The singer, not the song
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Re: "So how do you define hate speech?" Letters, January 20.
No need to define hate speech explicitly. Thai constitutions are famous for their vagueness. When a contentious issue arises, the matter is turned over to the Constitutional Court for interpretation.
It doesn’t matter what the law says: what matters is the identity of the accused. Since David Brown is an innocuous newspaper reader, it would be foolish for the court to rule that his complaint about shoe size (“Find me a big shoe shop”, Letters, January 18) incites hatred against shoe factories.
But if David happened to be chummy with a certain family or was an adherent of a particular political party, that could be a problem.
Meanwhile, have you ever seen the court do anything about crime suspects being treated like convicts, which happens every day? Never. It seems our constitutions have been designed to suppress “wayward politicians” and the “opponents of the elitism” rather than to protect the rights of citizens.
Somsak Pola
