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Thailand authorities shut down Amnesty International torture talk with threats of arrest
ABC Radio Australia - September 28, 2016
The report details 74 cases of alleged torture, including waterboarding and electric shocks to the genitals, and says abuse has increased since the coup in 2014.
Minutes before a planned press conference, police enforced a Labour Ministry decision that two of Amnesty's foreign representatives did not have a work permit and so could not address the media.
However, Amnesty's London-based legal advisor spoke outside the conference room, noting that he entered Thailand on a business visa and his business is human rights advocacy.
"They should go after the torturers, not the human rights defenders who are exposing the torture," Yuval Ginbar said. "In the 21st Century, you can't really shut people up – you can try but I think what they did probably gave us more voice."
The report, titled Make Him Speak By Tomorrow, said many torture cases involved suspected insurgents in Thailand's 'deep south', political opponents or people detained by rural police.
"They shocked my genitals, chest and ears," said a 47-year-old man allegedly tortured in Chiang Mai province, according to the Amnesty report. "Then they covered my face with plastic garbage bags and tightened them so I couldn't breathe, until I fell down... I feared I would die."
The Thai Government denied the allegations. "Our investigations into such allegations have shown no indication of torture, I have seen no indication of torture and the Thai people have seen no indication of torture," said General Sansern Kaewkamnerd, a spokesman in the Prime Minister's Office, according to the Reuters news agency.
Thailand's junta gave itself sweeping powers, including the right to hold suspects without charge or outside communication for a week at secret military facilities.
"What is happening in the unofficial place of detention, people being beaten up, people being suffocated, people being water boarded," Mr Ginbar said.
He said the military's methods are often crude. "They find a plastic bag, they put in on the person and they choke them, it's not like they have these very well equipped dungeons," he said.
A representative of the United
Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR) was
also scheduled to speak at the press conference.
"This incident, however,
is another striking illustration of a new pattern of harassment of human
rights defenders documenting torture in Thailand," said Jeremy Laurence,
spokesman for the UNOHCHR in Asia.
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