BANGKOK (AP) — An Australian man arrested in Thailand on a defamation charge that he says originated with Malaysia's government said Thursday he is a victim of transnational repression, in which Southeast Asia countries cooperate in seizing dissidents or critics of third countries.
Independent scholar and writer Murray Hunter, 66, told The Associated Press that he believes he was improperly arrested by Thai police Monday for articles he had written about Malaysia in 2024 on his online Substack newsletter, and he questioned how his case falls under Thai jurisdiction.
Concerns about cross-border repression have been documented by rights groups and U.N. rights experts, who in a July report expressed “profound concern regarding the reported rise in transnational repression ... to deter, silence or punish dissent, criticism or human rights advocacy.”
The report to the U.N. Human Rights Council said suspected human rights violations also included serious claims of extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances implicating Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, allegations that have been denied by all those countries.
Hunter, who lives in southern Thailand, was arrested at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong. He was jailed overnight and then released on 20,000 baht ($620) bail, pending a Nov. 17 court appearance. The charge of defamation by publication against him is punishable by a maximum prison term of two years and a fine of 200,000 baht ($6,180).
Hunter blamed the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission for lodging the criminal defamation charge against him. A copy of his charge sheet seen by AP identified that agency as the victim in the case but said the complainant was a person staying at a hotel in Bangkok whom it did not name.
The commission said it lodged police reports in 2024 in both Malaysia and Thailand regarding material by Hunter about Malaysian institutions and filed a civil lawsuit against him in Malaysia. It said in the statement it understood he had been arrested by Thai authorities for non-compliance with summonses they had issued in connection with their investigation. It also said it would abide by the decisions of the Thai justice system.
Asked about the summonses, Hunter said one was delivered to his home when he was on an extended stay in another region of Thailand and the local police where he was staying advised him the copy forwarded to him by a neighbor appeared to be a scam.
The Thai Foreign Ministry said it could not immediately comment.
A joint statement issued Wednesday by Malaysia’s Centre for Independent Journalism and the free speech organization PEN Malaysia said that if the commission was involved in the arrest, seeking a cross-border arrest for political criticism goes against the spirit of Malaysia’s constitution and its protections for freedom of expression.
“Although the Government may reference legal grounds under current restrictive laws, using Thai public authorities to silence dissenting speech would be an overreach of its powers and jurisdiction, and weaken constitutional guarantees,” it said.
Hunter said his case should be cause for concern, because “if this can happen to me, any journalists now, where a body in another country makes a complaint against them to the Thai police, could have the same consequences and be picked off a flight and put in a lockup.”
Australian Murray Hunter, an independent scholar and writer who lives in southern Thailand, talks to The Associated Press during an interview in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Australian Murray Hunter, an independent scholar and writer who lives in southern Thailand, talks to The Associated Press during an interview in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.
But he'd be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that started because of federal officers the president already has sent to the area — one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen.
The law, which allows presidents to use the military domestically, has been invoked on more than two dozen occasions — but rarely since the 20th Century's Civil Rights Movement.
Federal forces typically are called to quell widespread violence that has broken out on the local level — before Washington's involvement and when local authorities ask for help. When presidents acted without local requests, it was usually to enforce the rights of individuals who were being threatened or not protected by state and local governments. A third scenario is an outright insurrection — like the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Experts in constitutional and military law say none of that clearly applies in Minneapolis.
“This would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we've never seen,” said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. “None of the criteria have been met.”
William Banks, a Syracuse University professor emeritus who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, said the situation is “a historical outlier” because the violence Trump wants to end “is being created by the federal civilian officers” he sent there.
But he also cautioned Minnesota officials would have “a tough argument to win” in court, because the judiciary is hesitant to challenge “because the courts are typically going to defer to the president” on his military decisions.
Here is a look at the law, how it's been used and comparisons to Minneapolis.
George Washington signed the first version in 1792, authorizing him to mobilize state militias — National Guard forerunners — when “laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.”
He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes, including liquor levies and property taxes that were deemed essential to the young republic's survival.
Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter “insurrection or obstruction” of laws. Nunn said the early statutes recognized a fundamental “Anglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs” except “as a tool of last resort.”
The president argues Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Customs and Border Protection officers. Yet early statutes also defined circumstances for the law as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement.
There are between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, compared to Minneapolis, which has fewer than 600 police officers. Protesters' and bystanders' video, meanwhile, has shown violence initiated by federal officers, with the interactions growing more frequent since Renee Good was shot three times and killed.
“ICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,” Nunn said. “But what they're doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior” that goes beyond their legal function and “foments the situation” Trump wants to suppress.
“They can't intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,” he said, adding that the Constitutional requirement for a president to “faithfully execute the laws” means Trump must wield his power, on immigration and the Insurrection Act, “in good faith.”
Courts have blocked some of Trump's efforts to deploy the National Guard, but he'd argue with the Insurrection Act that he does not need a state's permission to send troops.
That traces to President Abraham Lincoln, who held in 1861 that Southern states could not legitimately secede. So, he convinced Congress to give him express power to deploy U.S. troops, without asking, into Confederate states he contended were still in the Union. Quite literally, Lincoln used the act as a legal basis to fight the Civil War.
Nunn said situations beyond such a clear insurrection as the Confederacy still require a local request or another trigger that Congress added after the Civil War: protecting individual rights. Ulysses S. Grant used that provision to send troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who ignored the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights statutes.
During post-war industrialization, violence erupted around strikes and expanding immigration — and governors sought help.
President Rutherford B. Hayes granted state requests during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed, leading to dozens of deaths. Grover Cleveland granted a Washington state governor's request — at that time it was a U.S. territory — to help protect Chinese citizens who were being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed.
Federal troops helped diffuse each situation.
Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes that federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed — and Minnesota leaders say their cities would be stable and safe if Trump's feds left.
As Grant had done, mid-20th century presidents used the act to counter white supremacists.
Franklin Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit — more than double the U.S. forces in Minneapolis — after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials asked for FDR's aid after riots escalated, in part, Nunn said, because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police.
Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent authorities to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied U.S. civil rights law and fomented violence themselves.
Dwight Eisenhower enforced integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith's admission and then pre-emptively to ensure no violence upon George Wallace's “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” to protest the University of Alabama's integration.
“There could have been significant loss of life from the rioters” in Mississippi, Nunn said.
Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace's troopers attacked marchers' on their first peaceful attempt.
Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated. The same thing happened in Los Angeles in 1992, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked.
Riots erupted after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force despite video showing them beating a Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush for support.
Bush authorized about 4,000 troops — but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. He promised to “restore order” yet directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation, and two of the L.A. officers were later convicted in federal court.
President Donald Trump answers questions after signing a bill that returns whole milk to school cafeterias across the country, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
