ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia
Tantawan Tuatulanon and Orawan Phuphong demanded {that a} decide revoke their bail in solidarity with different activists going through lese-majeste expenses.
A billboard of King Vajiralongkorn in Krabi, southern Thailand, November 24, 2019.
Credit score: Depositphotos
Two younger Thai pro-democracy activists have been taken to hospital after launching a starvation strike to protest what they thought of to be unjust pretrial detention of critics of the nation’s monarchy.
Tantawan “Tawan” Tuatulanon and Orawan Phuphong started their starvation strike in Bangkok’s Central Ladies’s Correctional Establishment on January 18, two days after showing in a Bangkok court docket to ask a decide to revoke their bail. The pair supposed this as a present of solidarity for 2 different political activists who had been returned to jail on expenses together with lese-majeste, demanding that the fees be dropped.
Thailand’s lese-majeste regulation criminalizes any criticism of the monarchy or the royal household, and carries punishments of as much as 15 years imprisonment.
Based on a report by BenarNews that cited the authorized advocacy group Thai Attorneys for Human Rights, the pair started the starvation strike after the court docket refused to rethink different circumstances. They had been taken to a jail hospital after collapsing two days into their strike, and are refusing to be fed by an intravenous drip or obtain medical care.
In 2022, Tantawan and Orawan had been charged with lese-majeste for conducting public opinion polls about royal motorcades. They had been jailed however later launched on bail. Showing outdoors the Ratchadapisek Felony Court docket on January 16, the pair poured crimson paint over themselves after asserting that they might revoke their bail in an act of solidarity with different detained activists.
The pair are simply two of the various people who face prison expenses for organizing the wave of public demonstrations that happened in late 2020 and early 2021. The youth-driven protests demanded a number of political adjustments together with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s resignation, the drafting of a genuinely democratic structure, and – most explosively – limitations on the ability of the Thai monarchy.
This uncommon open dialogue of the function of the royal household, the linchpin of Thailand’s steeply hierarchical system of privilege and wealth, has been met with a ruthless authorized offensive. After virtually a three-year hiatus within the pursuit of lese-majeste circumstances, the authorities started issuing indictments in November 2020 and have since charged not less than 210 individuals – lots of them protest leaders and political activists – underneath the regulation. A minimum of 22 people are incarcerated pending trials, in response to Thai Attorneys for Human Rights.
Many of those circumstances contain virtually comically minor transgressions. Final yr, a court docket in Bangkok sentenced a political activist to 2 years in jail for putting a sticker on a portrait of the king. In September, one other activist was sentenced to a few years imprisonment for carrying conventional Thai apparel at a political demonstration in October 2020 – an act that was deemed to be insulting to the nation’s Queen Suthida.
A whole lot of individuals together with activists and former politicians rallied in downtown Bangkok on Monday to name for the discharge of Tantawan and Orawan. These included Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the previous chief of the disbanded Future Ahead Get together, who has additionally been charged with lese-majeste for questioning a COVID-19 vaccine deal that benefited a pharmaceutical firm owned by King Vajiralongkorn.
In a statement earlier this week, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch referred to as on the Thai authorities to right away drop the fees towards the pair, and to “permit peaceful expression of all viewpoints, including questions about the monarchy.”
“Holding these activists in pretrial detention for the peaceful exercise of their rights is punitive and cruel,” Elaine Pearson, HRW’s Asia director, was quoted as saying.
#asiannews #asian_news
