Thailand lässt autokratische Nachbarn auf seinem Boden Jagd auf Gegner machen

SS: In this report for *Radio Free Asia*, Zachary Abuza highlights Thailand’s role as a hub for authoritarian neighbors to target dissidents, either through complicity or a blind eye, particularly since the 2014 military coup. He notes that the recent assassination of Cambodian opposition figure Lim Kimya in Bangkok exemplifies a troubling trend of Southeast Asian governments using extrajudicial means to eliminate or capture opposition figures abroad, violating international norms like non-refoulement. Thailand’s willingness to cooperate, whether with Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, or even China, underscores an informal but dangerous pattern of cross-border repression, often marked by disappearances, killings, and deportations. Despite its nominal democracy, Abuza says, Thailand’s military-dominated politics and its precarious relationship with the monarchy enable this tacit complicity. While countries like Vietnam and Laos leverage such arrangements to suppress dissent, Thailand’s cooperation reflects both internal pressures and asymmetric power dynamics in the region, cementing its role in this disturbing transnational “swap mart” of repression.