Thai woman jailed for 5 years for anti-royal web post
A Thai court jailed a woman for five years on Wednesday for posting online comments insulting to the monarchy, the second ruling of its kind this week under tough lese-majeste laws carrying penalties activists say are too harsh.
A Thai court jailed a woman for five years on Wednesday for posting online comments insulting to the monarchy, the second ruling of its kind this week under tough lese-majeste laws carrying penalties activists say are too harsh.
A judge ruled Noppawan Tangudomsuk, nicknamed “Bento”, posted messages in 2008 on the web board of news website Prachatai that were deemed offensive to the monarchy, a breach of Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act, a controversial law passed by a legislature hand-picked by generals after a 2006 coup.
We cannot point the finger solely at Yingluck and her administration. On the other hand, sentences are not getting any lighter and Yingluck’s government certainly hasn’t tried to alter the public discourse on this topic
“Investigations determined the computer’s IP address and showed that the messages posted originated from the defendant’s computer,” said the judge when reading the verdict.
Thailand has some of the world’s toughest lese-majeste laws, with royal insults punishable by up to 15 years in prison for each offence committed.
The ruling overturned a criminal court’s dismissal of the case in 2011 on the grounds there was insufficient evidence to show Noppawan posted the comments herself.
Her sentence follows a two-year prison term handed down on Tuesday to Sondhi Limthongkul, a media tycoon and founder of Thailand’s royalist “yellow-shirt” movement. He was ruled to have defamed the monarchy by repeating during a public speech comments deemed offensive made by a political opponent.