The kidnapping of Thailand’s dissident in Cambodia remains unsolved

Sitanan Satsaksit kneels outside her brother’s apartment building, her eyes lowered in prayer under a wide-brimmed hat. When she tried to reconstruct the events of that night six months earlier, she heard his anxious voice in her head.

They talked telephonically, she back in their native Thailand and he in his adopted home in Cambodia. The 38-year-old Wanchalearm Satsaksit, an outspoken democratic activist and satirist, was among more than 100 Thai dissidents who fled into exile after a 2014 military coup.

He told her he was buying meatballs outside his tall building in Phnom Penh, the capital, when she heard a commotion, a series of bangs and screams. Then came his plaintive cry, repeating over and over again, “I can’t breathe.”

These were his last words before the line died.

Witnesses told local journalists that they saw Cambodian-speaking men take the light, brilliant Wanchalearm in a dark blue Toyota Highlander and drive along the river road. But authorities in Cambodia and Thailand have reported no progress with the investigation.

Human rights groups believe his abduction was part of a pattern of politically motivated disappearances in Southeast Asia, where authoritarian governments have often helped each other direct exiles into exile.

And so, in early December, Sitanan finds herself on a street corner outside the Mekong Gardens apartment building, holding a basket of offerings while a trio of Buddhist monks distribute holy water and pray for Wanchalearm. She traveled to Phnom Penh to conduct her own investigation, meet with her brother’s associates, press police for answers, and testify before a judge in a desperate and lonely search for justice.

“I waited six months for this opportunity,” she said. “As difficult as it was, it was also a relief and happiness to come to Phnom Penh.”

The kidnapping has added significance amid seismic political events in Thailand this year. Pro-democracy protests not only put an end to the military-dominated government, but also restrictions on the powers of the monarchy, an astonishing display of defiance in a country where the king is to be honored, and criticism of him is a criminal offense.

Wanchalearm, a popular activist campaigning for gender and LGBTQ rights with a sharp and sometimes bad sense of humor, joins the “red shirt” political movement linked to former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. After the army expelled Yingluck in 2014, the junta issued a warrant for the arrest of Wanchalearm.

He fled to neighboring Cambodia, where he has been denouncing the military online for the next six years – recently in a Facebook video mocking former army chief and current prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. It was posted on June 3, the day before his abduction.

During the summer and fall, protesters held up posters of Wanchalearm, making him a symbol of the military’s failure to secure political rights. His name was spray-painted in Bangkok’s street corners and posted on social media, bringing the issue of missing dissidents into the national conversation for the first time.

Since 2016, eight Thai activists have disappeared from exile in Laos or Vietnam. In December 2018, two were found in the Mekong River along the Laotian border, with their faces crushed and bodies filled with concrete.

All were sought in Thailand on criminal charges related to criticism of the government or monarchy. In both cases, including Wanchalearm’s, the Thai authorities denied involvement.

“This is a refreshing message that there is no safe place for critics of the monarchy,” said Sunai Phasuk, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Bangkok. “Even those who escape from Thailand to other countries are still within the reach of cruel oppression.”

But what was different about the kidnapping of Wanchalearm is that it took place in broad daylight, with a view to witnesses and security cameras, which offers some hope that he could be found – or that his prisoners be brought to justice.

“Thailand has a very good operation with disappearance – you never find anything,” said Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, who heads the Cross Cultural Foundation group and accompanies Sitanan to Cambodia. “This time there is a lot of evidence if the authorities want to look into it.”

It remains unclear whether they want to do that.

The day after Wanchalearm went missing, a Cambodian police spokesman said he believed the reports were fake news. ‘Weeks later, the Cambodian government told a United Nations task force on forced disappearances that it had no knowledge of the abduction and no evidence that Wanchalearm was even in the country.

In August, the government reported that the police investigation was coming to an end. Wanchalearm was not a resident at his apartment building, and authorities continued to ask if he lived there. The number plate of the Toyota SUV seen in safety material is missing in official records, and interviews with three people confirmed that there was no kidnapping in the said area.

The Thai government has maintained that it has no jurisdiction over the incident and will wait for Cambodia to complete its investigation. The UN working group said it was “concerned” about Thailand’s position.

At her home in the northern Thai province of Ubon Ratchathani, Sitanan became increasingly frustrated.

She helped raise her brother, nine years younger than her, although she avoided politics and pleaded with him for a long time to show his comments. From time to time he would send Sitanan pictures of men he believed were watching in Phnom Penh.

In mid-May, police visited his mother at her country home to discuss his activities, prompting him to curse officers in his next video.

Yet he refused to seek asylum in the West like other prominent Thai dissidents, and he was determined to make a living in Cambodia.

He launched a series of small businesses, including a stall selling Thai papaya salad, but each failed. At one point, he and Sitanan traveled to Africa hoping to start a commercial banana farm in Cambodia, but it also faltered.

“He never knew about money,” Sitanan said. “He was always focused on activism.”

She hires a Cambodian lawyer to file a lawsuit in Phnom Penh and is seeking the opportunity to present evidence. In October, the judge gave her a summons and on November 10, Sitanan, Pornpen and two Thai lawyers flew to Cambodia.

After two weeks in the quarantine of COVID-19, the group took to the streets in hopes of gathering more information to get the case underway. They found that Thais who knew Wanchalearm were reluctant to meet in person, fearing for their safety. Police denied their request to enter his apartment. Witnesses refused to speak.

But the team managed to track down Wanchalearm’s roommate, a Cambodian who passed ‘Ricky’. He said he and Wanchalearm were both home on June 4th. Ricky, I’m going to die. I’m going to die. ‘

Pornpen, a veteran advocate in missing persons and torture cases, said their research makes it clear that Wanchalearm was targeted for his political views.

“He had no other enemies, and no one was behind him in Cambodia,” she said. “He did not borrow money to go to the casinos. He did not have a personal conflict at all. ‘

Sitanan compiled the roommate’s account, bank details, photos and other documents from Wanchalearm, which showed his presence in Cambodia, in a 177-page file and brought them to Phnom Penh Municipal Court on the morning of December 8. Sin Sovannroth heard her testimony and was asked questions by her Cambodian lawyer and a translator.

She then told reporters that her testimony should be more than enough for the judge to send the case to a trial court.

Privately, she was less confident. A day earlier, she met a senior police officer involved in the case who said he had not yet seen any evidence that Wanchalearm had been abducted.

“My conclusion was that these two institutions – the courts and the police – have done almost nothing to the investigation yet,” she said.

Amnesty International has sharply criticized the Cambodian authorities for “conspicuous inadequacies” that raise doubts “whether they are acting in good faith”. The government’s treatment of its own critics offers little hope that the investigation can suddenly get steam.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for 35 years, has imprisoned dozens of political prisoners and hunted down opposition leaders with criminal charges. Last year, a Cambodian opposition politician living in Thailand was attacked with a stun gun in an attempted kidnapping in suburban Bangkok.

The Thai and Cambodian governments have also worked together to force the return of exiled dissidents, who are likely to violate international law. In 2018, Thailand secretly extradited an exiled Cambodian, Rath Rott Mony, who was serving a two-year prison sentence for involvement in a documentary on child sex trafficking that angered Hun Sen’s government.

“We fear that the authoritarian governments of Southeast Asia are exchanging opposition activists with each other,” said Somchai Homlaor, one of the lawyers who traveled with Sitanan. “For Wanchalearm’s case, I do not think it’s a question of the ability in Cambodia, but of the willingness to bring the culprits to justice.”

Back in Thailand, Sitanan said she would continue to push for justice once she concludes another 14-day quarantine at the end of December.

“I do not know what I will do next, except that I will continue,” she said. “I will keep working to find the truth about what happened to my brother.”