A question of law

Pravit Rojanaphruk
The Nation on Sunday December 11, 2011 1:00 am

The attorney who's represented Amphon Tangnoppakul and Joe Gordon on lese majeste charges says he's standing by his principles

Red-shirt attorney Arnon Nampa, who specialises in cases related to lese majeste, recently shot into the spotlight when his 61-year-old client Amphon "Akong" Tangnoppakul was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Amphon allegedly sent four SMS text messages deemed defamatory to Her Majesty the Queen and the monarchy to a personal secretary of then-prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

But it wasn't just the severity of the sentence or even the far-from-convincing technical debate as to whether Amphon, who insists he is a royalist, was really responsible for sending the text messages or not, that caught the imagination of the public.

Clouding the issue is an accusation by opponents of the red shirts that Arnon, who offered his services pro bono, might have intentionally facilitated the harsh verdict and even "wrongly" advised Amphon to fight in the Appeal Court instead of quickly seeking a royal pardon.

In short, the 27-year-old lawyer has been basically accused by conspiracy theorists of using his client as an instrument in campaigning for the abolition of lese majeste law.

"If that's the case, the public prosecutors and the judges must also be collaborators," says Arnon, sitting in his modest 20-square-metre office in Bangkok's Huay Kwang district. "And I would also have not made any objections during the court proceedings."

Arnon appears unperturbed by the accusation, saying that when his opponents ran out of reasons to argue, they resorted to character assassination. "That's their trait," he says, adding that he has no trouble combining his legal practice based on lese majeste cases with his campaign to abolish a law he regards as anachronistic and undemocratic.

"An attorney of law is a human being too. What's wrong with having such a view?" says the man who also defended Prachatai.com director Chiranuch Premchaiporn and Thai-US citizen Joe Gordon. Gordon was on Thursday sentenced to two and a half years in prison for translating parts of the banned book "The King Never Smiles" and uploading it - while he was in the United States.

"Many attorneys don't want to take lese majeste cases. They feel they are dangerous, extreme and anti-monarchy," Arnon explains, adding that a judge, on learning that he was supporting a client to take his fight to the Appeal Court, asked him whether he was "really Thai".

Born into a modest family in Roi Et province, Arnon won a place at Thammasat University. After a semester of studying social science, he switched to Ramkhamhaeng University and enrolled in law.

Today, he and two junior peers from the same province, Yuttakan Sopanna and Anon Ngamsanit, at Rassadornprasong Law Institute are dependent on public donations and Arnon allows himself a modest salary of Bt15,000. The office doubles as their bedroom, and a glance at the bank account shows just Bt177,000 remaining from donations.

"I charge progressive rates," he says when asked about legal charges. "If you are poor I charge a little, but I will max you if you're rich. Most of our clients are not rich, however."

Arnon, who perceives the growing number of lese majeste cases as being linked to the political turmoil since the coup that ousted Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006, insists that his campaign for the law's abolition covers people of all political persuasions, not just red shirts. If yellow-shirt leader Sondhi Limthongkul were to be detained under the lese majeste law, Arnon says he would campaign for him.

Whether Sondhi would be interested in taking up Arnon's legal advice is quite a different matter, of course.