Lese majeste

A Thai court jailed an American man for two and a half years for insulting the king on Thursday. Joe Wichai Commart Gordon appeared in a Bangkok criminal court in an orange uniform and shackles to hear the sentence, after pleading guilty in October to translating excerpts of a banned biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and posting them online.

The 55-year-old salesman from Colorado, who has lived in the US for 30 years and was arrested in May after returning to the country of his birth to seek treatment for arthritis and high blood pressure, intends to ask for a royal pardon.

He told reporters after the verdict was read out that he was not Thai but an American citizen with a US passport and pointed out that he had posted links to the banned biography of the king while he was living in Colorado where he worked as a salesman. "In Thailand, there are many laws that don't allow you to express opinions but we don’t have that in America," he said.

The case has raised questions about the applicability of Thai law to acts committed by foreigners outside Thailand.

US Consul General Elizabeth Pratt told reporters in the Thai capital that the sentence was "severe."

"We continue to respect the Thai monarchy but we also respect the right of expression, which is internationally recognized as a human right," she said.

Twenty years for four text messages

　

The sentence comes weeks after a 61-year-old Thai man was jailed for 20 years on four counts of sending text messages to the private secretary of former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Ampon Tangnoppakul, or "Uncle SMS" as he is known in the Thai media, reportedly insulted the Thai queen in his text messages, whose content has not been made public because this would also be considered a crime under Thailand's stringent lese majeste laws, which prohibit any criticism of the royal family or the monarchy as an institution.

Brad Adams from Human Rights Watch said last week that the severity of penalties for lese majeste offenses was "shocking" and did not think there had been any noticeable difference with the new government. "It seems to be responding to questions about its loyalty to the monarchy by filing countless lese majeste charges," he told reporters.

Earlier this week, Yingluck Shinawatra's government said it had set up a committee to clamp down on websites considered insulting to the monarchy.

Although Ampon Tangnoppakul repeatedly denied the charges, he was sentenced on the basis of Thailand's lese majeste law (Article 112 of the penal code) and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act.

Increasingly, the two laws are being used in combination to curb people’s freedom of expression in Thailand. Whereas in 2005, there were 33 cases, this figure had risen to 478 by 2010 according to the Bangkok Post.

Walk of fearlessness

The popular independent online newspaper Prachatai has come under fire several times, with its premises being searched by police and editors being accused of violating the cybercrime law and insulting the monarchy. "The persecution has led to Prachatai shutting its online forum, where users were able to take part in open debate because they say they can neither guarantee the safety of the users nor their own," said Jost Prachaly from the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bangkok.

According to a study commissioned by the German foundation, some 57,000 webpages have been blocked since 2007. Pachaly said that the lese majeste law was usually cited but that there is "rarely mention of cybercrime such as child pornography, spamming or phishing."

Maja Liebing from Amnesty International says that the importance of the Internet is clear from the fact that the government is doing so much to keep it under control. "It gives a signal to society that people can only go so far... Then they will think twice about expressing their political opinions openly."

Facebook, which has 13 million members in Thailand, is also under the spotlight, with the government calling for the closure of 10,000 pages. The opposition would like to go even further and shut down Facebook and YouTube completely.

When it comes to silencing criticism, the ruling and opposition parties are in agreement but resistance is forming in society.

A "fearlessness walk" has been announced for Saturday in Bangkok.

Author: Rodion Ebbighausen / act
Editor: Arun Chowdhury