BANGKOK — For the 18th year in a row, local satirist publication NotTheNation has been snubbed by the Lese-Majeste Nominating Awards Committee, failing to be nominated for a single award in any of the 13 categories.
The Lese-Majeste Awards are given each year to people, publications, or media programs that best insult, mock, belittle, or defame the ruling Thai monarch, their immediate family, or any member of the extended Royal Thai Family, or merely imply that the Thai military has undue influence in politics.
The judges meet each year in mid-April, where they vote for candidates for various categories, including Never Forgive–Never Forget, Most Likely To Be Assassinated Before Trial, I’d Even Turn My Mother In If She Said That, and I Guess This Qualifies Too, Actually.
Past winners include Daranee “Da Torpedo” Charnchoengsilpakul, who was sentenced to 15 years for speeches deemed offensive to the monarchy in 2008 and won the inaugural Never Forgive–Never Forget award; Jatupat “Pai Dao Din” Boonpattararaksa earned Most Likely To Be Assassinated Before Trial in 2017 after being jailed for sharing a BBC article; and Surachai Danwattananusorn, who disappeared mysteriously in 2018 after years of outspoken royal criticism and posthumously received Not Being Found Doesn’t Mean You’re Missing. In 2021, the award was controversially given to a parrot in Nakhon Ratchasima that had allegedly been trained to repeat a slogan referencing succession. The bird won in the I Guess This Qualifies Too, Actually category. Government officials later insisted the animal was released into the wild.
The leading 2025 nominee is Paul Chambers, who is accused of writing a promotional blurb for an academic seminar about reorganization of the Thai military on a Singapore-based website. Chambers was arrested and charged with lese-majeste and violating Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act. “Since my client is facing 15 years in a Thai prison, I think he stands a very strong chance of winning an award this year,” his lawyer, Wannaphat Jenroumjit, said in a statement to the press.
When asked to clarify which award his client was most hopeful to win, Wannaphat declined to elaborate further, saying he didn’t want to influence the final jury’s impartiality. Although sources inside the jail where Chambers was imprisoned have said that Chambers hopes he wins the most coveted, Not Being Guilty Doesn’t Mean You’re Innocent award.
Since its founding in March 2007, NotTheNation has never won a Lese-Majeste Award, although it has been nominated six times, most recently in 2012, when it compared the scandal of leaked photos of a naked Prince Andrew of Great Britain to the scandal surrounding revealing photos of then Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn taken by German media.
Dennis Lichtenstein, based in Bonn, Germany and president of Market and Audience Insights, expressed mild surprise after briefly checking the Lese-Majeste Awards wiki page and confirming that NotTheNation had indeed never won. “That website is almost the definition of violating lese-majeste law in Thailand,” Lichtenstein noted, before returning to swipe idly through the McDonald’s restaurant menu app. “NotTheNation has insulted former King Bhumibol Adulyadej, former Queen Sirikit, King Vajiralongkorn, his siblings, various cousins—and even Air Chief Marshal FuFu, the King’s former pet poodle.”
Outside the ceremonial hall, editor-in-chief of NotTheNation, Sonny ‘Beetroot’ Carter wasn’t handling the rejection well. Accompanied by his fellow NTN staff members, and a small gaggle of reporters, Sonny derided the jury members for failing to nominate him and his team.
“Apparently we’re too obvious. One judge said our work ‘was obviously performative, while lacking the subtle conviction of honest treason,’” Sonny said disappointedly, before asking a staff member to set fire to a nomination ballot using a lighter shaped like a royal amulet. “It’s like they never heard of John Twyn. Fucking amateurs.”
Pausing to watch the paper burn, he took a long pull from a bottle of Black Label, gesturing broadly at his team. “I have reporters all over this country working their damnedest to insult and provoke the Royal Family. We’ve got dirt on all of them—Bhumibol, Sirikit—dead or alive, we know what they don’t want us to—the palace leaks like a sieve, you know. Even the cute princes and princesses have scandals. All the dogs, too.”
Asked if he was trying too hard—and perhaps that was why he never won an ward—Sonny punched out the reporter who asked it. “I don’t care if that is my reputation,” he continued to the remaining conscious members of the press. “I don’t like the idea of monarchy. This whole ‘divine right’ thing—it’s bullshit. They don’t have magic blood. No society should be built on people prostrating themselves before another person. It’s obscene for one man to own fifty billion dollars in assets while children in the same country go hungry or never get a proper education. And any one of my reporters could be black-bagged in broad daylight, wind up dismembered in the Chao Phraya. I don’t ask for forgiveness for wanting the Thai people to live in a free, fair, and open society.”
The award ceremony will be held in June.
At press time, NotTheNation staff reported receiving a specially addressed email from the Royal Security Command inviting all employees to a personalized reception where they would, at last, be properly recognized for their journalistic efforts.
Email Us: Info at NotTheNation dot com
