“There is no longer a safe place. It is too dangerous to even be ourselves, even in prison.”
Upon the last statement by Piyanut Kotsan, Director of Amnesty International Thailand, who gave a welcome speech to the event “BEING OURSELVES IS TOO DANGEROUS”, silence prevailed in the room. Everyone was stunned and stayed silent to mourn the passing of Netiporn “Boong” Sanehsangkhom, a political activist and hunger striker who died in prison on 14 May 2024.
“This incidence is a reminder of the other cruel side of the digital world” said Piyanut. “On the day she died, there was an outburst of comments online. While some mocked her death, others dehumanized her/”
Bung was one of millions of women in this world who experienced online harassment. Amnesty’s report “Being Ourselves is Too Dangerous – Digital Violence and the Silencing of Women and LGBTI Activists in Thailand” launched on the past 16 May, states that women and LGBTI rights defenders in Thailand endure Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TfGBV) at least in two forms including targeted digital surveillance and online harassment.
Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on promoting and protecting the right to freedom of opinion and expression, shared her view about the report.
“Freedom of expression is inalienably related to gender justice. Technologies enable the perpetration of violence, harassment, and smear campaigns, making women and LGBTI people so vulnerable in the past ten years, particularly women who are politicians, journalists, and human rights defenders.”
According to Khan, even though women and LGBTI people have tried to harness technologies to enhance their networking, the patriarchal norm or male dominance, which discriminates against women and LGBTI people, offline and online, has given rise to more harassment, which can happen anywhere and anytime/.”
“The technology-facilitated gender-based violence aims to encourage women and LGBTI people to leave behind the online world or space where they can express themselves” said Khan. “It is therefore dangerous not only at the individual level but societal level as a whole.”
Khan wrapped up her inauguration speech by saying that international law obviously stipulates that gender-based violence against an individual, both online and offline, constitutes a human rights violation. This is a challenge, and each state has not done enough to address it. It’s time for the Thai government to pay due attention to this and show their commitment to working to ensure gender equality both online and offline.
However, things might not turn out that way. For many women and LGBTI people who have come out to defend human rights, Thailand might still be a too dangerous place for them to be themselves without being exposed to harassment. And here are the stories of women and LGBTI people who have tried to make their voices heard and have been subject to harassment and surveillance in the online world.
TfGBV: Technology-facilitated gender-based violence
“When I addressed the issues of refugees and the death penalty, some people who I could not identify would comment, ‘Why didn’t you just marry those people?’ ‘Bring 100 of them and have them to live in your home.’”
Such are repeated responses Ms. Angkhana Neelapaijit, Former National Human Rights Commissioner and a human rights expert of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), has encountered throughout her human rights work. According to her, as a woman, gender and sex have often been used to discredit her and even to exterminate her existence. It has always pained her.
“Being leveled with such harassment, there is no other purpose. They simply want to discredit us” said Angkhana. “When I was indicted, and the Court accepted to review the case, I would be sent down and confined in a detention facility of the Corrections Department on the Court’s underground floor, which was literally a prison. It was such a dehumanizing experience. It was also the vindication of those who wanted to harass us.”
As a women human rights defender, Angkhana has become both the plaintiff who holds to account the persons who harassed her and a defendant in a case filed to silence her. Every time she has gone through such proceedings, it dawned on her that there was simply no gender sensitivity among these government officials.
“Every time I have gone to report the case (to the police)” recalled Angkhana when she was the receiving end of such harassment. “They would ask me to repeat the parts that dehumanized me. It was literally a process of re-victimization.”
Angkhana admitted that she must tone down her online activism since she feels someone has been watching her. Meanwhile, Amnesty International’s Thailand Researcher Chanatip Tatiyakaroonwong, who helped to author the report ““Being Ourselves is Too Dangerous” – Digital Violence and the Silencing of Women and LGBTI Activists in Thailand, stated that women and LGBTI HRDs in Thailand continue to encounter technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV).
TfGBV refers to any act of violence, or threats thereof, perpetrated by one or more individuals that are committed, assisted, aggravated, and amplified in part or entirely by the use of information and communication technologies or digital media that disproportionately impacts women, girls and other people based on their actual and/or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, causing physical, psychological, economic and sexual harm. Such violence exists in a continuum between physical and digital spaces.
Based on the report, Chanatip can summarize three points, including (1) women and LGBTI people active on human rights find themselves unsafe in online spaces as they encounter TfGBV, (2) there is no justice and remedy for individuals targeted with TfGBV, and (3) TfGBV has created a chilling effect causing women and LGBTI people not fully exercise their freedom of expression.
TfGBV can be divided into two categories, including the violence that targets an individual because of their gender and (2) it is not aimed at their gender, but rather the impact can be felt disproportionately among women and LGBTI people.
Chanatip wrapped up his presentation with the report by saying that digital tools are essential for women and LGBTI HRDs since they can use them to advocate for their social cause, but such tools are being taken away from them. The space in which they can express themselves has gradually shrunk as they become more at risk of being harmed by TfGBV while receiving neither justice nor remedy. This attests to the Thai state’s failure to protect and provide them with a remedy.
‘They are watching us’ When gender identity has been weaponized for an attack.
Apart from gender-based violence at the individual level, it can be assumed that at the state level, the authorities continue to surveil women and LGBTI activists using ‘Pegasus’ spyware developed by the NSO Group, an Israeli cybersecurity service provider. Bussarin Paenaeh, campaign staff of the Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw) was one of the 35 individuals attacked by Pegasus spyware even though she did not work on the frontline and was working with the documentation team of Mob Data Thailand in 2020.
“Around 2021, activists started receiving an email from Apple informing them that they might have become a target of spyware attack,” recalled Bussarin as she began telling her story. “I did not pay much attention to it since I worked in the background. But since I discovered that I had received the email, it made me feel like I was standing on a wobbly floor. I had no idea what they could do to us. How many times have they stolen data from me? What kind of data has been stolen?”
In the first two weeks since receiving such an alert, Bussarin was nervous and could not sleep well. She knew the reason for stealing data from her was to use it to attack her and stop her from doing her work. Nonetheless, Bussarin decided to stand up to confront the harassment with her available skill;
“Their only goal was to stop us from doing our work. Therefore, the more they tried to put my head down, the more I would try to resist and to bring my head up. I knew my dignity rested on my documentation work. I therefore told my supervisor that I had to do something to respond to this.”
Bussarin started her investigation by offering help checking the phones belonging to fellow activists. One difference she noted between male victims and victims of other genders was the different levels of fear inflicted. For women, having their personal information exposed to the public might elicit social denunciation, as an example cited by Bussarin;
“I was rather concerned about my weight and often took photo to monitor any change of my body. If such information gets leaked out, and I live in a Muslim society, I am pretty sure this would draw flak from my Muslim community.”
This is similar to Nada Chaiyajit’s situation, a lecturer from the School of Law, Mae Fah Luang University, a rights defender for LGBTI people and Muslims. As a Muslim, she has such an intersectional identity, and this could yield harassment from both ends.
“We have been subject to hatred in both the Islamic world and the heterosexual world. The hatred ran high as once somebody told me to ‘just abandon your Islam’, ‘Are you so dumb? You are banished by the religion. Why are you still having faith in the religion? God hate you.’”
Nada is another voice that echoes the view that the space for expression of LGBTI people has been shrinking since women and LGBTI people have been subject to an onslaught of harassment. This has taken its mental toll, and such harassment has stifled rights defenders. One of the most subtle forms of harassment is SLAPP cases. Her experience helping a victim of sexual harassment involving a political party convinces her that there is literally no Thai law that effectively offers protection to survivors of sexual harassment.
On this point, Angkhana added that despite constitutional provisions to ensure victims of dehumanization shall receive remedy, there is no organic law enacted to offer remedy in human rights violation cases.
Angkhana proposed that Thailand revise the Gender Equality Act B.E. 2558’s Section 17 paragraph two to remove the clause that allows discrimination based on the grounds of national security, religion, and welfare protection.
“Online harassment against human rights workers is a shameful act. The state must stop such action and offer remedy to all victims equally.”
Invoking the statement of the UN Committee Against Torture, Angkhana said that sexual harassment, denigration, and dehumanization are considered a part of an act of torture.
Patriarchy and sexual harassment in a so-called democracy
“I was first attacked when addressing the issues of LGBTI and democracy at the same time. What I encountered online on that day was statements expressing hatred against homosexual people, or LGBTI people, i.e. ‘Just want to kick you off the road and burn you with tires’”.
Such a statement has its deep roots in the male chauvinist society in Thailand. Siraphop Attohi, an LGBTI HRD, is among the activists who have to encounter such culture and endure such harassment. This has happened not only among people with different political views but also among people who define themselves as pro-democracy activists. They could expressly display their approval of LGBTI.
“No need to mention gender equality, let’s first acquire democracy.”
Siraphop has often heard such phrases and has often been subject to denigration and has his messages disregarded simply because of his gender identity which did not look so real for the audience. His physicality has also been weaponized against him, i.e., his weight, his appearance which might not conform traditional beauty and his being an LGBTI person. The hostile parties often turn to these things and use them to inflict mental anguish in this defender of the rights of women and LGBTI people.
The past three or four years saw a rapid growth of anti-feminist and anti-LGBTI people who have been gathered. The past three or four years saw a rapid growth of anti-feminist and anti-LGBTI people who have gathered and expressed their opposition around the world. Still, Siraphop thinks more people are speaking out about rights and gender equality, because of has elicited more resistance.
“Even within the pro-democracy movement, there is yet a safe space for women and LGBTI people” said Siraphop. “Harassment does not only stem from the anti-democracy people, but even from the pro-democracy activists.”
On this issue, Angkhana said that being a political activist does not equate to being a human rights defender since a HRD must have the key qualifications including the recognition of all rights prescribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Amnesty’s report “Being Ourselves is Too Dangerous” – Digital Violence and the Silencing of Women and LGBTI Activists in Thailand” is based on the interviews with 40 HRDs including 14 women and 26 LGBTI people. We have found that each of the HRDs has to confront various forms of harassment and surveillance based on their religion, state’s surveillance using spyware, judicial harassment, blackmailing through the exploitation of personal information, and sexual harassment, etc. Such harassment is geared toward creating a chilling effect to stop people from doing their work as much as possible.
Last but not least, despite the effort by Thailand to project its image as champion of gender equality, but in reality, they have failed to ensure protection of women and LGBTI HRDs from technology-facilitated gender-based violence in order to protect their fundamental human rights upheld in international laws and international human rights treaties to which Thailand is a state party including the ICCPR, the CAT, and the CEDAW.
In addition, gender-based violence is a culture that has been reproduced in Thailand and such cultural issues should prompt everyone in society to perform their duties and be responsible, as vocalized by the HRD Siraphop and the statement by Piyanut Kotsan, Director of Amnesty International Thailand, that;
“It is necessary that we stand with HRDs, women, and LGBTI people to ensure they have a chance to make their voice heard and to introduce and express themselves as they actually are without fearing reprisal.”