HRI’s TrialWatch project examines the prosecution of five pro-democracy protesters under a rarely used provision protecting the Thai monarchy and what the case reveals about the use of criminal law to restrict peaceful protest

By: Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, as part of its partnership with the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s TrialWatch programme

Today marks six years since pro-democracy demonstrators in Thailand were arrested for peacefully protesting. Last year, five protestors were handed prison sentences of 16-21 years, a major escalation in repression and the use of criminal law to silence movements for democracy. 

During this protest, a royal motorcade in Bangkok was delayed for just six minutes. No one attacked the vehicle. No one threw objects. No one breached the security cordon. The motorcade passed without incident. Yet five individuals protesting near the motorcade have now been handed lengthy prison sentences.

Over the past few years, Thailand has witnessed sustained pro-democracy protests calling for constitutional reform and limits on monarchical power.1 Royal motorcades have become political touch points.2 Fewer and fewer countries have draconian, often colonial-era laws that are used to criminalize criticizing monarchies or governments,3 and increasingly, countries are repealing or narrowing these laws—recognizing that such laws violate fundamental human rights.4 

Thailand, by contrast, has intensified its use of criminal law to insulate the monarchy from any potential criticism.5 Since 2020, at least 1,960 individuals, including protesters, human rights defenders, students, and ordinary citizens, have been charged under an expanding web of legal provisions, each with lengthy minimum prison sentences.6 These include the notorious Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code (lèse-majesté), sedition laws, the Computer Crimes Act, and emergency decrees restricting public gatherings.7

Yet, in an expansion of its monarchy-protection toolbox, the five democracy protesters8 arrested in 2020 were convicted under Section 110 for the first time, marking a major escalation in repression. 9 Section 110 is meant to address acts of violence against members of the royal family. It carries severe penalties—16 to 20 years’ imprisonment for attempts or preparatory acts, and potentially life imprisonment or even death where the act is deemed to endanger life. By contrast, Section 112 (lèse-majesté), which has been long been used, and criticized by international observers,10 criminalizes defamation, insult, or threat against the monarchy, incurs sentences ranging from 3 to 15 years.11

By casting the episode not simply as a speech-based offence under Section 112 but as a threat of violence under Section 110, harsher punishments can be justified, and correspondingly the chilling effect is intensified. 

What Happened During the Six Minutes?

The facts of the October 14, 2020 protest raise serious concerns about this application of the law. 

Five individuals, none of whom knew the others beforehand, were present at a demonstration in Bangkok. The demonstration coincided with the route of a royal motorcade, though the route itself had not been publicly disclosed in advance, meaning that the protesters did not know the motorcade would pass through their gathering. The prosecution later claimed that police had announced the approach of the royal motorcade over a loudspeaker. But the trial court found no evidence that any clear warning had been given. The prosecution’s own videos showed only a request to let a “convoy” pass, and witnesses testified that, without a clear warning, they could not tell that the vehicles belonged to a royal motorcade.12

When police advanced toward the demonstrators, tensions rose. Some protesters, fearing dispersal and possible injury, stepped forward and extended their arms to each other. One individual urged others to sit down in an attempt to de-escalate the situation.13 A few briefly did so before being pushed by advancing officers. As a result, the motorcade was delayed for approximately six minutes before proceeding without incident.

The trial court acquitted the five individuals.14 Yet, the appeals court concluded that the defendants’ actions constituted a joint, coordinated attempt to obstruct the motorcade, and by extension, an attempt to infringe upon the liberty of the Queen through an “act of violence.”15 For one of the five defendants, a prior Section 112 conviction for monarchy-related expression was later used to increase his sentence by one-third.16 

Such expansive interpretation of law requires deeper scrutiny. 

Violence Against Liberty of Crown: Then and Now

The idea that obstructing or restraining a King or Queen’s movement could amount to a grave offence against the monarchy is not new. For most of its history, English law treated harm to the monarch’s physical person as treason. Under the Treason Act of 1795, courts interpreted attempts to imprison, capture, or place the monarch in the power of conspirators as “overt acts” demonstrating an intention to compass or imagine the monarch’s death. This reflected the long-standing logic of English treason law, which treated even restraint as evidence of a threat not merely to the monarch’s freedom of movement, but to the monarch’s life and sovereign authority.17 

In a contemporary lecture, one critic18 ridiculed the Treason Act by joking that no rational legal system would prosecute a man whose cart had broken down at the wrong moment for treason against the Crown. It was satire, a reductio ad absurdum, meant to show how dangerous the law was.19 Even then, the law was seen as an overreach. And no record exists of the 1795 Act being applied to a person who merely impeded the royal coach. In 1998, the 1795 Act was repealed in its entirety.20 

Just like this provision, across jurisdictions, offences designated to protect the monarch and monarchy from criticism or inconvenience, either through treason, lèse-majesté, or sedition, are being repealed. Japan used to have a scheme of monarchical-protection under former Articles 73 and 75 of the Penal Code, which imposed special penalties for acts of violence against the Emperor and members of the Imperial Family.21 Those provisions were abolished during the post-war constitutional reforms on the ground that special offences protecting the Imperial House were unnecessary now that sovereignty was vested in the people and given that ordinary criminal law already punished violence against persons. 22

In the United Kingdom today, neither openly challenging the monarch’s legitimacy23 nor even suspected obstruction of the monarch’s movement, is treated as an offence against the Crown; at most, such conduct is addressed through ordinary public order law. When the head of an anti-monarchy group and five others were arrested at the coronation of King Charles III, it was under a provision that punishes carrying an object with the intention it might later be used to “lock on” (attach themselves to other people, objects or structures).24 The investigation found no evidence of that intent, and the arrest had no legal basis to stand.25 Flawed as it is,26 the law in this example was an ordinary public order offence that would apply the same whether the target was a royal procession or a construction site.

Even assuming that there was a basis for special provisions criminalizing ‘violence against the liberty’ of the crown, it is not clear how ‘violence’ is to be understood under Section 110. Criminal law rests on the principle of legality: that offences must be clearly defined, and individuals must be able to foresee, with reasonable certainty, whether their conduct is criminal.27 But Section 110, on its face, fails that standard. Its interpretation is so broad that it captures conduct that is not violent in any ordinary sense of the word. The problem is compounded by the severity of the penalties attached to Section 110. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has noted that the more serious the punishment, the greater the requirement for legal certainty.28 However here, harsh penalties are paired with imprecise definitions.

The detention of these individuals also implicates the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.29 Jurisprudence interpreting this right further clarifies how far the concept of ‘violence’ is being stretched and how disproportionate the response has been.

Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) guarantees the right to peaceful assembly, permitting restrictions only where they are provided by law, pursue a legitimate aim, and are necessary and proportionate in a democratic society.30 To clarify the meaning of “violence” in the context of assemblies or protests, the UN Human Rights Committee has noted that it “typically entails the use by participants of physical force against others that is likely to result in injury or death, or serious damage to property. Mere pushing and shoving or disruption of vehicular or pedestrian movement or daily activities do not amount to 'violence.’”31 Blocking of traffic for a short interval has long been understood as a symbol of non-violent protest.32 

And decades long prison sentences are plainly disproportionate to the conduct in question. To grasp the lack of proportionality, it helps to look at how other jurisdictions treat protest-related disruption of traffic. In DPP v Ziegler,33 the UK Supreme Court held that protesters who had lain down in the middle of an access road to a London arms fair, locked themselves to obstruction devices, and blocked one carriageway for around ninety minutes were protected by a “lawful excuse,” a statutory legal defence available in response to certain criminal offences in the UK. Reading the obstruction of the highway offence compatibly with Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR),34 the Supreme Court ordered the protesters’ acquittals, holding that deliberate physical obstruction of a highway can amount to lawful excuse where prosecution would be a disproportionate interference with the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly.35 In particular, the Supreme Court noted that it could “discern no error or flaw in [the trial court’s] reasoning” that “there was no evidence of any significant disruption” due to a roughly 90 minute partial blocking of an access road.36 

While this defence was limited in subsequent cases, and in some cases was not available as a matter of statutory law, even in subsequent, widely-criticized cases where UK courts have imposed significant sentences on protesters obstructing roads, the laws invoked were still deemed to require a fault element of intention or recklessness. As one court put it, “[i]t is unjust that defendants should be exposed to such a serious sanction unless there is equally serious fault on their part.”37 That concern was recently taken up by the Court of Appeal in a case that has been described as entailing the longest sentences ever imposed for non-violent protest in the UK,38 involving the disruption of Britain’s busiest motorway, the M25. The Court found the sentences to be “manifestly excessive”39 as the “conscientious desire to communicate their views about the appropriate response to climate change” from the defendants had to form part of the assessment of culpability,40 and, at minimum, should be considered in determining the proportionality of sentencing.41 The Court of Appeal ultimately reduced the sentences of all five defendants, with the longest sentence reduced from five to four years.42

Thailand goes beyond the UK approach and developments in Thailand point to something more systematic. They reflect the gradual expansion of laws to insulate the monarchy. Courts applying Section 112 have blurred the line between criticism of the monarch and the monarchy. Indeed, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention recently identified precisely this problem in a case against Thailand observing that the trial judgment was unclear as to whether the conduct prosecuted was “defamation of the monarch as an individual or criticism of the monarchy as an institution,” and concluding that this inconsistent application left even the courts unable to “coherently define the boundaries of the prohibited conduct.”43 Section 110 now also threatens to blur the line between protest and violence leading to restraint of royal liberty. 

The Line on Dissent Continues to Move

This is precisely how laws are repurposed in moments of political strain: Not necessarily through overt suspension of rights, but through their incremental redefinition. Terms like “defame,” “threat” and “insult”—and now “violence”—are stretched to accommodate conduct that would otherwise fall squarely within the protections of democratic life.

The effect is both immediate and enduring.

In the short term, individuals are unfairly imprisoned for conduct that is neither violent nor dangerous. In the long term, the boundaries of permissible speech and assembly shrink. Society is forced to learn not where the line is, but that the line can move, without warning. That uncertainty and confusion is itself a form of control and perhaps the whole point. 

Courts should not lend legitimacy to such expansion. They should acquit the defendants and, unless Parliament is prepared to repeal Section 110, ensure that it remains where it has been for years: dormant. To revive it against peaceful protesters would shield those in power from the very people they are meant to serve, turning democratic accountability into a punishable act.

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The Human Rights Institute advances international human rights through education, advocacy, fact-finding, research, scholarship, and critical reflection. We work in partnership with advocates, communities, and organizations pushing for social change to develop and strengthen the human rights legal framework and mechanisms, promote justice and accountability for human rights violations, and build and amplify collective power.

 

Footnotes

1 Article 19, Protests Under Threat: Thailand denying the demand for democracy, (Nov. 2022), https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/A19-Protests-Under-Threat_THAI_DEC-22.pdf, at 8-10. 

2 Article 19, Protests Under Threat: Thailand denying the demand for democracy, (Nov. 2022), https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/A19-Protests-Under-Threat_THAI_DEC-22.pdf, at 8-10. 

3 Several jurisdictions have either struck down sedition laws on vagueness grounds, such as Pakistan, or repealed them altogether, including Kenya, Ghana, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Jamaica, Maldives, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Uganda, and Malawi. Clooney Foundation for Justice, The Crime of Sedition: What Comes Next for an Archaic Law?, (Feb. 2024), https://cfj.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Sedition-Report-February-2024-Update.pdf, at 53, 57–58.

4 See, e.g., the following countries have repealed their lèse-majesté (or comparable laws): Japan (1947), Sweden (1948); Romania (2014); and Norway, (2015). On 28 October 2021, Belgium’s Constitutional Court held that a law dating from 1847 penalizing insults to the monarch violated the right to freedom of expression under the Belgian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. In the United Kingdom, the Treason Felony Act 1848, which criminalizes advocacy for the abolition of the monarchy, formally remains on the statute books but is no longer enforced in practice.

5 International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Second Wave: The return of lèse-majesté in Thailand, (Oct. 2021), https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/thailand_report_second_wave_774a_sg_au_210906.pdf, at 5-6. 

6 Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, December 2024: Arnon Convicted in Two Successive Cases Under Section 112—Court of Appeals Overturning Verdict on Royal Portrait Pain-Throwing Case—More Verdicts Delivered in Five Public Assembly Cases, (Jan. 23, 2025), https://tlhr2014.com/en/archives/72429;

Amnesty International, Thailand 2025, https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/south-east-asia-and-the-pacific/thailand/report-thailand/.

7 Al Jazeera, PM Prayuth promises to use ‘all laws’ against Thai protestors, (Nov. 19, 2020), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/19/pm-prayuth-promises-to-use-all-laws-against-thai-protesters.

8 Kulthida Samaputthi, Royal Procession: Voices from Defendants in a Historic Case Under Section 110 “Actions Against the Queen’s Freedom”, BBC (Nov. 20, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/thai/thailand-55018091. 

9 Section 110, Thai Criminal Code, 

https://www.thailandlawonline.com/table-of-contents/criminal-law-translation-thailand-penal-code. 

10 E.g., UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Thailand must immediately repeal lèse-majesté laws, say UN experts, (Jan. 30, 2025), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/01/thailand-must-immediately-repeal-lese-majeste-laws-say-un-experts; Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, & Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Communication to Thailand, U.N. Doc. AL THA 11/2020 (Jan. 11, 2021), https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=25839; 

UNWGAD, Opinion No. 52/2024 concerning Netiporn “Bung” Sanesangkhom (Thailand), A/HRC/WGAD/2024/52, (Dec. 9, 2024); UNWGAD, Opinion No. 28/2024 concerning Arnon Nampa (Thailand), A/HRC/WGAD/2024/28, (Oct. 9, 2024); UNWGAD, Opinion No. 38/2025 concerning Sirapob Phumphengphut (Thailand), A/HRC/WGAD/2025/38, (Oct. 17, 2025), at para. 49. 

11 Section 112, Thai Criminal Code, 

https://www.thailandlawonline.com/table-of-contents/criminal-law-translation-thailand-penal-code.

12 “The Petitioners maintain that no clear signals or announcements were made that the royal motorcade was approaching, which the Ratchada Criminal Court also concluded in acquitting the Petitioners . . . one crowd control officer testified they learned of it only five minutes prior to its arrival. . . . witnesses stated they were unable to recognize them as a royal motorcade. Though the prosecution asserted the police made an announcement over a loudspeaker that the royal motorcade was approaching, in dozens of video clips presented by the prosecution, it appears that the only announcement came from one of the escort vehicles requesting that the ‘convoy’ pass, without specifying it was a royal motorcade.” Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, & Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, In the matter of Aekachai Hongkangwan, Boonkueanun Paothong, Suranat Panprasert, Mr. “Keng,” and Mr. “Kwan” v. Government of Thailand: Petition to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, (May 2026),  https://kennedyhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Aekachai-Hongkangwan-et-al.-UNWGAD-Petition-and-Urgent-Action-Request-Public-Redacted.pdf, at 8. 

13 “Mr. Panprasert shouted ‘Sit down! Sit down,’ because he thought sitting would help defuse the confrontation and prevent further injuries. Some people briefly sat down on the road but stood up again, as the police continued to push those at the front, causing some to fall on the people seated on the ground.” Id. 

14 Judgment, Criminal Court of Thailand, Black case. No. Or 778/2564, (Jun. 28, 2023).

15 Judgment, Court of Appeal, Black case no. Aor.1611/2567, (Mar. 21, 2025). 

16 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, & Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, In the matter of Aekachai Hongkangwan, Boonkueanun Paothong, Suranat Panprasert, Mr. “Keng,” and Mr. “Kwan” v. Government of Thailand: Petition to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, (May 2026),  https://kennedyhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Aekachai-Hongkangwan-et-al.-UNWGAD-Petition-and-Urgent-Action-Request-Public-Redacted.pdf, at 11. 

17 “To conspire to imprison the king by force . . . is an overt act of compassing the king’s death,” because force against the King’s person “may tend to his death” and “there is generally but a short interval between the prisons and the graves of princes.” William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), reprinted in LONANG Inst., https://lonang.com/library/reference/blackstone-commentaries-law-england/bla-406/.

18 John Thelwall, a leading lecturer and political reformer who had himself been tried and acquitted for high treason in 1794. English Heritage, John Thelwall, https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/john-thelwall/.

19 “If a brewer's dray happen to break down, and so impede the progress of the King's coach, I should not wonder if the Attorney General were to cram horses, driver, and proprietor, the venders of malt and hops, and the manufacturers of the hoops and barrels into one indictment of high treason for restraining his Majesty's person.” John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide (2000), https://archive.org/details/imaginingkingsde0000barr, at 576. 

20 Crime and Disorder Act 1998, s. 120(2), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/37.

21 National Diet Library, Eliminating the Crimes of High Treason and Lese Majesty from Criminal Code, Birth of the Constitution of Japan, https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/05/150shoshi.html (noting that arts. 73–76, concerning high treason and lèse-majesté, were ordered deleted in 1946 as part of aligning the Criminal Code with the new Constitution). 

22 National Diet Library, Letter from Douglas MacArthur to Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida (Feb. 25, 1947), Birth of the Constitution of Japan, https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/05/137/137tx.html.

23 E.g. Symon Hill was arrested in Oxford in September 2022 after shouting “Who elected him?” during a local proclamation of King Charles III’s accession. He was later charged under the Public Order Act, but the charges were dropped for insufficient evidence; in 2025, Thames Valley Police accepted that the arrest grounds were unlawful and paid him £2,500 compensation. Daniel Boffey, Police Admit Arrest of Anti-Monarchy Heckler in Oxford Was Unlawful, The Guardian, (Mar. 11, 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/11/police-admit-arrest-of-anti-monarchy-heckler-in-oxford-was-unlawful.

24 Kevin Rawlinson & Nadeem Badshah, Met Police ‘Regret’ Arrest of Anti-Monarchy Protesters at Coronation, The Guardian, (May 8, 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/08/arrests-coronation-protesters-premeditated-republic-chief-police.

25 Id.

26 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called the Public Order Act 2023 incompatible with the right to peaceful assembly. UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, The Public Order Act will have a chilling effect on your civic freedoms – it must be repealed, (May 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/en/opinion-editorial/2023/05/public-order-act-will-have-chilling-effect-your-civic-freedoms-it-must-be.

The UK Parliament's own Joint Committee on Human Rights warned that the offence could sweep in demonstrators who simply link arms, and called for it to be amended or scrapped for its chilling effect on legitimate protest. Joint Committee on Human Rights, Legislative Scrutiny: Public Order Bill, UK Parliament, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt5803/jtselect/jtrights/351/report.html. 

27 UNWGAD, Opinion No. 4/2019 concerning Siraphop Kornaroot (Thailand), A/HRC/WGAD/2019/4, (May 30, 2019), at para. 55; UNWGAD, Opinion No. 64/2021 concerning Anchan Preelerd (Thailand), A/HRC/WGAD/2021/64, (Jan. 27, 2022), at para. 27. 

28 UNWGAD, Opinion No. 10/2018 concerning Waleed Abulkhair (Saudi Arabia), A/HRC/WGAD/2018/10, (Jul. 4, 2018), at para. 54. 

29 At the same time, protest speech and symbolic activity is also protected by the right to freedom of expression, codified in Article 19 of the ICCPR.

30 UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 37 on the right of peaceful assembly (article 21), CCPR/C/GC/37, (Sept. 17, 2020), https://docs.un.org/en/ccpr/c/gc/37, at para. 36. 

31 Id. at para. 15. 

32 Id. at para. 85 (An assembly that remains peaceful while nevertheless causing a high level of disruption, such as the extended blocking of traffic, may be dispersed, as a rule, only if the disruption is “serious and sustained”). 

33 UKSC 23. Director of Public Prosecutions v. Ziegler and Others, (2021), at paras. 57–68 (opinion of Lords Hamblen & Stevens). 

34 In Kudrevičius and Others v. Lithuania, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights also accepted that the blockade of major highways fell within Article 11. ECtHR, Kudrevičius and Others v Lithuania, App. No. 37553/05, (Oct. 15, 2015).

35 UKSC 23. Director of Public Prosecutions v. Ziegler and Others, (2021), at paras. 57–68 (opinion of Lords Hamblen & Stevens). 

36 Id. at para. 84.

37 EWCA Crim 919, R v. Trowland & Decker, (Jul. 31, 2023), at para. 46; EWCA Crim 199, R v. Hallam & Others, (Mar. 7, 2025), at paras. 12-14.

38 Matrix Chambers, Court of Appeal Provides Guidance on Sentencing for Acts of Civil Disobedience on Conscientious Grounds, (Mar. 13, 2025), https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/news/court-of-appeal-provides-guidance-on-sentencing-for-acts-of-civil-disobedience-on-conscientious-grounds/.

39 EWCA Crim 199, R v. Hallam & Others, (Mar. 7, 2025), at paras. 7(iii)-(iv).

40 EWCA Crim 199, R v. Hallam & Others, (Mar. 7, 2025), at paras. 25-26. 

41 The “sentencing judge in each case erred because he declined to make any reduction in the sentences imposed on them by reason of their conscientious motivation.” EWCA Crim 199, R v. Hallam & Others, (Mar. 7, 2025), at paras. 25-26. 

42 EWCA Crim 199, R v. Hallam & Others, (Mar. 7, 2025), at para. 191(i).

43 UNGAD, Opinion No. 38/2025 concerning Sirapob Phumphengphut (Thailand), A/HRC/WGAD/2025/38, (Oct. 17, 2025), at para. 79.