End the Gag on Thailand's Citizens

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End the Gag on Thailand's Citizens
Forbidding public discussion on the monarchy only entrenches the political crisis.

By PATRICK JORY AND MICHAEL MONTESANO

Thailand's Electoral Commission recently warned that discussion of the monarchy will not be tolerated in the lead up to the July 3 general election. The Commission's admonition is the latest in a series of warnings by government authorities designed to shut down debate about the role of the Thai monarch.

The Thai government admits that it has blocked more than 100,000 websites, mostly because they contain material that the government considers either insulting to the royal family or critical of the idea that Thailand should be a monarchy. Numerous Red Shirt leaders and sympathizers have been jailed or are awaiting charges under the country's lèse-majesté law, which makes it an offense to insult the king, queen, heir apparent or regent, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Jatuporn Phromphan, one of the most prominent among the accused red shirts, has just been charged under the law as a result of a speech that he made at a rally on the anniversary of the April-May 2010 violence, in which he accused military units attached to the palace of firing on and killing Red Shirt demonstrators. Thailand's military, which believes that there is a conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy, has been accused of threatening to arrest a leading Thai academic who dared to write an open letter criticizing a recent television interview by one of the princesses.

Yet, despite the authorities' best efforts to shut down public criticism of it, debate about the monarchy's future in Thailand is growing. This is mainly a result of the belief among large sections of the public that the ties between Privy Council Chairman Prem Tinsulanonda and the soldiers who carried out the coup of 2006, along with the subsequent appointment of a privy councilor as prime minister, mean that the palace was directly involved in the coup. Further, in the political turmoil of the past five years, the palace has on numerous occasions appeared to side with the royalist Yellow Shirt protestors, the military and the Democrat Party.

A small but growing number of Thai scholars, intellectuals and social activists writing in journals and on academic websites are beginning to discuss concrete proposals to reform the monarchy to make it more democratic. The proposals include reforming or abolishing the lèse-majesté law and ending the constitutional prohibition on criticism of the king and the royal family.


But these intellectuals and activists understand that the issue at hand is far broader than lèse majesté. Their proposals include abolishing the Privy Council, which is appointed by the king and widely believed to intervene in the country's politics, military promotions and judicial decisions; ending the relentless promotion of the monarchy in the Thai mass media and education system; bringing the monarchy's extensive assets and business interests under the direction of the government, as they were until early in the reign of King Bhumibol; ending the practice by which the king makes speeches on politically sensitive subjects, military affairs and judicial decisions without the approval of the elected government of the day; and abolishing the custom whereby commoners are obliged to prostrate themselves before members of the royal family in Thailand—the only place in the world where this custom still exists.

So far, the political parties haven't touched the issue of democratizing the Thai monarchy. Their silence is due not only to fear of being branded disloyal and facing prosecution for lèse majesté, but also to the risk of intimidation and violent retribution by political opponents.

But the assiduous effort of the Democrat Party-led, military-backed government to suppress critical debate about the monarchy demonstrates in itself that this issue is of enormous public concern. And it could backfire. Banning rational public discussion about the monarchy could radicalize Thais who want reform. Already, more far-reaching solutions to the question of the monarchy's future in Thailand than those mentioned here—including republicanism—are being called for in discussions held far from public view.

For this reason alone, Thai royalists ought to welcome open discussion of the monarchy and its place in national life. Thailand's monarchy has been refashioned repeatedly in the past. It will have to be refashioned again in the future, if it is to survive to play the significant role which its royalist supporters fervently hope for. A national consensus is required on the nature of that role in the decades ahead, something continued suppression of discussion makes impossible.

Forbidding Thai citizens from openly talking about what is, after all, their country's central political institution hardly befits a modern nation in whose politics all sides claim to seek a more democratic Thailand. More worrying, continued suppression of discussion could lead to further political violence—perhaps worse than that of April and May 2010.

Freedom House recently downgraded Thailand's media rating to "not free"—a humiliating label for a country that was once regarded as the most open and liberal in the region. Historian David Streckfuss, the leading scholar of lèse majesté law in Thailand, believes that some 200 people now languish in Thai jails following conviction for this offense. Their sentences, many handed down in secret trials, range up to 18 years.

This is no way to foster a forward-looking Thailand. Thais have a right to debate freely and openly the reform of the monarchy to suit a more modern and democratic future.

Mr. Jory is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Queensland. Mr. Montesano is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. They are the co-editors of Thai South and Malay North: Ethnic Interactions on a Plural Peninsula (Singapore: NUS Press), which will appear later this year in a Thai-language edition.





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