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Friday, May 11, 2007

Bangkok Post: Fascist Sitthichai Wants YouTube to Give Names to the Police in Lese Majeste Controversy

Government demands YouTube reveal user identity

BangkokPost.com

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The latest development came on Friday, just as the kerfuffle over the Internet videos appeared to be dying down and headed for a mutual resolution which would remove insulting videos and reopen YouTube.com to all Thai visitors. The Information and Communication Technology Ministry re-escalated the battle against the anti-monarchy videos on Friday, saying Thai authorities would demand YouTube.com hand over the Internet addresses of those who uploaded the clips.

The number of clips insulting the monarch has mushroomed after news spread around the world that Thailand had banned the popular site.

Despite claims by Google that some clips had been removed, the most popular such videos remained on the site on Friday afternoon.

Now, ICT Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom says authorities wanted to charge those who posted the mocking video clips with lese majeste, the crime of offending a monarch, which is punishable by up to15 years imprisonment.

"The police will ask for information from the company to file criminal charges against them," he said on Friday.

Mr Sitthichai did not say what might happen if YouTube refuses to hand over the information. A decision by YouTube or its owners to give such information to the Thai government would earn Thailand and Mr Sitthichai a firestorm of criticism across the Internet, and by civil rights groups around the world.

Even if YouTube or Google were to roll over and give the government the IP addresses, it would take more work to track down the actual people involved.

As of now, no one knows where the uploaders of the insulting videos live. IP addresses can be traced to an Internet company, which then would have to be compelled to match the Internet Protocol address to a specific user. There is little chance that a foreign court would allow such an invasion of privacy, but a Thai Internet provider would probably turn over such information in a case of insulting the monarchy.

Mr Sitthichai issued the threat to demand IP addresses two days after Google, which owns YouTube.com, informed the ministry that it would remove controversial video clips from the website. In turn, the ministry cancelled plans to try to launch a cirminal suit against Google at the Bangkok Criminal Court on Friday.

Mr Sitthichai said the ministry would unblock the YouTube website "immediately" - when all the clips were gone.

But there is great uncertainty over whether the videos will be removed. The text of the letter to Mr Sitthichai from Google vice president Kent Walker has been released, and Mr Walker said:

at least two of the videos cited by a Thai complaint would stay as they did not break lese majeste laws.

"They appear to be political comments that are critical of both the government and the conduct of foreigners," the letter said.

"Because they are political in nature, and not intended insults of His Majesty, we do not see a basis for blocking these videos," said the letter.

As of Friday at 4:30 p.m. Thailand time, all or most of the offensive clips were still on the YouTube.com site, according to informants able to access the website. And the government's attempt to block the site also remained in place.


I have been doing a little research. Thailand is actually breaking the law right now because it is violating The Universal Declaration on Human Rights and The International Covenant on Civil and Political rights.

This junta stated that it will respect all of its international obligations. This Thai government, which is an illegal government by the way, is forbidden to prosecute people over freedom of expression issues.


The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), which the UN General Assembly adopted in 1948, defines the right to freedom of expression at Article 19 as follows:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Thailand ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)28 in January 1997. This is a legally binding treaty that in Article 19 guarantees the right to freedom of opinion and expression in very similar terms to the UDHR:

1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without
interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

Also, the Thai government can't dictate to a foreign company domiciled abroad what to do, and it certainly can't compel YouTube to disclose the information of one of its users, especially over political speech.

I haven't seen the actual videos, because I am in Thailand, but somebody sent me a screen shot. There is no doubt that the videos were conveying political speech. The first video was actually protesting against the jailing of Oliver Jufer.

Some of the more unflattering videos weren't nice, but they were definitely protest videos.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think they are hoping that at least some posts came from within Thailand, where they can prosecute. One of three things could have happened:

1) The post was done (by a foreigner) from within Thailand, and likely posted anonymously from an Internet cafe.

2) The post was from outside Thailand, and so ICT will get nowhere even with this data they seek.

3) The video was made by or at the request of the government in order to justify shutting out youtube -- because all of Thaksin's "straight talk" is there for the middle class to see. Thaksin has retained his approval from the poor; if he can regain favor by the middle class then he has a shot at coming back to power. That's a conspiracy theory, for sure, but we are talking about known conspirators here who openly claim that getting Thaksin out of the picture is justification for anything.

Notice that only case #1 could result in punishment for crime and only if the poster used Internet access that has his name on the bill (DSL, GPRS, post-pay dialup). Internet cafes, Starbucks, or LOXINFO dialup cards would all obscure the poster's identity effectively.

-Afraid of The Man

Fonzi said...

Quite honestly, from the screen shot that I saw, I think the first video was by somebody in Switzerland who was protesting Oliver Jufer's jailing.

The rest of videos are probably from foreigners all over who were pissed that the Thai government was making a big fuss.

I don't think even the most republican of Thais would have made any of those videos, unless they were really hard core haters of the monarchy or they just wanted to make some trouble for YouTube.

Also, you might have a point that the government was just making an excuse to prevent people from watching Thaksin videos.

Bangkok Pundit said...

Fonzi:

Article 19

"3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:

(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;

(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals."

Remember lese majeste is a national security offence in Thailand. Alternatively, the Thai government would argue "morals". I am not saying I agree with these arguments. ICCPR is meaningless here as governments can interpret national security to mean whatever they want it to be.

Article 19 (1)-(3) closely resembles Section 39 of the 1997 Constitution, but lese majeste was never struck down for being contrary to the Constitution.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't the new cybercrime bill make it a serious crime for website owners (even if they are abroad) to not give visitor IP addresses to the Thai police if they so request?

Anonymous said...

What (if any) mechanisms exist for the Thai government to prosecute websites or people not living in Thailand for offences under Thai law committed abroad? Anyone know?

Carter

Red and White said...

I guess they simply are not done displaying their ignorance yet.

I'm running out of adjectives to describe the actions and attitude of the MICT.

In this particular scenario, my call is that it will come down to IF the nationality of any offender can be identified. If so, and the offender is Thai, they will get hauled over here. If not - on either score - it will die down after MICT equivocate to save face.

BP Made some intriguing revelations regarding extraterritorial application which he MICT are clearly relying on, what they seem to forget is that this is useless if the other country refuse to acknowledge the freedom of speech restriction imposed by another country with an illegal government!

Anonymous said...

By citing UDHR, I guess you forget a very heart of HR. Right comes with responsibility. I suggest you go and do more researches instead of citing any right as a western fashion. You may also read more on the rights of state. And cultural rights (which is the third-generation of rights that not all developed countries honour because they are still unfair to indigenous people). I really thing :
1) your post shows me you don't really understand HR at all
2) one big issue is that UDHR _ is the declaration and it is not international law.
3) go back to your library. When you want to make some smart comments, you do need to be smart first._ A HR watcher who is watching at a shark!

Fonzi said...

A HR watcher who is watching at a shark!-


You wrote-

>>Rights comes with responsibility. I suggest you go and do more researches instead of citing any right as a western fashion. You may also read more on the rights of state. And cultural rights (which is the third-generation of rights that not all developed countries honour because they are still unfair to indigenous people). I really thing :

1) your post shows me you don't really understand HR at all

2) one big issue is that UDHR _ is the declaration and it is not international law.

3) go back to your library. When you want to make some smart comments, you do need to be smart first._ A HR watcher who is watching at a shark!<<


Watching a shark-

You think you stand for human rights? Freedom of expression is a universally recognized human right, which the "state of Thailand" has agreed to.

If the Thai government agrees that political expression is a human right, then that no longer makes it a western right, but a Thai one.

Thailand is a signatory to both the Declaration of Human Rights and

"Thailand ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)2 in January 1997. This is legally binding treaty that in Article 19 guarantees the right to freedom of opinion and expression in very similar terms to the UDHR:

1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without
interference.

2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of
his choice."

Watching the shark, the fact is that the current laws in Thailand that support restrictions on freedom of expression, including lese majeste, were put into
law by military dictatorships.

So, please, don't play the stupid "freedom of expression" is a western value game.

Thai military dictatorship and restrictions on political expression don't equal Thai culture.



Considering that you have proved to all and sundry that you stand with Thai military dictatorship values over human freedom, I suggest you read what a few Thais have to say about "freedom of expression and responsibility."

http://www.article19.org/pdfs/publications/thailand-baseline-study.pdf

Lastly, before making any accusations against developed countries about their policies towards indigenous people, I suggest you pick up the newspaper today and read how people are being beheaded and killed in the Thai South right now. I suggest you read about how poor people in Surat Thani were handcuffed and arrested today because of land rights. I suggest you read how people from the Hill Tribe areas, people have lived in Thailand for centuries, still don't have identity cards and don't have access to the services to the state.

Watching, if you want to have a discussion about human rights, I am prepared to discuss, are you?