Lese majeste as revenge

Lese majeste is essentially a political crime and those accused of it are filling Thailand’s jails. It is a convenient charge to make against a political opponent (or even in a an intra-family dispute) to shut things up. The military dictatorship uses lese majeste to process its opponents in a military court and get them locked away in record time, with almost no publicity. Some of those political charges of lese majeste are used as a means of political revenge against those the junta hates.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the most recent accusation reported at Khaosod. (The way the junta is going, that claim of “most recent” will be irrelevant before the day is out.)

Nattathida Meewangpla, a 36 year-old nurse who was abducted by the military and held incommunicado for six days, then to be charged with “terrorism,” is now “accused of insulting the … [r]oyal [f]amily…”.

Apparently, the charge was made on 17 March 2015 “by Col. Wicharn Joddaeng, a high-ranking officer in the Internal Security Operation Command (ISOC), a Thai counter-insurgency agency.” Wicharn heads up the completely unlikely ISOC “department of laws and human rights.” We believe it is a department to flout the law with impunity and undermine human rights.

He claims Nattathida “copied a text that insulted the monarchy from one chat room and posted it in two other chat groups.” Who knows what “insults” the monarchy these days? Saying the king is as death’s door probably counts as would other truths.

This charge is simply meant to get her jailed as quickly as possible and to lock up another person considered a threat to the military dictatorship.