Prachatai webmaster guilty of allowing lese-majeste posts
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In unprecedented ruling, the Supreme Court Wednesday found the webmaster of the Prachatai news website guilty of liability for failing to prevent readers from posting lese-majeste comments on the site.
The Supreme Court upheld the lower courts’ sentence of a suspended eight-month jail term and a fine of Bt20,000 against Chiranuch Premchaiporn, the director of Prachatai.
Like the lower courts, the highest court found Chiranuch guilty of breaking Article 14 and Article 15 of the 2007 Technology Crime Act as alleged by public prosecutors for failing to promptly remove lese-majeste comments from the Prachatai website in 2008.
On March 31 2010, public prosecutors filed the charges against her in the Criminal Court. The suit alleged that Chiranuch, as the webmaster, intentionally supported or allowed others to post ten posts on her website from April 15 to November 3 2008 in defamation of the monarchy.
The suit alleged that as the webmaster, Chiranuch failed to carry out her responsibility to prevent the posting of false information on her website so she violated Article 14 and Article 15 of Technology Crime Act.
The Criminal Court found Chiranuch guilty on May 30 2012 and sentenced her to one year in jail and slapped a fine of Bt30,000 on her. But penalties were commuted by one third to eight-month jail term and Bt20,000 fine. The jail term was suspended for one year.
Both public prosecutors and Chiranuch appealed against the ruling – public prosecutors asked the Appeals Court to give Oranuch hasher penalties while she wanted the higher court to reverse the ruling.
On November 8 2013, the Appeals Court upheld the ruling and sentence of the Criminal Court. Chiranuch appealed against the ruling with the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruled that Chiranuch was in charge of the website so she definitely knew about the lese majeste posts on her site. Since she did not take action to remove them, her inaction was deemed as intentional consent to allow the information to remain on her website.
Like the lower court, the Supreme Court commuted the penalties from one-year imprisonment to eight months in jail and a fine of Bt30,000 to Bt20,000. The jail term was suspended for a year.
