Those Marvelous Monarchs

Ah, Thailand. Where you can cavort with child hookers until your cock turns blue, but where they'll throw you in jail if you don't pay the mandatory "respect" to the king.

Chotisak Onsoong was charged with an offence that could land him in jail for 15 years. His alleged crime was simple: during the playing of the royal anthem which precedes all films in Thai cinemas, he had remained in his seat. Mr Chotisak, a 27-year old businessman and political activist, is the latest person to be prosecuted under Thailand’s stringent lèse majesté laws, which make it a crime to “defame, insult or threaten” the King, Queen or heir to the throne. ...

In March last year a Swiss man received a ten-year prison term for drunkenly defacing posters of the King. He was pardoned and deported. Last summer a professor of philosophy at Silpakorn University in Bangkok, Boonsong Chaisingkananont, found himself under investigation for lèse majesté after setting the following examination questions for his first-year students. “Is the monarchy necessary for Thai society? How should it adapt to a democratic system? Discuss.”

Think it can't happen in the West? But it does.

Comments

[Hermes Ten]

The kind of laws, no doubt, that many of the Bushlickers would like to see here, so we'd all have to respect their Furher.

[Phelps]

In Thailand's defense, they seem to be making a genuine effort to end the child sex industry. I'm assuming that you don't have a problem with adult (uncoerced) prostitution?

http://www.tatnews.org/emagazine/3281.asp