Thailand and slandering the King

Everyone in the western world loves going to Thailand for its friendly people, interesting history, wonderful nature, and not least its beaches. Nobody really thinks about some old-fashioned laws existing there which are very contrary to the very ideals of freedom of speech that I am certain most westerners adhere to: you are not allowed to say anything bad about the monarchy.

This has just led to a ridiculous jail sentence against an Australian gentleman, Harry Nicolaides, who in a book that sold the incredible amount of seven copies, apparently had a paragraph that slandered the King of Thailand.

While this has existed for a while, and has recently also been discussed in regard to all the recent instability in Thailand (I read about it in the Economist). The point is that Thailand, an otherwise wonderful country, undermines its own credibility as a stable democracy when such things happen; Thailand seems more like a feudal autocracy than the modern Asian economy that it actually is.