Anchan Preelert was granted royal pardon after serving eight years in prison for criticizing the monarchy.

On Thursday, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) informed that Anchan Preelert has received a royal pardon and will be released on Wednesday from the Central Women’s Correctional Institution in Bangkok.

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The former government official, who has been behind bars for eight years, was sentenced to 43 years in prison for a lese-majeste offense stemming from her criticism of the monarchy.

In 2021, Preelert was convicted of sharing a recording of a radio program that contained remarks critical of the monarchy. The 69-year-old woman received the harshest sentence ever imposed at the time for criticizing Thailand’s king.

She pleaded guilty during her trial at Thailand’s Criminal Court. Her admission of guilt helped cut her original sentence in half, from 87 years to 43, with three years for each of the 29 counts — the number of times she shared the defamatory content — her lawyer, Phawini Chumsri, said.

Anchan’s prison term set a record for lese-majeste cases, surpassing a 35-year sentence handed down by a military court in 2017, when the junta that seized power in the 2014 coup was still in control.

Lese-majeste is a crime that shields Thailand’s royal family from insults. Article 112 of the Penal Code stipulates that anyone who “defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir or the regent shall be punished with imprisonment of three to 15 years.”

On Aug. 22, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was acquitted of lese-majeste, a charge that in recent years has often been used as a political weapon against opponents.

Thaksin, who led the Southeast Asian nation from 2001 to 2006, had been accused of the crime for claiming that members of the Privy Council — the monarch’s advisory body — orchestrated the 2014 coup that ousted his sister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government.

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Source: EFE

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