the result reverse culture. ready for. the real is no stranger to artificial. really connected to life. the prize winning documentary from the forest starts people first on t w. this is d w news asia coming up on the program final campaign rallies kick off in thailand as a divided country heads to the ballot box but some claim the vote may be rigged plus. as japan is slammed for its transgender laws we speak to a tokyo based activist who's fighting to keep her marriage status.

i'm melissa chan welcome to news asia good to have you with us voters in thailand will head to the polls on sunday after five years of military rule a decade ago major street protests divided thailand on the one side where the yellow shirts backing the military and the monarchy on the other side the red shirts they backed the former prime minister who was overthrown in a coup after years of turmoil the army seized power in two thousand and fourteen and its leader is now running against a slate of old and new faces sunday's vote is being framed as a contest between democrats and dictators bastian heartache has been on the campaign trail. at home drawing is something of a political rock star tyler. the son of one of the.

country's richest families he set up his own political party a year ago. his declared goal and military rule bring back democratic rights and create a more equal society. these ideas resonate especially with young voters. this is the first time i get to fight i'm part of the new generation and when i see china taiwan i believe he's also from the new generation. he has good policies and i believe he can make things happen on. my behalf he has good ideas beliefs and equality of all human beings and he's determined. no region will send more employees to the new parliament than thailand's poor rural northeast. most voters here are still stand supporters of the

previous democratic government that the country's military junta ousted in two thousand and fourteen who has political arm the polling structure and party has been working hard at making inroads here the military government has been trying to win over voters in this part of the country basically by handing out money many of the people we spoke to here however told us they still support parties affiliated with former prime ministers tocsin seen a wife and his sister yingluck but few are willing to speak out on camera they say they're afraid. afraid of him highland military dictator general prayuth chan or cha he took power by force in two thousand and fourteen to end the political turmoil of highland had been caught up in for more than a decade since then he's been trying to present himself as the people's friendly uncle. i think the country has become

a lot more peaceful there are no riots no fighting that's what i like everything is quiet. but to achieve that. suppressed democratic rights jailed critics and tried to take out political adversaries. now he wants to rebranded from dictator to democratically elected prime minister with the help of a constitution that gives him a very undemocratic and. i think you can say that the home to has one in terms of electoral engineering they have engineers the cost of tuition they've engineer political party laws and of course they control the monopoly of violence they control the military ok but what the hotel doesn't have is control over people's emotions over voters who really want change so the

military's party is trying hard to sell a dictator who has been mostly preoccupied with consolidating his power as an agent of renewal. i bought it i just stand by just going on last ten years ago then it's something change so thailand has to cool keep going so we're not stuck with. past so everybody wants a new one was a new common one a new policy with new politics the question is will thai voters be happy with the result these heavily skewed elections produce and what will happen if not. for large scale protests to a counter by a rival military faction everything is in the cards pile and could be in for turbulent times yet again. the fight for l.g.b. t.q. rights that stands for the rights of lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer are

questioning is a global movement and today i want to take a closer look at the t.v. part of the l g b t q t for transgender you can see the community's flag behind me the term describes people whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at their birth their visibility is increasing around the world but they still face many challenges in everyday life including in asia this week human rights watch released a report critical of japan in particular its policy to require transgender people to undergo sterilization if they want their new gender identity legally recognized . news asia has the story of an american woman whose personally experienced the impact of japan's. policies and who in a society that values conformity is trying to move the needle on both same sex

marriage and gender equality. this tall texan has made japan her home a country where she doesn't quite fit in ellen is transgender and lives in tokyo with her wife majority and their three children she kicked off her transition last year officially changing her gender name in the u.s. but she's hit a brick wall getting japan to recognize her new identity after officials realized she was married. in our case we've been married already for twenty years almost so our marriage is on the books so we will merge but it's become a same sex marriage so that's that's a problem for them. ellen's case is a direct challenge to japan's prohibition on same sex marriage. well but the government's position at the moment their options are to say ok we allow your marriage in which case they have a set a precedent for same sex marriage or to say no we don't allow your marriage in

which case they have to unilaterally cancel our marriage without our consent and it's not clear that they even have the legal capacity to do that. the family remains close as their status hangs in legal limbo mcgorry insists changes to their family unit shouldn't spell it and we are. quite aware that not still at this time with a call and she is an amazing parent to the children and an amazing partner and she is someone who i admire very much i love this so much that the mother of this just because her love relationship is complicated it doesn't mean that we need to divorce that. a permanent resident when doesn't risk deportation if her marriage status changes but she may face of legal battle to keep the family union she entered into. in the studio now is ellen mccready herself i want to thank you for joining us tell us a little bit more about your case so it's been sitting in the ministry of justice

for months now and so i was contacted recently by a japanese politician who took an interest in the case and she told me that there are two camps within the ministry one camp wants to just say ok marriage is fine same sex marriage president obama the other camp apparently is considering just disavowing my gender transition entirely so that would be a solution for them in the sense that it wouldn't get same sex marriage anymore right yeah very interesting now i want to talk a little bit about your personal situation though since you transitioned what are some of the challenges you faced including things you didn't expect yes so it's. it's been surprisingly easy perhaps in japan so well in the sense that on a daily level people are quite friendly people are polite there's no aggression it's not like being you know you don't have a fear of violence in general but. you know some people have moved away

from you some people have disappeared but overall it's been very easy and very friendly and some people have moved away so i want to follow up on it to talk about your family that we saw in the report how supportive looks like very supportive your wife has been and there was one son that we saw but you have two other children yes so so one that one of my children is living with his grandmother in the u.s. going to high school and my middle son was extremely supportive he wrote me a beautiful better after i told him about my transition and he said. he said in the letter literally he said ok after you told me a about this and you left my room i just stood there for twenty minutes and cried because i just thought how hard it must have been for you and i was like. so it was really created everyone's been really wonderful so your media soundly it's been really good and very supportive now going back to the the laws in the regulations in japan i want to understand

something better apparently if you switch genders in japan there is a requirement that you must be sterilized first of all explain what the thinking is behind that is it just from like people thinking that a person assigned to another gender shouldn't have the opposite genders reproductive organs what's going on there and does that affect you with your case so if you ask me to explain the thinking that's a bit hard because it seems completely irrational to me so the full set of requirements as you probably know is that you have to be sterilized you cannot have children under twenty you cannot be married and of course you also have to have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and so on right ok so the marriage criterion and the child criterion seems to relate to their rationale is about maintaining family stability. the first sterilization requirement i also take to have something to do

with that but i think the whole thing is really about the family registry system there ok and then in terms of the impact on you and your and your case then can you explain a little bit more so that the option of the japanese government to disallow my gender transition comes directly from that since i haven't had the surgery and i have minor children obviously and i married i would literally satisfy one of the it's so they could just in principle say ok your country does what it does but we don't do that we don't recognize it that's very fascinating and very very quickly how long do you think it'll take before this gets resolved in any way i literally have no idea but i hope soon ellen mccready thank you very much thank you thank you for having me. that's quite extraordinary for more stories and news head to our web site that's d.w. dot com ford slash asia and you can check us out on facebook as well we leave you

now with pictures from thailand as voters and politicians prepare for the big election on sunday we'll see you next time. sometimes books are more exciting than a real life. in terms. of. what if there's no escape. ritualised. current st. patrick's. coming presidential. orders from. the rebel army and to the going to be for. wasn't when

full in the rooms there wasn't room closed to be used in toto me to reinforce a controversial leader whose success is beyond question. the wanted tragedy starts able for on t w. as. it's left nothing but a trail of destruction the i.m.f. has dispatched a team to mozambique to help the economy recover one week after a side clone a day first made landfall. also on the show city life can be expensive but did you know that nairobi. africa's most expensive city according to one international study now correspondent there tells us more. and how chinese traditional nets in is threatening the traditions of

a small island community in eastern kenya. hello welcome to business africa i'm monica jones and berlin good to have you with us and we're starting with news from south east africa the international monetary fund has sent a team to mozambique it's aimed at helping the economy recover in the wake of a devastating cyclone a day hundreds of thousands have been affected by the disaster which left a trail of destruction across southeast africa hitting some of the poorest countries in the world. like loney die made landfall near mozambique's fourth largest city bear on march fourteenth green devastating winds of one hundred fifty millimeters of rain in a single day rescuers are now struggling to bring aid to survivors many stranded on car gauger on roofs or stuck in trees the flood zone covers a vast area three thousand square kilometers. the i.m.f. has promised to help mozambique as well as other countries in the region. are smaller than.