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FACT call to stand up for free speech at Somyot's lese majeste trial, starting on Wednesday April 18

Wed, 18/04/2012 - 13:54 | by prachatai
Freedom Against Censorship Thailand

You're invited! Come to support Somyot Pruksakasemsuk on these upcoming trial dates as trial observers.

As much may be learned from prosecution witnesses as the defence.

The next trial date will start from Wednesday, April 18, 2012. Morning sessions start at 9:30am, afternoon sessions at 1pm.

Here are the dates for court hearings:

Prosecution witness hearings:

Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Thursday, April 19
Friday, April 20
Tuesday, April 24
Wednesday, April 25
Thursday, April 26

Defence witness hearings:

Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Wednesday, May 2
Thursday, May 3
Friday, May 4

On March 12 the court denied Somyot's EIGHTH petition for release on bail. The petition was actually submitted by the Rights and Liberties Protection Department under Ministry of Justice, the same ministry overseeing all justice matters, including the courts.

Somyot was arrested April 30, 2011 at the immigration checkpoint at Sa Kaew, while he was returning from Cambodia with a red-shirt tour group.  He was charged with lèse majesté for two articles published in the Voice of Taksin magazine for which he was the editor.

He has been detained without bail ever since.  From November 2011 to February 2012, he was taken to four provinces, including Sa Kaew, Phetchabun, Nakhon Sawan and Songkhla, where prosecution witnesses were registered when, in fact, all of them lived in Bangkok.

Somyot's trial begins Wednesday, April 18, at Bangkok's Criminal Court (San Aya), on Ratchadapisek Road opposite Soi 38, Lat Phrao MTR station.

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Comments

#26714 - by john francis lee (visitor) () | Thu, 19/04/2012 - 14:20

They Are Still Killing Trade

They Are Still Killing Trade Union Leaders

Question:
So what happens these days in developing countries when a prominent, charismatic union activist - with the courage to stand up to sinister, government-supported business groups who have, on more than one occasion, already threatened his life - attempts to get the country’s underpaid, under-benefited workers to join a labor union?
Answer:
They kill him.

It was reported Monday, April 9, that the body of Aminul Islam ... had been found (on Friday, April 6) dumped along side a road in Ghatail, a town approximately 60 miles northwest of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital ... the corpse bore evidence of “severe” torture.

Islam had been trying to organize workers at factories owned by a company called the Shanta Group ... Shanta produces garments for many well-known American companies, including Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and Ralph Lauren ... business groups weren’t going to stand idly by and watch him convince Shanta’s 8,000 workers to join the union. They weren’t going to allow it. So they killed him.

According to the Solidarity Center ... nearly 4,000 Colombian trade unionists have been murdered over the last 20 years. Indeed, more trade unionists are killed in Colombia each year than in the rest of the world combined.

The United States supports the government of Colombia ... our government supports regimes whose human rights records are a joke.

Thailand has charged Somyos with lese majeste rather than torturing him and killing him outright.

Those expecting help for the 'outside', from the US government or HRW in particular, need to note the 'help' the Colombians have been receiving from the US government over the past two decades in the face of their regular murder. None.

We have to stand up to injustice and abuse whenever and wherever it occurs.

Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

-- Frederick Douglass

No one is going to free Somyos for us.

#26715 - by john francis lee (visitor) () | Thu, 19/04/2012 - 14:37

Douglass speaks of 'blows'

Douglass speaks of 'blows' ... violence against the Royal Thai Army, the perennial authors of violence against the people of Thailand, whose ISOC officers have presently imprisoned Somyos, is foolhardy, of course.

But unless and until the Royal Thai Army is removed from its position as the 'ultimate arbiter' of what passes for law and order in Thailand "the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon" the people of Thailand will be what they/we continue to submit to.

The removal can and must be done non-violently and, since the Phuea Thai regime has cast its lot with the Royal Thai Army, it must be done by the people acting on their/our own.

The Nitirat continue to show the way.