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ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia
The cartoon pictures of the duck, an emblem of the nation’s pro-democracy motion, had been stated to mock the Thai king.
Inflatable yellow geese, which have change into good-humored symbols of resistance throughout anti-government rallies, are lifted over a crowd of protesters in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 27, 2020.
Credit score: AP Photograph/Sakchai Lalit, File
A Thai man has been sentenced to 2 years in jail for promoting calendars that includes cartoons of yellow geese that authorities allege defamed the monarchy – the newest occasion of using Thailand’s harsh lese majeste legislation.
In accordance with the authorized help group Thai Attorneys for Human Rights (TLHR), the Bangkok Legal Courtroom dominated that the 2021 calendar, which was offered on the Fb web page of the pro-democracy democracy Ratsadon group, contained footage of yellow geese in poses stated to ridicule King Vajiralongkorn.
Narathorn Chotmankongsin, 26, was convicted underneath Thailand’s harsh lese-majeste legislation, which criminalizes any criticism of the monarchy or the royal household, and carries punishments of as much as 15 years imprisonment.
In accordance with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW), police arrested Narathorn at his dwelling “and confiscated calendars that featured cartoons of a yellow duck.” Professional-democracy teams have typically featured giant inflatable yellow geese at their protests.
The conviction is the newest in a string of lese-majeste instances that contain the leaders, organizers, and members of Thailand’s youth-dominated pro-democracy motion, which mounted giant protests in Bangkok and different Thai cities in late 2020 and early 2021. The protests demanded a number of political modifications together with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s resignation, the drafting of a genuinely democratic structure, and – for the primary time in residing reminiscence – limitations on the facility of the Thai monarchy.
Whereas the federal government noticed an off-the-cuff moratorium on using the lese-majeste legislation, it eliminated the shackles in late 2021, and TLHR claims that not less than 233 folks have since been charged with lese-majeste. Many of those have concerned absurdly minor or indirect “offenses,” which have been reported to the authorities by royalist zealots.
A 12 months in the past this week, a court docket in Bangkok sentenced a political activist to 2 years in jail for putting a sticker on a portrait of the king. In September, one other activist was sentenced to a few years imprisonment for carrying conventional Thai apparel at a political demonstration in October 2020 – an act that was deemed to be insulting to the nation’s Queen Suthida.
Because the lese majeste legislation has been mobilized to quash dissent, the abrogation of the legislation has change into a key demand of the nation’s youth protest motion – the prerequisite of an open or trustworthy accounting of the position of the royal establishment in Thailand’s political economic system. Two younger feminine activists searching for its repeal and the discharge of imprisoned activists are reportedly in essential situation after launching a starvation strike in jail in late January.
In a press release launched immediately, HRW requested Thai authorities to “quash the sentence” and launch Narathorn. “The prosecution and three-year sentence of a person for promoting satirical calendars present that Thai authorities at the moment are attempting to punish any exercise they deem to be insulting the monarchy,” stated Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This case sends a message to all Thais, and to the remainder of the world, that Thailand is shifting additional away from – not nearer to – changing into a rights-respecting democracy.”
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