AHRC on Somsak, Community Radio, and Fa Diew Kan

On 29 April 2011, the Asian Human Rights Commission issued a statement, “THAILAND: Threats to academic reflect continuous decline in enjoyment of fundamental rights, emboldened military,” commenting on the string of events which took place in Thailand this last week. To recap: Somsak Jeamteerasakul was threatened, 13 red shirt community radio stations were raided, and the DSI began consolidating evidence about possibly criminal actions of people who posted to the Fa Diew Kan webboard.

PPT urges readers to read the entire AHRC statement, but wishes to excerpt this astute paragraph:

The Asian Human Rights Commission has for some time been warning the international human rights community that Thailand has been steadily regressing towards a new type of anti-human rights and anti-rule of law system in which the values associated with these concepts are advertised widely at home and abroad but in which state institutions are not only emptied of those values, but in fact are inverted to serve precisely the opposite ends from what they purport to serve. It is by now clear that the project towards this anti-human rights and anti-rule of law system in Thailand is well underway.

With yesterday’s arrest of Somyos Pruksakasemsuk, this project appears to be moving even more rapidly.

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