Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [40]
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‘the media exercises self-censorship with regard to the monarchy, mainly out of respect for the crown, but also out of fear that political enemies will file lèse majesté charge’
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The country’s political strife is essentially a showdown between two media moguls and both have used their own outlets as political tools. The government opposition is co-organised by Sondhi Limthongkul, a former journalist who built a print and broadcast empire that he has used to rally opposition to the Thaksin regime and the post-coup elected government. His privately owned Asia Satellite Television (ASTV) station aired nearly 24-hour live broadcasts of PAD rallies and used the channel to mobilise supporters against police intervention.
Press intimidation in Thailand is made easier because of the country’s lèse majesté laws – causing offence against the dignity of the monarchy – which carries a jail term of between three and 15 years. Often the media exercises self-censorship with regard to the monarchy, mainly out of respect for the crown, but also out of fear that political enemies will file lèse majesté charges. Since 2006, there have been eight charges of lèse majesté filed, most notably by Thaksin and Sondhi against each other, as well as against Thai and foreign journalists. Most charges are never pursued but a recent recipient of a jail sentence was Harry Nicolaides, an Australian national who was sentenced to three years in a Thai jail for putting into print otherwise unprintable stories about the crown prince’s indiscretions into a work of fiction. He served a little more than a month of his sentence before receiving a royal pardon and returning home to Australia. More indicative of information suppression is the banning of historical books (and lèse majesté charges filed against the authors) that the government views as presenting a manipulative role by the monarchy in modern politics.
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One of the most complete selections of material on Theravada Buddhism is available at Access to Insight (www.accesstoinsight.org).
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RELIGION
Religion is alive and well in Thailand and colourful examples of daily worship can be found on nearly every corner. Walk the streets early in the morning and you’ll see the solemn progression of the Buddhist monks, with shaved heads and orange-coloured robes, engaged in bin·dá·bàht, the daily house-to-house alms food gathering.
Although the country is predominantly Buddhist, the minority religions often practice alongside one another. The green-hued onion domes of the mosques mark a neighbourhood as Muslim in pockets of Bangkok and in southern towns. In urban centres, large rounded doorways inscribed with Chinese characters and flanked by red paper lanterns mark the location of shn jôw, Chinese temples dedicated to the worship of Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian deities.
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Buddhism
Approximately 95% of Thai people are Theravada Buddhists, a branch of Buddhism that came from Sri Lanka during the Sukhothai period. The Theravada school is often called the southern school because it travelled from the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia, while Mahayana Buddhism was adopted throughout the northern regions of Nepal, Tibet, China and the rest of East Asia.
Prior to the arrival of Sinhalese monks in the 13th century to Thailand, an Indian form of Theravada existed during the Dvaravati kingdom (6th to 10th centuries), while Mahayana Buddhism was known in pockets