Thousands of copies of anti-charter letter mailed to villagers in northern Thailand

Thousands of copies of a politically-motivated letter have been mysteriously mailed to villagers in northern Thailand, urging the recipients to vote down a draft constitution in next month's public referendum, police said on Wednesday.

Thousands of copies of the letter bearing the state garuda seal in one corner of the white envelopes have been seized by the authorities from roadside mail boxes in Chiang Mai and Lampang provinces in northern Thailand since Tuesday but many others may already have reached the addressees, the police said.

They were addressed to villagers in Chiang Mai, Lamphun and Lampang without the name of the recipients or the name of the unknown sender who is yet to be arrested on charges of breaching the Referendum Act of 2016, which prohibits the dissemination of any information with content against the draft charter or the nationwide referendum, scheduled for Aug. 7, the police said.

Those constituents who may already have received the mysterious letter were told by the authorities to keep the copies to themselves and to never relay them to anybody else otherwise they might be as well charged with violation of the Referendum Act.

The anti-constitution letter might possibly be mailed to many other villagers in the provinces, especially those in the northern and northeastern regions, the police said.

Interior Minister Anupong Paochinda commented that the mysterious letter, randomly circulated in the northern provinces, was merely an effort to distort and confuse the content of the draft charter and vowed to have the unknown sender arrested and punished by law.

The police were investigating by inquiring possible witnesses who may have passed by the mail boxes and noticed the sender as well as consulting close-circuit cameras installed at nearby spots.

Several activists of the so-called New Democracy Movement had been arrested and detained on charges of breaching the Referendum Act by allegedly disseminating anti-constitution papers to passers-by in Ratchaburi province, about 80 kilometers west of the Thai capital, over the past weekend. Each of the political activists was finally released under a 140,000 baht (nearly 3,900 U.S. dollars) bail.

(APD)