For some time now I have been getting reports, on-and-off, that New Mandala pages that discuss lese majeste are being blocked in Thailand. When I was recently in the country I didn’t notice any problems but I am concerned that some New Mandala content (particularly that announcing local events, like this one) is not getting through. There is a discussion of this issue over at Prachatai that covers it in some detail.

Can anyone at the Thai end offer confirmation of this? From what I am led to understand, blog posts (such as this one) with “lese majeste” in the title are being (quite crudely?) eliminated based on URL keywords (at least by one ISP?). Any and all experience, analysis and insight is greatly appreciated. If you can get a screen grab of any possible problems that would be helpful too.

Also, if anyone else has been forced to access New Mandala through proxy servers that would be good to hear about. The mechanics of any subtle effort to block this site (and others!) are still a bit unclear to me but I’m sure that many of us would like to learn more.