A Thai opposition parliamentarian has been sentenced to six years in prison for insulting the monarchy on social media, the latest in a string of convictions under the country’s strict lese-majeste law.
Rukchanok “Ice” Srinork of the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP) was sentenced to three years under Article 112 of the Thai penal code, which criminalizes criticism of the monarchy, and three years for breaching the Computer Crimes Act charge, the AFP news agency reported.
The charges referred to two social media posts that she made on X (then known as Twitter) in 2021. The first invited people to wear black on King Vajiralongkorn’s birthday, while the second was a retweet of a post that criticized a government policy granting a COVID-19 vaccine production contract to a private company owned by the king.
The 29-year-old has since been released on bail worth $14,000 pending an appeal, on the condition that she not repeat the offence, the BBC reported. If she loses the appeal and is imprisoned, she will lose her seat in parliament.
Ice gained political prominence in the wave of anti-government protests that took place in Bangkok and other Thai cities in 2020 and 2021. The demonstrations followed the court-ordered disbanding of the Future Forward Party, the MFP’s progenitor, whose former leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit has also been charged with lese-majeste for criticizing the government’s COVID-19 vaccine procurement policy. The demonstrations saw sweeping calls for democratic reforms and – most explosively – the public airing of once-unthinkable criticisms of the monarchy.
Ice later joined the progressive MFP and ran for parliament at the general election in May, defeated a scion of one of Thailand’s most powerful political families in a constituency in the capital Bangkok. She did so on a modest budget, cycling around her constituency to meet her constituents. For felling Wan Ubumrung, the son of a powerful member of the Pheu Thai Party, one Thai media outlet described Rukchanok as a “giant killer,” The Guardian reported.
The young activist’s David-versus-Goliath victory represented in microcosm the strong performance of her party as a whole, which won the most seats in the election. But the party was then obstructed from forming government by the military-appointed Senate, and prominent MFP members now face a range of politically-inflected legal charges, including several lese-majeste charges.
It was precisely for this reason that the MFP campaigned for the abolition of Article 112, which the party argued had been used to suppress legitimate calls for democratic reform – in particular, to silence the organizers of the 2020-21 protests and tie them up in protracted legal proceedings. According to the advocacy group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, at least 262 lese-majeste cases have been opened, most of them involving leaders and participants in the protests.
This also offers a convincing first-line explanation of why conservatives and royalists were so eager to block the MFP forming government. Should Article 112 be unpicked, it would threaten to loosen the keystone that holds the power of the monarchy, and the whole weighty edifice of Thai power and privilege, in place.