Lèse majesté in Thailand

Scope of the law

As lèse-majesté is listed as one of the offences relating to the security of the kingdom, according to section 7 of the Thai Criminal Code, even alleged offences committed outside the kingdom can be punished within Thailand.

Section 112 of Thai Criminal Code currently reads as follows:

"Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, the Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years."

The penalty for lèse-majesté in Thailand was toughened from a maximum of seven years imprisonment during the premiership of royalist Tanin Kraivixien (1976–77). Also banned was criticism of any member of the royal family, royal development projects, the institution of royalty, the Chakri Dynasty, or any previous Thai king. These harsher provisions have been retained to the present day.

In 2007, controversy arose over whether criticism of members of Bhumibol's privy council also constituted criticism of Bhumibol. Police Special Branch Commander Lt Gen Theeradech Rodpho-thong refused to file charges of lèse-majesté against activists who launched a petition to oust Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda, declaring that the law only applied to members of the royal family. Two days later, he was demoted by Police Commander Seripisut Temiyavet. During the Songkran 2009 unrest, Thaksin Shinawatra accused the privy council president of masterminding the 2006 military coup. Royalists chose to interpret this as an attack on Bhumibol himself.

In a Kafkaesque twist, even calls to reform lèse-majesté laws have themselves resulted in charges of lèse-majesté. Political scientist Giles Ungpakorn noted that "the lèse-majesté laws are not really designed to protect the institution of the monarchy. In the past, the laws have been used to protect governments and to shield military coups from lawful criticism. This whole [royal] image is created to bolster a conservative elite well beyond the walls of the palace."

In 2013, a man was found guilty of "preparing and attempting" to commit an act of lèse-majesté. He had images and captions deemed to defame or threaten the royal family in his electronic device—which, his accusers said, potentially could have been connected to the Internet and been spread online. But the police seized the material before it was posted. He was found guilty, despite the law providing that mere preparation of the act is not a legal offence.

In 2016, a singer and activist, in addition to his prison sentence for defaming the monarchy, was ordered to write a song promoting “national reconciliation” after completing his sentence.

Legal proceedings

In 2013, a person filed lèse-majesté charges against his brother, showing how easily the lèse-majesté law can be misused and that the law has now become a potential weapon in family feuds. Often the police, courts, and prosecutors are afraid they will be accused of disloyalty to the monarch if they fail to prosecute allegations of lèse-majesté.

Details of the charges are rarely made public for fear of compounding the offence by repeating the original words deemed to have been insulting.

Article 14 of the Computer Crimes Act BE 2550 (2007), which broadly bars the circulation through computer systems of information and material deemed detrimental to national security, has also been used to prosecute cases of lèse-majesté.

In the case of Ampon Tangnoppakul, the Criminal Court found that:

"The prosecutor could not expressly prove that the defendant sent the messages as mentioned in the charge...but the grounds for his inability to introduce any eyewitnesses are the serious nature of the offence in question, to such an extent that a person intending to commit it would conduct the commission in absence of others...It needs to derive the guilt from the circumstantial evidence introduced by the prosecutor...And every circumstance evidence adduced by the prosecutor could firmly, proximately and reasonably indicate all circumstances giving rise to an absolute belief that during the periods of time aforementioned, the defendant sent the four messages as accused."

As to why the court did not grant the benefit of the doubt to Ampon, Court of Justice spokesperson Sitthisak Wanachaikit replied:

"When the public prosecutor who institutes the proceedings can exercise his burden of proof to the extent of bringing to light the evil intent of the defendant...the defendant needs to be punished according to the gravity of the case."

The courts sometimes use videoconferencing systems for court proceedings, so that defendants do not have to be physically present in the court. Judges have also said the accuser did not necessarily have to prove the information was factual "because if it is true, it is more defamatory, and if it isn't true, then it's super-defamatory." Detainees are seen barefoot and shackled at the ankles when brought to court, while two detainees have died in military custody. One hanged himself, and the other died of a blood infection, according to his autopsy.

Pleading guilty to committing lèse-majesté is seen as a move to seek a royal pardon if a person is handed a lengthy prison term. One commented that it was the king's generosity and sense of fair play that led him to grant pardons for lèse-majesté convictions.

2005–06 Thai political crisis

Premier Thaksin Shinawatra and royalist activist Sondhi Limthongkul both filed charges of lèse majesté against each other during the 2005–2006 political crisis. Thaksin's alleged lèse-majesté was one of the stated reasons for the Thai military's 2006 coup.

During his birthday speech in 2005, King Bhumibol Adulyadej encouraged criticism of himself:

"Actually, I must also be criticised. I am not afraid of the criticism concerning what I do wrong, because then I know. If you say the king cannot be criticised, it means that the king is not human. [...] If the king can do no wrong, it is akin to looking down upon him, because the king is not being treated as a human being. But the king can do wrong....If someone offers criticisms suggesting that the king is wrong, then I would like to be informed of their opinion. If I am not, that could be problematic... If we hold that the king cannot be criticised or violated, then the king ends up in a difficult situation."

Post-2006 coup

After the 2006 Thai coup d'état, dozens of radio stations have also been shut down due to alleged lèse majesté insults.

Academics have been investigated, imprisoned, and forced into exile over accusations of lèse-majesté. In 2007, Boonsong Chaisingkananon of Silpakorn University was the subject of a police investigation for asking students in an exam to discuss whether the monarchy was necessary in principle for Thai society and if it could be reformed to be consistent with democracy. Prominent historian Somsak Jeamteerasakul was arrested for proposing an eight-point plan on the reform of the monarchy. Somsak declared that he had never proposed to overthrow the monarchy and had never insulted Bhumibol personally. Professor Giles Ji Ungpakorn went into exile after his book, A Coup for the Rich, questioned Bhumibol's role in the 2006 coup.

Observers attribute the increasing number of lèse-majesté cases in recent years to King Bhumibol's public invitation of criticism in 2005, increased polarization following the 2006 military coup, and to speculation over his declining health.

During the government of Yingluck Shinawatra, the number of arrests and convictions for lèse-majesté offences significantly declined. However, she said she would not seek to reform the law. There were 478 cases in 2010.

Post-2014 coup

In May 2014, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), the military junta, granted authority to a military tribunal to prosecute lèse-majesté in Thailand. Military courts have routinely imposed harsher sentences than civilian courts would. In August 2015, the Bangkok Military Court sentenced Pongsak Sriboonpeng to 60 years in prison for his six Facebook postings (later reduced to 30 years when he pleaded guilty). It was Thailand's longest recorded sentence for lèse-majesté. The courts were dubbed "kangaroo courts."

Human rights groups say the lèse-majesté laws have been used as a political weapon to stifle free speech. iLaw, a Thai non-profit organization seeking legislative change, released a 2014 annual report which details changes after the 2014 coup. The junta issued orders and invoked martial law to hold persons in custody for seven days without pressing any charges against them. Secret trials were used. The officials seized personal communication devices to search for incriminating evidence.

In December 2014, parents of Srirasmi Suwadee, formerly a Thai princess, were sentenced for “insulting the royal family and lodging a malicious claim.” In 2015, the Minister of Justice asked the French ambassador to help extradite Thais charged with lèse-majesté; however, the military government has never successfully extradited someone living abroad. In November 2015, Glyn T. Davies, the US ambassador to Thailand, was investigated for a speech criticizing long prison sentences handed to those who found guilty of lèse-majesté. Critics accuse the junta of harnessing the deep reverence that Thais have for the king to boost their own power. In 2016, Facebook blocked users in Thailand from accessing a page satirizing Thailand’s royal family, citing the lèse-majesté law. Around the same time, there was speculation that the junta was able to obtain private chat logs of Facebookers.

Tenth Reign

In December 2016, Jatupat “Pai” Boonpattararaksa, a rights group member was accused of lèse majesté for sharing BBC Thai biography of Thailand's new king Vajiralongkorn. He was the only person to be arrested even though more than 2,600 people also shared the story. At least 68 persons have been with lèse majesté since the latest coup.

Acts punished

Acts deemed insulting to Bhumibol's image are also considered as criminal offences under the doctrine of lèse-majesté in Thailand. This includes placing photographs of anybody on a website in such a way as to appear above photographs of the king. In 2007 Oliver Jufer, a Swiss man, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for daubing black paint on portraits of Bhumibol while drunk in Chiang Mai. Suwicha Thakor was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison, later commuted to 10, for posting a picture on an Internet web board that was deemed insulting to Bhumibol, thereby violating section 112 of the Criminal Code and violating the Computer Crime Act (CCA) of 2007. The CCA was passed by the military junta following the 2006 coup. Suwicha's conviction was the first time that it had been successfully used to prosecute lèse-majesté. A nurse wearing black on Bhumibol Adulyadej's birthday was charged with lèse majesté. In 2015, Prachatai published an infographic showing that bathroom graffiti, a hand gesture, a hearsay report of a taxi conversation, and not standing during the playing of the royal anthem, among other things, could be punished as acts of lèse-majesté.

Internet blocking measures

Of particular concern to Thailand relating to the Internet are (1) malicious comments made against the institution of the monarchy and the royal families, who are by law not in a position to defend themselves, (2) improper content and language aimed at inciting hatred and undermining national security for political or other reasons, and (3) pornographic content, in particular child pornography.

The government, through the Office of Prevention and Suppression of Information Technology Crimes, maintains a "war room" where about a dozen computer specialists monitor the content of the Internet for pages which disparage the monarchy or pose a threat to national security. A web crawler is used to search widely. When an offending image or language is found the office obtains a court order blocking the site. On 28 October 2008, The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) announced plans to spend about 100–500 million baht to build a gateway to block websites with contents defaming the royal institution.

In 2008, "more than 4,800 webpages ha[d] been blocked...because they contain[ed] content deemed insulting to Thailand's royal family". As of December 2010, nearly 60,000 websites have been banned for alleged insults against Bhumibol. As of 2011, 70,000 pages had been blocked over a four-year period.

On 4 April 2007, the Thai government blocked Thai access to YouTube as a result of a video clip which it deemed insulting to the king. Various leaders of the military junta claimed that the clip was an attempt to undermine the monarchy, attack Thailand as a country, and threaten national security.

The website of Same Sky Books, publishers of Same Sky magazine, was shut down by the military government after comments on its bulletin board questioned claims made by the Thai media that the entire country was in mourning over the death of Princess Galyani Vadhana.

In December 2015, the court verdict against Chiranuch Premchaiporn, webmaster of the news website Prachatai, was upheld in the highest court: "an eight-month suspended jail sentence and a 20,000 baht fine". Previously, she had been jailed without bail for nearly a year for not removing—in 2008—an allegedly insulting comment from an article fast enough. Although the comments did not directly mention Bhumibol or members of his family, the court found that Chiranuch displayed insulting intent. Arrested in September 2010, she could face up to 50 years imprisonment if found guilty.

Support

A Thai official said that the lèse majesté law is similar to libel law for commoners. Some abuse their rights by spreading hate speeches or distorted information to incite hatred towards the monarchical institution. Those who were accused of lèse majesté had right to fair trial, due opportunity to contest the charges and assistance from lawyer, as well as the right to appeal.

In May 2016, Justice Minister remarked on "concerns raised by United Nations Security Council member countries during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva" on 11 May 2016: "that foreign countries would not understand why Thailand needs the lèse majesté law because they are not "civilised" nations with cultural refinement like ours."

A judge in a lèse majesté case, which a man was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison, said he would have given a longer sentence, but was advised on the shorter term by the court's deputy president.

Oppose

The lèse majesté law is described as "draconian." Amnesty International considers anyone jailed for insulting Bhumibol to be a political prisoner.

Article 112 is typically deployed with politically expedient timing, rather than at the time of the supposed offense. Jakrapob Penkair, a former Minister to the Office of the Prime Minister, commented "It’s not about your action, it’s about the timing. They wait until the moment when you seem most vulnerable."

Satirical reaction

Not The Nation, an anonymous website that satirizes a Thai newspaper, The Nation, satirized the media and public response paid to the case of Thai American Joe Gordon in contrast to that paid to the drug-related case of Australian Schapelle Corby and to the pardoning of Greek-Cypriot-Australian Harry Nicolaides. NTN later satirized plea bargaining in the "Uncle SMS" case. In December 2013, NTN circumvented the chilling effect of LMIT on discussion of succession with a discussion of the abdication of royal dog Thong Daeng.

In July 2014, British comedian John Oliver described Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn a "buffoon" and showed the leaked video of Vajiralongkorn and his topless wife celebrating the birthday of the prince's poodle, Air Chief Marshal Foo Foo, in a satirical piece about monarchy in general on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The Thai military government described Oliver as "undermining the royal institution", to which Oliver responded by saying "It seems my Thailand vacation is going to have to be postponed very much indefinitely. If I can bring down your monarchy, you have—at best—a wobbly monarchy."

Activists against the law

Literature