Sean Turnell

Latest from Dan Swift of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and me: asiatimes.com/2026/04/new-re…

If you want to "restore international law" and "get rid of lunatics" pretty sure that a strategy of "back Iran" ain't going to get you there. While its pretty astounding that such crackpot views are finding traction in certain segments of the extreme left and right, in a way its better that they come out and say it openly, like this. Such people support the Islamic Republic regime, responsible for some of the most egregious human rights atrocities of recent memory. Hatred for America and Western imperialism trumps everything else it seems, including massacring tens of thousands of unarmed protesters, hanging children, raping women in prisons, ethnic cleansing of minorities, funding terrorism... While such simplistic, binary thinking is appealing in a childish, fairytale sort of way, it reveals a deep ignorance of how the world actually works. There are lots of bad guys, and they are everywhere. Just because Trump's actions have been criminal and idiotic doesn't mean the Islamic Republic is somehow a beacon of international law and "the principle of sovereignty" (whatever that means). In our black and white world, in which all nuance is swept aside and effaced, at least such people have come out of the shadows and shown themselves for what they are.

No Joke: The U.N. has just elected 🇨🇳 China to its Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. China recently sentenced Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party.

“Grasp and hold in the core of your being that incredible feeling of joy at the moment you realised you were truly free. There will be all sorts of setbacks ahead, and the ‘real world’ will envelope you all too quickly, but if you have that moment stored away, always there for ready recall, you will find a shield.” Former unlawful detainee 🇦🇺 Sean Turnell talks to Hostage Aid reflecting on the complexities of life after his release from wrongful detention. Read the Q & A in full on our website: hostageaid.org/bound-by-hope-… Subscribe to our newsletters: hostageaid.org/subscribe/ @TurnellSean

Excellent piece by Ye Myo Hein

Heartbreaking 💔 This morning, right after President Trump’s speech, the Iranian regime moved fast and hanged 18-year-old protester. Yes, Mr. President @realDonaldTrump, there are no “less radical” leaders in Iran. From the courtroom to the prison cell, from the interrogator to the judge, this is a unified system of terror. So this is the Islamic Republic: a system with a Stone Age approach to dissent, executing its own young people to stay in power. This is not about left or right. This is about life, dignity, and the future of a nation. His name is Amirhossein Hatami. 18 years old. His “crime”? Demanding Freedom, dignity, and a normal life. No lawyer. No independent media to be his voice, No fair trial. No final goodbye to his family. But of course a forced confession on State TV after being tortured to admit a crime that he has committed never committed. And his friends may be next. By the way, where are the anti-war activists? Why don’t we hear you campaigning against mass arrests, and executions in Iran ? Would you demand that the Iranian regime stop its war on unarmed people? Stop the executions. Stop the torture. End the total #DigitalBlackOut imposed on Iran. This is about standing with the people of Iran against a regime that has massacred more than 40,000 of its own citizens and is now killing those arrested in the same uprising

Terrible news from Tehran: I just heard that the Iranian authorities today arrested the great human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. It's not known where she has been taken. Nasrin has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for her unflinching courage and moral leadership. I hope thought leaders worldwide will call on the Iranian authorities to release this brave woman who represents the best of Iran. Her husband, Reza Khandan, is already in prison serving a sentence for advocating for women's rights. Iran should release them -- and all political prisoners. It was wrong for the Shah to imprison people for peaceful expression of political views, and it's wrong for the Islamic Republic to do so today.

Profoundly positive news for Myanmar’s resistance to its apocalyptically failed military regime

Your friendly reminder that the son of the same Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf lived and studied in Melbourne for a number of years and reportedly owns property on Chapel St

@EvanFeigenbaum @adam_tooze @TWQgw My 2009 book on Myanmar’s monetary and financial history, ‘Fiery Dragons’ (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) has a very lengthy section on the Chettiars in Burma/Myanmar (including on the internal financial logic of their operations). An extraordinary community!!

In 2011, fifteen years ago, I wrote an essay for @TWQgw on the reemergence of an interconnected "historical Asia" instead of the fragmented "Cold War Asia" anomaly to which Americans had grown accustomed. A fantastic essay in Swarajya on the Chettiar financial empire, which stretched into Southeast Asia, and deployed private capital from Malaya to Vietnam, got me reflecting on it again. For a thousand years, as I argued in my 2011 essay, an astonishingly interconnected Asia was pretty much the natural order of things. "Asia is being reborn," I argued, "and remade." Yet, the United States, I warned, "is badly prepared for this momentous rebirth, which is at once stitching Asia back together and making the United States less relevant in each of  Asia’s constituent parts. Asians are, in various ways, passing the United States by, restoring ancient ties, and repairing long-broken strategic and economic links." This great piece gets at one element of the historical connection and the role of clans and communities, not just monarchs and empires, in this. In fact, it was empires, including the British and Russian empires, that contributed to the anomaly—when Tsarist armies arrived in Central Asia and the Soviet Union subsequently severed many traditional connections, and many of India’s traditional roles in Asia were subsumed within the British empire. It's been 15 years since I wrote this essay and U.S. policy still thinks in terms of Cold War referents rather than historical ones. If you want to see how quickly traditional patterns have reasserted themselves, just look at China's outsized role in Central Asia, compared to where it was even when I wrote this piece in 2011—which, by the way, was fully two years before Beijing tried to formalize some of this with its Belt and Road Initiative but the patterns were already patently obvious to anyone bothering to pay attention even before the BRI existed. But because U.S. policy now refracts the entire continent and all of its subregions through the prism of competition with China—a bipolar construct that doesn't capture historical patterns and evolving realities—it is missing a lot about the contours of what will certainly be a more integrated Asia if you pull this thread into the 2030s and beyond. America will miss opportunities in every part of the region over time, and find the United States less relevant to Asia’s future. I've been warning about this for a long time. Anyway, I loved this discussion of "the Chettiar way of wealth" from @SwarajyaMag, highlighting some of India's traditional roles to the east, and here's my 2011 essay in @TWQgw: csis.org/analysis/twq-w…

New📢from CAR: ‘Iranian drone motors traced to sanctioned Myanmar company’ Read CAR's latest #Myanmar Field Dispatch: conflictarm.org/iran-myanmar-p…

His name is Saleh Mohammadi, 19 years old wrestler. He was hanged today in Iran for the crime of protesting in last January and demanding💔

Kelley Currie appointed new UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar. This is fantastic news. Kelley has been a stalwart supporter of freedom in Myanmar for decades. This is no usual UN appointment. Super special, super good 💪❤️ ohchr.org/sites/default/…

Exactly right. It's time for the international community to piss or get off the pot. They should be saying that we will back the NUG and the democratic forces. That's what the Burmese people want! #WhatsHappeninginMyanmar

The @LowyInstitute's @TurnellSean was quoted in the @SCMPNews following the convening of Myanmar's new military-controlled parliament.👇scmp.com/week-asia/poli…

James Shwe - bravely on the mark as always:

And #Myanmar’s junta, so thoroughly indebted to Beijing, silently allows China’s theft.

Five ways to crack down on Myanmar’s junta: fdd.org/analysis/2026/…

250 years ago today Adam Smith gave the world a fantastic insight. That order, cooperation and prosperity are not ordered from above by priests or chiefs but emerge from the social interactions of ordinary people. It’s the most revolutionary and benign idea ever proposed.

Myanmar secretly imported jet fuel from Iran 3 times recently, analyst says asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/iran… via @NikkeiAsia