The Civil Court has ordered the police to pay damages to two reporters shot with rubber bullets while covering a protest in July 2021, as the police did not take care and did not use non-lethal weapons in the proper way. However, the Court ruled that this was not a violation of press freedom or an attempt at intimidating the press to stop their reporting.

The Cabinet has decided to postpone the enforcement of several sections in the new Prevention of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act requiring police officers to make audio and video recordings from the moment of arrest through to release, claiming the need for training and equipment.

The activist group Thalufah staged a protest in front of the police headquarters yesterday (24 November) to demand that the police take responsibility for the violent crackdown on the 18 November anti-government protest march, which left many protesters injured and cost one activist his eye.

An online news agency is filing a fresh court challenge aimed at reining in the police’s documented aggression against members of the press.  The 18 November crackdown on anti-government demonstrators saw a reporter on the ground being beaten and a bottle hurled at a photographer’s face from the direction of the police.

Among the 33 people injured during the clashes between crowd control police and protesters marching to the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre on Friday (18 November), one was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet and is now very likely to go blind.