Triam Udom Suksa Pattanakarn School yesterday filed a complaint to the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights to “protect the rights of other students” who feel threatened by the behaviour of Thanalop “Yok” Phalanchai, a student activist who is no longer a student of the school.
The school director, Jintana Srisarakham, and a group of parents submitted the complaint to Senator Somchai Sawangkarn, chairman of the committee.
According to Ms Jintana, the school had provided Yok with every educational need possible, even though she was not technically one of their students as her enrolment was “incomplete”.
The school had now issued a letter directly to her parents to explain the current situation after concerns were voiced about the disruption to Yok’s education the media circus was causing.
She added that Yok had been told she could sit an admission exam with the school for next year; however, the school is not able to accept Yok’s demands, which include a ban on uniforms, as it has legal obligations in most areas that make accommodating the young protester impractical.
Ms Jintana said the school’s rights were also violated by the fact that Yok did not provide enough cooperation with the school. Yok terrified the other students as well as distracting them with the video clips she shot in every part of the school and the phone calls she took from outsiders.
Earlier on July 9, Yok posted a commemoration of her 51 days since being released from the juvenile centre in Nakhon Pathom on her Facebook account. She said that she was affected by the “fake news” made by adults who believed they knew better than her and who tried to silence her accusations of rights violations.
She also accused the school of failing to support her and excluding her from the system.