112 madness and injustice

Prachatai has an article on Article 112 that begins:

Since pro-democracy protests emerged in 2020, Thailand’s draconian royal defamation [Article 112] law has been wielded in several cases concerning political expression, often with disproportionate penalties and with verdicts that far exceed the boundaries of protecting freedom of expression. In many cases, law enforcement seems over the top.

In fact, in all cases, law enforcement is over the top. The 12 cases selected by Thai Lawyers for Human Rights are just some of the most recent.

Our pending & acquitted page and our convictions page, where hundreds of cases are listed, going back to about 2009, and we readily admit that we haven’t been able to keep up with all of them. A quick look through these reveals how the law is applied in bizarre ways and how judges interpret the law in ways that make little sense when compared with the way the law is actually written.

There are cases related to a royal dog, to members of the royal family not covered by the law, to dead kings, and interpretations of fictional characters. Then there’s the large batch of cases related to the king’s – then crown prince’s – “divorce” of his third official wife, including one where a distant relative was charged and convicted for overpricing chilli paste.

What is clear in the post-2020 explosion of lese majeste cases is the effort by the palace-military combination to snuff out a youthful rejection of the king and monarchy.

In relation to that, there’s another story about TLHR “putting up bail for 19 political prisoners, mainly those charged under Section 112 – the lese majeste law – in a bid to protect their human rights.”

TLHR says “there were at least 43 political prisoners as of last Tuesday and at least 26 have been denied bail as they have not yet gone to court. Out of the 26 who are detained in prisons, there were 17 individuals imprisoned under Section 112.”

In one sense, this move is a challenge to the government and the judiciary. Given the intransigence and spinelessness in Netiporn Sanesangkhom’s case and her death, we will not be holding our breath on this latest effort to get bail for these political prisoners.