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Australian sentenced for insulting Thai monarchy
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by Dave Keating | January 19, 2009 at 01:42 am
31 views | 5 Recommendations | 1 comment
An 41-year-old Australian writer has been sentenced to three years in prison in Thailand for insulting the Thai monarchy. The insults were made in a book published in 2005.
Harry Nicolaides, 41, originally received a six-year sentence, which the court said it reduced because he had pleaded guilty. The book, "Verisimilitude," was published in 2005 and reportedly sold fewer than a dozen copies.
The case was brought under the country's strict lese majeste laws, which call for a jail term of up to 15 years for anyone who "defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the Regent."
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at 16:32 on January 21st, 2009
This entire story is worth reading. Thanks for posting it.
I lived in Thailand for a year. I know that King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit are well loved, because they have been 'open-hearted' monarchs since the 1950s. It has been a very long time since English monarchs, also well loved today, tried to exert this kind of control over the opinions of their citizens - or should I say "subjects"?
This is a good example of an archaic form of population control. It can only serve to undermine the prestige and the authority of both the government and the monarchy in Thailand.
Iron fisted government control will close peoples' minds and hearts and break their spirits. If they continue with this 'strict' policy against free speech, they will lose their voice on the world stage - and it won't help to move the capital, again, because the society will continue to be undermined from within.