Thailand Has Become Southeast Asia’s Hub of Transnational Repression
On September 29, Murray Hunter, a retired Australian researcher, was arrested in Bangkok. As prominent Southeast Asia writer Mong Palatino notes, he was arrested “at Bangkok airport in relation to a defamation suit filed by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).” Hunter had lived in Malaysia for years, Palatino adds, and was a university lecturer there until 2015, when he moved to Thailand. In Thailand, he “continued to write about Malaysian politics and Southeast Asian issues through his Substack page and several news websites” and his “critical reports have earned the ire of Malaysian authorities. In April 2024, the MCMC accused him of ‘slanderous postings.’ In February 2025, it filed defamation charges against the writer. It was only after Hunter’s arrest that it was revealed that an unnamed complainant filed a case in Thailand, which compelled Thai officials to initiate proceedings against him.”
Currently, Hunter is out of jail on bail. But he is expected to face charges in Thailand within the next month or two for criminal intimidation, a charge related to his writings about Malaysia.
Hunter’s story might seem surprising, but in reality it should come as no surprise to anyone following how the Thai government increasingly has become the center of Southeast Asia’s web of transnational repression. In recent years, Thailand has not only facilitated transnational repression by outright authoritarian neighbors like China, Vietnam, and Laos, but also by democracies such as Malaysia. At the same time, other regional states appear to be returning the favor by facilitating Thailand’s transnational repression of activists who have challenged the Thai monarchy and military.
Indeed, as Human Rights Watch has noted, Thailand has become a “swap mart” of dissidents from other regional states, who pay Bangkok back by targeting Thai critics living in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
As the most powerful state in mainland Southeast Asia, and a country that in the past has often allowed exiles from other countries to live in Thailand even if they were not granted refugee status, Thailand’s transformation matters a great deal. Its shift into the center of transnational repression makes it much harder for Southeast Asian dissidents to find safety.
This shift appears to have started after Thailand’s 2014 military coup and has lasted even though the military is no longer formally in charge of the government. As Human Rights Watch notes in a comprehensive report on transnational repression, since the coup, “refugees and asylum seekers in [Thailand] have faced surveillance, violence, abductions, enforced disappearances, and forced returns facilitated by the government of Thailand. “
While some dissidents and other asylum seekers have the means to leave Southeast Asia for places like France, Japan, Australia, or the United States, many do not, and even in these leading democracies Southeast Asian governments—including Thailand—appear able to target asylum seekers as well. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a prominent critic of the Thai monarchy (and my frequent writing collaborator) lives in exile in Kyoto, Japan, yet he was the subject, in July 2019, of an attack in his Kyoto residence in which a masked intruder shot him and his partner with some kind of chemical spray. As Al Jazeera reported, Pavin said after the attack his face and chest burned for 48 hours, and he believed the Thai palace was behind the attack. In France, meanwhile, exiled Laotian democracy activist Joseph Akravong was stabbed multiple times earlier this year, in what the authorities said was an assassination attempt. (He was wounded but did not die.)
At least in states like France and Japan, governments are not trying to work with Thailand to send back exiles or allow attacks on them in these other countries. For instance, the Japanese authorities found Pavin’s attacker, hit him with criminal charges, and he ultimately wound up jailed for twenty months for the crime. France has arrested four people in relation to the attack on Joseph Akravong.
The same is not true for Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian states. And the list of activists or just critical writers like Hunter targeted by transnational repression, centered on Thailand’s role (and being targeted even if they have United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees refugee status) is growing longer all the time.
As Human Rights Watch has documented, many Cambodian opposition politicians and activists have been targeted in Thailand in recent years. (It notes that “in March 2018, then-Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and then-Thai Prime Minister Prayut signed a still-confidential “fugitive” arrangement that allowed each country to send back alleged fugitives, which includes dissidents.) In addition, opponents of the Chinese government or people targeted by Beijing like Uyghurs, even those recognized as refugees by the UNHCR, have been sent back to China. As the report concludes, “Vietnamese dissidents [also] were tracked down and abducted [in Thailand]. Lao[tian] democracy and rights advocates went missing or were killed on Thai soil. A Malaysian LGBT rights influencer was targeted for repatriation.” These are but a handful of the many cases of activists, writers, and other refugees from neighboring states being targeted in the kingdom, which now includes Hunter.
The “swap mart” appears to be in full form. Thai activists have been found dead in the Mekong River, handcuffed, with their stomachs opened and concrete poured into their bodies in what strongly appeared to be an assassination in Laos. The Human Rights Watch investigation found that other Thai anti-monarchy activists have been detained and disappeared in Vietnam, or deported secretly back to Thailand, while other activists have disappeared in Laos and Cambodia, their cases conspicuously unsolved.
Perhaps after the next Thai parliamentary elections, scheduled to be held within the next few months, Thailand’s apparent policies might change. The elections could bring to power the People’s Party (PP), a progressive party favoring reform of the monarchy and the military, and which likely would not approve of transnational repression. But it remains doubtful whether PP will be allowed to rule, and the army will still hold onto vast power. Thailand’s role in the region’s transnational repression is unlikely to change anytime soon.
