A Constitutional Court in Thailand banned the Thai Rak Thai political party and barred over one hundred of its leaders from politics for five years.

Founded by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the Thai Rak Thai is the country’s most popular political party. The party aggressively courted poor rural voters and won mandated elections in 2001 and 2005.

According to the New York Times, the court found the party guilty of election fraud, paying small parties to run against it in the April 2006 election to satisfy a requirement for minimum participation. The Court acquitted the Thai Rak Thai’s rival, the Democrat Party, which ruled the kingdom before the Thai Rak Thai’s election in 2001. The Democrat Party faced similar charges of election fraud.

The rulings have been described as one of three major hurdles for the government in its attempt to steer the country back to democracy. Thai Rak Thai supporters, however, may pose strong opposition to these rulings and make these hurdles difficult to overcome. Analysts say this dissolution of Thailand’s most popular party would undermine the military’s claim to restore democracy.

Demonstrators have called for an end to the current military leadership that came to power after a coup that ousted the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, prior to an election that his Thai Rak Thai party was expected to win. Demonstrators criticize the Court as a military appointed tribunal. Shinawatra is now living in self-imposed exile.

For more information, please see:

BBC News – Thaksin Supporters Rally Over Ban – 31 May 2007
Channel News Asia – Thai Security Clampdown Indefinite: Coup Leader – 31 May 2007
FT – Thaksin’s ban from politics raises doubts on democracy – 31 May 2007
Channel News Asia – Thaksin Ban Reshapes Thailand Politics – 31 May 2007
BBC News – Thai ex-PM’s Party Ban ‘Unfair’ – 31 May 2007
The New York Times – Thai Court Disbands Former Prime Minister’s Political Party – 31 May 2007

Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, will spend another year under house arrest in her Myanmar home, according to the Associated Press. After spending 11 of the past 17 years in confinement, the Myanmar government was due to release her this week.

The government has held Suu Kyi because they claim that she threatens public order. As head of the Myanmar’s National League for Democracy party, her party won the general election in a landslide in 1990. After the victory, the military government refused to hand over power.

Although the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union have strongly condemned her continued sentenced, the Myanmar’s military junta continues to hold her and approximately 1,200 other political prisoners.

This week, National League for Democracy party supporters held a 300 to 500-person rally for her release. In response, the military government stepped up security around Suu Kyi’s home.

For more information, please see:

Myanmar military rounds up Suu Kyi supporters

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/276485/1/.html

Myanmar extends Suu Kyi’s house arrest

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070525/ap_on_re_as/myanmar_suu_kyi_5

China launched its one-child per couple policy in 1980 to try to maintain swift economic growth and feed and control the country’s growing population of 1.3 billion people. Recently, however, the central government in Beijing announced it was time to strictly enforce the one-child policy. In Bobai County of the Guangxi Province, primarily a rural, farming village, family planning officials threatened families who failed to pay fines for having more than one child. Some officials have even been accused of forcing women to submit to abortions or sterilizations. In response, however, thousands of peasants and townspeople gathered at government and birth control centers, clashing with police. Twenty-eight people have been arrested for instigating riots against China’s one-child policy.

Locals in Buffalo Village, however, have managed to beat China’s system. The records at the county maternity hospital are filled with lists of multiple pregnancies.  Mothers have used fertility drugs to get around the one-child policy by having twins, triplets, quadruplets, and even quintuplets. China does not impose fines on a mother who has multiple children at a time.

For more information please see:

Washington Post – Birth Control Crackdown Sparks Riots In Rural China – 23 May 2007

BBC News – Chinese Challenge One-Child Policy – 25 May 2007

Channel News Asia – China arrests 28 in family planning riots – 23 May 2007

Looking for gold, destitute peasants of Sre Leav, Cambodia have dug up about two hundred graves of victims of the Khmer Rouge from the 1970s.  The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, and is blamed for the death of 1.7 million people through starvation, illness, overwork, torture, and execution.  The killing fields, which are scattered throughout Cambodia, are mass graves where the Khmer Rouge unloaded victims. 

Of the thousands of killing fields researchers have documented, this is the first reported looting and raid.  Even as Cambodia prepares a trial of Khmer Rouge leaders, some experts find the pillaging to be an indication that past traumas are beginning to fade.  Digging has stopped, however, as villagers pray for forgiveness, fearing  ghosts of the victims will take revenge.

For more information, please see:

Time Magazine – Looting Cambodia’s ‘Killing Fields

The New York Times – Ghosts Wail as Cambodians Plunder Killing Field Graves – 20 May 2007

IHT – Villagers find and loot Cambodian killing field – 15 May 2007

International donors have suspended aid due to Sri Lanka due to the government’s recent offensive against the Tamil Tiger separatists. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany suspended new aid because of the increased numbers of killings. 

Amnesty International has alleged that both the military and the rebels have been killing civilians in indiscriminate artillery raids.

Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission has recorded more than 100 abductions and disappearances so far in 2007. Last year, 1,000 people were reported missing. More than 4,800 people have been killed since December 2005. More than 69,000 people have been killed since the war began in 1983.

The Tiger rebel group wants a separate state with full control over its law enforcement and government entities.  But a large majority of the island’s Tamil minority want a system based on federalism and a decentralization of power.

 

For more information, please see:

Aid weapon used against Sri Lanka http://www.ft.com/cms/s/54315d20-087b-11dc-b11e-000b5df10621,_i_email=y.html

600 killed in Sri Lanka battles http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070520/ap_on_re_as/sri_lanka

Sri Lanka: Tamil Tigers abducted us, say Indian fishermen http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070520/wl_sthasia_afp/indiasrilankaunrestkidnap

Moves by Sri Lanka Military Worry Human Rights Group http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051702386.html?referrer=emailarticle

20 Tamil rebels killed in fresh fighting: Sri Lanka http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070517/wl_asia_afp/srilankaunrest

8 reported killed in Sri Lanka fighting http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070514/ap_on_re_as/sri_lanka

Foreign aid cut fear as Sri Lanka fails on human rights http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/275876/1/.html