With a major update: Nitirat, coup and lese majeste

Readers will likely already have seen the long report at Prachatai on Nitirat’s continuing push to seek legal measures to nullify the noxious impacts of the 2006 military junta’s laws, including its 2007 Constitution  and the lese majeste law.

Nitirat’s renewed efforts begin in January.

The Thammasat University based lawyers say they have

listened to all the feedback [on their initial proposal], heeding both support and criticism.  We intended to push our proposals steadily further, but then came the floods; so we had to stop for a while.  Meanwhile, we were repeatedly asked what we would do next.  Some said that it was a pity that the floods came, otherwise we would move forward.  However, we’ve never stopped thinking about our proposals, always reconsidering, reviewing and refining the details, and we are determined to push them to reality….

Nitirat’s anti-Article 112 campaign will be launched on 15 January and will seek “to collect signatures to propose legal amendments to Parliament, based on Nitirat’s proposal.” Its campaign to nullify the legal impacts of the coup will begin on 22 January.

2012 is chosen as it will mark the centenary of the failed anti-monarchy action by a “group of military men and intellectuals against King Rama VI in 1912, which inspired the People’s Party’s overthrow of the Absolute Monarchy two decades later… and [is] the 80th anniversary of the 1932 revolution.”

Read the whole thing at Prachatai.

Update: At The Nation, Thammasat University law lecturer Vorachet Pakeerut, a key member of the Nitirat group, has called for reasoned debate on lese majeste. In any normal society, that would seem a reasonable call, but in Thailand, expect plenty of opposition to a reasonable call on this notorious law.

Referring to Article 112, the lawyer urged opponents to “think about it logically…”.

The lecturer wants a “new draft law, which is more democratic, accountable and less draconian than the current one with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.”

Vorachet said that: “People should have the right to air [their views about the monarchy] in a peaceful manner. Thailand is in a transitional period and I want to see more reason being employed…”.

We don’t imagine that the royalists will listen.

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