Self-exiled Thai academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun has left Japan temporarily following a mysterious chemical attack on him and his partner in their Kyoto home.
In an interview with The Financial Times, Mr Pavin declined to say where he was for security reasons. Police had moved his partner to a safe house in Kyoto, he said.
The incident occurred nearly a month ago but only came to light last week when comments he made about it at a seminar were posted on the Facebook page of an academic network. He told the FT that Japanese police had asked him earlier not to discuss the case, but he broke his silence after the news leaked out.
Mr Pavin told the FT that a man dressed in black and wearing a mask broke into his apartment before 5am on July 8 when he and his partner were asleep. The man lifted the bedclothes and sprayed them with a chemical substance that caused a burning sensation on their skin.
The men began screaming, he said, alerting a neighbour who called the police. The two were treated at a hospital, and a police forensic team came to the apartment to begin an investigation.
“It was nothing lethal, but it was quite bad,” Mr Pavin told the FT, saying he believed the chemical agent was a powerful form of pepper spray. “The impact of the chemical was with us for two days.”
He said he believed the assailant was Japanese, and had used a hammer to break into the apartment.
A spokesman for Kyoto Prefectural Police Headquarters on Friday confirmed that the force had launched an investigation, but declined to provide further details.
Mr Pavin said the Japanese police’s international terrorism unit was involved, but local police denied their involvement. “They understood I was a refugee,” Mr Pavin said. “They said that because of that, they do not see this as a simple burglary, like breaking in.”
A former regular contributor to the Bangkok Post and an outspoken critic of the establishment, Mr Pavin moved from Singapore to Japan in 2012 to take a position as an associate professor at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University.
Shortly after the military coup in 2014, the junta issued a warrant for his arrest for violations of Section 112 of the Criminal Code, better known as the lese majeste law. When he did not show up, his passport was revoked. His family in Bangkok has been harassed, he has said.
The academic continues to speak and write frequently, with The Washington Post among the publications in which his work appears. He also has 180,000 followers on Facebook.
“The message is getting clearer and clearer for Thai anti-monarchists: nowhere and no one is safe,” said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in Bangkok. “Violence against critics of the monarchy seems to have stretched beyond Thailand’s neighbouring countries and reached Japan, which is considered to be one of the safest places in the world.”