Tag Archives: lèse-majesté

Two pro-democracy youth leaders, Parit Chiwarak “Penguin” and Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul “Rung”, have been on hunger strike for some weeks. Penguin started his two weeks before Rung. They are protesting against the fact that they have repeatedly been denied bail while awaiting trial on lèse-majesté charges. Three other leaders have also been denied bail, while others who are out on bail still face serious charges.

The military junta’s attack on freedom of speech and the pro-democracy protest movement, has been stepped up because Prayut and his gang feel that the large protests, which erupted onto the streets last year, have ceased and the movement is now weaker.

Unlike the heroic protests in neighbouring Burma/Myanmar, Thai activists have not organised workers’ strikes and this is an important factor. [See https://bit.ly/3x4c9ca ].

While I do not believe that hunger strikes are useful strategies in the struggle against the heartless junta and their lackeys in the courts, I disagree with those in the movement who are putting pressure on Penguin and Rung to abandon their hunger strikes. Penguin and Rung are brave and intelligent activists and we should respect their personal decisions to refuse food; not make it harder for them.

There have been daily solidarity gatherings outside courts in Bangkok and Chiang Mai to demand the release of all detained activists and this is vital. But further, more powerful, actions by the organised trade unions need to take place. Unfortunately there is little sign of this right now.

While this is going on, U.S. academic, David Streckfuss, who has written about Thailand’s lèse-majesté law, faces expulsion from Thailand after living in the country for 35 years. The junta’s authorities pressurised Khon Kaen University to sack him. Without his job, his visa has been terminated. He is clearly being victimised for his stance on democracy and his association with activists.

The political situation is just getting worse and the COVID policies of the junta are a cruel farce.

There has been an increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID and this has coincided with the Songkarn water festival, when people travel back to the provinces or go on holiday. Many cases are associated with entertainment establishments. The numbers of infected people are low, as a proportion of the population, compared to Western Europe, the USA, Brazil or Mexico, and fortunately the number of deaths is also low. This is despite the fact that the junta is incapable of organising to protect the population, with the vaccination programme lagging far behind many countries. [See https://bit.ly/3bGCRvc for an analysis of COVID in Thailand last year.]

Yet, what is unbelievable is that the government insists on admitting everyone who tests positive into hospital, regardless of whether or not they have symptoms, and the vast majority do not. This has cause chaos in hospitals and delayed essential treatment for non-COVID patients.

The junta has long been using COVID as a political excuse to crack down on protesters, but in recent days the army have used COVID to whip up racism against Karen refugees who came across the border, fleeing bombardment by the Burmese military. They were pushed back by the Thai army. Then the army organised to spray the open ground near the river where these refugees had been sitting with disinfectant, claiming to stop the spread of COVID. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that this was necessary or would have any effect. Rather it was a disgusting attempt by the army to portray migrants and refugees as vectors of disease!

Giles Ji Ungpakorn

Thai politics

Junta lashes out at critics using Lèse-majesté

January 20, 2021 uglytruththailand

The Thai military junta is ramping up the use of the draconian lèse-majesté law against critics, opposition politicians and dissidents.

The latest person to be charged with this authoritarian law is opposition politician Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. His “crime” was to question the Covid vaccine policy of the junta, which has approved a contract between Siam Bioscience and AstraZeneca for the Thai company to produce the Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccine for sale in Thailand and South-East Asia. Siam Bioscience is 100% owned by King Wachiralongkorn and so far has had a poor financial record and no experience of vaccine production. The junta is also buying a small amount of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.

Thanathorn estimates that most Thais will not begin to be vaccinated until the end of the year, unlike in neighbouring countries. In addition to this there will not be enough of the vaccine to cover the whole population.

Cutting down Thanathorn is part of a long process of destroying the official parliamentary opposition to the junta, which installed itself through a military coup, followed by sham elections. Thanathorn’s Future Forward Party was forced to disband by the junta’s courts and Thanathorn himself banned as an MP, mainly because his party enjoyed significantly popularity, especially among young people. This is at a time when Taksin’s opposition Pua Thai Party has shrunk to a shadow of itself after a war of attrition waged upon it by the military and the conservatives, which used coups and their courts to try to reduce Taksin’s influence among the electorate. The present junta hopes to stay in power for 25 years! [See https://bit.ly/3731MIZ ].

To add insult to injury, the vaccine produced by Siam Bioscience is being called “the gift from the King”, which it certainly is not.

Wachiralongkorn is the richest person in Thailand, but this has absolutely nothing to do with his abilities in any field. He is an intellectually challenged brutal playboy.

So lèse-majesté is being used to stop Thais questioning Covid policies. It is also being used to prevent discussion about reforming the scandal-ridden monarchy and campaigning for democracy. Scores of young people who led the recent protests against the junta have now been charged under this law. This is hardly surprising, as retired academic Thak Chaloemtiarana recently commented that the demand to reform the monarchy is a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the military.

I have argued for a long time that the monarchy is an important tool for the military in attempting to legitimise their rule and the lèse-majesté law is designed to protect this so-called legitimacy. The target of protests must be the military junta rather than the idiot king Wachiralongkorn. [See the myth of Wachiralongkorn’s so called power https://bit.ly/2EOjsNL ].

In the eyes of the junta, criticism of the monarchy and the military is a much more serious “crime” than murder, rape or terrorism. A few days ago a 63 year old woman was sentenced to 87 years in jail (reduced to 43 years and 6 months) for sharing video clips criticising the monarchy!! She has already spent 3 years in prison awaiting trial.

The Thai junta and ruling class are truly a bunch of barbarians.

Yet the impressive youth protest movement seems to be stuck in a rut and unable to move forward to respond to these attacks on liberties by the military. Unless the movement regroups and takes a turn towards the working class by attempting to organise strike action and civil disobedience, it will lack the power to overthrow the junta. [See https://bit.ly/3p3LlnI ].

Giles Ji Ungpakorn

Thai politics

Rubber Ducks Can’t Defeat the Military

December 2, 2020 uglytruththailand

The youth-led prodemocracy movement that erupted in August has been inspiring. It has made huge strides forward towards getting rid of the conservative and corrupt, military dominated, society. But it is time to take an honest look at what has been achieved while assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the movement.

Strengths

The movement has successfully rebuilt the pro-democracy movement on the streets in Bangkok and other locations up and down the country. This is after the bloody repression of the Red Shirt movement in 2010 and the following years when only small symbolic protests took place. At its height over 100,000 people have now taken to the streets in recent months. This is a remarkable achievement.

The protest movement has been invigorated by young people who are not afraid to defy the Old Order. Apart from the demands for the resignation of General Prayut as Prime Minister, and the demand to write a new “peoples” constitution, the protesters have dared to demand that the monarchy be reformed. This is long over-due and occurs in the face of a long history of stifling royalist propaganda and draconian laws used to protect the monarchy.

Young women have played key roles in the movement and activists from a wide range of campaigns have join the protests. LGBT and abortion rights issues have been raised. The right to self-determination for the people of Patani has also been flagged up. And the pressing need to reform the conservative and backward education system has also been a feature of protests by school students.

Rank and file organisation of the protests under the slogan “we are all leaders” has meant that demonstrations have continued when the original leaders have been arrested. The flash mobs are clearly well organised and continually use innovative styles of protest.

But there are weaknesses

Symbolism during the protests, for example, the use of rubber ducks, might be very photogenic and excite foreign journalists, but it cannot hide the fact that so far the protest movement has not been able to make the country ungovernable. Without doing this, Prayut’s parliamentary dictatorship cannot be overthrown. Rubber ducks are no substitute for real protest power that comes from strikes and workplace walk-outs. Unfortunately, little is being done to go out and visit worker activists in offices, banks, hospitals and factories in order to argue for strikes. This is mainly due to the appalling weakness of the left and the unwillingness of activists to rebuild a left-wing political organisation which can argue within the movement for an orientation on strikes.

The “we are all leaders” strategy means that it is difficult to have serious and democratic discussions about the way forward because no democratic structures exist within the movement which can encourage participation in decision making. The top protest leaders become de facto unelected leaders. This is not because they wish to be authoritarian, but it is an unintended result of the “we are all leaders” strategy. Instead there could have been mass discussion meetings and elections of a united front leadership committee. The Thai movement is not unique here. The same problem occurred with Podemos in the Spanish State.

If the movement fails to get strike action, we shall end up with a miserable compromise, carried out in the junta dominated parliament. Some sections of the constitution might be amended, but Prayut and the junta will not resign and the monarchy will not be reformed. [See https://bit.ly/3qol8Bl ].

A dozen protest leaders have been charged with lèse-majesté with the prospect of long drawn out court cases ending in draconian prison sentences. There does not seem to be any strategy to defend these leaders and to be able to pressure the regime to drop the charges.

Given the great strides made by the protest movement, it would be a terrible tragedy if very little was achieved in the end and the leaders ended up being isolated.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn