To make the announcement meaningful, the coup-installed regime should at least allow freedom of expression, which has been widely suppressed since the junta came to power, the activists said.

The comments came after the government on Tuesday announced after its weekly Cabinet meeting that the human rights issue would be added to the national agenda, from next year to 2019. All government agencies would be instructed to carry out policies to improve the deteriorating human rights situation in the country, said Government Spokesman Lt-General Sansern Kaewkamnerd.

The move, however, was seen by many people as well as netizens, as a joke. Some of them pointed to the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and its government as part of the problem.

Sunai Phasuk, a veteran human rights advocate, mocked the announcement, saying it was bogus as the junta has made human rights violations a daily reality. “It is very ironic to announce human rights would be on the national agenda when simultaneously the regime is threatening to sue critics and put them in jail citing computer crimes,” the senior researcher at Human Rights Watch said.

It was on top of several other violations of human rights by the regime such as arbitrary detention and the restriction on press freedom, Sunai said.

He said if the regime was really serious about human rights, it should have lifted repressive orders issued under the powers of Article 44, he said. That way, it would have seemed much more sincere and meaningful, he added.

Another rights advocate, Chamnan Chanruang, stressed that the matter had been raised by the Justice Ministry as a master plan for a grand scheme. The junta government recently coined a buzzword ‘Thailand 4.0’, making it seem related to itself, he explained.

So, on the surface it may look good but the regime’s behaviour should be taken into consideration as well, the former chairman of the Amnesty International Thailand said. His impression was that the regime’s actions had not been in line with human rights, he added.

Thailand’s rights situation had recently been scrutinised by the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and it was found that the government had yet to fulfil its obligations, he pointed out. Restrictions on free speech and on political gatherings, on top of other violations, have remained unchanged, he said.

These restrictions make the announcement concerning human rights in the national agenda meaningless unless the NCPO actually repeals its oppressive orders and frees all political prisoners, Chamnan said.

Nirun Phitakwatchara, a former member of the National Human Rights Commission, said that after making such an announcement, the government should strive to improve the democratic atmosphere in the country, too.

For starters, it could review the orders that may have affected people’s rights such as those involving freedom of expression, academic freedom, and right to political gatherings, he said.

Such freedom could help, given an election was taking shape, Nirun said. Unless people could exercise their rights and freedom, the election would not be considered free and fair and the elected government may not be very well accepted either, he added.