Rights group: Thai human rights record failed to improve in 2011

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.

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.

More than 400 lese majesty cases were sent to trial in 2010 and 2011. In November, Ampon Tangnoppakul, 61, was sentenced to 20 years in jail for allegedly posting insulting text messages about the queen on his mobile phone.

The new government has stepped up internet surveillance and censorship, targeting website and social network portals accused of promoting allegedly anti-monarchy sentiments.

Yingluck's government was also blasted for making little progress in accounting for the 92 people who died and 2,000 others who were injured in the bloody street protests that rocked Bangkok in April-May of 2010, except in cases involving protesters who were supportive of the current government, Human Rights Watch said.

"The new government's accountability effort focused on the 2010 violence has been sadly one-sided," said the report. "It has pushed the police to make progress in the investigations of 13 murder cases in which soldiers were implicated to initiate post-mortem inquests and criminal prosecutions." 

   But it failed to pursue the slayings of 12 government authorities in the violence.

"The new government came to power promising justice to victims of the violence in 2010," Adams said. "Yet it has done nothing to reassure those victims that it will do more than previous governments to hold the people responsible for abuses accountable." 

   In the 676-page World Report 2012, progress on human rights in 2011 is assessed in more than 90 countries.