Front Line Defenders strongly condemns the deportation of Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei back to China by the Lao authorities, who detained the human rights defender on 28 July 2023 while he was about to board a train to Thailand for his onward journey to the United States to reunite with his wife and child.
On 29 August 2023, women human rights defenders Angkhana Neelapaijit, Puttanee Kangkun and Thanaporn Saleephol were acquitted of criminal defamation. On 23 November 2020, the Bangkok South Criminal Court began hearing the combined case against women human rights defenders Angkhana Neelapaijit, Puttanee Kangkun, and Thanaporn Saleephol.
In July 2018 Jiang Yefei was sentenced to six and a half years in prison on charges of 'inciting subversion of state power' and 'illegally crossing a national border.'
On 12 April 2022, around 6 am, an unknown individual threw a 9-inch long scissors at the house of woman human rights defender Angkhana Neelapaijit in Thonburi District, Bangkok. The attack damaged her front door and her car, which was parked outside her house. The incident was captured on CCTV which revealed the assailant wearing a black t-shirt with the King Rama 9 symbol, a cap and a surgical mask, walking along the small road where her house is located.
On 25 September 2020, environmental rights defenders of the Khao Lao Yai-Pha Jun Dai forest conservation group were able to successfully reclaim land from a mining project in the Nongbua Lamphu Province. The project had long been impacting the health and environment of the community. This struggle against the mining project, that has lasted over two decades has come with numerous death threats and killings of members of the group. Most recently, since early August 2020, there have been increasing death threats against one of the group’s advisors, Lertsak Kumkongsak.
According to independent human rights monitors, human rights defender Dong Guangping left a prison in the Henan province and returned home on 20 October 2023 after he completed an 11-month prison sentence for “illegal border crossing”. He was tried some time in April 2023 by the Zhengzhou Intermediate Court and was sentenced to 11 months in prison. This report confirms that he was returned from Viet Nam back to China, in breach of the principle of non-refoulement enshrined in international law.
On 22 May 2018, fifteen pro-democracy human rights defenders, including Anon Nampa, Rangsiman Rome, Sirawith Seritiwat, Chonticha Jaengrew and Piyarat Chongthep, were arrested and charged with sedition, with violating the junta’s ban on political gatherings of five people or more, and under the Road Traffic Act for participating in peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Bangkok.
On 23 January 2018, a lawsuit was filed against eight human rights defenders who are members of the We Walk… Solidarity campaign and march. They are accused of breaching Article 12 of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) Order No. 3/2558 (NCPO Order 3/2015), which states that political gatherings of five or more persons shall be punished with either a prison sentence of up to six months, a fine not exceeding ten thousand Baht, and/or both, unless permission has been granted by the Head of the NCPO or an authorised representative.
On 29 May 2017, the house of human rights defender Maitree Chamroensuksakul was raided by police while he was returning from a meeting with the U.N. Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, during an unofficial visit to Bangkok on 26 and 27 May 2017. The raid took place in the the village of Chaiyaphum Pasae, a Lahu human rights defender who was shot dead by military officials earlier this year, during an alleged anti-drug operation in Ban Kong Phak Ping, in the Chiang Dao district of Thailand’s northern Chiang Mai province.
On 29 August 2023, women human rights defenders Angkhana Neelapaijit, Puttanee Kangkun and Thanaporn Saleephol were acquitted of criminal defamation. On 23 November 2020, the Bangkok South Criminal Court began hearing the combined case against women human rights defenders Angkhana Neelapaijit, Puttanee Kangkun, and Thanaporn Saleephol.
On 22 May 2018, fifteen pro-democracy human rights defenders, including Anon Nampa, Rangsiman Rome, Sirawith Seritiwat, Chonticha Jaengrew and Piyarat Chongthep, were arrested and charged with sedition, with violating the junta’s ban on political gatherings of five people or more, and under the Road Traffic Act for participating in peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Bangkok.
On 22 May 2018, fifteen pro-democracy human rights defenders, including Anon Nampa, Rangsiman Rome, Sirawith Seritiwat, Chonticha Jaengrew and Piyarat Chongthep, were arrested and charged with sedition, with violating the junta’s ban on political gatherings of five people or more, and under the Road Traffic Act for participating in peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Bangkok.
On 14 February 2018, the Internal Security Operation Command (ISOC) Region 4 filed defamation charges against human rights defender Ismaael Teh in relation to a television show in which the defender recalled the torture he experienced at the hands of Thai soldiers in 2008.
On 27 July 2017, a Thai Court in Chaiyaphum province found human rights defender Suphap Khamlae guilty of encroaching on forest reserves and sentenced her to six months’ imprisonment under the National Forest Reserve Act. She is the wife of land rights defender Den Khamlae, who was also sentenced in absentia and subject to an arrest warrant despite being missing since April 2016.
