Google removes two custom cards from Doxing Royal Critics – The Diplomat

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A woman holds up a portrait of the late King of Thailand Bhumibol Adulyadej on the occasion of the monarch’s 85th birthday, December 5, 2012.

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Tech giant Google confirmed yesterday that it had removed two custom Google Maps documents that listed the names and addresses of hundreds of activists accused by Thai royalists of opposing the country’s monarchy.

Both documents were reportedly assembled by a team of 80 Royalist volunteers who planned to report the appointed activists to authorities for violations of Thailand’s lese majesty law.

“We have clear policies on what is acceptable for My Maps user-generated content, Google parent company Alphabet told Reuters. We remove user-generated maps that violate our policies.

The cards attempted to dox the hundreds of well-known critics of the Thai monarchy, who began to make sensitive calls for institutional power reform during the large-scale pro-democracy protests that unfolded in the second half of the year. ‘last year. Such criticisms were unprecedented, in large part because the country’s lese majesty law, also known as Article 112, provides for prison terms of up to 15 years for anyone who criticizes the king or the king. Royal family.

The overwhelmingly young protest leaders also called for the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who led a military coup in May 2014, and for the drafting of a new, truly democratic constitution for replace the current charter, designed by the military.

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Despite initially refraining from using the lese majeste law to quell protests, authorities triggered Article 112 in November, indicting dozens of protest leaders and protesters under the controversial provision.

100 people currently face lèse majesté charges, the overwhelming majority of which stem from online political expression and participation in peaceful pro-democracy protests, according to advocacy group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. which took place between August 2020 and March 2021.

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According to Reuters, one of the cards included the names and addresses of nearly 500 people, many of them students, as well as their photos in college or high school uniforms. The faces of those named had been covered with black squares with the number 112, a reference to the law of lese majesté. The map had received over 350,000 views.

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The news agency also managed to get a comment from Songklod Chuenchoopol, a prominent ultra-royalist activist who helped coordinate the doxing effort. Songklod, a 54-year-old retired army officer, confirmed that he plans to report all those named on the cards on the basis of lese majesty to the police. One of the unique elements of section 112, and something that makes it a particularly nefarious tool for quashing dissent, is the fact that any citizen can report an alleged violation of the law.

In many ways, the doxing effort was a predictable response from the Thai royalist fringe to the increased resources to the increased scrutiny and public criticism that was directed against King Vajiralongkorn and the institution of the monarchy. For staunch royalists, the Thai identity amounts to blind support for the monarchy and its sometimes eccentric inhabitants, notwithstanding the fact that the monarchy in its current form is a creation of the beginning of the post-WWII period.

In a broader sense, the attempt to denigrate critics of the monarchy represents a sort of Thai ultra-royalist equivalent to the phenomenon of red-tagging in the Philippines, which has become a source of considerable danger for left-wing activists and almost n ‘anyone. unhappy enough to be accused of having Communist sympathies.

Both are examples in which the internet and social media platforms, which have helped fuel a recent upsurge in youth activism in many Southeast Asian countries, can also be turned to threatening ends and illiberal.

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