In early 2010, Robert Amsterdam was hired by the Former Prime Minister of Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra to defend the rights of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), otherwise known as the Red Shirts.
Shinawatra, who was removed from elected office by a military coup 2006, dispatched the Amsterdam team to Bangkok to investigate and collect intelligence on senior military personnel and coup-appointed political leadership to present a series of claims in several international jurisdictions.
While Amsterdam was in Bangkok on one fact-finding mission, the Thai Army was deployed to forcefully break up the Red Shirt protests, resulting the murder of 91 unarmed citizens (the Bangkok Massacre of 2010). The Amsterdam team subsequently prepared an application to the International Criminal Court (ICC) documenting crimes against humanity committed by the Thai military, along with numerous other filings before organizations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union highlighting Thailand’s failure to uphold basic due process, constitutional, and democratic norms.
The firm was able to achieve a historic precedent in Thailand through an indictment of the former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, proving his UK citizenship with an innovative application of the Rome Statute of the ICC.
The Pheu Thai Party, with the support of the Red Shirts, was able to prevail in the May 2011 elections and remove the leadership responsible for the violence.