Chutima ‘Oi’ Sidasathian, 26 March 1982 – 15 August 2026, RIP

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand extends its deepest condolences to the friends and family of Chutima ‘Oi’ Sidasathian, a courageous and passionate advocate for media freedom in Thailand, who has died at the age of 44 in an Austrian hospital after suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Chutima began her career as a reporter at the news website Phuketwan, started by Australian journalist Alan Morison, at the beginning of 2008. The focus was on local events in Phuket, usually related to tourism, but in late 2008 Chutima learned from Thai navy contacts that large numbers of Rohingyas fleeing from Myanmar were being intercepted in Thai waters and kept in primitive conditions on off-shore islands.

She and Alan also broke the story that the Thai navy was towing boats packed with Rohingyas out to sea and leaving them there to drift without engines – accounts that were corroborated by Rohingya who washed up in Aceh in Indonesia, or the Indian-administered Andaman Islands.

The couple closely monitored the Rohingya boats arriving on Thailand’s Andaman coast over the next five years, with Chutima helping other news teams cover the story. In late 2013 they were charged with criminal defamation and breaking the Computer Crimes Act for an article in Phuketwan which quoted a Reuters investigation, accusing Thai ‘naval forces’ of complicity in people trafficking. 

Alan and Chutima spent 18 months fighting the charges, under which they faced up to seven years in jail. Their case was held up by human rights groups around the world as exemplifying the repressive influence of Thailand’s laws on freedom of expression.

A judge dropped the charges in September 2015, but the time and resources the couple spent defending themselves forced them to close down Phuketwan and move to Prachuap Khiri Khan.

In 2021 Chutima exposed the illegal diversion of government funds meant for micro-loans in her home province of Nakhon Ratchasima, for which she was subjected to nine charges under the criminal defamation law filed by a deputy mayor. She fought these charges too, even after Alan was diagnosed with cancer, and then her own diagnosis in early 2025. Alan died in April last year.

Chutima was acquitted of all but one charge, and had hoped to beat that before she died.

She was a prominent campaigner against the abuse of the criminal defamation law, so-called SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) prosecutions, and spoke several times at the FCCT.

Chutima was an inspirational personality, who could move from tears of frustration to joyous peals of laughter in a moment. She was generous, empathetic and totally committed to the causes she espoused. She will be dearly missed by the many of us in the media community in Thailand who knew her.