Chutima Sidasathian

Chutima Sidasathian was born on 26 March 1982 in Non Thai district, Nakhon Ratchasima province, in north-eastern Thailand. She described herself as someone who had broken out of what she called the cycle of poor education. She earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Phuket Rajabhat University and a master's degree in political science from Ramkhamhaeng University, and later a PhD in Asian studies from Walailak University, with a thesis on Rohingya refugees.

In 2009 her series for the South China Morning Post on boat dwellers drew attention to their treatment. The same year she joined Phuketwan, an English-language news site in Phuket, where she reported on refugees, corruption and rural hardship. With editor Alan Morison she covered Rohingya boat people almost daily, winning a 2010 Society of Publishers in Asia award for human rights reporting, and she worked as a fixer and interpreter for the Reuters team whose investigation into trafficking won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.

In July 2013 Phuketwan republished a 41-word paragraph from the Reuters investigation alleging the involvement of Thai naval officers in trafficking. The Royal Thai Navy filed criminal defamation and Computer Crimes Act complaints carrying a possible seven-year sentence. She and Morison refused to apologise and were acquitted by the Phuket Provincial Court on 1 September 2015. Phuketwan closed that December, which she blamed on constant legal harassment.

From 2021 she reported on farmers in 16 villages of Nakhon Ratchasima who were being pursued for debts on microcredit loans they said they never received. Her reporting alleged that funds had been misappropriated in Banlang sub-district, and she filed complaints with the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the Ombudsman, the Department of Special Investigation and the National Human Rights Commission. The local mayor brought five criminal defamation complaints, amounting to nine charges, and she was briefly detained in December 2022.

In October 2023 the National Human Rights Commission found the case to be a SLAPP. In March 2024 the Nakhon Ratchasima Provincial Court acquitted her on three charges, ruling that she was entitled to make genuine criticism of local administrators, and prosecutors later dropped several further cases. A government Special Commission of Investigation followed, and the Government Savings Bank's own inquiry confirmed her findings. She was shortlisted for Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Award in 2024.

Her partner in life and journalism was Alan Morison, the Australian founder and editor of Phuketwan, whom she met when she joined the site in 2009. He died of cancer in 2025. Beyond her reporting she helped trace missing relatives for families, including a man abandoned by traffickers years earlier, and paid for the education of children in families harmed by the lending scheme she investigated.

Diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer, she moved to Austria for treatment while one criminal defamation case against her remained open. Chutima Sidasathian died on Saturday 15 August 2026, aged 44. The Bangkok Post, citing her friend Michele Nayman, reported that she died in Innsbruck, Austria, where she had been receiving treatment for pancreatic cancer. Media Defence, Index on Censorship and the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand published tributes.

Media Defence, which supported her legal defence from 2015, said she spent her last years campaigning to end SLAPP cases and repeal Thailand's criminal defamation laws so that others could report more freely. Her acquittals and the official confirmation of her banking findings are cited by press freedom groups as evidence of how such laws are misused against journalists.