The line in the sand on human rights

There’s an interesting and revealing report at the Bangkok Post. Interesting and significant for the admissions made and revealing of the admission on the limits of human rights. The report draws on a U.N. Human Rights Council report (clicking downloads a large PDF) and the associated Thai government response.

The UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression report is here. (PPT will spend some time on this document over the next few days as it includes information on nearly 60 lese majeste/computer crimes cases, including cases against 11 foreign nationals.)

The Thai government’s response is here.

The admissions made:

Thailand has conceded to issues raised by a UN special rapporteur as alleged malpractice regarding freedom of expression and migrant labour, and to the fatal harassment of human rights defenders.

The admission is in a document included in 108 pages of communications involving special rapporteurs of the United Nations recently made available ahead of the 23rd session of the UN Human Rights Council.

This admission appears to PPT to be a significant advance as an admission could, with the right political will, lead to some policy changes.

The limits:

On page 24, there is a short reply dated Dec 26, 2012 from the Thai government to UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue to questions about cases in Thailand.

Thailand replied that the 2007 Constitution of Thailand contains the clause: The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated.

No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action, the official reply from Thailand said.

It is the reply that sets out the “reasons” for limiting freedom of speech related to the monarchy that draws a line in the sand.

While admitting that Article 112 was:

largely applied in a manner and with a frequency which raises some concerns. The severity of the punishments received, the absence of exemptions on constitutional or legal grounds, and the force it exerts over the judicial system adds to the chilling effect on free speech…,

the state defends all of this in the name of protecting a”special” monarchy. It is done with a quasi-religious zeal and rhetoric.

PPT plans more posts on these related reports.

Regularizing restrictions on free speech

As many readers will know, the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) is a non-governmental organization with general consultative status at the U.N.’s Human Rights Council. It makes regular reports to the HRC on Thailand. Find PPT’s earlier posts on these reports here.

Below,we reproduce the latest report by the ALRC:

A written statement submitted by

THAILAND: The regularization of the crisis of freedom of expression

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 22, 2013

ALRC-CWS-23-05-2013

Language(s): English only

HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

Twenty-third session, Agenda Item 3, General Debate

1. The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) wishes to bring the regularization of the crisis of freedom of expression in Thailand to the attention of the Human Rights Council. This statement is the sixth on this topic that the ALRC has submitted to the Council since May 2011. During the seventeenth session of the Council in May 2011, the ALRC highlighted the rise in the legal and unofficial use of Article 112 of the Criminal Code and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act (CCA) to constrict freedom of expression and intimidate citizens critical of the monarchy (A/HRC/17/NGO/27). During the nineteenth session in February 2012, the ALRC detailed some of the threats faced both by those who have expressed critical views of the monarchy, both legal and extralegal, as well as those who have expressed concern about these threats (A/HRC/19/NGO/55). During the twentieth session in June 2012, the ALRC raised concerns about the weak evidentiary basis of convictions made under Article 112 and the CCA (A/HRC/20/NGO/37) and the concerning conditions surrounding the death in prison custody of Amphon Tangnoppakul on 8 May 2012, then serving a 20-year sentence for four alleged violations of Article 112 and the CCA (A/HRC/20/NGO/38). During the twenty-second session in March 2013, the ALRC highlighted the January 2013 conviction under Article 112 of human rights defender and labour rights activist Somyot Prueksakasemsuk (A/HRC/22/NGO/44).

2. In the prior five statements, the ALRC has been concerned with the urgency of the threats posed by the constriction of freedom of expression. Particularly in the context of the 19 September 2006 coup and the violent clashes between state security forces and citizens in April-May 2010, the protection of fundamental human rights is necessary to foster the rule of law and democratization. The ALRC is again raising the issue of freedom of expression with the Council because the constriction of speech in the name of protecting the monarchy and national security has now become regularized. This is no longer an unusual breach of human rights, but one that has become constitutive of political and social life in Thailand. The entrenchment of the violation of freedom of expression threatens to normalize an additional series of human rights violations, such as the routine denial of bail to individuals awaiting trial and appeal, the provision of substandard medical care in prisons, and the use of secrecy to restrict the openness of trials and public information about ongoing cases.

3. Article 112 criminalizes criticism of the monarchy and mandates that, “Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.” The 2007 CCA, which was promulgated as part of Thailand’s compliance as a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, has been used to target web editors and websites identified as critical of the monarchy or dissident in other ways. The CCA provides for penalties of up to five years per count in cases which are judged to have involved the dissemination or hosting of information deemed threatening to national security, of which the institution of the monarchy is identified as a key part. While Article 112 law has been part of the Criminal Code since the last major revision in 1957, available statistics suggest that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of complaints filed since the 19 September 2006 coup; how often these complaints become formal charges and lead to prosecutions is information that the Government of Thailand has failed to provide up to this point. The CCA has often been used in combination with Article 112 in the four years since its promulgation; similar to the use of Article 112, complete usage information has not been made available by the Government of Thailand. This failure to provide information itself raises many unanswered questions about the use of both laws to diminish space for freedom of expression through the use of secrecy and creation of uncertainty.

4. At present, there are 6 persons known to be serving prison terms for alleged violations of Article 112 and/or the CCA and 1 person behind bars while awaiting trial.

a. Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul was convicted of violations of Article 112 related to 55 minutes of speech and sentenced to 18 years in prison on 28 August 2009. Following examination of her case by the Constitutional Court, her sentenced was reduced to 15 years in December 2011.

b. Wanchai Sae Tan was convicted of violations of Article 112 related to leaflets he made and distributed and sentenced to 15 years in prison on 26 February 2010.

c. Thanthawut Taweewarodomkul was convicted of violations of Article 112 and the CCA related to his work maintaining the NorPorChorUSA website and sentenced to 13 years in prison on 15 March 2011.

d. Surachai Sae Dan (Danwattananusorn) was convicted of a series of violations of Article 112 related to political speeches he made and sentenced to a total of 12.5 years in prison in a series of cases in 2012.

e. Somyot Prueksakasemsuk was convicted of violations of Article 112 related to his work in editing and publishing Voice of Taksin magazine, which was deemed to include two anti-monarchy articles (written by someone else) and sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison on 23 January 2013 (10 years on Article 112-related charges and 1 year related to a prior case).

f. Ekachai Hongkangwan was convicted of violations of Article 112 related to selling VCDs of an ABC Australia documentary and copies of WikiLeaks material and sentenced to 3 years and 4 months in prison on 28 March 2013.

g. Yutthapoom (last name withheld) has been held in the Bangkok Remand Prison since 19 September 2012 on charges of violating Article 112.

5. While there have been several other convictions in recent years, these 7 cases stand out because the individuals involved have repeatedly been denied bail, always on the grounds that their crimes are too grave a threat to national security to permit even temporary release. Although some individuals were granted bail while awaiting trial, upon conviction they were all denied bail, despite ongoing processes of appeal. This is in contravention to Article 9(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Thailand is a state party, which specifies: “Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial, at any other stage of the judicial proceedings, and, should occasion arise, for execution of the judgment.” Bail is routinely granted during trials and after conviction while awaiting appeal in cases of committing violent crimes in Thailand, but routinely denied for cases involving freedom of speech.

6. As highlighted by the May 2012 death in custody of Amphon Tangnoppakul, who was then serving a 20-year sentence for allegedly sending 4 anti-monarchy SMS messages, which the ALRC commented on in a June 2012 submission to the Council (A/HRC/20/NGO/38), the prison healthcare system in Thailand falls well beneath the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. As part of the testimony provided during the April 2013 postmortem inquest hearings into Amphon’s death in custody, as reported by Prachatai, Amphon reported to fellow prisoners that when he went to seek treatment at the prison hospital, physicians made contemptuous comments about his alleged defamation of the monarchy. This goes far beyond institutional failure to meet minimum standards and indicates that physicians have become partial and may not provide an equal level of care to all prisoners.

7. Prosecutions under Article 112 and the CCA are surrounded by several different kinds of secrecy. The first is that the total number of charges and prosecutions under these two measures has not been made public by the Government of Thailand. The reason that the ALRC noted above in the list of current prisoners above that these are the known cases of individuals currently serving prison sentences or under detention while awaiting trial is that in the annual U.S. State Department Human Rights Report on Thailand, released in late April 2013, they reported that the number of persons detained or imprisoned under laws related to lèse majesté was between 7 and 18. Those 7 individuals listed above are those who are known to be behind bars, but the U.S. State Department report indicates there may be an additional 11 individuals being held. The failure of the Government of Thailand to provide precise information to the public itself raises many unanswered questions about the use of the laws to diminish space for freedom of expression through the use of secrecy. In addition, in at least two cases, those of Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul and Wanchai Sae Tan, the trials were held in camera and were closed to the public on the basis that the dissemination of the testimony may constitute a threat to national security. In a 2011 comment, the Constitutional Court argued that there was no contradiction between a secret trial and the protection of rights and liberties as provided for in the 2007 Constitution. Taken together, these two forms of secrecy create uncertainty about what consequences citizens may face for the basic exercise of human rights and makes political participation filled with possible danger.

8. The ALRC is very concerned about the effects of the regularization of the constriction of freedom of expression on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law in Thailand. The danger of this regularization is that it naturalizes violations of rights and causes them to appear normal and justified. The ALRC would like to remind the Government of Thailand that under Article 19 of the ICCPR, restrictions on the right to freedom of expression are only permissible under two circumstances: “for respect of the rights or reputations of others” and “for the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.” While measure 112 is classified as a crime against national security within the Criminal Code of Thailand, and this is frequently cited by the Government of Thailand when faced with the criticism that the measure is in tension with the ICCPR, to date a clear explanation of the precise logic for categorizing the measure as such has not been provided. Without an adequate explanation being provided, the constriction of freedom of expression is arbitrary.

9. In view of the above, the Asian Legal Resource Center calls on the UN Human Rights Council to:

a. Call on the Government of Thailand to release all those convicted or facing charges under Article 112 and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act.

b. Demand that the Government of Thailand revoke Article 112 of the Criminal Code and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act.

c. Demand that the Government of Thailand provide an accounting of how they will improve the provisions for healthcare in prison and ensure that all prisoners receive the same treatment, without regard for the alleged crimes that they have committed.

d. Urge the Government of Thailand to allow and support the full exercise of freedom of expression and political freedom, consistent with the terms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which it is a signatory, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a state party.

e. Request the Special Rapporteur on the freedom of opinion and expression to continue ongoing monitoring and research about the brought situation of constriction of rights and individual cases in Thailand; and, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to continue to monitor and report on those cases of persons arbitrarily detained under Article 112.

Royalist reactionaries

The usual royalist suspects are at it again. By “it” we mean agitating for royalists and anti-Thaksin Shinawatra activists to come together to oppose the elected government.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with opposing the elected government. The problem is that these royalists have a long history of using undemocratic methods, including judicial and military coups, to bring  down elected and popular governments.

The Thai Spring is a website established with this moniker: “Thai Spring: Organized by Police Gen. Vasit Dejkunjorn and Mr. Kaewsun Atibodhi.” PPT has previously posted on both of these royalist reactionaries. For our posts on the royal copper, racist and xenophobe, click here. For more on the royalist lawyer who propagandized for the military and worked for the junta, click here.

Royalist Vasit

Their site is at change.org, which is a site for all kinds of  rights claims, rants, complaints and issues that drive anywhere from10s of people to hundreds of thousands. It claims to be  “[e]mpowering people everywhere to create the change they want to see.”

It does this mainly through petitions. Thai Spring seems more like a blog than a petition. Why the old royalists have chosen this site rather than the more common WordPress blog is anyone’s guess.

When we last looked it had just over 13,000 signatories and 56 “friends.” As the royalists get the word out, the yellow ones will likely sign in droves.

The establishment of the site is reported at the Bangkok Post. In that report, the site is said to be a place where “where people can voice their opposition to the Yingluck Shinawatra government…”. There are already hundreds of such sites, but the pompous copper seems to think his will carry more weight, probably because of his much-used palace links.

Old Vasit doesn’t describe himself as a democrat -usually a position associated with the Arab Spring – but as a “person who adheres strongly to the principle of a democratic administration under the monarchy,” which is no democracy at all, but the royalist elite’s post-Cold War construction of their state.

And the reactionary Vasit is clear what he opposes: he says he is “aware there are groups people trying relentlessly to undermine the highest institution in the country.” He means the monarchy.

Vasit has convinced himself that:

Those people have a plan to take over Thailand and change its administrative system, and he would not stand by and allow this to happen….

Thai Spring is apparently to allow yellow shirts “people” to “sign in and express disapproval of the prime minister’s speech in Ulan Bator.” Apparently Vasit thinks a speech on democracy is a threat to the monarchy.

Vasit hopes that the site will eventually lead to “anti-government protests by huge numbers of people.” The last time his lot tried to mobilize people for Pitak Siam, they failed.

Kaewsan

Kaewsan is reported as stating that “he believes the present government lacks the legitimacy to administer the country.” He continues to ignore election results,which have seen pro-Thaksin parties elected every time there has been an election since 2000. His view is that election victories amount to a “dictatorship of a majority…”.

His claim that “Yingluck’s speech in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, had isolated democratically minded Thai people from the rest of the world” defies any rational commentary. We won’t even try to guess at what he means.

With bizarre assistance from ministers like Information and Communication Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap’s political foot-in-mouth calisthenics and the arrogant political stupidity of Deputy Prime Minister Plodprasop Suraswadi, PPT would have thought that the government’s political opponents might have come up with something better than royalist has-beens.

Competition on succession?

PPT has heard all the rumors about intra-family competition on succession, yet a picture can tell a story.

Knowing the obvious on the military

At The Nation there’s a story that seems all too obvious to PPT and probably to anyone else who watches Thailand’s politics: the military is politicized, runs coups and rejects any modern notion of civilian control.

It seems that when an academic recites these truths, it is newsworthy, especially when a foreign academic, Professor Aurel Croissant, is making these points.

That “Thailand remains among those countries that have failed to institutionalise civilian control over the military,” is clear, despite efforts by  premiers as diverse  as Chuan Leekpai and Thaksin Shinawatra.

The professor says that “Thailand ranks fifth the world in terms of having the most number of military coups,” with 18 “successful” coups since 1932.

Nicholas Farrelly at New Mandala some time ago pointed out that counting coups is difficult:

Here on New Mandala we recently hosted a discussion about Thailand’s coup history where I suggested that counting the number of coups (attempted and successful) is a complicated business. Often, when somebody asks “how many coups have there been in Thailand?”, the final number that is cited is 18 but I fear that this may be a product of force of habit rather than hard number crunching.

He adds:

As it stands I have 11 “successful” and 9 “unsuccessful” coup efforts in the 20th century [sic. he adds 2006 in] for a total of 20.

The army’s real task: coups and repression

Readers at that thread add several more.

Croissant tells us that “the risk of a putsch remains high,”another point widely discussed, even in the past few days.

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, “Croissant predicted it will be a long time before Thailand can achieve genuine civilian control over the military.”

Oddly, though, in the way he is reported, the professor seems to blame civilians for the problem.

It [civilian control] will depend on not just the military refraining from getting involved in politics but also on strong civilian support and consensus that civilians should have oversight of the military.

“There’s no consensus on that they will not pull the military into political conflicts,” said Croissant, who jointly conducted research on the topic over four years in which more than 180 people in the Kingdom were interviewed.

We guess it depends a bit on who you interview….

Croissant adds:

… the military’s power can be exerted not just through the staging of coups d’etat but also through influence over the government’s decision-making processes. The lack of coups doesn’t automatically mean that civilian oversight exists, he said. “The military can exercise control over policy because democracy is weak.”

And who do we blame for that?Certainly the military, but we will come back to this point below.

On the brighter side, the academic “sees the September 19, 2006 coup as a sign of the army’s ‘eroding military control’ over Thai politics and society.”

What is missing in this account -and, yes,we know it is only a news report – is any discussion of the forces that have institutionalized the military’s coup  mentality.

From 1932, the military became a “protector” of the state. By the late 1950s, the military was transformed – with considerable U.S. funding and advice – into a “protector” of the state with the monarchy as the central defining element. This latter role has demanded a military that was pretty much hopeless in terms of usual ideas about  warfare and was trained and armed for domestic warfare. This meant fighting communists, insurgents,and as required, civilian protesters, who have been murdered by the military in very large numbers.

Protecting the monarchy and state also meant support for and from the Sino-Thai tycoons who expanded their economic and,later, political power through this period. The military was rewarded, with awards, decorations and loot (especially in border zones and in “commissions”).

Of course, the Abhisit Vejjajiva regime represented a complete alliance of military power and civilian weakness. Abhisit was anointed by military and monarchy and was beholden to them.

The alliance of capitalists, monarchy and military is strongly in favor of military interventionism  to protect their interests, political and economic. Some saw Thaksin’s rise as a weakening of this alliance and 2006 was a way to put things right. Some predict this alliance will weaken again at succession.

Panic, coups and courts

It is difficult to miss the increase in political panic attacks on the two main sides of the political contest in Thailand.

As PPT has already posted, the yellow-hued opponents of the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra have had multiple panic attacks that have caused them to shout their real political views out very loud. When Yingluck speaks to a meeting on democracy, the royalists and anti-Thaksin Shinawatra coalition has its leading figures shout about treason, selling out the country and greater “crimes.” The main “crime” seems to be Yingluck’s failure to again kowtow to the old men who think they run Thailand and continue to concoct a royalist version of the country’s recent political history. A few statements by a younger woman about political reality suggest to the geriatric royalists that their presumed control of her has weakened and that she does not “know her place.”

The tried and royalist trusted method for attacking elected governments, apart from the military coup, is judicial harassment and intervention. And so it is that as the political temperature rises ever more panicked and preposterous royalists charge off to their buddies at the Constitutional Court seeking judicial interference.

At the Bangkok Post it is reported that the latest move is appointed senator  – that is, unelected senator – Paiboon Nititawan who “represents” something called “other sectors,” which really just means he’s an unelected spawn of the military junta, has begged the kangaroo court to consider Thaksin Shinawatra’s alleged “order for Pheu Thai to amend the constitution,” which the senator claims “violates Section 68 of the charter, pertaining to acts that could undermine the constitutional monarchy or grab power through unconstitutional means.”

The Post states that some yellow-shirted intellectuals think the “Constitution Court is likely to take up a complaint…”. At the same time, “Somchai Srisuthiyakorn, a political science lecturer at Sripatum University, said the allegation that Thaksin’s Skype call breached Section 68 is far-fetched.” That won’t bother the court or the royalists.

Somchai reckons that a more likely constitutional court intervention is over the “MPs and senators [who] have declared they will not accept the authority of the charter court…”. He says: “Such an announcement is bound to be a violation of the law…. Many MPs and senators may realise their action carries a risk.”

Panic has also set in on the government and red shirt side. PPT has already posted on the political foot-in-mouth calisthenics by Information and Communication Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap. Equally panicky seems to be red shirt supporters claiming that a coup is in the offing. The clearest English-language statement of this was at New Mandala where Jim Taylor makes this claim:

The army, if a little confused about royal futures, are talking about a coup (yes, yet again) among themselves and many senior army officers (including Prayuth Chan-ocha) dropping strong hints in the media…

Several readers have emailed PPT with similar claims. We don’t doubt that the military brass around boss Prayuth Chan-ocha were shocked by Yingluck’s Mongolia speech, but we have yet to see any strong evidence of the tanks warming up. We would expect to see and hear a lot more from the top brass if they were at any serious level of plotting. That said, Yingluck’s speech and the failure of the king and queen to appear as scheduled probably mean that the military men have the coup jitters.

Meanwhile, while red shirt anger over the Constitutional Court shenanigans saw a mobile protest. Reports from the protest site are mixed, with some saying the protesters preparing to leave and others reporting an expansion of the protest (both in the same newspaper on the same day….). The very same newspaper is back to its old tricks of producing material filched from yellow-shirt sites and dressing it up as an op-ed rather than concocted propaganda.

The latter report also refers to:

hundreds of yellow-shirt Thai Compatriots and Territory Protection Front members, gathering since Tuesday at Sanam Luang, are refusing to clear the site.

They say they will stay until Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is ousted and that their presence won’t interfere with Royal Ploughing Ceremony on the grounds next Monday…. They are also demonstrating to offer moral support to the Constitutional Court judges and oppose the Preah Vihear court case.

The Bangkok Post, which says the rally is called off, has a spurious headline at its website, seems to say that the red shirt protest at the Constitutional Court was all Thaksin’s doing, when the story itself implies something else again, even suggesting that the Puea Thai bosses and Thaksin were out of sync with the protesters. Apparently the protest was called off:

after losing the backing of Pheu Thai, other red-shirt groups and, more importantly, ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, sources say.

Some ruling party MPs initially sponsored the protest by the Radio Broadcasters for Democracy movement formed by some red shirts, the Pheu Thai sources said.

Apparently, the MPs got cold feet when the rallies turned to those close to the palace:

The MPs had also joined the protest in front of the Constitution Court on Chaeng Watthana Road in Bangkok.

But they later withdrew their support after demonstration leaders ignored their warnings and attacked Privy Council president Prem Tinsulanonda, threatened Constitution Court judges and used obscene words.

The MPS and Thaksin apparently worried that the rally could destabilize the government. If Thaksin is the ring master in all of this, he seems to have been unable to control the situation or to fathom the impacts of his sister’s speech or the red shirt rally against the hopeless bunch at the Court. Always murky, the arm wrestle continues.

Inquests

Several inquests recent political deaths are continuing. Three recent reports on these caught PPT’s attention.

The first was at Prachatai a few days ago and is a report on the inquest into the death in custody of lese majeste victim Ampol Tangnopakul in May 2012. The inquest began in February 2013. This report recounts evidence provided by fellow lese majeste convict Tanthawut Taweewarodomkul, who provided great support to Ampol when in jail together.

Tanthawut’s testimony included details of overcrowding and work assignments that were beyond Ampol’s capacity as a sick and aged man. For example, he was assigned “to produce 5 kilograms of paper cups or about 2,500 cups each day.” However, he never reached the target.

He also commented on medical facilities and pointed out that the Bangkok Remand Prison has extremely limited medical capacity, with doctors visiting twice a week. Only “20 prisoners are allowed to go to the medical facility, and each prisoner is allowed to go there only once a week.” Ampol told Tanthawut that:

when he went to the medical facility for the first time, the doctors did not diagnose his illness, but gave him painkillers for his stomach pain. Only when he cried out the second time did the doctors examine him, but with some contemptuous remarks about his alleged offences to the monarchy.

His condition worsened and he was eventually sent to the Corrections Hospital on 4 May 2012, and died four days later.

The second report is about a “friendly fire” death of a soldier. Back in 2010, the BBC and other outlets reported a case of a soldier being killed by what seemed like “friendly fire.” The inquest found that “Private Narongrit Sala from the Second Battalion of the Ninth Infantry Division in Kanchanaburi was killed by a high-velocity bullet fired from one of the troops operating in the area [Don Muang]…” on 28 April 2010. A high-velocity bullet hit Narongrit at “his left elbow, travelled through to the skull and destroyed brain tissue…. The court concluded that the bullet was fired by a soldier operating in the area.”

MCOT reports that he “was fatally shot by a high-speed bullet which passed through his upper left eyebrow to the skull…. The bullet was fired from a military weapon.” There seems there was no doubt that Narongrit was killed by “friendly fire” as the inquest was concluded quickly with none of his relatives at the hearing and no “plaintiff and related military officials.”

The third report is of an inquest into the deaths at Wat Pathum Wanaram. A senior police officer has testified to the court that “military personnel were acting suspiciously when he and his men investigated Pathumwanaram Temple, where 6 civilians were murdered during the crackdown on Redshirts protest on 19 May 2010.”

Pol. Lt. Col. Sutad Chaiprom explained that

… he and his bomb squad were sent to collect evidences at Pathumwanararm Temple … on the morning after the incident. He said he found a number of automatic rifles at the temple, but they were all clearly army-issued firearms, and the soldiers were already stationed inside the temple when his team arrived.

He provided examples of military interference with his investigation saying that when “his men requested a closer investigation at a pond inside the temple, but they were refused by the military officials.”

Authoritarian speak

Thailand’s anti-democrats/authoritarians express themselves most clearly when they are most rabid and frothing about those they hate with irrational fervor.

So it is that Khao sod reports on a statement by Kaewsan Atibhodhi, a former member of the military junta-established Assets Scrutiny Committee that was meant to investigate corruption cases against ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. On the ASC, Kaewsan once made the remarkable claim that “evidence and witnesses are useless,” when one of its panels recommended legal action against Thaksin without hearing 300 witnesses or considering 100 additional pieces of evidence (Bangkok Post, 9 April 2008).

Kaewsan has also been a member of the ultra-royalist Siam Samakkhi group and attempted to concoct legal cases against Yingluck Shinawatra during the 2011 election campaign.

Kaewsan and his ultra-royalist buddies

He has posted an “open letter” at his Facebook pages that joins the long list of increasingly sordid and irrational criticisms of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s  speech in Mongolia on Thai democracy. His claims are not only driven by the irrationality that derives from his extreme personal hatred of Thaksin but by a deep intolerance to electoral democracy. Having served as a minion for the junta, the latter should be no surprise.

In addition, as is often the case when passion takes over from reason, Kaewsan’s grasp of reality is shown to be wanting when he compares Yingluck and her family to the Kim dynasty in North Korea.

As with other ultra-royalists and anti-democrats, Kaewsan declares Yingluck’s speech “lies” and proclaims the Shinawatra clan to be holding a “dictatorship over Thai people.” Yingluck, he says,

came to power via her brother′s influence, “not unlike how Kim Jong Un inherited the throne from his father”. Mr. Kaewsan also [repeatedly]… compar[ed] the Shinawatras to the Kim dynasty that has been ruling North Korea for decades.

He went on to blame the media for the dictatorship of the Shinawatra family:

“The Thai media obediently encourages the mass to be loyal to Shinawatra family, similar to the Korean media [sic]“, according to the open letter, which was written in Thai, “when you go to North Korea, you will see faces of the Dear Leader staring out from billboards. Such is the case in Thailand. The servants of the Shinawatra family are everywhere.”

PPT has its doubts that Kaewsan is a regular visitor to North Korea or that he has thought too much about the misplaced analogy. After all, if he’d thought for even a millisecond he might have noticed that if a comparison is to be drawn between North Korea and Thailand it might better be to the cult of personality between the autocratic family of rulers in North Korea and the monarchy in Thailand.

What is more significant is that Kaewsan’s misplaced comparison is just one more yellow-shirted statement indicating this neo-fascist movement’s rejection of electoral democracy. Kaewsan has probably noticed that Yingluck won a landslide electoral victory in what amounted to an emphatic rejection of his style of politics that links royalism, military and authoritarianism. We can’t recall the Kim dynasty in North Korea winning a free election.  On the other hand, pro-Thaksin parties have won every election since 2000. And that seems to be the point. Kaewsan and his ilk can’t stand the idea that the majority of Thais have repeatedly and steadfastly supported pro-Thaksin parties. Hence they reject elections and electoral democracy.

Updated: Lessons

The Bangkok Post has a neat report, heavy with prescription (and a little hope) regarding the rise of Willem-Alexander to be king of the Netherlands following his mother’s abdication.

It cannot be without considerable thought that the Post begins its story thus:

Dutch King Willem-Alexander has undergone a remarkable transformation from his image as a boozing Casanova, ill-equipped for the throne, to a serious family man well-loved by his people.

The comparison with Thailand’s own crown prince’s behavior is clear, not least as both men are pilots and both have been kings-in-waiting for a long time. Both have lived luxury lifestyles and both have enjoyed overseas haunts, one in Mozambique and the other in Germany.

Siblings: Vajiralongkorn and Sirindhorn

The report notes that:

… Willem-Alexander had a difficult adolescence, and was sent to complete his high school in Wales.

On returning to the Netherlands for his military service in the Navy and then to study, the young prince built an image in the Dutch media as a hard-partying and troublesome royal, earning him the nickname of “Prince Pils” after a particular beer.

Thailand’s royalists have long hoped that Vajiralongkorn would also eventually settle down and be more kingly in stature and behavior prior to actually becoming king. As Willem-Alexander indicates, just becoming king has an impact on popularity (at least until the first gaffe), and he still has his mother to stand behind him and help out as required. Abdication seems an impossibility in Thailand.

In Thailand,  the hopes for Vajiralongkorn have faded to be replaced by endless speculation about a more suitable “other” stepping in, and this chatter becomes ever more fervent as the aged king suffers yet another bout of illness that has kept him in a hospital since September 2009. But, for many of the hopeful, it remains forlorn hope, and they worry that the monarchy is doomed.

While his consort, a daughter of a military-junta serving Argentine, has not been the subject of widely available and scandalous videos and pictures, the comparisons between Vajiralongkorn and Willem-Alexander are too strong to go unnoticed.

Yet the difference seems to be that while Vajiralongkorn is withdrawn and aloof, the new Dutch monarch has painted himself a “man of the people.” Obviously, the royal handlers have played an important role in this. Such makeovers have been tried in Thailand – it worked for the current king – but Vajiralongkorn seems uninterested in this kind of advice.

Thailand’s monarchy may not be doomed but its political involvement and clear support for the 2006 military coup and criticism of its immense wealth mean that it continues to face its greatest challenge since the death of Ananda Mahidol.

Update: A reader points out that this is a wire story and not a Bangkok Post story. That’s true, but the Bangkok Post chose to run it and given it is a royal story, must have thought about it very carefully before using it. That is significant.

The monarchy, freedom and democracy

The US Department of State has released its Human Rights Report for 2012. PPT was alerted to this by a story at the Bangkok Post that referred to this report as “a highly critical report detailing … Thailand’s human rights failings.” It added that: “Observers noted this year’s report was more rounded and detailed, especially regarding the southern insurgency.”

Indeed, on our first skim of the report, released a week ago, it does seem somewhat better than its somewhat bland and repetitive reports of recent years. PPT has been especially critical of the State Department’s reports for their failure on lese majeste and the existence of political prisoners. Indeed, last year we commented on a:

hopelessly, probably deliberately, deceitful U.S. “human rights” report for Thailand in 2011. If it wasn’t deliberately deceitful, then we imagine that everyone on the Thailand desk at the Department of State and in the Embassy in Bangkok has been lobotomized to the extent that they are deaf, dumb and blind on lese majeste and other political prisoners in Thailand.

This year there is a change. As in previous years, there are useful comments on a range of issues including officials’ impunity, the use of emergency and other special laws and a range of abuses by security forces and local defence volunteers in the south. That list is disturbing reading. As the Post has it:

Security forces, the report said, were guilty of using excessive force, including killing, torturing and otherwise abusing suspects, detainees and prisoners.

PPT wants to highlight some of the report’s comments on politics, monarchy, lese majeste and political prisoners, which we think represents an attempt to break out of the previous genuflecting to the royalist propagandists and flunkies who have previously shaped American official discourses on Thailand. We will just quote and highlight (with some of the headings added by us):

Red shirts: According to an advocacy group, as of December, 16 protesters jailed after the 2010 United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD or “Red Shirts”) protests remained in pretrial detention, charged with protest-related crimes such as rioting and arson. Lawyers affiliated with the UDD movement continued to pursue bail for these remaining detainees held in several provinces. According to a UDD-affiliated information center, of the 1,857 arrests related to the 2010 protests, authorities prosecuted 1,664 individuals as of December, and the courts dismissed 91 cases, sentenced 850 individuals to probation and/or fines, and imprisoned 220 for less than one year, 63 for one to three years, 10 for three to five years, 10 for five to 10 years, and 27 for more than 10 years. According to the Department of Special Investigations, of the 270 protest-related cases under its jurisdiction, it completed 216 investigations as of December, and trials in 62 cases continued at year’s end.

Lese majeste: A July 10 royal pardon allowed the release of dual-national Joe Gordon (also known as Lerpong Wichaikhammat), who was sentenced in December 2011 to two and one-half years’ in prison for lese-majeste offenses. On August 16, a mass pardon in honor of the birthdays of the crown prince (July 28) and the queen (August 12) led to the release of approximately 30,000 prisoners. On August 24, in honor of the queen’s birthday, Suchart Narkbangsai and Suriyan Kokpuai, who were both serving three-year sentences for lese-majeste convictions, received royal pardons and were released.

PPT isn’t quite sure how releasing lese majeste convicts a bit early is an “honor” for the anyone. Thailand’s royals should be ashamed – not honored – that this feudal law remains in place; they could easily have it done away with if they had sufficient honor.

Trials: While most trials are public, the court may order a closed trial, particularly in cases involving national security, the royal family, children, or sexual abuse.

PPT can’t help but wonder why the State Department didn’t point out that closing courts infringes Section 40 of the current constitution. In other words, a court may close its proceedings but in doing so is infringing Thailand’s basic law.

Political Prisoners and Detainees: There were no government reports of political prisoners or detainees; however, sources estimated that seven to 18 persons remained detained under lese-majeste laws that outlaw criticism of the monarchy…. Some of those cases involved persons exercising their rights of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

While this statement is something of a step forward for the State Department, it still makes serious errors. For example, the claim that there are no government reports of political prisoners is simply a stupid claim. After all, the government has established a special prison for political prisoners at Laksi. Indeed, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra mentioned political prisoners in a speech this week.

Freedom of Speech and Press: The international and independent media operated freely, except in coverage of matters deemed a threat to national security or offensive to the monarchy…. Journalists generally were free to comment on government activities and institutions without fear of official reprisal. Nonetheless, they occasionally practiced self-censorship, particularly with regard to the monarchy and national security. For example, in April the Thai distributor of The Economist magazine withheld one issue because of a story about lese-majeste prosecutions…. The government imposed some restrictions on access to the Internet and reportedly monitored Internet chat rooms and social media without judicial oversight. Individuals and groups generally engaged in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail, although there were several limitations on content, such as lese majeste, pornography, and gambling…. The RTP Electronic Crime Suppression Division reported receiving 776 computer-related complaints during 2011 that resulted in 442 investigations–a complaint rate markedly greater than the 47 in 2009 or 285 in 2010. Most cases involved alleged defamation, lese majeste, and illegal activity such as gambling and pornography. Separately, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology operated the Cyber Security Operations Center to monitor and block Web sites. According to a report by the NGO iLaw, court orders officially blocked nearly 21,000 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) during the year, 80 percent of which were related to lese majeste. Since passage of the 2007 Computer Crime Act, authorities blocked more than 102,000 URLs, 76 percent related to lese majeste.

From this list it is crystal clear that the major impediment to free speech is the monarchy, lese majeste and national security. Indeed, “national security” is usually defined n terms of the monarchy as well. Can it be said that, apart from the monarchy, Thailand is relatively free? It certainly seems that way.

And finally, this: The constitution provides citizens the right to change their government peacefully through periodic, free, and fair elections based on universal, compulsory suffrage.

How true is this? Yes, there are periodic elections, but there are also periodic military and judicial coups…. More to the point, Section 68 of the constitution effectively makes it illegal to advocate for a republic in Thailand. Again, the monarchy is an obstacle to full democratic freedoms.