New Mandala

19 responses so far ↓

• 1 Kaveman’s Daily Feed of Informative Blogs » Oliver Jufer, Royal graffiti and global news // Mar 14, 2007 at 7:18 pm

  [...] Original post by Nicholas Farrelly [...]

• 2 Tosakan // Mar 14, 2007 at 10:45 pm

  I think it is interesting that you pointed this out.

  I noticed that the coverage has also been extensive as well.

  Why is this a important story, especially with all the other things going on in Thailand?

  Also, this guy was a drunk who committed an act of vandalism, an act that happens a million different times in a million different places all over the world every day.

  The fact that Mr. Oliver is up for 75 years in prison for this act of “vandalism” undermines the Thai notion that the king is above politics, but, ironically, Oliver’s act was only so political to the extent that he was angry that nobody was selling booze on the
  king’s birthday.

  Also, what was the intent of the lese majeste law in ancient Thailand?

  The purpose was to prevent princes and nobles from conspiring to overthrow the monarchy, because conspiracies against the monarchy and regicide were the norm rather than the exception back in the day. And many commoners despised the monarchy because they were forced to get tattooed and do corvee labor.

  Further, back in the day, the image of the monarch was sacred and it wasn’t meant to be plastered everywhere like it is now. (To prove my point, where are all the images and paintings of previous kings?) People weren’t supposed to look at the king in a form. How things have changed in such an Orwellian fashion in the age of mass media!

  Katherine Bowie in her village scout book said that
  the ubiquitous placing of the King’s image everywhere in Thailand began as a CIA/USIA program to spread loyalty to the monarchy to the masses to counter the threat of communism.

  During the mid-Rattanakosin period, people criticized the king all the time. Ironically, the Thai press was freer when it was run by foreigners during the mid 19th century than it is now. Dr. Dan Beach Bradley and King Mongkut used to have debates in the newspapers about Thai culture and government policy. During the reign of King Vajirayudh, the king would also write his own newspapers columns in response to what others have said about him. Rama 7 was openly attacked for his policies all the time.

  In the modern era, the lese majeste laws were used as a tool to persecute enemies of the military dictatorships. See the case of Ajarn Sulak.

  So, I go back to my original question, why is this international news?

  Also, if the Thais wanted to keep this hush hush, why didn’t they just make a deal with him and send him home?

• 3 anon // Mar 15, 2007 at 9:14 am

  He’s being jailed because junta heir-apparent Saprang Kalayanamitr suspects that Thaksin hired Jufer to insult the King. I’m not kidding! See here.

• 4 Blogger Jotman // Mar 15, 2007 at 1:55 pm

  Tosakan asks “Why is this a important story, especially with all the other things going on in Thailand?”

  Good question. The Lesse Mageste law — under which Mr. Oliver Jufer is being tried — continues to represent a serious obstacle to Thailand’s emergence as a fully functioning democracy. It was cited in justification of the recent coup, and it continues to stifle political discourse in Thailand.

  There are few stories more important to the future of Thailand than a story that exposes the nature of this law. International exposure to Mr. Jufer’s plight could well lead more Thais to question the need for repressive law. Besides, any time, anywhere that a human being is subjected to the threat of punishment, the severity of which so outrageously exceeds the crime, you have major human rights story and therefore an absolutely important story, regardless of whether the story has wider political implications (as this one certainly does). Mr. Oliver Jufer’s life matters. Period.

  I have written more about this issue at my blog, Jotman.com. Also see my recent posts on Thai-style democracy, Paul Handley’s biography of King Bhumibol, and the writings of Thongchai Winichakul.

  - Blogger Jotman

• 5 anon // Mar 15, 2007 at 4:27 pm

  Even more interesting than the maximum sentence is the minimum sentence. He pleaded guilty to five counts of lèse majesté, with each count having a minimum sentence of 3 years.

  That’s at least 15 years in rotting in a jail. Unless if he’s pardoned by the King, of course. But then again, the King has never pardoned anybody who has been convicted of lèse majesté…

• 6 nganadeeleg // Mar 15, 2007 at 4:33 pm

  This case has been bungled badly – forget lese majeste – he should have just been deported immediately for vandalism – then they can get on with dealing with important issues like the southern insurgency & corruption.

  Jotman – I noticed a couple of interesting quotes on your blog:

  Dec 3 2006:
  “Human nature being what it is, elites — whether communist, militarist, royalist, or corporatist — tend to be self-serving. That’s because power corrupts. Genuine democracy is the tried and tested safeguard; open society the antidote to this
  universal human frailty.”

  Mar 5 2007 (from Chang Noi’s column in the Nation about the Fa Dieo Kan special issue on the coup):
  “This book argues that the big issue now is not the military or political corruption or populism, but how to prevent an elite minority controlling politics and keeping the masses as passive partners, in part by exploiting the symbolic power of the monarchy.”

  Both sound good in theory, but how does it work in practice?

  There are many countries that don’t have a monachy, and also many that have open societies, but I am having difficulty coming up with countries that have ‘genuine democracy’ and do not have an elite minority controlling politics and keeping the masses as passive partners.

  I can think of a few where the masses think they have some control, but in reality they do not have much influence on ‘business as usual’ for the elites.

  I suppose it’s all relative.

• 7 nganadeeleg // Mar 15, 2007 at 4:35 pm

  anon: Do you have details of how many people have actually been convicted of lese majeste, and the time they served in jail?

• 8 anon // Mar 15, 2007 at 7:17 pm

  nganadeeleg, the last person well known to be convicted for lèse majesté was opposition politician Veera Musikapong, who was not only jailed but banned for politics for several years for making a joke about the Crown Prince. Other than him, numerous people have been imprisoned (but not convicted) for the crime, including the dumb Frenchman who refused to turn off his reading light on the plane even the princess ordered him to.

  During the 70’s, during the reign of the the royalist Thanin Kraiwichian, dozens of people were imprisoned for lèse majesté (it was also the Thanin-government that changed the punishment for lèse majesté from

• 9 Blogger Jotman // Mar 15, 2007 at 7:43 pm

  nganadeeleg:

  Elites are neither good nor bad. But they must be watched. To keep a check on the elites, people need access to information about them. They have to be free to talk about what the elites are doing.

  Constitutional democracy — elections, a separation of powers, rule of law, the right to free speech — provides the basis for a self-correcting political system. It’s not perfectly stable, as you rightly point out, but at least it provides an open process by which troubles can be sorted out. Sadly, the Thai system has become again something like a black box — a closed system.

  Which is to say an information-poor system. To me it all comes down to access to information. Unless information freely circulates, members of society won’t be able to recognize or address problems, taking corrective action from time to time.

  - Blogger Jotman

• 10 nganadeeleg // Mar 15, 2007 at 8:22 pm

  Jotman: Like I said – it’s all relative.
  Even the more ‘advanced’ democracies still have elites that are virtually above politics and whichever political party is in power has no effect on them – they just do it in a more subtle way than in Thailand, and they are happy to let the masses think that because they have a vote they have some control.

  anon: I bet the King does pardon Oliver if he happens to be convicted.

• 11 Bangkok Pundit // Mar 16, 2007 at 12:41 am

  Nganadeeleg: I posted this last year:

  “Talking of Fah Diew Kan, they interviewed (PDF) David Streckfuss – who wrote his dissertation on lese majeste law in Thailand. It is certainly worth a read particularly as his dissertation and an earlier journal article were written in the 90s. He has same interesting statistics on lese majeste cases in the last 10 years. 22 cases and everyone was found guilty and in 21 of the cases the person was sentenced to jail.”

  Anon: It was certainly not a joke about the Crown Prince. Streckfuss goes through the case in detail in both his dissertation and a journal article he wrote. The politician was imagining what his life would be like if he was a prince and living in a palace, he did not refer to a member of the Royal Family. He was found guilty because his statement was found to be indirectly insulting as it suggested members of the Royal Family were lazy.

  Here is screenshot from Streckfuss’ article with the words in question.

• 12 Srithanonchai // Mar 16, 2007 at 1:28 am

  The bibliographical details for Streckfuss are

  Streckfuss, David. 1995. “Kings in the Age of Nations – The Paradox of Lèse-Majesté as Political Crime in Thailand.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (3): 445-475. (Reprinted in David Streckfuss, ed. 1996. Modern Thai Monarchy and Cultural Politics: The Acquittal of Sulak Sivaraksa on the Charge of lese majeste in Siam 1995 and Its Consequences. Bangkok: Santi Pracha Dhamma Institute, pp. 54-80.)

  Streckfuss, David Eirich. 1998. “The poetics of subversion: Civil liberty and lese-majeste in the modern Thai state.” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. 669 pp.

• 13 polo // Mar 19, 2007 at 2:45 am

  We eariler noted how the Thai press — well mainly the Nation — strangely relies on foreign reports on sensitive matters relating to the monarchy. Here is the Nation doing it again:

  http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/read.php?newsid=30029590

  March 18
  Cambodian prince charged with adultery

  PHNOM PENH – A Cambodian court has charged ousted royalist leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh with adultery over his affair with a classical dancer, a court official said Sunday.

  Ranariddh — who is currently in Europe and was on Tuesday sentenced in absentia to 18 months in jail for fraud over a land deal — could face up to one year in prison if found guilty under Cambodia’s new monogamy laws.

  The charge follows a complaint filed in December by his estranged wife, Princess Norodom Marie Ranariddh.

  Sok Kalyan, deputy prosecutor at Phnom Penh Municipal Court, said the charge was issued in January, but was only made public on Friday, the first day of campaigning for upcoming local administrative elections.

  “It is true that I charged Prince Norodom Ranariddh with adultery, and I think it is fair because the accused had a relationship with a new partner,” said Sok Kalyan.

  He said the court would invite both Princess Marie and Ranariddh to court once the investigation was complete. No date for the hearing has yet been set.

  The prince, 63, has publicly acknowledged his relationship with a classical dancer, with whom he has a three-year-old son.

  Cambodia in September passed a monogamy law which punishes unfaithful spouses and bans polygamy and incest. Perpetrators face between a month and a year in prison, plus a fine of up to 205 dollars.

  Ranariddh’s defence lawyer Liv Sovanna labelled the charge “a great injustice”, but admitted that he had little hope that they could win the case, accusing the courts of bias.

  Ranariddh, who was sacked as leader of the Funcinpec party in October, was on Tuesday sentenced to 18 months in jail and ordered to pay 150,000 dollars to Funcinpec over the illegal sale of his former political party’s headquarters.

  The charges against the prince are at the heart of a battle with his former political allies for royalist support ahead of local elections next month and national polls in 2008, which are likely to see royalist influence in the government plummet.

  Ouk Socheat, the prince’s information adviser, said Ranariddh was currently in Belgium.

  He did not say when Ranariddh would return to Cambodia, but told AFP that members of the prince’s newly-established Norodom Ranariddh Party would issue a petition requesting a royal pardon from King Norodom Sihamoni.

  Agence France-Presse

• 14 anon // Mar 23, 2007 at 5:20 am

  So in Cambodia, the royal family isn’t constitutionally inviolate, like in Thailand?

• 15 New Mandala » Thailand’s climate of repression // Mar 29, 2007 at 3:35 pm

  [...] opinions. As a starter, let’s� reflect on� today’s news about the unfortunate Oliver Jufer. A Swiss man was jailed for 10 years Thursday on charges of insulting His Majesty the King by [...]

• 16 New Mandala » Thailand’s climate of repression // Mar 29, 2007 at 3:35 pm

  [...] opinions. As a starter, let’s� reflect on� today’s news about the unfortunate Oliver Jufer. A Swiss man was jailed for 10 years Thursday on charges of insulting His Majesty the King by [...]

• 17 New Mandala » The regime’s royal ridicule // Apr 8, 2007 at 9:02 am

  [...] clip campaign gains considerable energy, and even credibility, from the heavy handed sentencing of Oliver Jufer on lèse majesté charges. There is considerable juvenile mischief in this campaign, but there is [...]

• 18 New Mandala » Pardon me, Jufer free // Apr 12, 2007 at 9:13 pm

  [...] a couple of New Mandala readers have noted in their comments, Swiss graffitist Oliver Jufer has received a royal pardon. It was an unnecessary charge, an outrageous sentence and the fallout [...]

• 19 AFREETHAI // Apr 28, 2007 at 8:20 pm

  If that guy vandalised any other public or private properties in Thailand, would it be OK if he was tried?
  So what and where is the point? It’s all about ‘political stand’ right?

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