{"id":1982,"date":"2020-02-22T15:58:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T08:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/thailand-authorities-must-reverse-dissolution-of-opposition-future-forward-party\/"},"modified":"2024-11-11T11:13:45","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T04:13:45","slug":"thailand-authorities-must-reverse-dissolution-of-opposition-future-forward-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/news\/2020\/02\/thailand-authorities-must-reverse-dissolution-of-opposition-future-forward-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Thailand: Authorities must reverse dissolution of opposition Future Forward Party"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Responding to the news that Thailand\u2019s Constitutional Court has ruled on the Election Commission\u2019s request to dissolve the Future Forward Party, Amnesty International\u2019s Regional Director Nicholas Bequelin said:<\/p>\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"blockquote is-lined\"><p><strong style=\"font-weight: 400;font-family: amnestytradegothicbold, dindanmaibold, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-size: medium\">\u201cToday\u2019s decision by the Constitutional Court to dissolve the Future Forward Party illustrates how the authorities use judicial processes to intimidate, harass and target political opposition. Thai authorities must reverse the dissolution decision and restore genuine rights to freedom of expression and association in the country.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n<p><strong>Background<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thailand\u2019s Constitutional Court today ruled to dissolve the Future Forward Party, affirming the complaint filed by Thailand\u2019s Election Commission. The Court determined that, by accepting a 191 million Baht (approx. USD 6,036,664) loan from its leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the party was in violation of Sections 66 and 72 of the Organic Law on Political Parties, which bans donations of more than ten million Baht (approx. USD 316,000). It also ruled to prohibit 16 party executives from competing in elections for ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prior to and following the general elections on 24 March 2019, the government has launched the ongoing attacks on political opponents who were perceived as receiving increased public support. This was evident in the politically motivated disbandment of the Thai Raksa Chart Party on 7 March 2019. The party\u2019s leaders were barred from competing in elections for ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amnesty International is a non-partisan organization that neither supports nor opposes any candidate in any election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/about-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u0e40\u0e23\u0e35\u0e22\u0e19\u0e23\u0e39\u0e49\u0e40\u0e1e\u0e34\u0e48\u0e21\u0e40\u0e15\u0e34\u0e21\u0e40\u0e01\u0e35\u0e48\u0e22\u0e27\u0e01\u0e31\u0e1a\u0e41\u0e2d\u0e21\u0e40\u0e19\u0e2a\u0e15\u0e35\u0e49<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/donate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u0e1a\u0e23\u0e34\u0e08\u0e32\u0e04\u0e2a\u0e19\u0e31\u0e1a\u0e2a\u0e19\u0e38\u0e19\u0e41\u0e2d\u0e21\u0e40\u0e19\u0e2a\u0e15\u0e35\u0e49<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Responding to the news that Thailand\u2019s Constitutional Court has ruled on the Election Commission\u2019s request to dissolve the Future Forward Party, Amnesty International\u2019s Regional Director Nicholas Bequelin said: Background Thailand\u2019s Constitutional Court today ruled to dissolve the Future Forward Party, affirming the complaint filed by Thailand\u2019s Election Commission. The Court determined that, by accepting a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-title":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-description":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image-id":0,"_yoast_wpseo_twitter-title":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-description":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image-id":0,"_hero_title":"","_hero_content":"","_hero_cta_text":"","_hero_cta_link":"","_hero_alignment":"","_hero_background":"","_hero_size":"","_hero_show":"","_hero_type":"","_hero_embed":"","_hero_video_id":0,"_hero_hide_image_caption":true,"_hero_hide_image_copyright":false,"_nav_style":"","_disable_share_icons":false,"_disable_sidebar":false,"_display_author_info":false,"_hide_featured_image":false,"_hide_featured_image_caption":true,"_maximize_post_content":false,"_reduce_content_width":false,"_sidebar_id":0,"_stretch_thumbnail":false,"byline_context":"","byline_entity":"","byline_is_author":false,"disable_related_content":false,"download_id":0,"download_text":"","show_published_date":true,"show_updated_date":true,"term_slider":"","amnesty_index_number":"","recipients":"","recipients_refresh":"","recipients_refreshed":"","amnesty_umbraco_data":"","document_ref":"","amnesty_updated":"","footnotes":""},"category":[1585],"location":[1587],"resourceType":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","location-thailand"],"datePosted":"February 22, 2020","mlpRelationships":{"1":2013,"2":1982},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category?post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"resource-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resourceType?post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amnesty.or.th\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}