THAILAND: Campaign page launched for Prachatai director 05.11.

10 14:50

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Print This Article THAILAND: Campaign page launched

for Prachatai director
(Hong Kong, November 5, 2010) The Asian Human
Rights Commission on Wednesday launched a new
campaign webpage on the case of Chiranuch
Premchaiporn, the director of the independent online
news service Prachatai, who is facing multiple criminal
charges over material that readers posted onto her
website.

The webpage, which is mostly in English but also

contains some material in Thai, consists of appeals,
commentary and links to other relevant contents both
on Chiranuch's case and on issues of freedom of
expression in Thailand. It can be accessed at:
http://www.humanrights.asia/campaigns/chiranuch-
prachatai

If convicted of the 10 charges, under Thailand's

nebulous and draconian computer crimes and lese-
majesty laws, Chiranuch could be imprisoned for up to
50 years.

"The cases against Chiranuch are indicative of how the

law in Thailand is increasingly being used as a tool to
attack rather than defend fundamental human rights,"
Basil Fernando, director of policy and programmes at
the AHRC, said.

"That she has to criss-cross the country to answer

charges in whatever provinces they were lodged
against her over website contents that she herself did
not author is sheer nonsense, deserving of the
strongest condemnation by right-minded people
everywhere," Fernando said.

Pointing out that whereas in Thailand there are no

criminal offences defining torture or enforced
disappearance, the policy director of the Hong Kong
based-regional rights group remarked that for Internet

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THAILAND: Campaign page launched for Prachatai director 05.11.10 14:50

crimes to carry lengthy prison terms illustrates how

authoritarian and militarized governments use law with
increasing cynicism.

"These so-called offences reveal not any wrongdoing on

the part of the individual concerned, but only
wrongdoing on the part of a rampaging police state,"
Fernando added.

The AHRC has since 2006 spoken against both the

resurgence in what it has described as the internal-
security state in Thailand and the rapidly deteriorating
conditions for freedom of expression there.

In its 2009 report, it characterized the attacks on

Prachatai and its director as forming "part of a pattern
under the internal-security state to target certain
groups and individuals for harassment, arrest and
prosecution as a warning to others not to overstep the
many boundaries that prohibit free debate on topics of
great importance to the country and its people,
including through the use of lese-majesty and criminal
defamation laws, as well numerous other ambiguous
offences that may be stretched to cover just about
anybody and any situation".

###

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is

a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring
and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong
Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

Posted on 2010-11-05
Back to [2010 AHRC Press Releases]

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Asian Human Rights Commission

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