Like other poor working-class people, Ampon Tangnoppakul has struggled since his childhood. His mundane life was under the spotlight last week after he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sending mobile text messages deemed insulting to the royal institution.
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| Rosmalin: ‘He’s just a commoner |
His wife, Rosmalin, said over the weekend she still could not believe her husband's fate was real.
She insisted her husband was loyal to the monarchy and he had told the court so during the trial.
Mrs Rosmalin also said her husband had no strong political leanings that could motivate him to send four short messages to former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's personal secretary Somkiat Klongwattanasak in May last year.
"He is just interested in things, like other folks. Wherever people flock, he will try to see what happens too.
He used to attend both the yellow-shirt and the red-shirt rallies. At times, when Falungong [China's outlawed spiritual Buddhist sect] spoke in public, he also listened to them and brought pamphlets back home.
"But he never joined or became a member of any group. He's just a commoner," she insisted.
She recalled how she met Ampon, a native of Samut Prakan's Bang Bo district, in Chon Buri's Phan Thong district. Ampon was born to a Chinese family and was the third of seven children.
A daughter of a low-rank soldier stationed at Chon Buri's Navamintarajini Military Camp, Mrs Rosmalin said she and her husband worked at the same saw mill when they met.
She had a job in checking wooden planks while Ampon, whose Chinese name is Songpor, was helping in trading and driving wood trucks.
"Ar Por [as he was called then] is a clean and gentle man, not quite sociable but hard-working. We were married when he was 19 and I was 17," Mrs Rosmalin said.
Songpor and Rosmalin quit their jobs in Chon Buri and moved back to Samut Prakan, not far from his parents' house, when the couple had their third daughter in 1970. They had two sons and five daughters altogether.
Songpor was doing odds and ends while Rosmalin was hawking. Over a decade ago, around the time of the death of his Chinese father, Songpor adopted a Thai surname name, Tangnoppakul.
She said Ampon stopped going out to work several years ago and stayed home to take care of five grandchildren.
"Also, because he has developed cancerous cells at the tip of the tongue, he had to spend time visiting hospital in Samrong and then Rajvithi along with babysitting the grandchildren _ the youngest one is five years old," she said.
Mrs Rosmalin recalled how a dozen police officers raided their rented house in Soi Wat Dansamrong on Aug 3 last year and arrested him.
"The police asked for all the mobile phones. We just could not remember where we kept the keys for the cupboards in the house. We tried to force them open but the police then said they had got what they wanted," she said.
Ampon, later referred to by those who followed his case as Ar Gong (elderly), was held for 63 days before being given a bail release on Oct 4 last year.
He was then formally charged by the prosecutor on Jan 18 for violating Article 112 of the Criminal Code and the Computer Crimes Act, and has been incarcerated since then.
The court denied bail for him on the basis of the gravity of his crime and the possibility of flight. His trial took place on Sept 23, and Sept 27-30.
From the beginning, Ampon maintained his innocence, noting that he did not know how to send SMS messages and the phone number from which the messages were sent was not his.
But prosecution witnesses demonstrated to the court that the International Mobile Equipment Identity number of the cell phone from which the messages were sent belonged to Ampon.
The Nov 23 verdict has prompted a call by the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (ARHC) and Thai cyber users for a reversal of his sentence since Ampon is suffering from laryngeal cancer and is unlikely to be properly treated behind bars.
"Ampon Tangnoppakul has been sentenced to the longest period in prison to date for alleged violations of Article 112 and the Computer Crimes Act.
Given the weak nature of the evidence deployed against him, and the extenuating circumstances of health and age, this case indicates human rights are in deep crisis in Thailand," AHRC said.
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