Record 50-year term for lese-majeste violation
AChiang Rai man is facing 50 years in prison for royal defamation after the Court of Appeal found him guilty on additional counts to those for which he had already been sentenced, it was confirmed on Jan 18.
The sentence against Mongkol ‘Busbas’ Thirakot is believed to be the longest on record for violations under Section 112 of the Criminal Code, the lese-majeste law, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The previous record was set in the case of Anchan Preelert, a former senior Revenue Department official convicted in January 2021. She was originally handed an 87-year jail term on charges of breaking Section 112 and the Computer Crime Act with posts on multiple social media accounts that defamed the monarch. The sentence was reduced to 43 years because she confessed.
Conviction under Section 112 carries a minimum of three years in prison and a maximum of 15 years for each charge.
Mr Mongkol, a 30-yearold online clothing vendor and activist, is in the process of submitting a bail request to the Supreme Court, his lawyers said.
The Court of Appeal found the defendant guilty of 11 more counts of lese-majeste, on top of the 14 convictions in the Court of First Instance in January 2023, in connection with a total of 27 posts he made on Facebook.
The appeal court sentenced Mr Mongkol to three years on each count, for a total of 33 years. The sentence was reduced by one-third to 22 years because he provided useful information, the judges said.
The Court of First Instance last year handed down a sentence totalling 42 years but reduced it to 28 years. The combined prison terms now total 50 years.
Mr Mongkol was arrested in April 2021 after going on a hunger strike in Chiang Rai to press for the right to bail for political prisoners in similar cases.
Mongkol’s case came a day after the Criminal Court handed down a four-year jail term to activist and lawyer Arnon Nampa for lese-majeste violations.
Prosecutors told the court that Arnon posted three messages on his Facebook account on Jan 1, 2021 in a way that distorted information with the intent to insult the royal institution.
Arnon had previously been sentenced to four years in a separate lese-majeste case involving a rally in 2020.
According to data from TLHR, up to Dec 31 last year, 1,938 people have been prosecuted for political participation and expression since the beginning of the Free Youth protests in July 2020. At least 262 are facing lese-majeste charges under Section 112 and 138 have been charged with sedition under Section 116. Nine cases under Section 116 came before the courts in December and all were dismissed.