Thanthawut Taweewarodomkul, currently serving a 13-year sentence for lese majeste, has written to Amnesty International pleading for assistance. His full letter, and some reflections on the broader context, are available at Andrew Spooner’s website. A key extract from the letter reads:

So we now hope that Amnesty International, an organisation that is widely respected because of its outstanding human rights work and which has a huge global network, including in Thailand, would be able to help us out.

So far, we have never been contacted by or received any attention from Amnesty International in Thailand at all. We are deeply sad about this but we still hope that one day, Amnesty International, might start to pay attention to us.

At the moment, Thailand has a democratically elected government and its policy is to create reconciliation in Thailand, a country that has been deeply divided since the 2006 coup. Many organizations in Thailand and overseas have been working together to create reconciliation as soon as possible.

We, therefore, hope that Amnesty International will be part of this reconciliation process in Thailand by doing everything it can to ensure that the basic rights of incarcerated political prisoners meet international standards. We will be very happy if Amnesty International does this.