of the sort that was supposedly about to tear the country asunder last year, obliging him to play the part of reluctant gentleman usurper.

Hong Kong, China — At a meeting in Singapore last week, Burma's defense minister iterated that persons taken into custody over the protests in his country of recent months had not been arrested but held "only for questioning." Perhaps because it was intended to deflect ce

Hong Kong, China — A former senator this week decried the treatment of the 2 million or so migrant workers now in Thailand, most of whom have come from Burma. In a Bangkok Post article, Jon Ungphakorn offered up some instances of abuse in factories and on fishing boats to s

Hong Kong, China — While hundreds of persons remain detained or are missing in the aftermath of the uprising that gripped Burma in September, and new sporadic protests emerge, its national newspapers have consisted of the usual phalanx of army officers forcing their largess

Hong Kong, China — When Madi Alilatay was picked up in Yala, southern Thailand on July 23 this year he was not charged with anything. He was not held under any law, for any reason, or for any purpose.

Hong Kong, China — The lead article in last Sunday's South China Morning Post breathlessly reported that some of those involved in recent protests throughout Burma had received training from the National Endowment for Democracy, a group funded by the United States governmen

Hong Kong, China — Thailand at the start of the month acceded to the U.N. Convention against Torture, after years of work by many persons, among them human rights advocates and personnel in its Justice Ministry; the latter having convinced those in other parts of government

Hong Kong, China — The Hong Kong University this week hosted a talk on recent events in Burma by its dean of social sciences, who was billed as arguing "for new forms of intervention that take policy responses beyond the bankrupt strategies of sanctions imposed by Western s

Hong Kong, China — The reports of car crashes, court cases and actresses' haircuts that normally comprise the television broadcasts on Hong Kong's aboveground trains last week gave way to the images seen all over the world of monks leading their people in prayer and protest

Hong Kong, China — Among the many inspiring photographs to come from Burma in this past week, perhaps one of the most compelling was not of rain-soaked monks wading through flooded Rangoon streets or teenagers and their grandmothers with hands locked together to form protec

Hong Kong, China — When a group of Buddhist monks in Pakkoku, upper Burma, a fortnight ago joined public protests against drastic increases in nationwide fuel prices, they were met with shocking violence. At least three suffered injuries; one is rumored to have died.

Hong Kong, China — Many people have expressed genuine concern about the expanded role of the judiciary under Thailand's new army-backed constitution, which was pushed through a referendum and passed into law this August.Three top judges are now obliged to sit on panels th

Hong Kong, China — Over two weeks of rallies against rising prices in Burma have been met with familiar violence. In the former capital, Rangoon (Yangon), government-organized gangs consisting of plainclothes officials and hired thugs have set upon protestors with increasin

Hong Kong, China — Among the contingents of soldiers manning checkpoints and keeping watch on the public throughout August, in the eve and aftermath of Thailand's military-backed constitutional referendum, at least one took its work a bit too far. The unit, on detail in L

Hong Kong, China — If you are among those fretting about the global financial slump that has taken up so much news time in recent days, spare a thought for the people in Burma. On Aug.

Hong Kong, China — In a radio interview at the end of July, the interim prime minister of Thailand criticized anti-government protestors who fought with police outside the house of a privy councilor in Bangkok, the man whom they accuse of masterminding last year's military

Hong Kong, China — Six men in Burma have been jailed on account of a duck. Anyone wanting to appreciate the real nature of human rights abuse there, and also why years of international efforts have so far failed to effect any significant change, should take interest in how

Hong Kong, China — The interim government of Thailand is about to make a spectacle of itself -- one that will make brilliantly clear its ideal future society. According to an announcement by the Public Relations Department, a Democracy Festival will usher in the Aug.

Hong Kong, China — On June 15 a man in upper Burma emerged from a crowd to smash another in the face with knuckledusters. Then he ran off and hid in the office of an organization under the patronage of the country's senior army commander.

Hong Kong, China — On July 17 the government of Thailand renewed a state of emergency over the southern border provinces for the ninth time since it was introduced two years ago. That the bloodshed in the south has only worsened in these years should not be a surprise to an

Hong Kong, China — The International Committee of the Red Cross two weeks ago issued a remarkable press release on Burma (Myanmar). Remarkable, because in contrast to the committee's usually circumspect approach in discussing problems of government in countries where it ope

Hong Kong, China — A recording has been made public that indicates the extent to which Thailand's top jurists are compromised and their conduct, censurable.An unidentified top echelon bureaucrat apparently recorded his phone conversation with the secretary of the Supreme

Hong Kong, China — Burma's military government will reopen its constitutional convention for the fifth and final time as announced last week, whereby a new charter will be finalized and go to a referendum; thereafter the country will supposedly return to some kind of civili

Hong Kong, China — Dramatic events in both Pakistan and Thailand during the past year have brought their respective judiciaries to the centre of national politics. Judges and lawyers in Pakistan have played a heroic role in challenging the authority of the army, while those

Hong Kong, China — A group of schoolchildren in Burma were recently given a lesson on the inanity of their government and its officialdom. According to a report by the Thailand-based Yoma 3 news group, representatives of the Myanmar Maternal and Child Welfare Association ca

Hong Kong, China — Beware of news editors who write about "stakeholders." The word may be popular among the staff of international development agencies, producing clouded reports about projects that they have never seen, but it is usually avoided by journalists, who are exp

Hong Kong, China — The latest one-year extension to the house arrest of Burma's democracy icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has brought with it the usual speculation about the country's future and the thinking of its military rulers. What will be their next steps?

Hong Kong, China — Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers in 1787 that where powers of government are properly separated the judiciary poses the least threat to constitutional rights. It has no physical force of its own.

Hong Kong, China — The wedding video of a Burmese general's daughter has proved a surprise hit throughout the country. Footage of Thandar Shwe's glittering marriage ceremony has since last July been watched around the country on black market CDs, and globally on You Tube an

Hong Kong, China — In April, a court hearing on the outskirts of Bangkok was held up three times while the presiding judge answered his mobile phone. The judge, who was supposed to be listening to the deposition of a forensic expert, instead talked loudly into the telephone

Hong Kong, China — Burma and North Korea together caused a flurry of excitement a few days ago when they renewed diplomatic relations after a quarter-century hiatus. Government officials, newspaper editorialists and human rights advocates around the world rushed to iterate

Hong Kong, China — Thailand's eighteenth Constitution has been drafted. By September it will go to the country's first ever referendum.

Hong Kong, China — The price of eggs is a sensitive topic in Burma. Anger at the cost of an omelette, one Rangoon resident recently discovered, can land you in jail.

Hong Kong, China — A leading international human rights group released a report on Thailand a couple of weeks ago. The report was accurate, yet it said nothing new.

Hong Kong, China — The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is having trouble finding violent crime in Burma. This is strange, given its mandate; stranger still given that police and local officials there assault and kill people with impunity, and often over the

Hong Kong, China — Over the past months the interim prime minister of Thailand has stressed his strong interest in the "rule of law." What does a prime minister installed through a military coup mean when he talks about the rule of law?

Hong Kong, China — Over the past months the interim prime minister of Thailand has stressed his strong interest in the "rule of law." What does a prime minister installed through a military coup mean when he talks about the rule of law?