Thailand: two LGBTI WHRDs received online harassment in the Deep South of Thailand
Event- Country
- Thailand
- Initial Date
- Feb 7, 2017
- Event Description
Dr. Anticha Sangchai is an activist and lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences on the Pattani campus of the Prince of Songkla University. Mrs. Daranee Tongsiri is a LGBTI activist, who is also life partner of Anticha. They have been working over LGBTI issues in the Deep South of Thailand for several years. Together they found a book caf_ in Pattani called the Buku Bookshop in 2013. Apart from being "an alternative bookstore" that sells many progressive books, the Buku Bookshop has been organizing a workshop called Buku's Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights Classroom (Buku Classroom), which its aims are to provide a safe zone for the discussion of gender and sexuality in the conflict area where sexual well-being and sexual violence are topics that have been for long time being sweep under the rug. The workshop then developed other kinds of activity such as the Buku FC, which is a football team that puts together men, women, both hijab-wearing or not, and LGBTI. The Buku Bookshop has also been working with many CSOs in the Deep South for supporting other certain issues as well including, inter alia, concerns over autonomous region, the abuse of torture. The story featuring the Buku bookshop and the Buku FC was broadcasted on 7 February 2017 at 1:30pm. After its broadcast, Anticha Sangchai and Daranee Tongsiri were subjected to various attacks on social media alleging that they were teaching people in the local to become homosexual, which goes against the Islamic teaching. They were called as Mushrik, which is a rude term for calling non-believer. Some of the status of Facebook stated that the Pattani separatist fighter should get rid of them. They were called as acts of Satan. Some of the article also stated that they are trying to subvert Islam and Muslim way of life, which is very sensitive allegation for the people working in the area. The WHRDs also received information that there are witch-hunting attempt in the social media communication group by religious Muslim women. They are trying to find the Muslim women university students who appeared in the documentary playing football. The face photos, images and Facebook ID of football team members appeared in the film were spread among the closed social media group. Most of online harassment were happened on Facebook and lasted long for almost two weeks since the broadcasting day.
- Impact of Event
- 2
- Gender of HRD
- Woman
- Violation
- Gender Based Harassment
- Intimidation and Threats
- Online Attack and Harassment
- Sexual Violence
- Vilification
- Rights Concerned
- Academic freedom
- Online
- SOGI rights
- Women's rights
- HRD
- Academic
- NGO
- SOGI rights defender
- WHRD
- Perpetrator-Non-State
- Extremist group
- Non-state
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 6.761830800000017
Longitude: 101.3232549
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
From 7 February - 20 February 2017, Anticha Sangchai and Daranee Tongsiri were subjected to various attacks on social media alleging that they were teaching people in the Deep South of Thailand to become homosexual, which goes against the Islamic teaching.