For the first time in several years, Amnesty International acknowledged yesterday that there was at least one prisoner of conscience in Thailand. This was declared in the agency’s recently released 2011 report on human rights, which details how the freedom of expression is being curbed through the use of the emergency decree, the lese majeste law and the Computer Crime Act.

Wipas Raksakul, a businessman who was arrested last April for allegedly violating the lese majeste law by forwarding a message on Facebook, has been classified by Amnesty International as a “prisoner of conscience”.

TN

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