Updated: Welcome back I

29 12 2021

From Prachtai’s Facebook page:

On 19.00, three activists, one of whom is 17 year old, raised banners stating ‘abolish Section 112’ among the crowd that were welcoming the royal procession of King Vajiralongkorn and entourages at Wongwian Yai.

They were subdued by people with yellow shirt and scarf of the royal volunteer service, being injured during the process.
Originally, 5 people were arrested but only 3 activists nicknamed Sainam, Baipor and Tawan were brought to the nearby Bupharam Police Station. The other two had been released.

According to a video footage of the event, there was a woman ran into the King as he got out of the car before being immediately held by guards. It is still unclear whether the released two were the same people or not. Their hair colors are black, unlike a woman activist that has a blond hair.

As of 22.00, the three are still at the police station with lawyers from the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.

It is reported that the police is conducting a meeting over what charge should be pressed upon them despite originally charging them with causing a commotion in the public which carries a light penalty of paying fines.

A brief interview with Pol Lt Col Seksan Pa-taesang from Buppharam station reported that a woman who ran to the King was sent to Somdej Chao Phraya mental hospital. He hung up while we tried to ask on about the charge of the arrested.

On 23.00, it is reported that the two are also activists. The woman who was sent to the hospital are not in this group. There are 6 characters in the incident as of now: 2 released,3 being held, 1 at hospital.

On 00.30 of 29 December, the three had been released. They were charged with two light penalties of causing commotion in public and not complying with the authorities. The were fined 1,000 baht for each person.

The three said to the media that they would make physical checks to keep records of the injuries and would proceed to filing lawsuit against those that injured them.

Thai Enquirer reports these events. It notes that one video “that circulated on Tuesday night appears to show a woman sprinting towards the royal procession to reach the king himself.”

Of the broader protest, it observes:

Five political activists, including a 17-year-old boy, were arrested and allegedly beaten on Tuesday night for allegedly conducting protests near a crowd of royalists celebrating the royal procession of King Vajiralongkorn and other palace members at Wongwian Yai.

The group of activists raised the three-finger salute not far from the royal motorcade before violence broke out.

A mass of royalists approached the group of young activists and began beating them, grabbing their faces, ripping their banners from their hands.

Several police officers then removed the protesters from the area where the royal procession was taking place.

Thai Enquirer spoke with one of the protesters who complained “that the police were quick to use violence despite the fact that they were protesting peacefully.” She says they were opposing Article 112.

Police “charged the protesters with causing a public nuisance and violating public decency,” which “carry the maximum penalty of up to 1,000 baht in fines…”.

There may be more charges.


Actions

Information

2 responses

1 01 2022
Welcome back II | Political Prisoners in Thailand

[…] Thai Newsroom has this report on the recent royal security breach: […]

2 01 2022
Welcome back III | Political Prisoners in Thailand

[…] to our earlier posts, here and here, Prachatai has now reported on the events at Wongwian Yai, where several anti-112 […]

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.




%d bloggers like this: