Slashdot Mirror
Volunteer 'Cyber Scouts' Censor Web In Thailand
societyofrobots writes "Since the military coup of 2006, Thailand's media freedoms have continually been downgraded. A growing tactic among the ruling elite is to accuse the political opposition of insulting the king, allowing for censorship and political imprisonment of those who dare speak out. In 2010, web censorship began to reach the scales of China and Iran. Now, Thailand has formed a group of volunteers called Cyber-Scouts to patrol the web looking for comments deemed to insult the monarchy. AFP also has a video."
One question I have is, are they actually censoring things that do in fact insult the monarchy, or are they using that to suppress other political speech. Either one is bad, but they are whole different levels of bad. Removing things insulting a Monarch is an annoying anachronism but not very harmful... unless it spreads.
While true, that's hardly the point. Being able to hide from a repressive regime does not justify or negate the actions of that regime.
He does hold some responsibility. I don't know the precise details of the situation, but if the supporters are that fervent then I'm sure his making a speech along the lines of "If you wish to defend my honour and my dignity, do so not by repressing people in my name, but by protecting above all else the freedom of every person to speak as they wish, regardless of how abhorrent you may find what they choose to say." would go a very long way towards pointing them in the right direction.