In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand

by Tyrell Haberkorn

Following a 1932 coup d'état in Thailand that ended absolute monarchy and established a constitution, the Thai state that emerged has suppressed political dissent through detention, torture, forced reeducation, disappearances, assassinations, and massacres. In Plain Sight shows how these abuses, both hidden and occurring in public view, have become institutionalized through a chronic failure to hold perpetrators accountable. Tyrell Haberkorn's deeply researched revisionist history of modern Thailand highlights the legal, political, and social mechanisms that have produced such impunity and documents continual and courageous challenges to state domination.

Genres: Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

Published January 9, 2018

About the author

Tyrell Haberkorn is a fellow in political and social change at the Australian National University. She is the author of Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law and Violence in Northern Thailand and is writing a history of impunity for state violence in post-absolutist Thailand.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in human rights violations and the way a nation can zealously uphold human rights in name while simultaneously violating them in reality. While this book centers on Thailand specifically, the author does an incredible job describing a universal reality. He describes the class attitude that upholds the rights of some but not others. Interspersed with theory and facts, he tells the compelling stories of human rights violations in Thailand. Throughout he holds to the thesis that human rights violations did not appear and disappear with each coup d'etat, but rather existed consistently throughout them all.
Besides containing a great combination of stories, data, and theory, In Plain Sight was very well written. I read it in one sitting. Great topic sentences! I found it engaging and well worth the time.