An Australian and a Thai journalist, who were charged with defamation for reporting on the alleged involvement of Thai naval forces in human trafficking, have been acquitted.
Alan Morison, the 67-year-old Australian editor of independent Thai news website Phuketwan, and reporter Chutima Sidasathian, a Thai citizen, were facing seven years in jail — two years on criminal defamation charges and five years for breaching the Computer Crimes Act.
On Tuesday, the judge delivered his verdict in a Phuket court: Not guilty.
Amnesty International welcomed the news but said the pair shouldn’t have been put on trial to begin with.
“This is just the latest in a long line of attacks on freedom of expression and media outlets since the military seized power in 2014,” said Josef Benedict of Amnesty International’s South East Asia campaigns director.
Chutima said the journalists are waiting to see whether the Royal Thai Navy will appeal. It has to do so within 30 days.
“Today’s verdict turned out to be very satisfactory,” she told CNN.
Forty-one words
The charges were filed after the Thai navy complained about an article Phuketwan published in July 2013.
The story included a 41-word paragraph from a Reuters investigative article alleging that “Thai naval forces” had profited from involvement in the smuggling of ethnic Rohingya from neighboring Myanmar.
No one from Reuters, which won a Pulitzer Prize for the series of reports on Rohingya that the article featured in, was charged over the original story.
‘Threat to democratic society’
The case was slammed by press freedom organizations and human rights groups, including the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Eight international rights groups signed an open letter to Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha calling on him to drop the charges, claiming the case constituted a threat to the “bedrock of Thailand’s democratic society.”
Article ‘in public interest’
Chutima told CNN that she and Morison testified in court, defending the use of the paragraph that had prompted the charges.
“We explained to them that the term ‘Thai naval forces’ doesn’t mean the Royal Thai Navy, but it means any forces with capability or resources to work in water or at sea,” she said.
A witness, with expertise on the Computer Crimes Act, also testified in their defense, arguing the law was intended to prevent crimes such as hacking or credit card skimming, but had been abused.
Chutima told the court that, in writing the article, she and Morison had been simply doing their jobs and acting in the public interest.
“Regarding the first charge about defamation, the court has acquitted this because the statement didn’t affect Thai Navy’s reputation and images,” Chutima told CNN on Tuesday. “Also, the published story was useful for the public, which was about human trafficking in Rohingyas.”
Migrant crisis
The persecution of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar has fueled a migrant crisis in Southeast Asia, as tens of thousands have been driven into the hands of traffickers in their attempts to flee.
In May, dozens of graves and a number of secret detention camps were found in trafficking hotspots around the Thai-Malaysian border.
The ensuring Thai crackdown saw trafficking networks abandon their human cargo at sea, leaving thousands of vulnerable migrants on rickety wooden boats ping-ponging between different countries as they attempted to make landfall.
The crackdown led to dozens of arrests, including of a senior army officer in the region, Lieutenant General Manas Kongpan, on human trafficking charges.
Media clampdown
Thailand’s military junta, which toppled the government of Yingluck Shinawatra in a coup last year, has introduced strict controls on media, amid a clampdown on civil liberties.
Prayuth has repeatedly griped publicly about journalists, and was slammed for an offhand comment at a press conference in March that he would “probably just execute” any reporters who stepped out of line.
Benjamin Ismail, head of the Asia-Pacific desk for Reporters Without Borders, called on the Thai government “to end their policy of harassing the media.”
“The trial of these two journalists, who just did their job as news providers with a great deal of professionalism, poses a great danger to all those independent voices in Thailand who want to use their freedom of expression and information,” he said in a statement last month.
