THE BIG ISSUE: SILENCE REWARDED
>> The prosecutor of Pattani province officially dropped the army’s charges under the criminal defamation and Computer Crime Act laws against three civil rights veterans who had the audacity to detail 54 incidents of torture in the deep South and publish a book about them, entitled Torture.
But it’s a one-time deal with a lot of conditions.
For now, co-authors Pornpen Khongkachonkiet and Somchai Homla-or of the Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF) and Songkhla-based Anchana Heemmina of the Hearty Group won’t go to prison for this “crime”.
However, there’s not a shred of a sign that the Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc) is getting soft in its old age (51 years) or gracious in its power as controllers of the deep South. As always, Isoc is heavily invested in what is best for Isoc. And not prosecuting the trio who produced the book Torture in Thai and English is already working out very well for the secretive army group.
As part of agreeing to drop the criminal charges against Ms Pornpen, Ms Anchana and Mr Somchai, Isoc got a promise that they would let Isoc know any time they got a tip-off on torture.
To put this in the most unkind light, Isoc forced these civil rights defenders to agree to give the suppression command the right to censor or control the story before releasing it to the public. Or, you know, not release it all, because criminal defamation and Computer Crime Act charges are always there and always available.
So the Torture authors walk but no one else can, such as Sirikan “June” Charoensiri.
She got slammed on the day last year that she began her new career as a human rights lawyer. She took on the case of five anti-coup activists charged with holding an illegal meeting, because under here in the heyday of the National Council for Peace and Order “five” equals “more than five”.
As she headed for the military (of course) court, police stopped her and demanded to search her car. She demanded a search warrant. Authorities didn’t give her one but searched the car anyway, took all five of her clients’ phones and gave her the honour as the first lawyer in the combined history of Lanna, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, Siam and Thailand to be charged with sedition.
Neither the police, the military nor Isoc have withdrawn that case or that of the arguably even braver Naritsarawan Kaewnopparat, who is without legal training or background in what, under the law, she can do.
She has appeared here before. In 2011, her uncle and new army draftee Pvt Wichian Phuaksom was beaten and tortured to death by “fellow soldiers”.
Ms Naritsarawan had the audacity to tell reporters about it, and get the homicide in the newspapers. The army’s response was fast and furious: hit her with that familiar, criminal defamation lawsuit and tack on — of course — charges under the even more odious Computer Crime Act for an additional five years at the Greybar Hotel.
She hasn’t backed off. The junta’s always affable, always reliable, always loyal spokesman, Col Winthai Suvaree, says this persecution of Ms Naritsarawan has to go forward because she has made the army look bad. All the soldiers did was show how weak her uncle was.
We also know that army discipline also revealed the weakness of at least four other recruits and killed them since the general prime minister began the selfless task to heal the country in 2014.
All journalists including the elite Bangkok Post Sunday team understand the bottom line on any such intimidation. And sure enough, here’s what’s happened.
Back to Torture. Since Isoc charged the three activists last year, the authors have reported this number of credible reports of torture: zero.
There are two possible explanations. One is that on Dec 4, 2015 — the date of the last torture reported in the book — the Royal Thai Army and Royal Thai Police turned a new leaf. From that day forward, no torture was allowed, and no torture occurred.
That’s one possibility. Now note this. Between the beginning of March, when Isoc first promised to drop the lawsuits, and the end of October, when the prosecutors actually dropped them, charges and possible prison terms remained percolating slowly on justice’s back burner, ready at the flick of the wrist to again bubble up to a court date.
That’s eight months when Isoc was in complete charge of the deep South, eight months when Isoc was watching carefully to see that not a single story of torture in the entire deep South made the newspapers.
All that is needed to kill freedom of speech and freedom of the press are two items: laws designed to punish those who speak out of turn, and agencies willing to enforce them to the hilt.