page_title: Lèse majesté in Thailand
section_title: Internet censorship
hierarchical_section_title: Lèse majesté in Thailand / Government measures / Internet censorship
caption_attribution_description: English: Image displayed from Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology when accessing prohibited content, such as The Daily Mail, from Thailand in 2014.
context_page_description: In Thailand, lèse majesté is criminalized by Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code. It is illegal to defame, insult, or threaten the king, queen, heir-apparent, heir-presumptive, or regent. Modern Thai lèse-majesté law has been on the statute books since 1908; "insult" was criminalized and lèse majesté was made a crime against national security in 1957. The punishment, last strengthened in 1976 and the only constitutional monarchy to do so since World War II, is three to fifteen years of imprisonment per count and has been described as the "world's harshest lèse majesté law" and "possibly the strictest criminal-defamation law anywhere". According to social scientist Michael Connors, its enforcement "has been in the interest of the palace."
  There is substantial room for interpretation of the term "insult", which causes controversy. Broad interpretation of the law reflects the inviolable status of the King, resembling feudal or absolute monarchs. The Supreme Court decided that the law also applies to any previous monarchs. Criticism of any privy council member has also raised the question of whether lèse majesté applies by association.
context_section_description: The Office of Prevention and Suppression of Information Technology Crimes maintains a "war room" to monitor for pages which disparage the monarchy. A web crawler is used to search the internet. When an offending image or language is found, the office obtains a court order blocking the site. On 28 October 2008, The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) announced plans to spend about 100–500 million baht to build a gateway to block websites with contents defaming the royal institution.
  In 2008, "more than 4,800 webpages ha[d] been blocked...because they contain[ed] content deemed insulting to Thailand's royal family". In December 2010, nearly 60,000 websites have been banned for alleged insults against Bhumibol. In 2011, the number increased to 70,000.
  On 4 April 2007, the Thai government blocked Thai access to YouTube as a result of a video clip which it deemed insulting to the king.
  The website of Same Sky Books, publishers of Same Sky magazine, was shut down after comments on its bulletin board questioned mainstream media's claims that the entire country was in mourning over the death of Princess Galyani Vadhana.
  In December 2015, the court verdict against Chiranuch Premchaiporn, webmaster of the news website Prachatai, was upheld in the highest court: "an eight-month suspended jail sentence and a 20,000 baht fine". Previously, she had been jailed without bail for nearly a year for not removing—in 2008—an allegedly insulting comment from an article fast enough. Although the comments did not directly mention Bhumibol or members of his family, the court found that Chiranuch displayed insulting intent. Arrested in September 2010, she could face up to 50 years imprisonment if found guilty.
  In 2016, Facebook blocked users in Thailand from accessing a page satirizing Thailand's royal family, citing the lèse-majesté law. Around the same time, there was speculation that the junta was able to obtain private chat logs of Facebookers.
  In 2019, the Facebook page "Royalist Marketplace" was launched as a forum by academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun to discuss and criticize the Thai monarchy freely. The Thai authorities shut down access in Thailand to the Facebook page, which has accumulated around one million users, and which Facebook may be appealing, while Pavin is facing a charge of cybercrime. He has since launched a replacement Facebook page.
caption: Image displayed from Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology when accessing prohibited content, such as The Daily Mail, from Thailand in 2014.
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