Thailand’s election is mere weeks away and regardless of who ends up the victor, developments throughout the period of the military junta’s rule since 2014 should provide several lessons for the country’s future leader.
In May 2018, Indonesia was swept by a wave of terror attacks involving suicide bombers that targeted churches and the police headquarters in the city of Surabaya. What set this chain of events apart was the fact that they were carried out by members of the same families. In the incidents, the father and mother either shared militant roles with their children, or took their children along on their mission.
When speaking of religious intolerance in ASEAN member states, it’s likely that images of marginalised Rohingya in Myanmar, the increasingly conservative stance of Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo seems to have recently taken, and clampdowns on the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual (LGBT) community in Muslim majority countries like Malaysia and Brunei are among the first pictures that come to mind.
