Under the lèse majesté laws anyone can be charged with the crime of disrespecting the king, queen, or any heir to the throne. The current monarchy-backed military junta has used these laws to protect members of the King’s families, including, absurdly, their pets. Late last year, a young man was arrested after he posted a meme that mocked the king’s dog on a satirical Facebook page. Because of his joke, he now faces up to 37 years in prison.

These prosecutions indicate a problem far older than social media: Thailand’s constitution is designed to protect the king above everything else, including justice. Today, the first chapter of the constitution reads, “The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action.”

Because of this, the whole kingdom of Thailand is wary of honest conversation about the monarchy—and about the army generals who have frequently attempted to manipulate our country’s democratic system (nominally in place since a 1932 coup overturning the absolute monarchy of King Bhumibol’s uncle). This is quite a chilling effect, as the royals’ first coup to overthrow the constitutional government and regain power was attempted after democracy failed in 1933. The last, to date, occurred in 2014. Each time the king regains power, none of the coups’ leaders are ever brought before a court of justice.

To understand Thailand’s cycle of “coup, uprising, crackdown, election, coup” is to understand the relationship King Bhumibol—the world’s longest reigning monarch, having come to power in 1946—has with coups. By my count, approximately 10 coups have been staged for the king between 1947 and 2014. Each time, the palace’s Privy Council and other powerful actors have been able to generate enough military power to retain control for themselves and the civil servants that constitute this country’s elite.

This preoccupation with meddling in election results and quashing uprisings has left the majority of Thais with a subpar quality of life.

Young King Bhumibol.

I was born in 1966 in a rice-growing village 100 kilometers from Bangkok, Thailand’s capital. Because of its location, births were overseen by a midwife, rather than a medical doctor. As a youth, I was among the approximately 37 percent of Thai people suffering from thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder that degrades the carrier’s blood cells and can lead to anemia. I often think about how lucky I am to have survived my childhood sickness under the spotty care of the veteran medics and nurse’s assistants whom we called “doctors.”

This inferior health care was the norm for more than half of Thailand until the 1990s. If someone in the family needed serious medical attention, it meant selling anything you could to pay the medical bills and/or appealing to civil servants, who often seemed to only respond to bribes of food, gifts, or cash. (For this reason, the most secure life you can have in Thailand is to be a civil servant.)

Thus the less-secure classes cherished free universal health care when they experienced it for the first time in 2002, after it was implemented by Thaksin Shinawatra’s newly elected Thai Rak Thai party. When this happened, the whole country realized that bribing or personally knowing a civil servant was no longer the only option for getting reliable access to healthcare.

I like to think that the plan was implemented as a result of the mobilization of rural people who spurred the Thai Rak Thai party to power. However, the party dissolved after the monarchy regained control via yet another coup in 2006. This coup led to Shinawatra’s exile and many of his supporters being banned from practicing politics for years.

But dissatisfaction with the monarchy’s status quo, mainly among rural and lower-class Thais, remained, and led to massive demonstrations in 2010. Protestors from the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (commonly known as “Red Shirts”) took to the Bangkok streets in April and May of that year, and were met by tens of thousands of Royal Thai Armed Forces who opened fire on crowds, killing 100 people and leaving close to 2,000 injured. Shocked rural and urban Thais might not have supported Shinawatra’s political party—I myself do not support it—but the massacre alerted them to the brutality and selfishness displayed by the elite establishment and its protected class of civil servants.

The crackdown in May 2010 was yet another catalyst for many political activists to install democratic principles in Thailand. I answered my calling a few years before this, when I self-published an essay titled “Why I Don’t Love the King” and decided to live in exile outside Thailand. Today, I’m in Finland, but continue write on the “unspeakable” (under lèse-majesté) issues still affecting Thailand.

For instance, much of the national tax revenue is being funneled towards the nation’s elite. The budget allocation to the palaces has increased greatly since King Bhumibol came to power in 1946. And since the 2006 coup, the purpose of the national budget has been to support the development of the capital city of Bangkok and to look after the two million civil servants, military, and police, all in the name of protecting and honoring the King. This has worked out well for King Bhumibol; for almost a decade Forbes has ranked him as the world’s richest monarch, with a net worth of $30 billion.

Meanwhile, rural politicians fight amongst themselves over budget scraps, which they use to secure their families’ fortunes. The members of parliament in my hometown province, Suphanburi, have been passing positions between networks of family members for as long as I can remember.

2010 New Years Card for the Thai people, given by His Majesty the King of Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Growing up, we would hear things like “by the time the commission fees have been divided up, the money remaining for the construction of roads will only be around 20 percent.” On top of that, the prices for building materials such as brick, stone, and cement are greatly inflated, to the point where one of the Crown Property Bureau’s largest sources of income is from cement sales. As a result, Thailand’s road projects often take forever.

These issues have not spurred Thailand’s remaining political parties to action. No political party explicitly opposed the coups that occurred in 2006 and 2014, and they never felt the need to mobilize so that they could tell the military to go home. Party leaders resisted action so that they could protect their own families and businesses.

And so the current Thai junta survives, even though junta members have done nothing to endear themselves to the public, choosing instead to strengthen their ties to the monarchy. In March 2015, under the orders of Prayuth Chan-o-cha, a retired army general who leads Thailand’s National Council for Peace and Order, Article 44 was added to Thailand’s interim constitution, granting the junta unlimited legal power whenever the King feels threatened.

In return, the Privy Council, the body that advises the King, as well as other palace insiders, pushed out propaganda arguing that Thailand is not ready for democracy and is better off under the protection of 1,400 generals and 400,000 soldiers.

King Bhumibol seems to fear that he cannot keep the hearts of all Thai people submissive, and that they will one day rise up to eliminate the monarchy once and for all. And yet, because of his increasing reliance on lèse-majesté, many people outside of Thailand believe the king is universally beloved, and have no idea that there might be a different reality than the anachronistic story pushed by the palace. Indeed, the harsh lèse-majesté sentences have helped encourage that fantasy within the country as well.

There is a saying among the critical voices in Thailand that Thai people are living under a coconut shell, believing that Thailand is the most fantastic nation in the world, that Thai people are the sweetest human beings, and that the Thai king is the king of all kings. But outside of the coconut shell, the view is much darker.

 
*An earlier version misstated the year of the 2010 demonstrations.

The post Don’t You Dare Speak Ill of Thailand’s King appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The takeover of the government by Thailand’s army followed six months of street demonstrations aimed at bringing down the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of Thaksin, who was himself overthrown by the military in 2006. The army says this most recent coup was necessary to restore the peace, as the opposing political sides seemed unable to break their deadlock while protests resulted in the deaths of dozens and hundreds of injuries.

How has this affected my life in Bangkok? Not much, so far. My commuting has become more difficult, and I’m much more conscious of my words, and the color of my shirt. But it’s still the Bangkok that I’ve come to love for its vibrancy, its mix of modernity and old-world Asia, the food, the world-famous massages, and the bright colors.

I was born in Japan, schooled mostly in the U.S., and first came to Bangkok in 2000 for a summer internship with a project against sexual exploitation of children. Work on a project for HIV prevention brought me back in 2001 and then in 2007, when I met my German-Thai husband. We have small children we’re raising here (and we appreciate the affordable childcare) and live comfortably in a Thai family compound, with members of my husband’s extended family living in multiple houses inside a gated compound. My husband likens the whole place to Downton Abbey.

I sing for Opera Siam and its affiliated Orpheus Choir and work as a project management consultant to an international organization. (The organization doesn’t want us to comment on Thai politics, so that’s why I’m not using names.) My office is located in the old-fashioned government area near the center of Bangkok, where there are a number of popular targets for protesters: the Government House where the prime minister has offices, Bangkok’s police headquarters, parliament, and other military offices.

This last batch of protesters (the People’s Democratic Reform Committee, or PDRC, who opposed Yingluck’s government) decided to camp out on the main road smack in front of my office, thus blocking most of the office’s entranceways. For a while, the wide avenue was filled with tents, portable showers, port-a-potties, and communal dining areas. Eventually the number of people dwindled, especially after the king’s birthday last December, but the road remained blockaded. When the police attempted to reclaim the nearly deserted area in February, the protesters scrambled back to fight for their space. In the clashes there were casualties, and the area was left again to the protesters, who again mostly deserted the area as soon as it was not being threatened. They then consolidated their forces in Lumpini Park, a more convenient location in modern, downtown Bangkok.

Despite these disruptions, life has actually gone on quite normally for most of us Bangkok residents. The malls are still filled with people, we have no problems getting groceries and gas, businesses are open, public transportation is bustling as ever. If it weren’t for how the roadblocks added to already notorious Bangkok traffic, you might have thought these disturbances were occurring in another country.

For me, the road closures around the office doubled my commute from 20 minutes to at least 45 minutes, and I’ve heard colleagues lamenting some mornings about how their normal 45-minute drive to work took them as much as two hours. Recently, our office was closed for two and a half weeks when the protesters moved en masse back to our area, and we had to telecommute.

Another effect of these political upheavals has been that my husband and I have become extremely conscious of the color of our clothes. We dare not wear yellow (a remnant of the “yellow shirts” protests), red (likewise from “red shirts”), or any clothes that bear the three colors of the Thai flag: red, white, and blue (PDRC supporters wore Thai flag paraphernalia), for fear of our sartorial choices being taken as a political message. Some mornings will find us asking each other, “Does my shirt look too red?” or “Do you think this is too yellow?”, and it’s a running joke that we’ll soon run out of colors to wear.

Everyone is eager to talk about the political crisis, including on Facebook. What strikes me most is how emotional people are about Thaksin, who isn’t in the country anymore, but whom many think is orchestrating events from afar. One seems either to love or hate him and his family; there’s no middle path. Facebook is a minefield, with the real danger being that a carelessly made comment on my part might lose me friends whom I otherwise like. I try hard to say nothing more than that I hate the horrible traffic that the protests are causing.

The other thing that strikes me is how most people generally seem to welcome and trust the military. There was a picture circulating on Facebook where the head of General Prayuth, the man who instigated the coup, was Photoshopped onto Superman with a comment: “Our Hero!” It could be that Thais are simply used to coups—by one count there have been 24 in the 82 years since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy. (I got a good laugh out of a headline from Thailand’s version of The Onion stating that the most recent coup marked the discovery “of a new species of coup.”) Of further note, I’ve hardly heard a word mentioned on the role of the monarchy, which plays an essential role in Thai society and politics. I can only conjecture that most Thais seek “good” authorities—such as the monarchy and the military—to take control.

The general feeling in Bangkok following the military coup seemed to be that of relief. (See this piece by an eclectic conductor/composer/science fiction novelist friend, Somtow Sucharitkul.) I confess, even I felt a sense of satisfaction to hear that the main opposing political leaders were scolded for not getting along and then stripped of their powers. It was certainly a relief also that the military immediately dismantled the protest sites; our office has reopened and we can get back to work.

Thailand is the only home that my children have known, and it’s hard to see turmoil tearing it apart. Naturally, I hope for some kind of resolution, although it’s hard to tell how to reconcile a people who seem to be split down the middle. I hope that the military makes use of its stewardship of the government to find some miraculous compromise that all sides can reasonably accept. Otherwise, one can see elections taking place down the line, the pro-Thaksin party winning again (or not?), and the losing side taking to the streets again in protest. I can only pray that we won’t find ourselves saying: Here we go again.

The post Just Another Military Coup Monday in Bangkok appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Many of us who are Thai, or of Thai heritage, follow, and feel, all of this here in Los Angeles.

As this latest protest escalated over Thanksgiving weekend, my mom—who uses technology about as much as a vampire cooks with garlic—asked to borrow my iPad so she could watch live updates when she’s out running errands. Every evening last week, her TV was tuned to a live feed streaming over from Bangkok. My cousin switched from Verizon to T­Mobile because he needed unlimited data to stream the feed during his two-hour commute to and from work. Last month alone he consumed 10 gigabytes of data on his phone, not counting the broadband Internet he used while watching at home and during breaks at work.

Thais in Los Angeles aren’t just following the news, either. They attend talks and rallies when Thai politicians come to town. They’re passionate about the issues, and they feel invested in this fight. Most Thais I know have taken a side, and a good number of them feel very strongly that their side is right.

The Thai community in Los Angeles—estimated at around 80,000 people—is centered in Thai Town, a mile-long stretch of Hollywood Boulevard between the 101 Freeway and Normandie Avenue. There is also a large Thai Buddhist temple in North Hollywood that serves as a gathering spot for Southland Thais on national holidays, with a number of Thai businesses and residents in the surrounding community. A few smaller Thai temples and communities are scattered throughout the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

I have a large extended family here in Los Angeles, and every one of my relatives has lived in the United States longer than he or she lived in Thailand. Despite this, at family gatherings I hear only the slightest chatter about American politics, while emotions continue to run high over what’s happening in Bangkok.

The world’s most powerful nation elected its first African­-American president? Never mind that—boy, this chicken is delicious … who marinated this?

The friend of a friend shared a rumor about an unpopular Thai politician that contradicted an inconsequential thing he said in a TV interview two years ago? Let’s dissect that bit of conjecture for an hour over dinner!

Both of my parents were the first in their families to immigrate to the United States when they arrived here in the late 1960s seeking education and economic opportunities. Back then, there were so few Thais in Los Angeles that my parents—who were not people of means and influence—were invited to hold their wedding ceremony at the Thai consul-general’s residence in Beverly Hills. I was the first in my family to be born in the United States. My parents were working full-time and going to night school at the time, so my mom flew with me to Bangkok when I was an infant and asked my grandparents to take care of me for a short while. That short while turned into years, and I met my parents for the first time when I finally returned to Los Angeles at the age of 5. Throughout the 1980s, many of my mom’s siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins immigrated here. Most of them joined the growing business that my mom started with two of her brothers in downtown’s jewelry district.

But we never lost touch with politics in Thailand. Here’s an oversimplified account of where the country stands. Over a decade ago, a business tycoon named Thaksin Shinawatra—the current prime minister’s brother—founded a populist political party that appealed to the rural poor who make up the majority of the country’s approximately 64 million people. In 2001, Shinawatra became prime minister.

Shinawatra’s populist policies are primarily rooted in the concerns of his geographic electoral base. He commands widespread support from constituents in Thailand’s northern region—where he was born and raised—as well as the populous and agrarian northeastern region of Isan. These two regions have their own unique cultures, and their dialects are distinct from the Middle Thai spoken in Bangkok—the Isan dialect is actually a form of Laotian.

The group opposing Shinawatra is comprised of a coalition of various political parties that represent Bangkok’s political and socioeconomic elite, as well as its educated middle class. The Thai military—which at times has operated on its own agenda—has historically supported the opposition group, albeit with restraint.

In 2006, a non­violent military coup removed Shinawatra from the prime minister’s office. In 2008, Shinawatra was convicted of corruption. He has lived in exile with most of his assets frozen ever since. That did not do much to diminish his popular support, and his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, became prime minister in 2011. This sparked accusations that Thaksin Shinawatra was leading by proxy while in exile.

The current prime minister’s detractors are angered by what they perceive to be blatant corruption by the Shinawatra camp, from buying votes at election time to lining their own pockets to the detriment of the country. The government introduced an amnesty bill this year that many opponents believed would enable Thaksin Shinawatra to be cleared of his corruption conviction and return to Thailand. Last week’s protest was organized with a call for Yingluck to step down.

My mom’s family is part of the large Chinese diaspora that spread throughout Southeast Asia. They have middle-class values, are based in the Thonburi district in Bangkok, and support the opposition group. Most Thais, I think, are resigned to the belief that corruption is an unavoidable part of their government. A friend who sells software to Thailand’s various government ministries tells me he prefers it when the Shinawatra folks are in power; he has to offer off-the-books incentives as part of his sales pitch no matter which political party is in charge, but at least with the Shinawatra group decisions get made promptly, instead of forever sitting in committee limbo. I’ve never met a person in the anti­Shinawatra camp who believed that the politicians they supported were squeaky­clean—just that they were much less poisonous than the alternative.

At rallies and demonstrations, Shinawatra supporters wear red (they’re often called “redshirts” in Thai). The opposing side has gone through a few different colors over the years, but every time there is a mass gathering you can be sure that each side is color-coordinated in a show of solidarity. Even here in Los Angeles, you will see Thais wearing their affiliated color when big events are unfolding back home.

Just imagine the disruption it would cause if, every year or two, hundreds of thousands of Republicans and Democrats took to the streets in party colors and shut down multiple blocks in key sections of Los Angeles for a week or more. In 2008, the opposition group shut down Bangkok’s international airport. Imagine if protesters shut down LAX. We complain about traffic when Obama passes through town for celebrity fundraisers and we can’t get home for two hours. But this sort of disruption jeopardizes the long-term economic health of a city like Bangkok, where traffic congestion already makes it nearly impossible to get anything important done in a single day.

I last visited Bangkok in 2010 with my wife and daughter, who was 3 years old at the time. My wife’s parents and brother live in Bangkok. We stayed near the center of one of Bangkok’s main commercial districts—just down the street from the home of Abhisit Vejjajiva, who was then prime minister and a leader in Thailand’s Democrat Party. On the last day of our trip, we received word that redshirts were set to march on the prime minister’s house in the afternoon. We hastily packed our bags and loaded them into the car. As we sped off, police in riot gear were already amassing up and down the street and preparing for the worst. Despite the scares, my relatives and I intend to keep going back.

Fortunately, the recent strife was put on hold last Thursday for the birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. You know how it seems like the only thing Northern and Southern Californians can ever agree on is that In-­N-­Out Burger is the bomb? Well, in Thailand, the king is Big with a capital “B”—no matter what province you hail from or what color shirt you wear. So there were no protests on the king’s birthday. But who knows how long the quiet will last?

Just in case the action flares up again this week, my mom is prepared. A few days ago, she picked up a shiny new smartphone with, of course, an unlimited data plan.

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