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Thai Dissident Musicians Celebrate Getting French Haven

Associated Press

   BANGKOK - Members of a Thai folk music group who feared for their lives
   because of their fiercely antiestablishment songs are celebrating this
   week after being admitted to France to seek refugee status.

   The band Faiyen fled to Thailand's neighbor, Laos, after a military
   government took power in Bangkok in 2014. Dozens of dissidents, some
   fearing arrest under a law mandating prison terms for criticism of the
   country's monarchy, fled to Laos and Cambodia, another neighboring
   country, but few were able to travel further because of a lack of
   travel documents or money.

   Several dissidents who continued their political activities online
   after fleeing to Laos were killed or disappeared, spreading fear they
   had been targeted by Thai royalists.

   Faiyen, who lived together in houses in and around the Laotian capital,
   Vientiane, said they received constant death threats and in recent
   months issued urgent pleas for help to move to a safer refuge.

   Their fear increased after three activists who tried to flee Laos by
   crossing into Vietnam in January disappeared. According to rights
   groups they were arrested and secretly extradited to Thailand, but the
   authorities in Vietnam and Thailand have denied any knowledge of the
   affair. Faiyen then began a social media campaign which received
   widespread attention and support in May.

   Faiyen and their supporters said Tuesday that the group's members
   arrived last week in Paris.

   "Faiyen members are now rescued from the acute danger they faced in
   Laos -- to begin new lives in France with the dignity, liberty,
   equality and sister-brotherhood that they fought for with their lives,"
   Junya Yimprasert, a Thai political exile who helped the group move,
   said on her Facebook page. "Right now, our plan is to keep pushing the
   French government for the Faiyen members' political refugee status. We
   have to show them that if Faiyen were to be sent back to Thailand,
   there would be nothing waiting for them but death."

   Junya acknowledged that attaining refugee status could take months.

   She said the group's members would continue their political activism,
   especially against Thailand's lese majeste law under which offenders
   face prison terms of up to 15 years for insulting the monarchy.

   The band plans to hold a protest in front of the Thai Embassy in Paris
   to condemn the deaths and disappearances of their fellow exiles in
   Laos, followed by a concert on the Place de la Republique, "a park
   synonymous with democracy," Junya wrote.

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