The King Never Smiles -- Banned in Bangkok

The King Never Smiles

I'm almost finished with my first read of The King Never Smiles by Paul Handley, and have really enjoyed the book to date, but do be forewarned that this is a book best recommended for people who have a serious interest in Thailand, and have a fair amount to background regarding Thailand's history over the past six decades. Novices will probably get buried quickly and lose track, with all the military and political forces who dodge back and forth during their relationships with the Thai royal family.

Also, the book is largely complimentary to the Thai king, and there's very little scandalous insight that the ordinary Thai couldn"t fill you in at the local pub. There's only passing mention of most of the family, though the Crown Prince comes in for a serious drubbing. Who would have thought? Everybody knows all about V., and the book is far more discreet than the rumors and stories I've heard over the years. So don't buy this book expecting to see any new dirt; it ain't there.

Paul Handley is a professional journalist who worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review for over a decade, and he lived in Bangkok for 12 years, so he's got the credibility on Thai issues, despite the rather lame comments posted on the Amazon site. He compliments the king, then brings him down a few notches, then compliments him again, etc. etc. It's a well balanced look at the royal court, but his main message is that the royal family may be seriously endangered, what with V. and his image problem.

But ban the book? I find the actions of the Thai government to be far more egregious than anything in the book. A friend of mine in southern Thailand pre-ordered the book several months ago via Amazon, and he received the book last week, but from most Thai ISPs, when you visit the Amazon link, you will find it censored.

The solution to this annoying problem is for the king to intervene, and stop this nonsense.

With the world's longest-reigning monarch approaching the 60th anniversary of his ascension to the throne, we expected him to be a little less sensitive to criticism by now.

Although he is a constitutional monarch -- in a position that was considered prime figurehead material before his tenure began -- we are told that Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej has long been considered almost godlike by many of his subjects, consistently demonstrating an ability to mediate the often violent conflicts between military forces and pro-democracy movements. But in blocking Yale University Press Web material on "The King Never Smiles," Paul Handley's forthcoming critical biography of the monarch, Thailand's communications ministry has only succeeded in casting more doubt on the king's typically accepted image as a beneficent democrat.

In some spheres of intellectual debate, Thailand seems relatively progressive. Just last week, the government-funded Mahidol University in Thailand hosted an international nursing conference jointly organized with the Yale School of Nursing and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We laud the participating universities for their focus on attracting a wide range of opinions regarding complementary and alternative therapies for chronic illness; this suggests a willingness to accept and learn from constructive criticism in the fields of caregiving and medical treatment.

But when it comes to historical and political analysis, Thailand offers a far smaller academic playing field. Since more than a few criticisms of our own president have appeared in this space, we are fundamentally uncomfortable with the Thai law that delivers prison sentences of up to 15 years to anyone who speaks against the monarchy. Though the crime is only rarely prosecuted these days, we find it much more difficult to believe that the king has democracy's best interests at heart as long as he continues to limit free speech that happens to offend him.

We find it telling that the Royal Thai Police Web site has banned more than 32,000 other sites since the government began censoring the Web less than four years ago. Granted, an overwhelming majority of the verboten Web material was reportedly blocked for the same reasons that U.S. government computers in a public school or office might do so -- more than 76 percent of the sites in question were declared pornographic or related to either prostitution or the sale of sex equipment. But another 11 percent of the blocked Web sites, roughly 3,600, are designated simply as a "Threat to National Security," which leads us to believe that many of them paint unflattering pictures of the Thai government and its head. This is an astonishing amount of censorship from a country with strong beliefs in free-enterprise economics and pro-investment policies.

Under the current strictures, we are hardly surprised that all traces of Handley's book -- which depicts the king as "deeply political, autocratic, and even brutal," according to promotional material from Yale Press -- have been restricted by the Thai Ministry of Information and Communication Technology. But by limiting free political expression in so blatant a fashion, the Thai government seems to have proven Handley's point well before the book hits shelves.

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