Two young Thai hunger strike demand a reform of the law of lese majesty and the independence of justice, giving for the first time a collective scope to this type of protest.
by Brice Pedroletti (Bangkok, correspondent in Southeast Asia)
Tantawan Tuatulanon and Orawan Phuphong, two Thai antimonarchist activists aged 21 and 23, are not cold in the eyes. Designated, like most Thai people, by their nickname, “Tawan” and “Bam” have been on hunger strike since January 18. Hospitalized on January 24 in a civilian hospital in the suburbs of Bangkok, they have agreed to receive in recent days mineral and water salts but made their lawyer say on Wednesday, February 8, that they would resume within three days a dry diet, without water or of course food, if their requests were not satisfied.
There are three of them: a commitment from political parties to amend or abolish the very strict law of lese majesty, under which they were both charged last year; The liberation under bail of a dozen pro-democracy activists awaiting trial for various “political” crimes (sedition, lese majesty or “computer” offense), but to whom judges obstinately refuse parole as provided for in the law ; And finally, nothing less than the establishment of a “truly independent” justice.
“Save the lives of the two activists”
These claims embarrass the government of Prayuth Chan-Cha-Cha, the ex-general putschist who became Prime Minister and candidate for his re-election to the next legislative elections, expected by May. The latter said on February 6, by one of his ministers, whom he had given the police and members of the administration to “pay the greatest attention” to the fate of the two strikers.
The two main opposition parties, the powerful Pheu Thai, linked to the clan of the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the Move Forward party, the progressive training of urban and educated youth, submitted, in early February, An emergency motion in the House of Representatives to “debate measures to save the lives of the two activists”. Move Forward has already proposed several times to reform the law of lese majesty, whose party wishes to limit the penalties incurred in the event of a violation to one year in prison and a fine when it comes to the king, and six months for the queen or crown prince.
The current article 112 of the penal code supervising the lèse-majesté punishes “anyone who will have defamed, insulted or threatened the king, the queen, the presumptive heir or the regent” of an imprisonment of three to fifteen years. But each sentence is combined: thus, at the end of January, Mongkhon Thirakot, a 29-year-old Thai who has an online clothing sales site in Chiang Rai, was sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison for fourteen facts of defamation of the monarchy, mainly on Facebook.
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