They stood up for free speech. Now they are being sued for libel.

Thai activist Sutharee Wannasiri knew the poultry company had broken labor laws. She took to Twitter in 2017 to share a video of an interview with an employee who said he had to work day and night with no day off.

The poultry company hit back and sued Ms Sutharee for defamation and libel. Although a court found her not guilty in 2020, the company was not done yet.

While the case was still pending, her colleague from their human rights organization spoke up for Ms Sutharee on Twitter and Facebook. She was also charged with slander and libel. Now the colleague, Puttanee Kangkun, faces up to 42 years in prison pending sentencing.

The cases illustrate what often happens in Thailand when companies and government officials are not satisfied with public criticism. A defamation suit follows in which critics are accused of spreading untruths, and defendants are entangled in protracted legal battles and threatened with imprisonment.

Powerful figures who know they can use the courts to intimidate, harass and punish critics have taken advantage of what Thailand’s UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has called “judicial harassment”.

Although the Thammakaset poultry company was found guilty of labor abuse, it continued to take its critics to court: first those who spoke about the labor abuse, and later those who complained about the measures the company took to silence those people. people.

Since 2016, Thammakaset has filed 39 lawsuits, mostly for defamation, against 23 individuals: migrant workers, human rights defenders and journalists. It lost all of them except one, which was later overturned on appeal.

Three are still pending.

In addition to Ms. Puttanee, Thammakaset is also suing Angkhana Neelapaijit, a former national human rights commissioner in Thailand, and Thanaporn Saleephol, a press officer for the European Union in Thailand.

All three women took to social media to criticize Thammakaset’s lawsuits. All three are charged with libel and defamation; they are tried together.

Many countries in Southeast Asia have criminal defamation laws, but Thailand stands out. Citizens “are just much more aggressive” in using the law to “drag people into legal processes that are slow and expensive,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch‘s Asia division.

In addition to the criminal defamation law, there is the Computer Crimes Act, which makes it a crime to upload “false” information that “could cause harm to the public”. Another law, which protects the Thai monarchy from criticism, allows ordinary Thais to file complaints for violations.

A British rights watchdog, ARTICLE 19cited statistics from Thailand’s judicial authorities showing that prosecutors and private parties have filed more than 25,000 criminal defamation cases since 2015.

“The business and political elites see this as very effective because the courts are risk averse; they accept almost any case that makes no sense on the face of it,’ Mr Robertson said.

Faced with calls to crack down on the rampant abuse of the courts, the Thai government amended its Code of Criminal Procedure in 2018 to make it easier to dismiss cases against defendants who can claim they are acting in the public interest. But lawyers say little has changed.

Sor Rattanamanee Polkla, the lawyer who Ms. Puttanee, Mrs. Angkhana and Mrs. Thanaporn said she had filed a petition to have the cases dropped under this provision, but the court denied her request.

Thammakaset’s complaint against the three women is about the 2018 video shared by Ms Sutharee, made by Strengthen rights. Mrs. Puttanee works for the organization; Mrs. Sutharee and Mrs. Thanaporn both did.

In their Twitter and Facebook posts, Ms. Puttanee, Ms. Angkhana and Ms. Thanaporn expressed their solidarity with the activists who were persecuted by Thammakaset. Their posts linked to a Fortify Rights press release and a joint statement with other human rights organizations that eventually linked to the video.

Thammakaset has cited the video, which contains an interview with an employee describing how he works long hours and has his passport withheld, in his complaint.

In 2016, Thai authorities ruled that Thammakaset had failed to pay the minimum wage and overtime wages or to provide workers with adequate leave. In 2019, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s order to pay the company about $50,000 to a group of 14 employees who filed the labor complaint.

At a hearing for the three women in March, Chanchai Pheamphon, the owner of Thammakaset, told the judge that he had already “paid his dues” to the workers, but the online criticism continued to damage his business and his reputation.

He said his children had asked him if the family’s money came from “human trafficking, from the sale of slaves”.

“How should a father feel when his children ask him this?” Mr. Chanchai said in a rising voice. “I have to use my rights to fight. But using my rights is seen as threatening, using the law to silence them.”

Mr Chanchai told the court that no one wanted to do business with him anymore. But in March, two rights groups published an investigation showing that after Thammakaset revoked its poultry farming certifications in 2016, a new poultry farm called Srabua was set up by a man who had the same address as Mr Chanchai.

Mr. Chanchai denied any knowledge of Srabua.

When asked by a New York Times reporter if he plans to file more lawsuits against critics of the company, Mr. Chanchai said, “You are a reporter for a major news agency. If someone says you’re a drug dealer, do you fight back?”

According to the Thai Human Rights Lawyers Association, decriminalizing defamation cases could have saved Thai taxpayers $3.45 million between 2016 and 2018. Defendants in civil suits can also expect to pay large sums of money out of pocket.

At the hearing in March, Ms. Puttanee, 52, brought a backpack filled with clothes to court. The commute from her home to the court takes two hours each way, so every time she attends a hearing, she books a hotel at her own expense.

She said she expects the case to take four years if Thammakaset decides to take her argument all the way to the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, Mrs. Puttanee considers herself lucky: she is in a community that has gathered around her and her lawyer works pro bono.

“But I still treat this as harassment,” she said.

At the hearing, Mr. Chanchai explained how Ms. Puttanee’s Twitter posts had defamed his company. His account lasted five hours; Mrs. Puttanee fell asleep during his testimony.

Ms. Angkhana, the former human rights commissioner, is well known in Thailand for her husband, Somchai Neelapaijit, a human rights lawyer who disappeared in 2004 and whose fate remains unknown.

She said the current lawsuit has affected her mental health.

“It’s a repeated trauma when someone attacks you, when you’ve done nothing wrong,” says Ms Angkhana, 67. “This is the real purpose of the company – to make you feel powerless.”

Ms. Thanaporn, 29, said it was ironic to fall victim to the lawsuit she denounced simply by supporting her fellow activists online.

“The fact that I can be sued for this speaks for itself,” she said.