Thai police search for source of Line stickers making fun of the royal family
Thai authorities are looking for the source of a new set of messaging stickers apparently making fun of the Thai royal family that appeared in the sticker store of popular app Line.
Thailand has very strict lèse-majesté laws that can convict anyone who insults or makes fun of the Thai royal family.
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"We are investigating where the stickers came from and who did this," Colonel Somporn Daengdee, deputy chief of the police's Technology Crime Suppression Division, told Reuters.
Journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall managed to capture the stickers, which have since been pulled from the messaging app's store.
Line allows people to submit sticker sets to its store, which are screened by staff at the head office in Japan for offensive content.
However, people unfamiliar with stories about the Thai royals might not immediately recognise their depiction in the sticker set. As such, it's likely that they slipped past Japanese staff vetting submissions to the store.
But if you know the stories, you might spot the likeness of the crown prince who loved his poodle, Air Chief Marshal Foo Foo, or his sister Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who's known for contributing arts and craft work to the community.
A source sent Mashable a statement from people who say they created the stickers. Their location or identity couldn't be confirmed. "In Thailand, reverence for the royal family has sometimes been exploited to silence political debate. We wanted to create some light-hearted stickers that show the Thai royals as just like any other family. The furious reaction of Thai police shows Thailand is still far from democracy and freedom of speech," they said.
Line quickly issued an apology after removing the sticker set.
Line has a reported 33 million users in the kingdom, making up the majority of Thailand's mobile population. It is one of Line's largest markets in Southeast Asia.
This isn't the first time Line has had to pull stickers that rubbed authorities the wrong way in the region.
In February, it removed stickers with LGBT content from Indonesia's sticker store, at the apparent behest of the government there.
The punishment for the sticker maker of the Thai set is likely to be harsh, if the person or group resides in Thailand. Last year, a man was arrested for allegedly insulting the king and the monarch's beloved dog. He was charged with two counts of violating the lèse-majesté law -- one for the king, and the other for the dog -- which could land him 32 years in jail.
UPDATE: April 7, 2016, 11:55 a.m. BST
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Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
