NGO calls NLA to stop bills against people right

The NGO coordinating committee on development issued a statement after a two-day seminar at the Phranakhon Grand View Hotel. It said that the 11 bills under consideration would not promote freedom as guaranteed in the new 2007 Constitution. Instead the proposed laws, if enacted, could be exploited by the authorities to intimidate people.

The NGO panel believed the bodies appointed by the coup leaders to pass laws that would affect the whole country in the long term were illegitimate. The bills should be passed by an elected government and legislative bodies whose representatives came from the people, it noted.

The bills that had already been passed and those that would be passed by military-sponsored agencies aimed to give more power to the authorities and ignored the freedoms and rights of the people, the statement said.

The government and the NLA should immediately drop their attempts to pass the bills into laws, it said.

Former senator Jon Ungpakorn said those bills should only be passed after elected bodies took into account public opinion. As those bills would violate the rights of people, he believed the 2007 Constitution would be useless to the country if it allowed them to be enforced as laws.

The NGO panel concluded that it would use the channel - provided by the new charter - of collecting 10,000 signatures to push for the amendment of some existing laws which also violated freedoms of the people, he added.

Pairoj Polpetch, a human rights lawyer, said the NGO group would gather in front of Parliament on September 19, a year after the coup, to hand a letter to NLA speaker Meechai Ruchuphan, asking for an immediate halt to the 11 bills.

Weerayut Chokchaimadon

The Nation

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The 11 bills are...

Internal security bill

Community forest bill

Radio and television broadcasting bill

State-enterprise privatisation bill

Promotion and protection of environment bill

Water resource bill

National council of farmers bill

Toxic objects bill

University autonomy concerning Chulalongkorn University

University autonomy concerning Burapha University

University autonomy concerning Thaksin University