<p>Phetchaburi Provincial Court accepted an appeal to hold an emergency trial to find a missing a Karen human rights activist who disappeared in April 2014.</p> <p>The Provincial Court on Tuesday accepted the appeal to hold an emergency trial under Article 90 of the Criminal Procedure Code to investigate the alleged unlawful detention of Porlajee Rakchongcharoen, aka Billy, a Karen human and community rights activist, who disappeared on 17 April 2014.</p> <p>The appeal request was submitted by Phinnapha Phrueksaphan, Billy’s wife.</p>

<p>A media association in Thailand has claimed that the Thai authorities’ shutdown of a TV station affiliated with the anti-establishment red shirts is ‘disproportionate’ and seems partial.</p>

<p>A civil society organisation for consumers has urged the Thai authorities not to pass the digital economy bills, which will give the state unprecedented control over communications and the internet, before public revision.</p>

<p>Thai authorities have suspended the broadcasting license of a TV station affiliated with the anti-establishment red shirts for allegedly showing programmes which are threats to national security.</p>

<p>The military ordered Burapha University students to cancel a movie screening, reasoning that some of the movie content threatens national security.</p> <p>Last Thursday, a Facebook page called ‘<a href="https://www.facebook.com/BangseanRAMA/photos/a.195725820625773.1073741828.194391404092548/383831321815221/?type=1">Bangsaenrama</a>’ for a movie festival organised by students of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science of Burapha University in eastern Chonburi Province, revealed that the military had contacted the students to cancel the film screening.</p>

<p>Thai authorities carried out a massive search of student dormitories around Ramkhamhaeng University, an open university in Bangkok with large population of Muslim students from Southern Thailand.&nbsp;</p>

<div> <div>The Thai police said on Friday that they have closed about 50 per cent of more than 400 lèse majesté cases filed with them in the past six months. Also, more than 25,000 websites were closed because of lèse majesté.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>The police reported their six-month results at a press conference at the Royal Thai Police Headquarters on Friday.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>During the press conference, attended by about 100 civil servants, entrepreneurs, and medical volunteers, the police said they have closed 239 of 443 lèse majesté cases in the past six months. </div></div>

<div> <div>The appeal court last week gave a bookseller two years in jail for selling a banned book on the killing of King Ananda, a former king and older brother of the current King. He had earlier been acquitted by the court of first instance.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>The appeal court on Thursday sentenced Defendant U. (name and last name withheld at the defendant’s request) to three years in jail, but since his testimony was beneficial to the case, the jail term was reduced by one third.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Defendant U. </div></div>

<p>The Criminal Court has accepted a criminal defamation charge filed against a law academic for allegedly defaming a former President of the Supreme Administrative Court.</p> <p>The prosecutor at Bangkok’s Ratchada Criminal Court on Thursday indicted Phuttipong Ponganekgul, a law academic and part time lecturer at Siam and Kasetsart universities in Bangkok, for allegedly posting defamatory pictures and messages on the internet against Hatsawut Widitwiriyakun, a former President &nbsp;of the Supreme Administrative Court.</p>

<p>A civil society organisation for marginalised communities in Thailand has urged the government to keep its promise to solve the problems faced by the country’s poor.</p> <p>About 300 members of the People’s Movement for Just Society (P-Move), an organisation which is the voice of poor communities in Thailand, on Thursday morning gathered in front of Government House in Bangkok to submit to the authorities a statement called ‘Poor people’s suffering reaches its peak’.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7624/17056506179_a84303a44a_z.jpg" /></p>

<p>A number of academics, lawyers, and political activists on Wednesday received official letters from the Thai junta’s <a href="http://www.crr-thai.org/">Centre for Reconciliation and Reform</a>&nbsp;(CRR), inviting them to a meeting on reconciliation.</p> <p>The junta’s letters, which were issued on 17 April, invite at least 17 leading pro-democracy academics, lawyers, student activists, and members of the press in Thailand for a discussion on reconciliation, scheduled at the Thai Army Club in Bangkok at 9:30 am on Thursday.</p>

<p>The Appeal Court has sentenced 20 members of the Pakayaw Karen ethnic group to between one and five years’ imprisonment for illegal logging in protected areas.</p> <p>The Provincial Court of Mae Sariang District in the northern province of Mae Hong Son on Wednesday convicted 20 Pakayaw Karen from Ban Thung Pa Kha, Mae La Noi District, to one to five years in jail for possessing illegal teak wood.</p> <p>The court did not suspend the jail term and the defendants were taken to Mae Sariang prison after the verdict was read.</p>