Prominent British rights activist Andy Hall yesterday left Thailand, saying he feared for his safety amid legal problems and growing harassment from companies that have been “irrational, vindictive and aggressive.”
Hall, who has worked on the rights of migrant workers in Thailand for 11 years, has recently faced defamation lawsuits by companies he has accused of labor violations.
“The situation is not good right now,” he told reporters by telephone on Sunday before his flight, speaking from Mahachai, a town near Bangkok and the center of Thailand’s seafood processing industry.
“It’s rapidly deteriorating. It doesn’t feel safe. There are people who are intent on wearing me down. I’ve worked with so many companies in Thailand, and it’s rare to have a company that is so irrational and so vindictive. It’s enough to wear anyone down,” he said.
Hall was handed a suspended three-year jail term in September and fined 150,000 baht (US$4,280) for criminally defaming the Natural Fruit Co, a pineapple wholesaler that supplies the EU.
Rights groups called the verdict an alarming precedent in the fight against labor exploitation.
Emboldened by the ruling, a chicken farmer who lost his EU contracts and had to shut down his 1.6 million-chicken operation after Hall exposed alleged labor violations on one of his three farms, said he planned to pursue his own defamation case and has hired the Natural Fruit Co lawyer.
Supported by Hall, the chicken farm workers had sued the farmer in September, alleging forced overtime, unlawful salary deductions, confiscation of their passports and limited freedom of movement. They demanded US$1.3 million in compensation and civil damages.
The farmer countered with defamation lawsuits against 14 of the migrant workers, Hall said, adding that he did not know if suits had been filed against him or the non-governmental organization he cofounded, the Migrant Worker Rights Network.
Thailand employs an estimated 3 million migrant workers, mostly from Myanmar. Many migrants face labor violations, such as unpaid wages, confiscated travel documents and limited freedom of movement.
Hall’s legal problems began after he conducted research for Helsinki-based Finnwatch for a 2013 report called Cheap has a high price.
A company named in the report, Natural Fruit, filed four defamation cases against Hall.
One case related to an interview Hall gave to al-Jazeera in Myanmar in 2013 about the legal fallout of the Finnwatch report. A court in Bangkok dismissed the charges, but Thailand’s attorney general and Natural Fruit appealed.
The Thai Supreme Court on Thursday rejected that appeal. The verdict had originally been scheduled to be read on Nov. 25, but Hall said he requested the court to move the date forward because of his increasingly precarious situation.
“It’s time for the good companies, the good actors, to speak to these people. I work with a lot of good companies... I fear for my safety because of the unstable situation. I don’t want to be here another three weeks,” he said. “My work is not productive at the moment. It’s like walking on broken glass. I don’t feel secure to be working here. Why would you want to put yourself in this situation where you’re just being worn down and stuck in the court system?”
Because of the cases, Hall has had his travel restricted since June 2014 and his passport confiscated by two different courts. He was unable to live outside Thailand and had to ask the court’s permission each time he left the country.
“You’re at the whim of this corrupt, mafia system, and you can’t get out of it... I’ve done everything I’m legally obliged to do, and now is the time to step away and see if this will get better,” Hall said.
He said once the farmer filed criminal defamation charges against him, he would be subjected to travel restrictions again — another reason to leave now.
“The reason I’m leaving is they said in court they’re going to file a new criminal case against me, because it comes with all the restrictions — I’m not willing to be subjected to that criminal process again, and I’m also leaving because of the security issues,” Hall said.
Hall left on a Paris-bound flight that departed from Bangkok shortly after midnight yesterday. He has not specified a return date.
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