Meet Thailand's most famous troublemaker

His current action

A few minutes after 10 p.m. on April 18, Srisuwan Janya released from a military camp in Bangkok. The soldiers offered to drop him off somewhere, but the lawyer preferred to take a taxi.

Srisuwan has already filed 3.000 complaints against wrongdoing by government officials in recent years, but his latest complaint earned him XNUMX hours of military detention for the first time.

Soldiers apprehended him as he was about to deliver a petition at a government center urging the Prime Minister to return the 1932 Siamese Revolution plaque to its original place on the Royal Plaza and prosecute the thieves. (for the background of this story, see here: www.thailandblog.nl/BACKGROUND/mysterie-verdwenen-gedenkplaat-revolutie-1932/)
After his release he said: 'I told them not to arrest me because that will make me even more famous! The story will spread even more." He said the military released him without charge and did not force him to sign anything except a statement that he had not been injured or harmed during detention. Srisuwan said he was treated well and fed well: he ate two meals.

Srisuwan has been a familiar face for over 10 years. They know him at the Administrative Court, the Ombudsman, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and the Public Prosecutor. He has filed a series of charges on many subjects and is therefore well known among the news agencies who turn his complaints into scandal stories.

Yet his aversion to criminal and other improper behavior of government officials does not lead to taking political positions. And to this day, he has never shied away from pushing through on important issues despite being called up twice before by soldiers for an attitude adjustment session. But this time he left the military base with a promise not to demand further investigation of those who removed the symbol of the transition to constitutional democracy.

They asked for cooperation. They said it could provoke a political battle," he said, "if I had persisted, some malicious group would have used it to foment conflict that would have prevented reconciliation." He made it clear that he only wanted to protect history and not start political movements.

This action was different from the previous one where he did not give in and did not compromise with authoritarian pressure.

His past actions

Srisuwan was first taken to an army base in Bangkok in October 2015 a few days after he filed charges against Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha and Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam for favoring family members. "They had a thick file on me and I understood that they had been watching me for a long time," he said. “They asked me to drop the charges, but I refused. They couldn't do anything else and let me go after an hour of talking'.

A skilled student

He was the fourth child of a farmer in Phitsanulok province. His father decided that he was the most suitable of his siblings for further education and paid for his studies. That paid off. He received a scholarship to Maejo University in Chiang Mai and it was there that he began his life as an activist.

As president of the student association, he urged students and residents to close a road for three days to enforce more road safety in front of the university. It worked.

After graduating, he worked for the Air Pollution and Environmental Protection Foundation where he developed a passion for environmental issues. But his love of studying did not suffer. He has three Bachelor's Degrees and two Master's Degrees, one of which is in law. In 1993 he started to inform the Council of Lawyers about environmental issues in order to assist residents of risky areas.

After helping affected residents for a while, he began to feel that he was being abused. "Sometimes those we took to court would negotiate with the local people who would come to us and withdraw the complaint," Srisuwan said. "It seemed that they had used our input in the negotiations and we didn't think that was fair." He therefore founded the 'Stop Global Warming' Foundation in 2007 so that he could continue with the legal process even if others involved dropped out.

Srisuwan left the Council of Lawyers to start his own business but with the same model of helping those affected without charging anything. A few years later, he and some friends founded another organization specifically for political complaints, the Association of Organizations for the Protection of Thailand's Constitution.

After this, both organizations, the environmental and the more legal, were regularly front-page news due to Srisuwan's tireless filing of petitions concerning national and local conflicts. "I don't think those affected should keep quiet and think it's 'karma' and that we are powerless," Srisuwan said, "I disagree."

He is perhaps best known for petitioning the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva in 2010 to hold a public hearing on a planned industrial estate in Rayong province.

Asked what action he is most proud of, Srisuwa cites a complaint that eventually led to a hearing on a 350 billion baht budgeted water management project by Yingluck Shinawatra's government.

While many environmental activists take a non-political stance and care only about tangible results, Srisuwan believes that the two areas cannot be separated. 'I think it's related. Environmental issues are all the result of political actions by politicians'.

Believe in the Law

His fanatical and extensive activities aroused the curiosity of many including Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ochan who once publicly questioned how Srisuwan made his money. The answer is simple: with his work as a lawyer and supported by donations. Some customers pay him, some don't, and the donations sometimes amount to tens of thousands of baht.

In many cases, obvious misconduct and corruption would not have been investigated if this super-louse of the establishment had not filed a complaint. His recent successes include the near-constant absence of some MPs as salaries go through and payments from Thailand's largest beer brewer to the Bangkok police chief.

Nothing would have happened without Srisuwan, but he doesn't really care how everything ends after starting an action. "I think it's already a success if people become familiar with a certain case," he said, "it doesn't really matter what the outcome of the investigations are." But he has to pay a price for all this. In addition to the recent 12-hour detention, he receives soldiers every two weeks at his home in Lam Lu Ka township in Pathum Thani province. His office is also there. Sometimes he works until sunrise and then immediately leaves his house to file all kinds of petitions. His wife and two-year-old child live elsewhere and he will not say where to protect them.

Srisuwan says that he and his wife are not even friends on Facebook because she would worry about what he is up to. “Sometimes she sees it in the news,” he said, “my wife doesn't really like what I do. She doesn't object, but she is concerned. That's why I tell her as little as possible'.

Since the military coup in 2014, Srisuwan's work has increased considerably. But even in this day and age where the law is increasingly being pushed aside and ignored, he hasn't lost all hope in Thailand's justice system. “I believe that there is no other way for us Thai citizens to express our complaints as the constitution guarantees,” he said, “what can we rely on if not the law? Law enforcement is often not too strict because our society is based on patronage.' He believes that steps forward are accompanied by steps back.

'As a child I considered officials and the police so powerful that everyone must be afraid of them,' he says, 'and if I had dealt with the junta then as I do now, they could have put me in a red bucket to roll to meet my death. But today it is completely different'.

Source

www.khaosodenglish.com/news/2017/04/19/meet-thailands-super-gadfly-srisuwan-janya/

Here's another good story about environmental activists in Thailand and the many fatalities

projects.aljazeera.com/2015/04/thailand-activists/