Hunting red shirt backers II: Suthachai Yimpraserts’ case

Suthachai Yimprasert

As most PPT readers will know, Assistant Professor Suthachai Yimprasert of the Department of History at Chulalongkorn University, has been taken into military custody.

He is now reported to be on a hunger strike because the authorities will not allow him access to his books, the radio or TV.

He is a political prisoner.

The administration of Chulalongkorn University is so dominated by yellow-shirted academics that nothing can be expected of them in defending their academic. The National Human Rights Commission is a miserable failure and headed by a Chulalongkorn yellwow-shirt, so nothing of substance can be expected of them.

PPT seriously doubts that any international human rights organization has the Thailand track-record to suggest that it will support Suthachai. Think of Amnesty International’s pathetic record and wonder why they are not acting to defend Suthachai publicly.

In other words, the professor is on his own, and will have to rely on the support of friends – and they’ll be worried that they can also be accused or arrested – and international colleagues.

Raise Suthachai’s case everywhere. Write to the prime minister in Thailand. Write to the foreign minister. Both are part of the system of accusers, but the international voice of condemnation needs to be heard. This page may assist.

Just after PPT wrote and scheduled this post, we saw the Bangkok Post on the case. It reports that the “Criminal Court agreed on Friday to extend [his] … detention … for another seven days, despite his hunger strike over alleged CRES human rights violations.”

Under the emergency decree,  he may be detained for 30 days.

Suthachai and the editor of  Red News, Somyos Prueksakasemsuk are being held at the Adisorn army base in Saraburi. Suthachai’s lawyer said “no charges were pressed against them, and no [p]roper inquiry session had been arranged during their detention.”

Only Suthachai’s wife and lawyer have been permitted to visit him. The lawyer said that the “CRES has seized the teaching materials that he brought along to prepare university classes. Mr Suttachai has no contact with  the outside world, either through mobile phone, internet, telephone, newspaper or TV…”.

Suthachai’s “hunger strike was in protest against the violation of his basic human rights because he was  detained without any questioning or charges…”.

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