The police have forced the Human Rights Watch to cancel a press conference on the release of a report about an ethnic minority persecuted by the Vietnamese government, claiming the content is sensitive to bilateral ties and threat to national security.
The event was to take place on 26 June, 10.30am at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand.
Around ten uniformed police officers and eight plainclothes officers arrived at the FCCT, taking unsolicited pictures of event attendees before releasing an official statement on the forced cancellation.
In the official statement, the junta police, via the Lumphini police, claimed that the discussion on the Vietnamese government’s abuses on the Montagnard ethnic minority was “inappropriate” since it would “affect national stability” and the “Thai-Vietnamese bilateral relationship” by offering opportunistic “mal-intentioned individuals to create chaotic situations.”
According to the HRW’s report Persecuting “Evil Way” Religion: Abuses against Montagnards in Vietnam, the Vietnamese government uses state policy and regulations to persecute religious minorities such as the Montagnard Christians. The Montagnard practice De Ga Protestantism and Ha Mon Catholicism, sects that the officials call “Evil Way.” Vietnamese authorities organize “many waves of search and hunt” to intimidate, arrest, and mistreat the Montagnard, whom they accuse of “having politically ‘autonomous thoughts.’” General Tran Dai Quang, Vietnam’s minister of public security, has stressed in an official speech in January 2014 the need to “actively fight” the Evil Way. Since then, Vietnam and Cambodia have collaborated to forcibly arrest and return asylum seekers.
By cancelling this press conference on the persecuted Montagnard, Thailand is taking steps to establish its position as a “country defending human rights violations in other ASEAN countries,” states Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher from the HRW .
“Thailand used to defend human rights in southeast asia,” he says. “Blocking an event like this creates a specific image of Thailand in the NCPO era.”
Phil Robertson of the HRW details that in the afternoon of Thursday, 25 June, Sek Wannamethee from the Department of Information called Robertson to pressure him into cancelling the event. HRW replied that the report should be able to be presented, since it was not about Thailand at all, and most of the report information came from official Vietnamese state media. At 5 pm Lumphini police contacted the FCCT, saying that they received orders “from above” to prevent the event from happening. Official written order was only released at the FCCT at the time of the intended event.
“By stepping in to defend a neighboring state’s human rights violations against a group of its people and interrupting a scheduled press conference, Thailand’s military junta is violating freedom of assembly and demonstrating its contempt for freedom of the press. This action today is just the latest indication that Thailand is choosing to side with dictatorships in ASEAN while further stepping up repression at home,” stated Robertson.
Robertson has also said that the cancelled press conference will not be re-scheduled, so he hopes that the report prevented from discussed will still be viewed.
View the HRW’s report on the Montagnard persecuted by the Vietnamese government here.
