A political activist charged with insulting the king of Thailand has died in pre-trial detention after spending 65 days on hunger strike calling for an end to the imprisonment of political dissidents.
Netiporn Sanae-sangkhom, 28, had been detained since 26 January and maintained a hunger strike until the end of April, refusing food and water, according to her lawyers. The corrections department said she had experienced cardiac arrest on Tuesday morning and was unresponsive to treatment.
Activists called for vigils to be held in her memory in Bangkok, as well as in cities in northern Thailand including Chiang Mai, Lampang and Chiang Rai.
Netiporn was part of a youth-led movement that emerged in 2020, when protesters took to the streets in Bangkok to demand democratic reforms, including curbs on the power and wealth of the monarchy. This included a call for the scrapping of Thailand’s strict lèse-majesté law, under which criticism of the monarchy can lead to up to 15 years in prison on each charge.
The movement dwindled as many of the activist leaders were charged with multiple instances of lese-majesty, but Thalu Wang, a protest group with which Netiporn was involved, continued to organise smaller demonstrations.
Netiporn faced seven legal cases, including two charges of violating the law. The first was filed in relation to a 2022 protest in which she held up a poster at Siam Paragon, a busy shopping mall in Bangkok, which asked: “Do you think the royal motorcade causes inconvenience or not?”, inviting passersby to share their view by placing a sticker on either side of a chart on the poster.
Road closures caused by royal motorcades have been a source of frustration in congested Bangkok, though officials said this year that it was no longer a requirement for traffic to be cleared in order for royal vehicles to pass.
Her second lese-majesty case related to a separate protest, also in 2022, where she held a sign that said: “Do you agree that the government allows the king to use power however he pleases?”
Before her involvement in Thalu Wang, Netiporn had also been part of the student group Bad Students, which has called for education reforms including for LGBT students to have the right to choose their own hairstyles.
She had been detained twice due to her activism, most recently when her bail was revoked in relation to one of the lèse-majesté charges.
Her death has shocked many and raised questions about double standards in Thailand’s prison system.
“Why was she left to die? Why was it not urgent to get her treated? Because we requested it before. The correction department needs to answer this,” said Kritsadang Nutcharat, a lawyer from the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights group which represented her, in comments reported by Thai media.
Kritsadang said her treatment should be compared with that received by “an adult” – an apparent reference to the billionaire former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has not spent a single night in prison since returning from self-imposed exile to avoid corruption charges. His eight-year jail term was commuted to a year by the king and he spent six months in a police hospital for an undisclosed health condition before being granted parole.
His return to the country coincided with the return of his Pheu Thai party to power after it made a deal with military-aligned parties to keep a pro-reform party, which wanted to amend the lese-majesty law, out of power.
According to the Thai corrections department, Netiporn had weak legs and arms as well as anaemia.
She refused “minerals and vitamins” given by the hospital. “She had a cardiac arrest on Tuesday morning and wasn’t responsive to the treatment, which led her to die peacefully at 11.22am (0422 GMT),” the department said.
