• Thailand has started the selection of new senators, marking the start of a contentious battle between progressives and conservatives.
• Hopeful candidates registered at district offices nationwide, competing for one of the 200 seats in the upper house of Parliament.
• The Senate, though less powerful than the House of Representatives, played a large role in blocking the formation of a new government.

Thailand on Monday officially began the selection of new senators, a process that has become part of an ongoing war between progressive forces hoping for democratic political reforms and conservatives seeking to keep the status quo.

Hopeful candidates headed to district offices across the country on the first day of registration to compete for one of the 200 seats in Parliament’s upper house.

The power of the Senate — although limited compared to the House of Representatives, which is tasked with law-making responsibilities — was demonstrated dramatically when it blocked the progressive party that won the most seats in last year’s election from forming a new government.

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The senators were able to do so because of the 2017 Constitution, passed under a military government, which requires the prime minister to be approved by a joint vote of the elected House and the Senate, which was appointed by the military regime.

The Move Forward Party was opposed by senators who disapproved of its vow to seek reforms of Thailand’s monarchy.

The process of selecting the new senators will include three rounds of voting: district, provincial and national.

Unlike the elected lower house legislators, the senators will be chosen by their fellow applicants, competing in 20 categories such as occupation or social position, including women, the elderly and the disabled.

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The final results are expected to be announced in July.

The selection process in the Constitution is so complicated and unclear that critics say it was deliberately designed to discourage public participation. Critics say the Constitution also allows the state bureaucracy to hold more power than directly elected political officeholders.

The new senators will no longer be able to take part in selecting a prime minister but will retain the power to approve legislation passed by the House.

They also have the power to select members of nominally independent regulatory bodies such as the Election Commission and the Constitutional Court, whose work has been widely seen as impeding efforts at political reform and crippling proponents with legal penalties, including prison.

The Senate’s votes are also required to amend the Constitution. The governing Pheu Thai party is pushing for a new charter to replace the 2017 one to facilitate certain reform efforts promised during the campaign.

Civil society groups have campaigned to raise public awareness and encourage those favoring democratic reforms to enter the Senate selection process.

Law reform advocate Yingcheep Atchanont of the group iLaw has been organizing public discussions on the importance of the Senate and workshops to help would-be applicants understand how the selection process works.

“We are telling people what to do if they want change. There have been calls in recent years to reduce the power of the Senate, to get rid of the Senate,” he said. “All of this can only happen if we can amend the Constitution, and we need enough votes from the senators for that.”

Candidates must be more than 40 years old and have more than 10 years of experience in their chosen occupational group, the latter provision not applying for those competing in one of the social identity groups. They also cannot campaign or do anything that can be interpreted as campaigning.

Even the Election Commission has acknowledged how complicated the process is but says it will be able to carry it out smoothly and transparently.

Purawich Watanasukh, a political science lecturer at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, said he thinks the complicated rules were intentionally designed to reduce public participation.

“This is the contest of the people to debug not just the Senate itself, but the Constitution, which would lead to a new political landscape in Thailand,” he said, “”It will be the next battleground between the progressive movement and the establishment.”

Islamabad, Pakistan — More than 300 Pakistani students have rushed home from Kyrgyzstan after a mob attacked hostels occupied by international students, injuring several of them, in the Central Asian nation’s capital Bishkek last week.

The violence broke out in the late hours of May 17, lasting for more than six hours, when hundreds of Kyrgyz people targeted hostels of international students, leaving more than 30 injured.

In a news conference on Sunday, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said Kyrgyz authorities had assured that the situation had been brought under control. He confirmed that “four or five” Pakistani students were injured in the violence but refuted online rumours of any deaths in the clashes.

Yet, Dar appeared to acknowledge the fears of the more than 11,000 Pakistani students in Kyrgyzstan, and their families, announcing that the government was arranging flights to bring back all students who wanted to return. The government, he said, would bear the expenses — though Pakistani students in Bishkek claimed they had to pay out of pocket for tickets back.

So what led to the violence, what happened on May 17, and what is the situation in Bishkek now?

What happened on the night of May 17?

Korish Malik, a 24-year-old Pakistani student pursuing a medical degree in Bishkek, recalled that he was in his hostel when, in the evening, student residents received a message from the hostel administration to stay indoors.

“The administration said there appears to be a threat to international students and they must refrain from leaving the premises of their hostels. But then we saw on TikTok that a large group of locals was gathering and marching towards our hostel,” he told Al Jazeera from Bishkek.

According to Kyrgyz media reports, a crowd of more than 700 people gathered outside the city’s VIP Hostel, which houses more than 800 international students, including Pakistanis, Indians, Egyptians and Bangladeshis.

Bilal Ishaq, a Pakistani medical student from Faisalabad who lives in a private apartment near the VIP Hostel, said he also received alerts on WhatsApp groups of fellow university students and the Pakistani student community, asking students to stay indoors. He saw a crowd chanting slogans pass his building, moving towards the hostel. The WhatsApp groups, he said, were buzzing with messages from terrified students.

Back at the VIP Hostel, Korish said, soon after students received the warning, police officials arrived and cordoned off the front gate of the building. But the crowd, he said, was large — too large, it turned out.

“While there were a lot of police officials there, they did not have any riot gear with them,” he said. “We were just asked to switch off lights, lock the doors, and put heavy objects in front of the doors of our room.”

Korish said the mob entered the hostel from the emergency exit at the back of the building and went on to indulge in vandalism.

Videos on social media show a huge number of people walking towards the hostel, hurling stones at the windows. Another video shows a door being broken, and glass shattered in the corridor of the hostel.

Korish said he and his three roommates hid in their room on the fourth floor of the five-storey building. They could hear loud noises from other floors, he said.

“The whole thing lasted for almost six to eight hours and when we eventually came out of the room, it was obvious that the mob was there to just cause chaos and spread terror,” Korish said.

What triggered the attack?

The May 17 violence followed a brawl between Kyrgyz locals and a group of international students four days earlier.

Hassan Aryani, a Pakistani student pursuing his degree in medicine, said the videos of the fight went viral among students in the city. Aryani, from Mardan in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said an “uneasy calm” hung over the student community in Bishkek after that clash.

On the night of May 17, that tension exploded in mob violence.

What were the international responses?

The embassies of India and Pakistan in Bishkek advised the students to stay indoors.

On the morning of May 18, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif posted on X that he was “deeply concerned over the situation of Pakistani students in Bishkek”.

Deeply concerned over the situation of Pakistani students in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. I have directed Pakistan’s Ambassador to provide all necessary help and assistance. My office is also in touch with the Embassy and constantly monitoring the situation.

— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) May 18, 2024

Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar also wrote on the social media platform that he was monitoring events in Bishkek, urging Indian students to stay in contact with the country’s embassy.

The Kyrgyz government said on the morning of May 18 that calm had returned to the capital.

How is the situation in Bishkek now?

Aryani, who is in his final year of college, said while Bishkek appears to be returning to a state of normalcy, he was not willing to stick around in the Kyrgyz capital at the moment.

He said he planned to get a ticket and fly back to Pakistan as soon as he could.

Korish, the third-year student, said he managed to step out of his hostel on Monday morning and could move around the city. But he also said he would travel back to Pakistan to allay his parents’ concerns.

Meanwhile, Kyrgyz authorities also do not want to take chances.

Rasul Abazbek uulu, the country’s deputy minister for education and science, announced in a news conference on Monday that foreign students had been allowed to attend classes online for a week.

The latest announcement helped students like Korish make up their minds about the decision to return home.

“My family is naturally very worried about the situation. But now since our college has said that classes will take place online, and the semester was to end anyway at the end of May, I have bought a ticket to go back tomorrow,” Korish said.

While the Pakistani embassy in Kyrgyzstan says it is in close contact with the local authorities to facilitate the students, several students in Bishkek accused the government of abandoning them. Though Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, has said the government would bear the cost of transporting students back, the three students Al Jazeera spoke to all said they had to pay themselves for their tickets. It is unclear if the government plans to subsequently reimburse students.

The Kyrgyz government said those involved in the violence had been arrested and it was in touch with different foreign governments whose nationals were affected by the incident.

“There are no seriously injured people among participants of the incident. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic did not receive any messages regarding injured foreign citizens. At the same time, the ministry urges representatives of the media and foreign diplomatic missions not to disseminate false and unverified information,” the Kyrgyz government said in a statement on May 18.

How many Pakistanis and Indians study in Kyrgyzstan and where?

More than 11,000 Pakistani students and 15,000 Indian students are pursuing degrees in medicine in Kyrgyzstan.

The attraction: a combination of reasonably high standards at Soviet-era medical colleges combined with tuition fees that are lower than most educational destinations in the West and even in their home countries. Kyrgyzstan medical colleges are also popular among students from several Arab and African nations.

Ishaq, the student from Faisalabad, said while his medical degree in Pakistan could cost him nearly eight to nine million rupees ($28,000 to $32,000), the corresponding amount in Kyrgyzstan was closer to four to five million rupees ($14,000 to $18,000).

“It was a lot more feasible to study here money-wise. But now, with the Pakistani currency devaluation, the cost for studies even here is increasing,” he added. The Pakistani rupee, which stood at 160 against the US dollar in December 2020, has since slipped by more than 70 percent to 278 rupees a dollar.

LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces a hearing Monday in the High Court in London that could end with him being sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition.

The outcome will depend on how much weight judges give to assurances U.S. officials have provided that Assange’s rights won’t be trampled if he goes on trial.

In March, two judges rejected the bulk of Assange’s arguments but said he could take his case to the Court of Appeal unless the U.S. guaranteed he would not face the death penalty if extradited and would have the same free speech protections as a U.S. citizen.

The court said that if Assange, who is an Australian citizen, couldn’t rely on the First Amendment then it was arguable his extradition would be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which also provides free speech and press protections.

The U.S. has provided those reassurances, though Assange’s legal team and supporters argue they are not good enough to rely on to send him to the U.S. federal court system.

The U.S., for example, said Assange could seek to rely on the rights and protections of the First Amendment but that a decision on that would ultimately be up to a judge. In the past, the U.S. said it would argue at trial that he was not entitled to the constitutional protection because he’s not a U.S. citizen.

“The U.S. has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited,” his wife, Stella Assange, said. “The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in U.S. prison for publishing award-winning journalism.”

Assange, 52, has been indicted on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of a trove of classified U.S. documents almost 15 years ago. American prosecutors allege that Assange encouraged and helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published.

His lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted, though American authorities have said any sentence would likely be much shorter.

Assange’s family and supporters say his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, including taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London from 2012 until 2019. He has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison.

Assange’s lawyers argued in February that he was a journalist who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sending him to the U.S., they said, would expose him to a politically motivated prosecution and risk a “flagrant denial of justice.”

The U.S. government said his actions went way beyond those of a journalist gathering information and put lives at risk in his bid to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents.

If Assange prevails Monday, it would set the stage for an appeal process likely to extend what has already been a long legal saga.

If the court accepts the word of the U.S., it would mark the end of Assange’s legal challenges in the U.K., though it’s unclear what would immediately follow.

His legal team is prepared to ask the European Court of Human Rights to intervene. But his supporters fear Assange could possibly be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal.

The court could also postpone issuing a decision.

If he loses in court, he still may have another shot at freedom.

President Joe Biden said last month that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the case and let Assange return to his home country.

Officials provided no other details but Stella Assange said it was “a good sign” and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the comment was encouraging.