Ten years in prison for comments about Thai king

Article 19 reminds me of the revolting ten year prison sentence given to Thai blogger Suwicha Thakhor last Friday for having material on his blog deemed to have defamed the monarchy, an offence under Section 112 of Thailand’s Penal Code.

Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology claims to have shut down more than 2,000 websites alleged to have contained material offensive to the Thai King.

On 23 January, the Senate set up an extraordinary committee to oversee the blocking of further websites, claiming that over 10,000 could be targeted.

Several issues of the Economist carrying articles about the Thai king have been removed from the shelves in Thailand, while Paul Handley’s biography of the monarch, The King Never Smiles, has been banned in Thailand since its publication in 2006. Websites advertising the book have been blocked.

Sentencing someone to a decade in jail because of the comments they make on a blog is morally wrong.

If you see this post on http://yudigg.net, it's been copied without asking me, even though I've asked the site's owner to stop publishing my blog feed in full on his site. I will speak to his hosting company, Godaddy.com, if he does not remove all content from this blog.