| Sports |
by PATRICK
JACKSON
Sensitive heads of state
Swiss citizen Oliver Jufer, who
pleaded guilty to insulting the Thai king by spray-painting
portraits, has been jailed for 10 years under Thailand’s
rarely-used lese Majeste law. Thailand is not the only state to
prosecute those who offend their head of state though few such
laws are as draconian. It’s law carries a maximum prison sentence
of 75 years.
The concept of lese Majeste (Eng: injury to the Majesty) as a
crime goes back to ancient Rome and was jealously guarded by
absolute monarchs in medieval Europe, while something similar
existed in Asian cultures.
In Brunei, which like Thailand is ruled by a monarchy, three men
were jailed for a year last year for sending mobile phone clips
judged seditious and insulting to Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah and his
family.
Laws protecting the “dignity” of a monarch have been borrowed by
many modern republics. In the Indian Ocean state of Maldives,
three journalists were sentenced to life in 2002 for “insulting
the president” and setting up a newsletter critical of the
government.
In Poland, a member of the European Union, you can technically get
up to three years for offending the president. That protection is
extended to any foreign head of state visiting the country. Thus
police arrested 28 demonstrators in 2005 who were protesting
against president Vladimir Putin of Russia, a country which has
not enjoyed good relations with its western neighbour at the best
of times.
The chief concern about insult laws among human rights campaigners
is that they can be used to stifle freedom of expression.
“Freedom of speech is one of the most basic human rights,” an
Amnesty International spokesman says. “No state should be
prosecuting any individual for expressing an opinion held
peacefully.”
Amnesty is not quibbling with laws on defamation or incitement
which, it says, rightfully exist in any state to protect
individuals and the community. But other than these recognised
limits on freedom of speech, there should be no restrictions, it
argues.
Republics which have prosecuted people for insulting their heads
of state in recent years are typified by authoritarian leaders.
An Egyptian court sentenced blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman in
February to four years in prison for insulting Islam and president
Hosni Mubarak. Kazakhstan gave journalist Kaziz Toguzbayev a
two-year suspended sentence in January for “insulting the honour
and dignity” of president Nursultan Nazarbayev
Zimbabwe gave a two-year suspended sentence to businessman Jason
Gambitzs in 2004 for denigrating president Robert Mugabe by saying
he had “printed useless money”. Belarus sentenced two opposition
figures, Valeriy Levonevskiy and Alexander Vasiliev, in 2004 for
publicly insulting president Alexander Lukashenko
Syria sentenced journalist Mohammad Ghanem to six months in prison
last year for charges which included insulting president Bashar
al-Assad. Access to the popular video-sharing website YouTube was
suspended in Turkey this month after prosecutors told a court that
clips had appeared on the site insulting national hero Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk – who has been dead for nearly 70 years.
Freedom of speech was not, strictly speaking, at issue in
Thailand’s prosecution of Oliver Jufer, who admitted
spray-painting several portraits of the king while drunk.
“It was the idea that being rude about a government was a very bad
idea – it hurt the government but was technically not treason
because no act of rebellion was committed,” Prof Ronald Hutton of
Bristol University says. “In the days before the idea of
constitutional opposition, any opposition was regarded as criminal
and anybody who spoke against the government had to be prosecuted
because it could incite rebellion.”
If the concept now sounds obscure in that other leading
contemporary monarchy Britain, it is thanks to King Henry VIII
(1491-1547), who took personal injury one step further.
“Traditionally you have a division in countries between acts
against the monarch which are treason and rude things said against
the monarch which are lese Majeste. But Henry VIII passed an act
which made speaking against the king treason in itself so lese
Majeste became redundant,” Prof Hutton says.
Before anyone gets unduly anxious about offending Queen Elizabeth,
it should be pointed out that British parliamentarians dealt with
that part of Henry’s act long ago.
Since the 1790s, Prof Hutton says, Britain has had freedom of
speech legislation which covers most of what was once
“treason-by-words”. – BBC
 
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