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BANGKOK – A long-awaited amnesty covering political offenses committed across Thailand over the past 20 years officially entered into force on Monday, but targeted exclusions for high-profile and controversial crimes – most notably violations of the country’s harsh lese-majeste law that criminalizes defamation of the monarchy – have left advocates of national reconciliation skeptical of the policy’s ability to heal deep-seated political rifts.

First introduced as a measure to mend divisions sparked by decades of political unrest, violent mass protests, and repeated military coups, the amnesty is projected to apply to roughly 6,000 eligible individuals, according to parliamentary estimates. Formally named the Peaceful Society Promotion Act, the legislation passed its final parliamentary vote in July and was officially published in the Royal Gazette on Sunday, clearing the final procedural hurdle before it could take effect.

A special committee led by Thailand’s prime minister will be tasked with reviewing applications and confirming which individuals qualify for amnesty. The panel is required to convene its first meeting within 30 days of the law’s entry into force, though no official timeline has been set for how long the full eligibility review process will take.

The amnesty covers a broad spectrum of political offenses committed between January 1, 2005, and July 15, 2025. For qualifying recipients, the law will not only secure the release of currently imprisoned individuals, but also terminate open investigations and prosecutions, dismiss pending court cases, and permanently expunge related criminal records. Beyond lese-majeste offenses, the policy also excludes convictions for public corruption and any political crimes that resulted in death or severe bodily harm.

Critics have centered their pushback on the exclusion of lese-majeste cases, formally codified as Article 112 of Thailand’s Criminal Code. The law has long been a flashpoint of national controversy: critics argue it is routinely weaponized to suppress political dissent, with penalties including a maximum prison sentence of 15 years per conviction. Complaints can be filed by any private citizen, not just government or royal officials, and most defendants are ordered to remain in detention for the duration of often years-long legal proceedings. Even minor acts, such as liking a critical social media post on Facebook, have resulted in charges in recent years.

Mass student-led pro-democracy protests that erupted across Thailand in 2020 centered calls for reform of Article 112, only for many of the movement’s leading organizers to be charged with lese-majeste offenses themselves. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, a Bangkok-based legal advocacy organization, reports that more than 290 people – the majority of whom are young student activists – have faced Article 112 charges since early 2020. As of July this year, at least 54 people remain imprisoned in connection with political cases, and only around 10 of those detainees are expected to qualify for release under the new amnesty, the group confirmed, because all others are being held on lese-majeste charges.

Thailand’s long-running political divides have largely centered on the polarizing figure of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was removed from office in a 2006 military coup. Thaksin’s populist policy agenda earned him fierce loyalty among low-income and rural voters, particularly in the country’s northern and northeastern regions, but his widespread popularity and assertive governing style created deep, lasting fractures between his political base and the kingdom’s conservative establishment: urban elites, traditional royalists, and the military. Over the past two decades, parties aligned with Thaksin have repeatedly won general elections and returned to power, while Thaksin himself lived in self-imposed exile abroad for many years to avoid prison time on past political convictions. Just last week, Thaksin was granted an early royal pardon and released from parole just over a year after he returned to Thailand, a development that has reignited debate over the country’s uneven application of political justice.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has introduced a landmark draft law that would bar all children under the age of 16 from accessing major social media platforms, framing the proposal as an urgent response to what he described as widespread, generational harm to New Zealand’s young people. Announced on Monday, the policy joins a growing global wave of age-based restrictions on big tech, but faces immediate gridlock within Luxon’s own ruling coalition, leaving its path to passage deeply uncertain.

The proposed legislation targets leading platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook, requiring these companies to implement verifiable age-checking measures to exclude underage users. Acceptable verification methods outlined in the policy document from Luxon’s center-right National Party include existing user account data, facial age estimation technology, digital identity services, and formal government-issued identification. Critical carve-outs exclude one-on-one messaging services such as WhatsApp, user-generated online gaming platforms like Roblox, and productivity-focused artificial intelligence tools including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.

Notably, the draft law imposes no penalties on children or parents who access platforms in violation of the ban. Instead, enforcement falls entirely on tech companies, which could face fines of up to 10 percent of their annual global revenue for failing to meet their compliance obligations. The bill also mandates that platforms with significant child user bases must conduct regular public risk assessments and publish reports detailing potential harms to young users on their networks.

Luxon framed the policy as a necessary intervention based on local data, noting that 2025 research found one-third of New Zealand teenagers spend at least five hours per day on social media. “Social media is exposing them to harmful content, addictive technology and pressures they are not equipped to deal with and it’s affecting their family life, mental health, sleep, and education,” he told reporters on Monday.

Luxon’s push for the ban follows Australia’s implementation of a world-first under-16 social media ban that took effect in December 2025. Since Australia’s ban came into force, Canada, Brazil, and Indonesia have also enacted similar age restrictions, while dozens of other nations are currently drafting or evaluating their own rules. Early results from Australia show that just one month after the ban took effect, major platforms reported revoking access to roughly 4.7 million accounts confirmed to belong to underage users. The policy has divided global stakeholders: child safety advocates and many parents have praised the measures as a long-overdue protection for young people, while digital privacy organizations argue age-verification rules are easily circumvented and create unacceptable risks to users’ personal data.

Despite the prime minister’s support, the bill faces steep procedural and political obstacles. Two of the three parties in Luxon’s ruling coalition — the libertarian ACT Party and populist NZ First — have repeatedly and vehemently opposed the legislation, and confirmed Monday they will vote against it. For the bill to advance, Luxon will need backing from opposition lawmakers, who have not yet committed to supporting the proposal. Chris Hipkins, leader of the center-left Labour Party, the largest opposition bloc, said Monday his caucus has not reached a final decision on how to vote.

Complicating matters further, Luxon confirmed there is insufficient time to complete the legislative process before Parliament dissolves on October 1, ahead of New Zealand’s general election scheduled for November. Under New Zealand law, all bills must pass three separate rounds of parliamentary voting, a process that typically takes several months, before they can be signed into law. If Luxon’s National Party is reelected to lead the next government, he has pledged to reintroduce and advance the bill to make New Zealand the latest nation to implement strict age limits for social media access.

This is not the first time Luxon’s government has taken action to limit young New Zealanders’ screen time: in 2024, the administration enacted a nationwide ban on cellphone use during school hours for students of all age groups.

TOKYO — In a bid to reverse a dramatic breakdown in China-Japan relations triggered by a controversial statement on Taiwan from Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that inflamed Beijing and spilled over to damage economic ties, a multi-party delegation of Japanese legislators departed for Beijing on Monday. The four-day visit, scheduled to run through Thursday, will see the group hold formal talks with officials from the Chinese Communist Party, in what supporters frame as an opening to restart frozen diplomatic communication.

The cross-party delegation includes Gaku Hashimoto, a former health and welfare vice minister from Takaichi’s own ruling Liberal Democratic Party, one lawmaker from the Komeito opposition, and a representative from the Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA). Shinichi Isa, the CRA spokesperson and a former diplomat posted to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, spoke to reporters ahead of the delegation’s departure from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, emphasizing the urgency of the mission.

“Communication has been severed in all areas, and we are already seeing negative impacts ripple across multiple sectors,” Isa told reporters. “Our goal is to find a path forward that can restart constructive dialogue between the two sides.”

The crisis erupted immediately after Takaichi took office, when she stated that a Chinese military action targeting Taiwan would qualify as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially justifying the deployment of Japanese military force. The comment crossed a well-established red line for Beijing, which claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as its sovereign territory, and triggered furious pushback from Chinese authorities.

Weeks later, Isa warned on social media platform X that bilateral relations had fallen to their lowest point since the two countries normalized diplomatic ties in 1972. Unlike previous periods of tension, when low-level official communication remained open to prevent escalation, Isa noted that “now all official channels between government agencies and ministries have been completely cut off.” He added that the ongoing frozen relationship serves no national interest for either China or Japan, and confirmed that Beijing had granted the delegation’s request to open a limited “window for dialogue” between the two sides.

Earlier last week, China’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged that cross-party “people of insight” from Japan had recognized the severity of the current bilateral standoff and were seeking concrete steps to put relations back on a stable footing. “We urge those running the Japanese government to take these voices seriously … and take concrete actions to create the necessary conditions for normal exchanges between the two countries,” the ministry said in a statement Friday.

Takaichi has so far refused to retract her original comment on Taiwan. In a small conciliatory gesture amid rising tensions, however, she chose to pray remotely rather than make an in-person visit to Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine during the annual Aug. 15 commemoration of Japan’s World War II surrender. The shrine, which honors convicted Japanese war criminals alongside the country’s war dead, is widely viewed by China and South Korea as a symbol of unrepentant Japanese wartime militarism and aggression.