Human rights lawyer and activist Anon Nampa has been sentenced to 4 years in prison on a royal defamation charge for 3 Facebook posts criticizing the use of the royal defamation law against critics of the monarchy and calling for monarchy reform.

Protests took place last week in Chiang Mai’s old town to show support for detained human rights lawyer Anon Nampa and demand the release of activists and protesters detained on charges relating to political expression.

The Department of Special Investigation has reached an agreement to prosecute former ministers and senior executives of the Ministry of Labour for accepting bribes after they were found to be involved in sending Thai workers to be victims of human trafficking in Finland.

A Thai cartoonist has been charged with royal defamation for royal caricatures posted on a Facebook page.

The Chiang Rai Provincial Court has dismissed charges against former activist Supreeya Jaikaew on the grounds that the message on the banner she was accused of placing did not constitute an offence under the royal defamation law.

Facing royal defamation charges for singing a modified version of the royal anthem at a protest in January 2021, Chaiamorn “Ammy” Kaewwiboonpan, lead singer of The Bottom Blues pop band, was recently acquitted. However, another activist charged because of the protest, Promsorn, was sentenced to 2 years in prison without parole before being granted bail.

The government is proposing to allocate a budget of over 8.4 billion baht to the Royal Offices, according to a budget document released by the Budget Bureau on 26 December 2023. 

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Phumtham Wechayachai announced yesterday (25 December) that the Cabinet’s Constitutional Amendment Committee will propose 3 referendums on constitutional amendments and that the first will ask whether people want to amend the Constitution without amending chapters relating to the monarchy.

6 members of Progressive Social Security, a team of 7 labour rights advocates, have won most of the employee representatives’ seats on the Social Security Board in the country’s first-ever Social Security Board election, which had been postponed from 2015.

The residents of Thung Kula Ronghai, an area renowned for its cultivation of Thai Fragrant rice, staged a protest to demand the removal of a sugar factory and biomass power plant from the area out of concern that the facilities will negatively impact their local environment.

Yesterday (21 December), the Thai parliament passed the first reading of four bills proposing amendments to the marriage law to allow registration of marriage regardless of gender. If adopted, the amendments would make Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia to recognize marriage for all.

The Criminal Court today (21 December) dismissed a royal defamation charge filed against online influencer Aniwat Prathumthin, also known by the internet alias “Nara Crepe Katoei”, for video advertisements o the online shopping platform Lazada.