Thailand: Global Stand As My Witness Campaign Calls For Freeing Of Arnon Nampa

As Arnon Nampa's third anniversary as a Gwangju Prize for Human Rights winner dawns, he still unfairly languishes in prison for his activism. To date, Arnon has been sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The global civil society alliance, CIVICUS has added jailed lawyer Arnon Nampa to its Stand As My Witness campaign. The campaign calls for the immediate release of wrongly imprisoned journalists, activists, dissidents and human rights defenders around the world. It was launched in 2020 honoring the legacy of South Africa’s former prisoner of conscience and President Nelson Mandela.

In 2022, he was awarded the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights by the May 18 Foundation for his pro-democracy work in Thailand.

“CIVICUS added Arnon Nampa to the Stand As My Witness campaign due to the ongoing and unfair judicial persecution faced due to his activism. By bringing international attention, we hope that that his unjust convictions will be overturned, and that the government will immediately and unconditionally release him,” said Rajavelu Karunanithi, CIVICUS Advocacy and Campaigns Officer for Asia.

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Arnon Nampa is one of the founders of Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), a leading human rights organisation. He has also represented individuals facing judicial harassment for criticising the authorities or being involved in protests.

He was at the forefront of a protest movement that erupted in 2020 when hundreds of thousands of people, many of them young students, took to the streets to call for democratic changes, including the role of monarchy. Between 2020 and 2022, Arnon was arrested and detained several times.

In September 2023, Arnon was found guilty of violating the lèse-majesté (royal defamation or Article 112) law and the Emergency Decree, and was sentenced to four years in prison for a speech he delivered during protests calling for reform of the monarchy. He was sentenced to another four years in January 2024 for lèse-majesté for publishing three Facebook posts criticising the monarchy. In April 2024, he was sentenced to another two years in jail for calling for the repeal of the lèse-majesté law at a protest, defying the emergency decree, and using a loudspeaker without permission. He received another four years in July 2024, linked to two posts on Facebook about the monarchy.

He currently faces nine more lèse-majesté cases. On 3 December 2024, Arnon was sentenced to two more years in prison under the lèse-majesté law for writing an open letter to King and posting it online.

Arnon joins 18 other jailed individuals featured in the campaign, including Iran’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi, leading Hong Kong activist Chow Hang-Tung, prominent Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez and the Tajikistani 2024 Martin Ennals Award winner, Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov.

“Criticism of the monarchy and speech proposing reforms should be protected in a democratic society. The government must end the repeated criminalisation of Arnon Nampa and repeal the lèse-majesté law which is incompatible with Thailand’s international legal obligations,” said Karunanithi.

UN experts have expressed alarm over the use of Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws to convict and sentence Arnon Nampa. They said that these harsh sentences for those defending human rights have a chilling effect on human rights defenders, civil society and fundamental rights and freedoms.

CIVICUS continues to call for the release of Arnon Nampa.

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