Thailand: Poking the Tiger

Thailand: Poking the Tiger

Activists in Thailand have a busy calendar. Throughout the year they solemnly mark anniversaries of key dates in the struggle to establish a meaningful democracy in the kingdom. The surfeit of such events highlights just how turbulent the country’s modern history has been, with no less than twelve military coups since the abolition of absolute monarchy in 1932. On May 22 this year, a group of students calling themselves New Democracy Movement (NDM) held a spirited protest to mark the anniversary of the most recent coup, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014. Fourteen of the students were arrested – literally dragged away – and held for twelve days by a junta intent on stamping out any signs of dissent. They were released with charges still hanging over them, including one of sedition, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The students were unbowed and last month used the anniversary of another of Thailand’s coups to denounce military rule once again. On September 19, they gathered to remember the 2006 putsch that ousted Yingluck’s elder brother Thaksin and sent the country careening into chaos. Proceedings started at the traditionally liberal Thammasat University, an important site in Thai history due to the massacre of student protesters that occurred there in 1976. The NDM then led a crowd of up to two hundred on a march to the nearby Democracy Monument, where Red Shirt protestors rallying to call for elections were shot dead by the military in April 2010. Tragically, Thai history is as littered with killings as it is coups.

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