The activist was wearing a paper mask with a cartoon face of Kent Cheng, a Hong Kong actor who is widely regarded as a lookalike of Deputy Premier and Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan, when he was approached by officers from Yannawa police station in Bangkok.

Up to 100 uniformed and plainclothes officers had been keeping a close watch on Chatchai, as well as a number of local and foreign press members.

Chatchai insisted that he had broken none of the laws that some of his fellow activists had previously fallen foul of.

As a solo performer, he said, he could not have broken the junta’s ban on political gatherings of five or more people.

Moreover, his place of performance – on the Skywalk in Sathorn district – was not within a 150-metre radius of a Royal Palace, hence he could not have violated the Public Assembly Act, he added.

“I insist that I’ve not come to assemble. I’m here to perform arts,” said the activist from the Young People for Social Democracy Movement.

“It depends on how you interpret it. My performance is meant to reflect society. I will keep performing until a person behind the mask steps away,” he said, apparently alluding to Deputy PM Prawit.

Pol Colonel Ponnarong Suriyachaiwong, superintendent at Yannawa police station, said the police had merely “invited” Chatchai for a talk, without pressing any charges against him.

“Despite being a lone performer, he drew a lot of attention from people and the media. His action could also trigger further assemblies,” Ponnarong suggested, adding, “It also obstructed public transport.”

The charges against the five could ultimately land each of them with up to six months in prison and/or a maximum fine of Bt10,000.

The men, aged from 49 to 69, were summoned after they joined an assembly last Thursday to support Prawit, who has been in hot water for his unusual possession of several luxurious watches.

While all they did was participate in a small-scale gathering and hold up banners in support of the deputy PM, they are being charged with breaking the junta’s ban on political gatherings of five or more people.

Moreover, as the gathering was held in front of the Defence Ministry, located metres away from the Grand Palace compound, they have also been charged with breaking the Public Assembly Act, which prohibits public gatherings within a 150-metre radius of any of the Royal Palaces.

According to Pol Colonel Thanakrit Chaijaruwut, superintendent at Phrarachawang police station, the five men were “shocked” and never expected to be charged for holding banners containing no provocative wording.

They said they had decided to turn themselves in to the police in order to prove their innocence and had had no intention of instigating or triggering a situation in any political way, he said.

Police will next bring the five men before Dusit District Court for further prosecution of the case, he added.

“We’ve also ordered additional investigation of recordings from CCTV cameras and photographs. With that, we should be able to identify the rest of the roughly 30 participants and issue summonses accordingly,” the superintendent added.

Officials from the Government Spokesman’s Office handed the caps to everyone who pressed the “follow” button on their mobile phones.

The free caps were given out while some 2,000 local residents waited for Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha during his trip to an agricultural cooperative in Chanthaburi.

Many of the locals needed little help from officials on how to follow the Thai Khufah fanpage. The event helped boost the number of followers.

Security was tight at the cooperative in Makham district yesterday. Only people who had registered to attend the event in advance were allowed in and they had to pass through metal scanners.

Protesters, the TLHR said, had recently been brought to face prosecution whether they had spoken for or against the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).

Examples included the peaceful march by the People Go network that called for an end to the NCPO’s sweeping powers, and 39 activists known as the “MBK 39”, who held an assembly calling for the long-postponed election to be held.

Even participants in protests supporting Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan, who has been under pressure for his unusual possession of a luxury watch collection, were not exempt, the TLHR said.

The protesters all faced charges of allegedly breaking NCPO order no.3/2015 that prohibits all political gatherings of five or more people. The accused in the two latter cases are also accused of allegedly breaking the public assembly act that prohibits public gatherings within a 150-metre radius of royal palaces.

“These prosecutions were made because law enforcers considered that their gatherings were for political purposes,” the TLHR said in a statement

“This turns public assembly, which is a form of constitutionally and internationally endorsed freedom, into a kind of freedom that solely depends on law enforcers’ interpretation [of the law].”

Last March, the UN Human Rights Committee also urged Thailand to guarantee and protect freedom of peaceful assembly following the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right (ICCPR).

“We urge the Thai authorities to respect people who practice their civil and political rights, and agree that such rights are essential and practicable in a democratic regime,” it said

AN ATTEMPT to save defiant Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan has burned out after an online campaign was caught fabricating supporters calling on him to stay in office despite the scandal over his extravagant watches and demands that he step down.

The Change.org campaign website yesterday rushed to delete spam addresses from the petition supporting Prawit as many signatories complained that their names had been used without their consent.

Independent scholar Sarinee Achavanuntakul said in a Facebook post that her email address had been used without her knowledge to support the campaign. She added that she had later withdrawn her name as a supporter.

Freelancer Watthana Bombers Rujirojsakul said on Facebook that he had also received a surprise email response from the website, which said he had signed in support of Prawit, although he had not.

A user identified as “Invisible Hands” launched the campaign on the Change.org website asking people to sign in support of Prawit, who is also defence minister, for the sake of security and the World Cup 2018.

Prawit, as the new president of the Olympic Committee of Thailand, is planning to pool funds from the private sector and the Sports Authority of Thailand to buy the 2018 World Cup broadcast rights so that all matches can be broadcast live on free TV.

After the spam addresses were removed, the number of Prawit supporters was reduced from more than 25,000 on Sunday to only 200, and it stood at 400 as of press time yesterday. The campaign’s page on Change.org said it had been initiated on Sunday by 250 people.

Another campaign under the name of Anonymous Thailand launched on Saturday received 5,008 signatures in support of Prawit yesterday.

The Invisible Hands and Anonymous Thailand campaigns were apparently launched to counter a campaign by child-rights activist Ticha Na Nakhorn, who had received 63,079 signatures as of yesterday supporting the departure of Prawit, after the general announced he would step down if people “did not want him” anymore.

Warisara Sornpet, Change.org’s Thailand campaign director, confirmed yesterday that the pro-Prawit campaigns had been manipulated by coordinated email hacking.

“Our engineers in the US have seen irregularities in the campaign since Saturday and we have notified the initiating campaigner, Invisible Hands, but there has been no response so far,” she said. “The campaign might be removed unless the initiator contacts us.”

Change.org often has experienced similar attempts at manipulation with campaigns focusing on hot topics often being attacked by such tactics, she said.

Prawit is in the hot seat as his possession of luxury wristwatches has been scrutinised on social media. The issue has been submitted to the National Anti-Corruption Commission for examination, but the results have not been issued yet.

There has been speculation that the junta number-two is planning to step down as damage control for the military-led government under Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

However Lt-General Kongcheep Tantravanich, spokesman for the Defence Ministry, said yesterday Prawit still had a “strong will” and “good spirits” to continue performing his duties regarding national security and the safety of society.

Prawit “has good spirits and health, as well as a strong will and determination to work devotedly as a key government figure in taking care of the country’s security and safety of society”, he said.

Also yesterday, political activist Aekachai Hongkangwan submitted to the Defence Ministry the results of two online opinion polls in which most respondents favoured Prawit’s resignation.

A poll conducted by the publicly funded television channel Thai PBS included more than 200,000 people, while another one by the website Drama-Addict drew more than 100,000 respondents.

Rector Pradit Wanarat, said that he had issued the order to suspend the poll about public reaction to Deputy PM Prawit Wansuwan’s luxury watches that was to be released on January 28, an action that prompted the resignation of Nida’s director, Arnond Sakworawich.

Pradit cited three reasons that the poll lacked integrity and failed to meet academic standards.

First, the timing to conduct the poll was not appropriate, Pradit said, as the issue was under investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which has not yet reached any conclusions. So, in his view, the poll results could influence people’s perceptions and society at large, and lead to disturbance.

Second, the poll’s questions could have misled respondents to give responses that the pollsters wished to hear.

Pradit said there were five questions posed in the poll.

First: Have your friends ever lent you luxury watches?

Second: If a politician claimed to have borrowed luxury items from friends, do you think it is true or not?

Third: Do you think such a claim on luxury item’s possession could allow probes into corruption to continue?

Fourth: Do you think a liar would corrupt?

Fifth: Would you accept protection from clans suspected of being corrupt?

Pradit said those questions clearly misled respondents, citing some television programmes that interviewed former directors of the same poll, who pointed to the misleading aspects.

For instance, said Pradit, the first question aimed to ask people with incomes lower than Bt20,000, with 61 per cent of them not having a bachelors degree, suggesting they would be unlikely to have friends who would lend them luxury watches, and their answers would end up with “never”.

The question, Pradit added, also contained emotional and loaded words, suggesting unsound polling.

His third major ethical issue related to bias. Pollsters have to be unbiased and impartial to the issues or persons subject to their polling. The director’s posts on Facebook before the poll release date showed that he was biased, Pradit said. For instance, Pradit cited a January 24 post by Arnond, which allegedly said that if Big Pom (General Prawit) survived, Too (PM Prayut) and the junta would not, cannot, because they would lose all integrity.

Pradit statement argued that due to the three ethical and academic weaknesses, the poll was not a good poll, and because he was responsible for the integrity of the Institute, he had to issue an order to suspend it.

Pradit insisted that he had never amended the poll results in any way over the last five years. He just sometimes asked to see what subjects would be to ensure they are academically based.

Pradit insisted he has not recieved any orders to suspend the poll, and urged the public and the media to have trust in the Institute and its integrity and impartiality based on academic standards.

Arnond, who is a lecturer on business analytics and intelligence at the School of Applied Statistics, had just been appointed to lead the Nida polling office a few weeks earlier, but announced his resignation on the same date as the poll was to be released.

He wrote on Facebook that he had decided to quit with immediate effect. “For me, academic freedom and being respected are the most important values. Even before I had a position, I always stood in society on the side of what is right.”

At first he did not mention which poll he was writing about, but it was later learned that it was the one to do with Prawit’s possession of luxury watches.

Chokechai Ang-kaew submitted the petition to Attorney-General Khemchai Chutiwong via his deputy spokesperson, Kosolwat Inthuchanyong, who said the OAG would expedite the cases as requested if they had already been forwarded to the office.

However, Kosolwat said he had no idea as yet which cases had been submitted to the OAG.

Chokechai said that although the Supreme Court had dismissed the case against then-prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his deputy Suthep Thaugsuban, who were in charge of the situation at the time, citing that the case should have been filed by the National Anti-Corruption Commission – not the Department of Special Investigation – other authorities had been pinpointed during the court’s forensic fact-finding deliberations.

Relatives of the deceased have learned that some cases were submitted to the OAG, therefore they now wish to follow them up as they feel the cases in question have been handled relatively sluggishly, he explained.

For instance, some authorities have been pinpointed as being involved with the 2010 deaths of red-shirt demonstrators inside Wat Pathum Wanaram, but further details have been held back, the lawyer said the relatives were claiming.

The summons by police from Lumpini Station was revealed on Monday on the Facebook page of Nutta Mahattana, one of the 39 activists accused of planning the assembly.

Nutta is scheduled to hold a press conference under the hashtag #MBK39 on Tuesday at the FCCT. She is expected to update the case of the 39 activists, who are known as “the MBK39” and charged with sedition and of violating the junta’s ban on political assembly relating to a gathering on January 27 that demanded an election be held in 2018.

About 100 people gathered to join or observe the gathering held on the Skywalk in front of the MBK shopping mall.

The attempt by police to pressure the venue to bar an attempt to communicate to media should be regarded as a threat to press freedom, Nutta wrote on her Facebook on Monday.

“If police think the conference is a national security threat, why don’t the police contact me directly – because I’m the coordinator,” she wrote.

It is believed that the summons was in response to Nutta’s post on Facebook inviting people to attend the press conference.

The 39 activists last week asked for a postponement of their appearance to acknowledge the charges at Pathum Wan Police Station on Thursday.

The PM turned the brief silence into a joke, saying they were keeping quiet because they were waiting to take photos with him.

He then warned them that he had no idea what would happen next if Thais chose a “bad person” to lead the country. He also insisted that he had not entered the office of prime minister for political purposes.

Prayut met the group during his visit to Ban Pred Nai, which is a model village of mangrove management.

Prayut told them that the country was in trouble today because people still did not respect the rule of law. He said he has never interfered with the justice system and never could.

He also urged them not to allow anyone to draw them into conflict. The country was not yet peaceful and if it was not peaceful in the future, “everything will still be in a mess”, the premier said.