Human Rights

Yureesa Sama was a high-school student when the police officers showed up at her doorstep for the first time in 2010. Her family lived in a small house surrounded by rice paddies in a Malay-Muslim community in Pattani province in Thailand's Deep South. The officers questioned her parents, family members and neighbours. Then they left, only to return the following week, the one after that and so on. Sometimes they just hung around the house for hours watching who came and went. Yureesa sensed her parents' concern and knew something was wrong, but she didn't quite understand what was going on. Finally, she was told not to worry and focus on her studies. In most other places in Thailand, the officers' conduct would have raised eyebrows, but the Deep South has been ruled by martial law since 2005. Growing up in a region affected by a prolonged separatist insurgency, Yureesa was taught not to ask too many questions. 

Only Sajat, a successful entrepreneur and social media influencer in Malaysia, has been targeted by the government and the public for years - mostly because of her gender identity.

The prose of Indian poet Haripriya Soibam describes youth's struggle to preserve and promote democracy. Read her five poems for "Young voices on the rise - Youth and democracy in the Asia-Pacific region".

Sitting in front of Songkhla’s city hall, a seaside city in southern Thailand, a young woman dressed in a hijab wrote a letter to the country's prime minister. Choosing each word with care, she called on him "to listen to the stories of the fisherfolk’s children who grew up and bonded with the sea, protected and took care of it." It was in May 2020, two days before a week-long public hearing session for the Chana Industrial Estate project that is poised to transform the quiet fishing villages of Songkhla province into an industrial zone.

At the age of nine, Nalutporn was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy. For the rest of her life, she would use a wheelchair – and for the first part of that life, she had to make it through the Thai educational system. People with disabilities in Thailand have few rights sanctioned – a hot political issue for Nalutporn.

Homophobia, prejudice and hatred marked Patchara Kumchumnan's childhood. It's taken him a few years and some hundred kilometres to escape the prejudice and hatred in his hometown. But, while the scar of discrimination never faded completely, the experience became his driving force to defend the rights of others.

One of the most radical political artists in the Thai scene, 34-year-old Tada Hengsapkul ties together nationalism, often-ugly politics, and the bruises of the Cold War in provocative, thought-provoking art. In the current political climate where police violence against pro-democracy protesters has been increasingly rampant, his past works still ring true.

Educated on diverse gender perspectives by the internet and emboldened by global feminist movements like #MeToo, Filipino youth are boldly pushing the issues of body autonomy and sexuality to the frontlines of the struggle for gender equality. With social media as a platform for convergence, alliance and advocacy, they are treading territory that previous feminist movements shied away from.

CSOs in Cambodia have had to maneuver in an increasingly repressive environment, but the challenges and failures that they have had to face thus far have led to important reflections and learnings.

In the 1990s, excesses of ethnonationalism led to the devastating Balkan Wars. Today, left-wing liberal agents are trying to free themselves from these destructive forces.