Last year, the Thai Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn (who became King of Thailand in December) walked around a Munich shopping center sporting a little yellow crop top, exposing tattoos on his belly and back. He was with a woman who was similarly dressed. They looked like an ordinary couple on a beach vacation.
But the new King is not happy that a video surfaced on Facebook last month, posted by Somsak Jeamteerasakul, "a prominent Thai historian and critic of the monarchy who lives in France," according to The New York Times. The King has had the video blocked in Thailand, but today he threatened to sue Facebook if it wasn't immediately removed from the site.
The video has been blocked in Thailand but was still available outside the country on Tuesday.
Facebook, which opened an office in Thailand in 2015, declined to answer questions about its operations in the country or the pages that the government wants to remove. A spokeswoman, Clare Wareing, said only that the company’s policy was to comply with requests by governments to restrict access to content that officials believed violated local laws.
“When we receive such a request, we review it to determine if it puts us on notice of unlawful content,” Ms. Wareing said in an emailed statement. “If we determine that it does, then we make it unavailable in the relevant country or territory and notify people who try to access it why it is restricted.”
In Thailand, it's illegal to poke fun of the king, queen, or crown prince, and can carry a maximum sentence of 15 years.
Read the full story in The New York Times.
