Abduction of Thailand’s dissident in Cambodia remains unsolved

Sitanan Satsaksit was kneeling outside his brother’s building, eyes down in prayer under a wide-brimmed hat. While trying to reconstruct the events of that night six months earlier, she heard his anguished voice in her head.

They were talking on the phone, she back in Thailand, her homeland, and he from his adopted home in Cambodia. Wanchalearm Satsaksit, a democracy activist and avowed satirist, was among more than 100 Thai dissidents who fled into exile after a 2014 military coup.

He said he was buying meatballs outside his skyscraper in Phnom Penh, the capital, when she heard a commotion, a series of crashes and screams. Then came his wailing cry, repeated over and over: “I can’t breathe”.

Those were his last words before the line died.

Witnesses told local journalists that they saw Cambodian-speaking men pack the lightweight Wanchalearm wearing glasses in a dark blue Toyota Highlander and set out along the road by the river. But officials in Cambodia and Thailand have reported no progress on the investigation.

Human rights groups believe his abduction was part of a pattern of disappearances for political reasons in Southeast Asia, where authoritarian governments have often helped each other to target dissidents in exile.

And then Sitanan found himself on a corner outside the Mekong Gardens apartment building in early December, holding an offering basket while a trio of Buddhist monks poured out holy water and prayed for Wanchalearm. She traveled to Phnom Penh to conduct her own investigation, meet with her brother’s associates, pressure the police for answers and testify before a judge in a desperate and lonely search for justice.

“I waited for this opportunity for six months,” she said. “As difficult as it was, it was also a relief and a joy to come to Phnom Penh.”

The kidnapping has taken on additional significance amid seismic political events in Thailand this year. The pro-democracy protests called not only for an end to government dominated by the military, but also for limits to the powers of the monarchy, a surprising demonstration of challenge in a country where the king must be revered, and criticizing him is a criminal offense.

A popular activist who campaigned for gender and LGBTQ rights with sharp and sometimes obscene humor, Wanchalearm joined the “red shirt” political movement allied with former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. After the military expelled Yingluck in 2014, the junta issued an arrest warrant for Wanchalearm.

He fled to neighboring Cambodia, where for the next six years he continued to denounce the military online – most recently in a Facebook video mocking former army chief and current prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha. It was posted on June 3, the day before his kidnapping.

Throughout the summer and fall, protesters held up posters of Wanchalearm, making it a symbol of the military’s failure to secure political rights. His name was spray-painted on the corners of Bangkok and popular on social media, bringing the issue of missing dissidents to the national debate for the first time.

Since 2016, eight Thai activists have disappeared from exile in Laos or Vietnam. In December 2018, two were found floating on the Mekong River along the border with Laos, their faces crushed and bodies filled with concrete.

All were wanted in Thailand on criminal charges related to criticism of the government or monarchy. In each case, including Wanchalearm’s, the Thai authorities denied involvement.

“This is a chilling message that there is no safe place for critics of the monarchy,” said Sunai Phasuk, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Bangkok. “Even those who fled Thailand to other countries are still in the grip of brutal repression.”

But what was different about Wanchalearm’s kidnapping is that it took place in broad daylight, in the presence of witnesses and security cameras, offering a ray of hope that he could be found – or his captors brought to justice.

“Thailand has a very good disappearance operation – you never find anything, absolutely nothing,” said Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, who heads the Cross Cultural Foundation’s advocacy group and accompanied Sitanan to Cambodia. “This time, there is a lot of evidence if the authorities want to take a look.”

It is not yet clear whether they will.

The day after Wanchalearm disappeared, a Cambodian police spokesman said he believed the reports were “fake news”. Weeks later, the Cambodian government told a United Nations working group on enforced disappearances that it was unaware of the kidnapping and no record that Wanchalearm was in the country.

In August, the government reported that the police investigation was empty. Wanchalearm was not listed as a resident in his building, so authorities continued to question whether he lived there. The Toyota SUV license plate seen in the security images was missing from official records, and interviews with three people “confirmed that there were no reports of kidnapping in that area.”

The Thai government said it had no jurisdiction over the incident and would expect Cambodia to complete its investigation. The UN working group said it was “alarmed” by Thailand’s position.

At his home in Ubon Ratchathani province, in northern Thailand, Sitanan was increasingly frustrated.

She helped raise her brother, nine years younger, although she avoided politics and had long begged him to moderate her comments. From time to time, he sent Sitanan photos of men he believed were looking at him in Phnom Penh.

In mid-May, the police visited his mother at his rural home to discuss his activities, prompting him to curse the police in his next video.

Still, he refused to seek asylum in the West, like other prominent Thai dissidents, and seemed determined to earn a living in Cambodia.

He launched a series of small businesses, including a stall selling Thai papaya salad, but they all failed. At one point, he and Sitanan traveled to Africa in hopes of starting a commercial banana farm in Cambodia, but that also failed.

“He never knew about money,” said Sitanan. “He was always focused on activism.”

She hired a Cambodian lawyer to open a case in Phnom Penh and then pressed for the opportunity to present evidence. In October, the judge issued a subpoena for her, and on November 10, Sitanan, Pornpen and two Thai lawyers flew to Cambodia.

After two weeks in the quarantine of COVID-19, the group took to the streets, hoping to collect more information to start the case. They found that Thais who knew Wanchalearm were reluctant to meet in person, fearing for their safety. The police denied the request to enter his apartment. The witnesses refused to speak.

But the team managed to track down Wanchalearm’s roommate, a Cambodian known as “Ricky”, who said he and Wanchalearm were at home on June 4. That morning, a pale-looking Wanchalearm turned to his roommate and said, without explanation: Ricky, I’m going to die. I will die.”

Pornpen, a veteran advocate for missing persons and cases of torture, said his research made it clear that Wanchalearm was the target of his political views.

“He had no other enemies, no one was after him in Cambodia,” she said. “He didn’t borrow money to go to the casinos. He had no personal conflict. “

Sitanan compiled his roommate’s account, Wanchalearm’s bank details, photos and other documents demonstrating his presence in Cambodia in a 177-page dossier and uploaded it to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on the morning of 8 December. For an hour and a half, Judge Sin Sovannroth heard his testimony and asked questions through his Cambodian lawyer and a translator.

She later told reporters that her evidence should be more than enough for the judge to refer the case to a lower court.

In particular, she was less confident. The day before, she met a police officer involved in the case, who said she saw no evidence that Wanchalearm was kidnapped.

“My conclusion was that these two institutions – the courts and the police – have done almost nothing in the investigation,” she said.

Amnesty International harshly criticized the Cambodian authorities for “blatant inadequacies” that raised doubts “about whether they are acting in good faith”. The government’s treatment of its own critics offers little hope that the investigation will suddenly gain momentum.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, in power for 35 years, arrested dozens of political prisoners and harassed opposition leaders on criminal charges. Last year, a Cambodian opposition politician living in Thailand was attacked with a stun gun in an attempted kidnapping in the Bangkok suburb.

The governments of Thailand and Cambodia also collaborated in the forced return of dissidents in exile, in probable violation of international law. In 2018, Thailand secretly extradited an exiled Cambodian, Rath Rott Mony, who served a two-year prison term for involvement in a documentary on child sex trafficking that angered the Hun Sen government.

“We fear that the authoritarian governments of Southeast Asia are exchanging opposition activists among themselves,” said Somchai Homlaor, one of the lawyers who traveled with Sitanan. “For the case of Wanchalearm, I don’t think it’s a question of capacity in Cambodia, but of willingness to bring perpetrators to justice.”

Back in Thailand, Sitanan said he would continue to push for justice as soon as he completed another 14-day quarantine in late December.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do next, except that I’m going to keep going,” she said. “I will continue to work to find out the truth about what happened to my brother.”