Reds to meet UN rights body over ‘threats’

THE United Nations’ human rights agency will meet red-shirt leaders on Monday to discuss claims that they are being threatened by the government over their plan to monitor possible fraud in the upcoming referendum on the draft constitution, red-shirt leaders said yesterday.

Red-shirt leaders Jatuporn Prompan and Nattawut Saikua said they yesterday submitted a complaint with Laurent Meillan, representative of the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bangkok. 

In the complaint, they said the National Council for Peace and Order was attempting to shut down centres set up by the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship to monitor the referendum.

Jatuporn, who heads the UDD, said that the UN agency’s officials wanted him and other UDD leaders to meet them and discuss the matter on Monday at 11am.

“This is a good sign that the UN is interested in this issue,” he told reporters at the UN office.

The Nation contacted the OHCHR but was unable to get confirmation of the red shirts’ comments. 

NCPO spokesman Piyapong Klinphan said the junta was monitoring the UDD centres closely. He said the group had signed an agreement with authorities not to stage political activities so this move could breach the contract. 

He warned people not to join the group, adding that they could be abandoned if faced with legal prosecution. 

Jatuporn said that authorities had summoned the heads of the fraud-monitoring centres in the provinces. Campaign banners had been seized and the centres’ personnel were threatened with prosecution. 

The situation was particularly bad in Prachin Buri province where the centre’s leaders had been detained in an undisclosed location and the centre locked up by the authorities, the group claimed.

Jatuporn alleged the action was |the result of Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, a key NCPO member, saying the centres were |illegal despite junta chief Prayut |Chan-o-cha saying otherwise. 

The group called on the authorities to leave provincial red-shirt leaders alone. If the centres were illegal, the leaders should be arrested instead, Jatuporn said.

The group said it would continue with the action, as the junta could seize its objects but it could not stop the spirit of its members

Another NCPO spokesman Colonel Winthai Suvaree said it was still unclear if the centres were legal and officers were overseeing their activities. If they were deemed political, they would be stopped, he said. 

Meanwhile, Deputy PM Wissanu Krea-ngam said Pheu Thai politicians expressing a stance against the charter may be taking a political stand, feasibly punishable by party dissolution under Article 44 of the interim charter.

But the law was not to be used arbitrarily, he said, adding that there had been many times the regime considered using Article 44 but did not. There were benchmarks and reasons to consider before adopting such a strong measure, Wissanu explained.

He said normal laws were more sustainable than Article 44, which would eventually be scratched. 

The Pheu Thai politicians posted on their Facebook pages that they were going to reject the junta-sponsored constitution in the referendum. 

Election Commission member Somchai Srisuthiyakorn said that if it was proved that this action were organised by the party, the worst punishment the party could receive would be dissolution.

But Wissanu stressed the regime had no intention to do that at the moment. 

He declined to comment on what the politicians would have to say before facing severe punishment. The judgement would lie in the hands of relevant agents, he said.

The deputy PM said EC member Somchai’s dissolution comment was meant to serve as a deterrent to any further disruption. And as he was an agent enforcing the referendum law, he might regard the warning as necessary, Wissanu added. 

EC member Prawich Rattanapian said that expressing one’s opinion was not against the referendum law unless the opinion was a distortion of the truth or false information.