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Thailand - Suppressed or Restricted Information


      Thailand is a very repressive country when it comes to political ideas which the government does not like. Here is the way the Wikipedia describes the situation with regard to the Internet:

      Most Internet censorship in Thailand prior to the September 2006 military coup d’état was focused on blocking pornographic websites. The following years have seen a constant stream of sometimes violent protests, regional unrest, emergency decrees, a new cybercrimes law, and an updated Internal Security Act. Year by year Internet censorship has grown, with its focus shifting to lèse majesté, national security, and political issues. By 2010, estimates put the number of websites blocked at over 110,000. In December 2011, a dedicated government operation, the Cyber Security Operation Center, was opened. Between its opening and March 2014, the Center told ISPs to block 22,599 URLs.
      The subsequent 2014 Thai coup d’état has led to further restrictions on Internet content in the country, using the powers of the coup’s National Council for Peace and Order.
      The national constitution provides for freedom of expression and press “as regulated by law”; but, the government imposes overwhelming limitations on these rights. Internet filtering in Thailand was classified as selective in the social, political, and Internet tools areas, and no evidence of filtering was found in the conflict/security area by the OpenNet Initiative in November 2011. Thailand is on Reporters Without Borders list of countries under surveillance in 2011.
      In 2013, Freedom House, one year prior to the 2014 coup d’état, awarded Thailand a ‘partly free’ rating for internet freedom. In 2014, it awarded Thailand an overall score of 62 (“not free”) (0=best, 100=worst), citing substantial political censorship and the arrests of bloggers and other online users, ranking it 52 of 65 countries. As of 2019, Thailand remained ‘not free’, with an overall score of 35, fourth worst in the Asia-Pacific region, after China, Vietnam, and Pakistan.
      [Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Thailand, accessed on Dec. 23, 2022. Note that while the U.S. government promoted group “Freedom House” formerly regarded Thailand as “partly free”, it has in fact long been a fascist country as far as the suppression of ideas the government dislikes goes. —Ed.]

      The banning and suppression of printed material, and other media which the Thai government disapproves of, is perhaps even more draconian. And verbal criticisms of the government and the King are also harshly clamped down on. It sometimes reaches truly absurd levels, as when a factory worker, Thanakorn Siripaiboon, was arrested for insulting the King’s dog! [“Thai Man May Go to Prison for Insulting King’s Dog”, New York Times, Dec. 14, 2015.]

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Suppression of Free Speech in Thailand:



Communist Party of Thailand:

CPT Documents and Statements:

Patriotic Front of Thailand [Led by the CPT]:



Other Materials:





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