Thailand: Another Dissenter Disappears

Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty (c/o The Interpreter)

On June 4, Wanchalearm Satsaksit – a self-exiled Thai political activist living in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh – vanished. He was almost certainly abducted. CCTV footage shows him taken away in a black car. His sister, who was on the phone with him when he was seized, told BBC Thai that he cried out, “I can’t breathe” before the line was cut. Three witnesses identified him from photographs as the abductee. And a security guard at the scene said the kidnapper was carrying a gun.

Wanchalearm went missing one day after publishing a blistering attack on Thailand’s prime minister (and former junta leader) Prayuth Chan-ocha, and three weeks after Thai police visited Wanchalearm’s mother in north-east Thailand, asking her where he was.

The case raises serious questions, not for the first time, about the reach of Thai authorities beyond its borders, and the tendency of its neighbors either to cooperate or look the other way.  

Click here to keep reading. Craig Keating writes for The Interpreter.