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https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/thais-turn-to-twitter-to-criticise-royalty
The #IslandsShutdown hashtag was used about 382,000 times as of Jan 1 but has since been repeated more than a million times.
The criticism of the 33-year-old princess and the authorities is not a one-off but an unprecedented "macro-level structural change of Thai society which has already been set in motion", said Dr Soraj Hongladarom, a philosophy professor at Chulalongkorn University.
He was referring to the change in attitudes towards the monarchy.
The viral hashtag comes three months after #RoyalMotorcade became the top trending hashtag on Twitter in October with over 250,000 retweets.
Thais used the hashtag to voice their frustration over road closures that were imposed by the authorities to facilitate what is believed to be a royal motorcade.
It was the first time a group of people used Twitter to criticise the handling of the royal motorcadevia a trending hashtag.
In March last year, the hashtag #OldEnoughtoChooseforMyself went viral soon after the King released a statement on the eve of the general election urging people to vote for "good people".
Former junta leader Prayut Chan-o-cha became prime minister for the second term thanks to the nomination of Palang Pracharath – the party which won the second biggest number of seats, allowing it to form a government coalition – and the votes from the rubber-stamped Senate.
The growing boldness is a surprising development, Dr Soraj said. There are enough examples of people being thrown into jail for violating the kingdom's lese majeste laws or breaking computer crime laws with their monarchy-related social media posts.
Link to the full article
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/thais-turn-to-twitter-to-criticise-royalty
