<p><span><span> <span style="border-bottom: 1px solid #990033; text-decoration: underline; color: #990033; font-size: 11.2px; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" class="IL_LINK_STYLE">Thai</span><span> <span style="border-bottom: 1px solid #990033; text-decoration: underline; color: #990033; font-size: 11.2px; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" class="IL_LINK_STYLE">Prime Minister</span> Abhisit Vejjajiva should seek royal advice on changing the lese majeste law that has led to a slew of cases in recent months and forced a prominent academic to flee </span></span><span style="border-bottom: 1px solid #990033; text-decoration: underline; color: #990033; font-size: 11.2px; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" class="IL_LINK_STYLE">the country</span>, well-known social critic Sulak Sivaraksa said Wednesday.</span></p>

<p>A leading Bangkok-based professor who has joint British and Thai nationality fled <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/thailand">Thailand</a> at the weekend in the face of a lengthy sentence under the country&#39;s draconian lese-majesty laws, which forbid criticism of the king.</p>

<p>From the hell of his Bangkok prison cell, the writer Harry Nicolaides reveals the horror of his daily battle to survive.</p> <p>&#39;We are woken at 6 and counted in the cell. Mine is 12 metres long and just over four metres wide, holding 50 or 60 prisoners, mostly Thais, mostly murderers and rapists. ...&#39;</p>

<p>GENEVA<strong>:</strong> Angelina Jolie has called on Thailand&#39;s government to give more freedom to tens of thousands of Burmese refugees it has kept locked inside camps for up to 20 years.</p>

<p><font face="tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="2">In the just concluded Asia Pacific Editors&#39; Roundtable on Inequality and Hunger organised by the UNDP in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this writer told the gathering that Thailand has no challenge when it comes to hunger because the Thai media is generally uninterested and oblivious to the issue. </font></p>

<p>For most of last year, news from Thailand was dominated by the yellow-shirted protest movement calling itself the People&#39;s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). It helped drive two prime ministers from office. But since December, the PAD has disappeared from the scene. The BBC&#39;s Jonathan Head in Bangkok has been finding out what happened to it.</p>

<p>Nirmal Ghosh witnesses a pro-democracy rally calling for fresh elections. </p>

<p><font face="tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="2">Thai human rights defenders couldn&#39;t be more divided over the three years since the advent of the anti-Thaksin Shinawatra People&#39;s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). The price to be paid for this divide only gets higher too. </font></p>

<p><font face="tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="2">Prime Minister&#39;s Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey on Wednesday said the government will take action against community radio stations that have been found violating the law.</font></p>

<p><font face="tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="2">The crackdown on l&egrave;se majest&eacute; is intensifying as politics becomes polarised around the monarchy, says <em>Sinfah Tunsarawuth</em></font></p>

<p><font size="2">Your group met with Prime Minister<strong><a href="http://www.nationmultimedia.com/search/adsearch.php?keyword=+Abhisit+Vejjajiva+"> Abhisit Vejjajiva </a></strong>recently to express concerns about the growing number of blocked websites. What was his reaction?</font></p>

<p id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone"><font face="tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="2">Thailand&#39;s draconian lese-majesty law is a blunt instrument that Thais can too easily turn on foreigners &ndash; and each other</font></p>