Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia has become a defacto battleground for the wider war waged between the United States and an emerging China.
The nation of Thailand, possessing the second largest economy in ASEAN and a pivotal partner for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has just emerged from turbulent elections in which US-backed “pro-democracy” parties were defeated both at the polls and in parliament leaving Thailand’s military-linked political party in control.

With little else to offer the nations of Southeast Asia, the US has opted instead to wield the familiar and well-honed weapon of political subversion to peel potential partners away from Beijing in Washington’s continued bid to rescue its waning primacy in Asia-Pacific.

You will never read about it, but Dayak people, the “First Nation” of the enormous island of Borneo, are broken, robbed and brainwashed.
“Unity in diversity” it says; the motto of Indonesia. But it could be argued that the opposite is true. There is very little unity, and less and less diversity, as the country is controlled from Jakarta, an enormous, overpopulated stinky and sinking megapolis which is located on the island of Java.

After much uncertainty and a turbulent election, Thailand now has a new government led by its newly elected prime minister, Prayuth Chan-o-cha. This bodes well for Thailand’s stability and development as well as its growing ties with its ASEAN neighbours as well as with China.
For the US and its attempts to reassert “primacy” over Asia while encircling and containing the rise of China, the defeat of its “pro-democracy” proxies it is a nightmare.

The Western media along with multiple US and European funded “rights” groups have sounded the alarm over what they claim is a wave of assassinations and physical attacks on “activists.”
The particular target of these claims is Thailand.
Articles like the Sydney Morning Herald’s “‘They sent an assassination squad': Thai exiles speak of life in fear,” allege:

From 31 May to 2 June of this year, the scheduled IISS Shangri-La Dialogue took place in Singapore. It has been hosted annually (since 2002) by London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Forum is gradually turning into one of the most reputable events, well attended by high-ranking government officials. It was established to enable dialogue on security issues in the Indo-Pacific region, where the center of global political processes is shifting to.

The visit by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Bin Mohamad, to the Philippines in March of this year once again raised the issue of ownership over Malaysia’s state of Sabah.
Although during the visit itself this problem was not discussed, afterwards Mahathir Bin Mohamad told journalists during an interview that there were no outstanding claims from either side, but an official statement from Manila said President Duterte’s view was that there were remaining grievances.

It truly looked grand, impressive – the fourth most populous country on earth voted in general elections, which were held on 17 April 2019. Hundreds of positions were for grab: that of the president, the vice president, members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), and members of local legislative bodies. There were 190 million eligible voters in the country, and sixteen parties, including four new ones.

On 24 of March the first general election in 7 years was held in Thailand. It was meant to put an end to the 5-year rule by the military, who came to power in 2014 as a result of a coup d’etat.
It is worth highlighting straight away that the election did not shed any light on the future of politics in the nation, and instead generated an even more uncertain situation, which the ruling elite are now trying to rectify.

In the wake of Thailand’s recent elections, US and European-backed opposition forces were caught flatfooted, reeling from losing the popular vote to the military-linked Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP).
Additionally, “rising political star” as the Western media refers to him, billionaire heir Thanathorn Jungrungreangkit, head of the opposition Future Forward Party (FFP), has found himself in legal turmoil, facing various corruption cases and charges of sedition.
Defending a Billionaire