Mediaboss Marketing

By Amy Sawitta Lefevre

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court handed an eight-month suspended sentence on Wednesday to a website editor for failing to quickly remove posts deemed offensive to the monarchy in a case that adds to growing debate over Thailand's draconian royal censorship laws.

The Bangkok Criminal Court ruled posts on the Prachatai news website (www.prachatai.com) were offensive to the royal family and that its editor, Chiranuch Premchaiporn, failed to remove them promptly, as requested by the court, allowing at least one to stay online for 20 days.

Thailand has some of the world's toughest lese majeste laws to penalise insults against the king, queen and crown prince, but critics say the legislation is used to discredit activists and politicians opposed to the royalist establishment.

Chiranuch, 44, was charged in 2010 in a crackdown on royal defamation under former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, whose supporters include Bangkok's traditional elite of top generals, royal advisers, middle-class bureaucrats and old-money families.

She faced a maximum 20 years in jail on 10 counts of supporting illegal content and violating the Computer Crimes Act, a controversial and wide-ranging law passed by a military-installed legislature following a 2006 coup.

The suspended sentence is a rare moment of leniency in a series of tough and highly criticised decisions by courts to protect the monarchy, an effort that has increased during what many see as the twilight of the reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand's long-hospitalised 84-year-old monarch.

"For someone involved in a lese-majeste content issue, this was a comparatively reasonable sentence," said David Streckfuss, a scholar and expert on Thailand's lese-majeste laws.

Many Thais revere the king, the world's longest-ruling monarch, and regard him as a unifying figure, but national unease over what follows his reign has added to recent political turbulence.

Deadly street riots, mob takeovers of airports and a coup in recent years reveal a country divided broadly between a yellow-shirted royalist elite and lower-income red-shirted supporters of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, toppled in 2006.

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Webmaster gets suspended sentence in Thai royal insult case