THAI authorities have charged an Australian journalist and his local colleague with defaming Thailand's navy in an online news report about the trafficking of refugees from Myanmar.
The English-language news website Phuketwan posted a story last July carrying excerpts from a report by the Reuters news agency alleging that members of the Thai military were involved in trafficking captured immigrants from Myanmar's beleaguered Rohingya ethnic minority.
The charges came several days after Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its series on the violent persecution of the Rohingya - a Muslim minority that rights groups say has been subjected to systematic abuse and forced segregation.
Alan Morison, the website's Australian editor, and his Thai colleague, Chutima Sidasathien, appeared in a court on the southern island of Phuket to hear charges of defamation and violation of the 2007 Computer Crime Act. If found guilty, they could face up to seven years in prison and a fine of 100,000 baht ($A3223).
"To us, it's still very much a case that shouldn't be going to court, and sadly it's going to damage Thailand's reputation as a democracy because these kinds of cases shouldn't occur in any democracy," Morison said.
The navy filed the lawsuit against the pair in December. Human rights and press freedom groups have criticised the navy and urged that the charges be dropped.
The trial of Phuketwan's journalists was "unjustified and constitutes a dark stain on Thailand's record for respecting media freedom," Brad Adams, the Asia director of New York-based Human Right Watch, said in an email.
"The Thai navy should have debated these journalists publicly if they had concerns with the story rather than insisting on their prosecution under the draconian Computer Crimes Act and criminal libel statutes."
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