On 30 July, the USA chapter of Amnesty International (AI) wrote an open letter to Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, in advance of his trip to Thailand to attend the ASEAN ministerial meetings.

AI urged Pompeo to “inform the Thai authorities of [his] concerns regarding serious and ongoing human rights violations in the country” in light of the human rights violations and suppression of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly in the past year. AI said that the recent election took place in a “heavily restricted environment for human rights, including the country’s ongoing restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, court cases against peaceful critics, continued powers of arbitrary detention, and uninvestigated violence against activists”, along with a new and growing crackdown on the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly, which included the dissolving of a political party before the election, and multiple criminal complaints against the Future Forward Party both before and after the election.

AI also said that while the authorities have recently lifted a number of repressive and unwarranted bans on political activity and exercise of the rights to peaceful assembly and expression, authorities continue to file new criminal complaints against peaceful critics and retain powers of arbitrary detention and censorship. Meanwhile, systemic torture and ill-treatment by the military continues to be facilitated by emergency laws and decrees allowing individuals to be detained without charge or trial in unofficial places of detention.

There is also an ongoing concern regarding uninvestigated cases of torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. The state is also failing to protect activists and community rights defenders from violence and unlawful killings, and has a history of holding refugees and asylum seekers indefinitely and in extremely poor conditions and forcibly returning individuals, including recognized refugees, to countries where they are at genuine risk of torture or other serious human rights violations. 

In light of these human rights violations and restriction of freedom, AI urged that US officials make clear that as long as judicial harassment and arbitrary detention of peaceful dissenters continue, US policy toward Thailand will not change. Otherwise, the US government would be implicitly encouraging the continuation of repressive actions that threaten the future of human rights in the country and, indeed, in the region as a whole.