HRW and orders

PPT draws attention to a statement by Thailand representative for Human Rights Watch, Sunai Pasuk in a Bangkok Post article on the murder of Fabio Polenghi.

Sunai is right when he says that “the finding highlighted the need to hold the military to account for the 2010 deaths…”. He’s also right to complain about the Yingluck Shinawatra Government apparent decision to not hold soldiers responsible for their actions in April and May 2010 is legal  travesty.

However, Sunai also makes a remarkable claim: “According to Human Rights Watch’s research, there was no order given to shoot unarmed civilians…”.

PPT has not heard such a claim previously and has not seen the “research” Sunai says his organization conducted.

As Andrew Spooner points out, this claim seems different from a recent HRW statement on this matter.

Sunai needs to make the “research” he cites available or explain his claim.

Updated: Spooner, Asia Sentinel and HRW

A couple of weeks ago we had a couple of posts (here and here) regarding Andrew Spooner’s short career at Asia Sentinel. One of the reasons he thinks he was shunted by Asia Sentinel was a story he did regarding Brad Adams at Human Rights Watch.

When Asia Sentinel showed Spooner the electronic door, they deleted this story. He has now re-posted it at his Asia Provocateur blog.

The post refers to a 2011 appearance by Adams at a meeting held in the UK Parliament. The post includes a video of Adams speaking at the parliament on arson in Bangkok in May 2010. Spooner questions Adams and HRW on their claims in 2011.

Update: A reader points out that former lese majeste political prisoner Joe Gordon has also posted a link to another Spooner post on HRW that caries a specific warning about HRW. Read Joe’s comment here and the Asia Provocateur article he refers to here.

Spooner’s ups and downs

Less than a week ago PPT posted that:

Andrew Spooner is back with a new post at Asia Sentinel. His blogs and posts have always been interesting and have often aroused some fiery debates and controversy.

In that very short period he posted three stories with Asia Sentinel. Remarkably, they pulled them all.

Andrew tells his story of censorship back at his old blog Asia Provocateur. It certainly seems that his post questioning Human Rights Watch’s Brad Adams was a catalyst, but maybe his earlier writing also caused Asia Sentinel’s drastic action. And here we are referring to posts that were completely unconnected with Asia Sentinel!

Updated: Spooner’s back

Andrew Spooner is back with a new post at Asia Sentinel. His blogs and posts have always been interesting and have often aroused some fiery debates and controversy.

In his new post, on the latest constitutional amendment posturings and shenanigans is a topic PPT will shortly post on too. However, we have to agree with his observation that:

The Abhisit [Vejjajiva]-led Democrats [he means the Democrat Party], still bereft of policy yet ripe with a flagrant disregard for democracy, preferring, as ever, the arm of the politicised judiciary rather than the will of the Thai people, appear desperate to bring down the democratically-elected Pheu Thai government.

And like Andrew, we often wonder why the media doesn’t ask more searching questions of the anti-democratic Democrat Party and Abhisit when they continually seek to bring down elected governments.

Update: In keeping with his controversial blogging of the past, in a new post at Asia Sentinel, Spooner targets Human Rights Watch and Brad Adams: Did Brad Adams and Human Rights Watch lie about the Red Shirts?

Intimidating the relatives of the dead

As we recently posted, Asia Provocateur (Andrew Spooner) has moved. His first post there deserves attention.

He reports that Phayao Akkahad, the mother of murdered medic Kamolkade Akkahad, and a campaigner for justice for her daughter and others killed during the events of April and May 2010, is receiving threats. It is explained that: “Payao told me this morning that she has been harassed continually since 2010 but that the tone of the harassment is becoming ‘more aggressive’.”

… with some callers even claiming to be Thai Army officers. The call I received on 3rd September threatened to murder my whole family if I didn’t stop pursuing justice for the death of my daughter. The second call was this morning [7th September], it sounded like the same man, and repeated the same threats. But this time he sounded very angry and became abusive.

 

Prayuth, snipers, “fake” ammo

The stories concocted by the military to deny its use of  snipers in April and May 2010 are now reaching such incredible levels that the Army is now destroying its very last few shreds of credibility. These most fantastical lies were apparently delivered to the Department of Special Investigation yesterday. But we turn first to Army boss General Prayuth Chan-ocha.

The Bangkok Post reports that the Army boss said “he would cooperate if summonsed by the DSI.’ That seems pretty straightforward. But not, it seems, in the mind of the distracted and angry general, for it is immediately added that he “would have to check whether he had an important engagement on that date…. If he could not make himself available, he would assign an officer to represent him…”.

That means Prayuth isn’t going to show up. This deliberate snub of the investigation shows how much Prayuth values impunity and sets up for a clash between military brass and government.

Now back to the two army snipers who showed up yesterday. Recall that the military has repeatedly denied the use of snipers, despite evidence to the contrary. 

The report states: “Sgt Saringkan Taweecheep and Sgt Kacharat Niamrod of the 5th Cavalry Battalion were accompanied by a lawyer Lt-Col Burin Thongprapai of the Judge Advocate General’s Department…. They did not speak to the press.” The Post tells us nothing more.

However, Andrew Spooner has blogged on other reports. He refers to a short report at TNN24. This report states in its headline that the two snipers admitted that the fired at the “red shirt mob” but used “fake bullets.” Yes, that is the story. These men were assigned to the Bon Kai area, with M-16s, but they used some kind of blank cartridge.

We don’t blame these low-ranking men for this lie. Obviously their bosses have ordered them to make this ridiculous claim. Anyone still believes this bunch of liars masquerading as state-funded military brass must have fairies at the bottom of the garden or are blinded by nonsense political ideology.

Updated: Suthep and Abhisit

Yesterday, in a brief update to an earlier post, PPT noted that former deputy premier and the man mostly responsible for security issues under Abhisit Vejjajiva’s royalist government Suthep babbled about his capacity for only telling the truth before his “talk,” over many hours, with the Department of Special Investigation. In fact, this is how the Bangkok Post reported him: “I’ll tell only the truth…”.

It seems it is difficult for Suthep to recognize the truth because even this statement of him telling the truth is revealed as a lie. Andrew Spooner has a post worth reading at Asian Correspondent, where Suthep is quoted by Matichon as saying that he had “never seen” video footage of troops “shooting at Red Shirt protesters in the afternoon of April 1oth 2010 at Kok Wua.” It is impossible that a man in his position could not have seen this widely available footage, much of it available on the very night of the events.

As for Abhisit, Spooner draws attention to a Thai Rath report where Abhisit is quoted as warning Yingluck Shinawatra that an elected government should not interfere with the Army or else she would end up like her brother, Thaksin, overthrown in a military coup. Abhisit must simply love that idea as the Army might even make him prime minister again.

Abhisit has said that his party plans to “grill” the government on “white lies” about the economy. We wonder if the Democrat Party would ever be able to ask itself about the myriad of lies it has told regarding the murderous events it unleashed in 2010. They were black lies.

Update: The Nation now carries an account of Suthep’s 10 hour “meeting” with DSI and investigators, including his claims about being blind to evidence. The Nation headline appears to misrepresent the story in that Suthep’s claim is that the Army didn’t “fire first.” This seems to be something of a shift in the Democrat Party story on events, and different from that by the Army boss; until now, the claim has been that the Army killed not a single person.

Further updated: Thammasat student gets summons on new lese majeste charge

At New Mandala, Somsak Jeamteerasakul comments on what he says is a new lese majeste charge. PPT reproduces it in full:

New LM case: a first year student at Thammasat charged

I regret to inform all NM readers of the second of three new LM cases I mention above (an earlier post in the same thread).

The first case, that of ajarn Suraphot Thawisak, had already been reported.

The accused in this case is Miss Natthakarn Sakuldarachat (her name at the time of the incident she is being charged with, she has since changed her name and surname to avoid harassment). At this moment she is a first year student in the Faculty of Social Welfare, Thammasat University.

During March-April 2010, at the height of the rallies and crackdown in Bangkok, Natthakarn or “Kan Thoob” the nickname she used online then, under which she is more widely known, had just finished her high school course, and had already passed the written exam to the Silpakorn University.

She posted some comments on her Facebook. Some online royalists saw them, quickly accusing her of LM, and widely attacking her on the internet and in “Yellow” media outlets.

These fierce attacks were such that the Dean of the Silapakorn Faculty (a known royalist) where Natthakarn “Kan Thoob” already passed the written exam, decided to reject her as new student, claiming she was not qualified because of her lack of loyalty to the monarchy.

A few weeks afterward, Natthakarn earned the right to take a oral exam at Kasetsart University. But the royalists hounded her, threatened to stage a protest at the university the day she was scheduled to appear for an oral exam. So Natthakarn decided to not show up and forfeited her right to study there.

Because of this, between mid-2010 and mid-2011, Natthakarn stayed at home, losing a whole year of study.

In mid 2011, i.e. at the start of this academic year, she passed the exam into the Faculty of Social Welfare, Thammasat University; although the administration knew of her case (Dr.Somkid, the university rector recently gave an interview about her case), she was more fortunate that here at Thammasat, they were more tolerant of differing opinion and accepted her without any incident. She already finished her first term as student … and is about to start the second term, postponed because of the flood until the middle of this month.

However, some royalists were not satisfied with just ruining her study for a year; unknown to Natthakarn, some of them apparently lodged LM complain about her case with the police.

At the end of last October, an LM charged and a summon had been issued to Natthakarn by the Bang Khen Police precinct. But because of the flood (the police precinct itself was flooded, and Natthakarn herself was back in her home province of Ratchaburi), the date she was summoned to appear was re-scheduled twice, finally being set at 10 am., Wednesday 11 January.

During the past two months (from the time Natthakarn received her summon), I together with some academic friends have tried to made informal contact with people in the authorities, urging them to reconsider Natthakarn’s case. After all, there is really little merit in the charge and still less any benefits to social and political order, but to no avail. So, Natthakarn is now officially the latest victim in this LM madness.

Update 1: At Prachatai, a commentator has pointed to  a report on this case in a Freedom House report:

In addition to legal repercussions, internet users who post controversial content can face societal harassment, termed “online witch hunts” by local observers. In a case reported in May 2010, an 18-year-old high school graduate became the subject of an online hate campaign over her alleged insult of the monarchy. The woman claimed that she was refused a place at Silpakorn University because of her Facebook postings, and expressed fears of a physical attack after her name and address were posted on public websites. She said that she faced hostility in her neighborhood as well as threatening leaflets and phone calls, and that police had refused to accept her complaint. [53] A network of users calling themselves the “Social Sanction” group has actively sought out individuals who have expressed views deemed to be disrespectful of the monarchy and launched online campaigns to vilify them. In some cases, these campaigns have sparked official investigations of the targeted individual.[54]

Notes:

[53]  Pravit Rojanaphruk, “18-Year-Old’s Facebook Posting Spurs ‘Hate Campaign,’” Nation, May 28, 2010, available on Prachatai at http://prachatai3.info/english/node/1864. One of the pages condemning the young woman can be found at http://www.khanpak.com/front-variety/variety-view.php?id=500

[54] Sawatree Suksri, Siriphon Kusonsinwut, and Orapin Yingyongpathana, Situational Report on Control and Censorship of Online Media, Through the Use of Laws and the Imposition of Thai State Policies (Bangkok: iLaw Project, 2010), http://www.boell-southeastasia.org/downloads/ilaw_report_EN.pdf, p. 14.

Update 2: Somsak Jeamteerasakul has added more details, again at New Mandala. We reproduce it below, with a bit of editing:

Natthakarn has decided to ask the police for postponement of her reporting for LM charge, from next Wednesday to sometime next month. The police agreed. The new date is tentatively set at 11 February.

The reason for the request is that she has upcoming final exams for last semester (held up from October because of flood) within a few days after next Wednesday. At first she thought she could manage the preparation for both the exam and the reporting to police within few days of one another, but apparently the latter interfered too much with her time and concentration for the exam preparation.

I’d like to emphasize that the LM charge against Natthakarn “Kan Thoob” stills stands, the summon still stands, only the date of her reporting to police has been rescheduled.

Somsak goes on to provide further details:

I’d like also to give some further info about Natthakarn, just checked with her. She was born in May 1992. This means that her posting on Facebook between March and April 2010, for which she is being charged, happened when she was not quite 18 years old. I am not quite sure about the law on this, but as I understand it, should the case come to court, she could be tried as a minor, presumably even in juvenile court (?).

In any case, this fact (and the fact that even now she has not yet reached 20 years), makes the charge all the more depressing. While nobody of any age (or political persuasions – not even Sondhi Lim), should be charged with LM, in the case like Natthakarn’s, the police should have exercised good sense and should not have laid a formal charge against her. At most they should have contacted her, perhaps with her parents and her university supervisors, to warn her of potentials danger of posting ambiguous messages online. They should have let her get on with her life and study.

In addition, at New Mandala, Andrew Spooner points out that he wrote about this case a few months ago. His post then began:

Back in 2010, as the Thai people were busy counting the corpses resulting from former-PM Abhisit’s Bangkok massacre, a young 17-year-old girl left a message on her public Facebook page. The message was a rebuke to Thailand’s royalty that was so mild it didn’t even attract a charge under Thailand’s draconian lese majeste. But what it did attract was something far more sinister.

It might have been sinister then. It is far worse now. Lese majeste madness indeed.

Thailand’s extreme lese majeste law used to sentence another victim

If anyone needed further proof that Thailand’s lese majeste law and its closely related Computer Crimes Act were amongst the most extreme and repressive sets of laws it comes today with the sentencing of Ampol Tangnopakul.

Ampol is 61 years and ill and yet was given 20 years on charges of sending text messages. There remains real doubt that Ampol even had the skills to send such messages. Ampol denied the charges, saying he was unfamiliar with the text message function on mobile phones and did not know the recipient of the message. But never mind, the royalist courts have locked him up, probably until he dies.

He was reported arrested by Crime Suppression Division police on 3 August 2010 for sending SMS messages considered offensive to the monarchy to several important people, including a secretary to then Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. He was charged under the draconian laws that protect the monarchy from any comment that others may deem as critical. His sentence came without Ampol even being in court as he sat in the flooded Bangkok Remand Prison.

Ampol’s cruel sentence, some say, may allow a quick pardon on the king’s birthday. If there was some compassion for this old and poor man, perhaps that is the best case to be made for such a spiteful sentence. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for Lung Ampol.

One aspect of the case that deserves attention is the Central Bureau of Investigation claim that the messages were “inappropriate and considered insulting to the monarchy and have upset the recipients…”. The delicate soul who was offended by messages, said to be about the queen, was a personal secretary to Abhisit. We can only assume Abhisit also felt “upset.” In fact, the Democrat Party leader and his party were using lese majeste to repress political opponents.

Nothing has changed much since then. As Andrew Spooner points out, the Democrat Party is hard at work attempting to ensure that even more people are put in jail for lese majeste. Their efforts have now become quite maniacal.

Of course the increased pressure on the government to throw people in political prisons is a part of a broad and apparently coordinated strategy to link with the People’s Alliance for Democracy to show the government is disloyal to the throne. To any normal person, the idea of using Jurassic-era and anti-democratic laws would seem ridiculous, but not to this anti-democratic Democrat Party.

But readers will be pleased to know that the terrible sentence has even motivated the normally lese majeste somnolent Benjamin Zawacki at Amnesty International, who is said to have “condemned” the verdict, “accusing the government of suppressing freedom of expression.” He claimed that the current law “form and usage [of the law] place the country in contravention of its international legal obligations.” Zawacki added that Ampol “is a political prisoner.”

Of course, as PPT has pointed out for several years, every lese majeste victim is a political prisoner. Sitting around waiting until each one is sentenced before making a statement, as Zawacki appears to do, means that human rights organizations are complicit in the torture-like treatment that lese majeste victims are subjected to.

While Ampol’s case has had little attention to date, the over-the-top sentence has already gained considerable media attention in just a few hours. Here are some of the stories:

Man sentenced to 20 years for sending text messages deemed offensive to Thai queen

Washington Post

BANGKOK — A Thai criminal court sentenced a 61-year-old man to 20 years in prison Wednesday for sending text messages deemed offensive to the country’s queen. The court found Amphon Tangnoppaku guilty on four counts under lese majeste and computer …

Man sentenced to 20 years for insulting Thai queen

eTaiwan News

AP Thailand’s criminal court has sentenced a 61-year-old man to 20 years in prison for sending text messages deemed insulting to the country’s queen. The court found Amphon Tangnoppaku guilty Wednesday of violating the kingdom’s lese majeste and …

Thailand lese majeste man jailed for 20 years

BBC News

A man who sent text messages deemed insulting to Thailand’s monarchy has been jailed for 20 years. Ampon Tangnoppakul, 61, was convicted of sending four messages last year to an official working for then Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. …

Thai Man Receives 20 Year Sentence for Insulting Monarchy

Voice of America (blog)

A court in Thailand has sentenced a man to 20 years in prison for sending text messages that authorities say were “insulting” to the country’s royal family. Bangkok’s Criminal Court on Wednesday found 61-year-old Ampon Tangnoppakul guilty of sending …

20 Yrs Of Jail For Antimonarchy SMS In Thailand

Agenzia Giornalistica Italia

(AGI) Bangkok – A man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for texting insults against the monarchy Thailand. Ampon Tangnoppakuln was found guilty of lese-majesty. In May 2010 he texted the private secretary of then-prime minister, …

20 years’ jail for Thai anti-royal texts: lawyer

AFP

BANGKOK — A Thai court on Wednesday sentenced a man to 20 years in prison for sending text messages deemed insulting to the monarchy, his lawyer said, under the kingdom’s strict lese-majeste laws. Ampon Tangnoppakul, 61, was found guilty of four counts …

Man gets 20 years for insulting Thai king

Herald Sun

A THAI court has sentenced a man to 20 years in prison for sending text messages deemed insulting to the monarchy, …

 

Updated: Politicizing a national disaster II

In addition to the comments in PPT’s earlier post, there are a couple of stories that reflect on the way that the attacks on Yingluck Shinawatra reflect on the broader political conflict in Thailand.

Michael Montesano has a story at the Jakarta Globe that reflects on how the “floods have triggered a political and ideological contest concerning the role of the Thai monarchy.” He adds that “Thais unreconciled to the victory of Yingluck’s Red-Shirt-supported Pheu Thai Party in July’s polls have in recent weeks tried to turn her government’s current struggle to partisan political advantage. ” He notes how they have used fake and dated photos to convince themselves that the palace is hard at work on floods.

Related, it is interesting that Army boss Prayuth Chan-ocha seems to have become official spokesperson for the monarchy. We noted his earlier comments here. Now, at The Nation, it is he that tells the media that “Their Majesties the King and Queen have been concerned about the plight of flood victims…”, noting that the king is monitoring the floods. Why wouldn’t he be?

Prayuth then goes on to say that he is “pledging full military efforts on rescue and recovery.” What were they doing before this? Half-hearted efforts? Prayuth adds that “Their Majesties told the soldiers to take good care of the people…”. In Bangkok, yellow-shirt speak, that is saying (again) that Prayuth and the military’s loyalty is not to the government, but to the monarchy. Prayuth seems back on political course, posing the monarchy-army alliance against Puea Thai. The watery coup idea holds water, so to speak.

Andrew Spooner has a cheeky post that asks a relevant question of the HRW staffer in Thailand who seems to have a political concern about portable toilets….

For those saying that the government has been partisan in its efforts, this story is a kind of mild antidote.

Update: A reader draws our attention to a story in The Nation:

The military will deploy another 50,000 troops, 1,000 vehicles and 1,000 boats to fight off floodwaters from Bangkok, the Defence Ministry said yesterday.

The First Army Area will defend Bangkok, and the Navy Siriraj Hospital, where His Majesty the King is receiving treatment, and Thawee Watthana district….

The Air Force will be in charge of Don Mueang airport compound and the government Flood Relief Operations Centre, said ministry spokesman Colonel Thanathip Sawangsaeng.

There are around 10,000 troops already deployed throughout the country, he said. Military reservists may be mobilised as extra helpers to assist regular troops when needed.

It does seem seem odd that the report only has 10,000 troops in places other than Bangkok. Given that almost all deaths and injuries have been beyond Bangkok and that the flood in Bangkok will, in all likelihood, be less than further north, the question of priorities needs to be raised.