A tough royal defamation law in Thailand must be repealed rather than wielded against a young pro-democracy movement, protesters, law scholars and rights defenders told VOA, as calls mount for the international community to condemn a section of the penal code that smothers criticism of the monarchy.The kingdom, Southeast Asia’s second largest economy and a strategically pivotal nation wooed by both the U.S. and China, is locked in a political crisis, the latest chapter in a recent history defined by coups, aborted civilian governments and rival street protests.The role of the palace, headed by King Maha Vajiralongkorn — by some estimates the world’s richest monarch — has been thrust to the center of protester demands for sweeping reforms to a kingdom where the arch-royalist army reaches deep into politics and a super-rich establishment strides over one of Asia’s most unequal countries.Months of protests calling for the end of the battered government of ex-army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha and a new constitution to unplug the military from power, have waded into the dangerous ground of monarchy reform.Meet the Relentless Thai Rights Defender Taking on the Powerful The rights defender and legal advocate has been threatened, harassed and targeted by online trollsPlacards declaring “My Tax” and “End 112” — referring to a section of Thailand’s penal code — dot every protest, while speeches take unprecedented aim at the monarchy’s money and alliance with the army.Authorities say they have crossed the threshold of the broadly worded section 112 lese majeste law, which carries a prison sentence of from three to 15 years for each charge of “defaming, insulting or threatening” the royal family.But to those in its crosshairs, the law is faulty.“It is dubious, questionable… the interpretation is too broad and vague,” said Watcharakorn Chaikaew, 22, a student activist among 24 summoned over recent days by police for 112.“I mean it’s even a crime to criticize a king who died a century ago.”Thailand has officially been a constitutional monarchy since 1932.But the palace has at least endorsed — and at worst, protesters say, directed — endless coups by an army that refuses to allow democracy to take root.The demonstrators, who have largely been peaceful over months of boisterous, creative rallies, want the palace to be bound by the constitution and break its bond with the army.They accuse the monarchy of mission creep during four years of rule by Vajiralongkorn, who has swept the crown’s multi-billion-dollar assets under his direct control — along with elite army units — and shuffled arch-royalists into the top ranks of the army, government and palace inner circle.Previously, enforcement of lese majeste was opaque, with alleged violations going unreported lest they contravene the law.“That undermines the public trust completely in what actually is a violation of royal defamation and what’s not,” said Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, director of Cross Cultural Foundation, a human rights organization.Defamation Case Dropped Against BBC Reporter in Thailand 

        A Thai lawyer has withdrawn a criminal defamation case against a British BBC journalist involving a report on foreigners being defrauded of property, the BBC says.

 
The case against Jonathan Head, BBC’s Southeast Asia correspondent, had begun Wednesday and has been criticized as an example of how Thailand’s harsh criminal defamation laws can be used to intimidate journalists. 
 
The BBC said in a statement Wednesday that the plaintiff had withdrawn the case against Head, who said via Twitter Thursday…
Over the years, the law has been applied over transgressions ranging from criticizing a king who died around 400 years ago and another who mocked a favored palace dog of Vajiralongkorn’s beloved father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, in a Facebook post.Political weapon?Critics say the law exists only to muzzle pro-democracy movements, a claim buttressed, they say, by 24 recent cases.The youngest of the protesters now targeted by the law is 16.“Legally speaking, article 112 is very problematic,” said Teera Suteevarangkul, a law professor at Bangkok’s Thammasat University and member of a group of legal scholars pushing to change the law.“It should not be categorized under national security section of the criminal code; the punishment is disproportionate, and lastly it has been used as a political tool.”Watcharakorn, one of the student activists, was recently summoned over a protest at the German Embassy, where he read a statement urging the European nation to probe whether the king has been running Thai affairs from the lavish Bavarian villa where he has spent most of his time since acceding to the throne in 2016.A summons is a legal step that typically precedes formal charges in Thailand’s complicated legal system. “If the monarchy lives off of taxpayers’ money, why can’t we criticize them? I want the international community to pressure Thailand to abolish this law because it violates human rights,” he told VOA. “Thailand deserves the same as those countries that protect rights.”The protesters handed a petition to the U.N.’s Bangkok headquarters on Dec. 10 to press the Thai government to repeal the law and expunge prior convictions.“The simple fact [is] that the victims of this law are mostly pro-democracy people,” the statement added.The international community has largely remained mute on the pro-democracy protests.But in late November, international human rights attorney Amal Clooney urged all charges to be dropped against the protest leaders, some of whom have been hit by multiple allegations that could result in decades in jail.The king has yet to address the protesters directly.Instead he has been on a charm offensive, carrying out rare meet-and-greets with royalist fans to sponge away his image as a figure distant from his subjects.In a deeply divided country, there are powerful voices who believe the law must be enforced to its fullest against young radicals threatening the status quo.“The monarchy represents national security, so if you insult the monarchy, you commit a crime against the sovereign order,” Somchai Sawangkarn, one of the 250 senators appointed by Prayuth and endorsed by the king, told VOA.“There’s nothing wrong with the law, it’s those who commit offenses who are wrong.”
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Jimmy Lai, the 73-year-old Hong Kong media tycoon and advocate for democracy, was denied bail Saturday after being charged the previous day under the semi-autonomous Chinese territory’s new national security law.Lai faces a charge of collusion with foreign elements to endanger national security, apparently for tweets he made and interviews or commentaries he did with foreign media.The Apple Daily, a feisty pro-democracy tabloid owned by Lai, said he is accused of asking a foreign country, organization or individual to impose sanctions or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China.His case was adjourned to April 16 at the request of prosecutors, who said police needed time to review more than 1,000 tweets and comments made on his Twitter account, Relatives of a dozen Hong Kong citizens who have been detained in mainland China, wearing caps or hoods, attend a press conference in Hong Kong, Dec. 12, 2020.Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong earlier this year after stormy protests in 2019 that started over an extradition bill and expanded to include demands for greater democracy in the former British colony.The new law outlaws secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces to intervene in Hong Kong’s affairs. It has constricted free speech in the city, and democracy activists see it as a way to suppress dissent.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Saturday morning Asia time that the security law “makes a mockery of justice.” He called for Lai’s release, saying his only crime is speaking the truth about China’s authoritarian Communist Party government.Hong Kong’s National Security Law makes a mockery of justice. @JimmyLaiApple’s only “crime” is speaking the truth about the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarianism and fear of freedom. Charges should be dropped and he should be released immediately.— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 12, 2020Lai, the highest-profile person charged under the security law, has also been arrested for other alleged offenses this year. He has been charged with taking part in unauthorized protests and with fraud over alleged violations of office lease terms.He has advocated for other countries to take a harsher stance on China, and met with Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence in the U.S. last year to discuss the extradition bill, which the Hong Kong government eventually withdrew.Pence also tweeted about Lai, saying the charges against him are “an affront to freedom loving people around everywhere.”
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Laos is pushing ahead with four dams across the mainstream of the Mekong River, despite an escalating chorus of objections and crippling debt to Chinese state banks which resulted in the loss of control over its electricity grid to China.For almost two decades scientists and environmentalists have said Laos’ mega dam designs could irreversibly damage fish stocks, including endangered mammals like the Irrawaddy dolphin, and risked bankrupting the country.Deputy Energy and Mines minister Sinava Souphanouvong recently said Laos would build 100 dams across the country by 2030, adding that 78 were already operational and capable of producing 9,972 megawatts of electricity.Authorities say the tiny one-party state will be enriched by a series of dams generating hydropower from China in the north to Cambodia in the south, making it the “battery of Asia.”The four most contentious dams straddle the Mekong at four locations stretching from Pak Beng in the north along the river through Luang Prabang and Pak Lay and Sanakham, not far from the capital, Vientiane.  Officials hope to sell the electricity produced from those dams to Thailand.  A fifth at Xayaburi, about midway along the Pak Beng-Sanakham stretch, is already operational.However, Souphanouvong will be hard-pressed to convince critics.An editorial in ASEAN Today, an online commentary site, accused Lao authorities of making up impact assessments for the Sanakham dam. It claimed a report filed with the Mekong River Commission, an intergovernmental organization that coordinates management of the river, was copied from the assessment for Pak Lay, which was plagiarized from the Pak Beng report.Thailand and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, which had backed dam construction for two decades, ignoring pleas from scientists, environmentalists and fishers, is now having second thoughts.Somkiat Prajamwong, secretary-general of Thailand’s Office of National Water Resources, warned that Laos could be assuming too much in terms of sales, stressing no agreement had been reached on Sanakham electricity sales.“If we have other sources that will not have an impact on us, we’ll buy power from those sources,” he told reporters, referring to the potential impact on agricultural and fishing from decreased water flow due to the dams.“The Energy Ministry is discussing conditions, and the condition may be that the source has no impact on Thailand. We need more clarity,” he said.Drought and debtThailand, Cambodia and southern Vietnam, all of which are downstream on the Mekong from Laos, have endured a two-year drought, imperiling the livelihoods of 70 million people living hand to mouth.January-October rainfall was down by a quarter last year, and by more than a third this year, compared with 2018, according to the Mekong River Commission, and the U.S.-based Stimson Center has accused Laos and China of water hoarding through the dams.As a result, fishermen say, stocks have fallen dramatically and sediment flows – needed to replenish riverbanks – are being depleted, increasing the risks to buildings along the Mekong’s banks, while Vietnam has bitterly complained about saltwater intrusion from the sea.“We’ve seen significant negative impacts on the river and questions over its long-term sustainability,” Bradley Murg, a senior research fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, said.The cluster of five dams around Xayaburi cost a total of about $12.5 billion, which compares with Laos’ roughly $18 billion gross domestic product. Most of the cost was funded by Chinese state bank loans.Three months ago, snowballing debt forced Laos to cede control of its electricity to China Southern Power Grid Co., and Murg said Western government doubts about Vientiane’s ability to repay the loans tied it firmly to China in their eyes.“At the end of the day it’s why they recognize that Laos is one of China’s main client states in the region,” he said.“Laos has decided to bandwagon with Beijing and will not say a word against it in public,” he said.“This has signaled to states like Vietnam, like Cambodia, like Laos, that China has the leverage. China is the upstream state and thus has the control,” Murg said.CredibilityEleven dams are planned for the mainstream of the world’s 12th-largest river system, and Marcus Hardtke, a German environmental lawyer who has followed Mekong issues for two decades, said dam construction is about businesses making money.“People always talk about impacts, fish stocks, livelihoods and all that, and all that is true, but what people don’t realize is this is a business, and the money is in the construction of these dams.“So the key people involved in this, they make money out of building these things. This is simply a money-making deal,” he said.At a rare regional forum in Pakse, in southern Laos, three weeks ago, held by the Mekong commission, officials and developers were urged to reassess their commitment to dams and at least improve environmental assessments and ensure the timely release of water during droughts.That meeting was also held in response to the July 2018 collapse of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy dam in southern Laos, killing 71 people and displacing 7,000 more.Souphanouvong said the collapse “was a big lesson for Laos, leading the government to review safety standards in hydropower development to avoid further loss of life and destruction.”However, Hardtke said this was difficult to believe given warnings over safety, fish stocks and the economic consequences which have fallen on deaf ears for the last two decades.“It’s a classic example of low-quality work, of corruption in construction and shoddy maintenance,” he said in regard to the dam collapse. “It leads back to just making money out of these things and not really caring for impact or sustainability – and then these things happen.”
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The U.S. added China’s biggest computer chipmaker SMIC to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies last week, a move that will further widen the gap between China’s chip technology and the rest of the world.Despite its status as the world’s factory, China has never figured out how to make advanced chips. In recent years, Beijing has been planning a series of sweeping government policies and pouring billions of dollars into the industry to fulfill its chip self-sufficiency goal.So far, under ever-tightening international export controls, however, the country has only found itself mired in some of the most embarrassing industrial failures in its recent history. Most notably, one of the nation’s most high-profile chipmakers was taken over by municipal authorities in its home city of Wuhan, and a Beijing-based chipmaker, the Tsinghua Unigroup, defaulted on a corporate bond.FILE – A Chinese microchip is seen through a microscope set up at the booth for the state-controlled Tsinghua Unigroup project which is driving China’s semiconductor ambitions during the 21st China Beijing International High-tech Expo in Beijing.In this highly internationally integrated industry, experts say, no country can manufacture chips on its own, and China’s efforts to develop its semiconductor sector remains out of reach.Highly globalized chainSemiconductor production is considered one of the most sophisticated manufacturing processes in the world, involving more than 50 disciplines. Billions of transistor structures must be built within a few millimeters.The core equipment used to manufacture computer chips includes lithography machines. A Dutch company called ASML is the only company in the world currently capable of producing high-end extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. Of its 17 core suppliers, though, more than half are from the United States, and the rest are companies located throughout Europe.The company is jointly owned by shareholders from dozens of countries. According to its official website, among the top three major shareholders, two are from the United States and one is from the United Kingdom. Capital Research and Management Co. is the largest shareholder, and the second largest is the BlackRock Group; both are in the U.S. Additionally, Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung also hold shares in ASML, allowing these two manufacturers to enjoy the priority right to purchase the machine.   In Bid to Rely Less on US, China Firms Stockpile Taiwan Tech HardwareChina wants to become technologically self-reliant in 10 years but needs help for nowWhile ASML may dominate the chipmaking machine market, it is only one part of the long chain in the industry. The lens of its lithography machine is manufactured by Zeiss of Germany, the laser technology is owned by Cymer of the United States, and a French company provides key valves.Jan-Peter Kleinhans, a senior researcher at the Berlin think tank New Responsibility Foundation and director of the Technology and Geopolitics Project, said no country can make chips without foreign companies’ technology. He told VOA in a telephone interview that it took ASML more than two decades to develop their machines, and “they rely themselves on a network of around 5,000 suppliers to build this machine.”Kleinhans said that without the participation of any one of these companies, the entire global semiconductor chain would break.Kobe Goldberg, a researcher at the New American Security Research Center, told VOA that what China is trying to do is to build a totally nationalized supply chain in a highly internationalized industry. “That is much more difficult in an industry like semiconductors since it is so internationally integrated.”John Lee, a senior researcher at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think tank in Germany, said several Chinese firms already have the capacity to manufacture or fabricate some semiconductors. But they can easily face a crackdown by the U.S. government since American companies have a very strong dominance in the upstream segment of the supply chain, such as chip design.
 Huawei’s Survival at Stake as US Sanctions LoomStarting Sept. 15, China’s telecom giant Huawei will be cut off from essential supplies of semiconductors and without those chips, Huawei cannot make smartphones or 5G equipment on which its business depends, business analysts say”The dominance of U.S.-origin technology in upstream sectors of the global semiconductor supply chain means that Chinese ICT [information and communications technology] firms across the board are exposed to U.S. export controls, regardless of what happens to SMIC or Huawei as individual companies,” Lee added.Multilateral export controlThe multilateral export control implemented by democratic countries can be traced back to the informal multilateral regime called the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom).  Established in 1949, the 17-member organization, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Australia, attempted to coordinate controls over the export of strategic materials and technology to communist countries. In 1952, a separate group was established to scrutinize exports to China.US Imposes Curbs on Exports by China’s Top Chipmaker SMICNew Commerce Department requirements mean American suppliers of certain technology products to SMIC must apply for individual licenses before they can exportAlthough CoCom ceased to function on March 31, 1994, the list of prohibited items it formulated was later inherited by another multilateral export agreement, the Wassenaar Arrangement, which was signed in 1996. As many as 42 European, American and Asian countries joined the program, which allows member states to exercise control over their own technology exports, and China is again included in the list of targeted countries.Last December, the group reached an agreement to add chip manufacturing technology to the list of items subject to export controls.  While this revision does not explicitly target China, it points out that export restrictions are targeted at nonmember states, while China, along with Iran and North Korea, are not member states. Some Chinese observers called the jointly implemented move a “collective action” against China by countries that dominate the chip manufacturing supply chain.The Bureau of Industrial Security of the U.S. Commerce Department also announced in October of this year that six emerging technologies would be included in a new export control under the Wassenaar Agreement. All these technologies are directly related to chip manufacturing, including extreme ultraviolet lithography necessary for advanced chip manufacturing.Martijn Rasser, a senior researcher at the Center for New American Security’s Technology and National Security Project, told VOA the world’s liberal democracies have a huge advantage in their network of alliances and partnerships, adding: “It’s something that China just completely lacks, and that’s a big, a big headwind for them.”
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