Soldiers have visited the school of a student activist, asking him to stop criticising Prayut with threats of further intimidation.
On 21 July 2017, Sanhanutta Sartthaporn, the Secretary General of the education reform group Education for Liberation of Siam (ELS), posted on his Facebook account that he was visited by two plainclothes soldiers on Wednesday morning.
The soldiers approached the student when he was having breakfast at school. They asked him about a recent ELS statement that condemned junta head Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha for his excessive interference in Thai education.
After finding out that Sanhanutta had drafted the statement, a soldier asked him to stop criticising “his boss” and showed a quote from Col Burin Thongprapai, a legal officer for the NCPO, that read,
“I will catch them all, those who curse the honourable Prayut and curse the NCPO. I’m a soldier. A bunch of slaves like you can meet me any time if you have the guts.” [Translation note: the quotation uses words for ‘I’ and ‘you’ that the dictionary describes as ‘Impolite & Potentially Offensive’]
“If you don’t stop criticising my boss, I will pass on your name and I don’t know what will happen to you,” Sanhanutta quoted the soldier as saying.
Sanhanutta Sartthaporn (Photo from Sanhanutta’s Facebook)
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