On 29 June, we convened a panel of human rights defenders, lawyers, and digital rights experts to unpack how the UN Cybercrime Treaty is advancing transnational repression across the region – from Cambodia to Indonesia to stateless communities like the Rohingya. The surveillance industry behaves like any market under competition. Voluntary frameworks like the UN Guiding Principles carry zero consequences for companies, which is exactly why they get cited so often. The Cybercr

Justice delayed is justice denied. 🇰🇭 On 2 July 2024, Cambodia unjustly convicted Mother Nature Cambodia activists for their peaceful environmental advocacy. Five of them, Long Kunthea, Yim Leanghy, Thun Ratha, Phuon Keoraksmey, and Ly Chandaravuth, remain behind bars, serving six to eight years for “plotting” against the government. They appealed their convictions on 22 July 2024. Yet nearly two years later, their appeal hearing has been delayed, once again, with no new da

At the UN Expert Consultation on Technology and Right to Freedom of Association held in May, Manushya Foundation’s Digital Rights Advisor, Dr Jean Linis-Dinco, named the elephant in the room that many in the so-called digital rights movement refuse to acknowledge: the struggle for digital rights has been pulled into the orbit of the very corporations that profit from repression. The consultation will inform the UN Human Rights Committee’s development of General Comment No. 38

Trans rights activist Sylvia Rivera warned us decades ago: Pride without liberation become a market. As we close Pride Month 2026, we call out the corporations and elite institutions wrapping themselves in rainbows while refusing to confront the systems that keep LGBTIQ+ people unsafe, unheard, and exploited. No wonder over 37% of LGBTIQ+ people surveyed by dating app Taimi (2026) said Pride has become a “commercial event” that lost its true meaning. Yes, we celebrate Marriag

Thailand’s own law promises: No torture, no forced returns. So why does it keep sending people back to danger? On the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, we expose how Thailand is violating Section 13 of its 2023 Anti-Torture Act and enabling acts of transnational repression. ⚖️ Refoulement means forcing someone back to a country where they face real risk of torture, violence, or persecution. Thai and international law explicitly prohibit this. Yet Thailand co

Governments across Southeast Asia are using cybersecurity as cover to surveil critics, police borders, and protect the interests of those in power. 🇺🇳 The UN Cybercrime Treaty expands state-to-state cooperation, lowers evidentiary standards, and defines ‘cybercrime’ so broadly that activists, journalists, and organisers fall within reach. Tech companies are part of the problem too, as they profit from our data and then hand it to the governments pursuing us. The people who

94 years since the Siamese Revolution, when Siam ended absolute monarchy and became Thailand with a constitutional monarchy. 📍 But is Thailand a REAL democracy now? 🙅🏽‍♀️ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗯𝘃𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗡𝗢. Thailand has become a SLAPPs hub, where people who criticise the monarchy's political role and its obstruction of the democratic process end up being expelled or even arrested on Lèse-Majesté charges. A country cannot call itself democratic while people a

#StopTransnationalRepression ✊ On 20 June, Manushya Foundation joined Na Projects at Bangkok 1899 for Living, Waiting, and Hoping | Refugees Among Us: Stories, Challenges, and Hope in Thailand to honour World Refugee Day. We’re immensely grateful to hear directly from refugees, raise awareness on transnational repression, share food & stories, and connect with allies including Asylum Access Thailand, Sati Foundation, Parami University, and Hear & Found. 🤝 Thailand is home to

On 20 June, we marked World Refugee Day, a moment for the world to pause and truly listen to the voices of those forced to flee their homeland. This year, we use this platform to uplift the voices of Lao political refugees, and to recount the stories of activists in exile who face unimaginable consequences simply for speaking out. They are subject to threats, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, and assassinations. These injustices happen not only inside Laos, but across bo

Manushya Foundation stands in solidarity with our feminist sisters at the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network (RMCN) against the coordinated hate speech targeting Rohingya refugees and women human rights defenders. Over the last few days, hundreds of racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic comments flooded our social media posts on our solidarity with the Rohingya refugees and survivors. 👉 Check the photos to see the hate narratives we documented, and why we refuse to st

#StopDigitalDictatorship! ✊ Repression in our region does not work alone. It works through the military-BigTech industrial complex’s control over the spaces where we speak and organise. 🇺🇳 This is Manushya Foundation's submission to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the protection of human rights defenders in the digital age. 🌏 Across Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the same machinery appears in different uniforms, such as vague cyber law

#NoToAgeGating! 🙅🏽‍♀️ When states say they want to “protect children” by banning them online, which children do they mean? 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙧: 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙤𝙧! 🙃 Freedom has never been granted from above. It has been seized, again and again, by the people most determined to be free, and most often by the young. In Manushya Foundation's submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, “𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯:

Salamat, #DRAPAC2026! From 8-10 June, Manushya joined fellow digital rights activists in Manila to push back against techno-colonialism and digital authoritarianism. At the session "Inside the Black Box: Mappining Civil Society Engagement with Big Tech on Content Moderation," hosted by the South East Asia Collaborative Policy Network (SEA CPN), our Founder & Executive Director, Emilie Palamy Pradichit, drew from Manushya Foundation's s extensive work in grassroots-led platfor

Join us for 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗕𝗼𝘅: 𝗠𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗹 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗕𝗶𝗴 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, a co-learning workshop organised by the South East Asia Collaborative Policy Network (SEA CPN), where Manushya Foundation is a proud member. 💻 🗓️ Wednesday, 10 June 2026 ⏰ 09:00-11:50 AM UTC+8 (Manila time) 📍 Room 403, University of the Philippines, BGC What happens when content moderation system

Environmental justice without Indigenous justice is not justice at all. ✊ Despite having defended the environment for generations, Indigenous communities continue to face dispossession, false climate solutions, SLAPPs, and violence, while states and corporations move forward with impunity. Manushya’s two new UN submissions expose how Indigenous Peoples’ rights are being violated in Laos and Thailand in the name of profit, “development,” and even “conservation.” Their demand i