Facebookers Face 8 Years in Jail for Criticizing Thai Cops

[cookee68]

Well it is Facebook, that speaks for its self

[Jimbo2014]

Yez mein commissar. The police in this country are beyond reproach

[nontabury]

if the service isn't good enough then expect to be criticised, it's all part of feedback and continued improvements

and if you think you are beyond criticism be careful about the can of worms you are about to open, it will come back and bite you hard

If this woman broke the law then prosecute her for the offence she committed and move on, this libel accusation is pure nonsense and any reasonable court will see it that way

Agree with everything you say,except when you say any Reasonal court.

[GarryP]

This country seems to be getting worse in regard to freedom of speech. First it is do not criticize or comment on the Ratchapakdi Park fiasco (despite it being so obvious that corruption was involved), do not comment on politics or present political opinions even if you are a university lecturer teaching political science, and now do not criticize the police. Next it will be "Do not criticize the ban on criticism."

Bloody hell, when are they going to introduce thought police to this new Orwellian state.

'Bloody hell, when are they going to introduce thought police to this new Orwellian state.' Now there's an oxymoron.

Actually, sir, "Do not criticize the ban on criticism." is the oxymoron.

[TomJoad]

People get in trouble for challenging the "powers that be" in the West too.

Just ask Edward Snowden...

[silent]

Well an 8 year sentence isn't a moral lessons is it, it's a legal one. Duh

In a way I wish they'd start here. Duh without really bothering since they were just charged on the weekend, it's unlikely they're going to get what's probably the max if convicted and sentenced to 8 years. But it does send out a message to fabricators that spread misinformation like gospel don't it?

What?

Seconded!

Children, let this be a Criminal Justice procedure lesson: Both Sukanya and Peerasuth were charged during the weekend with defamation, That means they haven't been convicted yet and face the potential in court

[MrJohnson]

Freedom of Speech,such as it has ever been in Thailand, seems to be a diminishing commodity in Thailand.

[MZurf]

In a way I wish they'd start here. Duh without really bothering since they were just charged on the weekend, it's unlikely they're going to get what's probably the max if convicted and sentenced to 8 years. But it does send out a message to fabricators that spread misinformation like gospel don't it?

What?

Seconded!

Children, let this be a Criminal Justice procedure lesson: Both Sukanya and Peerasuth were charged during the weekend with defamation, That means they haven't been convicted yet and face the potential in court

Huh?

[lostmebike]

“We are not being vengeful. We are just doing our duty"

No. You are being the petty little men you are.

That means all TVF posters are to be busted next!

[northernphil]

To all those 150 or so toe rags who have been a tad rude about the very good Thai police ...Shame on you . I hope they find out who you are. Thai police are a splendid lot of good , honest chaps. They get little pay for the job they do and I for one am happy to hand over my 200B for speeding in my car and for wearing the wrong colour hat on my scooter. I retract all the comments I have made before it was an offence to speak ill of the c....s. ( chaps )

[soalbundy]

Does critising the police in this thread give everyone a potential jail term hanging on them?

i'm wondering the same thing.

I don't think Thai's are too bothered what farang say or print as long as it is in English and doesn't have a large Thai readership, who are we anyway, we have no say in anything, we aren't important, we neither have the power nor public following to cause trouble, little terrier's snapping at the heels who can be kicked away at ease.

[lostmebike]

To all those 150 or so toe rags who have been a tad rude about the very good Thai police ...Shame on you . I hope they find out who you are. Thai police are a splendid lot of good , honest chaps. They get little pay for the job they do and I for one am happy to hand over my 200B for speeding in my car and for wearing the wrong colour hat on my scooter. I retract all the comments I have made before it was an offence to speak ill of the c....s. ( chaps )

Agreed!

Lovely, splendid c***s (chaps)

[DaveinAsia]

Well, let's just hope thai police doesn't start browsing english forums...

They have been browsing all forums for years and instead of arresting the 'trouble making' farangs they troll them instead. I've had quite a few encounters here already.

They even pretend to be farangs. I guess they even have a few farangs working for them.

I'm pretty sure they wont be arresting any farangs though. They don't really give a toss what farangs think, write or say because farangs don't have any real power here anyway.

They are worried about Thais wakening up other Thais with the domino effect in mind. That frightens the hell out of them.

[gigman]

“I want this to be a moral lesson to warn people who post stuff on social media,” Col. Sompong Thip-aphakul, head of the Krabi Police Station, told Khaosod English today. “We are not being vengeful. We are just doing our duty. Some people just don’t understand our work, and I guess we cannot make everyone understand our work.”

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Yes Sir we don't understand your methods then your "work" and your law.

You should start punishing your work mates for taking bribes just to make "another dollar a day "

Yes My driver had to pay 100 bhts when stopped in mountains for doing nothing wrong ...I repeat NOTHING WRONG and I am a witness.

Your policeman and your mate said ; " When driving in mountains highway my taxi driver should keep speed at 30km /hour.................???????????????? " when allowed speed was on the sign 100km/hour .

How should understand your work if your mates on the bottom of your ranks are working not very hard to make living from bribes.

Sorry Sir you can not make me understand or not how you all work.

How can you explain this event...?

I was stopped in Pattaya by your fellow when driving hired, registered motorbike driving my bike at 30km/hour (I was looking for address) and he tried to give a a ticket for having Bangkok registration ...(???????) .....

When I demanded explanation and refused to go to police station to pay (looks like some others are getting free money) your police mate just gave me back my licence and let me go .

To be honest I tried to avoid driving Beach road where opposite is police station and you know what... I still remember this since 2 years ago and don't want to hire bike again.

I came to your country to see and feel happy and honest people to tourists like me who are expecting at least some decency and respect .

But you don't know what means respect. I will always remember what happened . Should I remember you as a person who is taking care about own citizens and tourists for the taxes and money paid that you can have your wages?

Is it the way you all work that I can not understand?????

I can tell you only this; You are all just cocky bullshit figures who was given a power and you just abusing it as much as you can.

Maybe you think that rest of the world is idiotic and brainless but I can say to you only this;

Before you go to your hard work in the morning ...when you are in your bathroom ...LOOK IN THE MIRROR and ask your self who is there in this reflection ....?? who is really there ?

Remember you can see only yourself. No one will criticise you ......but at least you discover who you are.

Tell other to do the same.

[gigman]

Does critising the police in this thread give everyone a potential jail term hanging on them?

i'm wondering the same thing.

I don't think Thai's are too bothered what farang say or print as long as it is in English and doesn't have a large Thai readership, who are we anyway, we have no say in anything, we aren't important, we neither have the power nor public following to cause trouble, little terrier's snapping at the heels who can be kicked away at ease.

Maybe you'll be surprised but they used to read TV before a lot and other sites....

I do not know how much time and how often they look on the subject we are talking about on this treads but I prefer to be careful about what I say here against them.

I can only say one thing ; I know someone who was stopped at emigration point and warned on the side about consequences due to his opinions on similar Website .

How they got his details ..??? I do not know .

I guess he wrote something which hurt them badly but he does not want to talk about it anymore.

I guess they have good hackers or something to get his real name ...

Now he prefer not to be active anymore because he has wife and family in Thailand and still needs his visa granted.

To be honest I prefer to be not to nast to them either now. Simply it does not pay....for me.

I can only say ...IT IS SAD.

[Artique]

what a manipulative title! they were charged not for "critisizing" police. but for slander. and deserve jail time.

[hawker9000]

Well, let's just hope thai police doesn't start browsing english forums...

They have been browsing all forums for years and instead of arresting the 'trouble making' farangs they troll them instead. I've had quite a few encounters here already.

They even pretend to be farangs. I guess they even have a few farangs working for them.

I'm pretty sure they wont be arresting any farangs though. They don't really give a toss what farangs think, write or say because farangs don't have any real power here anyway.

They are worried about Thais wakening up other Thais with the domino effect in mind. That frightens the hell out of them.

Yeap - have seen this trolling & posing from time to time on certain threads, too. Pretty childish and very obvious - as you'd expect. Kind o' cute, actually.

[Jools]

NOT "unbelievable" and NOT a distortion of Thai justice. It is business as usual. The concept of justice is basically a western notion. Thai people not do.

An unbelievable distortion of justice if this pair get any jail time.

Edited November 26, 2015 by Jools

[meltingpot2015]

Thailand have very strict laws regarding to what you can write about others on the internet, and the laws is not new.

6 years ago, one falang wrote not nice things about another falang on Facebook. The falang who had bad things written about him took the matter to the police.

The Facebook post was not in Thai and had to be translate so the police could understand. The falang who wrote on face book had to pay a big fine or face jail.

You can talk a lot about "freedom of speech".

But you have to ask yourself, is it fair that somebody can talk bad and about you or your business. Yes you can say if it is true, but there is many lies out there.

You see many examples of how a business write false reviews about a competitor on reviews site like trustpilot .com. I have worked with internet reputation management, and a real cash cow for me was to get false reviews and lies removed for my costumers.

So maybe Thailand have better rules than you will find in many other countries. One of the black arts in internet marketing is called deception management. It is very easy to spread lies on the internet and make people believe them.

So i think Thai rules are fair. If somebody write a lie about you and your company it is not cheap to get the lies removed from the internet. And many times a lie about you can be on a site you do not know, so you have virtually no chance to defend yourself.

The review site TrustPilot is highly overrated. Be very careful about using it as a one stop shop to make decisions about whether to use a particular company. There are many review sites on the internet, like, feefo, ConsumerAffairs and other specialist sites. Use them together with TrustPilot or use them instead.

I find trustpilot's working practices have become more favourable towards businesses. Genuine negative reviews are sometimes reported to Trustpilot by the business for immediate removal. However, Trustpilot can take over two days to re-instate these reviews. I have read that sometimes they never re-appear.

I think the problem is Trustpilot is selling services and charging fees from a lot of the companies (under review), so it feels it has to "look after" that company. Trustpilot is shooting itself in the foot by not disclosing the revenue earned from each company.

To prevent bogus negative reviews they could simply strengthen their compliance procedures by improving their screening software (current screening software incorrectly blocks genuine reviews and allows bogus reviews) and other methods. But to strengthen the equity between buyer and seller (company and consumer) they would need to improve the system (processes) and, hence, outcomes so that they "look after" both the business and the consumer. To start with, they should make the time taken for a review to re-appear (after changes) the same as the time taken for a review to disappear.

When I told Trustpilot all this, the support staff member said "....We do not tolerate fabricated reviews on our platform nor do we tolerate any misuse of our platform by companies (i.e. misreporting reviews, cherry picking, etc.). We have a team of compliance professionals working across the globe that has rigorous processes in place designed to effectively combat these kinds of abuses. ......I do hope you have a better understanding of our processes and the reasoning behind them."

He also said "Someone from our Compliance Team should be getting back to you soon regarding this case". By "this case" he means my review which was taken down immediately (within 40-50 minutes) due to making "external references to other companies". I removed these "external references" immediately. However, it's now over 48 hours and Trustpilot has still not got back to me nor made the modified review re-appear.

Edited December 4, 2015 by meltingpot2015

[exbikey]

"Peerasuth said he called officers at Krabi Police Station about the incident, but no one picked up the phone, so he took the woman to the hospital on his own. Even after the woman was admitted at the hospital, no officer showed up to assist her, he wrote.

“So, these are police that serve the people? If the victim was your own relative, what would you think? This kind of thing happens almost every day, but don’t you dickheads think about fixing it at all?” he wrote in a post set to be publically viewable.

Sompong said Peerasuth’s account of events was false, because the man in fact never alerted his station to the incident.

“He said he was angry that he called us and we didn’t respond to the scene. But actually, he was calling 191. He never called us. And maybe the 191 people didn’t pick up the phone, that’s why he got angry,” Sompong said."

Teaching a moral lesson?

Yeah, right, that's what's happening here.

Then what is the point of having 191 if no one is going to answer?

Probably too many were calling 191, that's why they're using 911 now....hopefully

Sorry about this, can't delete the bl**dy post.

Edited December 4, 2015 by exbikey

[tootall]

Wow so if I said that I went and filed two police reports with my Thai wife over a Korean neighbor who assaulted me and my wife several times and stood at his door and watched our house, but the Pattaya Police said "What do you want me to Do?" How about doing your <deleted> job. They also said I would have to pay them bribe money, their exact words, "Oh so you want to loose money to do this". Or if I posted pictures everyday of the Pattaya Police on duty(several) sitting in the Wonderful Bar on 2nd Road across from Avenue Mall, shirts unbuttoned, playing with their cell phones all day. This would be so egregious on my part for stating what I see and what happened to me with Pattya Police I could face jail time. How egregious is it what the Pattaya Police do when they are on duty. Oh, I forgot about the police who go to massage shops and get 2 hour up massages and sleep the rest of their shift everyday. Do not get me started on the racial profiling of police on the roads, stopping you for infractions you never committed just so they can get bribe money. But I am wrong and bad man for stating what I see, what I have had happen to me; and every other farang has seen or had to deal with in BKK or Pattaya. Bul-sh-t

[tootall]

Oh, do not bother coming after me, I have many pictures and copies in various locations including my lawyer with instructions on what to do if they come after me

[puukao]

i will marry her and take her to America!!!!

[saminoz]

It is a ludicrous issue to have the police complaining about their reputation being damaged. They are not a business, they are not an individual, they have an obligation to SERVE the people.

That includes NOT suing people when they complain rightly or wrongly about their service.

They can have a chit chat to explain their bit, but they should never be allowed to sue for defamation.

That's the issue TaH, they ARE a business, probably the largest and richest pyramid scheme/franchise in Thailand! Plenty to defend by using their bought positions to protect their revenues.

The RTP tend to use their positions of privilege to suppress the people, not serve them.

[digibum]

We better be careful on here too,if they ever get to read some

of what is said about them on here,there could be a few arrests,

they are very sensitive,8 years is more than you would get for

murder !.

regards Worgeordie

2 things

English is poor and will only get worse with the doors closing

Cant charge social media outbreaks coming from other countries

Its laughable that they say this is not vindictive, when it plainly is

Bizzaro Land where up is down, left is right, you say hello when you leave and goodbye when you arrive

1. How good does their English need to be to understand they're being criticized?

2. They can't charge social media based outside of Thailand but that doesn't mean that they can't find people inside of Thailand who are posting on said social media.

I can only speculate that the reason they have not taken a more hardline stance is they don't care what a bunch of farangs have to say. Catching them and prosecuting them would not be hard work if they ever should make it a priority.

Remember that single access point internet thingy they've been floating around? They can filter English as well as Thai with that. And don't think for a moment your ISP wouldn't turn you over.

Really, if they were cracking down, all they would have to do is tell all ISPs to report anybody accessing TVF. Then they round up everyone and make you prove you didn't say anything they find offensive. And you forget, that now they have your computer while you're in custody and all they need to do is come to TV and see what screen name your account is logged in under.

You really think the old, "Uh, that was a friend who came over and used my computer" excuse will work in Thailand?

[digibum]

A Farang Buddy of mine has been selling Condo's for the last 17 years in Pattaya.

These days he has 2 categories of clients left:

- Long term Farang residents are clearly on the sellers side.

- Only "new Farang's" are left on the buyers side.

Witch side is better equipped to assess "where Thailand is going" ?

Should this tell us something?

Cheers.

No offense but the old, "I have a buddy" anecdotal evidence thing has been played out. Everyone's "buddy" has been here a gazillion years and blah, blah, blah. In fact, off the top of my head, I can remember at least a dozen times I've heard the mass exodus buddy story before.

I'm not accusing you of making up your buddy or saying that your buddy didn't say those things. I'm just saying, it really doesn't matter what your buddy says unless your buddy is here to elaborate and provide some context to his observations.

Stick to what you know and can discuss.

[digibum]

The beginning of communism.

You need to educate yourself on what communism is.

[pedro01]

My wife called the cops 2 weeks ago when a drunk motorcyclist rode his bike into our car.

Their answer 'not interested'

[soalbundy]

My wife called the cops 2 weeks ago when a drunk motorcyclist rode his bike into our car.

Their answer 'not interested'

get a lawyer, their interest climbs astoundingly.

[tuanku]

Some people just don’t understand our work, and I guess we cannot make everyone understand our work.”

That's a classic.

Their problem is that people actually understand their work far too well (the work they do, that is, not the work they are theoretically paid for)