<p dir="ltr">Local people are to be evicted in the name of development, as the Thai junta invokes its absolute power to clear land for the benefit of big businesses.</p> <p></p>

<p dir="ltr">Citing arms race in Southeast Asia as a primary reason, the Thai junta has embraced a plan to equip the Royal Thai Navy with submarines. However, many wonder if the extra 36 billion baht in military spending could be a burden to the struggling Thai economy when it could be spent on other necessities.</p> <p></p>

<p dir="ltr">Despite efforts by the military government to improve the appalling state of Thai education, reformers point out that the new draft constitution will plunge Thailand deeper into an education crisis.</p> <p></p>

<p>Well-known pro-democracy activists and an academic have concluded that in addition to reforming its military, Thailand needs to reform its judicial institutions as well to get out of the endless cycle of coups d’état.</p> <p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Resistantcitizen/posts/1024747320901744">Resistant Citizen</a>, an anti-junta activist group, on Monday, 22 February 2016, organised a well-attended public seminar on Judicial Institutions under Special Circumstances at Thammasat University, Tha Prachan Campus, Bangkok.</p>

<p>After years of fighting for rights over land and resources, communities living on disputed land or standing on the way of state megaprojects are to be left destitute under the new draft constitution written by the junta-appointed Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC).</p> <p></p>

<p>Despite reports from Russian intelligence about ISIS members hiding in the country, security experts said that Thailand still has minimal risk of a spread of violence from the troubled Middle East. However, given the rise of Buddhist hardliners and security officers distracted by political dissidence, this might change. &nbsp;</p>

<p>As Thailand’s time under a military regime drags on for a year and a half without any prospect of an election in the near future, an independent writer and democracy activist says that political reform is just an empty promise if the Thai military does not reform itself.</p> <p></p>

<p>In an analysis of the development of Thai identity and culture, an academic argues that much of what was promoted by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) as Thai identity and culture in the 1950s was invented for US consumers. &nbsp;</p> <p>“It's the American consumers who showed the urban middle class Thais what to value about Thai culture,” said Matthew Phillips, a Southeast Asian Studies academic from Aberystwyth University in the UK, at the launch of his book at Thammasat University, Tha Prachan Campus, on Tuesday, 3 November 2015.</p>

<p dir="ltr">As the Thai military government starts opening up new Special Economic Zones along the border to provide cheap labour and a deregulated business environment for investors, villagers in the quiet northeastern province of Nakhon Phanom by the Mekong River are to be evicted from their homes.</p> <p></p>

<p dir="ltr">Following the controversial<a href="http://prachatai.org/english/node/4315">&nbsp;12 nationalistic Thai values</a>&nbsp;introduced in the aftermath of the 2014 coup d’état and the construction of a theme park with grandiose monuments of ancient kings, the Thai junta has now published its latest version of Thai history, which many historians view as an attempt to legitimize military rule via a narrow nationalistic history.</p> <p></p>

<p>&nbsp;</p> <p>In a deposition hearing held behind closed doors, a military court has sent an elderly man to three years in jail for writing messages defaming the monarchy in a shopping mall restroom.</p> <p>Bangkok Military Court, on Friday morning, 16 October 2015, sentenced Opas C., a 68-year-old musician, to three years’ imprisonment for offences under Article 112 of the Criminal Code, the lèse majesté law.</p>

<p>An embattled transgender activist has filed charges against one of Thailand’s most famous universities for not hiring her as a full-time lecturer because of ‘unjust’ reasons despite her faculty’s approval. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Kath Khangpiboon, a well-known LGBTI activist from the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thaitga.com/">Thai Transgender Alliance (Thai TGA)</a>, at 11 am, on Monday 12 October 2015, filed lawsuits against Thammasat University, the second oldest university in Thailand, and the university committee at the Administrative Court of Bangkok.</p>