Giles Ji Ungpakorn is a refugee from Thailand’s lèse majesté laws. He spoke to Index on Censorship about the government and military’s campaign against dissent
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Giles Ji Ungpakorn, who was charged with lèse majesté in January, fled Thailand for Britain over the weekend.
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The crackdown on lèse majesté is intensifying as politics becomes polarised around the monarchy, says Sinfah Tunsarawuth
Action: sign the petition against Thailand’s lèse majesté prosecutions here
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Our friend Roby Alampay of the South East Asian Press Alliance has an interesting post on Comment is Free on the iniquities of Thailand’s lèse majesté laws:
‘The charge of lese-majesty [sic] can be brought against anyone by anybody else. In the past year, police summoned an academic who questioned the royal family’s involvement in Thailand’s recent coups, and a former government official who took part in a media forum with some perspectives on republicanism. But charges have also been brought by fellow citizens against a man who, critical of recent coups, refused to stand in a cinema during the customary playing of the king’s anthem, and then against a labour leader who appeared on a TV news programme to talk about an ongoing strike in a clothing factory. The labour dispute had nothing to do with the man who refused to stand in the theatre. But on TV the union leader happened to wear a shirt that read, “Not standing up is not a crime”, and that was all it took for her union-busting employers to bring Thailand’s most notorious anti-insult law to bear down on the worker. Practically every Thai political camp routinely taunts the others with the charge.’
Read the rest here