Chutima Sidasathian, an award-winning Thai investigative journalist whose reports exposing corruption attracted relentless legal harassment from government and corporate interests, has died at the age of 44.
She passed away on Aug 15 in Innsbruck, Austria, where she had been undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer, according to Michele Nayman, a friend.
Her passing came a year after the death of her partner in life and journalism, Alan Morison, who founded the Phuket-based online news outlet Phuketwan.
The pair were working together at Phuketwan when the Royal Thai Navy filed criminal defamation and computer crime complaints in 2013 over a report implicating navy personnel in trafficking of Rohingya refugees.
The Phuket Provincial Court in September 2015 dismissed the suits but Phuketwan eventually closed down. Chutima said at the time that the pressure of constant legal harassment made it difficult for the news organisation to continue doing its job.
In March 2024, Chutima was acquitted of three charges of criminal defamation in a case brought by a local mayor in Nakhon Ratchasima. The official brought the case after she exposed irregularities in microcredit lending of money from the Village Fund programme through the state-owned Government Savings Bank (GSB).
The Provincial Court in her native Nakhon Ratchasima ruled that Chutima was entitled to make genuine criticism of local administrators in the public interest.
The government went on to investigate the banking scandal and a GSB internal investigation also confirmed Chutima’s findings
The National Human Rights Commission categorised the case as one of a long line of “Slapp” — Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation — cases filed in Thailand. (Story continues below)
At one point Chutima was facing five Slapp complaints in connection with her work. As of late last year, when she was undergoing cancer treatment abroad, only one case remained and it was without legal merit, her supporters said.
“Before I die, I want the case against me to be dropped and for Thailand to abolish criminal defamation,” the legal NGO Media Defence quoted her as saying in December 2025.
“I see my country as a much better country if the poor are treated fairly and honourably,” she told the same group in 2023. “What we all truly deserve is mutual respect, shared smiles, laughter without any oppression or control from those in power.”
