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Meet the Relentless Thai Rights Defender Taking on the Powerful

VOA News

   BANGKOK - She has been threatened more times than she can remember,
   harassed by legal cases and targeted by online trolls, but Pornpen
   Khongkachonkiet says she won't stop championing human rights,
   especially while the law does not protect Thais from falling victim to
   "enforced disappearances" by shadowy powers.

   She is not alone in her concerns.

   Nine Thai dissidents [1]have gone missing from overseas sanctuaries
   since 2016; the bodies of two who sought refuge in Laos were found in
   the Mekong river in 2019.

   Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, referred in a
   statement to VOA to "a realization that shadowy powers operate outside
   the law in Thailand and beyond the effective control of the government
   or parliament."

   Currently in quarantine in a Cambodian hotel, Pornpen, a rights
   defender and legal advocate, is preparing to help the family of
   Wanchalearm Satsaksit, a missing 38-year-old Thai activist reportedly
   pulled by armed men into a vehicle [2]outside his condominium in Phnom
   Penh in June.

   Wanchalearm had fled the country to avoid charges by the ruling junta,
   which smothered dissent after it seized power in 2014. He is the ninth
   of the dissidents to have disappeared.

   "You can give the family 'a remedy' and recover the victims' bodies,
   but the only thing that might bring closure and peace of mind is the
   truth," said Pornpen, known as Noi, who is director of the Cross
   Cultural Foundation, a Thai human rights organization.

   'Threatened countless times'

   Pornpen is a constant presence in the roughest corners of Thailand,
   tracing back human rights abuses through the victims, following glacial
   court processes and driving media interest when the state, police and
   army have long given up, or deliberately turned a blind eye.

   From "Billy" Porjalee Rakchongcharoen, a disappeared ethic Karen land
   rights activist near the Myanmar border, to allegations of state
   torture against Muslim detainees in the Muslim-majority Deep South,
   where a low-grade insurgency continues, to Wanchalearm's case, Pornpen
   says she is used to asking uncomfortable questions of those in power.

   "I've been threatened countless times," she said.

   "People call me and say things like, "Aren't you supposed to be a Thai
   Buddhist, why are you helping Muslims? Aren't you Thai?"

References

   1. https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/cambodia-pressed-thorough-probe-thai-activists-suspected-abduction
   2. https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/sister-missing-thai-activist-headed-cambodia

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