Thailand’s largely decentralized protest movement and evolving internet landscape will make it tough for the country’s conservative government to mute mounting calls to rein in the country’s powerful monarchy, observers say.Human rights lawyer Anon Nampa broke a decades-long taboo by challenging the king’s powers in public at a pro-democracy protest in the capital, Bangkok, on August 3. At another protest a week later, activists unveiled a bold 10-point plan to reform the monarchy that would, among other things, bar the royal palace from expressing political opinions and repeal a defamation law that can land any critic of the king in jail for up to 15 years.Their demands have ricocheted around the country at student-led protests calling for a new constitution and an end to the government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, who led a successful military coup in 2014 and prevailed in an election last year widely seen as rigged. His government has staked much of its reputation on a promise to protect and preserve the monarchy, which many Thais still revere as semi-divine.Young and restlessYounger Thais are less enamored. They make up the bulk of the pro-democracy protesters and see a royal palace playing politics well beyond its constitutional constraints to maintain the status quo.Prayut had warned the protesters to steer clear of criticizing the monarchy back in June and said they “really went too far” after the August 10 rally where activists read out their 10-point reform plan.Since then authorities have arrested more than a dozen activists and charged them with a spate of offenses from sedition to incitement. Anon, the human rights lawyer, was among them.Anon Nampa, left, and Panupong Jadnok, right, two of the leaders of recent anti-government protests, are seen after being granted a bail outside the criminal court in Bangkok, Thailand, Aug. 8, 2020.But David Streckfuss, an independent scholar and author on Thai history and politics, said the arrests are unlikely to stop a movement that seems to lack a clear central leadership.”These people are representatives of a movement, not so much leaders where you can take out the top tier and everything goes quiet,” he told VOA.Now that “the genie is out of the bottle,” Streckfuss added, the government will have to decide whether to try and manage a public debate on the monarchy that has been brewing below the surface for years or to crush it.”I would say that it would require a great deal of suppression at this point to quiet what’s been on a lot of people’s mind for … more than a decade,” he said.The dilemmaThe military has tried to smother dissent before. In the wake of the 2014 coup, Prime Minister Prayut’s junta rounded up hundreds of activists, academics and journalists it saw as threats, with some success.The junta then spent the next five years preparing for the 2019 election to make Thailand at least look something like a democracy again. Streckfuss said Prayut’s rebranded regime may be reluctant to throw all that work away with more mass arrests and will at least think twice before it does. There was also the risk, he added, that a much heavier hand from authorities will backfire by drawing even more people to the protesters’ cause.If the calls for royal reform do continue to grow and spread, they could also spark violence, warned Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an associate professor at Japan’s Kyoto University who studies Thai politics.”I think the government will continue to rely on legal instruments for now. But should the students intensify their protests then there is a possibility of the use of force,” he said. “The students [will] not back down on their demand. So it is a great test of the government’s patience.”Titipol Phakdeewanich, head of the political science faculty at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University, said the arrests won’t stop the reform calls at the protests but may still slow them down. He said security forces recently threatened to sue one of his own students over a Facebook post about the monarchy.Others have already been sued or arrested for posting critical comments or merely sharing news about the king, Maha Vajiralongkorn.”This actually makes students quite scared of the consequence,” Titipol said.A member of Thai right-wing group “Thai Pakdee” (Loyal Thai) holds a picture of King Maha Vajiralongkorn with Queen Suthida attend a rally in support of the government and the monarchy, in Bangkok, Thailand, Aug. 30, 2020. Compared with taking to the streets, though, he still sees the internet as a relative “safe zone” where talk of reforming the monarchy has mushroomed and will prove even tougher to quell.A digital revolutionOn August 24 Facebook acceded to government demands to block access in Thailand to the “Royal Marketplace,” a Facebook account critical of the monarchy with more than one million members set up by Pavin, or face legal action under the country’s Computer Crimes Act. By the end of the month, a new account under a similar name had attracted nearly all the old members back — with access in Thailand.Over the past several months, tens of thousands of Thai have also switched from Twitter to an alternative social media platform, Minds, over reports that Twitter users posting comments criticizing the king were getting visits from police. Twitter’s new privacy policy had as well raised fears that it would be more prone to sharing data with the government.”The government cannot entirely stop this generation to think or to look for alternative sources of information,” Titipol said. “It is not that easy in the 21st century with all kinds of technologies and different platforms of social media.”The spread of encrypted messaging also makes it harder for authorities to track and block accounts selectively, “so the landscape [has] changed,” said Arthit Suriyawongkul, co-founder of the Thai Netizen Network, a digital rights advocacy group.A government could in theory block access to entire platforms, as in China, or the way Thailand itself did with Facebook for a few days after the 2014 coup. But Arthit said the social media giants have become so vital to Thai businesses, and to the government’s own propaganda, that the authorities will hesitate to pull that trigger.Blunt force, he said, “no longer works in the new setting of the internet.” 
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Campaigners are urging Australia to restart a refugee program that has left thousands of people stranded overseas.  Australia closed its international borders in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.    The Refugee Council of Australia has estimated that about 4,000 refugees with humanitarian visas allowing entry into Australia are currently stranded overseas.  They are unable to travel because Australia’s international border was closed to foreign nationals in March to curb the spread of COVID-19.       David Odeesh is an Iraqi refugee in Australia.  His sister and her family were granted humanitarian visas in January and had planned to reunite with him in March.     The family had escaped the Islamic State terror group in their home city of Mosul in northern Iraq and fled to Lebanon, where they remain.     Odeesh says his sister is struggling to survive in a small apartment in Beirut and he is pleading with the authorities in Canberra to let the family come.     “They have all the documents ready, all the approval, and, unfortunately, what happened this pandemic — COVID-19 — everything stops, the border closed.  I hope [the] Australian government hear our voice and change this decision,”  he said.   The family has said it has applied twice for special permission from the government in Canberra to fly to Australia. The requests have been denied.  Australia’s international borders are expected to stay closed until 2021.     Campaigners believe refugees should, like citizens and permanent residents, be allowed into the country.     The Department for Home Affairs has appeared unmoved.  It has said the border restrictions “have been successful in slowing the spread of coronavirus in Australia”.
12,700 refugees were resettled in Australia in 2018.  The majority were from Iraq, with others escaping Myanmar, Syria and Afghanistan.       The government has said Australia has one of the world’s “most generous” resettlement programs and has given sanctuary to almost 900,000 refugees since the end of the World War II.     However, its detention of asylum seekers who try to reach Australia by sea in offshore camps in the South Pacific has drawn repeated international condemnation.  In response, Canberra has insisted the policies were a deterrent, and have prevented migrants risking their lives crossing treacherous waters in unseaworthy vessels.    
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A powerful typhoon was barreling up the already soaked Korean Peninsula Monday, toppling trees, causing small landslides and knocking out power to thousands of South Koreans before taking aim at flood-prone North Korea.  Around 17,000 South Korean homes lost electricity and at least 48 structures were destroyed across the country, as Typhoon Haishen – meaning “sea god” in Chinese – made landfall in the southeastern city of Ulsan and moved northward up the east coast. Television broadcasts showed flooded streets and overflowing rivers in the southern tip of South Korea. Local broadcaster KBS reported small landslides near apartment buildings on Geoje Island off the southeast coast.  South Korean officials have not reported any deaths. However, at least four people were missing, and dozens were injured after the storm swept through southern Japan, according to local media. Around 300,000 Japanese homes were without power as of Monday afternoon. Later Monday, Haishen is expected to pummel North Korea, which is still recovering from another major typhoon last week. The storm is set to make landfall in the northeastern port city of Chongjin, North Korea’s third largest city.A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho on September 7, 2020.Ahead of the typhoon, North Korean state television broadcast live reports showing waves striking the shore in Tongchon County, which borders South Korea. Residents there who live near the shore have been evacuated, state TV said.  Haishen is much bigger than Typhoon Maysak, which battered North Korea last week. According to North Korean state media, Maysak destroyed more than 1,000 dwellings and caused dozens of casualties. The Korean Peninsula usually sees just one typhoon per year but has been hit by three in the past two weeks. The situation has been made worse by a historically wet monsoon season, which ended last month. At one point this summer, South Korea saw 49 consecutive days of rain.  The storms are especially dire for North Korea, which is vulnerable to flooding. The country lacks adequate infrastructure and suffers from widespread deforestation, resulting in part from people cutting down trees for fuel or firewood or to clear land for farming.   Media in North Korea – a tightly controlled, quasi-Stalinist state – are not usually transparent about natural disasters or other calamities. State television usually only broadcasts prepackaged reports during a set schedule.  But during recent storms, North Korean state TV has been more flexible, sometimes even airing live reports during the overnight hours. On Sunday, state media reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited an area recently hit by Typhoon Maysak and fired a top local official there.  The storms are an added stress for impoverished North Korea, which is already dealing with a sagging economy because of the coronavirus pandemic and international sanctions over its nuclear program.  
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The latest session of Singapore’s Parliament opened in August with something it’s never seen before: the newly created role of Leader of the Opposition.  Pritam Singh, of the Workers’ Party, took the position following an election that political analysts say signaled dissatisfaction with a system long dominated by a single party.  The July general election gave the Workers’ Party four more seats for a total of 10 in Parliament, compared to 83 for the ruling People’s Action Party. The Progress Singapore Party took two seats. While Singapore has an open society, it has been run by a single party since independence from Britain. Voters have expressed a desire for political pluralism before, but political analysts say there are signs that this time may be different.   Dennis Tan, Singh’s fellow party member in Parliament, last week said voters “embraced the need for a diversity of viewpoints,” in addition to the views of the People’s Action Party, which has largely ruled since 1965.  “I hope the ruling party can start to accept that,” Tan said.People’s Action Party Secretary-General and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, right, verifies his identity with a polling official at the Alexandra Primary School polling center in Singapore, July 10, 2020.A record high of 11 parties participated in July’s general election. The PAP won 61% of the vote, near its all-time low of 60% support in the 2011 election.  After this most recent election, Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore and the secretary general of the PAP, acknowledged the public’s apparent desire for more “opposition presence in Parliament.”  Heading into the new term, Lee told his fellow party members to brace for vigorous debate.  “With more opposition MPs in the new parliament, and a leader of the opposition formally designated, we must expect sharper questioning and debate in Parliament,” he wrote in a letter to them.    Political analyst Joshua Kurlantzick said the election suggests a “viable” opposition may form in the Southeast Asian nation.  “In the longer term, the stage may be set for more contested politics,” Kurlantzick wrote in an analysis for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia. He predicted that weaknesses in the ruling party could create openings for other parties.  “Besides the PAP’s struggle to control COVID-19, which (might) be a shorter-term issue, the persistently high cost of living, the hard-hit Singaporean white-collar workforce, the challenges with Singapore’s existing housing model, and other deeply entrenched socioeconomic problems will continue to challenge the PAP government,” he said.  Kenneth Paul Tan, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said the Singapore election results demonstrate a wish for more debate.  “I do think that they signal interests and concerns that many voters consider to be insufficiently audible in policymaking debates,” he told VOA. “Also, the results signal broad dissatisfaction with the structural advantages and unfair tactics that the ruling party uses to secure its electoral dominance.” The Progress Singapore Party said it would use its role as an opposition party to bring new ideas to the table. “Over the course of the next few years, we look forward to more information and resources provided to the opposition for it to function as an effective voice and idea generator,” said Leong Mun Wai, one of two politicians who took up a seat in Parliament this session representing the Progress Singapore Party.    
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