Lese-Majeste laws in Thailand have been in the international news over the last months with the arrest of foreigners there who have been accused of bad-mouthing the Royals.
In Thailand the Royal Family are taken extremely seriously and any expressions of disrespect are zero tolerated. One Thai intellectual, Sulak Sivaraksa, was arrested for calling The King (when talking about the King’s fondness for sailing) “skipper”.
Lese-Majeste laws are a bit similar to defamation laws here but they are criminal rather than civil, so prison is a real possibility. In fact, if you offends the Thai Royals, prison is a formality. This debate lays out the technicalities.
There are been a growing number of cases in recent years but in the last year there have been more cases than ever with the political standoff between Thaksin and the “Royal” democrats coming to a head.
The “Royal” democrats, made up of the Army and the political establishment, pushed out Thakin’s Thai-love-Thai party, a mixture of the poor and the agricultural, and used the Lese-Majeste laws freely to do so. They have also closed down an estimated 3000 websites.
There is a deep fear among the ruling elite of an anti-royal sentiment accumulating among those they usurped. The Thai-love-Thai party has without doubt the most support in Thailand but they do not have Royal or military backing. Their supporters feel very disenfranchised at the moment and with members of the Royal family giving public support to the coup that disenchantment is seeping into the monarchy.
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Hi Paul interesting post,
Found comments similar to yours on the web from a fellow blogger. The post is pretty comprehensive in what the Thai Prime Minister recently said to the press regarding his own relationship, and indeed the whole Thai establishment, with the press. (or so he thought)
Abhisit Vejjajiva said he valued the need for a free media and fair comment. Having been part of the 1997 – 2001 government, who enjoyed high ratings amongst global media monitoring groups, there seems to be a sense that this is a genuine statement.
It goes onto say that:
Under his leadership, the media communities would be protected to ensure they can operate with freedom, non-interference and social responsibility. He pledged to amend any law that contravenes the rights and freedom of the people and the media. In months to come, he said this government would amend the Official Information Act (1997) to promote access and disclosure of official information.
Sadly these sentiments fell apart shortly after as deputy commander of the Crime Suppression Division led 10 officials armed with a search warrant signed a day earlier to the Prachatai. com office in Huay Kwang.
Full article is here
http://www.asianewsnet.net/news.php?id=4395&sec=3
Hi Paul, really interesting post^^
Before your post, I know little about Thailand media.
I think the Lese-Majeste laws in Thailand is the same like what happenen in Chinese cultural revolution, people shoud be extremely careful about what they have said or writen, honestly, some famous writers died of that, and even Chinese vice president died because of his different thought from the president, it’s really scary, and it really had a lot of impacts on the generation like my parents.
Knowlski,
thanks for enlightening me on some of the poitical characteristcis of Thailand.
Whilst reading your post, it struck me that in some respect we have, or did have at least, our own form of the Lese-majeste law – albeit unwritten, and certainly now weak if not non-existent.
Years ago, I believe it would have been unheard of to speak out against, or criticise our own Royal Family – this may well have been tens of years ago. Without delving too far into the mists of time, certainly I think this would have been true for the early years of the 20th century. I don’t believe there were any specific laws, apart from the obvious one of Treason, that legislated against “dissing” the Royal Family – was this just the ‘times’, was it a natural reverence for an institution that appeared mythical, was it the class system in operation, was it just respect? I do not know the answer to these questions, but what is clear, regardless of whether one supports the monarchy or not, these days it is just so easy to mock, criticise, ridicule, our ruling family. Maybe that is inevitable when the monarchy is not a political ruling establishment. Maybe it is just a feature of our times. Whatever, it seems, in this country at least, the unwritten code of respect for the monarchy has been torn up.
The situation in Thailand is I am sure, far more complex than here. Reading your post has already increased my knowledge of the Thailand political machine by a factor of 100. It appears that these laws are not consistent in their application, which only adds to the potential problems they may cause for the Thai citizen and visiting journalists.
In a recent Comment Is Free post on The Guardian website(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/22/thailand-nicolaides-lese-majesty) Roby Alampay describes the case of Australian write Harry Nicolaides, (imprisoned for three years under the law) and the continuing concerns of the BBC`s Jonathan Head over his reporting of the recent political crises.
Not pleasant reading, and yet one more reminder of how we take our westernised liberties so much for granted.
By the way did you know that Prince Charles talks to plants? Crazy.
Echoing Rob’s comment, I was under the impression that high treason is still on the statute books here – if you insult the Queen, you may face a prison sentence. However, if it IS still the case I don’t think it is used very often at all. Freedom of expression seems to have greater weight these days. But a really interesting post nonetheless.
Amy Pollock