Yesterday, the Minister of State (South East Asia/Far East, Caribbean, Central/South America, Australasia and Pacific) at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Jeremy Browne MP (Taunton Deane, Liberal Democrat) published the UK government’s response to these questions (the full answers can be found here, here, here and here).

What is clear from these responses is that the UK is very uneasy about the lese majeste law itself, the disproportionate sentences meted out by the courts for those found guilty of LM and the general treatment of prisoners.

What is also becoming evident is that the USA is increasingly isolated in its continued and persistent failure to hold Thailand – an important military ally of the USA – to account for its human rights breaches. Given that the USA have been long-term backers of Thailand’s most powerful and least democratic element and biggest supporter of the lese majeste law – the Thai Army – this should come as no surprise to commentators.

Furthermore, a US citizen, Joe Gordon, remains imprisoned in Thailand on lese majeste charges for comments he posted online whilst he was resident in the USA. The USA’s Bangkok mission has been noted for its lack of  response to the imprisonment of one its nationals under one of the most draconian censorship laws on earth and the UK’s statement further underlines US failures on this issue.

On Ah Kong the UK Minister of State responded that:

With our European Union partners, the UK expressed concern last year at the conviction and imprisonment for 20 years of Ampon Tangnoppakul for violating the lese-majeste laws.

And:

[This] statement reiterated the importance attached by the EU [the UK were co-signatories of an EU statement] to the rule of law, democracy and respect for human rights.

On lese majeste the Minister stated:

We are closely following the development of freedom of expression in Thailand and are concerned by the significant increase of lese-majeste cases in the country and the application of the laws and length of sentences in recent cases.

And:

Our embassy in Bangkok continues to monitor the ongoing trials of high-profile lese-majeste and freedom of expression on the internet cases. We have urged the Thai Government to ensure that the rule of law is applied in a non-discriminatory and proportionate manner consistent with upholding basic human rights, and will continue to take appropriate opportunities to do so.

More importantly the UK government also makes clear its call for Thailand to review the lese majeste laws:

In October 2011 at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the human rights situation in Thailand was reviewed as part of the Universal Periodic Review process. The UK played an active role, including raising our concerns about freedom of expression and specifically recommending that the Thai Government seek to review its lese-majeste laws.

What impact these comments will have is, of course, debatable.

The wider international community – with the exception of the USA – is now explicit in its eagerness for Thailand to make more headway in meeting its legal obligations under international law. To do this it would seem that the democratically elected Thai government will need to bring the Thai Army – the biggest supporters of lese majeste – under civilian control. This civilian control is also unlikely to be achieved without US assistance and the longer the US fail to act to bring their clients in the Thai Army to heel the longer Thailand’s slide away from democracy will be.

It can also be said that since the death of Ah Kong Thai domestic opinion has hardened at both ends of the lese majeste debate. Such hardening will likely only lead to more conflict, something only those who benefit from a widening of Thailand’s political crisis would seek. It’s time for the US to step-up and  demand the Thai Army allow for proper reform to take place.

All I can say is – don’t hold your breath.

UPDATE

Couple of claims here in the comments that the US has actually made an equivalent formal call for Thailand’s lese majeste laws to be reformed. They haven’t. What actually happened is that Kristie Kenney made a couple of very bland comments on twitter, while the Embassy made one short statement about the imprisonment of Joe Gordon. Then there was a strange and almost orchestrated over-reaction to these very banal comments by various Thai neo-fascist patriot groups.  Since then the US has been mostly silent, despite one of their citizens remaining in prison after what can only be called a deeply flawed trial.

As pointed out by myself in the comments below when the Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council was conducted last year in Geneva – the moment when LM came under the closest international scrutiny – the US refused to sign a statement, something a number of other governments did, which called for Thailand’s 112 law to be reformed. If the USA had done it would have given considerable more weight to the statement. The US didn’t. Question is, why? 

http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/2761/en/un:-spotlight-on-thailand’s-l

What the US govt have actually said formally was they were  “troubled by recent prosecutions and court decisions that are not consistent with international standards of freedom of expression.”

This is a relatively bland and meaningless statement and when set against the UK, EU and other governments’ calls for reform of LM, increasingly isolates the US in their one-eyed stance on lese majeste.

As these are “named day questions” they should be answered by 21st May but a “holding” answer might be used instead until the UK government formalises its position and gives a more in-depth response at a later date (as the questions have only just been tabled I can’t provide a link right now but will update tomorrow). The questions are as follows and are submitted directly to the government minister for his response -

What representations has he made regarding the imprisonment and death of Ampon Tangnoppakul in Thailand?

What assessment has he made of access to healthcare for prisoners in Thailand?

What assessment has he made of the treatment of people a) arrested and b) convicted under lèse majesté laws in Thailand?

What assessment has he made of the compliance of lèse majesté laws in Thailand with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and what representations has he made to the government of Thailand regarding freedom of expression and the lèse majesté laws?

The significance of these questions is that they mark a further internationalising of the lese majeste issue. They will also push the UK government into formalising its position not only on lese majeste but also regarding the healthcare and well-being of prisoners – issues that have particular pertinence after the death of Ah Kong.

I will return to this once the UK government has responded and hopefully will speak directly to Kerry McCarthy MP, herself.

We had had reports over the last couple of days that he had a bad stomach and wasn’t feeling well. Apparently he has had this condition for a month and was trying to secure bail to get it treated but bail was continually refused.  We’re being told now his sickness got increasingly worse and that no doctor was available to see him. Ah Kong was likely left to die in a filthy prison hospital, alone. At the moment our information is that an autopsy is being performed on his body. Many people in the Red Shirt community we have spoken to today are deeply suspicious as to the cause of his death.

Ah Kong and his wife, Pa Ou, on their wedding day.

Ah Kong was arrested after the intervention of an aide to the former Democrat Party Prime Minister, Mark Abhisit, decided to press charges after this aide received a number of private and personal SMS messages defaming the Thai queen. A court decided, despite very flimsy and weak evidence, that the SMS messages could be traced back to Ah Kong and he received a 20-year prison sentence. Why Abhisit’s aide couldn’t just delete the messages and forget them is beyond my understanding. I am also convinced that the aide would not have proceeded with such a prosecution without Abhisit’s blessing. I have also seen some evidence that Ah Kong was badly treated whilst awaiting trial and that his mistreatment was directly ordered by the Abhisit government.

I met Ah Kong three times. Each time these meetings took place in the Bangkok Remand Prison. He was obviously frail, yet despite his terrible ordeal, his eyes shone and his smile was broad. He also looked tearful. At that point almost no foreigners had ever been to meet him – not Bangkok’s huge foreign media corps and not the so-called human rights’ NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. A foreigner visiting him was a surprise. Likely it let him know at least someone in the wider world knew of his ordeal I asked him about how he was being treated. “Things are getting better now,” he said, with a quiet smile.

I was also lucky enough to meet Ah Kong’s wife, Pa Ou, on a couple of occasions. The last time I saw her we had lunch at MK in Big C in Samrong, just outside Bangkok. There was something indomitable, charismatic and bright about her. She combined this with an easy beauty and an obvious intelligence. Another thing that was very obvious was her love for her husband. Today my thoughts are with her and the rest of Ah Kong’s family

The international community have been pathetically lacking in response to dealing with lese majeste. The USA Embassy continually claim there are no political prisoners in Thailand. The British Embassy – a mission whose foreign minister made recent pronouncements about human rights being at the centre of its policy – gave interviews about flood preventions, yet has remained resolutely quiet on Thai human rights, its former Ambassador taking up work with a huge Thai conglomerate after years of abject silence. Human Rights Watch refused to visit any lese majeste prisoners for years and refused to take up lese majeste cases, their supine Thai researcher once stating that dealing with lese majeste would “damage his ability to work as a human rights defender”. When I met Ah Kong in February of this year I asked him if he had any visits from either Amnesty or HRW. “Who and what are Amnesty and HRW,” he responded, quizzically. Of course Amnesty International previously stated their tacit support for lese majeste saying “we can see why” such a law needs to exist. As far as I’m aware most Western journalists in Bangkok, with a few notable exceptions, never go to the prison to visit lese majeste prisoners, their silence part of a conspiracy  that can only be described as evil.

This evil and the conspiracy of silence that surrounds it led to the death of Ah Kong.

Another Thai Democrat Party MP "hard" at work.

After my story was published it was picked up by most of the Thai media, not least the Democrat Party-supporting Bangkok Post who unearthed other photographs of an MP looking at pornography. The Bangkok Post claimed this MP was “unnamed”. I immediately predicted on Twitter that the MP must be a Democrat such is the Bangkok Post’s slavish and undimmed support for anything “Democrat” (although the Post, like their favourite party, do struggle to understand “democracy”).

Today the Thai-language daily, Matichon, named the MP that all the Bangkok Post’s journalists failed to recognise as Bangkok MP Nat Bantadtarn, the son of former Democrat Party leader Banyat Bantadtarn.

Of course the Democrat Party and their supporters love to moralise about that “bad lady”, the democratically elected Yingluck Shinawatra, and how immoral she is – they have attempted to become masters at baiting their “lesser” opposite numbers in Pheu Thai. The Democrat Party also love to repeatedly invoking “traditional” Thai values and claiming the moral high-ground, not least via the supposedly impeccable credentials of their super-posh British leader.

So now they have a problem – not only has Abhisit, a man who bleats on about “rule of law” (with as much credibility as he talks of “democracy” – a member of his own parliamentary party, a Democrat MP called Kanchit is wanted for questioning in a murder case after CCTV showed someone  pumping 7 bullets into their victim. Kanchit has refused to answer any questions and Abhisit hasn’t even asked him to leave the Democrats), will now feel his party’s self-claimed monopoly on Thai morality and values also disintegrating around him.

Andrew Spooner can be followed on Twitter here and on Facebook here.

Not today in the Thai Parliament.

As Thai Democrat Party MP Pirapan Salirathavibhaga got up to make his case to Thailand’s assembled lawmakers a pornographic image flashed up on the presentation screen.

Luckily the moment was caught on video (for readers 18 and over only please).

Yet the appearance of this mystery porn star didn’t only occur once. Her image appeared three times during Mr. Pirapan’s speech.

At present it is not known if the image came from a computer belonging to Mr. Pirapan or was sourced from a Thai Parliament’s staff member’s device.

If Mr. Pirapan is confirmed as the source will the usual morally pious and very uptight Democrat Party leadership be bowing their heads in collective shame for damaging Thailand’s morality?

Andrew Spooner can be followed on Twitter here and on Facebook here.

Thaksin runs to read the next oped about him

But, more importantly, is another oped about Thaksin imminent?

Here at AP (Asia Provocateur) we think it is. In fact it is a cast iron certainty.

Of course opeds regarding Abhisit lying to the Thai parliament about which nationality he used to enroll at Oxford University are not imminent. AP can also guarantee that there will be no opeds about the continued failure to hold the Abhisit government to account for the brutal massacre they unleashed on the Thai people in 2010. You will find no mention of this in the Thai English language media anywhere. The deaths of 90+ Thai civilians protesters is, quite frankly, an irrelevance.

Nor will there be any opeds about the recent release of an autopsy report which proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that a hand-thrown fragmentation grenade that could have only been thrown by people close to them was used to kill the soldiers who stood next to Colonel Romklao on April 10th 2010 and not an M79 fired by the Red Shirts as is the lie put out by the previous “graceful” Abhisit government and their friends in the English-language Thai media/blogosphere/NGOs.

Of course there will be no mention or oped at all, anywhere, in English, about Romklao’s own body being immediately cremated after he was killed, before any autopsy could be carried out. That Romklao’s death was then used as a pretext to slaughter 90+ civilians is just a moot point.

We can also forget any opeds at all on the subject of Human Rights Watch’s lead researcher in Thailand, Sunai Phasuk, secretly supporting the 2006 illegal coup or that much of Thailand’s human rights community is riddled with extreme rightwing PAD-supporters and is deeply politicised as a result.

The New Wave of Thaksin Fever provides a great distraction for the chattering classes but the obsession with him prevents any deeper analysis or more investigative journalism to emerge. It’s just a constant regurgitation of the same old theories, cut and pasted from the same old sources, inflected with the same old distortions.

Will Thaksin return? Maybe. Does it need discussing? Sure. But there is much more discussion to be had than just that.

Andrew Spooner can be followed on Twitter here and on Facebook here.

In the first part of the interview Dr. Thongchai speaks of the failure of major human rights’ organisations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) to take a principled stand on issues such as the 2006 military coup and Thailand’s notoriously draconian lese majeste law. Dr. Thongchai believed the NGOs’ failure to act in a principled fashion stemmed from their politicisation that came from the adaptation of an anti-Thaksin position.

This led to the abandonment of political prisoners such as Da Torpedo – something that Amnesty International appeared to do so while colluding with the then Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government. Dr. Thongchai also contended that the abandonment of the likes of Da Torpedo by the major human rights’ organisations was “pathetic, thoughtless and cruel.”

Dr Thongchai’s words below are the continuation of his response to the question – “How well do you think Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Thailand have dealt with the cases of both political and lese majeste (LM) prisoners?”

Keep in mind that around the same time [as lese majeste (LM) cases were increasing], the Thai human rights (HR) community, including Zawacki [Amnesty’s Thai-based researcher], sang the praise of the Thai King as a champion of Human Rights. Given the horrible HR violations by Thaksin government in the anti-drug campaign and the conflicts in the deep south, these Thai HR people only saw things in black and white, i.e. Thaksin’s opponents are good guys, the coup and the king’s intervention were good things to happen. They failed to stand firmly on the HR principles regardless of who committed those violations of HR or that governments use the LM law to silence their critics and suppress their opponents.

AI and HRW listened to their own bureaucrats without listening to criticism and comments that they should be aware of the problems within Thai HR community. They don’t care abut these “outsiders”. In one conversation with a HRW person at the New York office, the person sarcastically wondered if I was a Thaksin supporter. A similar reaction also came from AI in London and from Thai HR activists to other critics of them. AI and HRW, in my opinion, have become bureaucratized, thus unable listen to the voices that are different from their own bureaucrats. Given criticism on their bureaucrats, they protect their people like any mandarin would do. After years of complaints, they have not yet opened up any investigation into their mistakes. Instead, in recent years, especially AI, have gradually slid into a better position that LM is a problem and victims are prisoners of conscience. They do this without admitting any mistake but instead claiming that this is the position they have held all along – which is not true.

Another reason for their mistake is, in my opinion, that Thailand is not very important for them to care or spend much time on. One of the major arguments why they did not care about the victims of the suppression in Thailand in 2009-2010 is that those Red victims were violent and had weapons. Meanwhile HRW and AI support the popular uprisings in the Arab world. They are correct for the latter, but they don’t even care regarding the flaws of their reasoning for their silence and absence of support to victims in Thailand’s case. Thailand is too small for them to acknowledge their mistake. They simply move into a new position without anybody’s attention. Mistakes are quietly swept under the rug like a capable bureaucracy would do.

One of the reasons AI and HRW have gradually changed their position re: the LM issues is because the situation in Thailand has changed and the views of international community have changed too. The latter may be more important to AI and HRW. It now becomes so obvious and undeniable that LM law is a serious violation of HR and victims, regardless of their political colors, should be judged by HR principles and not by their political colors.

If there have been failures what do you think these two pre-eminent HR NGOs could have done differently?

They should listen to other voices who are fighting for HR, not just their own bureaucrats. Stop belittling these different voices from the same side. If they could have a mechanism to hold their own country researchers, like Mr Zawacki, accountable, it would be great. I do not know if AI and HRW have a good enough bureaucracy to accept transparency and accountability or not.  I do not know how to change the behavior of those “mandarins” in London and New York. That is beyond my ability to understand how they work. It is not my problem for not understanding it but it is their task to make sure to not allow this mistake to happen again. Ultimately, I think both HRW and AI and all their bureaucrats should stand firmly on human rights principles. I hope this is not too much to ask for.

Andrew Spooner can be followed on Twitter here and on Facebook here.

Dr. Thongchai Winichakul

I met Dr. Thongchai in late 2011 at a SOAS event in London and then once again in Singapore earlier this year. We discussed at length the failures of Thailand’s human rights NGOs and in particular both Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI). As readers of this blog will know, I have previously been critical of both organisations.

More recently other revelations, sourced from the Wikileaks Thai cables, have focused on HRW’s secretive connivance and support of the highly illegal and anti-democratic 2006 Thai Army coup and the resulting military junta government. So far HRW have refused, point blank, to answer any questions regarding their support of the Thai Army’s military takeover and rumours persist that their Bangkok-based staff are closely linked to the neo-fascist pro-coup extremists in the PAD. Furthermore one of their staff members, Sunai Phasuk, met with US Embassy staff on 58 occasions – an astonishing number – over a five-year period. Is Phasuk employed to conduct intel gathering for the US government rather than to work as someone committed to “human rights”?

Other questions clearly need to be asked about HRW and Phasuk’s closeness to the US mission in Thailand, particularly in light of the USA’s backing of the 2006 junta and its continued support for Thailand’s brutal army — an institution that is implicated in several massacres and almost 20 military coups. Yet astonishingly, HRW, far from examining or explaining their own support for the 2006 coup – something which nearly all analysts state unleashed the present round of instability in Thailand, culminating in the brutal Bangkok Massacre of 2010 – released a report in late-2011 condemning the democratically elected Yingluck Shinawatra government of “back-sliding” on human rights (I will return to this issue at a later date).

With these issues in mind I asked if Dr. Thongchai would be willing to conduct an email-based interview. He agreed – this is part one.

How well do you think Amnesty Interntional (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Thailand have dealt with the cases of both political and lese majeste (LM) prisoners?

 I’m going to talk about LM law and its victims only because I am not sure how broad or particular “the cases of political prisoners” you mean here are victims of the state’s suppressions in the deep south considered “political prisoners” in your view, too? If they are, HRW and AI have done pretty good job on many cases. I don’t know and have not heard if the HRW and AI consider the prisoners related to the anti-government in April-May 2010 “political” or not. (Ironically, it should be noted that now Thai government considers these people “political prisoners” — although the meaning of such term in Thai may be different from the one held by international HR community – I’m not sure HRW or AI have said anything about these people yet.)

For the LM cases, they did poorly. Between 2005-present, for the first 4-5 years they were inactive, silent, and implicitly against the effort to fight the unjust law and to help victims of the law. The bottom-line was, IMO, the HRW and AI got info from, and followed the views of the local Thai human rights (HR) community which is dominated by anti-Thaksin people. They are very biased and lack professionalism or HR principles. They are too politicized and brought their politics to cloud their views and judgments on HR issues. Most of them supported the coup. A few leaders of these Thai HR people even joined the “tours” organized and financed by the coup regime to explain to the world the necessity of the coup. Their political biases blinded them from seeing the victims of the LM as political prisoners or prisoners of conscience because most of these victims are Thaksin supporters or at least were actively anti the coup regime. Many of HR lawyers became active lawyers for the anti-Thaksin (PAD Yellow) camp. Meanwhile, up until today, these human rights activists and lawyers refuse to provide legal assistance to the poor families of Red supporters who were victims of several state suppressions, of LM laws, and who were jailed since the crackdown in mid-2010.  (A few lawyers and activists, mostly from younger generations, broke out from these Thai HR “mandarins” to help the Red supporters.) These “Thaksin-hater” HR people have dominated and influenced the Thai HR community. (These people themselves changed their position in recent years. Unsurprisingly, AI and HRW also changed their positions too around the same time.)

Throughout these years, these Thai HR leaders and in particularly the AI researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, always cited one case of the LM victims that they helped – the case of Sulak Sivaraksa, an anti-Thaksin critic who was charged under the Thaksin government. However, this is just more evidence of bias and not any evidence of their professionalism or adherence to HR principles.   In more recent times Sulak’s case needs to be compared to a case AI often cited as the reason why they cannot support other victims of LM – that of “Da Torpedo”.  Zawacki argues in public and in private conversations, that Da Torpedo committed hate speech, thus disqualifying her from being a prisoner of conscience or political prisoner. In my opinion, this reasoning on such a “technical ground” is pathetic, thoughtless and cruel. Many political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are involved in armed struggles against their governments and have given much harsher speeches. Nonetheless, even if we put aside the Da Torpedo case, around the same time there are many other victims who were not involve in any hate speech at all. Yet AI (and HRW) were also silent on these victims and never provided a good reason for their silence.

Part-two of this interview will follow  in the next few days.

Andrew Spooner can be followed on Twitter here and on Facebook here.

From urinating on corpses, drones bringing mass slaughter to wedding parties, death squads murdering completely innocent, unarmed teenagers  and the unprovoked and brutal assassination of children asleep in their beds, the USA’s intervention in Afghanistan has descended into pure terror. As President Ronald Reagan’s former NSA Director and 3 Star General William Odom once put it “Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic.”

Of course the chance of US soldiers facing a court in Afghanistan is absolutely zero. Without doubt the soldier responsible will be evacuated out of the country to face possible court-martial in the US. Regardless of the justice meted out there the Afghan people, including the families of the dead children, will not have their day in court.

But impunity and a complete disregard for local people within the countries they serve was always the way for the US military. And Thais should look no further than the present US Ambassador to Thailand, Kristie Kenney, for a perfect example of this.

Kristie Kenney. Pic: AP.

Previously I’ve written about the Subic rape case here. In brief, a US Marine serving in the Philippines was convicted in a Philippine court of raping a local woman. The US government, however, refused, despite the overwhelming evidence at that time, to accept the conviction and the Marine was rushed to the protection of the US Embassy compound and never served a day of his sentence. The US hid the convicted Marine behind something called the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) – a legal device very similar to colonial-era laws where the dominant nation refuses to acknowledge the jurisdiction of local laws. Eventually under very dubious circumstances – with payoffs and the victim being granted US citizenship – the Marine won an appeal and the entire saga drew to a close. Yet the nasty stench of impunity still surrounds this case and the US Ambassador to Thailand, Kristie Kenney, was directly involved in securing that.

At the time of the Subic rape Kristie Kenney was the US Ambassador to the Philippines. When I wrote my original piece the Embassy WikiLeaks cables relating to that period had not yet been released. They were last year and it’s fair to say, after reading them, that Kristie Kenney played a significant role in freeing this rapist and making sure that opposition to this abrogation of Philippine sovereignty by elected Filipino law-makers was stymied. (A list of cables involving Kenney and the Subic rape case can be found here.)

In a cable written by Kenney and entitled “Handling The Marine “rape” Case — Next Steps” dated 27 April 2006. Kenney writes -

Through our repeated public statements and in our private conversations with senior GRP [Government of Republic of Philippines] officials and members of the Philippine Congress, we have continued to steer a steady course that protects the rights of the four Marines…

When set against the almost complete silence that Kenney has encouraged in the case of imprisoned US blogger Joe Gordon (hear about her attempt to stop difficult questions raised the Thai media about his case here), someone she has never visited despite his being in prison only a 30-minute drive from Kenney’s palatial residence in downtown Bangkok, her evident enthusiasm to help free those charged with rape is extraordinary and very revealing.

In another cable Kenney bemoans the “sensational” media coverage at the time of the rape, dismisses feminists protesters as “token” and lays out a plan in case of a guilty verdict – in this scenario “Any Marines found guilty will remain in Embassy custody.”

One has to wonder if Kenney raised her intervention in the Subic rape case and her complete dismissal of Filipino feminists during her recent Embassy-hosted “International Women’s Day” party? Given her cynicism the answer can only be a resounding no.

In this cable Kenney lays out the services afforded to the US Marine, Lance Corporal Smith, who has by now been found guilty of rape, and makes sure his rights are being respected. In a section entitled “EMBASSY PROVIDES SIGNIFICANT SUPPORT” Kenney writes:

 [Smith] is currently in a CONEX-type trailer, with basic amenities and access to fitness and sports facilities. Representatives from the III Marine Expeditionary Forces supervise him at all times.  The Regional Security Office has spent significant time and resources ensuring Smith’s safety and security, including during Smith’s appearances in court and, more recently, during Smith’s hospital visits for minor procedures. American Citizen Services officers, who attended all trial sessions, have also kept close watch over the case, liaising with Smith’s family and ensuring Smith’s rights as a U.S. citizen are respected.

Set against the conditions Joe Gordon has been kept in and that, unlike Smith, Joe committed his “crime” on US soil, the difference in treatment that Kenney helped secure is staggering. No matter how abhorrent the crime, impunity for serving members of US military seems to be paramount for Kenney. A blogger offering up a translation of Yale University book is entirely secondary. If only Joe Gordon had been a US Marine rapist.

Kenney reveals in another cable her personal concerns for the convicted US Marine rapist’s welfare –

Renewed high-level judicial and political focus on the rape case of Marine Lance Corporal Daniel J. Smith has underscored the profound importance of this issue … for LCpl Smith’s future.

In a cable entitled INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ELECTION Kenney discusses Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, an experienced and committed Filipino law-maker who is perceived as being anti the VFA which has kept Smith out of prison and grants the US military almost complete impunity.

Kenney writes –

 Senator Santiago is a vocal advocate for justice, human rights, and the rule of law.  She is a passionate crusader against government corruption, and in the rough and noisy world of Philippine politics, has remained untainted by corruption scandals.

Kenney then adds

In late 2005, [Santiago] initiated a Congressional move to abrogate the agreement after the U.S. government turned down the Philippines’ request for custody over the four servicemen accused in the controversial November 2005 Subic rape case.

However, and very strangely, Kenney then recounts Santiago’s opposition suddenly being dropped

 After a briefing at the U.S. Embassy and a visit to the accused servicemen, Senator Santiago dropped her efforts to abrogate the VFA.

We’ll never know what was in that “briefing” but given the USA and Kenney’s obvious desperation in making sure the convicted rapist never faced a day in prison and that the important strategic US-Philippines military alliance, conditional on the VFA, held, we can only speculate.

Kenney finished out her days in the Philippines taking part in the “papaya dance” on national TV and making comments about elected Filipino politicians behind closed doors.

In Thailand she’s spent her time making sure that no progressive voices in Thai politics are arrayed against the US. This is despite the US being a huge supporter of the same Thai Army that has repeatedly crushed Thai democracy and murdered Thai nationals, often with US weapons and using US training methods. Publicly, she has spent more time taking part in tacky Tatler photo shoots than addressing the human rights of US nationals like Joe Gordon and seems content that the US-armed/trained Thai Army maintains its impunity. From rapists to those who arm murderers and on to the jailing of US bloggers there is very little Kristie Kenney won’t utilise her formidable PR skills in support of.

Maybe Kenney now needs to get on a plane to Kabul? Unfortunately though, there’s no Afghan Tatler for her to appear in. There is, however, a US Army murderer for her to save.

Andrew Spooner can be found on twitter here.

Moderated comments are switched on.

To kick things off I will be speaking next week at the World Bloggers’ and Social Media Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The theme of my talk will be on Social Media v Old Media and I will be drawing, in part, on Evgeny Morozov’s excellent critique of cyber-utopianism, The Net Delusion and also my own experiences of social media in Thailand and beyond.

The thrust of my debate is to explore the possibility that we are now entering a time where the “social” aspect of information dissemination is supplanting veracity. Being “popular” is becoming more powerful than being critical and analytical. Fact-free “rumour”, driven by those who have “social capital”, drives out fact-checked “accuracy”. Group-think and conformity within “social” media spaces replaces the practised distance and evaluation of “old” media. As late 20^th Century French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once said “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”

The case study for my talk will draw on the reaction by English language Thai social media to my story on former Thai PM and present leader of the main Thai opposition Democrat Party Abhisit Vejjajiva’s luxury holiday to the Maldives that he took slap-bang in the middle of the worst natural disaster to have hit Thailand in decades.

In short, en masse, the English language social media community driven by personal antipathy towards myself dismissed the story as complete and unfounded garbage.  A mini-campaign to attack the story ensued yet no facts were checked by these people as their personal feelings and group-think mentality held sway.

Of course, placing “feeling” and “group think” above rational thought is everybody’s right, even if the result is large amounts of egg flying into your face. And so, the “campaign” started to gain traction until, in a highly amusing turn of events, the “old” media stepped in.

At that point two prominent Thai daily newspapers, Khao Sod and Matichon “fact-checked” my story and put questions to Abhisit and the Thai Democrat Party leadership.

The result? Yes, Abhisit DID travel to the Maldives during the flood crisis.

One of my stories on Abhisit’s trip to the Maldives was then translated into Thai and published by Khao Sod while Matichon gave my work plenty of coverage as well.

So is social media a vehicle of progressive politics where the technology, according to the cyber-utopians, supposedly determines socially just and democratic outcomes? Or just a space where conformity and reactionary thought is taking a new shape? Or does “old” media still maintain practices and methods that the cyber-utopians can’t compete with and utterly fail to address?

Needless to say I remain “unpopular” with members of the “social media” community. Vive le difference!

Andrew Spooner’s public Facebook page is here.

Things began badly with the start of the trial of labour activist and journalist, Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, on lese majeste charges. Somyot, who is being held in quite deplorable conditions, transported from prison to prison and province to province in shackles, faces up to 30 years in prison.

Then news came that left-wing Red Shirt leader, Surachai “Sae Dan” Danwattananusorn, who is also being held on remand on lese majeste charges and who is almost 70 years old, was thinking of changing his plea to guilty after his health condition deteriorated dramatically.

Next, as has been widely circulated in the global media, 61-year-old grandfather, Ampon Tangnoppakul, was sentenced to 20 years for sending 4 SMS messages to Somkiat Krongwattanasuk, an aide of Democrat Party leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva .

Ar Kong being arrested (from New Mandala)

At the same time as Ampon aka “Ar Kong” (his nickname, meaning “grandpa”) was being sentenced, the Democrat Party hosted a press conference announcing the establishment of a “cyber warriors” group to stalk those deemed to be committing lese majeste. A Democrat Party spokesperson also stated that they were seriously considering filing criminal charges against the present government’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies should they not pursue every single lese majeste charge.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, the present Pheu Thai government, eager to jump on the repressive bandwagon, issued a statement saying that they’d prosecute Facebook users for clicking the ‘like” button next to any content deemed lese majeste and that they had asked for 10,000 Facebook pages to be deleted.

Finally, news is coming through that a prosecution for lese majeste is going ahead against an unknown Facebook user (announced on Thai lawyer Anon Nampha’s Facebook page) who posted unspecified content on Facebook.

So where does all this leave human rights and freedom of expression activists?

Amnesty International, whose Thailand-based researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, has previously made comments that are supportive of the application of lese majeste (see below), have rather belatedly made a statement lambasting the draconian sentence in Ampon’s case. True to form, he has nothing at all to say on the case of either Somyot, Surachai or any of the other lese majeste victims. Previous evidence also exists that points towards Zawacki colluding with the former Democrat Party government in deciding if infamous lese majeste detainee, Da Torpedo, should be considered a “prisoner of conscience”.

Zawacki’s earlier thoughts on lese majeste should not be forgotten.

We have felt that working in a more private capacity than in a public way is the most appropriate and the most effective response on the lese majeste issue to date. There is an implicit knowledge of the sensitivity of this law [and] there are competing interests at stake; one is the right to freedom of expression. But you have an institution here that has played an important role in the protection of human rights in Thailand. We can see why the monarchy needs to be protected.

It would actually be very reasonable to surmise that Zawacki and Amnesty’s previous inaction and collusion have played a part that led to the point where lese majeste prosecutions have reached their recent zenith and a climate where the kind of savage sentence handed down to Ampon becomes possible.

But Amnesty are not alone in this failure. The diplomatic corps in Thailand – with the USA out in front – have submissively tolerated the abrogation of freedom of expression and human rights in Thailand for quite some time now. The case of US citizen Joe Gordon, who allegedly committed lese majeste several thousands of miles away in Colorado, has been a case in point. The US mission in Bangkok has been utterly pathetic in supporting Joe, its ambassador seemingly more interested in appearing in photo shoots than protecting the rights of her fellow citizen. Her swatting away of Nation journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk’s question regarding Joe Gordon during a vist of Senator John McCain is very revealing.

And where have Thailand’s social and international media been while the likes of Da Torpedo were left to rot in a Bangkok prison cell? Did any major media outlet attempt to visit her in prison or attempt to highlight her case? It seems not. While one can understand the reticence of some Bangkok-based journalists to take on such stories why can’t they at least publicly acknowledge the restrictions they work under?  (They seem very keen to do so when nations deemed as “hostile” by the West have similar restrictions – this recent article by the BBC about the Palestinian Authority complains extensively about “reporting restrictions”.)

Thankfully some international NGOs, such as ARTICLE 19, have been consistent in their condemnation of lese majeste. Their statement yesterday regarding Ampon’s case cuts to the heart of the issue.

“This verdict is shocking and shows the Thai authorities’ complete disregard for freedom of expression,” says Dr Agnès Callamard, ARTICLE 19 Executive Director. “We were encouraged last month when the government admitted that the use of the lèse-majesté law can adversely affect freedom of expression, however this latest development proves those words to be empty. We are saddened for Amphon and this extreme injustice.”

During Thailand’s human rights review before the United Nations Human Rights Council last month, ARTICLE 19, and a number countries including France and Norway publicly stated that the lèse-majesté law, by its very existence, constitutes a threat to legitimate political expression and freedom of expression.  Many other nations including Indonesia and Brazil expressed concerns and recommended reform of the laws.

ARTICLE 19 is also alarmed about the lack of reliable or compelling legal evidence in this conviction. Although the judge conceded that the technical evaluation of evidence could not conclusively incriminate Amphon, the court proceeded to find him guilty.

Since his arrest on 3 August 2010, Amphon has been detained without bail and will likely be moved to a high penalty prison on Friday 25 November 2011. ARTICLE 19 is deeply concerned about Amphon’s welfare, as he suffers from laryngeal cancer and lacks access to proper medical treatment.

ARTICLE 19 calls for the immediate reversal of Amphon’s conviction and for his immediate release.  Whilst under government authority, Amphon must be given proper medical care to ensure his well-being. Furthermore, ARTICLE 19 continues to call for the lèse-majesté law to be repealed and for the Computer Crimes Act to be brought in accordance with the Thai constitution and international standards.

Yet, the most depressing aspect of the entire situation is the lack of space to hold a proper public debate. Some supporters of lese majeste on extremist PAD supporter websites were calling for Ampon to be “decapitated” and have promised public disorder, with an implied threat of violence, if any proper reform of lese majeste takes place. The elected government appear weak and divided, unable to stand up to the forces arrayed against them and succumbing to ever more repressive practices. The Thai-based international NGOs such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch appear both politicised and collusive and the international media seem compromised.

What is certain is that the savagery of Ampon’s sentence is pushing the situation to breaking point. As I sit and write a 61-year-old grandfather is rotting in a Thai prison – the message is stark; this could happen to anyone. We are all Ar Kong now.

Andrew Spooner’s public Facebook page is available here – all are welcome to join.

The judge said that the prosecution could not clearly prove that the defendant was the person who sent the offensive text messages to the mobile phone of the Secretary to the then Prime Minister. But even so, because it is difficult for the prosecution to present compelling evidence, as the defendant who committed this offence would naturally conceal his actions so that others could not observe them, it is necessary to rely on circumstantial evidence which the prosecution presented to indicate the intentions of the defendant.

Of course the judge’s comments only muddy the issue further.

Elsewhere Bangkok Pundit has gone into more detail about the case, while court notes are available here.

One of Ampon’s defence witnesses is recorded in these notes as stating:

That the defendant often left his phone at home while he took her and her siblings to school. She also added that the defendant took her to sign the royal guestbook at Siriraj hospital during her summer vacation in 2009.

She replied to the cross-examination question that at home, apart from the family members, there was no other people coming in and out of the house. She has never seen the defendant send SMSs to anybody. Moreover, when the defendant wanted to call someone, he would open his phonebook first.

In addition, according to a Democrat Party Deputy Spokesperson, Mallika Boonmeetrakool (see her Twitter feed here), the Democrats are also threatening to launch a law suit against any government official who refuses to act on information provided to them by the “cyber warriors”.

Thai Democrats threaten to file charges against government.

According to one tweet by Mallika (rough translation): “If the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology doesn’t act on the evidence from the 200 websites we have already given them we will use the Democrat Party legal team to file action against them using section 157 of the criminal code.”

Section 157 states:

Whoever, being an official, wrongfully exercises or does not exercise any of his functions to the injury of any person, or dishonestly exercises or omits to exercise any of his functions, shall be punished with imprisonment of one to ten years or fined of two thousand to twenty thousand Baht, or both.

The implication of this is that the Democrats are full-square against any reform of lese majeste and are threatening to prosecute the Pheu Thai government if they refuse to make lese majeste arrests.

It appears that Amnesty have finally got off the fence and have condemned the imprisonment of Ampon. While it should be welcomed, what is slightly odd is that they have suddenly found a voice. For the previous 30months of Democrat Party rule (Amnesty Thailand have strong PAD connections, while Ben Zawacki, Amnesty’s researcher in Thailand, is noted for making statements that appeared  supportive of the lese majeste law) they have remained resolutely silent. Questions must be asked why that is the case.

Nonetheless Zawacki is reported in an article put out by AP on The State’s website to say

“Thailand has every right to have a (lese majeste) law, but its current form and usage place the country in contravention of its international legal obligations,” Zawacki told The Associated Press. “Repression remains the order of the day in Thailand on freedom of expression, and Amphon is a political prisoner.”

Prachatai are reporting that a 61-year-old grandfather of 5, Ampon Tangnoppakul, has been sentenced to 20 years for sending 4 SMS messages that defamed the monarchy to a member of Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva’s personal team.

Amphon, also known as Ar Kong, has always maintained his innocence and claimed that he didn’t own the SIM card used to send the messages.

This is a sentence that is shocking in both its severity and its savagery and our thoughts go out to Amphon and to his family.

One hopes that Human Rights Watch (who previously seemed to maintain a secret policy of not supporting lese majeste prisoners) and Amnesty International, whose Thailand researcher, Ben Zawacki, has previously suggested some support for the use of lese majeste, are finally confronted with a case that they can’t shut their eyes to.

It will also be interesting to see if Bangkok’s international media corps report anything about this case. Over the last years, with only one or two notable exceptions, they too have resolutely ignored cases similar to Ar Kong’s.

Finally, I hope that the present Pheu Thai government also understand the terrible human cost of sentencing people to horrific prison terms for such acts and work hard to reform lese majeste. They should be continually reminded that such harsh sentencing  undermines Thailand’s standing as a responsible member of the international community, painting it as little more than a North Korea with spas and temples.

Now, as I referred to in an earlier blog post, it appears that they can’t even spell it.

Normally, I’m not one to really pick up on the typos and spelling errors of others as like all writers I can make them myself from time to time.

But the attacks on Yingluck’s Thai accent when speaking English have been an endless feature of discussion of the kind of “educate” Bangkok Thai who reads the Bangkok Post.

Glass houses. Stones.

Update – The Bangkok Post has finally learnt how to spell democracy and has corrected their original error although the screengrabs remain…

Thaksin said:

I am willing to support all measures that lead to national reconciliation. I do not want to see any attempt that could damage reconciliation climate.

I am ready to sacrifice my personal happiness even though I have received no justice for more than five years. For all Thai people, I will exercise patience.

Does that mean he will not be seeking return to Thailand in the near future? Hard to say. But what is certain is that Thailand’s anti-Thaksin movement, typified by the neo-fascist PAD and their supporters, are waiting in the wings ready to explode with all the sanctimonious rage that they can muster.

Of course, arch anti-Thaksinite, the Bangkok Post‘s Voranai, is back out in front leading the charge with magnamounous calls for the “rule of law” and supporting “democracy” (what is also very amusing about that piece is that, rather tellingly, nobody at the Bangkok Post even knows how to spell the word “democracy”. They spell it “demcoracy” – screen grab is here).

Thaksin refuses pardon.

As Thaksin’s supposed “pardon” turns out to be an irrelevance, Voranai manages to be in the unenviable position of being completely out of a step with a story for a 2nd time in two weeks. But as usual, Voranai’s best trick is pulled by attempts to the claim the moral high ground – a location he establishes by omitting key facts and not explaining why someone as principled as he claims to be is not also calling for a protest to arrest the 2006 coup leaders (surely a far worse attack on the rule of law and democracy than Thaksin’s signing of a piece of paper?), or to conduct a proper criminal investigation into why nurses and children were shot on the streets of Bangkok last year (Voranai has already written an oped basically suggesting that the families of the dead from April/May should stop whinging).

And why is the so-called “liberal” wing of the anti-Thaksin movement, typified by the likes of  Voranai, failing to tackle the very obviously fascistic, racist and anti-democratic elements in their own ranks? Not doing so damages their credibility to emerge as a positive force for democratic change in Thailand.

It also marks this movement down as dishonest and hypocritical.

Once again, omissions flourish. There’s the fact that the present government’s pardon is basically just a replica of the Democrat Party government’s pardon from 2010. There’s the fact that the anti-Thaksin movement has always had at its very centre the PAD – a group of neo-fascists, absolutely opposed to democracy whose supporters routinely call for murder and slaughter. Then there’s the fact that pro-Thaksin parties have won all of Thailand’s last 5 democratic elections, 3 with absolute majorities. Then there’s the fact that the only way these pro-Thaksin governments have been removed and then kept out is via illegal coups, brutal massacres, illegal airport occupations by neo-fascist hate mobs, phony politicized convictions, dissolution of political parties by military juntas, huge censorship campaigns and just about every other anti-democratic act  imaginable all done, supposedly, to protect “democracy” from what is actually a democratically elected government.

The hypocrisy of the anti-Thaksin movement’s calls for “democracy”, “accountability” and the “rule of law” while they continually abrogate all three is transparent and stark. The lack of principle or of a cohesive rational and progressive position is obvious as well.

One thing needs to be very clear; opposing Thaksin with less democracy is bound to fail. Before the anti-Thaksin movement start throwing stones they better make sure their own house is in order first. Quite clearly it isn’t.

Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.

First, there’s the issue of the present prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra’s use of the English language (Siam Voices contributor Kaewmala has her take on the entire matter here which I’m roundly in agreement with).What Kaewmala has missed though, are some of the terrible and highly amusing English language manglings made by Yingluck’s critics, the best of which is below.

Thai neo-fascists attack Yingluck's English while mangling their own

But there is a far more sinister side to Yingluck and Thaksin’s critics. Over the last couple of days, photographs of piles of dead corpses have appeared on extreme right wing and PAD-supporting public Facebook pages. Comments include that Thaksin, his family and the Red Shirts should all be slaughtered. What is very worrying is that these comments and photos received dozens of “likes” from supporters (a report by Thai E-News on these calls for genocide can be found here though be warned that the photo in question is graphic. I also have screen grabs of all the comments and photographs).

So are Bangkok’s international media reporting on these calls for genocide? Or do they dismiss such things as irrelevant? Hard to say but many of them are still misrepresenting the PAD and many of the anti-Thaksin protesters as some kind of benign force for democracy and decency when all the evidence points away from that (remember that being “anti-Thaksin” is neutral and objective,  while even mentioning evidence such as Thaksin is popular with Thais or was democratically elected makes you “biased”).

Or maybe, as usual, the international media are taking their cue from the Bangkok Post who turn a tiny protest into front page news and airbrush out the PAD’s fascism and calls for extreme violence and genocide? Sinister, creepy and definitely NOT “neutral”.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, speaks during a joint news conference with Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra Thursday. Pic: AP.

A State Department official is credited as saying:

I was there three weeks ago. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve been to incredible places that are flooded, but virtually half the country is under water right now, the worst flooding by orders of magnitude in Thailand’s history. This is a young government elected not long ago…. She is a relative newcomer to politics. She and her government have struggled mightily against just incredible odds and enormous environmental challenges to deal with floods that are biblical in proportions. And she is – she has done an excellent job in seeking to balance huge interests both in the countryside and in urban areas, particularly in Bangkok.

While these comments are out of step with the likes of the anti-Yingluck Democrat and PAD-supporting English-language Thai press such as the Bangkok Post and the Nation (and many in the English-language Bangkok-based international media), they are much more in line with the Thai-language press who have been, in many cases, far less critical of Yingluck.

It’s refreshing to see the State Department create a more accurate reflection of the situation in Thailand but they did make quite a glaring error in their commentary – President Thaksin? I think not.

Andrew Spooner’s public Facebook page – all are welcome to join – can be found here.

The group, who called themselves the Social Activists Network for Democracy, made this protest on the same day that rumours are swirling Bangkok that military-ousted former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra may receive a pardon for a conviction relating to what some consider to be a trumped up charge of corruption regarding a piece of land the former PM’s wife bought at market rates several years ago.

It is not yet clear if the ordinary Red Shirt members who helped return the present Pheu Thai government to power and who are held in Thai prisons will also be pardoned.

The letter is as follows

Bangkok, 16 November 2011

The Honorable Ban Ki-moon,

As you may be aware, in October 2011 in Geneva, Switzerland Thailand was the subject of a Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

A number of recommendations flowed from this review, not least from Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. He urged Thailand to hold broad-based public consultations to amend section 112 of the penal code (Thailand’s infamous and draconian lese majeste law that imprisons people for up to 15 years for “defaming the monarchy”) and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act, with the objective to bring the country in compliance with its international human rights obligations.

Mr La Rue said -

“The threat of a long prison sentence and vagueness of what kinds of expression constitute defamation, insult, or threat to the monarchy, encourage self-censorship and stifle important debates on matters of public interest, thus putting in jeopardy the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This is exacerbated by the fact that the charges can be brought by private individuals and trials are often closed to the public.”

In addition to Mr. La Rue’s comments, the UK-based Freedom of Expression advocates, ARTICLE 19 had this to say -

“ARTICLE 19 would like to see the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and countries with close links to Thailand raise serious concerns with the Thai government on the misuse of the Lese Majeste law and the 2007 Computer Crime Act (CCA) which has been used as a default lese majeste legislation. The Thai government must open up dialogue with local civil society actors on the provisions of the lese majeste law and CCA and their use, and the government must amend these laws in accordance with Thailand’s obligations under its Constitution and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.”

Following the review several countries backed the call for the 112 law to be reformed, including Brazil, Indonesia and Canada, while other nations such as the UK, France and Norway asked for a space to be opened up in Thai public discourse where the future of the law could be discussed.

At present it is impossible to make an accurate verification of the numbers of persons who are incarcerated in Thailand as a result of the application of the 112 law.

However, several people are awaiting trial and sentencing for charges relating to alleged breaches of 112. In 2010 alone, it was reported that the courts accepted 478 new cases of lese majeste, almost three times the record set the year before. Experts believe that the number of persons in custody for alleged violations of 112 is now in the hundreds.

These persons include

1)   Mr. Amphon Tungnopphakul (61), a beloved grandfather of 5 who is being held on remand in inhumane and degrading conditions at the Bangkok Remand Prison. Mr. Tungnopphakul allegedly sent SMS messages that defamed the monarch to Somkriet Krongwattanasuk, a private secretary of former Prime Minister and leader of the Democrat Party, Abhisit Vejjajiva. The matter was reported to the police by Mr. Krongwattanasuk. Since his arrest Mr. Tungnopphakul was released for a short period on bail but the prosecutor demanded he be returned to prison and his bail be revoked. Mr. Tungnopphakul is also suffering from mouth cancer and we believe his release is of the utmost urgency on medical grounds alone.

2)  Ms. Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul (48) aka Da Torpedo who is accused of lese majeste in connection with speeches she made at a political rally in 2008. Her original trial was held in camera and she was unable to properly contest the evidence against her. At this trial she received an 18year prison sentence. She then appealed against this verdict on the basis that her in camera trial breached her constitutional rights. The Appeal Court revoked the original verdict of the lower court and returned her petition to the Constitutional Court. While the Constitutional Court believed that the closed trial of Ms. Charnchoengsilpakul did not breach the constitution at present the original revocation by the Appeal Court stands. Daranee will be facing a retrial on the 15th December after her case was inexplicably postponed from October 17th. This postponement has also destroyed Ms. Charnchoengsilpakul’s chances of asking for a reduction of penalty, something which is usual at the time of the King’s birthday on 5th December. Furthermore, we consider the denial of bail for Ms. Charnchoengsilpakul to be evidence of unusual and special punishment as it is ordinary for Thai citizens who have had their original conviction overturned by the Appeal Court to be freed on bail. Ms. Charnchoengsilpakul has been in prison since July 22nd 2008. For most of this time she has also had to endure a very painful jaw infection for which she has not been given adequate medical care. At least one witness has reported that Ms. Charnchoengsilpakul has had to remove her own teeth in order to be able to eat. We call for the immediate release of Ms. Charnchoengsilpakul and the provision of and proper medical care to be afforded her.

3)  Mr. Somyot Pruksakasemsuk (50) is a trade union activist and the editor of the “Voice of Thaksin” magazine. He is accused of lese majeste after publishing two articles in this magazine which were deemed to be of offence to the monarchy. Mr. Pruksakasemsuk has been denied bail because the court stated he was a threat to “national security.” He is being kept in inhumane and degrading conditions at the Sa Kaeo Prison. However, because the charges leveled against Mr. Pruksakasemsuk were made in four different places in Thailand he is being continually transported, chained and shackled, around the country in a small caged prison truck on journeys that can take up to 15hours. We believe this constitutes unusual and special punishment of Mr. Pruksakasemsuk and ask that he be released on bail and be allowed to make his own arrangements to face the charges as is normal practice in Thailand.

4)  Mr. Joe Gordon (55) is a naturalised US citizen of Thai descent who was arrested on 24th May 2011. He is currently being held in inhumane and degrading conditions at the Bangkok Remand Prison awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in a Bangkok court on 10th October 2011 to the charge of lese majeste. Before his guilty plea Mr. Gordon asserted his innocence on numerous occasions yet, after being repeatedly denied bail even though he had a painful medical condition for which proper treatment was denied, he changed his plea to guilty. We are concerned with the safety of Mr. Gordon’s conviction and believe he was subject to special and unusual punishment in order to evince a confession. Furthermore, the charge of lese majeste also relates to activity committed by Mr. Gordon while he was resident in the USA. Therefore the universal jurisdiction of Thailand’s lese majeste law has trumped Mr. Gordon’s constitutional rights as a US citizen. This is a deeply worrying development which has been further compounded by the lack of proper protest by Mr. Gordon’s US government representatives at the US Embassy in Bangkok.

As representatives of the Social Activists Network for Democracy (SAND) we would request that you thoroughly investigate the prison conditions of the four persons named above and make sure they are treated in an appropriate fashion  and with full recourse to adequate medical care and to proper justice.

We would like to request that you call for the immediate release on bail of all lese majeste prisoners.

We would like to request you ask the Thai authorities to reveal the full number of lese majeste prisoners and those who have been accused of lese majeste.

We would also request that you read the full advice of Mr La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, regarding Thailand’s use of both lese majeste and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act and act accordingly.

Yours faithfully,

Social Activists Network for Democracy (SAND)

Piece cut and pasted in below was blogged a couple of days ago.

In that piece I asked Voranai 3 questions, which I also sent to him prior to publication via email. I also informed him I’d publish any response he sent me. Voranai had the good grace to respond and I think it is only fair I repost the entire piece and include, at the top, his responses.

To withdraw or not to withdraw any article, I believe, is the Index on Censorship’s prerogative.  The story was written at the request of Index.

Did you deliberately misrepresent the story to Index?

The story wasn’t deliberately misrepresented.

Why didn’t you do some very basic fact checking before it was published?

The facts are correct.

The story was submitted on Friday Nov 4, it was published on Monday November 7. On november 8, the cabinet pulled back the proposal on the advise of the council of state. good news for all. but that was after the facts of the story. The amendment was alive and kicking before Nov 8. When asked by reporters if the cabinet will re-submit, the cultural minister said the issue will be considered after the flood crisis was over.

Original piece starts here – “On November 2 Prachatai ran a small article in English on their website concerning some quite draconian and censorious amendments that had been proposed to Thailand’s 2007 Print Registration Act. Thankfully, Prachatai were able to report the rather good news that these amendments had been rejected.

On 1 Nov, Deputy Spokesperson of the PM’s Office Chalitrat Chantarubeksa told reporters that the Office of the Council of State had rejected amendments to the 2007 Print Registration Act as proposed by the Ministry of Culture and approved by the Cabinet on 18 Oct.

The agency, which is the government’s advisory body on legal matters, told the government that certain parts of the proposed amendments might go against Section 45 of the Constitution which guarantees the people’s rights to freedom of expression.

The Cabinet then asked the Ministry of Culture to reconsider the amendments, he said.

The news that the amendments had been rejected also appeared in Thailand’s biggest selling national newspaper, Thai Rath, on November 1 and in Prachatai’s Thai language site on November 2 (even sitting in my armchair in London I knew they’d been rejected).

So, it seemed rather odd, that almost a week after news broke that the amendments had been rejected, the Bangkok Post’s very ownVoranai Vanijaka wrote a piece for the website of the UK’s prestigious anti-censorship organisation, Index on Censorship, where he opined that the already rejected amendment was part of some elaborate Pheu Thai plot to return former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to power.

In a piece entitled “Proposed Thai law gives police power to shut news media” Voranai holds forth on the apocalyptic horrors of the (rejected, non-existent) amendment stating that:

Anti-free speech legislation is used as a weapon in the ongoing political war between the Thaksin Shinawatra political machine and the Democrat Party.

and

The amendment of the Printing Act is viewed as another step to consolidate power and influence public opinions in the bid to pave the way for the return of Mr Thaksin to Thailand and, eventually, to power.

Of course, Voranai completely fails to mention in his article that the amendment hadn’t existed for almost a week. Only after I engaged him in the comments section of his article did he finally admit, on the November 8, that the amendment had been rejected.

So there was no “proposed Thai law” for anyone to “view” as yet more evidence of Thaksin’s illegitimate grab for power.

The questions Voranai now needs to answer are why hasn’t he withdrawn it in light of the correct facts then being presented to him? Did he deliberately misrepresent the story to Index? Why didn’t he do some very basic fact checking before it was published?

Of course Index also have some questions to answer about why they’ve allowed this misleading article to remain on their site without mentioning that the law had been abandoned several days before publication. They’ve allowed this situation to drag on despite being made fully aware of the facts of the matter.

Yet ultimately the responsibility lays with the contributor. It is Voranai’s name on the article. Maybe he is happy with misleading people? Who knows as, so far, he is refusing to answer.

(The comments section of Voranai’s piece is also worth a read and is home to quite a ding dong battle between myself and a person who accuses me, in all seriousness, of being part of a “ruthlessly underhand and inhumane totalitarian agenda”. You really couldn’t make it up).

Before publication I sent Voranai the questions above to give him a chance to respond. If he does so I will repost with his responses.”

Andrew Spooner’s Facebook page can be found here.

On 1 Nov, Deputy Spokesperson of the PM’s Office Chalitrat Chantarubeksa told reporters that the Office of the Council of State had rejected amendments to the 2007 Print Registration Act as proposed by the Ministry of Culture and approved by the Cabinet on 18 Oct.

The agency, which is the government’s advisory body on legal matters, told the government that certain parts of the proposed amendments might go against Section 45 of the Constitution which guarantees the people’s rights to freedom of expression.

The Cabinet then asked the Ministry of Culture to reconsider the amendments, he said.

The news that the amendments had been rejected also appeared in Thailand’s biggest selling national newspaper, Thai Rath, on November 1 and in Prachatai’s Thai language site on November 2 (even sitting in my armchair in London I knew they’d been rejected).

So, it seemed rather odd, that almost a week after news broke that the amendments had been rejected, the Bangkok Post’s very own Voranai Vanijaka wrote a piece for the website of the UK’s prestigious anti-censorship organisation, Index on Censorship, where he opined that the already rejected amendment was part of some elaborate Pheu Thai plot to return former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to power.

In a piece entitled “Proposed Thai law gives police power to shut news media” Voranai holds forth on the apocalyptic horrors of the (rejected, non-existent) amendment stating that:

Anti-free speech legislation is used as a weapon in the ongoing political war between the Thaksin Shinawatra political machine and the Democrat Party.

and

The amendment of the Printing Act is viewed as another step to consolidate power and influence public opinions in the bid to pave the way for the return of Mr Thaksin to Thailand and, eventually, to power.

Of course, Voranai completely fails to mention in his article that the amendment hadn’t existed for almost a week. Only after I engaged him in the comments section of his article did he finally admit, on the November 8, that the amendment had been rejected.

So there was no “proposed Thai law” for anyone to “view” as yet more evidence of Thaksin’s illegitimate grab for power.

The questions Voranai now needs to answer are why hasn’t he withdrawn it in light of the correct facts then being presented to him? Did he deliberately misrepresent the story to Index? Why didn’t he do some very basic fact checking before it was published?

Of course Index also have some questions to answer about why they’ve allowed this misleading article to remain on their site without mentioning that the law had been abandoned several days before publication. They’ve allowed this situation to drag on despite being made fully aware of the facts of the matter.

Yet ultimately the responsibility lays with the contributor. It is Voranai’s name on the article. Maybe he is happy with misleading people? Who knows as, so far, he is refusing to answer.

(The comments section of Voranai’s piece is also worth a read and is home to quite a ding dong battle between myself and a person who accuses me, in all seriousness, of being part of a “ruthlessly underhand and inhumane totalitarian agenda”. You really couldn’t make it up).

Before publication I sent Voranai the questions above to give him a chance to respond. If he does so I will repost with his responses.

Andrew Spooner’s Facebook page can be found here.

Yet, as anyone with even the merest interest in Thai history and politics will tell you, the Thai Army are not exactly the most benign force in the country.

There’s the numerous coups, the history of torture and abuse and, of course, several massacres, not least the one in Bangkok last year that resulted in the deaths of 85+ civilians.

And we shouldn’t forget how close the Thai Army are to their biggest supporter and ally – the USA. In fact the USA has trained more Thai soldiers in its foreign officer training programme than any other nation on earth, takes part with Thailand in Cobra Gold, the planet’s biggest annual military exercise and considers Thailand one of its oldest military allies. Lucky Thai Army. Unlucky Thai people.

Thai soldiers march during a training at a military barrack in Bangkok, Thailand Tuesday, April 19, 2011. (AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong)

So, given the history of coup, torture, massacre and almost guaranteed international impunity as provided by the USA, the story filtering down from Thailand’s notorious Golden Triangle area, while shocking, is no real surprise.

In mid-October 13 Chinese sailors were murdered in Northern Thailand. Their bodies were found floating in the Mekong River. At the time the story was published in the international press, The Guardian reported that:

Thirteen Chinese sailors have been killed by suspected drug traffickers who hijacked their ships on the Mekong river.

China Daily newspaper said two cargo boats were seized last Wednesday and 12 bodies were found near Chiang Rai in northernThailand on Friday and Saturday. Another body was found in the same area early on Monday, China’s official news agency, Xinhua, said.

Most of the victims had been bound, blindfolded and shot, the China Daily newspaper reported. The crew included two female cooks.

Local authorities captured both boats after a gun battle with the hijackers and found cargo that included speed pills worth 100 million baht (£2m), garlic, apples and fuel.

The Post cited Thai army officials as saying a gang run by the suspected drug trafficker Nor Kham was believed to be behind the attacks. The gang demands protection money from ships it hijacks on the Mekong and kills crew who refuse to co-operate, it added. The boats are then used to smuggle drugs from Burma to Thailand.

With the recent arrest of 9 Thai Army officers in connection with the murders it turns out that “Nor Kham” is not the main suspect after all. The Bangkok Post reports today:

Police have pressed charges of murder and tampering with evidence against a group of nine army officers including a major and a lieutenant over the deaths of the 13 men. The nine officers reported to Chiang Rai police on Friday.

The situation in Thailand at present is this – the democratically elected Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra,  is having to deal with an incredibly difficult set of circumstances (who can forget George W Bush and the USA’s disgraceful and incompetent handling of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans?), yet gets attacked by the opposition for her choice of footwear. This opposition, which pretty much loathes democracy, rather than seeing Thailand’s present predicament as a point of national interest sees it more as an opportunity to score petty points against the government and to undermine it.

Incredibly, at the same time, the leader of this opposition, Abhisit Vejjajiva, acts like the statesman we all know he is and takes a luxury break in the Maldives.

Then a rogue element  in the Thai Army – an organisation that makes a point of distancing itself from any form of democratic or civilian accountability – is arrested for the murder of 13 people.

Someone needs to explain why the opposition consider Yingluck’s choice of footwear to be of  more importance to Thailand’s anti-democratic opposition than the massive floods and a pile of Chinese corpses. At least it seems that Beijing are certainly not scared of flexing their muscles to get to the bottom of this.

Chinese authorities have urged Thailand to probe the attack and suspend shipping operations in the river.

Against a backdrop of 13 Mukdahan Red Shirts being incarcerated on decades-long prison sentences based on what appears to be the flimsiest of investigations and evidence, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Thailand’s Senior Researcher is fighting the good fight and tweeting about whose name is on a toilet. He did so using what some are claiming is a faked photograph.

“Pheu Thai must clarify why the name of its MP, Wanchi, is written on portable toilets donated by Japan. #ThaiFloodEng http://pic.twitter.com/bnyb1GfO“

So will HRW also clarify with their supporters why they failed to mention Thailand using cluster munitions against their Cambodian neighbours? Will they further clarify why they won’t mount any meaningful campaign whatsoever to call for reforms or abolition of Thailand’s lese majeste law? Will HRW clarify what actions they have been taking to make sure Red Shirts receive fair trials and what support they are giving to prisoners? The news coming in today of one of the Mukdahan Red Shirts trying to take his own life (scroll down the wall for mention in Thai) while screaming his innocence is surely of huge concern to anyone with even a passing acknowledgement of human rights.

But for HRW, guess not. After all, they have to make sure that the names on toilets are sorted out first.

Another curious development in the actions of Thailand’s international human rights NGOs is Amnesty’s recent report on the Southern insurgency.

In quite a damning article by Mark Askew on the Asia Times news website, Amnesty’s Donna Guest and Ben Zawacki stand accused of siding with the Thai state (something which is not news to this writer).

Amnesty’s press conference began with a categorical statement by Donna Guest, deputy director of its Asia-Pacific division, that targeted attacks on civilians constitute “war crimes” according to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit attacks on “persons taking no active part in hostilities”.

This legal designation of war crimes in international humanitarian law is applicable to “international and internal armed conflicts such as the one in southern Thailand” and is binding on all parties to the conflict, she said. Guest went on: “Insurgents are clearly in violation of the law and must cease these attacks immediately.”

Guest said that southern Thailand’s violent situation came under the definition of an “Internal Armed Conflict” according to criteria of the intensity and duration of violence and chain-of command of the armed groups.

Amnesty’s Thailand and Myanmar researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, the writer of the report, had a somewhat different line: the use of the label “Internal Armed Conflict” and all its legal implications for enforcing accountability for war crimes was “long overdue”. He said his report raised the issue of the south “to another level”.

Despite all the legalistic certainties of its rhetoric, Amnesty’s argument came in for strong critique. One representative of southern Muslim students claimed that the charges against insurgent “crimes” were remarkably similar to those made by the Thai state. More serious were the weak foundations for identifying the warring parties in this “Internal Armed conflict”.

Amnesty are unequivocal in their claim that the targeting of civilians by the Southern insurgents amounts to a war crime. Maybe so.

But when the Thai Army was shooting completely innocent, unarmed nurses and school children last April and May, what was that?

Of course when that happened, the NGOs – such as HRW and Amnesty – painted a picture of Reds provoking the army or barely mentioned the deaths of civilians at all.

Amnesty and HRW can’t have it both ways – their own lack of transparency and their obviously unbalanced and politicised positions need clarification before they point the finger at anybody else.

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