Thai Woman freed after serving eight years for royal insult

A 69-year-old Thai woman, Anchan Preelert, who once received one of the country’s harshest sentences for insulting the monarchy, has been released from prison after serving eight years. Her freedom came on Wednesday under a mass pardon granted to mark the king’s birthday.

Anchan, a former civil servant, was arrested in 2015 for sharing online audio clips from “DJ Banpodj,” an underground broadcaster critical of the monarchy. In 2021, she was sentenced to 43 years in prison, later reduced from an unprecedented 87-year term after she admitted guilt. Each of the 29 clips she reposted was treated as a separate offence under Thailand’s lese-majeste law, which prescribes up to 15 years per count for insulting the royal family.

Her punishment was once the longest imposed under the controversial Article 112 law, until 2024, when an online vendor, Mongkol Thirakot, was sentenced to at least 50 years over Facebook posts deemed offensive to the monarchy.

On her release from the Central Women’s Correctional Institution in Bangkok, Anchan appeared in a white T-shirt and purple scarf, bowing to well-wishers who presented her with flowers and “Welcome Home” signs. “Eight years I was in there… It’s a bitter feeling for me,” she told reporters.

Rights organisations, including Amnesty International, hailed her release as a rare reprieve, but warned that Thailand’s lese-majeste law continues to stifle free expression. More than 280 people have faced prosecution under the law in the past five years, particularly following student-led pro-democracy protests in 2020.

Just last month, lawmakers rejected an amnesty bill for those convicted under Article 112, a decision condemned by human rights groups as another setback for political freedoms in the country.