Slashdot Mirror
Thai Activist Jailed For the Crime of Sharing an Article on Facebook (eff.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Thai activist Jatuphat "Pai" Boonpattaraksa was sentenced this week to two and a half years in prison -- for the crime of sharing a BBC article on Facebook. The Thai-language article profiled Thailand's new king and, while thousands of users shared it, only Jutaphat was found to violate Thailand's strict lese majeste laws against insulting, defaming, or threatening the monarchy. The sentence comes after Jatuphat has already spent eight months in detention without bail. During this time, Jatuphat has fought additional charges for violating the Thai military junta's ban on political gatherings and for other activism with Dao Din, an anti-coup group. While in trial in military court, Jatuphat also accepted the Gwangzu Prize for Human Rights. When he was arrested last December, Jatuphat was the first person to be charged with lese majeste since the former King Bhumibol passed away and his son Vajiralongkorn took the throne. (He was not, however, the first to receive a sentence -- this past June saw one of the harshest rulings to date, with one man waiting over a year in jail to be sentenced to 35 years for Facebook posts critical of the royal family.) The conviction, which appears to have singled Jatuphat out among thousands of other Facebook users who shared the article, sends a strong message to other activists and netizens: overbroad laws like lese majeste can and will be used to target those who oppose military rule in Thailand.
If he were at Google, he might only have been doxxed, fired and blacklisted.
Another click bait headline. I liked Slashdot better when we had dupes every day, and what Taco did couldn't be described as editing.
He was jailed because he was a pro-domacracy activist, and they used the suppressive laws to silence him.
This is no different to when they used the same law to jail an activist who 'liked' a face book post.
Oppressive government uses oppressive law to suppress dissidents. Hmmm... doesn't make a very clickable headline.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
And this is why you don't go on Facebook ever. Well that, and I literally couldn't give less of a damn about the kind of leftist drivel that populates most of any social media.
We have an a natural born right to speech and thought. Unfortunately, not all countries observe that. This is why we must jealously guard everyone's freedom of speech, even when they choose to exercise the right to utter and state absolutely abhorrent ideas.
Man Behind Anti-Islam Video Gets Prison Term
In Russia, he would have simply been killed.
The thing with narcissistic ego-driven despots is they do this kind of horrible shit if they're allowed to. Considering his kind words for Putin and Duarte, how long before Trump calls the king of Thailand "a tremendous guy"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Thereby allowing the dictatorship to get away with anything it wants. The older political term for this was Endlösung
If the words of a mere mortal scare him?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The facts don't matter, especially not to the media.
There are many fact checking websites which provide unbiased data regarding the truthfulness of our political leaders. Let's examine a few. Keep in mind that they are comparing 8 years of Obama's presidency to 100+ days of Trump.
A search of Snopes.com articles concerning Barack Obama (329) vs Donald Trump (865).
Politifact.com summary of Barack Obama vs Donald Trump. The two graphs are very informative.
FactCheck.org summary of Obama's Whoppers vs Trump's Whoppers.
While none of these sites gave Barack Obama a free ride, FactCheck.org declared Donald Trump the King of Whoppers. I think that Burger King has a trademark infringement case here.
If you dismiss these sites as biased, or blame the mainstream media for twisting the facts, then the problem is probably you. You have let the semantic web tailor an experience that feeds you all of the misinformation (alternative facts) that aligns with your world view. As such, changing your paradigm would be uncomfortable, so you double-down on all of the stories that have been proven false (Pizzagate, Seth Rich's murder, etc...). If these stories rile you up, then the objective is met. The whole point is to stir up the crazies.
As such, you need to continually verify that you are not being brainwashed by either the right or the left. You need to wait-out sensational stories until they are fully vetted. You need to focus on facts, not bluster on with opinions.
Venezuela has done one thing right. Their gun violence has dropped by four orders of magnitude when they instituted their complete civilan gun ownership ban.
Do you have a citation for this? Because this article says the homocide rate has continued to increase. Your claimed 10000 fold drop in gun violence seems wildly implausible, since it is unlikely that most criminals would have surrendered their weapons.