Asia Catalyst (New York), Korekata AIDS Law Center (Beijing), and Thai AIDS Treatment Action
Group (Bangkok) are cooperating on writing the manual Know It, Prove It,
Change It: A Rights Curriculum for Grassroots Groups. The Human Rights
Mission Kit, which you can download here, is a
collection of easy-to-follow steps, worksheets and templates groups can use at
home to start their own human rights research.
[REPORT] The Thai Protest Zone
By Karyn Kaplan
Note from Asia Catalyst: On May 20-22, Asia Catalyst will join with Thai AIDS
Treatment Action Group and Korekata AIDS Law Center to hold a training for
Chinese and Thai AIDS NGOs in Bangkok. We’ve been communicating with Karyn
Kaplan of TTAG to figure out if the training could still go forward, given the
protests. Karyn wrote us an email describing the situation on May 4. Since
then, the New York Times reports that divisions
are emerging between protest leaders as the state again threatens to use
force to end the protests. Karyn gave us permission to reprint her email to us –
a picture of the scene in the protest zone.
[NEWS] Thai Police Framing Drug Users
Kudos to our colleagues at Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group (TTAG) for new research on police mistreatment of drug users. According to today’s report in the Nation, drug users arrested in Thailand report being forced to pay bribes to avoid arrest, and report being framed with drug plants. According to the report, which is based on interviews with 252 Thai drug users by TTAG and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, police may be struggling to meet quotas for drug arrests imposed by the government as part of its “war on drugs”.
