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Re:Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai Monarchy by crispyambulance on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:14AM (#25834149)
It's ugly but it's not "incomprehensible".

They got a monarchy. That means something. The monarchy serves as a kind of sacred cultural identity and attacking the monarchy is like attacking the society itself.

Places like England have more evolved monarchies, where saying something against royals won't land someone in jail, but the same sentiment is there. The only way to "dismantle it" is to wait and do it in steps over generations. Even Thailand is doing that now. The royals are largely symbolic and don't exercise direct political power. But there's still a strong cultural attachment.

Re:Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai Monarchy by xenocratus on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:30AM (#25834364)
> Even Thailand is doing that now. The royals are largely symbolic and don't exercise direct political power. But there's still a strong cultural attachment.

Don't know how biased the Economist is on this, but they've had a number of articles talking about the increasing role of the current king. An example is linked below.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/10/14/thailands-king...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210103234100if_/https://www.ec...

Re:Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai Monarchy by notahacker on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:46AM (#25834554)
Thailand has been technically a constitutional monarchy like the UK since 1932. But the constitutional role of a monarch is a lot bigger in a country which has had more coups than most countries have had elections in the time period since, and everyone involved has tried to claim their legitimacy comes from the monarch
Re:Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai Monarchy by Cthulhu_ on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:37AM (#25834454)
> Places like England have more evolved monarchies, where saying something against royals won't land someone in jail

... anymore. The last prosecution for that was in 1715 apparently. But it was illegal and probably still is; see also "Sedition". In a lot of countries, Lèse-majesté has only been scrapped from laws in fairly recent history (in part because it conflicts with the freedom of speech / expression codified in a lot of constitutions): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9

Re:Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai Monarchy by iguy on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:32AM (#25834381)
It sounds more like they have a military government, who claim to act in the name of a king. And hence claim that any criticism of them is criticism of him. Against which there are both strong laws (even if these were seldom applied so strongly before?) and a cultural taboo (which otherwise a general appointing himself leader would not command).
Re:Woman Is Sentenced to 43 Years for Criticizing Thai Monarchy by JRGC on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:25AM (#25834283)
the new king is not his father