02/18/2026
New translation from the Article 112 Project and Justice in Southeast Asia Lab at UW-Madison!
** Letters from Prison: Year 2 (Nos. 140-234, 1 October 2024-26 September 2025), by Arnon Nampa (อานนท์ นำภา) **
Read/Download: https://bit.ly/467TWxu
26 September 2025 marked the second anniversary of the imprisonment of Arnon Nampa in Thailand. This is 730 days that Arnon, who is a lawyer, human rights defender, poet, and father, has been separated from his family for peaceful speech and dissent calling for democracy and reform of the monarchy. Arnon is being prosecuted under a raft of repressive laws, most notably the draconian Article 112 of the Criminal Code, which defines the crime and prescribes the punishment for lèse majesté: “Whoever insults, defames, or threatens the king, queen, heir-apparent or regent shall be subject to imprisonment of three-to-fifteen years.” Arnon is one of nearly 300 people facing prosecution under Article 112 following the 2020 youth-led protests for democracy and reform of the monarchy.
Arnon has been accused of violation of Article 112 in fourteen cases. During the first two years of his imprisonment, he was convicted by the Court of First Instance in ten of these cases; his current total sentence is twenty-nine years and one month. Every few months a decision comes that lengthens his total prison sentence. On 26 September 2023, the Criminal Court sentenced Arnon to four years in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 during a speech he made at a protest on 14 October 2020. On 17 January 2024, the Criminal Court sentenced him to another four years in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 in relation to three Facebook posts. On 29 April 2024, the Southern Bangkok Criminal Court sentenced him to another two years and twenty days for alleged violation of Article 112 during a speech he gave commemorating the one-year anniversary of his Harry Potter speech on 3 August 2021. On 25 July 2024, the Criminal Court sentenced Arnon to four years in prison for alleged violated of Article 112 in relation to two Facebook posts. On 3 December 2024, the Criminal Court sentenced him to two years in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 for a Facebook post. On 19 December 2024, the Criminal Court sentenced Arnon to two years and eight months in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 in relation to a speech he made calling for reform of the monarchy as Harry Potter on 3 August 2020. On 27 March 2025, the Chiang Mai Provincial Court sentenced him to two years in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 in relation to a birthday party for General Prayuth Chan-ocha protest held at the Chiang Mai University Art Museum on 23 November 2020. On 28 May 2025, the Criminal Court sentenced Arnon to two years in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 in relation to a protest in front of the Bang Khen Police Station on 21 December 2020. On 25 June 2025, the Criminal Court sentenced him to two years and eight months in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 in relation to a demonstration at Lad Phrao Intersection on 2 December 2020. Most recently, on 8 July 2025, the Criminal Court sentenced him to two years and four months in prison for alleged violation of Article 112 in relation to a demonstration in front of Parliament on 17 November 2020. Arnon’s four remaining Article 112 cases are still moving through the initial prosecution stage.
Innocent verdicts are rare in Article 112 cases, and bail is frequently denied, even while appeals are ongoing. Since his first conviction in September 2023, Arnon has requested bail repeatedly, and has been denied bail repeatedly.In addition to his fourteen Article 112 cases, Arnon has been charged in twenty-four additional cases related to dissent since 2015. Two of these cases have resulted in prison terms that are included in his current sentence. First, on 7 March 2025, the Thanyaburi Provincial Court sentenced him to nine months for alleged violation of Article 116, or sedition, during a speech he made during the demonstration on 10 August 2020. Second, on 28 March 2025, the Criminal Court sentenced Arnon to six months in prison for alleged contempt of court for removing his shirt in protest in the courtroom. In this instance, Arnon was protesting his lack of access to justice. During the trial for his alleged violation of Article 112 during his 3 August 2020 speech, the judges refused to summon key documentary evidence requested by the defense as part of their struggle to prove the veracity of the very statements for which Arnon was being prosecuted. In this and his other cases, Arnon’s primary defense argument has been that what he said was true. The judges’ refusal to summon the documents was direct obstruction of this defense. One would not be permitted to prove the veracity of one’s speech during one’s trial. The message was clear: speaking the truth can not protect Arnon or others accused of violation of Article 112. Alongside the refusal to summon key evidence requested by the defense, Article 112 trials have been characterized by other irregularities. Judges have ordered hearings to be held in secret and have barred journalists and observers from the room. The stated reason is national security but the result is to restrict information. In other instances, judges have forbidden observers from taking notes or the public dissemination of what transpired in the courtroom. As Arnon asked in his 7 July 2025 letter, “If you are confident that the judgment is just, what are you afraid of?”
Within a few days after being imprisoned in September 2023,
Arnon began sending letters out from prison. He sends the letters out through an electronic application used by Bangkok Remand Prison for prisoners and their families and friends to send letters to one another. Arnon writes his letters on lined letter paper provided by the prison; the letters are then scanned and sent out to the designated recipient. Like all letters sent to and from Thai prisons, each letter is read and censored before it is transmitted. What makes the electronic letters different than the paper letters of earlier generations is the speed with which they circulate. Rather than the delay of days or even weeks common to paper letters, the electronic letters reach their recipients within a few seconds. Arnon sends his letters to his family, who then post them on social media to be read by fellow activists and supporters. Arnon’s letters span details of his daily life behind bars, instructions and expressions of longing and love to his family, case updates, critiques of the books he is reading and the series screened in the evenings by the prison, and broad social and political commentary. Many of his letters are addressed to his two young children, Pran (age 9) and Kan (age 3), and his spouse, Lookwa. When he writes to his children, as he does in the majority of his letters, he shifts the primary pronoun he uses to “Daddy.” He will not be home soon, and many birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays will pass without the family being together. Even as he addresses his children, his letters offer lessons to all who read them. The struggle for democracy is long and difficult. In naming his and his family’s suffering, Arnon illustrates the sacrifices the struggle exacts. He invites his readers to not turn away, which also involves asking them, implicitly, what they are willing to do in the service of democracy and human rights.
Arnon’s profession as a lawyer remains as central in his second year of letters as it was in the first year. In many cases, he is both a defendant and a lawyer for his fellow co-defendants. He writes about cross-examining witnesses and arguing cases clad in his prisoner’s uniform of thin pants and a short-sleeved shirt and with shackles around his ankles, rather than a suit and a lawyer’s robe. Some judges are uneasy at the presence of a lawyer-prisoner, and they try to keep him from doing his duty with the claim that his dress is “impolite.” Even though the lack of layers in the frigid air-conditioning means he is cold and the chains make moving around difficult, Arnon responds by maintaining that it does not impede him from doing his duty as a lawyer.
Arnon wrote 139 letters during his first year of imprisonment (25 September 2023-24 September 2024). The Article 112 Project and the Justice in Southeast Asia Lab (JSEALab) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison translated and published the letters as a free, open-access PDF. This volume contains the translations of the 95 letters that he wrote during his second year behind bars (25 September 2024-24 September 2025). Arnon’s letters are a record of the injustice of the judicial process and how one dissident is holding the line against this injustice. This record of his life and struggle comprises a history of Thailand, both lived and authored by Arnon.
While we hope that Arnon will be released and his letters from prison with therefore cease, we will continue to translate them as long as he writes them.
Read/Download: https://bit.ly/467TWxu
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