Giles Ungpakorn has his own press release : The Thai Truth for Reconciliation Commission Sides With the Royalist Elites

The Commission spends a lot of time talking about the so-called “men in black”, as though there was some kind of civil war between two sets of armed fighters. Yet the real picture, which they try to obscure, is that in 2010 the Abhisit Government and the army deployed tanks, armed soldiers and snipers against an unarmed group of protestors who were demanding democratic elections. We know that snipers fired live rounds against unarmed Red Shirts because the military’s own bullet audit shows this. There are numerous photos and videos of unarmed civilians being shot in the street by soldiers and there are the dead bodies of civilians, killed with military bullets. Nearly all the 90 odd deaths in April and May were civilians killed in this way. A mere handful of soldiers died after a grenade attack in April, probably from a rival military faction, and a couple died later by “friendly fire”. We cannot escape the obvious conclusion that a military-installed government deliberately killed unarmed protestors in order to avoid an http://tinyurl.com/9fpf63selection. Those responsible: the Prime Minister at the time and his deputy, the head of the army and the previous head of the army are all guilty of murder. The leaders of the 2006 coup should also be punished. For reconciliation to take place, justice must be done. ...

The Truth for Reconciliation Commission calls for robust measures, using the lèse majesté law, to punish those who insult the monarchy. It makes some meaningless suggestions about minor reforms of the law, but does not discuss the fact that the law itself is a serious obstacle to freedom of speech. Neither is there any suggestion that lèse majesté prisoners be immediately released. ...

One of the reasons that I was charged with lèse majesté was because I wrote a book which asked whether the Constitutional Monarch should protect the Constitution from a military coup. ... Somyot Pruksakasemsuk and many other lèse majesté prisoners are rotting in jail for merely making political statements against the dictatorship after the 2006 coup. ...

Somyot and Surapak both rot in jail for more than year, neither one convicted of ANYTHING ... brava Khun Achara!