This article was originally published on Prachatai.

Civil society groups gathered at the Ministry of Justice on Friday (7 August) to call on the authorities to protect political prisoners.

The groups delivered a letter from human rights lawyer Anon Nampa, who is detained pending appeal on several counts of royal defamation and is facing around 31 years in prison.

The letter, dated to 5 August and published on Anon’s Facebook page, stated that, in late July, the Bangkok Remand Prison decided to separate royal defamation detainees and hold them in different blocks.

Anon wrote that this led to safety concerns. He alleged that, in 2021, unknown officials tried to abduct activists detained at the time. He also wrote that, since 18 May 2025, political prisoners were being pressured into petitioning for a royal pardon by officials claiming to represent “a higher-up”, but the detainees refused. After the Bhumjaithai government came into power, prison executives were replaced. Attempts to separate the detainees then began.

He alleged that a royal defamation detainee held in another block was attacked by other prisoners for not standing for the Royal Anthem, which is played twice a day in the Bangkok Remand Prison. The attacked detainee was later moved to the Bang Kwang Central Prison, a maximum security prison that is the site of the men’s death row.

Anon wrote that, although being held together does not guarantee safety for political prisoners, it means that if anyone is assaulted or murdered, the rest would tell the world about it.

At the Ministry of Justice, participants began arriving in the morning. At around 10.20, participants wore a mask of Anon’s face and placed a blue bird cafe as a symbol. They read out a statement and submitted a petition to the Ministry of Justice, demanding that political prisoners must be held together unless there is a legis safety reason. Representatives of human rights organizations, lawmakers, detainees’ family members, and other relevant agencies must be allowed to visit prisons to check the detainees’ wellbeing to ensure transparency and trust. They also called for a concrete safety measures for detainees.