Man gets two years for mocking Thai king with a rubber duck calendar

A Thai lawyer has been sentenced to two years in jail for selling calendars featuring cartoon rubber ducks that judges said mocked Thailand’s monarch. Rubber ducks became a mascot for Thailand’s pro-democracy movement. Large duck-shaped inflatable dinghies were initially brought along as a joke to protests pushing for curbs to the power of the monarchy but were later used by demonstrators to protect themselves from violence by the authorities. Prosecutors argued the ducks shown in the calendars sold by the lawyer were deliberately intended to resemble King Rama X, who has been a repeated target of pro-democracy demonstrations in the country.  The defendant’s sentence was subsequently reduced to two years ‘in light of [his] valuable testimony’, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said.
 
According to the courts, the defendant claimed he had been unaware of the content of the calendars, having been in charge of delivering rather than selling the items. His argument was rejected on grounds that the defendant possesses a law degree, and must therefore have had some sense of the calendars’ illegal content, given that the first page features a phrase closely associated with the monarchy. 
Freedom of expression is restricted in Thailand under the country’s strict lèse-majesté law. Under the law, anyone found guilty of insulting the monarchy can face up to 15 years in jail. Since a coup in 2014, Thailand has seen increased censorship and arrests of individuals deemed to have insulted the monarchy. The current king has also become the target of increasing criticism and scrutiny by pro-democracy protesters. 
According to human rights organisations, the lèse-majesté law has been increasingly used in recent months by the Thai authorities as a tool to silence political opposition. Since the start of the year, at least 72 people have been charged under the law, according to the legal aid group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. In February, a woman was sentenced to 43 years in prison for sharing audio clips on social media that were judged to be critical of the monarchy.



Source link