LEGAL FRAMEWORK

The constitution “prohibits discrimination based on religious belief.” It states that all persons are equal before the law regardless of religious belief and allows all persons to profess, observe, or practice any religion of their choice as long as the exercise of these freedoms is not “harmful to the security of the State.” The constitution empowers the state to patronize and protect Buddhism as well as other religions, but it also provides for special promotion of Theravada Buddhism through education, the propagation of its principles, and the establishment of measures and mechanisms “to prevent the desecration of Buddhism in any form.”

A special order issued by the former military government in 2016 and still in effect provides for the state’s promotion and protection of “all recognized religions” in the country, but it mandates that all state agencies monitor the “right teaching” of all religions to ensure they are not “distorted to upset social harmony.” Defaming or insulting Buddhism and Buddhist clergy is specifically prohibited by law. Violators may face up to one year’s imprisonment, fines of up to 20,000 baht ($580), or both. The penal code prohibits the insult or disturbance of religious places or services of all officially recognized religious groups. Penalties range from imprisonment for one to seven years, a fine of 20,000 to 140,000 baht ($580 to $4,100), or both.

The law officially recognizes five religious groups: Buddhists, Muslims, Brahmin-Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians. While there is no official state religion, the constitution requires the King to be Buddhist and declares that he is the “upholder of religions.”

Groups associated with one of the five officially recognized religious groups may register to receive state benefits that include access to state subsidies, exemption from property and income taxes, and preferential allocation of resident visas for the registered organization’s foreign officials. These benefits are subsidized under various laws and regulations across multiple agencies. Registration as a religious group is not mandatory, and religious groups may operate without government interference, whether they are officially registered or recognized or not. The RAD is responsible for registering new religious groups, except for Buddhist groups, which are overseen by the National Office of Buddhism (NOB), an independent state agency under direct supervision of the Prime Minister. Buddhist religious clerics who hold administrative and senior ecclesiastical posts are compensated by the NOB, while similar support for Islamic religious leaders is supplied by the Sub-Department of Provincial Administration, Ministry of the Interior.

The RAD may register a new religious group outside one of the five recognized religious groups when it meets the following qualifications: the national census indicates the group has at least 5,000 adherents, possesses a uniquely recognizable theology, is not politically active, and obtains formal approval in a RAD-organized meeting of representatives from the concerned ministries and the five recognized umbrella religious groups. To register with the RAD, a religious group’s leader also must submit documentation on the group’s objectives and procedures, any relationship to a foreign country, a list of executive members and senior officials, and locations of administrative, religious, and teaching sites. The government has not recognized any new religious groups outside the five umbrella groups, and the RAD reports that no applications were received during the year. Despite the lack of formal legal recognition or registration, civil society organizations report that unregistered religious groups operate freely and that the government’s practice of not recognizing or registering new religious groups does not restrict their activities.

The constitution prohibits Buddhist priests, novices, monks, and other clergy from voting in elections, serving in the House of Representatives or Senate, or taking public positions on political matters. Christian clergy may vote in elections as long as they are not wearing formal religious attire. Except for the Chularatchamontri (Grand Mufti), imams are not regarded as priests or clergy and thus may vote in elections and assume political positions.

The Sangha Supreme Council serves as Thai Buddhism’s governing clerical body. The King has unilateral authority to appoint or remove members from the Sangha Supreme Council irrespective of the monk’s rank and without consent or consultation with the Supreme Patriarch, whom the King also has legal authority to appoint.

The penal code bars any activity that insults or defames a religion, whether directed at a sacred object or place of worship, and it specifies offenders shall be subject to two to seven years’ imprisonment or a fine of 2,000 to 14,000 baht ($58-$406), or both.

The law requires religious education classes for all students at both the primary and secondary levels; students may not opt out. The curriculum must contain information regarding the five recognized umbrella religious groups. Students who wish to pursue in-depth studies of a particular religion may study at private religious schools and may transfer credits to public schools. Individual schools, working in conjunction with their local administrative boards, are authorized to arrange additional religious studies courses. There are approximately 350 Catholic- and Protestant-run primary and secondary schools, whose curricula and registration are overseen by the Ministry of Education. The Sangha Supreme Council and the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand, respectively, create the Buddhist and Islamic portions of the religious education curricula required in public schools.

The Central Islamic Council of Thailand, whose members are Muslims appointed by royal proclamation, advises the Ministries of Education and Interior on Islamic issues. The government provides some funding for Islamic educational institutions, the construction of mosques, and Hajj participation. In the Deep South, the Southern Border Provinces Administration Center usually pays for Hajj travel with funding received from the central government. There are several hundred primary and secondary Islamic schools throughout the country. There are four options for students to obtain Islamic education in the Deep South: government-subsidized schools offering Islamic education in conjunction with the national curriculum; private Islamic schools offering non-Quranic subjects such as foreign languages (Arabic and English) but whose curriculum is not subject to government approval; private Islamic day schools offering Islamic education according to their own curriculum to students of all ages; and after-school religious courses for children in grades one through six, often held in mosques.

The Ministry of Justice allows the practice of sharia as a separate legal process outside the national civil code for Muslim residents of the Deep South for issues involving family law, including inheritance. Provincial courts apply this law and a sharia expert advises the judge. The law officially provides the administrative structure of Muslim communities in the Deep South, including the process for selecting the Chularatchamontri, whom the King appoints as the state advisor on Islamic affairs.

The RAD sets a quota for the number of foreign missionaries permitted to register and operate in the country: 1,357 Christian, six Muslim, 20 Hindu, and 41 Sikh. Registration confers some benefits, such as longer visa validity. Representatives of the five officially recognized religious groups may apply for one-year missionary visas that are renewable. Foreign missionaries from other religious groups are not eligible for missionary visas and must obtain tourist visas, which have a 90-day validity. Religious groups reported that being unregistered was not a significant barrier to foreign missionary activity, and many missionaries from unregistered groups worked in the country without government interference.

The immigration law does not recognize refugee status granted by UNHCR to individuals from other countries, and the law does not make enforcement exceptions for refugees or asylum seekers, including those claiming persecution on religious grounds. Such persons are subject to arrest and detention on the same basis as any persons without legal immigration status.

The country is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

GOVERNMENT PRACTICES

On September 21, the Thai and Malaysian prime ministers, along with government officials and delegates from both countries, met and discussed the peace process and development of the country’s southern border region. The Malaysian government moderated talks between the national government and the largest insurgent group, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN). BRN in Thailand agreed in February on a peace plan roadmap, but in the following month, BRN suspended talks pending formation of a new government after elections. As of year’s end, talks had not resumed.

Muslim leaders in the Deep South continued to express frustration with perceived discriminatory treatment by security forces and what they said was a judicial system lacking adequate checks and balances. Duay Jai continued to express concerns regarding security forces collecting DNA from suspected insurgents and their family members through intimidation and force. In October, Duay Jai reported authorities collected DNA from a 67-year-old woman after investigators searched her house and questioned her concerning her son, who was not at home. Investigators claimed the DNA was collected to determine if the son had been involved in a previous antigovernment incident. The NGO Cross Cultural Foundation reported it received 21 complaints that authorities coerced or forced individuals into providing DNA during the year.

According to Deep South Watch, authorities conducted 67 raid and search operations against Muslim insurgents during the year.

Authorities continued to use emergency decree and martial law provisions in effect in the Deep South since 2005 and 2004, respectively, that gave military, police, and civilian authorities significant powers to restrict certain basic rights, including extending pretrial detention and expanding warrantless searches. Authorities delegated certain internal security powers to the armed forces, often resulting in accusations by Muslims of unfair treatment, such as disproportionate searches of vehicles with Muslim passengers.

According to human rights groups and media reports, some refugees and asylum seekers were fleeing religious persecution in their countries of origin. According to UNHCR, the country’s law considers refugees and asylum seekers who entered the country without valid visas to be illegal aliens and thus technically subject to possible arrest, detention, and deportation, regardless of whether they had registered with UNHCR. Authorities, however, generally did not deport persons holding valid UNHCR asylum-seeker or refugee status. UNHCR also reported that the majority of asylum seekers and refugees, including those in detention, were not at risk of refoulement.

The government generally allowed UNHCR access to detained asylum seekers and refugees. In some cases, UNHCR-recognized refugees, including those fleeing religious persecution, reported staying in immigration detention centers (IDCs) in crowded conditions for multiple years. In many cases, the government placed mothers and children in shelters in accordance with a policy of ceasing detention of migrant children. Such shelters provided greater space than IDCs but still restricted freedom of movement, in some cases severely and in others minimally. According to international NGOs, however, there were multiple instances during the year of the government detaining refugee and asylum-seeking minors, including Rohingya Muslims fleeing religious and ethnic persecution in Burma, in IDCs or local police stations.

On May 10, a statement released by the Falun Dafa Information Center reported multiple Falun Gong practitioners in Thailand from China had been held in IDCs since 2014. The practitioners were held for immigration violations, not due to their religious identity. They reportedly requested UNHCR asylee status, which the country, however, does not recognize as a basis for legal immigration.

In November, according to media sources, immigration authorities arrested more than a dozen Christian ethnic Montagnards who fled Vietnam, some of whom reportedly were UNHCR-recognized refugees or asylum seekers. The arrests came against a backdrop of a reported rise in illegal migrants from Vietnam moving to the country. The immigration law does not make exceptions for UNHCR-recognized persons. There were no reports that the arrests for immigration violations were due to the Montagnards’ religious identity.

Media outlets and NGOs reported several dozen Uyghur Muslim asylum seekers from China remained in IDCs, most of them held since 2015. Humanitarian organizations reported Chinese authorities continued to pressure the government to return the Uyghurs to China. Humanitarian groups called on the government to allow these individuals to move to a country of their choosing where they would receive full refugee protections, and not be required to remain in an IDC.

On April 23, Human Rights Watch reported the death of Mattohti Mattursurn (also known as Muhammad Tursun), an ethnic Uyghur asylum seeker who spent nine years in immigration detention. Mattursun reportedly died of liver failure. In February, Aziz Abdullah, another Uyghur detained at Suan Phlu IDC, died at age 49, reportedly of pneumonia. NGOs said the deaths resulted from poor conditions in immigration detention and authorities’ refusal to provide adequate medical care.

Media outlets and NGOs reported in March that immigration authorities in Pattaya arrested 63 Chinese Christian members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, including dozens of children, for overstaying their visas and placed them in immigration detention. There were no reports that their religious beliefs played a role in the arrests and detentions. The group had applied with UNHCR for refugee status, and in April, immigration officials facilitated their departure for a third country.

The government continued to investigate and prosecute embezzlement crimes allegedly committed by senior Buddhist monks and government officials from the NOB.

On May 9, a police raid at Wat Pa Thammakhiri in Nakhon Ratchasima uncovered gold and jewelry valued at approximately 100 million baht ($2.9 million). Authorities arrested five monks and a driver. By May 11, after further investigation, authorities arrested two more monks, and charged the seven monks and two drivers with embezzling approximately 300 million baht ($8.7 million) from donations received by the temple since 2020.

Buddhist monks and temple authorities continued to comply with a 2018 Sangha Supreme Council order prohibiting the use of temple land for political activities or rallies, meetings, or seminars for purposes that violated the law or affected national security, social order, or public morals.

There was no update regarding the cases against Ai Phethong, secretary general of the Organization for Protection of Buddhism for Peace, who was convicted of defaming Muslim Prachachat Party leader Wan Muhamad Noor Matha. Wan Muhammad also filed civil lawsuits against Ai under different defamation acts for Ai’s social media posts accusing the politician of leading an insurgency movement in the Deep South. At the end of the year, the criminal conviction remained on appeal, and the civil lawsuits were pending.

The law denying legal recognition to women monks (bhikkhunis) remained in effect despite the National Human Rights Commission’s 2015 recommendation that the government amend it. The Sangha Supreme Council continued to prohibit women from becoming monks, and women wishing to join the monkhood usually travelled to India or Sri Lanka to be ordained. Of the 239,023 Buddhist clergy in the country, between 250 and 300 were women. Since a gender equality law exempts cases involving “compliance with religious principles,” the government excluded bhikkhunis from gender equality protection. Government officials continued to neither oppose nor support ordination of women, although they allowed bhikkhunis to practice and establish monasteries and temples. Without official recognition, however, monasteries led by women continued to be ineligible for any of the government benefits received by sanctioned Buddhist temples – primarily tax exemptions, free medical care, and subsidies for building construction and running social welfare programs. While male monks in the Deep South received government protection from verbal threats or physical attacks, bhikkhunis did not.

The only government-certified Islamic university in the Deep South, Fatoni University, continued to teach special curricula to Muslim students, including language instruction in Thai, English, Arabic, and Bahasa Malayu, and a mandatory peace-studies course, as well as to integrate religious principles into most course offerings. Three private Christian universities continued to provide religion courses as a component of their curricula and were open to students of any faith.

For the fiscal year ending September 30, the government allocated the RAD approximately 294 million baht ($8.5 million) to support non-Buddhist initiatives, the same amount as allocated during the previous fiscal year. Approximately 261.4 million baht ($7.6 million) of that allocation went to strategic planning for religious, artistic, and cultural development, including the promotion of interfaith cooperation through peace-building projects in the Deep South, the same as was allocated during the previous fiscal year. The RAD also received 1.1 million baht ($32,000) for Deep South conflict resolution and development projects. The NOB, funded separately from the RAD, received 4.19 billion baht ($122 million) in government funding, the same as the previous fiscal year.

Authorities continued to recognize elected provincial Islamic committees. Their responsibilities included providing advice to provincial governors on Islamic issues; deciding on the establishment, relocation, merger, and dissolution of mosques; appointing imams; and issuing announcements and approvals of Islamic religious activities. Committee members in the Deep South continued to report that some acted as advisers to government officials in dealing with the area’s ethnonationalist and religious tensions.

Buddhist monks continued to work as missionaries, particularly in border areas among the country’s tribal populations, and received some public funding. Buddhist missionaries worked in 279 communities and hill tribe regions in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Mae Hong Sorn, Tak, and Petchaboon Provinces. Their focus was teaching Buddhism and community development. The Sangha Supreme Council required Buddhist missionaries to pass training and educational programs at Maha Makut Buddhist University or Maha Chulalongkorn Rajavidyalaya University before being appointed as missionaries. The government, per regulation, did not permit foreign monks to serve as Buddhist missionaries.

According to government statistics from 2022, there were 11 registered foreign missionary groups with visas that operated in the country: six Christian, one Muslim, two Hindu, and two Sikh groups. In 2023 the government reported there were 1,004 foreign missionaries: 949 Christian, 3 Muslim, 20 Hindu, and 32 Sikh. Some foreigners entered the country on tourist visas to conduct missionary work or activities in support of missionaries and were required to depart after 90 days.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continued to fill its special quota of 200 foreign missionaries, granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Security Council. On October 22, the group dedicated a new temple in Bangkok, its first in the country.

Some Buddhist groups continued to express frustration with perceived special allowances for Muslims, such as financial assistance, job placement, and lower testing standards for Muslim university students. On January 18, the government responded by expanding an existing assistance program, previously reserved for Muslim students, to include students from all faiths.

According to members of some Indigenous communities, the government encouraged preservation of their cultural and religious heritage and supported economic opportunities for Indigenous communities in showcasing their handicrafts, cultures, and traditions. Community members also stated authorities sometimes intervened to dictate which crafts to produce or required Indigenous cultural rituals or religious ceremonies be conducted on certain days of the week to maximize the size of the audience of tourists. Members of Indigenous communities reported being fairly compensated for land when asked to relocate due to development, but also said communities consequently no longer had access to the affected ancestral lands and therefore were unable to fully conduct ancestral religious rites and worship in those locations according to their traditions.