Thai junta 'invites' then detains journalist

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/14/thai-junta-detains-journalist-pravit-rojanaphruk

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Thailand’s junta has detained a senior newspaper reporter and columnist, his paper says, the latest in a string of arrests targeting those who speak out against the government.

Thepchai Yong, the editor-in-chief of the English-language Nation, said “there is no justification whatsoever” for Pravit Rojanaphruk’s detention.

“If the military believe he has done something wrong, there are normal legal channels to deal with it,” Thepchai said, adding the paper had not been offered an official explanation for Pravit’s detention or details of where he is being held.

“We see this as a direct threat to press freedom,” he said.

Colonel Winthai Suvaree, a spokesman for the junta, told Thai journalists on Monday that Pravit was in military detention. He said in a text message that the length of Pravit’s detention depended on how he cooperated with authorities.

The Nation quoted an unnamed military officer who summoned Pravit as telling the paper he had “invited” the reporter.

Pravit, a former Chevening scholar at the Oxford University and a Reuters fellow, has been a prominent champion of freedom of expression. He has not only spoken out against the military leaders who took power in a coup last year, but was also critical of the previous elected government.

Pravit spent a week in jail last year after being summoned by the national council for peace and order, the military leadership that rules Thailand.

The Thai Lawyers for Human Rights group, which accompanied Pravit on his way to his summons and posted photos of him, said he was called in for “attitude adjustment”, a detention programme the government has used to haul in hundreds of dissenters for interrogation since the coup.

After being summoned, Pravit appeared to predict his own disappearance and tweeted on Sunday:

Freedom can't be maintained if we're not willing to defend it. #Thailand #ป

On Friday, the prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, defended the use of “attitude adjustment” to detain two politicians after they criticised his government’s handling of the economy.

“I’m not applying the law to those who are against me, but using the law against those who are wrong. Do you understand?” he said, adding that the politicians had been “invited”. “If you let them blame me, the people and society will listen to them every day, and one day they’ll believe in the things they say.”

The former energy minister Pichai Naripthaphan and former MP Karun Hosakul are members of the party of Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government Prayuth overthrew last year.

The country is divided between supporters of the military and supporters of the charismatic Yingluck and her brother Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup.

Asked who else he would use the law against, Prayuth said: “Everyone whose comments cause division, bad intent to the government, criticising the things the government didn’t do, causes trouble and blames a government that’s trying to improve the country, I will consider.”

Human Rights Watch has condemned what it says is the continued use of arbitrary arrest and secret detention to intimidate and silence people who criticise the country’s military rulers.

“As the junta tightens its dictatorial powers, Thailand’s climate of fear is intensifying,” Brad Adams, its Asia director, said in a statement last week.