A Buddhist monk from a well known temple filed a defamation charge against a newspaper columnist for mocking him over his hair-style on social media.
According to ASTV Manager, Venerable Aphichat Promjan, the chief lecturer monk of Benjamabophit Temple, a temple under the royal patronage in Bangkok, on Tuesday, 4 August 2015, file a complaint of offences under the 2007 Computer Crime Act against Surapod Taweesak, a religious academic and columnist of Matichon Newspaper, at Dusit Police Station.
The monk accused Surapod of defaming him for posting a facebook message saying that the he has a skinned-head hairstyle when he posted a picture of him and the other monk while they were travelling to Benjamabophit Temple on vehicle belonging to the Thai Royal Household on 23 July 2015.
Before the complaint was filed, Surapod posted a message on his facebook profile on Monday “one thing that I see is that while it has been promoting in the Thai society that Buddhist monks are virtuous role models of people in Thai society, but in fact, very few monks can express the virtue of seeing other human beings as equal to them.”
Venerable Aphichat Promjan files criminal defamation charge against Surapod, a Matichon columnist, at Dusit Police Station in Bangkok on 4 August 2015 (picture from Venerable Aphichat Promjan's facebook)
He pointed out that monks are public figure and should be able to take criticisms.
The columnist added that defamation charge should not be counted as criminal offense, but as offense under the civil laws instead.
“Defamation law should be in a civil code not the criminal code. The offenses under Computer Crime Act especially is too severe,” wrote Surapod.
Article 14 of the Computer Crime Code states that If any person commits any offence of the following acts shall be subject to imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine of not more than one hundred thousand baht or both: (1) that involves import to a computer system of forged computer data, either in whole or in part, or false computer data, in a manner that is likely to cause damage to that third party or the public; (2) that involves import to a computer system of false computer data in a manner that is likely to damage the country's security or cause a public panic; (3) that involves import to a computer system of any computer data related with an offence against the Kingdom's security under the Criminal Code; (4) that involves import to a computer system of any computer data of a pornographic nature that is publicly accessible; (5) that involves the dissemination or forwarding of computer data already known to be computer data under (1) (2) (3) or (4).