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In Hat Yai, Southern ThailandMurray Hunter says that he lived under the constant gaze of strangers “hovering around the house”.
“That’s scary,” he says. And so he was forced to “change residence for some time”.
Australian The academic turned journalist had long suspected that someone was keeping an eye on him, but with no one revealing their identity, he could only speculate. “But the best thing is that I don’t do that.”
hunter’s This fear was recently proven true when he was accused Under section 328 of the Thai Criminal Code – defamation By publishing – for writing Substack articles between April 13 and 29, 2024 Malaysian authorities claimed it defamed their communications regulator.
malaysia First filed a civil case, and then asked Thai authorities to intervene – an unusual escalation that resulted in the journalist’s arrest bangkok airport in september
This was the first known case of a foreign government invoking Thai criminal defamation law.
Hunter, 67, is now out on bail without a passport and will face trial on December 22. If found guilty, he could face up to two years in jail and a heavy fine.
Rights groups call it Malaysia’s unprecedented attempt to use Thailand’s legal system to silence a critic.
The Australian journalist had been detailing changes in Malaysian politics for more than a decade, believing he could “see trends before many others”. But when he started writing about the tightening of speech restrictions under the new government, particularly the enforcement zeal of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), the results came from somewhere he never expected: Thailand.
“I saw a real crackdown on freedom of the press and freedom of speech,” he says. Independent,
When? Anwar Ibrahim’s government took charge Hunter notes that in late 2022, it essentially banned public comment on the “three Rs” of race, religion, and royalty. And the MCMC “took the lead in becoming the driving force of this new code”.
Hunter published a handful of Substack articles using public information and accounts of Malaysians he contacted privately.
“I think this is a serious public concern and a broader change in government policy,” he explains.
But MCMC “appears to be very sensitive” about the issue and has been known to use civil lawsuits “to silence critics.”
Hunter was living outside the jurisdiction of Malaysia, so MCMC adopted a new approach to go after him. “They decided to contact Thai police to file a complaint under the Criminal Defamation Code,” he says. “That means it becomes a criminal case.”
On September 30, he and his partner were flying to Hong Kong when Thai police stopped them at the gate. “It came as a shock,” he says.
The officers told him he was being arrested for criminal defamation and told him the name of MCMC.
He was taken to a Bangkok police station, spent the night in lockup and was taken to court for bail the next morning. The date of his arraignment was fixed.
The scariest moment, he says, wasn’t the arrest, but what happened afterward. “Shock and anger and then a feeling of being alone and helpless.”
In his cell, Hunter says, he had an epiphany. “No one cares about it, so I am fighting this battle in the Thai court on my own, which is not an easy thing to handle,” he explains. Independent,
The legal system was unfamiliar and he did not speak the language.
“I can’t get on a plane, I can’t go to a bank, I can’t even go on a train. I can’t get a hotel room.”
It’s a “complete upheaval,” he says.
He says that even renewing his short-term stay permit sent him into a “state of panic.” Officials told him that they could not complete his paperwork and he would have to travel 500 km back to Bangkok to complete it.
“There were only four days left in my stay and then they said they couldn’t act on it,” recalls the journalist.
“I don’t know how long this will last.”
Hunter says people have warned him that his cases “could go on for a very long time”, effectively leaving him stuck in Thailand.
Phil Robertson of the Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates consultancy accused Malaysia of carrying out “gross international repression” and accused Thai authorities of allowing themselves to be “played for fools” by the MCMC.
Malaysian authorities have reportedly ordered internet providers in the Southeast Asian country to block access to Hunter’s blog.
Hunter believes that the prosecution is not being conducted by Malaysia’s leadership, but by the MCMC alone.
“They are watching passively,” he says of senior Malaysian government officials, “but it seems that MCMC has been allowed to operate without oversight, without scrutiny, without transparency.”
Hunter is most concerned about the precedent his case could set. He describes it as “International SLAPP” – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation – a politically motivated attempt to silence a critic by using another country’s legal system.
He explains, “You’re going to have international SLAPP actions to silence critics who don’t live in the country they’re reporting on.” Independent,
He says this is also a warning to journalists everywhere. If you write about “Country X, and you land here in Thailand”, all it takes is one complaint to get you arrested, they argue.
“You could face the same consequences I experienced, being kicked off a flight with an arrest warrant. For journalists, these are very dangerous times now.”
Before turning to journalism full-time, Hunter spent years in academia, publishing on ethics, governance and public policy.
He has lived in Southeast Asia for decades and was formerly an associate professor at Universiti Malaysia Perlis.
Thai lawyers for human rights criticized the criminal proceedings against Hunter. “Their articles document and criticize the use of laws and regulatory powers to block websites, target critics and whistle-blowers, and suppress dissenting voices,” the group said in a statement.
“By consistently and peacefully engaging in investigative reporting on these issues, and by raising the concerns of those affected by state overreach, Mr. Hunter works to promote and protect internationally recognized human rights – particularly the right to freedom of opinion and expression – placing him in the category of human rights defenders as understood in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders”.
Despite everything – the lockups, the surveillance, the legal entanglements – Hunter says he will not apologize for his reporting.
“A lot of people tell me I go overboard, but I believe I’m reporting the facts,” he says, “I don’t regret doing it. You know, I’d do it again.”
But he acknowledges the danger: “Now freedom of the press and opportunities to uncover the truth through freedom of expression are really under attack, and I think it’s going to get worse.”
The threat is no longer theoretical. “What happened to me could happen again and again,” he says, “and that’s worrying.”
Independent MCMC and the Royal Thai Police have been contacted for comment.