Promoting human rights

As coordinator of the Free Tibet Network, Pokpong led a group of students and human-rights activists in Thailand in an effort to draw the world's attention to the streets of Bangkok, where the Olympic Torch passed through on Saturday.

Pokpong said he believed there are no borders when it comes to human rights and said he would ask members of the international community to be concerned about human-rights violations outside their own countries.

Soon after the crackdown in Tibet, Pokpong helped set up the Free Tibet Network to raise public awareness regarding human-rights violations in Tibet.

His group, he said, would never use violent means to protest, but rather exercise the rights to freedom of expression guaranteed in the Thai Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to show its concern over human-rights violations against the people of Tibet.

Pokpong, 25, is a staff member at the Bangkok-based Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum Asia), a regional human-rights organisation with 40 member organisations in 15 Asian countries.

He graduated from Thammasat University's Liberal Arts Faculty in 2005. Being a talented student, Pokpong won the scholarship of excellence academic performance given by Thammasat University's Saving and Credit Cooperative Limited in 2004. He graduated with second-class honours in 2005.

His involvement in human-rights issues began in the United States when he took part in a student exchange programme between Thammasat and Creighton University in Nebraska.

"I was a volunteer for Amnesty International in the town. There I met about 500 students volunteering to work," he said, adding he enjoyed exchanging ideas with these youngsters who always came up with new perspectives on human rights and political issues.

Returning to Thailand, Pokpong continued devoting his time outside the classroom as a volunteer with Amnesty International Thailand.

After his graduation, Pokpong worked for a few months as research assistant at Chulalongkorn University's Social Research Institute. He has been with Forum Asia since September 2006.

In his role as Southeast Asia programme officer, Pokpong has been monitoring and writing reports on the human-rights situation in the region, including Thailand and Burma. He is also responsible for issuing urgent action notices when human-rights violations take place in a member country.

The young activist travels around the region to meetings and discussions on human-rights issues, and has attended UN human-rights sessions in Geneva.

At home, Pokpong works

 tirelessly in solidarity with other organisations to promote human rights.

But, Pokpong's concern for human rights goes far beyond the organisation's area of concentration. When faces limitations, the young activist finds a way out by forming ad-hoc groups to deal with some special issues. When Thailand began to face a political conflict that divided society, Pokpong and his activist friends formed a group called "The New Generation of Human-Rights Activists" to campaign on human-rights issues and urge everyone to respect the principals of human rights, even when they are on opposing sides.

For example, he said that he was disappointed that some human-rights organisations were silent when authorities tried to stop a rally of some groups the organisations did not agree with.

On the international level, Pokpong said he would like to ask Thai society to look beyond the frame of the nation to human-rights concerns elsewhere, such as those in Tibet and Burma.

Human rights is a universal issue, he said.

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas