A Thai labor rights activist on trial for allegedly insulting the country’s monarchy has moved to escalate his case to the country’s constitutional court.
Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, who has longstanding ties to garment industry unions here, was arrested in April 2011 for multiple counts of alleged lèse-majesté, or causing offense to the monarchy, through the publication of magazine articles. If convicted, Somyot could be jailed for up to 30 years. In May, his lawyer escalated his case by submitting a request to Thailand’s constitutional court to consider the proportionality of the punishment for lèse-majesté.
His wife, Sukanya Prueksakasemsuk, said she hopes the constitutional court’s ruling will be announced at Somyot’s next court appearance, which is scheduled for September 19. According to her, the constitutional court is obliged to consider his case, but there is no fixed deadline for the court to do so.
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Sukanya said the decision to escalate her husband’s case was made also to bring discussion of the law into the open. “We want to do something to get people to understand this law,” she said. “If we want to move this country to a democratic way of life, we should not use this law or use it carefully.”
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Questions have been raised about the prison system’s ability to provide Somyot with proper medical treatment for his chronic hypertension and his failure to attain bail. His wife said that ten previous applications for bail had been rejected, mainly because the prosecution feared he would interfere with their witnesses.
“We have cause for concern regarding the process,” said Andreas Magnusson, second secretary for political affairs at the Swedish embassy in Bangkok, which has been following the trial. “Very, very few people on trial for lèse-majesté get bail. For the sake of Thailand’s international reputation, the issue [of lèse-majesté] is crucial.”
Somyot is alleged to have published articles in “Voice of Taksin”, a magazine he ran, that were offensive toward the monarchy. Somyot denies committing lèse-majesté. His supporters claim the articles are not offensive to the monarchy and that under Thai law, writers, not publishers, are liable.
Sukanya denied that her husband wrote the stories that are the subject of the trial. She said that the articles were about a plot to kill Thais in 2010 and were written by a senior official in the populist government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in a military coup in 2006.
Somyot began working with groups like the International Textile and Garment Worker’s Federation in the 1980s and is credited with pushing the government to pass bills relating to maternity leave and employer contributions to a social welfare fund.
Somyot is just one of an increasing number of Thai residents who have been in dock on lèse-majesté charges. Earlier this month, a Thai webmaster was handed a suspended jail sentence and a fine for not speedily deleting comments, characterized as being anti-monarchy, on a website she ran. Earlier in May, a 61-year-old man serving a 20-year sentence for sending text messages that were offensive toward the monarchy, died in a prison hospital. Critics claim the law is often used for political reasons.
The Thai government, contacted via its embassy in Singapore, did not respond to a request for comment.