The_Munchmaster Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 3 years in jail! Sorry but fucking rediculous! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckwoww Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 3 years in jail! Sorry but fucking rediculous! Bet he gets out early. But the next bloke won't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheekyboy Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 just shows the Thais in a bad light as being a bunch of clowns , again . you lose count of the times they make fools of themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidflux Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 The les mejesty law seems to get used for all the wrong reasons. I think even the king himself has said it's outdated and unnecessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torneyboy Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 "I think it's reasonable to say that just writing a simple paragraph in a novel, to expect that would land you in such serious legal trouble, must have come as a surprise for Harry," Andrew Walker, a fellow in the Asia-Pacific Program at Australian National University, said on ABC. "I think Thailand is trying to send a message to international media, to writers, to bloggers, to people who are putting material on the Internet that the royal family is out of bounds." Says it all.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Hippie Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 3 years in jail! Sorry but fucking rediculous! Agreed. But at the same turn, he knew this might happen, so why did he go/stay in Thailand? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadfly Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 The BBC reports that before his arrest only seven copies of the book were sold. No one was paying any attention. What do you think will happen now? I was sent a copy of what was apparantly the offending passage from the US while I was in Singapore. I cannot tell if he actually was writing about this monarchy. We, of couse, cannot discuss further because that would involve citation to the book. This does, however, illustrate a real problem with this law - namely, you cannot discuss the key facts surrounding an alleged violation because such a discussion could be a crime. But it gets worse. The police apprantly construed a particular passage to refer to a member of the current Royal Family (not the King). If you construe it in the manner the police did - and I am not sure that is what the author intended - it raises an issue that I am sure the authorities would not like discussed. But now that the book has been banned because of what they think the book was trying to say, you are starting to see reporters ask if there is a story here. They ignored or weren't even aware of the rumours before, but now they are probing. And what a time for this to happen. They really stepped in it this time. I feel sorry for the guy, but I am not going to far into the discussion about "whether he should have known better" since its not at all clear that he was even talking about the current institution. But it is clear that the authorities, in handling this in the way they did, have highlighted, in the international press, a rumour I have heard for years from my Thai staff but have never seen mentioned in the press. Now the international press will be probing to see if there is any substance to the rumours. At the very least they will soon pick up on and repeat the rumours. It's almost as though they want to create more problems for Thailand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadfly Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Quick follow-up. Ran a google with various words to see what the press is reporting. Many of the sites blocked from Thailand. Have no idea what they are saying, and I am apparantly not allowed to know. Down the rabbit hole... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadfly Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 Did find the following confirms my reading: No specific name was mentioned in one short paragraph in a book 226 pages long and only three sentences are concerned. Furthermore, the charge is based on the translation of this passage into Thai, not on the original English.The reference to the monarchy is incidental, and in no way is central to the story in this work of fictionâ? What I read wandered around so much that it wasn't clear he was talking about the current monarchy. Further down the rabbit hole.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckwoww Posted January 20, 2009 Report Share Posted January 20, 2009 So do you think it's OK to break all Thai laws? Or just the ones you think are stupid? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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