Freedom House Security T he National Intelligence Agency (NIA) under the Office of the Prime Minister has the primary responsibility for monitoring, detecting, and countering threats to Thailand’s national security. The NIA works closely with the National Security Council (NSC), which formulates national security policy and strategic plans.4 At the operational level, the Foreign Affairs Division of the Royal Thai Police is responsible for cooperating with international law enforcement agencies and other states. Lack of awareness Thailand’s national security aims target espionage, subversion, sabotage, and terrorism. The country does not have policies for assessing the threat posed by foreign governments specifically to exiles or members of diasporas living within its borders. Security agencies also lack awareness about the potential threat of transnational repression.5 As a result, Thai authorities do not proactively conduct outreach to immigrant communities about security issues, nor do they take steps to vet information they receive from foreign governments. In addition to a general lack of awareness of transnational repression that may hinder effective protections, Thailand’s own laws and policies may facilitate targeting. Because of the country’s lèse-majesté laws, which criminalize criticism of the monarchy, authorities are unlikely to view criticism of the monarchy of a country such as Cambodia, Brunei, or Malaysia as a nonextraditable offense and are instead likely to treat it as an “ordinary crime.” 6 Critics of foreign monarchies can therefore be particularly vulnerable to transnational repression in Thailand. Thailand itself also has a track record of pursuing critics abroad. Critics of the Thai monarchy facing lèse-majesté charges who have fled to neighboring states including Vietnam and Cambodia have been the subjects of extradition requests. Several disappeared from their homes in exile in 2017 and 2019.7 Cooperation with foreign governments A major risk factor for transnational repression is Thailand’s formal and informal cooperation with other countries. Thailand’s foreign policy specifically emphasizes the goal of fostering balanced and positive bilateral and multilateral relationships to ensure regional stability.8 The Thai government has noted as an explicit national security priority the improvement of relationships with fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); that organization includes countries such as Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, all of which conduct transnational repression campaigns.9 Thai authorities do not proactively conduct outreach to immigrant communities about security issues, nor do they take steps to vet information they receive from foreign governments. Cooperation with neighboring countries has endangered political exiles seeking refuge in Thailand in the past. For example, in 2019, Truong Duy Nhat, a Vietnamese journalist and government critic who had applied for refugee status through the UNHCR office in Bangkok disappeared from a shopping mall in the city. He reappeared in Vietnam two days later and was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison for “defrauding the public.” 10 Accounts of Nhat’s disappearance suggest that he was initially detained by Thai police who handed him over to agents of the Vietnamese state who drove him across the border to Cambodia and on to Vietnam.11 In pursuit of Nhat, Thai authorities interrogated other Vietnamese refugees in Thailand while accompanied by Vietnamese officials, according to media accounts.12 In a similar case of cooperation, Sam Sokha, a Cambodian labor activist who threw a shoe at a photo of Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, was deported to Cambodia from Thailand in 2018 despite having refugee status.13 Her lawyers were told that the Thai authorities received a request for cooperation from Cambodia and deported the activist based on a violation of immigration law.14 The fact that Thailand and Cambodia worked together to return the activist seemed to be later confirmed by Thailand’s directorgeneral of the Department of Information at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who said that the deportation was “an act of cooperation between the two countries.” 15 Sam Sokha spent two years in prison for “incitement” against the government and another two years for posting Facebook comments critical of Cambodian authorities while she was in Thailand. freedomhouse.org 3