Thailand's Longest-Running Scam: The Lèse-Majesté Racket

Spain prosecutes its monarchs. Malaysia permits lawsuits against kings. Japan's emperor lives within constitutional limits. Thailand? Citizens face decades in prison while the monarchy operates beyond accountability. The People's Party promises to fight scams—but will they touch the biggest institutional con of all: a lèse-majesté system that turns criticism into crime while calling it constitutional?

The Racket Exposed

Section 112 isn't law. It's a protection racket dressed in constitutional language. The setup is brutally simple: make the crime so vague that anything counts as offense, install true believers to enforce it, watch the machinery eliminate enemies without leaving fingerprints. No royal signature needed. No explicit orders required. Just nod, stay silent, collect the benefits.

Watch the scam operate in real time. Citizen questions royal spending online. Ultra-royalist mob screenshots the post, files police complaint. Prosecutors charge Section 112 violation. Judges deliver three to fifteen years. Monarchy says nothing. Palace claims neutrality. Repeat until dissent disappears. This isn't justice—it's institutional extortion with judicial aesthetics.

This isn't law enforcement. It's institutional theater designed to look legitimate while functioning as political suppression. Kai Ambos, one of international criminal law's leading voices, argues that institutions possessing authority to halt systematic persecution but deliberately refraining become architects of that persecution. Apply that framework to Thailand: the monarchy holds constitutional power to pardon, to commute sentences, to publicly oppose prosecutions. It exercises none of these powers. That silence isn't neutrality—it's the con's organizing principle.

The Players Know Their Roles

Every actor in this performance understands the script without needing it written down. Antonio Cassese termed this "functional coordination"—institutional persecution operating through implicit alignment rather than explicit commands. Thai prosecutors don't need memos from the palace telling them to charge critics. They understand that building cases against monarchy skeptics advances their careers and serves royal interests. Judges don't require instructions on sentencing. They know conviction strengthens monarchical authority and signals loyalty to the institution signing their appointment papers.

The far-right amplifies the system. Ultra-royalist networks patrol social media, screenshot posts, file mass complaints. They've turned Section 112 into participatory persecution—crowdsourced authoritarianism where citizens police each other's thoughts. These networks operate with impunity because they're doing the monarchy's work without the monarchy having to ask. It's the perfect scam: outsource the dirty work to zealots, maintain deniability, reap the benefits.

Göran Sluiter, serving as an ICC judge, established that institutional benefit paired with institutional silence constitutes evidence of shared criminal purpose. Thailand's monarchy benefits enormously from Section 112's machinery. Political opposition gets neutralized without royal fingerprints on the charges. Critics disappear into prison while the palace claims constitutional neutrality. The institution grows stronger precisely because it never has to defend its authority—the judicial system does it through criminal prosecution.

Comparative Reality Check

Other monarchies prove Thailand's system is choice, not necessity. Malaysia's Karpal Singh sued King Abdullah in 1992, challenging whether monarchical immunity was absolute. The case proceeded. Singh had not disappeared or charged with sedition for daring to drag royalty into court. The Malaysian legal system accommodated radical challenge to monarchical authority because it understood that rule of law requires even kings answer to legal process sometimes.

Spain's monarchy faces actual accountability. King Juan Carlos abdicated amid financial scandal and fled into exile. Spanish prosecutors investigated. Courts examined evidence. The institution survived public scrutiny because it accepted constitutional constraints rather than criminalizing criticism. Japan's Emperor Naruhito lives within clear constitutional boundaries. The Imperial Household Agency manages royal affairs with transparency requirements. Japanese citizens freely debate the monarchy's role without facing criminal charges.

Thailand stands alone among constitutional monarchies in weaponizing criminal law against critics at this scale. That isolation reveals the con. If Japanese emperors can accept constraints, if Spanish kings can face investigation, if Malaysian monarchs can be sued, then Thailand's claim that Section 112 is necessary for institutional preservation collapses. The monarchy doesn't need this law to survive. It needs this law to remain unaccountable.

Fighting Scams—Except the One That Matters

Thailand's ruling coalition, led by the People's Party, has launched aggressive campaigns against call-center scam operations. They've arrested gang leaders running fraudulent investment schemes. They've shut down grey business operations in border zones. They've partnered with regional governments to extradite scam kingpins. The message is clear: Thailand is serious about fighting fraud.

But here's the paradox that should make everyone uncomfortable. The government can mobilize massive resources to dismantle transnational criminal networks scamming citizens out of money, yet it cannot—or will not—touch the institutional apparatus scamming citizens out of fundamental freedoms. Section 112 prosecutions have skyrocketed since 2020. Hundreds face charges. Dozens serve lengthy prison sentences. The persecution is systematic, documented, ongoing.

If the People's Party can identify call-center operations as criminal enterprises exploiting people through deception, why can't they identify Section 112 as an institutional enterprise exploiting constitutional language to suppress dissent? The answer reveals political calculation. Shutting down call centers carries no institutional risk. Confronting Section 112 means confronting the monarchy, the military, the judiciary, and the far-right networks that benefit from the current arrangement.

Cherif Bassiouni, the architect of modern international criminal law, established that institutional position creates accountability, not immunity. Officials cannot hide behind formal authority when that authority is deployed to commit or enable systematic human rights violations. The People's Party cannot claim powerlessness. They control government. They command parliamentary majorities. They possess legislative authority to amend Section 112 or limit prosecutorial discretion. Their inaction is a choice—a calculated decision to leave the con running while they tackle easier targets.

Why This Matters Beyond Thailand

The Rwanda tribunal's Akayesu case established that systematic persecution requires no smoking gun, no written orders, no explicit conspiracy. When institutional actors understand themselves serving a common objective and leadership permits that understanding to continue unchallenged, leadership bears responsibility. Judge Laïty Kama's ruling recognized that persecution operates through institutional culture more than individual commands.

Apply that standard to Thailand's Section 112 apparatus. Every prosecutor filing charges understands they're serving monarchical interests. Every judge handing down convictions knows they're strengthening royal authority. The monarchy observes this pattern year after year, possessing constitutional power to intervene, and chooses silence. Under Akayesu doctrine, that institutional alignment combined with leadership's deliberate non-interference constitutes systematic persecution indistinguishable from direct perpetration.

The Rome Statute grants the ICC jurisdiction over crimes against humanity committed through state institutions operating ostensibly within law. Thailand presents this scenario exactly. The legal framework exists. Prosecutions occur through courts. Sentences come from judges. Everything looks constitutional. But systematic targeting of political speech, coordinated timing of prosecutions during political crises, and consistent sentencing patterns reveal the machinery beneath the constitutional veneer.

Thailand's Section 112 system matters because it represents what authoritarian adaptation looks like in the 21st century. Don't deploy military coups when judicial persecution is cleaner. Don't order extrajudicial killings when prosecutors can secure lengthy prison sentences through legitimate-looking trials. Don't ban political parties when you can criminalize their supporters' speech. The con is upgrading authoritarianism with constitutional aesthetics.

Breaking the Con

Dismantling this scam requires naming it accurately. Section 112 isn't merely a bad law needing reform. It's an institutional fraud operating through deliberate coordination between monarchy, judiciary, prosecution, and far-right networks. The coordination isn't conspiracy—it's shared understanding of institutional interests producing systematic persecution without requiring explicit direction.

The People's Party faces a choice. They can continue their selective campaign against scams, targeting call centers and grey businesses while leaving the biggest institutional con untouched. Or they can demonstrate actual commitment to rule of law by confronting the machinery that makes Thailand exceptional among constitutional monarchies—and not in ways worth celebrating.

International pressure matters. If the ICC Prosecutor investigated Thailand's Section 112 apparatus using the same systematic persecution framework applied to other states, institutional actors would face consequences beyond domestic political calculations. The precedent would establish that constitutional monarchies cannot hide behind formal neutrality when institutional silence enables systematic suppression of political speech.

The con works because everyone pretends it's legitimate. Prosecutors call it law enforcement. Judges call it constitutional interpretation. The monarchy calls it necessary protection. Far-right networks call it patriotic duty. But strip away the rhetoric and you're left with a simple reality: an institutional system designed to eliminate political opposition through criminal prosecution while maintaining plausible deniability for the institution benefiting most.

Other monarchies prove alternatives exist. Thailand's system is choice, not necessity. The question is whether the People's Party—having promised to fight scams—has the courage to confront the institutional fraud running in plain sight. Or whether they'll keep chasing call-center operators while leaving the Section 112 con to continue scamming Thai democracy out of its future.

Prem Singh Gill
Prem Singh Gill is a Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.