Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, crackdown on the 2020–2021 Thai protests calling for democratic reforms. By 2021, the Monarchy and the authoritarian government worsened a civil liberty by using a harsh Lèse-majesté law against activists, untrustful justice system, constrained freedom of expression, and lack of freedom of association. Corruption index was also downgraded from 36 to 35, ranking 110 from 180 countries. Equality Racial Racial discrimination is a prevalent problem in Thailand but is only infrequently publicly discussed. Thailand has made two submissions to the UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, with ongoing issues including government policy towards ethnic groups, especially the Thai Malays, and the country's lack of racial discrimination legislation. Sex To mark International Women's Day 2020 on 8 March, Protection International and a network of Thai grassroots organizations handed the government its "Women's Report Card". The government flunked in all major areas of rights protection. The assessment indicates that the government's promise to protect the rights of women is not only perceived as empty, but that the state itself is believed to be the perpetrator of violence against grassroots efforts by Thai women. Thailand is obligated under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to safeguard women's rights and to follow policy recommendations from the CEDAW committee to right wrongs. On 30 September 2020, 110 Chief Executives of Thailand-based companies signed Women’s Empowerment Principles by UN, committing to gender equality, equal pay and a safer workplace for women. The document was signed on the 10th anniversary of the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEP). The event was hosted by "WeEmpowerAsia". Privacy In late 2016, the Thai Hacktivist group accused the Thai military of buying decryption technology for monitoring messaging software and social network sites. In 2020, the security forces began using a facial recognition system linked to cellphones in southern Thailand; people who failed to register their phones were shut off from the system. Deputy-Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan announced that the 8,200 security cameras operating in the southern Thailand could be fitted with a facial recognition system and could be run with artificial intelligence (AI) in the future. In October 2020, a U.N. report accused the Thai military of spying on people using an AI-enabled CCTV system, collecting biometric information; The Thai military later denied it. In September 2021, Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, a Move Forward Party MP, released videos,