On August 21, 2017, Endangered Scholars Worldwide learned that Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, the director of the Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai University who organized an international conference on Thai studies, has, along with four other Thai academics, been charged with violating the country’s military junta's ban on political gatherings of more than four people. Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, who faces up to one year in prison if convicted, i

On August 3, 2017, a court in northeastern Thailand began a closed-door trial of an activist law student arrested for sharing a BBC article about the country's new king on Facebook. Jatupat "Pai Dao Din" Boonpattararaksa was arrested in December 2016 for sharing a profile of the king that was posted on Facebook by the BBC's Thai-language service. As we reported earlier, his arrest was the first made under the country's strict “lese majeste” law created when the new king took

On May 22, 2017, Jatuphat "Pai" Boonpattararaksa, a law student and key member of the New Democracy Movement (NDM), was taken to the Military Court of Khon Kaen Province for trial. The trial was on a case in which Jatuphat and seven other democracy activists were indicted for violating the National Council for Peace and Order's (NCPO) Order No. 3/2015, which forbids political gatherings of five or more people, after participating in a peaceful gathering to commemorate the 201