Earlier this week British activist and researcher Andy Hall was found guilty of criminal defamation and computer crimes in a shock ruling by a Bangkok criminal court in Thailand. He was given a three-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, and fined 150,000 baht (£3,330).
The charges related to the publication of a report based on the worker interviews that he carried out in 2012 for Finnwatch, the Finnish civil society organisation of which I am the director. Migrant workers interviewed by Andy alleged that rights violations were occurring during the production of the pineapple juice products made by Natural Fruits that have been sold in Finland and other European countries.
Natural Fruit denies the allegations in the report. But rather than fully engaging with us as we prepared it, they instead sued Andy for his research. He was personally accused of defaming Natural Fruit, distributing Finnwatch report’s findings on the internet and creating serious business impacts and loss of face for the company.
During the long court hearings over this summer, Finland’s largest retailer, S Group, who had stopped purchasing from Natural Fruit, testified that their decision had not been because of the Finnwatch report, but because Natural Fruit refused internationally recognised social responsibility audits. Thai companies testified that Andy’s research was beneficial to improving labour practices. I testified that Finnwatch was responsible for both writing the report and publishing it – not Andy Hall. Still, in a surprise to the whole world, Andy was found guilty, even seemingly for events that didn’t appear on the charge sheet he was indicted for.
The court verdict is a clear sign that Thailand wants to stop Andy’s work and his criticism of conditions in the country’s labour-intensive export industries, which contribute so much to the Thai GDP. Andy is everything that a good human rights activist is: loud, persistent and undoubtedly annoying to those who end up on the wrong side of his criticism. He has lived in Thailand for more than 10 years and knows the domestic media, key civil society and business actors well. He is just as comfortable at the grassroots level, listening to migrant workers talk about their real-life challenges, as he is working within international forums, and on high-level diplomatic and media terrains. He is just as convincing in Thai as he is in English.The exposure of human rights violations, human trafficking and forced labour has cast a shadow over Thailand’s reputation over the last decade. Diminishing trust has led to business enterprises changing their attitudes towards the country, which has become subject to increased scrutiny. Independent auditing of Thai factories has become more frequent. Some companies have stopped purchasing from the country altogether.
But boycotts do not help to solve the problems and Thailand is too big an exporter for most businesses to replace in the short term. Thai and international companies have therefore turned to civil society for assistance – and one of those people they have asked for assistance is Andy Hall. He has been instrumental in building a dialogue between European companies and Thailand’s labour intensive export industries.
Maina Kiai, a UN special rapporteur, has warned about closing space for people to engage with governments. He says that civil society can play a role like unlocking the lid on a pressure cooker, just as the heat is increasing and the cooker is about to explode. Andy has been keeping an eye on Thailand’s own pressure cooker, voicing the concerns of millions of migrant workers, who are invaluable to the Thai economy but remain unorganised and without their own voice. Without people like Andy, who exposes challenges and proposes workable solutions, Thailand’s export industries are at risk and that ambition to reach consumer markets in Europe is unlikely to be achieved.
Several organisations in Europe have publicly stated their support for Andy. The UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative expressed “serious concerns” over the guilty verdict. The Foreign Trade Association, which represents 1,500 European companies, said it considered his guilty verdict “a sad setback for human rights”. That business enterprises take a stand in support of a human rights defender is unprecedented.
When I spoke with Andy, he was adamant that we should not think that this case was just about him. Many migrant workers with whom he works closely with have been devastated by the verdict. If this can happen to Andy, who has a British passport and the support of the world behind him, what chance do they have to stand up for their rights, they ask?
Thailand should wake up and realise before it’s too late that the justice system and medieval laws that can be abused to stifle freedom of expression are about to lose the keys to the solution.
Sonja Vartiala is executive director of Finnwatch