Abstract
Insulting the king is a matter of national security in Thailand.
On 29 February, Worachet Pakeerut, a star lecturer in law, was assaulted in broad daylight on his own university campus. Two young brothers punched him in the face before speeding off on a motorcycle. Worachet is a well-known public figure in Thailand: a brilliant academic who has challenged higher court decisions on the country’s laws and constitution. So news of the incident was reported on Thai television and pictures of Worachet’s bruised cheeks were on the front pages of all major Thai dailies.
The two men turned themselves in at the police station the next morning and announced that they disagreed with Worachet’s campaign to amend Thailand’s strict lèse majesté law, which makes it illegal to insult King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his family members. A week later, a Bangkok court sentenced them to three months’ imprisonment.
Worachet has angered many people in Thailand. In March last year, he led a band of young law lecturers at Thammasat University, known as the Nitirat group, which announced an elaborate and wide-ranging proposal to amend Section 112 of the penal code: anybody who ‘defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir-apparent or the regent’ can be subject to imprisonment for three to 15 years. Many hardcore royalists see his campaign as an effort to dissolve the country’s monarchy.
Worachet Pakeerut after he was attacked at Thammasat University, Bangkok, 29 February 2012
Credit: AP Photo
Lèse majesté is currently a crime against national security; anyone can accuse another person of the offence. The chill on free speech has also been a concern for foreign governments and international human rights organisations, as there are fears that political rivals use the law to silence and harass their opponents.
The issue has also been at the heart of power politics in Thailand since the overthrow of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006: military leaders disliked him for his anti-royalist position. His supporters, the red shirts, are calling for him to return from exile. Anti-Thaksin protesters have said they would challenge any move to amend the lèse majesté law.
Prosecutions soared after the country’s 2006 military coup
Nitirat argues that Section 112 should be re-categorised: currently it falls under national security legislation, but the group asserts that it should be reclassified as an offence that relates to the ‘reputation of the king, the queen, the heir-apparent and the regent’, offences that are not serious enough to ‘affect the existence of integrity and security of the kingdom’. The maximum jail term should be reduced to three years. The law should not stipulate a minimum jail term as Section 112 does. Without a minimum term, the court could exercise its discretion as it sees fit. Furthermore, Nitirat proposes that the penalty for defaming the queen, the heir-apparent or the regent should be less severe than the penalty for defaming the king, as he commands a higher status. Adopting the amendments, Nitirat argues, will ensure the law complies with the principle of proportionality, whereby the penalty of an offence should be proportionate to its severity, in line with international standards and Thailand’s own constitution. In cases where the defendant can prove the statement is true, he or she should not be penalised.
Bolder still, Nitirat asserts that there should be circumstances for pardoning such offences. The group argues that a person should be found not guilty of defaming the monarchy if he or she criticises or expresses an opinion ‘in good faith for the protection of a government under a democratic system with the monarch as the head of state under the constitution and for the protection of the constitution in serving academic or public interest’.
Nitirat also proposes that the current lèse majesté law should be amended so that only the Office of His Majesty’s Principal Private Secretary can file a complaint. This would certainly keep the number of prosecutions down, which soared following Thailand’s September 2006 military coup.
In January, Worachet’s campaign gathered further momentum after other academics, writers, artists and members of the general public signed up to form the Campaign Committee for the Amendment of Section 112. The committee launched its first major public meeting on 15 January at Thammasat University, which was attended by many members of the red shirts, supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin.
At the meeting, Worachet explained Nitirat’s proposals and launched a petition. The plan was to collect at least 10,000 signatures to enable the submission to parliament of a proposed draft for amendments to the law.
However, it turned out to be the first and last gathering at the university. The rector, Professor Somkid Lertpaitoon, announced that he would no longer allow Nitirat or the committee to organise any activity on campus that could be seen as a ‘political movement’. In a television interview with Somkid, the rector said that the group should not hold any activity that could ‘affect or instigate social conflict’. Worachet was interviewed in the same broadcast and was bombarded with criticism in the royalist press. It’s worth noting that student uprisings took place on the Thammasat campus in the 1970s, and a number of students were killed by the military. Many were accused of being against the monarchy.
In response to the rector’s objections, Worachet declared that his own university had restricted his academic freedom and denied that he had launched a political movement, stating that he was not associated with any party: people gathered in seeking an amendment to a law should not be seen as political.
He added that the university should allow all parties to discuss the proposed amendments to Section 112 in order to find out whether Thai society wanted to adopt them. If Thai people don’t exercise reason when talking to each other, he said, ‘then when will we become a “democratic civilization?”’
In late May, key members of the campaign led a march of a few hundred people to submit a draft amendment based on Nitirat’s blueprint to parliament, along with 26,968 signatures of support.
Parliament will now scrutinise the authenticity and legitimacy of the signatories before it potentially starts the process of turning it into law. However, the current government, run by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a younger sister of Thaksin, has said it will not take the initiative to amend the lèse majesté law, which could slow down, if not obstruct, the process.
Since the beginning of the year, there have been few reports of new lèse majesté cases and the authorities do not seem to have been very enthusiastic in pursuing some of those pending. So it’s possible that Worachet’s campaign for reform may already be having an effect.