Thailand blocked nationwide access to YouTube over some videos which the country’s government feel insult the country’s nobility.
“We have blocked YouTube because it contains a video insulting to our king,” said Winai Yoosabai, head of the censorship unit at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.
From the NY Times:
Thailand’s ban on YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, came after YouTube’s owner, Google, refused to remove the video clip, the communications minister, Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, said.
The clip, crude and amateurish and lasting less than a minute, depicts the king with clown features painted onto his face and an image of feet pasted over his head, an insulting gesture in Thailand.
It seems that Google has removed the video from YouTube, but no word on whether the Thai government has lifted the ban.
Comments
3 responses so far ↓
Rockyfied on Apr 5, 2007 at 10:29 am
O come on thailand. Take a joke!
Ahmed Bilal on Apr 5, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I wonder if this is going to increase the number of videos dissing the king?
Mick on Apr 5, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Hey you don’t want to go offending the Thai Royalty, that’s a big no-no. Here is a snippet from a news story earlier this week.
“A Swiss man became the first foreigner in more than a decade to be convicted under Thailand’s tough lese-majeste laws today when he was jailed for 10 years for insulting the country’s revered king.
Oliver Jufer, 57, earlier admitted defacing images of the 79-year-old monarch, Bhumibol Adulyadej, when he went on a drunken rampage with a can of spray-paint that he had bought for his dogs’ kennel.
Jufer, from Zurich, has lived in the northern city of Chang Mai for most of the past decade and faced a 75-year jail term for the total of five charges of insulting the king.”
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