• News & article

  Future of rivers in PM's hands

  News, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 25/09/2023

  » In a speech to parliament on Sept 11, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin outlined policies, action plans and commitments that his government will take over the next four years for the "benefit and happiness of all Thai people".

• News & article

  Free-flowing Salween River needs protection

  Oped, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 14/03/2023

  » This morning at Sob Moei -- the confluence of the Moei and the Salween rivers on the Thailand-Myanmar border -- indigenous peoples and their supporters are attending a spiritual ceremony to express their collective stance to protect the Salween River from destructive dam projects.

• News & article

  Today is a 'Day of Action for Rivers'

  News, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 14/03/2022

  » On a sandy beach by the Salween River on the Thai-Myanmar border in March 2006, boats carrying Karen villagers and other ethnic groups such as Karenni, Yintalai and Shan from various areas in the Salween Basin are arriving to join an important yet simple ceremony.

• News & article

  Humanitarian catastrophe on the Salween River

  Oped, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 19/06/2021

  » 'I can't figure it out. Thai officials told us to leave and [we'll] probably have to end up living in the forest. We need to squeeze ourselves among the cracks of the ravines to keep ourselves safe from airstrikes by the Myanmar army," Naw Lay Bue, a Karen housewife with her three-month-old baby in her arms, told me in an interview in March, a few days after she and other villagers fled to Thailand following air raids launched by the Myanmar army in Karen State.

• News & article

  Women bear highest cost of injustice

  News, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 08/03/2021

  » Soithip, an ethnic Karen-Thai woman from Bang Kloi in the Kaeng Krachan Forest, was among 22 villagers who were rounded up last Friday by state authorities and put behind bars at the Phetchaburi Provincial Prison. Returning to their ancestral land in the forest is a crime in the eye of the state.

• News & article

  Salween diversion project enters troubled waters

  Oped, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 26/09/2020

  » Over the past few months, the Irrigation Department and the House Committee Review of Integrated River Basin Management have been heavily promoting an inter-basin water diversion scheme. Planned projects will divert water across Thailand, incorporating international river basins, including the Mekong and Salween, to address "water shortages" in Thailand.

• News & article

  Karen fear ravages from river diversion schemes

  News, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 14/03/2020

  » Muesaw Chokedilok, an ethnic Karen woman from Thailand's Kaburdin Village in Chiang Mai's Omkoi district, hops aboard an old pickup truck for a rugged ride up the mountain. With her are a group of housewives from the same village, all clad in cotton handwoven clothes with beaded lace and colourful headscarves. They are on the way to meet a group of journalists from Bangkok. Their village is at least four hours by car to Muang Chiang Mai.

• News & article

  Mekong needs accountability, now

  News, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 14/11/2017

  » Last Wednesday, Pitsanukorn Deekaew, a resident of Chiang Khong district in Chiang Rai, received a welcome message from his lawyer. The appeal motion in his lawsuit regarding the Pak Beng dam project in Laos had been admitted for consideration by Thailand's Supreme Administrative Court.

• News & article

  Dam projects require serious debate

  News, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 21/09/2017

  » A review of Thailand's energy plans reveals an abundant electricity supply that vastly exceeds demand. So in the midst of this energy glut, why are we pushing hard to build more problematic hydroelectric dams in our neighbours' territories?

• News & article

  Investments should recognise local rights

  News, Pianporn Deetes, Published on 22/05/2017

  » A year ago, the cabinet issued a resolution recognising an obligation to protect human rights in Thai outbound investments. With Thai companies increasing their operations in neighbouring countries in sectors that carry significant risks for human rights and the environment, further action to put this important commitment into practice is now overdue.

1 2 Next Last