the Lack of Press Freedom in Thailand

When it comes to press freedom, Thailand ranked 115 out of 180 countries in this year’s World Press Freedom index which is honestly not a good place. This is a result of our current government. Our Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has a vision that the media should play a major role in supporting the government’s affair which puts the media in a tough position.

In 2014, the government granted authority to army courts to prosecute people who defame, insult, or threaten the monarchy. The lese majeste law has been used along with its substitute, the Computer Crime Act, to restrict free speech from platforms that are critical of the government and the monarchy and enforce censorship. 

Recently, the focus of censorship in Thailand has been mainly on lese majeste, national security, and political issues. Plus, the government also invoked the sedition laws to curb press freedom. 

The lese majeste law has been an obstacle for press freedom and freedom of speech in Thailand. Most of the media are unwilling to report anything that could be seen as critical of the monarchy with the fear of getting in trouble because of the law. 

There was a case of a columnist who spoke about how the prime minister handled the flood in 2017 and that made him being charged with sedition and detained for several times by the government. 

Another case is that the government threatened Facebook with legal action to put down a Facebook group called Royal Marketplace that engages in criticism about the monarchy. The incident is another reflection of how untouchable Thai monarchy is as the government would not let them be criticized like normal people. 

In the past few years, there has been more criticism about the king over the internet and some sarcastic comments about him regarding his actions. Also, there are questions about the existence of lese majeste law that should have no place in democratic country that Thailand claimed to be.

Many people have been protesting with the demand to reform the monarchy and the lese majeste law and this is where the authorities have begun enforcing the law more strictly and no mainstream media have been up to talk about this incident. 

The government even tried to censor media coverage of the protest which has drawn heavy criticism from human rights groups as the media has the right to provide the information about the protest and the public has the right to receive them. Luckily, the government failed to do so. 

If the mainstream media are not able to deliver this information to the public, it probably leads to the lack of trust that people have in the mainstream media that is unable to cover the protest movement and the government’s aim to suppress it. 

There are some lower profile media that are trying to provide a different point of view but often end up targeted by the authorities. With the strict control of political news under the junta government, there is no doubt that the press freedom in Thailand is limited.