The Thai activist and former senator Jon Ungphakorn has died peacefully at home at the age of 77, the Prachathai news agency announced on Tuesday.
Jon was the co-founder of Prachathai and iLaw (Internet Dialogue for Law Reform), a non-governmental organisation advocating freedom and democracy.
He was also remembered as a political activist and a campaigner promoting equal access to healthcare. He founded the Aids-Access Foundation in 1991. He was elected as a senator for Bangkok in 2000.
Jon received the prestigious Magsaysay Award for government service in 2005.
The Magsaysay committee called him “a committed Thai leader who fought for the rights of disadvantaged sectors of society”. The panel also praised him for “his impassioned insistence as a senator that Thailand respect the rights and attend humanely to the needs of its least advantaged citizens”.
Jon was born in London on Sept 19, 1947. He was a son of the late former Bank of Thailand governor Puey and Margaret Smith Ungphakorn. His brothers are Peter Mytri Ungphakorn, a former Business editor of the Bangkok Post, and the political scientist and activist Giles Ji Ungpakorn.