ASIA HAND Royal contradictions in Thailand
By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - When Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's public relations team
posted an inaccurate photograph of King Bhumibol Adulyadej to her official
Facebook page, the premier was potentially in violation of the country's strict
lese majeste law. While no such charges have been filed while her request for a
royal pardon is pending, the widening use of the draconian law has brought the
democratic credentials of both sides to Thailand's political conflict into
question.
Last week, Thailand wrapped up annual birthday gala celebrations for King
Bhumibol, the world's longest reigning monarch who turned 84 on December 5. This
coincided with two widely criticized lese majeste convictions, one last month
of an ailing 61-year old Thai man who allegedly sent remarks critical of the
monarchy by SMS, and another last week of a Thailand-born United States citizen
who translated and posted to the Internet passages from a banned book about the
king.
The European Union and United States both issued unusually critical public
statements about the verdicts, raising diplomatic concerns that the rising use
of the law is undermining freedom of expression. Western embassies, including
European countries with constitutional monarchies, have engaged Thai
authorities from behind the scenes in recent years on ways to temper and
modernize the law, which allows for 15-year prison sentences and is the
harshest of its type in the world.
Human rights groups, until now seen as mostly reticent on the issue, have used
the diplomatic cover to also make strong statements against the law's widening
use. Amnesty International said that convicted US citizen Joe Gordon should be
considered a "prisoner of conscience", while Human Rights Watch referred to
recent lese majeste penalties as "shocking" and an apparent government response
to lingering questions about its loyalty to the crown. The local and foreign
press are also giving lese majeste charges more critical coverage than
previously.
Academic studies show that the law's use has surged since the 2006 military
coup that ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the incumbent
premier's self-exiled and criminally convicted elder brother. Coup-makers
justified their putsch in part on charges that Thaksin was disloyal to the
crown - volatile allegations in Thailand's political context that Thaksin has
consistently denied. The outgoing Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government oversaw the
filing of 478 lese majeste cases last year, a threefold increase over the
number lodged in 2009, according to Office of the Judiciary statistics.
Anti-royal charges filed by his Democrat Party were often politicized to
undermine certain of Thaksin's political allies, including known republican
elements in his United Front Against Dictatorship for Democracy (UDD) "Red
Shirt" protest group. But Yingluck's equally aggressive approach to purging
anti-monarchy sentiment has blurred the earlier storyline that portrayed
Thailand's political conflict as a fight between an old royalist elite and a
Thaksin-aligned noveau riche who hold competing visions for the monarchy's
future once the widely revered King Bhumibol passes from the scene.
Yingluck's government established a new "war room" at police headquarters
tasked with monitoring the Internet for anti-royal postings. Last week, she
established a new 22-member committee headed by Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm
Yubamrung to scour and purge the web for lese majeste violations.
Information and Communications Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap told
reporters last month that since August his ministry has called on Facebook to
remove over 86,000 URLs with lese majeste content from its site. He warned Thai
Internet users that clicking "like" or "share" features on Facebook pages with
perceived anti-royal content could also be construed as lese majeste. (The
Democrats have advocated banning Facebook and Youtube altogether.)
Loyalty contest
Yingluck, who was catapulted to power by Red Shirt street protests that claimed
to be fighting for "true" democracy and an end to double standards in Thai
society, has bowed deeply and often to royal authority since taking power.
Rights groups point toward the lese majeste-related arrest of a computer
programmer on September 1 as indication of a grassroots crackdown; it is
unknown how many people have been detained on lese majeste charges under her
administration's watch.
Yingluck's anti-democratic tendencies, in the name of upholding the monarchy,
have disenfranchised many of the genuine pro-democracy activists in Thaksin's
camp.
Although Thaksin is currently afoul King Bhumibol's advisory Privy Council, it
is widely expected that he will receive a more sympathetic hearing once heir
apparent Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn takes the throne and appoints his own team
of royal advisers. Some political analysts see Yingluck's high-profile
crackdown on anti-monarchy materials posted to the Internet as a proxy bid by
Thaksin to establish his credentials as a guardian rather than threat to the
monarchy ahead of the eventual succession. Since Yingluck took power, his
political allies have attacked the current military leadership and opposition
Democrats while at the same time courting royal favor.
Yet even high-placed royalists believe the recent flurry of lese majeste cases
are doing more harm than good to the monarchy. In 2005, King Bhumibol famously
said during his birthday address that the king was not above criticism and that
shielding the monarch from criticism was akin to looking down on the crown.
With pockets of grassroots pressure and diplomatic displeasure since building
against the law's arbitrary and frequent use, many observers thought King
Bhumibol might make a similar statement during this year's nationally televised
address, which concentrated instead on the need for national unity after the
recent flooding disaster.
Anand Panyarachun, a former prime minister and top royal adviser, recently
acknowledged that the application of the lese majeste law, particularly a
provision that allows any private citizen to file charges, should in his
opinion be amended. In a counter to online and other criticism of the monarchy,
Anand recently steered the production of a new biography of the king that
breaks with the tradition of hagiography and aims to give the monarch a more
human, less godly face. Written by a group of foreign writers, the volume casts
new light on previously opaque royal corners, including on the Crown Property
Bureau's extensive land holdings and widely misunderstood rules of royal
succession.
There are competing interpretations of the apparent disconnect between top
royalists calling for the law's reform and the rising use of lese majeste
charges to silence dissent. One theory is that no Thai official is secure
enough in their position to risk initiating legal changes that could easily
backfire in anti-royal charges being filed against them personally. Outgoing
premier Abhisit initiated a panel tasked with exploring reform of the law's
application but it failed to make any progress. Yingluck, too, has backed away
from comments she made around the July election that she would consider
amending the law's application.
Another view is that one wing of the palace - backed by the military top brass
and their allied retired coup-makers - wants the law firmly upheld in the
run-up to what is expected to be a delicate and potentially destabilizing royal
succession from the revered King Bhumibol to Vajiralongkorn.
The military often leans on royal prestige to justify its independence from
elected civilian governments. King Bhumibol's passing will open a moral
authority vacuum top royalists fear the current succession plan will fail to
fill, according to leaked US diplomatic cables that quoted top royal advisers.
The lese majeste law shields the king, queen, heir apparent and regent from
insult and threat, but leaves the monarch's offspring and Privy Council open to
criticism.
Academic David Streckfuss argued in a recent paper that the post-2006 expansion
and mobilization of the lese majeste law "no longer simply protects the
institution" but "has come to define the institution of monarchy in Thailand,
much like toward the end of absolutism in various regimes in Europe".
Streckfuss argues that the post-coup shift from anti-royal charges being filed
predominantly among competing elites and politicians to common citizens
represented a significant turning point - one that both sides of Thailand's
political conflict are exploiting for political gain and by many estimates
increasingly at the monarchy's expense.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.
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