The Yala Provincial Court yesterday jailed a blind woman for 18 months for violating the country's lese majeste law, her lawyer and a court official said.
Those judged guilty of breaking Section 112 of the Criminal Code or the lese majeste law face up to 15 years in jail for each count of offending the King, Queen, Heir or Regent.
Nurhayati Masoh, 23, was found guilty after she posted on her Facebook account an article by Giles Ungpakorn, a Thai-British academic and vocal opponent of the Thai monarchy who fled Thailand after he was charged with lese majeste in 2009.
"She confessed that she posted it," Kaosar Aleemama, a lawyer for Nurhayati, said. "But she did not realise that it would lead to such a harsh punishment."
Nurhayati, who uses a computer application that helps the visually impaired post on social media, was arrested in November and sentenced to three years in jail by a court in the southern province of Yala.
"The case against her was filed on Nov 28, last year and she has been detained since," an official at the court, who declined to be named, said.
Nurhayati's confession led to her sentence being halved, he added.
Since the 2014 coup, at least 94 people have been prosecuted for lese majeste.
As many as 43 people have been sentenced, says the iLaw group that monitors royal insult cases, with 92% of them pleading guilty in the hope of receiving a shorter jail term.
"There may be more cases that we do not know about," Yingcheep Atchanont, iLaw's project manager, said.
The United Nations has expressed concern over what it calls the deteriorating rights situation in Thailand.
The Prayut Chan-o-cha government said it needs to crack down on critics of the monarchy for the sake of national security.
