Despite being released without charge after staging an anti-coup protest during Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's visit to Khon Kaen last week, members of the university's Dao Din student group say they fear for their lives.
"We are spending every day worried whether we are being followed or monitored or not by you-know-who," said Khon Kaen University's (KKU) senior law student Sasiprapa Raisa-nguan, a Dao Din member.
The law student spoke to the Bangkok Post on Thursday at the Century Park Hotel. She was among three Dao Din members who appeared as guests of a Thai PBS team that won an award at the 2014 Best Child Rights Reporting Awards, organised by Isra Institution and Unicef.
The award presentation was to mark the UN's annual Universal Children's Day on Nov 20 and to honour the best media reports published in local newspapers and broadcast on radio and television related to children's rights promotion.
The Dao Din group had earlier been interviewed by the Thai PBS team for the Siang Prachachon Plian Prathed Thai (Voice of the People who Change Thailand) programme.
Until yesterday, Ms Sasiprapa and other members could not directly contact their five friends who staged the protest. But they knew everyone was safe.
On Nov 19, five KKU students wearing "No Coup" T-shirts staged a symbolic protest by raising the defiant three-finger salute borrowed from The Hunger Games Hollywood blockbuster franchise while Gen Prayut was giving a speech.
The five were whisked from the scene and sent to a military camp for a re-education session. They were released the same day.
"If the government is afraid of a mere three-finger salute from students, this country is too fragile," Ms Sasiprapa said.
She said everyone in this country is entitled to freedom of expression regardless of their political preferences.
She said they were trying to send a message in order to stop people threatening their friends, so they could come back to live life as usual and prepare for exams.
At the awards presentation Tatri Taiphapoon, lecturer at Chulalongkorn University's faculty of communication arts, welcomed that violations of children's rights in media coverage has been improved; however, content that violated childrens' rights was still found.