Criminal-defamation laws in Thailand have become more likely to be repealed in 2024 because of a misguided prosecution and a corruption scandal involving a large national bank.
Thailand plans to apply to join the UN Human Rights Council. But if significant crimes are proved in the unusual case involving a whistleblower who exposed a community banking scandal, that move could be derailed again.
Also read: Bad laws make Thailand less safe for the brave
An extraordinary commission established by the Office of the Prime Minister to investigate the scam concludes its evidence-taking early in February. The trial of whistleblower Chutima Sidasathian begins just days later.
The special commission has been hearing from villagers and officials in the Non Thai district of the province of Nakhon Ratchasima, where three suicides and trauma affecting scores of farming families are blamed on the banking scandal.
A total of 45 million baht (US$1.3 million) was diverted from the national government-funded scheme, run by the Village Fund to provide low-cost loans for impoverished farmers, into personal accounts.
While the amount is not huge, a lot of interest now centers on one of Thailand’s largest banks, the Government Savings Bank (GSB). It has been alleged in evidence that the bank covered up the robbery of its own money.
While the special commission is not a court of law, the evidence in the form of signed statutory declarations carries similar weight and will be used against anyone incriminated in the process.
The 18-person commission is headed by three officers from the Attorney General’s Department, with six officers from the Village Fund, three from the bank, three from the Department of Justice and three from the Department of Special Investigation, Thailand’s equivalent of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The ”urgent” invitation to attend the commission went out to villagers late in December, just days before the hearing began. It came from the chief district officer, whose own investigation, prompted by the National Anti-Corruption Commission in a letter to the governor of the province, found no evidence of wrongdoing.
The invitation formally named Chutima as the person whose complaints instigated the setting up of the special commission.
Chutima achieved notoriety 10 years ago when she and another journalist from the online news outlet Phuketwan were accused of criminal defamation and computer crimes by the Royal Thai Navy. A Phuket judge eventually found the journalists not guilty.
In 2020, Chutima heard about the three overdoses from sleeping tablets and the trauma of debts that the farmers in the district had been asked to repay, even though in many cases, they’d never seen any money.
Using her investigative skills, she interviewed farmers individually and in groups over many months to uncover the truth about what had happened to the money that was intended to aid the farmers.
By the time she used Facebook posts to reveal what had happened to the money, the bank was well into a series of lawsuits, targeting 16 villages, one by one, to repay the full loan amounts, plus interest.
One village attempted to turn the civil case into a criminal case and add the name of an elected local official. The official tried to have Chutima prosecuted for contempt of court over two of her many Facebook posts, but the judge threw out the case.
The local official then went to a police station where officers accepted three different Facebook posts. Public prosecutors have since laid three criminal-defamation charges. The local official has also charged one villager and since increased the number of charges against Chutima to seven.
While the local official says that the criminal defamation charges are ”political” and ”personal” and have nothing to do with the community banking scandal, he attended the special commission’s hearing and his name was frequently mentioned.
After Chutima’s revelations about what had happened, the GSB conducted its own internal investigation and confirmed that a large sum of money had gone missing.
Although it would have been impossible for the money to be misdirected without the help of bank officers, the bank merely said through a local spokesman that some money had been ”borrowed” but since returned, and that any problems inside the bank’s branch had been fixed.
Given the option of involving law-enforcement agencies to pursue the thieves or seeking to draw up contracts directly with local officials who might or might not know where the money went, the bank chose to write the contracts.
The Village Fund, whose brand was misused when would-be thieves set up second village committees to rival the legitimate ones, does not seem quite so sure about the bank’s solution and instead lobbied for the setting up of the special commission of investigation.
Did bank officers breach Thai law by covering up a robbery of the bank’s own money, and if so, on whose authorization? The main issue posed by the evidence to the special commission so far is how far up the bank’s chain of command knowledge of the cover-up extended.
The commission is expected to provide answers eventually.
With the trial for criminal defamation of the whistleblower who started it all following just days after the commission wraps up, national and international attention is expected to focus on Thailand and human rights once again.
The National Human Rights Commission has declared Chutima a human-rights defender and the case against her a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) case.
Thailand failed in its last application to join the UN Human Rights Council in 2014. The Phuketwan trial of the two journalists at the time was most likely one of the reasons.
A second verdict of not guilty almost 10 years on from the first verdict of not guilty would simply confirm the truth of what Chutima said a decade ago: that it’s definitely time for Thailand’s much-abused criminal-defamation laws to be scrapped to encourage free speech.
The author, Alan Morison, was the other journalist charged with Chutima Sidasathian in 2013.