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Thailand Jails Dissident For What People Thought He Would Have Said
patiwat writes "A Thai court has convicted a man for censoring himself. In a 2010 anti-government rally, Yossawarit Chuklom said several people were against the dissolution of Abhisit Vejjajiva's government. He mentioned a few names, and then put his hand over his mouth and said he wasn't brave enough to continue. A court ruled that he would have mentioned King Bhumibol Adulyadej — thus earning him a conviction for insulting the King, who is constitutionally banned from any political role."
King Bhumibol Adulyade enjoys licking my toes.
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But Thailand is still where a huge chunk of consumer goods in the U.S. come from? How are the communists so much worse than monarchist totalitarians?
The injustice here is that he's being imprisoned for expressing an opinion that involves the King and his role in politics. That's rotten.
I suspect most people here will assume, instead, that the injustice is that he didn't name the King explicitly, but courts tend to make reasonable inferences that people using certain language and gestures intend to communicate a concept even if they don't state it explicitly in ${language}. Just as you couldn't say "One of my co-workers is a pedophile and it's not" ${list of everyone except the person you're refusing to name} without being at serious risk of being sued for libel, likewise it sounds like the dissident made gestures that would only be interpreted in one way by the crowd.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Glad to hear you've made the move to using only solid state drives or other non-hard drive storage in everything you buy. I still need a few hard drives until large capacity SSDs are affordable, so I'll have to be giving Thailand some of my business.
I can easily see this sort of thing happening in the US. Imagine a group of olive-skinned young men sitting in a cafeteria talking, in a purely hypothetical manor, about potential local terrorist targets and how they would go about hypothetically attacking them.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej is the ninth incarnation of Lord Rama, who himself was the eighth incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Preserver of the Universe. His Majesty is omniscient and He knows what everyone is thinking. It might look odd to the West with its mechanistic interpretation of the observable universe. But, rest assured, they know what was on his mind and they know what he would have done. The only thing that perplexes the holistic Eastern minded Thai people is, "Why is His Majesty using the mechanistic physical instruments like courts and jail, like the simple minded Westerners, and is not using His omnipotent powers to punish him directly and demonstrate His powers over nature for all to see?"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As long as it doesn't require too much effort, right?
Hmm... I typoed. Manor should be manner. A hypothetical manor is where I live.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
That is completely different.
The guy in TFA was sent for a predefined amount of time to a jail within the border of the country that convicted him in a legal trial.
I'm sure none of that would happen to those olive-skinned young men in the US.
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but yet you replied ...
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
steaming turd if he allows such crap to happen.
He doesn't "allow" it to happen, since he has no role in making or enforcing the laws. In the past, the king has spoken out against political abuse of lese-majesty laws.
One more country I'll never visit. One more country I will avoid when buying things.
I am sure the people persecuting this man will be glad to hear it, since they are part of the opposition to the current government. Your boycott makes as much sense as boycotting the USA because the a court makes a ruling that the Obama administration doesn't like. The government of Thailand is far from monolithic.
Thailand is actually a lovely country to visit - great beaches and diving, friendly people (just don't try to hire them to do work for you unless you understand their work ethic and speak their language), incredible culture, and some awesome things to see and do (visit the "tiger temple" where abandoned or orphaned tiger cubs are raised by humans; it's an incredible experience to go up and pet live tigers). There are also some... other... reasons to visit, ranging from "medical tourism" (dental, in particular, is high quality but orders of magnitude cheaper than in the US) to "sex tourism" (exactly what you think it is).
Their politics, on the other hand, are a complete flaming mess. Stay away from them (fortunately, this is easy; I was there for about five weeks and spent almost all of it out of the cities).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
On the other hand but you could approach the argument the other way. Does he actually have to utter the name in order to communicate something. i.e. if I said something like, I have a strong distaste for recent versions of Windows, especially Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and *censored* then it would be pretty clear what the item was that I was referring to.
I'm not saying that I agree with this sort of law, but I think the headline is rather sensationalist. From what I gather, from the perspective of the prosecution, it should be more like 'Thailand Jails Dissident for what the dissident communicated (non-verbally)'.
You are correct. It isn't the king that is the problem in this case (I'm not sure of any cases actually where the King was the problem). His people love him dearly, much more so than we in the United States care for our current (or any president).
In fact, the King has used what powers he has to pardon those who have been arrested for bad mouthing him. It seems his majesty is actually a quite reasonable person, and I'm sure there was good intentions on the part of the government when they made the law, however, the law enforcement on the other hand....
It's a case of culture clash. I spent a year there in 1974 while in the USAF, and literally everything there was completely different than here, including the colors of the sky, dirt, and vegetation, but especially the people. In the US, hookers are laughed at, jailed, scorned. In Thailand they are respected. Flipping someone the bird is meaningless there, but point your foot at someone and you're looking at a fistfight (actually, a foot fight; Thai boxing makes extensive use of feet). I once had a gun stuck in my face for refusing a shot of whiskey; it turned out that refusing a gift is a grave insult. Funnier was the guy was cool after I drank the shot.
And they revere the king. His picture is on every coin and bill, so if you're there do NOT step on money! Stepping on money is incredibly dangerous. Of course, being American I consider the idea of royalty itself to be absurd and wonder why my British cousins need them?
But if you're going to refuse to buy from Thailans because of this, you're pretty much stuck with only buying things from your own country, because every foreign country is going to have something normal to them that is atrocious to you (and vice versa). Like kings, or censorship, or guns, or burqas, or drugs, or drug laws, or something you consider corrupt where they think not having it is corrupt.
If you want a world econiomy, you're going to have to put up with other cultures' things you hate -- like guns, or gun laws, or censorship, or pornography, or royalty, or religion...
(mcgrew here, can't seem to be able to log in on this PC)
Not at all accurate. The King pardons people after they've been in jail (since they generally don't get any bail) for weeks or months, and even after convictions he takes time to pardon them, and then gets to be all generous. The King could if he wanted too, tell people that he doesn't like the law and they should get rid of it. He, and his people are together stamping on others basic ability for the most important forms of free speech- the ability to criticize their government. So fuck him, and fuck the monarchy and fuck their laws. Fuck em.
And they revere the king. His picture is on every coin and bill, so if you're there do NOT step on money! Stepping on money is incredibly dangerous. Of course, being American I consider the idea of royalty itself to be absurd and wonder why my British cousins need them?
Clearly you have not been paying attention to the antics in DC. If you're British/Australian/etc. when some idiot decides to bring the entire government to a halt as a negotiating tactic you can close your eyes and pretend Grandma (aka: Her Majesty the Queen) will fix it. She may not (she didn't solve Australia's Constitutional Crisis in 1975), but she could.
Sometimes she even does. Canada's Prorogation Crises was solved largely because she realized that letting the Tories get their way for two months (ie: proroguing Parliament from December 4th to January 26th) would not actually hurt anyone, but agreeing to the Opposition's demands could force a new election a few months after the old. If the Opposition actually had the votes in Parliament to govern the country in early December they'd clearly also have those votes in late January, but it they only had the votes to dump Harper, then Harper would be dumped, nobody would run the country for a few moths while they proved they had no plan (literally nobody -- they hadn't agreed who should be Prime Minister), and then everyone would have to pay for a new election. Which Harper probably would have won because a) in october he'd won, and b) would you vote for those morons?
Granted the person who actually did this crap was the Governor-General, but it was widely reported that Governor-General Jean only did those things after consulting with the Queen; and the Canadians got a whole lot of shit for that. It never seemed to occur to anyone that she's got hundreds of years of experience being Monarch of a Westminster-system Democracy (50 years ad Queen of England, Jamaica, Barbados etc. adds up), which is quite useful when something weird happens.
But if you're going to refuse to buy from Thailans because of this, you're pretty much stuck with only buying things from your own country, because every foreign country is going to have something normal to them that is atrocious to you (and vice versa). Like kings, or censorship, or guns, or burqas, or drugs, or drug laws, or something you consider corrupt where they think not having it is corrupt.
If you want a world econiomy, you're going to have to put up with other cultures' things you hate -- like guns, or gun laws, or censorship, or pornography, or royalty, or religion...
(mcgrew here, can't seem to be able to log in on this PC)
Heck, you're stuck with not buying anything, ever,
I've never met a geek who does not have significant problems with his own government, an obscure plan to fix said problems, and extreme frustration that everyone else is not passionate about replacing first-pass-the-post with proportional representation via the Condorcet method.
Thailand has it's problems. They are definitely way too protective of their King to be a good Democracy. But they don't have a debt ceiling, or a Speaker of the House who thinks he has a mandate to thwart a President who won (by almost 5 million) despite losing the popular vote by more then a million.
Please don't visit Thailand for sex tourism. It only perpetuates the tragedy of human trafficking, many young people are sold and enslaved for a short, disease-ridden, and trashy life, due to the wealth and privilege of those who think they can use people like objects. It is a haunting horrific thing that needs to stop. We humans should treat one another better.
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No, he can't. He has to do his own wheedling and backroom dealing to get the right people to back him, since he essentially has no power. I've seen a couple of these things happen a few years ago, and the day & hour he heard about them, he began speaking out against that law and what was being done 'in his name' but against his will.
Even though he has no official political power, he does know people, and the populace love him. That allows him to do things, but only after he's been able to build a sufficient backing so that the ones in control won't just ignore him and sweep it under the rug.
Remember, a king he may be, but it's a title that comes with no power.
We don't *need* them.
Actually I disagree - we do need them for two reasons. First the monarch can break up political log jams by either dissolving or proroging parliament as required. This is a very limited power but used at the right time can keep the system flowing smoothly. Second having a monarch avoids the need for yet another clueless politician who only cares about getting reelected and will likely cost the tax payer far more than the monarch they replace.
While a monarchy may be somewhat old fashioned the only reason to get rid of something old which works is to replace it with something better. Frankly I have yet to see evidence that there is a better system out there. Given that power rests almost entirely with the elected parliaments I fail to see any gain in replacing a hereditary monarchy with, what will effectively be, an elected one.