In an urgent appeal dated August 4, 2026, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders — a joint programme of FIDH and the World Organisation Against Torture — condemned an appellate ruling against the Thai pro-democracy activist and human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa. On July 16, 2026, the Court of Appeals Region 5 in Chiang Mai upheld both his conviction under Article 112 of the Criminal Code, Thailand’s lèse-majesté provision, and his two-year sentence, agreeing with the lower court that a speech he gave at a student protest in November 2020 — one criticising the transfer of public property into the king’s private ownership and calling for reform of the monarchy — amounted to defamation of the monarch. It is the first appellate decision in any of his 14 lèse-majesté cases, which together carry sentences totalling more than 31 years; he has been held at Bangkok Remand Prison since September 2023, has been convicted 11 times under Article 112 over speeches and social media posts from the 2020–21 protest wave, and has had every bail application and appeal rejected while consistently maintaining that his remarks were protected expression. The appeal notes that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his detention arbitrary in August 2024 and called for his immediate release, and that an amnesty bill passed by Thailand’s House of Representatives in July 2026 covering political prosecutions from 2005 to 2025 explicitly excludes those charged under Article 112 — Arnon Nampa among 282 people, including many human rights defenders and 20 minors. The Observatory calls for his immediate and unconditional release, the quashing of his convictions, an end to judicial harassment of defenders in Thailand, and amendment of the amnesty bill to cover lèse-majesté cases.

(Full appeal at fidh.org.)