Thailand’s state prosecutor has dropped the charges against a prominent American academic who was arrested and charged last month with defaming the country’s monarchy.
Paul Chambers, 58, a lecturer at Thailand’s Naresuan University in the northern town of Phitsanulok, was arrested on April 8 after a complaint was filed by the local military regional command.
The complaint accused Chambers of violating Article 112 of the Thai penal code, otherwise known as the lese-majeste law, which outlaws any criticism of the king and key members of the royal family, and the country’s Computer Crime Act. After reporting himself to the Phitsanulok police on April 8, Chambers spent two nights in jail. He was then granted release on bail, but forced to wear an ankle monitor while he awaited trial.
In a statement yesterday, the Office of the Attorney General said it had decided not to pursue the two charges against Chambers. It added that the Phitsanulok provincial prosecutor will request the provincial court to drop the charges, The Nation reported. It will also forward the case file and non-prosecution order to the commissioner of Provincial Police Region 6, covering Phitsanulok, who will determine whether to challenge the decision.
Chambers, who has lived in Thailand for many years and is fluent in both Thai and Lao, is a recognized expert on the country and has written extensively on a range of topics, in particular, the role of the Royal Thai Army in Thailand’s political economy.
The Article 112 complaint was supposedly related to the blurb for a webinar that Chambers participated in last October with Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, in which he discussed the influence of the military in Thai politics. However, Chambers denied either writing or publishing the blurb, and it makes no mention whatsoever of the king, the royal family, or the institution of the monarchy.
His arrest prompted expressions of concern from Asian studies scholars around the world, as well as the U.S. State Department, which said that the case “reinforces our longstanding concerns about the use of lèse majesté laws in Thailand.” It may also have played a role in delaying the planned tariff negotiations between Bangkok and Washington.
While foreigners are rarely charged with lese-majeste, the use of Article 112 against dissidents has spiked since the student-led protest movement of 2020-2021, which saw unusually open discussions of the role of the Thai monarchy in the country’s politics. At least 274 people are currently facing lese-majeste charges, according to the advocacy group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. The law’s critics say that it has been used to ringfence the Thai monarchy from any political scrutiny, even as it has been used to authorize significant abridgments of individual rights and regular military interventions in Thai politics.
However, even compared to some of the most excessive applications of Article 112, Chambers’ case made little sense. According to the Associated Press, the army’s Internal Security Operations Command told a parliamentary inquiry that it filed the complaint based on a Facebook post that translated the words of the blurb on the ISEAS Yusof-Ishak Institute, raising the possibility that the charge was the result of a translation error. Given the focus of Chambers’ scholarship, some also suspect that the charges were the result of something more than incompetence.
In any event, while Chambers is not yet fully off the hook, it is welcome that the Thai authorities came to their senses before the case moved any further forward.