Thailand votes for change

Thais went to the polls on Sunday, in the second election under the military's new 2017 constitution, and voted overwhelmingly for change. The default opposition Pheu Thai Party, who the establishment has been getting the military to overthrow for the last two decades, and which was denied power last election by the military-stacked senate despite winning a majority of the vote, ended up coming second. They lost out to "Move Forward", a popular movement which wants to repeal Thailand's undemocratic lese majeste law, downsize the military, crush the monopolies of the rich and limit the monarchy. Together these parties won almost two-thirds of the vote. Meanwhile, the party of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha seems to have got 3%. But thanks to the military-drafted constitution, under which the military-appointed Senate gets a vote in selecting the prime minister, he may still end up in power, despite this overwhelming rejection. And even if that doesn't happen, there's always the threat of another coup...

This situation - of elected governments being overthrown and democracy limited - looks like it will continue as long as Thailand has an establishment which refuses to accept democracy and an oversized military willing to act as their tool. The only way this cycle will be broken is if the military is downsized so that it can no longer be a danger to its own people. But that's obviously easier said than done.

Thailand's dictatorship strikes back

Last month, Thai voters gave the finger to the country's military dictatorship, electing - against all odds - a majority opposition coalition to throw out the junta. But now the military has struck back, charging a major opposition leader with (of course) "sedition":

The leader of a new party that has challenged Thailand’s military government has been charged on Saturday with sedition, the latest legal action facing the rising star after a disputed March election.

The sedition charge, which was filed by the junta, was the second criminal case opened against Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, 40, since he formed the progressive, youth-oriented Future Forward party last year.

The 2015 case resurfaced after the Future Forward party made a surprisingly strong showing in the 24 March election, coming in third with 6.2m votes.

[...]

Police told Reuters the complaint dated back to 2015 when Thanathorn, who was running his family’s car parts empire at the time, allegedly “provided assistance” to a leader of protesters against the 2014 military coup who violated a junta ban on gatherings of more than five people.

I don't think you'll find a better example of how sedition laws are a political weapon used by establishments to keep themselves in power. Which is precisely why anyone who values democracy should support getting rid of them. Fortunately we've already done that in New Zealand.

Giving the finger to dictatorship

Thais went to the polls over the weekend in the first elections since 2014's military coup. The elections were supposed to be a way for the dictatorship to legitimise its rule, Fiji-style. But despite censoring the media, banning a major opposition party, wheeling out the king to support the junta, having soldiers check the ballots of people voting, and the electoral commission refuse to finalise the results, the opposition still managed to win a majority on provisional results. And now, they've united to form a majority coalition to throw out the dictatorship:

Seven pro-democracy political parties in Thailand have united to form a coalition large enough to claim a parliamentary majority and declared their intention to form a government, ousting the military from power.

The announcement came amid concerns about potential irregularities in Sunday’s vote and before a full preliminary vote count has been released. Official results are not due until May.

Thailand’s Pheu Thai party said on Wednesday that it had formed a “democratic front” with six other parties after the disputed election, claiming the opposition alliance had won a majority in the lower house of parliament and the right to try to form a government.

The coalition, led by Thaksin-aligned party Pheu Thai which won the most seats in Sunday’s election, said they intended to “bring back democracy and stop the power of the NCPO [military junta]”.

Whether they'll actually get to do that will depend on whether the results stand, or whether the military "adjusts" them to give themselves power. But even if they do, the elected parliament will be battling against an entirely military-appointed Senate, which absurdly gets a voice in deciding the Prime Minister. OTOH, if they don't, then they will be able to prevent the dictatorship from passing any legislation whatsoever - a power they should use to the fullest until the Senate is abolished and democracy is restored.

Assisting in death penalty cases is illegal

In 2014, two UK backpackers were murdered in Thailand. The UK National Crime Agency provided information to Thai police which allowed them to apprehend and convict a pair of suspects. But those suspects were sentenced to death and allegedly tortured in custody. And as a result, the NCA's assistance has been found to be illegal:

The National Crime Agency in the UK has been forced to admit it acted unlawfully when it gave information to Thai police that helped send two men to death row for murdering two British backpackers.

The NCA supplied phone record evidence and intelligence to investigators in Thailand following the September 2014 murders of Hannah Witheridge, 23, and David Miller, 24, on the island of Koh Tao.

Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, both Burmese nationals, were convicted of the murders in 2015 after a trial which the anti-death penalty group Reprieve said was unfair. They face execution by lethal injection, and claim to have been tortured.

On Tuesday, the high court in London found against the NCA – Britain’s version of the FBI – in a case brought by lawyers for Lin and Phyo.

The NCA apparently violated government guidelines designed to prevent assistance in death penalty cases or to torture states. Its unclear whether they also violated UK Human Rights Act protections against the death penalty or torture in the process, but it is highly likely. And while it will do their victims no practical good - the Thais are going to murder them - it will hopefully prevent similar abuses in future.

Meanwhile, I'm again wondering what restrictions there are on the New Zealand police to prevent similar abuses here. I know we don't extradite to China because they murder people, but do we provide them with assistance? Because if we do, it would seem to violate s8 of the Bill of Rights Act, which applies to every action done by the police.

More British hypocrisy on the death penalty

The UK has had a long-term policy of opposing the death penalty, but under the Tories that policy is being eroded. The Foreign Office dropped abolition of the death penalty from its global goals, and they are carefully ignoring Saudi Arabia's mass executions so they can sell them more guns. And now they've hit a new low, with the British National Crime Agency helping to put two men on death row in Thailand:

The National Crime Agency secretly assisted the Royal Thai Police with a controversial murder investigation that put two Burmese migrants on death row despite government rules designed to stop British law enforcement contributing to capital punishment convictions overseas.

BuzzFeed News can reveal that mobile phone evidence handed over by officers from Britain’s elite crime-fighting force played a central part in the prosecution of Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, who were sentenced to death on Christmas Eve for the murders of British backpackers David Miller and Hannah Witheridge in Koh Tao.

The Foreign Office has previously expressed grave concerns about allegations that the two Burmese men were forced to confess under torture and a spokesman said after the verdict that it “opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances and we have made this position clear to the Thai government”.

British police are prohibited from supplying evidence to foreign authorities who still use capital punishment without written assurances that suspects will not be sentenced to death — unless they have ministerial permission.

But sources close to the case and documents seen by BuzzFeed News have revealed that the National Crime Agency (NCA) passed on the information linking the Burmese suspects to the crime “verbally” without seeking any written assurances that it would not be used to sentence them to death, and the evidence became a crucial part of the prosecution. The two men, both 22, are appealing their death sentences and claim they were framed by the Thai police and coerced into confessing during severe beatings.

This isn't just contrary to policy - its also fairly explicitly contrary to the UK Human Rights Act and the ECHR, which effectively forbid legal cooperation in death penalty cases. But its pretty clear that the UK no longer cares about that. And as for those NCA officers, they're no different from people who knowingly supply a weapon for murder. Under their own law, that makes them guilty of murder, and they should be tried for it.

Absurdity in Thailand

How absurd is Thailand's lese majeste law? A man could be jailed under it for insulting the king's dog:

A Thai factory worker could go to prison for a "sarcastic" post on social media in which he disparaged the king's dog, Tongdaeng.

The worker, Thanakorn Siripaiboon, faces years in prison for his crimes, which include sedition and insulting the king.

As the New York Times reports, Siripaiboon's lawyer, Anon Numpa, said the precise insult towards the dog was not specified in the military court where he was charged.

The idea of punishing people for criticising those in power is deeply undemocratic. Punishing people for snarking about their pets is simply absurd. Rather like monarchy itself, really.

Another coup in Thailand

So, Thailand's "martial law" has turned out to be a coup after all, with the military arresting politicians, shutting down the media, and banning public gatherings. Supposedly, this is to "restore order' "for society to love and be at peace again", but the natural suspicion is that it is to do away with democracy in support of Thailand's urban elite - just like last time.

It won't work. The divisions in Thai society will not be removed by top-down repression. They can only be managed by all sides respecting democratic outcomes and the limits of government - something the anti-democratic opposition simply will not do.

In the meantime, its another potent reminder of why large militaries are a standing danger to democracy, and why sensible democracies do not have them.

The first rule of lese majeste is that you don't talk about lese majeste...

Somyot Prueksakasemsuk is a Thai magazine editor. In 2011 he was arrested for publishing two articles which (according to monarchists) disparaged Thailand's king. And for that, he's just been sentenced to 11 years in jail:

He was sentenced to five years on each of the two charges, and the court cancelled the suspension of a previous one-year sentence - for a total of 11 years in prison, a cumulative sentence.

The severity of the sentence caught both Somyot and his family - his wife and son - totally by suprise, as it was harsher than previous rulings in other lese majeste cases, which usually were based on the minimum sentence of three years.

The real reason for the severe sentence? Somyot had been campaigning for Thailand's lese majeste law to be repealed. He was arrested just five days after launching a petition campaign to force a Parliamentary review of the law. And now, he's become its latest victim.

Thailand's monarchy claims a victim

In August 2010, Thai truck driver Amphon Tangnoppakul was accused of sending text messages to a government official insulting that country's queen. He was put on trial for lese majeste, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.

Today, he died in jail.

That's the cost of lese majeste laws: dead people. And if anyone thinks that protecting someone's "dignity" is worth a single human life, then they are simply monsters.

Democracy wins in Thailand

Thailand went to the polls yesterday in general elections, and have returned a landslide victory (and an absolute majority) for the Pheu Thai Party. Its a particularly sweet victory given what has happened in Thailand recently; Pheu Thai is the successor to Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai Party, which was ousted by a coup in 2006. The party reformed, and won the post-coup elections, but was dissolved after a court case and lost government after a coalition realignment. Hopefully this time they'll be luckier. While I don't think much of Shinawatra (the words "corrupt scumbag" spring to mind), he has a genuinely popular political platform which has repeatedly won the support of the majority of the Thai people, but has been thwarted and suppressed by undemocratic and extralegal means by the Thai elite. As long as it keeps winning elections, that platform deserves the chance to be implemented.

Cablegate: Thai queen supported coup

The Guardian has started a "you ask, we search" project for the cablegate archive, effectively crowdsourcing the task of looking for interesting stories. Today's result: the Queen of Thailand encouraged the 2006 coup against the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra:

Queen Sirikit was indirectly "responsible for the 2006 coup d'etat", according to Samak Sundaravej, one of Thaksin's successors as prime minister from January to September 2008, according to US diplomats. Samak also claimed, the cable writers add, that Sirikit had a hand in the "ongoing turmoil generated by PAD protests", a reference to the mass protests by the royalist People's Alliance for Democracy which have contributed to the downfall of several Thaksin-associated governments since 2006.

Sirikit is the wife of King Bhumibol, the world's longest-serving current monarch. As a member of the royal family she is in theory expected to be politically neutral.

So, the Thai royal family are officially opposed to democracy. That's good to know. And it means that if democracy is to take root in Thailand in the long-term, they're going to have to either evict their monarchy or castrate it.

Pardoned

Harry Nicolaides, the Australian author jailed in Thailand for the archaic "crime" of lese majeste, has been pardoned and released. He has now (sensibly) fled Thailand for a country which respects free speech and does not imprison people for writing bad novels. But while this is good news, Thailand's ridiculous law remains on the books, and the government is using it increasingly to stifle opposition to its plans to move Thailand away from democracy (or just to squash tourists used to freedom of speech). That should not be acceptable in any civilised country, and until Thailand repeals its law, people simply should not go there.

Banned in Thailand

What did Australian author Harry Nicolaides write which so offended the Thai government and caused them to jail him for lese majeste? Thanks to the Streisand effect, the relevant excerpt is now available on WikiLeaks:

From King Rama to the Crown Prince, the nobility was renowned for their romantic entanglements and intrigues. The Crown Prince had many wives "major and minor" with a coterie of concubines for entertainment. One of his recent wives was exiled with her entire family, including a son they conceived together, for an undisclosed indiscretion. He subsequently remarried with another woman and fathered another child. It was rumored that if the prince fell in love with one of his minor wives and she betrayed him, she and her family would disappear with their name, familial lineage and all vestiges of their existence expunged forever.

(The entire novel is also available here [PDF]. Given that it only sold seven copies, I don't think anyone is going to be losing money over it...)

So, basically establishing that the (fictional) Crown Prince has absolute power and uses it in his self-interest. You can see how the Thai government (who through the monarch have absolute power and use it in their self-interest) might be upset by that - but the fact remains that in a democratic society, nothing is held sacred, and you are allowed to say these sorts of things.

Unfortunately, as we've seen in recent years, and in recent use of the lese majeste law, Thailand isn't really a democratic society...

No freedom of speech in Thailand

Harry Nicolaides is an Australian author living in Thailand. In 2005, he published a novel, Verisimilitude, which included a short scene discussing the personal life of a fictional Thai prince and suggested some sort of abuse of royal power. For this, he was detained when leaving the country, and has just been sentenced to three years imprisonment for "slander[ing] the king, the crown prince and Thailand and the monarchy".

So, not only can the Thai government not distinguish between fiction and reality - they're also unable to recognise that this actual abuse of power does far more damage to the reputation of their sacred monarch than anything written in a bad novel. But pointing that out is probably the sort of thing which gets you arrested.

More lese majeste in Thailand

Last August, a former chief of staff to deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin (and now government Minister) Jakrapob Penkair gave a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. In it, he criticised one of the generals who had led the 2006 coup and attacked Thailand's system of "guided democracy" and patronage:

Patronage system is problematic because it encourages unequality among individuals.

And that’s a direct conflict to Democracy.

It encourages one person into thinking of depending on the other or others.

It breeds endless number of slaves with a very limited number of masters.

It prevents Thailand from coming out of age.

For saying this, Penkair has now been charged with lese majeste and faces between three and fifteen years in prison. Three to fifteen years for pointing out the simple truth that Thailand's rich and powerful have systematically infantilised their own people in order to maintain their positions.

This is how monarchies and aristocracies remain in power. And it seems to me to be an excellent reason for getting rid of them.

Overturning a coup at the ballot box

Thailand went to the polls today in general elections aimed at restoring democracy in the wake of last year's military coup, and from exit polls and preliminary results, it seems that supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are leading. One exit poll has the People's Power Party (an electoral vehicle established to replace Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party) holding an absolute majority, while another predicts 202 out of 480 seats. Either way, the PPP will be in a very strong position to form a government - which poses something of a problem for the Thai military, who face having their coup overturned at the ballot box. The question now is whether they will accept the results, or stage another coup until the people vote the "right" way.

Update: 228 seats. Not an outright majority, but a very strong position. All eyes are now on the military to see whether they will yield power...

Lese majeste in Thailand

Lese majeste is the ancient offence of injuring the dignity of the sovereign. In western democracies, it has rightly been relegated to the dustbin of history (though it still survives in New Zealand as contempt of Parliament). Unfortunately, other countries have not. There's a case going on in Thailand at the moment which demonstrates the absurdity of such laws.

Oliver Jufer is a Swiss man living in Thailand. Last December while drunk he defaced several paintings of the Thai king with black paint. He was arrested and charged, and has now pled guilty. The minimum possible sentence he can receive for the offence is seven and a half years in jail. For defacing a painting. IMHO that's a far greater threat to the "dignity" of the sovereign than the paint ever was.

To his credit, the Thai king thinks the law is absurd and should be repealed. But in a country where the monarchy can not be publicly debated, and where advocating repeal would itself be seen as lese majeste, that seems impossible. And an absurd law with draconian penalties persists, all to protect the fiction of monarchical "dignity".

Endorsement

The Thai king has endorsed yesterday's military coup, ending any hope of an immediate return to democracy and the restoration of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. So, it's pretty much a done deal then - the Generals will rule until they find a civilian patsy to take over (which sadly will not be difficult), and meanwhile the elections scheduled for November will be delayed for a year or more while the constitution is rewritten. Which I guess saves the generals from the embarassment of seeing the man they just ousted regain government at the polls, but cannot be considered good for Thai democracy.

In the meantime, I can't think of a better disproof of the monarchist claim that "monarchy protects democracy". Rather than being the guardian of the constitution, Thailand's monarch explicitly endorsed its overthrow. Some constitutional safeguard...

Thai coup

As you all probably already know, Thailand's caretaker government has been overthrown by a military coup. The Thai constitution has been suspended, Parliament dissolved, and martial law has been imposed. The new junta are claiming that the seizure of power is temporary, that they are acting to overthrow a corrupt and treasonous government and end "social division", and that elections will be held shortly - just as juntas always do. But the stark fact remains that they have stepped outside the role of the military in a democratic society and overthrown a constitutionally-appointed government at gunpoint. This cannot be allowed to stand.

The government of Thaksin Shinawatra is corrupt, and had attempted to manipulate the recent elections - but that does not justify their overthrow. The problem was being dealt with constitutionally, with the courts overturning the results of the elections and calling new ones (scheduled for November). Thaksin's government was widely expected to win those elections - despite its corruption and dirty tricks, it clearly still has majority public support - and so this coup looks more like an attempt to subvert democracy than "defend" it.

We'll have to wait and see how this turns out, and whether international pressure can make the junta back down. And we should hope that this doesn't follow the usual pattern of coups in Thailand. The last one, in 1992, ended in a massacre when people turned out to demonstrate against the new regime. We just have to hope this doesn't have a similar bloody ending.