Exiled academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun on December 11 revealed that he was stalked by a man to his apartment in Japan, saying it was not the first time he had the experience.

In a Facebook post, Pavin said that Japanese police on December 2 had arrested a Japanese man, aged around 30, who was loitering in front of his apartment in Kyoto.

The academic said his neighbours had spotted the man’s suspicious behaviour and called the police. After being interrogated, the man confessed that he had been “chasing/monitoring” him since November 30 on the orders of “someone”.

This was not the first threat he had faced, he added. Last year, someone broke into his apartment and attacked him with a chemical spray.

Pavin said: “This time, an unusual thing happened. Someone turned up at my university office, pretending to be a deliveryman. When he was told that I was not in the office, he left immediately. The university alerted the police. We were able to obtain footage of him from CCTV and begin the investigation.

“Around the same time, I started to receive anonymous phone calls for the entire week . . . This was just like last time before I was attacked. A Japanese man pretended to call me from the post office, asking for my address. I told the police.

“Eventually we contacted the post office and we were told that the post office would normally never call customers and would never call a number withheld. So, these calls were fake.”

Initial suspicion on December 2 was that the arrested man could have been linked to a network in Europe, especially in the Czech Republic.

“It is not coincidental that Aum Neko [a pro-democracy activist] was attacked last year and the police were able to arrest two men who were from the Czech Republic,” he said. “So, there is surely a connection. I am in the process of connecting the Japanese and French police for further investigation.”

THE NATION (THAILAND)/ASIA NEWS NETWORK