Rights group: Thai human rights record failed to improve in 2011
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Thailand's human rights situation worsened in 2011, despite the election of a popular new government in July, Human Rights Watch said Sunday in its World Report 2012.
The government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has largely failed to fulfil its pledges to make human rights a priority, stated the report, which highlighted a widening crackdown on freedom of expression and little progress in accounting for more than 90 deaths in political violence in 2010.
"The trajectory for rights has been on an alarming slide in recent years under successive Thai governments," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Adams said that neither the current government nor the previous government of former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had lived up to its human rights commitments.
Adams said that neither the current government nor the previous government of former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had lived up to its human rights commitments.
Although branded by its critics as being anti-royalist, the Yingluck government has continued to use the country's tough lese majesty law to suppress and prosecute alleged critics of the monarchy, the report stated.//DPA
