Thai activist’s mother indicted for lese-majeste

By CS Thana

BANGKOK

A Thai military court indicted Monday the mother of a student activist for lese-majeste over her reply to a Facebook message.

Patnaree Chankij, a 40-year-old widow and mother of three, was arrested and charged in May after replying "yes" to a message that was deemed to contain anti-monarchy content.

The message was sent by a friend of her son who was also taken into custody under a similar lese-majeste charge.

The Bangkok Military Court released Chankij on 500,000 baht ($14,380) bail Monday.

Chankij is the mother of Sirawith Seritiwat, nicknamed "Ja New’, a founder of the pro-democracy group Resistant Citizen.

Seritiwat, a tireless critic of the junta, has been arrested and detained numerous times, but still refuses to follow orders imposed by the military, which seized power in May 2014, overthrowing the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra.

Following her arrest in May, Human Rights Watch released a statement saying the Thai junta “has sunk to a new low by charging an activist’s mother under the ‘insulting the monarchy’ law, which has been systematically abused to silence critics”.

“The arbitrary enforcement of the lese-majeste law against an activist’s mother is yet another example of Thailand’s blatant contempt of its human rights obligations," said the group’s Asia director, Brad Adams.

Some analysts have suggested that that the new charge is a way to put pressure on Seritiwat, as the junta has previously used similar tactics.

In March, the military "visited" the sister of exiled academic Pavin Chachavalpongpan to ask her to put pressure on her brother to cancel a talk on the Thai monarchy at a British university.

Thailand’s lese-majeste law is one of the harshest in the world, and its criminal code punishes with jail terms between 3-15 years persons who “insult, defame or threaten the king, the queen, the heir, or the regent”.

In the last ten years, judges have tended to interpret the law broadly.

A man criticizing a 19th century king has been jailed, as has another who mocked on Facebook a dog belonging to the current King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Since the 2014 coup, military courts have charged at least 57 people with lese-majeste, with 44 charged for online commentary.