Lèse majesté CD seller released
On 2 February, Sathian Rattanawong was released from Bangkok Remand Prison after serving a year and eleven months for selling CDs with lèse majesté content in 2011.
He was greeted by about 20 people including relatives and red shirts.
He said that he was glad to be released. His three-year jail term, which was due to end in early April this year, was commuted after he applied for a ticket-of-leave according to the Corrections Department’s rules as he had already served almost two thirds of his time.
He was, however, required to report to the Department in the next three days in his home province Sa Kaeo in eastern Thailand.
He was arrested on 19 Mar 2011 near the Democracy Monument during a red-shirt rally. The police accused him of selling CDs with content that was offensive to the monarchy, and confiscated 20 of them. On 4 July of the same year, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison with a fine of 100,000 baht, but the penalties were reduced by half as he had pleaded guilty.
He said that he had applied for a royal pardon, but his petition did not succeed. However, his jail term was reduced twice under the 2011 and 2012 Royal Pardon Decrees, and that enabled him to apply for the ticket-of-leave and finally be released.
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It's good that he's out. He
It's good that he's out. He served 1 year 11 months too long. That time can never be restored to him. He was forced to plead guilty to a 'serious crime', which is nonetheless treated as one. It's good that he's escaped their grasp.
That leaves Darunee, Surachai, Somyot, Wanchai, Tanthawut, and Papatchanan ... just those whose names I know. Serving 69.5 years ... just short of 7 decades ... among the 6 of them.
Seven decades for ... at worst ... holding political opinions and expressing them.
Papatchanan some time ago
Papatchanan some time ago changed her first name to Parada. As to her so-called imprisonment (she is out on the streets again), this woman earns every problem she encounters, thrice-over. I need not call her a liar and charlatan. Meeting her is knowing her. She gives Pravit a run for his money. And then some.
It's good to hear that she's
It's good to hear that she's not imprisoned for lese majeste. Prachatai had said she was on bail on appeal.
But she was convicted, and I have not heard that her conviction was overturned. These cases and their attendant liabilities stretch on for indefinite time.
I guess you don't like her? I 'don't like' Julian Assange either - of course I don't even know him and am going on impressions, which is all you can draw from the media these days - but I certainly support wikileaks and don't want to hear of him in prison for his role in wikileaks. I don't like Arthur Sulzberger Jr. either, for much more concrete reasons - for his contribution to the framing of Wen Ho Lee and for his and Judy Miller's documented contributions to the neocon 'justification' for the US aggression in Iraq, for instance - but I don't want to see him imprisoned for printing the same material that wikileaks published. I don't have to worry about that latter occurring, just as I don't have to worry about Sondhi's being imprisoned for lese majeste - or for anything else - in either's case, actually. The double standard is in place in countries other than Thailand.
Similarly, I think that Papatchanan/Parada has every right to parade the double standard of treatment accorded Sondhi Limthongkul and the PAD vs that accorded the redshirts by the 'authorities', and to keep that unequal treatment before the public eye. And I'm glad she's doing so.