Rights group says nearly 300 criminal cases filed against defendants who were children at the time of their arrests
A 14-year-old charged with insulting the king. A 13-year-old physically dragged out of a restaurant by police officers. A 17-year-old shot with rubber bullets and beaten.
These are among the stories revealed in a new report from Amnesty International, which documents alleged human rights violations in connection to children participating in Thailand’s long-running protests and was released on Wednesday.
Sainam, who had previously been shot with rubber-coated bullets, was a regular fixture at the pro-democracy protests, but the then 17-year-old had planned to skip the demonstration on the day of his arrest in 2021.
Then he saw his friend had been injured.
“I saw my friend get shot in the news, so I went there to see my friend and when I got there it was chaotic, and the police ran and tried to catch anybody who was there,” Sainam told Al Jazeera.
“So, I ran and they shot me in the leg but I kept running so they shot me in the back and they threw me on the floor and beat me with the baton and riot shield.”
In nearly 300 cases, defendants who were children at the time of their alleged infractions are facing criminal charges, many of which are related to the 2020-2021 protest movement. Amnesty says the proceedings violate their freedom of expression, are tearing families apart and putting futures in jeopardy.
“Most of them are facing potential jail time,” said Chanatip Tatiyakaroonwong, a regional researcher at Amnesty. He says the majority of the documented cases, about 200, have been opened under the Emergency Decree invoked between March 2020 and October 2022 to stop the spread of COVID-19.
“Over the last two years there has been widespread weaponisation of COVID restrictions to curb people’s ability to protest,” Chanatip said.
