Curtailing Free Expression, Opinion and Information Online in Southeast Asia Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit for that reason.389 In October 2019, it was reported that Assoc. Prof. Kovit had apologized to the court, and promised to clarify on Twitter that the cases were not similar. The court thereafter did not pursue the case.390 In August 2019, independent academic and political writer Sarinee Achavanuntakul was summoned by the Election Cases Division of the Supreme Court for referring to the abovementioned issue in an article she wrote titled ‘“Danger of Overwhelming Legalism (once again): the case of media shareholding of lower house candidates’ that was published online on the Bangkok Business Newspaper’s website in May 2019.391 In October 2019, the court dropped the case against her after she made an apology.392 *** In recent years, new laws have been enacted to regulate information online, control the spread of disinformation and hate speech online and ensure cybersecurity to combat contemporary threats faced by States and the individuals they are duty-bound to protect. These legislative efforts, however, do not generally appear to have been undertaken in good faith by governments in the region. The weaknesses of older laws have reappeared in more contemporary laws, and the patterns of abuse in their implementation have persisted. Meanwhile a new generation of laws aiming to combat online disinformation and ensure cybersecurity have been introduced across the region. While it is too early to fully assess their implementation, the provisions on their face reflect serious shortcomings, which are not dissimilar to limitations that were evident in older laws covered in this paper. In effect, these more contemporary laws have expanded the scope in practice for abuse of the legal system to increase censorship of expression and information online. *** 389 Ibid. 390 Bangkok Business News, ‘Kovit free from tweeting contempt of court post’, 10 October 2019, Available at: https://www.bangkokbiznews.com/news/detail/850433 391 TLHR, ‘The Election Cases Division of the Supreme Court Summons Ms. Sarinee for Contempt of Court’, 6 September 2019, Available at: https://www.tlhr2014.com/?p=13620&lang=en; Bangkok Post, ‘Courts act against media-shareholding critics’, 29 August 2019, Available at: https://www. bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/1739051/courts-act-against-media-shareholding-critics; The article in Thai is available at: https://www.bangkokbiznews.com/blog/detail/648489 392 ICJ communication with partners. 105