Authoritarian quid pro quo

Siam

Remember Siam Theerawut, Chucheep ‘Uncle Sanam Luang’ Chiwasut and Kritsana Tubtha? They were reported to have gone “missing” in May 2019. They were “reportedly arrested in Vietnam and extradited to Bangkok…”. We doubt the term “extradited,” for they were “disappeared.” As might be expected, they had been previously charged with lese majeste and were associated with the so-called Thai Federation, They had fled Thailand following the 2014 military coup. They have not been heard of since their “disappearance.”

A recent news report jogged our collective memory on this. It is reported that:

On April 13, Thai, an independent journalist who posts political commentary on YouTube and has about 119,000 followers, went missing in Bangkok, Thailand, according to multiple news reports.

He had lived in Thailand as a refugee since 2020 and visited the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ office hours before his disappearance, according to those reports and Nguyen Van Hai, a colleague familiar with Thai’s situation and CPJ’s 2013 International Press Freedom Award winner, who communicated with CPJ via email.

On April 16, Vietnamese state media reported that Thai had been arrested while allegedly trying to enter Vietnam and was being held by police in the Huong Son district of central Ha Tinh province.

This is not the first such case: “In 2019, Vietnamese blogger Truong Duy Nhat was abducted in Thailand; he resurfaced in Vietnam days later and was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison.”

We might assume that this kind of cooperation between authoritarian regimes is a quid pro quo.