They looked like kids playing a game, but the heavy-handed detainment of young activists for using a three-finger salute to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with a coup that ended democratic rule betrays feelings of insecurity and paranoia among the junta.
The Nation November 25, 2014 1:00 am
Instead of detaining students for minor acts of defiance, the junta needs to begin listening to public opinions.
They looked like kids playing a game, but the heavy-handed detainment of young activists for using a three-finger salute to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with a coup that ended democratic rule betrays feelings of insecurity and paranoia among the junta.
The students were smart to borrow the simple gesture of defiance from the film franchise “The Hunger Games”. It has provoked an overblown response that makes the authorities look petty – even silly.
In his first visit to Khon Kaen province as prime minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha took to the stage at the Provincial Hall to be greeted by five protesting students.
The group, from Khon Kaen University, was then detained for making the three-finger gesture towards the premier. They were released after their parents accompanied them to a meeting with military authorities.
In Bangkok last week police detained three university students at the Scala and Siam Paragon cinemas for using the same three-finger salute.
The student demonstrations attracted international attention, following concerns raised by global organisations such as the United Nations over the condition of human rights in Thailand.
The Thai Foreign Ministry was even prompted to call a representative of the UN High Commission for Human Right to clarify the junta’s treatment of the protesting youngsters.
The crackdown suggests the junta might be losing perspective amid the huge challenges it faces, and failing to distinguish between minor acts of defiance and genuine threats to national security and the regime. The military and police detained and interrogated the students as if they were members of a terrorist group plotting the downfall of the state.
Prime Minister Prayut has suggested he could hardly care less about the student activism. Yet, though he dismisses the young activists’ significance, security officials have not been instructed to give them freedom of expression.
Rather than responding to student demonstrators as if they were enemies of the regime, authorities should take the opportunity to listen to the public opinion they offer towards the junta and its reform plan.
Rather than queuing up to scold the students or threaten them with legal action, the so-called reformers and intellectuals working for the regime should open a forum for them to express their concerns regarding reform, reconciliation and democracy.
Students are always a source of ideas on political reform and development. Over the decades the Thai student movement has proved itself to be a defender of democracy. Many members of the National Reform Council and the National Legislative Assembly took part in the student movement for democracy in the 1970s. They should be able to give the junta insight into the students’ democratic ideals and aspirations.
Students, particularly the group from Khon Khaen University, have been active in campaigns to help disadvantaged people in Northeast for years. Typically, they are politically non-partisan and affiliated with no party. When they call for democracy, they do so by and large without any hidden agenda or on behalf of any political faction. The junta should have no doubt about their intention and will.
If the junta genuinely cares about reform for democracy, as it claims, the authorities should adjust their attitude towards groups of people among the public who are increasingly seeking to make their voice heard.