Highlights of the nine-day festival include design projects aiming to improve public space and walkability, plastic waste reduction and street furniture made of local waste or commodities reflecting the neighborhood’s unique identity.
The event is hosted by the Thailand Creative and Design Center, or TCDC, in the historic Grand Postal Building along Charoen Krung Road near the river. It runs today through Feb. 3.
Visitors can reach the events by Chao Phraya express boats or free shuttle service from BTS Saphan Taksin exit 1 to TCDC from 11am to 10pm, and from MRT Hua Lamphong exit 1 to Talad Noi from 11am to 9pm.
All events are free and take place at venues throughout the Charoen Krung area. Not all are accessible to the mobility-impaired or people with disabilities. Find more information at the official website.
An image posted by True ID from a televised BNK48 rehearsal on Friday.
Update 7:40pm: The Embassy of Israel’s deputy chief of mission expressed “shock and dismay” over the outfit in a tweet at 5:30 pm. It noted that Sunday is the international day of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. Speaking on stage at Impact Muang Thong Thani, the performer who wore the Nazi shirt asked for people to forgive her and said she would “not let it happen again.”
BANGKOK — A member of one of Thailand’s biggest pop sensations wore a Nazi German war flag replete with swastikas at a Friday performance, according to images of the event.
BNK48 has yet to respond and their publicist could not immediately be reached for comment on images showing Pichayapa “Namsai” Natha, 19, of the so-called girl idol group wearing the Nazi-themed jersey in images posted Friday from a concert rehearsal.
Images show Pichayapa ‘Namsai’ Natha of Thai pop group BNK48 wearing a Nazi-themed jersey on Friday at what was described as a “televised rehearsal.” Image: Sexy BNK / Facebook
“At Sexy BNK48 fanpage, we are all speechless. Japan’s doubtable ‘idol’ subculture, Nazi Germany’s outfits and Siamese girls, is this an Axis Power revived?” Facebook user Jedmangda Aochermathamphan wrote on Sexy BNK48 page, which called attention to the images after they appeared online without comment.
The Sexy BNK48 page posts critically about the band, usually about racism among its fans.
Jedmangda was referring to recurring incidents in which Thai youth embrace imagery or fashion borrowed from Germany’s Third Reich. In most cases, they have said afterward that they were unaware of the history. The rehearsal at Impact Muang Thong Thai was for a Saturday concert.
The band’s image took a hit with some of its fans last year when its frontwoman, Cherprang Areekul, agreed to promote the ruling junta’s policies in a government television program.
A Silpakorn University student in Bangkok dressed as Adolf Hitler in 2016. Photo: Washirawit Santipiboon / Facebook
In 2016, students at Silpakorn University cosplayed as Nazi Party leader and German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler while other students wore the uniforms of fanatical students who led Chinese campaigns of torture and murder in the 1960s.
Chulalongkorn University apologized in 2013 after its graduating seniors posed for photos doing the Nazi salute in front of a mural of “superheroes” which included Hitler. Some parents were aghast in Chiang Mai in 2011 when students at a school there dressed in elaborate SS costumes for an entire Nazi-themed school parade.
BNK48 is a domestic franchise of a Japanese group called AKB48. Japan has had its share of “Nazi chic” scandals as well.
In late 2016, Sony Music was forced to apologize after a popular act signed to the label called Keyakizaka46 performed in outfits resembling Nazi-era German military uniforms.
From left, Surachai Danwattananusorn, Chatchan Boonphawal, and Kraidet Luelert, in undated photos provided by Pranee Danwattananusorn. All three went missing in December from Laos, with all but Surachai now identified as corpses which washed up in the Mekong River days before the New Year began.
Now that police have confirmed through DNA the identities of at least two Thais murdered and mutilated horrendously, I wonder what kind of hatred, cruelty or inhumanity could be responsible.
The two, who fled to Laos after the 2014 coup, were bound, disemboweled and stuffed with concrete. Their bodies were wrapped in rice sacks, another layer of green fishnet and thrown into the Mekong River.
At least two surfaced and have been identified as the anti-monarchist pair Chatchan “Phoo Chana” Boonphawal, 56, and Kraidet “Kasalong” Luelert, 47.
The two disappeared from Laos in early December along with a well-known republican Surachai Danwattananusorn, a 76-year-old, colorful former communist rebel turned Redshirt opposed to rule by the military and monarchy.
Was it just sheer hatred and vengeance? Or were their executioners merely “professionals” carrying out an operation?
Was the fact that at least two if not three bodies floated to the Thai side of the river in Nakhon Phanom province an unintended coincidence? Or was it a warning to the rest of the anti-monarchists who dare speak out?
A body is retrieved from the Mekong River on the border of Nakhon Phanom province in an undated photo.
I’m not alone in holding that the killings, which brought to five the number of identical disappearances since the coup, was about “making an example.”
The military government insisted Wednesday after the two DNA results came out, that they had nothing to do with it.
Whoever ordered the killings, when I spoke to the son of Phoo Chana on Monday, he dared not reveal his or his father’s real names. It wasn’t until Thursday that the police made their identities public.
The climate of fear is real.
The remaining fugitive anti-monarchists in Laos, believed to number about a dozen, are now not only in fear but mortal danger.
For four years, many of these people tried to obtain asylum in the West but failed. Now they know they are sitting ducks and at the mercy of the Lao security officers who keep an eye on them.
One of them, 20-something Nithiwat Wannasuri, is one of those who’s tried and failed to win asylum. A member of an act that penned anti-monarchy and anti-junta music, Nithiwat, who believes he could be next, is very bitter about what’s happening but refuses to be quiet. He said he’s moving every four days and posts angry updates on social about their plight and the situation in Thailand.
On Facebook, those supporting their cause have posted tributes praising as martyrs the two men as well as Surachai, whose wife Pranee Danwattanusorn, now says that he must be dead.
“The world have spoken your name: #Surachai …” wrote one Facebook user noting that 13 international news agencies have reported about the three.
To some ultra-royalists, it was time to celebrate and express schadenfreude.
Posting on Tuesday after the DNA tests were revealed, Facebook user Sarawut Niamloi instructed those “next in the queue to be ready for your turn.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, at right, stands with Richard Harris, at left, and Craig Challen at the 2019 Australian of the Year Awards on Friday in Canberra, Australia. Photo: Mick Tsikas / AAP Image via AP
CANBERRA, Australia — Two amateur divers who canceled their vacation plans to join what they thought was a hopeless mission to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand received one of Australia’s most prestigious awards on Friday.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison presented Australian of the Year Award 2019 trophies to anesthetist Richard Harris and his dive buddy Craig Challen, a retired veterinarian, at a ceremony in the national capital Canberra on the eve of Australia’s national day.
“A lot’s been said about this little adventure that we’ve had, but the bottom line for me is that there are 13 families that have still got their sons they wouldn’t have if we hadn’t been there as part of that group,” Challen said. “That’s what floats my boat.”
The complex rescue against the odds by an international team in July captured international attention. Both Australians have conceded they didn’t expect that all 13 team members trapped in the cave for two week would emerge alive.
“It was the best-worst plan that we had. I had no confidence at all that it was going to work and that the children could survive,” Harris said.
All 13 rescued Wild Boar soccer teams members congratulated the pair through a video message in which they said: “We love you. All the best.” The thanks brought tears to both men. Harris said it was their first communication with the boys since the rescue.
Challen said anyone with the necessary skills would have volunteered to help.
The boys and their 25-year-old coach entered the cave on June 23 for a quick exploration, but flooding quickly blocked the exit and they had to retreat deeper inside the cave. Heavy rains raised water levels further and thwarted the initial searches before two British divers on July 2 found the group huddled on a dry patch of ground, safe but hungry.
Harris and Challen arrived at the cave on July 6 and reached the team the next day.
Harris sedated the 13 before they began their journey out over three days, fearing panic in the dark and confined cave system was a major threat to their survival.
Challen helped remove the team’s masks and wetsuits as the boys and coach were brought out on stretches through dry places. He then prepared them for their next dive through flooded sections of the cave.
Their citations say that Harris’s medical expertise was key in the plan to get the children out. After swimming through the narrow caverns to assess the health of those trapped and giving the medical all-clear for each evacuee, he remained behind until the last team member was safe.
The citation also says Challen’s technical expertise was critical to the operation. He played a leading role, working 10-12 hours each day in extremely dangerous conditions to swim the children one-by-one through the dark and narrow flooded passageways.
Two weeks after the rescue, the pair was awarded the Star of Courage, the second-highest civilian bravery decoration in the Australian honors system after the Cross of Valor.
Harris said he would use his title of Australian of the Year to encourage children to test their own limits in the outdoors.
“I do fear for kids today who living in a risk-averse society will not learn to challenge themselves and to earn the grazed knees and stubbed toes that really are necessary to build resilience and confidence,” Harris said.
“You might think it’s strange that having just rescued some kids from a cave, that I would like to promote kids to come under ground,” he added.
The two friends had been planning to take a cave diving vacation together when the Australian government invited them to Thailand.
Harris was nominated for Australian of the Year by his home state of South Australia and Challen by his state of Western Australia. They were chosen from eight state and territory nominees.
An Australian of the Year is chosen by a government-appointed board to celebrate the achievements and contributions to society of eminent citizens who are regarded as role models for their nation.
US President Donald Trump walks back into the Oval Office after announcing a deal to temporarily reopen the government Friday in the Rose Garden of the White House. Photo: Evan Vucci / Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will emerge from the longest government shutdown in U.S. history politically weakened, his reputation questioned and his signature campaign promise still glaringly unfulfilled.
The 35-day partial shutdown over the president’s demand for billions of dollars to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was, in the end, futile. Facing defections within his own party, sagging poll numbers and public criticism for interrupted services, the self-proclaimed master dealmaker accepted an agreement that he had previously spurned and set an ignominious record that will remain part of his legacy.
Days after Trump marked the midpoint of his term, the shutdown highlighted the disquieting side effects of his unconventional governing style and the trials that lie ahead for him in dealing with emboldened Democrats.The folly of the effort was readily apparent inside the White House, where aides had warned Trump even before the shutdown began that there was no avenue to success in the showdown with Capitol Hill. Democrats ran for office on preventing Trump from building the wall — and it’s hardly a popular idea even among Republican lawmakers. Advisers watched in shock as Trump declared in a December meeting with lawmakers that he would be “proud” to shut down the government.
And when he ultimately did just that, they feared the messaging war had already been lost.
“He was playing double-A ball against major leaguers,” said former Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, who once headed the House GOP’s campaign arm. By backing himself into the shutdown with no way out, Davis said, Trump displayed a lack of discipline from the start.
The strategic deficit was only magnified by what allies saw as tactical errors. Trump spent the holidays tweeting from the White House rather than making public appearances to showcase his readiness to negotiate. He didn’t deliver a public address or visit the border to make his case until weeks had already gone by. Perhaps most crucially, he underestimated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the unity of congressional Democrats, thinking the Californian would be more amenable to a deal on the wall once she won the speakership.
Trump’s message zigzagged sometimes by the hour. He maintained he was proud of shutting down the government and then tried to pin the blame on Democrats. One moment he signaled he was ready to concede the wall in favor of other barriers on the border, and the next he tweeted he was fighting for the wall as strongly as ever. It was emblematic of the dysfunctional White House culture he has fostered and the challenges that have been manifest on decisions big and small for two years.
By the end of the shutdown, West Wing aides and outside allies of the president began to look at the seminal promise of Trump’s 2016 campaign as an immense — and unachievable — burden on his presidency.
It was complaints that Trump appeared to be passing up his last, best opportunity to make good on his build-the-wall pledge that led Trump into the shutdown to begin with. Conservative commentators and House Freedom Caucus members fired off warnings that Trump’s base would sour on him if he didn’t use the last days of unified GOP control of Washington last year to try to get money for the barrier.
But in his quest to appease his base, the president tarnished his standing with the American public. Overall, 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance in a survey released this week by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s down from 42 percent a month earlier and nears the lowest mark of his two-year presidency.
“Hopefully now the president has learned his lesson,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a press conference with Pelosi.
The impasse was an early test for Pelosi after her return to the speakership, one that she appeared to pass handily. Democrats remained unified against White House efforts to divide the caucus, and they head into the next round of debate over border security funding determined to make good on their own 2018 promises to block Trump’s wall.
As White House aides suggested that the shutdown had brought Democrats to embrace border “barriers,” Pelosi make clear her party remained resolved against the wall.
“Have I not been clear?” she said. “No, I have been very clear.”
Trump, characteristically, refused to concede that he’d conceded. Instead, he insisted he hadn’t caved to Democrats, and he threatened yet another shutdown even while bemoaning the last one’s impact on Americans.
“This was in no way a concession,” Trump tweeted late Friday. “It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it’s off to the races!”
BANGKOK — A major road accident on Ratchadapisek Road left 10 cars damaged and an entire lane blocked during a Friday afternoon rush hour.
The accident took place at about 4pm on the southbound lane of a bridge over Na Ranong Road in Khlong Toei district. Witnesses told the media they saw a 10-wheeler truck smashing through the traffic and damaging 10 cars in total. No injury was reported so far.
The driver, who was not immediately identified, reportedly blamed a “faulty brake” for the incident.
The pile-up is expected to cause a massive impact throughout this evening on road traffic across Bangkok downtown.
Premchai Karnasuta, far left, sits in the campsite where he was found on Feb. 5, 2018, with the remains of a leopard, panther and other wildlife in the Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in Kanchanaburi province.
BANGKOK — One year after a construction tycoon and three of his associates were arrested on poaching charges, the verdict for his court case was given after final arguments were heard Friday.
The verdict of the so-called “Black Panther” case against Premchai Karnasuta and three other suspects will be heard at 9am on March 19 at Thong Pha Phum Provincial Court.
Closing arguments were submitted Friday morning at a court in Kanchanaburi province.
Premchai faces a total of six allegations including hunting protected wildlife, illegally carrying firearms in public and poaching in a wildlife reserve.
The three suspects apart are Yong Dodkrua, Thanee Tummas and Nathee Riamsaen.
Premchai, president of one of Thailand’s largest construction companies, wasarrested in February after park rangers found him and three others had set up camp at the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, where they were found with guns and the carcass of a black panther among other animals.
Rohingya refugees shout slogans during a protest against the repatriation process at Unchiprang refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, in Bangladesh, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018. The head of Bangladesh's refugee commission said plans to begin a voluntary repatriation of Rohingya Muslim refugees to their native Myanmar on Thursday were scrapped after officials were unable to find anyone who wanted to return. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)
UNITED NATIONS — The World Refugee Council called Thursday for up to USD$20 billion stolen by government leaders and now frozen in the United States, Britain and other countries to be reallocated by courts to help millions of displaced people forced to flee conflict, persecution and victimization.
The council also called for people responsible for the growing crisis of refugees and internally displaced people – including government leaders, military officers and opposition and rebel figures – to be held accountable, all the way to the International Criminal Court.
Chaired by former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, the 24-member council which was formed in May 2017 includes former heads of state and ministers, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, and leading business, civil society and human rights officials.
The 218-page report it launched Thursday goes beyond what the United Nations has done, at a time when the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes is 68.5 million, the highest since World War II. Its release also comes as populist and nationalist political figures “are exploiting people’s anxieties, fears” about refugees, Axworthy said,
Tanzania’s former President Jakaya Kikwete, a council co-chair, said the current crisis is a consequence of some countries’ internal policies, authoritarianism, sectarianism, violence and conflicts, “but the other aspect is that the attitude towards refugees has changed.”
“In the past people have been welcoming, friendly,” he said. “Now people are … closing the doors for people who are … fleeing from danger. But they say, ‘no, no you can’t come’ … and refugees are being blamed as being the problem.”
Kikwete said “unscrupulous politicians” are using refugees to get votes “because when you tell your people they’re dangerous” they react, and the politicians become popular.
At the same time, the report said, “the humanitarian commitment of nations, once a norm, has given way to nativism. Xenophobia – fear and exclusion of the ‘outsider’ – has gathered force in America, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.”
The U.N. refugee agency, which relies on voluntary contributions, is seriously underfunded and its head, Filippo Grandi, called in his latest report on forced displacement for “a new and far more comprehensive approach” to the crisis “so that countries and communities aren’t left dealing with this alone.”
Axworthy told a news conference: “What we’ve really proposed is a way in which you have to get out of the box in which refugees are seen simply as ‘a humanitarian issue.'”
“There has to be a much stronger level of involvement,” he said, in matters of security, development, human rights, accountability and finance for the world’s 25.4 million refugees and 40 million internally displaced, along with 3.1 million asylum seekers.
Axworthy said the World Bank has estimated that there are between $15 billion and $20 billion “in purloined assets that various political leaders have stolen from their people.”
How much of that can be recovered, he said, depends on how many governments and countries are prepared to give their courts the right to reallocate the money. He pointed to Switzerland, which has done just that, as a model.
Fen Osler Hampson, the council’s executive director, said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime has complained it doesn’t have access to $3 billion in bank accounts frozen in the United States. He said there are several hundred million dollars belonging to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s family frozen in London bank accounts. And in the case of South Sudan, he said, “the generals have several hundred millions that are frozen in bank accounts in Nairobi.”
“All it takes is political will to introduce that legislation” to give courts the right to reallocate that money, Hampson said.
The World Refugee Council’s argument is that refugees and internally displaced people, the majority of them women and children, are the most vulnerable in the world and should therefore have the primary claim on those assets, he said.
Other prospects for new money, Hampson said, are to leverage the vast resources of the private sector and create “refugee bonds,” similar to “green bonds” to tackle climate change.
Another proposal is a kind of cap-and-trade system where if a country isn’t willing to resettle refugees for political reasons it can make financial contributions to developing countries saddled with huge costs for hosting millions of refugees, Hampson said.
As for accountability, Axworthy said using the International Criminal Court to prosecute Myanmar’s military leaders for alleged crimes against humanity for the crackdown that led over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh would “take away the impunity” for those responsible for massive displacement.
The council also called for the drafting of a new protocol to the 1951 Refugee Convention requiring “collective responsibility for refugees.”
Buddhists and Muslims march Tuesday to protest attacks on civilians in Narathiwat province.
BANGKOK — When two monks were killed on holy ground in Thailand’s Deep South one week ago, virtually every human rights group from Human Rights Watch to the local Cross Cross Cultural Foundation denounced the violence as unacceptable. That didn’t stop a Buddhist monk from taking to social media three days later to stoke grievances by claiming the opposite.
“What’s the use of having rights activists? Or are they all dead? Soldiers are shot, they remain quiet. Villagers are shot, they remain quiet. Monks are shot, they remain quiet,” the Buddhist monk wrote Monday on Facebook under the name Phra Ajarn Frank Power of Awakening Chayakaro. “When the joen are caught, they shout out to protect the joen.”
Joen is a euphemism employed as a catch-all to describe Malay-Muslim separatists and is akin to “goons” or “bandits.”
The monks’ murders have further inflamed inter-religious and ethnic tensions, with activists and scholars comparing the current climate to a festering wound of distrust in which both sides only see and remember what they want.
“It’s like festering pus,” said Wichai Kanchanasuwon, director of the Peace Studies Institute at Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai city. Wichai has for years sought peaceful resolution of separatist-related violence in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.
‘What’s the use of having rights activists? Or are they all dead? Soldiers are shot, they remain quiet. Villagers are shot, they remain quiet. Monks are shot, they remain quiet. When the goons are caught, they shout out to protect the goons,’ an account named Phra Ajarn Frank Power of Awakening Chayakaro wrote Monday on Facebook.
Both a local and Buddhist, Wichai said Buddhists have become enraged by the attacks one week ago which left two monks dead and two injured, with some calling for swift retaliation.
“But they have forgotten to look at the fact that three Muslim religious leaders have also been killed recently,” he said, adding that it doesn’t seem to register as big news or create a stir of the same magnitude in Thai society when such thing happens, which is predominantly Buddhist.
On the other side, Wichai said some Muslim religious leaders have floated conspiracy theories, questioning whether it was in fact a “false flag” operation by the state to sow more hatred against them.
“They said the temple wasn’t that far from an army outpost, and no culprits have been arrested so far,” Wichai said.
Wichai has been monitoring the use of social media and said rising hatred has become widespread in Thai society.
He likened it to filling a jug about to burst.
“Violence doesn’t solve problems. In the end more innocent people will die, not the extremists,” he said.
That includes messages such as those stoking resentment toward human rights groups which have spoken out about abuses, including torture and the execution of suspects without due process.
Caught in the crossfire has been leading human rights figure Angkhana Neelapaijit, caretaker National Human Rights Commissioner. Angkhana is a Muslim from Bangkok whose husband, a rights lawyer, vanished and was presumably killed 15 years ago.
She said Thursday that she had been a target of many social media attacks due to the issues she promotes, for which she is accused of siding with the separatists.
“Our job is to verify the facts and make proposals,” Angkhana said. Last year, she even lodged a police complaint over threatening speech made against her.
“They posted my photos and asked why a person like me should live,” she said.
Angkhana fears that people of the two religions and ethnicities will increasingly hate one another as the conflict continues unabated. More than 7,000 people have been killed in the past 15 years of conflict, according to monitors.
Also subscribing to the festering wound analogy is Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, director of Cross Cultural Foundation, a human rights advocacy group that has promoted rights and published reports of system torture practiced by the Thai military.
Pornpen believes hate speech on social media wouldn’t be effective was there no mutual anger and frustration simmering beneath the surface.
“This uneasiness cannot be activated by online media alone. There must be a germ festering,” she said.
Human rights activists working in the south are often branded as useless if not as assisting enemies of the Thai state when they defend the civil and political rights of Thai-Malay Muslims prosecutes by authorities.
Pornpen acknowledged that it is disturbing for Buddhists to see bullet holes in monks’ alms bowls. She added the pictures of the bullet holes cut deep into the hearts of many Buddhists, but that most do not remember images of mosques being attacked or Muslim religious leaders being shot to death.
A monk’s alms bowl purportedly hit by a bullet in last week’s attack on a temple in Narathiwat province is displayed after the attack.
The commissioner suspects that some of the hate speech has been planted by extremists on both sides to stoke division.
Such speech prevails online on both sides of the divide, where public Facebook groups such as “We Love Buddhism and Hate Islam” exist. Though it only boasts about 180 members, it exemplifies the incendiary language used in the conflict. On the other hand, Facebook pages such as “We love Buddhism” recount the issue from the other side.
On the page – which has more than 25,000 likes – a Yala province monk in a short video posted the day after the attacks, said he’d been threatened with death by Thai-Malay Muslim youths who told him not to go out for alms in the morning.
His message of being ignored, saying such complaints are ignored by the mass media, struck a chord.
In under a week, the video was watched more than 345,000 times and shared almost 12,000 times.
Hakeem Ali Mohamed Ali AlAraibi in December led in handcuffs at the Thai Criminal Court.
The Thai government has been asked by FIFA’s leadership to release a Bahraini soccer player who is in detention while embroiled in extradition proceedings despite having refugee status in Australia.
FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura called for an urgent “humane outcome” to the case of Hakeem al-Araibi, who lives in Melbourne but was arrested while on vacation in Thailand last month on an Interpol notice.
Bahrain wants its former national team player returned to serve a 10-year prison sentence that was handed down in absentia after he was accused of vandalizing a police station — a charge he denies.
In an emailed letter, Samoura asked Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha “to take the necessary steps to ensure that Mr. AI-Araibi is allowed to return safely to Australia at the earliest possible moment, in accordance with the relevant international standards.
“We strongly believe that this course of action will do justice not only to Thailand’s obligations under international law, but also to basic human and humanitarian values, which we know your country and government hold dear.”
The Asian Football Confederation, which is led by Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa, a member of Bahrain’s royal family, would not say if it endorsed the appeal from FIFA. AFC spokesman Colin Gibson said in a written response that the governing body “is working with FIFA on this issue … along with other stakeholders.”
Bahrain has a Shiite majority but is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, and has a reputation for harsh repression since its failed “Arab Spring” uprising in 2011. Al-Araibi has said he believed he was targeted for arrest because of his Shiite faith and because his brother was politically active in Bahrain.
Al-Araibi has said he was tortured in Bahrain after his 2012 arrest and fled in 2014 to Australia, which granted him political asylum in 2017 and where he now plays for Melbourne’s Pascoe Vale Football Club.
“This situation should not have arisen in particular, since Mr. AI-Araibi now lives, works and plays as a professional footballer in Australia, where he has been accorded refugee status,” Samoura wrote in her letter to the Thai premier.
“When according refugee status to Mr. AI-Araibi, the Australian authorities concluded that Mr. AI-Araibi is at serious risk of mistreatment in his home country. As stated publicly on several occasions, FIFA is therefore respectfully urging the authorities of the Kingdom of Thailand to take the necessary steps to ensure that Mr. AI-Araibi is allowed to return safely to Australia at the earliest possible moment, in accordance with the relevant international standards.”
Samoura said she wants to meet the Thai government with player union officials.
“We look forward to your timely response on this urgent request and sincerely thank you for your efforts towards a humane outcome of this matter,” Samoura said.
