Category: Asia

Suvash Darnal – ‘consummate democracy activist’

     

It was because Suvash Darnal (right) combined so flawlessly several key attributes that he can be considered to have been a consummate democracy activist, writes Carl Gershman, the President of… Read more »

Cambodia’s Democratic Transition Has Collapsed, With Dangerous Consequences

     

As Cambodia prepares for national elections in two years, its politics have veered dangerously out of control, notes Council on Foreign Relations analyst Joshua Kurlantzick. Even though young Cambodians are… Read more »

Revitalizing Democracy Support in Troubled Times

     

The world has experienced a decade of decline in democracy, and the downward trajectory is accelerating, Freedom House reports: Nativist sentiments in the United States and Europe are weakening support… Read more »

China’s Future a Dictator’s Dilemma: Communist Party’s Strategy for Survival

     

China’s Communist authorities fretting about potentially “subversive” civil society groups — such as rights lawyers and labor activists — have a new red flag: the upcoming birthday of former president… Read more »

Nepal – no national unity without inclusive democracy

     

Nepal’s Parliament recently elected Pushpa Kamal Dahal as prime minister, in the country’s 25th change in leadership in 26 years, The New York Times notes: Political instability is harming Nepal’s… Read more »

Hong Kong: Student Protest Leaders Sentenced

     

  Three student leaders in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, who led mass rallies and sit-ins in 2014, have been sentenced, the BBC reports: Joshua Wong, who became the teenage face… Read more »

Vietnam’s growing protest culture explained

     

The Formosa scandal in Vietnam has recently made international headlines and offered the international community a rare glimpse into the fringe, but steadily growing, culture of protest and activism in… Read more »

Democracy in China: It’s in the eye of the beholder?

     

China watchers in the West have been fruitlessly searching for signs of democracy for more than 25 years, notes Bruce J. Dickson, professor of political science at George Washington University. But… Read more »

China’s crackdown on dissent the harshest in decades

     

China is in the midst of what many overseas scholars say is its harshest crackdown on human rights and civil society in decades, marked by officially-sponsored paranoia about foreign forces… Read more »