Reporters Without Borders calls on the Thai pineapple processing company Natural Fruit and the Thai judicial authorities to abandon the three defamation cases still pending against British human rights defender Andy Hall after a Bangkok court dismissed a fourth one today.
The case dismissed last Friday ends the criminal defamation proceedings against Hall over an interview for Al Jazeera in April 2013 in which he commented on the earlier lawsuits that Natural Fruit brought against him over a report by the Finnish NGO Finnwatch for which he works.
An expert on migratory issues, Hall did an investigation for Finnwatch in 2012 into the conditions of Burmese migrant workers at a National Fruit processing plant in southern Thailand.
When a Finnwatch report entitled “Cheap has a high price,” published in January 2013, highlighted grave human rights at the plant, Natural Fruit reacted immediately, bringing civil and criminal defamation cases against Hall but refraining from suing Finnwatch itself.
Including the case filed after the Al Jazeera interview, a total of four cases were brought against Hall, two criminal ones and two civil ones seeking damages. The first criminal case, brought immediately after the report’s publication, also included a charge under the notorious Computer Crimes Act (CCA) that carries a possible seven-year jail term.
