1 million political prisoners-PPT

[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: We admire PPT’s forthright reporting of news no Thai media will touch. Unfortunately, all freedom of expression groups in Thailand have been painted into a corner where other human rights issues and censorship have been eclipsed by profligate, political lèse majesté prosecutions. We rely on PPT’s opinions in our own coverage to these issues which are crucial to Thailand’s development and future. Thank you, PPT!]

1,000,000 hits

Political Prisoners in Thailand: July 14, 2012

http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/1000000-hits/

PPT has just reached a milestone: one million hits at this site and at our other site that mirrors this one and which seems more accessible at times in Thailand. The government in Thailand continues to block us in a seemingly random manner.

It is a kind of sad anniversary. The collective that got together in 2009 to set up PPT didn’t imagine that we’d still be at it today.

At the time we began, we said that PPT was dedicated to those who are held in Thailand’s prisons and those accused and charged with political crimes. Our focus remains, as it was back then, on the contemporary period where political cases revolve around the use of Thailand’s lese majeste law and, increasingly, the Computer Crimes Act.

The blog has been authored by friends of Thailand who oppose the jailing of opponents for political reasons. We support the expansion of free speech in Thailand.

Because this blog has included material that is banned in Thailand and might land us in jail as political prisoners, we have remained anonymous. We hope that we have been able to raise the international profile of the issues of political freedom and lese majeste.

We had hoped that, after three years and more, lese majeste would have been a political issue of the past and that our blog would have been unnecessary. We were wrong and so we keep going. While there have been no new charges since the end of the royalist Abhisit Vejjajiva regime was voted out. In fact, though, in the next few days we plan to update our list of lese majeste cases, with new details we have received from readers.