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Dokument #2139297
Amnesty International (Autor)
The authorities continued to suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, detaining protesters and charging activists and an academic under repressive laws. Leaked documents revealed coordinated cyber operations targeting civil society and opposition groups. Human rights defenders received online threats of violence. Refoulement persisted with the unlawful deportation of 40 Uyghurs to China and the extradition of a Montagnard activist to Viet Nam. A landmark verdict held 13 soldiers accountable for torture committed in 2024. The government allowed Myanmar refugees living in camps to work legally outside the camps, while new legislation on ethnic groups drew criticism for sidelining Indigenous Peoples.
On 28 May, a Cambodian soldier was killed in a clash with Thai troops at the Thai-Cambodia border. This led to months of tension and armed conflict, resulting in the deaths of at least 40 people. Thousands of people fled from towns and villages.
In June, Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen made public the audio recording of a compromising private phone call he had with then Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra during the border clashes. This led Thailand’s Constitutional Court to suspend her on 1 July and officially remove her from office on 29 August. On 7 September, parliament elected Anutin Charnvirakul, the leader of the Bhumjaithai Party, as the new prime minister.
On 7 January , a gunman shot and killed 74-year-old Cambodian-French former opposition member of parliament Lim Kimya in the capital, Bangkok. In October, a former Thai navy marine was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. Warrants were issued for two Cambodian suspects, but both remained at large.
At the end of the year, 55 people remained in detention serving prison sentences due to the exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly during large-scale protests between 2020 and 2022 calling for political reforms.
In April, the Third Army Area Commander charged Paul Chambers, a prominent US academic living in Thailand specializing in Thai civil-military relations and democratization, under the lese-majesty law and the Computer Crimes Act. He was charged over a promotional blurb for an academic seminar in Singapore on Thailand’s annual police and military reshuffle. Prosecutors dropped the charges against him in May. In September, Chambers filed a case against four police units for unlawfully revoking his visa.
In May, 15 activists from P-Move, a civil society coalition working on labour, environmental and land rights, were charged for joining public assemblies in 2024-2025, allegedly violating a 50m protest ban around Government House in Bangkok.
In July, parliamentarians began deliberating five bills on granting amnesty for criminal offences related to political activities.1 These bills included one drafted by the Network for People’s Amnesty – a coalition of 20 civil society organizations – which explicitly included amnesty for individuals facing charges under two articles of the Criminal Code: Article 110 (violence or threat against the Queen, the Heir-Apparent, or the Regent) and Article 112 (lese-majesty). In October, parliament voted to reject provisions that allowed amnesty for those charged under these laws.
In August, police charged three activists for “failure to notify authorities about a public demonstration within 24 hours”, as required under the Public Assembly Act. The activists had held a protest against Myanmar military leader Min Aung Hlaing’s participation at the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation Summit in Bangkok on 5 April.
On 5 September, the Bangkok Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal of five activists involved in a peaceful protest in the vicinity of the royal motorcade in October 2020. They were found guilty of multiple charges, including violence against the Queen (Article 110), illegal assembly (Article 215) and obstructing traffic (Article 385), all punishable under the Thai Criminal Code. The activists remained in prison because the court had denied their request for bail.
During a parliamentary no-confidence debate in March, an opposition parliamentarian disclosed leaked internal documents revealing that Thai police and military units were jointly running a “Cyber Team” to tarnish the reputations and undermine the work of civil society organizations and political opposition members. According to the leaked information, Amnesty International was explicitly identified as a “high-value target”.2 Other INGOs, local civil society groups, prominent activists and pro-democracy figures were also on this list, including human rights organizations Thai Lawyers for Human Rights and iLaw, and human rights defender Anna Annanon.
On 10 September, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders expressed concern over the defamation charge against Witoon Lianchamroon, Secretary-General of the BIOTHAI Foundation. The Special Rapporteur said the charge “may be in retaliation for his work on community rights and food security”. The lawsuit stemmed from his warning that the invasive Blackchin Tilapia, an alien fish species, could harm river ecosystems and threaten local fishermen’s livelihoods.
On 15 October, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders raised concerns about online threats of violence against Thai human rights defender Angkhana Neelapaijit. The threats were linked to her criticisms of potential human rights violations resulting from the authorities’ management of the border conflict with Cambodia.
On 27 February, the authorities deported 40 Uyghurs to China, despite the real risk of serious human rights violations, and the prohibition of refoulement under Thailand’s anti-torture law.3 The men deported were among approximately 300 Uyghurs who had been apprehended by the government on 13 March 2014 after they had fled persecution and discrimination in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A total of 109 people from the group were deported to China in July 2015. As of December, five other Uyghur refugees were at risk of being forcibly returned.
On 27 May, the Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases Region 2 in Rayong Province delivered the first verdict under Thailand’s Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act passed in 2022. The court found two army instructors and 11 senior conscripts guilty of the torture of Worapratch Phadmasakul, an 18-year-old conscript, and sentenced them to prison terms ranging between 10 and 20 years. Worapratch Phadmasakul died after being severely tortured and beaten during disciplinary training on 2 August 2024.
On 28 November, authorities extradited Indigenous Montagnard and Ede human rights defender and refugee Y Quynh Bdap to Viet Nam, following a Court of Appeal ruling approving Viet Nam’s extradition request.4 In 2024, Viet Nam convicted Bdap in absentia on terrorism charges over an alleged 2023 attack on a government building.
On 26 August, the cabinet passed a resolution allowing refugees from Myanmar to work regularly in Thailand. The resolution applied to around 81,000 forcibly displaced people hosted in camps along the Thai-Myanmar border. The refugees were required to apply for a work permit, which would last for one year.
Local communities and civil society organizations raised concerns about the lack of public participation in Land Bridge, the government’s large-scale infrastructure project aimed at connecting shipping routes between the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. The first phase of the project was set to be completed in 2030. Concerns included the negative ecological impacts of the project, which could threaten the livelihood of coastal communities, including the Indigenous Moken people whose primary source of livelihood is artisanal fishing.
On 6 August, parliament passed the Act on Protection and Promotion of the Way of Life of Ethnic Groups aimed at protecting the cultural rights of ethnic minority communities. However, civil society and OHCHR, the UN human rights office, criticized the law because it failed to include the term “Indigenous”, using the term “ethnic” instead, and did not fully reflect the principle of free, prior and informed consent.
Residents in Nakhon Ratchasima province demanded an end to potash-mining operations. The operations caused soil and groundwater salinity to rise, rendering farmland infertile and contaminating water sources, thereby undermining the rights to water, adequate food, health and livelihoods.
Meanwhile, in the north of the country along the Kok River, arsenic contamination traced to rare-earth and gold mining upstream in Myanmar exposed ethnic communities and Indigenous Peoples – particularly in Chiang Rai province – to serious health risks, deprived them of safe drinking water and infringed their right to health.
© Amnesty International
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