Thailand

Charges of lèse majesté have increased dramatically since the September 2006 coup which deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In January 2009, Australian writer Harry Nicolaides was sentenced to three years' imprisonment but was later pardoned by the king. In February, an arrest warrant was issued for Thai-British academic Giles Ji Ungpakorn for his book, A Coup For The Rich, criticising the 2006 military coup. Giles fled the country to avoid imprisonment.

In May 2008, BBC Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head was accused of lèse majesté after 'inappropriate photographs' were posted on the BBC's news wesbite. Several issues of the Economist carrying articles about the king have been pulled from the shelves in Thailand. Paul M Handley's biography of the monarch, The King Never Smiles, has been banned in Thailand since its publication in 2006, and websites advertising the book have been blocked.

The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology claims to have shut down more than 2,000 websites alleged to have contained lèse majesté material. And on 23 January, the Senate set up an extraordinary committee to oversee the blocking of further sites, warning that over 10,000 could be targeted.