Fighting for Virtue
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Published By Cornell University Press

9781501709586

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-153
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo

This chapter explains how not everyone accused of trying to bring down the monarchy—lom jao—ended up charged with lèse-majesté. It explores another case brought under a different law that illustrates similar issues to the Somyot case. The national security provisions of the 2007 Computer Crime Act offer an alternative means of prosecuting the allegedly disloyal, another notch along the treason spectrum. An illustrative example is the case of former broker Katha Pajariyapong, who was accused of making two web-board postings critical of royalty on the web board of Fa Diao Kan, a critical journal that featured on the April 2010 antimonarchy organogram. The Katha case frequently resembled a theater of the absurd: laughable charges, inept lawyers who wanted to quit, bungling prosecution witnesses, and a presiding judge who claimed to be on the side of the defendant before sending him to jail. Yet the consequences of these farcical proceedings were very real: Katha ultimately served a couple of years behind bars for a meaningless “crime” that brought the law into disrepute. The chapter then argues that judges again allowed their misguided understandings concerning how to show loyalty to the monarchy to take precedence over common sense. Katha's alleged actions had no effect on the country's national security, and no criminal intent was demonstrated during the trial.



2020 ◽  
pp. 219-252










2020 ◽  
pp. 154-169
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