<p id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone">Thailand&#39;s draconian lese-majesty law is a blunt instrument that Thais can too easily turn on foreigners &ndash; and each other</p>

<p>When Abhisit Vejjajiva slipped through the back door and into the prime minister&rsquo;s seat in Thailand late last year, exiled democracy advocates from Burma welcomed him. Over a week after reports broke of the Thai navy forcing boatloads of people from Burma back into the ocean to die, they should be thinking again. </p>

<p>&quot;Grand reconciliation,&quot; said Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva last week to foreign journalists at a FCCT dinner talk on how he plans to end the on-going political polarisation. </p>

<p>Thailand&#39;s drastic use of l&egrave;se-majest&eacute; laws is damaging the monarchy and freedom</p>

<p>Lawyers for Australian author, Harry Nicolaides, will lodge an application for a Royal Pardon this week after the Melbourne man was sentenced to three years&#39; jail for insulting the Royal family.</p>

<p>While Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has vowed not to tamper with press freedom, over the past two weeks the administration launched an unprecedented crackdown on websites deemed as slandering the institution of monarchy. </p>

<p>Thai soldiers are detaining illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Burma and forcing them back out to sea in boats without engines, survivors say.</p>

<p>Amnesty International (AI) has called on the government to end the &quot;culture of impunity&quot; in the deep South where the London-based organisation has documented at least 34 cases of authorities torturing suspected Malay Muslim insurgents, four of whom died.</p>

<p>The government is ready to lift the emergency decree in the restive southern border provinces if special laws are enforced to deal with the insurgents, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Wednesday. </p>

<p>Last month a campaign group in Thailand opposing Internet censorship released a list of 1,303 new website addresses that, it claims, are among those a government ministry has blocked.</p>

<p>Politics and national security are intertwined and this is especially true under the current political climate. Social divide fuelled by months of political strife has reared its ugly head, threatening to undermine the royal institution in the process. The threat has crept too close to the highest institution, thereby alarming the military which has sworn an oath of allegiance to protect the monarchy.</p>

<p>BRAZILIAN airline company Embraer has sold an ERJ 135 aircraft to the Thai military, which will be used for transporting civilian and military personnel, the aircraft manufacturer reported on Thursday. </p>