The Prachatai Editorial Team has, for the past 8 years, named a person or group of people who have played an important role in social and political change as our Person of the Year. They are also often more at risk of threats and harassment. For 2024, we name the late activist Netiporn ‘Bung’ Sanesangkhom as our Person of the Year.

Netiporn died on 14 May 2024 while held in pre-trial detention on a royal defamation charge and after undergoing a long hunger strike to demand judicial reform. She was 28 years old. Her death led to questions about the treatment of detainees and demands for the release of political prisoners.

Netiporn Sanesangkhom (left) with her friends. (Photo by Napin Mandharachita)

Netiporn grew up in a family of judiciary workers. Her father is a judge and her sister a lawyer. She said in an interview with Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) in 2022 that she grew up around the courts and that her family previously expected her to study law.

Netiporn described herself as a former conservative. But in 2020, she joined the student rights group Bad Student to campaign against school dress and hairstyle code before becoming a founding member of the monarchy reform activist group ThaluWang. The group often conducted polls regarding the monarchy, from road closures during royal motorcades to whether people want their tax money to be budgeted to the monarchy. Activists who joined the group are now facing royal defamation charges for conducting these polls.

Netiporn said in 2022, after ThaluWang was formed, that she felt that activists would be prosecuted into silence no matter what they do. She also said that ThaluWang’s founding members no longer wanted to tiptoe around the root of the country’s problems, which she said was that people cannot criticize the monarchy, and so they decided to raise questions about the monarchy directly.

Arbitrary detentions

For her political activities, she was prosecuted in a total of 7 cases, two of which were under the royal defamation law. One was for conducting a poll on royal motorcades at Siam Paragon shopping mall on 8 February 2022, and another was for conducting a poll on whether people agree with the government allowing the King to use his powers as he pleases.

Netiporn was detained twice. The first time was after the South Bangkok Criminal Court revoked her bail. Netiporn and fellow monarchy reform activist Nutthanit Duangmusit went on a hunger strike to protest their detention before being granted bail after 64 days of hunger strike and 94 days of detention.

She was detained a second time after the South Bangkok Criminal Court revoked her bail on 26 January 2024 for participating in a protest at the Ministry of Culture on 6 August 2023. On the same day, the Court sentenced her to 1 month in prison on a contempt of court charge for an incident on 19 October 2023. At the time, Netiporn and activist Thanalop Phalanchai were attending the trial of Saharat Sukkhamla, a graduate from Mahidol University’s College of Religious Studies and ex-novice monk, who was found guilty of royal defamation. The two activists reportedly climbed a fence near the cells under the South Bangkok Criminal Court building in an attempt to ask if Saharat needed anything to eat while he was detained pending the result of his bail request. A court marshal and two security guards stopped them and threatened to charge them with contempt of court. An argument occurred after Netiporn and Thanalop asked the court marshal for his name and whether he had the authority to charge them. He then hit Netiporn with a baton, injuring her.

Immediately after her detention, Netiporn went on a hunger strike to demand judicial reform and an end to the detention of political dissidents.

Activist Tantawan Tuatulanon, who had organized the polls with ThaluWang, said that Netiporn was charged although she only observed the royal motorcade polls and did not take part. She maintained that they should not have been charged to begin with and questioned why one of the conditions for their bail was that they must not repeat their offence when they have not been found guilty.

Meanwhile, lawyer Kunthika Nutcharus said that bail conditions in royal defamation cases are often so broad that anything would fit. “What happens is a person can be punished twice for one offence,” she said.

Netiporn and other activists were facing charges for a protest at the Ministry of Culture, Kunthika said. The case was being handled by Huaikwang Police Station, but officers at Pathumwan Police Station used the protest to back their request that the Court revoke Netiporn’s bail. Kunthika believed that this would eventually destroy the legal system. She also said that the attitude that activists deserve to have their bail revoked because they repeat their offences is the kind of attitude that refuses to give the system an opportunity to function as it should.

Netiporn may not have had much choice but to go on a hunger strike, Kunthika said, since she was accused of royal defamation for something that is not a serious violation and it is still debatable whether it was an offence to begin with.

“Nobody was forcing her (to go on a hunger strike),” Kunthika said. “People were even trying to make her stop. These are people who should have been able to make her, like her parents and her lawyers. People were continually telling her to stop. In that condition, sometimes she didn’t have much choice.”

A silent death

Activists and protesters attending the first night of Netiporn's funeral. (Photo by ไข่แมวชีส)

On the morning of 14 May 2024, it was reported that Netiporn was pronounced dead at Thammasat University Hospital, where she had been transferred from the Corrections Hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest.

It remained unclear whether Netiporn died while detained at the Corrections Hospital or at Thammasat University Hospital. Records obtained from Thammasat University Hospital stated that Netiporn had no vital signs upon arrival at 9.30 on 14 May, and that doctors found that an endotracheal tube had been placed in her esophagus instead of her windpipe. As a result, oxygen was pumped into her stomach and intestines instead of her lungs. The placement of the tube is believed to be a major cause of her death, although there could be other reasons. Meanwhile, Netiporn’s medical records obtained from the Corrections Hospital diagnosed her with Refeeding Syndrome, a condition caused by a severe shift in electrolytes when a person who is malnourished begins feeding again.

It was not easy for the family to get the Corrections Hospital to release the records. Lawyer Krisadang Nutcharus, who represented Netiporn before her death, said that Netiporn’s legal team was initially granted the power of attorney by Netiporn’s older sister to request her medical records and CCTV footage from her hospital ward, but was told that the Department of Corrections’ regulations stipulates that only a parent can obtain the records. Two days later, lawyers and activists who went to the Corrections Hospital were forced to wait in front of the gates for several hours as officials insisted on seeing Netiporn’s family members before finally handing over the records to her lawyers.

However, her family and lawyers have pointed out inconsistencies in the records obtained from the Corrections Hospital. The time at which resuscitation began after Netiporn went into cardiac arrest was recorded differently in different documents. The records also stated that she was sent for a chest x-ray and a brain CT scan while CPR was being performed, leading to questions why these tests were conducted since they would require CPR to be interrupted.

The CCTV footage of Netiporn’s resuscitation has never been released. The Corrections Hospital claimed that doing so would “affect security” because the footage was filmed inside the Corrections Hospital and nurses were included in the footage. Krisadang was later allowed to see the footage, and said in a statement on 31 July 2024 that the footage shows that when Netiporn first exhibited critical symptoms, no resuscitation was provided by skilled medical personnel. The resuscitation efforts captured on video were not in accordance with medical standards, and no standard medical equipment was used.

Krisadang filed a petition with the Chief Justice of the Criminal Court in June 2024 calling for an inquest into Netiporn’s death. He said that there is enough evidence to believe that Netiporn died at the Corrections Hospital, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ratchadapisek Criminal Court, and asked that the Court handle the inquest instead of the Thanyaburi Provincial Court, because it was likely she was already dead when she was transferred to Thammasat University Hospital.

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) said that an inquest hearing will be held at the Thanyaburi Provincial Court on 13 January 2025 at 13.00.

One month after Netiporn's death, a group of activists marched to the Supreme Court to demand the release of political prisoners. Two people are holding a banner calling for bail for political prisoners and amnesty for those charged with royal defamation.

Netiporn’s death was followed by several protests, messages of condolence from ambassadors, and demands for an investigation from civil society groups. But it did not trigger any major movement.

“I feel that the silence that has happened, that society is not talking about her as much as in the beginning, it’s beyond scary. It’s made me very depressed,” Tantawan said.

Tantawan said she has more questions every day about what happened and who was involved. She was being detained pending trial on a sedition charge between February – May 2024 and was also on hunger strike. It was reported that she was held in the same hospital room as Netiporn at the Corrections Hospital, and is likely to be the main eyewitness to Netiporn’s death and resuscitation process.

She noted that Netiporn is not the first life lost to the abnormalities in the Thai justice system. Judge Khanakorn Pianchana also committed suicide in protest at interference in the system. She said she has wondered if Netiporn’s death would trigger change, but said that there have already been several turning points that could have led to changes in the justice system. She asked why people working in the system are still refusing to change when lives have been lost.

Meanwhile, Kunthika said that Netiporn’s legal team and friends are not questioning the Department of Corrections because they believe it did something wrong but because they were not given enough information. If the Department of Corrections could prove that it did everything right, she said, everyone would be fine with it. They would be able to move on, since they would know that, if a detainee dies in the Corrections Hospital, it would not be because the hospital made a mistake.

There is no need to find aspects of Netiporn to praise, Kunthika said, since focusing on the person can be problematic. Instead, people should focus on finding out the facts so that nobody would have to suffer the same fate.

“I think, in the case of Bung, it is a sad thing that should not have happened, but if there is something that we should look at, it’s that we should help with finding out the truth so that it wouldn’t happen to other people’s daughters and sons,” she said.

“It isn’t important if it’s someone we like. It is important whether the system can make it happen, because one day, it could be someone that we like and we love who is put in that situation.”