Harry Nicolaides is latest victim of Thailand’s archaic lèse-majesté laws

An Australian teacher was yesterday sentenced to three years imprisonment in Thailand for insulting the Thai monarchy. Harry Nicolaides originally received six years but the sentence was halved after he pleaded guilty and apologised to the king. The case was filed under the country’s notorious lèse-majesté laws which can allow for a 15 year jail term for insulting the Thai king, queen or (as in Nicolaides’s case) the prince regent.

The 41 year Nicolaides is a Melbourne man who has worked in Thailand as an English teacher and freelance writer. He was arrested at Bangkok airport as he tried to leave the country on 31 August last year. Nicolaides was charged under article 112 of the Thai criminal code which reads "Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, the Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years." Nicolaides was alleged to have made the insult in a paragraph in his 2005 novel Verisimilitude (see full text in linked pdf). Nicolaides intended the novel as a commentary on contemporary Thai political and social life however the book was not exactly a page-turner. Only 50 copies were published of which only seven were sold.

The offending passage in the novel was just a few sentences which described the turbulent marital relations of its fictional prince. It is a thinly-veiled account of the sexual affairs of Thailand's Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn. Vajiralongkorn is the 56 year old first son of the long-reigning monarch Bhumibol Adulyadel. The heir to the throne is the Edward VII of Thai royalty, an occasional philanderer who is waiting forever for his aged and revered parent to die in order to ascend to the throne. Vajiralongkorn lacks the stature and popularity of his frail father who has reigned for 62 years old. Time magazine compared him to a more recent British example calling him “Charles’ Siamese Twin” picking on the similarities of “an elderly monarch, an heir with a troubled marriage, [and] rumours of adultery”.

At Nicolaides’ trial, the presiding judge said the passage in Verisimilitude "suggested that there was abuse of royal power," and caused "dishonour" to the king and the heir apparent. After the trial the prosecutor warned journalists not to repeat or publish the offending material. The warning was treated seriously by CNN which chose not to repeat the allegations “because it could result in CNN staff being prosecuted in Thailand.” As a result most people in Thailand remain unaware of the details of this and other similar cases.

In his 2005 birthday speech King Bhumibol cautioned against the over-exuberant use of this criminal provision. However it remains a convenient tool for many factions within the Thai elite and is unlikely to be repealed anytime soon. The laws are a serious problem for Thai media and effectively muzzle public discussion of a range of issues relating to the country’s ongoing political crisis. As the Thai news and analysis site New Mandela points out, the lèse majesté laws “helps guarantee an unrelenting public diet of positive royal news.”

The obscure laws have been invoked several times in recent years as the role of the king comes under sharp focus in Thailand’s fraught post-coup environment. Last year Chotisak Onsoong was charged for refusing to stand during the national anthem in a cinema. More seriously, a government minister Jakrapob Penkair was charged with after a speech critical of the country’s patronage system which “bordered” on lèse majesté.

And as recently as last week Giles Ungpakorn, an associate professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University, was arrested for “unspecified charges” believed to be related to his critical public statements about the monarchy and his book A Coup for the Rich. The pugnacious Ungpakorn has refused to be silenced and promised to fight the charges in order, as he says, “to defend academic freedom, the freedom of expression and democracy in Thailand.” Ungpakorn, Nicolaides and the others deserve the support of everyone who cares about the precarious health of democracy in the 21st century.

The truth behind Thailand's “protests”: a delicate balance of forces

What exactly is going on in Thailand? Western media reports a “political crisis” but so far seems a well organised, peaceful, and most importantly supported-by-the-military crisis. The Prime Minister’s residence has been taken over by 20,000 protesters for a week but so far the PM Samak Sundaravej has not called out the police or the army. The 73-year old Samak is a Thaksin Shinawatra surrogate whose legitimacy stems from last year's election won by the People Power Party created by loyalists from Thaksin’s old party Thai Rak Thai.

The southern airports of Phuket, Hat Yai and Krabi were barricaded off by protesters who marched on their stomachs rumoured to be supplied by the military or even members of the Royal Family. Samek has refused to call an election and has vowed to rule on with the apparent support of the king whom he met today.

Samak won power in 2007 with the support of the rural majority despite the antagonism of the coup leaders. He now hangs on as a stand-in leader for the far-away Shinawatra. A growing wealthy elite in Bangkok, loath both men and are determined to force an election. But Thaksin may be about to taxi home. Today, he sold his English Premier League football "toy" Manchester City to Abu Dhabi interests. Thaksin may be cashing up for his inevitable return to his homeland and the bribes he will need to pay to stay out of prison.

And so the west reports Thailand seems delicately poised between four forces that represent the Army, the King, the country (in the name of Thaksin), and Bangkok’s growing bourgeoisie. The army has remained in barracks so far but given their past record as recently as 2006, they could be itching for the chance to “solve” the crisis. Coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin has retired but the army’s attempt to fix the 2007 election backfired spectacularly. There may be other leaders who want to take on his baton. But they will have to contend with Samak’s appointment today of General Songkitti Jaggabatara, a former classmate of Shinawatra to the role of military supreme commander.

But for now, the army is quietly working behind the scenes for the opposition umbrella group People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Some have claimed PAD actually stands for People Against Democracy because of what it is fighting for: a Parliament in which only 30 percent is elected and the rest are “appointed” by royal command. PAD’s paternalistic policy see them blame western-style democracy for Thailand’s ills. It was PAD who began the protests that led to Thaksin’s overthrow and who now want to strike at him again through Samak.

PAD have strongly invoked the royal family in their attempt to curry favour. Royalty remains sacrosanct in Thailand and there is intense jockeying for power in the event of the death of 80 year old King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Officially a constitutional monarchy, Bhumibol is extremely powerful. He has been instrumental in most Thai political dealings over his extraordinary 60 years on the throne and had a very direct bearing on the 2005 coup. He is the world’s longest-reigning monarch, and the wealthiest royal worth an estimated $35 billion. PAD knows that if Bhumibol withdraws his support it means the end for Samak.

While no-one knows how this drama will play out between Bhumibol, PAD, Samak and the army, it should be noted there is an fifth force of influence in the country: the Thai media. Television is contested but is mostly controlled by Samak. His forces say the state media should be a mouthpiece for the government, while opponents argue that it belongs to the people as these stations are established and operated using the taxpayers' money. The print scene is also vibrant. As of 2003, there were 150 newspapers of which about 40 were Bangkok dailies. The city also has two important English language dailies The Bangkok Post and the Nation and several Chinese language papers. Almost all of the country’s 73 provinces have local newspapers. Lurid tabloid journalism is extremely popular but there is also a significant well-educated elite who avidly read the broadsheets. These papers have one major taboo topic (criticism of the Royal Family) but otherwise report fairly on the political unrest. With a free Internet also available, Thailand is awash with vigorous, diverse, well-informed opinion that can quickly turn hostile.

It will take a monumental effort of will to end that unrest. The Guardian sees the crisis as a continuation of the events that ended Thaksin’s reign calling it a “never ending coup”. They see it as a struggle between “two deep-seated and irreconcilable forces” of a the traditional Thai alliance of the bureaucracy, military and monarchy, and “a populist nouveau riche from the rural areas whose support Thaksin has tapped into.” It sees an election as perhaps the only gamebreaker.

Thai King in hospital

The headline in this morning’s English language Bangkok Post was “Foreigners join long queues of wellwishers”. The wellwisher queues are at the Siriraj hospital because the Thai King is currently there recovering from spinal surgery he had last Thursday. He is now walking with the aid of a walking stick and doctors are satisfied with the speed of his recovery. The king fell and fractured a rib on June 24 while walking around the palace grounds but officials have not said if the operation was related to that accident. The king has suffered from spinal problems since 1995, which doctors said were caused by old age. The condition was diagnosed in 2003 as lumbar spinal stenosis, and the king has been receiving physical therapy as treatment since last year.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej is the ninth king of the Chakri dynasty which has ruled Thailand since 1782. The 78 year old King is a constitutional monarch. The last absolute monarch was King Prajadhipok (known as Rama VII to non Thais) who ruled from 1925 until his abdication in 1935. However in 1932 a bloodless coup took place. It was orchestrated by the so-called People's Party (Khana Ratsadorn) who took control of the royal palace in Bangkok and arrested key officials while the king was at his summer retreat in Hua Hin. The People's Party demanded that Prajadhipok agree to become a constitutional monarch and grant Thai people a democratic constitution. The King agreed and the first "permanent" constitution was granted on December 10, 1932. King Ananda (Rama VIII) replaced him in 1935.

The two dominant figures in Thai politics during the 1930s were Luang Pibulsonggram (later known as Field Marshal Pibul) and Dr Pridi Panomyong. There were both educated in France but held very different opinions on how to run the country. Pibul favoured dictatorship whereas Dr Pridi paved the way for democratic change. By the end of the 1930s Pibul was PM and Dr Pridi was foreign minister. After the fall of France in 1940 to Nazi Germany, there were border skirmishes which resulted in the return of areas of Laos and Cambodia to Thailand. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941, they demanded free passage through Thailand to attack British territories in Burma and India. Pibul was powerless to resist and issued a declafration of war against Britian and the US in January 1942. Dr Pridi organised a resistance movement which eventually saw him regain power at Pibul’s expense. This enabled Thailand to avoid being seen as a Japanese collaborator at the end of the war.

King Ananda, meanwhile had reigned since 1935 as a boy of 10. But on June 9, 1946, Ananda was found shot dead in his room at the Grand Palace during an official state visit from the Swiss government. In October 1946, a Commission of Inquiry reported that the King's death could not have been accidental but that neither suicide nor murder was satisfactorily proved. This mysterious death brought his younger brother to the throne. King Bhumibol Adulyadej was pronounced Rama IX (crowned in 1950) and he reigns to this day.

Dr Pridi was accused of complicity in the death of Ananda and was forced into exile by Pibul. He attempted two comebacks in 1949 and 1951 but both ended in failure. Pibul remained in power until 1957 until he too was overthrown by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat in 1957. In November 1971, Prime Minister Thanom executed a coup against his own government, thereby ending the three-year experiment with what had passed for parliamentary democracy. In October 1973, Thai students staged massive demonstrations that overthrew the military government and sent its leaders into exile. After an interregnum of three years, the rightists returned to power in 1976 in a violent coup.

The king is a constitutional monarch similar to the British royals but he is deeply revered. His role as mediator in the crises of the 1970s and 1992 won him great respect. His death, whenever it happens, will be the source of great mourning across the country.