Down With Feudalism, Long Live the People: Challenging the Monarchy in Thailand

Description

Beginning in July 2020, youth-led protests filled the streets of Bangkok and other cities in Thailand. Fed up with the remnants of dictatorship that lingered despite the elections in March 2019, the protestors made three demands: 1) The current prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, who first came to power in the May 2014 coup, must resign and a new election held; 2) The 2017 Constitution, drafted by a junta-appointed body, must be revised; and 3) The institution of the monarchy must be reformed. The third demand is both what has made the protests potentially socially and politically transformative – and has caused the state to respond with repression. Since November 2020, at least 155 people, including many secondary school and university students, have been accused of lèse majesté, or insulting, defaming or threating the king, queen, heir-apparent or regent, a crime that carries a sentence of up to 15 years imprisonment per count. This talk examines the courageous dissent of activists and the repression they now face.

Bio:
Tyrell Haberkorn is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin. Tyrell researches and writes about state violence and dissident cultural politics in Thailand from the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932 until the present. She is the author of Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law and Violence (2011) and In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand (2018). She is currently writing a first draft of an indictment of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), the military junta that took power in the 22 May 2014 coup, and translating Prontip Mankhong’s prison memoir, All They Could Do To Us [มันทำร้ายเราได้แค่นี้แหละ]. Tyrell also writes and translates frequently about Southeast Asia for a public audience, including Dissent, Foreign Affairs, Mekong Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, openDemocracy, and Prachatai.