A man has been sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment for insulting Thailand's monarchy on Facebook. The long jail term was imposed under the country's harsh lèse-majesté law (literally "injured majesty"), which lays down that anyone convicted of insulting the king, queen, heir, or regent faces up to 15 years in prison on each count.

As The Guardian reports, Bangkok’s military court found Pongsak Sriboonpeng, 48, guilty of "posting messages and pictures defaming the monarchy in six posts on the social media site." Although he faced a possible 90 years in prison, the court imposed "only" 60 years—ten years for each insulting post—which was then halved because he pleaded guilty.

His lawyer pointed out that this is a new record for the law, and noted that there could be no appeal against the sentence, since it was imposed by a military court in a country still under martial law. The Guardian article says that convictions for lèse-majesté have increased dramatically since Thailand’s generals seized power from the elected government in May 2014.

The Thai "tradition" of imposing or threatening to impose long jail sentences for insulting the monarchy goes back many years. Ars reported how in 2006 a naturalised United States citizen from Thailand was arrested when he returned to his native land, and allegedly forced to confess to breaking the law. He was released after promising not to do so again—and praising the country's king.

In 2007, a Swiss man was jailed for 10 years for the crime of lèse-majesté after an initial sentence of 20 years was halved because he confessed. The same approach was taken by the court earlier this year, when an initial sentence of 50 years for posting five "defamatory" pictures on Facebook was cut to 25 years.

The lèse-majesté law has also been used to justify censorship and online snooping. In 2007, YouTube was blocked in Thailand for hosting a video deemed insulting to the king, while reports in 2014 suggested that the law would be used to carry out mass surveillance "specifically targeting those producing and reading lèse majesté content." The Guardian article notes that critics of the law see it as being used in a targeted fashion against political enemies of the royalist elite and their military allies, as well as anyone opposed to the coup.