Collusion in cross-border murders, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations

Prachatai reports on a 28-page report from the UN Human Rights Council transmitted in late July 2025 to the governments of Thailand, Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Viet Nam, China, and Malaysia, together with ASEAN.

Wanchalerm: disappeared

The bodies presenting the report were:

the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances; Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia; Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Special Rapporteur on minority issues; Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief; Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism; Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and Working Group on discrimination against women and girls

The report is about the governments of these countries’ “involvement in cross-border human rights violations.” It details “apparent international collusion in killings, enforced disappearances and other crimes.”

Clipped from Thai Alliance for Human Rights website

As Prachatai observes:

Human rights organisations in Thailand and elsewhere have long suspected that the security forces of Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia and Viet Nam have been allowed to operate in each other’s countries and are responsible for a number of human rights violations.

Among other things, the report is an account of murders and enforced disappearance of Thai activists and members of the opposition in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. In addition, forced returns, harassment, refoulement, detention of opposition members, activists and human rights defenders, and the designation of Vietnamese diaspora civil society organizations as terrorist organizations are all laid out.

The report “expresses ‘profound concern’ at the reported rise in transnational repression, ‘to deter, silence or punish dissent, criticism or human rights advocacy’, made by individuals outside their country’.” It emphasizes the role of officials in these grisly murders and disappearances and in associated repression.

It is sickening reading for anyone interested in human rights. We see no such interest in the various Thai governments over the past decades and more.