He worked for the current Bangkok governor and was photographed with an ousted Thai premier and a current Phnom Penh deputy governor. Missing since 2020, Wanchalearm Satsaksit also helped other Thai dissidents flee to Cambodia. But his associates have sought to erase all ties.
The sister of disappeared activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit was summoned to a prosecutor’s office on Monday. Though it’s a first for Sitanan, criminal prosecution has become a routine reality for hundreds of Thais taking a stand in the country’s pro-democracy movement.
The lawyers and family investigating Wanchalearm Satsaksit disappearance in June released a copy of the exiled Thai dissident’s Cambodian passport as investigations in both countries stagnate.
The abduction of Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit by “four unidentified armed persons” in Phnom Penh in June, and five other cases of Thai opposition activists disappearing since 2016, “point to a pattern of disappearances,” U.N. experts said in a letter released on Tuesday.
More than six months after Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit disappeared from outside his Phnom Penh apartment, his sister Sitanan testified before the Phnom Penh court on Tuesday in an effort to prevent her brother’s alleged abduction from turning into a cold case.
Sitanan Satsaksit’s lawyer translated her ceremonial prayer: that she would prove to the Cambodian court that her abducted Thai activist brother lived in the Phnom Penh condominium building a few hundred meters behind her.
U.N. officials raised concerns that Cambodian authorities did not fully investigate evidence into the disappearance of Thai pro-democracy activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit, in spite of the government’s insistence that it had pursued all available leads.
Three months after a Thai activist was allegedly abducted from outside a Chroy Changvar district apartment, neighbors say other Thai regulars who used to be seen in the area are no longer around, while apartment management denies the man had even lived there.
Cambodian authorities told the U.N. that the visa of Wanchalearm Satsaksit, a missing Thai dissident living in exile in Phnom Penh, had expired almost three years ago when questioned about his alleged abduction from outside his apartment by armed men in June.
The U.N. Committee on Enforced Disappearances has called on Cambodia to “urgently search” for a Thai pro-democracy activist who went missing nearly three weeks ago in a suspected abduction outside his Phnom Penh condominium complex.
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