This is the most succinct of the wire stories I've read about Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra filing a complain with Dusit police to charge cartoonist Chai Rachawat with libel and defamation over a statement made on social media.
The post itself uses the word prostitute to draw a distinction between a prostitute and the evil person the cartoonist believes the prime minister to be. I'm not exactly sure how you can libel someone by calling them evil -- that seems like a judgement call to me more than some term that can be disproved -- but I don't really know how the law works. I am sort of terrified by the thought of a law restricting free speech via the special target of computers in any part of the world, and a ten-year sentence for criticizing a public official via a summary term like that is high lunacy. I'm also, as always, discouraged by the worldwide trend of several years running now whereby elected officials using a court system in which they're almost certainly likely to find some special favor to beat on their country's cartoonists.
The post itself uses the word prostitute to draw a distinction between a prostitute and the evil person the cartoonist believes the prime minister to be. I'm not exactly sure how you can libel someone by calling them evil -- that seems like a judgement call to me more than some term that can be disproved -- but I don't really know how the law works. I am sort of terrified by the thought of a law restricting free speech via the special target of computers in any part of the world, and a ten-year sentence for criticizing a public official via a summary term like that is high lunacy. I'm also, as always, discouraged by the worldwide trend of several years running now whereby elected officials using a court system in which they're almost certainly likely to find some special favor to beat on their country's cartoonists.