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This was pretty much expected but is a shocker nonetheless. “The court ruled that Ampon failed to provide credible evidence to back up his defence.” Yes, he didn’t but equally the prosecution failed to provide more than circumstantial evidence to support the claim that he did it. The prosecution’s case seemed to leave significant, reasonable doubt that he sent the messages himself. In addition there was no obvious motive or record of any past anti-monarchist behaviour. Of course it is possible that he really did send the messages but in a case like this where there is no firm evidence and reasonable doubt cannot be dispelled a jury in a common law jurisdiction would not be permitted to convict. But then Thailand is not subject to juries, common law or even any discernible form of rule of law.

From the Times of London.Editorial of 24.11.2011

“Thailand’s childish, idiotic lèse-majesté law is a stain on that nation’s standing in the world.”

More details on the case here including some very surprising comment from the trial judge.

https://bitly.com/va6x3G

#4

Pressure on the government to show “loyalty” does not only come from the royalist aphichon’s political party, the Democrats (who have recently been so proud of providing a “constructive opposition”), but also from its very own newspaper, the Bangkok Post.

In an editorial published on November 23, Yingluck was urged to publicly confess her guilt in having tried to use the king as a political tool “to rescue the convicted felon Thaksin” on the occasion of the amnesty issue.

The relevant sentences of the editorial read,

“Never has politics been allowed to intrude into the auspiciousness of pardons and the great events around them.
(…) Under no circumstances should any faction or party be allowed to inject politics into the gracious granting of pardons and remissions of sentence.
The draft decree should never have been written, but because it intruded on such an auspicious event, the government must account for its actions.”

The people of Thailand have seen enough. It’s time for this teetering pyramid of fear, grovelling, and tyranny to be swept aside to make way for democracy. Only then will brave and merciful Thais be filled pride in their country instead of shame.

@Vichai asked:
Maybe you should hang out with different Thai friends CT? Stay away from negative people, places and whatever.

—

Hahaha, thank you for the tip. The reason I still don’t really ‘break’ my friendship with these friends I have is because I believe that most of my Thai friends are actually kind at heart. I know many of them since primary/middle schools, and they are great parts of my childhood. Many of them are nice and sincere, but now they are just too fanatical to the Monarchy that they would wish anyone who does not love him to be killed. I believe one day they will realise that they were wrong and change their thinking. That’s why I wouldn’t break my friendship with them.

Words fail me utterly.

Htoo Htoo Han
it is not one man show, see bigger picture.do not follow the bottom of a woman’s salon(htamian) Daw aung san suu kyi had told to people of burma, democracy is not come by me everyone job to do.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/questnews/north/burmese-pair-retract-war-crimes-claim-burma-junta-executions-un-icc/story-fn8m0rl4-1226130658704?fb_ref=rec-top&fb_source=profile_oneline

Burmese pair retract crimes claim
http://www.couriermail.com.au
NUNDAH’S Htoo Htoo Han and Zillmere’s Moon Hsar claimed in July to have murdered up to 70 people in their war-torn Burma homeland in a bid to gain attention and bring to light wrongs committed by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and United Nations (UN).
Like ┬╖ ┬╖ Share ┬╖ September 11 at 12:29pm near Brisbane
Denise Irwin likes this.
Htoo Htoo Han Keep fighting yourself, what ever you can do for our freedom, also ask your self… are you a crow (talk) or a peacock (action)? in our history, the leader stands in front and doesn’t cowardly stand behind for others to fight for them.

I have had about 30 minutes for the shock and horror to sink in. Mr. Amphong, a.k.a. “Uncle SMS” has been until this point the convenient offender, old, poor, uneducated, and unable to defend himself. He is a hapless victim. It is quite possible he didn’t send the offending text messages; even if he did, the prosecutors should have done a pass on this one simply on the basis of mercy and possible issues of the mental health of the alleged perpetrator. I feel very, very sorry for him. I am guessing that most other people, when they hear the facts and see the photo, will as well. Therefore, it is our duty to humanity to spread this photo as far and as wide as we can.

This is a lesson to Amnesty International as well. If you choose to ignore a human rights issue like Lese Majeste and Article 112 it doesn’t go away, it only festers and gets much worse. Time to wake up and do your job!

Simon Creak has drawn our attention to the increasingly subtle reconfiguring of memory in Laos today, not just by the government but by respectable international organizations like the World Bank too.
One source of this, I would contend, is the confusion that has emerged among visitors to Laos and foreigners working there about whether it is more correct to call the country ‘Laos’ or ‘Lao’ because the ‘s’ is absent in the Lao language. There is a reason why an ‘s’ may be added to ‘Lao’, and that is to transform it into a noun. Thus, the term ‘Lao’ is an adjective; with the ‘s’ added it becomes a noun. This is a logical solution to a linguistic problem within most European languages, or one may say a resource that these languages have. Some people seem to think that the written ‘s’ is silent, but this is simply a rationale for the observed difference between the spelling of Laos and the fact that many people these days do not pronounce the ‘s’ when speaking.
The confusion is set to continue. But it is worth noting the political and stylistic confusions that accompany it. The people who have had the biggest impact on English usage in Laos are the international aid organizations and the embassies. Between them they produce mountains of documents in which they have ‘solved’ this problem in a most ugly way stylistically. Instead of using ‘Lao’ as both an adjective and a noun in these documents (which is how most of them use it in speech) they continually forgo the noun form in favour of the adjectival, i.e. they write the Lao PDR, endlessly. Some unconsciously recognise the problem and try to turn the adjective into a noun, such as with ‘in Lao PDR’. Laos or Lao would be so much simpler. Furthermore, it has produced confusions between the country of Laos and the current regime, the LPDR. If the Lao PDR is your pseudo noun, how do you refer to the country before this regime was in power? In one case I saw a graph series for the ‘Lao PDR’ stretching from the 1950s into the 1990s! Of course, the Lao PDR has only existed since December 1975. Even the American Embassy tripped itself up when in 2005 it celebrated 50 years of diplomatic relations between ‘The USA and the Lao PDR’. They of all people should have been aware that they initially established diplomatic relations with the Royal Lao Government in Laos. No doubt the Lao PDR itself is very happy to see such slipping and sliding in historical memory as it garners to itself all the ‘good’ things that have happened in Laos’ recent past.